Note one of the comments to the article at the bottom quotes Kurt Vonnegut:
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way."
http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/3786
If your morals are based on principle, then no matter who the person was, your decision would remain the same.
I believe/hope that I am the type of person who would not take anothers' life no matter what the circumstances because I want to be a person of principle. If there were some situation where I did take a life, then I am not the principled person I think I am.
Take the example of Google and their motto,'Don't be Evil'. It was a nice bit of marketing, but when the value of doing business with a repressive government was high enough, they and other company's apparently had no problems working with said governments to continue the repression of it's citizens.
Now, you may say, Google has left that country. But, it was not due to the moral repugnance they felt about repressing the citizens, but the fact they were under attack by agents/citizens of said government and felt it was no longer in their interest 'financially' to stay.
A bit out of topic, I think on the question of China many people have a black and white view of the situation...
In the case of google, they came to China but actually provided a less censored service than baidu (by writing in the search pages that some results were left out because of censoring thus attracting attention to it)... So in what way was their behavior evil?
Additionnaly, they never started any blogging service in China that would have put them in a situation where they had to give information to the government about political activists (unlike yahoo who gave such information)...
So, I don't think Google did anything evil in that case...
In what way did they trade freedom of speech?
Did people in China have more freedom of speech before they came to China? Could they have forced the chinese government to limit censoring?
Of course not... The only thing they could do and did is give another reliable search engine that censored less than their competitors...
No, I understand it required collusion with China to make it impossible to resolve Google.com to a different search engine. If they did nothing, folks could Google with the same engine the rest of us do. Try to remember, your ancestors may have fought and died to stay free. Google certainly did not extend themselves in any way to promote this ideal. This discussion here is probably not available in China.
That is utter hyperbole. Google never had the "freedom of speech for ~1.3 billion people" to trade. They do not and probably never will have anything like that kind of power. I am far from a Google fanboy but if you're going to criticise them, please keep it reasonable.
That is reasonable. I'm simply asking them to not do business with a repressive government. Maybe, you don't think freedom of speech is important, but I do.
As for what kind of effect they could have: Google is an internationally recognized brand that is most certainly known in China (even without being the dominant search engine). Refusing to do business with China would be hard for the state-run media to explain away.
Of course, I think a lot of people really, really want to believe that Google is different from every single other multinational organization that has ever existed. It's not.
Facebook and Twitter are internationally recognized brand that are blocked in China... Explaining that away is no problem for the Chinese government.
I think the difference between your point of view and my point of view is that I don't see things as completely black...
China is a repressive government and freedom of speech is not allowed there but it's certainly better than it was during the cultural revolution and I think it'll get better...
Now, as someone who lived in China before Google decided to move in the chinese market I can tell you that it was a great news to see them move... Before they were intermitently blocked by the Chinese firewall, a lot of queries were blocked so access to good search engines was not very good...
After Google moved to China, well they had to censor some of the results out but then they would point it out, and connection and access to google was much better...
So for me, it was a net benefit to see google move in China, and I hope that them moving out won't result in their being blocked again...
Google has ~24 billion in revenue. Twitter is harder to pinpoint but from the sources I've seen it's far less than 50 million. Facebook is somewhere around 400-550 million.
I guess my point is that they aren't even in the same stratosphere. Twitter and Facebook may be international recognized (and clearly I should have differentiated here), but they aren't in any way equivalent to a behemoth like Google.
Well they aren't the equivalent in term of revenues but Twitter, Facebook and Youtube (also banned in China after having been allowed at the beginning) are all as well known as Google to the average user...
Apart from that, Google's revenue doesn't give them any leverage on the Chinese government, mostly because they wouldn't ever back down on censoring as it would mean losing face...
Well said. I always thought it was odd that people cheered Google when they pulled out of China even though they only did that because the Chinese government was hacking them (most notably not becase the Chinese government doesn't care about freedom of speech).
I bought a LaserJet 4P when it was new for about $1,000
I know it seems like a lot, but like many of HP's products back then, it is bullet proof. Sure it's not very fast, but it prints text well and I replace the toner cartridge every 2 to 3 years.
I've had friends and family go through several printers in a row due to cheaper built quality. When we returned one (a HP inkjet, iirc) to the store, I asked if they send them back to the manufacturer. I was told it was not cost effective to do. They threw it away and gave us a new one.
If I do ever decide to buy a color printer, I think I'd go with Canon as some of my more technical friends have had good experience with them and Canon is not so anally retentive about 3rd party ink.
"Don’t be discouraged by the questions on your non-existent military background – their banking services are available to all. Select no on all the military questions, hit submit, and you will be banking with the best bank in the US (for now)."
When my wife and I became engaged, she wanted to choose her own ring. Since I was leaving on a business trip, we agreed on a ballpark price range and she went looking.
While she likes diamonds, they are not her favorite gem stone. She ended up buying a very nice emerald ring with much smaller diamonds channel set on either side.
So when an anniversary approached, and I want to give her a bracelet, earrings, or some such item, diamonds don't even come into consideration.
While I don't preach my view to others, I have been asked a few times about gift ideas by other guys. I try to steer them away from diamonds, endeavoring to explain the scam for what it is.
This account reminds me of a company manager who oversaw their external printing jobs. He would visit different printery/bindery operations, not your kinko's sized stuff, but large Lith-o-man type offset presses.
He said he had all different types of metrics he used when evaluating a potential vendor for his jobs. But what it usually all boiled down to was how clean was the press area.
If the presses and surrounding area were grimy and tools, supplies etc. were scattered about, he knew the jobs they did would most likely not meet his expectations.
If however the area was clean and the press operators keeps things in order, he could count on that vendor to produce a superior product.
But counter examples along those lines are plentiful. I remember reading a breathless writeup on a tour of a new VW plant. The cleanliness and spotless floors were apparently the main important factor there. Yet VW cars are well known in the industry as having serious quality issues with everything from blistering paint to the continuously faulty electrical systems of the New Beetle.
If this dog-and-pony show was representative of VWs efforts to reach parity with the mechanical quality of say, the Honda Civic and Accord, then I would say this "quality is fractal" idea would have some merit. But even a cursory review of something as basic as mechanical reliability in consumer reports or on true delta shows VWs to regularly be just "meh" in terms of reliability.
I need a new iPod cable and as I was at my local shopping center, I decided to check at Circuit City. I expected the price to be ~$10.00 but the prices was $24.99
I checked with amazon when I got home. I was able to buy a 3 pack, regular cable, car charger cable and 110v outlet cable for $8.00 including shipping.
It's not a mystery why retailers are suffering when you see price gouging like that.
"Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before. He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way." http://www.quotedb.com/quotes/3786