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There Is No Maker Movement in China

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Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#101

Post by v-yadli »

chaostheory wrote: post #100
v-yadli wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have no idea why you assume that pudn is an example of 'open source' to me. I'm just talking about information. Do you get this now? You are again interpreting my words with a predefined, well, interpreter. Yes I agree with you that open source (in a western perspective somehow) doesn't work in China, as I have stated above, just like they don't care about Github. It means that the collaboration, copy right awarene…

> I'd suggest you do some research on this: where's all the information hiding in the Chinese internet? It's just that, things work quite different here in China... In your posts (the previous one and your last one) you were essentially saying that mainland Chinese do things differently, but it was just as good. Well I've listed specific reasons as to why it's not as good as the way things are in the West. Your curre…

> but it was just as good

No. Read it again. It's neither good nor bad to me. I'll apologize if my wording is confusing.

> it's just not impressive like other things...

Trivially true. Universally applicable. Nonsense.

> It's just mainland Chinese culture

Agree. What I really want is to expose the underlying details about how things work here. It's not just simply 'different' in one or two parameters. It's not about good or bad. You can say it's bad, I've got no problem with it. But I really want to say that it's interesting, and it's not just China. The fareast countries are similar.

(Well talking about quality do you really think I'm arguing that pudn is good? Chinese open source is good? Why would you assume me that kind of person after all? :-)

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#102

Post by coldtea »

mmorris wrote: post #78
1stop wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This comment just reads as a passive-aggressive racist rant. Do you really think people in China do not share? Do you really think Chinese are 'used' to obeying 'emporers'? Is that because they did 100 years ago? Which emperor do they follow now? (if you answer is the CCP or Xijinping, how is that different to Congress/Obama?) Is buying a movie off iTunes for $10 more of a rebellion against institutions than p2p-stre…

>> the CCP or Xijinping, how is that different to Congress/Obama? Not disagreeing with you that their is real innovation going on in China (I think there is), but I don't think this is a great example. The US Congress and President Obama are all elected officials, whereas Xi Jinping and the CCP are not. Electing your own leaders is a pretty big deal, thus the protests in Hong Kong.

>The US Congress and President Obama are all elected officials, whereas Xi Jinping and the CCP are not. Electing your own leaders is a pretty big deal

You'd be surprised. Tons of Americans don't bother to even vote, and when they do they vote for the same old shit parties, that are very much alike except for some token issues.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#103

Post by chaostheory »

v-yadli wrote: post #101
chaostheory wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd suggest you do some research on this: where's all the information hiding in the Chinese internet? It's just that, things work quite different here in China... In your posts (the previous one and your last one) you were essentially saying that mainland Chinese do things differently, but it was just as good. Well I've listed specific reasons as to why it's not as good as the way things are in the West. Your curre…

> but it was just as good No. Read it again. It's neither good nor bad to me. I'll apologize if my wording is confusing. > it's just not impressive like other things... Trivially true. Universally applicable. Nonsense. > It's just mainland Chinese culture Agree. What I really want is to expose the underlying details about how things work here. It's not just simply 'different' in one or two parameters. It's not about…

> It's neither good nor bad to me. I'll apologize if my wording is confusing.

Ok then I guess I don't understand your point/purpose of posting that then. From my point of view, it seemed like you were providing an argument against what I previously posted.

> What I really want is to expose the underlying details about how things work here.

I think I've already done a good job of that myself ;)

> It's not just simply 'different' in one or two parameters. It's not about good or bad.

It is bad and it's not subtle bad; it's pretty obvious, glaring, and embarrasingly bad. Again here are the reasons why I feel that it's pathetic that China is just one big photocopier:

1. As everyone has already mentioned, most of the population in China are very capable when it comes to anything technical, making stuff, or hacking it. The skill and talent are both there.

2. China dwarfs everyone when it comes to population.

3. Recapping, China has a lot more people than every other country and proportionally it even has a more skilled population due to many factors; yet most of the innovation still happens Outside of China. China always follows. It never leads in innovation.

> But I really want to say that it's interesting, and it's not just China. The fareast countries are similar.

I disagree. I would say that both Japan and Korea are ahead. Japan is still pretty original, and while Korea does some copying for the most part they also innovate (You can even see it in their films and shows).

China's current predicament is the price for having a totalitarian way of life, where too many ideas are censored by the CCP. Maybe one day China can mitigate the lack of creativity by either allowing more freedom or by importing enough foreigners like Singapore... I kind of doubt it though given the CCP's paranoia and the current laws concerning ownership if you're not a citizen.

