Western Media Fake Piracy story in China

Sony: No Pirated "Spider-Man 3" on Internet, Streets of China

Submitted by Mark Hefflinger on April 25, 2007 - 10:47am.
Los Angeles - Sony Pictures Entertainment said on Wednesday that, contrary to news reports, an investigation by the company has found no pirated DVD copies of its forthcoming "Spider-Man 3" film in China, or on the Internet.

Reuters and other outlets had reported seeing $1 DVDs bearing "Spider-Man 3" branding in Beijing, but the discs did not contain authentic copies of the film, which opens in theaters on May 1.

"Similar hoaxes and false alarms have occurred prior to the release of other major films," Sony Pictures said in a statement.

"We have uncovered examples of Spider-Man 2 being sold in Spider-Man 3 boxes in China. But thus far we can find no instance where Spider-Man 3 has appeared on DVD."

Furthermore, Sony said it has not detected the film on Internet file-sharing networks. "After an initial investigation of online sites worldwide, we have so far found no pirated copies of Spider-Man 3 on the Internet," Sony said.


Source: http://www.dmwmedia.com/news/2007/04/25/sony-no-pirated-spider-man-3-on-internet-streets-of-china

China firm wins patent on malaria vaccine

SHANGHAI April 24 (UPI) -- Chinese firm SinoBiomed said Tuesday it has been granted a U.S. patent for its malaria vaccine PfCP2.9.

The newly issued patent covers a fusion protein comprising the Plasmodium merozoite surface protein-1 and the Plasmodium apical membrane antigen 1, the encoding DNA sequence, the vector containing the sequence and the host cell containing the vector.

The patent also covers the method for preparing the fusion protein and the usage for producing anti-malarial vaccine.

The patent has been assigned to the Second Military Medical University in Shanghai for the preparation and dosage of the plasmodium fusion antigen, SinoBiomed said.

"The granting of this U.S. patent enables SinoBiomed to proceed with the vaccine development with full confidence in its potential for commercial development for the global market," said SinoBiomed President and CEO Banjun Yang. "The potential benefits to humanity as well as to SinoBiomed shareholders are significant."

The company said it has exclusive rights to develop, manufacture and sell the vaccine through its 82-percent owned subsidiary, Shanghai Wanxing Bio-pharmaceuticals Co. Ltd.


Source: http://www.upi.com/

China gunning for three Petaflop systems

The Great Grid of China

By Nebojsa Novakovic: Tuesday 24 April 2007, 13:03

A BEHEMOTH like Intel wouldn't pay grand, Global IDF-scale, homage to the Middle Kingdom - the ancient name for China, for those few not in the know - without a good reason. Let's make it many good reasons, in fact.

Three of those good reasons are in the field of HPC - High Performance Computing, the boring official name for supercomputing. While other regional HPC powers, Japan and Korea, aim for one Petaflop+ class system each in the next few years, China is pushing to the forefront of the game by going for at least two, most probably three, Petaflop supercomputers by 2010.

And what a competition that is: The Olympic capital city, Beijing, will have one, most probably under the patronage of Chinese Academy of Science, where Lenovo is an incumbent with a large 1000-CPU Itanium Quadrics system right now. This will probably come on line first, since it is the central node of China National Grid.

The financial capital of Shanghai has a the go-ahead for another Petaflop, at its supercomputer centre. The incumbent there is (far less known) Dawning. Each of these is going ahead with 100+ TFLOP 'pilot' systems this year to, kinda, prepare for the final fun. For a comparison, each of those two 'pilots' would be faster than anything anywhere in Europe today. And yes, these two huge metropolises have committed to these mammoth supercomputer projects - no ifs and buts there.

Finally, the 'enterprising' southern province of famed Cantonese cuisine and shrewd businessmen may have its own Petaflop. Galactic computing, set up by the well-known Steve Chen of ex-Cray fame, uses its base in the ever-prosperous city of Shenzhen, now the richest city of Guangdong province together with the capital Guangzhou. Yes, they started without clear federal support, but you'd never know it down there. After all, Shenzhen was the size of Ellis Island 40 years ago, yet now it is greater than Greater London - both in size, well over 2,000 sq km, and population, with some 13 million, in a multitude of huge, well planned, gardens of skyscrapers. So, determination does it.

