Search Engines Set To Vie For China

ackthpt writes "Could China be where the battle for top search engine is waged? Reuters is carrying an article on the play for the Chinese search engine market. Already the second largest internet market in the world, there are estimated 80 million users in China and the number growing fast. Yahoo's acquisition 3721.com, Google-styled Baidu.com and Zhongsou.com are already poised and profitable. Where is Google? Blocked at one time, Google has made its way into China. Their handy cached pages are not available, but they do offer the Ad Words service in chinese to lure business. Those unfamiliar with China's rapid adoption of the internet might like to read up on the success of DangDang.Com an online bookseller, on the BBC, where it's noted that houses without heat or running water may actually have internet access. Thanks to China coming in where many growing pains, suffered by the west, have already passed or obstacles such as competing vested interests aren't as influential, so internet infrastructure is going in at a rapid pace."

Comments

Talk about Chutzpah...

[Penguinisto]

"My job in China is to kick Google's ass," said Zhou Hongyi, the bespectacled founder and chief executive of 3721 Network Software,"

He's gonna need an awfully big boot...

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[dingo]

Are you saying google has a big arse?
OOOOOOOOHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
You're in trouble now.
No man has ever survived that minefield.
You wil just have to search the web somewhere else if you are going to make comments like that.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[sbrown123]

He's gonna need an awfully big boot...


No, he'll just go pay off a government/military official and have Google blocked again. China is notorious for not playing fair and giving local companies huge advantages over foreign competition. I wish our own government would do this someday...

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[Shirov]

What and actually protect American jobs? Are you nuts? How are corporations and the richest 5% of the US population supposed to get even richer with such ideas*...

*note the sarcasm...

China is a big opportunity for the wealthy. Its the middle and lower classes that should fear things like this... Sure, open it all up, and wait for the huge sucking sound that used to be our economy...

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[Anonymous Coward]

HARRO!!! I hab creat-uhd new Webuh Browsah!!! ChingChungChang.com!!!

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[spike hay]

If you read about what's called comparative advantage, an extremely important economic theory, you would see that trade protectionism is damaging to the economy in the long run.

An economy should focus on producing what it is "least worse" at producing. Any government intervention, through subsidies or tariffs or other means, ultimately damages the economy because it encourages production in innefficient industries. An economy should always focus on productive industries and import everything else.

Take a look at the U.S. in the 70's and 80's. Our economy was based on manufacturing and industry. But we sucked at it. American industry was not competitive on the world market. We had anemic growth and ultra-high unemployment to prove it. So, industry moved overseas. This of course worsened the short-term unemployment problem. It was painful.

But you know what? We're better off without industry. That loss allowed our economy to expand in other areas, such as the tech sector. And now we have lower unemployment and a higher standard of living, too, compared to the 1970's.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[Shirov]

You really believe all this trickle spin bullshit? China, Australlia... hell, most of Europe have protectionist stances when it comes to jobs, and seem to be doing fine...

BTW: Is it really better to just dump an industry that you may not be the best at and displace 100's of 1000's of people rather than making your country better at that form of production?

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[Stephen Ma]

China is notorious for not playing fair and giving local companies huge advantages over foreign competition.

Advantages like Bush's tariff on steel imports, and the incredible subsidies that agribusinesses receive every year from Congress, which they use to undercut the farmers in many countries in the third-world, leading to frequent suicide by said farmers?

Pot...kettle....

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[spike hay]

You should head down to Stockholm to claim your Nobel Prize, because if you're right, you've disproved one of the most important founding principles of economics. It's universally accepted by Keynesians, monetarists, supply siders, everyone.

Trade protectionism sometimes will not kill an economy. But it contributes to uncompetitiveness on the global market. If we still had an economy based on industry, we would be so uncompetive in that arena compared to countries like China and Indonesia that we would likely be in a long-term recession, much like Japan is suffering now largely due to uncompetitiveness.

BTW: Is it really better to just dump an industry that you may not be the best at and displace 100's of 1000's of people rather than making your country better at that form of production?

You can't just make an economy better in an industry. Suppose I wanted to make the U.S. more competitive in steel production compared to say, India. To do that, I'd have to make mining more efficient, automate factories more, etc. Unless I wanted to lay off all the workers I possibly can, bust unions, and reduce worker benefits, I'm pretty much going to have to spend large amounts of money on capital. Thus, I'm still not competitive. Steel made by highly paid U.S. workers is not competitive.

Thus, the best thing to do would be to allow the free market to dictate what the steel industry does. This would entail some factories closing. But that frees up resources for more productive industries.

Free trade hurts badly in the short run but will produce a vibrant economy that is very competitive in the world market in the long run. It's counterintuitive, but it works.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[sbrown123]

Advantages like Bush's tariff on steel imports,


Bush removed the tariffs in December. When the tariffs were in effect there was a sizable increase in steel production and sales.

http://www.cnn.com/2003/ALLPOLITICS/12/04/elec04 .p rez.bush.steel/


and the incredible subsidies that agribusinesses receive every year from Congress


Thats because farming is not cheap. Its a very expensive business. There are many a farmer who is living with huge debt.


which they use to undercut the farmers in many countries in the third-world


The U.S. is the largest donater of farming equipment and food to third world countries.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

The US government does the same thing China does. Since you probably live in USA, or are heavily influenced by US government government propaganda, you wouldn't know. If you don't believe me, ask anyone from Latin America. Free trade did them a lot of good all right...

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[thirdrock]

Free trade hurts badly in the short run but will produce a vibrant economy that is very competitive in the world market in the long run. It's counterintuitive, but it works.

I don't believe it is counter-intuitive. To me it's perfectly intuitive. To change the the type of production your country engages in requires that the people working in these new industries have new and different knowledge and new and different skills.

To acquire this new knowledge and these new skills requires time, effort and oftentimes money. This is the pain that people who have been getting richer every year for a 100 years want to avoid.

Those who have money already make this transistion more easily than those who do not, which leads to an ever increasing disparity of wealth. This is the real source of complaint.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[spike hay]

Very true. It is pretty intuitive. But to many people it is not. Losing jobs sounds bad.

Those who have money already make this transistion more easily than those who do not, which leads to an ever increasing disparity of wealth. This is the real source of complaint.

This is open for debate. Often, the executives and higher-ups of a failing company get the shaft as well. Of course, there has been an increasing disparity of wealth in the past few decades.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[sbrown123]

But it contributes to uncompetitiveness on the global market.


There. You said it. I was waiting for the "G" word". Global what? No, the constant spin of saying protectionist is bad and globalisation is good is humorous because people such as yourself are completely incapable of finding how this is good for Joe Somebody working over in a steel plant in Ohio who has to go home tommorow and find a new job to feed his family.


You can't just make an economy better in an industry.


Your point earlier that we sucked at industry defies history. During WWII the U.S. was in a funk of a recession and it used its industrial might to snuff out two countries that were industrial power houses themselves: Germany and Japan. The 70's and 80's downturn had little to do with industry but rather the country redirecting its focus into a service economy that we have today.


Free trade hurts badly in the short run but will produce a vibrant economy that is very competitive in the world market in the long run.


And you know this because your econ teacher told you so? Where is your proof? History cannot be a guide since no one has done this before. So you have no facts only a theory. Risking the country on someones guess work has never really done us much good. Look at how well the tech industry went.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[sbrown123]

Losing jobs sounds bad.


You think so? Heres something people miss with the global economy idea. As people lose jobs they effect other people who have jobs. In a common day you consume products and pay for services that depend on your income to keep other people employed. As more and more people join the unemployed other areas are quickly effected and those business will have to fire people to support those who can pay. With globalization companies can use cheaper labor elsewhere to save on these loses which means more unemployed local workers. Its a vicious cycle where eventually the whole system is destroyed internally. Large corporations will survive simply because they, and only they, do not depend on the U.S. for work.

Now, this eventually will even out but 99% of the U.S. population will have to become equivelant to third world countries in order to compete.

And this is good in what way?


Often, the executives and higher-ups of a failing company get the shaft as well.


