"In fact, on a per capita basis, Africans are already richer than Indians, and a dozen African states have higher gross national income per capita than China."
- Amit PatelWow that kills a stereotype I had in my head. Cool - I like it when that happens.
- Dan Morrill AKA Techwag
It is based on the Siemens Velaro trains
- Chris HofmannIt's bugging me that we barely know how to make our own stuff anymore. We're forced to buy almost everything. I found descriptions of the umbrella-making process on madehow.com, which is a good source for these kinds of things, just like How Stuff Works. But that's not answering my whole question. I want to be able to access the sources of the goods that we buy. I want to be able to make useful things. Not be a factory worker, just make useful things when I want to or need to.
- Kamilah GillWell, I think you'd have to go back pretty far to find people who made their own umbrellas. Same goes for other items like shoes. Artisans and guilds aren't new. Most people didn't make these things. The difference now is that we don't always have local people who do this work.
- Katy SUmbrellas are a complicated example. I'm not saying that everyone needs to know how to make an umbrella for themselves. I just would like for the information about making them and exactly where they (and similar products) come from to be easier to find. There's like this wall I can't get through to find out this stuff. I know most people didn't make their own shoes and things. Work has always been specialized. But at least there would be a cobbler down the street or something.
- Kamilah GillThe world could use more cobblers. Of the shoe variety and the food variety. :)
- Katy SEver watch "How It's Made" on Discovery? There was a memorable episode about umbrellas. Largely handmade in this example. Locally made (if you live in Canada).
- Stephen MackI've watched How It's Made, yes. Their video didn't come up while I was searching for the other stuff. I'll search for it directly. Thanks.
- Kamilah GillFound the How It's Made video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VqcjPCHQPg Very helpful. It shows that it is possible to make umbrellas by hand in a less mass-produced way. (All umbrellas still require some handcrafting, even the ones made in China.) That's what I was kind of wondering. I knew there had to be *somebody* still crafting umbrellas. The company shown was Swaine Adeney Brigg.
- Kamilah GillGood find!
- Stephen MackOK, I guess I won't complain about how much umbrellas cost anymore.
- Todd Hoff
RT @anguswong: Didn't have to wait long: #China #fake #iPad wannabe knockoff called #iPed http://bit.ly/clpg2a
[Direct Link]From @ChinaFAQs - China's New Regional Air Quality Regulation - translated http://bit.ly/9sxzcx
[Direct Link]RT @christinelu: China now has 786 million mobile phone users. -- http://ow.ly/1Sffa
[Direct Link]
It’s a tablet. It comes in a box nearly identical to the iPad. Yet, one letter makes a big difference: it’s called the iPed, and it costs only $105 – approximately five times less than Apple’s original, the iPad. And of course, you can only buy it in China.
Although cheap and visually quite similar to the original, the iPed sports far weaker hardware. It’s based on an Intel chip, and has 128 MB of RAM and 16 GB of storage space. It runs on Android, but from what we can see in the video below, it’s quite slow, probably hampered by the low amount of RAM it possesses.
However, given the fact that Apple’s iPad is not yet available in China (it took iPhone years to reach China) and the attaractive price, the iPed will probably find its audience, unless Apple manages to sue it out of production.
Tags: apple, china, ipad, iPed
Taste of the future: China-India Water Shortage Means Coca-Cola and Intel in Fight for precious resource http://bit.ly/cUPU37 via @slashdot
[Direct Link]China holds $2.45 trillion of foreign exchange reserves, with U.S. Treasury debt and Euro zone government bonds making up key investments.
- Mitchell TsaiRT @serkantoto: #GOAP At #Chinict 2010 now, China's biggest tech conference (www.chinict.org). Livestream on @techcrunch: http://tcrn.ch/aMrpGw
[Direct Link]DayStar Technologies Inc. (NASDAQ:DSTID) has the 1st highest upside potential in this segment of the market. Its upside is 654.2%. Consensus target price $13.50. SunPower Corporation (NASDAQ:SPWRA) is 2nd. Upside is 86.0%. Consensus target price $19.96. Canadian Solar Inc. (NASDAQ:CSIQ) is 3rd. Upside is 83.2%. Consensus target price $22.29.
- Mitchell Tsai
Gah.
- Stephen MackI am thinking that an "I swear on my life" joke would be flat here.
- Louis GrayChina’s Flood of iPad Flankers. http://r2.ly/8zer
[Direct Link]"Data from various sources within China that we've seen over the past few weeks has pointed us directly toward one simple conclusion: China is experiencing serious inflation."
- Morton Fox
Walmart is a little different in China. They sell some really crazy shit there.
6 I think is sausages? I didn't know they were so into eating reptiles and amphibians.
- ronin
Xinhua, the Chinese news outlet, is reporting this morning that the Chinese government will be implementing new standards that are aimed at preventing "state secrets being disclosed and uncertified maps published online."
The rules are an update to standards adopted one year ago, and, according to the Xinhua article, require "all Internet map servers to keep servers storing map data inside the country and provide public Internet protocol addresses." We have to wonder how might this affect Google and the location-based-services market in China.
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The updated rules will also require that all map servers must "have no record of information leakage in any form in the past three years," and violations exposing state secrets can receive jail sentences of seven to 10 years. The new rules, the article states, also pertain to maps downloaded or copied to mobile devices.
Hiding government sites from online maps is certainly nothing new, but the Xinhua article makes several points that make us wonder what new implications these regulations might have.
For example, it mentions that the new rules require "all Internet map servers to keep servers storing map data inside the country and provide public Internet protocol addresses". How will this affect Google, which just recently moved its servers to Hong Kong? How will other maps services, such as Bing Maps, be affected?
The article also mentions "a Japanese who measure 195 locations inside Longyan and located 80 of them on his map" who received "administrative punishment". Is China looking to effectively outlaw the LBS boom we've seen in the U.S. and other countries? It would seem so. The article gives another example, citing "three Germans who collected geographihc information [...] and later mapped these in computers." Heck, we do that daily with applications like Gowalla and Foursquare.
Internet censorship is nothing new, but it surely sounds like these rules are about to step it up a notch. China is the world's largest mobile market and geo-locational technologies are booming, but these new regulations could have some serious effects.
We asked Google if it had any comment on how this might affect its operations there, but have not yet received any response.
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