These Chinese moves will definitely have many supporters in the US and EU supercomputer centres - one sure result is, more funds available to these guys to match or exceed China's efforts, whether in civilian or military use. At the end of the day, what's supercomputing but yet another one-upmanship 'mine is bigger/faster/hotter than yours' game? Save for the honest hard-working exceptions of course...


Source: http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=39142

Killer in VT Was A Korean. Many Western Media Are feeling Disappointed

A sad incident happened in Virginia Tech on 04/16/2007, in which 33 people died. Even in such a sorrow scenario, western media did not forget to put dirty words toward China and Chinese.

It was started from Chicago Sun Times who linked the shooting with a Chinese. Then the information was adopted by many western media immediately without any further investigation.

Western media should feel disappointed when they heard that the killer was a Korean instead of a Chinese as they wished.

I feel really sorry for the victims of the killing that were used as a tool to attack China and Chinese and for the readers who were misled by the wedia.

The following report is from Chicago Sun Times.

Here on visa? The shooting rampage . . .

April 17, 2007
BY MICHAEL SNEED Sun-Times Columnist
Sneed hears authorities were investigating whether the gunman who killed 32 people in a rampage on the Virginia Tech campus was a Chinese national who arrived in the United States last year on a student visa.

The 25-year-old man being investigated for the deadliest college carnage in U.S. history reportedly arrived in San Francisco on a United Airlines flight on Aug. 7, 2006, on a visa issued in Shanghai, the source said. Investigators had not linked him to any terrorist groups, the source added.

The shooter reportedly had multiple handguns with high-capacity magazines, enabling him to kill many students quickly.

The rampage also appeared to have been premeditated since the exits in the campus buildings in which the shootings occurred were chained.

One story being investigated was that the rampage was the result of a domestic problem, and an ex-girlfriend may have been killed in the massacre. But that was pure speculation.

Investigators also believe three bomb threats on the campus last week may have been attempts by the shooter to test the campus security response. In addition, Sneed hears the gunman was described by witnesses as Asian and about 6 feet tall.

Access to Norris Hall, where the multiple shootings occurred, can only be gained through a student ID.

The man being investigated was reportedly in the U.S. on an F-1 visa (student).

Tourism Industry In China and India

The city of Shanghai alone boasts of 1,35,000 rooms against a mere 1,05,000 rooms in the entire India. A country smaller than the size of Delhi, Singapore, has nearly half of India's total room capacity with figures standing at 48,000.

China also leads India in infrastructure development with 316 hotel projects in pipeline, almost double of India which has 161 on-going projects.

Similarly, the room capacity target of China stands at 1,07,725 which is more than six times of India's 16,734.

Comparing India with rival tourist destinations China and Singapore in terms of tourist arrivals, the study noted that Singapore, despite its tiny size, gets twice the number of tourists and China gets more than 10 times.

Against India's tourist arrivals figure of 4.3 million last year, China received as many as 46.80 million tourists and Singapore got 3.92 million, close to what the whole of India got in 2005.

http://www.expressindia.com/fullstory.php?newsid=83821

Huawei launches 65nm CDMA 1xEV-DO Data Card

Huawei Technologies has developed world's first 65nm CDMA 1xEV-DO data card, EC360, especially for the North American market.

The card is manufactured using a 65nm process, which allows for less power consumption and simpler maintenance requirements. This data card reportedly supports fast packet data services with a maximum downlink transmission rate of 3.1M and uplink transmission rate of 1.8M.

More detail can be accessed here.

Huawei, ZTE to Build New Bases in China

http://circuitsassembly.com/cms/cms/content/view/4713/95/

SHENZHEN, CHINA – China's two leading telecom equipment providers, Huawei TechnologiesZTE Corp., are planning to build new manufacturing and R&D bases to speed up domestic and global expansion.

Huawei will spend a reported $517 million on a base in Dongguan. The company will build the base in phases, the first of which will be ready early next year. When fully operational, the cluster of factories will account for several billion dollars worth of Huawei's revenue, according to local media.

