I for one have been using Google's advertising to advertise myself, the results were quite good at low cost. I don't have the means to start advertising in newspapers or magazines, let alone billboards or TV ads. It's a perfect way of small-scale targeted advertising.
Also mind that dollar-to-dollar comparisons income work poorly at best. Homes in Beijing are considered very expensive for Chinese buyers, they may well be cheap for US norms. Food in China is way cheaper than in the US for sure, you can go to a nice restaurant and have a good dinner for the equivalent of USD 10 per head.
To compare prices maybe you should look into the big-mac-index, looking at relative prices of a big mac in various countries. That is of course also not perfect but a more reasonable comparison than dollar-to-dollar.
Thinking of working with molten metals at such temperatures, the greatest advantage for sure will be the moulds that can made of almost any metal. Copper may do, to name a soft one. Makes mould making so much easier.
Safety is another. Molten cadmium will burn when you touch it, molten iron is worse. Spilling molten iron may set your shop on fire. So may many other molten metals. I know many materials can self combust at temperatures in the 600-800 C range, which makes anything at higher temperatures (especially liquids) a fire hazard.
That is ionic cadmium. Not the metallic state we are talking about here. Though as with most heavy metals it's the ionic state in which it is soluble in water and hence toxic.
The main thing I wonder is why do they use cadmium in the first place? What's so good about it? TFA says "nothing positive about cadmium" - but I'm sure that depends on your pov. There must be something very attractive about using cadmium (it can't be just the low price, iron is also pretty cheap) that makes them use cadmium.
A typical problem with displays is that many newly developed display types have very limited life times. Sometimes as short as days or a few changes, deteriorating fast. I can imagine that such a colour version had a short life time, maybe in the order of 100 changes. That's probably good enough for a prototype display to show off, but not for consumer applications.
As another commenter points out the pixel size may have been an issue. Again this is something that makes it sound to me like nice prototype, but that's it.
These two issues - life time and resolution - is what producers were waiting for to mature. In b/w they have matured: hence the Kindle et. al are there. Colour may be next.
The article you quote states that 1187 people were charged with possession of a knife, that is 26 a week. And this is charge with possession, no words on whether they used the knife or so. Just that there were knife-related 22 deaths so far.
So this article totally busted that myth so to say.
When a government changes a law, the law changes for everybody. These law changes are open, and most countries have a legislature or so (lower/upper house in UK, house of representatives and senate in US, etc) that is democratically elected and has to approve such laws.
Actually, going a bit further, in a democracy the government is a direct representation of the population, and with that of what the population wants (yes I'm idealising here). And the laws are a reflection on how the people think things should be organised. E.g. we have laws against stealing and killing. We have laws regulating marriage, heritage, property ownership. All things "the people" want to have organised, and organised in such a way. A law is basically a rule guiding how we live and interact with each other.
Then the government wants to change something in this whole organisation, because they think times have changed, technology has changed, morals have changed, whatever. That is when it is time to change some of those rules, those laws.
But a government is itself also bound by those laws, most notably a constitution if the country has one. The way laws are changed for example is written down there. Also a government can not just kick you out of your house: there are rules for that. You can be kicked out if you don't pay the rent, or if a motorway has to be built and you happen to be in the way (in which case you will be compensated one way or another, again according to those laws).
So yes the government can change laws, but only in ways set by those laws, and the process and results are open. If the government were above the law then they could for example just take your house if they saw fit, without compensation.
I totally agree with you. Many of these laws, and I have to say particularly coming out of the US closely followed by its lapdogs Australia and the UK, are quite horrible. However they all play on fear, and fear is a very powerful emotion. Western politicians are surely the best allies of Al Qaeda and related groups.
Now again the discussion whether the guy that tried to blow up an airliner should be considered POW or common criminal. This is a criminal and I think he should be tried for that, and put behind bars for a long time. It's not a POW, and I have to look it up but IIRC a POW also has lots of protection, including that a POW shall be released soon after a conflict has ended. And a conflict like this is not a war, it can not "end" like a war.
And airport "security". A miserable failure. I fly regularly within Asia and I do not feel unsafe because of terrorism risks. Common crashes due to pilot error or technical problems are much more common. Only once in Korea I had to take off my shoes, elsewhere not. Last week in Vietnam I walked through the metal detector which went off... then I told them "oh, must by my coat" (metal buttons), threw it on a box through the scanner, walked through the detector again, and was good to go. Not even having to take out my laptop from my bag. Quick and easy, just like 10 years ago. Except for liquids (I didn't try to take any).
