China is fast becoming the biggest threat’ to the American supremacy in space. They plan to put their very own astronaut on the Moon. The intention of a manned spacecraft to the Moon comes after the Chinese had revealed extravagant plans to build its own space station. An officially written white paper provides the future goals for the Chinese space program.

A more common scene? (Courtesy: The Washington Post)

China plans to enter the space exploration grand stage in three steps. The first one involves the said lunar mission. The next one involves replicating what NASA has done with the LRO, viz. putting a satellite around the moon. The last one involves returning lunar samples to study back to Earth.

The proposed Chinese space station

This is probably the worst news for NASA’s space program. It is still to recover from the retirement of the space shuttle fleet and is dependent heavily on the Russians for trips to and from the space station. Also, the weakening economy is not helping things.

The Chinese have a long way to go, though, before they can even begin to think about challenging the US supremacy. No hard deadline has been given, but unofficial word indicates that the Chinese would like to put up the space station by 2020 and the man on the Moon by 2025.

Ken Pounds, a researcher at Leicester University, UK, thinks this might be a blessing in disguise for the faltering US space program:

Assuming the Chinese are serious, which recent history suggests they are, then I believe the impact could be game-changing. “It is very unlikely the U.S. would not respond. That could breathe new life into their space exploration programme, which is currently going nowhere.

Space exploration is a great idea, but history tells us a grim and different story about two powers trying to outdo one another in that regard. Let us just hope that space remains a peaceful frontier for man, for ever!

Lenovo unveiled two new Android tablets at an event in China today. The LePad S2007 and the LePad S2010 run Android 3.1 Honeycomb, and will likely get an upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich eventually.

The LePad S2007 comes with a 7 inch IPS display with a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels, while the LePad S2010 comes with a 10.1 inch display with the same resolution.

Both these tablets are powered by a 1.5 GHz dual core Qualcomm processor, and 1 GB of RAM. They offer dual mode 3G connectivity (EVDO & WCDMA), so they will work with both China Telecom and China Unicom. Both also come with an 8 MP primary camera and a 1.3 MP secondary camera.

The LePad S2007 comes with a 3780 mAh battery and weighs 360 gms, while the LePad S2010 comes with a mammoth 7560 mAh battery and weighs 670 gms.

Both devices will be available in China, next month, along with the 5 inch Lenovo LePad S2005, which was also unveiled today.

Here’s an image of the trio – LePad S2005, LePad S2007 & LePad S2010 – posing together.

Everyone seems to be focusing on the largest smartphone market in the world – China – these days. Hopefully, we will also see Lenovo launch variants of these devices globally.

Japan’s top defense contractor, Mitsubishi Heavy, has confirmed that it was a victim of a cyber-attack recently. The hack attempt targeted submarine, missile and nuclear plant data stored on their computers. Reportedly, malware was found on almost 80 computers inside the company, including 45 servers and 38 PCs. This confirms that there were 80 infected computers running at 11 Mitsubishi Heavy sites for an uncertain period, nearly half of which were servers.

The attacks on Mitsubishi Heavy were spotted for the first time on August 11 and the intrusion seems to have come from a spear-phishing attack. This form of phishing involves sending spoofed emails to the recipient, making it look like it comes from a known email address. The day of this attack was the 80th anniversary of the Manchurian incident.

China has denied involvement with this attack. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson  Hong Lei says,

Such allegations are groundless. The Chinese government has always opposed  Internet  hacking. Chinese laws prohibit hacking and other cybercrimes.  I would like to emphasize that the Chinese government is willing to cooperate with other countries to fight against cybercrimes including hacking.

The matter is still under investigation and a Mitsubishi Heavy spokesperson has said,

There is no possibility of any leakage of defense-related information at this point.

Mitsubishi heavy is the largest and the most reputed defense contractor in Japan. IHI (Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industries), which is another defense contractor at Japan, was also hit by a similar attack. While Mitsubishi Heavy specializes in  submarine  technology, IHI is famous for its aircraft turbochargers.

This event has  occurred four months after the largest defense contractor in the US was hit by a cyber-attack. In both these cases, it is amusing to see how China is linked to every cyber-attack on defense contractors.

(Via: WSJ, Source: Al Jazeera)

The world is truly not enough anymore. Chinese astronomers want to capture a near earth object (NEO) and force it to orbit Earth. What about the risks, you ask? What about the rewards, comes the answer!

