Sure, the analogy isn't perfect. I was just pointing out that simply because Google chooses to do business in China does not imply that they enjoy being party to censorship, which is what eastcoasts last post implied.
What? What you just described was completely flashy and serves absolutely no functional purpose whatsoever.
it... uh, it's function is to display the property sheet for a widget. The property sheet's gotta be somewhere on the screen, on the 'back' of the window you're setting the properties for seems about as good a place as any other.
That's a goddamn lie and you know it. Java3D does not, in fact, 'work nicely'. Have they fixed the "J3D objects are not GC-able" bug yet? My guess is 'no' because the day they ported it to OSX was the day they stopped working on it.
We need a decent ubiquitous 3D plugin for things like showing off stuff you can buy in 3D.
We don't need a browser to show us a 3D representation of the web, because that is too much information. Hyperbolic mappings are not somehow more intuitive than simple lists. In fact, they are less so.
When we get common 3D displays and controllers, then my position will change.
Oh, I see. You think that because Google is forced to obey Chinese law in order to do business there that they agree with it. As it turns out, that may actually not be the case, much as they may not have enjoyed turning over a bunch of search results to the US Justice Dept. In a similar vein, I don't agree with the laws regarding gun control, yet I obey them nonetheless. I'm sure you can name a few laws you find immoral but obey anyway as well.
Sorry, but I view the idea that google unilaterally declining to do business with the Chinese will have any effect on anything other than googles balance sheets as hopelessly naive. China doesn't care. Well, I take that back: MS and Yahoo would be overjoyed. If you'd like to put forth some kind of reasonable scenario to the contrary, I'm all ears. I'll just mention preemptively that "if google throws away billions in potential revenue, maybe other corporations will as well" doesn't really fall under the 'reasonable' category.
On the other hand, I view the idea that google could attempt lobby for change from inside as a reasonably pragmatic view, even if unlikely to produce large changes.
Yeah, it has to start somewhere. And that somewhere is some form of agreement across a broad base of governmental organizations and private corporations that they won't do business with China. Otherwise Google is just tilting at windmills.
This is asinine. So you're saying because they've done their best to not do evil, they should be penalized in the court of public opinion more than those who have made zero effort to do so?
(a) and we don't live in a free country because people like you have plenty of spare time for fault-finding either.
(b) read the rest of the thread, there's several. The big one is 'which does more good: no google in china or some google in china? Is it better to refuse to be part of a corrupt system and try to act for change, or to simply refuse to acknowledge that the system exists?'
(c) if you honestly think that Google refusing to work with the Chinese will have any impact at all, you're either wildly overestimating Google's importance or wildly underestimating the inertia of the Chinese government. Or immensely naive.
The only reason anyone cares about this is googles 'do no evil' thing. No need to get up on the anticensorship high horse - every business in America is doing the exact same thing. If you want to affect change in China, the people you need to talk to are your elected officials, not Google.
the point is, as 'bsyatplay' pointed out, that without a broad consensus, a google boycott of China is completely ineffective and serves no purpose other than to pacify idealistic bystanders.
(a) honestly, can you find nothing more important to do with your life than rooting out tiny fragments of hypocrisy in others?
(b) there's easy cases to be made that some google is better than none, and I've seen many of those cases made by actual people in China, not self-righteous internet nerds.
(c) Google cannot be the Only Moral Company. Expecting them to be so is tantamount to expecting them to commit corporate suicide over a matter they are incapable of changing.
In short, grow up and learn to see the shades of grey.
Not true. It's all about depth of focus. Your eyes have no problem focusing on a screen 2 feet in front of you. Trying to focus on a screen less than an inch in-front of you eyes to read it, however, is impossible for your eyes. Never-the-less, they will try, and after long-term use, you'll see serious problems.
You clearly don't have any experience with HMDs. All of the decent ones have optics that present an image to your eyes that appears to be at least several feet away. I have personally used a tiny, glasses-mounted display that presented an SVGA (VGA? I can't remember) image that appeared to be about two feet away. I used it for over 6 hours and felt no more eyeball fatigue than I would have if I'd been using a standard monitor.
