Everything Else

If the iPad is not to your liking! it's the aPad/iPed/oPud/uPid/weePoop at last!



Pre-Orphaned!

http://chinagrabber.com/buy-m800-mid-apad-tablet-pc---7-touch-android-apad-m70003.aspx

wheee!

robots, fer forgé, palm trees, sunny beach, yachts, price bubble, a thousand colours, all for 149.99!

penny change sir

and you thought that the 80s were the end of taste eh?

It's one thing to buy a knockoff purse or eyeglasses or something like that, but don't the people of china realize that this thing won't work nearly as well as a real iPad?

It might work better. Oh, the quality will be crap but the biggest drawback I see to a real iPad is being stuck with Apple applications and that effing iTunes. If this is simply the form factor of an iPad with the functionality of a netbook, maybe it's okay.

btw, the "people of china" couldn't care less if anything works or not, as long as it's cheap. This is why over 65% of all the exports from China come from foreign-owned factories. China will never be competitive at anything except cheap crap. You've been robbed of a society by your own people.

Ain't globalization grand ?

I thought that was precisely the appeal of the iPad: the itunes/apple OS and the fact that everything worked properly. Plus, if you can't see the screen in the product photo, how do you think it will look in the "real world" with that giant ball of fire in the sky?

I have to wonder. Definitely not for me. Oh, it's better than Windows but it's the physical design that I like. OS X, who cares ? Same-o same-o. If it ran BeOS or Irix I'd have one already.

The iTunes schtick is the real killer for me. They can forget that ****, I already did timesharing and terminals and won't return.

it's instructive to note that this was preciously the viewpoint everyone had of japan throughout the first 1/3 of the 1900's. japan managed to turn that situation around 180 degree's in the 60's. what should be feared is if china wakes up and manages to pull the same economic turn-around.

culturally, it's likely as not, to be impossible.

Sky, I beg to differ. You're right, that's what everyone said. And it's Common Wisdom now to make this claim.

But China and Japan and Taiwan and Korea have NEVER been the same. The claim is stupid on all levels.

China has 1.4 billion people. Taiwan, Korea, Japan maybe 100 million total among all three ? This alone creates huge differences.

China has been Confucian for 2,000 years. Korea never, Japan never, Taiwan had to drop that or die. Confucian thinking does not work in the modern world. Worse, they tried to drop master kong from the fifties thru the eighties but have now returned to feudalism in a big way. Do you think that medieval France could be a strong competitor in today's world ?

Japan was NEVER a producer of crap. After WW II when their entire island was rubble, they made junk. But it wasn't because they didn't know better. It was because their tools had been destroyed. China has not made anything but garbage since the Ming dynasty. Somewhere along the line they went for the Manager Syndrome and decided "cheap" and "competitive" was the way to go. They'll not recover from that easily. The US won't recover from that so easily, either. Financiers and Important People are perhaps not entirely worthless but they're pretty close to it. Let them run the country and it's doomed. China has let Important People make all the decisions for over a thousand years. Hard habit to break ...

Remember that Japan kicked China's ass from Billabong to Tusacaloosa with almost no effort. War skills may not be popular these days but they do show a society's abilities at organization, planning, and execution. China ain't got none of the above.

In short, this "All the other Asian countries went through this sequence too" statement is crap. China and Japan and Korea and Taiwan and Singapore are NOT the same, any more than the US and Mexico and Guatemala are the same just because we are in the same hemisphere.

Now wait a minute here. I have a Dayton Audio (local company) APA-150 amplifier that was proudly manufactured in China. With the exception of a linear-taper volume pot (which they replaced, no questions asked, and immediately admitted that it was a design defect) it is a damn fine machine. Monsterous transformer and other power handling components, fan that only comes on when needed, solidly machined aluminum chassis and cover.

I will agree that the number of quality products anywhere (especially from China) are few and far between. But it isn't all crap. That machine taught me to never dismiss any product because of it's country of origin.

play you a song?

