Congratulations on the move! Asia is a great place to be. And a great environment for doing business. I'm in Hong Kong --- in several cities around the region including here, SG, KL, and Jakarta I see lots of latent entrepreneurial energy starting to manifest itself.
One warning: since it seems you plan to majority-own some local startups I hope you have an excellent accountant to help you with Uncle Sam. (yep, Americans living overseas still have to file with the IRS. whole mess of complicated forms. can even end up having to pay tax on undistributed corporate profits if you're not careful ...)
Agreed on the Engineering Statistics Handbook, especially Section 5 on Process Improvement, which contains a decent (and free) treatment of Design of Experiments. A lot of the earlier sections are ok but not as sharply interesting, but their DoE stuff is quite good.
Couple of articles which may be interesting reading (in Chinese) --- touching on China-specific privacy, legal/data licensing issues, etc. surrounding these maps:
They had problems with providing a mapping service in China without a license though. They were forced to shutdown for a very long time + redesigned their website to survive. Make sure you get the right license first in China!
Forgive me but this article seems to generate more confusion than it clears up. Statements like Cantonese and Mandarin speakers both use one of the writing systems mentioned above, and on paper, the languages can look quite similar are quite inept. Except a few subject matters (that do NOT get sent through five-cent-per-word web services --- like advertising slogans and written instructions for verbal Miranda warning-equivalents), clients NEVER need translations into Written Cantonese. They need translations into Standard Written Chinese.
Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the Mainland all write in Standard Written Chinese. Hong Kongers do not expect to see Cantonese in materials translated from a foreign original, and largely do not want to. HK/TW/CN have a few vocabulary differences (e.g. "taxi" is HK's "dishi", TW's "jichengche", and CN's "chuzuche"). Orthogonal to the vocabulary differences, HK and TW use Traditional characters, SG and ZH use Simplified. But I can write "chuzuche" in Traditional, or "jichengche" in Simplified. They still mean the same thing and are still understandable to all.
While we hope to offer translations into Traditional Chinese by Cantonese speakers in the future, currently our translations are not ideal if you hope to sell your product in Hong Kong.
Traditional to Simplified mapping is perfectly surjective. That is to say, it can be done by computer with 100% accuracy. Having a Traditional Chinese and a Simplified Chinese version of a document does NOT require two separate translations from the source document, as you seem to be implying.
Let me draw an analogy, Britain says "boot" and "bonnet" and "bobby" where America says "trunk" and "hood" and "cop". That does not mean everyone needs to get separate British English and American English translations, nor separate Taiwan Chinese and Singapore Chinese translations. In one extreme, if I were a high volume group-buying website looking to expand globally, yes of course I want the whole interface and the terms and conditions done up separately for each English and for each Chinese. In the other extreme, if I ran a boutique hotel and just wanted to give my Chinese customers directions from the airport to my doorstep, I have no need for separate translations.
In between is a giant grey area where full-service Language Service Providers generally try to provide some guidance to their clients. As a low-cost LSP maybe you are not aiming at the kind of client who needs this kind of guidance --- in which case you shouldn't be purporting to offer it. You should define yourself clearly.
You make some good points, but I think the rule of thumb the article brings up still holds true: "choose translators located in the region you are marketing your product in." Yes, Traditional to Simplified mapping can be done easily by computer(the article actually provides a link to a site that does this for free), and yes, despite regional vocabulary differences for words like taxi, all words can be written in Traditional or Simplified and be largely understood by all of those in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Mainland. The article could have done a better job explaining this, and sometimes simply understanding is good enough.
That said, the article really has non Chinese speakers marketing their product in China in mind, and just as if I were marketing my product in the U.K. I would want British spellings, I would want local words to be used if I were marketing my product to a specific Chinese locale. And, in my opinion, the difference in vocabularies between HK/TW/CN are arguably greater than the English vocabulary differences between UK and the US. Simply put, if I were marketing my product to Hong Kong, I would not want to pay even $.05/word for a translation of a product description if I knew it was done by a Mandarin speaker from Beijing who was not versed in the regional differences, and had only converted the text from Simplified to Traditional. I think this holds true for both small boutique hotels, and "high volume group-buying websites."
The table in the article was designed to be clearer and simpler than the above explanation for most users, and also not to represent that Simplified Chinese is suitable for all customers, which would be a misrepresentation.