CIOs, CFOs, etc are only putz puppets of the board of majority investors. The board is staffed by very wealthy individuals who often sit on the boards of other non-competing openly traded companies. These people are all for globalization since it simply means to them more money. They are not employed and cannot be fired. If the company tanks they generally are well off enough to just go somewhere else and sit on another board.

Dont be a putz puppet. Globalization is a horrible idea that only sounds good on paper. Protecting the jobs of those who work should be the #1 focus.

Someone once noted to me that if we were unable to freely trade overseas those countries would probably impose sanctions on our products or stop some forms of trades. This would mean something like DVD players would no longer come from Japan. In reality, if that occured, companies here in the United States would simply start producing them. Sure they might cost more. But why does that really matter? If I had to buy a DVD player for $200 because of this I wouldnt cry myself to bed everynight wishing Japan would sell them to me cheaper.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[spike hay]

There. You said it. I was waiting for the "G" word". Global what? No, the constant spin of saying protectionist is bad and globalisation is good is humorous because people such as yourself are completely incapable of finding how this is good for Joe Somebody working over in a steel plant in Ohio who has to go home tommorow and find a new job to feed his family.

Did you read anything that I wrote? Layoffs and jobs moving overseas hurts. IN THE SHORT RUN. But economies need to evolve and move forward. If they don't, they will be left behind. If we still had an economy focused completely on heavy industry, you would not be as well off as you are today. Our exports would be reduced to virtually zero. No one would buy from the U.S. because our goods would be too expensive compared to more competitive countries. This would trigger a bad long-term recession. Jobs would be lost. Wages cut. And, unlike in a free-trade situation, they won't come back.

For a more ancient example of comparative advantage: In the early 1800's, the New England economy was completely based on agriculture. But, eventaully, the soils depleted and the market was flooded with cheap agricultural goods from the South and West. These areas were more suited to agriculture than New England. Many New England farmers failed and became impoverished.

So, did the New Englanders just sit on their asses and keep farming? No. This freeing of resources away from the agricultural sector allowed for a worker surplus. Guess what happened? The industrial revolution. Since 90% of the population wasn't on farms, they could work in the factories.

The 70's and 80's downturn had little to do with industry but rather the country redirecting its focus into a service economy that we have today.

Uh. We now have such a larger service sector because we don't have much in the way of industry.

Your point earlier that we sucked at industry defies history. During WWII the U.S. was in a funk of a recession and it used its industrial might to snuff out two countries that were industrial power houses themselves: Germany ad Japan.

Read my post again. We haven't always sucked at industry. In WWII, we were great at it. The fact that we had such a large industrial base was one of the main reasons we won the war. But we sucked at industry by the 1970's. Thus, many companies packed up and left. That is obvious. The last decade we've had higher growth and lower unemployment than during the 1970's, despite having lost all of those industrial jobs.

Go read this for a basic overview of comparative advantage.

Risking the country on someones guess work has never really done us much good. Look at how well the tech industry went.

Free trade isn't risking the country on somebody's guess work. It is based on the will of the market, which is composed of the people. Do you know hat is based on guess work, though?

That's right. Trade protectionalism. The government interfering in certain industries in a worthless clumsy attempt at helping the economy.

Go speak to any economist. Do it. Any economist. They will invariably tell you that protectionism bites everyone in the ass in the long run.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[Zilfondel2]

So...everyone is supposed to become employed in a specific sector?

In any given population, there are some people that are more adept at working at certain jobs than other people. For instance, some people are good at numbers and can work at computer programming. Others are not, and would rather cut off their left arm then work in programming or statistics simply becasue they hate numbers.

Similarly, business and/or analytical jobs do not appeal to those with creative tendencies, and vice versa. This is not even going near the problem with a lot of people who cannot get advanced degrees to enter a field.

This is completely the opposite of the idea behind sustainability. Importing goods and service from places thousands of miles away is ONLY profitable because of cheap transportation.

Once that price becomes too high, then the current economic model (global economy) must change.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[spike hay]

With globalization companies can use cheaper labor elsewhere to save on these loses which means more unemployed local workers. Its a vicious cycle where eventually the whole system is destroyed internally. Large corporations will survive simply because they, and only they, do not depend on the U.S. for work.

Again, look at the 1970's and early 1980's. If you want an example of a mass exodus of jobs overseas, you can find no better incidence. During this time, we lost a good portion of our heavy industry overseas. Japanese car companies were mopping the floor with the Big 3. Steel was moving out to India. Manufacturing was shipping out en masse to Korea and Taiwan. Unemployment was far higher than anything we saw during this latest recession.

This exodus was destined to occur no matter what. In this case, no amount of trade protectionalism could have stopped it. Yet, jobs came back. Not in the same areas, but they did come back. The end result was the low unemployment and efficient economy of the 1990's. We didn't suffer an economic collapse, as you posit that we would.

Outflows of jobs never have caused any kind of an economic collapse, and they never will. I defy you to show me one example of this vicious cycle.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[spike hay]

So...everyone is supposed to become employed in a specific sector?

Sorry if I made it sound that way. I was just keeping things simplistic. I was talking more about concentrating on sectors that we are the "least worst" at instead of innefficient industries.

Once that price becomes too high, then the current economic model (global economy) must change.

I'll have to disagree with you on the whole prices thing. We're seeing very low inflation right now. In fact, we've have completely low to moderate inflation for the last 20 years. Slow, steady inflation doesn't cause problems now, and it won't in the future.

You say in your previous post "Because people spend more money and make more money, the prices of everything goes up."

That's not really true. When the GDP grows (when you see GDP grwoth rates, it's always inflation-adjusted), people spend more money because there is more products to be had. They have more money to spend because they are the ones that produced all of those products. The products aren't more expensive. There's just more of them. It's a stregth of the global economy, I'd say.

Of course, there is inflation. But that usually isn't to be worried about unless it gets fairly high.

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[Stephen Ma]

Bush removed the tariffs in December.

But he did impose the tariffs. Steel, lumber, and agriculture were just some of the innumerable ways in which the U.S. protected its internal market, even as it used a crowbar to wrench open the markets in other countries.

The U.S. is the largest donater of farming equipment and food to third world countries.

The peasants of India have no need of tractors -- they can't even afford the fuel to run the tractors. They just need the U.S. to stop dumping food into the Indian market at prices that are incredibly low because of the enormous subsidies that U.S. agribusinesses receive. Many ruined farmers in India have committed suicide.

(By the way, this obscene situation was the main reason for the failure of the Cancun round of trade negotiations last year.)

Pot... kettle....

Re:Talk about Chutzpah...

[thirdrock]

Losing jobs sounds bad.

Yes, but changing jobs sounds worse, because that would require some effort.

This is open for debate. Often, the executives and higher-ups of a failing company get the shaft as well.

However, if they have used their higher income to save some money, they are often able to afford re-training or to be able to move to another area.

Of course, there has been an increasing disparity of wealth in the past few decades.

Could that be because those who were richer to start with had the funds and the witheral to make the transistion to the 'next economy', while those whose skills were easily replacable did not?
This is how the rich get richer, that is until lemon socialist governments step in to bail out those who are unable to make the transistion.

No running water?

[Havokmon]

Apparently not everyone surfs on the john.

Chinese Search Engines

[kevx45]

Wonder why China doesn't have a state-run search engine? They have a state-modified version of Linux (referring to RedStar Linux, I think...)

Seriously though, China has the largest population in the world with India at a close second right now. OF course their internet usage is BOOMING. Good luck to all those who design the search engines.

Re:Chinese Search Engines

[Anonymous Coward]

I think India has a larger poulation now actually

Re:Chinese Search Engines

[danbond_98]

Yes, but would the people rather use a state owned, hugely filtered search engine or google which, even if it is cut down, will still be 1000x better?

Re:Chinese Search Engines

[kevx45]

That wasn't the point of the question. I would think, in China anyhow, that it wouldn't matter what the people wanted since government controls everything anyhow. And since China has the manpower resources, I would think they would just rip Google off and run their own search engine. Or something like that. Probably doesn't matter anyhow since in the next few years they'll probably do that anyhow.

That's my two cents.

Kev

Extra Radio Buttons?

[linmanux]

On the chinese google page, what are the three radio buttons for? I know my google doesn't have them.

