Lineage II and other games not on the list brace for usage spikes during those time blocks. Stockholders are braced for wads of cash to fly their way. CEOs hope new subsriptions outway the bribes they paid to keep their games off the list.
Immerse yourself in the language. Write it and speak it every day. For some, this means living in the country; for others, date someone whose native language is the one you're trying to learn (and who doesn't have any other language in common with you; for example, my girlfriend speaks English, but my Chinese is much better than her English, so we always speak Chinese to each other, as it feels much more natural).
But yeah, do anything and everything that increases exposure. Flash cards are just one way. Set interfaces in Chinese, watch stuff with Chinese subtitles, etc. After spending a few summers in China, and spending much of my time with Chinese graduate students here (and having a Chinese girlfriend....), I often find myself thinking in Chinese, or mentally translating from Chinese into English, or pirating things with Chinese subtitles because it's faster for me to read Chinese subtitles.
This isn't a problem. They are closing down the localized version of Google.cn only. Unless the Powers That Be decide to completely block access to Google.com (individual content wouldn't be blocked unless it was "objectionable", and most content on Google Scholar is decidedly apolitical), Chinese scholars can just use the English version. Many of them have decent English, or have access to grad students with decent English. So again, no big loss unless they somehow lose access to the English Google scholar as well.
Before I get modded troll, consider he does actually have a point. Openness and free exchange of information are serious threats to social stability in China (which is, as others have pointed out, what Google does best). China watched the fall of the Soviet Union as a result of glasnost and perestroika. They are eager to avoid the same mistake, as the costs of social instability (both human and economic) would be far too high, for the country, its people, and not least themselves.
This isn't about Tiananmen or the Great Leap Forward, which are pretty much open secrets. It's about suppressing free flow of information, and maintaining control over all mediums of information exchange. They had control of the traditional media, phones, SMS, etc. The internet is another beast. Finding out and sharing information about corruption and other major shortfalls is far too easy with an open, uncensored internet. They don't want peasants knowing too much about local corruption, and when they do know, they don't want them to be able to organize or share this information. Censorship is a key component; allowing criticism of the government even on such now-unimportant bygones as the Great Leap Forward would potentially open the floodgates on new criticism on issues that could result in instability.
So, Li is right. In order to suppress dissent, they must maintain control and continue censoring. Whether you think the cost imposed by censorship and lack of free speech is greater than the potential losses from any resulting social instability is another matter entirely. Many Chinese think, and I often agree, that while the Chinese government is too sensitive right now, maintaining a stable environment for economic growth is a bigger priority than free speech. The farmers I talked to in Shandong and Jilin also agreed- they know they're getting shafted in comparison to urban dwellers, but they're still doing better than at any time in history, and would rather not lose their chance at a new fridge, air conditioning, and a TV in return for some abstract ideas about freedom to criticize the government. In their minds, censorship and its evils are the lesser evil, when compared to potential civil strife.
Most educated Chinese are well aware, and really don't care that much about the Mao years. Same party, different leadership. American parallel: The Civil War killed more Americans than pretty much all other wars combined to date, since it was Americans vs Americans on American soil. At the time, Lincoln was in charge, and he was a Republican (which used to be the "good" party- Democrats and Republicans sorta swapped platforms in the 1960s as a result of the Civil Rights movement).
So new boss, very different from the old boss. They don't give a fuck if the Chinese know about 6/4 or the Great Leap Forward. But stopping censorship would open up the floodgates of freedom of speech and criticism. Peasants don't know and don't care about history. They do know that the local party officials are corrupt, and that many of them are getting shafted. An uncensored, free internet would be a great way for them to learn more,share stories, and organize. It would be an amazing platform for the criticism of the communist party.
It's not even the Central party they'd be criticizing; many Chinese adore Grandpa Hu and Grandpa Wen. The local party officials are another thing altogether, especially in rural areas.
While this works well for the more widely-spoken languages (Western/European Languages, Chinese, Japanese), I suspect there is a massive drop-off for some of the less common languages, especially those for languages spoken in countries less connected to the internet. The article mentioned they feed the algorithm human translations from the EU and UN proceedings; what about less-common Asian languages, the Indian subcontinent languages, central Asian languages? The volume simply doesn't exist. Where the volume does exist, what about Russian and Korean, which are dominated by Yandex and Naver? Might be interesting to run a comparison, but unfortunately all the languages I speak are covered fairly well by Google at this point:(
I'm not fluent in Chinese law (yet, though I plan to be someday), but there are large numbers of Western lawyers who are. And I'm sure Google and the US government employ many of these.
