Red is expens$ive. Green is ¢heap.
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USA National Gas Temperature Map
Why so much variation? My laptop computer costs the same in every State.
Category: economics
Google in China
Here is a lengthy NY Times article digging into the Google compromise in China:
Google’s China Problem (and China’s Google Problem)
It is a complex story. I think Google is doing the right thing.
Yahoo was first into China. But Google was far more successful when they first entered the market.
Suddenly, Sept. 3, 2002, Google results disappeared in China. Shut down completely by the government. Many concluded that the action was instigated by Baidu, a Chinese competitor to Google.
A quarter of Baidu’s traffic comes from searching for unlicensed MP3’s — illegal in the USA.
After much consideration, Google opened Google.cn in January 2006. Try it yourself. Search for “Human Rights” and see what you get. The results are self-censored in compliance with Chinese law.
Google.com is still open in China. The same search results as we get here. But when you try to click on a “banned” link, you get an error page. All of wikipedia.com is unavailable, for example.
One Chinese dissident in the article ranks Google best. Then Microsoft. But calls Yahoo! a sell-out.
So, should Google have simply dropped out of the Chinese market? (That’s what Apple is going to do in France, unwilling to modify their service to comply with French law.)
What do you think? (Do you own stock in Google?)
what is “net neutrality”?
Click on the (ugly looking) video below for a quick overview:
In China the internet is censored. The Chinese suffer under totalitarian control.
Of course I assume the crazy American Congress can be bought off by lobbyists. They might enact any kind of goofy legislation.
Gladly I live in a free country?
SaveTheInternet.com provides more information.
hhmmmm …
They claim Canada’s least favourite company — Telus— blocked Internet customers from visiting a website sympathetic to workers with whom Telus was negotiating.
And Shaw, a major Canadian cable company, charges an extra $10 a month to subscribers who dare to use a competing Internet telephone service.
HEY. Those are my Internet Service Providers!
Who is defending net neutrality in Canada?
software piracy as a business strategy
Reminds me of big tobacco giving away free smokes to kids.
Bill Gates on Piracy: “They’ll get addicted, and then we’ll collect.”
The proliferation of pirated copies nevertheless establishes Microsoft products — particularly Windows and Office — as the software standard. As economies mature and flourish and people and companies begin buying legitimate versions, they usually buy Microsoft because most others already use it. It’s called the network effect.
Bill Gates acknowledged in an unguarded moment in 1998. “Although about 3 million computers get sold every year in China, people don’t pay for the software. Someday they will, though.”
“And as long as they’re going to steal it, we want them to steal ours. They’ll get sort of addicted, and then we’ll somehow figure out how to collect sometime in the next decade.”
drug companies in it for the money
Drugs companies ‘inventing diseases to boost profits’
Do you believe this headline? I’m not so sure.
For example, shyness is diagnosed as a “social anxiety disorder” and treated with antidepressants.
Get your drugs for:
IRRITABLE BOWEL SYNDROMES, SEXUAL DYSFUNCTIONS, OSTEOPOROSIS, SLEEPY IN THE MORNING SICKNESS … (OK, I invented the last one myself.)
what is “social networking”?
MySpace is the largest site (has more pages) on the internet after Yahoo. The advertising potential of sites like MySpace have entrepreneurs drooling.
I hear the term Social Networking a lot of late. But what does it mean?
It refers to websites focused on getting people together who have common interests.
Connecting people with a common passion
Sounds good. I want to put together a social network of gymnastics coaches on a new site GymnasticsCoaching.com
I’m brainstorming the best way to put GC.com together if you have any suggestions.
Blog format? Wiki format?
Interactivity is key.
movie budgets will average US$15 million
Leave it to “Star Wars” creator George Lucas to pronounce the death of the Hollywood blockbuster.
“The market forces that exist today make it unrealistic to spend $200 million on a movie,” said Lucas, a near-billionaire from his feverishly franchised outer-space epics. “Those movies can’t make their money back anymore. Look at what happened with ‘King Kong.'”
… “I think it’s great that the major Oscar nominations have gone to independent films,” … adding that it’s no accident that the “small movies” outclassed the spectaculars in this year’s Academy Awards.
… “In the future, almost everything that gets shown in theaters will be indie movies,” Lucas declared.
Google ads
Google over the past four years collected $11.2 billion from advertisers. Then made payments to advertising partners (i.e. ME) of more than $3.9 billion.
Actually, I’m one of the lowest paid Google coolies, earning about US$3 a day from my thousands of web pages.
When you click on those inoffensive Google ads you are supporting the website hosting them — even if you do not buy anything.
new Bolivian president cuts his own salary
The Bush speech writers will likely tone down the emphasis on democracy after Hamas got elected in Palestine and an extreme Socialist was elected in a Bolivian landslide.
Evo Morales, the first indigenous president of Bolivia, took immediate steps to make his mark. He should — the average Bolivian president remains in office less than a year!
It’s a brave gesture. But to me this looks like another chapter in the history of doomed socialist experiments.
Consider building tourism instead, Mr. Morales. Look to Peru.
CNN.com – Bolivian president gives teachers half his pay – Jan 27, 2006
get your robot dog while supplies last!
Sony was #1 in robot dogs manufacture.
No more.
After selling over 150,000 Aibos since launching the product in May 1999, Sony is calling it quits to concentrate on fewer product lines.
The robotic dogs sold for upwards of $2,000 each. They can dance, whimper, guard and play, developing personalities based on interaction with its owners.
One of these is now extinct:
