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Computer engineers and scholars at the University of Florida have created a virtual Chinese city that can help people familiarise themselves with the sights and experiences they may encounter during their first trip to China.The federally-funded ‘Second China Project’, as the researchers named it, was undertaken with objective of educating and preparing foreign service or other government professionals so that they would be fully prepared and ready to work when they visit China.

“I think what we hope is that this kind of environment can provide a bridge between knowledge alone and actually being in the real-life environment,” said Julie Henderson, an international program specialist at the UF College of Pharmacy and co-principal investigator and project designer for the effort.

The new model can not only introduce users to typical sights and the Chinese language, but also to expectations of politeness, accepted business practices and cultural norms.

“We’ve built an environment around learning objectives,” said Paul Fishwick, lead investigator and a professor of computer and information science and engineering.

In the office simulation, the user’s avatar chooses appropriate business attire and a gift, greets a receptionist, and is guided to a conference room to be seated, among other activities.

The system improves the user’s understanding or awareness with each scenario: the Chinese formal greeting language and procedure, that it’s traditional to bring a gift to a first meeting, that guests typically are seated facing the door in a Chinese meeting room, and so on.

In the simulation, a greeter shows the visitor photos of well-known personalities who have visited as patrons, a typical practice in many establishments in China.

There is also a Web tutorial that provides biographical background on Chinese President Hu Jintao and other well-known Chinese personalities in the photos.

“It’s important to be able to go to China already familiar with the important historic and political figures,” said Henderson.

The researchers believe that allowing users to place themselves within Second China’s virtual world may make the information more memorable and pique users’ curiosity and urge to explore.

They’ll spend a year developing the project, and the next year testing it on users to gauge its effectiveness.

“In terms of knowledge and empathy toward the culture, we don’t yet know the answer to the question of where one medium succeeds and another one fails,” Fishwick said.

An expert at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign says that rapid digitising may ultimately lead to a “digital dark age”, where digital photographs will become unreadable to future computers.Jerome P. McDonough, an assistant professor in the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at the university, says that the issue of a looming digital dark age originates from the mass of data spawned by the ever-growing information economy - including electronic records, tax files, e-mail, music and photos.

He is afraid that data produced with ever-shifting platforms and file formats may eventually fall into a black hole of inaccessibility.

“If we can’t keep today’s information alive for future generations, we will lose a lot of our culture,” he said.

“Even over the course of 10 years, you can have a rapid enough evolution in the ways people store digital information and the programs they use to access it that file formats can fall out of date,” he added.

McDonough highlighted the fact that a “huge amount” of content was being developed in digital formats only.

“E-mail is a classic example of that. It runs both the modern business world and government. If that information is lost, you’ve lost the archive of what has actually happened in the modern world. We’ve seen a couple of examples of this so far,” he said.

He also cited the missing White House e-mail archive from the run-up to the Iraq War, a violation of the Presidential Records Act.

“With the current state of the technology, data is vulnerable to both accidental and deliberate erasure. What we would like to see is an environment where we can make sure that data does not die due to accidents, malicious intent or even benign neglect,” he said.

He said that Barack Obama’s political advertising inside the latest editions of the popular videogames “Burnout Paradise” and “NBA Live” ought to be preserved for future generations, but all that could possibly be lost because of the proprietary nature of videogames and videogame platforms.

“It’s not a matter of just preserving the game itself. There are whole parts of popular and political culture that we won’t be able to preserve if we can’t preserve what’s going on inside the gaming world,” he said.

According to him, there would also be an economic effect to the loss of data from a digital dark age.

“We would essentially be burning money because we would lose the huge economic investment libraries and archives have made digitising materials to make them accessible. Governments are likewise investing huge sums to make documents available to the public in electronic form,” he said.

McDonough said that a digital dark age could be avoided if experts figure out the best way to keep valuable data alive and accessible by using a multi-prong approach of migrating data to new formats, devising methods of getting old software to work on existing platforms, using open-source file formats and software, and creating data that’s “media-independent.”

