Month: April 2007

  • Wired Overselling The Influence of 2-ch?

    It’s a great story: a sprawling and fascinating message board site with mediocre design and millions of users influences society—a lot. That’s the lede of a Wired story published yesterday and written by Lisa Katayama, who apparently writes a fair amount of “news of the weird, cute, or uniquely Japanese”-type material for the Wired website.…

  • links for 2007-04-20

    Letter from China: Wen reveals himself as a new kind of Chinese leader – International Herald Tribune When Prime Minister Wen Jiabao of China set off for a historic visit to Japan nearly two weeks ago, pundits in this region set the bar remarkably low China sentences Canadian activist to life in prison – International…

  • Wen: Japan Trip 'Most Important Task' so Far in Office

    Noted, from Howard French’s piece today (emphasis mine): In reality, [Chinese Primier] Wen [Jiabao], too, mostly sticks closely to the script – a fact that he himself revealed in an unusually candid discussion of his preparation for the Japan trip. “This is the most important task since I took office,” he told an audience of…

  • Microsoft in China: In Numbers from FP

    Foreign Policy’s Passport blog examines Microsoft in China for this week’s “Numbers.” Here is the argument boiled down, and see their post for sources and more good numbers: $295 Price for a basic, legal copy of Microsoft Vista in China $1.30 to $4.00 Price of a pirated copy of Microsoft Vista on the street in…

  • Does Death Toll Alone Determine Global Response?

    At Global Voices Online, John Kennedy translates a Chinese-language blog post called “Waiting for Bush to Reciprocate” (等着布什的回礼) The idea is that 33 people die on a pretty regular basis in China, and President Bush doesn’t always send his condolence straight away. In America, everybody lowers the flag to half-mast for a week, and Mrs.…