The Asteroid intended for capture. From the arXiv paper of the Chinese astronomer team.

Petting an Asteroid

Researchers from Tsinghua University in Beijing want to emulate artificially what Jupiter does on a regular basis capture asteroids. Here’s the trick: Planets will pull smaller objects into an orbit around themselves if the object passes close to them. Now, if the planet is large enough, the orbit will be closed around the planet. Otherwise, the body can just complete a turnaround and fly off into space again. Most of the time this is what happens for Earth. There are many asteroids which get deflected from their paths due to the Earth’s gravity. The Chinese astronomers argue that if we can nudge it just a bit and in the right direction, we can bring it into orbit around the Earth.

The trick Jupiter does to often!

So, what of the obvious dangers? What protection do we have if we make a mistake and find an asteroid hurtling into the sea? Simple the atmosphere. The NEO that the scientists want to study is called 2008EA9, which is a mere 10 meters across and is due to pass Earth in 2049. The group even has a paper published in one of the Chinese Astrophysical Journals.

Why an asteroid? We can look at the asteroid for a few years continuously. We can mine for minerals on the asteroid. We can impinge them and get to know how the Solar System came to be. And then, we can send them on their way out into oblivion once again.

So wait for a few years you might be able to keep an asteroid.

In a move, dripping with political motivations, China has agreed to launch a Pakistan satellite for the first time ever. This marks a landmark and a new beginningin China-Pakistan relations. The news was reported by China’s Xinhua news agency.

The existing Pakistani satellite, PAKSAT-1 was acquired by Pakistan after Indonesia gave up on it due to power problems.

The new satellite

The new satellite, PAKSAT-1R, is expected to be a communication satellite. According to Xinhua, the satellite will be used for a large number of purposes, like weather monitoring, high-power communication and, crucially, strategic defence purposes. It was built by Pakistan’s Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission (Suparco). (PAKSAT-1R page here). Much of the construction of the satellite was done by engineers from China. Xinhua did not provide a date for the launch, though, saying that it will be launched at an Appropriate Time.

PAKSAT-1R prototype

A new landmark in co-operation

Pakistan welcomed China’s support to its space program, saying that this would take Sino-Pak relations to greater heights. Pakistan’s ambassador to Beijing, Masood Khan described said that this establishes a new platform, and it marks a new beginning. He hinted that this was just the beginning of a long collaborative effort

As we accomplished this goal of launching PAKSAT-1R, we will swiftly move on to expand our collaboration with China in related fields of space science and technology.

So far, Pakistan’s space agency is a fledgling body and its forays into space miniscule in scale compared with those of its neighbours like India and China. However, it wants to expand its indigenous capabilities on satellite design with China’s help. The not-so-secret aspiration of Pakistan’s is to match up with India’s capabilities as soon as it can, but it has a long way to go.

India hasn’t reacted to this news as yet.

Business may fall for many cafe owners in the big cities of China as more people are avoiding these shops. The reason is that they are no longer providing wi-fi services, which were really popular with their customers. This is the after-effect of an order issued by the Chinese administration, which restricts the use of wi-fi services.

Cost, reason and accusations

The order requires all wi-fi service providers in public places to install costly software that will help identify the wi-fi user. The software is priced at anything between 20,000 yuan ($3100) to 60,000 yuan ($9300), according to China Business News. The violation of this order may lead to a fine of 5,000 yuan.

No longer so free

The Chinese administration says that this will help them cut down upon illegal activities. This is not the first time China has imposed restrictions upon viewing content on the internet. This is just the latest in a spate of blockages, as a part of their censorship system.

Rainsoft, the software maker of this particular software, and frequent collaborator with Chinese police has also been pulled into question. It has been speculated that the company has intimate ties with high ranking officials in the police force and thus this order is being so ruthlessly enforced.

China’s bad cyber history

China has had a bad history, blocking the search giant Google in July last year. Coupled with that, it has also been guilty of blocking Gmail, Google’s email service, as recently as May this year. China angered Google by restricting search results in May, 2010. China has also been accused of blocking the Android market. These are significant, as China has the highest number of online users, with official figures of 485 million.

Not a very happy picture

A huge public outcry in China prevented the government of going ahead with their plans of installing an Internet filter software on every PC sold in the country in 2009. While the Chinese administration saw it as a way of protecting children from pornographic and violent content on the net, others saw it as a gross violation of privacy.

