Banksy.

Banksy

Taiwan betting on WiMax to win hotspot status - Yahoo! News

Taiwan betting on WiMax to win hotspot status - Yahoo! News: "Asia was the earliest commercial adopter of the WiMax standard, with South Korea the first country to set up wireless 'hotspots' thanks to heavy backing from Samsung. In Japan, mobile phone operators and their partners are jockeying to win two WiMax licences which will be awarded by the government by the end of the year. Taiwan has already handed out six WiMax licences and operators are due to start services by the end of 2008. It is far from certain whether WiMax and its backers - grouped around major industry players such as Intel, Sprint Nextel and Nokia - will prevail in making the technology the mainstream standard of the next generation of mobile broadband communications. However, Asia is investing heavily in WiMax research and infrastructure in the hope that its electronics makers can define technology standards, rather than just using those set by others."

Bring Tibet rail to Nepal, Kathmandu tells Beijing - www.phayul.com

Bring Tibet rail to Nepal, Kathmandu tells Beijing - www.phayul.com: "Kathmandu is keen on creating a viable “China option” to reduce dependence on India. Already, the two sides have agreed to widen the single-lane Kathmandu-Lhasa road."

In Alaska, Whalers Fear Oil Drilling May Curtail Way of Life - New York Times

In Alaska, Whalers Fear Oil Drilling May Curtail Way of Life - New York Times: "traditional way of life is coming into conflict with one of the modern world’s most urgent priorities: finding more oil."

Why China cracked down on my nonprofit | csmonitor.com

Why China cracked down on my nonprofit | csmonitor.com
Nick Young recounts the government shutdown of his online NGO newsletter China Development Brief, which he started in 2002 and ran for nearly five years before its termination by Chinese authorities in 2007.

A Troubling Case of Readers' Block - washingtonpost.com

A Troubling Case of Readers' Block - washingtonpost.com: "Americans are reading less and their reading proficiency is declining at troubling rates, according to a report that the National Endowment for the Arts will issue today. The trend is particularly strong among older teens and young adults, and if it is not reversed, the NEA report suggests, it will have a profound negative effect on the nation's economic and civic future."

Nasdaq-NYSE Rivalry Comes to China

Nasdaq-NYSE Rivalry Comes to China: "Not so long ago, listing their shares on Nasdaq was a no-brainer for Chinese tech companies looking to tap overseas money... But in 2007, Nasdaq has faced greater competition in China from exchanges in Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York, and elsewhere."

FT.com / Mergermarket - China Railway up 70% on debut

FT.com / Mergermarket - China Railway up 70% on debut: "Several analysts said the more important indicator would be how the company’s shares fare over the next few weeks once the initial euphoria that can surround listings in Shanghai has died down. Shares in PetroChina have fallen 37 per cent in Shanghai from their high on the first day of trading in October. China Railway’s performance comes after shares in both Sinotruk, a heavy truck maker, and Sinotrans Shipping, a dry bulk carrier, last month fell by more than 13 per cent on their first day trading in Hong Kong. Moreover, investor appetite for smaller IPOs across Asia has started to wane amid volatility in equity markets triggered by fears of a US slowdown."

UK headed for cyber 'cold war' - Times Online

UK headed for cyber 'cold war' - Times Online: "'The definition of security is changing,' a NATO official said. 'National infrastructure is critical - politically, economically and commercially, and now that we know these kinds of attacks are happening, there is an increasingly push to give the issue a higher profile on the political level.'"

How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook -- Facebook -- InformationWeek

How Your Creepy Ex-Co-Workers Will Kill Facebook -- Facebook -- InformationWeek: "If there was any doubt about Facebook's lack of qualification to displace the Internet with a benevolent dictatorship/walled garden, it was removed when Facebook unveiled its new advertising campaign. Now, Facebook will allow its advertisers use the profile pictures of Facebook users to advertise their products, without permission or compensation. Even if you're the kind of person who likes the sound of a benevolent dictatorship this clearly isn't one."

