Slashdot Mirror
China to Be Laptop Leader
prostoalex writes "IMS Research says that by the end of the year People Republic of China might become world's biggest laptop manufacturer. The plants will be largely owned by Taiwanese manufacturers, though. Taiwan is current #1."
Help! I'm trapped inside a laptop factory!
Hasn't china been the "leader" of manufacturing stuff foreverish? By "leader" you would think they were responsible for the R&D and design of the laptops, but from what I've read it just appears they can have more sweatshops than anyone else.
Frequency of stories about Chinese tech stuff certainly picked up recently. What's going on there?
Being we probably have 100x the missles of China, I really wouldn't worry about this possibility.
We've been worried about China invading Taiwan - looks like Taiwan invaded China to me...
Good heavens Miss Sakamoto - you're beautiful!
The leadership we're talking about here is production only. I don't see how having more low wage workers to exploit equates to development leadership. I don't mean to use the word "exploit" too negatively though, this will probably be a good thing.
The more low-paid jobs available, the more competition for labour, and as a result, better working conditions and pay.
What makes a man want to be a mouse? (Python's Flying Circus)
Slave labor tends to reduce costs to just about the bare minimum. Maybe we'll start seeing some brand new $500 laptops soon. I kind of feel bad to think that a group of poor Chinese kids will toil for hours assembling my computer for pennies a day. Children get easily distracted, especially when they're worrying about their mother being tortured by the factory manager for falling behind in production.
Laptops own YOU!!!
Ya Think China might make laptops cheap? And make many of them? Thats NEWS HOW?
Course I want them for 99 cents like everything else I would buy from china.....
China to be largest manufacturer of laptops....
Not to troll, but I think that a lot of laptops that will come out of china will suck, just like a lot of the other toys and electronics that come out of China. On the other hand, it probably would drive the price down enough for me to afford one in addition to my desktop. Personally, I won't be getting one of these laptops from China because I am a mac freak and never want to use any OS other than Mac OS X ever again.
I think that quality needs to be emphasized for electronics. Laptops are diing long before their useful life is up. Also, things that don't go obsolete very fast (DVD players, Stereos, VCRs, the like) shou;dn't break in six months. I know this violates short term business models (if it breaks they have to buy a new one and we get another sale). Planned obselescence is a terrible thing.
Help I'm a rock.
I think that we all know that mainland China manufactures a lot of stuff, but what does this prove? That cheap labor attracts business? It comes to me not as any suprise that this was eventually going to happen. A major leap forward would be that China has the most laptop users in the world or possibly that a Chinese computer company has outsold one of western counterparts, but this is really no big suprise.
Am I the only geek who flinches when they see the word "Be" in a headline? (think BeOS, best operating system in the universe).
:wq!
Ok, i'll stop jumping so hard when I see headlines like that, just please stop writing "Be" with the upper case letter in headlines.
Doc already told me to lay off the caffiene.
Please, Zeta guys, release it already!
I'm more concerned about the missle manufacturers producing parts over there. The DOD seems to have lost their fortitude when it comes to executing people for treason. Perhaps that will change before they nuke us for interfering with Taiwan.
I think laptops fall into the category of toilet paper and rice balls. Who gives a shit. Nobody's gonna die cause your crappy Dell can't run WinblowZ 2010.
People are finally realizing China isn't quite as bush league as they thought.
Seriously though, China is a manufacturing superpower. They have lots of high tech neighbors willing to put money into China (and they aren't doing so badly with their R&D either), a huge population, and a large/rapidly expanding production capacity. They really are in an ideal place to manufacture all kinds of electronics.
====
Crudely Drawn Games
How come WE aren't the number one manufacturer of laptops. Perhaps it's time we became less dependant on asian countries and started building our own computers with our own technology! Who would trust chinese made computers anyway? Communist governments are known for using backdoors and spying. Is our data really safe ?
Stanley Feinbaum, professional journalist and master debater! God bless the USA!
