Google in China - The Big Disconnect 148
wile_e_wonka writes "The NY Times (registration required) has an article about Google's history in China (beginning way before this whole censorship thing). The article, among other things, talks about of Google's head of operations in China, and his goals for the company there. From the article: 'Lee can sound almost evangelical when he talks about the liberating power of technology. The Internet, he says, will level the playing field for China's enormous rural underclass; once the country's small villages are connected, he says, students thousands of miles from Shanghai or Beijing will be able to access online course materials from M.I.T. or Harvard and fully educate themselves.'"
liberated (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:liberated (Score:1)
Re:liberated (Score:4, Funny)
Well sure, but liberation.google.com is still just at the invite-only beta stage.
Re:liberated (Score:3, Interesting)
Since I am in China, there is no fucking way I can read your reply (according to your theory).
And since I am in China, I also can't discuss this issue with you here, also according to your theory.
The only thing that is certain is that I can't discuss this in Chinese here.
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Re:liberated (Score:1)
It's a mystery why we in the West feel a need to impute ignorance on China's citizens. If only they knew how things worked in the West, they'd cast off their chains of oppression! They'd build
Re:liberated (Score:2)
I agree. I am a ex Chinese national and I see becoming like the states would be several steps backwards for China. A better target would be Canada or some european countries, possible Sweden. T
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Are you saying that your government is ineffectual at censorship?
You may or may not be correct, but that is neither Slashdot's fault nor a reason not to seek to repair the corruption that is censorship, and its defenders.
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Your statements appears to equate censorship of the Tianamen Square massacre to attacking kiddie porn sites.
Is a fair characterization of your position?
Re:liberated (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Fiddlesticks!
Tyrants everywhere LOVE the idea that fundamental human rights don't apply to THEIR people -- especially free speech.
Scientists have found nothing in the genetic makeup of Asians (or black slaves in 19th century America, or Christian slaves in today's Africa) or any subgroup a particular dictatorship happens to own, that justifies denying them of fundamental human rights. It is NOT relevant that the objects of an oppressive government assert they don't care about free speech; torture and
Re:liberated (Score:2)
How is this all that different from Western Countries? All countries have taboo topics that people from other cultures cannot figure out. These restrictions might be new to the Internet but other media (Radio, TV, etc.) have long been regulated and forcibly filtered by Western Governments.
RTFA. You missed a major point.- risk taking. (Score:3, Insightful)
It's so easy to look pious rather than make the hard choices as Google did.
The most exciting behavior that I read in the article is the exploding level
of voluntary participation, expression, and pers
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Still.
Learn science, learn to believe in facts, not ideology. Learn to observe to gather facts. Learn psychology, learn how slogans, ideas are forced into one mind.
Those who still ignore they belong in a democracy will be quick to see it?
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Anyway, the main information factor in formenting revolution is generally not particular details, pieces of history, et
This well organized mind has been liberated (Score:2)
Take a wild guess at which president said:
"He's used the word 'win-win,' and that's a very important concept when it comes to economics that are mutually beneficial."
It is truly amazing when you consider which one has been speaking his native language.
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Re:liberated (Score:3, Informative)
While maybe not about Iraq, the US government is currently involved in the largest, most far reaching classification nightmare since Nixon. Aside from having made up dozens if not hundreds of new sensitive but unclassified [fas.org] classifications of documents that exempt millions of documents from the FOIA despite their unclassified status, the g
Re:liberated (Score:2, Funny)
Re:liberated (Score:2)
You must be one of those "if you have nothing to hide" people.
Re:liberated (Score:3, Insightful)
Why is it okay for the Government to keep secrets? Perhaps some aspects of the military; troop locations and such - are something that should be kept a secret. But for almost everything else, I don't see it. We ARE the government, supposedly. We The People. It's supposed to be the citizens that make up the country and the government - why should only a few people be granted more access to YOUR country then you? What makes them so special? They're just people too. Citizens of our cou
Re:liberated (Score:2)
None of these exist in China. Closed door 'trials', inhumane punishment or execution, and essentially a government whose agents act as thought police.
