don't we as a society have better things to do than ferret out instances of hypocracy in every nook and cranny of public life? Is hypocracy really so awful? If a company strives to do good but sometimes fails at it, is that not better than to not strive at all?
Google has done a lot of good: free awesome search engine, all the tools, the advocacy of actual standards, etc. So their political efforts are dirty - hey, you know, welcome to politics.
> Your interests don't have to be "likely targets for potential censorship" to be adversely affected by that censorship.
that may be true in some cases, but is clearly -not- the case for the examples I listed.
> Freedom of speech (and freedom in general) aren't just principles to make citizens of elite first-world countries feel good about themselves. They have far-reaching consequences, and it is those consequences that people sometimes fight and die for.
Sure. I'm not sure what you think I'm getting at, but all I'm saying is in some cases it's prefereble to have a censored source of information to having none at all, and I've provided several examples of those cases. Getting up on your high horse about freedom of speech really isn't relevant to someone who is dying because their doctor can't diagnose them properly.
Nothing is completely isolated from anything, that's certainly true, but your assertion that this implies that they are likely targets for potential censorship by the chinese government is demonstrably wrong, since you can easily access this information from inside china, and strikes me as deliberatly misleading.
but still not such a great idea, IHMO. I don't see what's so hard about finding some small chunk of an actual problem you had a while back and asking someone to solve it. That's what I've done every time I interviewed someone and it generally works pretty well.
I just can't see saying "Wow, Bob isn't working out really well. I can't figure out why, though - he did so great decyphering that message and solving the riddle of the Wizards Cave that I gave him as a test."
uh... frequently, yes. If you're interested in IDE cable pinouts, instructions on how to build a refrigerator or diagnostic steps for abdominal pain, the chance it'll be censored due to political reasons seems pretty small.
> Why is everybody framing the question in terms of Google's profits?
I'm not. I mostly simply objected to the use of the term "heroic" in this totally non-heroic context.
> Jimmy Wales is doing the same thing for the internet, and I have the utmost respect for that.
So do I. I think it's a Good Thing he's doing, I just decline to get all worked up and laud him as a 'hero' for doing what is, frankly, probably the easiest course of action.
Small companies more efficient than large bureaucracies! Further shocking news as events warrant!
Seriously, though, how is this surprising? Small companies, by their nature, are more able to come up with good solutions to a narrowly defined problem, such as 'build a nuke detector falling within these parameters,' this should surprise no one.
However, you still need someone to oversee this host of small companies. Privatizing any large-scale project (such as 'homeland security') into a host of tiny companies is inviting all kinds of intractable integration issues, waste and outright fraud. There's a reason the government is the way it is - the bureacracy exists to minimize these problems. It's not perfect, obviously, but it mostly works.
It's always tempting to say "you know, this is broken, let's start fresh with a whole new way of doing things," but it often leads to simply trading one set of problems for another.
My analogy -is- flawed, but lies with the dragon/mouse. The problem is that what's holding the princess is very dangerous to the princess, but Wales is immune to it. China holds no power over Wikipedia, so it's a very safe thing for Wales to get up on his high horse.
What I assume you're assserting is the incredibly offensive but oft-repeated notion that if the Chinese people don't rebel that they don't deserve what they get, in which case I'll just ask you whether you felt the Jews in WW2 or the Cambodians under Pol Pot deserved what they got.
> The way I see it, you don't lose something by not taking advantage of an opportunity.
Well, at my age, I can assure you that you do.;)
>And one can never predict the consequences of any such action. Perhaps the note was stolen from a bank, and leads to you going to prison?
The assumption was that the aquisition cost was zero. If you start pulling hypothetical rabbits out of hats, you simply can't have a reasonable conversation. If you cross your legs, maybe it'll dislodge a blood clot and you'll have an embolism. If you reply to this, maybe you'll break your monitor.
>Economists are widely known to live in a fantasy world out of touch with reality. I think the proper term for "economist" is "whackjob" or "whore."
Well now come on. I firmly belive that economics doesn't deserve the term 'science,' but 'whore' is a little much.
> The thing about this is that most places that have a gas infrastructure in place -- dense cities -- probably already have extensive broadband infrastructure in place already.
Actually, big cities frequently lag in this respect. Putting in new services in a titanic pain in the ass exactly because the city is so dense. Out in the burbs it's a lot easier to open up a trench and lay some fiber or whatever.
> the internet savy part of the Chinese population get a near constant reminder that they're being censored.