Manufacturers must realise that cost savings is not everything these days. People want quality too.
.. But I welcome our Chineese Laptop overlords.
I dont see to many "Made in China" laptops at the stores here in Canada. The one i am typing this on is made in Japan (Toshiba satellite) and another major laptop brand Dell has all its production facilities in US except maybe the desktop units for the japanese market.
Siggy Say, Siggy Do
Ok, who makes laptops in the USA anymore? Anyone? Fuck China, I will NEVER willing by anything of consequence from there.
You get what you pay for. Now all off this might push prices down which is good but what about the quality? Some of the laptops I've used from China (which were bought by the company I worked at) and TBH they sucked. Unreliable, bad screens. Now I don't want to tar all of China with the same brush but I can't help but think this will happen.
My $0.02
Rus
Cheap UK and US VPS
Looking under the hood, it gets worse. While all other *nixes use standard ELF binaries, Darwin (Apple's name for their proprietary "Unix" kernel) does not. Ummm, Darwin is open sourced, www.opendarwin.org. And almost everything is "standards" compatible. Run Samba or almost any other common unix app and it will go AND work. So quit your griping. Jeez, they just changed the "windowing" environment as you call it. And I think they got that from NextSTEP.
Sock puppets stole my sig.
Fuck, should have posted as anonymous. In other news, you should all be scared.
All cheer and support our brutal and oppressive communist allies in technology production!
As if I give a shit about it, it's better that they make it there and fuck up their country with pollution and shit than mine.
>IMS Research says that by the end of the year People Republic of China
>might become world's biggest laptop manufacturer. The plants
>will be largely owned by Taiwanese manufacturers, though.
>Taiwan is current #1.
The problem with business man in general is that they drift where the money is, and care less about the impact to their own country (if they even consider Taiwan to be a country in the first place, regardless if they were born there).
The impact to the shift of labtop industry from Taiwan to China (by Taiwanese company) are two folds.
First, China gains a competitive edge to the industry, and to the overall economy of China and can later be used to bargain against Taiwan. (Heck, China already is using the new found money from its booming economy to buy 3rd world nations' support against Taiwan)
Second, Taiwan loses leadership in the industry, the economy suffers, unemplyeement rate increases due to the moving of manufacturing plants to China.
Most Taiwanese people still fail to realize that China is still a hostile nation towards Taiwan. And China still threaten to invade or bomb Taiwan if Taiwan refused to reunite with China.
God.. I mean... can you imagine American business man supporting Iraq so that Iraq has more money to build missles to aim at US ??
In other news, you should all be scared.
/me experiences a mild orgasm
A link to a printer friendly page!
The unofficial
Apple is a monopoly. They make their OS and their hardware propreitary. How is Microsoft worse than that? Microsoft makes a great product, and they have done for longer than Apple. Just because most computer users choose the ease-of-use and professional style of Windows, means it's a monopoly? Riiight... That's not a monopoly, apple control's its own hardware. NOT the whole computer industry. Why don't they port Safari? They have no moral reason to or any reason to whatsoever. Apple isn't in the business of making apps for windows, they make their own OS.
Sock puppets stole my sig.
Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the slashdot.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
You're going to be the what again? Could you say that one more time? You have our gratitude...
Who is Michael Sims?
the guy who posted this story on slashdot
I'm older than you, dumb shit poser ass rancher fuck face dickhead nimrod pea brain..
Your command of logic makes me hard. I want to have your children, cousin.
I'm drunk as fuck.
As USA!=Canada!=UK!=Australia, they speak the same language doesn't mean they are the same country.
ODM links
I think Apple powerbooks are now made by Compal.
Why not our labor? Ask the unions.
Original Design Manufacturer. They are not just about cheap production labor -- they design the whole computer from motherboard out, create entire product roadmaps etc... and deliver it on a platter to OEMs who want to slap a label on it.
they are taking away all the business from tradition EMS type outsourcers (Solectron, Flextronics, Jabil, et al) in desktop computers and are on the move in laptops
The perspective that it's entirely about cheap production labor is both naive and flat wrong.
