London, England (CNN) — James Cameron’s feverishly-awaited sci-fi blockbuster “Avatar” has enjoyed its world premiere to strong reviews.

Hyped as the most technically-ambitious and expensive film ever made, “Avatar,” had a lot to live up to.

But, as the credits rolled following the 3D epic’s world premiere in London Thursday, it looked like the “Titanic” director’s decade-long gamble had paid off.

There were whoops and cheers as portions of the audience gave Cameron and cast members, including Sigourney Weaver and Sam Worthington, a standing ovation.

Later, outside, among the excited crowd, much of the talk was about the amazing spectacle Cameron had created on the fictional planet of Pandora, which has been invaded by military forces from Earth.

“It was an absolute marvel and I am left in awe after seeing it,” audience member James Howard, 23, said of the magical jungle planet that lights up with phosphorescence at night.

The planet’s 10-foot-tall, blue-skinned indigenous species, the Na’vi also went down well with the audience.

Back in August, when Cameron treated fans around the world to a 15-minute taster dubbed “Avatar Day,” there were questions about how appealing the creatures would be.

But Kent Renwick, 39, said: “The [Na'vi] female character had a really expressive face. She was really beautiful and that’s why I think it worked.

Others commended the advanced 3D: Lucy Biswicke, 34, said she had no feelings of motion sickness from wearing the specs. “It’s all about the quality of the 3D for me. I’d never seen a 3D film before and this is amazing.”

Fox, the studio behind “Avatar,” recently told CNN that “Avatar” is the most expensive film the studio has ever produced, although it declined to confirm a figure. Industry watchers have put the figure at around $300 million.

Part of the multi-million dollar budget was spent on developing new cameras, with the feature marketed as a huge leap forward in filmmaking.

Cameron, who is famous for pushing the boundaries of film, couldn’t have hoped for a better reception for the the epic he first conceived 14 years ago.

Hype around “Avatar” has been further stoked by the “Terminator” and “Aliens” director’s 12-year directing hiatus. His last film, the 1997 epic “Titanic,” won 11 Oscars and took $1.8 billion worldwide at the box office — a record that remains to be broken.

Parallels with Cameron’s earlier work were apparent in more than just the huge ambition of “Avatar.”

The strong female characters are back (in the shape of Sigourney Weaver as an acid-tongued cigarette-smoking xeno-biologist), as is his gritty, industrial vision of humanity in the future.

“It’s like ‘Titanic’ meets ‘Terminator’ or ‘Aliens,’” joked makeup artist Bill Corso, 42.

But some audience members took issue with the storyline. Andrew James, 27, said: “The plot is by the numbers, very much what I expected. You know, you’ve got the courageous army guy, you’ve got the native women, they’re all very much caricatures. But, I couldn’t help buying into it.”

“There were parts that you couldn’t help but chuckle at,” Howard said of some of the dialogue which he found cheesy. “I know I’m going to talk about it and think I don’t like it as much later on, but right now I thought it was absolutely amazing.”

“The thing is, he’s trying to cram a really complicated storyline into a blockbuster format so he has to rely on some cliches,” said Lisa Armstrong, 35, from Nottingham.

It’s not only Fox who will be closely monitoring such feedback: “Avatar’s” boundary-pushing use of 3D technology is regarded as a game-changer for the film industry as a whole.

Positive reviews from critics in newspapers like The Guardian in London and trade press like Variety and Screen International have started to appear.
But the real test will come next week when the movie goes on public release worldwide.

On October 29 of that year, for perhaps the first time, a message was sent over the network that would eventually become the Web. Leonard Kleinrock, a professor of computer science at the University of California-Los Angeles, connected the school’s host computer to one at Stanford Research Institute, a former arm of Stanford University.

Forty years ago today, the Internet may have uttered its first word.

Twenty years later, Kleinrock chaired a group whose report on building a national computer network influenced Congress in helping develop the modern Internet. Kleinrock holds more than a dozen patents and was awarded the National Medal of Science last year by President Bush.

In an interview with CNN, the 75-year-old looks back on his achievements and peers into the exciting and sometimes scary future of the Web he helped create.

CNN: In basic terms, what happened on October 29, 1969, and what was its importance to the Internet as we know it today?

Kleinrock: Millions of people helped create this Internet. I basically supervised the creation of the Internet at the first node, both in the first connection and the very first message. We had just by then connected the first two host computers to the Internet. The first one was on September 2, 1969, when UCLA connected its host computer to the first packet switcher, the first router if you will, ever on the Internet.

