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In the future, Internet crime will come mostly from Asia…oh, and Mexico

孙智谦 on 18 Jan 2008

F-Secure.com just published the resulting maps from their study of the shifts in Internet crime trends since 1986. The results are pretty interesting. The map below illustrates that up to the year 2003, criminals from the United States and Europe have been the creators of most malware. According to F-Secure, the time period covered by this map was characterized by “opportunistic ‘hobbyists’ learning their craft” and “old-school virus writers operating from areas in Europe, United States, Australia and India.”

And then in the “recent history” (is 1986 considered ancient history now?! Am I that old?!), people apparently started getting bored of just playing around and writing viruses and things just to wreak havoc; they wanted to make money or achieve some other goal, so “professional, targeted attacks” started to rise. Here’s how F-Secure describes the characteristics of malware creation in this period:

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.

Moving on…the folks at F-Secure now don their prophet caps and look to the future, predicting that in the future, malware will come mostly from Asia with generous helpings coming from Africa and Mexico. Their site makes the following two points:

“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.

So it looks like we all get to look forward to more virus-laden e-mails trying to trick us into doing the same old things with the same old consequences, only now with even worse English than in the past, probably confusing Rs and Ls throughout. Ah, grobarization!

Link to F-Secure study

How to enable Chinese input on your Blackberry

孙智谦 on 10 Jan 2008

I recently switched my phone service from Sprint to AT&T and somehow managed to sucker myself into thinking I needed a Blackberry so that I can keep up-to-date on all the unimportant e-mails I receive every day (the latest deals on erectile dysfunction medications, who wants help smuggling money out of what country, etc). I ended up getting a Blackberry Curve 8310. It’s a cool phone, but the only problem is that with the default OS, there’s no support for Chinese at all. It can’t display Chinese characters, and it can’t input them. That stinks since I do get e-mail from Chinese friends, and I’d like to be able to read and respond to what they write without having to be at home to do it. So I set about trying to find a way to make it work…and after lots of Google searching and forum reading, I came across a great forum thread (link at the bottom of this article) that gave me the general steps on how to get it done. I followed the steps (with some modifications) and was able to make it work pretty easily. I’ve posted the outline of the procedure that I used below in an attempt to hopefully make it easier for those who follow after me. Here goes…

I highly recommend backing up your Blackberry before you do anything. In the BlackBerry Desktop Manager program, click on Backup and Restore and choose the Backup option and export your data to a file.

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
After you’ve done this, re-install Desktop Manager and other applications, set up your synchronization again, and you’re good-to-go.

It’s pretty straight-forward. If I’ve left a step out, let me know by leaving a comment. And sorry about the lack of screenshots. I neglected to take any when I was doing this on my Blackberry, and I don’t feel like going back and doing it again just for screenshots, so this is all you get. If for some reason this process fails and your Blackberry is all jacked up, fear not. Just follow the instructions for using javaloader.exe on this forum thread (Or call support for help with getting it back to its like-new state) and try again. Happy hacking!

Link to article/forum posting that I used to do this to my own Blackberry

South Korea once again proves that the US is WAY behind in technology

孙智谦 on 31 Dec 2007

America tries to act like the leader in technology sometimes, but it’s really slow on the uptake. You know those cool credit cards that are starting to pop up more and more, the kind that you can wave in front of the gas pump instead of actually having to go through the usual “insert card and remove quickly” routine? Those may be all the rage in America (or not: I don’t know many people who actually have one), but they’re old news. All the cool kids (who live in Korea) have USB credit cards now. They don’t have to enter information to make purchases online; all they have to do is plug their credit card into their USB port to pay for stuff online. Take that, third-world country America!

Link to article

NBC Nightly News report on the Chinese language; Chinese Pod is featured!