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[squarefish]

my guess would be different dialects of their language.

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[cyfer2000]

search the internet
search Chinese Content in the internet
Search symplified Chinese content in the internet

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[robslimo]

(1) search all webpages (all languages)
(2) search Chinese webpages
(3) search (simplified) Chinese webpages

I think the last one refers to the simplified written dialect.

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[Jotaigna]

how do you say "I feel lucky" in Chinese?.

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[Anonymous Coward]

>I think the last one refers to the simplified written dialect

Something like that - Simplified Chinese (GB2312) as opposed to other locales (Hong Kong, Taiwan) which use Traditional Chinese (Big5).

Google handles Chinese searches very well.

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[le_jfs]

how do you say "I feel lucky" in Chinese?.

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[kusma]

"All web pages", "Web pages in Chinese" and "Web pages in Simplified Chinese".

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[Thud457]

So, in China, does "Safe Search" mean "don't return anything that'll have me end up making Nikes in Jail"?

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[Anonymous Coward]

Not feeling lucky? :-)

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[zhangweiwu]

If you want to know, i Pinyin Shou Qi Bu Cuo = Luck Is No Bad

Re:Extra Radio Buttons?

[zhangweiwu]

wooo sorry don't know I should use HTML. It is my first post to slashdot.

In Pinyin:

Shou Qi Bu Cuo
=
Luck Is No Bad

BusinessWeek articles on the internet in china

[andy1307]

China.Net
China will soon be No. 1 in Web users. That will unleash a world of opportunity

An Open Society Online? Not Yet

eBay's Patient Bid on China

Re:BusinessWeek articles on the internet in china

[sbrown123]

That will unleash a world of opportunity


Yeah, it means my googling will get even more chinese results than those in english! Now I just need to learn chinese!

Re:BusinessWeek articles on the internet in china

[K1-V116]

Especially for pr0n in Cantonese?

Re:BusinessWeek articles on the internet in china

[Anonymous Coward]

Chinese pr0n - half an hour later you want another blowjob! (Although I'm disenchanted with their stance on goats' rights in that country...)

That sounds like an endorsement of Communism

[Anonymous Coward]

"Thanks to China [where] obstacles such as competing vested interests aren't as influential, so internet infrastructure is going in at a rapid pace."

Or at the very least, of dictators. Yay for the efficiency that comes with lack of choice!

Re:That sounds like an endorsement of Communism

[wdavies]

Actually, I dont think it means that per-se - more that you a virtually clean playing field to start off on... Its the classic story of combined and uneven development (to quote some Marxist economist).

Basically, for example, in the US, the development of Cell Phone standards was screwed by competing behemoths that already had a stranglehold on the telecoms market. Ditto with Broadband/DSL deployment. I guess in China, they have nothing much, so they will start off with the now state of the Art... whereas the US still has difficulty with the last mile.

Just my 2c worth.

W

Just a simple(?) question

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

There is much emphasis on the "growing" market for computers/internet stuff in China, and everyone who is anyone is trying to get into that market.

But does it really exist? The government has shown a marked distaste for anything that may threaten their power/viewpoint, and with many poor people in china (farmers, et al) does this market really exist, or are large corps. trying to forcibly open them up like they did with Japan in the early times?

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[ackthpt]

The times they are changing...

But does it really exist? The government has shown a marked distaste for anything that may threaten their power/viewpoint, and with many poor people in china (farmers, et al) does this market really exist, or are large corps. trying to forcibly open them up like they did with Japan in the early times?

Mao, back during the 1920's fond his support in the overlooked and abused peasants, abused first by the outgoing Manchu Dynasty then by Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. In the backwaters of the country the party has always drawn its strength and support. However, expect in a generation or so (and probably already well seeded) factions which draw support from other sources to make themselves known and carve out their own spheres of power and influence. Expect the peasants to lose considerable clout.

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[sbrown123]

Expect the peasants to lose considerable clout.


I was playing my favorite RTS the other day and my peasants took down a wolly mammoth. They are hard to beat with their pitchforks, torches, and mob mentality. Dont underestimate the little guys!

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[KingJoshi]

well, just 15% of the Chinese population is still 50% larger than all of Japan's population. China's economy has been growing steadily. Same with India. Even when a majority are poor, a small minority still adds up to A LOT of people.

From the CIA factbook.

Population:
China: 1.287 billion
India: 1.05 billion
USA: 0.290 billion
Japan: 0.127 billion

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[God! Awful 2]

There is much emphasis on the "growing" market for computers/internet stuff in China, and everyone who is anyone is trying to get into that market. But does it really exist?

The western media makes a big deal about the lack of freedom in China, but what about the attitude of the Chinese? Most people there don't seem to believe that they are being oppressed. None of the Chinese immigrants I know seem to care about the lack of "freedom" in China (okay, so I don't know any Falun Gong).

They didn't grow up in awe of the first amendment. The fact that it's harder to surf porn there doesn't seem to bother them. As for technological adoption, every second person I met there had a cell phone, digital camera, and an e-mail address.

-a

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[IWantMoreSpamPlease]

But how many people do you know that were at Tiananmen Square?

If you grow up without the concept of freedom, then perhaps you haven't lost anything (or don't know any better) but when (if?) the internet comes in full force, and the people see what they might never have had...what then?

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[Deliveranc3]

China is of course a developing country, however the principles of opening markets still apply and because of China's size certain other factors apply.

First off china is developing their own open source solution, chances are it's allready better than anything we have, my friends who have tried it report that it's really good.

Second poor or not the work of one day is the work of one day, and with nuclear weapons making free trade a possibility (Cough imperialism) the chances are that wealth between China and the rest of the world will level out in the next few years, whether it will be at a higher or lower level than the one we currently enjoy is a matter of debate and largely irrelevant due to the time vs technological growth equations.

More interesting will be the affects of their Buddhist/Taoist/Communist philosophies on our stale protestant/capitalist intellectual yawn fest. Check out their views on genetic engineering if you want an example.

Any society which which respects uniformity of purpose probably has much to teach a society based on the strength of each person's hand.

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[autopr0n]

Mao, back during the 1920's fond his support in the overlooked and abused peasants,

Yup, and then he fucked them harder then they'd ever been fucked before. Under Mao, peasents had a quota of grain they had to provide to the government, and a perminant minder. Pesants would often go hungry if they couldn't provide enough grain to meet their quota, even though they had produced more then enough to feed themselves. If they produced extra grain, they could only sell it at extra low prices. Mao's incompitance and idiocy resulted in the deaths of tens of millions of people.

Not that I'm some anti-communist McCarthiest, just point out what happened.

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

Expect the peasants to lose considerable clout.

There is no such thing as peasents; rather it's more like low class (as opposed to upper classes). In any case, they are already struggling these days. The restructuring of the Chinese economy meant that millions of lower class people were put out of jobs. So right now you have the situation where some people in the coastal areas are getting very rich while the interior is poor. A lot of these so-called migrants flock to the cities but they still struggle.

The Chinese government realizes this. In fact, the recent speech the Premier gave (just last week I think), he was talking about this problem. The wealth needs to be more equitable. He even talked about slowing down the Chinese economy (yes, slowing it down) from something like a 9% growth rate to 6-7% (or something). It remains to be seen if any of this will be successfully accomplished. Failure to do so will mean the Chinese government will collapse.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Just a simple(?) question

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

Asking a Chinese living under totalitarianism whether they are free is like asking an American whether their government is imperialist? Because governments spend billions of dollars on propaganda and disinformation (we all know how it worked for the Iraqi war and their WMD), the citizens in any nation are "brainwashed" and more likely to toe the government, or conformist, view.

Sivaram Velauthapillai

VI or Emacs?

[j0keralpha]

China is the main developing technology market now... your main competition problems in the US,EUR, etc. are that you will be dominated by market sway and sentiment in an existing user base. The choice between Yahoo and Google in china may well be like the choice 'VI or Emacs' that some people here went through years ago...

Re:VI or Emacs?

[Penguinisto]

Maybe, or perhaps China may come up with a better algorithm still.

