Remember last month when Baidu was hacked by the Iranian Cyber Army?

Well, Domain Name Wire explains the hi-tech coding techniques used to perpertrate the crime:

Here’s how Baidu alleges the hacker got access to one of the world’s most popular web sites domain name account in under an hour:

1. Hacker starts online chat session with Register.com representative, claiming to be an agent of Baidu.

2. Register.com representative asks hacker to provide verification information. Hacker provides invalid information, but Register.com goes ahead and e-mails a security code to the email address it has on file for Baidu anyway.

3. The hacker doesn’t have access to that e-mail address, so he/she relays a bogus security code to the Register.com representative via chat. Baidu claims the representative didn’t bother to compare the code to the actual one.

4. Hacker asks Register.com representative to change email address on file to antiwahabi2008@gmail.com, and representative does.

5. Hacker now uses “forgot password” link at Register.com to request the username and password to the account. Hacker can then log in and change the name servers.

Baidu is currently suing Register.com but they could have simply avoided this whole debacle by paying a few extra  dollars a year for increased domain security. After all they do rely on their website being available for their core business. But it’s easier to blame it on the idiocy of a Register.com tech support guy.

You’ve also mentioned that you see China as too entrepreneurial. How can that be?
Entrepreneurialism is in our blood, and that makes us open to new ideas and new people. But it means we can also be impatient, and without focus. In Chinese companies, middle managers are always trying to figure out how they can ultimately take over the company, or start their own company. This may also be because Chinese companies aren’t as good at taking care of their employees. Compare China to Japan in this respect. It’s difficult to imagine a Chinese company creating the next Toyota, let alone the next Google.

Hard to argue, but give it another 5 or 10 years, and I bet it will be much easier to imagine a Huawei, Alibaba, or some other Chinese company being a global leader in both sales and innovation.

Motorola has been struggling in China for years.  The Harvard business school even has a case for its MBA students about the company’s missteps in the China market (mercifully changing the name of Motorola, but that doesn’t do any good for the company’s workers who are out of jobs as of today).

Notwithstanding this, for now, the scene on the street in downtown Shanghai does not reveal obvious signs of economic strain.

Aside from the Miss Switzerland pageant, it was clearly the top story of the weekend!

I was curious about the ”763 batches of Chinese milk found chemical free” link, however, so I searched the site for the keyword “milk”. Turns out there has been a lot of news about milk in the past couple of weeks. It’s all terribly complicated, and I’m still sorting out the facts. But these articles, all taken from China Daily and Xinhua, have been particularly helpful:

• “Shenzhou VII sets standard for China-made products“
• “Prompt response“
• “Wen stresses business ethics“
• “Mother offers fresh alternative“
• “Major Chinese dairy producers promise to improve“
• “Untainted milk not hit by scandal“

The rest of the country continues to sacrifice for Beijing’s Olympic party. Yesterday SHTig and I visited one of the nicest (and largest) office towers in Beijing. The entire building was frigid–on a Sunday, when perhaps a few dozen people were inside. Meanwhile, Bloomberg reports on electricity rationing in Wuhan:

The provincial government decided to cut power supplies to the capital city of Wuhan by 34 percent, the city of Huangshi by 31 percent and Huanggang by 16 percent, the local economic commission said in a statement posted on its Web site.

China, facing its sixth year of electricity shortages, mothballed 3 percent of its coal-fired generating capacity as of July 25 after fuel supplies dwindled, State Grid Corp. of China said last week. Coal stockpiles at Hubei’s power plants have fallen below the “caution line” of 750,000 metric tons, the provincial government said.

“Insufficient coal supplies forced the closure of an increasing number of power plants in the province,” the commission said. “We decided to start rationing power supplies from Aug. 5 in order to ensure basic power demand for the summer and Olympics are met.”

Unfortunately for Wuhan and the rest of China, the current shortage is not being caused by the Olympics alone, but is rather part of a much greater problem:

State Grid said last week 46 percent of the power stations on its network have coal stockpiles below the “caution line” or seven days of consumption. More than 1 billion people rely on State Grid for their power.

The Three Gorges hydropower station in Hubei had a daily output of 440 million kilowatt-hours yesterday [August 5 or 6], or 5 percent of the nation’s total consumption, the Xinhua News Agency reported today.

Just took this photo with my cell phone on the way to lunch.

A London black cab with Beijing colors colours…

NATOR ADDS: China Car Times had some info on this back in May.

ODB ADDS: I know Israel was also testing these cabs out a few years ago, as they are supposed to be more secure with the driver being in a separate compartment from the passengers.

You’ve heard it said that Chinese will surpass the US because they are willing to work so damn hard (for less money, under tougher circumstances, for the sake of national glory, etc.) Well, China will continue its ascent, but lets dispel this notion that the people here work so much harder than Americans or Europeans.

Evidence? A survey currently running on www.highpk.com is asking Chinese people whether people to choose their preference:

1. “work to live / overtime is basically a pressure that hides the enjoyment of life” (工作为了生活 — 加班根本就是一种压榨，剥夺了生活的乐趣)

2. “live to work — overtime is an expression of my hard work and is the elevator to success” (活着为了工作 — 加班是我努力工作的表现，是通往成功的阶梯).

Well, as of right now, with nearly 15,000 votes/comments in, a whopping 90% take option #1, that working is to support life but not more.

And living in China, I believe it. People here are not cramming every minute of the day to work harder and do better. Heck, even the designer of the story image took shortcuts. See how he mixed up the English with the Chinese in the picture above? “Work to live” and “live to work” are in the wrong places. Obviously that dude was not OTing to get his image done correctly.

From the China domestic standpoint, it will be interesting to see how this ripples through the marketplace.  China is already under inflationary pressures, and if the economy at large is exposed to higher energy prices, this will exacerbate those pressures.

The article describes how a new market has emerged for companies who help monitor China’s blogosphere and help fight negative and potentially brand damaging remarks before they turn into a PR crisis. These services cost anywhere between USD 500 and USD 25,000 a month, as the article quotes, and major clients of such firms include Toyota, Nike, Carrefour, McDonald’s, and many others.

What caught my eye was this :

Plenty of companies are willing to pay for positive spin. PR outfits hire students to write postings that boost certain brands and criticize the competition, says a staffer at a Western PR firm in Beijing.

Chinese Web Union is candid about doing this. It pays thousands of people to write nice things about clients, and it compensates forum leaders who spread positive information and quash bad publicity.

So basically, some companies are paying for a positive spin… and I wouldn’t be surprised if there are companies paying for a negative spin…

Heck, for USD 25,000 a month, I wouldn’t be surprised if there are some “PR companies” that are doing both at the very same time…

“War is good for business” — The 34th rule of acquisition.

The earthquake donation roll call extends from the largest companies in China down to the smallest. This photo is from a poster on Hubuxiang, an alley in Wuhan famous for its dozens of stalls selling tasty snacks. About 80 stalls are listed, with individual donations as small as 10 RMB mentioned. Most of the snacks here cost 1-3 RMB, and thousands of people eat on Hubuxiang every day, so 10 RMB isn’t exactly a generous donation, even for these small-time proprietors. I wonder whether those in the 10 RMB group are proud or ashamed to have their name and donation amount listed like this — probably a bit of both.