Happy married Vista too slow with movies

I have installed Window Vista on my dual core PC since day two. I am pretty happy with it since I never have to restore my partition using Ghost, something I been doing with my laptop running XP for more than 20 times due to virus. The performance is a bit slower than running XP but I am happy because I manage to remove all the .dll causing Adobe Premiere to crash using a debugging tool. God this China Story blog is turning into a tech blog. Anyway I try playing an UFC Ultimate Fighter 6 final .avi video file downloaded from the internet and it is so slow. The sound is ok but the screen is play at 10 fps. I play the same file on my single core laptop running XP and it is very fast… So I figure it can be virus. Sure enough I ran a spy ware software and found a KGB_Spy spy ware which has been key logging and remotely stealing information from my PC. After I check that no illegal credit card payment was made in the last 30 days I try to play the UFC file again but still the same thing, it is very slow. But when I play another older UFC file it is ok. So certain files are slow and certain files aren’t. So I run google search and find out from that Vista has content protection software that can slow down the PC. You can read all about it here.
http://windowsvistablog.com/blogs/windowsvista/archive/2007/01/20/windows-vista-content-protection-twenty-questions-and-answers.aspx

At least that’s what I think it is.

I also have problem playing youtube full screen on my 1680×1050. The sound starts cracking but is ok with normal size. I notice the CPU is ok 100%. But then it could be a flash problem.

The Unique Primitive China Stock Market

China has two stock exchanges, namely the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. The market of securities trading in Shanghai begins in the late 1860s. The Shanghai Share broker’s Association is formed in 1891. In 1949 at the start of communist era it is suspended until 1990. The Shanghai Stock Exchange is now the fifth largest capital market in the world. Mainland China has a second, smaller, stock exchange: the Shenzhen Stock Exchange.

There are two types of stocks being issued in the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange: A shares and B shares. A shares are priced in the local Renminbi currency, while B shares are quoted in U.S. dollars. Initially, trading in A shares are restricted to domestic investors only while B shares are available to both domestic (since 2001) and foreign investors. However, after reforms were implemented in December 2002, foreign investors are now allowed (with limitations) to trade in A shares under the Qualified Foreign Institutional Investor (QFII) system. There is a plan to eventually merge the two types of shares.

Although equity derivatives, futures and options are very common in the rest of the world the China Financial Futures Exchange is still waiting to introduce it’s stock index futures. Once the stock equity derivatives begin trading they are expected to absorb much of the excess liquidity in the market. China has too much money and too little financial instrument to invest. This is pushing the stock market unrealistically high and causing alarming inflation. If one follows China’s stock market closely and have read my article on the THE LONG BULL MARKET you notice the market keeps rising and rising as though people have no fear. One theory is because of the excess liquidity and lack of derivative instrument and short selling. Since investor cannot put their money on the downside, they are force to bet on the upside hence pushing stock price higher and higher. But then of course they can always stop buying like they are doing now during this global subprime crisis.

There is no small cap market in China. In the U.K the small cap market is the AIM and in Hong Kong it is the GEM. The listing rules are less stricts for the small cap listings. It does not mean that there are no small companies in the Shanghai Stock Exchange and the Shenzhen Stock Exchange. On the contrary there are a lot of rubbish stocks on the mainboard. This is very important from a risk management point of view to separate them because you do not want the mainboard to be full of rubbish companies. It can make the mainboard more risky, lowering its price earning ratio lower.

As you can see China although is catching up fast is still very primitive. I remember a couple years ago there were two very young good looking people from a Chinese brokerage firm on the trading floor. We are an international investment bank in Hong Kong. I remember our head dealer was showing these two guys trading some basic trading conventions e.g. VWAP orders, Market On Close orders. Our head dealer told me that they are unfamiliar with some very basic concepts.

In summary, the Chinese Stock Market is like a lot of other Chinese stuff, nice but not quite there yet. In fact if you look close enough it is like a Geely Vision, trying to look sophisticated but does not have the quality. But I am sure foreign banks is helping enormously in raising the standard.