London is the most watched city in the world - but I have never heard about a serious drop in crime rates. Or a serious increase in crimes solved.
And of course those privacy invasions only get worse, never better. No politician dares to remove those "security" cameras and other "security" measures.
If the government does illegal things (like using full-body scanners on minors) then other people may file a complaint to the police, or directly start a law suit. This happens a lot in civil cases where people or companies sue the government.
The government makes the laws, but is not above the law (at least not in most developed countries with proper separation of powers). Indeed the government can technically do whatever they like, as long as they first make sure their own laws allow them to do so. That's all.
Bar setting up a dedicated plant, I don't think there is too much economy of scale going from 100k to 10 mln of this kind of product.
That said I doubt Apple will give a 10 mln contract to just one manufacturer. Much safer to have 10 manufacturers produce each 1 mln. Then if one has a problem you're not running out of stock immediately.
Tablets used to be much more expensive than normal laptops. So only people who had a very very good reason to buy one, would.
These devices are roughly the same price as common netbooks (similar screen size and other hardware specs). That may make a huge difference.
Technology has advanced a lot since the first tablets were conceived, both hardware and software. The first tablets well they had a nice turnable/flippable screen but not much use for the touch screen itself. This has certainly changed by now.
While it may not seem to be fair, punishing music execs for previously collected fines/settlements would be clearly unfair. This because a certain fine was set in the law, and they acted accordingly. Iow, the collected fines were legal at the time. Remember: this is not about whether this law is fair or not, it is about what this law IS.
Now this appeal may overturn said law, I doubt that would make previously collected fines automatically illegal. Otherwise one would have the problem of a retro-active law: this punishes people for acts that were legal at the time they were done.
I can imagine it may be possible for people that were fined to retroactively try to overturn this fine, and maybe recover some of it. But that's a matter for lawyers to think about.
But, my wife, who is an MS Office expert, can't stand it. It is just too limited and clunky compared to Office, she says.
Any specific examples of advanced features that your wife needs and that work so much better in MS Office, or are simply completely absent in OOo, that makes it worth paying for it?
And secondly you talk about a "serious user" market - what is a "serious user"? I am using OOo all the time, and I have never found any limitation. Now it may help I'm just using it for simple documents (mostly invoices) but I would call myself a "serious user". It's been like ten years or more since I seriously used MS Office. I used StarOffice before and also that did the job for me just fine.
It may help that I want to write documents, not endlessly tinker with layout (and trying to do DTP) - if I wanted to do DTP I'd start checking out more specialised DTP software instead.
I'm sure that ARM is technically a viable desktop. Video2000 was also technically more viable than VHS. That doesn't mean they stand a chance in the market as it is now: Windows doesn't run on ARM so ARM has no chance to break in the consumer market at large, and will remain so niche that ARM based motherboards will cost more simply because they miss the economy of scale (and immense competition) of the Intel platform.
Now on the other hand if Google manages to put out a couple million ARM based netbooks that could change that whole economy-of-scale story.
As I see it, not having delved into the details, ARM has a very good performance/watt ratio. Excellent for netbooks. I have no idea why or whether it would need significantly more memory than Intel platforms.
There's bucket loads of potential and capabilities in ARM on netbooks but Microsoft will not let that grab hold if they have any say in it.
Exactly, they will try and defend their monopoly with all they have (like any sensible business would of course). And that is why I see it as interesting that Google is behind it. I don't see much direct leverage from MS against Google: making Google's apps not work on Windows computers will give MS a lot of backlash, Google is just too big for that kind of tricks.
Google's software services are platform-agnostic already, for being Internet-based. That is their advantage. Netscape was dependent on Windows, Google is basically just dependent on a browser (and even that they have in-house already).
But it's mainly for it's sheer size and the massive positive mind share that Google has that I think they can take on Microsoft by basically ignoring Microsoft and go their own way.
My 1st generation EEEPC running Linux can do all that (I know it can: I've done all that and more). Also doesn't run Windows. So I wouldn't see any difference when that would have been a non-Intel platform. Except for Flash maybe.
No, not desktop replacements. But they are close to that in terms of power: the only things I can not do on my EEE-PC (1st generation, Linux) are because of the limited storage space, and the small screen size. I'm not a gamer by the way, except online card games which don't need much in the way of computing power. Modern computers have plenty of that, the slowest on the market is fast enough for most of the tasks we do. Remember "winmodems"? Where the emulation was done on the processor? It became possible because there was so much processor power that taking away a bit for a task that could easily be done in hardware had become a non-issue. Actually the issue had become "what are we going to do with all that processing power?".
