Rare Apple computer sells for $210,700

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by Steven Musil

This Apple-1 sold at a Christie's auction for $210,700.

(Credit: Christie's)

 

Talk about a smart tech buy. An Apple computer purchased more than 30 years ago has sold for 425 times its original selling price.

An Apple-1, one of only about 200 such machines built in Apple co-founder Steve Jobs' parents' garage, sold at Christie's auction house in London today for 133,250 pounds (about $210,700). The Apple-1, which didn't include a casing, power supply, keyboard, or monitor, originally retailed for $666.66 in 1976. Apple discontinued the model in 1977.

Christie's called the computer a "historic relic" and said the auction included all the original components, including its 8K bytes of RAM, in its original shipping box, as well as a signed letter from Jobs to the original owner.

The winning bidder was Italian businessman and private collector Marco Boglion, who made his offer over the phone, according to the Associated Press.

In a time when most personal computers were sold as self-assembly kits, the Apple-1 broke new ground as the first personal computer sold with a fully assembled motherboard.

Fellow Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, who attended the auction in London, threw in an autographed letter with the sale. Wozniak said he was proud to have his work auctioned alongside such technologically notables as an Enigma, the World War II German code-making machine, and documents from British mathematician Alan Turing, a pioneer of modern computing.

"Today my heart went out as I got to see things auctioned off like the Turing documents and the Enigma machine--and the Apple I," Wozniak reportedly told journalists after the auction. "It really was an important step, (even though) I didn't feel that way when I designed it

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Emerging China speeding ahead

CERITALAH
By KARIM RASLAN

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Nation’s developing network of bullet trains is a reflection of the country’s remarkable transformation and the growing technological prowess built on strong historical and cultural foundations.

I WAS in China a few weeks ago. As it happened, I needed to travel from Hangzhou, where I was staying, to Shanghai.

The most practical option was by train, which was how I ended up aboard the CRH380A bullet train at Hangzhou Station.

I had booked a premium seat, only to discover that it was the train’s first day of operation and there were camera crews and journalists hovering around.

Settling in, I noticed a neatly-placed power socket as well as a sheaf of glossy magazines stuffed in the seatback pocket in front of me.

I pulled out one of the magazines at random. The cover revealed an alluring image of Italian movie star Monica Belluci baring a naked shoulder.

Mmm ... clearly, this was not going to be your average train ride.

Completed in just 20 months, the 202km high-speed rail line links the ancient imperial capital (currently China’s premier tourism destination) with the bustling cacophony of Shanghai – made all the more raucous, at the time, by the soon-to-be-closed World Expo.

I was travelling with an artist friend who had studied at the prestigious China Academy of Art, located on the banks of the West Lake in Hangzhou, back in the early 80s.

As a Shanghainese, he remembers, in those days, the same journey took six hours. That morning on the bullet train, we were promised a 45-minute journey.

My friend added that there were slower and less expensive options – the slowest of which took 78 minutes.

As the train pulled out of Hangzhou, I leaned back in my reclining seat, keeping an eagle eye on the speedometer located just above the carriage-doorway.

The acceleration was slow and steady. We quickly reached 150kph, by which stage the scene outside appeared to be passing only moderately swiftly.

However, as the train started touching 250 kph, most of the action appeared to be inside the carriage, as various passengers leapt up to have their photos taken beneath the flickering speedometer.

At 350kph, there was a small line of people waiting to have their photos taken. We were, after all, on the world’s fastest bullet train – yes, way faster than Japan’s Shinkansen.

Glancing outside once again at the suburban sprawl, I marvelled at technology.

Here I was, travelling so fast, and yet it was almost impossible to feel or discern the speed at which I was moving within the hermetically sealed train.

Forty-five minutes after we departed from Hangzhou, we pulled into Hongqiao Station in Shanghai – alongside the domestic airport of the same name.

Recently rebuilt, Hongqiao Station was another colossal structure of marble, glass and steel.

