Is China's Control of the Internet Slipping?

Garp writes "According to the BBC news site the Chinese governments grip on the internet is slipping. Ever since they allowed use of the internet, the Chinese have been monitoring the information that has been flowing (jokingly referred to as the great fire-wall of china), in an attempt to ensure 'bad' philosophies don't infect their people. However, the internet is having a much more profound affect, out of the control of the government ..."

Comments

Prolly for the better.

[bleckywelcky]

I would say that is prolly for the better for everyone, since we will be able to reach more people with more information. Perhaps this will help in the human rights debates that have been rampant in China over the past years.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[amevba]

I would say that is prolly for the better for everyone, since we will be able to reach more people with more information. Exactly! Once we lose our freedom(s) due to crazy digital copyright acts and other such legislation (both in US and EU), the Asians will hopefully have been fully liberated and *ta-daa* come to the rescue and demand that the oppression of poor US and EU citizens must stop! Now that would be a victory for freedom and Lucas could maybe then reconsider making the last 3 movies of SW with the republic-turned-bad turned back into good by the rebels!

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Zeinfeld]

Perhaps this will help in the human rights debates that have been rampant in China over the past years.

The point which is missed in 90% of the posts on this board is that the information most damaging to the communist party comes from inside china, not from outside. External events have a much lesser effect on a country the size of China than internal.

The Soviet Union did not fall because of Reagan, or any policy of the West. It fell because its own people rejected it, first in the satelite states, finally in Moscow. Solidarity, the Polish trade union brought down the USSR in the end. The Berlin wall fell when a bunch of students attacket it en masse and the guards in the watch towers disobeyed orders and refused to shoot.

The issues in China are complex, they are no longer a Stalinist communist regime, they are not democratic, they have adopted a 19th century model of capitalism in which the actual role of the state is to protect the oligarchs and exploiters. The gerantocracy that runs the country is largely in its 80s and their principle driving principle is fear. In particular fear of a return to the days of the cultural revolution of Mao and fear of partition into separate states that are dominated by foreign powers as happened at the turn of the century when the US, Germany, France, Britain and Japan each carved out spheres of influence.

China is rapidly industrializing and output is rising fast. Economically China will be one of the maor powers within ten years. Already the Chineese middle class is larger than the US middle class. As with India, China is a first world power whose strength is obscured by a vast third world hinterland.

Change is comming, but it isn't going to be driven by external forces. In fact external forces are more likely to be counterproductive. The critical mistake made by the Tiannanen Square protesters was building the statue of liberty. Up to that point the communist party was affraid to crush the protests, in particular they were affraid that the soldiers would refuse to fire. However the statue of liberty was a symbol of an alliance with a foreign power and the troops could be sent in to crush that.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[zulux]

The Soviet Union did not fall because of Reagan, or any policy of the West.

Hate to break it to you - but the ideas of the west provided a source of inspiration to the peoples of Iron Cutain.

It's not like they revolted to become more like Saudi Arabia or eastern Africa. The revolted to become more like the west - whom they thought had a better life.

Part of that was helped by communications - Radio Free Europe and the BBC shortwave probably helped more than we could imagine. These were funded by the west for exactly this reason - and after the revolution, afther they have served their call, both have had their funding curtailed.

So the policy of boradcast radio did help spread our ideas - so much so that the poor blockes spent vast resources to block their signals.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Lord MJ]

Capitalism isn't a political system it's an economic system. It is in fact very possible to have a dictatorship that is ruling a capitalist state. And it is also possible for a capitalism to be centrally commanded. (Ie, the gov't decides what to produce, but private enterprises are the one's that produce it).

Re:Prolly for the better.

[JimFromJersey]

Uhhhh.... take your medicine and put the tin foil hat back on.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[rsmah]

It is in fact very possible to have a dictatorship that is ruling a capitalist state. And it is also possible for a capitalism to be centrally commanded. (Ie, the gov't decides what to produce, but private enterprises are the one's that produce it).

Umm...that's called National Socialism. Otherwise known as fascism. The nazi party was officially the "National Socialist German Workers Party" and the word "nazi" itself is a contraction of the german "Nationalsozialismus".

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Zeinfeld]

Hate to break it to you - but the ideas of the west provided a source of inspiration to the peoples of Iron Cutain.

If it is ideas that you want to measure then remember that Karl Marx wrote Das Capital in the Reading room of the British Library.

What you appear to be unable to grasp is that whatever was done from the outside had mush less effect than what went on on the inside. The attempt by the idiotic right to claim the credit for destroying the Soviet Union is pure self delusion. The people of Eastern Europe took their own freedom, whatever we did amounted to a small effect on the margins.

That is why there has been little change in the example you cite - Saudi Arabia and Eastern Africa. Those areas have been exposed to Western ideas for far longer than Russia ever was, including the experience of British colonial rule.

The BBC World Service is certainly an effective propaganda tool. I can't say the same for Voice of America which is all propaganda all the time and about as interesting to listen to as Radio Moscow was and for about the same reason.

If you want to effect change then there are much more effective ways to do so than by puffing yourself up with self importance. The US claim to be the torchbearer of human rights is not generally accepted in the rest of the world. The practice of seggragation was only recently abolished in the south, during the cold war the US regularly conived to replace democratically elected regimes with brutal murderers who would do Washington's bidding. It is a great pity that the current administration cheered on the attempted coup in Venezuela rather than condemning it instantly as the rest of the free world did.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Zeinfeld]

Capitalism is the system where the state's ONLY function is to protect individual rights.

Actually the term Capitalism is Marxist in origin and originally refered to an economic system in which control of the means of production are controlled by means of control of capital.

In Das Kapital Marx wrote about capitalism almost all the time, the bits about the communist system to replace it are little more than an afterthought in comparison. What is somewhat hillarious for European readers is the way that many of Marx's arguments have since been adopted by the right as a defense of capitalism. This is not suprising since Marx was one of the first economists to really explain how capitalism worked and he was not completely against it. What he wanted was a means of harnessing the productivity of capitalism with a social settlement that did not mean that 95% of the population lived in dire poverty. However since Marx is not a politically correct figure to praise the good ideas that Marx had are usually ascribed to Adam Smith.

The political system we live in today is neither capitalist, nor socialist by 19th century definitions. This is something that should have really upset the Marxist idealogues since acording to the theory that is not meant to happen.

Capital is far more broadly distributed than ever before and access to capital is no longer restricted to a tiny class of plutocrats. The type of capitalism that Marx wrote about is practically dead.

Apart that is from in countries like China where control of capital and control of the state are both restricted to a tiny governing elite.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[sugrshack]

The Soviet Union did not fall because of Reagan, or any policy of the West. It fell because its own people rejected it, first in the satelite states, finally in Moscow.

there may be some elements of truth in this, however events like this do not occur in a vacuum. Why did the people reject it?

Place this in the context of a cold war, wherein the Soviet Union, which was nowhere near as wealthy a country than the US, was forced to spend a much greater percent of their GDP on defense (yes, the US spent more, but the Soviets spent a higher percent). What happens is that money which could have been spent on other things (such as feeding the people) gets re-directed to missle silos. As a result, you end up with a highly disgruntled population.

so, yes... the Soviet Union may have crumbled as a result of internal pressure, this pressure existed within the global context of the cold war. I suppose this may be semantic to you, but it is significant enough not to disregard external influences.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Beliskner]

Here's some food for thought - Communism's (Stalin style) worst enemy is education. Because Russia provided education (albeit biased) in the mainland and satellite states, they sowed the seeds for revolution. Without much education, their population would still today be largely agrarian, and the communists would still be in power albeit of a much less capable nation.

I'm not setting this in stone, it's just that when I drink tea that's too hot it goes to my head, heats upmy brain and starts me thinking, this is more of an RFC. Maybe I should click X instead of Submit, what do you think?

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Beliskner]

Whoa! Now *that* is what I call paranoia. I love it! AC I officially de-troll you. Although you did ruin the ending by saying "Google for the rest". Any succesful search on Google needs keywords you dumbass. Asking Google for "US naughty did bad stuff hate kill" won't bring up even half the information you mentioned.

Plus if the programmes you mention actually exist then surely it would be simple for the Feds to use SNMP vulnerabilities to hack into Google's edge routers and set up a stealth rule which will drop all SYN packets from Google's spiders to the websites containing the information you mentioned. Thus these websites won't be indexed in Google. A little paranoia is a bad thing.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[zulux]

What you appear to be unable to grasp is that whatever was done from the outside had mush less effect than what went on on the inside.

I'll thank you to keep your pontificating as to my mental capabilites to yourself - as you are wrong.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[zulux]

Uh oh. No, no, no. You are the one living in dreams now. What did inspire them was more the living standards; the ideals of democracy were important for rather few people. In many/most cases people in 3rd world countries are interested in getting better standards of living, and couldn't give rats ass about "higher" ideals.


The third world,possibly yes - but not Russia and the eastern bloc. They may have been stunted by the 'revolution' but they are smart and definatly in the first world. You demean them to think that their struggle for democracy was only a struggle for TV and Coke. I encourage you to visit - and you'll see that the quality of people there is capable of idealistic thought and not just consumerism.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Zeinfeld]

so, yes... the Soviet Union may have crumbled as a result of internal pressure, this pressure existed within the global context of the cold war. I suppose this may be semantic to you, but it is significant enough not to disregard external influences.

Semantics means 'meaning', so debates about semantics are not trivial.

While the USSR spent a great deal on its military it never spent anywhere near as much as the US military claimed it did. Much of the Soviet war machine was badly maintained relics from WWII but for purposes of war games etc it was asserted that a USSR tank was equivalent to a NATO tank. Result lots of think tank studies that concluded that the US needed to arm itself more heavily.

A similar process was at work during the 19th century with Britain. Despite the fact that its navy outnumbered that of any two of the other great powers and moreover Britain controlled the six key strategic ports the press and polity regularly fell victim of invasion fever.

The cure for thinking that external pressures caused the USSR to collapse is to look at it. Whatever the USSR military machine consumed the beuracracy wasted five times as much.

The one significant external event was Afghanistan during which the USSR discovered that it was not a military superpower.

If the diversion of resources was the most significant factor the change would have happened first in the USSR itself where the diversion was greatest. In fact the change began in Chezekslovakia and Poland, countries that were not building nuclear missiles or anti-star wars shields. In fact the original Solidarity protests were sparked because the Gdansk shipyard was getting fewer orders for ships and wages were being cut.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Zeinfeld]

You have to distinguish between true capitalism and the mongrel form we have in place today.

No we don't. Idealogues like yourself always start off with the line 'you have to distinguish...'. It was bunk when the Marxists tried to explain away the soviet union and it is equally bunk when republicans and libertarians try to explain away out current society.

The problem is not any particular ideology, it is ideology itself. Blinkered libertarians seeking Libertopia are every bit as dangerous as their ideological predecesors.

The idea for a national health figure did not come from Marx, it came from Nye Bevan, and was endorsed by Winston Churchill. The Labour manifesto that promised to establish the NHS was written by George Orwell, so before you try to conflate Socialism and Stalism go check your facts out.

As for Marx not being politically correct, political corectness has been used and is used by the right every bit as much as by the left. The McArthy hearings were a political corectness witchunt. When Bob Dole wagged his finger at Bill Clinton calling him a Liberal he was using the strategy of political correctness. When Bush and his stooges call critics 'unpatriotic' he is using the strategy of political corectness.

And of course when right wing pundits attempt to intimidate reporters with talk of 'the liberal media' they are using the strategy of political corectness.

What right wing comentators complain of as 'political corectness' is most often rejection of bigotry. The fact is that these days the media is not exclusively white male protestants. So if a comentator wants to publish a piece that is racist, homophobic, mysogenistic, anti-semitic or contains some other type of bigotry the chances are pretty good that doing so is going to be a career limiting move since blacks, hispanics, gays, lesbians, women, catholics, jews etc now have positions of power in the media industry and are unlikely to look favorably on a bigot of any kind and especially a reporter whose bigotry is aimed at them.

Some bigots do manage to survive in the mainstream media. Pat Buchanan and David Horowitz for example. But they are forced to disguise their hatred in code to retain access to the media. When Buchanan adopted an overtly racist platform in his second Presidential campaign it ended his CNN career.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Beliskner]

Thank You, if you had a /. account I'd friend you. You might as well get one, even if you post as AC they still know exactly who you are.

I remember somebody on /. linking to a story between Spetmber-January about that guy that posted pro-WTC attack stuff on indymedia.org and got pulled off a plane and interrogated by some guy in a suit who didn't show ID. And 'cos his wife's Palestinan his kids start crying having to wait while him and her get searched all the time. Might have been a link from a comment on /. some time ago.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[yog]

China is a house of cards. The ruling party is becoming largely irrelevant; its ideology is extinct, its leaders ignorant of modern economics, and its control of the military and the provinces predicated on a need to defend the country from threats which have long since disappeared. The Soviet Union is no more, and the Russians can hardly afford to invade China at this point. The US annoys China vis-a-vis Taiwan and human rights, however, and yet the US is China's largest export market and among its largest source of foreign investment.

So, there's no clear enemy outside the country, a restive population that is just waiting for an excuse to get rid of Communism after what happened in the Cultural Rev., plus of course the barbaric acts of 6-4-89.

They are trying to retire their huge state factories, plunging thousands of people out of work and adding to the anger quotient.

They are allowing the most squalid, oppressive conditions to exist in said factories and in private enterprises, the kind of conditions Marx railed against.

