Daily Stuff--9/11/2012

Languages--Chinese:

I watched episode 55 of Travel in Chinese. This episode was about making dumplings and what makes them culturally significant in Beijing and northern China.

Articles:

There were a few interesting articles in the LA Times. One was about how the iPhone is helping the US economy. Since it's debut in 2007, over 244 million have been sold. Even though the overall sales are small contribution to the GDP, it's still a gain, and at this point, any small gain is worth something. The iPhone, as of now, is Apple's most important product because the sales contribute the most to their bottom line. So they have to make sure to keep it as up to date as possible and will probably always have to redesign it so it stays "new" so people will want to buy it. What I've observed with Apple products is that almost everyone seems to want the latest product, even if the change from one model to another isn't all that significant. So it makes sense that iPhones are and will continue to be in such high demand.

Another article was about Amazon's supposed monopoly on e-books. Amazon has been accused of sneakily monopolizing the e-book industry without anyone even realizing it. They set their prices at $9.99, which drives off the competition from other e-book distributors and bookstores. Over time, this should allow Amazon to lower it's prices more and more, leaving them essentially the only e-book distributors. This is a conspiracy because Amazon is working around the law with this scheme. This reminds me of something I heard about Microsoft a while ago. To avoid getting in trouble with the law for a monopoly, Bill Gates simply broke Microsoft down into smaller parts of the overall big company.

Philosophy:

I read about democracy as social inquiry in Dewey's political philosophy. He believed that peoples' interests should be taken into account and that the best way for this to happen is through public discussion. If the people are involved, they get a say in what happens in the government, and it doesn't end up becoming an oligarch.

Internships:

I looked at an internship on internships.com for a software engineering position. The company is Mitchell International and one of the only requirements is knowledge on relational databases, memory management, and operating systems.