“Reliance on open standards is certainly a huge part, but it’s not the only part. If we want information to survive, we really need to avoid formats that depend on a particular media type. Commercial DVDs that employ protection schemes make it impossible for libraries to legally transfer the content to new media. When the old media dies, the information dies with it,” he said.

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If you think you can easily fool others when it comes to the security that you have to have on your checks, think twice. There is the amazing MICR toner, which is at its best when it comes to the lines that you can possibly see on your check papers. Visible as it is, you may think that it is only a simple derangement of the ink from the printer but actually, it is magnetic ink that can transmit a code when it will be under a special reader and a digital data may be read. In this manner, it will be impossible for other people to make use of it in a bad way. HP MICR is also the same kind as that of the toner that I have regarded above. Through this, people who are on the syndicate will be having a hard time copying certain checks and it will be impossible for them to do such. This is really a great way to be secured and as such, it will be easy to deal with and you no longer have to undergo those other hard ways of securing things that you currently have on hand.

Culture fans thousands of miles from Beijing can now visit its famous Forbidden City, through a three dimensional recreation of the vast palace that also allows them to dress up as an imperial eunuch and meet a courtesan.

One of the jewels in China’s cultural crown, the sprawling complex in the heart of the capital already gets tens of thousands of real-life visitors each day.

But now online tourists can also watch the Qing dynasty emperor feast at dinner, train fighting crickets and feed them with blood-fattened mosquitoes, or practice archery with the help of a courtesan.

At the virtual palace, unveiled on Friday, they can also dress up as part of the huge imperial entourage.

“When you enter the Forbidden City you choose one of nine historical costumes, which is to give a sense of history but also keep a sense of decorum,” said John Tolva, program manager at IBM who led the project, dubbed “Beyond Space and Time.”

“You can’t run and you can’t fly,” he added, a restriction that aims to prevent other virtual visitors, whom you can see and interact with, being distracted.

The program does not shy away from the racier sides of imperial history, shaped in part by the legions of eunuchs who controlled portions of court life and could rise to great power.

“One of the costumes you can chose is a eunuch,” said IBM Vice President Paula W. Baker — though to spare blushes that avatar is only labeled “imperial servant.”

They also appear in some of the bureaucratic roles they might have filled hundreds of years ago.

“There are eunuchs, for instance in the ‘approving imperial memorials’ scenes,” Tolva added.

Those who are interested in other intimate aspects of the emperor’s life have a chance to get an up close look at the women chosen to serve him.

“There is a painting being done of the emperor and the courtesans are there, orbiting about tending to him while the painter does his job,” Tolva said.

“And for all the activities where you actually do something there is an attendant who is styled as a courtesan.”

The museum hopes the program (www.beyondspaceandtime.com), which is based on computer gaming software, will earn new fans for a cultural landmark which survived China’s tumultuous 20th century in remarkably good form.

It has been over three years in the making and cost over $3 million, provided by IBM as part of a community program.

Exacting curators feel the result offers a good introduction to the palace, but worry there has been a certain sacrifice of historical accuracy for the convenience of a modern visitor.

“You wouldn’t have been able to just wander around like this,” said Hu Chui, director of the Information Department, gesturing at a soldier avatar striding toward a central hall.

“You would have been kowtowing and anyway, he is on the imperial pathway. You would get arrested for that.”

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ITIL stands for information technology infrastructure library. You would basically just need to have the proper training to keep files organized and ultimately know where they need to go. It’s just like a virtual librarian who’s in charge of a whole bunch of files. This isn’t as easy as one might think though. The system isn’t like something you’d be used to from personal experience. You need to understand just how complex networks work and how the library software organizes the comings and goings of all the files. For this, you’ll need to take the time to learn ITIL v3 training, especially if you want to be up to date on the latest changes.

There is a lot of demand for someone with the right skills in information technology. If you are willing to get the training necessary, then a whole world will open up to you.

Want to get rid of those irritating cold calls that you have to attend? Well, then TrueCall might just prove to be your ultimate saviour.The TrueCall device acts as a buffer between the phone and the outside world and can easily distinguish between welcome and unwelcome callers.

