Paid for news is just like a sore thumb

Right now, news is delivered to our devices free of charge, well, almost free for most anyway. The digital world is associated with free things. Anything less will be taken as against the well being of the society. You get most of the headlines free of charge, but some established media firms are toying with paid news. How would people react? Already two London news providers have turned into paid services. The rest of the band is taking a close look to see whether it would work out at all. But reports are coming in that readers have been bottoming to more than half when the service was free. Obviously, people would not like to pay for something that they have got for free. Unfortunately for news media, people do not want to pay. Why don’t they get advertisers to pay? Search engines have been using the model successfully for years. That is the way things work. Somebody comes along and pick up the tab and the rest get to enjoy them for free! So why can’t they do it with news? Perhaps it is more of a holding cash thing than getting payment from advertisers? Getting cash first hand is always better than getting paid through a third party!

In truth, these news media are trying to test the waters. No harm done if nobody subscribes. They can always change course or close down or perhaps metamorphoses into something else! But no, media companies are addicted to collecting money upfront and that is the way it works. Anyway, they have to answer to their boards and getting food unto the table is what they know best. So pay is the way to go and no two things about it. Still, there is room for experiments. Just imagine? Let the boys get the news. Then put the news block up for auction. The highest bidder can sponsor the news just like any other auction. It is a commodity anyway, and it can be done with just a click of the mouse. Why not? With people picking up the tabs, it becomes a win-win situation. Media companies can then focus on collecting news. Advertisers are happy that they have played a part. And readers like you and me gets the news for free. This is the way to go; free news at your fingertip. Why, we do love to see advertisements don’t we? Anyway, paid news has also not forsaken the adverts. You will be used to it just like most of the web pages now. So I say, free news anytime!

China at great stress to pretend playing second fiddle

There wasn’t the usual press frenzy about China having developed the second fastest super-computer in the world. It was a very subdued reporting, almost rid of the usual fanfare in achievement reports. Well, nobody bothers about second place right? But it was nevertheless significant, coming from a developing country with over a billion people to feed. There is always the fear that one gets beaten and beaten squarely. That perhaps the press boys were worried about as well. Especially the boys in MIT and those that live on glamor reporting, it is going to be a case of one always looking at who is lurking behind their shadow! A second place is certainly intimidating enough. With government support, there is no telling when they will be number one, or perhaps, they are already number one!

It was off course not surprising. After all, China is realistically the number two largest economy in the world. It has always been the western dogma that a country without a free flow of ideas will never win the day, in terms of technology. And China is far from a free country. Why then should people slot it out to put such a state to great heights? Understandably, China is a far cry from what it used to be. For one thing, they have been able to put their scarce resources in the right place that matters. They are no political squabbling s, or at least none observable. Like the Olympics, there are able to train their people from the ground up. And they don’t have a free press to do the reporting. Certainly, Sun Zhu’s warfare techniques would have put into practice.

Certainly, nobody knows about the fact that China has a silicon valley! Do you? But they have one at Zhongguancun. It is true that it is difficult to even pronounce it, and even more difficult to remember it. China, unknown to the rest of the world has liberated its educational system. It has almost 200,000 foreign students studying there, and not only that, the students have very good rapport with industries. They can talk and discuss about industrial focused problems and they go about putting their minds to work. America has also used the model of foreign students to add verve to its curriculum. The ideas from foreign students, largely from China, have contributed to great solutions. China has now caught up and it would not be a fiction of imagination that the day will come soon when we talk about a Harvard, or a MIT of China.

We do have too much oil after all

There is plenty of oil under the sea. The Gulf of Mexico oil spill is a testament to that, never mind what BP would want you to believe. Those hundred thousand of barrels gushing out from the earth is a signal to mankind to once again splurge on using gas hungry autos that give total comfort. Yes, there is enough of oil underneath the earth’s crust to last us a few more generations. But there is a caveat. You will need to spend billions of dollars just to explore all the continental surfaces surrounding all the continents. Although there is enough of money for such purposes, the people who have the power of approving them just do not have that kind of patience to wait for their ROI. They prefer something faster.

Thus mankind is made to suffer for paying top dollars for their oil. As another sign of an excess of oil in our lives, you will see that there is also oil in our cooked foods. If there is no more oil, the first enterprise to close shop will be the fast food joints. These outlets which have mushroomed all over the world have a problem that is seldom mentioned. It is the excess oil that comes from all those automatic and clinical frying ovens after the chicken, beef and butter have been served to eager young clients that is a headache to be disposed off. Where there is strict supervision from the authorities, these expanded oils are clinically disposed of. In third world countries, where supervision is slack, the oil is just dumped into the drains.

