Posted by Scott Hughes Mon, 30 Jan 2006 22:31:00 GMT
In China, they force American websites to censor the results of certain searches, so that they can ensure that the populace only gets the Chinese Government’s version of the story.
In America, they use a legion of staffers to assault the editorial efforts of an open encyclopedia, so that the populace only gets their version of the story.
Posted by Scott Hughes Mon, 30 Jan 2006 00:45:00 GMT
via NoodleFood:
What does Google’s collusion with the Chinese government to censor its search results mean? It’s the difference between fact and illusion.
I found the difference between those two search results to be quite disturbing. To recap (if China is liberated tomorrow, I’ll look like an idiot when those links don’t work), if you search for “tiananmen” on the Chinese Google image search page, you get pictures from happy tourists and travel websites. If you execute the same search on our Google image search page, you get pictures of brave Tiananmen Tank Guy (the student who stood alone in front of a row of tanks sent to quell a student demonstration).
Here’s some more I tried:
Chinese Arrest and Chinese Arrest Censored
Chinese Arrest Censored
Chinese Dissent and Chinese Dissent Censored
Chinese Dissent Censored
Chinese Activist and Chinese Activist Censored
Chinese Activist Censored
Perhaps the most disturbing are images of members of the banned religion Falun Gong… Pay close attention to the pictures of Falun Gong practicioners, specifically the healthy physical condition of any practicioner that happens to be shown on the Chinese site.
Falun Gong and Falun Gong Censored
Falun Gong Censored
I don’t know how much you can fault Google for this. They can make a lot of money in China, and that’s the price of doing business there. Giving the Chinese people easier access to information than they had before can only help, so it’s a limited win-win. The only people in the way of making it a complete win for the Chinese people would be the Chinese government, not Google. It’s not the fault of American businesses that the Chinese people haven’t overthrown the tyrants yet.
Update, 1/30/2006
I corrected the search links to the Chinese Google home page. While constructing the links, I mistakenly thought that Google may be changing the results based on the country of origin of the IP address that was conducting the search. I though that appending “&cr=countryCN” to the url would fix it, but this actually tells Google to search only the websites that are hosted in China. After modifying the links, the differences between the two searches becomes very subtle. It appears that I did not find any other keywords that were being censored. Tiananmen is the only obvious one, and I would’ve thought Falun Gong would’ve been on the list but the results are identical.
Speaking practically, if Google is not filtering by the IP address of the originator, the censorship of whatever keywords on the Chinese home page makes no difference… Since a Chinese citizen can just choose to use the US (or standard) home page for Google and get all of the results back.
Update Again, 1/31/2006
Apparently, there were some early issues with capitalization on the chinese search page, but Google has fixed those now. I realize now I have no idea what the “cr=” in the url means. If you go to http://images.google.cn and search for keyword “Falun Gong”, you will get censored results. Go into your address bar and remove the “&cr=countryCN” from the url that was generated by Google’s Chinese search page, and you will now see the uncensored results. Is this all the Chinese citizens have to do to see all the results? You know, this whole “censoring the web” idea isn’t making a lot of sense.
Posted by Scott Hughes Sun, 15 Jan 2006 19:30:00 GMT
I just couldn’t resist its siren call… I’ve been looking for a good reason to upgrade and Steve Jobs finally announced it at the last MacWorld. An Intel-based Apple laptop, with a 4-5x power increase over the previous generation of PowerBooks. I’d been looking to upgrade the Mac Mini to something beefier, but the stats on the PowerBooks didn’t have me convinced that I would’ve noticed too much of a performance increase. I thought I was going to be stuck with one of the desktop G5’s, but I was really hoping that I could finally find a high-performance laptop as my next desktop replacement.
It’s an expensive machine, considering that I usually self-build my machines for well under $1000. I did get a slight discount on it, which basically equated to the retail price without tax. It’s my first real laptop machine (omitting a retired clunker or two that someone’s given me), though it will spend most of it’s time docked on my 20” lcd monitor at home. I am looking forward to the ability to undock it and bring some work with me.
The Mac Mini will likely become my HTPC (Home Theater PC). I’m not sure how that’ll work out, but now that you can install Apple’s Front Row on any Mac, I just need to find some way to remote control it.
Update:
The wait is killing me!
I can’t wait for this thing to ship. Apple is torturing me with the mid-February ship date. Some folks are reporting that they are getting their units the week prior.
I guess the demand is pretty high. Hopefully that translates into making the demand for all the apps that I want to run on an Intel Mac equally as high, so I’ll see Universal Binaries without much delay.
BTW, this obsessing over ship date contrasts nicely with my wife’s treatment of her Nano. She got it in before she received the screen protectors, so she just left it in the box and waited patiently for two weeks. I guess that makes us a good pair, technology obsessive vs. technology calm and accepting.
Posted by Scott Hughes Thu, 12 Jan 2006 23:31:00 GMT
Now, I consider myself a fan of good comedy. I wouldn’t necessarily call myself an aficianado, simply because I don’t have the time or energy to keep up with whose got the best material nowadays. I have a few favorite comedians I keep tabs on occasionally and I’m really familiar with some recent great acts (Bill Burr, Dane Cook, Sarah Silverman). On the other hand, there’s a few folks out there that think they have what it takes to be a comedian… Yet, they resort to just telling jokes (i.e. tired, obvious setup-punchline-repeat), as opposed to really connecting with your audience and making us laugh at true absurdities.
You might even agree with me that the obvious most trite expression of hack comedy would be the Blonde Joke. I’m of the opinion that if you’ve graduated past Middle School age and repeated a blonde joke, then we can’t be friends. That said, I’m going to be a little hypocritical here now… Because I really think you need to check out this blonde joke. No matter your feelings about blonde jokes or blondes, you’re going to laugh your ass off at this one.
Posted by Scott Hughes Tue, 10 Jan 2006 17:48:00 GMT
… Your keynote brings the entire internet to a grinding halt. All the tech news sites are at full stop as Mac geeks sit constantly refreshing the page, to see which rumors are true. Full disclosure: I’ve been refreshing TUAW’s live chatcast, so I’m contributing to the problem. So far, looks like iPhoto has added Photocasting.. But only for .Mac users. Nothing else has caught my eye yet, but I’m hoping for affordable Intel-based laptops to be announced.
Posted by Scott Hughes Tue, 03 Jan 2006 03:47:00 GMT
I was really impressed with tonight’s episode of Arrested Development. The latest chatter I heard was that Fox was not going to pick it up for another season. However, it may not yet be officially cancelled. There is a grassroots campaign to pester Fox into keeping it on the air… But tonight’s episode shaped the show into a metaphor for its own fate.
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