Just watching TV (Taiwan channel) on how an MBA/MA/MSc won't get you a good job anymore in Taiwan. And even with some serious work experience on top you are still not guaranteed a job.
The main gripe of these MBA's et al seems to be that their counterparts graduating across the Taiwan Strait in China seem to be lined up for fat salaries (China style) even before (now where do we remember this from?) graduation or (horror) are even dropping out of college just for the money.
In related news,.. the Taipei Times is reporting that the Fair Trade Commision in Taiwan is investigating Microsoft for abuse of its monopoly position... the article:
The government has formed a special taskforce to investigate Microsoft over accusations it has abused its software monopoly to manipulate prices, a report said yesterday.
The taskforce established by the Fair Trade Commission will investigate Microsoft for at least six months before taking any action against the US software giant, local media said.According to Taiwan's fair trade law, the head of a company can be jailed for up to three years and fined up to NT$100 million (US$2.89 million) if he is found guilty of abusing the company's market dominance.
On Friday, lawmakers from the PFP charged Microsoft with profiteering in Taiwan by gouging prices for its operating systems.
They also demanded the justice ministry halt a crackdown on pirated computer software, mostly Microsoft products, before the commission completes the investigation.
The ministry Wednesday launched a drive against unauthorized software to safeguard intellectual property rights.
What is probably the most fascinating of the discovery is probably not that America was discovered by whom, but that a whole library of information (related to the chinese imperial archives) is becoming more and more accessible to Chinese and other researchers around the world.
Imperial China kept detailed records on a day to day basis of communications and other records. A gold mine of unique historic information can be found in there.
One gold nugged dug up by a French historian (sorry, don't have a link handy) descibes in detail a world journey and visit by a late 18th century British trade delegation that could thus be retraced as the British had kept diaries they published after their travels. The emperor had kept a day to day watch of their activities as they travelled through China and made detailed comments in the sidelines of the reports he was receiving on the foreigners.
The British were out to sell horse drawn carriages, canons, clocks and other "high tech". They had visions of selling huge amounts of their products to China's immense population....
First, use at least Raid0,1 for ALL your data. IDE RAID controller cards can be pretty expensive, but if you are in the market for a new motherboard it comes as an extra on a decent board.
THEN, buy a tapedrive for your day-to-day critical data. I know, they are slow, and a reasonably priced one can only store up to 10Gb (uncompressed) but you run these things in the dark hours anyway and use it for the stuff that will stuff you immediately if it goes missing (e-mail, documents, records). Cycle a weeks (or more) worth of tapes, and keep one off-site/fire safe.
FINALY on a regular basis, backup your MP3 collection onto CD-ROM; do the same with the family album etc etc.
It is a hassle, but you sleep a lot nicer at night.
It seems that if you intend to work for a place short term only then you can just accept the terms and walk if you want. Sound great if your twenty something and ready to hit the road anytime.
But if you are going to do some serious time (like 25+ years or something) at any place you might as well ensure that you have feedback and some say into anything what your bosses are cooking up that might wreak havock in your life.
Just because its cheaper to now produce the same widgets in India (or the current hype low-cost place) doesn't mean you need to be fired at a 10 seconds notice without rights to pension money etc and a clause in your contract saying you can work in the same field for the next 10 years+.
Sure it might be the best for the company to just relocate to another country, but wouldn't it be nice if they were forced to negotiate instead of telling you to pack your stuff ?
One national cable modem company where I live just decided that trying to convert millions of miles of outdated cheap junk wired cable TV installations owned by hundreds of small time operators who make their money by broadcasting illegal localized advertising wasn't worth their money and they never even got close to their targeted number of customers. (And thus missed their target quarter after quarter)
So now instead they are leasing telephone lines from the telephone monopoly and started offering ADSL lines. Bit late to that party though.
Irony is of course that until recently they have spend $$ in advertising the negative aspects of ADSL as compared to cable modems.
So cable TV on demand (who wants it?) might take a while to be introduced around here. Happily there are plenty of movie rental places.
Does anyone know what length the antenna cables can be between the base station and the actual antenna on the roof?
Reason for asking is that I'm looking into building a similar setup for a local group of computers. But the most strategic rooftop is 7 floors up from the appartment. It would be much simpler if I don't have to buy/protect/provide power to a rooftop unit other than just the antenna.
Isn't it interesting to see how the Internet is taking shape, and is becoming more and more like any other neighborhood?
We started of with a few huts, lousy roads, a gung-ho attitude but now the roads are becoming better and the cities bigger we have also introduced highway patrols to stop speeding motorists from 'uncivilized' behavior. (eg. have your local government come swoop in on those trucking around stolen goods)
With a few kicks here and there, a couple of arrests, a kangaroo court and you have the net-citizens behave like any other good members of your (a) socialist state (b) communist paradise (c) capitalist nation (d) religious order (e) fill in the blanks.
Sure, there are a couple of rough spots in town and a few slippery characters, but its too easy to swoop in with hidden camera's to notice the license plates of those upstanding citizens visiting the prostitutes and send a notice in the mail. Police in many "civilized" countries have been doing it for years.
1984 ? Long past. The net is just as easy to police as many an uptown neighbourhood.
On the issue of illegal music? As long as the citizens of (a)-(e) won't say with a straight face that copying, selling and distributing music over the net is legal the cops of (a)-(e) will just swoop in an arrest any offenders stupid/unlucky enough to get caught.