You told me you was high class
I could see through that
And baby I know
You ain't no real cool cat
…
You can wag your tail
But I ain't gonna feed you no more


sybr, it's what hamei said above (foreign owned factories)

some (now most) prestigious equipment in the filmmaking business comes from there too. (big joke is that it was coming from China before all this went mainstream, i.e. even before made in XyZ included China)

Key words bolded for your entertainment .


Betcha can't name even one.


Going out on a limb here but I would say, Yes it is.

I cannot think of one thing in modern China that's worth a plug nickel. As the saying goes, they could fuck up a turd. This isn't because Chinese people are stupid or because the repressive communist regime killed all the intellectuals in the Cultural Revolution or because of any other ridiculous thesis proposed in the western press.

It's mainly because Confucianism is shit.

If you want a society of mindless zombies, if you want a society where lying, cheating, stealing is the norm because "anything is good as long as it will advance the family interests", if you want a society that cares for nothing on earth except its own selfish interests, then Confucius is your man. George W Bush would be another choice, I guess.

Basically, sybr, Dayton Audio screwed you and all the other people who should be assembling their products to avoid paying decent salaries, avoid the regulations that keep Love Canal from happening, avoid the taxes that pave your roads, keep your sewage disposal plant running, keep your water potable and your air breathable. Dayton Audio and the rest of the slimy little bastards with financial degrees but the foresight of a flea entered into a pact with the devil to enrich themselves at the expense of the people who made it all possible. "China" could not have done shit by themselves. It's your friends and neighbor ceo's and cfo's who have created this monster. Let's get government off the back of business ! Drill, baby, drill ! And don't forget to repeal Glass-Steagall, so inconvenient for the true wealth-producers !

Now what ? Could you people fuck it up any worse ?

this is why the royal we rely heavily upon disclaimers, such as the one supplied below

I figgerred that ... but that particular bit of conventional wisdom is so common and so wrong .... it attempts to excuse everything but in fact it excuses nothing and worse yet, it's not even true.. Typical media horseshit.

I think I'd like an iPad that ran BeOS and filled up via ftp, tho. Apple OS is too glitzy for me these days and the iTunes thing, disgusting. Hardware ten, software three, and I'm still on unemployment, computin' for my own enjoyment ...

Oh, we probably could/will.

Just out of curiosity, are you claiming the distance exemption from the generic "you people"? That doesn't sound very working class hero-ish to me - thought the janitor would always be there to help clean up the mess.....

Looks that way, to be truthful. I just spent three weeks in the US and it's not pretty. Could be because of where I was but ...

Grocery store prices are similar to what they were ten years ago. Not the same but not appalling, either.

So why is a mediocre, no, a very mediocre meal three times as much as it was ten years ago ? Fifteen dollar hamburgers ? Why do you put up with that crap ? I was fool enough to order a medium Coke at Bungler King. The damned thing came in a five gallon cup and cost six bucks. Guys ? That's STUPID. Waitresses don't get any more than they did a decade ago, food is not THAT much higher, so what's the deal ? Two candles on the table and a "Hi ! My name is Jeffrey and I'll be your waiter tonight" triple the cost ? And WHY so ridiculously large ? Who can eat a two pound hamburger ? I happen to know that Bungler King and Mickey still possess normal human sized cups. They use them here in China. So why do Americans put up with this crap ?

Urinals - wtf is going on there ? Take a normal-sized urinal and mount it six inches off the floor ? Which nitwit thought this up ? If you want to use the same hardware for both five year olds and Wilt Chamberlain, then use the ones they had in the thirties - full height, from floor to elbow. What happened to intelligence ? We're trying to copy China in the "I don't care if it works, everything fits on the drawings" sweepstakes ?