I look at it in the perspective that the Chinese have a unique cultural outlook on life and philosophy that has been sharpened and refined over millenia. Odds are fairly good that they could put it to use in finding a way to do something (searching stuff online in a most relevant way) that many still regard as an art more than as an exercise in math and coding.

(man, emacs is ugly enough in English... I don't wanna know how many fingers would be required to do anything in a Chinese-ideogram keyboarded version of emacs...)

Re:VI or Emacs?

[kc0dxh]

What's more, since these algorithms test language, some of the languages used by China might be better suited to searching... or not.

Google Cache Pages for China?

[abcxyz]

I just looked, and the cached page link is there. Do you mean that they aren't caching links to CN sites?

Re:Google Cache Pages for China?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've found that 30 minutes after caching a Chinese page it had to be re-cached.

Re:Google Cache Pages for China?

[Stuwee]

Apart from this article, I wasn't aware that Google's cache functions had been disabled at all in China. Indeed, it doesn't seem all that possible since the Chinese can surely still use the English version to the same devices.

The Chinese authorities however did at one point block both Google and Altavista - dubbed "The Chinese Firewall" by the press - due to the fact that sites that they explicitly blocked from viewing could be accessed through Google's cache.

Re:Google Cache Pages for China?

[aCC]

Wow, this is actually news! I've been working in China for over 1,5 years and only now I can access the Google cache.

Before, if you accessed e.g. http://66.102.11.104/search?q=cache:jo3aRe29uHsJ:s lashdot.org/+slashdot&hl=en&ie=UTF-8 then you received timeouts. Only way round it would be by using proxies (encrypted if possible). They seem to have improved their Firewall of China and now let users look at "unclassified" Google caches.

Re:Google Cache Pages for China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Many web sites are blocked, once a time sourceforge.net was blocked too, but I think it was a mistake. I care about geocities, there are lots of good technique stuff there I cannot reach from China. I'm pretty courious about the reason of blocking vim.org and enlightenment.org, what did they say on there webpage made them blocked? Can someone copies something from enlightenment.org and pastes it here? I wish to know when DR17 will come out, I'm tired with DR16.

Re:Google Cache Pages for China?

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in China and use the English Google search all the time. The cache is more often off than on.

Re:Google Cache Pages for China?

[Anonymous Coward]

Another thing that you can't get in China aside from the Google cache is the BBC web site that carried this article. I have been in China for 5 years and other sites (e.g. VOA) come and go, but BBC is always off.

I know this Zhou guy

[CreamOfWheat]

He is an outright scam artist. Please do not invest $ with this guy, you will be sorry. Zhou also has a nasty habit of picking his nose and eating it--strange guy he is

I can vouch for...

[robslimo]

the popularity of the Internet in China. My in-laws are Chinese, living in Beijing. A coupla years ago, my brother-in-law got a cheap computer and a dial-up connection. Now he's just as much a net addict as the average western user. He uses email constantly, P2P networks, chat, online purchases... you name it. He just an average kinda guy too, not a techie.

It would be foolish for any large (maybe even some small) business to ignore the Chinese market. Give'm too much of a head start and they'll have their own market locked up tight internally.

--
I'm robSlimo, the username is a product of frustration after losing the pwd to RatOmeter.

3721?

[c_oflynn]

What is 3721 for? That like 1337 in chinese or something?

Re:3721?

[bcolflesh]

From their FAQ:

"Q: Where does the name 3721 come from?
The founders believed that 3721 was an appropriate name for the company, as 3721 is a Chinese saying that means "No matter 3 by 7 is 21, Just do it." The name is also suitable since it is a number, therefore the company's website URL is the same in English and Chinese - which is in line with 3721's philosophy of making the Internet simple for users."

Re:3721?

[jez9999]

The Chinese use Arabic numbers?

Re:3721?

[Cruciform]

Oddly enough the name Yakuza is based on a number too. Ya-Ku-Za. 8-9-3. A losing hand in the game hanafuda.

Re:3721?

[bcolflesh]

Apparently the game is called "oichokabu" - the deck of cards used to play it is called "hanafuda".

Re:3721?

[Anonymous Coward]

The saying rythms in Cantonese.

Re:3721?

[zhangweiwu]

3721 is evil. There was a lawsuit settled several months ago, between 3721 and the google-like baidu.com. (I didn't read the details, my friends told me this.) Because they each pop-up and install a IE plugin and, upon installation, break each other's plugin. I'll find news reports on this if you really care the detail.

Baidu.com mp3 search :)

[joeldg]

Baidu.com has an mp3 tab..
run a search for "metallica" or whatever..

kind of useful.. glad these guys can get away with that where mp3.lycos.com had to shut down.

Re:Baidu.com mp3 search :)

[cyfer2000]

why not try http://www.sogua.com/ input "pink floyd" at whereever you can and hit return

Re:Baidu.com mp3 search :)

[joeldg]

not as near many results.
baidu actually has a lot of returned results.
not as many as some place like soulreactor.com but they are direct links at least.

No surprise

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

China has two modes: hypermodern and very obsolete. A big Chinese city is like a veneer of chrome and neon put on an old tile-roofed hovel- you walk down the main streets, and the buildings are new and the shops stylish. You take a turn and it's rows upon rows of little houses with carts of vegetables out front and pirated DVD stores in between. An "Internet Cafe" in America is a swanky establishment- modern PCs, business class high speed Internet connection, and lattes to sip. In China, it could be just as sophisticated, downtown. Or, it could be 5 clunker boxes sharing a 56k modem in a random little room on a back street.

Re:No surprise

[cyfer2000]

I am student in US from China, my parents in China are using aDSL which I can not afford in US. I think there are millions of people using aDSL in China

Re:No surprise

[Anonymous Coward]

you left out with a side order of dog or cat....

Slashdot Double Standards

[Pave Low]

How come we don't see the 'Google Violates Human Rights in China' like we did with Microsoft?

Just curious.

Re:Slashdot Double Standards

[Stargoat]

Because Google is providing a search engine. Microsoft is providing parts of the firewall and sniffer technology used to trap and jail (or eliminate) people like Stainless Steel Mouse.

MS

[aidanjpadden]

Microsoft are always in there somewhere - if you look on the 3721 site it says that they have close links with MSN

"...notably our collaboration with MSN enhances the users' search and navigation experience on the IE browser in China..."

What is the leading browser over there - if they were all using IE then you'd say that Yahoo have the advantage here but since they have a tendancy to prefer their own Linux distro's I guess it's all up in the air?

Re:MS

[cyfer2000]

and 3721 install its IE plugin to whereever it can. I bet it is the most hated search engine by Chinese people.

Re:MS

[TerminalInsanity]

so i guess china will have to do without their xfree86

google.cn

[sp00]

Anyone ever looked at google.cn? It doesn't looks like it follows the usual google style. Mabye someone is trying to beat google out in china.

Re:google.cn

[Pranjal]

Actually google.cn does not belong to Google at all. Check the whois database.

Re:google.cn

[zhangweiwu]

That is a forum. Sex and games so like. Other examples are www.excite.com.cn has nothing to do with www.excite.com

Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[agslashdot]

The real technical hurdle search engines will have to face lie in India, not China.

Chinese Dialects -
http://www.glossika.com/en/dict/dialectmap.htm

Indian languages -
http://www.sanyal.com/india/indlang.html

With a handful of dialects & Mandarin being the mainstream language, a Chinese search engine will have a comparitively smaller problem sifting through the problem space than an Indian search engine that would have to deal with content in 325 distinct languages ( not dialects...India has 1000s of dialects! ) with atleast 100+ different scripts.

Ofcourse, IT tends to penetrate the English speaking population first & foremost, so most search engines, as a first cut, focus on content written in English & ignore the rest.

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[cyfer2000]

The other thing about Chinese is the dialects in most case are only different in pronouciation. So as search engines only read things and listen nothing, most dialects are the same.

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[ackthpt]

With a handful of dialects & Mandarin being the mainstream language, a Chinese search engine will have a comparitively smaller problem sifting through the problem space ...

For this you can thank the will of the CCP, which desired a uniform chinese language for the country. Notice Taiwanese use the old language. While it may seem a great loss, the advantage is people can communicate more easily. India's myriad little kingdoms of the past few centuries did little to create a unified language. China is well prepared for an actual great technological leap forward. India has it's work cut out for it.