Been reading Ayn Rand again eh?
First chapter of Capitalism: TUI goes over that. Good stuff.
Mac.
You need to separate design from marketing. Most of the design of the laptops are by Taiwanese companies. The marketing gets done by Western companies.
You can call a chinese manufacturing company, tell them what you want the product to do, and (assuming thye don't already have such a product) they will design it (or add your eatures to their existing product), build a prototype, and schedule production and delivery for you. All you need is an idea and a marketing plan and you, too, could become the next tivo.
I'm high and drunk. fucked
More like a little Red Flag for that nice new laptop of yours...
Patent: from Latin patere, to be open
This just in: They make stuff in China.
Stay tuned for these other breaking developments...
- Scientists discover it's really cold in Siberia.
- U.S. Justice Department admits life not fair.
- FDA Bombshell: Eating too much can make you fat.
all this and Andy Rooney, tonight on 60 minutes.
He is perhaps the most infamous and hated editor on slashdot. He is known for abusing his unlimited mod points to mod up his friends and mod down his enemies.
Well considering I'm an unemployed geek. They'll have to be 99 cents in order for me to afford them.
Why do you think the US is so keen on coercing the world's nations into signing onto the WTO treaty? In the case of china, who has the power? The US, who buys all those goods? Or china, who supplies all those cheap goods the people of the US depends on?
Mine came with a fortune cookie:
The future will bring you many Blue Screens.
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
they will be the laptop leaders...all they need to do is create more hackers, oh wait this isn't C&C: Generals.
"Laptop in hand."
They won't be "laptops" anymore.
Umm... do you realize America could kill 1,000,000 Chinese people EVERY DAY for a YEAR and they would still have a larger population than us? Think about it...
Damn...I am neither.
China has a large and well educated population that is increasingly moving toward High Tech items, because other countires (such as Taiwan) have traditionally dominated these markets and have kept pries rather high. Using cheaper (criminally, but that's editorializing) labor they can bring to market a cheaper product (of similar quality). Heck, even software jobs are moving to south east Asia and the Indian subcontinent, in an airing of Talk of the Nation a few weeks ago, they were discussing the high levels of education and low cost of workers for fields from mechanical engineering, to software design and tech support in foreign countries, especially since the incerasing wiredness of the world and these countries in particular makes it easier (and more cost effective) than ever.
I think that in the next few years there will be an even greater outsourcing of these sorts of projects. India and Bangladesh are typically cheaper markets then China to work in, and we can probably look forward to those countries entering into these markets.
Now for my editorial, because I have to have it (you can stop reading if you'd like). with the US job market as tight as it is right now, it is a major ethical dillema to be outsourcing High paying jobs to countires where the worker that would make $60,000 a year here, makes $5,000 over there. It puts the US economy in grave danger of collapsing in on itself as these lucrative jobs are removed and th emarket has to return to a service and agricultural based economy (the latter of which is becoming a smaller employer but larger business by the year). In all hopes this would see the rise in the standards of living for the average person in China, Micronesia, wherever, but it doesn't seem like the transition would be quick as workers there would have to get it in their heads that they deserrve that amount of money. (To sum, it's like an emerging basketball trend, American players (on the whole) have no actual proficiency with teh sport (though they have a great deal of raw physical talent), and eastern European players do. This means an increasing influx of Eastern European players until they become complacent in their position and the Americans learn to play the game (with little things like passing, and team work)).
Ideally, (and I'm being naive) there is a way to protect American jobs while increasing (or ostensibly increasing) the standard of living in foreign countries. If the US government, or the AMerican consumer, would refuse to allow the sale of (or purchase) goods that were manufactured or generated by workers who were not treated equally to their American counterparts. Of course, in teh drive for cheap stuff there are no rules. [end]
Isn't it easy to be #1 if you've got a "captive audience"
Look at the result after Matthew shared Jesus with his captive audience
Well our parent company, OSDN is outsourcing Slashdot to China. The whole thing is just a coincidence.
