我用了中国移动，用了快四年。从前没觉得好，但相对来说平稳。 为用3G服务我换到了中国联通。这个联通服3G服务的确很快，而186号码选择不错，但其它方面都没联通那么承受。

1）联通服务信号经常很弱。在许多地方移动完全有信号，但联通就显示“无服务”

2）“12593″。如你得打国际电话，移动的12593非常优惠。联通的“10193”也不错，但是无法跟3G服务一起用，所以就能通过“17900的美加直通车”，但是这种每次打电话浪费30秒钟在输入电话号码，原来的12593不用等 － 就存号码在练习簿里。

3）VIP客户服务。打电话到移动的10086，会自动的转换到VIP热线，但联通的服务就让大家一起排队，一起等等。

4）国际长途加“+00”。这个很麻烦因为反对国际标准。国际标准电话号码是：＋ 国家号 区号 本地号，但联通是“＋00国家号”。所以，如同步你的电话簿到联通的手机，而也同步到移动或AT&T或其它公司的手机，永远无法同步。这个真麻烦。

Additionally, China Unicom has supposedly purchased 500,000 iPhones that it expects to resell to customers in China, but I don’t think this is possible with the pricing plan that they’ve created. See iPhone @ CHU.

For a 3GS that does not have Wifi and is locked to China Unicom, if you sign up for a 2 year contract, you can spend: 386元 ($56) or 586元 ($86) per month you can get an iPhone for 1799元 ($264) or 99元 ($15). However, there is a deposit of 5200元 ($794) or 6900元 ($1014).

Meanwhile, for a real 3GS iPhone from Hong Kong – the official Wifi Enabled “Apple Unlocked” version that you can use with China Mobile, China Unicom, or any other carrier on the planet is HK$ 5388 ($695 / 4747元).

Apparently the target is the “186元” per month, on a 2 year contract which gives you an iPhone for 3500元. If they could move the 225/month phone down to 1999元, I think they could move their target quota.

Without the change, I expect the grey market from Apple Hong Kong will take the most market share.

There are lots and lots of Chinese materials out there. I’ve personally bought tons of them. But there are just a few items that stand out far above EVERYTHING else.

1) PLECO – Dictionary for iPhone, Palm, Windows Mobile

2) Easy Way to Learn Chinese Characters (汉字速成课本)

3) Boot Camp style class using the Berlitz Method to get started

There are lots and lots of items that I felt were valuable, but not necessarily extremely so. However, if you are learning Chinese, I can’t imagine 3 more valuable resources.

There are lots of features of Pleco that will appeal to you regardless of your current proficiency in Chinese. Be it a beginner, intermediate, advanced – unless you attended K-12 in China and got your masters in Chinese Literature, then Pleco has something useful for you.

As for “Easy Way to Learn Chinese Characters”, it’s just that. Chinese is actually really easy. Characters aren’t scary. They’re totally logical and easy to remember. They are just taught as badly as Calculus is taught in most universities. Personally, I couldn’t imagine trying to learn Chinese if I didn’t learn to read and write. That is basically saying that you’re goal is to be illiterate. Next time you meat an American who is illiterate, ask yourself if your goal is to speak Chinese as badly as an illiterate american speaks english.

Berlitz Immersion courses are very good to get the basics down. Enough to have very basic conversation and accomplish very basic tasks. Once you’re done with your Berlitz class, you’ll be a long, long way from language mastery, but you may already be fluent in the sense that you can begin to think in Chinese rather than translating ideas from your native language. Once you can think in the target language, you’re just a lot of rules, vocabulary, time and practice away from mastery – but the course is already set. You just need to persist.

My iPhone 3GS was working just fine, then it suddenly stopped booting. Now I get a message on the screen saying: “iTunes could not connect to the iPhone “ryphone3gs” because it is locked with a passcode. You must enter your passcode on the iPhone before it can be used with iTunes”. [Cancel] [Try Again]

Of course, while displaying this message, my iPhone simply displays a “swipe for emergency call” message and provides no way to actually unlock the phone.

When going into Hardware restore mode, I simply see “Error 23″ in iTunes, which according to some online information may mean my hardware is toasted.

I tried using “irecovery” to get at the source of the issue, but each time I boot up, I get:

Boot Failure Count: 0 Panic Fail Count: 0
Radio failed to respond.
Radio failed to respond.
Pinging Radio Failed, 4
Entering recovery mode, starting command prompt

Apparently I’m not the only one having this “pinging radio failed” problem.

The last ditch effort may be to prepare a custom Apple iPhone RAM disk apparently called “Bypass_Passcode.bin” (created with iLiberty+) and use irecovery to load that RAM disk onto the iPhone, and then use the disk to disable the password. Seems like a lot of work considering that my iPhone is new, that it’s never been hacked, jailbroken, sim-unlocked or anything else.

There’s also some information about downgrading the 3GS from 3.1 to 3.0, but that seems specific to the sim-unlockers and jailbreakers of the world. Sad that even playing by Apple’s rules, the iPhone still isn’t very reliable.

Following the directions of the Apple support website, I entered in my serial number and other iPhone information and submitted my case, only to get an error from the Apple support website saying: “We’re sorry, but we’re unable to complete your request at this time. Please try again in a few minutes or start over now”. Of course after a few minutes I started over and did the process again, and got the same error. Forgive me for being a skeptic about AAPL at $300/share.

Goldman Sachs Research just completed a visit to China where they’ve concluded that their bullish thesis on the country was justified, China commodity demand would drive prices higher and they feel increasingly confident about their current $94 crude oil price target.

More here.

Prices of oil will surely go up because their being measured in worthless currencies.
The China real-estate market has been in bubble mode since the credit bubble started in 2001.
Shanghai real-estate prices per sq ft are comparable with Los Angeles, yet these are 70-year land leases, not purchases.

Shouldn’t we know by now that if Goldman says to buy, it probably means that Goldman insiders are already selling.

哇。快四年在上海，今天终于找到了方便查询上映时间的网页。当然当前有许多电影时间表，但都没有好的调理。但谷歌的这个是不错！