However these netbooks may show people for starters that there are alternatives: that's why I'm curious whether it will take off. I mean, it's not going to run Windows as we know it if these specs are going to be true. If it takes off well without Windows, then it proves Windows is not a necessity. And Google is one of the few players in this market that has a big enough brand name to be able to pull off such a stunt and in the process change a mindset. In this case the "if it doesn't run Windows it's no good" mindset.
By my understanding ChromeOS is basically a Linux distribution - that would mean there is an enormous library of software readily available. So even there is not much of an issue. The names are maybe a bit different, the way the software looks and works too, though I don't think that's going to be a killer as "it's Google branded - so it must be good".
But as long as this Google netbook is vapourware we won't know. And we'll stick to dreaming.
This would become a non-Intel platform, which means Windows doesn't run on it. I'd really like to see how well it sells when Windows is simply not an option. If it takes off, MS is going to be hit hard, if only because alternative OSes become a serious alternative all of a sudden. Instead of being a niche product.
Price of under $300, but still subsidised: where is the money coming from? Normally e.g. a mobile phone is subsidised because you are going to pay money to the mobile phone provider (calls, data, etc). I have never paid Google anything, other than for ads that I asked them to place. But not for any of their regular services. So either ad-supported, or only sold together with mobile data plans or so? The first is easy to get around: just install another OS or so.
Opening up the processor market: if this netbook takes off, we could start seeing really lots of non-Intel compatible computers around, first of all of course ARM based, and maybe a revival of the PPC in the consumer market. I think that would be the best effect of this. Not just because Windows doesn't run on it but because there is so much more than Intel. And I bet there will suddenly be more room for competitors to AMD and Intel: they do not need to license any microcode or so. And porting Linux/*BSD/Chrome to those architectures, if not done yet, will be relatively easy.
IMHO one of the core reasons all consumer PCs come with Intel compatible processors is that Windows runs on them. Equip them with other processors and you can not sell your product with Windows. And that is an absolute suicidal business plan at the moment. Google may get this going, get non-Windows and non-Intel computers to the masses, opening up a lot of space for competitors.
And if it doesn't work, well we can always continue dreaming.
Dear god man, what were you thinking? An intelligent response to my funny version of a first post (it's too easy just to say FP).:)
Yes I know... silly, huh? Just no other comments went this direction.
I've never heard of the fake eggs.
Those were sold in Hong Kong and came in the news. After cooking they become rubbery and bouncy. Strange. Two days later a headline in the newspaper: "real eggs can bounce, too" - some researcher found a way to cook real eggs to make them bounce. Really funny. Beats the Mythbusters when it comes to crazy experimentation.
Melamine enriched foods, sure.
That one unfortunately true. And a few weeks ago again in the news some crazy trader trying to sell out a lot of melanine contaminated milk powder, hidden in a lot of good milk powder. So that tests of the lot only checked the real thing, with the melanine laced powder hidden under the boxes that were tested and approved in the same lot.
Cardboard based pastries yum.
That story itself has since proven to be fake: some news reporter trying to come up with something sensational, to advance his career. I forgot the details but the main thing is that all the TV footage was set up, and the whole story was fake. The fact that people believed it so easily says a lot about the general conception of China. If the same story was said to be in Europe or north America no-one would have believed it to begin with. Of course the fact that it was fake doesn't hit the news as hard as the original story of cardboard pastry filling.
And you sure that was a Rolex? Not something like Polex or Rolax?
Dozens of reactions on your comment and no-one seems to realy get the point of why they would do it.
This is China, the country of fakes. Fake Windows is cheaper than the real thing. And it works fine, doesn't it? Oh well that screen saver.exe file doesn't work maybe. But I bet they already installed non-free stuff like Flash and wmv codecs etc.
In China everything is faked if it can make it cheaper. Eggs are faked, no kidding. There were fake mainland made eggs on the Hong Kong market. Looks like eggs, doesn't taste like the real thing. And they bounce after cooking.
I doubt this has anything to do with MS cracking down on fakes but everything with providing a cheaper OS and still selling a "real" computer. Because face it: the vast majority of the people that just wants to buy a 'puter to get work done, wants a Windows computer.
