Foreign PC-makers OK with censorship filters

Turns out that a number of PC-makers were quite prepared to go along with China's demand that censorship-enabling software be installed in their wares. Although China has postponed its demand, computers with the filtering software are already flowing in from foreign manufacturers.

Taiwan's Acer Inc., the world's No. 3 PC-maker behind Hewlett-Packard Co. and Dell Inc., said it's already shipping PCs to China with disks containing the so-called Green Dam software. Sony Corp. says it is doing the same. For how long? "What we will do in the future is still undecided because it will depend on the situation," Sony spokesman Shinichi Tobe told the Associated Press. Asus Inc., another Taiwan PC-maker, said it's preparing to supply Green Dam disks. Taiwan's BenQInc. said the system is on its laptop's hard drives.

Apart from perhaps being less attuned to the free expression versus government control debate, there may be another reason why Taiwanese manufacturers enthusiastically have rushed in where others feared to tread. Earlier this week, for the first time since the island nation split off from the mainland 60 years ago, Taiwan opened up for Chinese investment, despite the fact that China does not recognize its independence. This could be a huge move economically for Taiwan, whose government has been strenuously seeking closer ties with China.

Meanwhile, an official with China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology was quoted as saying Beijing "will definitely carry on the directive on Green Dam. It's just a matter of time."

Taiwan's PC-makers clearly believe they know on which side their bread is buttered. As, of course, does China's Lenovo Group Ltd., which bought out IBM's PC division five years ago and sells tons of ThinkPads in the United States. Lenovo said it was proceeding with plans to pre-install the software, despite the government postponing its mandate.

Wind from Washington: Berkeley's Nordic Windpower USA just got a 16ドル million loan guarantee from the Department of Energy to help tool up its assembly plant in Pocatello, Idaho, where it manufactures 1 megawatt turbines. In May, the company, which uses Swedish technology, announced deals to sell 19 of its two-blade turbines to schools in Indiana, an Iowa power company, a housing development in Minnesota, an Arizona military base and a wind farm in Uruguay.

The money may not be much, but at least it's evidence that Bay Area companies can be in the wind power game.