I have noticed no changes. Searching in Chinese version still provides "All pages" "All Chinese pages" "All Simplified Chinese pages" as options, with "All pages" as default, regardless of language query.
The English version of Google helpfully suggests "Search English pages only" when entering a Chinese search term, with no "Written in any language" options available on the top of the search page (still available in options). When entering German search terms, same results as English search terms. Same for Russian and other non-Roman alphabets.
I would say it's bias, in that Americans generally only speak English, and don't ask for targeted language results, whereas users of localized version might have an interest in language options.
You're doing it wrong. Search for Falun Gong in Chinese, Baidu functions completely normally, returning all the relevant results. Google.com(English, using Chinese search terms) and Baidu naturally return different results; but the Chinese results are much better! They provide much more useful information regarding the evil cult that is Falun Gong! Sort of like how searching Google for Scientology provides nasty, biased, Scientology-backed and funded apologist propaganda, but China helpfully censors that nasty pro-cult crap, leaving you with the truth!
Piracy brought Anime to America, and sustains other markets as well, where Japanese prices are too high (China, Taiwan: manga insanely popular, but everyone buys pirates versions or reads scanlations online). The producers of manga and anime do so primarily for the Japanese market, which remains highly profitable. Unless the Japanese start pirating, the industry will do fine, and keep producing. Manga and anime needs to be as popular overseas as it is in Japan for traditional print distribution or dubbing studios to be profitable. The only places besides Japan where manga is that popular is China/Taiwan/Korea, and they have the same piracy issues as America, since noone there wants to pay for inferior service (long wait times and poor voice acting), compared to the superiority of fans who do it for the love of the medium.
Bottom line: Overseas production companies are going to hemmorhage money.
Also, I'm not crying about this. Fans do an awesome job of translating. There are far more fansubs and fan translations available than official licensed translations. Where they do buy rights to huge series, the pirated version has been out long before. I don't want to wait months for some company to wade through licensure and waiting for completed books; I happily read it the day it comes out in Japan, as it is usually scanned and translated within 3 hours, tops. Most fan translations do a great job, and I hate dubs with a passion. Why on earth should I pay for the DVD or a bound book?
Plus, the intersection of the anime/manga crowd and the geek crowd is a fairly large set. We're not stupid, and know how to use the internet(s) to get what we want.
Is still the best way to learn any language. Watching media, listening to music, talking with people, reading and writing the language... doing anything that increases your daily exposure to the language. Naturally going to that country is your best bet, live with a host family, and do your best to forget your mother tongue for a year. A Chinese friend of mine speaks perfectly fluent German, simply from living there for a year with a family, despite not evening knowing "Guten tag" upon arrival (she didn't even have much background in English to help with Germanic language grammar).
As someone else mentioned, music*, books, movies, comedy.... and just meet people from that country/region. A computer will only be effective if you use it for absurdly long amounts of time. You can never learn a language effectively for an hour a day- live the language, breathe it, and most importantly, USE it. At first you'll be learning to say "How do I say, 'I'm late' in X?" and later be wondering how to make complex philosophical arguments in said language. It's a process of natural acquisition, at any age.
*Music not recommended for Chinese or other tonal languages. You get the sounds, but not the tones.
While I presume you are being facetious, I'll bite anyway. This is a hardware solution, and circumventable by simply controlling functionalities of satellite phones. China already bans wifi capability on most phones sold there, why not demand restrictions on functionality or remote software on all satellite-enabled phones sold in China? It wouldn't be airtight, but it would be enough to stop most users. Also, for the majority of Chinese people, a good satellite phone and the wish to look for satellites operated by non-Chinese companies is not on the horizon (for at least ~10-20 years, maybe). The desire is the thing that's missing; the options to get around the firewall are out there, but noone cares enough to go through the trouble to do it.