But there was no other computer to talk to. So a month later, Stanford Research Institute received its interface message processor, or IMP, connected it to their host computer, and we created the first piece of the backbone network when a 50-kilobit-per-second line was connected between UCLA and SRI.

What we wanted to do was send a message essentially from UCLA to SRI’s host. And frankly, all we wanted to do was log in — to type an l-o-g, and the remote time-sharing system knows what you’re trying to do.

So we typed the “l,” and we asked over the phone, “Did you get the ‘l?’ ” And the response came back, “Yep, we got the ‘l.’ ” We typed the “o.” “Got the ‘o?’ ” ” ‘Yep, got the ‘o.’ ” Typed the ‘g.’ “You get the ‘g?’ ” Crash! SRI’s host crashed at that point. So the very first message ever on the Internet was the very simple, very prophetic “lo,” as in lo and behold.

And, you know, we weren’t aware that this was a significant event that would be recorded in history. We did not have a very effective message like “What hath God wrought” or “Come here, Watson, I need you.” Or “One giant leap for mankind.” We just weren’t that smart.

When the host computers talked to each other, I like to say the Internet uttered its first words on that day.

CNN: Before October 29, 1969, was no computer talking to any other computer?

Kleinrock: Well, typically not over a data connection, no. What was going on at that time was that many users sitting at terminals were connected to time-sharing systems with a local connection. But that was just connecting to a single computer.

CNN: UCLA sent a press release about your work in July of 1969, just a few months before your October breakthrough. At the time, did you have any idea how far-reaching all this was?

Kleinrock: Basically, I said the Internet will be always on, always available, [and that] everybody with any device could connect to the Internet from any time and any location, and it would be as invisible as electricity. What I missed was the social aspect, namely that my 99-year-old mother would be on the Internet, as she was until she passed away two years ago. And by the way, at the same time, my preschool granddaughter would be on the Internet.

CNN: What is feature shock?

Kleinrock: Feature shock is a term I coined some years ago. Systems [such as Windows or Safari] contain an enormous number of features, each one of which may be valuable by itself, but no one is really able to use all the features. However, because you’ve essentially paid for all those features, you feel guilty if you don’t exploit them. So you spend time learning to use them.

I’m a power user of PowerPoint. I spend thousands of hours learning how to use it effectively. If someone came along with a new version of PowerPoint that has a different interface than the one I’m used to, and [even] if it were twice as good as PowerPoint, I wouldn’t bother installing it.

We’re overwhelmed by [features]; we don’t know how to use them. It slows down the rate at which new applications and features are accepted by the public because of this investment they have in their thousands of hours of learning.

And I consider that a good thing. It allows a little more mature thinking in how we start hopping around in technologies and thereby losing the experience and history we had before. There’s a kind of a measured way in which people will adopt new technology, and I think that’s helpful.

CNN: What are you up to these days in the development of the Internet?

Kleinrock: I’m working on what we call smart spaces, whereby the cyberspace comes out from behind the [computer] screen, where most people consider it residing, and moves out into your physical space so that there will be intelligence and embedded technology in the walls of your room, in your desk, in your fingernails, in your eyeglasses, in your automobile, in your hotel rooms all across the world as you move around.

CNN: If computers will be doing so much of our thinking for us, does that mean our brains will get less of a workout?

Kleinrock: It’s always been the goal and desire of we technologists that as we provide capability that computers are good at — number crunching, file storage, massive databases that can be searched — that it would free us up to do the things that humans do so well, like pattern recognition and putting thoughts together, intuition and innovation.

So it may relieve us of some of the mundane things that we don’t do well. On the other hand, I personally regret that the youth of today are depending so much for their simple arithmetic calculations on these handheld calculators or wristwatch calculators that they don’t know how to make change in the supermarkets anymore.

CNN: What other dangers could be ahead?

Kleinrock: There’s a very dark side to the Internet, which we’re all familiar with. It started with a worm in 1988, and it became spam in 1994, and now we have pornography, we have denial of service [attacks], we have identity theft, we have fraud, we have things like botnets [pieces of software that cyberthieves use to remotely and secretly control your computer], which really worry me.

One of the problems of the Internet is that we didn’t install what I like to call strong user authentication or strong file authentication. We didn’t anticipate the level of the dark side we see today. The culture of the early Internet was one of trust of all the users.

