From Japan, another precautionary tale about how blogging can be hazardous to your job.:

A former police administration officer in Morioka, Iwate Prefecture, has been reported to prosecutors for violating the Swords and Firearms Control Law after taking pictures of handguns and using them on his blog.

Whilst on duty in September 2002, the 33-year-old unlocked a firearms cabinet and selected two particularly photogenic weapons, then after surreptitiously taking a few pictures he posted them on his blog – twice as it turns out. Yet despite cleverly applying a mosaic pattern to the photos, a prefectural police worker later recognized the guns and promptly reported his findings.

The unnamed blogger was given a 10 percent pay cut as punishment, but being understandably embarrassed by the whole affair, he resigned on Wednesday, explaining his behaviour by saying, “I posted [the photographs of the guns] because I wanted people to take an interest in the home page.”

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia

Indonesia has a new blog aggregator service.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, indonesia, southeast asia

AsiaPundit is not alone in noticing a rise in economic nationalism in the US. Hopefully this will all die down after the election cycle plays out.

China’s Lenovo, the owners of IBM’s personal computer division, are facing the ire of Congress after winning a sizable government contract. Mutant Frog comments.:

The New York Times today is reporting that a number of Congressmembers from both parties are in an uproar over an announcement that Chinese-owned Lenovo computers has won a bid to supply 15,000 machines to the US State

The opposition seems to be a combination of misguided economic nationalism, mixed with a vague but real appreciation of possible security concerns. Surprisingly, this article does not mention the security chip Lenovo has been installing on their domestic models. Now, it would of course be trivial to see whether nor not that chip is installed on the machines being purchased by the State Department, but doing a full-blown security audit would probably be enough trouble so that it would become more economical to just go to the next lowest bidder instead.

The real question is this: are the possibly security concerns serious enough to justify the panic? Supporters of the deal point out that the computers will be used only for unclassified work, but honestly that shouldn’t do anything to relieve you. Most of the government’s paperwork is unclassified, but still not public-think of things like personnel records and so on that would be of great usefulness as intelligence.

Meanwhile, ‘China’s’ Hutchison Whampoa is attracting attention for winning a contract to check cargo shipments for radiation. Milton J Madison comments.:

Hutchison Whampoa, a global leader in the ports business is being paid to install and operate their equipment in the Bahamiam port. Rest assured, however, that as indicated by hyper-partisan Chuck Shumer’s remarks [one of my hometown legislators that used to represent a district in central Brooklyn and is now the senior senator from New York State, and judging from comments that he made in the past in his representitive capacity, is amongst one of the most stupidest and most socialist members of US legislative bodies. Additionally, he along with Senator Graham are sponsoring legislation to slap huge tariffs on Chinese exports to the US in pyrrhic and useless push to preserve low paying manufacturing jobs in the US], that the do nothing Democrats will be using this as another wedge against Bush Administration in this election year.

The way that I look at this, is in fighting against terrorism, their is no silver bullet or perfect defense. But one can attempt to cut down the avenues of attack and work towards the ultimate goal of protecting the American homeland. If a foreign entity is hired to assist in this, and there is no American counterpart that is prepared or equipped to do the job, then foreign operated firms must be hired to do these jobs.

Technorati Tags: asia, china, east asia, northeast asia, hong kong, lenovo

David Weber at Japundit investigates the unfortunate disappearance of the Ninja in American pop culture.:

As for the real Ninja, they served as the perfect martial arts foil for any aspiring hero whether they were samurai, shaolin monks, police officers, superheroes, or redneck truck drivers. Ninja were readily available for heroes to test their mettle against. It didn’t take much to find a few ninja back then as they were just about everywhere. A hero could hardly go for a leak without bumping into a pack of them along the way.

Then the butt-kicking would begin.

Despite their years of intensive training and strict discipline, ninja never won a single fight they were in even if they outnumbered their opponents 100 to 1. They appeared to be particularly vulnerable to an old-fashion left hook. The only time ninja were successful in actually killing someone with their skills or their myriad of pointy weapons was when they could manage to kill off the hero’s buddy, girlfriend, or dog. This minor victory was often short-lived and generally backfired on them as the hero would become enraged to the point of slaughtering ninja by the bushel. This would go on until the hero finally tracked down the Head Ninja and in an epic fight-to-the-death match, killed him. The few surviving ninja of the hero’s rampage would find themselves suddenly unemployed while many of them would have to apply for handicap parking decals.

Technorati Tags: asia, east asia, japan, northeast asia, ninjas

Via Google video, a talk on Google China with Rebecca MacKinnon and Tomothy Wu.:

There are no fireworks in the talk and both Rebecca and Tim agree, in the end, that Google did screw up with Google.cn