Actually, in the real world, we do have a problem of too much oil. Lately, news has been out that a patent on oil eating bacteria has been granted. It was initially rejected because the bacteria was there all the while and granting a patent to it was seen as going against the laws laid down by the fathers of our patent system. But in reality, we really need to have these bacteria put in soap powder boxes such that man could easily dispose of unwanted oil. It is not that we could not recycle them, but more of a need for a practical system to collect them from our many kitchens.

There is another problem though. What is gong to happen when these bacteria has consumed the oil? Are we going to dispose of them again? Will they cause harm to our environments? Nobody knows. And the company that has got a patent for it does not want to comment. Perhaps the company selling them may want to collect them back for recycling? Still, we will not be able to solve our excess oil problem as long as we continue our excesses. We just eat and eat our way to sickness. That is the way advertisement tells us. Because we live to eat, we inherently over consume and left all the waste strewn at our back yards and in land fills. We are actually depriving the future generation of clean and sustainable environment.

If we take a god look at great China, we will find that although there are 1.3 billion people over there, there is not much waste of oil. Food are judiciously apportioned to the majority of the population. You will not be able to see overweight people there in the streets. People just eat as little as possible and you would not be able to detect oil in their drains. Thus it would be a good idea to take a cue from that factory to the world.

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Computer in a biochip

It has always been a time consuming process to design computer circuits, but in change of technique, engineers have used nature as a model. They have discarded etching circuits on a silicon chip and instead, using the DNA model to churn out thousands of circuits in the shortest of times. This will have deep implications for the electronic industry. Dr. Chris Dwyer, assistant professor at Duke’s Pratt School of Engineering, demonstrated that by simply mixing modified bits of DNA and other molecules, he could create billions of identical, nano sized, waffle-looking structures. By mixing it with different light-sensitive molecules, these self assembled blocks showed programmable traits like logic gates and switches that can be assembled into running programs.

The assembled molecules, known as chromosphores acts like light sensitive switches and thus can be used as computational models. They can also be used in biomedical apparatus and bio-medication. When light is shone unto the chromophores, it gets excited and gives off energy which is then absorbed by a neighboring chromosphore. From there, a different wavelength of light is given off. There is therefore an input light and an output light of a different wavelength. It thus models like the one and zeros of computer code, and at a much faster rate and less heat to cope with. Unlike the old model which has somehow reached its physical limitations, the new model will open much more possibilities and at nano scale to boot.

China’s regard for intellectual property protection is an urgent issue!

It was at the end of January 2010 that foreign firms operating in China got their shock in the form of the China government’s new condition for those bidding for government contracts. The new condition is that those who want to bid for government tenders must not only have their intellectual property registered in China, but will also have to them registered with a Chinese as one of the inventors. As if it is not already a hassle to register their IPs in China (it has to be translated into Mandarin), foreign firms will have to part with their IP to an ‘indigenous’ citizen of the Republic of China. In short, China is telling all those interested in getting a part of the 50 billion dollars annual tender to get real.

Since then, there has been a hue a cry especially from US firms having business set-ups in China. They had brought up the case, seemingly serious to President Obama. But what can the president do? It is after all the host country’s right to change its rules when it deems fit. Apparently the ruling was put into place during a time of weakness in the US. With run away debts, and a weakening dollar, Washington was in a weak position to pressure for China to return to status quo, as far as trade practices are concerned. Bearing in mind that Washington was trying to force China to revalue upwards its Yuan, China must have waited for such an opportune time to strike back.

Of late, officials from Washington have been flying in to China with accelerated frequency. And the main issue is always China must revalue upwards its Yuan so that Washington could continue to sell goods back to China. But we all know that China need not accede to any giveaway now since it has a large amount of its reserve parked in Washington. Just with a mere mention of transferring away of its reserve holdings will shake the dollar to tumble out of control! Then again, China could revalue its Yuan but counter work with other subsidies just like Washington subsidizing its cotton growers at the expense of others. Trade issues are always dynamic, and the Chinese have learn a lesson or two from the west, so no matter how much Washington use arm twisting techniques, it won’t work with the Chinese. Perhaps buying less for a longer duration might work!