Be interesting, these next 10 years.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Skjellifetti]

The Soviets collapsed for many complex reasons. One of my professors in Natural Resource Economics used to claim that it was the Saudis who brought down the Soviets. The Reagen admin in the US raised the stakes by drastically increasing the US defense budget while the Saudis dropped the price of oil by a large amount. The Soviets could not afford to match the increase in their already huge defense budgets as a result of the oil price squeeze. So ya, much as I dislike the right wing, they might well have been the straw that broke the camel's back in this case.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Dyolf Knip]

Well, fascism includes a lot of the racial superiority complexes you find in Nazi Germany, Imperial Japan, and to a much lesser extent Musolini's Italy. A better example would be Pre-WW1 Germany, the Second Reich. A centralized monarchy but great control over the economy in the hands of independent industry magnates. And while it was not something I'd have liked to have lived under, it was nowhere near as repellent as the Third.

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Dyolf Knip]

This is not suprising since Marx was one of the first economists to really explain how capitalism worked and he was not completely against it.

Indeed. When compared to what preceded it, a fuedal economy, Marx observed that capitalism was superior in pretty much every way.

the bits about the communist system to replace it are little more than an afterthought in comparison

I read some of Marx's work and thought that exact same thing. He goes on and on about the pros and cons of capitalism, but the extent of his descriptions of how Communism would work were rather broad and vague. The Workers will do this and Society will do that. Very little about how exactly the whole thing is supposed to hang together, which I thought to be kinda important for a command economy. It's all well and good to say that we should "abolish competition and replace it with association" and have "communal ownership of goods", but you might as well say that the Golden Rule is the only law a country should have. Just how is this vague Society supposed to fairly and equally dole out scarse resources?

Compare that with capitalism, in which anyone with capital makes his own best decisions on how to use it. It not only works better when the 'rules' are vague, it pretty much requires it. Of course, so often you end up with monopolies and it's downhill from there...

Re:Prolly for the better.

[Dyolf Knip]

a fuedal economy
Seriously need to start spellchecking my work. A feudal economy. Dunno what a fuedal economy is...

Re:Prolly for the better.

[sugrshack]

I believe you're still looking for specific external events. I do agree with you on most of your argument, however it's also important to recognize that the Soviet Union (which was not really a true Communist country, but really a socialist state which operated more as a form of state controlled capitalism) had to exist within the context of global capitalism. Pointing out the military failure in Afghanistan tends to obscure the issue; by the same logic we could argue that the US was not a superpower because of the inability to wipe Vietnam off the map.

People within the Soviet Union may have also rejected the system largely because of comparison with the rest of the world. Of course there were tons of flaws with the system; they were unable to feed their own people; the system basically did NOT work in many circumstances (as your mention of the Solidarity protests illustrates), however nothing occurs or changes within a vacuum. Thought requires a point of reference.

Of course we cannot be certain about what specific elements "caused" the collapse of the Soviet Union; there was a certain level of overdetermination ocurring; a multitude of factors working together, each of which could be sufficient, but not necessary, let to the collapse. One (not necessarily me) might suggest that it was an inevitability, whether it was due to internal frustrations or external pressures or both (or other factors which we haven't even begun to discuss).

I just wonder if anybody has tried...

[tulare]

kill 9 squid

Re:No, sorry

[cyberkreiger]

Hate to break it to you, but there are actually two "i" in "slipping".

Ok, now you've /.ed the BEEB?

[kalidasa]

Can't get there from here. That's impressive.

Re:Ok, now you've /.ed the BEEB?

[dalassa]

ok, Whoever modded this didn't look at the link. Its the cache of goatse.cx.

Thank you, my eyes did not need that before my morning caffiene.

A matter of time

[EyesWideOpen]

Despite how well their plan to monitor the internet has gone up until this point, did the Chinese governement really expect to keep certain parts of the internet from a billion people?

Re:A matter of time

[gartogg]

And it would have worked too, if it hadn't been for those kids and their dratted technology, I mean dog.

scooby-dooby doooooooooooo!

Re:A matter of time

[digital_freedom]

Despite how well their plan to monitor the internet has gone up until this point, did the Chinese governement really expect to keep certain parts of the internet from a billion people?

In a word, Yes. Why shouldn't they after they've had control over all other media. This is just another flow of information. For the Chinese government, this one is even easier to localize. It's a lot harder to have an illegal fiber optic cable network than an illegal anti-government paper distribution system.

Actually the most ironic thing is that a US software company will probably sell them some new whizbang software so they can better filter all that incoming traffic.

Widespread changes...

[ramdac]

We all know that China's news institutions (government controlled) will soon be ignored. The Chinese government won't always be able to restrict their users from reading information from the BBC, CNN, and other institutions.

China's GOV has to face the music. They can't and won't control what their people see on the internet--at least not forever. As more and more people there use the internet, those people will find ways to express their views.

Re:Widespread changes...

[squaretorus]

A bit further than this. China probably CAN prevent the viewing of news.bbc.co.uk and cnn.com but they'll NEVER keep up to date the block list for NGOs and other more independent and direct news sources.

As long as there are search engines, email, and word of mouth, those who WANT to read the real story will be able to.

This leaves those majority of the population still sucking in the dross they are fed. At the moment in the UK you can't move for people sucking up to the royal family on the TV. The mass population couldn't give two shits about them and want them gone - but the BBC pays for a big concert, a million people go along to see bands for free, and we're told its a royalist revival!

Enough people just go along with this and decide 'hey - yeah - lets do that! royals! I love them!' because they don't form opinions, they consume them.

Re:Widespread changes...

[vidarh]

Despite wanting to see monarchy in the UK abolished, I must disagree with you. Countless polls have shown that the people in the UK in general support monarchy and supports the royal family. Large groups of the people may want them gone, but unfortunately not the majority.

Re:Widespread changes...

[ryepup]

uhhh, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the monarchy in the UK was just for show, and all the actual governing took place in Parliament with the Prime Minister. I thought the royal family was more just a PR thing for the government.

But then again, I am just a stupid American.

Re:Widespread changes...

[RickHunter]

This is assuming that there are still independant and direct news sources on the Internet. The Powers that Be, including ICANN and the current crop of news companies, seem dead-set on trying to prevent that. Skyrocketing bandwidth costs, "cybersquatting" accusations, lack of affordable bandwidth for your ordinary citizen, gradual firewalling-off of non-corporate entities to prevent "copyright infringement"....

In case you haven't noticed, its getting harder and harder to run a small site of any sort without resorting to buying space from an established web host. Who can and will cut you off at the first sign of trouble, be it legal or simply "high" bandwidth use due to popularity. Yes, that's right. Do a good job of news reporting and get a lot of visitors, and you'll be slapped with huge fines for your troubles.

Its wonderful when the very companies who are most threatened by the power the Internet gives to the individual control its backbone, isn't it?

Re:Widespread changes...

[vidarh]

You're right. The point being?

Monarchy in the UK is just a silly show, but that doesn't stop the majority of the people from supporting it. I guess a lot of people support it because it gives them something to read about in the papers.

Re:Widespread changes...

[beanyk]

uhhh, correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought the monarchy in the UK was just for show, and all the actual governing took place in Parliament with the Prime Minister. I thought the royal family was more just a PR thing for the government.

This is true (apart from a few symbolic powers), but there are better methods even of choosing figureheads. The British Royal family is no better and no worse than the average non-royal family, but has been elevated (and at times, humiliated), simply because of genetics and marriage. This is pretty offensive to many people, even if it's a small unimportant thing.

Re:Widespread changes...

[realdpk]

I dunno what market you're in but in the US market bandwidth prices are falling (thanks to Cogent, can't wait for that Chap. 11).

Many web hosts, large and small, will charge small sites by the GB, so you can use all you want.

I can't help but think this post came from 1999 or something. :)

Re:Widespread changes...

[cardshark2001]

Can't? That's a pretty strong word! There are plenty of people who are reading this discussion who could tell you, I wager, exactly how it could be done.

If you have a single entry point of Internet into the country, by way of a huge trunk, you can control it as you please.

Did you ever read 1984? Orwell has a point, control the middle class, and you control everyone. I wish I could be as confident as you in saying it is impossible, but I am afraid it is all too possible, and if anyone will find a way, it will be the Chinese.

Re:Widespread changes...

[Tarquin Sidebottom]

I'm not a royalist (I watched a grand total of zero seconds of the Jubilee coverage) but I say keep the monarcy.
As the saying goes "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely". Keep the Queen (or eventually the King) and make sure that there's always somebody above the Goverment who they have to answer to directly (as opposed to answering to just the voters once every four years or so).

Its not as if the cost is crippling - £8million a year. This is no doubt a lot to me and you, but is just 15p per person or 0.012% of the 54 billion spend a year on the NHS.

Re:Widespread changes...

[junkgrep]

Heh: wait till the Chinese find out about FoxNews! Finally, a fair and balanced news program!

Or maybe FoxNews is already allowed in China, thanks to Murdoch's sniveling love of pleasing dictators to get his projects on the cable lines.

Re:Widespread changes...

[junkgrep]

---A bit further than this. China probably CAN prevent the viewing of news.bbc.co.uk and cnn.com but they'll NEVER keep up to date the block list for NGOs and other more independent and direct news sources.---

You seem to be assuming that the Chinese will use an excluding system whereby they run around blocking objectionable content. But what if they used an including system, whereby they only allowed people to go to sites that they approve? So they don't need to worry about blocking new addresses: only things they've checked out and signed off on will get through.

Re:Widespread changes...

[nemesisj]

"We all know that China's news institutions (government controlled) will soon be ignored. The Chinese government won't always be able to restrict their users from reading information from the BBC, CNN, and other institutions."

Why do we all know this? If someone came up to you and told you that everything you had ever learned and been taught all your life was a lie (or at least a very highly distorted version of the truth) and that your primary sources of information were largely innacurate, would you believe them? Would you be willing to turn your whole outlook on life upside down? While you might if you were particularly independent, the average Chinese citizen won't. From living in China, I'd say that close to 90% of the young intellectuals, who have known about the Tiananmen Square incident and other debacles still trust the government news. They figure that the western news sources are just as biased, and while they are a definite curiosity, western news is just as unreliable as communist news. They have been taught all their lives that a free press is unreliable and prone to error, and they believe it.

Also, why can't they control the internet? They own all the infrastructure, the ISPs, the cable, everything. You're not very informed to think they just can't turn off whatever they want. They block all of geocities and angelfire, and often block cnn and other news sites when some issue that is sensitive to the government is happening. Don't underestimate what a determined dictatorship can accomplish, especially when they hold all of the cards.

The really funny thing is that most Chinese ISPs and websites self censor their content, out of fear that they'll be totally shut down. The flow of information in China is not out of control, and it won't be for a long time.

Re:Widespread changes...

[Cmdr Taco (luser)]

That can't do it now, unless they also block google.com.

A savvy Chinese citizen can simply view google's cached copy. They've got to know in general what they're looking for, but try this example:

A CNN story about Falun Gong here

Re:Widespread changes...

[pacman on prozac]

but the BBC pays for a big concert

Actually the Queen paid for it. So I guess you could say indirectly we paid for it although she has many incomes other than that provided by the state so it's a moot point really.

we're told its a royalist revival!

I've not heard the BBC ever pushing that angle other than on some news shows asking the question "so is this a royalist revival?" but I have heard many open discussions on the BBC about whether we should even have a royal family anymore so it's not like they're only playing one side.

I always used to despise the Royal Family but after seeing then give a standing ovation to Ozzy Osbourne and Tommy Iommi doing Paranoid live on stage my opinion of them is changing :)

Re:Widespread changes...

[RickHunter]

I'm mainly looking at all the popular sites that've had to shut down or severely cripple their services due to unannounced bandwidth caps or utterly ludicrous traffic fees. This may have changed recently, as you said, due to Cogent's financial troubles, but that doesn't help all the sites that've had to shut down in the past six months when their ISPs started springing these fees (and "backpayments" for their use in the past) on them.

Re:Widespread changes...

[vidarh]

Eh..? The government doesn't have to answer to the queen in any way. And even if they did have to, that would still not justify an unelected person.

I don't give a damn about the cost. But I do give a damn about the symbol of oppression that a monarch is.

Re:Widespread changes...

[elefantstn]

That and it keeps tourists showing up in London... Between tabloid sales and hotel rooms, the royals are probably a multibillion-dollar industry.

Re:Widespread changes...

[ramdac]

Exactly. Thanks for the example CmdrTaco.

This is exactly what I'm talking about. There are most likely 200 other ways to subvert the Chinese Government's efforts to control and supress information that might be seen by it's people.

I had a friend that was in China for about a year. Everytime she tried to use hotmail she got some wierd message on her screen telling her that a 3rd party may be viewing her information (and something hinted it may be the government). She was at some EDU at the time.

Even still, there's no way any government could possibly restrict all defamous information about it's government from their users' eyes.

Case in point (above).

Re:Widespread changes...

[7dragon]

Read the book "Lies My Teacher Told Me"

http://www.uvm.edu/~jloewen/ and get a better view of American History. After reading this book maybe my fellow Americans will take their collective heads out of their asses, work together to fix our own social, economic, spiritual and mental problems before we start sticking our noses in the business of other Nation states....

Re:Widespread changes...

[phatStrat]

I agree with the stance that free press is unreliable just as much as a state-run press. Both have objectives and agendas.

Example 1. In Canada one company owns most of the province-wide dailys. I haven't looked that much into the company, but you can probably guess the interests of the company is reflected in the content and perspective of the stories they run. There have been many times when a major detail or headline was incorrectly reported (often implying someone of something), only to have that oversight corrected in a tiny 2 x 1 box on the last page of the classifieds section. Well, the damage has already been done, the misinformation has already been accepted, and the newspaper cannot be held accountable because they did infact print a correction. The question is, was the misprint a genuine mistake, or intentionally crafted?