"China to Be Laptop Leader" ?
Come on, it would have been so much funnier to title it "China Be Laptop Leader."
The unofficial
I hope your'e extra careful when you buy brand name stuff then, including high end electronics, fashion shoes, clothing etc.
Did you ever notice who the highest paid people in companies are, people whose salaries frequently equal that of a dozen or so employees (and more)?
Then did you ever notice that while all of these things get outsourced, the corporate management structure doesn't go with it?
What skills do US corporate dictators have that foreign ones do not? I'm sure tha tthe Chinese would be far better at keeping large groups of people disciplined in a hierarchicial order and getting the products out and all of that as their American counterparts.
After all, remeber, nothing is ever really about the bottom line. It's about what's lining the rich guy's pocket.
I spent some time in China last year and I was shocked by how some of these "slave laborers" live. One guy I got to know works for a construction company, he gets a base pay of about US$100 a month. With overtime and performance bonuses, he can earn an additional US$100 in a good month. How does this guy live? Well, he OWNS a very nice 2 bedroom apartment with hardwood floors, fully equiped modern western-style bathroom and kitchen (w/ hot shower, washer and dryer, dish washer, refrigerator, microwave, etc), good looking furniture, DVD player, 30+ inch flat screen TV, computer, stereo system, digital camera, and separate cell phones for him and his wife. And he's able to have all this while putting his wife through law school. You may ask how can this guy possibly afford all this? Answer is simple, while Chinese made stuff is cheap in the US, they are much much cheaper in China! Regular prices for goods is often a fraction of what they cost in the US. If you know where to look, you can get even lower prices. And if you wait for a sale or a price war, which happens quite frequently considering how many manufacturers there are for any type of goods in China (there are like 100+ TV makers in China). Food is also incredibly cheap in China. You can have a full meal at a neighborhood noodle shop for little more than a quarter. If you cook at home, the cost is basically negligible.
The moral of all this is that conditions for these "slave laborers" are nothing like what Americans imagine. These "slave laborers" own 230+ million cell phones, live decent lives, and have enough left-over to sent money home to support entire extended families. OTOH, living conditions for the 900 million peasants in rural China is really really bad, and that's why there seems to be an endless stream of people competing eagerly to become "slave laborers".
What was there to see at the oddpost link?
It loaded up fine in my Mozilla Browser.
then I opened it in IE. Both look and function the same to me.
`` it is still the western companies that design and market the devices''
As for today yes, but Chinese are working hard on their own CPU, have their `own' linux distro that suits their politics and one day we may see Chinese `Red Dragons' available on the market.
western companies?
Start thinking multinational.
From a european perspective, this isn't news. we've always had respect for the chinese and their economic might.
You americans have a fair amount of
unreconstructed Colonel Blimp in you.
cheers.
Thank Matt Drudge. I'm a lazy motherfucker.
The Taiwanese constitution itself insists that Tibet is part of China
Yes, and the Taiwanese constitution also insist that Taiwan is a part of China, The Republic of China that is (which is what Taiwan's official name is).
Yeah, and I got fucked!
Funny thing about those anti-Apple trolls. They used to put those rants into any Apple-related discussion. Now they start to put them into anything laptop-related - which means they equate "laptop manufacturer" with "Apple" in their own minds. And I can agree with that :-)
"Made in China" or "Hacked by Chinese"?
I wonder if they shoot you for each dead pixel
just because your a schizophrenic doesn't mean people arn't really out to get you
...jobs, jobs, and more jobs. I'm leaving South Korea to work in China soon, and I couldn't be happier.
Tech is just one part, but business is booming, and now is the time to get in.