Vast, soaring and cathedral-like, it provided an overwhelming conclusion to our extraordinarily swift rail trip.
China’s fast emerging network of bullet trains is a reflection of the country’s remarkable transformation.

The moniker “Made In China” no longer evokes a sense of inferiority; Chinese technology continues to evolve and improve.

Furthermore the growing technological prowess is built on strong historical and cultural foundations; institutions that have survived and prospered since the Cultural Revolution’s depredations.
Hangzhou encapsulates these forces.

The city combines Southern Song Dynasty era marvels along with trading and manufacturing expertise. On the one hand there are the quintessential Chinese tourist sites – the West Lake, the pagodas and the teahouses – while on the other are vast industrial estates contributing to a GDP that has trebled in the past decade to reach over 520 billion renmenbi (RM243bil).

A culture of scholarship, learning and the arts – embodied in the startlingly lavish China Academy of Arts’ campus – provides a firm foundation for innovation as traditions are both honoured and updated.

Indeed, China’s rise is made all the more complex and indeed resilient because the Middle Kingdom is both increasingly modern and rooted.

The level of self-confidence is drawn from history, culture and contemporary commercial might.

But, as China progresses economically and “spiritually” – with the emphasis on culture and talent, a few questions remain. Can the ruling Communist Party hold off the call for greater civil liberties?

Is prosperity alone enough to satisfy the people? What does the recent furore over the Nobel Peace Prize tells us about China’s current leaders’ state of mind of?

However for the smaller nations of South-East Asia, the challenge is more profound. Indeed the future can look quite harrowing. Where do we fit in?

What is our role vis-a-vis the behemoth that is modern China? Are we going to be little more than a modern tributary state?

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Feng shui master: Polls likely before May

By WONG PEK MEI  pekmei@thestar.com.my

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KUALA LUMPUR: Forget about reading tea leaves or peering into crystal balls. Feng shui master Prof David Koh predicts that the general election will take place before May.

The principal consultant at the Malaysian Institute of Geomancy Sciences said the economic forecast next year indicated that the general election was around the corner.

Future outlook: Koh showing the 2011 Year of the Rabbit Malaysian Institute of Geomancy Sciences Outlook book and the Kansai Environology (Feng Shui) colour book guide at the talk in Kuala Lumpur yesterday.

 

“We forecast that there will be a spike in the country’s economic performance between March and April.

“And this will usually take place before an election,” he told reporters at the 2011 Outlook Talk – Year Of The Rabbit at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre yesterday.

He has a message for the men, too.

“Strong, young women will come to the fore in politics, finance or economy, in the February to March period,” he said.

“Scholars will also gain prominence between April and May. They will either bring fame to Malaysia or contribute to its development,” said Koh.

Asked for their identity, he jokingly said: “I did not ask for their names.”

He also said according to the I-Ching calculations, it was predicted that political leaders were likely to encounter internal problems in their parties.

“Some (problems) are not noticeable now but they are boiling over.

“There will be a lot of pretentious members who will trick their leaders into believing they are good but have their own private agenda,” he said, adding that the internal problems could reach a critical point in August and September.

Contrary to public belief, he said Malaysia would not experience a collapse in the property market next year.

Koh took centrestage when he presented the country’s outlook including the possibility of Dooms­day 2012.

Such a doomsday, he said, would not happen.

On natural disasters, he said heavy rains in the period of February to March might lead to floods in the northern region.

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A new status for Chinese

 By Clarence Chua

I often take a long pause when I am asked about what I do in Beijing, especially if the person is from Malaysia.

For the last two decades, more than 90% of Chinese Malaysian families send their children to vernacular primary schools. Those who do not read and write some basic Chinese are clearly the minority these days.

So when I say I am learning Hanyu (the Chinese language) here in the Chinese capital, I see baffled expressions. To them, it seems as ridiculous as an Anglo-Australian learning English in England.