Hmmm,... it seems all posts so far are concentrating on the DE-coding of DVD's. But how about the actual ENCODING ? With the encryption algorithm broken; Am I correct that producing your own DVD's has come into the realm of possibilities? (expensive, but possible)
I assume that the license holders with the encryption algorithm also prohibited unlicensed creation-/production of DVD not under their total control.(Eg. unrated, uncontrolled, free market DVD production (oh horror))
Considering that I can get nearly every single minute of post WWII television and movie history on VCD in the video stores around the corner (this is downtown Taipei) there must be plenty of enterprising individuals interested in planning to setup their own production lines without having to pay hefty DVD technology royalties?
Not necessarely a bad thing as that would only accelerate the acceptance of the DVD player; and more sales to the hardware manufacturers. Not to the DVD consortium, unless they get a percentage of every DVD player sold.
Slashdot Mirror
The main gripe of these MBA's et al seems to be that their counterparts graduating across the Taiwan Strait in China seem to be lined up for fat salaries (China style) even before (now where do we remember this from?) graduation or (horror) are even dropping out of college just for the money.
The government has formed a special taskforce to investigate Microsoft over accusations it has abused its software monopoly to manipulate prices, a report said yesterday.
The taskforce established by the Fair Trade Commission will investigate Microsoft for at least six months before taking any action against the US software giant, local media said.According to Taiwan's fair trade law, the head of a company can be jailed for up to three years and fined up to NT$100 million (US$2.89 million) if he is found guilty of abusing the company's market dominance.
On Friday, lawmakers from the PFP charged Microsoft with profiteering in Taiwan by gouging prices for its operating systems.
They also demanded the justice ministry halt a crackdown on pirated computer software, mostly Microsoft products, before the commission completes the investigation.
The ministry Wednesday launched a drive against unauthorized software to safeguard intellectual property rights.
Imperial China kept detailed records on a day to day basis of communications and other records. A gold mine of unique historic information can be found in there.
One gold nugged dug up by a French historian (sorry, don't have a link handy) descibes in detail a world journey and visit by a late 18th century British trade delegation that could thus be retraced as the British had kept diaries they published after their travels. The emperor had kept a day to day watch of their activities as they travelled through China and made detailed comments in the sidelines of the reports he was receiving on the foreigners.
The British were out to sell horse drawn carriages, canons, clocks and other "high tech". They had visions of selling huge amounts of their products to China's immense population....
All solutions come in threes:
First, use at least Raid0,1 for ALL your data. IDE RAID controller cards can be pretty expensive, but if you are in the market for a new motherboard it comes as an extra on a decent board.
THEN, buy a tapedrive for your day-to-day critical data. I know, they are slow, and a reasonably priced one can only store up to 10Gb (uncompressed) but you run these things in the dark hours anyway and use it for the stuff that will stuff you immediately if it goes missing (e-mail, documents, records). Cycle a weeks (or more) worth of tapes, and keep one off-site/fire safe.
FINALY on a regular basis, backup your MP3 collection onto CD-ROM; do the same with the family album etc etc.
It is a hassle, but you sleep a lot nicer at night.
Just because its cheaper to now produce the same widgets in India (or the current hype low-cost place) doesn't mean you need to be fired at a 10 seconds notice without rights to pension money etc and a clause in your contract saying you can work in the same field for the next 10 years+.
Sure it might be the best for the company to just relocate to another country, but wouldn't it be nice if they were forced to negotiate instead of telling you to pack your stuff ?
So now instead they are leasing telephone lines from the telephone monopoly and started offering ADSL lines. Bit late to that party though.
Irony is of course that until recently they have spend $$ in advertising the negative aspects of ADSL as compared to cable modems.
So cable TV on demand (who wants it?) might take a while to be introduced around here. Happily there are plenty of movie rental places.
Does anyone know what length the antenna cables can be between the base station and the actual antenna on the roof?
Reason for asking is that I'm looking into building a similar setup for a local group of computers. But the most strategic rooftop is 7 floors up from the appartment. It would be much simpler if I don't have to buy/protect/provide power to a rooftop unit other than just the antenna.
Isn't it interesting to see how the Internet is taking shape, and is becoming more and more like any other neighborhood?
We started of with a few huts, lousy roads, a gung-ho attitude but now the roads are becoming better and the cities bigger we have also introduced highway patrols to stop speeding motorists from 'uncivilized' behavior. (eg. have your local government come swoop in on those trucking around stolen goods)
With a few kicks here and there, a couple of arrests, a kangaroo court and you have the net-citizens behave like any other good members of your (a) socialist state (b) communist paradise (c) capitalist nation (d) religious order (e) fill in the blanks.
Sure, there are a couple of rough spots in town and a few slippery characters, but its too easy to swoop in with hidden camera's to notice the license plates of those upstanding citizens visiting the prostitutes and send a notice in the mail. Police in many "civilized" countries have been doing it for years.
1984 ? Long past. The net is just as easy to police as many an uptown neighbourhood.
On the issue of illegal music? As long as the citizens of (a)-(e) won't say with a straight face that copying, selling and distributing music over the net is legal the cops of (a)-(e) will just swoop in an arrest any offenders stupid/unlucky enough to get caught.
Nuff Said for now.
I assume that the license holders with the encryption algorithm also prohibited unlicensed creation-/production of DVD not under their total control.(Eg. unrated, uncontrolled, free market DVD production (oh horror))
Considering that I can get nearly every single minute of post WWII television and movie history on VCD in the video stores around the corner (this is downtown Taipei) there must be plenty of enterprising individuals interested in planning to setup their own production lines without having to pay hefty DVD technology royalties?
Not necessarely a bad thing as that would only accelerate the acceptance of the DVD player; and more sales to the hardware manufacturers. Not to the DVD consortium, unless they get a percentage of every DVD player sold.