While noone in China uses twitter enough to care even if Twitter found a way to "uncensor itself", if they could succesfully find a technical workaround that required no effort from end-users, it might be worth talking about (if my reading of TFA is right, any site could use such hacks to unblock itself, even google or dissident websites). However, if it forces end-users to install software to route around firewalls (a la Freedomgate and other already available software), the sites will remain unaccessible to the majority of users, who just don't care enough to bother. I'm honestly very curious as to what technical methods are out there for opening access through government firewalls that would not involve illegal and nearly impossible invasions into foreign computer networks. The Chinese and Iranian governments control the "pipes"; what software solutions could twitter possible be thinking of? Nice goal, but technically possible, beyond current "hacks/proxies"?
Mod parent up. Only English sources seem intent on using various different terms for astronauts based on their nationalities. In Chinese, there are two terms for astronauts: yuhangyuan,which is made up of the term for space flight (in turn made up the the words for space/universe and travel/craft/flight) and the word for member, person, employee, etc. which is also used for pilots, etc. taikongren is the basis for taikonaut, which is literally "outer space person", and isn't used as commonly as the former. The terms are applied to all astronauts regardless of country of origin; it really does seem ridiculous that only we seem to be fixated on this problem. The Russians seem to be consistent in using cosmonaut to describe astronauts, though I haven't done a survey of Russian news sources.
P.S. You are right about basic word combinations; though "automobile" (qi che) uses the characters for "steam" or "vapor" and "wheeled vehicle/car", while the combination of "fire" and "wheeled vehicle (huo che) refers most commonly to trains. Disclaimer: Not a native Chinese speaker, but close enough by now:p
If Google finds anything, this could have serious reprecussions for foreign companies hiring in China and Chinese students seeking green cards/employment in the US, especially in high-tech areas. Does anyone else think that mandatory background checks might be put in place to screen candidates, beyond simply assessing technical skills?
If so, it's a good time to be Indian or Taiwanese/Korean, if you're competing with Chinese candidates.
Though I do hope if this doesn't result in hiring discrimination against Chinese candidates; most of them are bright cookies, and there may come a day when US tech companies need them more than they need us.
T-mobile is the only option for urban areas. If you're not in an urban area, Verizon has the best coverage, but it's CDMA format, so if you plan to go back overseas or travel frequently, you'll need to keep your old phone for swapping SIM cards.
Also, if you switch to a CDMA carrier, you'll need to buy a new phone. I would recommend T-mobile for the reason you can just swap out the SIM card, but if you're not in an urban area, ATT is the only other GSM carrier, and they are only slightly better than two cans on a string.
How exactly would they enforce this? At best he can force Italian ISPs to comply, which could be circumvented by simply having a decent enough proxy outside Italian borders, or just sending files to users in other countries. I'd also hate to see how these licenses were handled- on a computer basis, in which ISPs authorize individual accounts? The entire idea simply seems absurd and unworkable.
On another note, IANAL, but would this in any way conflict with any European Union laws regarding freedom of speech?
140 characters is a lot in Chinese. While most phones are not limited to so few characters anymore, even if they were, you can cram a lot of information into 140 Chinese characters. Easily enough to plan riots; the anti-Japanese riots several years back were orchestrated and planned almost exclusively over SMS.
No matter what it does, we are too distrustful of large MNCs to ever assume they are capable of actually making a principled stand that would run contrary to business interests. The Google narrative of the situation is fairly clear: one of the costs of doing business in China was to kowtow to government censorship demands (complying with Chinese law, as they comply with American law in America and German law in Germany). They felt it was wrong (or not) but claimed the greater evil would be to NOT enter the search market, leaving it to be dominated by companies who would have no qualms about censorship whatsoever (see Yahoo handing over IP addresses). They later discovered they had no leverage; the good they could do by being able to provide search results that were clearly marked as "censored" was outweighed by the harm that could be done by leaked information, and they were unable to do anything (within the bounds of Chinese law) to prevent it. Thus, they reevaluated, and are considering exiting the market.
The alternative is that it is simply a business strategy switch: they discovered the market is unprofitable, and are exiting or some shit.