"Republic of China" does NOT mean Taiwan is a part of China! It is merely stating the fact that the true Chinese government is actually in Taiwan. (say what you posted to any Taiwanese, I dare you)
And surely the descendants of those slave-owning native-land-grabbing rebels (Thomas Jefferson et al) will soon be back in the fold once they realise their mistake... just as the renegade mainland will rejoin taiwan.
Generally people have wanted the smallest laptop, but someone has to set the record for the biggest laptop.
A couple of weeks ago Digitimes was reporting (registration required) that by the end of the year over 50% of motherboards will be produced in China.
Though the simple task of manufacture has been handed down to the Chinese, it is still the western companies that design and market the devices.
This is a troll, I would mod it down if I have mod points. Get your fact first. A lot of notebook computers are designed by Taiwanese companies (ever heard about how Asus is heading towards ODM on notebook, not to mention Compal?), not the traditional western companies. And most probably Asia is the test point for marketing the latest model of notebook computers.
At least, it's not that difficult to identify many notebooks from many different brand names shared a similar design: all of them are customized product from ODM solutions provided by one of the Taiwanese companies (Compal was/is?? the leader in this area.)
Mainland China is catching up fast in the area of designing too. It wouldn't surprise me if major new consumer computer products are mainly designed in Mainland China in 5 years. All you need is a couple thousands well trained engineers and industrial designers.
A sig is redundant.
China might become world's biggest laptop manufacturer.
Yeah, they'll usurp the laptop market with ultracheap, super low quality products that don't work properly just as they've done with most electronics. No wait, most products you find in North America period!
Strange how business people in capitalist countries will opt for inferior products from an opposing communist country (with a horrible human rights record) just to save a few bucks and be competitive in the free market society they hold so dear. The irony is too much.
SEO Copywriter. Just Say ON
...you'll want to buy another one an hour after you start using it! This could really be the thing to boost the global economy... addictive devices!
It seems to me like the Taiwanese have moved their production to China where labour is cheaper. Similar to how companies that moved their call centres and programming teams to India are now looking for even cheaper places.
What bugs me is that I'm an unemployed programmer, and I can't compete with people who consider 4000/year a good wage. Plus, anyone who employs me needs to pay tax, social security and contribute to my pension.
Where will it end? Is someone gonna code for food?
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
being able to relocate, & also maitain communications is relevant to these times.
more breathing. consult with/trust in yOUR creator. vote with yOUR wallet. that's the spirit.
yOUR intentions/behaviours will disempower the greed/fear based georgewellian fuddite murdering thieves. that's not a trick you say? right again.
should we (that includes you) fail to assist in the termination of the behaviours of the Godless execrable, there'll be few ports that are worth visiting.
pay attention. it's affordable, & can leave one with the sense of not being misled by the walking dead.
we don't need no stinking bombs. if you're in the bomb making/shipping/firing 'business', you need to check yourself out. don't think that 'got to make a living' lament will hold up at all.
the lights are coming up now. we're in crisis mode. you can help. do us all a favor, for a change.
pairannoyed? you bet. if you're not, you might want to get some help having your process cleared.
The article doesn't mention it, but does anyone know if these laptops will use the dragon CPU?
j
On account of Dell closing all it's U.S. laptop factories, you can bet your money that the models don't magically appear out of thin air--they are made in other countries.
Actually, the laptops aren't only made in other countries, but they are made by OTHER companies who build stuff and slap the Dell logo on them. I think IBM is the only company that actually makes its own laptops, whether here or across seas.
Cover your eyes and click this link!
Apparently you know very little about Mandarin, or it's input. For Japanese input, there is a big speed penalty. But Chinese input is faster.
Most people in Taiwan use either bpmf input or canjie. Most people in mainland China use either pinyin or canjie. Bpmf and pinyin are phonetic input methods which are approximately the same speed as English. Canjie input is based upon the structure of a character instead, and is MUCH faster than English input. I can type over 200 words per minute with canjie, and many professional typists can type at over 300.
There is no "slowing factor" in typing Mandarin. In fact, I would argue that by lacking a meaning based orthographic system, that English is a "slowing factor".