Example 2. CNN is one of the only American news stations we get up here (aside from prime-time CBS, NBC, ABC, which use CNN for a source frequently). Ok, we get MSNBC too (please). But talk about blowing reason and perspective out of the water. For a month following September 11 CNN was a place to be force fed. By who? For what end?

People build their lives around the news. They implicitly rely on the news to inform them and to help shape their attitudes towards various issues. My view is that there is no independent free press. Ultimately neither form of press is better than the other. Fabrication of facts is just the same as the intentional manipulation of them.

Of course the mere act of reporting an event can be deemed an intentional manipulation however unintentional. And fabrication or misleading done by an agency of the state that opposes what we consider to be basic human rights is bad. But it still makes you think.

I read the Vancouver Sun and (usually) take it at face value. I watch CNN. Time-to-time I check out the BBC and even the North Korean state-run press. But if you really think about it, it's about picking your own poison.

Re:Widespread changes...

[Deziex]

Not to mention, the entire House of Windsor is/was a fabrication, made up by George IV (?)
to cover up their Germanic/Saxon roots and to make them totally British.

Makes you think, eh?

Re:Widespread changes...

[Beliskner]

I don't give a damn about the cost. But I do give a damn about the symbol of oppression that a monarch is.

You're totally missing the point. Tony Blair and Steven Byers are also figureheads of oppression. The fact is the monarchy pulls in so much American money and tourists that Britain will go bankrupt if they abolish it. This is why I support it. Obviously the Queen is a racist beeeea*ch (she was still eating when the Caribbean carnival went past I think this was deliberately timed).

The Queen also provides an excellent high profile scapegoat, if we got rid of her, the anti-monarchists would be happy - for 1 year and would then turn their attentions to other evils (in their opinion) in the UK such as oh I dunno mosques, racial minorities. The monarchy allows stupid people that hate people a central target. Of course some misinformed people have the false impression that she actually wields some power. Without her the British ancien regime would be truly in the shadows and completely uncontactable.

Re:Widespread changes...

[Martin Blank]

They don't answer directly, but if the King/Queen disapproves of something, it becomes a Very Bad Thing in the eyes of many people. The monarchy may not wield much in the way of real power, but it wields influence over the thoughts of large sections of the population, which is sometimes even better.

Re:Widespread changes...

[vidarh]

Exactly how are elected representatives symbols of oppression?

As for anti-monarchists turning their attention elsewhere, I don't see any large groups spending a lot of time or effort in fighting the monarchy beyond criticizing it. It's not worth it, exactly because there are other problems (and mosques and racial minorities are certainly not something I consider a problem) that are more important, so I certainly don't buy the claim that she functions as a scapegoat.

Re:Widespread changes...

[vidarh]

That's bullshit. If the queen started voicing even the most remotely controversial ideas about how the UK should be run there would immediately be support in parliament for reducing her importance. Remember the recent changes in the House of Lords? Why do you think that was? It was because the House of Lords didn't understand it's place as a relic, and meddled too much.

There's a long tradition in the remaining European monarchies for the monarch to keep their mouth shut about politics in return for keeping their privileges. It goes so far that much of media immediately start crying foul if the monarch even starts voicing opinions about how things should be run.

The queen is a figurehead, and nothing else. Which makes it even more ridiculous to keep the monarchy.

Re:Widespread changes...

[Beliskner]

Exactly how are elected representatives symbols of oppression?

A choice between voting for Hague who was a xenophobic bastard, and Blair who is less of a bastard. Is this freedom?

After seeing the types of people turning up for anti-monarchy protests, and on Kilroy, it's pretty obvious to me that they're potential BNP material. Many anti-royalists are also xenophobic, if you read this uncensored forum, ahhh oops it's been taken down because under UK law the webmaster is liable for any hate speech posted on *his* website. Inciting hatred is an offence under the Riot Act.

The BNP has almost unlimited resources to recruit as many racists as they like.

It's not worth it, exactly because there are other problems (and mosques and racial minorities are certainly not something I consider a problem) that are more important, so I certainly don't buy the claim that she functions as a scapegoat

You can't look at this from your perspective only, are most anti-Royalists willing to switch over to the BNP? I put it to you yes. The Royals provide a more high profile target, and the profile of the target of peoples' hatred is important according to studies.

I put it to you that 1 year after the monarchy is abolished, the membership of the BNP would have doubled. Do you disagree with me on this point?

Re:Widespread changes...

[vidarh]

So you're saying that 30-40 percent of the UK population are racist willing to switch to the BNP? If so, why haven't they already done so?

Contrary to what you seem to believe, opposition to the monarchy has historically always gotten its strongest support from the left, particularly socialists, communist, trotskyist and anarchist groups, but also to some extend from social democrats, and strongly opposed by the right, including many groups on the far right who see a republic as stepping on national symbols (the monarchy being one of them).

Looking to France, for instance, this is exactly what you see. The royalist organizations draw their support almost exclusively from the right.

I think that if you believe abolishing the monarchy will change anything - for or against - the BNP, then you are deluded.

Re:Widespread changes...

[RegularFry]

I know I'll support people that throw parties like that every few decades...

Re:Widespread changes...

[Beliskner]

So you're saying that 30-40 percent of the UK population are racist willing to switch to the BNP?

No. Hague was exposed and many people saw through him and so didn't vote for him, a lot of people didn't see through him because they couldn't be arsed (the indifferrent majority which is a far cry from hardcore BNP members).

...opposition to the monarchy has historically always gotten its strongest support from the left, particularly socialists, communist, trotskyist and anarchist groups, but also to some extend from social democrats, and strongly opposed by the right, including many groups on the far right who see a republic as stepping on national symbols (the monarchy being one of them

...Looking to France, for instance, this is exactly what you see. The royalist organizations draw their support almost exclusively from the right.

Ahhh you are correct, puritan anarchists wouldn't mind powerless figureheads like royalty, however among their ranks there's a significant number of jealous rogues who oppose all hierarchical social/military structures including the affluent elite (cavemen anarchists) and it's always these "anarchists" that get interviewed by the BBC. These hate-anarchists are the real threat, and I think they are a new phenomenon...

I believe this differrent phenomenon has been resurrected from ages past, it's not confined by idealogical generalisations: it's the disenchanted masses - people on the wrong side of the ever widening rich-poor divide, creating massive resentment at the ruling elite (including figureheads) ala French aristocracy during the French revolution. This revolution in the UK has ironically been postponed by the September 11th attacks by re-igniting (perhaps temporarily) a sense of national community due to a collecive disgust of this event.

Re:Widespread changes...

[Dyolf Knip]

even the North Korean state-run press [kcna.co.jp].

I've read that one on occasion. Most of the time it's utter bosh, but occasionally there's some gems. My all-time favorites are when they reflect on how the DPRK won the Korean War which was started by the evil United States in an unprovoked attack. Great stuff...

The chinese internet

[Hellkitten]

Well they let the cat out of the bag and now they can't get it back in. Politicians underestimate the possibilities of the internet, nothing new here.

The interesting idea is that AFAIK China has the largest population on earth, what will happen to the internet once the chinese politicians give up and let them roam free? Even if just a small part is on the net we will begin to see the influence of chinese culture. And what about language? Today english is de dominant language in the internet, but there is an awful lot of chinese speakin people that might get connected. Time for a new language class anyone?

Re:The chinese internet

[BobTheBooser]

(note: I have never been to china)
I don't know how much this will actually affect the vast majority of chinese people(say 99.5%) china is still a third world country and the under welming minority who have access to a telephone line and a computer or the money for an internet cafe dont necessaraly read/speek english. Which the majority of the web content is written in.
China is still a very closed country, I had a friend who went there a cupple years ago and he was traveling in a group. They werent suposed to go traveling alone, and they had a government official with them when the group went out. They wernt allowed to say certan things to some people or go certan places, or take photos of certan things. China is still compleetly closed military state, there are probably some people living in china that dont even know they have a soccialist government (or that most people around the world have this new fangled thing called electricity). Just my 2 cents.

Re:The chinese internet

[Hellkitten]

0.5% of a lot of people is still a lot of people!

I know for a fact than china is considered one of the most interesting market for mobile communications, not because any large percent could actually afford a cellphone, but because there are so many chinese that you still would have a lot of potential customers. The same applies to the Internet

The question I raised was not how the internet would affect the chinese, but how the chinese would affect the internet

Re:The chinese internet

[cybercuzco]

Today english is de dominant language in the internet, but there is an awful lot of chinese speakin people that might get connected.

Mesa say yousa not worry so much bout speakin chinese, worry more bout speakin english

-Jar Jar

Re:The chinese internet

[Silverhammer]

0.5% of a lot of people is still a lot of people!

Check your math -- 0.5% of a billion is only 5 million.

I know for a fact than china is considered one of the most interesting market for mobile communications, not because any large percent could actually afford a cellphone, but because there are so many chinese that you still would have a lot of potential customers.

No, China is an "interesting" market because the rest of the industrialized nations (North America, EU, Japan, etc) are already glutted.

Re:The chinese internet

[Microlith]

If that's the case, Taco'd better work on hislameness filter, it filters out anything that's all encoding characters.

Last thing we need is Taco calling all the chinese posters, posting in chinese, lame!

CmdrTaco

Re:The chinese internet

[Dephex Twin]

I predict that in the short term, English will continue to be the dominant language until we have the same kind of internationalization support for web pages that we have now in operating systems.

I think it will remain the dominant language even with this, simply because it is the dominant language anyway, Internet or not. The fortunate thing about the Internet starting out initially in English is that a lot of people knew it as their second language already.

mark

Re:The chinese internet

[smurdock]

There's enough interesting things in that topic alone for a PhD or two...

Chinese doesn't use an alphabet, it uses ideograms, i.e., symbols that do not represent phonetics. Think of Arabic numerals -- they mean the same thing in hundreds of languages but are pronounced hundreds of different and mutually unintelligible ways. (That's why Hong Kong movies have Chinese subtitles. They're speaking Cantonese, which is mutually unintelligble to speakers of Mandarin, but both use the same written characters.)

But computer-using Chinese generally use standard QWERTY keyboards, so there's this fairly new phenomenon of Chinese who become used to entering the characters phonetically with Latin characters, and gradually forgetting how to write the ideograms. Reading and writing seem to use different parts of the brain.

Re:The chinese internet

[pmc]

I had a friend who went there a cupple years ago and he was traveling in a group. They werent suposed to go traveling alone, and they had a government official with them when the group went out.

Hmm - not at all what I experienced. I went to Beijing about 10 years ago - also as part of a group. There were no restictions at all placed on us - there was an official interpreter, but no compulsion to go on the organised tours. I spent a lot of time wandering about. Things were a little tense as I was over there near the anniversary of Tiannemen Square (which I visited on the actual anniversary - that place is huge: jokingly I said beforehand it would take 1/2 hour to walk across it. This was an underestimate.), and there were a fair number of police wandering about. I even saw some dissidents being arrested (outside of the official government residence near Tianemmen Square).

One evening (armed with my trusty phrase book) I wandered into one of the large blocks that form neighbourhoods (these are 3 by 3 smaller blocks, and there seems to be some sort of district zoning thing going on). These are definitely not tourist places. In these I found a small resturant and proffering my phrase book opened to the resturant page I pointed at "What do you recommend?" and got what was easily the best meal I had there - and the cheapest by a mile.

Interestingly there was absolutly no problems at all in getting into China - send passport details to tour operator. The provided a group visa and we - literally - formed a line in the order of the names on the visa and walked through immigration. The whole thing took about 5 minutes. No problem getting out. This was the only place on the whole trip that photography was forbidden - in common with almost ever other immigration hall I've ever been in.

Admittedly I didn't go outside Beijing except to the Great Wall (although some others did) so things may well be diferent elsewhere. The only other place where there was a bit of an atmosphere was on the upper floors of the English Language Bookshop where the pirated software is reputedly sold.

So, yes, China is in some ways a closed nation, but nowhere near as controlled as you are making out. It is also a very odd place - when you first arrive at the western hotel (which looks like a hilton anywhere else in the world) and get in the taxi (whose drivers are nutters) and see the McDonalds, and Coke, and bright, neon, shop signs, it all seems comfortably familiar. OK - they don't speak the language but I'm from Europe - I'm used to not speaking the language when I'm on holiday. After a few days, however, you'll notice something that makes you realise how different this place is - for me it was realising that there were no advertisments.

Re:The chinese internet

[Our Man In Redmond]

Well they let the cat out of the bag and now they can't get it back in.

My favorite metaphor for this comes from a book by Peter S. Beagle:

"You ever try to put birdshit back into the bird?"

Re:The chinese internet

[jazman_777]

No, China is an "interesting" market because the rest of the industrialized nations (North America, EU, Japan, etc) are already glutted.

The "China Market" is a siren song that has been luring American business for over 100 years. It's the origin of the Spanish-American war, even. Back then, the US had basically finished expanding westward. There was fear in business about what would happen because there was no "expanding" market (which is ridiculous, because the population didn't stop growing...). Anyway, they looked a bit further west, and saw China, a "huge untapped market". However, you needed coaling stations along the way for the ships plying the trade. The Hawaiian Islands and the Phillippines were optimal. Hawaii was already under US control (the monarchy having been undermined and overthrown), and the Phillippines were owned by the Spanish. So we concocted a little war with Spain to "liberate" Cuba, and on the side we grabbed the Phillipines, and smashed their own independence movement (> 200,000 Filipinos killed). Just a little tangent here, sorry.

