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Fabricated bank adds to China's list of fakery

In this March 13, 2012 photo, businessman Lin Chunping attends a press conference in Wenzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang province. In China, awash with fake iPhones, pirated DVDs of Hollywood blockbusters and knockoff Louis Vuitton bags, 41-year-old rice trader Lin took fakery to a whole new level: He invented a U.S. bank and claimed he bought it. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

In this March 13, 2012 photo, businessman Lin Chunping attends a press conference in Wenzhou, in eastern China's Zhejiang province. In China, awash with fake iPhones, pirated DVDs of Hollywood blockbusters and knockoff Louis Vuitton bags, 41-year-old rice trader Lin took fakery to a whole new level: He invented a U.S. bank and claimed he bought it. (AP Photo) CHINA OUT

BEIJING (AP) ? In a China awash with fake iPhones, pirated DVDs and knockoff Louis Vuitton bags, rice trader Lin Chunping took fakery to a whole new level: He invented a U.S. bank and claimed he bought it.

The little-known businessman shot to fame in January when state media reported that he had taken over Delaware-based Atlantic Bank. The unprecedented acquisition brought him praise: His hometown gave him a prestigious political appointment and state media called his business experience "legendary."

The only thing that may have been legendary is Lin's audacity. Not only did he not buy Atlantic Bank in Delaware for $60 million as he claimed, but there is no Atlantic Bank in that state.

Chinese reporters could not locate an Atlantic Bank or a bank registration by Lin in Delaware. He's under arrest for an unrelated fraud and has been forced to give up his municipal-level appointment to the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the government's top advisory body.

Lin, who was arrested in early June, could not be reached for comment. But the 41-year-old's short, spectacular rise and fall shows how fakery has evolved in China, morphing from the manufacture of copycat goods to entire institutions and careers.

Last year, officials found five fake Apple stores in the southwestern city of Kunming. The stores were modeled after the U.S. company's iconic stores right down to the winding staircase and the staff in blue T-shirts.

In early June, local press in eastern Shandong province exposed a fake university. Students who did not score high enough on the national college entrance exam to make it into university received sham admission letters to the Shandong Institute of Light Industry, a real school. The students paid nearly 30,000 yuan ($4,800) over the course of four years to attend classes at the institute.

Weeks before graduation, the students learned they would not get diplomas because they were not officially enrolled at the school but in a private training program that rents space from the institute, according to the report in the state-run Jinan Times. The program organizer had disappeared, the newspaper reported.

Among students, getting ahead by padding resumes or other subterfuge is common.

Zinch China, the Chinese arm of U.S.-based educational networking site Zinch.com, estimates that 90 percent of recommendation letters to U.S. schools are fake, that 70 percent of the essays are written by someone else and that half the transcripts are fabricated. Zinch drew the numbers from interviews with Chinese students, parents and agents.

Experts point to many reasons for the widespread of lack of scruples, from the need to be hyper-competitive to succeed in an over-populated society to an ancient sage who countenanced lying to achieve a higher purpose.

He Huaihong, a Peking University philosophy professor who teaches ethics, takes aim at China's politics, specifically the disconnect between an avowedly communist leadership and the capitalist economy it oversees.

"Jargon left from a century of political revolution is so disconnected with reality that the society is filled with meaningless, empty talk," said He.

Lin told Chinese reporters that it took him two years to negotiate the purchase of the U.S. bank, and that the bank had declared bankruptcy in 2008 because of the financial crisis. To add more flair to the story, Lin told reporters that the bank had been running for 85 years and was run by Jews, who are stereotypically seen by many Chinese as having superior business skills.

Lin's story was particularly captivating because overseas acquisitions are a point of pride in China, showcasing its rising economic power. Lin's supposed purchase of an American bank signaled both Chinese triumph and U.S. decline.

His claims also cheered his hometown, the eastern city of Wenzhou, which was reeling from a government-imposed credit crunch that had ruined some highly leveraged entrepreneurs, some of whom fled the city and their debts. A few committed suicide.

"People were shocked that an obscure businessman bought a foreign bank and it was a U.S. bank nonetheless. He wasn't even a banker to begin with," said Zhu Xiaochuan, a researcher on China's financial law at CEIBS Lujiazui Institute of International Finance in Shanghai. "The news must be credible because it was in mainstream media. The public were amazed how wealthy Wenzhou businessmen were."

A profile on the website of the ruling Communist Party's newspaper People's Daily depicts Lin as sharp and hardworking, selling buttons as a teenager, then purchasing a copper and gold mine in Ghana and investing in the rice business in China. The profile is still available online.