What will happen in HK will have more repercussions for the mainland than just control and order.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#104

Post by v-yadli »

chaostheory wrote: post #103
v-yadli wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but it was just as good No. Read it again. It's neither good nor bad to me. I'll apologize if my wording is confusing. > it's just not impressive like other things... Trivially true. Universally applicable. Nonsense. > It's just mainland Chinese culture Agree. What I really want is to expose the underlying details about how things work here. It's not just simply 'different' in one or two parameters. It's not about…

> It's neither good nor bad to me. I'll apologize if my wording is confusing. Ok then I guess I don't understand your point/purpose of posting that then. From my point of view, it seemed like you were providing an argument against what I previously posted. > What I really want is to expose the underlying details about how things work here. I think I've already done a good job of that myself ;) > It's not just simply…

> Ok then I guess I don't understand your point

sorry for that. the logic chain is a bit long... I was working on exploiting the problem of the statement "if Chinese people have Maker culture there will be (same_ratio * population_base) open source projects". I should have quoted it there.

Anyway there's one thing clear (for me), that one create and share when he/she stops struggling for living.

So ok here's a better model:

(same_ratio * max(0, non_struggling_population(china))

But given the fact that open source didn't make it here, this one doesn't make sense (because I know that some little portion of this huge base is really not struggling). nevermind:

(get_ratio_by_culture(china) * max( ..... )) ^ `this is what we get at this point.

Ugh, too simple isn't it, I'd really like to see something more interesting.

Let's first not introduce forums, IM groups of producers. Just consider one thing: Chinese people crack things. The more 'struggling' they are, the more they crack, but the skill gets lower. Say that now we have a close source binary. Some top-notched hackers extracted/disassembled the code to make it more readable, and runnable. (Maybe they're from Russia, just sayin :-D Lower tier programmers bind hooks to the routines. Lower tier programmers use editors to iterate through the binary to seek for useful literals, inject resources to make mods... Lower tier resellers, though not capable of these technical stuff, are able to follow the tutorials released by all higher tiers, and subtly modify the thing.

And this model suddenly becomes a non-deterministic close-source-binary cracking ecosystem, that tries many possible solutions simultaneously, and hierarchically(given the fan-out factor high enough between each two tiers).

Yeah I know you would never say this is "good". But I think this is at least mathematically interesting. And it gives some sense to how to utilize this kind of ecosystems to do something real(though this model is still far from realistic).

> I would say that both Japan and Korea are ahead

Sure. Just consider get_ratio_by_culture() and non_struggling_population().

get_ratio_by_culture() is similar. It doesn't mean the current whole picture is similar. But the later one is variable and the former one is nearly const.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#105

Post by chaostheory »

v-yadli wrote: post #104
chaostheory wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's neither good nor bad to me. I'll apologize if my wording is confusing. Ok then I guess I don't understand your point/purpose of posting that then. From my point of view, it seemed like you were providing an argument against what I previously posted. > What I really want is to expose the underlying details about how things work here. I think I've already done a good job of that myself ;) > It's not just simply…

> Ok then I guess I don't understand your point sorry for that. the logic chain is a bit long... I was working on exploiting the problem of the statement "if Chinese people have Maker culture there will be (same_ratio * population_base) open source projects". I should have quoted it there. Anyway there's one thing clear (for me), that one create and share when he/she stops struggling for living. So ok here's a better…

Here's the thing. Having a majority lower class population is a not a good excuse for the lack of innovation. In the 19th century, approximately 80% of the population in the West was working class. You can say that the population more closely mirrors China's population today, where the population is poor but very skilled. Despite the disadvantages of most of the population, the West was still extremely innovative.

Another trend that gets exposed here is that anytime anyone has a valid criticism of China, the inevitable "China is still developing" or "Most of China's population is poor" excuse tends to come up.

At the end of the day, the true reason for the lack of mainland Chinese innovation is probably the suppression of freedom by the CCP as well as the culture that is created from a low trust society due to the CCP's corruption. It's hard to be creative when you have to think about what you can and can't say or type, as well as missing out on the ideas that could have been shared, but have not due to the lack of free expression. Unless things change, China will never become much more than a larger and larger photocopier. HK is the first test.

Maybe the only place China can innovate are in sectors that have legal controls in the West like bioengineering.

Re: There Is No Maker Movement in China

#106

Post by stretchwithme »

reedlaw wrote: post #52
stretchwithme wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same downside as doing anything for a living.

Not so much if you work a normal 40 hour workweek. That leaves some productive energy for evenings and weekends.

I meant you can work too much at anything, not just this job.
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