Slashdot Mirror

http://mora.jp/artist/80307744/80006846/?cpid=sony.co.jp

This example has a design no more complicated than an English website serving similar purpose (in this case, music retail). It mere appears to be more cluttered because the Japanese writing system is more complex.

A similar observation can be made with regards to Chinese, which is even more compact than Japanese due to the lack of a phonetic alphabet. Take a look at Yahoo:
http://www.yahoo.com/
http://www.yahoo.com.cn/
http://www.yahoo.co.jp/

The hanzi/kanji writing system simply does not lend itself to minimalistic designs in the same way that can be achieved by the Roman alphabet. This is partially why many modern brands in Japan make liberal use of English in their designs and typesets.

That said, it is also true that Chinese and Japanese web designers appear to follow a set of standards rather different from the Web 2.0 design philosophies. Many of them still like to use <TABLE> to format their layouts.

There's still Web Pages That Suck. :)

And the Chinese webmasters and users still believe in a "busy" front page.

Even portals reflect that mentality. Examples:

• Yahoo! USA vs Yahoo! China.
• Youtube vs Todou

It is rare indeed for Chinese websites to be minimalist. Examples:

• Google USA and Google China.
• Baidu

If you're looking for crappy pop music:

http://music.yahoo.com.cn/

Set it for mp3, and most of the links actually work to download! I've used this to uhm.. explore some files before.

I think this might just be what they're suing over.

well... it's more direct than that- the reason they are suing Yahoo China is in my sig (last I checked it was, otherwise go to http://music.yahoo.com.cn/ to see what I mean)- click the link and use it to look for an MP3- direct link, no clicking through loads of spam or ads- click the result and a media player will pop up with a download link too. I hope that Yahoo wins- I couldn't possibly bear to lose this valuable resource.

Yahoo China differs from other search engines (and from other Yahoo editions) by offering a quite comprehensive MP3 search with direct download links at http://music.yahoo.com.cn/

Examples?
http://music.yahoo.com.cn/search.html?pid=ysearch& source=ysearch_music_result_topsearch&p=nelly+furt ado&mimetype=all
http://music.yahoo.com.cn/search.html?pid=ysearch& source=ysearch_music_result_topsearch&p=shakira&mi metype=all

Yahoo China differs from other search engines (and from other Yahoo editions) by offering a quite comprehensive MP3 search with direct download links at http://music.yahoo.com.cn/

Examples?
http://music.yahoo.com.cn/search.html?pid=ysearch& source=ysearch_music_result_topsearch&p=nelly+furt ado&mimetype=all
http://music.yahoo.com.cn/search.html?pid=ysearch& source=ysearch_music_result_topsearch&p=shakira&mi metype=all

Yahoo China differs from other search engines (and from other Yahoo editions) by offering a quite comprehensive MP3 search with direct download links at http://music.yahoo.com.cn/

Examples?
http://music.yahoo.com.cn/search.html?pid=ysearch& source=ysearch_music_result_topsearch&p=nelly+furt ado&mimetype=all
http://music.yahoo.com.cn/search.html?pid=ysearch& source=ysearch_music_result_topsearch&p=shakira&mi metype=all

We have physical, electronic, and procedural safeguards that comply with federal regulations to protect personal information about you.

I would say that over the last year, I have seen Google put in some interesting situations. They've made those situations fairly public prior to deciding what to do about them, taken time to make a choice, chosen what could arguably be the lesser of evils, and made that public, too.

Examples: Google gets beat up all the time for tailoring its web searches to suit the Chinese gov't on google.cn. What about Yahoo and MSN? I'm sure that they tailor search results at teir China sites, too. Google gets beat up for having to turn over data to the Justice Dept, and yet they're the only ones who made any noise about it. I'm sure those same requests were made of other search engines, and that those engines happily turned over the requested data without informing the public at all.

Do I trust Google more now than I did a year ago? Yes, I do. Because they are public about situations of which the public should be aware, while their competitors are uncannily silent.

I pity the poor people who don't understand enough Chinese to use Yahoo! China MP3 search and download because Yahoo has got it right in China. Free, and it's got to be legal, right? It's Yahoo that's doing this, the RIAA would have attracted attention to this a long time ago if this was illegal. Try it with the help of babelfish or something, and see if you like it. It covers a whole lot, and will most definitely have what you're looking for. Bonus- no threat of being sued! This is the direction that Yahoo may be taking with the discussion, but maybe not...

You have to look at Yahoo from all sides- its China deparement does more than what you read on Slashdot every so often- look at http://mp3.yahoo.com.cn/ provides a convienient search engine for all MP3s on the web, lyrics and ringtone versions included, Chinese or not. So while Yahoo America has to turn people in for downloading MP3s off the web, Yahoo "must comply with all local laws" and only those laws- forcing Yahoo to abide by American laws would also remove this wonderful service that I use in place of a P2P network.

It's been interesting to see the robots from yahoo popping up in the logs with Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp China; http://misc.yahoo.com.cn/help.html) in them - i wonder if that will happen with Googlebot sightings or if we'll need to do traceroutes on them when we start seeing new ip addresses showing up from them

What if this were Microsoft?

Would you be so willing to understand?

Ah yes... but it is Microsoft:

http://www.msn.com.cn/ and yahoo: http://www.yahoo.com.cn/

Are they telling you that they are being forced to censor what you read? Seems there is a real line between going along quietly with oppression and telling you directly who you need to talk to in order to stop the thuggery.

It is an age old question, when is doing nothing better than doing something you disagree with under the threat of force? I think the morality of the situation depends on how much you can effect the outcome and if there is anything immoral that is done that couldn't be done without your participation. In this case, if they are truly telling people that search results are being omitted and the reason they are being omitted, then I think this is the bet they could hope to accomplish.

In this way Google is not misleading people like other search engines might by simply omitting the results and pretending that they are giving you complete results.

But the devil is in the details and this sounds like a slippery slope, to use the cliche, in order to remain "not evil" google would have to be willing to stop doing business in china or any other country that saught to use google itself more directly to mislead.

Slashdot is a waste of time, I hope to continue in that tradition.