China puts off Internet filter, activists happy

China’s ambitions to strengthen control of the Internet with filtering software became a show of the limits of its power on Wednesday, as activists and industry groups welcomed AN abrupt delay of the contentious plan.

The surprise climbdown was reported late on Tuesday by Xinhua news agency, which said the ministry of industry and information technology would "delay the mandatory installation of the controversial ‘Green Dam-Youth Escort’ filtering software on new computers".

Officials said the software was intended to stamp out Internet pornography, and computer companies had originally been told that from Wednesday they had to bundle "Green Dam" with any personal computers heading to stores for sale in the country.

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Cisco plans big server market push

Within the next few months, Cisco Systems, the largest maker of networking equipment, plans to release a product that threatens to shake up the technology industry and put the company on a collision course with traditional partners like Hewlett-Packard and IBM.

The product — a server computer equipped with sophisticated virtualization software — is a bold but risky move by Cisco into an unfamiliar, intensely competitive market that typically produces far lower profits than Cisco makes from network gear. But it reflects the company’s ambition to grow beyond its roots as the so-called plumber of the Internet to offer everything from instant messaging software to digital stereos.

For years, Cisco remained content to sell the switches and routers that direct the rivers of data flowing between computing systems. It dominates that market, making most of its $40 billion a year in revenue, and 65 per cent gross margins, from such products.

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