I knew every user on the Internet in those early days. It was an open culture. We shared everything we did. We got our gratification by putting things out there, which people could use. And there was an etiquette — net etiquette if you will, which people behaved.

CNN: What about privacy? Is it dead?

Kleinrock: Yes, in a word. Yes.

And it was voluntarily given up in many cases. I mean, when someone lists their telephone number or uses their credit card or makes a cell phone call or even carries around a cell phone, that’s an awful lot of info about where you are, what you’re doing and some of your private matters.

There are cameras all over the place, and they’re increasing in number. I like to say the only privacy we can expect is to go to the edge of the ocean, strip down and jump in and hope there’s no sonar down there tracking you, by the way, which there will be soon.

CNN: Do you like to play video games over the Internet?

Kleinrock: The answer is no, no. I’m not of that generation. Nor do I use Facebook or Twitter. I’ve got enough things that demand my attention. … E-mail is a wonderful black hole for my time. I don’t want to have to answer tweets and SMS messages, following friends, etc. It’s too demanding and too frivolous in many ways.

CNN: Do you have a certain emotional tie to the Internet as if it were a member of the family?

Kleinrock: Of course I do, and it’s part and parcel to my DNA. But it’s as aggravating to me as to anyone else in terms of when it doesn’t work, when the applications don’t work.

CNN: Were you always an inventor?

Kleinrock: When I was about 6 years old, I built a crystal radio from instructions I found in a Superman comic book. The thing that fascinated me was, I could basically get all the parts at no cost.

I was totally enchanted. This was magic, and I spent the rest of my life trying to figure out how that works. Life is one big puzzle for me in the positive sense. There are a lot of things to play with. And they pay me for it.

Eight years after its launch, and nearly three years after Microsoft began shipping Windows Vista (its putative successor), XP is still the operating system most likely to be installed on a new PC in 81% of IT departments, according to a new Forrester Research poll.

Microsoft made it easy for IT decision makers to do what they are naturally predisposed to do — stick with what they know. Steve Balmer is not going make that mistake again, judging from a report published Thursday by Forrester analyst Benjamin Gray.

“Factors are converging,” he writes, “that will provide IT managers with a compelling reason to shake the status quo, finally ending Windows XP’s corporate reign.”

Gray, who last year give his clients five reasons to switch to Vista, now offers the timetable by which Microsoft will make life increasingly difficult for anyone who wants to keep supporting Windows XP.

1. Earlier this year, Windows XP Service Pack 2 entered the extended support phase, meaning it will no longer receive new enhancements.
2. On July 7, 2010, Windows XP Service Pack 3 will follow suit.
3. On April 8, 2014, the extended support phase of both Windows XP SP2 and SP3 will end, and new security updates and patches will no longer be released.
4. Eighteen months after Windows 7 is released or with the release of its first service pack (whichever comes first), the OEM licenses bundled with every PC will no longer carry downgrade rights to Windows XP — meaning that to deploy Windows XP you will have to purchase volume license copies of Windows along with new PCs or use existing, unused Windows volume licenses.

“Already 66% of the firms we recently surveyed expect to migrate to Windows 7 eventually, although most don’t have firm plans yet,” writes Gray, who clearly believes they better get cracking. “That leaves just 27% of organizations that haven’t yet looked at adopting Windows 7 thoroughly enough and 2% that are considering alternatives to Windows 7, namely Windows 8, Mac OS X, and Linux.”

Gray advises managers running Windows XP shops to start preparing now for what could be a long and bumpy upgrade path. For most firms, the processes involved — application compatibility testing, image development, application packaging and testing — can take anywhere from 12 to 18 months.

By which time you can expect Microsoft to start cutting off XP’s air supply.

Gray’s report, “Windows 7 Commercial Adoption Outlook,” is available here for $499

2. What do you like most about computers and technology? I like how it makes life easier and gives us endless possibilities.

 3. What do you like least about computers and technology? I dislike how it is not always reliable.

4. How do you learn best during Computer Studies class?By reading things.

 5. Do you study for tests? Sometimes if i have freetime.

6. Describe your study strategies? Read things over

7. Has the study of computer terminology assisted you in understanding computers and technology better? Yes.

With 338 million Internet users in June 2009, according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), China is no longer a niche market of the online industry.