The "General tax on payments abroad" applies to services, rather than dividends. Also, technical or professional services rendered abroad --- presumably, most of what a startup would be paying its suppliers for --- get withholding tax at 15% rather than 35%. (I am no accountant or tax lawyer, but to me it looks like the main point of the 35% tax is some sort of anti-transfer-pricing-abuse measure --- to penalise attempts at tax evasion by local companies who pay their affiliates in tax havens for fictitious and ill-defined "services" and then try to claim that these service payments are part of their cost of doing business and should be deducted from profits for their Chilean tax bill.) For the dividing line of what is a technical service or not, look up "Servicios prestados en el extranjero" on the website of the Chilean taxation authority: http://www.sii.cl
Even better, these tax rates on both services and on dividends may be further reduced by bilateral treaties. Chile has tax treaties with many OECD members and South American countries. See http://www.sii.cl/pagina/jurisprudencia/convenios.htm
US citizens/permanent residents should note a few things. Like trevalyan says, don't let it discourage you --- but be aware of the issues that could come up. If you participate in the program, you will become an owner of a "Controlled Foreign Company". You have to file a Form 5471 every year with the IRS and an FBAR declaration (TD F 90-22.1) with the US Treasury Department for any bank accounts owned by you or your Chilean company. 5471 in particular is a pain in the ass. Also if you go back to the US afterwards and continue running your Chilean company, it can get very complicated --- look up "Subpart F" (Internal Revenue Code sections 951-965), in particular "foreign base company services income" --- start at http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/usc_sup_01_26_10_A_20_1...
Another (less pressing) problem is that Chile has signed a tax treaty with the US, but it is not yet ratified by either side's legislature. Until the treaty has been ratified and the IRS determines that it meets their requirements, dividends that a US citizen receives from a Chilean company are NOT qualified dividends. They will be taxed at your ordinary US income tax rate and not the reduced rate of 15%. But I'd imagine by the time you are profitable enough to think of paying dividends, the treaty will be settled and this will no longer be a problem (though of course, the provisions for qualified dividends may have sunsetted by that time!)
Why Kenya's first Internet meme wasn't notable enough for Wikipedia ... On March 24, the Wall Street Journal’s Cassandra Vinograd commented on the story ... The article was deleted once again
Actually in the end, it was notable enough for Wikipedia. The article was not deleted again following the initial speedy deletions for copyright violation and the like. It was nominated for a full deletion discussion, but every single person other than the nominator voted "keep" [1]. Furthermore, the nominator (the guy who initiated the full debate) isn't exactly a model Wikipedian; he had been registered for less than half a year, and left in a huff just two months later after administrators told him to be more patient with some guy who had added unsourced names to a soccer roster article [2][3].
But it is doubtful whether Internet access alone will make people in developing countries contribute to Wikipedia ... As those from developing countries come online and try to edit the encyclopedia, a number of conflicts have arisen due to tensions between so-called ‘inclusionists’ and ‘deletionists’ in the encyclopaedia ... the homophily of the current network is coming up against its need to expand and diversify
Incidentally, one of the users who proposed the Makmende article for deletion (one of the other times, not the main debate above) is himself from a developing country [4]. And he's contributed to Wikipedia numerous articles about his home country (as well as others about Swedish, Taiwan, and Russian chemists) [5].
I think your answer is an exemplar of the problems the Wikipedia community faces.
Insiders are satisfied that the process, honed over a decade, is working. At a micro level there is nothing to point to that is actually wrong; indeed you could argue the process is growing in sophistication and fairness.
Outsiders are often very dissatisfied. From their perspective, new contributions are assailed with objections from people who appear to be proudly ignorant of the subject in question, and their work is subjected to bewildering bureaucratic procedures. And this is reflected in the macro statistics for contributors, which for the English Wikipedia are all flat or even going in reverse.[1]
I think Wiki-insiders have become a bit disconnected from the experience of outsiders, especially when it comes to social norms. To an insider, squabbles about notability and even requests for deletion are normal. Insiders are so used to this, they avoid being vulnerable to the criticisms of other Wikipedians, by reflex; for instance, in footnoting everything they say. ;) Imagine for a minute that you walked into a passionate notability discussion without such habits already ingrained. How do you think it would go?