Re:liberated (Score:1, Insightful)
There are significant discrepancies between Tienamman Square and Iraq, especially in that context.
Tienamman Square involved the killing of nonviolent protestors against the government, by their own government. I am no expert on the matter, but it is my belief that their claims of corruption in the government (amongst other things) had at least a significant portion of truth to them. This is only reinforced by what a social taboo Tienamman square has become in China, as well
Re:liberated (Score:3, Insightful)
At the risk of going totally OT, I want to pick a fight over this minor point in your post:
The matter of Iraq is a reactionary military invasion and subsequent occupation of a hostile state. We had every justification to take military military
Re:liberated (Score:1)
--Love, Hitler
WMDs are easier to hide than camps. Doesn't mean they were never there. For that matter, we found the camps, and some people still don't believe it [wikipedia.org].
Re:liberated (Score:2, Insightful)
It is true that in the USA, you won't get put into jail for protesting the war in Iraq. It is true that you won't even get put into jail for calling the President to step down.
HOWEVER.
Protests in the USA mean nothing. People protest against the war in Iraq? So what? Bush gets re-elected, and boasts proudly how the war has helped the world. In the USA, protests has become a means for citizens to vent their anger and to put them
Re:liberated (Score:2)
Now let's see if people in China can read a blog that contains the phrase "Tiananmen Square".
I love the people in the U.S. writing on blogs and saying whatever ridiculous things they want to say without any problems and without anyone telling them they can't, complaining about censorship. It's just too stupid.
Re:Insightful??!! (Score:2)
There are stuff that don't get coverage in the media. Video tapes confiscated by the US army from reporters. News that is forbidden to be released in the press. And you call that freedom of the press?
And besides, the American people are happy in allowing their country to do the things that happened in Iraq. Nobody's trying to stop their government. That's why you can talk all you want. If you are really planning to overthrow the US government (and is be
The Horror! (Score:2)
I can't believe it! A government web site is using directives in robots.txt to indicate what they want scanned by webcrawlers and what they don't!
I think you have uncovered a big conspiracy here. Looking at the robots.txt file, It appears that what BUSH and CHENEY have conspired to do is to disallow search engine from indexing of the text only versions of the pages on the site!!!!
By disa
Re:The Horror! (Score:1)
Re:The Horror! (Score:2)
Blocking something with Robots.txt is not censorship. I block large media files with robots.txt because I don't want to waste bandwidth on webcrawlers. Some people block their images file. BTW, a good design stategy for a web site is to put thumbnails in a different directory than the pictures. You then block th
Registration Free Link (Score:4, Informative)
Google's Tagline (Score:2)
They thought about, "Smile, you're happy," but then figured it would offend too many and the pigeon rank system would get messed up.
Re:Google's Tagline (Score:2)
How the Internet will REALLY be used in China (Score:3, Funny)
Re:How the Internet will REALLY be used in China (Score:1, Offtopic)
Re:How the Internet will REALLY be used in China (Score:2)
Except that the Beloved Party has made most of those illegal in China, and heavily frowns upon the rest.
The only killer app for the internet in China is to say you're keeping up with the Joneses.
As long as they stay away from Yahoo (Score:2)
Oh really? (Score:2)
Yeah that's what'll happen. (Score:5, Insightful)
Cause, you know, just look at the US - Internet access for the past 10 years has turned the current crop of high schoolers into a bunch of geniuses, all just itching to discover antigravity or write a new sociopolitical theory that eliminates inflation and market swings...
lol of course on the other hand my little brother of 14 is writing better games than I was at 18...
Re:Yeah that's what'll happen. (Score:2)
I think the difference is that US students already had access to colleges and universities. The Internet did not improve their study options because they were already pretty good. Chinese villagers of some godforsaken valley, on the other
Re:Yeah that's what'll happen. (Score:2)
But it takes more than just running a wire to someone's home...
