Their products were "bad" (overpriced and mostly technically inferior.)
I'm not even sure their intentions were very good except in the very early days. Hard to imagine Google charging $900 for a $90 memory stick like Sun did.
China is interesting. It's not like USA with just a population of 310,000,000, it has 1,330,000,000 people.
If one group successfully causes enough political unrest, and 5% of the population supports and follows this group, that's a total of 66,500 000 people, the current population of the UK. Its astounding when you start looking at numbers like this. USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memory when China and India start becoming major players.
How can a democracy successfully emerge when you have the potential to introduce great divergence and even possibly civil war?
One potential result is that you end up with... two democracies. Revolutionary divisions in Europe just ended up more permanent than the ones in China.
But I don't think population totals tell the whole story. One thing I like to quote is when a friend of mine visited China and noted that the "small towns", which still had 2-4 million people but were smaller than the big cities, still felt like small towns. They were less culturally interesting, less alive. The point is the cultural dynamic of "cosmopolitan centre" against "sleepy provincial town" exists despite multiplying the populations by 10; it's more about where the "centre of culture" is I imagine. So maybe democracy can survive scaling as well.
Well, I think difference between China and Europe is geography, and now a common language. Mandarin is spoken basically everywhere, except Hong Kong. Even the border provinces like Tibet (Xizhan) and Xinjiang (formerly a Turkic country) have a lot of Han migrants (or colonists, as some might say). It's easier to hold a country together when you share a common language. There are local dialects and languages, but school kids learn Mandarin, and the writing is all the same (though obviously the grammar, phrasing, and idioms will be different).
As for geography, China is very flat. It was flat 5000 years ago, and peasants (the occasional ruler with a civil engineering fetish) have been making it flatter for millennia. There's nowhere for an army to hide. Dissenters can hide in the concrete jungle, but you can't make any real strongholds. Also anyone who holds the Yellow River and Yangtze River will have strategic control of most of China, and the two rivers have been linked since (IIRC) the Qin dynasty.
As for the "small towns" being a little, well, dead, that's partly a result of rural poverty (and taxes redistributing wealth to the capitals); but also (as you said) of the bigger cities being of interest to young ambitious people.
Exactly. Why do you think China insists on celebrating diversity (the 55 official ethnic minorities get lots of airtime in cultural events - I've seen a national day celebration on TV in which every official minority had a representative dance troup), while emphasizing some kind of fundamental unity of the country (at the end of the celebration, all the dance troupes danced together).
> USA, UK, Europe and the Western world will just be a distant memory when China and India start becoming major players.
As individual entities, perhaps. As a bloc? NATO member countries total population is about 800 million, if I'm not mistaken. The Western world is hardly going to disappear.
Not just a bloc of NATO countries, but also with Russia, which seems to be eagerly invited into organizations such as G8 (= G7 + Russia). With Russia, Ukraine, and Kazakhstan, the total population of such a bloc is 1 billion. I can forsee the US, France, Germany, and Russia soon forming a proto-military alliance, to give them the option to counter-balance China if they need to one day.
And of course the US, unlike China, has immigration as its foundation. They could accept, say, 20 million educated and/or wealthy immigrants from China over the next 20 years, with no shortage of takers ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2660178 ), which would strengthen America and weaken China.
Russia has always been against NATO and lately it is pushing hard for a strong SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) [1] which is branded as Russia's/China's answer to NATO.
The current major issue with SCO though is it needs either India or Pakistan or both as its members to make it a formidable military alliance. But since India and Pakistan are archrivals there are differences between Russia, which has always backed India, and China, which has always backed Pakistan.
> Russia has always been against NATO and lately it is pushing hard for a strong SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organisation) [1] which is branded as Russia's/China's answer to NATO.
This is true. In the long term, Russia needs to decide whether it wants to be a satellite of China, or part of NATO / the West.
