General Motors stock price is now below $4.00 per share, which is essentially ZERO, adjusted for inflation 1947. The only thing that could save General Motors is another World War.
Even a bailout would only prolong the inevitable.
This problem is expanding and the real problem is when we pass the Quadrillion Mark.
After which time, a new currency must be introduced due to the hyperinflation problem that is slowly growing in Asia.
They need to dump U.S. debt. China’s economy is slowing down and soon will become less friendly towards the financial system.
There is NO UNDERSTANDING of what is transpiring.
Maybe it is better that way. There would be a panic.
Many factories in China depend on the constant stream of orders for consumer goods. After the first major Sichuan earthquake, many factories and vendors decided not to re-build and re-open.
The ones that remained were cautiously optimistic that they could benefit from the decreased competition.
However, the U.S. economy is grinding to a screeching halt and several of the factories will shutdown a few week before the Chinese New Year and NOT re-open in February.
This could lead to empty shelves at some retailers as early as February 2009. In which case, their only choice may be to go out of business altogether.
There is a chain reaction in the supply chain, and it’s not very good at all.
The retail stores are ordering less inventory or shutting down in the U.S..
This is causing the wholesalers not to accumulate their minimum order quantities (MOQs) for production and shipment.
The Chinese factories are accomodating SOME smaller orders, but cannot continue producing items at a loss. I would say maybe 30% of the remaining factories are accepting orders daily. The others are just shutting down completely.
Huh? What?
Ok, let me back up. In China, we really don’t have “lay offs”; instead there is simply a notice on the door saying “sorry, go away for now, see you later, come back when we have work for you”.
To complicate things, there are invoices still unpaid and banks who will have a hard time collecting the debt.
Yup!
China is about to have its own version of commercial real estate financial crisis. Think I am kidding? Wait until you cannot find a power supply to recharge your iPhone or when laundry baskets at Wal-Mart are selling for $25 each. 
oh. that will be something else.
Get ready.
In China, US factories usually prepaid for production. The Europeans wanted credit extended, a wish that was granted up until now. Almost all the European companies I am dealing with now need to immediately pay the cost in full prior to production and shipment of product.
Not anymore.
Google and Primezero have a lot in common.
Both names are plays on mathematical themes.
Both base most of their software applications online.
Both are chasing Bloomberg Terminal Model.
The Google PC most certainly will be a low-power, simple-to-use Internet Appliance.
Google Chrome is a simple approach to distributed web application development.
The Primezero i18n Terminal desktop (or laptop… or mobile device) will be based on the idea of “simple”.
People want to do things now.
The future of business online will not defy but rather deny complexity.
Especially after the debacle on Wall Street.
Several people are on October holiday to celebrate the birth of the People’s Republic of China.
Many of the factories were not paid before they left for vacation.
Some Chinese workers will return to closed factories.
The risk-taking has ended for now and many banks are not loaning to ANYONE.
ANYONE.
The feelings constructed during the Olympics with thousands of people singing “We Are Ready” fade as China is unable to control its fake food problem that dates back as far as the year 2000. (yup, 8 years)
Now, we are back to the reality in China.
Money talks and money kills.
In order to meet quotas, several food manufacturers add chemicals to food or liquids without any thought about public safety.
Hong Kong has lost its ability to produce its own food at a reasonable cost to the public.
It depends on mainland China for things as simple as MILK. (are you kidding me?) Now, understand this. Hong Kongers should need to drink milk powder from mainland China, but the economy has experienced dramatic inflation.
People might be using the tainted powder milk in every level of food preparation.
Oh geez.
During the Beijing Olympics, I provided a limited re-release of Primezero Chinese Tools 2008, a Large Type English Chinese Dictionary search tool.
Feedback from users showed me that I need to maintain more versions of the dictionary tools for more users.
So, I plan to release several types of dictionaries in the next few months, including re-designs of Primezero Aulenti and Primezero Soleri Picture Dictionary systems.
For now you only have two choices: Primezero Chinese Tools 2008 and Primezero i18n Terminal
Hanzi To Pinyin Converter: http://www.hanzitopinyin.com/
There is a faster algorithm for converting your Hanzi into Pinyin.
Mobile Hanzi To Pinyin Converter: http://m.hanzitopinyin.com/
Easier on the eyes on your iPhone.
The sovereign wealth funds are all freaked out about the U.S. debt and the precedent set by Bear Stearns and Fannie/Freddie.
The memory of the Asian currency crisis is still fresh and the banks in Asia are trying to find ways to settle transactions quickly.
If Singapore, China, Korea, Japan, and Thailand cannot be persuaded that everything is under control by the time the markets open on Monday, they still have a fiduciary to protect their own national security.