Lin said he renamed the bank USA New HSBC Federation Consortium Inc. and that the institution had already attracted $40 million in deposits with the prospect of turning an annual profit of $5 million to $6 million. The new name had an air of respectability, borrowing from the London-based global banking giant HSBC Holdings, whose brand is well-known in China.

The story attracted so much attention that Chinese journalists familiar with U.S. banking regulations checked into the legitimacy of Lin's claims. They found no Atlantic Bank in Delaware and that Lin's New HSBC was not licensed to offer banking services in Delaware.

When his nonexistent bank was exposed in March, Lin told reporters he made "exaggerations" to raise his social status and to win future opportunities in banking.

Lin is not known to have made any money off his bank claims, but after they were shown to be false he apparently became a target in a police campaign to crack down on economic crimes.

A statement on the Wenzhou police bureau's website said he is suspected of having falsified invoices worth of hundreds of millions of yuan (tens of millions of dollars) through several of his companies in a tax-evading scheme.

Associated Press

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Google's New Cloud Security: Better for Businesses | docSTAR

6.18.12

Google?s New Cloud Security: Better for Businesses

Category: Blog,

Posted By: admin

Google has a new security certification for its business suite, Google Apps for Business, that has significantly increased its cloud security. ?This new ISO 27001 certification is not only better for Google, but it?s also better for businesses, as it offers an even higher level of protection against vulnerabilities.

ISO 27001 security certification is among the most internationally accepted independent security standards and is part of an Information Security Management System. ?The certification can only be earned by suites that have information security controls that address impacts, vulnerabilities, and threats, that have risk treatment methods, and that have a management system that functions to meet both future and current security needs.

In order to determine whether or not it met these requirements, Google had to undergo a third-party audit. ?Ernst & Young CertifyPoint conducted the audit in three different stages. ?To begin, the body informally assessed Google Apps for Business? information security risks and controls. ?Upon passing this assessment, Google underwent a formal, in-depth audit of its security risks, controls, and management systems. ?Finally, Ernst & Young CertifyPoint conducted many follow-up examinations that ensured Google was continuing its security practices.

Google went through the rigorous audit process to earn ISO 27001 certification for its business cloud suite because the higher ranking significantly improves the platform. ?But not only is this new certification better for Google, it?s also better for businesses.

Ever since Google first entered the cloud computing market in 2006, it has worked to provide its customers with high levels of data protection. ?While many businesses turn to the cloud for universal access to data, only recently have businesses moved to the cloud for better security. ?But Google hopes to change that, especially for larger businesses. ?Though small businesses have shown they feel increasingly comfortable with cloud security, large corporations have voiced some doubts about the protection their data would enjoy in the cloud. ?However, now that Google Apps for Business is certified in such an internationally accepted standard, these doubts will likely dissipate and make these businesses more accepting of the idea of a Google Apps migration.

Businesses should also rest assured knowing that this is not the last investment that Google intends to make in cloud security. ?According to Eran Feigenbaum, Director of Security for Google Enterprise, Google will continue to undergo third-party audits to ensure that its information security systems are continuing to meet high standards.

If you?re a business owner, it is extremely important for you to know that your data is secure. ?Information is essential to the daily operations of your business, and you need the peace of mind that your precious data will not be vulnerable to threats or compromised by hackers. ?In order to guarantee that your data is safe, you should be familiar with and understand the security certifications your service provider has earned. ?In the case of Google Apps for Business, you can rest assured knowing that the suite has been verified in an internationally accepted standard by a third-party auditing body and that its security controls will continue to be reviewed.

This piece was contributed by Cloud Sherpas, a leading cloud service provider and was named the ?Google Enterprise 2011 Partner of the Year.? As one of the first Google Enterprise partners, Cloud Sherpas has migrated over one million users across a variety of industries from legacy, on-premise messaging systems to Google Apps, helping organizations adopt cloud computing to innovate and dramatically reduce their IT expenses. A Google Apps Reseller in Atlanta, GA, Cloud Sherpas has regional offices in locations including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Austin and Sydney, and has more Google Apps Certified Deployment Specialists than any other partner in the world.

---

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Kodak ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printer

Clearly aimed primarily at home use?with built-in templates for graph paper, notebook paper, sheet music, tic-tac-toe, and more?the Kodak ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printer ($99.99 direct) offers better than par print speed and output quality for photos, reasonable speed and quality for text and graphics, and a lower running cost than most printers in its price range, at a claimed 3 cents for a monochrome page and 9.5 cents for a color page. The combination makes it highly attractive for the price, and also an Editors' Choice.

