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January 31, 2006
Google, China + Business as Usual
Google's under fire for its decision to follow Chinese law and censor some search results. This isn't news to any technology fan with a pulse. But I've been a little taken aback at the volume of the outcry over Google's new service in China. But then, perhaps it's anything but surprising that the blabosphere gets its knickers in a knot over the intellectual insult of restricted search results and not, say, the broken bodies of the people in China, Mexico, and elsewhere who churn out a big chunk of the goods we buy.
People I respect are among those critical of Google's move, but I don't get it. The company is simply practicing business as usual and, unlike Microsoft or Yahoo, without directly harming any individual Chinese citizen thus far (although, lord knows, that could change in the future).
Google isn't Enron. It's not Halliburton or even Hill & Knowlton. So why the enormous outcry? I think it's so fierce partly because it feels so personal. Journalists and bloggers can't imagine what it's like to sit inside a sweatshop sewing name-brand jeans with bleeding fingers. But we use Google services every day of the week.
And so we gnash our teeth, wax indignant and cite Google's infamous "do no evil" creed in support of our case. But it's beyond naive for an adult to take that language at face value and believe that anyone or anything outside of Google might be allowed to define its meaning. Some people are shocked, shocked that Google is participating in legal commerce. But that's the idea, after all.
On Friday Google's senior policy counsel, Andrew McLaughlin, claimed the company debated the issue for years and ultimately decided that "filtering our search results clearly compromises our mission. Failing to offer Google search at all to a fifth of the world's population, however, does so far more severely."
That spin wildly overstates the case. As McLaughlin himself pointed out, Google.com is a bad experience for users in the Republic of China because the service is slow, incomplete and unavailable to users there about 10 percent of the time. Sucky service does not equal "failing to offer Google search at all," however, no matter how far you stretch it. But unlike the new service, Google.com wasn't optimized for Chinese users. Google's China baby will be fast, available and, yes, incomplete. The company decided it was a fair tradeoff.
Critics don't agree and they don't have to, but the company's reasoning makes sense to me. Whether Google can escape additional complicity with a horrific regime remains to be seen. The slippery slope is, after all, damn slippery. In the meantime, there's ample opportunity to be outraged over additional legal business dealings in China and elsewhere, and Google bashers should get a grip. The idea of censored search results will hardly be a surprise to Chinese Web surfers, although it seems as though the company could do a much better job of flagging it.
Google *is* a scary company but not because of its China policy. I don't use Google mail, for example, because I think it's creepy and potentially dangerous for any entity--animal, vegetable or mineral, government or corporation--to have access to all my e-mail, all my contacts, plus details on practically every step I take in cyberspace via cookies that track my IP address during all my Google searches.
It's not much fun to be seen as Darth Vader in the public imagination. But Google execs had best get used to it. Their vast ambitions, coupled with the nearly inevitable arrogance that so often builds within enormously successful companies, virtually guarantee that a Google backlash will continue to build.
It's how the world works. And maybe that's just as well.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 12:17 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
January 30, 2006
Happy Chinese New Year
Happy Tet, Sol-Nal, Losar, etc. to Asian Americans and others who celebrate this festive holiday. According my friends at Chopsticks, Please, "This year’s celebration ushers in the Year of the Dog. Those born under this sign are extremely loyal, honest, and keep secrets really well."
Chopsticks, Please has gorgeous Chinese Zodiac cards for all the Dogs, Hares, Tigers (and Rats) in your life, along with New Year cards and all-occasion cards for Asian Americans and the people who love them. I especially like the adoption cards for adoptive children and new adoptive families.
Am I shilling? Ubetcha. This is a shameless plug for Chopsticks,Please. Buy some cards and spread a little cheer by sending them to your nearest and dearest.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 10:25 AM | Comments (0)
January 29, 2006
Glenn Fleishman Stalks Corporate Spin
I've long admired Glenn Fleishman for lots of reasons. He's really nice, he's really smart, he writes well (not as common as you might expect, even among professional writers) and he's alarmingly prolific. The freelance journalist, book author and blogger behind seven blogs is soft launching his eighth, about radio and the future of AM and FM right here.
Over at Wi-Fi Net News, Glenn has been covering the struggle to create municipal wireless networks for ages. He recently weighed in on plans (hopes?) to build a 1500-square-mile wireless network across Silicon Valley and highlights the gap between reality and the highly polished talking points parroted by corporate critics of municipal wireless.
“ 'Andrew Johnson, a Comcast Bay Area spokesman,…said companies that have spent billions of dollars to build wired networks shouldn’t be undermined by taxpayer funds focused toward a rival.' "
As Glenn notes, "Interestingly, virtually no municipal RFPs now involve taxpayer funds, but incumbents continue to play from that script. This RFP will involve roughy $40,000 from a few dozen cities."
” ‘The free market should be allowed to play out,’ he said. ‘A municipal subsidy, or a provision of a municipal WiFi network would not be the best use of taxpayer funds.’
"In other words, regardless of the fact that broadband firms have been spreading the notion that high-speed access is critical to individual businesses and entire communities, those communities have no right to ensure that they have what they want if they’re paying for it directly despite massive public subsidies paid to incumbents, which are never mentioned in the same breath as the 'billions' spent."
Exactly. Because if it's good for Comcast, it's good for the nation. Just keep saying it, no matter how bogus. Much of the time, spin wins.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 11:00 PM | Comments (0)
Bad News for Big Eaters
While digesting my dessert of baked fruit salad with melted white chocolate and vanilla ice cream I noticed this bad news for food lovers: self-starving live-forever crackpots may have a point.