Re:The chinese internet

[Shao Ke]

I was just there last month. I went to visit the in laws with my wife (and stayed with them most of the time).
I didn't see any signs of Internet blocking. I could access whatever I wanted.
People did get a little uncomfortable when discussing things like freedom when they were in groups. One of my wife's schoolmates is now an officer in the Chinese military and refused to take a picture with me in it - they aren't allowed to talk to foreigners.
But the rest of the group of her old schoolmates were joking with him about being their oppressor at a dinner party ;).
Otherwise, no sign of being watched or restricted. They didn't check our bags coming in or going out of the country.
We were in Si Chuan province, which is one of the richer ones, but there were still signs of poverty everywhere. They really need some good plumbers.
Otherwise, lots of signs of capitalism. Quite a few billboards (mostly China Telecom).
The Chinese people are almost universally warm to Americans. I guess they haven't seen enough of us yet.
When I was in one of the smaller villages (say, 200k people) it was quite a big deal to see a foreigner. My wife kept telling me I was getting stared at but I didn't notice too much. She guessed that most of them hadn't seen any caucasians in person before.
Western movies and video games are quite popular. Trying to control the Internet (and western communication in general) is like putting their finger in a dyke. It's going to burst eventually and there isn't anything they can do about it.

Re:The chinese internet

[gotr00t]

The thing is, someone will have to invent a novel new way to input data using the Chiense language if this is the case. Clearly, inputting with PinYin (phonetics) is not fast, and making a keyboard filled with characters is not practical. English has a major advantage for computers because it is a western language - every word is made up of a limited amount of letters, and they can all be planted onto a keyboard. In Chinese, this is different. It is more adopted to be written, as almost all of you probably know, it is a character lanugage, and each character IS made up of a limited pattern of BiHua (pen strokes), but the placement of them is also critical to making up a single character.

Inputting Chinese into a computer is NOT fast, and it is much easier to real-time chat in English, as I find it much faster.

The DragonPen, a system of a pen and pad that recognizes your writing is a good place to start, but even the fastest writers I know don't write as fast as I can type in English.

Therefore, unless something NEW is invented, there is no way that Chinese will ever replace English, or any Western languages in that matter, simply because it is less efficent and not practical. It's easier to make Chinese people learn English (A great deal of Chinese youth can speak some English)

Re:The chinese internet

[Scurrilous Knave]

Actually, I have regular (almost daily) conversations with mainland Chinese Esperantists, in Esperanto of course. Not to mention Vietnamese, Koreans, Iranians, and people from other locales whose viewpoints I don't "normally" get to hear about here in the USA.

Now, for all I know, they are all military intelligence officers, monitoring 'net usage. For all I know, they could be working for the U. S. military. But they sure sound like they are legit.

Se oni jam parolas la lingvon, iru al Karelia au alia babilejo en GEIB.

If you don't already speak La Lingvo Internacia, check out any of ELNA, eo.org, UEA, or just Google for "Esperanto". Be prepared for a lot of hits nowadays.

Re:The chinese internet

[JWhitlock]

The interesting idea is that AFAIK China has the largest population on earth, what will happen to the internet once the chinese politicians give up and let them roam free? Even if just a small part is on the net we will begin to see the influence of chinese culture. And what about language? Today english is de dominant language in the internet, but there is an awful lot of chinese speakin people that might get connected. Time for a new language class anyone?

Just like India dominates the Internet, followed closely by Russia...

Remember, China has traditionally given intellectuals and artists a choice - bend your works to the party line, or supress them, or be imprisioned or killed. That kind of psycopathic natural selection will keep China from being a cultural leader for a long time after the party is gone...

The U.S. is much better - bend your works to the capitalist line, or have a hard time feeding yourself. Still, that's the best we'll get, outside of a college campus. And that depends on rich parents or mortaging future earnings...

Re:The chinese internet

[Alsee]

My favorite metaphor

Mine is:

Trying to take something off of the internet is like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
-Joe Garelli, News Radio.

That's why the MPAA/RIAA are trying to plug your analog hole.

-

Re:The chinese internet

[Hellkitten]

Yousa funnie, but engliss not mesa firs languigg

That made me laugh, you may not have made my day but you certainly made my next half hour. Thank you

Change from the inside

[seldolivaw]

I think it's really interesting that China has spent so much time and effort trying to protect its citizens from ideas from outside without realising that ideas that come from inside are just as dangerous. People who talk to each other cannot be fooled by propaganda, as the article mentions -- a mining disaster which killed 81 people was initially supressed, but when word about it spread on the 'net anyway the official newspapers ended up reporting on it.

The logical conclusion of this is that the much-protested firewall that China has put around itself will be of no help at all in supressing dissent, as long as chat rooms and even e-mail exist.

Re:Change from the inside

[3th3rn3t]

Ah, we see yet another attempt to keep information from the people ? will they succeed ? i doubt it , but it will sure be fun to watch them try.

people have to understand that information cannot be kept free. As long as there is the internet, with chat rooms, email and web pages, people will always learn what they werent supposed to.
Knowledge is power.

Re:Change from the inside

[4of12]

Exactly.

Presuming that "counter-revolutionary" thoughts always enter from the outside and could be theoretically controlled by a firewall neglects the basic fact that China is filled with enough people on the inside that can think for themselves.

When a rational idea or a truth is communicated, it will resonate all through the inside.

OTOH, China, like the U.S. and Russia, has a great deal of national pride. While the party in power has used that as tool for its own ends, there's nothing preventing a popular movement from incorporating "patriotism" in a way that might be unhealthy for everyone in the long term. Remember some of the causes of WWW 1!

Re:Change from the inside

[hype7]

Remember some of the causes of WWW 1!

As opposed to some of the causes of Internet2?

-- james

Re:Change from the inside

[Pig Hogger]

I think it's really interesting that China has spent so much time and effort trying to protect its citizens from ideas from outside without realising that ideas that come from inside are just as dangerous.

This is the more funny given that Mao Tse-Tung's communism is ALSO an idea that came from outside China...

Re:Change from the inside

[bruthasj]

And that he loved Americans was also an interesting aspect of big Mao (and boy he was a fat sucker ... except wait, he's son was even fatter ... ever read that book?)

Re:Change from the inside

[Our Man In Redmond]

You'd think if their ideology really was superior they would welcome the challenge of putting it to the test against the rest of the world, wouldn't you?

You'd also think they'd recall something military commanders and radicals have known since there were military commanders and radicals: It's much easier to attack a fortress (or a movement, or a country, or pretty much anything) from the inside than from the outside.

In an odd turn of events, it may someday turn out that Internet was the biggest Trojan horse of all.

Re:Change from the inside

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Remember some of the causes of WWW 1!

I think we can hold Tim Berners-Lee completely responsible for that.

Re:Change from the inside

[danro]

I think we can hold Tim Berners-Lee completely responsible for that.

Yes, ol' Tim is definitly aiding the terrorists.
The W3C advocates open standards, and we all know that is Evil.
After all, if we have open standards the terrorists have already won.

A ceip.org document on the matter

[jukal]

Summary:
In this paper the authors illustrate how two authoritarian regimes, China and Cuba, are maintaining control over the Internet's political impact through different combinations of reactive and proactive strategies. These cases illustrate that, contrary to assumptions, different types of authoritarian regimes may be able to control and profit from the Internet. Examining the experiences of these two countries may help to shed light on other authoritarian regimes' strategies for Internet development, as well as help to develop generalizable conclusions about the impact of the Internet on authoritarian rule.

The whole document is here

Re:A ceip.org document on the matter

[junkgrep]

Hah: you Americans think the Chinese have it bad, and are missing all the best content on the net? If you only knew what YOUR country has been blocking off from YOU! And you don't even know it's being done!

Re:A ceip.org document on the matter

[brsmith4]

Hah: you Americans think the Chinese have it bad, and are missing all the best content on the net? If you only knew what YOUR country has been blocking off from YOU! And you don't even know it's being done!

And where might you be from, oh free one? I can tell you that I am not blocked from a damn thing. Maybe if you show some proof of this, I might think twice. The only thing blocking off Americans is our majority's inability to speak many languages. Some of us can (or can use da fish) and learn these stories. But believe me, we aren't blocked.

Re:A ceip.org document on the matter

[Liberal Mafia]

Just in the summary, one phrase jumps out at me:

"While the long-term political impact of the Internet remains an open question..." (italics mine)

Yes, in the short to medium term, totalitarian governments can indeed survive and even profit from the Internet. What will happen in the long term, as the effects of the Net percolate into public opinions, attitudes and ideals and erode the state-prescribed memes, is something else again.

Re:A ceip.org document on the matter

[junkgrep]

---I can tell you that I am not blocked from a damn thing.---

How would you know what you don't know? To you, these sites simply look like unregistered addresses...

---And where might you be from, oh free one?---

A place far away, where they have this thing called: "kidding." I understand that my cultural practices distress and frighten you, but I assure you that my "kidding" will cause you no ill effects. In time, you will learn to tell the "serious" from the "kid."

peek-a-booty

[bmongar]

Of course it will slip even more when peekabooty gets finished and individual sites can't be blocked from a savay user.

Just like mp3 trading...

[cperciva]

This reinforces a fundamental fact of human behaviour: People generally ignore laws. If there is a policeman standing at their elbow, they'll obey the law, but as soon as the policeman is not obviously present, they'll go back to doing whatever they feel is "right".

When it comes to mp3 trading, usage of illicit drugs, or discussing Chinese politics, there are three simple options in the hands of the government:
1. Allow them,
2. Put police everywhere (think 1984), or
3. Change how people think about such activities (public anti-drinking-and-driving campaigns are a good example of this).

The Great Firewall of China might help the government identify (and eliminate) any rebellious leaders, but it won't stop the spread of ideas and ideals.

Re:Just like mp3 trading...

[gclef]

I would modify that statement slightly: people generally ignore laws that they don't like or understand.

People don't generally ignore the laws against murder, for example. Most people agree that outlawing killing people is a good thing, and they understand why, so folks obey that law. Very few people understand why they must drive $value MPH/KPH, so they usually don't, unless there's a danger that they'll be caught.

Re:Just like mp3 trading...

[automandc]

Which demonstrates the vapid self-interest behind most people's moral philosophy.

More people are killed by reckless drivers who think they have the skill/technology/brains to drive at unsafe speeds, than by murder.

Nothing gets on my nerves more than some yahoo in a way-to-big SUV tailgating me at 80MPH simply because he has no f-ing clue about such concepts as reaction time or stopping distance.

Of course, when his unnecessary and reckless conduct causes my death it is an "accident," while a woman who shoots her abusive husband dead in his sleep is considered a "murderer"

Re:Just like mp3 trading...

[MadAhab]

These things are true, but China is a very big country full of people who seem to readily ignore rules if they think they aren't being enforced. And with China's size, that makes governing very difficult. These facts have historically been excuses by China's leaders for their heavy-handed rule.

Re:Just like mp3 trading...

[sckeener]

This reinforces a fundamental fact of human behaviour: People generally ignore laws. If there is a policeman standing at their elbow, they'll obey the law, but as soon as the policeman is not obviously present, they'll go back to doing whatever they feel is "right".

I can say the same thing about cats and dogs....My cat, Oswin, knows it is wrong to jump on the counters, but the moment my back is to the lasagna - bam - I've got cat hair and sauce....maybe it's not human behaviour but mammal behavior.

I wonder what Darwin would say...

Re:Just like mp3 trading...

[Tom]

When it comes to mp3 trading, usage of illicit drugs, or discussing Chinese politics, there are three simple options in the hands of the government:

You should also mention that ironically, governments do not differ very much in this, no matter whether they are communist, capitalist, democratic, republic, dictatorship or whatever.

Which is a funny thing since for some of these systems, the choice should be obvious. For example, in a democracy you'd think that if "the people" (who, according to the book, are the rulers) want something done one way, it's done that way.

You Can Never Truly Filter

[unformed]

If you have -any- way access an outside machine that is relatively in your control (ie: shell access, which can be bought for a few dollars a month) then you can get by any protection.

Here's an article I wrote not too long ago about how to do it:
- - - -
Breaking Through Any Firewall or Proxy

There's different reasons for breaking through firewalls/proxies.
1) Get completely unfiltered access to the internet.
2) Get unmonitored, or secure, access to the internet.
3) Access services normally disallowed by the firewall.

The article will demonstrate various ways to get by most implementations of firewalls/proxies. In absolutely no way am I responsible if you do anything you're not supposed to, or even supposed to, be doing. If you get caught and fired, tough shit. If you access illegal information, tough shit. If you open up a hole and somebody breaks into your computer, tough shit. I'm not responsible. (This is for the lawsuit-happy bastards out there.)

Anyways, lets begin:

For all methods, it is expected that you have access to a machine on the other side of the firewall, and that it has access to whatever you need.
Your machine will be the CLIENT, and the machine on the other side of the firewall will be the TUNNEL. The accessed machine will be the SERVER.

Furthermore, this article also assumes you a basic knowledge of your browser's configuration, installing software on your CLIENT and TUNNEL machines, and logging in via SSH.

A Linux/Unix box is preferable for the TUNNEL, but not required by any means. The software is freely available for any system.

1) HTTP Tunneling Through SSH
Often, only some ports will be firewalled (80, 21, etc) for caching, filtering, and monitoring purposes. However, they leave direct access available for other ports (25, 23, etc).

If your browser must use a proxy to access the web, but you don't require a proxy to get mail, this is probably the implementation.

