【每日阅读训练第四期——速度越障10系列】【10-13】经管

angela不怕孤单

感觉今天的阅读框架还是比较清晰的，希望大家喜欢~
三星的有点流水账，感觉最近买iphone5的没见几个，买三星的同学多了，所以找了这篇文章。
周末愉快~~~

【speed】
【time 1】
Smartphones
Galaxy Note II Review: How Samsung Sold Me on Humongous Phones

By Jared NewmanNov. 07, 20125 Comments

There was a time when I thought 4 to 4.3 inches was the ideal screen size for a smartphone. This was before Apple upsized its iPhone 5, but after other phone makers had starting creeping into the 4.7- to 4.8-inch range. It seemed to me that smartphones were getting too big for average-sized hands, and that phone makers had gone mad in a game of “mine is bigger.”

But then I spent a week using nothing but Samsung’s Galaxy Note II, a smartphone-tablet crossover with a whopping 5.5-inch display. It’s been a fun experience, but it’s also tweaked my thinking; now, even 4.8-inch screens seem reasonable, and anything less feels insufferably puny.

Granted, I’d always been accepting of the fact that some people might like phones with gigantic screens. In my review of the original Galaxy Note, which only launched nine months ago on AT&T, I concluded that the phone should find a niche, though I didn’t consider myself part of it. Somehow in the course of using the Note II as my only phone for a week, my feelings have changed.

The fact that the Galaxy Note II is so much better than its predecessor might have something to do with it. This is largely due to the software, which is based on Android 4.1, codenamed Jelly Bean. Smoothness was the main focus for this version of Android, and it really shines on the Note II. Every swipe through the home screen is just as fluid as the iPhone–for a long time the high-water mark of interface fluidity–even with a full array of widgets and an animated wallpaper. I’ll go so far as to say it’s the smoothest Android phone I’ve ever used.

Samsung’s hardware probably played a role in the Galaxy Note II’s newfound pep as well. This is one of the first smartphones in the United States with a quad-core processor, and it also has 2 GB of RAM to keep things humming along. I never had any performance issues when watching videos, playing games or just moving from one app to another. Shutter times on the phone’s 8-megapixel camera were practically immediate.

The main attraction, of course, is that gigantic 5.5-inch, 1280-by-720 resolution display. That may sound like a boost over the 5.3-inch, 1280-by-800 resolution display in the original Galaxy Note, but it’s actually more of a shift. The Note II’s display uses a 16:9 aspect ratio, so it’s taller and narrower than the original 16:10 note, and the pixel density (and overall number of pixels) is lower. In the real world, the difference in displays is subtle.
【434】

【time 2】
When you hold the Galaxy Note II up against any other smartphone, however, the difference is drastic. Compared to the iPhone 5, the Note II provides roughly 0.75 inches more space horizontally, and about 1.25 inches more space vertically. Although the screen resolution is the same as many other high-end Android phones–and the pixel density is lower–there’s still something glorious about the Note II’s roomy display, especially for videos, games and web browsing.

The size of the phone provides another benefit: It leaves room for a big battery. I didn’t do any standardized testing, but when using the Note II regularly for phone calls, browsing, GPS navigation, photography, streaming music and the occasional game or video, I was often able to leave it off the charger for two whole days at a time. It’s hard to imagine any situation where the Note II wouldn’t at least be able to get through a full day of rigorous use, and a 48-hour span is definitely doable.

But is the Note II too big to actually carry around? Not for me. I tried it in a variety of jeans pockets, both dressy and casual, and never felt uncomfortable, though the phone can leave a notably large impression (cue the banal jokes). It helps that the Note II is fairly svelte, measuring 0.37 inches thick with a gently curved design. (In terms of looks, it’s similar to the Galaxy S III, with softly rounded edges and a glossy plastic rear panel.)

