Taiwanese have been shocked by media reports about a sex party held in a train carriage. Because the people who booked the carriage got together through the Internet and an underage girl allegedly played the “female lead” at the party, children’s welfare groups are once again calling for stricter controls to be imposed on the Internet. Some are even calling for a Taiwanese version of China’s “Great Firewall” to block overseas Web sites that carry undesirable content.
In many democracies, each time there is an important election all kinds of odd and interesting people take part. They could be porn stars, singers or entertainers. They could be retired teachers who have stood for election a hundred times, and so on. It happens all the time, but now people in Germany have actually voted into office as state legislators candidates from the Pirate Party.
Minor parties with alternative standpoints, such as the Pirate Party, winning seats in an election is something that nobody believes until it actually happens. It is as if the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, which was established by Internet nerds, were to actually build a church from which to preach their Pastafarian ways.
Apple has complied with the Taipei City Government’s request to provide a seven-day trial period for software bought through its online App Store during which the software can be returned for a full refund.
The city government says that this will protect consumers and has asked all major foreign app suppliers to follow suit. Google flatly refused to provide the trial period for its Android Market, taking down all paid apps from its online store until the matter has been resolved. It looks like Google will be exploring other options.
蘋果跟台北市政府AppStore看似終於達成7天退費的協議。台北市政府號稱要保護消費者，跟主要的AppStore外商都槓上了，Google更悍然拒絕，把非付費的App都下架了，看起來也會往各有台階的方向走，外國人看起來還是一尾活龍，但台灣數位內容產業信心已經被台北市政府打趴了。
Social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook have opened up new ways of exchanging information. Look at the role they have played in promoting and spreading the “Jasmine Revolution” in North Africa and the Arabian peninsula, and the way they have fundamentally changed the way information about natural disasters is shared.
Research into the amount of information available online and the number of searches immediately following disasters like Typhoon Morakot in Taiwan and the Haiti earthquake, and my own observations on these phenomena since the recent massive earthquake in Japan, show that interest tends to peak within the first 72 hours and then gradually tails off. If you were to draw a graph of the amount of information and the instances of searches, it would be decidedly asymmetrical.
TIM的數位人生 