If you have direct access to non-popular ports, you can access almost any service as long as you change the port. Generaly, the main purpose of bypassing this firewall is to have unfiltered and/or unmonitored web access. The method can of course be modified to meet your needs.

Install a proxy server (ie: tinyproxy) on the TUNNEL machine. For security purposes, set the listening port to an odd port (ie: 8999, REMOTE_PROXY_PORT) or set access rights to only localhost. Install an SSH (ie: sshd) server on the TUNNEL. For security purposes, set the listening port to an odd port. Do NOT set access rights to only localhost because you'll access the proxy through ssh.

Install an SSH client on the CLIENT machine. Select a random port (LOCAL_PORT) and then set the browser's proxy to localhost:LOCAL_PORT.

Run SSH with LOCAL_PORT forwarded to REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_PROXY_PORT.
(CLI ssh: ssh -L LOCAL_PORT:REMOTE_HOST:REMOTE_PROXY_HOST -l USERNAME REMOTE_HOST)

Once connected and logged in, if the proxy and the tunnel are working correctly, you've got completely unfiltered web access.

(NB: Using a SOCKS5-compliant proxy would offer an almost completely unfiltered and unmonitored connection, as long as the application supported SOCKS proxies.)

2) SSH Tunneling Through HTTP
Some implementations allow only HTTP access, while blocking all other ports.
Check out Corkscrew at http://www.agroman.net/corkscrew/

Corkscrew is a tool to allow full SSH access through a strict HTTPS session. Then through the SSH access, you can create another tunnel to allow access to all other programs.

Conclusion)
Hopefully this allows some of the people out there to worry a little less about getting caught doing things they're not supposed to. The reason for using SSH in both cases is because it's encrypted. In the event you are caught, at least you're only caught for breaking teh rules, there's nothing additionally criminalizing.

SSH can also be used for a lot more interesting things. Using Windows, you can instal Cygwin, ssh into a *Nix box and tunnel over X connections, and end up working as if you were actually at the machine.

Anyways, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

--unformed

Re:You Can Never Truly Filter

[smnolde]

True, but see my tutorial on BSDVault here: http://bsdvault.net/sections.php?op=viewarticle&ar tid=83

Or Click Here

Re:You Can Never Truly Filter

[dattaway]

Its just a matter of time before someone goes one step further to package the ssh packets in .gif banner ads. No eavesdropping spook would be the wiser thinking the connection is business as usual as the stealth connection would appear to be a barrage of spam popups.

I see a great future for stenography.

Re:You Can Never Truly Filter

[stevelaniel]

You're trying to fix an inherently non-technological problem with a technological solution. This is the same sort of philosophy that led us to FreeNet, which is really a wonderful product; the problem is that the governments that we'd circumvent with FreeNet are the same governments that would probably make FreeNet illegal.

You'll want to be more paranoid in your response to a repressive government. Imagine that your government has complete control over what's on your computer. Imagine that a certain set of programs is legal, and everything not in that set is expressly forbidden. Anyone running SSH, say, is subject to execution. I think this is a valid way to set up the problem of how to get around the Chinese government. Our problem is not, fundamentally, how to get around firewalls.

Who was it who first said...

[Anonymous Coward]

"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

Re:Who was it who first said...

[Alsee]

Who was it who first said...
"The Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."

It must have been Al Gore, Right?
Something that fundamental and profound could only have come from the inventor of the internet.

-

Re:Who was it who first said...

[FattMattP]

It was John Gilmore, co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Cypherpunks cryptography discussion list.

internet censorship

[Una]

Well, my guess as to why China is having a hard time censoring their citizens viewing, is simply that of manpower.
With how fast content is created and updated on the internet, even with active filtering software, would require a fulltime staff of tens of thousands of people just to find blockable content.

I imagine the Chinese goverment is slacking in their efforts to completely block "objectional" content, just by not throwing enough manpower at it.
Now, I in no way condone censoring any information, but lets get real...
If the chinese goverment wants to control what their citizens think, their going to.

Now, what needs to be done, is some of that new-fangled "electronic warfare". :)
What I mean by that, is for people who care about censorship to setup free speech propoganda websites wherever they can.
There going to have to be diffrent, so the automatic software doesnt automatically filter it.
And its going to need to have real information.

If you care about billions of people being censored, stand up, and do something about it.
If not, sit down, go back to whatever you were doing, and forget that anything ever happened.

Anyways, thats just my take on things.
-Una

Re:Intresting thought control method

[ekidder]

One of my favorite quotes, from GURPS Illuminati (unfortunately, a roommate borrowed the book, so no exact references) goes: "Sure, the government lies and the media lies, but in a democracy, they're /different/ lies."

Re:Intresting thought control method

[nam37]

I'm sure I'll get "flame-bait" for this, but... You are a complete idiot.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[sputnik73]

You should say "mainstream media" because clearly websites are a form of media and there has been plenty of criticism of the U.S. government's policies as of late. Furthermore, I'm not quite sure you've been keeping up on what the media has been reporting. The Times, Newsweek, MSNBC, FoxNews, and CNN have all been questioning the FBI's knowledge of a possible terrorist attack before 9/11. There is no shortage of pundits in this country who will criticize politicians.
Also, your statement that "In China it seems that the media is free and the government only controls its (sic) distribution" is just stupid. A free media that cannot inform anyone is not a free media at all. And I guess you're not aware of the "People's" Daily newspaper in China which is the official mouthpiece of the Communist government - clearly a form of media which is not "free" and entirely controlled by the government. The Chinese government has long shown that they do not share the same views of freedom that your average American will espouse. I think that this story is indicative of the fact that in this past century technology has made the world a much smaller place. The Internet, hopefully, will force a degree of honesty onto governments around the world and aid the people in removing depostic regimes. I also find it quite offensive that you're trying to defend China by comparing it to the United States government's behavior. You should read up a bit more on how the Chinese government treats her people and realize that not only is your statement out of line but it is also quite insulting to the millions of Chinese people living in oppression - when you downplay their oppression and try to compare it to Americans, you confuse people on the issue. There's a reason people are fleeing China to enter the United States and it's not because the US "controls the media."

How is this different from corporate control?

[gelfling]

In the West, about 90% of all internet activity goes through 9 portals which are controlled by a tiny cadre of huge media conglomerates, each run nearly as the singular expression of one person's ego.

We will not be forced into oppression, but seduced by it and ultimately the internet will become a weapon of tyranny.

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[Brian Stretch]

How is this different from corporate control?

Well, for starters, Ted Turner's Castro News Network can't have you thrown into the gulag for watching Rupert Murdoch's Fox News.

See laogai.org, etc.

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[rhadamanthus]

Thank you for making this very important point. To put numbers to this argument, note that:

Of all the interesting statistics, the most important is that the number of TV stations, magazines, and media outlets over all has increased tremendously, all the while being more consolidated then ever before. This strikes me as surprising. The illusion of diversity in literature and media is rather frightening. In 1947, 80 percent of daily newspapers were independent; in 1989 that number had shrunk to 20 percent. In 1981, the 11,000 or so magazines were owned by 20 companies, but as of 1988 that number had fallen to three. Books are the same, being controlled by seven major firms. This is not to say that no other sources of information exist, just that the concentration shows no sign of slowing down. Which should strike you as disconcerting.

Likewise, music is controlled by 5 large groups, representing 84 percent of the US market. (yes, the RIAA) Radio has 60 percent of its content controlled by 3 broadcast groups. And again in movies: In 1985, the 12 largest theater owners had 25 percent of the screens, as of 1998, that figure was about 61 percent and rapidly increasing. The 6 top firms by this point accounted for 90 percent of overall theater revenue. Not surprisingly, 132 out of the 148 "widely distributed" movies in 1997 had deals with these 6 vendors. This also explains the drop in foreign films, from 10 percent in the mid 1970s to 0.5 percent in the 90s.

Again, in broadcasting, 6 firms control 80 percent of the nations TV and cable, and 75 percent of its content. To summarize, Professor Ben Bagdikian wrote, "despite more than 25,000 outles in the US, 23 corporations control most of the business in newspapers, magazines, books and movies." The top six, FYI, make more revenue than the next 20 combined.

One hardly needs evidence to notice that such heavy concentration of power, (in this case, information) results inherently in bias. Witness the pro-american rhetoric seething from current media and the "anti-terrorist" news reports that for all we know may be made up.

The most saddening thing is that the Internet was specifically designed to prevent concentration of information. It was built to promote the free-flow of any idea or voice. But its being swept away in a tidal wave of corporate lobbying and associated legislation, as well as patriotic/moralist/ideological campaigns to stomp out "opposing" viewpoints. Criticize china all you want for their "information suppresion". We are no better, we just don't see it. Apathy and hypocrisy go hand in hand....

-----------rhad

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[rhadamanthus]

To quote Lawrence Lessig, "If the media companies are owned by a handful of companies, each basically holding the very same ideals, how much diversity can we expect in the production of media content? How critical can we believe these media will be? How committed to testing the status quo is this form of organization--itself so dependent on the status quo--likely to be?"

Or if you don't think this happens, even Newt Gingrich appealed to it in a 1997 address to the Georgia Chamber of Commerce, when he said that business leaders and advertisers "ought to take more direct command of the newsroom."

Scary.

-----rhad

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[darekana]

But information wants to be free, right?

It invents new avenues accross which to travel, from printing press to mail to wire to laser to satellite...

Now it has the internet to travel accross...
It has google...
It has databases...
It has caching and mirroring...
It has terrabyte storage...
It has offsite backups...
It knows where you live...

It has new CCD eyes everywhere...
It can never be stopped...
It will rise up and dominate us with an army of machines? Uhm nevermind...

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[WolfWithoutAClause]

In the West, about 90% of all internet activity goes through 9 portals which are controlled by a tiny cadre of huge media conglomerates, each run nearly as the singular expression of one person's ego.

Let's see:

• Slashdot
• BBC
• CNN
• The Register

Who else do you need?

;-)

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[gelfling]

Go MEMRI

One of the most important sites - see also debkafile

http://www.debka.com/

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[awol]

Because for 0.x% of my monthly salary I can set up "whatUlikey.com" and present any "legal" material I like. And as far as editorial content goes, _even_ more unrestricted, (although perhaps only as long as one is small enough or "in the US" to some extent :-).

Now if/when corporate control means that I can, truly, no longer do this then we do have a problem, but this is _NOT_ the same as corporate control of content. The legislation that gets passed that fetters my rights in this area is the cause for concern, that one has some institutional (be it the US consitution or common law or whatever) protection in the "liberal west" makes it very different from a) China and b) the corporate dystopia that the poster is suggesting already exists.

Re:How is this different from corporate control?

[rhadamanthus]

I would argue that the CBDPTA and the DMCA are unfortunate signs of old companies appealing to congress to stifle the decentralized aspect of the web. Case in point, the digital watermarking techniques desired by the MPAA and RIAA would associate a digital signature with playability for music, movies, etc. This in effect crushes the independent artist/film director. Why? Well, the ability to watermark would be a closely guarded secret as it "legalizes" a DRM-designed player to play the associated file. I think it would be way too optimistic to assume that the RIAA or MPAA would allow this "watermark" to be distributed to independent folks not under their wing, and therefore unassociated with their profit margins.

An example of ideological repression would be the PATRIOT act. The definitions implied are too broad. Non-mainstream ideals could be argued illegal strictly based on a politically motivated desire to appear to fight "terrorism". In the same vein, the numerous bills that attacked online pornography represent a dangerous trend in censorship. While not necessarily in the same line of thought as media outlets, it does highlight a thought process all too common. More information on censorship can be found here: http://www.eff.org/Censorship/. Another great resource is Lawrence Lessig's book, "The Future of Ideas", his whole book basically revolves around the current trend to consolidate the Internet much like physical news and media.

sorry, I cannot address this better right now, work is piling up.

-----rhad

Welcome to life 2.0

[peterdaly]

It will be interesting in the coming years to see how China evolves from their current state. The article talks about a man who was put in jail for a few years (a concrete cell as they describe it) for having a web site with a forum where people were talking about democracy and such. It is really very said, coming from a country which strongly supports people's rights to criticize, to see a person be put away for having a venue for free speech in the real true meaning of the term.

The section about the mine collapse was interesting as well. For those who didn't read the article, there was a mine collapse killing 81 people the "the government" did not want publicized, to the point of threatening journalists. It was released on a web site, and before long, mainstream journalists started picking the story up as well. This is really a revolutionary thing in a country where the press has historically been 100% controlled.

The public being informed is a major step in a country progressing into a "modern free government." Imagine the economic powerhouse they county may be able to transform itself into if more power and rights are given to the people.

-Pete

Ironically...

[cswiii]

...this BBC article was posted one day after the thirteenth anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[brejc8]

Right let me see if you have heard any of these stories is so then the US media is fair:

Israeli christian solders massacring over 5000 people in Lebanon for a bit of a laugh.

IRA being not very nice people after all.

West owed factory in India has a huge chemical spill and kills or blinds 10,000 people. Eventually the owners find out a week later and send some one to stop the spill.

Latest Israeli massacres.

The government has been spending millions on convincing people of anything from Panama being a evil communist state which wants to be invaded to current Islam
teaches people to kill everyone else.

A Theory of Progression in Government

[gartogg]

A history teacher I once took some courses from in High School (Military History and US History) subscribed to an interesting theory; The fall of Russian Communism resulted from McDonalds.

The fact that there were McDonalds restaurants in Russia fed the public there the image of how Americans live, and with that as a model, it became increasingly obvious that Communism was failing to fulfill it's mission of Utopia. In 1984, Orwell realized that as long as the government asserted that everything was improving, people would not be too inquisitiveabout the subject. In Russia, this became impossible, and the people lost faith in their government.