孙智谦 on 30 Oct 2007

It’s apparently the “in thing” in America to learn Chinese. It must be if big news networks are running stories about it during their prime time slots. The NBC Nightly News article is actually pretty good. It starts off mentioning how how much times have changed, how schools have gone from offering French and Spanish classes to offering Mandarin classes as well. I wish I had that option when I was in high school; I can’t guarantee I would’ve taken Chinese, but it would’ve been pretty nice to have the option, at least. Maybe I wouldn’t have wasted so many years of my time studying French, a language I have absolutely no use for in my adult life. And maybe when I started learning Chinese over four years ago, more of the tools that exist today would’ve been ready for me back then. Meh, I’m whining. Moving on…The report goes on to say that Mandarin is becoming the “must-know language of the future” and that it’s even being taught in elementary schools. It also says that China has begun setting up Mandarin-learning institutes in over 30 countries with the goal of tripling the number of Mandarin students to 100 million within three years. That’s a pretty ambitious goal; but China’s a huge country with its fingers in everything in the world, so it may not be unattainable, especially when you take into account Chinese Pod’s download statistics: they quit counting the number of downloads when they hit 20 million. And while Chinese Pod caters to adults, there are certainly lots of other Chinese instruction products that cater to kids: software, games, television shows, you name it. Nickelodeon even has a show called Ni Hao, Kai-Lan that introduces toddlers to the language. So even in places where no formal classes are offered, everybody from your young nephew to your old uncle has access to some form of instruction in Chinese directed at their age group.

The question of whether Chinese will replace English as the international language is brought up in the report as well. As is typical of big network news shows, they don’t show his full comment in its original context, so we don’t know what he was really talking about, but it does seem like Chinese Pod’s co-founder Ken Carroll is referring to this question when he comments on Chinese’s lack of an alphabet being an issue. Sure, there are romanization systems out there to help people with learning to pronounce Chinese, and it’s definitely possible to write entire sentences in Pinyin or other romanization systems, but the ridiculous number of homonyms in the language makes it rather confusing at times. Still, China’s a huge player on the world scene, and more and more people and organizations are becoming more and more involved with the big red giant, so who knows what people may come up with to make it more foreigner-friendly. I wonder how much longer it’ll be before companies start replacing Spanish with Chinese in the “qualified applicants must be able to speak…” areas of their job postings. I’d better get back to studying now.

I tried to embed the video of the report here, but the code for embedding it won’t work with my blog. No matter. You can just click the link below to go to the Praxis Languages page and watch it. Congrats on the mention (and free publicity), Chinese Pod!

Click here to jump to the video of the report.

ChinesePera-kun: the most helpful Firefox extension there is for students of Chinese

孙智谦 on 26 Oct 2007

Chinesepera-kun in action

I’m really excited about this Firefox extension! Up until this afternoon, if I ran across a Chinese character that I didn’t know, I would have to copy it and paste it into Adsotrans.com or Babelfish to see what it meant. It can be really cumbersome, having so many different browser windows or tabs open just to get the meaning of a specific character. But then Ole over on the forums at Mango Languages suggested this excellent Firefox plugin called Chinesepera-kun, and now gone are the days of bogging my system down with 5 different Firefox tabs being open at once just so I can learn a new character.

Here’s how it works: Once you’ve installed the plugin, you right-click anywhere in the Firefox window and choose Toggle ChinesePera-kun to activate it. Then, when you see a Chinese character that you don’t recognize on a website, you just hover your cursor over it and watch the definition pop up on the screen, along with the Pinyin pronunciation. For an larger image of it in action, click here. Totally awesome!

You can learn more about the plugin and download it here.

Roman alphabet to internet: “Et tu, Brute?”

孙智谦 on 15 Oct 2007

This’ll be interesting…

The Internet (or, internets if you’re some people - it’s a series of tubes) is great because no matter what language you speak or where you live, as long as you have a connection to it, you can benefit from the collective knowledge of the world’s Internet-using population. That’s really incredible when you think about it, being able to call upon the collective knowledge of the whole world to find out pretty much whatever you want to know. But in spite of the fact that people from all over the world who speak different languages can contribute to the Internet in any language they wish, it has always been kind of unfair in a way. Up to this point, if you wanted to have a web site, your domain name had to be in English. That’s great for native speakers of English, but not-so-good for people who don’t speak English. So a supposedly universal tool has always catered to a certain group. Lame!

