有趣的故事^__^

[文章來自轉寄信件，不知來源]
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道德是國力提升的基礎

為什麼歐洲許多先進國家還是很富強?

在某個電視訪談節目中，嘉賓是一位當今頗具知名的青年企業家。節目漸近尾聲時，按慣例，主持人提出了最後一個問題。

請問：你認為事業成功的最關鍵品質是什麼？
沉思片刻之后，他並沒有直接回答，而是平靜地敘述了這樣一段故事：

十二年前，有一個小伙子剛畢業就去了法國，開始了半工半讀的留學生活。漸漸地，他發現當地的的公共交通系統的售票處是自助的，也就是你想到哪個地方，根據目 的地自行買票，車站幾乎都是開放式的，不設檢票口，也沒有檢票員 。甚至連隨機性的抽查都非常少。他發現了這個管理上的漏洞，或者說以他的思維 方式看來是漏洞。

憑著自己的聰明勁，他精確地估算了這樣一個概率：逃票而被查到的比例大約僅為萬分之三。他為自己的這個發現而沾沾自喜，從此之後，他便經常逃票上車。他還找到了一個寬慰自己的理由：自己還是窮學生嘛，能省一點是一點。

四年過去了，名牌大學的金字招牌和優秀的學業成績讓他充滿自信，他開始頻頻地進入巴黎一些跨國公司的大門，躊躇滿志地推銷自己，因為他知道這些公司都在積極地開發亞太市場。但這些公司都是先熱情有加，然而數日之後，卻又都是婉言相拒。 一次次的 失敗，使他憤怒。他認為一定是這些公司有種族歧視的傾向，排斥 中國人。最後一次，他衝進了某公司人力資源部經理的辦公室，要求經理對於不予錄用他給出一個合理的理由。然而，結局卻是他始料不及的。下面的一段對話很令人玩味。

先生，我們並不是歧視你，相反，我們很重視你。因為我們公司一直在開發中國市場，我們需要一些優秀的本土人才來協助我們 完成這個工作，所以你一來求職的時候，我們對你的教育背景和學術水平很感興趣，老實說，從工作能力上，你就是我們所要找的人。

-那為什麼不收天下英才為貴公司所用？

因為我們查了你的信用記錄，發現你有三次乘公車逃票被處罰的記錄。

-我不否認這個。但為了這點小事，你們就放棄了一個多次在學報上發表過論文的人才？

小事？我們並不認為這是小事。
我們注意到，第一次逃票是在你來我們國家後的第一個星期，檢查人員相信了你的解釋，因為你說自己還不熟悉自助售票系統，只是給你補了票。
但在這之後，你又兩次逃票。

-那時剛好我口袋中沒有零錢。

不、不，先生。我不同意你這種解釋，你在懷疑 我的智商。我相信在被查獲前，你可能有數百次逃票的經歷。

-那也罪不至死吧？幹嗎那麼認真？以後改還不行嗎？

不、不，先生。此事證明了兩點：
一、你不尊重規則。不僅如此，你擅於發現規則中的漏洞並惡意使用。
二、你不值得信任。
而我們公司的許多工作的進行是必須依靠信任進行的，因為如果你負責了某個地區的市場開發，公司將賦予你許多職權。
為了節約成本，我們沒有辦法設置複雜的監督機構，正如我們的公共交通系統一樣。
所以我們沒有辦法雇用你，可以確切地說，在這個國家甚至整個歐盟，你可能找不到雇用你的公司。

直到此時，他才如夢方醒、 懊悔難當。然而，真正讓他產生一語驚心之感的，卻還是對方最後 提到一句話：

道德常常能彌補智慧的缺陷，然而 ，智慧卻永遠填補不了道德的空白。（但丁）

 

............Σ=口=！

有一幕海鷗跑去啄被沖上岸的大魷魚，好可愛XD

幹麻丟回海裡，既然太多了就吃掉咩+

這寫給美國人看的文章，對熟知日本的我們來說是老生常談，但它裡面有個Galápagos syndrome的比喻實在太妙了，讓我不得不把它收集起來XDDDD （←生物宅）
還有，日本手機快全球化吧！（流口水）

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Technology

July 20, 2009
Why Japan's Cellphones Haven't Gone Global
By HIROKO TABUCHI

Robert Gilhooly/Bloomberg News
Japanese cellphone makers want to expand, but their clever handsets do not work on other networks.

TOKYO - At first glance, Japanese cellphones are a gadget lover's dream: ready for Internet and e-mail, they double as credit cards, boarding passes and even body-fat calculators.

But it is hard to find anyone in Chicago or London using a Japanese phone like a Panasonic, a Sharp or an NEC. Despite years of dabbling in overseas markets, Japan's handset makers have little presence beyond the country's shores.

"Japan is years ahead in any innovation. But it hasn't been able to get business out of it," said Gerhard Fasol, president of the Tokyo-based IT consulting firm, Eurotechnology Japan.