In China, it seems as though a similar evolution is occuring; The alter-ego of Soviet Commuism, Chinese Communism, is being exposed to it's antithesis. Russian Communism focused, as I understand, mainly on supression and communitization of materialism, but was then faced with the holy grail of materialism, McDonalds. Chinese Communism, now that they have seen how materialism works, focuses on supression of intellectualism among their masses, and is now faced with intellectualism's holy grail, the internet, which allows the masses to see the intellectual side of Democracy.

Obviously, the Orwellian Prophecy has come partially true in this part of the world.

"Inside an imposing building in Beijing is the Ministry of Information Industry, where a hi-tech police force keeps watch over the internet 24 hours a day. Its job is to keep ordinary Chinese people from accessing unhealthy information. That could be anything from Playboy to the BBC." -BBC News, China Loses Grip on Internet.

"The Misistry of Truth -- Minitrue, in Newspeak -- was startlingly different form any other building in sight. It was an enormous Pyramidal structure of glittering white concrete, soaring up, terrace after terrace, three hundred meters into the air... [it] concerned itself with news, entertainment, education, and the fine arts, [anything from Playboy to the BBC]" -1984, by George Orwell.

The only difference between Oceania and China is an external one, and it is essential. China has no external enemy to pour material into to prevent it's citizen's rising standard of living. Instead, it has Europe, the United States, and many other regions of the world that have accepted democracy and capitalism.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[pubjames]

A history teacher I once took some courses from in High School (Military History and US History) subscribed to an interesting theory; The fall of Russian Communism resulted from McDonalds.

If this theory is meant to be taken literally, then it is an insult to the Russian people. They aren't that stupid, nor ignorant, at least those that I know in Moscow and StPetersburg. Even many years before the fall of Russian Communism many Russians were well aware about the world outside Russia and the failings of their political system. To say that Russian Communism fell because of McDonalds is such as gross simplification of what happened that it is meaningless.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[hype7]

A history teacher I once took some courses from in High School (Military History and US History) subscribed to an interesting theory; The fall of Russian Communism resulted from McDonalds.

The fact that there were McDonalds restaurants in Russia fed the public there the image of how Americans live, and with that as a model, it became increasingly obvious that Communism was failing to fulfill it's mission of Utopia. In 1984, Orwell realized that as long as the government asserted that everything was improving, people would not be too inquisitiveabout the subject. In Russia, this became impossible, and the people lost faith in their government.

In China, it seems as though a similar evolution is occuring; The alter-ego of Soviet Commuism, Chinese Communism, is being exposed to it's antithesis. Russian Communism focused, as I understand, mainly on supression and communitization of materialism, but was then faced with the holy grail of materialism, McDonalds. Chinese Communism, now that they have seen how materialism works, focuses on supression of intellectualism among their masses, and is now faced with intellectualism's holy grail, the internet, which allows the masses to see the intellectual side of Democracy.

The theory you refer to is otherwise known as The Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention . And before you mod me +1 funny, I'm being serious - it was first espoused by Thomas Friedman in his book, The Lexus and the Olive Tree. It's an excellent read, a great perspective on globalisation and its differing effects on various parts of the world.

-- james

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[Gulthek]

In China, it seems as though a similar evolution is occuring; The alter-ego of Soviet Commuism, Chinese Communism, is being exposed to it's antithesis. Russian Communism focused, as I understand, mainly on supression and communitization of materialism, but was then faced with the holy grail of materialism, McDonalds.

First off you can't suppress something and spread it throughout the community at the same time.

Second, Chinese Communism split from what was Soviet Communism back in the 1950s as China pissed off the USSR by declaring that they were going to Do It Their Way.
Nowadays calling the Chinese government Communist is a joke. A joke perpetuated primarily for the benefit of the old party members who still wield control. They have even whipped up an excuse that allows self-proclaimed capitalists to join the Chinese Communist Party! The best explanation of China's current policy is this:

The CCP leaders are riding in a taxicab, ahead is a fork in the road with one path leading to Communism and one to Capitalism. The driver asks: Which way should I go? After a brief discussion, the leaders tell the driver to signal a turn to Communism, but to actually turn towards Capitalism.

The CCP wants to keep control over information, but the party isn't stupid. There is just an ongoing high level conflict on government policy, the Internet is just one of the controls being exploited by each side.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[Zeinfeld]

Obviously, the Orwellian Prophecy has come partially true in this part of the world.

It wasn't a prophecy and the comparison to the West, in particular the relationship of the UK and the US was quite deliberate.

Orwell's objective was to make people realise that the USSR was a totalitarian regime and Stalin a tyrant. This was not something that many people wanted to hear in 1948 just after the Russians had done most of the fighting to stop Hitler. The Nazi-Soviet pact had been largely forgotten by this time.

1984 is full of ironic and sarcastic references to the BBC where Orwell (Eric Blair) worked during the war, manipulating truth in exactly the same way that Smith does. Two majot themes in the book are the erasure of history (suppression of the Nazi-Soviet pact) and the shifting aliances between the 3 great powers.

Incidentally Orwell was not anti-socialist, he was anti-communist. He was a member of the Labour party and wrote the 1945 Labour manifesto.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[gartogg]

The question isn't which way they are currently headed, but where they were originally headed. Obviously they are no longer communist, I don't see what your point here is at all. My point is, as I referred to in my post, the Orwellian vision that communist leaders were headed towards was foiled by a changing world, one in which global politics forced a modicum of internationalization on China, destroying the insularism that a good totalitarian state needs.

Also, you said "you can't suppress something and spread it throughout the community at the same time" Obviously this was insufficiently clear, but the word Communitization, or a noun based on a badly conjugated verb form of communism (communitize or something like that), obviously does not mean "to spread [something] throughout the community," as you could have inferred from context.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[brinticus]

I'll grant some complaints here that the "presence of McDonalds" = "fall of Russia" is overly simplistic, but this quip does seem to point towards a wider issue: awareness of pleasurable technology -- whether food technology, as in McDonalds; or, information technology, as in the 'Net -- has tempted people to change their lifestyle ever since primitives noted how efficiently the next tribe achieved their goals when they stuck sharp stones on the end of sticks.

Human beings naturally aquire and use technology, and part of this is a cultural issue, not just one of prudence. Maximizing survival and quality of life is of supreme importance, but it's exciting to try new things too. Making them forbidden, is EVEN MORE SO!

brinticus

---------

"People are always SLIGHTLY stupider than you think they are" - Montgomery's axiom #1

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[elflord]

If this theory is meant to be taken literally, then it is an insult to the Russian people. They aren't that stupid, nor ignorant, at least those that I know in Moscow and StPetersburg. Even many years before the fall of Russian Communism many Russians were well aware about the world outside Russia and the failings of their political system.

It seems fairly clear to me that this is more of a catchy slogan than something that is intended to be taken literally. It encapsulates an important concept though -- it's not enough for "many" Russians to be aware of the failings of the system to bring about change -- the average guy on the street has to see it, and preferably experience it first hand-- it's not really enough to read about it, because even if you're "aware", you will probably not get angry or otherwise excited about something that seems so distant. You feel it so much more if it's rubbed in your face. McDonalds symbolises a first-hand exposure to Western culture, and the relative failings of their own system, as experienced by the common man (as opposed to pontifications on the failings of the system by an academic elite)

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[PD]

Actually, I'd claim that the theory is really an insult to American kids, not Russians. High school history isn't designed to teach students anything, it's meant to give them a couple facts to learn, and to shovel the dogma of how the US is the greatest country in the Universe in all ways. If teachers tell their young students that one of the world's superpowers could defeat the other simply by sending over a few burger flippers, then that accomplishes the goal. Teaching that kind of crap to kids insults their intelligence and hinders their thinking process.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[pubjames]

Teaching that kind of crap to kids insults their intelligence and hinders their thinking process.

Absolutely. It dismays me that in the USA people these days it seems that people cannot formulate an intelligent response to complex situations where there are multiple variables. Everything gets reduced to good and bad, goodies and baddies, black and white, left and right. Everything is dumbed down, even politics and history. That's why so many people on Slashdot were shocked to read stuff like the letter that Peruvian congress man wrote. Shocked by intelligent, eloquent, unbiased reasoning, because it's so uncommon these days.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[frankie_guasch]

A history teacher I once took some courses from in High School (Military History and US History) subscribed to an interesting theory; The fall of Russian Communism resulted from McDonalds.

This is naive. Russia fell because of cultural leaks. One example are movies showing the way of live in western countries.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[pamri]

Isn't it ironic, that china, a communist state(??), trusts it people to make economic decisions on their own, by way of adopting free-market policies, but does not trusts it people to make political decisions like electing a govt in a democratic manner?

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[awol]

There was a set of rules given in a novel, Dune I believe, by which people can be opressed. Amongst their number, and paraphrasing, are "Never let the oppressed realise there is an alternative to their opression", "Never let them create their own leaders". I would argue that there is some truth in these rules and that the Soviet Union collapsed when both of the above "rules" were broken. McDonald's helped, but was not sufficient.

I know a lot of Russian (and I mean Russian) ex Soviet citizens and the level of contempt they have for Gorbachev is remarkable, despite any failings I hope the courage (and vision) of that man is judged fairly by history. As someone who grew up in the west (Oz) as a teenager in the 1980's, the "inevitable" collapse of the Soviet Union was not particularly evident to me, and to some extent the speed of the collapse was extraordinary.

What has this to do with China, well they have the two edged sword of 1.2 billion people. The social surplus that a middle class of even 10% of the population could generate is mind boggling. But even that would leave a subsistence class of over a billion people. I think that whilst it may be true that the genie is out of the box to some extent wrt the internet, there is an additional inertia that will impede China's progress to a "liberal" (take that to mean what you will) society.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[Jon Howard]

The profundity of your sentiment sends my mind reeling.

I could write a book on this, but instead I'll limit my response to a few lines. The issue was not "black and white", because people are more complex than simple binary. The issue was made black and white because there was little free communication between the US and the USSR, so the citizenry were ignorant of the complex variables which were affecting the situation. The Internet has potential to provide free (as in speech) communication to everyone, allowing people to communicate the complexities which could help lead to compromise rather than war in situations where it would previously been virtually inavoidable.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[jazman_777]

That's why so many people on Slashdot were shocked to read stuff like the letter that Peruvian congress man wrote. Shocked by intelligent, eloquent, unbiased reasoning, because it's so uncommon these days.

How could we be shocked here by that? Slashdot is synonymous with well-researched, well-reasoned, civil debate, with people open to growth and enlightenment and a better understanding of the truth about things.

Except for all the bedwetting leftists!

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[ckedge]

I took a course in Russian (the language) at a mid-sized Canadian University in 1989. The professor described a visit by a bunch of Soviet academics a few years before (accompanied by political handlers of course). As he drove them around the city to show them the sights, the river, etc etc, they absolutely refused to believe that their visit and the car ride wasn't all being staged. They just couldn't believe that *every* single Canadian citizen had their own car.

As they drove along paved four lane street in the city core, full of rush-hour cars, in some little out-of-the-way Canadian city (200,000 people, Canadian Prairies), they were absolutely *CERTAIN* that the Canadian Government had gotten together a few hundred cars and were having them all circle around the block to put on a show for them. He had to repeatedly assure them that no, this was just like any other day in any modern Western city.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[3Bees]

A history teacher I once took some courses from in High School (Military History and US History) subscribed to an interesting theory; The fall of Russian Communism resulted from McDonalds.

I pity anyone who had to suffer through this kind of crap presented as history. This is nothing more than history distorted in order to form a cute phrase to repeat at coctail parties. It reduces 75+ years of history for 11 time-zones of people into a single image designed for the consumption of an ignorant populace (US). The cute saying and distorted half-ass analysis that is behind it totally ignores the many years of growing corruption that preceded the fall of Russian Communism, as well as misrepresenting or ignoring the history of the Russian revolution and the people behind it (do a bit of research into the number of peoples who were involved in the Soviet Union, examine the numbers of totally distinct ethnologies and language groups in this ex-state and you will, maybe, begin to see the shallow-ness of your analysis).

Before I get modded down as off-topic I will connect this with the article under discussion. The Soviet peoples did not embark on an experiment in Utopianism, they were not an informed populace who voted to play with communism. They were peasants, there was a small industrial prolitariat, and a fabulously wealthy aristocracy. This same generalization can be made about the Chinese (overwhelmingly peasant, small pockets of industrialization, wealthy aristocracy), as can a generalization about the growth of an educated middle-class that arose post-revolution.

As another poster comments, there is far more influence on the course of Chinese history from inside of China than from outside; as was also true with the USSR (look at a map and an almanac to guage the relative sizes and populations of the US in comparason to either of them).

I will hasten to add the your critique of the efforts to distort reality in favor of the ruling powers of China is a valid one, but don't limit yourself there. Keep thinking and apply that same critisicm to your own situation. We have far more influnce on our own history than either China or the Soviets, as our literature and our cultural view plainly show.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[DepoeEng]

In the 70's I read a book, in English, by two Soviet economists demonstrating why a rigidly planned economy couldn't work - The leadership got the message; Gorbachev lived it. Hence his reforms. Point is, the change came from inside, from their knowledge of failure. That the reforms went further than the last Soviet establishment intended was an accident of history, perhaps unavoidable.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[gartogg]

It's not niave, it's tounge-in-cheek, and your response shows that McDonalds is a subset of the full reason, proving my point.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[gartogg]

I'm truly sorry that people don't understand this as a sarcastic quip that hints at the actual causes of collapse. When it was presented, it was presented as a 2-week lesson in a survey of modern history (as it effected the United States. It was culturally biased, but I already adknowledged that by referencing the title of the course.) I beleive that the history teacher you are belittling is mora a result of your personal expierence than any data given, since you obviously would rather push an agenda (that amercan schools are bad) than discuss the relevance and underlying truth to the quip that was obviously not all the teacher presented on the subject.

