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China Files Case Against Intel's Wireless Network
Krishna Dagli writes "China has launched a case against American chipmaker Intel's near-monopoly on encryption standards for wireless local area network (WLAN) equipment, state press reported Monday."
Can we all just ignore this story until xinhua / china decide to release some information on what (specifically), the IEEE is supposed to have done?
-1 Lack of detail.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
*China* is accusing Intel of unethical behavior?!
Hah!
... the world has lunched a case against China's near-monopoly on copyright abuse, human rights, cheap label, ...
Karma stuck at 50? Add 2-5 inches.. err.. 2-5x Karmas Count to your pen1es.. err.. Karma all naturally and private
Evil against Evil. Although I'd argue that since Intel doesn't sell the organs of executed political prisoners, they are the lesser evil.
So, I guess that makes Intel the Jason in this conflict.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
since when does china care about patent law?
Nothing to do with patent law.
Short version. IEEE submitted 80211i, China submitted WAPI to ISO to be international wireless encryption standards. IEEE won, WAPI lost. China is complaining that IEEE did something bad during the lead up to the voting process. No news sources are reporting what that something was as far as I can see.
So we have nebulous claims of interference in the ISO process. No more, no less.
(I'm not sure whether I dislike/distrust Intel or China more)
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
... and in 2003 tried to force multinationals wanting to sell wireless computer equipment to support its proprietary and secret encryption standard called WAPI.
Exactly how is it better to replace one proprietary standard with another. If they were serious about this, perhaps proposing an open standard would be a bit more constructive.
Our elected leaders in DC will not know what to do about this as it presents a major problem for them. That is who do they support?
Big Business or China?
Since most of them in DC (GOPer & DEMs) are in love with both whose side do they support?
There is to be a 90 minute DVD about this issue. It will be released in the U.S. in July for $14.99 or get it now, burned to a cd... from a Chinese convenience shop near you.
Funnypics
Yeah, it's about time they grew up and started killing other countries' populace like the grown-ups are.
"" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
What they say Intel did is irrelevant to them and us.
Yes, yes, China's motives are quite obvious.
But what they say intel did has some merit don't you think? After all, if Intel did something against ISOs rules, then we may be looking at WAPI as the new standard.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
Note to slashdot repliers: Enough with the ad hominem attacks. If you don't like what China's doing, talk about what they're doing, not what you like/dislike about China.
We've all got our personal opinions on politics and the politics of technology, but if our words are to mean anything, we've got to appeal to higher standards.
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
Reverse engineer? 802.11i is an open standard, and it seems like Intel was defending that in the face of what would have been a proprietary standard that China would stand to benefit from.
Consider the princelings of China. They and their parents are members of the Chinese communist party. These princelings live, for long stretches, in the West and enjoy its freedoms and prosperity. Yet, the parents of the princelings fully support and enforce the draconian Chinese "laws" that crush human rights in China.
I have personally met some of these princelings.
Do they realize their hypocrisy? Yes. Do they care? No.
Here is another, more damning, example. In 2001 in Northern California, the Chinese consulate in San Francisco sponsored an anti-Falun-Gong meeting conducted in Santa Clara, California. Chinese students from San Jose State University, Stanford University, and other neighboring universities, attended the meeting. The Chinese student associations at the respective universities fully supported the anti-Falun-Gong meeting.
These Chinese students enjoy the freedom and prosperity in the West but, actually, support the draconian Chinese "laws" that crush human rights in China.
Do they realize their hypocrisy? Yes. Do they care? No.
By now, you should realize that the authoritarian government in China exists for one reason: the majority of Chinese either support the authoritarian government or are indifferent to it.
Of course they're upset since it means they can't foist their backdoors on anyone without an immense amount of difficulty. Would you trust Beijing gummint encryption?
The US Government should tell the Chinese that we will start giving a damn about whether an Intel monopoly hurts their homegrown wireless industry when they start giving a damn about all the software piracy and intellectual property theft going on in their country.
Intel hasn't (to my knowledge) killed anyone protesting against it, in full view of the world's cameras, just because it can.
'Capitalists of the world, unite! Oh
Intel hasn't (to my knowledge) killed anyone protesting against it, in full view of the world's cameras, just because it can.
Good point.
You're quite right that China has behaved far more atrociously than intel.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
"Insulting". You have to read the article to really get a sense of it. I don't know how much of it's a show and how much of it is really that they ... feel they've lost face. Ok. It's real. Face matters in Chinese culture, a lot, and this is a combination of homegrown startup tech and nascent national status. By our standards, they subordinate truth to status even in rational endeavors, that's as contemptible coming from them as it is from our own politicians, and you can just see the feedback loop closing. Pray for some genuine diplomats, everybody's going to need them.
