Could you imagine the people who never used Google

The top editor from one of the most popular newspapers in Hong Kong, said he never used Google. Do you believe? I didn't believe it until I heard from his mouth. Yes, he does, and maybe many people do not use Google. What's it mean?
Some people may say it means nothing, because Google is not the rice that everyone has to eat every day. I am not a technology aficionado; but I would like to argue that Google is the quickest way you can find the useful information in the web. If you don't use Google, it means, at least, your information from the web is not the most updated; it also implies that you are not a frequent user to look for information on the web.
Before entering into this program, I am not trying to be a technical savvy; but now I want to be because I know its importance. I can see how Internet changes the China in a dramatically fast way; and also to the world. Many people call Internet the virtual society; true, but I would like to add one word on it, which is "virtual global society". Technology can take the vacumm in the society and make people in the country and outside the country know the information in several seconds. Especially in China, the change in the media brought by Internet can not happen with one or two TV program. But Internet has done that.
But I am still confused about one thing- the communication between humans in the Internet. It is a different way from in the real society. Maybe the two way can exist together for a long time, or maybe one will replace another. If there is, I believe it will be the online communication that will win finally.

My "speculation" about the revaluation of Yuan

Yes, people are speculating more and more on the

appreciation of Yuan.  Bankers and fund managers in

different organizations all believe that yuan will

appreciate in a short time. From the angle of the

reporters, we can see different speeches or viewpoints

from Chinese officials,and diffrent measures for them

to reduce the pressure on Yuan. But I do believe the

bankers should have some reason to do such

speculation. One of them, I think, is that U.S

dollar's devaluation has put great measure on Yuan.

There is an exaggerated news whose headline is "U.S.

dollar's devaluation equals with robbing money from

Chinese's porket". For instance, with the U.S.

dollar's devaluation, China's Foreign reserve, most of

which are in the currency of dollars, has devalued

about 10%. Also, People's Bank of China needs to buy

more gold from the international markets to maintain

the foreign reserve. But the gold price has been more

expensive, marching above 455 dollars per ounce this

week, the highest price in 16 years. I am not sure if

China can resist the pressure or not.

Who will decide Ukraine's future?

Ukraine has become one of our topics in the class. No one knows what happened to Ukraine indeed, but everyone knows it is a big news because it appears on the headline of major newspapers.
Election will always be the most deputable stories in human's history. The lates U.S. election has already proved it. But the one in Ukraine is apparently a different story, where the other countries spoke out their viewpoint in the public. EU prefers Viktor Yushchendo, while Russian President Putin prefers Viktor Yanukovich, according to IHT. But there is no voice from Ukraine's people, though every politician said the people are the most important.
Then I began to wonder Ukraine's future...
But do not be afraid that EU and Russian will fight with each other at last, for they are still relying on each other in the economic development, one of the advantages brought by globalization. Conflict becomes more complex, while internal relation becomes more close, too.

Wired generation, I am one of them

With more and more teenagers become wired, the time they spend on realistic social activities is less and less. Internet is a virtual society, making people sharing their social life with the original life.
I am one of the few people who has been educated engineering and social science. The first period told me the happiness in processing machine code and communicating with online strangers, and the second taught me the necessaries to talk with people and exchange with ideas. But not all people have the same oppotunity as me. That's why we can always see the outgoing-character girl who has no idea about the Internet, and the shy boy in real life who is a forum talker.

One of my law professor said he was afraid of engineers. "Lawyer are depending on talking; Economist are depending on talking, too. But less-talking engineers will always create something surprising. "

Social people don't understand engineer; in reverse, engineers don't like social people, either. Listening to the debate between politicians on the radio, engineers consider it as a waste of time. They could take the time to produce some spaceship, robots and the other techi-stuff to make the world more efficiency.

How could I survive in the middle?

Monopoly accounting

Monopoly is a bad thing, according to the industry rules. The same may happen to the accounting industry. With more and more scandel in the company they audited, the Big Four don't feel comfortable though they are still enjoying the below amazing statistics:

"According to the General Accounting Office, a congressional watchdog, the “Big Four”—Deloitte & Touche, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC), Ernst & Young (E&Y) and KPMG—audit 97% of all public companies in America with sales over $250m. They audit more than 80% of public companies in Japan, two-thirds of those in Canada, all of Britain's 100-biggest public companies and, according to International Accounting Bulletin, they hold over 70% of the European market by fee income.-Economist"

How long google could go?