Re:Yeah that's what'll happen. (Score:2)
Re:Yeah that's what'll happen. (Score:2)
Forgot Something (Score:1)
Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2, Insightful)
You're dead on here. I've read articles on the BBC about how many Chinese people actually support censorship. They, not the government, put pressure on local newcasts to only report "happy news". Many Chinese people view the restrictions as helpful in weeding out unwelcome "foreign influence".
While it might come as a big surprise to Slashdotters, I suspect that the majority of Chinese people k
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2)
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2)
Okay, I don't have any authoritative source to back my claims, but I dare you to show me any solid evidence of your claims.
And you guys wonder why the stuff is censored.
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:1)
And if you're still wondering why, I should add: It's just a "-1: Not True" mod.
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2)
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2)
Or are they really "uprisings" in the ordinary meaning?
I'd like to know.
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2)
Let me get it straight:
1. The Chinese government oppresses their people. No freedoms, no rights.
2. And then demonstrations which should be evidence (at least to some extent!) of freedom of assembly and rights to cricitize government are framed as "uprisings", purportedly evidence that people are trying to overthrow the government, and thus supporting claim #1.
Is it what they're (or the G...GP, which my initial reply was towards) saying?
That logic escapes me.
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2, Informative)
In case the story's censored by those dastardly profit-motivated editors of the Economist, the most relevant bit is "there were some 74,000 protests last year, involving more than 3.7m people; up from 10,000 in 1994 and 58,000 in 2003. Sun Liping, a Chinese academic, has calculated that demonstrations involving more than 100 people occurred in 337 cities and 1,955 counties in the first 10 months of last year. This amounted to between 120 and 250 suc
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2)
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2)
Re:Getting around Chinas Firewall (Score:2)
educate the peons (Score:2, Funny)
MIT Does (Score:2)
Re:educate the peons (Score:2)
Hm, let's see... (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds great... until you think it through. Besides connected villages, this would also requires students who have...
I'm all about the rural poor becoming educated in China and everywhere, but it's going to take more than access to Google to do it.
Re:Hm, let's see... (Score:2)
Re:Hm, let's see... (Score:1)
Basically, it would give the rural
Re:Hm, let's see... (Score:2)
2) A high-school education. A *good* high-school education.
3) Exceptional levels of self-motivation
4) ???
5) Profit !
Re:Hm, let's see... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Hm, let's see... (Score:1)
So, the barriers are at least a little lower than you expected.
Re:Hm, let's see... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Hm, let's see... (Score:3, Insightful)
Google Freedom 2.0 (Score:4, Insightful)
But what good is an ivy-league education if you can't freely express your ideas?
Re:Google Freedom 2.0 (Score:2)
Re:Google Freedom 2.0 (Score:2)
Re:Google Freedom 2.0 (Score:2)
There are plenty of ivy-league graduates who can't freely express their ideas. Q.E.D.
"fully educate themselves." (Score:4, Informative)
If not, then these students won't be fully educated at all.
Re: "fully educate themselves." (Score:3, Informative)
It indeed has the picture and the story (in brief), and the page was indeed fetched from within China.
People all know about this, and this information will never go away. But you will not see it discussed in official media or anything like that.
Re: "fully educate themselves." (Score:1)
Re: "fully educate themselves." (Score:5, Insightful)
I am technically from China as well (Hong Kong) as well, although I have never grown up in any "communist state" (whatever that means).
Most people criticing China's "human rights" problems don't stick to facts, but to proganda by the western media that is almost twenty years old. They like to believe that "my country is better than yours", despite the fact that this is becoming more and more doubtful.
Let me say this: nobody cares about people in China. All they care about is that "American values are better than Chinese values (and you should adopt them at whatever cost, even if it means that you overthrow your own government)". I mean, if anyone really takes a serious look at what actually happens in China, I'm sure they'll suddenly find that their dicks weren't as long as they previously thought.
PS: Of course, there are those who really do care. But those people typically tackle the issue realistically instead of suggesting an overthrow of the CCP or something to that effect.
Re: "fully educate themselves." (Score:3)
Re: "fully educate themselves." (Score:1)
We're trained to think this way from birth. It doesn't help that almost all the media we're exposed to is our own, which makes it difficult to r
Re: "fully educate themselves." (Score:2)
The chinese, on the other hand, are coming from the other direction. Things were much worse not too long ago, and they are getting better. Still having some restrictions but having much greater freedom than before is still a step forward.