As you might expect for a home MFP, the ESP 3.2 can only print, scan, and copy. But don't think that the focus on home use means that it's limited strictly to basics. Among other niceties, it can print JPG files from memory cards, letting you preview them first on the 2.4-inch display, and it also offers touch-screen controls, with well-designed menus that make this printer easy to use. In addition, as with the home-oriented HP Photosmart 5520 e-All-in-One ($129.99 direct, 3 stars) that I recently reviewed, the ESP 3.2 supports printing through the cloud, in this case with Google Cloud Print and Kodak Email Print Services.

If you want to take advantage of either cloud print feature, be aware that you can't use them if you connect the printer by USB, and the only network support the ESP 3.2 offers is for WiFi. If you don't have a WiFi access point on your network (and if you're security conscious you may not want one), you can't use either cloud print option.

Also pegging the printer as home-oriented is the lack of such office-centric features as a fax capability and automatic document feeder as well as the strictly limited paper handling, with a single 100-sheet tray. Even so, as with most low-cost inkjet MFPs today, the ESP 3.2 is suitable for light-duty use in a home office, or for the dual role of home and home-office printer. Just keep in mind that the key phrase in that sentence is light duty.

Speed and Quality
For my tests, I connected the printer by USB cable to a system running Windows Vista. Setup was standard fare. On our business applications suite (timed with QualityLogic's hardware and software) I clocked it at an effective speed of 3.2 pages per minute (ppm). That makes it a bit slower than the more expensive Photosmart 5520, at 3.7 ppm, but essentially tied with the similarly priced HP Officejet 4620 e-All-in-One ($99.99 direct, 3 stars).

Photo speed was more impressive, with an average of 50 seconds for a 4 by 6 on our tests. In fact, the ESP 3.2 is one of the few printers in its price range that can print a 4 by 6 photo in less than a minute in its highest quality mode.

The photo speed is even more impressive when you consider that the output quality is above par. Photos from most inkjets are roughly equivalent to drugstore prints, but often at the low end of what you can expect from a drugstore. The ESP 3.2 photo quality is at least at the high end of that range, and arguably a touch better. Also, unlike many inkjet printers, the ESP 3.2 even handled our black and white output well, without any tinge of color at any shade of gray.

As with speed, quality for text and graphics isn't as impressive as for photos, but it's not bad, with text at the low end of a tight range where the vast majority of inkjets fall, and graphics absolutely par for an ink jet. I wouldn't use the ESP 3.2 to print, say, a resume or other text output that needs to convey a sense of professionalism, but it's good enough for most business and home needs.

Graphics are easily good enough for any internal business or home use. Depending on how much of a perfectionist you are, you might even consider the graphics good enough to hand to important clients or customers who you want to impress with a sense of your professionalism.

I'd like this printer even more if it included wired network support rather than just WiFi. But that's not a major issue unless you want cloud printing, don't already have a WiFi access point on your network, and don't want to add one. In most ways?from print speed, to output quality, to low running cost?the Kodak ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printer offers lots of strengths and very few weaknesses. And it's impressive enough for the price to make it Editors' Choice even if it didn't support cloud printing at all.

More Multi-function Printer Reviews:
??? Kodak ESP 3.2 All-in-One Printer
??? Samsung SCX-5639FR
??? HP Officejet 4620 e-All-in-One
??? Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4533
??? Epson WorkForce Pro WP-4590
?? more

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Synopsis for Neill Blomkamp's Elysium Released

Anticipation is high for filmmaker Neil Blomkamp?s followup to his breakout hit District 9, which is another sci-fi project titled Elysium. However, save for a handful of set photos ? revealing Matt Damon with a shaved head, bloodied clothing, and unidentified futuristic body equipment ? there hasn?t been any news of substance to report since Blomkmap began shooting his sophomore feature.

Prior to now, virtually nothing in the way of concrete information has been revealed about the storyline for Elysium, other than what little can be gleaned from the titular reference to the Elysian Fields from Greek mythology (a final resting place for noble souls). A newly-unveiled synopsis sheds light on how that story ties?into the film?s central narrative, on a literal and figurative level (a la Prometheus).

The first preview audience screening has been held for Elysium, and invitations to said event (made available online thanks to?Collider) include an encompassing, NON-SPOILER summary of the film?s plot (you can read it below):

In the year 2159, two classes of people exist: the very wealthy who live on a pristine man-made space station called Elysium, and the rest, who live on an overpopulated, ruined Earth. Secretary Rhodes (Jodie Foster), a hard line government of?cial, will stop at nothing to enforce anti-immigration laws and preserve the luxurious lifestyle of the citizens of Elysium. That doesn?t stop the people of Earth from trying to get in, by any means they can. When unlucky Max (Matt Damon) is backed into a corner, he agrees to take on a daunting mission that, if successful, will not only save his life, but could bring equality to these polarized worlds.