Inventors and ex-telemarketers Steve Smith and John Price are the ones who came up with the idea for such a blocking gizmo.

“TrueCall is designed to give people control of their landlines. You can bolt the door and close the curtains but your landline is the weak link in your privacy,” BBC quoted Price, as saying.

The new gadget intercepts all calls, and can differentiates if it is a friend or a member of the user’s family-whose numbers the user can easily store on the star list-enabling the calls to reach normally.

In case the caller’s number is on a zap list - numbers of telemarketers or other nuisance callers - it is the device that answers it, enabling all future calls from that number, with an automated message which means the phone does not ring at all.

When the system doesn’t recognise the caller’s number, the caller withholds their number, and asks them who they are, puts them on hold and then rings the user’s phone.

Then it is up to the user to either, take the call, have the system take a message, or reject the call and add the number to the “zap” list. Users can add callers to their “star” list by pressing the star button on their phone at any point during a call.

In fact, the device could soon be able to download a list of blacklisted numbers from a central database, which can be dialled into via a modem inside the box.

This will transmit information about each call that was made, if this is requested by the user.

A new report from security services provider ScanSafe finds that companies are at increasing risk of having employees inadvertently download backdoors and password stealers onto corporate computers from Web sites that have malicious software hidden on them. A company in ScanSafe’s focus group faced a nearly 500 percent greater risk of exposure to those threats in September than was faced in January of this year, according to ScanSafe’s Global Threat Report released on Tuesday.

Companies in the energy sector are at greater risk from Web-based malware than other industries, the report concludes. The energy sector, worldwide, faces a 189 percent higher risk of exposure from workers visiting sites with malware on them than other industries, followed by the pharmaceutical and chemicals industry, construction and engineering, and media and publishing.

“On a more positive note, government agencies were at 0 percent, which indicates they were at neither higher nor lower rates of exposure compared to other verticals,” Mary Landesman, senior security researcher at ScanSafe, writes in a blog post.

The industry with the lowest rate of exposure was aviation and automotive. Landesman says she can’t say exactly why one sector is more at risk than another but expects to release more findings soon that could help answer that question.

Overall, there was a flattening in the volume of threats in August and September, although ScanSafe is seeing a spike in October. Landesman says things could get ugly from a malware perspective throughout the rest of this year.

The holidays tend to be busy for socially engineered-types of malware, Landesman said. Plus, “the economy is hurting people’s finances and this could encourage criminals to up their efforts to gain more money through illicit means,” she said.

Also on Tuesday, security firm MessageLabs released statistics on the numbers of phishing attacks related to the banking crisis.

MessageLabs intercepted 7,000 phishing attacks exploiting Bank of America on October 16 and 15,000 on October 17, reaching 125,000 total e-mails over that weekend. American Express was the focus of a phishing attack that started on October 20 and reached 35,000 e-mails for the day.

The Cutwail botnet, which controls more than 1 million active unsuspecting zombie computers on the Internet and is believed to be the largest botnet, is responsible for those phishing attempts, MessageLabs said.

Apple Inc reported a stronger-than-expected 26 per cent rise in quarterly profit, spurred by strong sales of its new iPhone, and its shares rose 13 per cent on Tuesday.

Apple posted a six-fold increase in iPhone shipments during the September quarter, the first since it released a faster, next-generation model. The company said it sold 6.89 million iPhones during the quarter, outpacing Blackberry-maker Research in Motion Ltd.

Chief Executive Steve Jobs called the iPhone’s performance “remarkable” and said Apple is now the third-largest mobile phone supplier by revenue behind Nokia and Samsung Electronics.

Oppenheimer analyst Yair Reiner called the iPhone shipments a “pretty stunning number” and said the company’s revenues do not fully reflect the strength of iPhone demand because Apple records sales from the phone over a two-year period.

Apple, which is famously cautious in its outlook, issued forecasts for the important December quarter that were below Wall Street estimates, but investors and analysts said it was probably another example of Apple lowering expectations only to exceed them later on.