But it looks like English is finally about to lose its stranglehold on domain names. ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers - the guys who run the Internet’s names and addresses) announced last Thursday that they will be registering (on a test basis) domain names in Arabic, Persian, Russian, Hindi, Greek, Korean, Hebrew, Japanese, Tamil, and both styles of written Chinese (simplified and traditional). This is huge, probably the biggest change to the internet since Al Gore “created” it. It’s just a test for now, though, so if you register a domain name in a language other than English, it will have to have a .test suffix added to it (instead of .com, .org, .net, etc.), and you’ll be directed to a wiki page instead of being able to make your own website.

The Yahoo! article I pulled this information from doesn’t say specifically what the testing criteria is (and I’m too lazy to find out), but it says, “The results of the test will determine whether ICANN sanctions using languages written in alphabets other than English for complete domain names.” So if it goes well, the internet may get a whole lot bigger. The Internet World Statistics website says that about 37 percent of the world’s Internet users live in Asia and another couple percent are in the Middle East (North American users make up about 19 percent of the Internet’s users, and Europeans make up about 27 percent). Those numbers mean that if things aren’t done correctly, the internet could conceivably see some performance issues from the new traffic created by new websites popping up in all these different languages. That fear is apparently the reason this wasn’t done a long time ago, according to ICCAN’s first chief executive, Mike Roberts. He said, “The engineers thought that trying to do the non-Roman alphabet thing with all this growth would destabilize the Internet and cause crashes.” I’m assuming they have things worked out now so that won’t happen, but we’ll see.

Link to article.

Coolest. Concept. Cars. Ever.

孙智谦 on 11 Oct 2007

It looks like Nissan is going to totally beast the 2007 Tokyo Motor Show with their three new concept cars, the ROUND BOX, the NV200, and the INTIMA.

First up is the ROUND BOX, which looks on the outside like a tough, futuristic cross between a Chrysler PT Cruiser and a Honda Element. The cockpit, though, is completely Star Trek or Minority Report. It’s one of the most incredible-looking things I’ve ever seen that isn’t completely science fiction (although how much of it is actually functional isn’t clear). If I were to drive one, I’d probably be so busy staring at all the cool things on the dashboard that I’d probably end up in a serious accident, but it’d almost be worth it just to have something this cool.

The NV200 makes vans look awesome! It’s like a cargo van that transforms into a bus/office. When its back side isn’t fully extended, it seems like it’d only be a two-seater because I don’t see how you could possibly have room for more than 2 people with all that stuff shoved in the back (computer, storage bins, a place to hang clothes). But when it is fully extended, it looks like something you’d see on Star Trek. Very impressive! I want one of these in a big way.

Ok, so what about sedans? The Nissan INTIMA (is that like the opposite of an Altima, like an innie bellybutton versus an outie?) seems pretty cool, too. It’s got a computer with some cool-looking features (address book, points of interest, phone book, themes for something or other) built right into the dash, and a nice looking radio console. I’d have to say that it’s not as cool or futuristic looking as the other two concept cars, but it’s still pretty nice.

Nice, eh? Too bad these are just concept cars and not available to the public yet. Who knows when they will be, either? Until then, I’ll just dream…

Freaky Japanese face-mimicking robots

孙智谦 on 21 Sep 2007

Those robot-obsessed Japanese scientists are at it again! Japan’s Takanishi Labs has developed a face-mimicking robot that can switch between 2 different faces in a matter of seconds. It works by using servos and microcontrollers to change the shape of a “face mask,” and it’s a strange mix of of impressive and scary. Watch the video below to see how it shape-shifts into 2 different faces:

OK, the basic robot itself is kind of cool, but when you see it with a human face projected over top of the robot, it becomes eerily realistic, like in the video below:

Freaky, eh? It’s only a matter of time before the technology becomes smaller and smaller to the point that it won’t need the giant box behind it to make those faces, which would make much more realistic applications possible. Amazing! Cheaper Chinese rip-off technology in 5…4…3…2…

If you’re a big enough geek to care, here’s more information on it.