Huawei is also building a similar base in Langfang to be finished in July. It is also expected to generate billions in revenue.

ZTE is building a national R&D and manufacturing park in Shenzhen to expand its presence in cellphones. The park will cover 440,000 sq. meters and employ 15,000 workers.

STMicroelectronics is stepping in to support China's domestic audio video codec, lending it more street credibility in a world dominated by MPEG-4 and H.264/AVC standards.

ST will initially take a software-based approach to decode China's Audio Video Coding Standard, using media processors in its existing STi520x and STi710x families that are used in IP set-top boxes. By the end of the year, or early next year, it will have a hardwired implementation in volume production, said Bob Krysiak, ST's general manager for Greater China.

Expect other multinationals, such as Broadcom Corp., to quickly tip plans of their support for AVS, too.

Till now, only a small number of local companies have signed onto AVS, including Celestial Semiconductor, Grandview Semiconductor, Longjing Microelectronics, Fudan Micro Nano and Beijing USC.

A recently released Chinese broadcast mobile TV specification, known as CMMB, also uses AVS as its codec. Still, China Telecom, the largest domestic telecom company, favors H.264 in its IPTV offering and it will likely dominate the market.

AVS backers say the codec is similar to H.264 in terms of technical performance. Unlike MPEG-4/H.264, however, the AVS group probably will not charge "participation fees" to use the codec for subscription-based services, over-the-air free broad- casts or duplication of content on a title-by-title basis.


The complete report can be found here.

Real-Time Map Monitors Disasters Across the Globe

The report from wsj can be found here.

Enter the website of the map

China Netcom to Implement Domestic A/V codec for IPTV

China Netcom said positive results from testing the Audio Video Coding Standard (AVS) in the coastal city of Dalian persuaded it to fully implement the codec this year in 20 more cities. It will also transfer current H.264-based IPTV trials in four cities to AVS, although there's no schedule for that. China Netcom is running IPTV trial in five cities, one of which uses AVS while the other four use the more popular H.264.

There are several firms in China designing for AVS, including Celestial Semiconductor, Grandview Semiconductor, Longjing Microelectronics, Fudan Micro Nano and Beijing USC.

In addition, Broadcom Corp. said it will release a chip supporting AVS this year. STMicroelectronics has been waiting to see if AVS will be used in the satellite set-top box market, but because that's still unclear, ST has not committed to developing chips.

Envivio Inc., provider of MPEG-4-based IP video convergence solutions, recently released a telco-grade encoder that supports AVS for broadcast and IPTV deployments.

China Netcom hopes for 2 million AVS-based IPTV users in two years and 6 million in five to seven years, or 40 percent of its current broadband users. Market researcher iSuppli estimates that by 2008 there will be 3.6 million IPTV users in China and by 2010, the figure will be 17.4 million. Last year, there were 436,000 IPTV users.

AVS is a domestically developed audio/video codec that is being considered as part of a global IPTV standard being drafted by the International Telecommunication Union. A recently released broadcast mobile TV specification, known as CMMB, also uses AVS as its codec. Still, China Telecom, the largest domestic telecom company, favors H.264 in its IPTV offering.

AVS backers say the codec is similar to H.264 in terms of technical performance. Unlike MPEG-4/H.264, however, the AVS group probably will not charge "participation fees" to use the codec for subscription-based services, over-the-air free broad- casts or duplication of content on a title-by-title basis.

The codec is among a handful of domestic standards that China is promoting in order to lessen its reliance on foreign intellectual property. If the strategy is successful in the long run, it will shift the flow of royalties and fees into the coffers of local, rather than foreign, companies and help to build up domestic technology.

Netcom added it will also test AVS-based TV over a TD-SCDMA cellular network. Currently, there are no plans for commercialization since Netcom doesn't have a cellular license yet, said Xiongyan Tang, vice chief engineer at Netcom.

(Source)

The homepage of China's AVS forum is http://www.avs.org.cn/en/

Children in India cheaper than buffaloes

NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Traffickers are selling children in India for amounts that are often lower than the cost of animals and most of them end up working as laborers or commercial sex workers, activists said on Tuesday.