If the few chinese people I've met are any indication, they don't need any 'constant reminder' that some information is being censored.
Embargos (embargoes? I don't know.) have such shitty historical performance that I'm always surprised that intelligent people would still call for one.
> Losing $100 means that you must have had $100 that you no longer have.
If there's zero effort required to aquire the $100, it seems to me that for all intents and purposes you've gained it already, so not picking it up translates to a loss. I dimly remember some economic term for this, something like "lost opportunity cost," only it's not exactly that and I can't find it in a quick googling. Any help on that front is welcomed.
well, I'm assuming that there's no cost associated with aquiring that $100. In retrospect, that's clearly not the case with google, so I withdraw the analogy.
> one doesn't die from being deprived of information
Are you sure about that? Take a minute and think it over.
> If I could follow your analogy, I would say that Google accepted to provide sickening food (censored information) to people that maybe would have had better food otherwise.
That analogy depends on the subject. There's a lot of uncensored content on chinese google. Only when it gets political is it censored. And in a lot of circumstances, politics isn't the most important thing in a lot of peoples minds.
Of course no one wants to live in a society where the government censors information. But, hey, look, there's like 1.3 billion people stuck doing just that, maybe we should face reality and try to make things better in a manner that might actually make a difference. I know it's easy to simply say "isolate, embargo, if they don't play nice we'll just take our ball and go home" because that comes from a position of virtually zero thought. It's a dogmatic response, not a reasoned one.
Slashdot Mirror
> it's not like we're talking food or other essential stuff
thin end of the wedge. GM foods are basically IP, and I see no reason you couldn't try to make the precedent from one area fit another.
> We call it air, and it can transmit vibrations from one person to another!
There's a lot of people in my office for whom a Zune would serve as a welcome replacement for this kind of behavior. From my POV, anyway.
"HEY, STEVE, YOU SEE THE GAME LAST NIGHT?!?"
"HELL YEAH, DID YOU SEE THAT TIME WHEN..."
"AW HELL YEAH, THAT WAS SICK!"
ok you can shut up now plz.
You can say the same things about medical diagnoses - and yet, decision support software for doctors is used quite often.
It's a guide and a method to keep tabs on the judicial record. I view it with cautious optimism.
don't we as a society have better things to do than ferret out instances of hypocracy in every nook and cranny of public life? Is hypocracy really so awful? If a company strives to do good but sometimes fails at it, is that not better than to not strive at all?
Google has done a lot of good: free awesome search engine, all the tools, the advocacy of actual standards, etc. So their political efforts are dirty - hey, you know, welcome to politics.
> If the cork is 1.38 Jupiter Volumes, how big was the bottle?!?
about 460 billion km: http://www.physorg.com/news63346824.html
> Your interests don't have to be "likely targets for potential censorship" to be adversely affected by that censorship.
that may be true in some cases, but is clearly -not- the case for the examples I listed.
> Freedom of speech (and freedom in general) aren't just principles to make citizens of elite first-world countries feel good about themselves. They have far-reaching consequences, and it is those consequences that people sometimes fight and die for.
Sure. I'm not sure what you think I'm getting at, but all I'm saying is in some cases it's prefereble to have a censored source of information to having none at all, and I've provided several examples of those cases. Getting up on your high horse about freedom of speech really isn't relevant to someone who is dying because their doctor can't diagnose them properly.
Nothing is completely isolated from anything, that's certainly true, but your assertion that this implies that they are likely targets for potential censorship by the chinese government is demonstrably wrong, since you can easily access this information from inside china, and strikes me as deliberatly misleading.
but still not such a great idea, IHMO. I don't see what's so hard about finding some small chunk of an actual problem you had a while back and asking someone to solve it. That's what I've done every time I interviewed someone and it generally works pretty well.
I just can't see saying "Wow, Bob isn't working out really well. I can't figure out why, though - he did so great decyphering that message and solving the riddle of the Wizards Cave that I gave him as a test."
None of the items you listed are likely to prevent someone from finding the kinds of information I specified, and I think you know that.
> Is it not better to have an absense of Wikipedia so that the absense itself gives information (that they aren't free)?
do you honestly think they don't know that already?
uh ... frequently, yes. If you're interested in IDE cable pinouts, instructions on how to build a refrigerator or diagnostic steps for abdominal pain, the chance it'll be censored due to political reasons seems pretty small.
Did you have a specific example in mind?
