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Businesses

Submission + - Chinese IP Acquisition Tactics Exposed (sina.com.cn)

Submitted by hackingbear
hackingbear writes: In an interview published in Sina.com.cn (here is the google translation,) Chinese rail engineers gave a detailed account of the history, motivation, technologies of Chinese high-speed rail system. More interestingly, they blatantly revealed the strategies and tactics used in acquiring high-speed rail techs from foreign companies. Here is the summary and paraphrase. At the beginning, China developed its own high-speed rail system known as the Chinese Star which achieved a test speed of 320km/h; but the system was considered not reliable or stable enough for operation. So China decided to import the technologies. The superior (leaders) instructed, "The goal of the project is to boost our economy, not theirs." A key strategy employed is divide-and-conquer: by dividing up the technologies of the system and importing multiple different techs across different companies, it ensures no single country or company has total control. "What we do is to exchange market for technologies. The negotiation was led by the Ministry of Railway [against industry alliances of the exporting countries]. This uniform executive power gave China huge advantage in negotiations," said Wu Junrong, "If we don't give in, they have no choice. They all want a piece of our huge high speed rail project." For example, [Chinese locomotive train] CRH2 is based on Japanese tech, CRH3 on German tech, and CRH5 on French tech, all retrofit for Chinese rail standards. Another strategy is buy-to-build. The first three trains were imported as a whole; the second three were assembled with imported parts; subsequent trains contains more and more Chinese made parts. "Some exporters were reluctant to transfer technologies. But we have explicitly requested such from the beginning. They cooperate eventually because they find profits in this huge project. This is business. There is no stealing [of technologies]." In conclusion, Wu boasted that now there are a dozen countries, including the US, are interested in Chinese high-speed rail techs, because they know more than any other single company and the Chinese version is cheaper too.
Youtube

Submission + - YouTube considered a TV station in Italy

Submitted by orzetto
orzetto writes: Italian newspaper La Repubblica reports that YouTube and similar websites based on user-generated content will be considered TV stations (Google translation) in Italian law, and will be subject to the same obligations. Among these, a small tax (500 €), the obligation to publish corrections within 48 hours upon request of people who consider themselves slandered by published content, and the obligation not to broadcast content inappropriate for children in certain time slots. The main change, though, is that YouTube and similar sites will be legally responsible of all published content as long as they have any form (even if automated) of editorial control.

The main reason is likely that, being a TV, YouTube has now to assume editorial responsibility for all published content, which facilitates the ongoing € 500M lawsuit of Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi against YouTube because of content copyrighted by Berlusconi's TV networks that some users uploaded on YouTube. Berlusconi's Spanish TV, TeleCinco, was previously defeated in court exactly on the grounds that YouTube is not a content provider.
Democrats

Democrats Crowdsourcing To Vote Palin In Primaries 1128

Posted by timothy from the can-you-see-the-primary-from-here? dept.
SharpieMarker writes "In what could be the most extreme and influential crowdsourcing project ever, Democrats are beginning to organize to purposely vote for Palin in the 2012 Republican primaries. Their theory is by having Palin as an opponent, Obama will have the best odds at winning reelection. Recent polls have shown that Obama comfortably leads Palin by 10-20 points, but Obama is statistically tied with Romney and barely ahead of Huckabee. They even have a state-by-state primary voting guide to help Democrats navigate various states' rules for voting Palin in Republican primaries."

Submission + - U.S. Rare Earth Mine Resumes Active Mining (itworld.com)

Submitted by itwbennett
itwbennett writes: Colorado-based Molycorp resumed active mining of the rare earth metal facility at Mountain Pass, California last week. The site had been shut down in 2002 amid environmental concerns and the low costs for rare earth metals provided by mining operations based in China. But now, apparently, the greater concern is offsetting China's control of the unique group of materials necessary to build tech gadgets like smart phones and laptops.
IBM

IBM Projects Holographic Phones, Air-Driven Batteries 109

Posted by timothy from the get-it-projects-get-it-huh dept.
geek4 writes "In 2015, we will be using mobile phones that will project a 3D holographic image of callers, claims IBM in a list of predictions of future technologies culled from a survey of 3,000 IBM scientists. 3D displays are also the focus of work between Intel and Nokia in the development of a holographic interface. Cities heated by servers and advanced city traffic monitoring are also listed as being among the prevalent technologies of the next five years, according to a Bloomberg article."
Earth