The Japanese have a name for their problem: Galápagos syndrome.

Japan's cellphones are like the endemic species that Darwin encountered on the Galápagos Islands - fantastically evolved and divergent from their mainland cousins - explains Takeshi Natsuno, who teaches at Tokyo's Keio University.

This year, Mr. Natsuno, who developed a popular wireless Internet service called i-Mode, assembled some of the best minds in the field to debate how Japanese cellphones can go global.

"The most amazing thing about Japan is that even the average person out there will have a superadvanced phone," said Mr. Natsuno. "So we're asking, can't Japan build on that advantage?"

The only Japanese handset maker with any meaningful global share is Sony Ericsson, and that company is a London-based joint venture between a Japanese electronics maker and a Swedish telecommunications firm.

And Sony Ericsson has been hit by big losses. Its market share was just 6.3 percent in the first quarter of 2009, behind Nokia of Finland, Samsung Electronics and LG of South Korea, and Motorola of Illinois.

Yet Japan's lack of global clout is all the more surprising because its cellphones set the pace in almost every industry innovation: e-mail capabilities in 1999, camera phones in 2000, third-generation networks in 2001, full music downloads in 2002, electronic payments in 2004 and digital TV in 2005.

Japan has 100 million users of advanced third-generation smartphones, twice the number used in the United States, a much larger market. Many Japanese rely on their phones, not a PC, for Internet access.

Indeed, Japanese makers thought they had positioned themselves to dominate the age of digital data. But Japanese cellphone makers were a little too clever. The industry turned increasingly inward. In the 1990s, they set a standard for the second-generation network that was rejected everywhere else. Carriers created fenced-in Web services, like i-Mode. Those mobile Web universes fostered huge e-commerce and content markets within Japan, but they have also increased the country's isolation from the global market.

Then Japan quickly adopted a third-generation standard in 2001. The rest of the world dallied, essentially making Japanese phones too advanced for most markets.

At the same time, the rapid growth of Japan's cellphone market in the late 1990s and early 2000s gave Japanese companies little incentive to market overseas. But now the market is shrinking significantly, hit by a recession and a graying economy; makers shipped 19 percent fewer handsets in 2008 and expect to ship even fewer in 2009. The industry remains fragmented, with eight cellphone makers vying for part of a market that will be less than 30 million units this year.

Several Japanese companies are now considering a push into overseas markets, including NEC, which pulled the plug on its money-losing international cellphone efforts in 2006. Panasonic, Sharp, Toshiba and Fujitsu are said to be planning similar moves.

"Japanese cellphone makers need to either look overseas, or exit the business," said Kenshi Tazaki, a managing vice president at the consulting firm Gartner Japan.

At a recent meeting of Mr. Natsuno's group, 20 men and one woman crowded around a big conference table in a skyscraper in central Tokyo, examining market data, delivering diatribes and frequently shaking their heads.

The discussion then turned to the cellphones themselves. Despite their advanced hardware, handsets here often have primitive, clunky interfaces, some participants said. Most handsets have no way to easily synchronize data with PCs as the iPhone and other smartphones do.

Because each handset model is designed with a customized user interface, development is time-consuming and expensive, said Tetsuzo Matsumoto, senior executive vice president at Softbank Mobile, a leading carrier. "Japan's phones are all ‘handmade' from scratch," he said. "That's reaching the limit."

Then there are the peculiarities of the Japanese market, like the almost universal clamshell design, which is not as popular overseas. Recent hardware innovations, like solar-powered batteries or waterproofing, have been incremental rather than groundbreaking.

The emphasis on hardware makes even the newest phones here surprisingly bulky. Some analysts say cellphone carriers stifle innovation by demanding so many peripheral hardware functions for phones.

The Sharp 912SH for Softbank, for example, comes with an LCD screen that swivels 90 degrees, GPS tracking, a bar-code reader, digital TV, credit card functions, video conferencing and a camera and is unlocked by face recognition.

Meanwhile, Japanese developers are jealous of the runaway global popularity of the Apple iPhone and App Store, which have pushed the American and European cellphone industry away from its obsession with hardware specifications to software. "This is the kind of phone I wanted to make," Mr. Natsuno said, playing with his own iPhone 3G.

The conflict between Japan's advanced hardware and its primitive software has contributed to some confusion over whether the Japanese find the iPhone cutting edge or boring. One analyst said they just aren't used to handsets that connect to a computer.

The forum Mr. Natsuno convened to address Galápagos syndrome has come up with a series of recommendations: Japan's handset makers must focus more on software and must be more aggressive in hiring foreign talent, and the country's cellphone carriers must also set their sights overseas.

"It's not too late for Japan's cellphone industry to look overseas," said Tetsuro Tsusaka, a telecom analyst at Barclays Capital Japan. "Besides, most phones outside the Galápagos are just so basic."

http://tw.news.yahoo.com/article/url/d/a/090629/4/1m39j.html

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