Satellite Dishes Still Forbidden in China

To be honest, I am frustrated that I cannot install a satellite dish to receive foreign programs like CNN, NBC in my home. It is explicit illegal to use it at home.

The State Council issued a decree in 1993 saying only hotels, media outlets, and apartment buildings housing foreigners are allowed to use satellite dishes. It seems the ban is out of date since any one can access CNN.com or MSNBC.com via Internet to get the lastest report, if they are not blocked by the Great Firewall at that time.

“The object of the system is to ensure stable social order and the right direction for cultural and ideological progress; it is also expected to help foster our own radio and TV industry” said Hu Zhanfan, deputy director of State Administration of Radio, Film and Television (SARFT) in a recent interview with China Central Television, according to Shanghai Star.

Many people in my residential garden installed the dishes one or two years ago. From outside the building, I see the small dish pointing to the sky clearly. No one ever tried to say any word about it. I get one or two flyers advertising to install satellite dishes everyday in my mailbox (physical mailbox in my house). They offer the dish at 3000 RMB to 6000 RMB. Price varis according to the satellite you choose.

The regulation itself does not make sense. Just like the ICP filing regulation. My site is still illegal since I haven’t registered it at the communication adminstration. Also, I don’t want to pay the 510 RMB registration fee in addition to my hosting/domain name fee. I dont’ want to hire a people with a “security expert certification”. I don’t want to hire another two decidated persons to monitor the comment system. I also don’t want to shutdown the site for two months and wait for the filing to be approved. Even if I get registered, my site still breaks the regulation since this site contains links to site that is not registered. Refer to My Site Remains Illegal in Chian for details.

The Satellite Dish ban is facing the same situation. The rule itself is not realistic so it is not enforced. Then the rule becomes a rule that can be broken….

MSN Messenger Virus Jitux.A

Warninig! Virus Alert!

According to MSN Messenger newsgroup (microsoft.public.msn.messenger), a new virus is found.

2003 is ending with another computer virus causing havoc on the net.

Anti-virus company Panda Software has warned net users to watch out for a new virus, a worm called Jitux.A, which is spread via MSN Messenger.

Jitux.A is an aggressive code that contains a link to the web page www.home.no/ / jituxramon.exe. Once open, the file JITUXRAMON.EXE automatically downloads, infecting your computer. The worm file stores itself in the computer’s memory and sends new infected

messages every five minutes to all contacts in your Messenger’s Contact List. Panda Software advises web users to update their anti-virus patch as soon as possible. Users can also download the free online anti-virus PandaActiveScan available at the company website.

More info here:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/virus_info/encyclopedia/overview.aspx?IdVirus=43211&sind=0

Panda software online virus scanner:

http://www.pandasoftware.com/activescan/com/activescan_principal.htm

Also, don’t accept invitation from dar0nb0y187@hotmail.com.

Thanks for Linda‘s reminder.

My City, My Bus Stop Project

I started the My City, My Bus Stop project last weekend. It is inspired by the Degree Confluence Project – a project aiming to visit and take picture of each of the latitude and longitude integer degree intersections in the world. I am thinking of a project to visit all the bus stops in Shanghai, take a picture and write simple description about it. The temporiy home page is hosted here.

You may have noticed that I put a small icon screen-i.am.here-logo.png on my home page. It links to the nearest bus stop of where I live.

I believe it is a great idea if many people (especially bloggers) join in to take pictures of the bus stop and add themselves to the database. They will form local communities around each bus stop…

The system is currently hosted on Wiki engine. It is a good way for online collaboration. Any one, yes, anyone who can see the page, can edit the page and add their own comment on the page. That is the power of Wiki.

Salary in Shanghai

Before talking about salary, check the Living Cost in Shanghai (and Part II).

Average salary is very hard to tell, since it varies greatly based on lots of factors.

The Enterprise Type You Work For

Nation Owned Enterprises pays very low, something around 1000 – 2000 RMB. For people looking for salary information on Internet, you don’t need to take it into consideration since you don’t like them (for the low salary) and they don’t like people like you (since they don’t has the flexibility to hire you). :-D Of cause, they are changing these days.

Most higher salary jobs exist in foreign owned company and private held companies. According to this report, the average annual salary for white-collar workers in Shanghai is 38,447 RMB (US$ 4,632).

For Fortune 500 companies, like Intel, Microsoft, HP, IBM, people are paid higher. Should be 100K to 200K RMB / year for employees.

Executives are paid very high. I heard a GM position of an IT company is 2 million RMB per year.