I like xfire. Now that Sony has their paws on it, it'll get all crappy and for some reason it'll be ATRAC-enabled. Crap.
In these our modern times, when people need to get something done, they resort to the big guns: internet petitions.
> Why is everybody framing the question in terms of Google's profits?
I'm not. I mostly simply objected to the use of the term "heroic" in this totally non-heroic context.
> Jimmy Wales is doing the same thing for the internet, and I have the utmost respect for that.
So do I. I think it's a Good Thing he's doing, I just decline to get all worked up and laud him as a 'hero' for doing what is, frankly, probably the easiest course of action.
Small companies more efficient than large bureaucracies! Further shocking news as events warrant!
Seriously, though, how is this surprising? Small companies, by their nature, are more able to come up with good solutions to a narrowly defined problem, such as 'build a nuke detector falling within these parameters,' this should surprise no one.
However, you still need someone to oversee this host of small companies. Privatizing any large-scale project (such as 'homeland security') into a host of tiny companies is inviting all kinds of intractable integration issues, waste and outright fraud. There's a reason the government is the way it is - the bureacracy exists to minimize these problems. It's not perfect, obviously, but it mostly works.
It's always tempting to say "you know, this is broken, let's start fresh with a whole new way of doing things," but it often leads to simply trading one set of problems for another.
well ok then.
My analogy -is- flawed, but lies with the dragon/mouse. The problem is that what's holding the princess is very dangerous to the princess, but Wales is immune to it. China holds no power over Wikipedia, so it's a very safe thing for Wales to get up on his high horse.
What I assume you're assserting is the incredibly offensive but oft-repeated notion that if the Chinese people don't rebel that they don't deserve what they get, in which case I'll just ask you whether you felt the Jews in WW2 or the Cambodians under Pol Pot deserved what they got.
> The way I see it, you don't lose something by not taking advantage of an opportunity.
;)
Well, at my age, I can assure you that you do.
>And one can never predict the consequences of any such action. Perhaps the note was stolen from a bank, and leads to you going to prison?
The assumption was that the aquisition cost was zero. If you start pulling hypothetical rabbits out of hats, you simply can't have a reasonable conversation. If you cross your legs, maybe it'll dislodge a blood clot and you'll have an embolism. If you reply to this, maybe you'll break your monitor.
>Economists are widely known to live in a fantasy world out of touch with reality. I think the proper term for "economist" is "whackjob" or "whore."
Well now come on. I firmly belive that economics doesn't deserve the term 'science,' but 'whore' is a little much.
> The thing about this is that most places that have a gas infrastructure in place -- dense cities -- probably already have extensive broadband infrastructure in place already.
Actually, big cities frequently lag in this respect. Putting in new services in a titanic pain in the ass exactly because the city is so dense. Out in the burbs it's a lot easier to open up a trench and lay some fiber or whatever.
> the internet savy part of the Chinese population get a near constant reminder that they're being censored.
If the few chinese people I've met are any indication, they don't need any 'constant reminder' that some information is being censored.
Embargos (embargoes? I don't know.) have such shitty historical performance that I'm always surprised that intelligent people would still call for one.
> Losing $100 means that you must have had $100 that you no longer have.
If there's zero effort required to aquire the $100, it seems to me that for all intents and purposes you've gained it already, so not picking it up translates to a loss. I dimly remember some economic term for this, something like "lost opportunity cost," only it's not exactly that and I can't find it in a quick googling. Any help on that front is welcomed.
well, I'm assuming that there's no cost associated with aquiring that $100. In retrospect, that's clearly not the case with google, so I withdraw the analogy.
> one doesn't die from being deprived of information
Are you sure about that? Take a minute and think it over.
> If I could follow your analogy, I would say that Google accepted to provide sickening food (censored information) to people that maybe would have had better food otherwise.
That analogy depends on the subject. There's a lot of uncensored content on chinese google. Only when it gets political is it censored. And in a lot of circumstances, politics isn't the most important thing in a lot of peoples minds.
Firstly, if you see a $100 on the ground and don't pick it up, isn't that basically the same as losing $100?
Secondly, I didn't make any assertions about Google's behavior.
Of course no one wants to live in a society where the government censors information. But, hey, look, there's like 1.3 billion people stuck doing just that, maybe we should face reality and try to make things better in a manner that might actually make a difference. I know it's easy to simply say "isolate, embargo, if they don't play nice we'll just take our ball and go home" because that comes from a position of virtually zero thought. It's a dogmatic response, not a reasoned one.