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Shanda Box vs. Microsoft Venus After Six Years?
Luyi Chen asks: "Shanda revealed their new PC entertainment center (aka Shanda Box) at China International Consumer Electronics Show (SinoCES) last Friday. It's strategy is to move Internet content to TV. Six years ago, Microsoft Venus was to provide a cheap operating system with basic information processing ability for the TV set-top market. While Microsoft focused on reducing the price, Shanda focuses on reducing the entry level. Both strategies are based on the fact that the number of TVs dwarfs the number of PCs in China, which won't change in six years. What is different is that we have faster hardware, more Internet content and users. Amazingly enough, Microsoft's Venus didn't make it out of the laboratory. Does Slashdot think Shanda will succeed where Microsoft thought it would fail?"
Microsoft Windows Mobile licenses are less than $5, which is why you are seeing a lot of cell phones and PDA's coming out with Windows Mobile as the OS.
I believe that "we" is meant to be a collective; i.e., "we", as the world of 2005, now have faster hardware, more Internet content and users.
The submitter is a Chinese PhD student blogger, legitimately trying to source for more opinions from Slashdot about this issue.
If you had read his blog linked from his submission, you'll see he has done some of his own analysis. Quite a bit more than what most posters here have so far, and it's not very much yet.
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No. Surfing the web on a low quality analog TV sucks ass. Even someone who has never used the internet before will notice the problem.
Modern websites are graphics heavy and designed for resolutions of at least 800x600 (1024x768 is the most common design target now).
Additionally, a normal quality analog television is worse for web browsing than a Windows 3.1 era 640x480 16 color monitor would be. The display resolution is slightly better (in china) at 768x576, but television are designed for a significant viewing distance and have pixel blur that wouldn't allow for reasonable size screen fonts.
When I got my Sega Dreamcast I tried TV webbrowsing, and the resolution was a legitmate issue.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
3. Unlike the US - the people of China do not have the "I've gotta have it!" kind of outlook. It is more like how the US used to be. The "If it won't solve my problems I don't want it." kind of outlook. And their major problems are food, clean water, medicines, and shelter.
I think parent is stuck in the 1980's mindset of China. I've visted China 4x in the past decade and I was most recently there just a year ago. The fast growing Chinese middle-class is probably the MOST brand conscious demographic I've ever seen. The obsession with status and spending money on gadgets, electronics, cars, and entertainment is wild; much more so than the US. We're not talking about a country of 1.3billion (not 3.5 billion) farmers here. We're talking about a country who's number Internet users just hit 130million and whose purchasing power will soon rival the top developed-countries. Yes, of course 50% of China's population are agrarian, but that doesn't mean the millions upon millions of people living in urban center's don't have cash to burn. If anything, the average middle-class Chinese have more percentage of their money to spend on electronics than their US counter part. China's social security system promises housing, healthcare, and retirement means more money that is taken home can be spent on non-essentials. Sure less money is taken home, but since food is cheap and most family don't need to own a car or pay for mortgage, most of that money is spent on entertainment. Did you know the total number of cellphones sold in China last year was 60 million? And is set to surpass the US in cellphone usage is just 3 years? This hardly sounds like a country of poor farms barely getting by on food and water, like the picture you're trying to paint.
If the post above were made 20 years ago I would have whole-heartly agreed. But anyone who's looked at China recently would completely disagree.
Also, you have to keep in mind that a Chinese characters are entire words. So while a symbol might have to be four times the size to be readable, it also will be one symbol for what could be five or six symbols in English.
Required reading for anyone tempted to post a comment on the IP law of China: Ministry of Science and Technology: Laws and Regulations
Topics:
Patent Law
Trademark Law
Copyright Law
Technology Contract Law
Product Quality Law
Freedom to buy alcohol and cigarettes without a license or age requirement
Shops ignore the law, but sales of alcohol and tobacco to minors is illegal in China and you are expected to show your ID. People's Daily Online: Law stresses ban on underage booze sales
> Chinese Market is quite open now. And according its commitment to WTO, you will see more big change recently. On the other hand, the inbalance of trade between USA and China has many reasons. One of them is USA forbid many kinds of high tech products to be exported to China. Could you give any example of products that China cann't buy from USA due to "heavy barrier" from China? > I suggest you remove "communists". It's hard to find real ones in China now. > I has not doubt on it. But don't forget China is NOT the only and strongest competor of USA in the world > Your information is quite out-of-date China has a very good relationship with South Korea. As for Japan, the relationship between two government does meet trouble recently. But the non-governmental relationship is still good. Overall, it's far from "belligerant" Similiar situation between Taiwan and Mainland China. > While USA is NO.1 country who is selling weapon, considering it HAS killed thousands in Iraq, I think it's absurd for you to make such accusation just based on your imagination on a thing which is unlikely to happen