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[KingJoshi]

granted, India has more languages and dialects, but it's important to keep in mind that naming the distinction is mostly arbitrary. Two people can consider themselves to speak the same language, but the differences in their language can be greater than those that for identity or historical reasons call their language a different name.

Second, most educated people in India also know English. Granted, most people in India cannot afford to be educated, but neither can they afford computers and internet to do web searches either.

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[Anonymous Coward]

Taiwanese use Mandarin too, you dolt! Get a clue before you right bullshit.

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[Stephen Ma]

The Chinese written language has been standardized all over the country for thousands of years. The CCP merely "simplified" a few characters.

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi, no, that's wrong. They also differ a hell of a lot in grammar. And even when you have the same characters in multiple dialects/languages, they can refer to words with different meanings. Never mind, say, Cantonese-specific characters.

That said, most people in China speak Mandarin. That makes things easy.

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[The Cydonian]

I speak five (Indian) languages, and have always wondered at Google's ability at searching Unicode characters across all languages (and, of course, their commitment to serving their UI in many Indian languages).

The difficulty, therefore, is not in terms of *languages* per se, but in terms of encoding; 99% of the stuff out there in my mother tongue, Telugu, uses non-Unicode rendering with proprietary fonts (often dynamic, so the display gets screwed up in browsers other than IE). Not to mention the fact that many websites, instead, prefer to use JPG images to display content; that way, they wouldn't have to do any tech support for n00b users irritated by the badly corrupted display on their browsers.

Then again, I'm talking about the ten or so Indian scripts which are covered by Unicode. Other scripts such as Meitei, for instance, obviously need to wait even more (but hopefully can get to the net faster considering the current experience). :-)

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[The Cydonian]

granted, India has more languages and dialects, but it's important to keep in mind that naming the distinction is mostly arbitrary. Two people can consider themselves to speak the same language, but the differences in their language can be greater than those that for identity or historical reasons call their language a different name.

But that wasn't the OP's point; he was merely saying it would be much more difficult, technically speaking, than it is for Chinese, to take search engines to all Indians, whether they speak English or not.

Second, most educated people in India also know English. Granted, most people in India cannot afford to be educated, but neither can they afford computers and internet to do web searches either.

Which, still, isnt reason enough for Google, or any other search engine, not to be in Indian languages. I, for one, would like to, say, look up the Ram Charita Manas, as easily as I can look up, say, Shakespeare. (As in, you can *get* the Ram Charita Manas, but you can't *search* through it.)

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[The Cydonian]

India's myriad little kingdoms of the past few centuries did little to create a unified language. China is well prepared for an actual great technological leap forward. India has it's work cut out for it.

You seem to be hinting that India isn't ready for an "actual" great technological leap forward because we don't speak a common tongue. I disagree; where there is complexity, there is creativity. It is pretty trivial for end-users to transliterate between scripts using the Indian Standard Code for Information Interchange (ISCII); a certain M- key combo, I believe, for emacs fans :-).

And indeed, it is a creative solution that has found uses outside Indian borders as well; Thai, for instance, uses ISCII as a base for its character encoding. So does Sinhalese, Myanmarese and just about most of the South, and South East Asian scripts out here.

Nope, our past and culture have never held us back from innovation or technological discovery.

Re:Technical Challenges - languages vs dialects

[xiashang00]

No. Although there are a handful of dialects in China, there are only two Chinese characters sets, the simplified and the traditional. All the Chinese poeple can read are mostly read the simplifid characters. If you can read traditional Chinese charaters set you can read the simplified sets also, and vice versa. It only takes one some minutes to adapt the two character systems. Remember you search with 'hands' not 'mouth'.

Bite the wax tadpole

[Channard]

'The founders believed that 3721 was an appropriate name for the company, as 3721 is a Chinese saying that means "No matter 3 by 7 is 21, Just do it."'

I bet Nike's lawyers are getting ready to 'just do it'..

That's a good goal

[General Sherman]

Unless China blocks them for showing anti-government material.

Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

houses without heat or running water may actually have internet access.

Glad to see they have their priorities straight.

Re:Priorities

[KingJoshi]

what do you do more often, drink water and bathe or drink soda (pop) and use the internet? Don't make me revoke your Slashdot card :)

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Alaska without running water but I have dialup... It's much cheaper and easier to string wires than to bury pipe.

Re:Priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

"houses without heat or running water may actually have internet access.... Glad to see they have their priorities straight."

Is this still the China story, or is it about student houses?

Re:Priorities

[WarderDot]

I'll be impressed if houses without electricity have internet access.

They're slowing modernizing.

[bad enema]

10 years ago, it was 99% little houses and vegetable carts.

Gradually, there will be more and more high rise apartment buildings to replace these houses. This will make sense as both the population grows and as people slowly gain personal riches to afford better living conditions.

The question is..

[Channard]

.. which company wants to find itself in trouble when it search engine catalogues pages with anti-government sentiment. Because, even if there's major censoring going on, some will still get caught by whatever webcrawler they end up using.

Wrong.

[DAldredge]

His job in china is to not get placed in Jail AND beat Google... If his search engine works too well and indexs the 'wrong' stuff he could face prison time.

Re:Wrong.

[The Unabageler]

but I suppose just indexing the "wong" stuff is ok

*ducks and hides

Re:Wrong.

[thirdrock]

His job in china is to not get placed in Jail AND beat Google... If his search engine works too well and indexs the 'wrong' stuff he could face prison time.

Wow! A Chinese lawyer on Slashdot. Thank-you for sharing your insights with us!

Chinese Google?

[Morologous]

It's all Greek to me.

Internet in China

[Vexware]

I would be interested in knowing to which point the Chinese government limits and will limit the access to information on the Internet, as after all it could be very easy to find documents discussing the way the Chinese government works, and which the Chinese leadership could find "a negative influence" over the population. After all, we in Europe, on a country-per-country base alone, have some problems blocking sensitive content which is uploaded and exchanged on the Internet - but then as soon as the governments try to enforce these limits a little bit, there's an outcry denouncing "an attack against free speach" (but the use of this "free speach" can be a little scary, when it is to detail the construction of home-made bombs); then again this may not be such a problem in China.

Re:Internet in China

[Anonymous Coward]

but the use of this "free speach" can be a little scary, when it is to detail the construction of home-made bombs

There's nothing scary about it, and no need to enclose it in quotations. Free speech, like all rights, exists primarily for the sake of things deemed dangerous or perverse. Pornography and bomb-making-information aren't abuses of free speech; they're quintessential examples.

Re:Internet in China

[Vexware]

I once read a quote here on Slashdot. It was by Voltaire, and said: "I might not like what you have to say, but I will defend your right to say it." I believe that quote is what free speach is all about. If it exists, it is to allow everyone to say anything in freedom, and as you say, freedom of speach exists primarily just for being able to say things deemed dangerous, perverse or taboo. I do not wish there be a limit to free speach - this would be an insult to democracy - but I sometimes wish it would be used in better ways than it is sometimes used now.

My Favorite China Internet Statistics

[MoreOrLess]

From CIA World Factbook on China:

Internet Providers: 3 (2000)
Internet Users: 45.8 million (2002)

Now I know these are dated, but c'mon ya'll, someone open up some ISPs there!! Do you think it's the government stifling competitior, or just that AOL can't afford to mail out 1.3 billion CDs there...

Pretty soon, all our webpages will be..

[SiW]

..SEARCHED BY CHINESE!

i can't read

[happyfrogcow]

"Yes Captain, our engines have been set to 'Fuscia'"

"No Leutenant! Not out engines, our Search engines!"

"Yes sir, setting search engines to 'Fuscia'"

"Fuscia!? No, set them to 'Vie'"

"Violet, Sir?"

"Leutenant, set our search engines to 'vie', thats an order!"

"What color is 'Vie', Sir?"

...At this point in the little theatre in my mind, I realized what the headline was trying to say.

Better late than never.

[Anonymous Coward]

./ . --|-- ----- .
/| | \ \ | / / |
-+-|--- ---|--- | |
_|- \/ /|\ | '
\| /\| / | \ \| .