They may not dump all of it, but they still need to dump some of the U.S. Debt early next week.
What an interesting situation.
This CNN story about setbacks in pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong at first do not appear to be related.
However, when you stop and think about what it symbolizes, your eyes will widen and you will experience a tingle on the front of your forehead.
Don’t worry. It’s called nervous twitch.
Hong Kongers are voting to return to the days before everything was “improved”… the days before life was “more interesting”.
They are voting in symbolic “flight to quality” where they feel safer about wages, inflation and a system where who you know matters. Yup.
The problem is Hong Kongers don’t know who Fannie and Freddie are now. And the HKMA will feel more political pressure to follow the lead of the Chinese mainland take advice to liquidate– not reduce their stakes, not re-allocate their positions — liquidate anything rhyming with Fannie and Freddie from their financial system.
So, Mr. Paulson, when you bring out the bazooka as Bill Gross recommended, remember to bend your knees and when you fire, don’t forget to say “Booyaaah!!”
You have 5 hours to complete the Fannie and Freddie takeover before Asian Markets open.
Primezero i18n Terminal converts this for you so you don’t need to remember the format: June 30, 2008.
But…., just in case you want to know why it is what it is…
In Chinese, people say there year first. Then the month. Then the day.
2008 is the year. 二〇〇八年
The month is the 6th month. 六月
The day is the 30. 三十日
Put them all together? 二〇〇八年六月三十日
Investors have been rushing into China to catch the social networking boom. How do you say it? Learn how on the Primezero i18n Terminal, where you can see the simplified and traditional Chinese and actually hear a tutor pronounce the words for you. Example Search: social networking
Everyone is looking for the next big thing in English-Chinese Dictionary design and development.
Unfortunately, I don’t have it.
Instead, I have a good idea about which companies will do well in the next 6 months with the Beijing Olympics approaching and the huge interest in Chinese languages this entails.
My two favorite companies right now are Nokia and Apple. They are attempting to penetrate the enterprise market where Blackberry dominates, so they are really taking some bold steps.
One area I am sure will grow is translation. Two people in two different timezones in two different languages should be able to communicate basic protocols and business objectives without fancy software. Nokia and Apple both provide new exciting opportunities for software developers, as the phones are bringing human machine interaction to a whole new level.
Personalized English-Chinese Dictionaries will help individuals build vocabulary. Combined with digital language tutors, the dictionaries will provide a new channel of interoperability and understanding.
Maybe.
You can download the Chinese Practice Paper for any Chinese characters.
Simply click the “+paper” link beside any single-character query result.
Click on the “+paper” link and you get free Chinese practice paper. Simple as that.
nuff said.
… when you e-mail your friends again and again during a disaster and they do not respond…
Japanese are rationing food.
Chinese are saving food for the Olympics.
Hong Kongers now are stuck with little or no agriculture and only few independent resources…
which means … we have a problem.
Developing …
It has been brought to my attention that some of my vendors cannot deliver or start orders on products because some U.S. banks are unable to settle international transfers.
In case you are having the same problem, I just wanted to let you know that others are also going through this headache. This is disturbing.
Developing …
Factories are shutting down all over Southern China. With this development may come an upheaval of Hong Konger amenities and family support services.
Discussing these issues with colleagues has left me rather downtrodden, but this is the reality of the “bubble”.
Well – more like a game of musical chairs. The migrants workers in China had perspective, because they are keen to see scarcity in the presence of temporary excess. The understood that while
* Start the music. * (something by Vivaldi)
When engineering jobs were shipped to China from America, anyone in Southern China could open a factory and hire workers. This is what many of the Hong Kongers did.
With economic investment agreements, such as CEPA, the future was supposed to be a dream of mercantilism. However, as more Hong Kongers lost good-paying jobs, many were forced to take lower paying jobs to feed their families.
They sought refuge and comfort in the Hong Kong stock market, where you could roll dice and pick stocks and become rich overnight or at least pay the bills. But, for many that did not last for long.
Then, there was the investment real estate boom in Hong Kong, then there was … wait…
* The music stopped. *
Silence.
Uh-oh, not enough chairs.
Hong Kongers, on the other hand, have a short memory and were not ready for the music to stop. Several farmers are saving their pigs from market to take a loss upfront, but they know will have food for remainder of the year.
Let me re-phrase this so you can completely understand what I am talking about: Chinese migrant workers are not returning to the factories. Expect delays on shipping for anything made in China.
Woohoooo!!
Chinese Seal Chop is listed in the Google Gadgets Directory.