“Our visibility is low and our forecast is challenging, and as a result, we are going to be prudent in producing the December quarter,” Apple Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said.

Even as the company confronts an expected drop in consumer spending, Jobs sounded untroubled, pointing to the company’s core of loyal customers. “While they may postpone purchases in tough times, they’re unlikely to abandon them,” he said.

“We may get buffeted around by the waves a little bit, but we’ll be fine and stronger than ever when the waters are calm in the future.”

Apple reported profit in its fiscal fourth quarter ended September 27 of $1.14 billion, or $1.26 a share, up from $904 million, or $1.01 a share, in the year-ago period. Revenue rose 27 per cent to $7.9 billion.

The profit bested analysts’ average expectations for the company to post a profit of $1.11 a share but the reported revenue was below their average forecast of $8.04 billion, according to Reuters Estimates.

The company said its fourth-quarter figures would have been better if it fully accounted for iPhone revenue. Including deferred revenue from the iPhone, sales in the quarter would have reached $11.68 billion and $2.44 billion in net income.

In the past, Apple had not provided adjusted figures, which include all the revenue it defers from the iPhone and Apple TV. If it had not deferred iPhone revenue, the phone would have represented 39 per cent of Apple’s sales in the September quarter, according to the company.

CONSERVATIVE ESTIMATES

For the holiday quarter ending in December, Apple forecast profit between $1.06 and $1.35 a share on revenue of $9 billion to $10 billion. Analysts, on average, were expecting earnings of $1.69 per share on revenue of $10.7 billion in the period, according to Reuters Estimates.

Gabelli & Co analyst Robert Haley said the company forecast is “traditionally conservative, and with the economy being a big wild card they’re being more conservative.”

In the September quarter, Mac shipments increased 21 per cent from last year to 2.61 million, while iPod shipments rose 8 per cent to 11.05 million.

Some fear that Apple may be more susceptible to an economic downturn because it charges premium prices for its products. But Jobs said the company has no interest in going down-market, and he scoffed at so-called netbooks, which are stripped-down, budget laptops.

“There are some customers which we choose not to serve. We don’t know how to make a $500 computer that’s not a piece of junk,” he said.

Jobs also gave clues to the company’s approach as it enters what may be an extended period of economic uncertainty.

“We have almost $25 billion safely in the bank and zero debt. This provides us tremendous stability and the ability to invest our way through this downturn. This is what we did during the last downturn.”

Shares of Cupertino, California-based Apple closed the regular session down $6.95, or 7.06 per cent, at $91.49. In extended trading, the stock rose to $103.61.

Bank of Baroda (BoB), which has major operations in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has opened a new electronic banking service unit (EBSU) in Abu Dhabi.

India’s Ambassador to the UAE Talmiz Ahmad and BoB chairman and managing director M.D. Mallya inaugurated the unit at the Mussafah area of the UAE capital, according to a BoB statement.

Speaking on the occasion, Mallya said the bank was going strong despite the ongoing global financial crisis.

“The clientele base of the bank is presently 33 million customers spread throughout the world with overseas presence in 25 countries with 72 offices,” he said.

“The bank plans to expand by opening 10 more branches abroad during 2008-2009,” he added.

In his speech, Ahmad described the bank as the best among all public sector banks in India with new initiatives being launched frequently.

He, however, stated that banks needed to exercise maximum caution in this time of financial crisis.

He also appreciated the fact that the new unit opened at Mussafah would cater to the needs of the humblest segment of that area.

Ashok Gupta, chief executive of BoB’s Gulf operations, said with the opening of the customer centre at Mussafah, customers living in the vicinity would get banking services at their doorstep.

“Various services like collection of applications, account opening forms, cash withdrawal etc would be available to them,” he said.

Also present on the occasion were prominent UAE-based businessmen Yusuf Ali and B.R. Shetty.

This is the second BoB EBSU in the UAE, the other one being in Jebel Ali, Dubai. The bank has six full-fledged branches in the UAE, which is home to around 1.5 million expatriate Indians