The problem with this is simple: even if we concede that Chinese consumers don't click or buy anything through Google ads, rendering their business model moot, Google needs the market share. The Chinese will not always be poor. There are huge number of middle class Chinese in cities with enough disposable income to make purchases. The revenue streams will grow over the years. If they cede the market to Baidu, by the time the Chinese are rich enough to afford to buy products online through ads, Google will have to enter the market as a new player with no market share to start. Not being a business analyst for google, I do not know exactly how many clicks they need to remain profitable in China. But given the huge numbers of urban Chinese with money to spare, and the impressive rate of growth, it will only be a matter of time before (urban) China catches up to Taiwan and Korea (and eventually Japan). When that happens, it will be a much more profitable market than the US and Europe.
While I'm inclined to distrust MNCs, it is possible that they really are trying to make a stand. Did anyone know/leak this before it was announced, making them fear a Yahoo-style shitstorm? Otherwise, it would have made more sense to keep it quiet, simply say there was an attack, and leave the targets of the attack unannounced, and then continue business as usual. But no matter what it does, it will be accused of simply following the money. But hey, props to google for trying, in my book.
Bear in mind Wikipedia may not be the site of choice for users in these countries: searches on Chinese google or Baidu don't always return wikipedia at the top. The most popular search engine, Baidu, often returns results from Baidu Encyclopedia (a clone of Wikipedia, in functionality). The Baidu Baike entry for Heilongjianghttp://baike.baidu.com/view/2647.htm?fr=ala0 is much longer and more complete, and seems to have more activity than the Chinese version. Also, Wikipedia was censored for a period of time, which might have affected usage.
Computer gaming is already heavily integrated into CS1.5 and 1.6 courses! I fully support expanding professional training to all versions of CS, as to reduce the number of noobs populating the servers.
The downside is, naturally, that the courses focus *too* heavily on games, and thus while it builds incredible enthusiasm for CS, tends to bring about overall slippage of GPA, and a waning interest in actual coursework.
Slashdot Mirror
Lineage II and other games not on the list brace for usage spikes during those time blocks. Stockholders are braced for wads of cash to fly their way. CEOs hope new subsriptions outway the bribes they paid to keep their games off the list.
This is prohibitively expensive. Many studies in sociology and economics rely on demographic data, which is usually best provided by the census.
I just wish we had yearly data :(
Immerse yourself in the language. Write it and speak it every day. For some, this means living in the country; for others, date someone whose native language is the one you're trying to learn (and who doesn't have any other language in common with you; for example, my girlfriend speaks English, but my Chinese is much better than her English, so we always speak Chinese to each other, as it feels much more natural).
But yeah, do anything and everything that increases exposure. Flash cards are just one way. Set interfaces in Chinese, watch stuff with Chinese subtitles, etc. After spending a few summers in China, and spending much of my time with Chinese graduate students here (and having a Chinese girlfriend....), I often find myself thinking in Chinese, or mentally translating from Chinese into English, or pirating things with Chinese subtitles because it's faster for me to read Chinese subtitles.
I would expect this to be done in 3D, with mad special effects and CGI, sort of like Avatar in Middle-Earth.
If done well, that wouldn't be a bad thing :D
This isn't a problem. They are closing down the localized version of Google.cn only. Unless the Powers That Be decide to completely block access to Google.com (individual content wouldn't be blocked unless it was "objectionable", and most content on Google Scholar is decidedly apolitical), Chinese scholars can just use the English version. Many of them have decent English, or have access to grad students with decent English. So again, no big loss unless they somehow lose access to the English Google scholar as well.
Before I get modded troll, consider he does actually have a point. Openness and free exchange of information are serious threats to social stability in China (which is, as others have pointed out, what Google does best). China watched the fall of the Soviet Union as a result of glasnost and perestroika. They are eager to avoid the same mistake, as the costs of social instability (both human and economic) would be far too high, for the country, its people, and not least themselves.
This isn't about Tiananmen or the Great Leap Forward, which are pretty much open secrets. It's about suppressing free flow of information, and maintaining control over all mediums of information exchange. They had control of the traditional media, phones, SMS, etc. The internet is another beast. Finding out and sharing information about corruption and other major shortfalls is far too easy with an open, uncensored internet. They don't want peasants knowing too much about local corruption, and when they do know, they don't want them to be able to organize or share this information. Censorship is a key component; allowing criticism of the government even on such now-unimportant bygones as the Great Leap Forward would potentially open the floodgates on new criticism on issues that could result in instability.
