Bunnie Huang on China's "Shanzai" Mash-Up Design Shops 181
saccade.com writes "Bunnie (of XBox hacking and Chumby fame) has written an
insightful post about how a new phenomena emerging out of China called
'Shanzai' has
impacted the electronics business there.
A new class of innovators, they're
going beyond merely copying western designs to producing electronic "mash-ups" to create new products. Bootstrapped on small amounts of capital, they range from
shops of just a few people to a few hundred. They rapidly create new products, and use
an "open source" style design community where design ideas and component lists are shared."
USA is losing because we think we're winning (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:USA is losing because we think we're winning (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:USA is losing because we think we're winning (Score:5, Insightful)
I think another part of the problem is when engineers, mathematicians and so on graduate and work for the financial services industry. So they design the latest fad financial service rather than the latest fad electronic device.
At least electronic devices don't up end entire economies like intellectually bankrupt financial services apparently can.
Re:USA is losing because we think we're winning (Score:5, Insightful)
This is one of the two reasons why I admire Steve Wozniak as a person. He's a tinkerer at heart. He'll sit down at a table with various parts and put together something that's cool. Engineering is like lego for geniuses.
.
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(The other reason I admire Woz is for his sweet, pimped-out Segway.)
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Why is it a problem if China is innovating and creating new business models and new kinds of electronics?
It isn't a problem. That's not what he said. He said it was a problem that we (the collective modern 1st world) have outsourced all production elsewhere.
Innovation is not a zero sum game. Instead of thinking about how can we protect what we know and stop Chinese people from innovating, it would be more productive for us to learn what we can from them, and then maybe improve our business models.
Aaaand you
Re:USA is losing because we think we're winning (Score:5, Insightful)
Why is it that with China the first reflex is always "us vs them" like the parent post?
The Chinese will innovate with the resources that the Chinese have while the US will innovate with the resources that the Americans have (note no us and they).
I don't understand why people feel that it would be better if the Chinese were deprived of this opportunity. I would be more inclined to say "join the party", the "more the merrier" in the engineer's club.
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Why is it that with China the first reflex is always "us vs them" like the parent post?
Because humanity thrives on conflict in all aspects of their lives. See: religion, politics, sports, romance, games, etc.
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You have to realize that years of viewing things like "Sex and the City" has done tremendous damage to the view of Americans from China's viewpoint.
From my point of view too
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Every country's people think they are better than every other country's people. Except a handful of self-hating Americans.
I don't hate myself, I don't hate my country, I hate my image, an image given to me by people who I strongly disagree with (and this doesn't mean everyone from my country or a party or a lifestyle or belief). People who have wrapped my true identity underneath their ideals, beliefs, achievements and laziness. (These are different people, but their grouped image gives me my image to outsiders, the proverbial "they") I have also been imaged by people from the outside, while I can't blame them too much, becaus
Re:USA is losing because we think we're winning (Score:5, Insightful)
Because people are stupid and think economics is a zero-sum game. This leads to the chain;
China is getting richer.
If China is getting richer, someone is getting poorer.
We are getting poorer.
Whereas the only thing that holds is the first. If China is getting richer, it means they have more money to buy things from the US/EU and less competitive labour!
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The Chinese getting richer actually does have a negative impact on the United States.
The rate at which the Chinese economy is growing is faster than the rate at which the global economy is growing.
The difference between the rate of global expansion and the rate of chinese expansion is growth that is lost by everybody else.
So while the economy is not a zero sum game you can still have the growth of one economy have a negative impact on others.
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The Chinese getting richer actually does have a negative impact on the United States.
The rate at which the Chinese economy is growing is faster than the rate at which the global economy is growing.
The difference between the rate of global expansion and the rate of chinese expansion is growth that is lost by everybody else.
So while the economy is not a zero sum game you can still have the growth of one economy have a negative impact on others.
The economy is also not a fixed-sum game; China growing faster makes the global economy grow faster, rather than making the US economy grow slower.
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Except that there genuinely is a limit to the rate of growth in the global economy.
Which is...?
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Most likely it will be tied to the rate at which natural resources can be extracted from the land. This can be mitigated to some degree by greater demand for natural resources causing new extraction businesses, but that will not in all cases completely counter a very large demand. Many industries like mining concerns, oil refineries, oil wells and chemical plants take many years to go through planning, permitting, construction, production. All of that prevents "the market" from responding to the increase
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0) The USA has been buying stuff (like oil) with money (USD) that they can create out of nothing.
