In response to this, Taiwan has gotten organized.  All over town, restaurants are posting this picture in their windows:

I have been seeing this picture everywhere!  You can see from the symbolism that they’ve said NO to US Beef.   The red head on the cow shows that it is in fact MAD, and there’s even a number at the bottom unique to this store.    The situation has gotten to the point where Taiwan has asked America to respect its wishes and will stop importing these beef parts.  Last week, the Taiwan Legislature revised a law to ban the import of the Beef and now the executive branch is busy explaining why to the US government.

He’s talking about people who aren’t centered on a god or a religion and the effects of their views.  All around the world modern people are looking past their religions (particularly those religions that judge and point fingers at non-believers I believe) and forming different world views.  What do these people believe in?  What is the effect of these views?  I was surprised at how relevant his observations were.

Speaker: Alain de Botton

Subject:  How we define success, in ourselves and  in others, and what it says about us

Time: 16:55

As of this posting, it has been translated into 15 languages

Another great talk from TED!

I’ve talked about using delicious a couple years ago, I use it for saving website links, but more and more I’m using the delicious community to help me find things I’m looking for.  I’m not aware of other major communities like delicious, but I’m sure there are several or many out there.

To me, this is just like deciding to (A) look in the phone book or (B) to call your friend for a recommendation.  There are times when the phone book is perfect (use Google), and then there are times when you want that friend of yours to tell you who to call (Use delicious or a community search).  Here are a couple of situations when I use delicious to search instead.

1. Looking for Software

The delicious community is pretty technical (as you can see from their popular page), and it is a great resource when you need it.  Recently, I was updating my resume, and I wanted to convert it from a Word file to a PDF file.  I didn’t have the software for that, but I thought I’d try searching for it.  Using Google to search (“convert Word to PDF”), I found several ads, and the first choice was a software download.  I have no idea if this software is safe, stable, how many people use it, etc.  I could research it if I wanted, but that’s more time.  Here is a picture of the search results from a delicious search for  “Convert word pdf”

Notice how on the left is the title of the website, and below it the actual website address.  On the right the dark blue squares show How many people have saved this site.  This box on this right is what I’m looking at.  All of those boxes are dark blue because more than 1000 people have saved each website.  Looking at this list, I make a conclusion that all of these first few are pretty popular, but there is one clear leader with almost 40,000 people who have saved the link.  This clear winner is not on the first page of the Google results, so I probably would never have found it.

Even though this case produces an easy choice, in less obvious searches I can still quickly and easily see what a technical community of web users are using for different software applications.

2. Looking for  “Free” things

Using the word “Free” on Google is usually like putting a target on your back.  There are lots and lots of companies trying to sell you something, and they all know if they use the word free they are going to get a lot more traffic.  This is not a bad thing, but sometimes it’s just nice to find the free thing you are looking for with a minimum amount of BS.

I am currently preparing to take the GMAT, and I’ve been looking for free test questions that I can take to practice for the exam.  If I use the search term “GMAT prep” in Google I get a who’s who listing on the first page.  All the most legitimate companies who make a living preparing people for the test.  If you add the word “free” to your search the results don’t get any better.

Using the delicious search things are different.  Actually, there’s not 1 top link in common with the results page from Google.  There are a few companies selling here (as you can see from the titles), but there are also a couple of blogs and forum websites.  These are the places that I shouldn’t have to spend money, and I can find free test questions / tips pretty quickly this way.

So, there are some examples of when I think there’s a much better choice than Google for search.  The other nice thing about using delicious search is the information below the blue boxes on the right side (they are in grey, and the words I used are highlighted in grey).  I can see the most common words other people are using to save the websites.  If I’m having a hard time knowing what words to use to search, I can look here and get some new ideas and see what other people are using.

From: www.TED.org

Time: 4:00 minutes

Subject:  A study of 3 plants that work together to increase air quality indoors.

Summary of the plants and information from the video:

o Areca palm

o chrysalidocarpus lutescens

o 散尾葵

o 4 shoulder high plants per person

o Mother-in-law’s tongue

o Aka Snake Plant

o Sansevieria trifasciata

o 虎尾蘭

o 6-8 waist high plants

o Money plant

o Aka Ivy-arum

o epipremnum aureum

o 綠蘿 (芋葉藤)

I understood my first marketing tagline just the other day. Here in Taiwan toilet
paper and Kleenex are one and the same.
You buy big packs of them and you use them for just about everything in
your house. Also, you do not flush
toilet paper in Taiwan, so every
bathroom has a small trash can in it.

This is from a Kleenex pack. You can see the characters:

給家人最好的

給 = Give

家人 = Your family (lit. house + people)

最好的 = Very Good, the very best (lit. very + good + particle)

Alltogether this adds up to “Giving your family the very best”.  Sounds exactly like what is says in the USA.  BTW, as far as I can tell, all those characters in the lower right corner mean “3 ply”

Monkey has made its way into movies, operas, books, video games and is referenced in entertainment throughout the world.  For example, the image you see is of Jet Li, from a recent adaptation, The Forbidden Kingdom.  The image below is from a newly created Circus done by a collaboration of British and Chinese entertainers.  It is currently playing in London.

