In 2014, you don't have to say a word to speak volumes

If you are not ready to speak up with a blog, or to write an op-ed for a newspaper, you still can express yourself without as much as writing a word.

Take Facebook for example, you can like or share a post you find agreeable.  You can retweet a tweet a tweet or forward an email that you think is good for the world.

All of these take just one click and require no writing.

Do it now.  Don't continue to be silent.

謹把此文獻給不打中文的台灣人: readers' feedback

I. Ed suggests the use of iPad, and writing pads such as those made by PenPower.  I personally finger write on the trackpad of a MacBookPro.  But writing pad or tablet of any kind that supports writing by finger either on the pad or on the display should work well.

Luby

You encouraged people to write Hanji, but you did not show how to do this.

For instance, one can hand write Hanji by using a pad made by Pen-power.  But better yet, one can use i-Pad to write Hanji with your own finger.

Ed

II. Taiwan Echo recommends a non-trivial use of Google translate as a way for Chinese input:

中文打字 is actually very easy, because it is "pinyin", it follows the sound of English alphabets. For example, typing "taiwan" gives you 台灣，"keshi" gives you 可是, "buyao" gives you 不要, etc.

So anyone familiar with the English keyboard can easily pick that up.

If you r interested and have time for some practice, take 5~10 minutes to visit:

http://translate.google.com/

Turn the left panel to Chinese and check the box [ ] 允許以拼字方式輸入

and you can start typing. Don't even have to install anything.

III. Sean recommends 注音輸入法:

我以前以注音輸入時也是不習慣，但是記憶注音鍵盤位置的方法與記憶英文字母鍵盤位置的方法相同，只要打久了，習慣了就會越打越快。

Leave a comment if you have other recommendations.
 

謹把此文獻給不打中文的台灣人For Taiwanese who do not use handwriting for Chinese input: why you must

Chinese input through handwriting is as easy as handwriting on a piece of paper.  Anyone who has a smartphone should already know this. 
Therefore, it is such a mystery to me that, now in  2012, few US-educated Taiwanese I know write Chinese in their electronic communications such as email.  

They would type invented English like Nan-fang Shuo when they mean to say 南方朔; Chen Yi-Sheng for 陳儀深;  Ts'ai-hsun for 財訊, and bo-dua bo-se for 沒大沒小.   It is hard to write such English.  Readers take a long time to decipher Chen Yi-Sheng.  誰是陳一陷?  Many will never figure out what bo-dua bo-se means.  

People write 100% English even when they have difficulty expressing themselves in 100% English.  Someone criticized such phenomenon bluntly as follows:

雖然大家為了鍵入方便，喜歡以英文溝通, 但我發現大多數人在專業以外，對英文的理解能力是大有問題的，或者根本不花心思去理解，所以我以下以中文書寫 ...

If you have avoided Chinese input, please try it now by handwriting.  Three things can happen: 

• You will find it to be so easy.
• You will make your writing accessible to those people who do not read English, making you so much more influential. 
• You won't lose your ability to handwrite Chinese because you will do it regularly.  In contrast, those people who do not handwrite Chinese stand to lose such ability.

Let me know if you have questions.

Computer illiteracy shortens lives and makes unhappy people

A computer illiterate person uses computers less efficiently.  For example, it might take him 5 hours to do something that takes someone else one second.
She might be using a MacBook Pro with a i7 quad core processor and two gigabyte memory, and constantly sucking her thumb wondering why the machine was taking a minute or two to load a Word file.

Effectively, a computer illiterate person lives a shorter life because day in and day out, he wastes so much time.  And time is life.

But I worry that with their significantly shortened lives, they also are less happy.  Here is why.

In this lightening fast changing time of the Internet age, to be computer illiterate is to be behind our own time.  To be behind guarantees unhappiness.  Imagine a caveman having dinner with sophisticated social elites in a French restaurant.  The caveman is likely to feel inadequate and have difficulty keeping up a conversation.

As a person falls behind, she begins to have hard time coping with responsibilities such as allowing her email messages to pile up unorganized and unattended, and neglecting to reply to messages from friends and colleagues. 

People, fight back to live a long and happy life!

Massive spams from yahoo.com email accounts and why we should be shocked

Over the years, I received thousands of emails from friends and acquaintances reporting that they got stranded in a foreign country, such as Spain or England, and asking that I please send money.  Almost all such messages are from yahoo.com email addresses.  A sample follows:

Hello,                          

I'm writing this with tears in my eyes, My family and I came down here to Madrid, Spain for a short vacation, unfortunately we were mugged at the park of the hotel where we stayed,all cash,credit card and mobile phone were stolen off us but luckily for me i still have my passports with me.

I've been to the embassy and the Police here but they're not helping issues at all and my flight leaves any moment from today but we're having problems settling the hotel bills and the hotel manager won't let me leave until i settle the bills,

I'm freaked out at the moment.....I need your help out i need some cash to settle the hotel bill promise to refund it back to you all i need is £1,750.00 GBP or any amount you can afford .will be going along in helping me out

Thanks.  Dennis.

This long-standing attack intensifies in recent days.
Three things worth noting:

1. Very, very few of the yahoo.com email account holders complained or expressed concerns about their addresses being used to spam others.  Their names are used to do potentially damaging things such as mass mailing pornography; but they don't care enough to speak up.
2. Almost all these yahoo.com email account holders continue to use their compromised yahoo.com accounts.  This is as if a person continues to use the same bank account after a stranger had transfered $10,000 out of that account to a Dubai bank.
3. It is unlikely I am the only person receiving such attacks.  That is, others are being massively attacked as well.  Then why is it that I cannot find useful information when I search Google for something like "spam from yahoo.com", with or without quotes?  This is as if googling for twin towers two months after they were destroyed and obtained no matches.   I include the first page of such an unhelpful Google search at the end.