A lot of foreigner get U.S. or Europe local pay and dispatched to Shanghai to work. For them, Shanghai will be paradise considering the exchange rate. Foods and drinks are labeled almost the same number (or 50%) higher than that in U.S. The difference is, in U.S, the unit is USD and in Shanghai, it is RMB. The exchange rate is around 8 RMB = 1 USD.

People coming here from U.S should expect lower income since the living cost is much more lower than in U.S. The low living cost has been nominated as top 10 things expats love about Shanghai.

Tax…

According to the last regulation (Chinese site)

Monthly income:

<500 5% 500-2000 10% 2000-5000 15% 5,000-20,000 20%

20,000-40,000 25%

40,000-60,000 30%

60,000-80,000 35%

80,000-100,000 40%

>100,000 45%

The portion below 1000 RMB in Shanghai do not need to pay tax. (It is 1000 RMB for Beijing, 1600 RMB for Shenzhen and 800 RMB for the rest part of China).

Example

For example, if someone get 100K annual salary (already pretty good), that is 8333 RMB/month. (Some companies pay salaries in 13 months with one month double pay.) After tax (20%), he/she gets 6666 RMB. Update: Run corrected me that the tax is not calculated as 20% of salary directly.

The portion of salary you need to pay tax = 8333 – 1000 = 7333 RMB

The tax you need to pay = 500 * 5% + (2000 – 500) * 10% + (5000 – 2000) * 15% + (7333 – 5000) * 20% = 1091.6 RMB

You get 6242 RMB. (Thanks goes to Run, Ginn and JH to help me correct all the errors. I believe this version is the correct one)

How he/she will spend the money?

  1. Rent. Typically, he/she will need to pay of rent of 1000 – 1200 RMB – a typical room people from this salary rage will choose.
  2. Transportation. 3 RMB for single way Metro –> 6 RMB per day –> 180 RMB per month. Should also consider occasional taxi – additional 50 RMB.
  3. Mobile and Internet. Should be 200 RMB in total if the person is not too talkative.
  4. Utilities. Utilities is nothing compared to other expense. 100 RMB or so.

So he/she should still have some money (around 4000 RMB) for eating out, shopping, and clothes… That is life of a well-paid white collar in Shanghai.

Bring Your Mobile and Internet to Shanghai

Alf sent me a wonderful email containing questions that first time travelers to Shanghai will definitely face. It gave me good idea about what I need to write to help them.

How to Access Internet?

Can I buy an Internet card to connect to the internet from my hotel room using my laptop? What different cards are there? Where can you buy them? What is the policy of the hotels? etc.

There are some kinds of Internet cards on the market that allow you to dial a number to gain Internet access. As a traveler, however, you don’t need to bother buy a card. You can dial up to the Shanghai Telecom directly for Internet access via any phone line.

  • The access number is 16300
  • Username: 16300
  • Password: 16300

It charges 0.05 RMB per minute for the Internet access fee and 0.02 RMB per minute for the phone line fee. The fee will be included in the telephone bill to the telephone owner.

Based on my experience, I can access Internet via 16300 in hotels. But don’t forget to input 9,16300 in the phone number field in your dial up connection. 9 is for external line and the comma is for pause. Adjust it according to your hotel setting.

The hotel may charge you higher than the standard charge from Shanghai Telecom.

Can I Use My Mobile?

The mobile you have in Europe or U.S. may not work in China. China is using GSM 900 Mhz while it is GSM 1800 MHz in Europe and 1900 MHz in U.S. You need a mobile that support 900 Mhz to access the local network. Pre-paid card is available: Mobiles in China – My Personal Perspective and Difference Between Quanqiutong and Shenzhouxing. You can buy these cards at the International Arrival Hall in Pudong Airport.

Transportation

“Which bus should I take to go from Pudong Airport to ….?” Not surprisingly, this is the top question I received. I hope the following articles will be useful:

You may be also interested in alternatives besides bus.

In particular, if you want to go to Pujiang Youth Hostel, one of two Youth Hotstel in Shanghai. You can take Pudong Airport Bus #2 (19 RMB) to People’s Square and take taxi there (10 – 15 RMB).

PmWiki Successfully Installed on Windows 2000

I finally decided to use PmWiki as my Wiki engine, just like choosing MovableType for my blog. Before choosing PmWiki, I also successfully installed UseModWiki and OpenWikie on my server, and did some research on MediaWiki. OpenWiki are not so reliable since I frequently meet 500 Server Internal ErrorUseMod is definitely a good choice since the revision function works greatly immediately after installation, but the documentation part is not as good as PmWiki. I specially like the WikiTrails feature, which is not available from other engines.