The story is similar to The Odyssey with the hero being on a journey to a distant land and has to deal with a great deal of trials and monsters along the road; while he can never quite reach his goal along the way. The main character, Monkey, is very intelligent and his curiosity ends up getting him in lots of trouble.  After becoming powerful he starts to get into bad situations constantly and doesn’t know when to stop.  Eventually he is reformed and in the end becomes enlightened after he wages war with every possible person and god along the way.

During the book, there were bunches of places where it said “An old saying goes..” or “The ancient proverb states…”  I thought I’d save all of these and share a few to shed some light on some of the old Chinese colloquialisms in the book.  Enjoy!

1. A poorly drawn tiger looks like a dog; an ill carved
   swan looks like a duck.
   1. Ie. An ambitious undertaking which, if not done
      properly, maybe be worse than inaction.
2. A court must not, even for a day, be without a sovereign
3. To be virtuous without instruction is
   superhuman. To be virtuous after
   instruction is reasonable. To be
   instructed and remain incorrigible is to be a fool.
4. Magistrates err, clerks
   err, the man with the warrant never errs
5. He who fails to avenge the
   wrongs done to a parent is unworthy of the name of man.
6. Clear wine brings a blush to the cheeks; yellow gold moves even a philosophic heart.

Jet Li Image from Screen-Power.com

Image courtesy of the Amazon Page selling an audio cd from a British Opera adaptation from the book

It's so easy as a businessman to get caught up thinking
about the world as being about Google or making cheaper widgets in
China to be sold at Walmart.  There is so much more going on in the
world than what you read about in the NY Times.

Time: 32:00 (First 10:00 is everything; rest is Q & A)
Subject: Software that creates life using DNA; which consumes waste and creates usable energy

• Intel Celeron dual core processor
• 500 gig sata hd
• 1 gig ddr2 ram
• 20x DVD burner

If I did a quick comparison with a typical computer from Dell that would have run me $749.  I believe the main drawback of building your own computer is getting the software installed on it properly.  Windows needs to recognize all the new hardware you’ve purchased, etc. which can be really difficult.

In the end, I went through the software installation process about 3 times on my new shuttle, mostly because of the SATA hard drive and XP not being too friendly with it.  Here is a brief outline to all of you with a shuttle trying to install XP on it:

1. Partition the hard drive – I did a primary partition of 100 gig.  This should get around any Sata issues you have.  XP was seeing my 500 gig drive as 131 gigs no matter what I did.
2. Install OS – I opted for XP because (1) I already have a license so I didn’t have to buy any software (2) XP has a much better reputation than Vista
3. Install the LAN and VGA drivers from the Shuttle CD
4. Go to Microsoft.com and go to Support, then Updates.  Run the program, install what they recommend, then reboot and do it over again.  The 3rd time you run through it’ll finally install Service Pack 2, that’s what you really want.
5. Auto-update the USB drivers through your hardware manager
6. Install the Audio and Chipset drivers from the Shuttle CD
7. Partition the rest of the hard drive and format it.  I partitioned another 300 gigs to a secondary drive.  This allows me to put all my media (photos, music, movies, etc) and other files on it.
8. Done!

If you are mildly comfortable with computers are are thinking about buying a new one, consider building a new computer like the ones shuttle offers.  If you already have a computer with XP then you have a license, the savings on the software side would allow you to buy more computer or save even more up front.

So for those of you who are ‘older and set in your ways,’ I have a video you might want to watch about the internet.

It moves fast at times, but it’s a good summary of some of the ways people are using the web now.  It is often called Web 2.0, and has been referred to that way for a year or two now.

Be good to mention that this post is titled the same as my blog is titled, a very apt subject for the world I live in.

One of my co-workers just bought a laptop PC for these reasons, while needing a way to get work email at home.  She bought a dell
and has run into endless issues. She started with Vista, realized it
was too much trouble, upgraded to XP, and has been unable to get the
thing to work. Even though she got the best service contract with dell,
she’s out in the cold. Why?

Have you ever tried calling the
company who made your TV when the cable went out? I haven’t either, but
my guess is they won’t be much help. There have to be at least 20
million computer users (including my parents) in the USA who do not
understand the difference between hardware and software. They buy a
computer from dell, and expect dell to help them when they can’t
connect to a wireless network. As this happens, Dell is left making
their customers angry; Microsoft is building operating systems more
fuel-inefficient than the new Hummer, and everyone leaves frustrated;
The computer doesn’t work.

I don’t own a mac, but their model is
really killing the PC right now because of this problem. My coworker
doesn’t care that her soundcard driver needs to be updated with XP, she
just knows she bought a computer from dell and the sound doesn’t work.
She also gets a “not my problem” answer when she calls for help, even
though she thinks by buying the premium service package she’s getting
full support. Reading the dell warranty page, they have categorized support into three areas:

1. Hardware Warranty Support
2. Optional CompleteCare Accidental Damage Service
3. Spyware, Virus and How To’s

Clearly,
buying your normal computer gets you #1. #2 deals with dropping the
laptop, etc. #3 is what Dell is trying to package the software support
thing around. HowTo: Install a network, a printer, How to remove a
virus from your PC, etc.

This really sucks for dell. Service is
expensive, margins on computer hardware are razor thin, and all the
while they need to make the customer happy when the customer doesn’t
realize they are on the phone with the wrong company.

I wonder what Google is thinking about all of this.