Chinese (Couch) Potato

"Tudou.com" (="Potato", in Romanized Chinese) is one of the several Chinese "Youtubes", seemingly the largest one at present (possibly larger than YouTube itself in some dimensions). Tudou's stated goal is "to move couch potatoes from the TV screen to computer screens, a process very much under way in China". Here's their wiki entry. While this might be not very exciting yet, what might knock you out is the fact that you can watch on Tudou an amazing number of excellent (whole) movies, both recent and old, in very high definition media format (typically split in several parts). For instance, you can find entirely the top 5 movies (and probably most of the rest, as well) from my 25 favourite movies list (which needs an update). Thus, if you have the time (even if you are not per se a couch potato), go for it: they've got an impressive collection. You can search for the titles of the movies in English: don't be put off by the Chinese, should you not understand it :-). It might be of course just a matter of time before Tudou will also have to start removing some of its material because of copyrights infringement (I am not sure to what extent that is a problem already, but at least concerning recent movies such as Sweeney Todd, the likelihood of foul play is very high...), but the Chinese legislation in context appears to be more than lenient for the time being.

Mioritic achievements of bad renown. And their primary causes.

No one, it turns out, does Internet auction fraud like the Romanians. [...]

when it comes to online auctions, particularly for big-ticket items such as cars that can yield $5,000 a scam, Romanians own the game. Romanian police estimate that cyber-crime is now a multimillion-dollar national industry, as important to organized criminals here as drug smuggling or human trafficking. [...]

The Internet Crime Complaint Center, a partnership between the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center, ranks Romania fifth in its table of naughty nations. But most experts agree that doesn't give Romanian criminals their due. Much of the cash being made on auction fraud reported as originating in the U.S., Canada, Britain, Spain or Italy is actually being picked up in those countries by Romanian money mules. An EBay fraud ring busted last year in Chicago, for example, has been traced to Pitesti, Romania. [...]

EBay, which doesn't even operate a site in Romania, won't talk dollar figures but acknowledges that the country is the No. 1 source of "professional fraud." On a November 2006 visit to the Romanian capital, Bucharest, FBI Director Robert Mueller said the vast majority of Internet fraud committed on "one prominent U.S. online auction website is connected to Romania or Romanians."

Read more here.

All well said, except this part that simply doesn't fit at all the story or the point or anything, though it raises a far more important issue. Here's the nonsense: "The respect for math is inside every family, even simple families, who are very proud to say their children are good at mathematics," said Radu Gologan, a senior research scientist at the Institute of Mathematics in downtown Bucharest." This is a myth that some Romanians still believe in (including, surprinsingly, the 'insider' interviewed above). Unfortunately, recent data reveals the very sad, but expected, truth (link in Romanian)... It is primarily the LACK of mathematics, logic, of good education/good job opportunities/ good preparation for (economic & social) life in general etc., in Romania, that determines such criminal behaviour as mentioned above, and not their (overwhelming- LOL!) presence (or respect for them and all the rest of the blahblah). But some still need to wake up. Including (or better: especially) those that are part of the Romanian education system.

Web 2.0 in less than 5 minutes or 'Digital Cultural Anthropology'

I bet no one would fall asleep in this sort of presentations.
Thanks to Paul for the link.

Google back in 1997

Stephen Dubner has this excellent post about how Google looked like 10 years ago. Pretty amazing, isn't it? And you can also see the webpage of a young PhD called Sergey Brin, full of ideas (and- most likely without knowing it- with a very succesful career just years away). See more on Freakonomics.

Control freaks

I keep wondering how can there be such a mixture of (not always) good (sometimes excellent!) economic policies (far better than most 'opposition' in the USA advocate- and that's one problem there: the alternative might be worse, in overall terms), but absolutely insane 'political' ones (eventually leading to bad economic outcomes as well...), interfering with private life/ choice and meant to control, there is this obsession with controlling each and everybody's activities, thoughts etc., for the 'sake of security', in the USA (unfortunately even amazing thinkers- in general- like Gary Becker and Richard Posner- sustain some tradeoffs between privacy and security in this respect- I think all that is sheer nonsense and simply shows incapacity of the government, who, let's not forget, is supposed to serve their people, not to control them; if one is an Economist one should recall Milton Friedman's position on all that- Ave Milton, morituri te salutant!). There is no doubt that this dichotomy in policy making only confuses the masses, since in the end you have to prioritize, you have to choose- no side seems to offer you the whole best package, which is completely non-strategic (ok, maybe not in the USA...).

But back to the concrete story here: for now, that was just a (nice?...) visit and probably some-incipient- intimidation, but I would not bet that the decision makers would not translate such attitudes in policies (some of such policies are in fact on the way) as long as President Bush and his (political; it is amazing to see that his econ advisers have been/still are some of the best in the USA) entourage have their way. The funny part is that you can find this 'anonymous surfing', 'IP-hide' software everywhere on the internet and I have been myself using some of them (not Tor, though) in the past. So what's the problem?

PS. Talking about control freaks, for long time now I think Mr. Basescu, the Romanian President, got inspired by the wrong side of Mr. Bush.

Netvibes and Politics 2.0

I've read an interesting article in the latest Economist print edition (Feb 3rd- Feb 9th) about Netvibes and Tariq Krim, its founder and CEO. Find below some excerpts from the article, dealing with the (unavoidable) political capital that comes with his very succesful (so far) enterprise. It looks like the new marketing guru has still got good ideas and I am sure we haven't seen the best of him yet- in entrepreneurship or politics...

France's politicians have also noticed Netvibes, and have courted Mr Krim. Speaking in December at a conference in Paris, Nicolas Sarkozy, the centre-right candidate in France's forthcoming presidential election, cited him as one of the country's examples of “exceptional talent” in the internet realm. Not to be outdone, Ségolène Royal, Mr Sarkozy's Socialist rival for the presidency, is using Netvibes to distribute news about her campaign.

Since the grim blocks of Paris's banlieues, best known for the car-burning riots of 2005, are far from Mr Krim's soigné background, he has resisted attempts to make him a mascot for successful beurs—French slang for people, such as the footballer Zinedine Zidane, of North African descent. He is, however, making his own political use of technology, bringing together 1,000 French business people and activists in an invitation-only online think-tank called Digital Catalyst. “There's a lot of people like me in France, but we don't know each other,” he says of the group. “It's key that the right people meet one another. If this works, we could have Politics 2.0.”