But, unsurprisingly, you're perfectly ready to proclaim "IT CAN'T BE DONE!" People like you are speedbumps on the road of progress.
Get a grip. There are many worse personality traits than hypocracy. In fact, I'd be willing to guess that EVEN YOU have been guilty of hypocracy at some point in your life.
And I think it's preposterous to ask them to hew to some sort of Holier-Than-Thou philosophy while the rest of the world rushes to do business with China.
Tagging was supposed to use humans to actually process what's important
At the beginning, I thought tagging might have been useful, but 90% of the tags are simply words from the articles title or category, along with one or more of: [stupid | evil | smart | haha]. Frequently all four.
Since this has come to pass, I have adjusted my attitude to find humor in the tagging system. Come on. Lunch. It's funny.
about 1 in 5 of these articles turn out to be anything more than misquotes, press releases out of context, rumors or just simple errors.
We get it, we get it already: Sony = Evil, the console is awful and if you buy it the CEO of Sony will come to your house and shit on your children. Enough already.
I guess I'm enough of an optimist to think that the keyboard/mouse combo isn't the zenith of input devices.
Do I have an alternative? No, but then I didn't have an alternative to cumbersome wired telephones or BBSes or carburetors either, and somehow someone managed to come up with a few.
Because you can end up with a gadget which does not fulfill any of its functions appropriately.
Why yes, you can end up with bad products sometimes. In fact, you can do so even with old technology. The fact that you felt compelled to post this stupendously obvious fact a thread about exciting new technology is kind of why I called everyone luddites.
30 comments, all about how this technology is worthless and how what we have right now is just fine.
I for one would enjoy a fun-size pc, cellphones the size of a hearing aid, a pda wristwatch and tiny headmounted displays I fit in the corner of my glasses. The rest of you can continue to enjoy your breadbox-sized pcs and your feelings of self-righteousness.
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Ok. So I guess your answer to my rhetorical question is 'yes'?
Sure, the analogy isn't perfect. I was just pointing out that simply because Google chooses to do business in China does not imply that they enjoy being party to censorship, which is what eastcoasts last post implied.
it ... uh, it's function is to display the property sheet for a widget. The property sheet's gotta be somewhere on the screen, on the 'back' of the window you're setting the properties for seems about as good a place as any other.
but, you know, I'm not bitter or anything. ;)
That's a goddamn lie and you know it. Java3D does not, in fact, 'work nicely'. Have they fixed the "J3D objects are not GC-able" bug yet? My guess is 'no' because the day they ported it to OSX was the day they stopped working on it.
We need a decent ubiquitous 3D plugin for things like showing off stuff you can buy in 3D.
We don't need a browser to show us a 3D representation of the web, because that is too much information. Hyperbolic mappings are not somehow more intuitive than simple lists. In fact, they are less so.
When we get common 3D displays and controllers, then my position will change.
Oh, I see. You think that because Google is forced to obey Chinese law in order to do business there that they agree with it. As it turns out, that may actually not be the case, much as they may not have enjoyed turning over a bunch of search results to the US Justice Dept. In a similar vein, I don't agree with the laws regarding gun control, yet I obey them nonetheless. I'm sure you can name a few laws you find immoral but obey anyway as well.
Sorry, but I view the idea that google unilaterally declining to do business with the Chinese will have any effect on anything other than googles balance sheets as hopelessly naive. China doesn't care. Well, I take that back: MS and Yahoo would be overjoyed. If you'd like to put forth some kind of reasonable scenario to the contrary, I'm all ears. I'll just mention preemptively that "if google throws away billions in potential revenue, maybe other corporations will as well" doesn't really fall under the 'reasonable' category.
On the other hand, I view the idea that google could attempt lobby for change from inside as a reasonably pragmatic view, even if unlikely to produce large changes.