What now 4G

You probably will remember those halcyon days when 3G licenses were awarded right? There were bidding and crazy auctions that stunned governments and people alike. That was Europe then, where 3G licenses went up for a few billion pounds which made governments rich like no business. Alas, 3G came and gone and nothing much happened. In terms of people’s living, not much has improved. Back then, video calling was supposed to make drastic changes to people’s life. Unfortunately, not much has changed because service providers were hampered by the huge bill they had to pay for the 3G licenses. The result was that video calling services had to be priced way too high for mass adoption. You will find it hard to catch any one using video call nowadays. It was so to speak a total failure, partly blamed on cost and partly blamed on insufficient bandwidth. And now, we are taking about going to 4G?

To be certain, there will be bidding all over again. Governments everywhere are a bit addicted to getting easy money. What more when most of them are facing huge budget deficits! Could we all survive another round of expensive telecommunication roll outs? Nevertheless, 4G technology providers are humming with eagerness about the introduction of the new technology. They say that with 4G, people’s life will change for the better. For one thing, with the increased speed of both upload and download, people will find new ways of doing things; like watching videos on their hand-helds all day long. Anyway, if we were to look at Korea and Japan, where they already run their services in their own 4G formats, there don’t seem to be any improvements at all. The only benefit is that people have more access to videos and movies. Certainly, one of the beneficiaries is the porn seller!

Looking at the technology players that are strong at touting 4G, we can see that the same number of providers but with a slight change in their constituents. American companies like Qualcomm and InterDigital are still ruling the roost. The rest of them consist of Nokia and Ericsson. The surprise however is Huawei which shows a strong contender for top system providers. It is a sign that China has arrived at the scene and others will have to take note of. But the way the do it is an example of sleuth and wisdom. Huawei came to the scene by way of supplier for 3G systems. In the short period, they had banked on being a reliable supplier of cheap support systems that the major players could not compete. With some dedicated backdoor research, they have managed to knock out a 4G system that delivers. But there is no telling what they can do in the future. Perhaps one day China might become the chief player for communication equipments in the world, just as they were the chief foundry to the world now!

Even China has to respect intellectual property rights, but only because of the World Trade Expo

It is indeed considered a rare event that China had to secretly negotiate with Japanese singer-songwriter Mayo Okamoto to get permission for using her song as the theme song for the Shanghai World Trade Expo which opens in May 1, 2010. It was not meant to be that way. The song was among many submitted by the public to be used as the theme song for the expo. Unknowingly, the organizing committee selected the song, without realizing that the person who submitted it had copied from Ms. Okamoto. Perhaps, even that was not intentionally done. But when the accusation of copying was posted on the internet, the expo committee realized that they had to do something, like seeking permission for the use of the song (even though it only faintly resembles Okamoto’s work), which in itself was rarely heard of in China. Fortunately, Ms Okamotor had agreed to allow the use of the theme, otherwise it would have been a big embarrassment for the organizer.


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This goes to show that even big bad giants, when faced with an embarrassing moment, would choose to eat humble pie when there are putting out their best act in front of a wide audience! Were it not because of the world trade expo, would China have acceded to such an act? Obviously not, if we were to look at those recent events like the tussle with Google and Yahoo! This would be a very good lesson for all of us. How to deal with the big bad wolf? Use trade sanctions or weapons of mass destruction? Certainly it will not work as shown by the intransigence of North Korea and Burma. The only way would be like the Shanghai case. Draw them out, let them face the world. Put them in a position where their face would be their destiny. When you are the showman, and the spot light is on you, no one will be allowed to make you leave the scene in disgrace. You just have to stay put and the show has to go on, whatever happens! Maybe all the shouting about China not respecting intellectual property rights is of no avail. Perhaps, relocating WIPO to Beijing might be a better option!

Is China observing intellectual property rights?

It is true. China is gearing up its machinery to practice intellectual property rights. But it is only protecting IPs that has an indigenous origin! It is protecting patents belonging to its own citizens, not those of foreigners. They have now informed foreign countries that they will only buy if there is a Chinese owned patent on the products and services. In other words, they have turn one hundred and eighty degrees and will only respect intellectual properties owned by Chinese. If foreigners wish to win state procurement tenders, they will have to dish out half of the inventor ship to Chinese citizens. That precisely is throwing up a wall to contain foreign imports. From court records, there is very little prosecution of its citizens for intellectual property infringements. But it does bring to prosecution where foreigners are caught ripping off Chinese video games!

