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Inside Factory China
blackbearnh writes "While China is attempting to pull its industry up out of mere manufacturing mode, for now the country is the production workhorse of the consumer electronics industry. Almost anything you pick up at a Best Buy first breathed life across the Pacific Ocean. But what is it like to shepherd a product through the design and production process? Andrew 'bunnie' Huang has done just that with the Chumby, a new Internet appliance. In an interview with O'Reilly Radar, he talks about the logistical and moral issues involved with manufacturing in China, as well as his take on the consumer's right to hack the hardware they purchase."
Put yourself in the Chinese situation. If you had to work months and months and months to save up to buy something for yourself, would you buy the frivolous electronic gadgets you are manufacturing now, or would you work your tail off for something more rewarding like health care, better housing, national defense, or better quality food?
The Chinese economy is undergoing changes to serve its own people now. Factories will be modified to produce goods the Chinese people want, rather than what we want. It won't happen over night, but it's a process that will continue as they shift away from being an export economy.
Pff, he must be one of those communists. How can the free market and private property possibly survive if people are allowed to own what they buy?
I met this guy at a Foo camp party in Beijing, and he gave a presentation on how he reverse engineers Nintendo Wiis. He uses some kind of custom chassis that connects to both sides of the Wii's motherboard and burns off the tops of chips to look at their structure through a microscope. Pretty impressive...
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
Let's have China be a giant slave labor pool but then borrow trillions of dollars of them to cover our own increased social welfare costs. Let's face it, the whole concept of trade coming into balance with them is just impossible, will never happen, and the more we trade with them, the more bankrupt we will get. Anyone who seems to think otherwise, please let me know what year it will be that US and China trade will be in balance. What year is that going to be?
This is my sig.
He has it wrong. Unlocked communication devices are different, because they can cause additional costs/damage on the network they are connected to. This is the reason smartphone makers cripple their devices.
How does that work? An unlocked communications device can simply be used on a different provider. That provider still has to provide you (see what I did there?) with the services in order for you to use them. A malfunctioning, locked device can cause communications problems - if the network is poorly designed. The same is true of a rogue device. You don't mean to tell me that the cellphone companies are trusting phones they have sold simply because they once held them, do you? Because somehow, I doubt that.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
There has been a shift in corporate thinking over the last 20 years. They have slowly been moving from selling products, to licensing products. Companies worldwide have taken their cue from the software industry.
DRM laden musics. Not for rental DVDs and videos. EULAs on video games. Proprietary printer cartridges. Cars that can only be fixed at licensed dealers. Homeowners associations. The list goes on.
The sad reality is that many companies now think, or behave as if they do think, that once you buy their product they still have control and veto power over how, when, when and who can use it. This has been a huge shift in western industry, thirty years in the making. Its genesis can essentially be traced back to this letter. Once the idea of selling numbers to people, and retaining indefinite control over their use of that number, became firmly entrenched in the law, culture and mindset of our industry, it was much smaller step to apply that same principle to books, cars, nintendos and houses.
I'm not sure where this will end, but I can guarantee you one thing. The myriad of artificial restrictions being placed on property in the western world are most certainly not being applied or enforced in developing countries.
May the Maths Be with you!
It's just plain inefficient. Before, companies made products that were governed mainly by the "laws" of nature; they tried to offer as much as nature allowed. Now, companies are actively creating new laws and restrictions, which ultimately means the products aren't doing as much as they could do. Any country which avoids this idiotic situation will have an advantage.