IEEE Spectrum: Internet Censorship: As Bad As You Thought It Was

IEEE Spectrum: Internet Censorship: As Bad As You Thought It Was: "The report’s authors, the OpenNet Initiative—a multi­disciplinary team at the University of Toronto, and Cambridge, Harvard, and Oxford universities—sent investigators to 41 countries that had been rumored to filter Internet content, whether to silence political dissent or to block access to pornography or religiously and culturally divisive material. ONI set out to objectively confirm or invalidate the reports. It found that the situation was worse than the rumor mill suggested. “The big thing is that the scope, scale, and sophistication of Internet content filtering is on the rise worldwide, and it’s really an alarming increase,” says Deibert, one of the book’s editors and contributors. ONI discovered systematic Internet filtering in 25 countries, with nine of them—China, Ethiopia, Iran, Myanmar, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and Yemen—blocking content in every category it investigated."

James Fallows (November 27, 2007) - "The" way vs "a" way (Japan v China dept)

James Fallows (November 27, 2007) - "The" way vs "a" way (Japan v China dept): "Japan is all about the way of doing things. Practice, ritual, perfectionism, as much fanatical attention to the process as to the result. China is all about finding a way to do things. Improvisation, little interest in rules, putting up with whatever is necessary to attain the result."

Can Greed Save Africa?

Can Greed Save Africa?: "Thanks to the global commodities boom of the past few years, sub-Saharan Africa's economies, after decades of stagnation, are expanding by an average of 6% annually—twice the U.S. pace. And like bees to honey, investors are swarming into the region in search of the enormous returns that ultra-early-stage investments can bring."

Zenfolio | Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images

Zenfolio | Thomas H. Hahn Docu-Images
Photographs of China, taken by Professor Thomas H. Hahn of Cornell University. Themes in the collection include Chinese modern art, urbanization and architecture, cityscapes, sacred sites and mountains.

The Big Brother State

Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power - New York Times

Hiding in Plain Sight, Google Seeks More Power - New York Times

The rate at which the Google computing system has grown is as remarkable as its size. In March 2001, when the company was serving about 70 million Web pages daily, it had 8,000 computers, according to a Microsoft researcher granted anonymity to talk about a detailed tour he was given at one of Google's Silicon Valley computing centers. By 2003 the number had grown to 100,000.

Today even the closest Google watchers have lost precise count of how big the system is. The best guess is that Google now has more than 450,000 servers spread over at least 25 locations around the world. The company has major operations in Ireland, and a big computing center has recently been completed in Atlanta. Connecting these centers is a high-capacity fiber optic network that the company has assembled over the last few years.

WiMAXTrends :: Articles

WiMAXTrends :: Articles: "However, Wan Yi, director of the wireless and mobile department at the China Communications Standards Association (CCSA), has said in a statement that approval of WiMAX as a 3G technology would “unbalance” the mobile industry, and that is has been politically driven by the US government in a bid to promote a US-dominated platform in a sector where American vendors have not always held the reins. He told China Comms: “3G technology sits on a triangle of W-CDMA, CDMA and TD-SCMDA, and WiMAX would have a big impact on this triangular structure. Major W-CDMA and CDMA vendors are all opposed to it.” In fact, the main opposition predictably comes from the only two majors to remain entirely outside the WiMAX fold, Ericsson and Qualcomm."

The Appeal of Mobile WiMAX in Emerging Countries — WIMAX

The Appeal of Mobile WiMAX in Emerging Countries — WIMAX: "Emerging countries may take the lead in mobile WiMAX growth due to two trends:
* Demand for affordable, flexible broadband, coupled with the lack of wired broadband.
* Widespread 3G, lack of spectrum, and non-committal operators will delay mobile WiMAX in many developed markets."

Asia seen as proving ground for WiMax - Communications - News - ZDNet Asia

Asia seen as proving ground for WiMax - Communications - News - ZDNet Asia: "For his presentation to the ICT expo, he used the case study of Pakistani operator Wateen Telecom, which was able to rollout a nationwide WiMax network in just nine months. Yet another proving ground for WiMax is Taiwan, where Motorola was recently awarded network contracts with WiMax licence holder Far EasTone Telecom. 'To get the sense of WiMax you have to visit Taiwan and see how the IT world is getting behind it,' he said."