In fact, despite the insulting and personal way you phrased your response, I agree with your unstated overall assessment of the american educational system. However, coming from a school that is private, well run, and places a majority of it's students in the top 25 colleges in the states, I feel that your assessment is unfair, based on incomplete information, and ignores the context and overall message that I attempted to impart.

Obviously the fall of soviet russia did not stem from one simplistic cause (culture comparison and envy) and especially not from one restaurant that is a symptom of this cause. The point you seem to miss, however, is that my analysis was not intended to show the causes of the fall of Soviet russia, but rather to apply a small facet of what is already adknowledged as the cause to the situation in china. (I should also point out that the causese you mentioned also apply, included fragmented national identity, corruption, and also many other factors others in this thread pointed out.)

Thank you for your reply, and I will thank you further if your future comments are slightly less dogmatically stated and significantly less personally insulting, less insulting to a teacher I respect, and less insulting the school I attend.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[Gulthek]

Ahh, I see now that I did indeed misinterpret your original post, and I did instead mis-understand communitization as to apply some concept throughout the community (e.g. communes in the 1950s and 60s and all of the conflicting policies that were handed down during that era).

But I'm afraid I must still disagree.

The Communist leaders weren't foiled by a changing world but by their own (hrm, rather Mao's) impatience. Starting with the Great Leap Forward, Mao pushed for a rapidness of revolution that simply could not be sustained by a large population, certainly not one the size of China's at the time, although they tried. This set a precedent for the rest of Mao's rule (influence would be a better word perhaps). That's why he was effectively ousted from the party in the early 1960s, so the CCP could proceed with their totalitarian vision that Mao's concept of constant struggle was interfering with.

I do not doubt that your conclusion would be correct if Mao had remained a "dead ancestor" in Shanghai in the early 1960s as the other party members hoped. Instead he used his cultural influence to create the red guards, and used his ties with the army to re-instate himself into power. Of course this led to the Cultural Revolution.

After the Cultural Revolution the people had simply become anti-political, they were tired of being micromanaged by the CCP. They no longer cared about some future perfection, they wanted stability -- and were willing to sacrifice political ideals to get it.

When Deng Xiaoping broke Hua Guofeng's holding pattern, he really had little choice but to introduce capitalism and give some controls back to the populace to revive China's production and economy.

During all of this there was little in the way of foreign, or "bad", influences affecting the people of China. Actually it was in one case the other way around, the Black Panthers smuggled thousands of copies of Mao's Little Red Book into the United States during the early 1970s. When people were punished for "going capitalist" during the Cultural Revolution, it was really for reverting to the ways of the past -- a very serious crime when your government is based on iconoclasm.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[ChristopherMarlowe]

The fall of Russian Communism resulted from McDonalds.
It's a good thing they didn't wait an hour after eating, they would of invaded.

Re:A Theory of Progression in Government

[gartogg]

The fact that there was that "there was little in the way of foreign, or 'bad', influences" is simply not indicative of the importance of ANY outside influence. If no one knew that capitalism existed and that most of the 1st class countries in the world were happy with it, then there would have been no need to implement capitalist measures at all.

A writer (i think it was asimov) talked about how the way decrepit civilizations crumble is by barbarians invading from the outside (and in a galactic civilization there are no barbarian outsiders.) In this case, thoughm the outside pressure is my the more sophisticated form of government. Basically, with no outside influences, and stable, or only mildly unstable form of government will not collapse. Rome might still be the capital of the civilized word if there were no goths and vandals.

internet free china

[alexc]

Is it me or does it seem that the internet is Essentailly a new version of the Old Radio Free Europe/ VOA RAdio network?

Maybe it is,

[Icepick_]

But then again, so it you 'I' key.

Sliipping...

[Kerg]

Yes, the Chinese administrators are sliipping on the Internet watch.

They maybe able to speell though.

Re:No, sorry

[Jucius Maximus]

"Hate to break it to you, but there are actually two "i" in "slipping"."

It is possible that that was a deliberate sliip intended as a pun :-)

Triangle Boy

[maxconfus]

Triangle Boy is one of the methods Chinese surfers are using to get around the 'Great Fire Wall' of China.
http://www.safeweb.com/tboy_whitepaper.html
Here is the gist of the free program.
Anybody who downloads triangle boy gives the ability to secretly lend his or her Internet address to users behind restricted firewalls. That, in turn, hands such users the electronic keys they need to receive unfettered access to the Web.

Re:Triangle Boy

[ISPTech]

Sorry. Copy and paste bugs me so I'll save you all the trouble (even though the link didn't load for me).

Link to triangle boy.

G

Re:Triangle Boy

[blair1q]

Triangle Boy was originally part of the old Safeweb secure-http proxy service.

That incarnation of Safeweb appears to be dead, replaced by a spook-box maker.

When Safeweb was starting to have problems--overload and outages--I offered them a dollar for their business model. I guess I should have known their real business model was intelligence collection.

--Blair

Re:hopefully

[gylle]

Tons of unrestricted information should give the Chinese a chance to bypass the biased/false national news and make up their own minds. and that is probably a good thing.

Yes probably a good thing, as it cannot be bad. But, how successfully have the US citizens succeeded in bypassing their biased national news? And the percentage of Chinese with Internet access will remain tiny in comparison with the US. However, I am confident that all individuals are able to make up their own minds --- with or without unfiltered Internet access.

But will this change China?

[cp99]

I'm a bit skeptical as to whether or not this will change China that much. I travelled through Vietnam a couple of years ago, and the internet was pretty much uncontrolled then (this may have since changed), if locals want to find out about the rest of the world they can.

While I wish it wasn't true, I starting to feel that as long as you give people a chance to improve their lot (which does happen in China) freedom doesn't seem that important.

Plus, if it does ever take off, the government can always launch propaganda floods about the evils of the West (just find a few crime storys), or that fails, there is always the army.

Personally, I feel that freedom will come to China only after a very long time. Reformers will have to penetrate the system (as per the Soviet Union) and reach it's upper levels before change will happen.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[JeanBaptiste]

yeah? what about the USS Cole? or yeah what was that... world trade centers? pentagon? are these all media hype also? I dont think most muslims hate us and I know the media does not portray it that way. I DO think most muslim led COUNTRIES hate us and that is why they fund suicide bombings and such. I couldn't agree more that the american media sucks, but you cant say that it is goverment controlled

just perspective

[tid242]

it's interesting to note that this story is entirely from the perspective of a capitalist & democratic society (oft accused (rightly so) of being run by 'elitest technocrats') on its own moral high-ground of assuming an 'information free' culture already exists in its native province (UK). however, with the case of America, perhaps the most blatantly in-your-face with claims of informational freedom, recent studies have shown that a vast majority of internet traffic is centered upon only a few news carriers (yahoo! MSN AOL), and it is well known that the vast majority of our other physical media is controlled solely by but a few companies (TW/AOL, Disney et al). is _this_ freedom? while individuals everywhere will always have oppertunity to express disfavor with whatever it is they feel like, the internet only provides an expanded environment in which to do so, nothing more. a group of individuals discussing politics in a chat-room are no less subordinate to a hostile government in the end, than are the same individuals sitting in a dining room discussion over supper. the globalisation of information is an inevidable progression the information age must allow, yet this in no way assures the integrity of said information, nor its effect on greater society. i live in a proclaimedly expression-embracing country (USA)but my sources of information are undoubtably shaped by the dearth of non-partial reporting in my media-monopoly. more importantly in either society we still engage in 'majority rule' whether the majority is in a republic or communism the sources of information available to *most* people will still dictate the whims of the country. While i _do_ think that it's absolutely wonderful that the Chinese people are recieving more online liberty it should be remembered that until an enormous percentage of people are online & engaging in news-gathering & discussion government-run news agencies will still have a firm control over public belief (56M out of 1.xxB is not a very large percentage).

sorry this got long (and scatterbrained)

-tid242

Re:just perspective

[PigleT]

"it's interesting to note that this story is entirely from the perspective of a capitalist but that still needs demonstrating from first principles on a frequent basis.)

"on its own moral high-ground of assuming an 'information free' culture already exists in its native province (UK)."

Erm, not entirely sure what you mean by "information-free". Presumably not that there's no info in the UK, although that wouldn't surprise me?

Re:just perspective

[t_allardyce]

How is the UK an information free zone? The story you read came from a UK website.

Its better to be run be elitist technocrats than dictator wannabes who are the lap-dogs of multi-billion dollar corporations.

Re:just perspective

[dwm]

The fact that you were able to post this where hundreds of thousands of people could see it, and have zero chance of being arrested (or even frowned at, most likely) very nicely demolishes your argument.

Is corporatization of the internet a problem? Yes. Is it in any way comparable to the situation in repressive countries like China? No.

Just some perspective.

Re:just perspective

[Stiletto]

Not so.

Wait until the Office of Homeland Security's new FBI and CIA read his post and start a file on him. If he keeps posting about how bad corporate control is (and other things that only terrorists would write) he's liable to find himself locked away somewhere for good.

Welcome to the New Western World.

Re:just perspective

[nordaim]

Just a comment on your sig, being from Lancaster County PA (one of the many homes to the Amish): I have met several Amish computer programmers/professionals. Depending on the rules of the diocese in which they live, they can use electricity for their business, or dc to ac power converters. One fellow had a complete PC repair shop in his barn and spent his spare time as an outsource for C/C++ programming.

ha

[mary_will_grow]

"At 0300 the printing presses at The People's Daily are in full flow. The newspaper is the mouthpiece of the Communist Party. Its stock in trade is industrial output figures and the latest Communist Party dogma.

It is not a good read. "

Sounds a lot like The New York Times. Or NBC. Or CNN. Or ABC. Or CBS. Actually you could just flip the words "Communism" and "Democracy" throughout the whole article, and you have a story about the US!

hehe

Re:ha

[proj_2501]

This is a poor analogy.

Despite the grand amount of clout mainstream media has, there ARE competitors. In fact, you just mentioned a whole bunch in your post? Does that not strike you as a little odd?

Re:ha

[egomaniac]

Actually you could just flip the words "Communism" and "Democracy" throughout the whole article, and you have a story about the US!

Yes, because we frequently arrest people for having anti-government opinions. Happens all the time.

Dumbass.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[brejc8]

I'm Polish and I've lived under communism most of my life. My girlfriend is Chinese I also work with several Chinese who are here in the UK for a few years studying
before going back.

I absolutely agree but the fact that the government stops the people from seeing the bad news makes people want it more. In the US no one wants to know what evil acts
are done on their behalf.

The worst thing of all is some other people in this thread who without thinking will state that the media always tells the trough. There is no point even trying to tell them
otherwise because its all loony talk to them. Lizard men and all that.

Is China's control of the Internet sliipping?

[hype7]

Maybe, but somebody's control of the english language definitely is.

-- james

What a dissapointment...

[ComaVN]

when the chinese finally get uncensored internet, and all they find is hamsterdance, goatse and trolls.

What China Doesn't Want Its People To Know...

[dbretton]

somewhere in China...

Mei Ling: Hey Wang, come here!

Wang: What is it?

Mei Ling: This web page says that our General Gao's chicken is made with MSG!

Wang: Those commie bastards!!

Attn: All Chinese Netizens:

[dbretton]

Here is a quick overview of the "internet" which your government has not allowed you to see:

There are tons of nude celebrity pictures. They're all fake.

Liquid herbal viagra is everywhere, and you don't need a perscription!

There's this HUGE collection of MP3's that you can get for free...OOPS, too late.

The Germans like to play with poop.

There's a web page devoted to some guy's abnormally large asshole.

Tommy Lee is hung like a horse.

Re:China controls the internet?

[Seehund]

Now maybe we can return the internet mantle to its rightful owner:

The Swiss.

"The Swiss"? Is that Al Gore's Slashdot username?

Re:P2P news clients?

[mccalli]

Decentralized news content strikes me as an ideal way to circumvent government restrictions on the media... but is this implemented anywhere?

Err....yes. It's called Usenet, is implemented using NNTP, and has been going for long before the web has existed.

Cheers,
Ian

J-Curve Revolutionary theory

[BenHmm]

Read some of Hannah Arendt. She is one proponent of the, now classic, J-Curve Theory of Rising and Declining Satisfaction.

The idea, basically, is that all is well until the public's expectation for change becomes greater than the rate of change allowed by the government. When that happens, you get a revolution.

This is why Reform is so dangerous to totalitarian regimes - it's not the reform itself, but the rate of reform that does the 'damage'. Gorbachev wanted to reform the USSR's Communist Party - but he went too slowly, the people's expectations got too high, and the Berlin Wall fell.

The same is happening in China, and not just in the Internet-space. Economic reform almost caused a revolution - which manifested inself in the Tiananmen Square protests - because it was percievd as going too slowly, and NOT because the Chinese wanted the supposed end result of a Western-Style liberal democracy.

It's actually the process of change that people want, and not the end result. (which is good, as it means we have things like, you know, Progress).

Re:J-Curve Revolutionary theory

[Bearpaw]

It's actually the process of change that people want, and not the end result. (which is good, as it means we have things like, you know, Progress).

I'm not so sure that's good. People seem to (mostly) take it as a given that change = progress and progress is good, and they mostly don't think enough about the directions "progress" takes us.

