Well, as an American living in China, it's impossible to maintain my Western lifestyle without my VPN service. While I've not looked for outright censorship on Chinese websites, it's a fact that hundreds (in my experience) to thousands (as reported by others) of Western (not just USA) websites are blocked by the Great Firewall. In most respects, that's worse than censuring something's that's been published. It's like pre-crime (pre-censoring?)
(In any case, I'd still need a VPN for geo-blocking, but that's a separate issue.)
As for phonetically spelling out every word, well, not really. You can get close approximations, but there are sounds and speech patterns in other languages that can't be written or transcribed into Chinese. The best you can do with my simple name is "Jimu" for example.
You mentioned kanji, though, which is Japanese, and in Japan, most foreign names and other words are transliterated not in kanji, but rather in katakana. My experience is with Chinese, not Japanese, so I don't know how closely transcribed the words can become. Because katakana is all syllables, I think they must have some of the same problems as hanzi.
I admit it; not everyone is me. I don't need the US postal service, but somewhere, there's someone who doesn't have a computer and needs to get her cancelled checks back from her bank every month in order to balance her checkbook. (Obviously but a single example of many.)
So, let the rates boost. If you're going to demand a postal service and also not adapt to modern times, stop making everyone else subsidize you. Pay the rates the market bears. I hear dumb people on sites like consumerist complain about the outrageous price of $0.44 postage stamps. But you know what, that's dirt cheap! Why not charge a flat buck? What not two bucks? Hell, when I need a guarantee, I happily pay $10 and up for mail.
Also,./ apparently doesn't like cents symbols, at least on preview.
I'm an automotive engineer working for an American company in China presently. Your use of proper English will be much, much more important to you here than any amount of Chinese.
I've also spent years in Mexico related to the job. Same thing goes there.
In both cultures, though, your personal life will be greatly enhanced by speaking the native language.
That was truly amazing. I'm impressed, and thanks for sharing that.
How, though, was it output? Obviously what we saw was a digitized version of film, but how was the film made in the first place? As a kid in the late 1970's, microcomputers (that's what we called PC's then) already output modulated signals which could be recorded on early VCR's. How were these put into film? And was it real time, or generated frame by frame a la Pixar?
That's actually pretty cool. I'd like to pair it with an ABB, Kuka, or Fanuc controller and use it for something industrial, but then again, I'm an industrial nerd.
(I can't access my Bank of China account on anything but IE; BOC requires a browser plugin for "security" that won't run on anything but IE. Guess I'll be doing all of my online banking at work, because I run Macs and Linux at the house.)
Chinese don't need anything but IE to access their internet, because their internet is damned ugly with no sense of design or aesthetics. The entire Chinese internet is like visiting MySpace. The few sites that cater to us expats usually have non-Chinese designers.
That's what planes are for. They're superior in every respect, with the possible exception of energy use per passenger mile. It's not trains versus cars; it's trains versus airplanes.
Yes, but does that apply to the source code or to the displayed content? Copyright law doesn't seem to support HTML tags, whereas a direct statement "Copyright 2011 by Firstname Lastname" passes muster.
(Note than in the USA we all know you don't need a copyright statement to have the copyright. That's not what this is about.)
There's nothing more free than the public domain, which is why a defensive publication is used. The halfbakery thing seems uneccesarily convoluted. I suppose that some definitions of "freedom" are GPL-like, in that maybe he wants to allow people to pseudo-freely use his ideas as long as they agree to certain conditions?
Kudos to the developers. If I hadn't gotten an interest in HD, I'd still have my three Xboxes running XBMC. Alas, they were too slow for H.264 and so three young shoppers at the Salvation Army will get lucky. My I just use my Hackintosh through a matrix switch to the whole house running Plex. The upside is, only one install to maintain. Well, that and HD.
But what you don't get is that that income is imaginary. Let's assume that you make $100,000 (which is a lot in some places, and is very little in other places, jeesh, don't hate because your prices are low). Now your host company charges you 50% tax, which your company pays. Now the IRS sees that you've made $150,000. Except, maybe your host company sees it that way, too, and now wants $75,000 instead of $50,000, which the company pays, and the IRS sees as more income, ad infinitum until on paper you look like you've made $250,000.
If you were a careful reader, you'd see that I wrote that the USA taxes my income over $90,000 when I'm not living in the USA, *not* that I make $90,000. But you're not a careful reader, because you already have a notion that theft is okay because it's better for everyone to be economically dirt poor rather than let some people succeed.
I'm an engineer. There's no way in hell that I ever pretend that I'm a scientist. We're practical. We execute science, not discover it (generally speaking).