When you buy something in China, you'd best assume it's faked. Then you won't be disappointed at least on that part.
"Best" of all, security theatre related: tonight on the TV news it was mentioned that this individual's name was on a list of high-risk terror suspects, some kind of watch list I guess, but not on the no-fly list. So this guy was even on the radar of US security services, and he still managed to pull a stunt like this!
Slashdot Mirror
Maybe it works exactly because of that.
I for one have been using Google's advertising to advertise myself, the results were quite good at low cost. I don't have the means to start advertising in newspapers or magazines, let alone billboards or TV ads. It's a perfect way of small-scale targeted advertising.
Also mind that dollar-to-dollar comparisons income work poorly at best. Homes in Beijing are considered very expensive for Chinese buyers, they may well be cheap for US norms. Food in China is way cheaper than in the US for sure, you can go to a nice restaurant and have a good dinner for the equivalent of USD 10 per head.
To compare prices maybe you should look into the big-mac-index, looking at relative prices of a big mac in various countries. That is of course also not perfect but a more reasonable comparison than dollar-to-dollar.
Thinking of working with molten metals at such temperatures, the greatest advantage for sure will be the moulds that can made of almost any metal. Copper may do, to name a soft one. Makes mould making so much easier.
Safety is another. Molten cadmium will burn when you touch it, molten iron is worse. Spilling molten iron may set your shop on fire. So may many other molten metals. I know many materials can self combust at temperatures in the 600-800 C range, which makes anything at higher temperatures (especially liquids) a fire hazard.
That is ionic cadmium. Not the metallic state we are talking about here. Though as with most heavy metals it's the ionic state in which it is soluble in water and hence toxic.
You mean 315 C and 1540 C right? Then those numbers start making sense for the rest of the world.
The main thing I wonder is why do they use cadmium in the first place? What's so good about it? TFA says "nothing positive about cadmium" - but I'm sure that depends on your pov. There must be something very attractive about using cadmium (it can't be just the low price, iron is also pretty cheap) that makes them use cadmium.
Good luck with at least 80% of the worlds toys made in Shantou, China alone! Unless you make your own toys there is not much choice left...
A typical problem with displays is that many newly developed display types have very limited life times. Sometimes as short as days or a few changes, deteriorating fast. I can imagine that such a colour version had a short life time, maybe in the order of 100 changes. That's probably good enough for a prototype display to show off, but not for consumer applications.
As another commenter points out the pixel size may have been an issue. Again this is something that makes it sound to me like nice prototype, but that's it.
These two issues - life time and resolution - is what producers were waiting for to mature. In b/w they have matured: hence the Kindle et. al are there. Colour may be next.
You mean there is more than one nation that uses the z so often?
The article you quote states that 1187 people were charged with possession of a knife, that is 26 a week. And this is charge with possession, no words on whether they used the knife or so. Just that there were knife-related 22 deaths so far.
So this article totally busted that myth so to say.
When a government changes a law, the law changes for everybody. These law changes are open, and most countries have a legislature or so (lower/upper house in UK, house of representatives and senate in US, etc) that is democratically elected and has to approve such laws.
Actually, going a bit further, in a democracy the government is a direct representation of the population, and with that of what the population wants (yes I'm idealising here). And the laws are a reflection on how the people think things should be organised. E.g. we have laws against stealing and killing. We have laws regulating marriage, heritage, property ownership. All things "the people" want to have organised, and organised in such a way. A law is basically a rule guiding how we live and interact with each other.
Then the government wants to change something in this whole organisation, because they think times have changed, technology has changed, morals have changed, whatever. That is when it is time to change some of those rules, those laws.
But a government is itself also bound by those laws, most notably a constitution if the country has one. The way laws are changed for example is written down there. Also a government can not just kick you out of your house: there are rules for that. You can be kicked out if you don't pay the rent, or if a motorway has to be built and you happen to be in the way (in which case you will be compensated one way or another, again according to those laws).
So yes the government can change laws, but only in ways set by those laws, and the process and results are open. If the government were above the law then they could for example just take your house if they saw fit, without compensation.
Yes, and that's exactly why those children are ALSO charged with child porn related offenses.
I totally agree with you. Many of these laws, and I have to say particularly coming out of the US closely followed by its lapdogs Australia and the UK, are quite horrible. However they all play on fear, and fear is a very powerful emotion. Western politicians are surely the best allies of Al Qaeda and related groups.