China will own IT.
I'm a gnu world man.
She didnt win. The crap Republican model that the politicians offered lost. If they had of asked simply, "Should Australia be a Republic", it would have been a dominant majority.
The Queen and Australian Government is an embarrassment. Australia is no place for a monarchy, it goes against all Australian principles.
omcioo--
Literally prices are way too high for laptops and has anyone looked at used laptops? I swear they've averaged at 1 dollar per mhz for any decent laptop without any serious defects. I wish my truck had that kind of depreciation.
I don't buy name brand stuff.
I don't buy "fashion" clothes or "fashion" shoes.
I pay attention to where things are made and I buy American made products if there is anyway possible. In cases where it's not possible to buy an American made product, I try to buy the product that's made in a country that supports freedom and not tyranny.
Noooo! Help me out! Our laptops are being invaded by red army!! It is made in China.. it has built in trojan horse to "counter-strike" the one that was built-inside Windows by Microsoft!
TROLL? FLAMEBAIT?? Are you kidding me??
All the things I said are documented fact.
PROVE that stuff from China is high quality and not total crap. You can't because it is crap.
The only quality products ever to come from China where silk and chinaware a few hundred years ago. Now they just crank out cheap crap to flood Wally World with so they can the Chinese communist military machine running..
A HUGE percentage of the "goods" made in China are made by prison labor, namely political prisoners, I.E. those dissidents that oppose the State.
The communist government is murderous. Ever seen the video of Tiananmen square butchery??
How about Tibet? Or those people that just want to do that exercise thing in the park??
Boy, if you think that China is anything other than a murderous, oppressive country, you live in a bubble.
When you buy crap from China you HELP keep that system running. Every TV you buy made in China or Tiawan puts another AK-47 in the hands of a Chinese soldier that will use that AK-47 against his own people and will gladly use it against Americans if told to do so.
The Chinese are spoiling for war, they support North Korea, they've been caught RED handed stealing nuclear weapons secrets (W88 come to mind eh?), missle secrets, they are forever spying on America.
They even threatened to wipe California off the map with nuclear weapons if we interfered with them when they were reclaiming Tiawan and again if they weren't granted MFN trade status.
And we gave in to those terrorist threats. What's wrong with that picture eh??
You folks better come out of mommies basement and wake up!
Turn off the Sci-fi channel and take the red pill. Or just take the blue pill and be happy..
Your choice. No troll, no flaimbait, just truth..
Care to cite a reference for your version of events?
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a rigged demo
--Andy Finkel (J. Klass?)
I've actually doubtful that much will come of this in the near term.
1) Chip design is very hard and very capital intensive, and Intel and AMD have a lock on the market. Creating an indigenous world class chip is going to take decades.
As far the short term, I think that the chances for the dragon chip being a commercial success are far lower than the VIA CPU.
1) The big problem for Linux in China is that China has weak IP laws. Because China has weak IP laws, everyone runs with pirated copies of Windows.
Err, no, there isn't. The approach used is different (predictive phonetic input for Japanese vs character stroke input for Chinese), but that's because the underlying languages are also radically different, despite the superficial similarity of the writing system.
Most Japanese these days bemoan (a little exaggeratedly) that they've forgotten to write by hand, since it's so much faster and easier to write by computer. And besides, we all know how poor the Japanese are at designing electronics and coding games, right?
Cheers,
-j.
UA+/-+/-oItuvwoIj/(R)t|h@1/4EO. /|nearomanji. iOromanjieJkS|/eJkS|/oO. 1/4gea(R)EOA+/-oihiragana,katakanaAUO~|r(kanji),1/ 4ga(R)EOo|rO~|r. (C)OHS|ik1/4gea@1/4EO.
nOAIU3/4eIU,A@(C)w|r+/-oO. |HU3/4eAo3/4C,iO3/4C|nHaAnI^aH(R)Aa|h! @hOI`eJkAU|n,iOq{|+/-`|IU3/4eeJk. |pGAn+/-HUemail, R"NOSPAM" U|n(C)_,3/4DAIOeJk.
p (analogueNOkidSP@silAMiconashes.net
I'm a gnu world man.