Environment

Windows 2000

Internet Information Server

I hosted my site with my ISP. They have configured PHP for me already.

Install PHP on Windows

Although I didn’t do it for this installation, I have successfully installed PHP engine onto my Windows XP.

  • Download PHP binary for Windows IIS at PHP‘s website: http://cn2.php.net/get/php-4.3.4-installer.exe/from/a/mirror
  • After download, directly double click to run the Windows Installer program.
  • Click Next>, Next> and Next>…. accept all the default setting, except the SMTP screen.
  • Click OK to confirm the success of the PHP installation.

Well. PHP is successfully installed. It is easier and smoother than I expected.

Download PmWiki Code

  • Go to http://www.pmichaud.com/pub/pmwiki/ to download the latest version of PmWiki. I downloaded the pmwiki-0.5.26.zip (153k).
  • Extract the files into a folder.
  • Upload the whole folder to the web server. There is even no need to edit the configuration files before it works. I am using http://home.wangjianshuo.com/scripts/pmwiki/ as the destination folder.
  • After upload, just visit the URL of the file pmwiki.php. It is http://home.wangjianshuo.com/scripts/pmwiki/pmwiki.php for my case. It simplely works well. This surprised me a lot

Configure PmWiki

Although it does not take any extra effort to let PmWiki up and running, some important steps are neccessary for PmWiki to work on Windows flatform.

Diff and Patch

By default, everything in PmWiki works on Windows except the page revisions (sample). This problem is not obvious, so you may need the following reproduce steps:

  1. Open any page in your installation.
  2. Make any changes by clicking the Edit Page and save it.
  3. Click Page Revisions at the end of the page. It should show the difference betwee the two versions. However, most user will see blank lines and some Restore links. The Restore link does not work since all the versions are shown as the final version – the history of the editing is not perserved as the sample revision page shows.

Solution

DiffAndPatchForWindows offers some directions to solve the problem. PmWiki relies on external command of diff and patch for version control. Neither of the command are natively available on Windows. The easiest way, as stated in the article, is to download GNUWin32 diff and patch tools.

  1. Download the two Windows setup files. The SourceForge site of GNUWin32 offers too many choices and it is not strait forward for our installation propose. This is the shortcut:
  2. Double-click each of them to run the setup program.
  3. Accept all the default settings during the setup.
  4. You should find the following files under C:\program files\GnuWin32\bin folder, if you used the default setting:

    46,080 cmp.exe

    92,160 diff.exe

    46,080 diff3.exe

    926,123 libiconv-2.dll

    72,261 libintl-2.dll

    117,760 patch.exe

    48,793 regex.dll

    51,712 sdiff.exe

  5. Upload these files to a folder on your server. I used /scripts/bin. Actually, sdiff.exe, diff3.exe and cmp.exe are optional. The other three .dll are required for diff.exe and patch.exe to run.
  6. Create a local.php at the same folder as PmWiki.php if it is not there yet.

    $SysDiffCmd = ‘E:\\Customer\\Wangjianshuo\\scripts\\bin\\diff.exe ‘;

    $SysPatchCmd = ‘E:\\customer\\wangjianshuo\\scripts\\bin\\patch.exe –silent’;

    Replace the my path with your own path.

    Now your blog should support the revision feature. Please note that all pages modified before diff and patch will permennantly lose the function of roll-back since the diff history was not preserved.

Chinese Support

Chinese is not completely supported in PmWiki, so does other Asia languages. It is because PmWiki, like other Wiki engines, use \xB0 as new line seperator, which falls into the Chinese GB2312 encoding area. So characters with \xB0 as the first byte will be considered as newline and cause problem. Here is the solution (in Chinese).

After the applying the patch, I also downloaded the interface localizatino pack.

Do you know why they are using i18n? It is Internationalization. There is exactly 18 characters between i and n and few people want to spell it out. LOL.

My Speech and Training Record

By the year end, I summarized some kep speeches and training I have delivered in the last three years, just as I did in Jan last year. I never been a full time trainer, but my passion for training is always there.


Format

Date			Speech Title

Event or audience


Conferences

August 10, 2000		BizTalk Server in .COM Ages

China CEO/CIO Summit

September 19, 2000	BizTalk - Beyond the Limitation of Enterprise Application

Microsoft .NET Launch (1500+ attendants)

September 28, 2000	Microsoft BizTalk Integration Practices

China CEO/CIO Summit (CIOs from Sina, Sohu?