Previous (unconfirmed) reports indicated that Damon?s character is an ex-convict, which has prompted speculation about what the aforementioned body suit could be. One of the popular theories (among others) pegs the mechanical appendage as a life-supporting item, thus making?Max (by definition) a cyborg; that could set the stage for Blomkmap?s film to explore the increasingly prevalent role technology plays in our everyday lives (similar to the impending RoboCop remake). Bear in mind, though, that guess could also be WAY off base.

Sharlto Copley in 'District 9'

Moving past that ? Elysium appears to offer a mix of gruesome violence, thrills, and sci-fi allegory along the lines of District 9. The logline alludes to a storyline that addresses timely issues of social upheaval and class warfare, which are currently all the rage in both movies (The Hunger Games, Dark Knight Rises) and on television (Legend of Korra). It also suggests a place for the ?antagonist? being portrayed by Wagner Moura, who?s previously been described as a divisive, but charismatic figure involved with human trafficking (possibly, into Elysium).

Supporting roles in Elysium will be filled out by people like District 9 star Sharlto Copley, Alice Braga (Predators), Diego Luna (Y Tu Mam? Tambi?n), William Fichtner (Prison Break), Carly Pope (Outlaw), Michael Shanks (Stargate SG-1) and Talisa Soto (Mortal Kombat). The diversity of that roster ? in combination with the Elysium synopsis, indicates that issues of xenophobia and contemporary racism should also be touched on (as they were in D9).

Overall, there appears to be reason enough for fans of cerebral sci-fi to mark their calendars for March 1st, 2013, which is when Elysium begins its theatrical release in the U.S. Naturally, we?ll continue to keep you up-to-date on the project?s status in the meantime.

-

Source: Collider

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Expectations high ahead of Apple CEO's keynote

(Apple)

Check back here at 9:45 a.m. PT on Monday for a liveblog of Cook's keynote from Yahoo's Scott Ard and Joanna Stern of ABC News.

Apple's 2012 Worldwide Developers Conference begins Monday in San Francisco. As usual, there is plenty of buzz surrounding the annual event--rampant speculation among tech industry observers about what the Cupertino, Calif.-based company and CEO Tim Cook--whose kenote is scheduled for 10 a.m. PT--could unveil this week at the sold-out show.

"Tf the deluge of rumors is indication of what's to come," Engadget's Darren Murph wrote, "this could very well be the most monumental WWDC in recent memory."

Many predict Apple will announce a new operating system--iOS 6--on Monday.

"The announcement of new software for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch has been confirmed by banners that appeared at the Moscone conference center in San Francisco on Friday, reading 'iOS 6,'" the Associated Press reported. "It's not much of a surprise. Apple has used its Worldwide Developers Conference as an opportunity to announce new iPhone software for the past few years."

"iOS 6 will very probably be the cornerstone of the keynote and the follow-up sessions," Gizmodo.com's preview noted. "There's also a good chance that we'll see new MacBook Pros, a new generation of MacBook Air, and a release date for OS X Mountain Lion. Hell, we might even see new Mac Pros and some Apple TV Apps."

[Related: The 10 best - and free -apps for iPad]

"It's been a year or more since Apple's major desktop and laptop models have been updated," CNN's Doug Gross wrote. "The iMac got refreshed in May 2011, the MacBook Pro's last overhaul was February 2011 and MacBook Air's latest model rolled out in July of last year."

As Gross pointed out, apps "have started showing up in the Mac app store with updates saying they've added 'retina graphics,' the term Apple uses for its high-resolution displays on newer iPhones and iPads"--suggesting that Apple's PCs may be getting upgraded, too.

According to PCMag.com, Siri--Apple's "intelligent personal assistant" favored by actors like John Malkovich--will "likely" be announced for the new iPad, too.

[Related: History's coolest 'techercise' gadgets]

The biggest mystery, the AP noted, surrounds Apple's TV ambitions: "Late company founder Steve Jobs told biographer Walter Isaacson that he wanted to remake the TV. Apple does sell an 'Apple TV,' but it's small box that connects to a TV to display movies from iTunes. There's much speculation that Apple plans to make a full-blown TV set, integrated with iTunes."

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South Korean paper hit by major cyber attack

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