Sure, it
Unless they, too, have an accrediataion cartel (Score:1)
This high cost, of education, is kept artificially high by regional accreditation cartels. Of course people can argue that education is free; it is also unmarketable. People do not market their education, in most cases, they market their degrees. There are a number of solutions to
Cryptome CN (Score:1)
Re:Cryptome CN (Score:2)
Pipe Dream (Score:4, Insightful)
"Fully Educate Themselves". Not likely. For one, the courses are in english. Two, almost all of the courses on M.I.T.'s Open Courseware site require the purchase of multiple $100+ text books. In addition there is no feedback when following the courses. Unless you understand *how* to learn its very difficult to use these courses effectively.
Those are issues though, that only come to pass when "all the villiages are connected" and by definition reliably powered (which they are not). Furthermore, access is great - however the very nature of learning, long periods of reading, problem solving require that those wishing to learn have a dedicated console, or computer to utilize.
I'm all for educating the masses, I just think that running around spouting this "vision" is disingenuous.
Community Colleges - not Individuals (Score:2)
Re:Pipe Dream (Score:2)
Let's jump straight to full freedoms (Score:1)
Unless you believe that this change should happe
Re:Let's jump straight to full freedoms (Score:1)
Re:Let's jump straight to full freedoms (Score:2)
Name one country that has no government sanctioned/controlled censorship or inhumane activities.
Wouldn't it be great if, on that day, every Chinese person was allowed to speak and inquire about whatever they want, whenever they want? Of course that would be great, but its not going to happen. Things like that don't magically happen over night. It takes ti
freedom is an ends technology is a means (Score:2)
Corrupted Database Gives False Sense of Knowledge (Score:5, Interesting)
Deliberate data corruption, such as censorship, can give users the illusion that they are well informed when the data permitted through appears authoritative. Ponder, for example, the confidence one felt upon reading cherry-picked information about Iraq; Judy Miller may well have thought she was better informed when in fact she was less informed.
How, then, can the data corruption be exposed, and who is motivated to do it?
One approach is maximizing the number of links to censored pages [wikipedia.org], to alert the censored individual that their data is corrupt. However there must be more effective techniques.
Perhaps more important, there must be a way to motivate individuals to fix this data corruption; forgive me for being cynical, but if there were a way to profit from the repair, that would be a powerful motivator.
They're not even close... (Score:1, Interesting)
In the 6th video, university students in China are shown the picture of the Tank Man. They have no idea of who he is or what he is doing. They are unable to put the picture in any kind of social context or even guess what is going on in the photograph. China has a long way to go.
Re:They're not even close... (Score:3, Insightful)
Excellent documentary! Free to watch online. (Score:2)
And it just so happens that.... (Score:2)
I don't know ... (Score:3, Insightful)
But I AM convinced that if the Chinese were to completely block outside content, creating a Chinese intranet with only government-approved content, it would be a stable system, and would satisfy the Chinese people's need for contact and communications... and would also be a horrible thing to have happen.
So I reluctantly support the western net services doing business in China under Chinese totalitarian rules.
But I do wonder how the Chinese authorities are going to deal with the influx of lots of tourists at the Olympic games, many of whom will want to photograph Tianamem Square and will inevitably ask a lot of awkward questions. If the Chinese want to interact with the West, they cannot avoid these things.
Recent PBS Frontline espisode (Score:3, Insightful)
that's a ling distance . . . (Score:3, Funny)
Will they also get other "ideas" from that coursework
Same old nonsense. (Score:2)
Like those stupid AOL commercials with that over-weight middle-aged guy running with professional runners or the kid swimming with athletes. Yeah, because reading a bunch of text, screwing with an unintuitive flash interface and looking at miniscule over-compressed photographs is jus
Re:The cat is out of the bag. (Score:2)
Yes they can. It's called facism. It just needs a war or three every decade to keep people in line.