TRAITOR!

[Anonymous Coward]

You said something againt China! You are a traitor! You hate 'free' trade!!!

Signed,
GWB

Re:TRAITOR!

[Shirov]

Free trade? Is an economy that regulates utilities, media, and television, along with preventing monopolies truely a "free market economy"? That is a perception the upper 5% want us all to believe...

Oh yeah

[Amorpheus_MMS]

>it's noted that houses without heat or running
>water may actually have internet access

Now those geeks have their priorities straight!

Another in a long history of naive calculations

[ianscot]

Since before the west (and Japan) worked at divvying the country up in the 19th century, businesses have been salivating over how much money they'd make if only they could sell shoes, or a steak, or a sports shirt, or a Yugo, to every person in China. The calculations always amount to "if we could only sell to X percentage of the population, well, multiply that by our profit margin and... wow!"

This is the neocolonial version, embedded in internet bubble-think. You may as well insert that step that shows up in /. "profit" jokes all the time:

3. ...
4. Profit!

China's more than a bunch of feet to put shoes on, and people and cultures are more than "untapped markets." Life ain't quite that simple.

short-form (simplified) vs long-form characters

[sczimme]

(Disclaimer: I haven't looked at the site yet.)

One of Mao's reforms in the 1940s was to simplify thousands of Chinese characters. These are called 'short-form' (jian ti zi). The people on Taiwan, however, were not subject to the update of the language, and 'long-form' characters (fan ti zi) were standard there for a long time. I believe the short-form versions have been adopted on a small scale.

That the mainland China site offers both short- and long-form is probably an oblique assertion that [according to Beijing] China and Taiwan are one country. Otherwise the site would probably include only short-form characters. (my speculation - .02 ren min bi)

Re:short-form (simplified) vs long-form characters

[Anonymous Coward]

Hong Kong also uses Traditional characters, as it was controlled by the British for most of the last century. Also, most Chinese living abroad use the Traditional characters.

Re:short-form (simplified) vs long-form characters

[HungWeiLo]

Hong Kong and Macao also uses traditional (non-simplified) characters.

Question for Slashdot

[Overly Critical Guy]

You posted a headline entitled "Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China" that said basically that because the government uses Windows, Microsoft is violating human rights. The article completely ignored the fact that China has its own custom Linux distribution, and that KDE removed the Taiwan flag for China.

Is Google "violating human rights" in this case? Yahoo? Anyone else?

Re:Question for Slashdot

[Urine1diot]

Err, you might want to get your facts straight before you go spouting off. First off all, it was Red Hat that removed the Taiwanese flag from their "unified" KDE distribution. Second of all, what does this have to do with Google violating human rights? I'm pretty sure that Google isn't based in China and who's to say that they use KDE to admin their server farm?

If you're trying to impugn Slashdot's earlier story (which you fail to provide a link for) you'll have to provide some proof if you expect anyone to take you seriously.

Re:Question for Slashdot

[Overly Critical Guy]

I'm talking about this story--"Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China."

I'm merely pointing out the double-standard. Slashdot breathlessly reports that somehow, Microsoft is violating human rights in China because their oppressive government uses Windows systems.

Meanwhile, Google, Yahoo, Linux, and Red Hat all freely target and do business with China--all without a peep from Slashdot. It's the double-standard. We never saw, for instance, a "OSS Violates Human Rights In China" article, even though China has its own Red Flag Linux distribution.

Feel free to disagree.

Re:Question for Slashdot

[Urine1diot]

From the article (thanks for the link, BTW):

'Amnesty believes Microsoft is in violation of a new United Nations Human Rights code for multinationals which says businesses should 'seek to ensure that the goods and services they provide will not be used to abuse human rights'. The article basically states that 'Gate's firm supplied technology used to trap Chinese dissidents'

Show me the hypocrisy in Slashdot. The story clearly says that Amnesty International was saying that Microsoft was/is violating human rights in China, not Slashdot. If Amnesty goes and says the same thing about OSS, then I'm sure it would be here on Slashdot as well. It seems to me that your complaint should be directed at Amnesty Intl., not Slashdot.

Growth to what end?

[amightywind]

Thanks to China coming in where many growing pains, suffered by the west, have already passed or obstacles such as competing vested interests aren't as influential, so internet infrastructure is going in at a rapid pace.

What good is the growth of network infrastructure when users cannot communicate freely or visit unapproved websites? "Vested interests" of Chinese citizens are routinely trampled by a gang of Communist cronies. Why is that so great? Seems to me that the network simply another way to enhance the Orwellian nature of the state.

Re:Growth to what end?

[coastwalker]

A tightly controled population is still capable of buying as much Nike Coke MacDonalds and Ford as a free one. Business is probably also doing very nicely with a very loose regulatory framework.

What people missunderstand about China is that though it comes from a place of centralised state economic control, that the government is strongly committed to rapid economic growth. Growth that is happening. There are many contries that have gone from largely agricultural economies to modern industrialisation in 20 to 30 years. Spain is a good example. South Korea differs from North Korea mainly in its political and legal institutions. Modernising policies in China could make China as sucessfull as South Korea in a very short period of time.

Re:Growth to what end?

[Anonymous Coward]

What good is the growth of network infrastructure when users cannot communicate freely or visit unapproved websites? "Vested interests" of Chinese citizens are routinely trampled by a gang of Communist cronies. Why is that so great? Seems to me that the network simply another way to enhance the Orwellian nature of the state.

The situation in China is somewhat similar to the Renaissance period in Europe. You could also ask the question: What good is the growth of the Printing Press when people cannot communicate freely on topics not approved by the Church? People promoting Copernicus's ideas might even be burned at the stake.

The point is that a new mass communication media such as the Internet opens up such an enormous space for exchange of ideas that even if it is not totally free it would still be a huge boost to progress. Once its benefit has been realized to a certain extend it will also help tear down existing obstacles.

How about "El Ron!" the movie!

[Anonymous Coward]

How about something a little more recent, like Plan Nine from Utah! "then he turned into a NEWT!"

Hi tech companies who think they can make money...

[mTor]

in China are like a mouse who thinks can get the cheese from a trap. Chinese will always keep a step ahead and keep on asking for various "features". Just take a look what they're doing to CPUs (Intel won't be able to sell soon) and Wi-Fi chips.

Search engines will be the same. Chinese will demand that they be able to censor anything they want. They'll be asking for backdoors and ways to track who accesses what.

Just when you think you've jumped through the last hoop, there will be another one waiting for you.

I think I know what the problem is...

[MagnaMark]

I think I know what the problem with Google's Chinese site is:

It's mostly just a bunch of question marks:

???? - Google ?? - Google.com in English

(C)2004 Google - ?? 4,285,199,774 ????

Gosh, Google has a good reputation, but with shoddy pages like this, they're not going to make much of a dent in the Chinese search market.

Re:I think I know what the problem is...

[crovira]

Its because its in Chinese (Mandarin most likely.)

Your character set can't represent the ideograms.

Re:I think I know what the problem is...

[MagnaMark]

Chinese, you say... No kidding? Well, I'll be!

Thanks for pointing that out, Mr. Literal! ;)

Transcript of conf call with Chinese officials

[bgeer]

Official: "We need to block search results which promote public disorder and evil cults"
Google: "Okay okay we'll block them"
Lycos: "We'll block them AND log who searches for them"
Yahoo: "We'll block, log, AND notify police of their location"
Microsoft: "We'll block, log, notify, disable their computers AND place an order for potassium chloride and a guerney using .NET supply chain management!"

Re:Transcript of conf call with Chinese officials

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry china perfers the tried and true method one bullet to the head, then charge the family for the bullet. in china people are cheap bullets aren`t......

CHINA?!

[TerminalInsanity]

a top search engine, from a country that insists on censoring the internet? HAH!

Population density

[Perianwyr Stormcrow]

It's so much easier to get high speed networks going when the population density is as high as that of a Chinese city (this is the case across all of Asia- S. Korea is highly wired simply because its population is extremely dense.)