Another massive spam attack from yahoo.com accounts has the appearance of promoting one web site or another, like so:

awesome you should check this out wow http://www.finance15tanews.net/biz/?news=1265628 

The first page of an unhelpful Google search for spam from yahoo.com on 2012-06-12 follows:

1. Why Am I Getting So Much Spam from Yahoo ? | The Big Picture

   www.ritholtz.com/.../why-am-i-getting-so-much-spam-from-yahoo/

   Feb 22, 2010 – An inordinate amount of pharmacy spam is coming my way from Yahoo.com. Why aren't they doing any spam filtering? And if they are, why are ...

2. Groups Help | - SLN2520 - Receiving spam from a Yahoo! group

   help.yahoo.com › Groups Help

   Apr 9, 2012 – Groups provides a number of tools and systems to enable you to block unwanted messages and spam. When you report spam to Yahoo!, we ...

3. Reporting Spam or Phishing | Yahoo! Abuse Help

   help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/abuse/spam/

   Abuse > Reporting Spam or Phishing. Yahoo! Abuse Help Topics. Password and Account Security Issues ... I want to report spam being sent to a Yahoo!

4. Yahoo! Account Help | - SLN2068 - What to do if your account is ...

   help.yahoo.com/kb/index?page=content&id=SLN2068

   May 14, 2012 – What to do if your account is sending spam. ID: SLN3417. Refers to: Yahoo! Account , Mail , Mail Classic , Mobile Mail , Messenger 11.5 ...

5. How to stop spam from coming into your Yahoo! Mail ... - Help - Yahoo!

   help.yahoo.com › Mail Help

   May 25, 2012 – Yahoo! Mail automatically filters for spam (and sends suspected spam messages to your "Spam" folder), but sometimes unwanted messages ...

6. How to Block Spam on Yahoo! Mail: 5 steps (with pictures)

   www.wikihow.com › ... › Email and Instant Messaging › Yahoo! Mail

   May 30, 2012 – How to Block Spam on Yahoo! Mail. Are you tired of getting all that spam in your Yahoo email? Here are some quick ways to get rid of all the ...

7. Stop Spam From Yahoo!

   jondreyer.org/yahoospam.html

   Jan 14, 2003 – (I tried, just for fun, to set it to deliver spam to abuse@yahoo.com but it was clever enough to reject the address!) Click "Save Changes". You're ...

8. something is emailing my yahoo address book with spam, sending it ...

   https://getsatisfaction.com/yahoo/.../something_is_emailing_my_yah...

   Mar 17, 2009 – Someone is spamming about 1/3 of my yahoo address book contacts with online casino gambling spam. I have: removed one malware ...

9. Security Fix - Spam From Hijacked Webmail Accounts

   voices.washingtonpost.com/.../spam_sent_through_hijacked_web.ht...

   Apr 29, 2009 – A family member called last night, upset and embarrassed that his yahoo.com account was used to blast out spam to all of his contacts. A quick ...

10. postfix - How can I filter spam from yahoo's servers? - Server Fault

    serverfault.com/questions/.../how-can-i-filter-spam-from-yahoos-serv...

    In the last few months my mail server has been getting massive amounts of spam from yahoo.com's mail servers. Each one appears to be from a different Yahoo ...

Smartphones: DOs and DON'Ts

DON'Ts:

1. Don't use it to do major writing, such as wiring a message longer than a few characters.  Remember smartphones don't normally come with a keyboard or a mouse.
2. Don't use it to check your mails, browse the web, etc when you are walking.  It is unsightly and dangerous.
3. Don't use it when you should be talking to strangers,  friends and family.
4. Don't disturb others when you use it as a phone. 

DOs:

1. Use it as an alarm clock, a count down timer and a stop watch.  In short use it as an all-purpose timer.
2. Use it as a sort of a swiss army knife.
3. Use it to check weather.
4. Use Evernote to compose shopping list
5. Use Google Map to locate things and prevent from getting lost
6. Use its camera to take pictures.  Note that this camera is no substitute for a good camera with stabilizer.  For example, the quality of the pictures will be poor if used on a whale-watching cruise.  Note that if you choose, the pictures when uploaded will have a google map alongside.  
7. Use it as a flashlight.
8. Use the cell network to provide Internet access to your Notebook computer when there is no Wi-Fi, such as when you are taking a bus.
9. Use it as a USB drive as you would a flash drive.
10. Use it as an iPod to listen to music, audiobooks, etc.  Use a stereo bluetooth headset for this.
11. In a store, use your phone to scan a bar-code just like the casher, to find information or do comparison shopping.

參與一個網路連署需要多少時間?

How about four seconds?  四秒!

假定你使用 Google Chrome, 或者 Firefox with add-on such as LastPass, 軟體會記得你以前填表用的資料, 而在你寫下你的名字的第一個字後, 就自動幫你把整個表填完.  At this point, you have used half a second.

剩下的 3.5 秒是用來做  CAPTCHA (Completely Automated Public Turing test 來証明你是人, 不是程式) test.

這裹有兩個連署湏要你 8 秒鐘的時間:

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