1) The USA has also been buying Chinese stuff, with money that the Chinese has lent the USA.
2) The USA is considering printing yet more money (lending yourself money, promising to pay yourself back in decades is practically the same as printing it) to get itself out of a huge mess that it mainly created.
3) If the USA prints US doll
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China is getting richer.
If China is getting richer, someone is getting poorer.
We are getting poorer.
You should've stopped there, you were doing so well.
History has never followed any course but the one above when there are multiple groups of people working within the same ecosystem. Someone is always taking from someone else, with one group getting richer and the other poorer, regardless of economic systems and theories.
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America's buying power is predicated on China being fucked? Err...I don't know if you've been in a cave for the past ten years or so, but China is in no way "fucked"
Actually, they are boning themselves environmentally. But that's not going to save us, in the short term. In fact, they're boning us that way, too. There's more Chinese pollution in LA than there is from Los Angelenos.
However, you have failed entirely to actually contradict me. You have only proven my point. China is coming up; we're going down.
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Because the first world is scared of the low-wage Wirtschaftswunder which Japan, Korea, Taiwan etc showed us. Only there is over a billion people in China. 10-20 years more and the next billion, the Indians, join the party for real. And by _that_ time, the Africans will be where China & India are now.
Where the former first world will be is anybody's guess, really.
I can understand both 'their' and 'our' pov.
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Competition of the "if I can't have it I don't want you to have it" school is mean-spirited and rather unproductive; but the "interesting idea you have there, I should look into that" school has been responsible for a great deal of progress, and seems to be what grandparent was driving at.
Whether one likes the fact or not, it is undeniably the case that contemporar
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Because...live IS a constant contest to try to come o
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The Chinese will innovate with the resources that the Chinese have while the US will innovate with the resources that the Americans have (note no us and they).
Yet, we have no resources. Yes, we can design; but what happens when we want or need to produce, and nobody wants to take (or is prohibited from taking by their government) our money?
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We are more governmentally encumbered and less capitalist than China in many ways!
Funny you should say that. To my mind this is the spirit of socialism at its best - the people at the bottom working together rather than each individual competing against each other. Open source is another prime example of what socialism and communism was really about before powerhungry egomaniacs like Stalin and Lenin took out a patent on the idea.
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Re:USA is losing because we think we're winning (Score:5, Insightful)
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Probably true for the majority, but there are enough people who who go out of their way to take advantage of others to make a society relying on that basic cooperation not work.
So the fix inevitably becomes iron grip nasty government. Of course the people that are comfortable in such a position of power are not particularly nice people, so it becomes worse over time, as the good people get killed or leave.
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Cooperative? Where do you get that idea? From my seat on the boat, it looks like it's fundamentally competitive and controlling. The Romans didn't come to power because they were 'cooperative' - it was because they controlled what they had and competed for everything else.
A part of human nature is cooperation, yes, though it is a fundamentally different approach. It can yield similar results, but it requires the participants to be internally motivated - often through grandiose speech, FUD, or something like
Needs vs. wants (Score:2)
One's own interests tend to involve further cooperation, if the person cares about long term survival of their person.
In general this is true, until you only have one coke bottle. Only so many people can have water front property in Hawaii, and while I recognize that not everyone wants it, enough people do that there is no way to satisfy everyone. Someone is going to get it, someone else is not, and thus cooperation is no longer desirable. Now it's just competition.
Since when does "long term survival of their person" require "water front property in Hawaii"? There's a difference between need and want. Perhaps cooperation can satisfy needs, and competition can satisfy whatever wants are left.
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communism hasn't worked anywhere
Most families are working models of communism - the family shares its possessions etc. It's true that many of the states that have called themselves "Communist" have failed, most notably the Soviet Union, but the question still remains whether this was because of communism or because of other factors - such as the permanent state of conflict with the Western world, the general incompetence of its leaders, the extreme paranoia of the same or whatever. I would say that it is impossible to have a stable societ
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Every singly functioning democracy in the world has taxes, yet for some reason people still go to work. Funny that...
And considering that there's no such thing as a free market, how do you know you'd like it?
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The basis of socialism is the redistrubtion of wealth/resources "from each according to his ability, to each according to their need."
