Vires Acquirit Eundo

If I am using IE8, the white dots (a.k.a. dead dots) will appear. If I use other browsers dots will not appear. I guess the core of IE is not perfect. Strange thing, I used Windows Live Writer to upload all the photos. They were looking fine there.

In IE8

In Google Chrome and other browsers: no problem

I am glad that many of my previous suggestions have been accepted. See SPAMMERS! - Talking about Happy 4th birthday, Windows Live Spaces! and Talk about: Technical preview of Windows Live Writer now available. Thank you. My further thoughts may involve editing uploaded pictures after they are uploaded. Good? :)

Article from Society Panic After Suntech Power Fired Too Many Staffs

The local society is in shock after Suntech dramatically sacked at least 2,000 employees and may wish to sack a further 1,000 to 2,000 employees in January, according to the sources from its production line 8.

Breaking news recently has included an explosion of bending machine from its panel factory on 28 November 2008 that has seriously injured 7 employees and wounded another 30. The accident was covered quickly by the company and was not reported on local newspaper at all.

Suntech Power is one of the biggest PV industry leaders in East Asia. However in the financial crisis like 2008 the company seems that it cannot pass the test, unlike many other smaller Chinese solar companies. Its Nasdaq stock has been falling since 2008 and it has declined 89%.

Criticism points out that lacking of efficient management, expanding too quick, bad-trained employees are three factors that stumble Suntech.

Despite of a large amount of workers from other remote provinces being fired, many local engineers and office workers were also kicked out. Unlike the unlettered workers, the panicky local community is fighting back. Recently an unemployed mother of one wrote a letter on the local online forum which was then quickly broad casted and forwarded to many other white-collar fellows in East China.

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Published by Maomaojuan on 26/11/2008:

I quited my previous job last month and went to Suntech-Power in November. I was wishing Suntech-Power could offer me a better treatment as the HR has promised me previously. Suddenly, yesterday (25/11/2008) Suntech HR informed me to go back home till January and wait for further announcement. This is absolutely a joke. Sadly I was still in the trail contract. I am a mother of a daughter and I do have a family to support. Does the Suntech-Power chief CEO Dr. Shi wish me to stay in his office to protest against the company?

I hear that the heads of Suntech had a joint meeting in October and decided to execute 2,000 staffs in December. All those out-contracted staffs will not be renewed and all those in trial will not get the opportunities to become formal staffs.

My question is, since in October Suntech is relieving staffs, why did the company still hire so many new staffs? The response of the company is so slow.

Like me, people who were tempted to quit the previous jobs and joined Suntech recently were absolutely idiots. The company methodology is absolutely absurd! Are the 30 HR staffs of Suntech cheating people all the time?

A Letter to Dear Dr. Zhenrong Shi:

The first day of my company culture lecture, I was told that you had a dream, which is "The company was growing as fast as 100%, and our company motto is Worshipping Goodness and Good Virtues; Persuading Good Conduct." I have to ask you, do you have good virtues? Are you behaving well?
The mission of Suntech was "Creating green future, benefiting human society" I have to ask you, you hire people then fire them after two weeks; you seriously harm the society stability. How dare you say you benefit people?

I've been working in other foreign company for years. I've found that Suntech's HR was HUGE, LOW-EFFICIENCY, HIRING people EVERYDAY then FIRING them thereafter.

1. The staffs are not well educated, many of whom are relatives of city councilor or so. I've heard that one staff was only 18, because he was a relative of somebody CEO.
2. The inner management was absolutely in chaos. There is no SOP.
3. The inner documents are not well flowed.
4. There is no system controlled production. SAP was just a toy. The production lines can do whatever they like to do.
5. There is no refining production. Never! For six years only last week did staffs see training from Japanese. However it was too late!

There are also many problems, I do not wish to mention. I am just sad to say, why Suntech-Power is so "low-power" (no virtue)?

My 3 years daughter asked me today, "Mum why don't you go work today? We cannot buy anything without working." I was heart-broken!

Published on xici.net forum

Nobody is aware of when and how the scandal will come to an end.

Report by Solar Expert.

This is just as cool as bananas! Look forward to seeing the new updates. Although I still prefer some solid changes to be made, I reckon changing too many in one shot is not realistic.

Two ideas that just come across my brain:

1. Can we save my current customised theme as C1, save my next customised theme as C2, so next time when I want to change, all I need is just click my theme?
2. Can we have our theme(s) randomly selected, or even customised themes rotating?
   

Nevertheless, I will wait to see the change's coming.

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Coming soon: cleaner, better looking spaces

As promised last week, we’re going to talk in more detail about the exciting changes coming to Windows Live, and we figured we should start with the product you’re using right now, Windows Live Spaces.

More freedom to do what you want

Let’s start off with the most visible change: we’re removing the horizontal ad from your space!