We must understand that China is run by an authoritarian regime. What the authority says goes. No objection what so ever. And they know they are wining the intellectual property game. If required, China can close its doors now and still be able to make it to the next cycle. The west would have to look somewhere else for their markets, and in these bad climate, they and not China will be the first to go under. Such is the scenario: the new game is protectionism, and its survival for only the fittest. Obviously the fittest is the one with the most cash around. No matter what pressure the US is putting up, China will normally play the delaying game. One thing that comes to mind is the controversy over the Iranian nuclear embargo which Washington spearheaded. China has a lot of interest in Iran, and will not agree to any sanction, but instead see to it that its money is not getting burn.

China is now sailing to its near neighbors. For the moment, it is more interested in striking a working relationship with ASEAN, Japan, Korea, India, Australia, Brazil, Russia and Africa. It has already struck a free trade deal with ASEAN and will be signing more deals with Japan and Korea. It has used its large pool of funds to acquire companies around the world. It has bought iron mines, oil concessions, and other world brands. Whilst the west is struggling to overcome the recession, China is diligently building up its asset base. Its maxim is buying when it is cheap and when others can only look and not act. In the meanwhile, it is dragging its feet as far as revaluing its currency is concerned, much to the consternation of the US and the rest of the world.

Japan to drag China to the WTO Court!

Japan, like many of China’s other trading partners is peeved by China’s insistence of only buying from companies that have “indigenous innovation”. It is considering going into negotiation with China to trash out the issue, but in case it fails, then Japan would want the option to drag its erstwhile partner to the WTO Court in Geneva. However, like everything China does, there have so far been no clarifications of what constitutes as indigenous innovation. At issue is China’s government procurement of product and services which according to a report reached 90 billion dollars a year, and China’s insistence of foreign suppliers to register their intellectual property in China and also to have at least one of the inventors a Chinese citizen. Most suppliers see it as China unjust shifting its goal post and creating trade barriers in a time of economic uncertainties.

In reality, it is not only China that has created trade barriers, but almost every country has some sort of wall created. Take the case of the US. It is reported that the US is seriously taking up the suggestion by Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman’s call to put a twenty percent tariff on all Chinese imports besides the imposition of tax on Chinese steel products. So have Japan’s barrier to rice imports and the EU’s slapping of tax on Chinese nuts and bolts. China could have remained silent on the issue of state procurements but instead choose to make it known. Perhaps, it is China’s way of diverting Washington’s attention away from its insistence of China revaluing upwards its currency? Or maybe China is preparing to face the consequence of withdrawing its economic stimulus? But seriously, what can Japan achieve if it succeeds in bringing China to the WTO Court? It might loose more than it can gain!

Just who controls the patent system?

Do you know that there are over three hundred patent trolls? And together they owned about twenty thousand patents! What does it mean? It simply means they are the force to reckon with, and not the patent office! Well, the patent office (US) grants about a hundred and fifty thousand patents a year, but the patent trolls skimmed off the most important ones (those available for sale). The rest of the patents are kept in silos at universities and research institutions, and they will lay there gathering dust. With the bulk of the useful ones being in the hands of the trolls, it would mean that companies that have their own patents and are using them to make products have to be very careful, least they become the target of money extrication by the trolls. Even if you think you are safe using your own patents, you might eventually be made to pay because the trolls can exact you to pay for their license by threatening you in court for disputed infringements. They have the money and they have good lawyers and anybody standing in their way will be brought to their knees by a mere lawyer’s letter of demand. Nobody could afford to be targeted by the trolls. This is just how powerful they have become.

Understandably, the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) are concerned. The very fact that the patent system was created to help people to come forward and have their inventions protected will ring hollow if the trolls have the upper hand. They are like the Mafia of the intellectual property world. If the situation gets out of hand, then nobody would be bothered to get their inventions registered. Industries would suffer. The world economy would suffer. Rest assured that more people would be brought to the courts for infringements, even if they did not infringe at all. Companies, big and small would not dare to innovate, and mankind will suffer even more. Already there is a prediction that the trolls will be targeting life sciences in future. They have been actively buying up all those bio-technology patents available from the market. With a shrinking budget, university research departments are quietly selling off quickly those patents just to bring in funds to continue research and developments. If you have been granted a patent, and that patent has a far reaching implication to the industry, then you can be sure that the trolls will call you up and offer you money that you can’t refuse! Such is the future and if you think that the trolls will sooner fade from the scene, you will be disappointed as there are more funds being channeled into new troll setups everyday! Our hope then will rest in the hands of USPTO who are reported to want to introduce new rulings to stamp out the influence of the patent trolls league. Will the good people succeed? Maybe it’s too late already! It is like asking if the authorities will ever get rid of the Mafias.