The article strongly implies that there is a Global North/Global South problem here. So your point about how the core 'homophily' group aren't necessarily from Europe or America is interesting. Perhaps the real axis is Wikipedian/Non-wikipedian.
This is hardly a problem unique to Wikipedia, and no especially workable solutions have been proposed that I’ve seen. If routine members are denied the ability to do things like bring up deletion discussions, just because some of them might get tendentiously caught up in the bureaucracy and thereby lose sight of broader goals, that just makes the process more onerous when it is necessary, which is often.
I think the biggest problem is that the “outsiders” you are generalizing about, at least in your portrayal, are failing to realize that the “insiders” are just a bunch of individual people, and don’t stand for any unified position, conspiratorial or otherwise.
Communicating information to new users, especially ones who make little effort to learn about community norms and practices, is extremely difficult, because there is no way to force them to look at any particular explanation. Even talk page messages lovingly crafted to be as helpful as possible are going to often meet with “What, I have to spend more than 30 seconds figuring out why my changes to an article were deemed a regression? No thanks.”
Communicating information to new users, especially ones who make little effort to learn about community norms and practices, is extremely difficult, because there is no way to force them to look at any particular explanation.
Karma systems deal with this by using game dynamics. Beginners are channeled into work which supposedly educates them and indoctrinates than into community values.
I think there’s a big difference between a site whose visible product is discussion, such as Hacker News, and a site whose discussion is only in support of the visible product, like Wikipedia. Newcomers to a discussion community can easily see practices and norms at work, because the process and the results are the same thing, and are completely transparent by definition. Since much if not most of the process of writing Wikipedia is reorganizing and rewriting and cutting and polishing, without any one user having responsibility for an article, it’s not obvious just quite what contributions are most helpful, or even helpful at all.
I think the feedback (reversions with edit summaries, discussion on talk pages, comments on users’ pages) are okay, but it’s an inherently different kind of feedback than you’d get from, say, HN or Facebook or Twitter or Stack Overflow. Just comes with the territory.
I think Wikipedia could do a lot better, especially if it had more programmers working on technical improvements. But I wouldn’t guess the systems used by discussion-oriented communities could be usefully easily transferred.
The issue the NYT is complaining about is: the US prefers to use "place of incorporation" instead of "place of effective management" in deciding where a company should be taxed. Of course this should hardly be a surprise, when Delaware alone is "home" to tens of thousands of companies owned by non-resident aliens.
For those who are curious or suffering from insomnia, here's the actual laws that make Carnival mostly tax-exempt:
Internal Revenue Code Sec. 883:
(a) The following items shall not be included in gross income of a foreign corporation, and shall be exempt from taxation under this subtitle: (1) Ships operated by certain foreign corporations: Gross income derived by a corporation organized in a foreign country from the international operation of a ship or ships if such foreign country grants an equivalent exemption to corporations organized in the United States.http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/html/uscode26/usc_sec_26_0...
"Foreign corporation" is defined in Sec. 7701:
(4) Domestic: The term “domestic” when applied to a corporation or partnership means created or organized in the United States or under the law of the United States or of any State unless, in the case of a partnership, the Secretary provides otherwise by regulations. (5) Foreign: The term “foreign” when applied to a corporation or partnership means a corporation or partnership which is not domestic.http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/26/usc_sec_26_00007701----...
In some countries, the laws and treaties care about the "place of effective management" of a corporation in deciding where it is to be taxed. That would catch out Carnival. For example, the OECD model tax convention says: Profits from the operation of ships or aircraft in international traffic shall be taxable only in the Contracting State in which the place of effective management of the enterprise is locatedhttp://browse.oecdbookshop.org/oecd/pdfs/browseit/2310081E.P...
However, the US uses the following in most of its treaties instead: Profits of an enterprise of a Contracting State from the operation in international traffic of ships or aircraft shall be taxable only in that State. And, there is no double-taxation treaty between the US and Panama in the first place, only a tax information exchange agreement.
To be fair, I only thought to check that because I recognise the guy's name and know he's in CS (though I had no clue until today that he worked for Google) --- he co-developed LibSVM, which I've used heavily:
DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer and I'm assuming you live in the US, UK, Latin America, Africa, or some other countries which LACK a bilateral agreement with HK on enforcement of court judgments. Australia, Israel, Germany, & others HAVE such agreements with HK which invalidate the rest of what I'm saying. Look up Foreign Judgments (Reciprocal Enforcement) Ordinance. If you want more free advice, I'd suggest asking the guys at http://geoexpat.com instead, there's lots of HK lawyers there.