Damn editors and their saturday night parties!
Perhaps, the problem is that the moderators do not like the reasoning of the article, and the only way for them to attack it is to hide it.
The crime in this discussion forum is that the Taiwanese support mainland China. Please read "Warning Sign: Taiwanese Money and Technology Supports Mainland China". "Made in Taiwan" = "Made in China". If you support human rights, do not buy any notebook computers made in either Taiwan or mainland China.
I'm quite familiar with Japanese input. Actually what you say about Japanese forgetting how to write by hand is true. Most young Japanese have problems remembering characters. Japanese has a HUGE disadvantage compared with Mandarin (or any other langauge I know) for input. There are 2 big problems.
1) Japanese has 3 character sets
Whenever you write a word you have to chose whether you want it to be hiragana, katakana or kanji. There are general rules to be followed, but the are not absolute! Grammatical particles are always kanji, and foriegn loan words are always katakana, BUT many times the same word could be written in any of the 3 depending on situation and the feeling the author wants to communicate. Usually you would see hiragana in a personal context, kanji in a formal context, and katakana in advertising. The result of all of this is that a phonetic input system must be used, and after phonetics are input, the user must select which of the 3 alphabets to use. In the best case scenario the computer would choose correctly wherever only one script is permited, and require just a few strikes of the space bar in other cases. This is still slow.
2. Lots of homonyms
Japanese has borrowed a huge portion of its vocabulary from Chinese. Chinese was (and still is)tonal. Japanese isn't. As a result Japanese has a LOT of homonyms. For example, "denki" can mean a light, electrical appliances in general, a romance novel, or a biography. They all have different Chinese characters, but the sound are the same. In cases like this the user has no choice but to either hit the space bar until they get the word they want or worse yet pick up the mouse and click the desired character from a box. This is madenning. I have never met ANY Japanese programmer who types over 100wpm, EVEN if you count hiragana particles as words!!!
In Mandarin, you will never have problem #1. If you use a phonetic input system such as bpmf as most novices do, you have problem #2 to a small extent. Being tonal, there are far fewer homonyms in Mandarin than in Japanese, but there are a few. I realize inputting the tone takes a keyboard strike, but even counting the tone, no word is more than 4 keystrokes (and you don't need spaces between them, like in English).
If you use canjie (cangjie to some), or another radical based system you well never have problem #1 or problem #2.
I hope this was informative, I work with Japanese who come to Taiwan for business on a regular basis, as well as corrospond with them through email, and these have been my experiences. If there is some newer and better Japanese input out there, I'd love to see it. It would be a big time saver for me!
I'm a gnu world man.
... the person who posted this were literate. Odds are the Chinese handle English better.
"The plants will be largely owned by Taiwanese manufacturers, though. Taiwan is current #1."
At least until they get the shit blown out of them by the massive bulk of missiles China has produced specifically for targeting them...
You need a FREE iPod Nano
It's sad that Slashdot readers, who usually have a wide knowledge of many different social and political fields, and help defeat the stereotype that geeks don't know about anything, are so xenophobic when it comes to China.
This doesn't apply to everyone on here, but it seems that plenty of people only seem to know about Tiananmen Square and prison labor. Someone on here said that "the HUGE majority" of products made in China come from prison labor. Just on the face of this, I am going to guess that 600 million Chinese people aren't in prison.
Yes, the government of China is repressive. But probably not more so then the governments of Nigeria, Pakistan and maybe Mexico. And unlike those governments, the Chinese government does manage to provide some kind of education and welfare to its populace.
China is not some mysterious, closed prison state. If you want to find out about China, you can go on ICQ, find a chat partner, and ask them.
Hopefully I didn't put any [] around my words.
