They can (and I've met many who do) go over to China and teach English for a few months (there's massive turnover, and actually qaulified teachers are in short supply)... of course that's not much different than community college or tutoring.
In China's defense, they only ever asked me to register my website.
Although you do have to write *a name* down when you use an internet cafe. I think it's supposed to be your name, and they are supposed to check ID, but I'm not sure, it never happened
But domain names are usually affordable to individuals (some of the cuckoo TLDs are ridiculously expensive). So you'll make just as much money selling cool names to geeks as selling useful ones to companies (same order of magnitude anyway).
For example, I have a 6 letter, pronounceable almost-a-word url. And I bought it last year, can you imagine me getting a cool three letter.com address in 2006?
Also, I live in Waterloo and while it says on the box that I have broadband, it's garbage.
It goes down frequently and is as slow as dialup. As far as I can tell (and I've had it for ~7 years) they don't increase the total capacity as much as they should for each new user (although it's faster when the students go home for Christmas)
I made a presentation using OO with some microsofties in the audience today, I had to reboot (old beatup laptop woot!) and when the OO loading screen popped up I got some heckling:
"Use Microsoft Office" they said
"Microsoft makes an office suite now?" I asked
I was the only presenter who wasn't asked to submit a resume to MS.
so true. There are no good chinese-centric books on learning english. We used british ones because they were already pirated.
First day: "talk about your home countries and how they are different from England"... for people who've never been more than 100km from their village in rural China.
Even if something is 95% likely correct (the defacto standard for saying something is true is statistics), knowing that the authors are biased and may have searched through 20 datasets to find the one that backed up their claim is worthwile.
Quick example, if I flipped a coin and got heads 10 times in a row, it's probably a biased coin.
If I did the experiment 1000 times, and only told you about the one time that happened because I *want* that to happen, it's useful to know.
Still, unless they've said or done something (like said he'd hand the election to bush) biased, I'd assume it's good stats.
I'd argue the problem is actually too much political stability -- as in no-one ever loses elections:)
You really have to look at the mean-time-between-government-confiscations, and the average profit you can extract in that time (and for China, it is *not* good, as late as the 70s there was total confiscation and it still happens regularly but mostly just to farmers).
I remember talking to a guy who had just invested $1 000 000 (or maybe a million pound or euros, the point is all he had) in real estate in the capital of Laos... seemed crazy to me, Laos' major trading partner seemed to be UNICEF, the government does not have a vested interest in making sure he keeps that property.
I was teaching a class of cell phone designers in the south of beijing, and half of them predicted they'd be making more than I was in 10 years (numerically, they didn't know that I was making $1400/month at the time as a teacher). A quarter thought they'd catch up and maybe surpass US wages in the medium term. If you extrapolate linearly from their parents who made essentially nothing to them at $150/month, it makes sense:)
I've taken and aced a handful of university econ courses, and one of the problems I noticed was a massive over-reliance on graphs.
The graphs sometimes contained too much information, somtimes not enough. Nobody understood that when you draw a supply vs demand curve, you're implicitly claiming to know the elasticity (via the slope). On the other hand it only shows you what's going on in one time frame but I rarely see people draw more than one curve per discussion.
I don't have a farm or anything, but does it bother anybody that it *is* possible to pass down a farm, just as it has been for thousands of years.
BUT now it takes $10 000 in lawyers' fees.
seems like the worst of both worlds, as opposed to money going towards the public good, it goes wasted (lawyering generally doesn't create anything anyone wants).
I want to know how he found out about getting into China without a visa. I've actually lived in China on a forged visa but I don't know how to get in without at least something that looks like one... Do American businessmen frequently sneak in through the Himalayas to avoid paying $30?
The University of Waterloo (in Canada) uses a similar system. They can only keep the system up for 16 hours a day (I asked why, they won't tell me) and you have to click through 3 or 4 screens sometimes with only one option Transcript>view transcript>Still want to view your transcript>Hey you want a transcript>click here for a transcript
But think about it, their customers only pay a few thousands of dollars a year.... who can afford to build a webapp for just $10 000/ seat?
The China Daily is the *leading* paper for reports of goats attacking children and old women being in kindergarten.
It also helps you realize that every company in China is better than any other company in the world... and that they caught that government official that they never told you embezzled a million kuai last year...
>The punishment for any offence should be capped at the damage it caused to the victim and society at whole
I disagree slightly, there are a lot of crimes like petty theft whereby if the punishment for the theft of $20 was a $20 fine it's not a punishment at all. Especially for clearly criminal but petty behaviour (physical theft) you need a larger punishment to reflect the fact that you just can't catch them every time.
Speaking from a Chinese internet cafe (from Firefox on my USB drive) EVERY public computer has a few toolbars on Internet explorer. Even little 640 by 480 screens are cluttered up with 2 or 3 value-added bars!
One at a hotel in Hanoi (Vietnam not China) had a big bar to tell me the temperature was -999 degrees, and I couldn't get rid of it.
Slashdot Mirror
They can (and I've met many who do) go over to China and teach English for a few months (there's massive turnover, and actually qaulified teachers are in short supply)... of course that's not much different than community college or tutoring.
As a member of a third party, I often find that our ideas on mandatory baby sacrifices are overlooked.
Frankly, I think both major parties are two soft on the loveable little creatures.
In China's defense, they only ever asked me to register my website.