Now again the discussion whether the guy that tried to blow up an airliner should be considered POW or common criminal. This is a criminal and I think he should be tried for that, and put behind bars for a long time. It's not a POW, and I have to look it up but IIRC a POW also has lots of protection, including that a POW shall be released soon after a conflict has ended. And a conflict like this is not a war, it can not "end" like a war.
And airport "security". A miserable failure. I fly regularly within Asia and I do not feel unsafe because of terrorism risks. Common crashes due to pilot error or technical problems are much more common. Only once in Korea I had to take off my shoes, elsewhere not. Last week in Vietnam I walked through the metal detector which went off... then I told them "oh, must by my coat" (metal buttons), threw it on a box through the scanner, walked through the detector again, and was good to go. Not even having to take out my laptop from my bag. Quick and easy, just like 10 years ago. Except for liquids (I didn't try to take any).
London is the most watched city in the world - but I have never heard about a serious drop in crime rates. Or a serious increase in crimes solved.
And of course those privacy invasions only get worse, never better. No politician dares to remove those "security" cameras and other "security" measures.
If the government does illegal things (like using full-body scanners on minors) then other people may file a complaint to the police, or directly start a law suit. This happens a lot in civil cases where people or companies sue the government.
The government makes the laws, but is not above the law (at least not in most developed countries with proper separation of powers). Indeed the government can technically do whatever they like, as long as they first make sure their own laws allow them to do so. That's all.
You could be not too far off indeed.
Bar setting up a dedicated plant, I don't think there is too much economy of scale going from 100k to 10 mln of this kind of product.
That said I doubt Apple will give a 10 mln contract to just one manufacturer. Much safer to have 10 manufacturers produce each 1 mln. Then if one has a problem you're not running out of stock immediately.
Tablets used to be much more expensive than normal laptops. So only people who had a very very good reason to buy one, would.
These devices are roughly the same price as common netbooks (similar screen size and other hardware specs). That may make a huge difference.
Technology has advanced a lot since the first tablets were conceived, both hardware and software. The first tablets well they had a nice turnable/flippable screen but not much use for the touch screen itself. This has certainly changed by now.
While it may not seem to be fair, punishing music execs for previously collected fines/settlements would be clearly unfair. This because a certain fine was set in the law, and they acted accordingly. Iow, the collected fines were legal at the time. Remember: this is not about whether this law is fair or not, it is about what this law IS.
Now this appeal may overturn said law, I doubt that would make previously collected fines automatically illegal. Otherwise one would have the problem of a retro-active law: this punishes people for acts that were legal at the time they were done.
I can imagine it may be possible for people that were fined to retroactively try to overturn this fine, and maybe recover some of it. But that's a matter for lawyers to think about.
But, my wife, who is an MS Office expert, can't stand it. It is just too limited and clunky compared to Office, she says.
Any specific examples of advanced features that your wife needs and that work so much better in MS Office, or are simply completely absent in OOo, that makes it worth paying for it?
And secondly you talk about a "serious user" market - what is a "serious user"? I am using OOo all the time, and I have never found any limitation. Now it may help I'm just using it for simple documents (mostly invoices) but I would call myself a "serious user". It's been like ten years or more since I seriously used MS Office. I used StarOffice before and also that did the job for me just fine.
It may help that I want to write documents, not endlessly tinker with layout (and trying to do DTP) - if I wanted to do DTP I'd start checking out more specialised DTP software instead.
I'm sure that ARM is technically a viable desktop. Video2000 was also technically more viable than VHS. That doesn't mean they stand a chance in the market as it is now: Windows doesn't run on ARM so ARM has no chance to break in the consumer market at large, and will remain so niche that ARM based motherboards will cost more simply because they miss the economy of scale (and immense competition) of the Intel platform.
Now on the other hand if Google manages to put out a couple million ARM based netbooks that could change that whole economy-of-scale story.
As I see it, not having delved into the details, ARM has a very good performance/watt ratio. Excellent for netbooks. I have no idea why or whether it would need significantly more memory than Intel platforms.
There's bucket loads of potential and capabilities in ARM on netbooks but Microsoft will not let that grab hold if they have any say in it.
Exactly, they will try and defend their monopoly with all they have (like any sensible business would of course). And that is why I see it as interesting that Google is behind it. I don't see much direct leverage from MS against Google: making Google's apps not work on Windows computers will give MS a lot of backlash, Google is just too big for that kind of tricks.