"Non-exclusive jurisdiction" clauses are put in because of problems with enforcement of foreign court judgments. If you sue someone in your country and win, but he has no assets in your country, you have to go to his country and convince a court there to enforce your country's judgment if you want to get your hands on any of his money.
Contract law differs a lot between countries, but any judge anywhere whom you ask to recognise a foreign court judgment wants to know at least three things: #1: the court which issued the original judgment actually has jurisdiction. #2: there's no more avenues of appeal above that court. #3: you informed the other guy before you sued him. If you can prove any one of those three is untrue, then you derail the enforcement of the foreign judgment. The "non-exclusive jurisdiction" clause makes it impossible to argue about #1.
Signing a contract for "non-exclusive jurisdiction" in HK doesn't restrict you or HKCorp trying to sue each other anywhere in the world you can convince a judge to listen. But it does mean that if HKCorp sues you in HK, wins, and then comes to your country to collect, you can't argue that the HK court was not a proper venue. While if you sue HKCorp in your country, win, and go to HK to try to get the judgment recognised, the HK judge will want to know why you didn't just sue in HK.
Thanks for the detailed response. I think my real question is whether if because of some disagreement, that my firm would be forced by law to fly to Hong Kong to argue with them in court. Clearly that seems like a ridiculous expectation, but I have no idea what kind of laws exist between countries about these things. It would seem to me that if they sued our firm in HK court, that our presence is at our own option. Not that we plan or look forward to such an occurrence, but we want to fully understand the risks.
The article's dismissal of an editor by complaining that "[his] edits were all deleting things and moving things around" is a perfect illustration of why "bytes added" is just as bad a contribution metric as "edit count". We're not in 2001 anymore. The Internet is not short of bytes about Alan Alda or Anacondas, and nor is Wikipedia short of people who add bytes about them.
Newly-added bytes may be true or false. They may be useful or not useful even if true --- readers do not want every byte about a given topic, they want a few tens of thousands of the most useful ones. (This is entirely orthogonal to the inclusionist-deletionist debate about what topics should be included. Some bytes may be useless in the context of a main topical article about Alan Alda himself, but they would be very relevant to a subtopical article about Alan Alda's dental health).
For a popular topic, you'll have dozens of people adding bytes of varying quality. Insiders subtract the false or useless bytes (an action easily captured in statistics and then maligned on the internet by pundits), but also look at the true and useful bytes, fact-check them, and then leave them in place. This contribution --- curation --- is not captured in any statistics, but it is an important part of the mechanism by which you can have 1 expert and two enthusiastic amateurs stop by every few weeks on their lunch break to expand an article with no centralised notice or approval, without having have the place turned into a mess by the 97 vandals and well-meaning incompetents who came by in the meantime.
The real problem Wikipedia faces is in the long tail of topics, where there is only one person adding the bytes, and that person is either grinding an axe, self-promoting, or afflicted with incurable "nerdview". The well-meaning, harried, underinformed Wikipedia insiders inevitably screw up when they try to distinguish useless vs. useful bytes on these topics, but I wouldn't call the outsiders who added the bytes in the first place "experts". Unfortunately both sides' conduct may be scaring away the people who are actual experts on those long-tail topics ...
Insiders subtract the false or useless bytes (an action easily captured in statistics and then maligned on the internet by pundits), but also look at the true and useful bytes, fact-check them, and then leave them in place. This contribution --- curation --- is not captured in any statistics. . . . Unfortunately both sides' conduct may be scaring away the people who are actual experts on those long-tail topics.
Correct. But not just long-tail topics, but any topic that can only be properly treated by deep immersion in the subject, and especially any topic that is controversial. A lot of point-of-view pushers on Wikipedia do a lot of their POV-pushing by "framing," just making sure that some wikilinks to articles they like persist, while others are deleted, or that navigation templates or article categories play up the articles that best represent their point of view. And that's before we even get to the issue of deleting reliable sources.
One warning: since it seems you plan to majority-own some local startups I hope you have an excellent accountant to help you with Uncle Sam. (yep, Americans living overseas still have to file with the IRS. whole mess of complicated forms. can even end up having to pay tax on undistributed corporate profits if you're not careful ...)