Re:Confucius Say:"Many search engine but few conte

[ZenFu]

The population of China could be 1.2B, but when you compare the amount of literature written in Chinese langauge(s) to that written in English, Chinese comes in a very poor second place.

Who are we to say what they can do with the new tools that they will be provided? The combination of Yahoo going to China and the following article regarding the "deep web" makes me think that there will be new ways of conceptualizing and approaching the online universe.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/03/09/132025 1&mode=thread

Old-style content, assuming the word is still relevant, may not be the only content people are interested in and especially may not be relevant to other countries and cultures with different social, political and economic attributes. Who is to say that new internet surfers will go about the internet the same way the old internet surfers have done?

I think it'll be interesting to see what types of new and revolutionary products do come out of initiatives such as these.

Search Engine Censorship

[mckelveyf]

I think there should be a great deal of concern of new search engines in China. The major customer in China is the state and a number of companies including Cisco, Yahoo, and Microsoft have been catering their software to permit Chinese censorship. The Chinese government has also been active in removing certain keywords from use in popular search engines, like google.
If I type in 'Falun Gong' or 'VIP Reference' (page 30-31)' in any of these new search engines, I recieve no content. Sure these my offer new commerical opportunities, like MP3 searching. Both they are part of state control in China. Companies back in 2000 had to agree to self-censorship. These new sites represent a growing trend of corporate complicity in Chinese censorship. And if common search engines are actively controlling what is 'found' on the Internet, there is great concern that average citizens will become acostumed to a regulated Internet.

fenn

Language Barrier

[Deliveranc3]

I was really hoping that the internet might have unified all the languages. The chances of it doing so were really good, the percentage of information available on it in English was really really high, all the scripting took place in English and dns was all set up with an asci typeset.

Now I guess we will probably be going into space thousands of years from now still speaking to each other in gibberish.

Maybe I'd be more upset if I didn't enjoy hearing people sing in russian so much :)

According to the quoted article...

[Penguinisto]

Amnesty believes Microsoft is in violation of a new United Nations Human Rights code for multinationals which says businesses should 'seek to ensure that the goods and services they provide will not be used to abuse human rights'. The article basically states that 'Gate's firm supplied technology used to trap Chinese dissidents'."

1) Err, Amnesty Int'l is the primary source of condemnation MSFT, not Slashdot.

2) How do you "trap Chinese dissidents" with Google or Yahoo? Wouldn't Mapquest be faster? RedHat I could see the kick about since they do OSes too, but see #1 WRT RedHat and culpability.

3) With respect to OSS operating systems (of which neither Google or Yahoo qualify), the first pile of replies in your quoted article are chock-full of people asking stuff along the lines of 'what about OSS? Aren't they culpable as well?'

So, err, what was all the shouting about again?

3721 = san chi er yi?

[autopr0n]

So, what's that supposed to mean? I've noticed that Chinese people tend to use numbers as stand ins for Chinese characters that have similar pronunciations, but what is san chi er yi supposed to mean?

One of the most interesting is using 88 rather then ttyl when signing of instant messanges. 88 = "bai bai" :P

Re:3721 = san chi er yi?

[Kiyooka]

The general meaning is: "3 times 7 is 21 no matter what you say, do, wish, idealize or philosophize about, so just do what you have to do and be expedient". "chi" and "yi" also rhymes, so it sticks in the mind.

I've never heard 88 used as "bye bye", but I can see it since 8 = "bat" (actually a soft cut-off 't', no letter for it). It sounds a little like "bye", and Chinese people like the number 8 because it's a perfect rhyme with "fat", which means rich. Dat's "fat", yo.

Re:3721 = san chi er yi?

[AtomicBomb]

3721: 3x7=21. In the Cantonese speaking part of China (at least in Hong Kong), 3927 is the more common variant. Its mean is like "whatsoever".

The sentence is like "I don't care 3721, let's go to the pub before heading back home"

It should be called 9413

[Anonymous Coward]

> "No matter 3 by 7 is 21, Just do it."

Shouldn't that be 'No matter it is 9413 (9 deaths 1 live), Just do it.'?

Wifi in the outhouse?

[autopr0n]

Wouldn't be that hard to setup. But I wonder, how can you have Electrical service needed to run internet connected PCs, but not have a space heater. I would expect a space heater to be much cheaper then a computer, and obviously more apealing in northern china.

I mean, maybe the electricity is expensive, but arn't these people supposed to be communists? I know they're adapting but I would think that things like electricity would be a base service.

Re:Wifi in the outhouse?

[Anonymous Coward]

But a computer *is* a space heater. At least from a thermodynamic perspective.
And an extremely efficient one at that; when you spin down the hard drive and turn off the monitor almost all of the power that goes into the computer comes out as heat.

Couple of Points

[nemesisj]

There's a couple of points in the BBC article that are very misleading, which I'd like to draw attention to.

The worst issue is when the lady being interviewed says "Everywhere we go there are good internet connections." This statement needs to be qualified, since a good "broadband" internet connection in China is typically on par with a decent dialup setup in the US. Most Chinese cities have less bandwidth than a typical large state university. The city I lived in until recently only had 2 T3 lines for the entire urban area of 7 million people. A broadband connection would manage downloads of 4k a second at 2 in the morning, and maybe 1k or less during the day.

Also, I get the impression that she's using canned comparisons that one might use when talking to investors in this article - her anecdote about no heat but a great internet connection is no doubt accurate (China until recently did not allow central heating south of the Yangtze river) but is needlessy sensational if you really know what's going on.

Likewise, the fact that she's never given bribes is almost undoubtedly a lie, or she's taking advantage of the fact that doing business in China involves the use of many tactics that would commonly be referred to as bribes in the US.

Just a few minor points - the reality is of course that China will become a much more active participant in internet related activities, so the overall point of the article I agree with.

Short-form quite widespread

[autopr0n]

Your asertion that short-form characters were adopted on a "small scale" is way off. Pretty much everything on the manland is written using it, and it's taught in schools. Outside of taiwan, most chinese is taught using short form. It kind of sucks, though, because long form is easier to read (IMO) because you are looking at more information to 'hook' onto. With computers, there is no diffrence in the amount of time it takes to write.

Huh...

[autopr0n]

You know, switching between simple and traditional characters is pretty easy in software, there's a 1 to 1 correlation. I would expect most web browsers would support auto-conversion to the users prefrence...

Re:Huh...

[Triones]

Of coures it's not 1 to 1 !
Several traditional characters can be mapped into a single simplified characters.
The set of simplified chars is much smaller.

Arabic?

[Kiyooka]

Humans everywhere use a 10-digit number system, because humans everywhere have 10 digits -- literally, 10 fingers.

Re:Arabic?

[jez9999]

Yes, I'm sure they do... but the point I was making is that '3721' is a string of Arabic numbers. Just as I wouldn't recognise what Chinese script means, I doubt they'd understand Western script if they hadn't studied a Western language.

Re:Arabic?

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

Doesn't mathematics everywhere use Arabic numerals?

I'm not sure but I always thought humans used Arabic numerals everwhere (of course, I'm talking about now--clearly it wasn't the case before).

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Re:Arabic?

[Anonymous Coward]

Humans have used all sorts of different bases over the years, including 5, 10, 12, and 60.

Nobody cares about the fingers because you don't use your fingers to do math. There's no particular evidence that the human brain has any sort of "natural" base.

Re:Arabic?

[Kiyooka]

But the main base in usage is virtually always 10. Notice that 10, 12, and 60 require 2 symbols to represent, not one symbol. In Chinese, there are exactly the same symbols as in English: one for 0, one for 1, ... one for 9. Anything more needs a combination of the symbols. This is the case the entire world over. No civilization uses as its main numbering system a base-8 digit symbol system in which '9' requires 2 digits to represent, or a base-13 numbering system in which there are 13 unique single symbols for 1 to 13, etc.

Unlucky numerology

[whovian]

3721 --> 3 + 7 + 2 + 1 = 13

13 --> 1 + 3 = 4

Uh-oh. Looks like they're dead.

They won't care.

[autopr0n]

Most people don't care about freedom, they just live their lives the way the government wants. They think it only affects "dissidents". Just look at America. 40% don't think the patriot act goes far enough. Lots of people think the press has too much freedom(!!!).

