Right, 'cause it's much nicer to do business in countries where corporate can push government around (like in the US of A).

It's one thing to say there is insufficient evidence, but *no* evidence?!

First of all, "Asian scripts" is a totally bogus term: East Asian scripts (Chinese and derivatives, aka CJK), which are logographic, has no relation whatsoever with other Asian scripts (e. g. Mongolian, Thai, Indic, Arabic etc.), which are alphabetic and very much related to non-Asian alphabetic scripts (e. g. Greek and derivatives like Latin).

Second of all, neither the CJK scripts nor the other Asian scripts has a stronger emphasis on line thickness than non-Asian scripts. Including line thickness as an additional parameter would certainly improve OCR for CJK, but no more than it would for any other script.

From TFA: "Citing sources in the defense contracting and intelligence consulting community, the iDefense report unambiguously declares that the Chinese government was, in fact, behind the effort."

Right, for what possible sinister reason could people in the American "defense contracting and intelligence consulting community" have to paint China as a threat to US national security?

I was talking about this new Wuhan-Guangdong route, and you're citing numbers for the entire Shinkansen network.

BTW, in day-to-day operations, German's ICE and Japan's Sinkansen often go beyond 300 km/h. Frace's TGV never does, and Canada's Bombaardier doesn't even work well above 200 km/h. The expected top speed in day-to-day operations for this route is about 350 km/h with the German trains and 300 km/h with the Japanese.

But as car-lovers know, more difficult than driving fast is braking fast. The new Chinese trains uses Siemens' braking technology that provides five (!) entirely different, independently operating braking systems, of which only one needs to work (that's 400% redundant, obsessive even for German standards) in order to completely stop the train within a few km. That's why this route is not only going to be one of the fastest in the world, but also one of the most densely operated (i. e. shortest safety distance between one train and the next).

Someone in my family works for Siemens as a senior member of the China High-Speed Rail project (not to be confused with the China Maglev project, for which Siemens is also a partner). We've talked about it quite often - and fairly extensively yesterday. Here are a few details:

The technologies of all four major high-speed rail system in the world - Germany's ICE, Japan's Sinkansen, France's TGV and Canada's Bombardier (in order of overall technological advancement) - have come together in China, though rather reluctantly. When the Chinese started the project years ago, they did something very clever: Instead of picking one of the four systems (which is what people normally do), they gave all four a pilot contract each. The one showing the best result in its pilot would then be chosen as the main partner, they said, making all four competing like crazy - routinely investing more resources than they've originally planed. The Chinese are not concerned about significant waste due to incompatibility between the pilot products, since all four are building to the specs written by the Chinese.

Now, years later, the Canadians and the French are practically washed out, even though some of their technologies have contributed to the new Chinese system. The Germans and the Japanese remain - as initially expected - the main competitors - or, reluctant partners for the Chinese. The vast majority of heavy lifting on the technological front is done by the Germans (which was also expected, since even the Japanese system was originally based on German designs), but the Japanese have the advantage that their pilot has started earlier (the Chinese intentionally delayed the German pilot in order to ransom a below-value price).

The record speed, for example, was achieved using two joined trains - of four sections each - built by Siemens in Germany and put together in China. Those are the only two German trains current available for this route. All the other trains are Japanese, and they're what people see on most new footages. But the top speed the Japanese trains (on the same route) can reach are significantly lower - about 350 km/h, or >10% less than the German record. Plus, while the German rains got to 395 km/h in standard configuration - with two tracking (active) and two tracked (passive) sections in each train - the Japanese had to cheat - using three tracking and only one tracked section in each train - in order to reach their 350 km/h.

As someone has mentioned above, there exist a TGV speed record that's much higher still, but that's a record nobody in the industry takes seriously, because it was achieved with a totally crazy, not nearly practical configuration of train sections. It's a fake number, period.

The bottom line is, for the original cost of one project, China has managed to get more than twice the amount worth of know-how (all legally via proper technology transfer contracts), and is now itself among the leading players of the industry. For the upcoming US high-speed rail system, the Chinese has offered a bid with a price tag 1/3 lower than anybody else...

From TFA: "I suppose that adds up, 90 per cent less code equates to ten times faster."

Really? I suppose you can write haiku ten times faster than stream-of-conscious recordings, too?

There's one thing that computer code and natural language text have in common: For both, confusing "writing" with "typing" is moronic.

... isn't software v. hardware, but speed v. functionality, i. e., in the history of most software, the decrease in speed is disproportional to the increase in functionality. Of course, "disproportional" is subjective, and new, advanced functionalities are generally more complicated and resource intensive than old, basic ones. So a simple reverse-linear relationship might be unrealistic, but when many software don't even manage to beat the reverse-quadratic ratio, there's definitely something wrong.

BTW, the author of TFA is the submitter of this "story" (email address matches byline).