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Google To Suspend Mobile Phone Launch In China
An anonymous reader tips news that Google has decided to delay the launch of two mobile phones in China after the recent censorship conflict with the Chinese government. The phones were developed with Samsung and Motorola, and both of them run Android. A related article in BusinessWeek wonders whether Google's new stance on censorship will halt the progress Android is making in China, the world's largest mobile market. "The country was well on its way to helping Google exploit Android. Chinese handset makers such as Huawei and ZTE have been some of the earliest supporters of the upstart operating system. China Mobile already sells its own version of an Android-based phone system called OPhone. Motorola is making a big push into the Chinese market with smartphones based on the Android OS. And China's Lenovo has developed numerous Android-based products, including the LePhone. Any undue pressure from the establishment would mean that most of these companies would have to abandon Android in favor of other mobile operating environments."
Everything you say is correct, but perhaps you don't post to Slashdot very often. Moderation is almost always abused to indicate agreement/disagreement. As you have noted, your opinion speaks in favour of China's progress and against Google's. You would be no better off trying to defend the practices of the Catholic Church in a discussion on historical scientific progress (even the ones that resulted in preservation of pre-mediaeval documents and that gave the spark to the Renaissance - I have tried!).
It doesn't matter how much information you provide, or whether your ideas are relevant; it just matters whether your argument gives succour to the right team. Welcome to truth by democracy: have you also visited Wikipedia?
open source rescues formats, protocols, specifications and standards.
Not quite true. At most, theoretically true. The most popular open-source file-systems, Ext2 and Ext3 don't have official specification of the on-disk data structures. Many drivers that are part of mainline Linux kernel have code based on closed specs. RedHat's popular open-source clustering file-system, GFS doesn't have public specs.
The largest prime factor of my UID is 263267.
That means that now when you use hotmail, or office live or msn, or any of the Microsoft web properties, there is a chance that not only the NSA and the US courts can access your data, but also unelected and corrupt Chinese officials.
How many NSA officials did you vote for? What about judges? Just because you get to make one decision every four years, your government is not magically perfect either.
The Chinese have one big advantage over the US: their government doesn't need to lie to anyone. When they monitor the internet, they say so. And if you think your clean and elected officials don't, just try and exchange a few emails with a friend about blowing up something.