I really don't know where you get off on all this insulting Chinese typists. Where do you get these ideas? Are you talking about farmers who's yearly earnings is about equal to the cost of a computer? Do you think they are the typical Chinese computer users?
I live in Taiwan, and I've got quite a few buddies from HK, too. I don't not know ANY young adults who are "hunt and peck" typists here. Not only have most middle class Chinese adopted email, but we also do quite a bit with ICQ, MSM, and online strategy war games which use chatting for communication DURING battle. This isn't just a few people. Most teenagers do this.
I'm really sick of arrogant Americans who always make assumptions about what most Chinese can and cannot do. I am NOT a "specially trained professional" typist. Neither are any of my coworkers. But we don't "hunt and peck", and we do type faster than the foriegner in our office.
What are you talking about? What is "tze2"? I know that's not international pinyin, and it's not Taiwan pinyin either, so I'm guessing it's bastardized Wade-Guiles? So you mean "zi2"? Sorry. No such word. Did you mean "zi4"? Like "word"?
Well, whatever. They're right about Chinese typing w/ cangjie being faster. Comparing by translation even helps Chinese more, because Chinese does not have useless words like "a, the, and", etc... Chinese doesn't waste space by always writing a subject in every sentence, either. I can type faster in Chinese than English, and I've been living in America since I started high school.
Please read "Facts About Taiwan" to get a better understanding of why "Made in Taiwan" = "Made in China". Just say "NO!" to notebook computers made in Taiwan or China.
The point of the original article is that the Taiwanese insist that Taiwan, Tibet, and mainland China are all part of one nation. The Taiwanese constitution, the highest law in Taiwan, says that Tibet is part of China. It is also clear that the Taiwanese support all the geopolitical objectives of mainland China. (reference: "Facts about Taiwan"
5+ insightful, me thinks.
605413? Yes, it's a prime.
You can find more information in the Almanac of China's Foreign Economic Relations and Trade. I found the 2001 edition in the Seattle Public Library about a year ago. The 2002 edition should be available now since the edition-year indicates the year that is being reported on.
.cn web site with more statistics and information. The whole book may have been available as a PDF as well. Unfortunately, the margin appears to have been too narrow to record the URL :)
Some of the numbers were amazing. I don't remember the pizza / hamburger / noodles metric, but I do recall that a C230 Mercedes was priced at about 800k Yuan, which is about US$100k (a $30k car in USA, and the smallest Mercedes sold here). Salaries in Yuan and US$ are supposed to be comparable, so that is like spending a million dollars for an imported compact car. The Audi A6 was priced at about half that, probably due to the fact that VW-Audi have joint venture factories in China. For those not into cars, the A6 is a midsized car with AWD and lots of cool gadgets. Logos aside, the A6 is a much cooler car than the C-class. Interestingly, the young telecom generation live a very rockstar lifestyle, comparable to the 1996-1999 period in the USA. Difference is that they are still living it. So cars like these are well within their grasp.
My notes from the Almanac include a section from p138:
Government encourages growth of Software and Hardware so that it reaches international advanced level by 2010. IC facilities should lead Development and Production world wide. Encourage Domestic enterprise (...)
I recall that every page had an URL at the top pointing to a
Bonus points to anyone who posts it.
When's the last time you hired a programmer because they could type 100 words a minute? Does a sysadmin who types twice as fast as another accomplish twice as much?
The limiting factor in Information Technology is, and always will be, the speed of human thought. Being able to type faster is not an advantage. I can only type 35 words a minute that has always been plenty.
Or maybe it's just that I think before I code. If the developers and sysadmins in China don't do the same, it won't matter what language they use because all their products will be worthless.
You have to hand it to these Taiwanese people, in becoming independant nation, they've choosen the more clever way, than let's say Catalunia or East-Timor..
They're now just seem to be heading for total domination over their agressor..
If you don't wanna join them, beat them..
How is this news? Everything I buy is already "Made in China" or "Made in Taiwan". And I live in North America...