And a very appealing principle it is too; but it is no more than a principle - a guideline or ideal, if you will. As you will note, I did in fact argue that one can't implement pure socialism or communism; it is good to share, but we all need something we can call our own. No ideology or religion is more important than people; the goal of socialism - or indeed any ideology worth anything - is to make life good for as many people as possible. This obviously means that when we reach the point where we have to
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There are various problems, one being outsourcing which means the knowledge is exported (which in itself is not a bad thing if you can stay competitive), but I think the biggest problem is the patent law (which is seen as capitalistic enough probably), while china also has a patent law they simply do not care about it.
Guess what how the USA became big, they ignored european patents. Same happens now in china which has a bigger embracement of knowledge sharing in society than the west!
Guess what would happen
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Notice the lack of patent lawyers being featured in that article.
Quite telling I think.
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Less governmentally encumbered, maybe; less capitalist? Doubtful.
I recall reading somewhere about these "shanzai" shops a while ago. Basically, they're a sort of government-sanctioned and organized cooperative: they offer a large handful of "open to China" designs from which a company can base their products. Remember that $100 "HiVision" laptop from China with a MIPS processor? Yeah, that was one of the many Chinese-Nationalist-sourced products. You'll find variations of the same exact hardware platform (d
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You couldn't be more wrong. One of the main pillars of capitalism is that there are no barriers preventing new players from entering a market. In this sense OSS is capitalism at its most pure.
Shops like MS and Apple actively lobby the Government to raise the barrier of entry with laws like the DMCA and software patents. This is decidedly uncaptialistic. Its much closer to fascism really.
Believe it or not, profitability is not really a consideration when it comes to classifying an industry as one kind of i
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I'm sorry, but the roots of the two words we are comparing disagree.
CAPITALism vs SOCIALism. Looks to me as if the focus of resource distribution is the major difference. Both systems seek to define how resources are allocated and to what goal they should be used towards. Capitalism assumes that the actor who makes the most profit from the resources they are given is using them most efficiently, while socialism assumes that a system-wide view of what ends the resources are being applied to should be soug
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I'm not disagreeing that OSS has capitalist traits. I actually believe that if you view productivity as capital OSS is extremely capitalistic. I was simply disputing the insinuation that only capitalist systems can implement competition.
Socialist systems have no built-in component that makes competition (and the benefits of such) incompatible. In fact, I think any properly thought out socialist system would include quite a bit of market competition out of necessity, because competition is a very simple a
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No, socialism would be having the government demand that programmers write software for the greater good or be jailed.
No, that's a caricature of Evil Red Communism.
if it's FOSS, that just means it isn't exclusive. That doesn't make it any less capitalistic or free market.
It precisely makes it less capitalist. "From each according to ability to each according to need"
The problem is the knee-jerk reaction to the word "socialism". Nobody wants to accept that maybe some aspects of socialism aren't all that bad. Similarly not all of capitalism is all that bad ( or all that good either ). The most healthy systems employ elements from both
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Thank you for so ably demonstrating the ignorance, self-delusion, and dogmatism that I described in my last sentence. Now, for your own sake as well as ours, please go spend half a day doing some scholarly reading about the actual concept and theories of socialism. You might start with a contrast of subjective and objective valuation, recognize the ethical problem that one of the two represents, and then hopefully you might begin to comprehend the intent and nature of true socialism, as opposed to the per
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Ooops: meant that for the PARENT of this comment.
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You're not describing true socialism. True socialism would be a voluntary economic system. That's why it doesn't and can't work in its ideal form, because the human race is unable to cooperate to that degree (yet, or ever). It requires an evolution of the species that hasn't yet happened. Communism, as well as some of the socialism-like policies in otherwise capitalist countries, is an unethical attempt to use government to create an ethical economy. Do you see the ethical hypocrisy with that?
(Libertar
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Duh: socialism has nothing to do with government. It describes an economic system.
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Duh: socialism has nothing to do with government. It describes an economic system.
An economic system where the means of production are owned by ... the government!
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No, not owned by the government. You need a better source of information than the indoctrination-with-an-agenda diet you've been fed... and I do mean "fed", because I doubt you've actively sought out any objective information about socialism. The only information you have about it is what validates your desired view of the world, and that was handed to you with that as a goal in mind. That information is wrong. Are you scared of learning something that might challenge your worldview? Grow a pair and go
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No, not owned by the government.
Oh, right. Where could I have gotten the idea that socialism [reference.com] means ownership by the government or a collective [wikipedia.org]?
