China Rules Skype Illegal. Tell Me Something New.

The two real problems in China

China is a large country with a large population. If you are given the opportunity to govern China, you will probably grasping for breath thinking of a solution. Mind you, China is made up of many seperate states with as many cultures and beliefs. Although it has a single written language, people in different states talk with diferent slangs and it is not uncommon for a northern  chinese to not understand what a southern chinese is talking about. To govern it, you would need great resources and to be ready to use untried methods. Now, China has progressed to the second largest economy in the world, and is moving towards dethroning US as the largest economy, probably within four years time. But beneath all those money making schemes that a revived China has, two things stand out in importance. One is how to control the communicating links among the citizenry and the other is the great concern about run away inflation. It is therefore not surprising that the present Chinese government spent most of their time debating as to what appropriate actions to be taken to keep the kettle from boiling over.

Communication is a serious matter. In China, with a population of one over billion  and with most of them able to call each other over the handphone, keeping a close eye on what is being chattered is top prioirity. Having emegered from Chaiman Moa's red revolution from the seventies, the China of today will have a whole new set of problems to tackle. It used to be that the citizenry had to be very careful what they talk and who they talk to. Communism does'nt allow freedom of speech, or for that matter, talking bad about the government. Not only that, they have to sing in praise of their leaders, something that is no more in vogue and fully embraced in North Korea. Like people anywhere in the world, praising for government actions is no more popular. People learns about hypocarcies and talking good about the government is one of the worst kind of hypocracy! The latest sign of government intolerance of freedom of speech is the banning of Skype in China. Why is it banned? First, like Blackberries systems, it is a foreign thing. With both systems, the government can't get its hand on tapping what is being conversed. That means they can't effectively put their control on how many people pass of chatting their hatred for the govenment. Without adequate control, the populace could topple the government, perhaps with a little bit of help from the west!

The second big problem in China is running inflation. But why inflation? As China progressed into a world economy, there is a dicotmy between the rich and the poor. A rising middle class is emerging fast, due to the large trade surplus the China has achieved for the past ten years. Unfortnately, this rich sector is unevenly distributed. Large industrial towns , mostly in the western coastal regions is causing a lot of dissent from the poorer states in the interia and western regions. As China grew from an agricultural base, and is still helped by a large rural sector with meagre incomes, it is finding great difficulty in distributing of wealth among the populace. Imbued with endemic corruption in its governing structures, channeling of wealth to the poor is proving to be difficult. Agricultural lands are illegally taken away for sale to private entities for conversion to industrial entities. The poor gets poorer and the rich gets to stake away money in overseas accounts. There is a great fear that another revolution might come along, manned by the destitute poor and rural have nots. The leaders are of the oppinion that they can't use the army, two million strong to control any rebellion. The first sign of an agrieved government is of course the new law in controlling asset bubbles by way of getting the banks from upping their cash asset value. Still, the property market, populaced by the rich is running at a dangerous pace. A burst, no matter how small will affect the economy of China, bringing with it more problems for the poor and also affecting the world. Like China, the other  progressing economies also have property bubble on their hands.

 

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.

Would you want to see more efficiencies? How about going to this great place to start up an environmentally sound business. Yes, it is called MSC Status, the place where things are doable.

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!