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China: the New Advanced Technology Research Hotbed
securitas writes "The New York Times' Chris Buckley reports that China is the new hotbed of advanced technology research and development for hundreds of global technology companies. The list includes household names like Oracle (which 'opened a lab in Beijing to tailor its Linux operating software to suit its Asian customers'), Motorola, Siemens, IBM, Intel, General Electric, Nokia and others. Microsoft Research Asia hopes Google-surpassing technology comes from a group of '10 researchers ... working on new ways to drill deep into the Internet and select and organize the information found there.' Growth of the R&D sector in China is so rapid that 'within five years China could overtake Britain, Germany and Japan as a base for corporate research, leaving it second only to the United States.'"
"within five years China could overtake Britain, Germany and Japan as a base for corporate research, leaving it second only to the United States."
And within ten? Maybe we can do their tech support for them. Outsourcing's a bitch, but it works both ways.
Is the announcement trying to be buzzword compliant?
Western languages like English use alphabetical glyphs which are combined to form words, which can recursively combine to form acronyms and abbreviations.
By in China, Mandarin, Cantonese and other dialects are all written using ideographs, where one glyph represents a single word. As a result, it is impossible to form acronyms. And as a result, technological progress is impossible.
Now, where's my company acronym dictionary again?
Let's see THAT in China!
Having read the article thoroughly, this startling news shows the flaws in the brewing Open Source Zeitgeist that is gripping the software community. Have you considered that providing software for free to countries such as China is essentially tacit support for oppressive regimes?
Far-fetched? Think about it: With MySQL, the People's Army will now be able to do multiple queries on their tables of democratic activists in Olog(n) time instead of lengthy searches in card catalogs. The bureaucratic overhead previously allowed activists enough time to flee the country. How about building cheap firewalls so the people can't get the unbiased reporting that CNN provides? Or using Apache to publish lists of Falun Gong people to their police forces instantly? I doubt that never crossed your minds when you were coding away in your parents' basements. Consider putting that little thought in your mental resolv.conf file.
If that does not concern you ( which it probably doesn't, since the slashdot.org paradigm is publishing articles about how not to pay for things ), consider something else. When China eventually goes to war with Taiwan, we want to be able turn their command and control facilities into the computing equivalent of a train-wreck. One of the advantages of Windows never mentioned in the article is the ability of Microsoft to remotely deactivate Windows XP in the case of a national emergency. Thanks to GNU/Lunix, Taiwan will be on a collision course with the mainland in the near future.
Which throws into question Mr. Stallman's motives. A known proponent of socialism, the Chinese government and RMS are natural allies. Could it be a back door to Stallman's dream of an uber-Socialist United States? We may never know for sure. Next time you consider contributing to an open source project, ask yourself this question: don't you want to make sure your work isn't used for nefarious purposes? Will you risk having blood on your hands?
The "one child policy" coupled with the practice of killing females newborns and fetuses has created a scarcity of women to distract the males. With no women to be chasing, there's nothing to do but work.
And chinese porn
Personally, I agree with you, I just don't think Arnie will though.
-Derek
Treat me like a marketing stat, and I'll treat your movie like a series of ones and zeros
I don't have a problem with that, as long as they bring huge barrels of Wonton Soup back to the States with them.
Gunpowder. Rockets.
That benefited humans.
Ok, but besides gunpowder, rockets, astronomical records, the printing press, martial arts, paper money and toilet paper what have the Chinese ever done for us?
Oh, and besides silk too.
Happy people make bad consumers.