Right after justifying my playing of video games to a bunch of folks today, I return to find this horrible piece of news on the Internet. Granted, it is not a general classifier for the normal online video gamer, however it is still disgusting and might elicit responses such as where has humanity fallen?!from you, my dear reader.

According to Sanxiang City News the couple (who are both under 21 years of age) had sold off their three children to fund their video game obsession. The young couple bonded over their love of internet games in 2007. They had their first child, a son, in 2008 and then their next in 2009 who was a daughter. They apparently came up with an ideato sell their daughter for an equivalent of   less than US$500. Li Lin and Li Juan then sold their first child for about US$4,600.

To further fill up their coffers to pay for their obsession, they conceived another child and sold him off for the same US$4,600.

They were finally turned over to the authorities when Li Lin’s mother found out what her son and his wife were up to. It’s admittedly quite tragic and thoroughly disgraceful. The young parents should have been taught about parenting responsibilities instead of responsibilities to an online guild.

HTC Salsa is the company’s first smartphone, which comes with a dedicated Facebook button. This handset allows you to upload photos or update your status, within a single click. This handset has been recently launched in China. Since, Facebook was blocked in china and the Chinese users doesn’t care much about Facebook, HTC ditched the Facebook button and launched this handset in China with a dedicated Sina Weibo button. Sina Weibo is a popular social networking service in China, similar to the Twitter. HTC has also renamed the handset from HTC Salsa to HTC Weike.

“This is the first time for a handset company to cooperate with a Chinese Internet giant, and I think this could be a trend when the mobile Internet era catches on,” said, Ray Yam, China president of HTC Corp.

HTC Weike features a 3.4 inch touchscreen display with 480 x 320 pixels resolution, 800 MHz processor, Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) Operating System, HTC Sense UI, Dedicated Sina Weibo button, 5 megapixel camera with autofocus and LED flash, VGA front camera, 512 MB ROM, 512 MB RAM and so on.

Other features include a 3.5 mm headset jack, internal GPS antenna, G-Sensor, Digital compass, Proximity Sensor, Bluetooth 3.0 with FTP/OPP, Wi-Fi connectivity, micro-USB, microSD card slot, up to 540 mins talk-time, up to 530 hours stand-by time and a 1520 mAh battery. This handset measures 109.1 x 58.9 x 12.3 mm and weighs 120 grams.

HTC Weike allows you to access more than 250,000 apps from the Android Market. This handset comes with a price tag of 3,380 yuan (approx. $520).

It’s been barely two days since Google Plus was unveiled, but China has already decided that it has seen and heard enough. Even before most Chinese people have had the chance to get their hands on a Google+ invite, the Chinese Government has banned the Google’s new social network.

Google’s troubles with the Chinese Government are well known and documented. Last year, Google pulled out of China, after a very public war of words with the government. Google alleged that elements with the probable backing of the government had hacked into its services to access data belonging to human rights activists. It’s not clear exactly which aspect of Google Plus aggravated the Chinese, but both Great Firewall of China and Just Ping are confirming that Google Plus is inaccessible inside China.

Google Plus is a new social network that was recently unveiled, and has since been dubbed as a potential “Facebook Killer” by pundits. It attempts to offer the best blend of openness and privacy through its strong focus on Circles (groups). If you have just received an invite, don’t forget to check out our Google+ setup guide. If you are still waiting for an invite, take a look at our screenshot tour. Due to excessive demand, Google has stopped handing out any more invites, but you can drop your mail in the queue to be notified as and when more invites become available.

A 17-year old boy, identified by the surname Zheng in the  Anhui Province in eastern China sold one of his kidneys to buy an iPad 2 tablet. Zheng searched over the Internet and found a buyer who offered to pay 22,000 yuan ($3000) for the organ.

Zheng reports, I wanted to buy an iPad 2 but could not afford it. A broker contacted me on the Internet and said he could help me sell one kidney for 20,000 yuan.’The report states that the operation was carried out in Chenzhou on 28th April and his parents knew nothing about it. Zheng’s mother grew suspicious when he returned home with an iPad 2 and an iPhone in his hand. When she successfully forced him to reveal the truth, she filed a complaint to the police immediately. The police could not locate the broker whose cell phone was switched off. The case is under investigation now.

This is what you call heights of stupidity!

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