With mask will travel

Don’t be mistaken, these cyclists are not donning mask to filter out H1N1 virus. They are wearing the protective face cover to prevent sand and grit from getting into their lungs. This scenario is in China where sandstorms are getting very common. Scientist doesn’t know yet why the storms are getting so prevalent. It could be change in climate or perhaps too the deserts growing in size due to drought. Anyway, according to a World Bank report, 16 out of the 20 most polluted cities in the world are situated in China. China has of late being inundated with air pollution. On a bad day, whole cities can be shrouded in fine mist, and people going to work have to endure with traffic congestion due to poor visibilities. It was during the Beijing Olympics that vehicles were forced to be allowed on the streets on consecutive days; this to cut down on the number of cars in order that the air be cleared of smog. But looking at the pace of development in China, there is no telling when China can get a fresh envelope of clean air space. In the meantime, people will have to wear face mask, like wearing clothing!

Why is the China Market disappearing?

All right, China has 400 million people accessing the internet and 700 million mobile-phone users. So what you might ask? Of course these figures looked tempting, and it is not likely to be matched anywhere else. These figures have always being the chief attraction for businesses to relocate to China, but although it is salivating, there are other negative issues that are becoming of concern which could put paid to attracting more investments into China. One of the most highly profiled case is that of Google withdrawing from the search market in China. Why is it that a company with a thirty percent market share of the search market suddenly decides to get out of the China market? Was it really the purported censorship issue (as related by Google) that broke the straw? Or was it some other issue like intellectual property theft, or that hacking? Then there was the issue that web host GoDaddy that had decided to stop accepting registration for the dot CN domain. And ominously, and a sign of things to come, the Chinese court have jailed four executives of Rio Tinto for bribery and stealing of Chinese secrets. Of all things, foreigners are charged for corruption in one of the most corrupt countries of the world! What then is going to happen in this great market called China?

Slowly but surely, other issues began to surface. In particular, the way China did not go out of its way to accommodate Google shows that China has of late decided to look inwards again and don't really care a hoot about others, after it had a decade ago opened up its market to the rest of the world. Yes, China had made a pile of money, chiefly from American consumers and have now decided to close its door to do some spring cleaning instead! It was a great experiment by a communist government, and a successful one at that. Another significant issue is the condition set by the Chinese government with regards to government and state procurements. Early in 2010, the Chinese government came out with the edict that it will only allow procurements provided that the supplier must have intellectual properties like patents and trademarks registered in and possessed by Chinese. Not only that, foreign suppliers must relocate their R & D to China and open up their research to Chinese citizens. Suddenly a wall came up, erected to restrict foreign sellers of products and services. It was no small matter as the amount of state procurement was estimated to be about $90 billion in 2008. As the restriction comes in the wake of the revival of western economies, its implementation will surely spark off complaints.

Has the bamboo wall being resurrected again? We must be reminded that a large part of the industrial output in China comes from foreign investments. Now, if they are not now nervous about the restrictions, then they will surely be fidgeting in the coming months. It is evident that there has been a drastic swift in policy and one that comes at a most inappropriate time. Just when the west is depending on the Chinese to buy more of their products, the unjust move might spark off a trade war that will further depress world trades. In another critical move, the Chinese government has begun to sell of their holdings of US treasuries and repatriate the money back to China. This of course has sparked of concern in the money market. There will be dire repercussions all around and chief among the victims will be the US dollar. However, even though China might want to draw down their amount of US bonds, they are afraid that if there is a too drastic a sell off, the US dollar might tumble to an unacceptable value relative to the Chinese Renminbe and thus rendered their remaining bonds worthless. So, the most likely scenario is that the drawdown of the US treasuries will be tightly controlled, and proceed according to the actual situation on the ground.

No matter how we view China, we must be reminded that China is being controlled by a group of cadres with a strong support from the army. It is a country run by guns and we can’t expect it to change in anyway. Its experience with market economy is in no way acceptable by all, and there is an under current of a large sector that has been left out of progress. With diminishing returns from farming due to shrinking farmlands and adverse weather conditions, the rural have-nots are beginning to put pressure on the central government for something to happen to alleviate their sufferings. Of course the Chinese government knows about it, but because of lack of an effective administration and an endemic corruption, much of the aid earmarked for the poor does not reach them in time. The gap between the rich and the poor has widened tremendously, and there is nothing much the government can do about it, except to once again restructure the system to the one they had begun with. And that is the communism that Chairman Mao knew of.

What does patent rights and copyrights have to do with your lives? Well, to make it simple, go over to the Patent Agent to learn more.