A new service called Google scholar has been introduced last week. It is aiming at scientists and academic researchers. They can look for scholarly reviewd papers there. Good idea. How large markets remain now?

Contempt of Court, Press should take care

Facing with the possible jail of contempt of court, a journalist has chosen to keeping his promise instead of breaching of confidence.
Jim's statement
Jim Taricani, a 30-year veteran journalist, who works for NBC's TV station in Providence, R.I, was sued for not disclosing his source of one tape about the mayor's corruption. Many media reported the action as a threat to the Freedom of Expression. But it is more important to find that if he violated the law of Contempt of Court. The mayor has already been judged into prison, which means the jurisdical result is not affected by the show of the tape. And the second, if Mr. Taricani is willing to disclose the source, will he be suede for "Breach of Confidence"?

Like ICAC case in Hong Kong, when Singtao daily sued ICAC for "offense of freedom expression", the Court of Appeal didn't consider it as a big deal. Journalists should not be always proud of the exclusive right. Even if they are on behalf of "public opinion", they should be aware that the citizens also need the other rights. Like one of the comments on Taricani's case, " Freedom of Expression is the right of every citizen, not only journalists. If they violated the court order against the other right, they should bear the consequence"

Why everyone is afraid of China?

Power, is the most frequent word I have heard after I came to Hong Kong. Hong Kong locals are afraid of Chinese power when they see China leader's visit to other countries. Foreigners are also afraid of the power when they find that China has becoming more and more agreesive in the relation with other countries. But what's is the power of China?

The Times reported on Friday that Brazil academic and officials are questioning the cooperation between China and Brazil. They have thought that China would benefit a lot from the raw material provided by Brazil, but Brazil's industry will be vulnerable. They said that China has taken a lot of FDI from latin America, also. In a word, China have already robbed, and will continute to rob Brazile's markets.

They even talked about pollution. China will bring its own polluting problem to Brazil, according to some academics.

Oppositing voice will always come out under the government policy. So does Brazil policy this time. People will consider China as another U.S., though most of them still prefer U.S. investment as a way to promote the economy. But they are used to the only superpower. No so many people blames U.S. when it starts to use the raw material and energy of the other country, because it is natural.

Media plays a big role forming the people's opinion. A veteran finicial journalist said that there are always two voices in the foreign media: one is "China's economy is becoming more and more stronger". and the other is "Chinese government is becoming worse in making up the decision". So the image for China is weird. That's why people feel afraid of. They can't control the Chinese government, while they are attracted by Chinese Economy.

" Every Chinese wants power", is that true? We need to find out, and it is still too early to get to a conclusion.

My poor Chinese media colleagues

Scientists always find good reasons to talk to people, without saying his or her hidden background and purpose. Especially in the media-sensitive market, like China, they always do so.

Chinese media reported one of the great scientists in the Internet development had visited Beijing to discuss IPv6, one of the Internet protocols, from NOV.17 th to 19th. Robert E. Kahn is one of the founders of TCP/IP protocol, which was largely reported in Chinese media at the time he visited. But nobody mentioned he is one of the director of Qualcomm, the company who is eager to enter into Chinese 3G market via CDMA2000.

No one knows the detailed schedule of Mr. Kahn. But when interviewed by Sina.com(in Chinese), he said China Unicom had done a great job in the research of IPv6. But in one former article also from Sina, Mr. Kahn would visit the academic devoting in IPv6.

Qualcomm has been a major and long-term supporter when China Unicom began to set up CDMA network in the coutry. In Qualcomm's website, it says" QUALCOMM understands that China Unicom is considering the deployment of CDMA 1x(the successor of common CDMA network) and possibly HDR for 3G".

China Unicom has just changed the CEO from Wang Jianzhou to Chang Xiaobing.

The process of learning language

Learn a new language is not that easy. It is what I have found in Hong Kong. When you think you know it good enough, you begin to feel difficult. When you are headache about it, it begins to flatter you. I believe there must be some "language cell" fighting with each other in the brain when you learn another anguage. Finally they know how to live with others well after a hard fighting.

So are the human life. People fight with each other before they know how to adapt others. When human first developed from monkey, they fight with each other for food; After centuries, they fight with each other for everything, including money, place, famor. We are, too.

