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mikeamitrano

Member since: Nov 5th, 2009

mikeamitrano's Latest Comments

Blog Activity
Blog# of Comments
TUAW.com1 Comment
Download Squad5 Comments

Recent Comments:

Dear Aunt TUAW: What's my best bet for international data? (TUAW.com)

Mar 12th 2011 3:41AM First of all, don't expect that you can even go on Facebook, Flickr, etc. They're all blocked.

Second, do not buy a roaming package through AT&T, it will definitely be too much money. I just came back from Shanghai, and my Taiwanese SIM card (through China Unicom) offered me around US$5 a day for unlimited internet if you send a text to a certain number. It just gets billed to your phone as a premium text and you have unlimited (or in Chinese, 'all-you-can-eat') data. You can choose 1 day, 3 day, or 1 week, all with different prices, obviously 1 week being the best deal. If the prices look cheap, it's because Mainland phones are VERY cheap. When I was in Beijing for a bit, my data was around US$4 a month for 150MB (on a China Mobile SIM). I actually just spoke about this exact topic with my boss yesterday. He goes to Shenzhen a lot to check out factories, and he uses this service all the time. It's not related to the Taiwanese card, its a service by China Unicom 中國联通 (not China Mobile 中國移動). Force your phone to use China Unicom.

Third, do not buy a SIM card in China for data use (you might want one for phone calls though, in that case, buy China Mobile M-Zone). You aren't there long enough to wait for the 1st of the month to roll around to actually activate the data plan (they do all plan changes on the first of every month), and if you don't have a data plan, then they will charge you RMB6 (about US$.90) for every megabyte. Totally not worth it.

Third, TUAW, what a terrible job. It seems as if you just googled "international personal hotspot + cheap" and then pasted the sales pitch, and made no effort to actually check out the options available IN THAT COUNTRY. Just because he said "personal hotspot" doesn't mean that's the automatic solution. LAZY. You are encouraging this guy to pay ridiculous amounts of money and buy a bunch of crap he doesn't need when he probably will only upload stuff a few times. He isn't running a corporation and needs to be connected at all times, he's a guy going on vacation and wants to upload pictures on Facebook, which, I repeat, he can't even go on in China. I highly suggest you edit this post to include all the information I put in here, and then, Erica, you can Paypal me the money you got for "writing" this.

Sincerely,
Guy who is getting more and more irritated with TUAW and Downloadsquad.

Data from CIA shows massive Internet Explorer gain, and largest Firefox loss ever (Download Squad)

Mar 1st 2011 7:07AM Well, I can explain why the Mainland Chinese use IE. Programs like PPStream, PPLive, and Kugou (streaming TV, movies, and music) actually require you to use Internet Explorer. Also, mainlanders don't know how to write proper code, so their websites only look correct in IE6. Their software is so dependent on Windows Explorer runtimes that they won't even open at all (even if incorrectly) in Wine or Crossover. They have their own browsers (skinned IE6), and don't give a crap about Firefox or Chrome for that matter.

It's the same crap in Taiwan, too, but at least people are starting to use Chrome. Go on any Asian website and look through the HTML...its all tables and codes...!! It irritates me very much that a region of the world that is so "technologically advanced" can't manage to use code written after 1995.

I couldn't use my mac to print out my tuition bill from a Taiwanese university because it required IE and Windows, yes, it told me mac wasn't supported...in the end on the PC it was a friggin' table-ized html file with incorrect encoding anyway!! (constant messed up encoding is another thing....just use unicode!!!!)

AutoDesk Dragonfly becomes Homestyler, does easy 3D home design for free (Download Squad)

Apr 17th 2010 1:58AM Am I the only person that would still prefer to use The Sims? :-D

Miro updates Internet TV app to version 3, launches Video Converter (Download Squad)

Mar 26th 2010 1:36PM On Mac, I use Vuze to download torrents, and then I drag the file into the "Devices" area. It asks me what I want to convert to (iPhone, iPod, Xbox360, PS3, etc., already preset for file format and bitrate), and if it is and iPhone or iPod, it automatically adds it to the iTunes library under Movies.

As far as title goes...I just downloaded the torrent for all of Jersey Shore and it added them all to iTunes with the s01e01 type of deal, so that wasn't too bad.

Not sure about Windows though...I would imagine Vuze also has something similar in the Windows version.

China plans home brew champion supercomputer (Download Squad)

Jan 20th 2010 10:05AM So...does that TWN stand for "Taiwan"? Probably... :-D

The biggest ban ever: no more World of Warcraft in China (Download Squad)

Nov 5th 2009 1:44AM Right now I live in Taiwan, and lived in Beijing for a year, so let me clear this up in the shortest way possible:

After Qing Dynasty ended, the Republic of China (future Taiwan) was set up to rule all of Mainland including Taiwan. Then there was a war with Japan. Chiang Kai-Shek (future Taiwan) and Mao Zedong (future China), both leaders of two separate political factions, co-operated with each other to get rid of the Japanese. After the Japanese left, they resumed their civil war. Mao "won" and Chiang Kai-Shek fled to Taiwan, which was recently given back to China after 50 some-odd years rule by the Japanese. Fast-forward.

First off: Taiwan is an island, not a country or official title for anything. People just say Taiwan because the Republic of China is located on Taiwan (also including small islands), and it's more convenient.

Taiwan believes all of Mainland is part of the Republic of China, Mainland China believes Taiwan (Province) is a part of People's Republic of China. They have reached a status-quo now where, I believe, nothing will change for a while. Too much Taiwanese investment in Mainland, and the Taiwanese have not declared independence, technically, so no real reason to attack (also, US defense treaty with Taiwan). However, they always have missiles aimed at Taiwan from Fujian Province, and randomly conduct "missile testing".

Mainland believes Taiwan is part of China because they lost the civil war.
Taiwan believes they are not China because they have a separate economy, passport, immigration system, and choose to use the traditional set of Chinese characters, as opposed to the newer, simplified character set that the Mainland government created to increase literacy.

Taiwan's official name is 中華民國, or "Chinese people's nation", referencing the ethnic group as opposed to the country of China, where-as China's official short name is 中國, or "Nation of China", actually referencing the country, as China has many many ethnic groups that are not ethnically Chinese, including Korean, Turkish Muslim groups, etc.

Also, interestingly, about 90% of the Taiwanese population came from China pretty recently, so, they are still ethnically Chinese people, speak Mandarin (or local dialects from southern China), and follow Chinese customs. The first language here is Mandarin, also, in my experience, most Han Chinese are very racist towards the aboriginal groups in Taiwan.

Most countries in the world do not recognize Taiwan as being a separate country, however, can get away with not recognizing it as part of China, either. We can thank Nixon for that. He changed the US's official recognition of "China" from Taiwanese China to Mainland China back in the 70's, and the rest of the world followed suit. The US still, however, has a protection treaty with Taiwan in case China ever attacks.

My younger Chinese friends view Taiwan as part of China, but more like Hong Kong rather than a separate country; it's still Chinese, but it's not really the same as China. The major problem here is that the Chinese cannot separate ethnicity from nationality, which has been their problem all throughout history.

The history here is really too complicated..., so really, there is no answer as to whether or not Republic of China (Taiwan) is a "country" or not, they haven't even decided yet.