Actually I'm getting ready to accept a three year assignment in China. My tax rate rate (due to my income) will be 50%. Fortunately for me my company equalizes all of my taxes (a burdensome process in itself, described below), so I won't see the effects, but that's versus a net rate of only 26% (federal only) after my itemized deductions.
Tax equalization (I've been through this before when on assignment in Mexico): I owe 50% to the host country, and (say) 26% to my home country (only over about 90,000 when not in the USA). But because my company pays my foreign taxes, the USA regards that as income to me. So the company pays that back, which both China and the USA recognize as income to me. So that tax that, too. So the company pays that back, too, which is taxed by both countries.
In effect, I come out okay, the Chinese take well, well over 50% of my true, earned income, and the fact that the United States gets anything is just stealing from my company (every other modern country in the world doesn't tax overseas personal income).
Of course we all know the Chinese are communist in name, and in order to continue professing such they're socially obligated to tax us rich (compared to their workers) bastards at exploitative rates.
That's parts stores, and parent is talking about dealerships. Dealerships will sell only OEM parts. And good (independent) mechanics will let you specify OEM or third-party. For some things it doesn't matter, for others it does.
If I have produce (for the reasons you mentioned) or alcohol (for the age verification delay) then I avoid the self-checkout completely. It's quicker to wait in line with the check-writing, silver-haired, old ladies.
If not for live sports, I'd've ditched cable (rather, satellite) a long time ago. For American sports, I could subscribe to a streaming package, but those collectively cost a hell of a lot more than a satellite package. Then there are sports that just aren't available online, like Mexican Soccer. Okay, *I'm* not the Mexican soccer fan, but my wife is, and I'd have to steal from popular movies and say, "I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced. No marriage counselling, no trial separation, I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced."
100,000 miles is the current norm for a set of spark plugs. Not related to the story, but thought you might want to know that. And while I'm at it, don't change your oil every 3,000 miles either.
My completed map is gorgeous, but aside from that, why (prior to 4.x) did I waste time trying to Jailbreak and run a GPS tracker in the background? I could have just gotten this data. I wish there were a full-time GPS tracker. Well, one that I had control over.
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Well, as an American living in China, it's impossible to maintain my Western lifestyle without my VPN service. While I've not looked for outright censorship on Chinese websites, it's a fact that hundreds (in my experience) to thousands (as reported by others) of Western (not just USA) websites are blocked by the Great Firewall. In most respects, that's worse than censuring something's that's been published. It's like pre-crime (pre-censoring?)
(In any case, I'd still need a VPN for geo-blocking, but that's a separate issue.)
In China, it's "hanzi."
As for phonetically spelling out every word, well, not really. You can get close approximations, but there are sounds and speech patterns in other languages that can't be written or transcribed into Chinese. The best you can do with my simple name is "Jimu" for example.
You mentioned kanji, though, which is Japanese, and in Japan, most foreign names and other words are transliterated not in kanji, but rather in katakana. My experience is with Chinese, not Japanese, so I don't know how closely transcribed the words can become. Because katakana is all syllables, I think they must have some of the same problems as hanzi.
I admit it; not everyone is me. I don't need the US postal service, but somewhere, there's someone who doesn't have a computer and needs to get her cancelled checks back from her bank every month in order to balance her checkbook. (Obviously but a single example of many.)
So, let the rates boost. If you're going to demand a postal service and also not adapt to modern times, stop making everyone else subsidize you. Pay the rates the market bears. I hear dumb people on sites like consumerist complain about the outrageous price of $0.44 postage stamps. But you know what, that's dirt cheap! Why not charge a flat buck? What not two bucks? Hell, when I need a guarantee, I happily pay $10 and up for mail.
Also, ./ apparently doesn't like cents symbols, at least on preview.
I'm an automotive engineer working for an American company in China presently. Your use of proper English will be much, much more important to you here than any amount of Chinese.
I've also spent years in Mexico related to the job. Same thing goes there.
In both cultures, though, your personal life will be greatly enhanced by speaking the native language.
That was truly amazing. I'm impressed, and thanks for sharing that.
How, though, was it output? Obviously what we saw was a digitized version of film, but how was the film made in the first place? As a kid in the late 1970's, microcomputers (that's what we called PC's then) already output modulated signals which could be recorded on early VCR's. How were these put into film? And was it real time, or generated frame by frame a la Pixar?
How come we've never invented the smiley for ::groan:: ?
That's actually pretty cool. I'd like to pair it with an ABB, Kuka, or Fanuc controller and use it for something industrial, but then again, I'm an industrial nerd.