Today's class is Chinese Foreign Policy. We talked of some possibility of China's future. But my question is how people know a country's future without knowing its history. China is a country with five thousand year's cultural history, where people develop tradition, culture, and all the things in Chinese character. I would like to describe my country as a "secret" country not because they are secret, just because people can not understand. When western countries just started, China had already set up its own management system and it has worked well for thousands of years. But the internal fighting between people has made the society instable. So we had stopped for hundreds of year, where some innovative country set up in the other side of the ocean.

Talk back to languages. There was once a saying: God create different languages for humans, in order to inhibit them developing smarter than the God. So we humans need to develop ourselves beyond languages, especially in the journalism field. Suddenly, I find I should not be resisted to the difference and difficulties here. I am doing something useful.

Question to learn journalism in Hong Kong

I was once asked by a magazine's senior editor: Why you learn journalism in Hong Kong? I can see from his eyes that my answers didn't satisfy him. I began to ask myself, and then found I was not satisfied, either.
English? Who will be my future readers? I know my English is not that well as the one of native-English speaker.
News values? I am still confused by it after three-month study.
At last, I was totally confused, then silent at all the class for the whole week.

Afarat is dead, first news coming from AFP

Afarat died in Paris hospital, according to AFP. Rumors are flying in bbc radio. Nobody can confirm the news, before the official annoucenment. Sorry to hear the news.

Bush's first press conference after re-elected

From BBC
Questions:
Will you add some democratics into the counsel?
Bush:
Yes... Democratic wants a peaceful world. BTW, we has already worked together in Sep.11. It is not Republican or Democratics...

His voice is not as strong as the one in the debate. Tired after a tight election? But his answer is in two way: First, he doesn't want a peaceful world. Second, he can work together with Democratics, but the result is not that good.

Recovery and Revitalisation

How Asian, especially Chinese, discuss "Recovery and Revitaalisation" when the telecom carrier still enjoy a tremendous need in voice and data services? The eighth Asia Pacific Telecommunication Rountable, held by the Economist in Shanghai, may give an answer on Nov 11th to 12nd.
It's a pity that none of the Chinese carriers are involved in the speaker list.

Will DTT hit hackpot in EU?

Really a good news feature. It starts with Finland's struggle to get the DTT, and argues if DTT can make good money in EU.

Weekly Magazine’s Death

Far Eastern Economic Review (FEER), the leading Asian business and financial newsweekly, will change to monthly magazine in December resulted with the loss of eighty jobs, while real-time media, like Bloomberg News, another financial news provider, is aggressively recruiting people in the same continent.

Dow Jones & Company, who owns FEER, Wall Street Journal and the other vital business and financial news media in the world, today announced that FEER will change its format from a newsweekly to a monthly with the issues and ideas largely written by Asian opinion leaders from the fields of politics, business and academics in December.

Dow Jones Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Peter R. Kann, explained that nearly all other advertising-dependent newsweeklies based in Asia already have succumbed to competition from more immediate media alternatives, and that as a weekly, the Review had lost money for the past six years.

Two weeks before, Dow Jones released the report of Revenue and Profit for Third Quarter 2004. Print Publishing revenue declined $4.0 million, or 1.9%, in the third quarter of 2004 versus the same period a year ago. The detailed number for the loss of FEER is not mentioned.

As a result of format changing, eighty jobs will be reduced, representing about 10% of the company’s total Asia-based employees. After work force reductions, the company will record a restructuring charge, recorded as a special item, of approximately $3 million, or two cents per share, in the fourth quarter of 2004.

On the other hand, Bloomberg News, an electronic newspaper as “Tomorrow’s front page”, has been organizing Recruitment Event in Hong Kong, Singapore and Tokyo from October to December. Bruce Grant, Bureau Chief for HK/China operations of Bloomberg, said “We welcome journalists”.

Mr Grant gave a seminar to the journalism students from all top universities of Hong Kong in Oct. 25. He talked about the character of Bloomberg News- “Five Fs”, one of which is “Fastest word”. Users can access to the latest news of Bloomberg 24 hours a day, without waiting for tomorrow’s newspaper, or magazine of next week.

Conceived as an electronic newspaper with main focus on business and financial news and information, Bloomberg News, has more than 1,600 journalists and editors reporting from 94 bureaus. Profit is unknown as the company not listed.

