Due-East.org

What is SHE SAYING?!?!?! Translation? I don’t get or understand any of her videos, some of them she doesn’t even talk, she just stares into your soul, and you leave thinking something inside of you is gone…=(

Malware creation hotspots growing in the former Soviet countries (such as Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Lithuania, Latvia). Other major areas of criminal activity are Brazil and China, which have large numbers of individuals with sophisticated computing skills but without the job opportunities to make a living for themselves in the IT sector. Online crime often presents a more lucrative path to raising living standards for people like these.

I’m not sure these maps are totally accurate. It seems kind of fishy that at least graphically they’ve pinned ALL of the world’s virus-writing guilt on Brazil, Russia, and China. C’mon, guys…Americans aren’t that lazy that they’re gonna let other countries make all the illegal money. I mean, the US pretty much invented the Internet and Internet crime; they’re not going out like chumps.

• “Internet usage is growing fastest in Asia, followed by Africa. IT job growth will be lacking behind, creating a breeding ground for online criminals.”
• “In many countries there will be a delay before the legal system catches up with developments in the IT sector. Computer criminals may also be able to escape the law more easily in countries which are undergoing serious political and security problems.”

It makes perfect sense to me. If the citizens of a country are poor and the government of that country is too busy with its own growing pains or internal struggle to pass and enforce Internet-related laws, naturally people there are gonna take advantage of the situation. Often, in terms of what people will and won’t do, hunger > laws > ethics. So when the chips are down, most people will do whatever they need to put food on the table regardless of ethics or laws, and if there’s no law to telling them they can’t do something, they’re even more likely to give it a shot. Anyway, below is their map of the future of Internet crime.

• Twelve Hours Later - A blog about “Literature from the other side of the globe - Chinese SF, fantasy, and mainstream fiction”
• http://www.sfw-cd.com - The official site of China’s Science Fiction World magazine, which is apparently a really popular magazine in China. If only I could read more Chinese…
• Some guy’s research project on Chinese SciFi
• Lavie Tidhar’s article on “Science Fiction, Globalization, and the People’s Republic of China”.

1. The first step is to download the latest HK CSL Limited (HK CSL is a Hong Kong cell phone carrier) version of the Blackberry OS for your particular model. You can download it here. It’ll ask you all kinds of questions and run through the whole “I’m not gonna use this to hack the planet” stuff, but you can at least download it.
2. Next, you’ll also want to download the Simplified Chinese font pack for Blackberry. I can’t find the link where I got it originally, but you can download it here. It doesn’t appear that the HK CSL version of the Blackberry OS supports simplified Chinese characters. It may, but when I installed it, it didn’t seem like it was going to, so just to be safe, I downloaded the fonts for it and installed them. After you’ve downloaded the package, extract the zip file to somewhere on your computer and note where you extracted the files. You’ll have to browse to that location in a couple of steps.
3. After you’ve obtained the software you need, I recommend uninstalling any Blackberry software you have on your computer (just for the sake of doing things cleanly). Logically, you’ll need your Blackberry User Tools CD (or at least a downloaded copy) for reinstalling the software later.
4. Navigate to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\AppLoader
   and rename or delete your VENDOR.XML file if that directory and that file still exist. They may not since you just uninstalled all Blackberry software that was on your machine.
5. Open the downloaded OS file that you got in step 1 and install it. At the end of the install, it should ask you if you want to run the Application Loader program. I chose Yes, but then the AppLoader that it ran was in Chinese, and I didn’t feel like going through it in Chinese. So I canceled it and browsed to C:\Program Files\Common Files\Research In Motion\Apploader and double-clicked on Loader.exe That kicked off the Apploader program in English. Your mileage may vary, but that’s what worked for me.
6. At the screen where it gives you the option of what you want to install, make sure you check all the boxes that have to do with Chinese (and Japanese and Korean if you want to be able to read sites/e-mails in those languages - sorry, this OS doesn’t support writing in those languages). Also, remember those simplified Chinese fonts I mentioned downloading earlier? They may not be necessary, but you may want to browse to where that zip file was extracted and select the net_rim_font_chinese.alx file to install those simplified Chinese fonts just to be safe. Also on this screen, make sure you select the pinyin input option so that you can switch between inputting English and Chinese using your Blackberry. At some point during this step, it’ll probably also ask you if you want to backup your device. That’d be a good idea if you like what you have on your Blackberry. Once you’ve done all that, get ready to wait up to 30 minutes (maybe more, maybe less) for your device to become usable again. It’ll probably look like it’s hung at some point because the progress bar won’t move for a long time, but it’s just taking it’s sweet time. It’ll work.
7. You’ll probably have to go through the setup wizard on your Blackberry again, but the good news is that it should keep your messaging/e-mail set up (it did on mine, anyway). It’ll ask you what input language and screen language you wanna use. Unless you’re fluent in Chinese and can read it all, I recommend sticking with English on both. You can easily switch the input language within an application by pressing the “full” menu button (the menu button with the dots on it) and choosing Switch Input Language. Then, it’s just a matter of typing pinyin and selecting the appropriate character for what you want to say.
8. After you’ve done this, re-install Desktop Manager and other applications, set up your synchronization again, and you’re good-to-go.