You need a better source of information than the indoctrination-with-an-agenda diet you've been fed... and I do mean "fed", because I doubt you've actively sought out any objective information about socialism. The only information you have about it is what validates your desired view of the world, and that was handed to you with that as a goal in mind. That in
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You're referring to one single form or subset of socialism, nationalized socialism. It's a subset, not a complete description of socialism. The most fundamental principles of socialism DO NOT REQUIRE that everything be under the direct control of a government. I guess you stopped reading before you got to mention of market socialism and other approaches that don't advocate complete unilateral nationalization?
I'd suggest you read that Wikipedia article and its referenced sources a bit more carefully befor
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I'd suggest you read that Wikipedia article and its referenced sources a bit more carefully before you try to call me a liar.
I haven't called you a liar, I'm just saying that you're wrong.
I guess you stopped reading before you got to mention of market socialism ...
Besides, it's still clearly true that many (if not most) types of socialism requite government involvement, so
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No, it's not. The THEORY of socialism describes an economic system, period, regardless whether some IMPLEMENTATIONS of it employ varying forms of government intervention or not.
theory != implementation
I referred to the core theory, not any specific implementations of it.
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theory != implementation
It doesn't matter if you're talking theory or implementation. Many times socialism is defined as state ownership, and most other definitions at least mention it as a common feature. If you has said "socialism doesn't necessarily require government intervention" you'd be fine because there are forms that don't. But when you say "socialism has nothing to do with government", you're suggesting that there's no connection at all, which is silly.
And even if you were completely cor
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anymore.
This is exactly what the US and Japan and probably most modern industrialised countries did to get themselves started.
Shanzhai, not Shanzai (Score:5, Informative)
Often case the term 'Shanzhai' production implies 'cheap and dirty, but work'. Say, we procure electronic parts from a 'Shanzhai' factory, we expect them to be cheap but not with very high quality.
Remind me again, how did Apple start? (Score:5, Interesting)
Remind me again, how did Apple start?
I think that this sounds more like a new type of consumer-producer than just piracy, and that the "mash-up" is an apt comparison.
These guys may end up revamping a part of the market with their "hardware shareware", and if they do, I say more power to them. Especially since they are doing more than just plain copies, they are producing products that are, arguably, "improved" models.
Quoth the article, "contemporary shanzhai are rebellious, individualistic, underground, and self-empowered innovators" ... which one of those does the marketplace *not* need? (Mark you, I say "need", not "want"; I'm quite sure they want none of it, but will nonetheless have more of it than they like.)
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The likes of an Apple, HP and such to start out making hardware out of a garage like these people do, seem to be diminishing. I don't know if any US garage company can build a custom phone from the circuits on up these days. Designing computers from circuits is probably too expensive of a job now for a garage company. Assuming they do it, the buyer is not going to be consumer, maybe commercial, industrial, government or military uses can justify the expense, but a garage company probably has too low of a
Re:Remind me again, how did Apple start? (Score:4, Insightful)
If they are as good as that, then surely they don't need to rip off Apple's branding to be a success?
The current implementation of Patents is harming innovation by legitimate businesses, that does not mean that companies should not be able to protect any form of new development for a limited period of time. Currently the nations with the loosest attitude to IP are the ones with the least to gain by cracking down on it, do you think that in 10 years time when there are a few Chinese owned firms actually pushing development the of new products forward the Chinese government won't be much keener to ensure IP rules are followed in other countries?
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If they are as good as that, then surely they don't need to rip off Apple's branding to be a success?
No, but they might the "free" marketing provided by piggybacking on top of established brand recognition.
And oh yes, I'm quite sure the governments of the Asian countries that are currently hot with piracy will reverse their positions on IP once the companies in those countries mature enough to "go legit". They want a piece of the cake now, but they will not want to share with others later. (Not to troll, but is this not similar to what the US has been doing since they became sovereign?)
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I can't tell if you were aiming for a Funny rating, but I'll elaborate in case you weren't.
They started out as a number of individuals tinkering in a garage, partaking in the creation of a totally new market that changed the whole perspective of 'computing'. I guess these guys are doing the same for 'gadgets'.
And, well, I won't say they did NOT borrow bits from here and there. But then again, those were the days when neat tricks were shared in the computer club instead of (as nowadays) taken to the patents
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and I do think that that was a good thing overall (if not for the original inventors of the ideas).
Oh, I dunno. Jobs and Wozniak made out all right, so did Hewlett and Packard, and any number of companies founded along similar lines over the years. That was, of course, before the rise of Intellectual Property law, and the parasites who milk it for all its worth.