Yeah, it has to start somewhere. And that somewhere is some form of agreement across a broad base of governmental organizations and private corporations that they won't do business with China. Otherwise Google is just tilting at windmills.
This is asinine. So you're saying because they've done their best to not do evil, they should be penalized in the court of public opinion more than those who have made zero effort to do so?
(b) read the rest of the thread, there's several. The big one is 'which does more good: no google in china or some google in china? Is it better to refuse to be part of a corrupt system and try to act for change, or to simply refuse to acknowledge that the system exists?'
(c) if you honestly think that Google refusing to work with the Chinese will have any impact at all, you're either wildly overestimating Google's importance or wildly underestimating the inertia of the Chinese government. Or immensely naive.
The only reason anyone cares about this is googles 'do no evil' thing. No need to get up on the anticensorship high horse - every business in America is doing the exact same thing. If you want to affect change in China, the people you need to talk to are your elected officials, not Google.
the point is, as 'bsyatplay' pointed out, that without a broad consensus, a google boycott of China is completely ineffective and serves no purpose other than to pacify idealistic bystanders.
(b) there's easy cases to be made that some google is better than none, and I've seen many of those cases made by actual people in China, not self-righteous internet nerds.
(c) Google cannot be the Only Moral Company. Expecting them to be so is tantamount to expecting them to commit corporate suicide over a matter they are incapable of changing.
In short, grow up and learn to see the shades of grey.
You clearly don't have any experience with HMDs. All of the decent ones have optics that present an image to your eyes that appears to be at least several feet away. I have personally used a tiny, glasses-mounted display that presented an SVGA (VGA? I can't remember) image that appeared to be about two feet away. I used it for over 6 hours and felt no more eyeball fatigue than I would have if I'd been using a standard monitor.
But, unsurprisingly, you're perfectly ready to proclaim "IT CAN'T BE DONE!" People like you are speedbumps on the road of progress.
the sad thing is, it looked right when I posted it. :(
Get a grip. There are many worse personality traits than hypocracy. In fact, I'd be willing to guess that EVEN YOU have been guilty of hypocracy at some point in your life.
And I think it's preposterous to ask them to hew to some sort of Holier-Than-Thou philosophy while the rest of the world rushes to do business with China.
"Weight isn't a very big concern for your house. Not too many people take their house out for a flight."
Well, maybe more would if the houses weren't so goddamn heavy, mister smartypants.
At the beginning, I thought tagging might have been useful, but 90% of the tags are simply words from the articles title or category, along with one or more of: [stupid | evil | smart | haha]. Frequently all four.
Since this has come to pass, I have adjusted my attitude to find humor in the tagging system. Come on. Lunch. It's funny.
Wha? Oh, I get it. Because MIKKKRO$OFT is the other Evil corporation. That's a pretty fresh angle you're working there, Ace, you should be on the TV.
Just wanted to say that I was giddy with glee to find that this article was tagged 'lunch'
about 1 in 5 of these articles turn out to be anything more than misquotes, press releases out of context, rumors or just simple errors.
We get it, we get it already: Sony = Evil, the console is awful and if you buy it the CEO of Sony will come to your house and shit on your children. Enough already.
I guess I'm enough of an optimist to think that the keyboard/mouse combo isn't the zenith of input devices.
Do I have an alternative? No, but then I didn't have an alternative to cumbersome wired telephones or BBSes or carburetors either, and somehow someone managed to come up with a few.
Why yes, you can end up with bad products sometimes. In fact, you can do so even with old technology. The fact that you felt compelled to post this stupendously obvious fact a thread about exciting new technology is kind of why I called everyone luddites.
30 comments, all about how this technology is worthless and how what we have right now is just fine.
I for one would enjoy a fun-size pc, cellphones the size of a hearing aid, a pda wristwatch and tiny headmounted displays I fit in the corner of my glasses. The rest of you can continue to enjoy your breadbox-sized pcs and your feelings of self-righteousness.