Inside Factory China 135
blackbearnh writes "While China is attempting to pull its industry up out of mere manufacturing mode, for now the country is the production workhorse of the consumer electronics industry. Almost anything you pick up at a Best Buy first breathed life across the Pacific Ocean. But what is it like to shepherd a product through the design and production process? Andrew 'bunnie' Huang has done just that with the Chumby, a new Internet appliance. In an interview with O'Reilly Radar, he talks about the logistical and moral issues involved with manufacturing in China, as well as his take on the consumer's right to hack the hardware they purchase."
China's economy is going to retool itself.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Put yourself in the Chinese situation. If you had to work months and months and months to save up to buy something for yourself, would you buy the frivolous electronic gadgets you are manufacturing now, or would you work your tail off for something more rewarding like health care, better housing, national defense, or better quality food?
The Chinese economy is undergoing changes to serve its own people now. Factories will be modified to produce goods the Chinese people want, rather than what we want. It won't happen over night, but it's a process that will continue as they shift away from being an export economy.
Re:Chumby homepage stinks, article OK (Score:1, Insightful)
What would you expect from the author of "Hacking the Xbox"? Next you'll be surprised that RMS is in favour of open-source software...
This is just a stupid arrangement (Score:5, Insightful)
Let's have China be a giant slave labor pool but then borrow trillions of dollars of them to cover our own increased social welfare costs. Let's face it, the whole concept of trade coming into balance with them is just impossible, will never happen, and the more we trade with them, the more bankrupt we will get. Anyone who seems to think otherwise, please let me know what year it will be that US and China trade will be in balance. What year is that going to be?
As for chumby (Score:4, Insightful)
Flying spaghetti monster and all his noodley appendages, just go and read a bloody book or talk to someone or do something other than sit there watching a non-stop stream of the same five websites.
Read the article... right? (Score:3, Insightful)
I read the article, and the guy uses right, like and whatever an awful lot. I realize it was supposed to read like a conversation, but it was awfully annoying.
It was also quite rambling. I would have loved more detail on the kinds of things he took apart as a kid, or some of the neat things he built with his 200 in 1 radio shack kit. These are the kinds of comments that inspire future hackers & product designers. But they spent very little time on what he had actually done.
All in all not a bad article, and certainly fodder for additional reading into this guy. I will say that the Chumby is getting some interest in my office. Folks have latched onto it in a "Web 2.0" kind of way, using it as an emblem of what the future of commerce, not just ecommerce, will be in the future.
Re:Chumby homepage stinks, article OK (Score:5, Insightful)
He has it wrong. Unlocked communication devices are different, because they can cause additional costs/damage on the network they are connected to. This is the reason smartphone makers cripple their devices.
How does that work? An unlocked communications device can simply be used on a different provider. That provider still has to provide you (see what I did there?) with the services in order for you to use them. A malfunctioning, locked device can cause communications problems - if the network is poorly designed. The same is true of a rogue device. You don't mean to tell me that the cellphone companies are trusting phones they have sold simply because they once held them, do you? Because somehow, I doubt that.
Re:Chumby homepage stinks, article OK (Score:4, Insightful)
Also, in many cases, particularly among the smarter smartphones and more complex devices(which are generally the ones people are most interested in modding), there is a substantial degree of separation between the cellular modem bit, and the processor running the OS(Hayes AT ain't dead yet). Lockdown of the communication side is often about FCC regulations or legitimate network concerns. Lockdown of the application side is all about squeezing more money for worse service.
Re:China's economy is going to retool itself.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:This is just a stupid arrangement (Score:3, Insightful)
That seems more like a bigger problem for China than the USA.
To paraphrase the saying, if I borrow 100K from the bank, it's my worry. If I borrow 1 trillion from the bank, it's the bank's worry.
Worse for China - it's not like China can throw the USA into prison, or seize and liquidate the USA's assets.
Anyway if the USA wants to, it can ask the Federal Reserve to wave its magic wand and create USD out of nowhere to pay China. After all the loans are in US Dollars
If "creating out of nowhere" lacks style, they could do it by "borrowing" from the Federal Reserve or whatever scheme they want to come up with. Not much difference.
So why care if the trade is in balance or not?
What you should care about is whether you get your cut of the dollars the US Government is going to print.
And what the US Gov should care about is ensuring that trade and financing continues to be mainly done in US Dollars.
Re:Chumby homepage stinks, article OK (Score:3, Insightful)
No one is stopping people from buying things that conform to there required interpretation of 'freedom'. How would it be a free market if the government legislated to control how a company is allowed to build physical devices? Sadly, sometimes it is exactly because a market is free that people choose to make choices that we as individuals may wish they wouldn't.
Re:China's economy is going to retool itself.. (Score:3, Insightful)
would you buy the frivolous electronic gadgets you are manufacturing now
Hands up anyone who wants to buy something from any of their former workplaces. I sure as hell know I don't.
There's just a lot of problems with that. (Score:4, Insightful)
Even if we could assume that by, itself, a scenario of long term debt and eventual bankruptcy would not have terrible consequences for the USA, losing our ability to manufacture for ourselves is corrosive to our society. A slave economy retards technological innovation, undermines scientific achievement and ultimately results in social stagnation. The Romans collapsed as they went more and more into a slave economy, and having an economic reliance on slaves also doomed the old African tribal states, the Muslim states, and then most recently even the old Confederacy. Why invest millions into building machinery, when you can just add more slaves to your mix without any real capital cost at all? In that sense, slavery and a destruction of worker's rights is not just evil, its stupid.
Re:This is just a stupid arrangement (Score:4, Insightful)
Stop making all of our crap for us while retaining all of that massive production capability filled with experienced manufacturing personnel for servicing internal production and other countries of their choosing, I would guess. But in the meantime, they'll continue to increase our reliance on them while ensuring that they can completely obliterate our credit at any time that they choose simply by calling in their markers. Being suddenly cut off from the rest of the world probably sounds like a wonderful fantasy to many insular Americans, but we'll see how well that works out for a country that has relied on deficit spending and operated in a trade deficit for decades.
The Chinese think long-term better than any other people on the planet. Last I heard, the general plan was to be the most powerful nation on Earth in 50 years. At the rate that we westerners are undermining our future for the sake of short-term bolstering, I'd say that the 50 year estimate is highly conservative.
Re:Chumby homepage stinks, article OK (Score:5, Insightful)
It's just plain inefficient. Before, companies made products that were governed mainly by the "laws" of nature; they tried to offer as much as nature allowed. Now, companies are actively creating new laws and restrictions, which ultimately means the products aren't doing as much as they could do. Any country which avoids this idiotic situation will have an advantage.