Love of freedom is something that some people have an inate desire for, but for most people that isn't true. However, it can be sold and packaged by like any product (for example, equate personal freedom with national freedom and make personal freedom 'patriotic' like in the American civil war).

In a lot of cases, freedom-loving intellectuals are smart enough to sell this to the public, but when an authoritarian government like the Chinese clamping down on dissidents while at the same time providing for the citizenry well, giving them what they want, pro-freedom revolution is a non-starter.

It will be intresting to see what happens when the chinese bubble pops...

Facts for grandparent poster:

[Kiyooka]

The population of China could be 1.2B, but when you compare the amount of literature written in Chinese langauge(s) to that written in English, Chinese comes in a very poor second place.

Most translated books in the world:

1. the Bible. I don't think this counts because it's pushed onto other cultures by hordes of fanatical marketers that outnumber any corporation today: missionaries.
2. the Tao Te Ching, written thousands of years before Christ was even born. Less than 100 sections. Some sections are just 2 sentences. No missionaries. It's not even religious. No marketing force. People read it, it's deep, people want to learn more. Eye-opening whether you're 17, 57, reading for first time, 100th time... You should read it some time.

Did you know the Golden Rule of humanity "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is from Confucious? That "unto" King James lingo bullshit was added in to make people think only the Bible has any wisdom in the world. A better translation is "treat others as you would have them treat you". Less action-based, more focused on attitude and respect.

Sun Tzu's Art of War, written over 2000 years ago, is a must-read for MBA's the entire world over.

Oh yeah, the Chinese also invented the printing press.

I'm not saying Chinese people have the best literature in the world, but they're defintely up there. How can you think Chinese literature is comparatively poor? I think you should thoroughly study a topic before you make such generalizing statements. It only makes you look like a culture-centric ass.

Re:Facts for grandparent poster:

[pavon]

Good point on Tao Te Ching.

Did you know the Golden Rule of humanity "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" is from Confucious? That "unto" King James lingo bullshit was added in to make people think only the Bible has any wisdom in the world.

Give it a break :) First, there is no evidence that Jesus (or the writers of the new testimant) stole that from confucious. It is a good idea that many cultures have "discovered" independently. Second that "unto bullshit" is in there because that is how the language was spoken when the King James translation was done.

Re:The next big religious movie

[Sivaram_Velauthapill]

No wonder Usama bin Laden is angry. He probably saw a message like yours and got angry... ;)

Sivaram Velauthapillai

Slashdot posted it

[Overly Critical Guy]

Slashdot posted it, with that headline.

There wasn't an "OSS Violates Human Rights In China," was there?

Like I said, I feel it was hypocritical to post that headline. If a pro-Microsoft site had posted the OSS headline mentioned above, Slashdotters would be all over them for "bias."

Re:Slashdot posted it

[Urine1diot]

So your cheesed off because of a frickin' headline? A headline? Yeah, that's bias for you--why, in the three seconds that it would have taken anyone to read the story they might have thought that Microsoft was guilty of human rights violations! My God! However, after those three seconds elapsed, unless they didn't have a clue, they would have figured out what the headline was trying to say.

If a pro-MS site had posted you theoretical headline, I seriously doubt that anyone would be jumping up and down screaming for blood. After all, in the article you're talking about most of replies are asking the same question: What about OSS culpability?

But, then again, what do I know?

Re:Slashdot posted it

[Overly Critical Guy]

Yes, a headline, because the only reason Slashdot posted it was to indirectly accuse Microsoft of being evil.

However, after those three seconds elapsed, unless they didn't have a clue, they would have figured out what the headline was trying to say.

"Microsoft Violates Human Rights In China." What else is it trying to say?

f a pro-MS site had posted you theoretical headline, I seriously doubt that anyone would be jumping up and down screaming for blood.

You've got to be joking. Every little comment Billy Gates makes about Linux in some arcane lecture somewhere gets breathlessly posted as front page news so all the Linux people can jump on it and make fun of "M$." If a pro-Microsoft site had accused OSS of violating human rights simply because China uses its software, Slashdot would be all over it and you'd have endless posts defending Linux and accusing the "Microsoftie" site of bias.

Re:Slashdot posted it

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow. You completely ignored the parent poster's points and reiterated what s/he replied to. No wonder nobody argues with you--you're incapable of coherent argumentation.

Get a browser that dosn't suck.

[autopr0n]

They show up as chinese characters on my screen.

No heat, but I do have Internet!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, I live in a developing country I think... It's almost China. I don't have a heating, I do have running water (need to boil it before drinking), and very fast cable internet.

I live in Hong Kong.

It is so hot, you don't need heating. Just an airco :-)

Wouter.

MOD PARENT DOWN

[Anonymous Coward]

MOD PARENT DOWN (-1 redundant)!!!!!!!!! REDUNDANT- SAME AS A PREVIOUSLY POSTED COMMENT, THIS GUY JUST POSTED IT THE SAME MINUTE (so it could be up to 59 seconds after). proof is here. check the CID- it's one less than this one. it's likely that rob copied that other guy.

BBC? Not in china....

[Anonymous Coward]

"
Those unfamiliar with China's rapid adoption of the internet might like to read up on the success of DangDang.Com an online bookseller, on the BBC,
"

The BBC's news.bbc.co.uk site is 'not available' from China....

YHBT

[Anonymous Coward]

YHL. HAND.

I agree...

[Zilfondel2]

Additionally, you can't compare the United States to other countries.

Labor costs are tied into quality of life issues, all the junk that they own, and the developed nature of the country. People in the US buy more shit than most other countries in the world (certainly more than in Africa, China, or India), thus we have more monthly payments, taxes, and other stuff we have to support.

Because people make more money, and spend more money, the prices for everything goes up...because we have to pay ourselves to work maintaining this "economy."

It's really all just a vicious circle. When you introduce ultra-low cost labor in other countries, you are just circumventing all the built-in domestic costs for doing business HERE.

Eventually, you will probably be fucked, because people in other countries aren't any "stupider" than Americans. And they *really* want to get the cool shit we take for granted, plus they are used to working hard for next to nothing.

Censorship in action

[euggie]

I can read and write in Traditional Chinese, so here's an interesting fact:

After you search for things--in Chinese--along the line of "Remember 6/4" , "destroy the communist party" or even just "six-four" (a common way to refer to the Tienanmen Square Massacre) on Baidu or Zhongsou, for the next few minutes the their servers will immediately drop your connection ;-)

Re:Censorship in action

[Anonymous Coward]

Even worse. In my case I need to drop the modem and redial to get a new IP address to enter google again. One very interesting thing is game websites are sometimes mistakenly blocked. If you setup a website talking about using "magic" in certain game, a trick is to lleps ti sa "cigam" (READ FROM RIGHT TO LEFT. of course do the trick in Chinese text) to avoid being filtered and blocked.

Reading Comprehension 101 for autopr0n

[sczimme]

Your asertion that short-form characters were adopted on a "small scale" is way off.

Your reading comprehension is way off: I was talking about the use of short-form characters in Taiwan, not mainland China. Can you address that or would you like to misread something else?

As an aside, jiantizi still have the radicals and other visual and auditory clues [for reading] but are much easier to write when not using a computer, which is how at least 80% of mainland China does it. I don't think Mao was concerned with Big5 (et al)...

Re:Reading Comprehension 101 for autopr0n

[kusma]

In hand-writing, many people in Taiwan use (partially) simplified characters and other abbreviations, especially for common complicated characters and radicals. Most of these abbreviations are actually older than the writing reform, and were chosen to replace the full forms by Mao's reform commission.

No, my point is this:

[Kiyooka]

the golden rule isn't even **IN** the Bible. That you think it was, was my point! It was Confucious who first said it, but since it would disrupt Christian culture to think 'heathen godless savage pagans' could develop such a golden rule, they tried to associate it with the Bible by squeezing "unto" into it, so people will only go to the church when they want answers in life.

Oops, my bad:

[Kiyooka]

I just did some research, and it IS in the Bible. Sorry, my bad. I had believed otherwise. Just ignore me as I take off my tinfoil hat! :)