"Children are purchased like buffaloes," said Bhuvan Ribhu of Bachpan Bachao Andolan (Save the Childhood Movement), quoting a study that is due to be released later this year.

"While buffaloes may cost up to 15,000 rupees ($350), children are sold at prices between 500 and 2,000 rupees ($12 and $45)," he told Reuters.

For instance, two brothers in Bihar were recently given away for 250 rupees ($6) each by their parents and trafficked out of the state in connivance with police, Ribhu said.

The group estimates that children account for 40 to 50 percent of all victims of human trafficking. They are sold to work as domestic laborers, or in the carpet industry, on farms or as commercial sex workers.

The traffickers-police connection was so strong in some parts of the country that traffickers scout freely and children rescued from brothels and bonded labor were often victims again, he said.


Source

Efforts to cut spending veiled effort to end war

President Bush has asked Congress for $100 billion to carry on the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. That's a lot of money. I wish there was not a war in Iraq and Afghanistan, which is really being run by Iran and Syria. The fact of the matter is that they have in mind to kill us and destroy our society. Is $100 billion too much to keep these fanatics at bay?

One thing for sure, standing on the corner of 10th and White Sands in Alamogordo with a sign calling for "Peace, Unity and Love" will probably not scare the Iranians and Syrians away. Being nice to them is interpreted, by them, as weakness and an invitation to redouble their efforts to bring down the Great Satin, i.e. us.

The Democrats, who cling to a slim majority in both houses of Congress, have replied to President Bush's request for funds by offering a bill. The Wall Street Journal on March 17 reported the first chapter of that bill contains, among other things, $25 million for spinach, $20 million to restore farmland damaged by freezing temperatures, $1.46 billion for livestock farmers, $78 million to ensure proper storage of peanuts, $500 million for urgent wild land fire suppression and though not part of this bill there is the raise in the minimum wage nationwide.

That money has to come from somewhere. For God's sake, we are at war, people are trying to kill us and destroy our civilization and we are heaping this on top of our funds to support our troops. It was Nero who fiddled while Rome burned. Why are the Democrats trying to do the same thing?

I understand that the Democratic leadership and the liberals who want to end the war yesterday or this afternoon at the latest, are too cowardly to try to just shut off the funds for the war. That would make them publicly responsible for the consequences of doing so. They are trying to do the same thing by stealth, by imposing conditions on the use of the funds for the war, and time limits that will tie the president's hands and those of the military commanders conducting day to day operations, if the Iraq parliament fails to meet our Democrats' deadlines. The conduct of any war is an executive responsibility, not a legislative one.

I submit that Nancy Pelosi and the Democratic leadership of the House and Senate are just plain incompetent to govern. God help the United States if the likes of Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama or John Edwards are ever handed the presidency. President George W. Bush's judgment respecting the conduct of the war is open to Monday morning quarterbacking. Let's put it this way, have you made any mistakes in judgment since March 2003? Suffice it to say that, at least the president does not favor irresponsible, immediate surrender and damn the consequences.

The article was posted on Alamogordo Daily News

Please don't think I agree with this author, insead, I feel it is very funny to see how Americans view internal and external issues. I need to point out this author should be a educated American and interested in the political affairs.

China successes in test of quantum cryptography network: scientists

China's first quantum cryptography network has been successfully tested in Beijing, the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced on Monday.

The commercial communication network of the Chinese Network Company (CNC) was used to test the quantum network.

The testing was carried out by the Key Lab of Quantum Information under the University of Science and Technology. Leading scientist Guo Guangcan said that current cryptography faces challenges from quantum computers, because theoretically all codes can be deciphered.

But quantum information cannot be copied and any interception of quantum information is easily discovered, Guo said, adding that the new quantum cryptography is therefore "absolutely safe" and proof against decoding.

The research group successfully completed a 125-km fiber point-to-point quantum key distribution (QKD) experiment between Beijing and Tianjin in 2004, which solved the problem of stability in quantum cryptography systems.

Source