Bear in mind that SCO isn't actually a military alliance (with mutual defence obligations) yet, although it may become so in the future.
> They could accept, say, 20 million educated and/or wealthy immigrants from China over the next 20 years, with no shortage of takers ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2660178 ), which would strengthen America and weaken China.
This is the best way to weaken China. In fact, it's the best way to weaken any poor country. Just pay the best people they have to come to your country and become permanent citizens. It's still not too late. Within 20-25 years, there may be no advantage for them, but right now, there is still something for the Chinese to gain by moving here.
You don't even need to pay people to move, you just need to have a better society (and get rid of all the immigration laws which prevent this from happening).
I thought it might be presumptuous to assume that South America wanted anything to do with us... if I, personally, was South America I wouldn't, at this point.
"Great divergence" is not necessarily a problem for democracy. Any specific manifestation of democracy is a tool for governing despite them.
Civil war is not more likely in a democracy than a non democracy. Civil wars (I'm perhaps controversially excluding revolutionary wars such as the current Libyan or Syrian wars because they are usually wars between a regime and the The People) are rarely over political disagreement.
Most civil wars are a result of either: (1) two or more competing elites competing for power (eg James vs William; Augustus vs Anthony). (2) Ethnic/confessional divides that supersede everything else politically. For example, Lebanese Maronites are politically Maronites. They will not vote for a Druze Social-Democrat even if this is their political belief because that identification is much weaker than the Maronite one. Lebanese politics is about dividing political pies between sects.
China is probably in greater danger of 1 today than it would be if democratic and it probably wouldn't be under greater danger of 2, Chinese minorities don't want to be Chinese but they are too small even if they do identify politically entirely along ethnic lines.
Re #2 of your point. The divide isn't along ethnic lines; it's along economic/cultural. Huge divide between rural farmers and urban yuppies. The yuppies are like the HN crowd. But historically, China goes as the peasant class goes.
Most of the time, the government is trying to appease the peasants while encouraging the yuppies. It's a tough balance.
My experience in China has been a little different. You certainly see divides along economic lines, but there are tremendous ethnic divides in China that aren't talked about outside the country, and often its these ethnic divides that create some of the worst economic divides.
Additionally, in recent years the population of China's cities has grown to be around half or more of the total Chinese population. It's not just farmers vs yuppies anymore, its non-local immigrants vs native locals. I saw this big time in Beijing, where a lot of the general working class were pissed because they had to work and ended up with crap for housing while the "natives" didn't work nearly as much - not because the natives were rich, but because they received state-funded stipends and discounted premium housing which immigrants to the city (from other parts of China) aren't eligible for.
I suppose you could consider my second point "economic", thought it's not really in the way most people would think of that term. It's a general side-effect of communist policies which still exist, though are far less publicized within the country.
Is country/peasant worker vs city worker an ethnic divide? Sounds more like a class divide. (ironic in a post-maoist country)
The urbanisation figures in china are highly suspect. Given one child policy is primarily policed in the city and intentionally lax in the countryside. This coupled with the fact their census seems (unconfirmed) do NOT count unofficial residence (i.e second/third/etc children). It makes it very hard to get a real picture of China's urbanisation stats.
Is country/peasant worker vs city worker an ethnic divide?
The distinction you're looking for is "Han Chinese" versus "everyone else." China's outlying rural provinces have significant populations -- often pluralities or majorities -- from ethnic groups which are not Han Chinese, which is the dominant economic group in China and which is the portion of China largely winning from economic growth. For example, there are several large, predominantly Muslim ethnic groups in the border provinces, by the *stans and what have you. Plus Tibetans, etc, etc.
It is possible that this ethnic conflict eventually gets resolved like the Yamato vs. Everyone Else conflict in Japan: the nation of Japan became coextensive with Yamato Japanese and everyone basically pretends that Japan is monoethnic. (This would have been Serious News To Us for most of Janaese history.) It is also possible that China goes along a more Russian or Balkan path.