Music. It's possible that my ears are failing but we went to dozens of places with music that I know well playing in the background. Either Sony is selling Diner Music CD's covered by Johhny in His Garage so they wouldn't have to pay the original singers, or Pat Boone has remastered every sixties and seventies song in the archives. Elevator Rock, really cool. Barf.

The people of my group are starting to get old. People with manufacturing businesses making real stuff. Good stuff, with customers like Joe Gibbs. They can't give their businesses away. No one wants any nasty manufacturing company, that's so outre. You could get your hands dirty !

Meanwhile, the industrial parks that used to be 95% full at all times are 2/3 empty. "We need jobs ! We need jobs !" Well it's a fine time to leave me, Lucille. Shoulda thought of that when you sent all the real work overseas so you could all be real estate agents, webmasters, and sell life insurance.

All these talentfree people wandering around in their $300 True Religion jeans and driving their Mercedes SUV's while they are $300,000 upside down in their over-mortgaged houses ... wtf, wreck ? This is the US now ? It's disgusting.



No working class hero here. No distance exemption, maybe a Cassandra exemption. I started screaming about Kirk Kerkorian and Bill Agee in the late seventies. Voodoo economics and trickle down and every bit of fascist crap that came along for the next thirty years. (Benito Mussolini invented fascism : his definition was "Operation of the government for the benefit of the corporations." If that doesn't describe the past thirty years of American society then I don't know what does.) Nobody gave a rat's ass. Fine, y'all wanted this shit, now you've got it. (Not you in particular, wreck. Not even everyone ... but enough. More than enough. "We need rich people to give jobs to the poor people." God, can we say "brainwashed" ?)

Y'all made your bed, now y'all get to lie in it. The US is a nation of spoiled overgrown children. When I think of all the sacrifices that my parents went through so that the slimy greedy self-righteous assholes of the past thirty years could throw it all away, it makes me want to cry. Or puke, not sure which.

Plus I missed out on picking up an SGI that would have been perfect. Now that really makes me want to cry, but my own fault

That $200 box would cost over a grand if it was made in canada or the US, so the salesman said. Too much for a poor college student like me. It's playing "serpentine fire" right now through speakers I built myself using components from a company manufactured in quebec. My car (chevy MC) was built in oshawa, parents used to have a TA built in montreal. Only the canadians would build a car that you could pop a wheelie with

It sounds like you were either in kalifornia or NY state... no $150 short pants here last time I looked, and the only time I've been charged $10+ for a crap fast food meal was somewhere along the I90 in between buffalo and syracuse. With places like moes, guidos, potbellys, 5 guys, etc, around, nobody eats at mickeys or the king anymore. they've closed 3 or 4 of them and turned into oil change places and the like here)

If you are so disgusted with outsourcing of manufacturing and other operations to china, I must wonder what it is, exactly, that are you doing there? I used to work in a manufacturing place in canada, most of the tractor accessories were shipped to germany, some to the US. A real old-school guy ran the place, you would love it.

What's really ironic about this thread is that the real Apple Ipad is also built in China.

hehehe this thread reminds me of my colleague who overheard someone's conversation while waiting for his turn at the immigration line: "what you can't find in China, does not exist.." hehe what's worst is they were Americans talking

there's something funnier:

if we knew a thing or two about capitalism, democracy, freedom, markets, indexes and the rest of the buzzwords, no one would complain about his sneakers/computa/pod/ being made in china, zanzibar or mars.

remember what your old friends used to say:



all things that matter take time + dedication

most of the books that lay down the basics about the mess we're talking here come with a surprise: the footnotes on the 1st page of the 1st chapters take up more paper space than the text of the main paragraph.

old-(s)kool vs new (s)kool is only about haircuts (ok fashion trends too), what we're facing (and missing big time) is obviousness + implicitness.


us continental toasts are not much better right now

till then, sybr, please give us a groove over your PA boombox and let's swing some

the difference is where it's designed, not where it's build - although ultimately you can't pick either in a vacuum since it is... you know, china.