User:Jidanni/Dan Jacobson (Taiwan)

Dan Jacobson, born 1960, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA, moved in 1965 with his parents to Evanston, Illinois, where he attended the Free School of Evanston and also received a Bachelor's Degree in Geology and a Master's degree in Computer Science from Northwestern University, at minimal tuition as his father worked in the library. In 1977 he lived on The Farm (Tennessee).

He worked for a mere three years in Bell Labs, Naperville, Illinois, when in 1991 on a visit to Taiwan he met a local woman, remarrying and moving to the island, where he is now a permanent resident and a member of the expatriate community, with occasional press attention, despite location on a remote hilltop due to his fear of noise, where he maintains subsistence agriculture amid a hectare of Taiwan subtropical evergreen forest.

Actions
Over the years Jacobson has occasionally drawn attention:
 * Promoting Hanyu Pinyin over the Democratic Progressive Party's Tongyong Pinyin.
 * Promoting the use of the Taiwan Power Company's pole coordinates as a "poorman's GPS". These were then incorporated into maps by e.g., Sunriver, who now informally feature Jacobson on their maps and website.
 * Promoting house number planning amongst local governments.
 * Discovering the reversal of the globe on the 1999 version of the NT$1000 bill. Despite denials, the image was replaced in the 2004 reissue.
 * The Highway System in Taiwan adopted Jacobson's suggestions
 * Integrated formerly all-female toll collector hiring
 * Replaced reoccurring e.g., 0.8 fractional kilometer posts with their full versions: 169 .8
 * Replaced the 1/2 half kilometer posts on the provincial highways expressways with their full versions: 37.5

In 2007 Jacobson became focused on rescinding Article 9 of the Nationality Law of the Republic of China, so immigrants to Taiwan such as himself can keep their original nationality.

Comments
Richard Stallman notes Jacobson is "much more unusual" than Stallman.