Am I relying on Google too much?

This is what I gradually sensed and uncovered during putting myself into this Internet age - my ability of finding and utilising digital tools is probably much better than my dad, but when turning to initialising thoughts and traversing through logical steps before going to authorities for proofs, I am definitely worse than their generations.

The key is if you don't use it, you lose it over time. The reliance we have on the Internet makes us think less (my personal experience). It is no fault on Google or any other great Internet digital tools outta there, it is us and our surrounding environment that generates pressure on what we are assigned to achieve. We need to find a productive balance between thinking, actioning and productivity.

Haiti Is Owed

Philosophers are often criticized for not being pragmatic, especially when a disaster already stroke. We tend to deliberately ignore true causes for seemingly high ethical reasons. Here is Ted Rall talking about why Haiti is owed. By the way he is a popular American political cartoonist. Article can be found here –

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/01/14-13

But I think Ted overblamed the U.S. because in true history, it was the French having planting the seeds. I read a similar article by an Chinese writer couple of days ago, but thought his words despite being true proven by various history books will be rebuffed by the western media. Now nice to see someone from the opposite camp express the same view.

Why Does the U.S. Care About Haiti?

Since 12th of Jan, 2010, Haiti has been devastated by sever earthquakes. Among other countries, the U.S. has been the most active sending navy carriers and troops to the poor island nation. You wonder why besides the U.S. being a great democracy who values human rights?

Where is Cuba and where is Haiti? Maps do not lie. Stationing troops in Haiti will help America choke Cuba from two directions.

 Secondly, Haiti has been well-known for its wide plantation of coffee beans, sugar and indigo, very sought-after commodities in today's market and from a long run with BRIC increasing their appetite.

Why System.out.println("logging messages") is bad

It is university assignment standard to conduct logging, and it is bad.

- is always printed to output stream
- shows information in the console that is not relevant for the end user
- code must be deleted/commented out to disable output
- programmer must take care of formatting
- no filtering, everything is printed out
- unknown which part in the code generated the output

Man, I saw heaps of System.outs in an industry-renowned production system. So don't be surprised professional coders are still using the mechanism for logging. Sigh...

Google will leave China, Yes or No?

Either way, Google has to gain something for their decision and the true consequence can only emerge in the long run. Either decision has to be well contemplated. Claiming leaving just for the censorship seems too naive and in some aspects conspiratory. I would say they won't leave even though Chinese consumers are not giving them too much attention, only 30% of the market occupancy and that is shared with Yahoo and a few small players. It is long way behind Baidu.com.

But I have to admit I am a Google fan.