> Not saying they couldn't develop an operating system; but the rest of the article did a pretty good job of explaining why they just wouldn't.I'm not sure what point you're trying to make here. If Google (or rather Danger) could have forked Android instead of creating a new operating system, they would have done that too. In fact, they did, in a sense, as Android uses the Linux kernel, after all.
Sure, Google now actually is trying to create a new OS from scratch (Fuchsia), but it remains to be seen if it will be a success in the market (or if it will even ever be deployed in a commercial product).
> If someone 'cheats', there is a pretty good chance that they also 'lie'. And enough with the cultural relativism. Some things people do are recognizably bad just at the human or even social animal level.
I share your difficulty in wrapping your head around this idea, but a certain amount of cultural relativism is required here. And your own absolutism isn't a absolute as you think.
Here is an exercise that may help: Why is cheating at poker considered, well, cheating, but bluffing (including deliberately faking tells, or other subterfuge) is not?
If you say "bluffing is part of the game", try to understand that much of what is called 'cheating' is seen as part of the game in their context, and while getting caught cheating is cause for losing face, it isn't cause for feeling guilt. In fact, whoever is doing the catching is supposed to feel embarrassed for pointing it out, not self-righteous.
> Even dogs get embarrassed by their own behavior, if they are caught out.
Right. While the idea of 'Face' or shame is something that exists in Chinese culture, and is as powerful a force as guilt is in Western cultures, it doesn't work in the same way, and trying to guilt a Chinese person typically just shames them instead, and makes the shamer a target for anger and even revenge. This point perhaps could have been given more space in the essay.
Aside: I think that this is part of what drives the 'social credit score' initiative: In a very real sense it is a system for measuring 'face', but there is never a 'shamer' that can be embarrassed or blamed.