September 7, 2000	Microsoft BizTalk Preview

Microsoft TechEd. Shanghai (400+ attendants)

October 11, 2000	Achieving Highest Availability with Microsoft Solutions

Microsoft/Intel Banner Exchange Conference (250+ attendants)

November 26, 2000	BizTalk Architecture and ebXML

National Standard Committee Conference on eCommerce

November 28, 2000	Developing BizTalk Solutions

DevDays, Shanghai (300+ attendants)

November 11, 2000	Logistic and eCommerce

PGL Logistic Technology and Management Conference

December 8, 2000	Next Generation Internet

Microsoft/Intel Banner Exchange Conference (250+ attendants)

June 1, 2001		Microsoft .NET

Intel APAC Summit (Internal Event) (Intel's key IT staff in APAC region)

October 30, 2001	Microsoft .NET Scenarios

Siemens Global IT Summit

April 22, 2002		Understanding .NET (General Session) EN

Microsoft Asia MVP Summit (200 attendants from around Asia)

December 5, 2002	Designing for Usability

Microsoft Developer Community Summit

Microsoft University Relationship Program

December 8, 2000	Microsoft .NET in Universities

Shanghai Tong Ji University

April 19, 2001		XML - The Corner Stone of Next Generation of Internet

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Min Hang Campus

April 24, 2001		The Road to eCommerce

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Min Hang Campus

April 25, 2001		Microsoft .NET and Its Components

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Min Hang Campus

May 11, 2001		Secrets of Microsoft's Success

Shanghai Jiao Tong Unv. / East China Normal Univ.

June 6, 2001		Microsoft .NET Framework Startup Camp

Shanghai Jiao Tong University Xu Hui Campus

Enterprise Customer Training

December 1, 2000	Microsoft .NET, SOAP and Web Services EN

Microsoft Premier Customers ( from Thailand/Singapore/India)

September 22, 2000	Microsoft .NET Overview

Siemens (China)

Octomber 12, 2000	BizTalk

Guangzhou Sigma Software Co.

April 2, 2001		Enabling Smoother B2B Transaction with BizTalk

Alibaba

May 5, 2002		Microsoft Development Team Practices

Shanghai Shock Exchange

Internal Training

July 4, 2003		XML for Support Engineers

Windows Online Support Team, GTEC, Microsoft

April 1, 2001		Learning XML via Demos

Service Camp 2001, GTEC, Microsoft

August 8, 2000		What A Support Engineer Needs to Know about XML

Office Online Support Division, GTEC, Microsoft

April 25, 2000		XML in Depth

ME Charlie Team, GTEC, Microsoft

May 31, 2001		XML for Non-Technical People EN

Communication Specialists Technical Education, GTEC

Jun 28, 200		BizTalk Training

Microsoft (China) Sales and Marketing Team Training

September 22, 2000	Jswang's Perspective on Microsoft .NET EN

Company-Wide Tech Talk, GTEC, Microsoft

November 1, 2001	Microsoft .NET

Microsoft Service Camp XP (Best Trainer Award)

November 1, 2001	The Minimums you Need to Know about Microsoft .NET

Wicresoft New Hire Training

July 10, 2003		Microsoft .NET ?What the Video is Talking About

Microsoft Technical Festival, WOD, GTEC

October 13, 2000	SOAP and BizTalk Overview

Guangzhou Office, Microsfot(China)

Support Services Operation

December 19, 2001	Microsoft Call Center Operation

SHEAC

April 15, 2003		Understanding Customer Service

Wicresoft ESS Camp III

December 9, 2003	Processes, Metrics and Best Practices Behind GTEC Operation

Guangzhou Unicom

Presentation and Training Skills

October 21, 2002 	Facilitating Interactive Workshop

GTEC, Microsoft

March 1, 2003		Facilitating Interactive Workshop

Wicresoft

July 30, 2002		Presentation Skills

Orchestra Camp, GTEC, Microsoft

Development Management Training

Microsoft Development Management Training, covering the team model,

bugs tracking, source control, team coding facilities, and culture building.

Sept 28 - 29, 2001	Guangzhou, Guangzhou

December 3 ?6, 2001	Changsha, Hunan

January 30, 2002	Nanjing, Jiangsu

May 22 ?26, 2002	Wuhan, Hubei

July 6 ?10, 2002	Suzhou, Jiangsu

August 22, 2002		Suzhou, Jiangsu

Sept 24 ?28, 2002	Chengdu, Sichuan

January 21 ?22, 2003	Shanghai

I tried very hard not to mix the professional life and the personal life in this blog. I avoided posting anything related to my employer or the job I am doing.