Judging from the feedback, 8 out of 10 users of the Chinese Seal Chop Widget for WordPress actually prefer the Chinese Seal Chop Google Gadget since it is faster to install and doesn’t require futzing with settings from a dashboard or re-uploading updates and patches every month.
I think the vision at Google is to completely relieve end-users from the burden of updating their software all the time, so they can focus on content development.
Try it out!
Hope this brightens your day!
February 24, 2008: This day is very interesting because it was the one added to push the number of days in February to be 29 days.
二〇〇八年 - 2008 year
二月 - February Month #2
二十四日 - Day #24
Convert your articles from Traditional To Simplified Chinese Characters quickly (Includes Rare Chinese Characters). — Primezero i18n Terminal
Simply copy and paste the Chinese characters into the leftbox and get a printable pinyin annotation on the rightbox.
Developer’s Notes
Introducing online Hanzi To Pinyin Conversion from Primezero i18n Terminal. You need to have a web browser (Firefox with Ruby XHTML Support Add-On, MSIE6 or later) that can read Ruby Characters. I am working on another version that will display the characters nicely for all web browsers. I wanted to get this version out.
Release early, release often. 
Sample Sentence: ##%@#! You want me to pay how much for that rè jiāo huàn qì ?
Learn more Chinese little by little on the Primezero i18n Terminal.
Task #1: You need to close the FunInputEngine.
Task #2: You need to move all the FunInput* items to the trash.
Logout and re-login. All gone. You can re-install this great program whenever you want.
We are going to install FunInputToy v 1.5.10 for Mac OS 10.4.
Should be easy, so let’s get to it.Double-click the installer package to get started.
Just breeze through the install… ok?
\If you want a translation, I’ll do that later…
English? Are you sure?
Continue!
Install… then logout after installation is complete. Well, that was the easy part. Now comes to the hard part: Uninstalling FunInputToy!
Several factories are having difficulty finding replacement labor for the migrant workers who refuse to return to the work after Chinese New Year holiday.
This is going to put further stress on logistics companies who rely on constant flow of export goods with business models that are tooled for razor thin margins. Several vendors have shut down in Mainland China, no longer able to keep furniture or home decor operations afloat during the U.S. economic downturn.
Consumer electronics factories will soon be floating without customers as demand comes to a screeeeeeching halt. Yes, that’s right. Your cell phone may not have the replacements parts available. Funny.
Comments: I do not think Americans are ready to see empty shelves at Wal-Mart, because that’s what’s next. If you cannot produce the product, and the people who ship the products go out of business, how does your product get to the store shelves? … Teleportation?
Oh, btw, I can only pay my vendors in RMB, Hong Kong Dollars, Yen or Euros… those are my choices. F**k!
Developing…
Good question.
I am not really focusing on English to Chinese, actually I am focusing on Chinese as the pivot language and allow translators from all over the world to use this application for hopefully better understanding of language and culture.
If we understand each other, then we can have some world peace and quiet.
I am trying to develop a completely new way to provide translation to non-speakers and students learning of Chinese. There is a lot of scribble on the paper so please be patient whilst I bring the ideas from paper to production.
The concept is called the Primezero i18n Terminal. The platform is based on years of user feedback. You can start creating your own translation engine if you want using PrimezeroTools, freely available open source code at my Google Code Site, pzphp.
More details about Primezero i18n Terminal coming soon…
Here is the YouTube clip:
Here is the BlipTV clip:
Adsotrans makes it easy to annotate Chinese articles and read them inline with context.
David’s new engine is faster and click-friendly.
I have added the new link on Primezero Chinese Tools search results.
Sample Query: Happy New Year
Click Adsotrans link to get your annotation.
Click on the characters to reveal an edit window. Neat!
It is becoming more likely that several Chinese migrant workers from the rural areas will not return to factories after the Chinese New Year. Reasons may include one or more of the following:
Developing…
As a capstone to my milestones, I like to create PowerPoint presentations.
(Geez, what a geek).
There is something quite Zen-like when developing with PowerPoint on Google Docs. Simple yet just what I need.
They give me a chance to reflect on the product description and whether I met the basic requirements of a project. Under 10 slides of course — 9 to be exact. I just wanted to explain PrimezeroTools and cast it as a Chinese dictionary plugin. I was going to say “helper class”, but that is not as smooth as “plugin” … however plugin is WAY overused today like FRAMEWORK … *shivers down my spine *brrrr
Here is the GoogleDocs PowerPoint presentation:
Happy Chinese New Year of the Rat! This year will be a great year!!~
I am happy to introduce my boring, drab and underwhelming Chinese Character Block API. Yes, there is more coming, but I thought I would just kick this off. Ｉcalled it HanziBlox.
