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I'm Not Japanese

sachagreif.com

11–20 of 129 posts

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#11

Yahoo Japan thinks I'm a woman despite my Yahoo profile saying otherwise. All I get is ads for women's undies and makeup. Google's search is pretty bad too, it really pushes me to the Japanese page even though I want English since the results differ. They hide the English page link way at the bottom in small font text and don't make clear that it's the English version.

A better explanation is that Yahoo! Japan believes you are a cross-dresser...

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#12

If you are traveling and Google is trying to send you to a country specific site, you can use this address to tell Google you actually really want to go to Google.com: http://www.google.com/ncr I believe the NCR stands for No Country Redirect. But as the article points out, many websites make it harder than it aught to be use them from other countries. Some Japenese websites sometimes even actively try to prevent for…

At least for me, that does not work anymore.

However, http://www.google.com/?hl=en works.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#13
post #3

>> Does Google assumes that we live in The Matrix, and you can learn a new country’s language instantly as soon as you move there? >> Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese (true preference: "Accept-Language: ja-jp;q=1.0; en;q=0.000001") whose configura…

> This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places (most relevantly to the instant case, Germany, I believe). Google has a blogspot.jp which is a copy of .com which is a copy of .de which is a copy of... except that they enforce country-specific censorship laws. This was deemed an acceptable tradeoff versus getting all of blogspot blacklisted in e.g. Germany.

what event/law are you referring to? why blogspot should be censored in germany?

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#14
Google customises its searches to such a degree that I've set up two different quick search keywords in chrome:

ge : will search google.com with primary language = en g : will search google.co.jp with primary language = jp

I get wildly different result sets every time. And usually, one is spot on with what i'm looking for and the other is useless.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#15
I've also had several problems with compilers and IDE. Recent example: Visual C++ detects that my computer has a Japanese environment and switches its messages to Japanese. Qt Creator takes these messages and displays them in its output box, in the process borking them completely (□□□□ etc.), even though its own interface is in Japanese as well. Now I couldn't find a switch to make the compiler output English when called on the command line, so I eventually just used VC++ as the main IDE.

A lot of programs require command-line switches on every invocation to change the language if it's not the same as your OS locale.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#16

Yahoo Japan thinks I'm a woman despite my Yahoo profile saying otherwise. All I get is ads for women's undies and makeup. Google's search is pretty bad too, it really pushes me to the Japanese page even though I want English since the results differ. They hide the English page link way at the bottom in small font text and don't make clear that it's the English version.

Maybe their machine learning thinks your transsexual.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#17
post #11

Yahoo Japan thinks I'm a woman despite my Yahoo profile saying otherwise. All I get is ads for women's undies and makeup. Google's search is pretty bad too, it really pushes me to the Japanese page even though I want English since the results differ. They hide the English page link way at the bottom in small font text and don't make clear that it's the English version.

A better explanation is that Yahoo! Japan believes you are a cross-dresser...

There definately is a correlation of "coming up with this thought" and "what username do I pick on HN?".

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#19
post #13
post #3

>> Does Google assumes that we live in The Matrix, and you can learn a new country’s language instantly as soon as you move there? >> Google is making the (accurate) calculation that over 99% of people coming from a Japanese IP address whose computer says "Accept-Language: en-gb;q=0.9, en;q=0.7" are actually Japanese speakers of Japanese (true preference: "Accept-Language: ja-jp;q=1.0; en;q=0.000001") whose configura…

> This is a hack around censorship laws in a few places (most relevantly to the instant case, Germany, I believe). Google has a blogspot.jp which is a copy of .com which is a copy of .de which is a copy of... except that they enforce country-specific censorship laws. This was deemed an acceptable tradeoff versus getting all of blogspot blacklisted in e.g. Germany. what event/law are you referring to? why blogspot sho…

Germany has many laws which are different that e.g. the USA. In particular, in the US certain sentiments which are politically and socially radioactive are protected by the US Constitution and the laws, traditions, and expectations of the American polity. Germany is similar in some regards but there is one particular politically and socially radioactive statement you could make -- support for the Nazi Party -- which, owing to the laws, traditions, and expectations of the Germany polity, will result in the government coming down on you like a ton of bricks.

Re: I'm Not Japanese

#20
I have a similar compounded problem:

I live in Japan, my systems are configured in English, but when I'm at the office my internet is routed through a proxy which is somehow localized to India (I have no idea where is its actual location).

- I get Google in English most of the time (though sometimes it will pop back to Japanese)

- Google account settings on the other hand will most of the time show in Japanese (I'm OK though, I know the language)

- Search results include Japanese language websites at home

- I get Japanese ads at home and Indian ads at work, especially funny on Youtube.

- Google Maps is all over the place though, sometimes showing me Japan, India but also defaulting to US of A...

Note: you rant about two settings for language, but that makes sense. I want to see the Google interface in English because this is my preferences for interfaces, but I want local search results including Japanese language websites because that is what's useful to me most of the time.

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