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Yup, just like A
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Except for the toxic waste bit, that does sound like working for Steve Jobs.
If he goes on chemo, then it will be exactly like working for Steve Jobs.
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Heck, not "basement". I meant to type "base"! Now cue the jokes of "your mom's basement" ...
Yes ... as in, "all your basement belong to us."
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Shanzhai usually means a mountain strong hold of bandits. I suppose the potentially illegal part here is with respect to IP laws? Then again, the Chinese never quite respected those in the first place.
I was reading somewhere that there was even an SZ version of the Chinese New Year TV show---the bigger show in China---this year because people are sick and tired of the official TV channel
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MBA shortsightedness (Score:5, Insightful)
For temporary profit (that few have participated in) we have outsourced ourselves into irrelevance. As the purchasing power of the increasingly service-based economy diminishes, so do the profits. It is a shortsighted policy - something that MBAs excel at.
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It is a shortsighted policy - something that MBAs excel at.
Worse, I know some who are proud of what they've done.
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...whom will the Chinese exploit or outsource their own jobs to?
How about the US?
Re:MBA shortsightedness (Score:5, Interesting)
You joke about this but it does happen. I've worked on projects where there are people working all over the place. E.g. Euro/US company designs something and manufactures it in China and the software is done by an Indiam company.
So far, so conventional. But the Chinese are often just assembling parts that come from the US (e.g. processors from Intel, components from Europe, displays from Korea and batteries from Japan) and immediately exporting them. And the Indian company might subcontract work back to Europe or to the US. It's simplistic to say that work has moved from Europe/the US to China/India, it's more accurate to say that China and India have joined in networks that were global before.
And it's also simplistic to say that jobs are always moved from high wage countries to low wage ones. I've seen projects move from the US to Northern Europe for instance, or from Eastern Europe to Western Europe.
The other thing is that labour costs aren't everything. If you have an efficient company making components they are a tiny fraction of your gross sales. Finally there's a pecking order in terms of where the money ends up - and low wage low skill places are not very high in it. A factory in China makes a tiny percentage of the sticker price on a laptop - most of it stays in the country it was bought or was used to buy parts for import. Most of those Indian consultancy companies are going to end up going bust because they bill several clients for one hour of developer time and thus have a low perceived productivity. The few good ones that survive are quickly going to start charging the same rates that US or European companies charge.
Back when Indian and China opened up I thought it would gut engineering in rich countries. That hasn't happened and my few trips to both places tells me it won't happen. Probably consultancy rates would have been 10% higher if they weren't there, if that.
Re:MBA shortsightedness (Score:5, Funny)
Well, judging from present lack of demand for my sexual services, I don't think I have to worry about being a prostitute. Being a mercenary or prostitute/mercenary-owning banker both sound pretty badass though, sign me up!
Smart; Very smart (Score:3, Insightful)
The west will lose unless we get smart and change. China is in this for the long haul. They keep their yuan pegged to the dollar, keep up their trade barriers, and then gripe when our economy is crashing. In the meantime, they are building 2-4 NEW NUKE subs EACH YEAR. It borrow HEAVILY from western ideas.
Re:Smart; Very smart (Score:5, Interesting)
Our IP is getting in our way. That is why our forefathers created SHORT TERM IP rights. Now, it is just a money maker for a bit longer, but is KILLING the west.
Not to mention the 150 year-after-Disneys-death copyright. That really helps preserve the wealth of the rich, but at the cost of a stagnating society.
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Please explain that one to me. How do long copyrights cause stagnation in society? If anything I would expect them to encourage the creation of new works, because the copyrighted work in question will always cost money, so there is always room to compete with it. But if the copyright expires, the work becomes free, and thus unprofitable to compete with. So I would expect more people to be involved in creating new works if there is a market for creating competitors to already-copyrighted works. If there
SMALL-amount manufacturing exists (Score:5, Informative)
There are already a number of small-amount manufacturers, as you call them. Some are prototyping shops, some will build any number of items for you.
http://www.emachineshop.com/ [emachineshop.com]
http://www.tapplastics.com/ [tapplastics.com]
http://www.pad2pad.com/ [pad2pad.com]
http://www.olimex.com/ [olimex.com]
http://www.eurocircuits.com/ [eurocircuits.com]
(no affiliation to any of them)
But you have to supply a sellable idea that's not been done yet, and bear the cost of iterating the bugs out of the design.
