Competition Chinese style

Chinese regulations stipulate that WiFi equipment sold in the country comply with its regional encryption standard. And should a vendor want to comply, it can buy the tech from only 11 companies in China, including Huawei Technologies.

CNet reports that Wired Authentication and Privacy Infrastructure was developed by China and is not used anywhere else. The policy came into effect on 1 December.

Requiring foreign WiFi equipment manufacturers to work with Chinese partners to acquire the necessary encryption standard has raised a host of fears among foreign companies.

Japanese electronics giant Hitachi is teaming up with Tokai, a maker of disposable cigarette lighters, to produce commercial fuel cells for handheld computers in 2005, CNet reports.

Several electronics companies are investigating fuel cells as an alternative to existing nickel cadmium batteries and lithium-ion batteries, which will inevitably hit a barrier when portable devices become more power-hungry. Fuel cells, just one of the alternative techniques under investigation, could create a long-lasting and cheap power source in a small package.

Sun Microsystems will deliver a full-featured version of its Java server product line in the second half of next year, ZDNet reports.

Sun last month released a stripped-down, developer edition of its Sun Application Server 8.0, which includes a tool kit for writing and deploying Java applications. The enterprise version will include advanced features, such as improved management, better performance and "high availability" capabilities.