(I can't access my Bank of China account on anything but IE; BOC requires a browser plugin for "security" that won't run on anything but IE. Guess I'll be doing all of my online banking at work, because I run Macs and Linux at the house.)
Chinese don't need anything but IE to access their internet, because their internet is damned ugly with no sense of design or aesthetics. The entire Chinese internet is like visiting MySpace. The few sites that cater to us expats usually have non-Chinese designers.
That's my biggest issue with them. Stupid drivers ahead of me that stop!
That's what planes are for. They're superior in every respect, with the possible exception of energy use per passenger mile. It's not trains versus cars; it's trains versus airplanes.
Of course is single bomb can be devastating enough to make an entire train route useless, whereas airplanes can fly pretty much anywhere.
Yes, but does that apply to the source code or to the displayed content? Copyright law doesn't seem to support HTML tags, whereas a direct statement "Copyright 2011 by Firstname Lastname" passes muster.
(Note than in the USA we all know you don't need a copyright statement to have the copyright. That's not what this is about.)
There's nothing more free than the public domain, which is why a defensive publication is used. The halfbakery thing seems uneccesarily convoluted. I suppose that some definitions of "freedom" are GPL-like, in that maybe he wants to allow people to pseudo-freely use his ideas as long as they agree to certain conditions?
Look up "defensive publication." It's done all the danged time.
Kudos to the developers. If I hadn't gotten an interest in HD, I'd still have my three Xboxes running XBMC. Alas, they were too slow for H.264 and so three young shoppers at the Salvation Army will get lucky. My I just use my Hackintosh through a matrix switch to the whole house running Plex. The upside is, only one install to maintain. Well, that and HD.
But what you don't get is that that income is imaginary. Let's assume that you make $100,000 (which is a lot in some places, and is very little in other places, jeesh, don't hate because your prices are low). Now your host company charges you 50% tax, which your company pays. Now the IRS sees that you've made $150,000. Except, maybe your host company sees it that way, too, and now wants $75,000 instead of $50,000, which the company pays, and the IRS sees as more income, ad infinitum until on paper you look like you've made $250,000.
If you were a careful reader, you'd see that I wrote that the USA taxes my income over $90,000 when I'm not living in the USA, *not* that I make $90,000. But you're not a careful reader, because you already have a notion that theft is okay because it's better for everyone to be economically dirt poor rather than let some people succeed.
I'm an engineer. There's no way in hell that I ever pretend that I'm a scientist. We're practical. We execute science, not discover it (generally speaking).
Actually I'm getting ready to accept a three year assignment in China. My tax rate rate (due to my income) will be 50%. Fortunately for me my company equalizes all of my taxes (a burdensome process in itself, described below), so I won't see the effects, but that's versus a net rate of only 26% (federal only) after my itemized deductions.
Tax equalization (I've been through this before when on assignment in Mexico): I owe 50% to the host country, and (say) 26% to my home country (only over about 90,000 when not in the USA). But because my company pays my foreign taxes, the USA regards that as income to me. So the company pays that back, which both China and the USA recognize as income to me. So that tax that, too. So the company pays that back, too, which is taxed by both countries.
In effect, I come out okay, the Chinese take well, well over 50% of my true, earned income, and the fact that the United States gets anything is just stealing from my company (every other modern country in the world doesn't tax overseas personal income).
Of course we all know the Chinese are communist in name, and in order to continue professing such they're socially obligated to tax us rich (compared to their workers) bastards at exploitative rates.
That's parts stores, and parent is talking about dealerships. Dealerships will sell only OEM parts. And good (independent) mechanics will let you specify OEM or third-party. For some things it doesn't matter, for others it does.
If I have produce (for the reasons you mentioned) or alcohol (for the age verification delay) then I avoid the self-checkout completely. It's quicker to wait in line with the check-writing, silver-haired, old ladies.
So is it random, or every N visits?
If not for live sports, I'd've ditched cable (rather, satellite) a long time ago. For American sports, I could subscribe to a streaming package, but those collectively cost a hell of a lot more than a satellite package. Then there are sports that just aren't available online, like Mexican Soccer. Okay, *I'm* not the Mexican soccer fan, but my wife is, and I'd have to steal from popular movies and say, "I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced. No marriage counselling, no trial separation, I'm gonna get fuckin' divorced."
100,000 miles is the current norm for a set of spark plugs. Not related to the story, but thought you might want to know that. And while I'm at it, don't change your oil every 3,000 miles either.
My completed map is gorgeous, but aside from that, why (prior to 4.x) did I waste time trying to Jailbreak and run a GPS tracker in the background? I could have just gotten this data. I wish there were a full-time GPS tracker. Well, one that I had control over.