The biggest problem with the Galaxy Note II is the one that’s inherent to its size: You cannot comfortably use it with one hand. Sure, you can flip through the home screen and scroll through apps with your thumb, but good luck tapping something at the top of the screen, or reaching beyond the home button to either the back or menu buttons (depending on which hand you’re using). A few times, I almost dropped the phone while wrangling with it one-handed. More often, my palm would accidentally tap something on the edge of the screen as I tried to reach across with my thumb. As with the original Note, it’s a tradeoff.
【362】


【time 3】
Of course, Samsung is still pushing the “S Pen” stylus as a selling point for the Galaxy Note II, and I still think it’s a gimmick. The stylus itself is larger, and therefore easier to use, and the phone includes a few more pen-optimized applications than its predecessor, including a pressure-sensitive version of Sketchbook Mobile. In my normal use, though, it was rarely easier to pull the stylus from its holster than it was to just keep using my fingers. Also, the Note II’s physical back and menu buttons don’t detect the stylus, so even when you’re using it, you’ll still need to tap with your fingers to get around.

I do have a few other nitpicks with the Galaxy Note II’s software, mainly where Samsung tries to overreach with unnecessary features. For instance, the keyboard has a one-handed mode that squishes the keys toward one side of the screen. It’s clever, but too easy to invoke by accident (I’m not even sure how), and once enabled, the only way to turn it off is through the keyboard’s settings menu, as far as I could tell. The keyboard has other frustrations, notably the lack of a dedicated button for voice input–it’s instead combined with the clipboard and other keyboard options in an all-purpose input button–though I did like how number keys are perched above the letters.

Also, Samsung’s shameless Siri clone, known as S Voice, doesn’t bring much to the table. You reach it by double-tapping the home button, but I’d much rather assign that command to regular Google voice search. You can, at least, access Google Now by holding the menu button, but the use of two different voice assistants, one inferior than the other, just adds confusion. At this point, a few bad software decisions here and there are par for the course with Android phones, and the Note II is no different.

Overall, though, the Galaxy Note II is an excellent device, however you want to classify it. In my week with this phone-tablet crossover, I’ve noticed that I’m using my Nexus 7 tablet less, and I’m dreading the idea of going back to the smartphones that I once thought were just the right size. There’s room for a device that straddles the line between both, and Samsung is showing everyone how it’s done.
【389】

【time 4】
France and the euro

The time-bomb at the heart of Europe

Why France could become the biggest danger to Europe’s single currency

Nov 17th 2012 | from the print edition

THE threat of the euro’s collapse has abated for the moment, but putting the single currency right will involve years of pain. The pressure for reform and budget cuts is fiercest in Greece, Portugal, Spain and Italy, which all saw mass strikes and clashes with police this week. But ahead looms a bigger problem that could dwarf any of these: France.

The country has always been at the heart of the euro, as of the European Union. President François Mitterrand argued for the single currency because he hoped to bolster French influence in an EU that would otherwise fall under the sway of a unified Germany. France has gained from the euro: it is borrowing at record low rates and has avoided the troubles of the Mediterranean. Yet even before May, when François Hollande became the country’s first Socialist president since Mitterrand, France had ceded leadership in the euro crisis to Germany. And now its economy looks increasingly vulnerable as well.

As our special report in this issue explains, France still has many strengths, but its weaknesses have been laid bare by the euro crisis. For years it has been losing competitiveness to Germany and the trend has accelerated as the Germans have cut costs and pushed through big reforms. Without the option of currency devaluation, France has resorted to public spending and debt. Even as other EU countries have curbed the reach of the state, it has grown in France to consume almost 57% of GDP, the highest share in the euro zone. Because of the failure to balance a single budget since 1981, public debt has risen from 22% of GDP then to over 90% now.