I grew up in an era where my parents definitely did not believe that the vernacular system had any future. It seemed to them that China was going to fail after the Cultural Revolution and Tiananmen Square student uprising.

What’s more, with English being the lingua franca, those who had placed their bets on Chinese education seemed to be on the same slippery slope back to the Chin (Qiang) Dynasty!

However history played out differently and China is an emerging super power and has indeed become a desirable laguage to learn. Even pre-schoolers and elementary schoolchildren in different parts of the world are beginning to see the need to learn Chinese.

Vernacular education is still a thorny subject in Malaysia.

Some live and die by it like Mao’s little red book, while others see it as an obstacle to national unity. But at whichever side of the fence you sit on, it is an undeniable fact that Hanyu, Putonghua, Zhongwen, Guoyu or whatever they call it in China, has become an important global language.

And with China embracing globalisation like a born-again capitalist, the demand for Hanyu classes is skyrocketing faster than the Shanghai Stock Exchange.

The Office of Chinese Language Council International or better known as Hanban is in charge of spreading Chinese language and culture all over the world. Under Hanban is the Confucius Institute (Kongzi Xueyuan) that is responsible of the real action.

The Confucius Institute is the Chinese equivalent to the British Council or Alliance Francaise although it runs the institution differently from the others.

The Institute often works as a conduit for a partner Chinese university and a local institute of higher learning. To date, there are more than 300 Confucius Institutes and an almost equal number of Confucius Classrooms worldwide.

For the many Malaysians who, for whatever reasons, have missed out on an early education in Chinese, learning Hanyu need not entail the arduous task of relocating to China.

The Confucius Institute for Malaysia has just started its maiden part-time Hanyu program at the Universiti Malaya city campus this year. And unlike other programmes, all teachers at the Institute are from the mainland. This helps reduce many of the Hokkien and Cantonese related anomalies in pronunciation that many Malaysians have accepted as the norm.

Its partner is the Beijing Foreign Studies University (BFSU) and it aims to be the premier Mandarin language centre by 2012. BFSU is of course no stranger to Malaysia as it is the only university in China that has a Malay department.

Currently there are more than 100 students pursuing a Chinese course at the BFSU in Beijing under a government scholarship program. Upon graduation they are expected to serve as Chinese teachers with the Education Ministry. Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Tun Razak’s son Norashman Razak Najib is an alumnus of BFSU after a three-week stint as a language student earlier this year.

Another part-time option is at the Hanban-sanctioned Shanghai Jiaotong University - Global Hanyu and Culture Centre (SJTU-GHCC) in Three Two Square, Petaling Jaya. They have the Baby Panda classes to cater for pre-primary school kids all the way to the completion of the Hanyu Shuiping Kaoshi (HSK).

The HSK examination is for Chinese what TOEFL and IELTS are for English and comes under the purview of Hanban. It is the only Mandarin Chinese proficiency test for foreign students in China. The HSK was recently revised and now consists of only six levels — with Level One being elementary and Level Six being advanced. Most Chinese universities would require at least a Level Four for science subjects and Level Six for other language intensive degrees.

The HSK exams are held almost every other month in China to cater for the ever growing number of foreign students learning Hanyu. In Malaysia the HSK exams are held twice a year but this would largely depend on the school and the enrolment number.

Mandarin is one of the most difficult languages to learn as an adult. My former Russian classmate once said that learning Hanyu was harder than building the Great Wall.

And this is coming from someone who writes Cyrillic for a living. I often thought that being Malaysian gives me an advantage over the other laowai (foreigners). But after two months in Beijing, I changed my mind.

> For more information on dates and prices for the Confucius Institute – University Malaya Mandarin lessons please visit their website at www.umcced.edu.my/kzium/index.htm or
www.globalhanyu.com for the same at Shanghai Jiaotong University – Global Hanyu and Culture Centre).

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