Some time ago, before The Incident I thought it would be a good idea to add SZP to the external links over at Wikipedia. Because I had this silly idea that SZP could, you know, provide information about Shenzhen for people new to the city. Yeah, I know, it’s a silly concept especially since we don’t put ads on the site and everybody knows the sites that have the real good stuff have got pop-ups, pop-unders, pop-alloverthepaces and Google ads. We used to have Google ads but decided we were too hip for Google.
Anyway, wandering about the internet, as you do, I somehow ended up reading the article about Shenzhen on the all mighty wiki and found… no link to us.
And you know what, I don’t care.
You can, if you really, really want to find out who did that and find the IP address of that person. I can’t be bothered to tell you the truth.
I read Wikipedia form time to time, being a bit of a history enthusiast but come to think of it, I’ve never been too impressed with the external links. Let’s just say that not everybody has realized the 90’s Geocities style has gone a bit out of fashion and leave it at that, shall we.
The other reason, or should I say one of the other reasons, I don’t really care is the current article itself. Maybe SZP is too much of an elitist website to appeal to most tourists who, according to Wikipedia, “choose to stay in a largely expatriate community called Shekou (which means Snake Mouth). It is a residential area, with few commercial buildings”. Maybe Shekou has changed since the last time I was there, which I entirely possible of course, but that description is not one I would use for the place myself.
They do manage to mention Hua Qiang Bei but not a word about Dong Men.
Then there is this: “The train journey from Hong Kong's Kowloon Tong KCR station to Lo Wu's border crossing takes approximately 40 minutes”. That is true, I suppose. I’m not sure if it actually is 40 minutes but I think it’s quite accurate. There is no mention of the procedure, or the time it takes or the very existence of the customs office. Since it can take only up to one hour I suppose it’s not something the average traveller would want to know about.
You know, I could even create an article about SZP on Wikipedia and do my advertising that way but I am not going to. I actually believe in trying to provide useful information without trying to crap on well meaning people who give bandwidth away for free.
I don't think I can come up with enough quotes and references but Shenzhen is now home to the (I think) first actual cooking robot.
Robots!
I could refer to The Register's hilarious Rise Of The Machines (which will probably feature this shortly, ha! beat you!) or perhaps paraphrase Terry Pratchett who in one of his books describes a machine that, when working properly could make a decent cup of tea and when not functioning properly would make a furious cup of cat, but I'm sure you can let your own imagination run wild with the concept of a cooking robot.
Just say the words....Cooking. Robot. This is so friggin' cool.
A robot that can cook and, according to Xinhua which knows everything important enough to know, it can "perform other special Chinese cooking actions". I have no idea what that means and am not too sure if I want to.
No pictures alas, and my artist render is hopefully very inacurate but it seems the thing can cook "a dish of beautifully-flavored, attractive-looking shrimp in five minutes".
It's 2006, we don't have a flying car yet but we have a robot in the kitchen that can make "Sichuan, Shandong and Canton cuisines and can cook thousands of Chinese dishes".
"Chinese hackers have launched a sustained attack against the web systems of the US Department of Commerce.
Security experts reckon attacks originating from computer crackers largely located in China's Guangdong province are aimed at extracting sensitive information from targets such as the Commerce Department's technology export office."
Some officials in the American government seem to think the Chinese (local) government seems to at least know about this. I dunno, they can hardly keep the national internet traffic under as much control as they seem to want so I don't think they can stop a few dedicated uni graduates that can get their hands on a lot of cheap hardware.
Tuesday, 07 October 2008