Your space is all about your content, the way you want to show it, so we’re reducing the amount of clutter and giving you more freedom by:

• Removing the horizontal ad from the top of your space
• Making all of the modules optional (even the Title and Tagline module, which previously couldn’t be removed)
• Using a simpler header that has less text than other pages in Windows Live
• Letting you change themes, fonts, colors, and background images on your space using the customize menu
• Letting you rename or not show the title of each module on your space by using the settings menu for each module in customize mode
• Letting you select exactly which photo albums to show in your photos module – you can even customize what parts of the photos interface to display

(These last three are features that we’ve already implemented and are available today in Spaces)

Better looking pages

We’re also making some additional small changes to make your space look even better. One of the things we’ve done is to improve the typography on your space by using a larger, more readable default font, Segoe UI. It’s a subtle change, but it really helps make your content easier to read. Here’s a side-by-side comparison of our post from last week with the current font and with the new default font:

(Current version on left, new version on right)

We’re also doing a better job of differentiating titles from normal text by using different size text instead of relying on bold versus plain text. Of course, if you prefer the old font you can customize your space to use the old font (when we release the new update, we won’t override any font selections you’ve already made).

There’ll also be a couple of theme changes, mainly to the header and background images, that make things look a bit simpler, cleaner, and more attractive. The most obvious of these is that we’re getting rid of the 3D “bevel” in the header and moving to solid colors or unobstructed background images. You can see this in the comparison screenshot below:

(Current version on top, new version on bottom)

Don’t worry, these theme changes won’t break your layout or change the way your modules look – they’ll only affect the header and background images.

Improved blogging experience (especially with photos)

Blogging with photos will get even better with the next update. About a year ago we fixed the Add Photos button in blogs on Internet Explorer so your photos were inserted inline in your blog entry, which let you move them around, place them exactly where you wanted, and generally make your blog entries more attractive and appealing. With this release all browsers will be able to insert images inline, and you won’t need to install our upload tool in order to insert images. If you do install the tool, however, you’ll get a rich, drag and drop upload experience that makes inserting images from your computer, or from a photo album you already have on Windows Live, a snap.

We also built a great new photo preview that you’ll see when you click on a photo in a blog entry. Instead of opening up a new window with a larger version of the image, the current page will show a beautiful preview of the original size image (or as much as can fit on your screen):

In the coming days we’ll continue to blog about all of the cool stuff in the next release. We hope you’re as excited about it as we are. As always, please let us know what you think in the comments.

- The Windows Live team

Source from Suntech Power Dramatic Decline Of Output

According to reliable sources, Suntech Power China has cut at least half jobs and is preparing for further cutting.
Unconfirmed sources say that one of the China's biggest solar companies, Suntech Power Co, based in Wuxi China has seen a decline recently because of financial crisis.

One worker worked in the old production line told reporters that he was told to maintain only one day at work in one week. That is to say he's only paid one day salary per week, if not worse.

Another street source told reporters that Suntech Power had already closed or temporarily closed at least 24 production lines which represent 50% of its production. Unreported and unconfirmed data show that 2,000 workers have lost their jobs.

Other big solar companies have all suffered recently, however some medium companies that have not come into market are not hit very hard. According to some sources from China Municipal Bureau of Foreign Trade & Economic, some medium solar companies in China have put more resources in R&D and they are able to pass the crisis safely because they didn't put a lot of sources into production in the last three months and they did not leave too many stocks to sell. The good management was working in these companies.

Although Suntech Power is not likely to be dead, the current situation will certainly do harm to its reputation.

I guess it need a Chinese to explain everything.

Yes it is true that 8 is a lucky number, however 8 is lucky because Cantonese speak 8 like "Fa", the same sound as another character which means "becoming rich", and only after 1990s did the number become popular in North China, because Canton province (include Hong Kong area) were the first to open up to westerners and Cantonese became rich first. So in Cantonese G8 is OK...

In the Mandarin which were mostly spoken in North China and enforced by the government as an official language the number 8 pronounces as "Ba". Combines G and 8 it will sound like "Gee - Ba" which sounds exactly like male's sexual organ, or "dxxk".

Imagine the "dxxk" is said again and again in a Canon's shop everyday... "I want to buy a dxxk" "I just bought a dxxk", that will absolutely kick off a lot of Asian female buyers

Somebody upstairs asked about number "4". Yes in Feng Shui "4" is considered unlucky. However combines 4 with English letters such as D-Lux 4 and G4 the number 4 means nothing. Besides the number 4 does not frighten out new generations because the death is too far away from them.

---

Funny enough, FYI, Nikon has a series of accessories codes which often makes Chinese lol:

Nikon's out flash lamp code is SB, e.g. SB800. SB in North China is an abbreviation of "Sha-Bi" which means "stupid woman's private part"... Bad enough..