"Ultrasound examinations showed that the hearts of people on caloric restriction appeared more elastic than those of age- and gender-matched control subjects. Their hearts were able to relax between beats in a way similar to the hearts in younger people.
" 'This is the first study to demonstrate that long-term calorie restriction with optimal nutrition has cardiac-specific effects that ameliorate age-associated declines in heart function,' said principal investigator Luigi Fontana, M.D., Ph.D., WUSTL assistant professor of medicine and an investigator at the Istituto Superiore di Sanità in Rome.
"Members of the Calorie Restriction Society try to consume between 10 percent and 25 percent fewer calories than average Americans while still maintaining proper nutrition. Caloric restriction tends to resemble a traditional Mediterranean diet, which includes a wide variety of vegetables, olive oil, beans, whole grains, fish and fruit, Fontana said. The diet avoids refined and processed foods, soft drinks, desserts, white bread and other sources of so-called 'empty' calories.
"Research on mice and rats has shown that stringent and consistent caloric restriction increases the animals' maximum life span by about 30 percent and protects them against atherosclerosis and cancer, but human study has been difficult because the caloric restriction lifestyle requires a strict diet regimen, both to keep the total number of calories low and to ensure that people consume the proper balance of nutrients."
My personal belief is that calorie restrictors don't live forever, it just feels like forever because there's no chocolate around.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:59 PM | Comments (0)
Are Child Hunters in the Bag?
Good news for Wisconsin's dwindeling number of deer hunters: There's a push on for fresh, er, blood.
Or as AP explains, "Rep. Scott Gunderson’s proposal would lower the hunting age from 12 to 8. 'It’s important to get kids involved in hunting at a younger age. If they are not engaged in hunting by 12 or 13, they probably won’t be,' said Gunderson, R-Waterford."
Tragically, the article fails to explain why teens who fail to hunt is a problem but does note that some people aren't excited about third-grade hunters, even though "under Gunderson’s bill, parents or guardians could designate an adult mentor who must stay within arm’s length of the 8- to 11-year-old child, and the two must share a weapon." (Sounds kinky and not in a good way.)
"...The idea of a lower hunting age horrifies Joe Slattery, whose 14-year-old son was accidentally shot and killed by a 12-year-old while deer hunting in Marinette County last year. 'This is a child safety issue,' Slattery said. 'Eight-year-olds don’t have the coordination or attention span or physical ability to handle a gun. They are learning cursive writing and some of them believe in Santa Claus.'
"The state Assembly already approved Gunderson’s bill on a 74-19 vote. The measure still needs approval from the state Senate and Gov. Jim Doyle to become law."
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 09:48 PM | Comments (0)
January 19, 2006
What Big Ears You Have, Mr. Disney
According to the Wall Street Journal (sub required), "Walt Disney Co. is in serious discussions to buy Pixar Animation Studios after months in which the two animation giants have been exploring ways to continue their lucrative partnership, according to people familiar with the matter.
"In the deal under discussion, Disney would pay a nominal premium to Pixar's current market value of $6.7 billion in a stock transaction that would make Pixar Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs the largest individual shareholder in Disney."
So here's my question: If Jobs becomes, in essence, Mr. Disney, will the Mickey Mouse TV be tweaked to transmit program selection info back to the mother ship? I ask only because Apple was happy to do the same with the latest version of iTunes, at least until privacy fans got their knickers in a knot and the company backtracked. Which was only appropriate.
In any case, I prefer Target's 13-inch Hello Kitty TV/DVD player combo to the Mickey Mouse TV or the Disney Princess model. Even though all three of them are deeply twisted products. They're designed for 6 to 10 year olds. Because little kids need, deserve, and want to own personal TVs in the sick world we live in today, and their parents let them.
And that, dear reader, is even more depressing than Apple's slimy, utimately successful strategy for marketing stuff to us by monitoring the songs we click in iTunes.
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 03:08 PM | Comments (0)
January 08, 2006
Elderly Crooks
Happy Etc. I totally missed last month's crackdown on elderly criminals.
"Dottie Neeley, 87, was fingerprinted, photographed and thrown in jail, imprisoned as much by the tubing from her oxygen tank as by the concrete and steel around her.
"The woman who spent two days in jail after her arrest last December is among a growing number of Kentucky senior citizens charged in a crackdown on a crime authorities say is rampant in Appalachia: Elderly people are reselling their painkillers and other medications to addicts."
And sometimes more. Ms. Neeley, it turns out, was selling weed and methadone, not exactly standard-issue items in most medicine cabinets. But let's not be distracted by this case from the larger lesson: the upbeat in crime among old farts. Since April 2004, a Kentucky anti-drug task force "has charged more than 40 people 60 or older with selling primarily prescription drugs in the mountains."
" 'When a person is on Social Security, drawing $500 a month, and they can sell their pain pills for $10 apiece, they'll take half of them for themselves and sell the other half to pay their electric bills or buy groceries,' " is how Floyd County jailer Roger Webb explained the situation to AP reporter Roger Alford.
Not everyone agrees it's about poverty. "Dan Smoot, a former state police drug detective who heads the task force, said the elderly people being charged are not necessarily struggling to put food on the table. 'Most of the elderly we arrest are merely continuing a family tradition,' he said. 'It has been part of their culture for a long time.' " Like poverty, I'm willing to bet. (Link courtesy the Elderly Law Prof Blog.)
Posted by Deborah Branscum at 06:25 PM | Comments (0)