Also, and more to the point, the burden of IP is on your shoulders; at least, they're just punching out parts on your behalf and AFAIK that's not been contested in court as of yet.
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IMHO, the fact that patent licenses aren't automatically recursive is absolutely perverse. Under current law, if you buy something made with a patented part, modify it, and sell it, you can be sued for infringement even though the part in question was fully licensed at the time of purchase. That's perverse. The mere fact that most people are shocked (if they even believe you) when you tell them shows that our elected officials have become seriously disconnected from society's consensus about IP law.
If I wan
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Fat chance your sane approach will be passed into law.
USA is under a slow, ever-increasing vise squeeze.
Brought on by millions of laws, millions of lawsuits which can bankrupt an entire family, and police high-handedness which result in mix-tape makers being sentenced to 20 yrs in prison.
Innovation thrives where compeition is open and need to survive is unencumbered by protectionists.
Apple invented the iPhone and settled a number of lawsuits and still defending some.
Same with iPod.
Same with PC by HP (sued b
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Several thoughts;
IP rights have their uses. I happen to know that China has cloned processors and that are unlicensed. Inside China anything you buy will use one of those. For the export market Chinese companies have to import legal components from somone who has a license. So if you work for US processor manufacturer for example, IP law is protecting your job. I suspect that if you have an engineering job in a rich country, IP licensing is one of the things that pays your salary.
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For the export market Chinese companies have to import legal components from somone who has a license. So if you work for US processor manufacturer for example, IP law is protecting your job. I suspect that if you have an engineering job in a rich country, IP licensing is one of the things that pays your salary.
GP was complaining about long term IP rights. So in effect you're saying that we're protecting the Pentium 2 processor from being copied (released 1997). I think it's had enough time with protection and should be allowed to be copied
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So in other words, they did not 'clone' the processor, but merely reimplemented MIPS instructions set. If the instruction set is patented, the patent should be in the bin where all other s/w patents belong, that is of course a garbage bin.
GSM and other similar licenses are a total rip-off.
SShan zhai bandit phones and popular youth culture (Score:4, Informative)
For those intereseted there is small write up with a few pics on the cultural aspects of Shan zhai on:
http://chinayouthology.com/blog/?p=369 [chinayouthology.com]
Talking to friends in China last week "Shan zhai" anything is a hot word in china now, being applied to mobile phone, fashion, whatever.
While I was there I offered over half a dozen iphone look alikes which can be bought from around 1000 yuan (~£110)
This means one thing (Score:2)
Capitalistic open source super cool (Score:2, Insightful)
This is amazing, great stuff. And this is emergin in capitalistic (sic!) China, as a natural way of doing business. By natural I mean not bound by copyright/patent laws, free flow of ideas - things we all love in open source *can* be moved to other markets as well and it is great example.
Wondering if we shouldn't run some campaign that'd allow this kind of things happen in EU?
Re:Capitalistic open source super cool (Score:5, Insightful)
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Maybe you should read the article before you rant.
"Interestingly, the shanzhai employ a concept called the âoeopen BOMâ â" they share their bill of materials and other design materials with each other, and they share any improvements made; these rules are policed by community word-of-mouth, to the extent that if someone is found cheating they are ostracized by the shanzhai ecosystem."
It's actually kinda like the GPL. The Shanzhai guys aren't going to share their stuff with you, because you'r
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Cf. Silicon Valley (Score:5, Insightful)
The big thing going for the Shan Zhai is that their component makers are just around the corner. Need a touch screen for you iPhone knock off? Duck across town and talk to "Joe" and buy a few crate fulls off him. No long distance language barriers, freighting, delay, currency exchange or other things that an kill momentum in a project. It's not that different to Silicon Valley, in that it is effectively a technology shopping mall for engineers.
Compare that to Australia, where I live. Manufacturing base is close to zlich. Components have to be procured from overseas and local distributors are just not interested. Most time and effort goes into procurement rather than design. Better be sure of your design too, as deciding to make a design change involves a while new procurement cycle. No ducking down to "the local" to get a replacement. As an engineer, I'm envious.
Brute-forcing the market = new innovation (Score:2, Interesting)
The way these companies are trying to find winning combinations in the market is very simple, they iterate through 2,3,4-dimensional space of gadget combinations.
Righ now it seems they are at stage 3, combining 3 things together for instance usb-mouse/heater/skype handset.