Although you do have to write *a name* down when you use an internet cafe. I think it's supposed to be your name, and they are supposed to check ID, but I'm not sure, it never happened
But domain names are usually affordable to individuals (some of the cuckoo TLDs are ridiculously expensive). So you'll make just as much money selling cool names to geeks as selling useful ones to companies (same order of magnitude anyway).
.com address in 2006?
For example, I have a 6 letter, pronounceable almost-a-word url. And I bought it last year, can you imagine me getting a cool three letter
It's a widely known fact that Canada is responsible for 50% of the HD DVD piracy.
Even worse, the AACS specification does not, in fact, account for this large sparsely populated country.
or just anything that delays "Beerfest II"
Also, I live in Waterloo and while it says on the box that I have broadband, it's garbage. It goes down frequently and is as slow as dialup. As far as I can tell (and I've had it for ~7 years) they don't increase the total capacity as much as they should for each new user (although it's faster when the students go home for Christmas)
Well, the population of Waterloo is 103% Asian near the university. (I kid, I kid....)
I get a %5 discount at my favourite Chinese restaurant *sometimes* for speaking Chinese! (I'm white, they think it's cute)
I made a presentation using OO with some microsofties in the audience today, I had to reboot (old beatup laptop woot!) and when the OO loading screen popped up I got some heckling:
"Use Microsoft Office" they said
"Microsoft makes an office suite now?" I asked
I was the only presenter who wasn't asked to submit a resume to MS.
multiplayer games: http://euri.ca/games/multiplayerGames
and painfully indie games: http://euri.ca/games/indieGames
so true. There are no good chinese-centric books on learning english. We used british ones because they were already pirated. First day: "talk about your home countries and how they are different from England" ... for people who've never been more than 100km from their village in rural China.
Even if something is 95% likely correct (the defacto standard for saying something is true is statistics), knowing that the authors are biased and may have searched through 20 datasets to find the one that backed up their claim is worthwile. Quick example, if I flipped a coin and got heads 10 times in a row, it's probably a biased coin. If I did the experiment 1000 times, and only told you about the one time that happened because I *want* that to happen, it's useful to know. Still, unless they've said or done something (like said he'd hand the election to bush) biased, I'd assume it's good stats.
I'd argue the problem is actually too much political stability -- as in no-one ever loses elections :)
You really have to look at the mean-time-between-government-confiscations, and the average profit you can extract in that time (and for China, it is *not* good, as late as the 70s there was total confiscation and it still happens regularly but mostly just to farmers).
I remember talking to a guy who had just invested $1 000 000 (or maybe a million pound or euros, the point is all he had) in real estate in the capital of Laos... seemed crazy to me, Laos' major trading partner seemed to be UNICEF, the government does not have a vested interest in making sure he keeps that property.
I know, eh?
:)
I was teaching a class of cell phone designers in the south of beijing, and half of them predicted they'd be making more than I was in 10 years (numerically, they didn't know that I was making $1400/month at the time as a teacher). A quarter thought they'd catch up and maybe surpass US wages in the medium term. If you extrapolate linearly from their parents who made essentially nothing to them at $150/month, it makes sense
I've taken and aced a handful of university econ courses, and one of the problems I noticed was a massive over-reliance on graphs.
The graphs sometimes contained too much information, somtimes not enough. Nobody understood that when you draw a supply vs demand curve, you're implicitly claiming to know the elasticity (via the slope). On the other hand it only shows you what's going on in one time frame but I rarely see people draw more than one curve per discussion.
I don't have a farm or anything, but does it bother anybody that it *is* possible to pass down a farm, just as it has been for thousands of years.
BUT now it takes $10 000 in lawyers' fees.
seems like the worst of both worlds, as opposed to money going towards the public good, it goes wasted (lawyering generally doesn't create anything anyone wants).
I want to know how he found out about getting into China without a visa. I've actually lived in China on a forged visa but I don't know how to get in without at least something that looks like one... Do American businessmen frequently sneak in through the Himalayas to avoid paying $30?
or down. or not at all?
The University of Waterloo (in Canada) uses a similar system. They can only keep the system up for 16 hours a day (I asked why, they won't tell me) and you have to click through 3 or 4 screens sometimes with only one option Transcript>view transcript>Still want to view your transcript>Hey you want a transcript>click here for a transcript
But think about it, their customers only pay a few thousands of dollars a year.... who can afford to build a webapp for just $10 000/ seat?
Sacrilegious!
The China Daily is the *leading* paper for reports of goats attacking children and old women being in kindergarten.
It also helps you realize that every company in China is better than any other company in the world... and that they caught that government official that they never told you embezzled a million kuai last year...
There's a much simpler example:
Saying 3 people have SARS-like symptoms in Guangzhou, "endangers China's national security, reputation and interests"
And that has happened, and that endangers us.
>The punishment for any offence should be capped at the damage it caused to the victim and society at whole I disagree slightly, there are a lot of crimes like petty theft whereby if the punishment for the theft of $20 was a $20 fine it's not a punishment at all. Especially for clearly criminal but petty behaviour (physical theft) you need a larger punishment to reflect the fact that you just can't catch them every time.
Speaking from a Chinese internet cafe (from Firefox on my USB drive) EVERY public computer has a few toolbars on Internet explorer. Even little 640 by 480 screens are cluttered up with 2 or 3 value-added bars! One at a hotel in Hanoi (Vietnam not China) had a big bar to tell me the temperature was -999 degrees, and I couldn't get rid of it.