Panglos is back from Beijing and Thailand but has not yet had time to clear all the yuan and bhat out of her purse, let alone absorb the apparently daily accounts of government departments giving personal data away with ten free gallons of petrol plus Green Shield Stamps.
Meanwhile, exposure to the street markets of Beijing, Bangkok and Phuket has persuaded her that any attempt to assert globalised IP rights against Asia ls a lost cause. Pirate DVDS of every quality from perfect to dodgy sold for c 50-70 baht - less than a pound - including Futurama, not yet out in the UK, and The Golden compass, not yet out on DVD legally ANYWHERE, yet possesed of utterly convincing cover artwork and copy.. Pangloss may have purchased some of these but only with which to thrill her classes, nota bene. Meanwhile knock off designer goods are so commonplace that frankly I came back covetous more of a Tescos set of napkins than a Gucci handbag. Dilution? Yes, I am very diluted:)
Serious Content will resume after Xmas.
In the meantime , have two nice images for the season.
One, a postgraduate class on cybersecurity I taught at the Beijing University of Telecommunications, in English, without translator (only days after producing a report accusing China of being the main player in cyber-terrorism :-). The class, all Mandarin-speaking, were attentive and excited and asked incisive questions. No developing country lag at all there. When we tried to look up something on Wikipedia and found it blocked by the Great Firewall, a student lackadaisically simply punched in a proxy server address. Censorship? What censorship?
Secondly, yesterday I was proud to attend the wedding of my PhD`student Rowena Rodrigues, herself an IT law blogger. Congratulations to Rowena and Jovito, and I hope for a long and happy marriage and bouncing baby PhD thesis in the years to come!
No comments:
Post a Comment