It is also possible, I suppose, that China resolves its ethnic issues by some combination of ethnic cleansing and genocide, which would not be new.
On a macro-scale the non-Han are relatively small, though, especially compared to some of the other cases of multi-ethnic countries. Non-Han-Chinese make up only 8% of the PRC population, whereas non-Russians make up about 20% of Russia's current population, and made up about 40% of the USSR's.
It is true that they're much more prominent in the outlying areas; e.g. 60% of Xinjiang is non-Han. Those areas have relatively few people compared to the more populous parts of China, though; Shanghai alone has more people than all of Xinjiang. China's current strategy seems to be to take advantage of that numerical imbalance to Han-ify the outlying areas, since the smallish (in absolute numbers) non-Han population can be swamped by moving only a few percent of the people from the central cities out there.
It's easy to throw out numbers like 8% until you realize that it represents over 100 million people. Per capita that may be a small number, but in the general scheme of things it means a lot of disgruntled people. I never really thought about it until I went over there and had the chance to interact with various groups, and it changed a lot of my perspective on how China functions on the inside.
I grew up in Xinjiang, arguably the most ethnically divided region in China, so I know where you're coming from. China's approach to taming ethnic minorities is straight forward: various forms of oppression. Besides racism, the other major reason is that minorities in China, unlike those in the US for example, do not want to be Chinese. There's no civil activism because neither side want true equality (both want to be separate).
Back to the original point: the Han peasant class is far greater than any other demographic. That demographic has been responsible for the dynastic cycles for thousands of years. It's still the case today, and the Chinese government is well aware of that. At the same time, the government has to keep stoking the economic fire, promote innovation, etc.
China's ethnic groups are small, weak and concentrated in remote areas. They really are probably not a political factor. I really can't see this ever being the dividing line of a civil war. They might demand autonomy or independence but that's not really a civil war.
Any serious civil strife that could effect the political direction of the country is most likely to be of the revolutionary kind. The most likely (though still not that likely) scenario I can think of is post economic downturn combined with political scandal. It would probably be a nebulous combination/coalition of demands/factions. Pick a basket of anti regime, pro peasant, anti corruption, pro democracy, human rights. Maybe Christianity or religion in general plays a role.
I think you need to draw a line though between civil strife and revolutionary agitation. I think the urban/rural divide will most likely manifest in the latter.
On what parameters? Both have hundreds of languages, ethnic groups and religions. Both are huge and somewhat federated.
OP was saying that democracy doesn't stand a chance in highly populated countries. According to the Democracy Index [1], it's working better in India than in 15 European countries.
I wasn't saying anything really, just trying to get my head around the huge difference between numbers in population. Living in the Western world I feel all that matters is the US, and UK, and how much the US dominates and polices global politics.
Yet China and India's population are so astoundingly out of proportion with the rest of the world, I am surprised it isn't them that we hear more of. I haven't even place India into my 'understanding the world' mental picture yet.
My main point is about moving a highly populated country TO a democracy. I look at the American civil war and how many lives were lost during that, and then wonder about the implications of allowing opposing ideas to rise. My initial reaction to the 'communist' regime in China is that it's wrong. But I then look at how large the population is and how well the government is working, and wonder if it's any worse or better than America's capitalist version of democracy.
What happens when China or India decide that they need to police the world in what is an appropriate way to run a country?
We need to look at the type of social groups interacting and using it though. Most people on HN I think would use Facebook less, so we can't be the demographic to base it on. The News Stream is really a gossip magazine just for people you know.
But it's the social party goers that use it. I have a few in my stream, like little sisters. It's used heaps if you're a party goer. Photos, events, global shout outs. It looks like less people use it because you cull a lot of the noisy users.
Maybe its the progression of the web as a communication medium vs fads. Initially there was geocities and webpages, then blogs came along.