Nikon's handle's code is MB, which is an abbrev. of "Ma-Bi" which means "your mum's private part", even worse... ;-(

the remote control of Nikon is coded as ML, which is a new word to new generation Chinese but is an abbrev. of "make love"

Nikon's anti-Dispersion is called ED-xyz, which, because of one Chinese film, the ED in medical is widely known as an abbrev. of "erection disabled"......

Localization IS IMPORTANT...

It has been four years since I started to blog here. Microsoft has been good but there is one issue I am always agnoying about. That is the *SPAMMING*. Every time I receive hundreds of junk comments, I will go furious. Because I have to go to every blog entry from homepage, click "edit", then  wait for the contents to display in full, then I could click the small "x" before each junk. That is time consuming, especially when some idiots flood hundreds into my blog!

There should be three ways to prevent spamming:

1. Design a simple CMS, that allows Space users to delete junks more quickly than the spammers. I would prefer put this CMS on the front page which is http://xjtuchine.home.services.spaces.live.com/default.aspx;
2. Design an intellegent system that automatically identify the spammers who publish too many similar comments across the Space phere. It should be very very easy. Even our university's IT junior students had done that!
3. Design a simple user voting system, that users can rate, complain or vote who's spamming. The ones who got the most complains will be reviewed by system admin.  

I am hoping SpaceCraft team could see this blog and smooth the user experience for us faithful users.

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Happy 4th birthday, Windows Live Spaces!

Just four short years ago today we shipped the first beta version of Spaces.

The Spaces team would like to thank you, all of our wonderful users, for an awesome four years. We’re looking forward to many, many more.

Beijing - 29/8/2008

From my Chinese friend, rumour says that LOC (London Olympic Committee) Officials have announced that because of the significance and outstanding of 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening and Closing, London is considering giving up the next Olympic Opening, to save next Olympic's tight budget. After urgent internal meeting, IOC (International Olympic Committee) president announces that, the next Opening will still be in Beijing! The news immediately knocks down all Beijing local officers, martial police soldiers, volunteers and city councilors. To make it worse there is no paramedical service because all doctors and nurses in Beijing faint as well. Angry Beijing police staffs are preparing to raise a million-people demonstration to protest IOC's silly decision. One policeman bursts into tears in front of Bird's Nest (site of Opening Ceremony) and says, "I've been working extremely hard in the last seven years since the announcement of Beijing's success in 2001, and now I am expected to overwork another four years? That will definitely lead to my tomorrow's suicide..."

Bono, lead singer of the rock band U2, is famous throughout the entertainment industry for being more than just a little self-righteous.

At a recent U2 concert in Glasgow, Scotland, he asked the audience for total quiet.

Then, in the silence, he started to slowly clap his hands, once every few seconds. Holding the audience in total silence, he said into the microphone, 'Every time I clap my hands, a child in Africa dies.'

From the front of the crowd a voice with a broad Scottish accent pierced the quiet...

"Well, f--ckin stop doin it then, ya evil bastard!"

No, not at all

That is a good one. Hope you guys all good and thank you for your efforts.

Additional, I would like to give you some suggestions for Live Space:

1. Can you do an automatic SEO funtion, that can put people's blog head in the <title>section? This can not only help people's blog attract more traffic but also allow you guys display your banner (advertisement) more often!
   
2. Why don't you guys do some changes that automatically translate the blog links to .htm format? You must know .entry is very very unfriendly to seach engines (even to your Live search)
3. User can change the numbers of  articles showing on homepage freely. They are not bounded to 5, 10 or 15 articles...
4. I've surveyed many friends. They all say the "previous or next page" icon (the small triangle ) is very very hard to find! Couldn't you guys use texts instead of using the small triangles? Besides, you 'd put this under each single blog, not on top of each blog article!
5. A premier Live service that premier users can pay to get VIP services and get rid of banners. Say $10 a month? People will pay that!
6. The community page! Don't you think that is important? It is VERY VERY IMPORTANT! I don't know why you do not generate an attracting community page for each country/market! The current ones are either not attractive or just not up to date / less information / not enough user articles recommended. But through the community page users can easily find popular blogs and interactive with them!
7. Junk link prevention. Very easy. Human power is huge. Use a calculation that can let users vote!
8. Open more HTML functions. Restrictions can only drive your potential users away!
   

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Technical preview of Windows Live Writer now available

This morning, the Windows Live Writer team released a new version of Writer for download from Writer Zone, their team blog. The new version is a technical preview only available in English (United States), and the primary focus of the release is to get feedback on the improvements made to the plug-in SDK.

In addition, there are some additional product features as well, including the ability to publish videos from your computer to Soapbox and Spaces as well as new photo editing capabilities.

Go check out the Writer team space where you can read more about the SDK changes and the new features, and download the technical preview.

And as always, keep the feedback coming.

- Chris
Product Manager, Windows Live

Technorati Tags: Windows Live Writer,Windows Live

The best picture I've ever seen for Songzanlin Monastery.

Photo by George Steinmetz @ National Geographic (link)