User Comments - bodawei
bodawei
Posted on: Annoying Popups
June 20, 2012 at 12:36 PMThe expression 中毒 is interesting because the usual meaning of 毒 is either poison or drugs. It can also be used as a verb 'to poison', and then 中毒 means to be pooisoned. I guess that the connection is that giving a computer a virus is rather like the act of poisoning.
Neither Pleco nor my electronic dictionary have this meaning of giving a computer a virus - nor does mdbg it seems. (Actually mdbg gives a translation of HIV.)
Is using 中毒 this way new, or a colloquial use?
Posted on: Annoying Popups
June 20, 2012 at 9:25 AMI should have listened to the 'don't click' advice. It seems that whether you click Yes or No you are a "winner" either way. Now I have a sexy Norwegian voice telling me that I have won an iPhone. I'm going to have to re-boot my laptop. :(
Posted on: Annoying Popups
June 20, 2012 at 9:22 AMThis problem is not exclusive to China.
I am in Norway and went to the New York Times website a moment ago and got a very annoying pop-up tht jumps around continually, and says:
Gratulerer! Du er dagens iPhone 4S vinner!!
Klikk pa “Ja” – knappen nedenfor for a vinn for tiden gar ut.
Ja .. Nei
I don't speak Norwegian but I am going to go with Nei.
Posted on: Annoying Popups
June 20, 2012 at 9:10 AM... or just "okay". A meaning that is pretty high-frequency.
Posted on: Annoying Popups
June 20, 2012 at 8:47 AMI haven’t really thought about web portals for ten years or so … I thought that the portal had died, but occasionally the expression pops-up! It has bad connotations for me – AOL being the worst I ever encounted. Aaaaaaah! Yahoo survives but it is also a site that I avoid if possible.
But I guess most of my destinations are by definition web portals – for search (Google), media sites (eg. SMH and ABC), Wikipedia.
All the social media sites qualify as web portals too, right?
So sites that are NOT portals are those providing their own content or product. Banks, other corporate entities, Government departments.
By this definition ChinesePod is not a web portal. It does not aggregate information from other sources so I guess it does not qualify.
What do you call a site that is not a web portal?
Anyway, I was wondering why we have the message in the Dialogue about pop-ups being less likely on web portals – why is this so? Web portals I go to such as media sites are particularly prone to pop-ups. Own content web-sites seem less prone to pop-ups to me. Am I missing something?
Posted on: The Tea Scam
June 19, 2012 at 10:20 PMBaba
I always write knowing that you are watching like a hawk, and yet I still get careless ... :)
But ...
'30 million is more than 2% of 1300 million'
I said built-up areas; the built-up areas of these cities is less than 30 million. I am not sure of exact figures but I am guessing maybe 12 million and say 8 million respectively.
'just plucked it out of the air as a risk reduction....just the number of daft people who would fall for such a scam when there is no language barrier to assist the scammers.'
Exactly - I think I was defining 'most' as around 90%, in each of my steps - my message is that a lot of stories I hear could be explained as communication break-downs.
' I'll be on the lookout for a Chinese dwarf, and will trust all others implicitly'
That is very good Baba ... why didn't I think of that?
Your task is made even easier because dwarfs in China tend to congregate. Just wear your precious belongings on your tummy, and not on your back (a device used by many of the Chinese themselves), and you'll be sweet.
Posted on: The Tea Scam
June 19, 2012 at 10:05 PMGidday RJ - nice to hear from you.
In Australia ... it is by some calculations one big scam. How else can I explain near to the highest cost of living in the world? (Don't worry RJ, if you make it to Oz and I am in the country you can stay at my place ... if I have paid the electricity). And if I am not there, the climate is so good you can sleep outside. Which is, I guess, why it is near to the highest cost of living in the world. The best scam I have heard of (since someone sold a Yank the Sydney Harbour Bridge) is a Chinese tour company that charges Chinese tourists to walk on Bondi Beach.
Yes - I agree, you have to try hard to be scammed in China ... or drink a lot of baijiu. And even if you are, you were not bitten for much.
Posted on: The Tea Scam
June 16, 2012 at 2:03 PMScamming of foreigners – it is an exaggerated problem in China. The way I see it:
Most of them occur in built-up Beijing and Shanghai, say broadly in amongst 30 million people out of 1300 million people – 95% of scams are in cities populated by less than 2% of the Chinese population. Stay away from Beijing and Shanghai.
If you can’t stay away, most ‘scams’ in Beijing and Shanghai are confusions caused by lack of Chinese language skills – learn the language and you are left in a theoretical danger zone shared with just 1.5 million people.
Most of those scams are visited on those loitering in tourist spots or railways stations/airports – stay away from these and you are in a danger zone shared with 75,000 people.
Most of them are not scams – they are just high prices for products or services – recognise that and you are at risk amongst 3,750 people.
Most of those encounters could be avoided by listening to ChinesePod –if you don’t do your ChinesePod lessons you are at risk from 187 Chinese people.
On any given day most of these scammers will be at lunch or most will be in another part of the city – by my calculation you are in danger from just 0.46 of a Chinese person on any given day in China, amongst the hundreds or even thousands you may encounter.
If any of the other Chinese people are around when you meet this 0.46 of a person you are pretty safe.
In a country of 1.35 billion people you have got to be unlucky to be scammed. (Or you don’t take the above advice.)
But in any case, scamming has a certain elegance and skill about it – would you rather be mugged in America, pick-pocketed in Western Europe, kidnapped in the Middle East, lost in South Asia, attacked by pirates in Africa, driven into a ravine in South America, or scammed in China? (I would say something about Australia, but no-one can afford to visit us any more.)
Posted on: Using a VPN
June 13, 2012 at 3:18 PMHee hee, stop it, ... hee hee ...
Living here has some elements of the Middle Ages about it, I suppose.
Reminds me - I saw one film during my recent trip over the great firewall, The Dictator, and I liked the line in the film when the eponymous dictator says something like "... totalitarianism, and I mean that not in a good way" ... well, I was laughing out loud in the cinema.
So ... I'm trying to get my head around the idea of Facebook relieving someone of ignorance. Seriously, kimiik, any searchers of the truth who are looking in the social networking sites can just get a vpn, as vigorously promoted by ChinesePod.
My problem is that sometimes I believe my own posts; I've gotta work on that. :)
baba
You stirring the pot again?
Posted on: 高考让我们缺失了什么？
June 20, 2012 at 12:46 PMSome go after high school as you say (often into one or two years of a foundation program), but from my experience the most common paths are (1) about two years of high school in the foreign country of choice, and (2) entry after two undergraduate years of preparation in China, In the latter case the gaokao is still a requirement. But I would be interested to know if anyone has data on the numbers taking each of the number of possible pathways.