So, Li is right. In order to suppress dissent, they must maintain control and continue censoring. Whether you think the cost imposed by censorship and lack of free speech is greater than the potential losses from any resulting social instability is another matter entirely. Many Chinese think, and I often agree, that while the Chinese government is too sensitive right now, maintaining a stable environment for economic growth is a bigger priority than free speech. The farmers I talked to in Shandong and Jilin also agreed- they know they're getting shafted in comparison to urban dwellers, but they're still doing better than at any time in history, and would rather not lose their chance at a new fridge, air conditioning, and a TV in return for some abstract ideas about freedom to criticize the government. In their minds, censorship and its evils are the lesser evil, when compared to potential civil strife.
Most educated Chinese are well aware, and really don't care that much about the Mao years. Same party, different leadership. American parallel: The Civil War killed more Americans than pretty much all other wars combined to date, since it was Americans vs Americans on American soil. At the time, Lincoln was in charge, and he was a Republican (which used to be the "good" party- Democrats and Republicans sorta swapped platforms in the 1960s as a result of the Civil Rights movement).
So new boss, very different from the old boss. They don't give a fuck if the Chinese know about 6/4 or the Great Leap Forward. But stopping censorship would open up the floodgates of freedom of speech and criticism. Peasants don't know and don't care about history. They do know that the local party officials are corrupt, and that many of them are getting shafted. An uncensored, free internet would be a great way for them to learn more,share stories, and organize. It would be an amazing platform for the criticism of the communist party.
It's not even the Central party they'd be criticizing; many Chinese adore Grandpa Hu and Grandpa Wen. The local party officials are another thing altogether, especially in rural areas.
While this works well for the more widely-spoken languages (Western/European Languages, Chinese, Japanese), I suspect there is a massive drop-off for some of the less common languages, especially those for languages spoken in countries less connected to the internet. The article mentioned they feed the algorithm human translations from the EU and UN proceedings; what about less-common Asian languages, the Indian subcontinent languages, central Asian languages? The volume simply doesn't exist. :(
Where the volume does exist, what about Russian and Korean, which are dominated by Yandex and Naver? Might be interesting to run a comparison, but unfortunately all the languages I speak are covered fairly well by Google at this point
FTFA: 1.3 trillion pounds, or 600 million tons. Dividing by 2*10^3 shouldn't be that difficult.
Then again, this is Slashdot, nobody ever reads TFA!
I'm not fluent in Chinese law (yet, though I plan to be someday), but there are large numbers of Western lawyers who are. And I'm sure Google and the US government employ many of these.
I have noticed no changes. Searching in Chinese version still provides "All pages" "All Chinese pages" "All Simplified Chinese pages" as options, with "All pages" as default, regardless of language query.
The English version of Google helpfully suggests "Search English pages only" when entering a Chinese search term, with no "Written in any language" options available on the top of the search page (still available in options). When entering German search terms, same results as English search terms. Same for Russian and other non-Roman alphabets.
I would say it's bias, in that Americans generally only speak English, and don't ask for targeted language results, whereas users of localized version might have an interest in language options.
You're doing it wrong. Search for Falun Gong in Chinese, Baidu functions completely normally, returning all the relevant results. Google.com(English, using Chinese search terms) and Baidu naturally return different results; but the Chinese results are much better! They provide much more useful information regarding the evil cult that is Falun Gong! Sort of like how searching Google for Scientology provides nasty, biased, Scientology-backed and funded apologist propaganda, but China helpfully censors that nasty pro-cult crap, leaving you with the truth!
Piracy brought Anime to America, and sustains other markets as well, where Japanese prices are too high (China, Taiwan: manga insanely popular, but everyone buys pirates versions or reads scanlations online). The producers of manga and anime do so primarily for the Japanese market, which remains highly profitable. Unless the Japanese start pirating, the industry will do fine, and keep producing. Manga and anime needs to be as popular overseas as it is in Japan for traditional print distribution or dubbing studios to be profitable. The only places besides Japan where manga is that popular is China/Taiwan/Korea, and they have the same piracy issues as America, since noone there wants to pay for inferior service (long wait times and poor voice acting), compared to the superiority of fans who do it for the love of the medium.