I wouldn't know enough to tell without some serious books-hitting — and since it's secret tech nobody has the facts anyway — but imagine the possible irony here: what if WAPI really is better? That's just too delicious. The unfeeling consumer-of-good-stories in me almost hopes it's true.
As always, all IMO. Insert "I think" everywhere grammatically possible.
It doesn't really matter what wireless encryption standards one uses, you can't trust them anyway. First of all, the companies involved have already demonstrated their incompetence with WEP. Second, I think at this point you have to assume that any encryption that's encoded in a chip has a backdoor in it and that a significant number of people will know about it.
If you want secure wireless communications, you have to use software encryption implemented in open source software.
Legalize and the right to a democratic networking standard .... China is indeed becoming more westernized all the time ... hahahaha ... I love it.
As they appear to be suggesting that the IEEE "leant" on ISO to stop the Chinese Wifi standard becoming accepted. Because a large part of this was from Intel, and lets face it suing the IEEE is going to look REAL dumb, they've decided to go after the big bad wolf.
I love the idea of clandestine meetings around ISO and IEEE meetings, more people would go if that was true!
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
actually a good chunk of Non catholic Christians do believe in a bodily resurection
(catholics have thier own problems and jewish folks also think its not Kosher)
besides its RUDE to yank chunks of a person out without their permission.
Any person using FTFY or editing my postings agrees to a US$50.00 charge
Others have already pointed out that this case has nothing to do with patents, but I'll answer this question anyway:
since when does china care about patent law?
Since about the same time as US.
As long as the international balance on Copyrights, Patents etc disfavoured US, it had blissfully ignored them. But as soon as it looked that the trend is reversing usians started to cry foul and became the biggest proponent of the Intelectual Property in the world.
We have this stupid saying in Poland: "Kali steal cow, good did, cow steal from Kali, bad did"[1].
Robert
[1] grammar intentionally bad, as in Polish original, since it comes from novel by Henryk Sienkiewicz and was supposed to emulate African speaking broken Polish
Bastard Operator From 193.219.28.162
Note to slashdot repliers: Enough with the ad hominem attacks. If you don't like what China's doing, talk about what they're doing, not what you like/dislike about China.
Because you reply to no post in particular, and because there is variation of opinion on this topic one could argue that your predictable appeal is ad hominem as well. Strong well supported opinions should be welcome on this forum. "Can we call get along" pablum such as yours just takes up space.
I personally find China's accusation of collusion to be laughable. China cannot easily establish technical standards because (deservedly) no one trusts them.
an ill wind that blows no good
While everything you say is true, NAFTA has still been more advantageous for America. Just look at the softwood lumber dispute (http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/HET/Softwood/). Basiclly America stole $5billion through illegal tarifs on lumber and even with losing court case after court case refused to be honourable. They have finally decide to give back a couple of billion but it still leaves a bad taste about America and how they honour treaties.
Also there are very few large Canadian firms anymore as they all have been bought out by American firms.
What I really laugh at are the poor Australians who even after seeing how America keeps its word went and signed a free trade agreement.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
You know whereof you speak? I call bullshit. I've lived in China for almost half a decade now, I speak Mandarin at a nearly native level, and I can tell you that face means a great deal to the Chinese. You are guilty of the very mistake you accuse the OP of making: conflating Japanese and Chinese culture. The Japanese and the Chinese both have very strong notions of face, but as with so many other things that seem at first glance to be shared by these two wildly different cultures, they are not the same.
To say that you learned "most of your Mandarin in China" to me seems like a clever way of making the Slashdot masses consider you an authority. Clever because it deliberately omits how much Mandarin you know -- and without knowing anything at all about you I would bet a great deal that it's nearly zilch. Why? Because in order to learn to speak a language well, you must do more than take classes and read books -- you must interact on a personal level with speakers of that language. For someone who presumably does not have native prowess in a language closely related to Mandarin, the language is relatively difficult to learn, which would imply that, if you spoke the language well, you must have spent a lot of time interacting with Chinese people. As someone who has been doing this for quite some time now, I think I can state with reasonable certitude that no one open-minded enough to undertake this would come away from the experience with as narrow-minded and unnuanced an understanding as you appear to have.
Mandarin has so many face-related terms and sayings it is absolutely staggering. I can't speak with any authority on the Japanese interpretation, but I did study the Japanese language for five years while in school and I wasn't exposed to anywhere near the same lexical diversity. But I'll freely admit that I never spoke Japanese well, whereas I speak Mandarin very well.