The next step was Myspace with its Geocities like system, but actual network style functionality. Along with the rise of the social network ecosystem was user-gen content websites and comments. Comments on blogs and discussion forums mixed with shared links pushed through 4chan, forums, and then Digg.
Along with these useful mediums was also the fad like rush. If its cool then you have to use it. Myspace was to ugly though and Facebook brought along format, and styling, like the Apple way.
Facebook has some brilliant underlying concepts - Events and Messaging mediums in an online world. Much better than email and sms.
There are also several layers of society and how they interact. The social to be social groups, and the not so noisy users who like it when they visit a city can see old mates.
Facebook will still be the top web-based social communication medium (besides email for business). When HTML5 comes out and web-gaming increases more, you'll see a bigger explosion of Facebook usage I think.
I think I envision my path as moving to contracting, then consulting, and creating a consulting company, while this funds my product company. pg suggests this is difficult though. However once the consulting side hits of, I could hire a reputable manager for x amount of profit share, while I receive enough to invest in my product based company.
You sound hugely naive. How old are you? I would suggest not worry about the legalese for now, or even looking so far ahead.
Just start your project, try to get a few customers, and go from there. Those steps alone will take you far longer than you'd expect, and teach you more than you can learn in researching how to start a company. You don't need lawyers, you don't need T&Cs, you don't need to incorporate. Just build out your idea and get to market as fast as you can.
Naive indeed. For example, I'll call my product Onlinez. I just register the domain, create the product, and people sign up. I need to allow credit card transactions. Where does this get charged to? I need a business account (ABN) and that is all? And then sign up with on of the online credit card companies?
What if a customer is unhappy with my service? What EULA/T&C do I need to provide? I'm just trying to get my head around all basics, and make sure that when I start I start in the right spot.
Another example, I suppose twitter is a case in point. Who owns Twitter? Is that the companies only product? How do they market Company X creator of Twitter. Or the original owners would just sell Twitter itself and move on to another product?
Looking through your previous comments history. In some it seems you have had some success with websites. Do you consider yourself successful?
Did you build your products on the side whilst holding a full-time job? And you just went at it, creating products and getting cash from users from it?
Are you a good programmer?
I've been thinking about these things a lot, but finding it hard to actualise everything around it. From what you've said, it appears to be as simple as it is. Build a product, try to get customers, and maybe make some money. Worry about everything else later.
Should look a little further before I comment.
http://coryliu.com/ Looks profesh. And HiveDesk. So a lot of experience? Do you have a blog entry on some starter tips?
I don't consider myself particularly successful compared to many people here, but yes, I've created products which got users/customers, and made a few bucks.
Its good that you have questions and curiosity, but some things you need to figure out or learn on your own. So in short:
• If you need to accept money, use paypal or google "accept credit cards online". Thats your research.
• If you have unhappy customers, you talk to them and resolve it. Don't worry about terms unless you have a good reason to.
• If you want to know more about Twitter, look them up on Wikipedia.
Don't worry about other people or about trying to follow a pattern to success; there are no patterns. Just work hard, and do what you gotta do.
I have fond memories of Digg, at least. Loved the user activism around the HD-DVD key days. That's kind of the last thing I remember was really awesome about that site.
I'd be really curious to see a good analysis or even set of anecdotes about why it went downhill. Seems like basically they ignored their userbase.
'If not for the existence and success of iOS, Nokia wouldn’t be in trouble..' If not for Nokia, iOS would never existed, touch screen phones would not have been invented.
If not for the competitiveness and success of Windows, Apple wouldn't have had to redesign itself. And now Windows is redesigning itself to compete. Apple didn't invent this stuff, they re-adapted existing technologies into a pioneering product. And now other companies are doing the same.
Gruber's points do not impact as much with such a thick layer of bias.
If you think Gruber's biased in favor of Apple, just wait until you meet Steve Jobs.