Bottom line: Overseas production companies are going to hemmorhage money.
Also, I'm not crying about this. Fans do an awesome job of translating. There are far more fansubs and fan translations available than official licensed translations. Where they do buy rights to huge series, the pirated version has been out long before. I don't want to wait months for some company to wade through licensure and waiting for completed books; I happily read it the day it comes out in Japan, as it is usually scanned and translated within 3 hours, tops. Most fan translations do a great job, and I hate dubs with a passion. Why on earth should I pay for the DVD or a bound book?
Plus, the intersection of the anime/manga crowd and the geek crowd is a fairly large set. We're not stupid, and know how to use the internet(s) to get what we want.
Is still the best way to learn any language. Watching media, listening to music, talking with people, reading and writing the language... doing anything that increases your daily exposure to the language. Naturally going to that country is your best bet, live with a host family, and do your best to forget your mother tongue for a year. A Chinese friend of mine speaks perfectly fluent German, simply from living there for a year with a family, despite not evening knowing "Guten tag" upon arrival (she didn't even have much background in English to help with Germanic language grammar).
As someone else mentioned, music*, books, movies, comedy.... and just meet people from that country/region. A computer will only be effective if you use it for absurdly long amounts of time. You can never learn a language effectively for an hour a day- live the language, breathe it, and most importantly, USE it. At first you'll be learning to say "How do I say, 'I'm late' in X?" and later be wondering how to make complex philosophical arguments in said language. It's a process of natural acquisition, at any age.
*Music not recommended for Chinese or other tonal languages. You get the sounds, but not the tones.
While I presume you are being facetious, I'll bite anyway. This is a hardware solution, and circumventable by simply controlling functionalities of satellite phones. China already bans wifi capability on most phones sold there, why not demand restrictions on functionality or remote software on all satellite-enabled phones sold in China? It wouldn't be airtight, but it would be enough to stop most users. Also, for the majority of Chinese people, a good satellite phone and the wish to look for satellites operated by non-Chinese companies is not on the horizon (for at least ~10-20 years, maybe). The desire is the thing that's missing; the options to get around the firewall are out there, but noone cares enough to go through the trouble to do it.
While noone in China uses twitter enough to care even if Twitter found a way to "uncensor itself", if they could succesfully find a technical workaround that required no effort from end-users, it might be worth talking about (if my reading of TFA is right, any site could use such hacks to unblock itself, even google or dissident websites). However, if it forces end-users to install software to route around firewalls (a la Freedomgate and other already available software), the sites will remain unaccessible to the majority of users, who just don't care enough to bother.
I'm honestly very curious as to what technical methods are out there for opening access through government firewalls that would not involve illegal and nearly impossible invasions into foreign computer networks. The Chinese and Iranian governments control the "pipes"; what software solutions could twitter possible be thinking of? Nice goal, but technically possible, beyond current "hacks/proxies"?
Mod parent up. Only English sources seem intent on using various different terms for astronauts based on their nationalities. In Chinese, there are two terms for astronauts: yuhangyuan,which is made up of the term for space flight (in turn made up the the words for space/universe and travel/craft/flight) and the word for member, person, employee, etc. which is also used for pilots, etc. taikongren is the basis for taikonaut, which is literally "outer space person", and isn't used as commonly as the former. The terms are applied to all astronauts regardless of country of origin; it really does seem ridiculous that only we seem to be fixated on this problem. The Russians seem to be consistent in using cosmonaut to describe astronauts, though I haven't done a survey of Russian news sources.
P.S. You are right about basic word combinations; though "automobile" (qi che) uses the characters for "steam" or "vapor" and "wheeled vehicle/car", while the combination of "fire" and "wheeled vehicle (huo che) refers most commonly to trains. :p
Disclaimer: Not a native Chinese speaker, but close enough by now
Especially Super Metroid.
Though, there would be something to be said for a well-rendered 3D Samus Aran sans armor....
If Google finds anything, this could have serious reprecussions for foreign companies hiring in China and Chinese students seeking green cards/employment in the US, especially in high-tech areas. Does anyone else think that mandatory background checks might be put in place to screen candidates, beyond simply assessing technical skills?