Shenzhen Luohu Commercial City Children Selling For RMB50, 000

China Shenzhen is a very popular travel destination. Shenzhen LuoHu train station is at the border between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. The Shenzhen LuoHu shopping mall is at the right hand side once you exit immigration and is above the coach station.

Shenzhen Luohu Commercial City is five storeys high and has all kind of shops; toy, fake watch, curtain, wholesale jewellery, golf equipment, nice Chinese restaurant and a lot of other lady stuff.

Hard selling is very common in China. They will try to sell you fake watch asking for RMB500. If you ignore them then they will lower the price to 400, 300, 200 and 100. It is a very common to negotiate the price and you should always negotiate at least half of the asking price.

Shenzhen LuoHu used to be a very dusty and unsafe place. Since the Shenzhen underground train was introduced in 2004 it improves dramatically. However it is still possible to get mugged. I also once saw a man trying to sell a 3 year old girl to me and my wife for RMB50, 000 inside Luohu Commercial City. I got a feeling the price is not negotiable. A lot of Children in China are kidnap and sold to small villages in China.

Internet In The Wild Wild World dot CC

Chinese government is strict on their internet because freedom of speech cans potential cause their billions of Chinese people to riot. Whether this is good or not, I am not debating it here. However to clarify what I mean by being strict here are some examples.

1. Certain information is blocked and not accessible from within China.
2. All internet cafes in China require user identification. Chinese government is persistent in cracking down underground internet café. So a person does something illegal will be tracked down.
3. Even big players like Yahoo are obliged to provide private user detail to the Chinese authority. So I am pretty certain the smaller players will have to oblige too.
4. Porn is strictly prohibited in China. People have been caught and sent to prison.

However despite these certain other things are pretty loose. If you open a Chinese website the chances are the site will be full of eye confusing advertisements. Google only allow certain amount of advertisement on one page. Most other company do not allow you to put advertisement from different provides on one page e.g. Google & Yahoo advertisements cannot co-exist.

I am doing a search on google.com and baidu.com on “World In Conflict”. Below on the left is a site I randomly click on from the google’s result compare with the right from baidu.com (a very popular Chinese search engine). You notice there are a lot of female photos along with other stuffs totally irrelevant to PC game.

When you try to download something you won’t find the download button where it is suppose to be. Instead you find yourself tricked into pressing onto a lot of Chinese advertisements. Google has banned websites who put advertisement opposite to a link. This is considered to be a trick and not allow by Google. China’s internet industry is quite a jungle as you can see.

99% Chinese Use Tencent QQ

Mainland Chinese do not use MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger or ICQ. Almost 99% use Tecent QQ messenger. Tecent is based in Shenzhen and is listed in HKEX also.

Shenzhen Tencent QQ is free and power. Chinese people talk to their friends and family everywhere in China with Tencent QQ. Alternatively roaming fee with China Mobile is unbelievably expensive. For the same reason Chinese internet cafe is extremely popular. It cost 2-4RMB per hour. This is an extremely cheap way for Chinese individuals who just migrate to the big Chinese cities and have little friends to recreate. One can watch movies, play games and communicate to their friends and families with Tencent QQ.

I know a lot of small business in China who use Tencent QQ to communicate with their Chinese clients in real-time to confirm orders.

Tencent QQ has video call functions. The network speed in China is quick enough for the video to be good. Tencent QQ has a lot of simple online games and almost everyone in China I know play them on a regular basis. It is also an online game platform for more sophisticated game like Counter Strike. Counter Strike is hugely popular in China for many years. Largely because it is easy to get pirate version and playable online as oppose to other games that need to connect to central server in the U.S for authentication.

China has a internation network filter to block certain materials to reach the Chinese. You will find that a lot of foreign blogs and forums are not reachable in China e.g. blogger. A few years ago foreign news websites e.g. CNN are blocked. Nowadays the restrictions are looser. CNN is reachable but some contents are filtered. Youtube was blocked during the recent Tibet riot.