Chinese is the second most common language on the Internet, according to The Economist, and quickly gaining ground on English.

As the former technology writer for Hong Kong’s daily English-language newspaper, South China Morning Post, So has been following closely China’s exponential Internet developments over the past decade.

What inspired her to write “Red Wired” was the chasm in online culture on either side of China’s carefully controlled borders.

“The information gap between those who are from this part of the world and who know Chinese and those who are from another part of world and who don’t is just so huge,” observes So.

“I’ve talked to lots of investors, analysts, visitors to Hong Kong, and they really don’t know what’s happening in China. They ask the silliest questions about China and the Internet.”

“Red Wired” tells the stories behind China’s homegrown online start-ups, often overtaking dominant start-ups that have been successful in the West but which flailed after venturing into Chinese territory.

One anecdote involves an advertisement by Baidu, China’s most popular search engine, teasing Google China for not knowing Chinese.

Google focused on high-end technology rather than Chinese linguistics. From 2002 to 2005, Google’s Chinese site also suffered interference from the Chinese government, which redirected users to Baidu whenever Google’s search results failed to comply with China’s censorship rules.

Although Google China has since learned the lingo and learned to cooperate with the higher order, it still trails Baidu with only 28 percent of the search-engine market share, compared to Baidu’s 63 percent, according to a 2008 study by Analysys International.

Conquering the Internet with Chinese characteristics

So what are the unique characteristics of China’s Netizens?

While 25.5 percent of the Chinese population is now online, CNNIC‘s 2008 statistics sketch a relatively coherent portrait of the mainstream majority of them: 67 percent are below the age of 30; 73 percent have only a high school education or lower; 33 percent are students; and 28 percent fall into the lowest income bracket of under $75 per month.

Moreover, 78 percent go online at home and 42 percent log on at an Internet cafe. Once connected, 84 percent listen to music, 75 percent instant-message, 63 percent play online games, and only 57 percent e-mail.

In short, for the vast majority of Chinese, Internet means play, not work.

One could conclude that an Internet entrepreneur’s target audience in China is teenage and twenty-something students, low-end consumers in search of entertainment with plenty of time to kill.

Among the most salient of China’s Internet start-ups are those that innovated on proven Western models by successfully adapting them to the Chinese market.

Tencent, with a 77 percent market share of instant messaging services nationwide, is one of the start-ups that gets it. Tencent is now the largest Internet company in China.

“What really made [Tencent founder] Pony Ma stand out is that he viewed his QQ instant messenger differently from other IM services such as MSN and Yahoo,” says So.

“They viewed IM as a two-way communication, so made it as efficient as possible. They targeted the high-end white-collar users, thinking they’re rich, advertisers will love them, they’ll buy additional services.

“Ma thought differently. QQ was a community targeting low-end users — kids, factory workers. They don’t need efficiency, they come online to kill time, to be entertained, to talk with friends, not to do work.”

In a China where economic growth comes at different speeds, So believes that the Internet has leveled out the playing field.

“The online population in China comes from very modest families,” she says.

“Forty percent go online at Internet cafes, which is the cheapest entertainment alternative you can find. It costs just 30 cents per hour. The poorest kid can afford that, and these Internet cafes can be found in the most remote regions.

“So actually the Internet is flattening out this information gap, if not material gap, because even the poorest kid in China can go online and get information. And because of piracy, they can also download lots of stuff for free.”

Sea turtle power

Another recurring factor of success among Chinese Internet start-ups is their founders’ extensive experience working in Silicon Valley before returning to China to launch their own business.

A person who has returned to China from overseas is known in Mandarin as “hai gui,” which sounds the same as the Mandarin words for “sea turtle.” Such entrepreneurial returnees include Baidu’s Robin Li, Sohu’s Charles Zhang and Ctrip’s James Liang.

“Sea turtles bring in new ideas,” says So. “Like what is a search engine?”

“Robin Li was an engineer with a patent on search mechanism, and he wanted to build a Chinese search engine. He brought in the idea, the technology and the funding. While he was still working for Infoseek in Silicon Valley, he got $1.2 million from former executives of Inktomi. Then he went back to China and recruited students and teachers from Peking University, and he built Baidu in a year.

Likewise, China is growing from both foreign interaction and the new technological and political challenges of online culture and commerce. As the “Great Intranet” continues to expand and evolve, China continues to explore the fragile balance between censorship and control, and enterprise and innovation.