Google's software services are platform-agnostic already, for being Internet-based. That is their advantage. Netscape was dependent on Windows, Google is basically just dependent on a browser (and even that they have in-house already).
But it's mainly for it's sheer size and the massive positive mind share that Google has that I think they can take on Microsoft by basically ignoring Microsoft and go their own way.
My 1st generation EEEPC running Linux can do all that (I know it can: I've done all that and more). Also doesn't run Windows. So I wouldn't see any difference when that would have been a non-Intel platform. Except for Flash maybe.
No, not desktop replacements. But they are close to that in terms of power: the only things I can not do on my EEE-PC (1st generation, Linux) are because of the limited storage space, and the small screen size. I'm not a gamer by the way, except online card games which don't need much in the way of computing power. Modern computers have plenty of that, the slowest on the market is fast enough for most of the tasks we do. Remember "winmodems"? Where the emulation was done on the processor? It became possible because there was so much processor power that taking away a bit for a task that could easily be done in hardware had become a non-issue. Actually the issue had become "what are we going to do with all that processing power?".
However these netbooks may show people for starters that there are alternatives: that's why I'm curious whether it will take off. I mean, it's not going to run Windows as we know it if these specs are going to be true. If it takes off well without Windows, then it proves Windows is not a necessity. And Google is one of the few players in this market that has a big enough brand name to be able to pull off such a stunt and in the process change a mindset. In this case the "if it doesn't run Windows it's no good" mindset.
By my understanding ChromeOS is basically a Linux distribution - that would mean there is an enormous library of software readily available. So even there is not much of an issue. The names are maybe a bit different, the way the software looks and works too, though I don't think that's going to be a killer as "it's Google branded - so it must be good".
But as long as this Google netbook is vapourware we won't know. And we'll stick to dreaming.
This can be interesting, why:
IMHO one of the core reasons all consumer PCs come with Intel compatible processors is that Windows runs on them. Equip them with other processors and you can not sell your product with Windows. And that is an absolute suicidal business plan at the moment. Google may get this going, get non-Windows and non-Intel computers to the masses, opening up a lot of space for competitors.
And if it doesn't work, well we can always continue dreaming.
Dear god man, what were you thinking? An intelligent response to my funny version of a first post (it's too easy just to say FP). :)
Yes I know... silly, huh? Just no other comments went this direction.
I've never heard of the fake eggs.
Those were sold in Hong Kong and came in the news. After cooking they become rubbery and bouncy. Strange. Two days later a headline in the newspaper: "real eggs can bounce, too" - some researcher found a way to cook real eggs to make them bounce. Really funny. Beats the Mythbusters when it comes to crazy experimentation.
Melamine enriched foods, sure.
That one unfortunately true. And a few weeks ago again in the news some crazy trader trying to sell out a lot of melanine contaminated milk powder, hidden in a lot of good milk powder. So that tests of the lot only checked the real thing, with the melanine laced powder hidden under the boxes that were tested and approved in the same lot.
Cardboard based pastries yum.
That story itself has since proven to be fake: some news reporter trying to come up with something sensational, to advance his career. I forgot the details but the main thing is that all the TV footage was set up, and the whole story was fake. The fact that people believed it so easily says a lot about the general conception of China. If the same story was said to be in Europe or north America no-one would have believed it to begin with. Of course the fact that it was fake doesn't hit the news as hard as the original story of cardboard pastry filling.
And you sure that was a Rolex? Not something like Polex or Rolax?
Dozens of reactions on your comment and no-one seems to realy get the point of why they would do it.
This is China, the country of fakes. Fake Windows is cheaper than the real thing. And it works fine, doesn't it? Oh well that screen saver .exe file doesn't work maybe. But I bet they already installed non-free stuff like Flash and wmv codecs etc.
In China everything is faked if it can make it cheaper. Eggs are faked, no kidding. There were fake mainland made eggs on the Hong Kong market. Looks like eggs, doesn't taste like the real thing. And they bounce after cooking.
I doubt this has anything to do with MS cracking down on fakes but everything with providing a cheaper OS and still selling a "real" computer. Because face it: the vast majority of the people that just wants to buy a 'puter to get work done, wants a Windows computer.
When you buy something in China, you'd best assume it's faked. Then you won't be disappointed at least on that part.
"Best" of all, security theatre related: tonight on the TV news it was mentioned that this individual's name was on a list of high-risk terror suspects, some kind of watch list I guess, but not on the no-fly list. So this guy was even on the radar of US security services, and he still managed to pull a stunt like this!