I'm only half-joking. I mean the whole POINT of DF is that it's written from a very Apple-centric point of view. That doesn't mean lavishing uncritical praise on everything Apple does, while mindlessly heaping opprobrium on their competitors. What it DOES mean is cultivating a point-of-view that attempts to closely track the one held by Apple itself.
If Gruber says something is idiotic, what he means is "I think Apple thinks this is idiotic, and here's why."
Obviously, his insights aren't perfect. But given that Jobs & Co. don't blog, DF provides one of the more reliable guides as to what the folks in Cupertino are actually seeing and thinking. Its sustained success indicates that, all things considered, Gruber is doing a pretty solid job.
I have seen that, and I do like enthusiasts, and I have enjoyed DF before, but every now and then a little too much seethes through and I feel that the point of comparing Windows 8 to Mac OSX gets lost in the forest of praise for Apple.
I wanted to read DF's Apple-centric point of view, but couldn't get past the third paragraph.
Its difficult when you're independent of platforms and have to read literature written by those who are limited by their sole choice of one platform.
"Its difficult when you're independent of platforms and have to read literature written by those who are limited by their sole choice of one platform."
Don't bother posting such comments here, HN is known for having a whole bunch of Apple fanboys who will mercilessly mod down any valid criticism so that it's grayed out while fawning posts and posts critical of other companies get modded up to the sky. Notice how there is no other analysis of this news on the front page. They HAVE to feel justified about their choice and Gruber just tells them what they want to hear. There have been a few HN'ers who quit HN in disgust because of this cavaliier attitude. (bye bye karma)
If Gruber is biased toward the Apple way of doing things, maybe that's because iPad is currently the king of tablets, so they must be doing something right (especially after everyone mocked it as a giant iPod touch with a silly name).
Well, this article in particular has more biased based phrases than actual content, but I do see why people are so inclined towards Apple due to the success of the iPad.
And you are right, I had the same misconception of the iPad, now it is a common place name, and product that all CEO's must have.
I just desire that people not be so part of the -cult- of certain groups. My favourite are those who switch, Windows one day, Apple the next. I have a growing dislike for those who limit themselves.
But mostly, why am I bothering to comment at all. I'm just a cubicle worker. Its comments exactly like mine that I think pg and hackernews complain about when it comes to quality. Meh.
A bit clearer information. I've had one now for a while and I do enjoy the phone. It seems slightly limited but hopefully Mango will push it further, and we'll see tighter integration with Windows 8 next year. Zune software looks better than iTunes, but some of its configs are lacking. The current phone is probably between the iPhone 3GS and iPhone 4, but you don't have that feeling of App Silos, however I use the Facebook integration less and less. I think I will be leaning towards iPhone 5 instead though, as the apps are significantly lacking in this phone (and app development API/SDK access is terrible). Marketplace needs a big overhaul and move to something different than an App Store mimic.
The worst feature is Bing Maps. Last night I typed in location X and it said not available. So I typed in located X suburb Y and it still said it could not find it. So I typed in location X suburb Y and state Z. It then relocates to the centre of the state Z and points out that state Z is here.
So we're waiting until October for limited backgrounding and an integrated sms, facebook, and messenger experience? Yeah, I can see ppl holding off on iOS and android upgrades for this;) Seriously, win7 is so unbaked it can't even connect to a hidden wifi network. And with this fall release they are not going to be at parity with last year's OS's. They have continued to loss market share. They need to leapfrog the competition:(
I wouldn't say the wait is optional, more financially restricted(2 year contract).
Is your Win7 experience a personal one though? I haven't yet required to connect to a hidden wifi network. And now that cut-and-paste has arrived, I have used it all of twice.
I'm always of the state of mind that the differences between Android, Iphone, and Win7 aren't that big; I wouldn't say that win7 is unbaked any of those phones, except when it comes to apps, and iPhone always wins.
I just hate being an Apple user. I want to have an iPhone with out the Apple fanboy stigma
