Google

Recently, Google has been a big news item, both for its refusal to comply with a Department of Justice subpoena and its decision to censor its content in Google 中国. Google was very popular on the web for refusing to comply with the Department of Justice, but that popularity turned sour with the China decision.

Personally, I agree with Google on both counts. The department of Justice really doesn't have a reason to subpoena one million urls, as they can get more relevant information by running their own searches. The whole thing smells rotten.

As for the issue with Google 中国, Google was put in a tough situation. If they didn't comply with China, they would be blocked, which would make them a whole lot less useful. While it did ruin their image for the time being, it was the right thing to do. Resisting on moral grounds is fine when doing so does hurt more than it helps. However, if Google had done so, their services would have not been available. True, the filter does take away some of Google's utility. However, being blocked leaves Chinese users without any utility from Google and still in a censored position. Google resisting would not have done any good and would in fact be more evil, IMO. Whether they their motives were in their pocketbook or not, they did the right thing.

Table of squares

Table of squares
Originally uploaded by alethiareg.

This is an image I am using for ODN

Google Talk

Google talk a
Google Hack by
Douwe Osinga

The doldrums of winter

Winter has proven to be extremely boring.

The Holidays

I spent Christmas at my Uncle Eric's house with my mother and brothers. While it was not the ideal situation that we had during Thanksgiving, things went pretty well. The experience was soured by a fight between mom and me over her high tension attitude toward life. That problem carried out until New Year's Eve when I finally let go of my anger.

I found out my grades today and was relieved to see that I had passed Tutorial with a C+.