Start Using It Right Now
Just type the following URI into your URL Bar in your browser and get going!
http://www.primezero.com/labs/hanziblox/build?h=我
HanziBlox? Why HanziBlox?
Because I Googled HanziBlox and came up with Zero Results. That’s why.
The following names are finalists for naming this new API:
Ok, not really. but you get my point.
I’m not funny.
I’ll get back to work.
Primezero Chinese Tools Completed at Version 1.10. Here is a complete list of features. This information architecture experiment has concluded.
I want to clarify:
From Developer’s Notebook
Now, for a quick core dump…
The primary goal of this project was to test what a “Chinese dictionary” is supposed to be. Let us first look at the somewhat traditional archetype this book.
A Chinese dictionary is a bound volume that contains insurmountable amounts of information related to one or more dialects of Chinese that can be readily accessed when needed.
Large volumes make wonderful doorstops and also are useful for propping up windows. Smaller volumes are often called “pocket dictionaries”, most likely designed for portability but with limited content.
Some Chinese dictionaries are neither large nor small, so they a provided topic-specific title, where you can find vocabulary that eludes that pocket dictionary without dragging a 5 pound dictionary around.
Things you find in traditional paper dictionaries:
Things you find in Primezero Chinese Tools (not a dictionary… a dictionary tool):
As far as the class design goes for Primezero Tools, I only want to have two categories of functions/methods: the mega methods and the puny methods.
The mega methods are the functions that are front and center and will help users quickly develop applications with little programming experience. You can also call these “jedi” methods.
The puny methods are helper functions that should be ignored by most users. Their job is to help the mega methods look easy to use without getting any credit whatsoever. You can also call these “gerbil” or “padawan” methods.
Don’t You Mean Private, Protected and Public?
Uh, no.
All methods are public, but some just need to be left alone …
by users who are not comfortable with PHP yet …
Hmm.. does it make sense?
One of the most important features a semantics engine will need is the ability to transform information for whatever reason (portability, readability, vanity, 等等…).
One of the features I would like to see in several Content Management Systems is the ability to easily get audibly speak the language of the author and understand the blog entry from the author’s perspective with… dare I say … protocol droids?
I have actually discussed this with some distinguished linguists and many have concluded that such a project would be ridiculous because .. blah blah blah blah blah wah wah wah blah blah blah blah … ok, I didn’t listen to what they said.
Below is a screenshot of a sample application of Primezero Tools providing pinyin for Sina article. Of course, it does not understand duoyinci or any fanciful linguistic aspects of Mandarin, but the idea for students is “hey, here is a page … I should be able to practice reading Chinese, cool”.
Furthermore, integrating translation engines into semantics engines is the future as operating systems like gOS pick up steam and CMS will become primary mode of developing easily transportable information.
We’re laughing because it’s true. There is no place like home. There is no place like home. There is no place like home. There is no place like home. There is no place like home.
Hey! ^^ There is a hole on your shirt.
You cannot see it?
Look closely…
This was on live TV in Hong Kong during a holiday fundraiser. Funneh.
Non-verbals are always affect translation.
He gives the strong gaze and a compliment with a slightly deeper voice.
She adjusts her headset… or does she? .. a chance for miscommunication.
Translation can be vertical or horizontal. It can be encoded then decoded, decoded then encoded or encoded twice and decoded once. That is human translation.
Like MandarinTools, the CJK Institute was one of the first online resources for learning Chinese and other Asian languages. Jack Halpern has just released a bigger and better version of this tremendous resource with a fresh new web site. He is a professional lexicographer. I consider his writings essential for proper dictionary development.
URL: http://www.cjk.org/
This blog is quite witty and an absolute treat for scholars of Chinese history (and… well, if you have a sense of humor).
http://yanxishan.wordpress.com/
Citigroup has no takers from emerging markets, including China.
http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D8U5M7TO0.htm
And funny thing is… China may have just awakened the spirit of acquisition from emerging market funds. What am I talking about?
Well, if Citigroup is trying to raise more money, it means that all the fingers and toes are plugged in the dike and there is really no way to block purchase of capital assets in the U.S.
Sit back and grab some popcorn as the dollar collapses and the subprime crisis spreads into the treasury markets. 
Pinyin Practice: I absolutely love this web site created by Alan Peterka.
Try using this learning tool called Speaking Chinese. It provides some nice self-paced lessons and exercises for vocabulary and grammar.
Another application I really like on the site is the Self-Quiz, which helps me keep my pinyin spelling fresh in my mind, especially with initials and finals.
You can also read the blog about latest topics relating to learning Chinese language and culture online.
