5 ms·

Github being blocked for a few days was annoying, but the real story here is that for a person / company in China, there are no "safe" web services upon which t

Github being blocked for a few days was annoying, but the real story here is that for a person / company in China, there are no "safe" web services upon which to build things, no matter how apolitical those services might be. Anything you build on technology that you need to access over the network is immediately at risk of suffering a massive, totally opaque, and totally unfixable (by you, at least) failure. Domestic services are a little bit better, but (and I say this out of sad experience) not immune. Non-China based services are just a crapshoot, especially these days. It's sad and it's frustrating and it really makes you wonder how China is ever going to really transition away from a heavy industry / copycat technology economy.

thejosh 14y ago
The whole point of git is that they can simply remove github and put in a new remote host and start using that. Annoying that their issues/other data go up in smoke and they lose the OSS aspect of github.
veidr 14y ago
I think it is unlikely that China is ever going to really transition away from a heavy industry / copycat technology economy, until its current government is overthrown or otherwise replaced. This is a fundamental problem with totalitarian regimes that oppress their people. A key part of denying people freedom is preventing free exchange of information. Happily, though, the leading edge of economic success seems to increasingly rely on unfettered flow of knowledge and information. This is, overall, good for the free world, as advances in information technology yield increased productivity for both organizations and individuals. It is not that good for autocratic regimes like the USSR and China, because they have to actively fight the tide of improving technology -- which both consumes energy and keeps their population less knowledgeable/capable, thereby disadvantaging them in the increasingly information- and knowledge-dependent modern economy.
- tianshuo 14y ago
  I agree that most of the IT sector in China is copycat. But there is emerging innovation, eg. Tencent Wechat has no comparable competitor IMHO.
  - veidr 14y ago
    I definitely wouldn't argue with you; historically, China is the source of a huge portion of humankind's inventions, and I am sure there is a great deal of innovation happening there right now. My point was more narrowly that the current system of government there, and the lack of information freedom the automatically comes with it, presents a serious obstacle for innovative businesses (particularly anything to do with computing, mobile, and internet, a huge swath of the modern economy).
  - biesnecker 14y ago
    Agreed, weixin is awesome, but how likely are they to gain real international traction so long as messages from anywhere are subject to the same censorship regime?

thejosh 14y ago

The whole point of git is that they can simply remove github and put in a new remote host and start using that. Annoying that their issues/other data go up in smoke and they lose the OSS aspect of github.

veidr 14y ago

I think it is unlikely that China is ever going to really transition away from a heavy industry / copycat technology economy, until its current government is overthrown or otherwise replaced. This is a fundamental problem with totalitarian regimes that oppress their people. A key part of denying people freedom is preventing free exchange of information. Happily, though, the leading edge of economic success seems to increasingly rely on unfettered flow of knowledge and information. This is, overall, good for the free world, as advances in information technology yield increased productivity for both organizations and individuals. It is not that good for autocratic regimes like the USSR and China, because they have to actively fight the tide of improving technology -- which both consumes energy and keeps their population less knowledgeable/capable, thereby disadvantaging them in the increasingly information- and knowledge-dependent modern economy.

tianshuo 14y ago
I agree that most of the IT sector in China is copycat. But there is emerging innovation, eg. Tencent Wechat has no comparable competitor IMHO.
- veidr 14y ago
  I definitely wouldn't argue with you; historically, China is the source of a huge portion of humankind's inventions, and I am sure there is a great deal of innovation happening there right now. My point was more narrowly that the current system of government there, and the lack of information freedom the automatically comes with it, presents a serious obstacle for innovative businesses (particularly anything to do with computing, mobile, and internet, a huge swath of the modern economy).
- biesnecker 14y ago
  Agreed, weixin is awesome, but how likely are they to gain real international traction so long as messages from anywhere are subject to the same censorship regime?