Another poster said that the Chinese "treat each other like shit", or somesuch, but to me this is a classic example of a westerner using western metrics of politeness and propriety to judge the actions of people with a fundamentally different cultural background. Something similar occurs with the Japanese. There is a fascination with all things Japanese in the geek community -- I'll admit I don't understand it well myself -- but I'm frequently told by all sorts of people that the Japanese are exceptionally polite and well mannered. This is a tremendously two dimensional way of looking at an entire population of people.
Let's make one thing clear here: the percentage of assholes in any particular group is relatively constant. What makes a person an asshole is their intent -- their knowing willingness to insult, degrade, or upset others. A westerner not familiar with Chinese social norms observes inter-Chinese interaction and is surprised by their apparent penchant to treat each other like dirt. What he does not understand is that many things not acceptable in western culture (and even here I am generalizing, as neither Chinese nor Western culture as such are homogenous at all) are acceptable in Chinese culture, and vice-versa. In China, a Chinese person says something to someone else and thinks nothing of it -- he does not consider it rude and did not have any malicious intent whatsoever, and in turn the person who hears it thinks little of it. The same situation, but in the West: exactly the same words are exchanged, but the listener becomes tremendously upset, because in the context of western culture, saying such a thing is a violation of accepted social norms and as such only someone with malicious intent would say them. Conversely, the Chinese often say that westerners don't need much face, by which they mean that they are not hao mianzi, that we put up with all sorts of insulting situations that no Chinese person would ever put up with. I've been involved in street fights on several occasions because of face.
To get back to the Japanese, Westerners
I call bullshit. I've lived in China for almost half a decade now, I speak Mandarin at a nearly native level, and I can tell you that face means a great deal to the Chinese. You are guilty of the very mistake you accuse the OP of making: conflating Japanese and Chinese culture.
... but I'm frequently told by all sorts of people that the Japanese are exceptionally polite and well mannered.
Well I honestly don't know where you've been hiding for the last five years, so I can't call anything, but thats because I prefer to stick to the facts I know. Face means as muich to the Chinese as it does to a westerner, in that no one likes to be made to look a fool. The OP was referring to the convoluted and elaborate rules of "face" present in Japanese culture, of which you appear to be totally unaware. If you had been aware, you wouldn't have made that comparison.
and without knowing anything at all about you I would bet a great deal that it's nearly zilch.
I'm not going to get in a pissing match about levels of Mandarin, you seem to be more full of urine than me; you appear to be attacking me for a full paragraph there without any basis whatsoever, except that your opinions conflict with my observations. Thats called an ad-hominem. And for the record, I speak over eight languages with a varying degree of fluency, including some I can almost guarantee you have never heard of.
Mandarin has so many face-related terms and sayings it is absolutely staggering.
So has English. Egg on his face, brass balls, guts, gung ho, I could give you a few hundred. Your point?
the Chinese "treat each other like shit", or somesuch, but to me this is a classic example of a westerner using western metrics of politeness and propriety to judge the actions of people with a fundamentally different cultural background.
Treated like shit is treated like shit. Just because you were raised up in a community of slave owners doesn't make it right.
There is a fascination with all things Japanese in the geek community -- I'll admit I don't understand it well myself
Hot chicks and cosplay. Yes its a simplistic way of looking at a culture. It is not the entirety of their views however and you would do well to educate yourself as to what those views are before you go making accusations. Thats what I would call a tremendously two dimensional way of looking at "the geek community".
the percentage of assholes in any particular group is relatively constant. What makes a person an asshole is their intent -- their knowing willingness to insult, degrade, or upset others.
Not only is that not true, it occurs to me that people tend to be assholes based on how they view you. So your metrics here are off from the start. But carry on.
The same situation, but in the West: exactly the same words are exchanged, but the listener becomes tremendously upset, because in the context of western culture, saying such a thing is a violation of accepted social norms and as such only someone with malicious intent would say them.
Bollocks. Here in Ireland, you want to hear some of the locals, they would make a sailor blush. Thats also part of western culture, because you see the west consists of more than just America... Are we back to those two dimensional views?
demonstrating, I hope, that it is not that the Japanese are polite per se but rather that Westerners observing them lack the necessary knowledge to accurately describe them as such.
Why are we running down the Japanese now? Why are they even in this discussion? And the chinese have just as much of the same problem, during saint patricks day they have a great laugh at all the Irish running around wearing green hats. If you have lived in China, you'll know what that means. Not that anyone gives a rats ass over here.
Believe me when I say that the concept of face is important to the Chine
What he can't kill, he has sex on. Trent.