30 karma · joined October 13, 2012
They were Yuanyou(元佑党人) the reformists, and Yuanfeng(元丰党人) the conservatives.
Damn.
Now, there is a similar case in US.
I hope this time, politicians can do much better than ruin all good things.
I propose a new digital currency be created according to certain eigenvectors[1] and allometry[2] features of trading network flows or simply the internet traffic flows.
The progress of Complex Network[3] theory may tell us more about how to build a solid algorithm for this kind of "evolving coins" to make them decentralized and evolve along with real economic activities.
I've been investigating the theory in part time and I dare say somebody with sufficient knowledge is able to figure out a model eventually.
IMO, bitcoin is the start of inventing a better currency, not the end.
[1]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrality [2]http://www.nature.com/scitable/knowledge/library/allometry-t... [3]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_network
As for traditional media, BBC has a good reputation in my circles.
GPL license simply does NOT work in China for two reasons. 1)IP protection is sadly ineffective due to the impaired legal system. In practice, GPL=Appache in China. 2) Consumers hate to pay for pure services without goods delivered due to misconceptions from long lasting low cost of human labor. In practice, free full version software plus charging for premium human support does not work.
These two things are changing slowly but any one interested in China market should never ignore them, especially the 2nd one. Xiaomi will be sued outside China if they violate the GPL license. That's a risk they can't ignore.
About Link #2: For a lot of overseas Chinese like me, NYTimes is notorious for holding biased views towards China. This actually undermines its credibility compared with less biased media like BBC.
I bought a Xiaomi phone for my father recently and I've been Samsung and Apple client for a long time.
IMO, Xiaomi has done a very impressive job to improve Android OS for non-geek people. One of those nice built-in features is seamless fine grain privacy/access control of each app. Another is built-in 3G traffic optimization and metering which is important because 3G data plans provide smaller quotas in China.
Xiaomi brings a lot of merits from IOS to Android not by simply copying designs. They did a good job to solve the pain points for their audiences, who are mostly first time smartphone users. They mainly compete with feature phone vendors other than Samsung or Apple before Xiaomi gains huge traction.
My father was very glad to switch to Xiaomi after my several failed attempts of replacing his beloved feature phone :)
Even I myself plan to buy a Xiaomi to replace my buggy Samsung S3 (never-rooted, less than 1 year) if it's going to release a high-end model.
However, they failed to compete with www.alipay.com which provides free escrow service and seamless ecommerce integration.
99bill had to abandon b2c market and pick up b2b & offline market.
Email as a ATM is not 'amazingly clever' if the transactions are not protected by escrow service.