User Comments - tiaopidepi

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 5: Wang Tries to Excel at the Office

Clippy? Really? Clippy's been gone for seven years.

Posted on: Often: Using 常常，经常，通常 (chángcháng, jīngcháng, tōngcháng)

pearltowerpete,

Very good point about privacy. I used to use Google's IME until I discovered that it runs a communication service in the background. Google's IME actually phones home...whether it is to get updates or to report on you, I don't know. What I do know is that when a corporation claims to not be evil, they are probably lying.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 5: Wang Tries to Excel at the Office

xuchen, if you really want more technical terms, Microsoft has a site where you can translate all kinds of technical terms.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 5: Wang Tries to Excel at the Office

Paint is incredibly stupid software, though it's slightly more impressive in Windows 7. Paint.net is a fantastic drop-in replacement for Paint.

What's amusing is that I often have similar conversations at work (though not about Excel.) Software has so many features that no one can know or understand all of them, not even the people who make the software.

Posted on: Asking for Leave

我的同事住了在伦敦。他收到工作机会从微软。他不想工作在微软应为微软捐助请假的一年三个星期。他不知道在美国公司工人得到请假的一年两个星期。

I fear my Chinese isn't quite up to the level normally seen here...I'll say what I mean in English.

I have a coworker who lived in London. He received a job offer from Microsoft. He did not want to work at Microsoft because they offer three weeks' vacation a year. He didn't know that American companies offer two weeks' vacation a year.

America's really quite far behind when it comes to workers' rights.

Posted on: Buying a Plasma TV

It seems to me that people either watch too much TV or proudly proclaim that they don't own one. I always think of alcohol when people tell me they don't own a TV: "Oh, I never ever drink!" I think I watch just enough TV but I also think I don't drink too much : )

The "boob" in "boob tube" doesn't refer to a breast. It refers to the first, and oldest definitions of the word: a boob is a stupid, boorish, awkward person. TV, it is commonly thought, makes you stupid. (But Bud makes you wiser, according to an old American kids' joke...)

Here's someone who is pretty stupid even though he doesn't watch much TV. He always watches shows with dogs or horses, though, and this is his favorite movie.

Posted on: No Walking on the Grass

I wanted to take a picture using my computer in front of the Apple Store in NYC (yeah, stupid tourist) and was quickly chided "no sitting on the steps!" I think the concrete was in the process of growing to be all fuzzy. Apparently, concrete likes shoes but not butts.

Posted on: Around the Office

Definitely a step up in the world. Nice change from the old place.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 3: A Call for Innovation

@auntie68, eyux: Yes, I meant the Yiddish definition! And I was also being unfair--I only read what eyux wrote, not the whole article. He may very well be a humble, fantastic man.

Posted on: Lao Wang's Office 3: A Call for Innovation

@eyux: Chinese DVDs are hard to find in New York? C'mon, you must be kidding me! Has Mr. Rogers been to Manhattan's Chinatown? (You can get better crab dumplings at Joe's Shanghai than you can in Old Town.) If he doesn't want to go into the city, he can go to Chinatown in Flushing (pronounced 父姓) and I'm sure he can find whatever he wants. In fact, if he can give up his objection to having a television (possibly his holier-than-thou objection to television) he can just watch CCTV in Chinese on the local cable.

From your characterization, Rogers seems like a real putz. And isn't capitalism about rewarding the rich at the expense of the poor anyway? There is no such thing as "socialism for the rich". The rich getting richer is the way capitalism works, in America, in modern China and in eastern Europe back in the time of Marx and Lenin. The rich getting all the government largess is what socialism was created to fight.