The business climate in France has also worsened. French firms are burdened by overly rigid labour- and product-market regulation, exceptionally high taxes and the euro zone’s heaviest social charges on payrolls. Not surprisingly, new companies are rare. France has fewer small and medium-sized enterprises, today’s engines of job growth, than Germany, Italy or Britain. The economy is stagnant, may tip into recession this quarter and will barely grow next year. Over 10% of the workforce, and over 25% of the young, are jobless. The external current-account deficit has swung from a small surplus in 1999 into one of the euro zone’s biggest deficits. In short, too many of France’s firms are uncompetitive and the country’s bloated government is living beyond its means.
【400】

【time 5】
Hollande at bay
With enough boldness and grit, Mr Hollande could now reform France. His party holds power in the legislature and in almost all the regions. The left should be better able than the right to persuade the unions to accept change. Mr Hollande has acknowledged that France lacks competitiveness. And, encouragingly, he has recently promised to implement many of the changes recommended in a new report by Louis Gallois, a businessman, including reducing the burden of social charges on companies. The president wants to make the labour market more flexible. This week he even talked of the excessive size of the state, promising to “do better, while spending less”.

Yet set against the gravity of France’s economic problems, Mr Hollande still seems half-hearted. Why should business believe him when he has already pushed through a string of leftish measures, including a 75% top income-tax rate, increased taxes on companies, wealth, capital gains and dividends, a higher minimum wage and a partial rollback of a previously accepted rise in the pension age? No wonder so many would-be entrepreneurs are talking of leaving the country.

European governments that have undertaken big reforms have done so because there was a deep sense of crisis, because voters believed there was no alternative and because political leaders had the conviction that change was unavoidable. None of this describes Mr Hollande or France. During the election campaign, Mr Hollande barely mentioned the need for business-friendly reform, focusing instead on ending austerity. His Socialist Party remains unmodernised and hostile to capitalism: since he began to warn about France’s competitiveness, his approval rating has plunged. Worse, France is aiming at a moving target. All euro-zone countries are making structural reforms, and mostly faster and more extensively than France is doing. The IMF recently warned that France risks being left behind by Italy and Spain.

At stake is not just the future of France, but that of the euro. Mr Hollande has correctly badgered Angela Merkel for pushing austerity too hard. But he has hidden behind his napkin when it comes to the political integration needed to solve the euro crisis. There has to be greater European-level control over national economic policies. France has reluctantly ratified the recent fiscal compact, which gives Brussels extra budgetary powers. But neither the elite nor the voters are yet prepared to transfer more sovereignty, just as they are unprepared for deep structural reforms. While most countries discuss how much sovereignty they will have to give up, France is resolutely avoiding any debate on the future of Europe. Mr Hollande was badly burned in 2005 when voters rejected the EU constitutional treaty after his party split down the middle. A repeat of that would pitch the single currency into chaos.
【460】

【剩余】
Too big not to succeed?
Our most recent on a big European country (in June 2011) focused on Italy’s failure to reform under Silvio Berlusconi; by the end of the year he was out—and change had begun. So far investors have been indulgent of France; indeed, long-term interest rates have fallen a bit. But sooner or later the centime will drop. You cannot defy economics for long.
Unless Mr Hollande shows that he is genuinely committed to changing the path his country has been on for the past 30 years, France will lose the faith of investors—and of Germany. As several euro-zone countries have found, sentiment in the markets can shift quickly. The crisis could hit as early as next year. Previous European currency upheavals have often started elsewhere only to finish by engulfing France—and this time, too, France rather than Italy or Spain could be where the euro’s fate is decided. Mr Hollande does not have long to defuse the time-bomb at the heart of Europe.
【170】


【obstacle】

Asia

India vs China: Which Has a Bigger Reform Challenge?

By Michael SchumanNov. 15, 2012Add a Comment


Both India and China are in the middle of their worst economic slowdowns in many years. If IMF projections for 2012 prove accurate, China’s GDP will advance at the slowest pace since 1999, and India’s at the slowest pace since 2002. There is a lot to learn from these downturns. One is that economies, no matter how promising, can’t grow at fantastically high rates indefinitely, with GDP ascending in neat, upward straight lines. We also learn that “decoupling” is still not a reality (especially for China). Despite rising domestic demand and burgeoning ties of trade and investment between emerging economies, the developing world is still connected to the developed, and what happens in the U.S. and Europe still matters a great deal.