It is just their way of "innovation", they have almost infinite resources - money, people, factories so they try different combinations.
Kind of like brute-forcing crypto key instead of finding weakness in algorithm.
Grrr. (Score:5, Insightful)
This was happening years ago, back in 2005 in my last trip for example.
What is really behind this is a business that is not shackled by the same leg irons that cripple development in the west - for example accountability, itellectual property, patenting, copyright, health and safety, quality management and so on.
The gist of the problem is that you can either have development that is ethical, safe, manageable, legal, and controlled.... or you can development that is rapid, fluid and prone to appropiate and adapt any idea that fits the bill.
It is impossible to have both.
In China you see an emphasis on the latter and in the west you have the former, this is a culture clash of epic proportions. At the end of the day we are all to blame, we all like the idea of promoting western businesses and industry - but we all have a greater desire for cheap DVD players and iPhone clones.
Yes I can appreciate the rapid, innovative engineering this trend shows in China - but behind it is a clash of cultures and ethical and moral decisions that have decimated industy and development in the western world.
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Yes I can appreciate the rapid, innovative engineering this trend shows in China - but behind it is a clash of cultures and ethical and moral decisions that have decimated industy and development in the western world.
It's more of a trade-off (something any engineer worth his salt understands very clearly.) The truth is, we're both heading in the same direction, it's just that we're farther along the curve than China. You think the manufacturing sector in the U.S. was any different than China's before the advent of worker protection and environmental law? Believe me, it was a chamber of horrors similar to what China's workers are suffering in now.
The problem is, neither our current approach nor China's can be maintain
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The gist of the problem is that you can either have development that is ethical, safe, manageable, legal, and controlled.... or you can development that is rapid, fluid and prone to appropiate and adapt any idea that fits the bill.
Or you can have development that's rapid and fluid and can appropriate and adapt useful ideas, and is also safe and ethical. "Manageable" and "controlled" sound like they're only useful if you're large enough to have "outsider" shareholders, and "Legal" just requires fixing (removing?) the patent system.
It is impossible to have both.
Drop "controlled" and probably "manageable", and I think you get something like Sillicon Valley is/was.
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While you have identified the differences, it is really not China vs. Western world.
The western world did not care about ethical, safe, manageable, legal, and controlled from the beginning. These have been driven by growing income, market consolidation (to the large companies,) as well as efforts of your beloved politicians and lawyers.
Similarly, all third world countries are practicing "rapid, fluid and prone to appropriate and adapt any idea that fits the bill."
The same trend is undertaking in China bu
I think Bunnie is confused to what a "mash-up" is (Score:3, Informative)
"I heard a local comment about how great it was that the shanzhai could not only make an iPhone clone, they could improve it by giving the clone a user-replaceable battery[...]I can't help but wonder out loud if mashup in hardware is all that bad."
Adding a user-replaceable battery does not make it a mashup. The combination cell-phone/racecar, sure. But that? That's just a knock-off.
Translation... (Score:2)
Once a term used to suggest something cheap or inferior, shanzhai now suggests to many a certain Chinese cleverness and ingenuity. Shanzhai culture "is from the grass roots and for the grass roots," says Han Haoyue, a media critic in Beijing, who sees it as a means of self-expression.
Sounds to me like "hack" or "hacker".
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bunnie says:
I did look into the prices of equipment in china and they are about 20-50% that of used equipment bought in the US.
The problem is that shipping an SMT machine in one piece to the US would not be cheap; compound onto that the tariff Iâ(TM)d have to pay, the zoning issues of putting an SMT line in your house, and the 20-30x cost of labor to maintain and run the machines, and itâ(TM)s not looking as attractive.
The other important thing about that setup is the retail store on the bottom floor. Not only can that guy make stuff, he can move it â" I imagine the equivalent would be getting a retail store in downtown San Francisco with this equipment in there. The rent would be astronomical, and the landlord probably wouldnâ(TM)t allow (or be zoned for) mixed living, manufacturing, and selling.
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Geeks, there's a lot of love to be had sifting through the USB handwarmers for the gems - DX's LED torches are remarkably similar to Surefire's, for example, and they do free world wide shipping. Taking a punt on a cheap box of gadgets to arrive in the post is one of my favourite hobbies...
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Whoah, I knew of the first three, but the last one is awesome!
In all seriousness, DE is great, I order shitloads off them.
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It's a new phenomenon damnit!
I must say, you have a singular perspective in this issue.