This post is an exception. Why? I justed joined the LinkedIn.com network per Isaac‘s (Chinese site) invitation. It is a good professional network focusing on business and employeement opportunities. ThenI begin to build up my profile (requires free membership to view). I also invited some of my best friends and asked them to give me endoresement on the position I have ever been. Among them, I listed Speaker and Trainer as a position. To make sure I have evidence that I was qualified for this position, I took about one hour to create a summary of major events I spoke or training I facilicated. The result is amazing. I’d like to share how frequently I attended all kinds of events in the last three years.

Oh. I also listed another funny position – Founder and Major Contributor of Wangjianshuo.com. Haha. If you’d like help to endorse my work on this site, please also join the LinkedIn.com and add me as your connection. My display name at LinkedIn.com is Jian Shuo Wang.

Happy New Year 2004

Happy New Year, 2004!!

Do you still remember the fireworks picture I posted the same day at the beginning of 2003? Here is my routine work to post the nice fireworks. The difference is, the pictures of this year is much better since I realized the fireworks mode of my Sony P8.

shanghai-fireworks.best-2004.eve.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

shanghai-fireworks.three-2004.eve.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

shanghai-fireworks.red.explosion-2004.eve.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

shanghai-fireworks.white.green-2004.eve.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

shanghai-fireworks.large-2004.eve.jpg

© Jian Shuo Wang

All the pictures were taken between 0:00 – 0:10 AM, Jan 1, 2003 from my reading room. The fireworks is at Shanghai Ever Bright Exhibition Center.

Happy New Year!

Top Commenter of the Month / Year

Although it is the holiday time, I still didn’t forget to announce the top commenter of the month for December, 2004.

The Top Commenter of the Month Award of December 2003 goes to

Carroll 14

WilliamW 10

Xu 8

Top 10 list:

Jian Shuo Wang 101

Carroll 14

WilliamW 10

Xu 8

tutu 6

Vesna 5

dodo 5

Bethune 5

Hailey 4

Zhang 3

sophie 3

Jason 3

erhuyou 3

elizabeth 3

History

This is the history of the Top Commenter Award for the year of 2003.

I started the Top Commenter Award from May of this year. At the beginning of every month, I will select the Top 3 Commenter in the past month and give the Top Commenter Award. I also list the top 10 Commenter.

April 2003

anna

Caroline

Luo

May 2003

Caroline

Luo

annie

July 2003

Nick

Kme

Yoda

Johnny

Gary Soup

Euthenics

June 2003

Nick

cuanyu

Xu

andrea

Augest 2003

toufu

Xu

Dan

Carroll

September 2003

william

tutu

Xu

Pete

October 2003

tutu

WilliamW(combined with previous nickname william)

Carroll

November 2003

WilliamW

tutu

dodo

December 2003

Carroll

WilliamW

Xu

Readers with Most Comments

If you are interested in who are the most active participants on this blog, here is the complete list of all readers who has posted more than 10 comments in the year of 2003.

Jian Shuo Wang 878

Caroline 59

luo 54

David 37

Xu 36

tutu 34

Carroll 33

WilliamW 32

anna 31

Nick 27

cuanyu 24

annie 23

Isaac 18

toufu 16

John 15

Mainlander 14

dodo 14

Carol 14

Vivian 13

William 12

Steve 12

Zhang 11

Tim 11

Shanghai Knight 11

Johnny 11

dave 11

Andrea 11

I am trying to add links to people on the list if I know they have a website. Let me know if I missed you

Just as I stated in Thank You For Your Comments, I appreciate everyone’s participation and your comments have been a more and more important part in this blog.

I want to thank everyone for commenting on my blog. I didn’t expect that so many people were involved. At the very beginning, when I have about 50 blog entries, I got about 10 comments. Later, when I completed my first 100 entries, there were about 100 comments. Now this is the 198th article in this blog and I got 478 comments, doubling the number of the blog entries. These comments shows sparkling ideas and timely information about the world. I appreciate everyone’s contribution on this blog which is the source of my passion to continue writing.

Now I have 419 entries and 3312 comments on this blog – the number of comments are almost 8 times of the entries. That means, there are about 8 comments on every entry by average. Wow. I am overwhelmed by your contribution to add your ideas into the thread of my thinking. Thank you for your contribution!