Perhaps the most important take away from the slowdown, however, is that even rapidly growing economies can’t be complacent. Though it is true that the poor performance of emerging economies everywhere is a function of the weakness of the global economy generally, that is only part of the story. Both India and China have been slowing down because neither country has done what they need to keep growth going, in a healthy and sustainable fashion.


The big question going forward is: Will they?


The answer matters to everybody. If India and China get their reforms right, the world economy will be better able to create jobs. These two markets are becoming crucial to major companies in the U.S. and Europe. Yum! Brands, which controls the KFC and Pizza Hut fast-food chains, now earns roughly half its revenue in China, for example. If India and China don’t move ahead on reform, the global economy will lose out on a key source of growth that is vital as the U.S. and Europe struggle with debt, deficits and unemployment.


In many respects, the sort of reform necessary in the two economies is similar. Both require greater liberalization. India must continue to dismantle the leftover red tape of the License Raj to free up private companies and open up to greater levels of foreign investment. China has to scale back its overbearing state enterprises, allow more competition in certain key sectors (like finance) and deregulate prices (especially interest rates) to improve efficiency, corporate performance, and resource allocation. Both also have to do more to build a stronger middle class. In China, that means improving labor rights and creating a better social safety net (such as improved healthcare and pension systems). India has to double down on anti-poverty programs by improving the effectiveness of the civil service and bolstering education and other social services. Both have to stamp down corruption. China ranks an unimpressive 75th (out of 183 countries) on Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index, and India an embarrassing 95th. Recent scandals, like the fall of Chongqing boss Bo Xilai in China, have exposed just how serious the corruption problem is.


Yet neither country has been responding to their reform challenges boldly enough. Both administrations face stiff political opposition to reform. In India, there are too many politicians still stuck in 1960s thinking about economics who fiercely resist the realities of reform and make it difficult for the government to press forward with any urgency. China, too, has powerful opponents to greater reform, especially state enterprises, who benefit from subsidies and protected markets, and the bureaucracy, which will resist any loss of authority in liberalization efforts. There is also no clear consensus within the Chinese Communist Party as to what kind of economy China should have going forward, with some factions arguing for greater openness and other fearful of giving up too much state control.


Despite the opposition, however, both countries have been making progress. After a long stall in reform, India’s new finance minister, P. Chidambaram, has unleashed a torrent of measures in recent weeks that further opened the retail, airline and insurance sectors to foreign investment. I’ve been impressed recently with China’s economic policymaking amid the downturn. Rather than deluging the economy with another tidal wave of credit and spending (as the state did during the 2008 economic crisis), the government has been much more prudent, encouraging further lending and fast-tracking some infrastructure projects but not going overboard. This has boosted hopes that the leadership if finally committing itself to “rebalancing,” or shifting the sources of growth away from investment and towards consumption. There are early signs that difficult shift is starting to take place. In the first three-quarters of the year, consumption contributed more to growth than investment.


We should not, however, get our hopes up. The Indian government has recently picked some low-hanging reform fruit but the tough stuff remains ahead. India can no longer afford to suffer without proper power or rural development because of a resistant and ineffective bureaucracy.New Delhi’s biggest challenge is making the state more competent and capable of implementing reform.