Though Mr. Kann in Daw Jones didn’t mention what the “more immediate media” refers to, “Fastest” Bloomberg should be one of them. Especially in business and financial field, Mr. Grant in Bloomberg said, people want to see the latest news without the limit of news publishing. Businessman can make decisions quickly to earn money or reduce loss.

With 23-year short history, Bloomberg has become the main provider for business and financial news in the world. “Quality and reliability” of the news and information are their main advantages, according to Mr. Grant.

Compared with Bloomberg, FEER is not that “advantageous”. Though set up in 1946, it has to change the format and reduce the staffs to “modestly accretive to full-year 2005 earnings per share” of Dow Jones & Company. Before FEER, AsiaWeek, another leading Asian magazine, ceased publication in Dec, 2001 due to the “financial” problem. Coincidentally, the same number of eighty jobs was eliminated.

AsiaWeek and FEER was said to be the only “two big regional newsweekly” in English.

Mr. Grant is right that most people prefer to see the “fastest” news rather than the weekly ones. But “fastest” will bring big problems to the quality of the news.

When Mr. Grant showed how to use Bloomberg’s news database, Gene Mustain, the journalism professor in the University of Hong Kong, have found many headlines including “may” or “may be”. He said it reduced the “accuracy” of the news and made people confusing.

President of the Foreign Correspondent Club, Matthew C. Driskill mentioned another problem when talking with the journalism students in the University of Hong Kong. International Herald Tribune (IHT), the newspaper where he is working, has collaborated with Bloomberg in one of IHT’s columns- “Business Asia”. He said he had found many stories from Bloomberg are in the “templates”, which means that the news is in fixed format. He said it is ok for general news, but not for certain stories. “Templates” will betray reader’s trust on the newspaper.

Some students said that it could be the trends for the news writing, but Mr. Driskill denied, “If that is the future, I will go to else where to work”.

FEER's change means what?

FEER( Far Eastern Economic Review), set up in 1946, will change from weekly to monthly in this December. And most important, it will change from the "more-academic" style magazine to the home of "Asia's thought-leaders of every ideological stripe", and "will emphasize politics as Asian nations take their rightful place on the world stage".

I was stuffed when first heard the news. Someone inside FEER told me that it is "a sad day for Asian Journalism". I know what it means. But all I don't know is what it will mean.

Oil price not just affected Hong Kong

If you say that Hong Kong's economy is easy to be affected by global oil price, so China is following up(sorry, the link is in Chinese). Car owners, taxi drivers and even airplane company are now worrying about the oil price. The so-called "oil-quota" ("oil-ticket") are already sold-up, or in other words, forbidden to sold now. Taxi drivers are shortening their work hours in the night. Airplane company are now applying for growing up prices.(They should bear the oil price for they have earned so much)
Global events begin to affect China in an aggressive way. Nobody can say it is dangerous or not. I hope Chinese can now prepare for it. Economy sensitive should be leaded by information-sensitive. There is still a long way to go.

Leave something when you die

flaming even
Originally uploaded by fubuki.

We can't expect the time when we die; but should we prepare? A korea website said "yes". You can leave words there, in order to send them to the people related. You can also leave will there. People will remember you via your words or they will no be hurt.
But there are two questions:
(1) One way there is to require you to reply once per month to confirm you are alive. Isn't it weird? If you have a holiday where you will no go Internet and you forget to tell the website, then they will consider you are dead. Wow, terrible.
(2) How they will confirm the validaty of the words? Especially to the will. Is the one stored in the website having same legal power with the one stored in your lawyer? If there are some difference, what will happen?
Anyway, it should be interesting to try, as we still have so many words to say after we die.

Mobile phone is dangerous? pay attention, they just mention "Analogue"

Swedish researchers found that 10 or more years of mobile phone use increase the risk in brain tumor and it was confined to the side of the head where the phone was usually held.

People are nervous after reading the news, which was widely reported in the world. CNN's is the best, I believe. But should we give up phones? no, of course not.

First, the researchers are just mentioning Analogue phones. Now most phones we use is digital ones. The two kind of phone are using different kind of methods to transmit the signals, according to CNN. (I am surprised to find that some newspaper didn't mentioned this point at all; really embarassed for that reporter)

Second, they are saying that less than 10 year's usage will be less dangerous and they are still working out.

So I would like to suggest people not to put the phone near the head directly. Instead, using hands-free or microphone will be better.