My interpretation of this is that Google is REALLY pissing China off intentionally by doing this - exploiting the schism between Hong Kong and mainland China, forcing issues to the forefront which the Chinese like to ignore (like why does Hong Kong get less centralized control than other parts of China). This could be quite a large issue in China and Hong Kong should China decide to dictate terms to the more autonomous Hong Kong.
Personally, I'd have gone for +1 Insightful for this. It potentially serves to emphasise to the mainlanders that they are somehow second class to the citizens of HK. A former colleague once described going from HK to the mainland to visit a supplier as like going from West Berlin to communist East Berlin. He was talking about all the security involved - and having to be followed around by a communist party apparatchik all the time. However, you do have to wonder if there are other parallels to be drawn there...
Just think how much money they could have saved by making a quick call to Larry Elisson or Scott McNealy. On the other hand, I can imagine the responses:
Larry E. : Yes, I know we weren't successful with the network computer last time around, but it was all down to the network infrastructure. Now that everyone in the world has 100% guaranteed broadband access all the time, I'm sure it will fly...
Scott M. : Yes I know we weren't successful with the JavaStation last time around, but it was probably as a result of limiting it to running just the Java application stack. I'm sure that if you use something more enterprise ready like (cough, splutter, cough) a combination of Javascript and AJAX hacks you'll do much better...
I agree that a full blown desktop/server JVM would be OTT. The CDC (connected device configuration) profile is designed for devices which are smarter than the bog-standard Java-ME phone, but not up to running a full SE stack. Have a look at the overview here. A cut and paste of the 'target devices' section:
The CDC configuration was designed to bring the many advantages of the Java platform to a broad range of network-connected consumer and embedded devices, including smart communicators, high-end PDAs, and set-top boxes.
Devices that support CDC typically include a 32-bit microprocessor/controller and make about 2 MB of RAM and 2.5 MB of ROM available to the Java application environment.
What's more, the open source implementation released by Sun has an excellent ARM targeted JIT compiler. All in all, apart from the out of date GUI implementation (QT3 based) it would be an ideal Java platform for something like the N900.
I'll add another thing that's missing from my N810 which looks like it's still missing from the N900, which is an 'official' JVM. The Java CDC profile was designed for devices like this - and the GPL'd Sun version is very ARM-friendly. I managed to get the foundation version up and running on my N810, but it needs quite a bit of work to get the GUI layers working (I ran into some QT3 versus QT4 threading voodoo when I tried).
So, if anyone from Nokia is reading this - I'd like to see a supported CDC personal profile JVM with Jambi support!
Yes - I know that this is all GPL'd code and I should be able to take it and fix it all myself, but having it as a standard part of the platform makes a huge difference.
OK, since we're doing shameless plugs here, I can say with a high degree of certainty that there will be a Linux friendly ZigBee solution arriving RSN. The product in development is a smart USB adapter which embeds all the proprietary ZigBee code so that the host-side can be 100% Free Software friendly - although it will be dual-licensed to allow 3rd parties to create Tivo-ised products on commercial terms.
As far as the host side is concerned, it will be based Java/OSGi in order to take advantage of the modularity that platform gives. The idea here is that different developers can create their own applications for home security, lighting control, remote control cat flaps, etc and plug them into a running system. Of course, you'll still need to buy into one of the commercial vendors if you want to build your own ZigBee powered gadgets - but their dev kits are generally pretty good value and many can be had at hobbyist-friendly prices.
If you're not wanting to roll your own ZigBee powered gadgets, third party products are slowly coming to market which implement the standard ZigBee profiles for home automation, smart energy and RFCE (remote controls on steroids). The intention is to support all these standards as plugins to the host platform.
However, before everyone gets over-excited, I need to point out that the initial batch of 32 USB devices will be for conformance testing and trusted early beta testers only. As with all these kinds of projects, availability of the final product will depend on how many late-night coding sessions I manage to get in and how much money I can persuade the bank manager to lend me
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.