China’s leaders say the right things – outgoing President Hu Jintao spoke of fighting corruption and boosting consumption in his speech before this month’s 18th Communist Party Congress – but we’ve heard these promises again and again and again and real progress has been slow, at best. The new party leadership announced on Thursday also leaves doubts that reforms will come quickly enough. Prominent reformers, most notably Guangdong provincial party chief Wang Yang, were left off the new seven-member Standing Committee. Yet China may have an even bigger reform challenge than India. New Delhi needs to continue and expand what it has been doing for the past 20 years – freeing India’s entrepreneurial energies through liberalization. China, however, has the tough task of completely altering its growth model,from a state-led, investment-heavy system to a more open and balanced system with stronger rule of law. Despite the recent promising data, that process is still in its early days.


Neither country can afford to foot-drag. If India can’t get its growth rate up, the country won’t be able to rapidly reduce poverty or create jobs for the millions of youngsters who enter the workforce each year. China’s current growth model, meanwhile, is creating dangerous distortions in the economy – excess capacity, high levels of debt – that could eventually explode into a major economic crisis. The big story in India and China in the next five years is whether or not they can get their reform act together. We should all pray they do.
【1055】

莽莽要上7

speed1'57
1‘23
1’20
1‘45
2'03


Obstacle
5'19
多谢哈！哈哈~~

2012Michelle

占位，辛苦Angela了。

这小分队的任务，怎么就总是做不完的咧，呵呵~

阿丫丫丫

145
95
110
102
95
40
360

好久不读了速度超慢啊，泪奔~~o(>_<)o ~~

xiaod265

神啊~我今天的还没做，怎么明天的就出来了？！

徒手破鲜橙

1‘55
1’41
2‘08
2’07
2‘10

5’08

实在忍不住吐槽，作者真是三星的托儿，真心不喜这种大手提，我笑一下，电话就断了。。。。╮(╯▽╰)╭

CCcarol

这几天没有好好看 先占了再说~要不然都没补坑的压力了~

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
补今天最后一个坑~
2‘13
2’10
2‘14
同意楼上~ 玩儿了别人的三星 就瞬间被拔草了...  最近三星的那个广告 喜欢它的一百个理由 我只想说 我不喜欢它 也有一百个理由。。。
2’24
2‘30
1’01

越障：5‘13
读着读着就感觉是资本主义的角度分析中国和印度的各种实际情况 斯巴达反正也开完了 希望更好吧~

阿菜hrf

速度练习好长啊...note 大的装在裤兜里就蹲不下来了，哈哈
2'21''
1'55''
2'06''
2'12''
2'55''
obstacle:6'43'' 看来新一届的亚洲偶像天团不好干啊

Mystery1331

Galaxy NoteⅡ Review(Speed1~Speed3)
Speed1:3'09"
P1.4to4.3 inches is the ideal size for a smartphone.
P2~P3.Change mind after using 5.5-inch display, even 4.8-inch screens are reasonable.
P4.Smoother than its predecessor largely due to software(Android4.1)
P5.Hardware made shutter times immediate.
P6.Resolution display.

Speed2:2'26"
P7.bigger when compare with IP5, though screen resolution remain the same and the pixel density is lower.
P8.bigger battery
P9.too big to carry around? not for the author.
P10.Biggest problem:cannot use it with one hand.

Speed3:2'40"
P11."S Pen"stylus
P12~P13. Nitpicksverreach with unnecessary features.eg1.keyboard one-handed mode eg2."S Voice"-Shanzhai Siri
P14. Conclusion: execellent device.

EU currency's biggest danger:France(Speed4~Speed5)
Speed4:2'52"
P1.France is the biggest problem dwarf any of these countries.
P2.Vulnarable economy
P3.Weakness:France lose competitiveness to Germany.
P4.The business climate in France has also worsened.

Speed5:3'23"
P5.Mr.Hollande could reform France.
P6.However, he seemed half-hearted.
P7.His Socialist Party remains unmodernised and hostile to capitalism.
P8.There has to be greater European-level control over national economic policies.
P9.Limited time remained for reforming before EU crapse.

Obstacle:7'04"很中肯的好文章！

xyolandas

2'18''
2'04''
2'27''
3'10''
3'26''

后面明显太困了。。