Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

A new approach to China

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

261–270 of 392 posts

Re: A new approach to China

#261

Post by jacquesm »

andreyf wrote: post #260
jacquesm wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You really don't get it do you? How do I go about explaining this in a way that the coin will drop... Borrowing a pencil or a piece of (blank) paper during class concerns the use of raw materials. There is no personal investment in to that piece of paper or pencil, they are the equal of any other piece of paper or pencil, which is why you can 'return' a piece of paper, you simply take another one that looks sufficien…

Accepting (and using) your confounding between copyright violation, plagiarism, and theft, most moral and legal system make exception to very minor infringements. The oldest I know of is the Babylonian Talmud, which grants exception to "injury less than a perutah in value" [1]. I challenge you to show any value in this "theft". that's saying that it is ok to steal dollar bills but not ok to steal 100's Precisely! Tha…

I give up.

Someone else want to give it a shot?

Re: A new approach to China

#262

Post by kevintwohy »

siculars wrote: post #36
boundlessdreamz wrote: post #6

This is incredible. This is the first time, I have seen a LARGE company * Putting its users above profits * Stand up to Chinese Government. Since accounts of human rights activists were targeted, this operation was clearly done at the behest of Chinese Government. I'm disgusted by the levels to which the Chinese Government can stoop. It is time the world stands up to China. If a corporation, whose main aim is to gene…

I am so proud of Google right now. It's hard to contain. It is high time somoene stood up to China and let them know enough is enough. I sincerely hope other corporations follow suit. As I mentioned elsewhere, I am sure there is more to the story than is being let on now. I could only imagine the level of corporate espionage that is in play between China and Google. Good for Google calling them on it and making a bro…

Agreed, but Occam's Razor seems too tempting not to consider in this situation. What's more likely, that Google decided overnight to get wise to the 'evil-being' that they might have been underwriting in China for the last 5 years, or that the business circumstances shifted such that an exit from the Chinese search market made more sense for the company, and a story was thus spun?

Re: A new approach to China

#263

Post by andreyf »

forkandwait wrote: post #239
jacoblyles wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I downvoted you for your unsupported claim that "In the neo-liberal era, this approach is no longer given any credence". I also downvoted you for complaining about a downvote, which probably gave you more sympathy upvotes than you deserved.

By the definition of neoliberal, non-market structures are considered bad. But you don't know that, or you wouldn't have downvoted me, at least not the first time. Why you might have downvoted me is that you think a shift away from more socialist structures toward more market structures is a good thing, or (less likely) that we are not in a neoliberal era. In either case, to downvote an opinion because you think it i…

I do appreciate the explanation.

I have a better one: you sound snotty and smarter than me. Burn him!

Re: A new approach to China

#266

Post by andreyf »

jacquesm wrote: post #261
andreyf wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Accepting (and using) your confounding between copyright violation, plagiarism, and theft, most moral and legal system make exception to very minor infringements. The oldest I know of is the Babylonian Talmud, which grants exception to "injury less than a perutah in value" [1]. I challenge you to show any value in this "theft". that's saying that it is ok to steal dollar bills but not ok to steal 100's Precisely! Tha…

I give up. Someone else want to give it a shot?

Someone else want to give it a shot?

Sure. Assuming we have the same innate moral sense as the authors of the Talmud, you value the damages of my copyright infringement as greater or equal than a perutah in value. I do not.

As a matter of fact, the reason I cross-posted is that I don't think the comment in question deserved the top spot, and would frankly be ashamed if such writing/logic were ever seriously attributed to me.

Re: A new approach to China

#267

Post by JulianMorrison »

I think Google entering China, agreeing to censorship, was an umbrella that provided ethical shelter to a lot of other companies who were willing to take the same deal. So the biggest impact of them walking away has to be that they take their umbrella with them, and suddenly everyone else is getting wet. They are in effect threatening the Chinese government with a stampede of all companies that care about being seen to be ethical, and a substantial blackening of their name. This is absolutely hitting the Chinese where it hurts.

Re: A new approach to China

#268

Post by est »

JCThoughtscream wrote: post #7
omouse wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They shouldn't have even opened an office in China. What the heck did they expect to happen?

They expected to do business, of course. It is, after all, a 1.32bn audience base. Quite glad they're opting to take the ethical route this time, though.

> a 1.32bn audience base

With 0.4bn actual base (total amount of Chinese Internet users), others were 'represented' by the Party.

Re: A new approach to China

#269

Post by est »

jhancock wrote: post #118
riobard wrote: post #44

I want to add some background knowledge: - ever since the ending of the Olympics in 2008, Chinese government started a series of large scale "cleaning up" operations all in the name of removing porn from the Internet (while we all know what's the more obvious reason ...). - Many report that as of now Xinjiang Autonomous Region has Internet access to only a few selected official websites after the riot in 2009. - Ther…

I'm not defending the China gov for these actions (and many not listed above). When criticizing these actions, it helps to understand the tremendous strains within China. China has changed more in the last 10 years than possibly any other country in the history of the world. These changes are accompanied by massive externalities. There are some serious powder kegs of anger and resentment, Xinjiang being a prime examp…

> the tremendous strains within China

Who created these strains and who should be responsible for this?

Re: A new approach to China

#270

Post by est »

rms wrote: post #199
damngfw wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hackers ! if you are the true hacker, you should unite and destroy the GFW ! GFW force the 1.6 billion Chinese people to stay outside the gate of information society , GFW is not only the enemy of the Chinese people but also the enemy of all mankind !

I don't think there is anything I could do to make a difference. I guess I can give a few people a free US VPN. Email me if you want access. Google could bring down the GFW by massively disseminating free VPN access to Chinese people. However, doing so could get Larry and/or Sergey assassinated.

VPN is just temporary solution, I suspect there will soon be a whitelist crack down. I hope there's some sort of darknet that actively inject data into China's Internet using source address rewrite. However most of ISP in US or Europe ban srcaddr rewrite which makes this difficult.
Post reply on HN