PMP can do ANYTHING. Really. The reviewers say so.

孙智谦 on 17 Jul 2007

The Portable Media Player, which can do pretty much anything

Check out this Portable Media Player (or PMP - which just so happens to be a very similar name to Sony’s PSP, a handheld gaming system with a similar design). It can apparently do basically anything entertainment-wise, even read novels! I wonder what it thought of Pride and Prejudice. Look at the Chinglish-laden features list below:

Portable Game & Media Player integrates such functions as watching Movie, enjoying Music, Playing GAMES, Reading novels, sound Recording, browsing Pictures and Take pictures. Feature : Game Player : Game Emulator support NES, SNES & MD/SMC ( Sega 16bit ), You can run thousands of game which you can download from Internet Movie Player : Support AVI of MPEG-4 format ( DIVX 3.11/4.X/5.X and XVID codec : Sizes : 320*240 @ 30 fps ) Music Player : Support MP3, WMA, FLAC , with Equlizer Camera : Digital Camera Function with 1300K pixel Video Recorder : Record in 320*240 MPEG4 Voice Recorder : Voice Recorde in MP3 format in 128,192 and 256KPS E-Book Reader : Support E-Book in TXT format Picture Viewer : Support JPG, GIF , BMP format Build-in 1G memory, Support Max. 4G external SD card. Build-in Litum Rechargable battery wth 12000mah , Continue Video play for 6 hrs, or Music play for 20 hrs. With Auto Shut down, Firmware upgradable, 3.6″ screen size ( 960*240) TFT , Theme Select, Multi Language support ( English, French, Chinese, Italian, Portuguese ) , Wallpaper changable

And apparently it’s a high-quality product! Just look at the customer comments below:

X-Box Man says, “Very professional! All kinds and all in readiness. Almost you can find every kinds of product in it.” That’s great because I need some more toilet paper, and now I won’t have to go to the store to get some. I can just look in my new PMP and find it!
Gunter Maske says, “Humanly design and easy for carrying . You will find every design is close to user’s requirements. Good!” As long as the design is humanly, I’m sure it fits every user’s requirements!
S. Yung has problems with self-esteem, but the PMP makes him feel more confident in his worth as a person. He says, “The products have many functions which make me feel more exciting! And all of them are work well ! How perfect!”
Guy Mason apparently has this product confused for a pace-maker. “Works so great you won’t even know it’s there ! It works just like it is supposed to!”

With reviews like those, who wouldn’t want one! It’s not too expensive, either. If you’re paying in American dollars, it’ll cost you just over one hundred bucks. A humanly design, any product you want inside, self-help properties, and invisibility, all for $110?! I’ll take two!

Link to product page.

RIM wins eight year fight to make Chinese drivers even worse

孙智谦 on 07 Jul 2007

Accidents waiting to happen

As if the traffic in Chinese cities wasn’t dangerous enough, Research In Motion (RIM) has won an eight year battle to be able to sell their BlackBerry devices in China. If you don’t have one of these, you won’t understand, but if you do have one, you’ll understand why people call them CrackBerries and why they can be dangerous if you drive a car. They’re quite possibly the most addictive devices on the planet up to this point (the iPhone isn’t as widely used yet) because they can be used as phones, internet browsing devices, and e-mail clients. I see lots of people using them during their morning commutes, and I’m not totally innocent of using mine while driving, either.

The traffic in Chinese cities is known for being extremely dangerous already, with drivers ranging from aggressive to downright psychotic. It’s kind of understandable considering that there are about a zillion cars on every street in some cities; you kind of have to be a bit aggressive or just plain off your rocker to drive in conditions like they have on some streets. And it’s dangerous. I was in a motor scooter accident there. Okay, technically it was my fault since I hit a stationary object, and there was only one other vehicle on the road that was nowhere near me, but that’s not the point! The point is, adding a bunch of BlackBerries to the mix is only going to make things worse. I’m glad I don’t live there right now.