A little bit evil is similar to me like being a little bit pregnant or a little bit dead.
This following story has been variously ascribed, but the way I heard it was that Leonard Cohen was in a cafeteria at McGill. A female student sat down at the same table to eat her lunch and Cohen asked her if she'd be willing to sleep with him for $ 100,000.00. She thought about it honestly and said that considering the offer was coming from Leonard Cohen and that she was financially somewhat hard up, she would agree. He then asked if she would do it for $ 50.00. She replied, indignantly; "What do you think I am?" Cohen replied: "I know what you are, now we're just arguing about money."
A little bit evil to me is like a little bit dirty or a little bit wet. I think mine is a more accurate view of evil in the world.
Excellent story.
Actually, I'm not sure the Chinese govt is actually *paying* Google anything. I think it's just allowing the Chinese people access to the search engine and Google hopes to make money there in much the same way it makes money here. I should add that I'm not entirely sure of the details of the agreement/proposal so I might be dead wrong on this point. I understand that either way it will likely benefit Google, but it does change the flavor of the agreement.
Mr. Cohen has way too much class to behave so crassly. In addition, he can undoubtedly get as many girls to sleep with him just by introducing himself...
Of course he's not a young man anymore and he's undoubtedly learned that it's much more fun when the girls come onto him...
Well, I suppose if you consider bankrupting third world nations by speculating on their currency and endangering the currencies of first tier nations like Britain via the same approach to be making money "honestly", then I suppose you can say that George Soros came by his money honestly.
+--------------------------------------------------------------------------------+ If you're gonna be dumb, you better be tough
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" . . . Google isn't doing anything proprietary in its web and usenet aggregating. You or I could start doing it tomorrow."
AND
"All Google has that you don't is a head start, a supoena to appear before the US Congress, and $19 billion less share value than they had a couple of days ago."
That's absurd. If true, there would be no degrees of felony and subsequent degrees of sentencing. Every rational person understands there are degrees of good and evil. Every rational person understands that sometimes the choice is not between good and bad, but bad and worse. Every rational person understands that real world moral questions are substantially more complex and nuanced than what you learn in Sunday School (where the choices are obvious). Every rational person understands that decisions to not do things carry consequences just like decisions to do things, and that there are also incidental results to all such (in)actions. Only ideological purists insist that no middle ground is ever reasonable or a possible path to the desired end state.
Moreover, Google's decision to engage with the Chinese is hardly self-evidently "evil". It is a judgment call (by us 3rd-parties - Google have their own rationale', I'm sure) as to whether the net of this decision is morally positive or negative. I think it will be a good thing in the long run and help accelerate the collapse of Communism in China and the assist the ascent of Capitalism. You may disagree, but to dismiss it out of hand as "evil" is ridiculous.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Tim Daneliuk snipped-for-privacy@tundraware.com PGP Key:
Police use Google to monitor newsgroup activity, scan past postings for keywords etc and then visit on the strength of what they have read (as I have been visited recently) all I can say is your view is very nieve.
Niel.
"We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force. " : Ayn Rand in "The Nature of Government"
1 a whole formed by combining several (typically disparate) elements : the council was an aggregate of three regional assemblies. ? the total number of points scored by a player or team in a series of sporting contests : the result put the sides even on aggregate.
2 a material or structure formed from a loosely compacted mass of fragments or particles. ? pieces of broken or crushed stone or gravel used to make concrete, or more generally in building and construction work. adjective [ attrib. ] |?agrigit| |?agr?g?t| formed or calculated by the combination of many separate units or items; total : the aggregate amount of grants made. ? Botany (of a group of species) comprising several very similar species formerly regarded as a single species. ? Economics denoting the total supply or demand for goods and services in an economy at a particular time : aggregate demand | aggregate supply. verb |-?g?t| |?øgr??ge?t| |?agr?ge?t| form or group into a class or cluster : [ intrans. ] the butterflies aggregate in dense groups. PHRASES in ( the) aggregate in total; as a whole. DERIVATIVES aggregation |?agri?g? sh ?n| |?øgr??ge???n| |-?ge??(?)n| noun aggregative |-?g?tiv| |?øgr??ge?d?v| |?agr?g?t?v| adjective ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin aggregat- ?herded together,¹ from the verb aggregare, from ad- ?toward¹ + grex, greg- ?a flock.¹
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Web spiders to gather page content are a dime a dozen. Capturing and storing a news feed is trivial.
There is nothing proprietary about aggregating web site content and news feeds.
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