If so, it's a good time to be Indian or Taiwanese/Korean, if you're competing with Chinese candidates.
Though I do hope if this doesn't result in hiring discrimination against Chinese candidates; most of them are bright cookies, and there may come a day when US tech companies need them more than they need us.
T-mobile is the only option for urban areas. If you're not in an urban area, Verizon has the best coverage, but it's CDMA format, so if you plan to go back overseas or travel frequently, you'll need to keep your old phone for swapping SIM cards.
Also, if you switch to a CDMA carrier, you'll need to buy a new phone. I would recommend T-mobile for the reason you can just swap out the SIM card, but if you're not in an urban area, ATT is the only other GSM carrier, and they are only slightly better than two cans on a string.
How exactly would they enforce this? At best he can force Italian ISPs to comply, which could be circumvented by simply having a decent enough proxy outside Italian borders, or just sending files to users in other countries. I'd also hate to see how these licenses were handled- on a computer basis, in which ISPs authorize individual accounts? The entire idea simply seems absurd and unworkable.
On another note, IANAL, but would this in any way conflict with any European Union laws regarding freedom of speech?
140 characters is a lot in Chinese. While most phones are not limited to so few characters anymore, even if they were, you can cram a lot of information into 140 Chinese characters. Easily enough to plan riots; the anti-Japanese riots several years back were orchestrated and planned almost exclusively over SMS.
No matter what it does, we are too distrustful of large MNCs to ever assume they are capable of actually making a principled stand that would run contrary to business interests. The Google narrative of the situation is fairly clear: one of the costs of doing business in China was to kowtow to government censorship demands (complying with Chinese law, as they comply with American law in America and German law in Germany). They felt it was wrong (or not) but claimed the greater evil would be to NOT enter the search market, leaving it to be dominated by companies who would have no qualms about censorship whatsoever (see Yahoo handing over IP addresses).
They later discovered they had no leverage; the good they could do by being able to provide search results that were clearly marked as "censored" was outweighed by the harm that could be done by leaked information, and they were unable to do anything (within the bounds of Chinese law) to prevent it. Thus, they reevaluated, and are considering exiting the market.
The alternative is that it is simply a business strategy switch: they discovered the market is unprofitable, and are exiting or some shit.
The problem with this is simple: even if we concede that Chinese consumers don't click or buy anything through Google ads, rendering their business model moot, Google needs the market share. The Chinese will not always be poor. There are huge number of middle class Chinese in cities with enough disposable income to make purchases. The revenue streams will grow over the years. If they cede the market to Baidu, by the time the Chinese are rich enough to afford to buy products online through ads, Google will have to enter the market as a new player with no market share to start. Not being a business analyst for google, I do not know exactly how many clicks they need to remain profitable in China. But given the huge numbers of urban Chinese with money to spare, and the impressive rate of growth, it will only be a matter of time before (urban) China catches up to Taiwan and Korea (and eventually Japan). When that happens, it will be a much more profitable market than the US and Europe.
While I'm inclined to distrust MNCs, it is possible that they really are trying to make a stand. Did anyone know/leak this before it was announced, making them fear a Yahoo-style shitstorm? Otherwise, it would have made more sense to keep it quiet, simply say there was an attack, and leave the targets of the attack unannounced, and then continue business as usual. But no matter what it does, it will be accused of simply following the money. But hey, props to google for trying, in my book.
Bear in mind Wikipedia may not be the site of choice for users in these countries: searches on Chinese google or Baidu don't always return wikipedia at the top. The most popular search engine, Baidu, often returns results from Baidu Encyclopedia (a clone of Wikipedia, in functionality). The Baidu Baike entry for Heilongjianghttp://baike.baidu.com/view/2647.htm?fr=ala0 is much longer and more complete, and seems to have more activity than the Chinese version. Also, Wikipedia was censored for a period of time, which might have affected usage.
Computer gaming is already heavily integrated into CS1.5 and 1.6 courses! I fully support expanding professional training to all versions of CS, as to reduce the number of noobs populating the servers.
The downside is, naturally, that the courses focus *too* heavily on games, and thus while it builds incredible enthusiasm for CS, tends to bring about overall slippage of GPA, and a waning interest in actual coursework.