Submission + - End the Ethanol Insanity

Submitted by theodp
theodp writes: It's now conceivable, says BusinessWeek's Ed Wallace, that the myth of ethanol as the salvation for America's energy problem is coming to an end. Curiously, the alternative fuel may be done in by an unlikely collection of foes. Fervidly pro-ethanol in the last decade of his political career, former VP Al Gore reversed course in late November and apologized for supporting ethanol, which apparently was more about ingratiating himself to farmers. A week later, Energy Secretary Steven Chu piled on, saying: 'The future of transportation fuels shouldn't involve ethanol.' And in December, a group of small-engine manufacturers, automakers, and boat manufacturers filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals to vacate the EPA's October ruling that using a 15% blend of ethanol in fuel supplies would not harm 2007 and newer vehicles. Despite all of this, the newly-elected Congress has extended the 45 cent-per-gallon ethanol blending tax credit that was due to expire, a move that is expected to reduce revenue by $6.25 billion in 2011. 'The ethanol insanity,' longtime-critic Wallace laments, 'will continue until so many cars and motors are damaged by this fuel additive that the public outcry can no longer be ignored. Adding an expensive, harmful, useless filler to gasoline just to win farmers' gratitude is not remotely the same as having a legitimate national energy policy.'
Science

Submission + - Do Pterosaurs Still Exist on Papua New Guinea? (environmentalgraffiti.com) 2

Submitted by
Phoghat
Phoghat writes: "Eyewitness accounts of animals that resemble fabled pterosaurs have made even serious researchers believe that the animals do exist.
Pterosaurs are ferocious flying dinosaurs thought to have been extinct for 65 million years. However, there is physical evidence of gigantic nesting sites in some of the mountainous cliff areas of Papua New Guinea. What's more the natives there have been reported as being fearful of animals that fit their description and given eyewitness accounts. The animals were described as being large in diameter, with bat-like wings connecting to an elongated beak. There were reports of razor sharp teeth and claws and a lengthy whip-like tail with a split or flange at the end."
Privacy

Submission + - Woman arrested at ABIA after refusing enhanced pat (kvue.com) 1

Submitted by masterwit
masterwit writes: In the wake of recent articles involving the arguable privacy issues and constitutional rights violations involved with the new technology employed by the TSA , back scanners...this happened:
The article states: "One of the first people in line after that shutdown never made it through. She was arrested and banned from the airport.
Claire Hirschkind, 56, who says she is a rape victim and who has a pacemaker-type device implanted in her chest, says her constitutional rights were violated. She says she never broke any laws. But the Transportation Security Administration disagrees."
It will be interesting to see the fallout from this unfortunate situation.
Businesses

How the Free Market Rocked the Grid 551

Posted by Soulskill from the current-events dept.
sean_nestor sends in a story at IEEE Spectrum that begins: "Most of us take for granted that the lights will work when we flip them on, without worrying too much about the staggeringly complex things needed to make that happen. Thank the engineers who designed and built the power grids for that — but don't thank them too much. Their main goal was reliability; keeping the cost of electricity down was less of a concern. That's in part why so many people in the United States complain about high electricity prices. Some armchair economists (and a quite a few real ones) have long argued that the solution is deregulation. After all, many other US industries have been deregulated — take, for instance, oil, natural gas, or trucking — and greater competition in those sectors swiftly brought prices down. Why not electricity?"
The Internet

Bank of America Buying Abusive Domain Names 249

Posted by timothy from the get-out-your-thesaurus dept.
Nite_Hawk writes "Bank of America has snapped up hundreds of abusive domain names for its senior executives and board members in what is being perceived as a defensive strategy against the future publication of damaging insider info from whistleblowing website WikiLeaks. According to Domain Name Wire, the US bank has been aggressively registering domain names including its board of directors' and senior executives' names followed by 'sucks' and 'blows.'"
The Media

BYTE Is Coming Back 185

Posted by timothy from the has-it-been-12-years-already dept.
harrymcc writes "More than a dozen years after its death, BYTE magazine is still the most beloved computer magazine of all time — the one that employees of every other tech mag got used to being compared unfavorably with. And now it's being revived, in the form of a new BYTE.com. The new version isn't replicating the focus of the old BYTE — it's focused on the use of consumer tech products in a business environment — and I'm pretty positive it won't feature Robert Tinney's art or epic Jerry Pournelle columns. But I'm glad to see the legendary brand back in use rather than sitting in limbo."

Submission + - DivX to be bought by Macrovision (investors.com)

Submitted by 575
575 writes: The one-time controversial company DivX (and its new owner Sonic) is slated to be purchased by Macrovision; a copy protection company with such an awful consumer reputation that it changed its name to Rovi. DivX made its reputation by enabling piracy though codec that made it feasible to share large videos over the internet, and flipping the bird to the system though endeavors like Stage6. Now that it has literally sold out to "the man", what does it mean (if anything) for the media on the internet?

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