Mine Disaster

[Dragoness Eclectic]

Pay close attention: it wasn't "the government" that didn't want it publicized, it was the local provinicial government that didn't want it publicized--to reporters from the official Party newspaper! Notice they stopped interfering when the news finally made it to Beijing. Reading between the lines, what happened here was the provincial governor/commissioner/party hacks didn't want the central government learning about their screw-ups and sending them to a "re-education" camp for a few years.

Interesting /. trend

[Arsewiper]

It's not the article that's interesting so much as the interest and reaction from /.ers. The reaction seems to be be a natural concern for the freedom of Chinese people instead of kneejerk racism. A good sign of changing opinion. We're seeing people as individuals instead of judging them by the actions of their governments.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[Hellkitten]

fund suicide bombings

How much funding would a suicide bomber need? I think they could get what they need without any help if they tried. The real problem is that the israeli way of treating paestinians creates a lot of desperate people. Desperate people with nothing to lose and a grudge against the country that opresses them (and the big country that funds their opressors), seems dangerous enough to me. Of course those leaders that claims islam means the will go to heaven for blowing them selves up is only making matters worse, bot the root problem is that people are beeing treated like shit in the first place

Mod me down if don't like what I say, or maybe ask the chinese how to stop my outside influuence from giving you 'bad ideas'

even though

[f00zbll]

the internet is populated with more junk than useful stuff, it's good to see china creaping towards democracy that is closer to the "ideal democracy". No country has the "ideal" democracy, but the current government is far from free. Especially when people are being put in jail for stating the obvious that everyone is thinking.

oops!

[apoupc]

"Is China's Control of the internet Sliipping?" oops! looks like your finger should have slipped off the "I" key a little sooner

Re:Intresting thought control method

[JeanBaptiste]

one could argue the plight of the palistinians is the fault of arafat as well as the surrounding arab nations as much as anything israel has done.

The moral is...

[Gorbie]

"The more you tighten your grip, the more star systems will slip through your fingers."

- Princess Leah, a long time ago and far, far away...

There is always someone smarter than you...unless you are Jason Isaacs in Armageddon and get to be "pretty much the smartest man on the planet". Trying to lock down a civilization will only ever work for a short period.

Whatever causes us to complain about laws and/or rules in th U.S., we do have it pretty great in comparison.

Re:The moral is...

[junkgrep]

I dunno: I haven't seen any posts here, or anywhere, from people in China and Cuba. Granted, there's the language barrier, but you'd hope that there were at least some english speaking in-China Linux geeks surfing, or with translators, that would have something to say on such a germaine subject. Can we confirm that people in China can even READ this part of slashdot?

US Companies helping the Chinese Gov't

[guanxi]

Remember this story?

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/02/19/ 01 22238&mode=thread&tid=153

Posted by timothy on Monday February 18, @11:02PM
from the can-you-read-this-in-beijing dept.

chowbok writes: "The Weekly Standard writes that despite expectations, the Chinese Government has been very successful in suppressing free internet access for their citizens. Key to this success was the assistance of Cisco, who built a giant firewall tailored to the state's needs, Yahoo (who helpfully censors search results and monitors online chats), and other Western companies."

Re:Intresting thought control method

[brsmith4]

A lot actually. You need to convince the d00d to kill him/her self. Whats the easiest way to do it: give the guy thousands of dollars so that he can set his family up for life. Just a thought.

Re:P2P news clients?

[dajt]

Err, it's currently implemented using NNTP. It used to be implemented with UUCP and analog modems. Remember the Telebit Trailblazer?

Is Slashdot's control of its spellchecker.....

[hellfire]

sliiiiiiiiiiiiipping????

Re:Intresting thought control method

[Hellkitten]

UN official 1: Well the nazis treated the jews pretty bad
UN official 2: Yes we should do something to make it up to them
UN official 1: How bout we give them that piece of land over there?
UN official 2: Won't the people that live there object
UN official 1: Probably not but just in case we'll ask USA to give the new country a lot of guns
UN official 2: Yeah, then there shouldn't be any problems there at all
UN official 1: But maybe we should give the people that live there something to stop them from complaining
UN official 2: Nah, after all the jewish people would have learnt from the nazis how they shouldn't act. So they will probably treat the others nice

I blame the united nations

Re:Intresting thought control method

[JeanBaptiste]

I blame the UN for a lot, but not this one... also, look it up, jews were there before WWII (and therefore they were there before the UN ever was) I do think that 'I blame the united nations' makes a nice sig though

I would like a internet-free china, like

[Neck_of_the_Woods]

Radio-Free Europe. I think the USA should set up very high end wi-fi along the borders and broadcast DHCP into china. Smuggle in cards, and repeaters...it would be fun for the whole family!

America would be loved...err. hated because of porn, er loved because of porn..err..shit what was my point!

Re:I would like a internet-free china, like

[Dolly_Llama]

this might be nitpicking, but i think the hyphen would be more appropriate in the other position as in Radio Free-Europe (radio from the free portion of Europe) rather than Internet-Free China (being free of the internet is something the powers that be in China would love).

Re:Intresting thought control method

[hs81]

Correct. The US media is tends to take a short term outlook on most incidents when what is desperatly needed is a longer term perspective. eg. its fine reporting 9/11 etc but not good at presenting the reasons why people have such hatred of the US/The West.
In any case the US media is not owned by the government however they are 'influenced' by the advertising companies.

What the Chinese actually do

[Anonymous Coward]

You guys seem to be under the impression that the Chinese block news.bbc.co.uk and CNN.com.
They dont exactly do that. They block them occassionally - sometimes for months at a time.

Now I cant get to the BBC. Last week I could. Now I can get to CNN. (I am in China).

I think they do this to make the BBC and CNN a difficult to get to news source - while the peoples daily is always online...

Also most of the people here dont give a damn about democracy - go into one of the many internet bars round here - everyone is playing Counter Strike or using ICQ in Chinese...

I am in China (Shandong) and am posting as an AC as I forgot my username and password... Also it might be a bit unwise to post my name - tho I would if I hadnt forgot my username and password.

"The police are here...

[Anonymous Coward]

he wrote. "Thanks to all of those who care about democracy in China. Goodbye."

Of course the exact same thing thing happened to the "resistance" movement's radio station in Guatamala in the 1950s.

Turns out it was all staged.

Oh-- it also turns out that there was no resistance radio station-- it was the CIA flying around broadcasting over head.

Trust no one. You have no friends. The Computer is your friend. You can trust the Big Computer.

Irony of censorship.

[HighTeckRedNeck]

Information just wants to be free. And after it gets into your brain it makes you want to be free. Which is why tyrants always try to suppress it. The result is that after a period of brain drain the tyrant gets what he deserves. For instance the "solid water" article. Just go into any pet store and pick up a bottle of "gut load". It is used by reptile lovers to give crickets water without them drowning themselves. It can also be found in plant stores to mix into potting soil so potted plants don't need to be watered as often. But it's most common application is diapers.

Whenever a politician wants to prevent you from thinking, you know they are afraid you will realize just how little they believe in what they are saying.

It's coming

[Jesus IS the Devil]

I think democracy will slowly creep in to China. With each passing leader will come reform. People are not stupid.

Now the question is, do they want to let it explode and cause chaos or a complete revolution, or do they want to let it ease into the culture slowly.

Of course, if you're in favor of China breaking up into pieces like the USSR, you'll think of ways to cause an explosive revolution. If you care about peace and love, you'll let them ease into it. Push them but don't shove.

Re:It's coming

[dwm]

I think democracy will slowly creep in to China.
With each passing leader will come reform.
People are not stupid.

Well, two out of three ain't bad.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[mdw2]

well yes, I guess it would qualify as fair. Wtf new are you watching if you -haven't- heard any of that. Also, remember, "israeli massacres", are often counterbalanced by palestinian massacres, no one on either side is without blood on their hands.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[brsmith4]

How can you state what people in the US want? You, judging from your article, aren't even a US citizen, nor do you live here. How can you so boldly state what we believe or feel? We want to know what is happening, whether it be good or bad. Believe me, no one in the US believes that the media tells the entire truth.

It's really easy

[Codex The Sloth]

Does anyone think that if china "loses control" of the Internet, they will just shut it down or (rather than filtering what you can't see) have extremely strict control on what you can?

Maybe it's the other way around.

[ahfoo]

Maybe China's censorship of the net has just been blown out of proportion in a big snowjob by western media with an extreme paranoia about socialism.
Rather than the Internet is having a capitalist affect on China, perhaps it's having a socialist affect on the West.
If my country, the US, wasn't so hypocritical about its own human rights abuses I'd tend to take it all more at face value, but it isn't. The US is full of shit in a lot of ways and I say that as a proud American. How do you reconcile a drug war against the citizenry with all this free market let the monopolies do as they please crap? That's pure bullshit and it has to change.
Anyhow, back to the topic, Taiwan, Korea, Hong Kong and several major cities in Mainland China including Shanghai and Beijing are fully liberalizing ethernet net access this year and promising 2Megs up and down for twenty bucks a month with no restrictions. Meanwhile, PacBell will tell you that they have to charge you five grand a month to connect your wirelss net to a DS3 because they have no choice but to use ATM and Sonet. Why is that? Oh, because they have no QOS on ethernet networks and they need QOS for their value added services. And anyway, your download on Kazaa might get interrupted for a half second every other day and that would be a huge tragedy so they need to charge these outrageous prices and can't offer straight ethernet backbone service. Yeah right. Sounds like, we're incumbent because we got the money, fuck you. The American way.
Who's losing control here again?

Re:Intresting thought control method

[JeanBaptiste]

so the parent says the government runs american media and he gets modded up. I say that no the government does not and get modded down. Interesting mindset here at slashdot.

Vin Cerf said it best

[alispguru]

At a talk he gave at Worldcon in 1998. I can't find an online citation, so I hope he'll forgive me if I mangle his words:

Intenet censorship for China is like the old "marching Chinese" idea (if everyone in China marched 10 abreast past a given point, the line would never end because it would take more than one generation for the population to pass that point). Only now the question is, can the Chinese government shoot people faster than they can get on the Internet?

Re:Vin Cerf said it best

[majestyk2000]

Actually, if this is what he said, he wasn't checking his figures very well. Here's the problem:

- There are about 1,273 million people in China, according to www.prb.org.

- If they walk 10 abreast, that's 127.3 million rows.

- If you count five feet between people as a reasonable margin (measuring from center of person to center of person), that means your line would take up 636,500,000 feet approx.

- That's 120,550 miles approx., so if you assume a 5mph marching speed, it would take 24,110 hours to get them past a given spot. That's about 1005 days, or 2 years and maybe nine months.

You can, of course, massage these numbers to make it take longer, but it appears that no matter what your assumption was it would only take about 2.75-4.00 years for them to pass a given spot. This doesn't allow for the fact that the line would wrap around the earth maybe five times. If Cerf implied that it wouldn't end because of this, then he is right. Otherwise, those Chinese folks don't live very long.

Re:Vin Cerf said it best

[adb]

Make it one at a time rather than ten abreast, and it will stretch out to around twenty years, or a generation.

Chinese internet censorship?

[nukeade]

I would think that it's not the foreign media giants they should be afraid of. You can tell me that all of the media giants here in the US are owned by huge companies bent on twisting my thoughts to something favorable to them, and maybe they are.

The point of the internet is that here anyone has a voice, giving you virtually unstoppable exposure to random people's opinions on their homepages, forums, etc. which are going to be almost impossible to block out every one of unless you were to block every page but the media giants. But that's not going to happen soon.

Everyone who posts here is playing a part in the liberation of the world vs. media giants simply by writing what you think and hitting submit.

I bow before you, defenders of freedom.

~Ben

Re:P2P news clients?

[mccalli]

It used to be implemented with UUCP

Ooh god yes. I remember this. I hated UUCP configuration...

Scary.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:Intresting thought control method

[joss]

First off, it's not specific to US it's entirely universal human behaviour. You don't win friends and influence people by being critical. Poeple most like to hear stuff that is complementary. Even more so in a crisis. However, deny people access to something and it suddenly becomes hugely desirable.

Secondly, in UK one gets easy access to most US media. Eg, one can watch CNN, MSNBC, etc with basic cable. One can read washington post, NYTimes online or even buy them in larger newsagents if one cares too.

There is a vicious circle at work. The main reason that Americans are so patriotic is that throughout their lives almost everything they hear reinforces the notion that America is the best (richest, most free, most tolerant, etc)
country on earth, so why shouldn't they be proud of that. Moreover, since the majority believes this completely, it is unwise for a publication that wishes to be bought or even believed to say anything that reflects too badly on America. The media will happily complain about things like crime, drugs, morality - these are internal issues and there's no point denying they exist. There's nothing unpatriotic about discussing one's problems. However you'll never see a mainstream newspaper article saying: "if a foreign power maintained a large military presence in my country to prop up a corrupt, repressive and unpopular regime, to ensure a better deal for their corporations, I would be pretty pissed off too". That wouldn't go down well. No, the reason al-Quaida hate America is "they hate our freedom".

Foreign news is virtually never mentioned on US television unless it's in such a way as to reflect well upon America. For example, you'll get a story like - "American troops fly into East Timor to protect the natives from gangs of thugs." The earlier story: "US trained and funded death squads kill 1/3rd of population of East Timor to supress an independence movement that could damage the interests of US oil companies in nearby waters" is much less likely to make people feel good about themselves, happy with your publication, and likely to read you again. This phenomena is not unique to US by any means, but is more pronounced there than other places I've stayed.

Heh?

[mcrbids]

I don't get a couple of things. First, if the Chinese govt. is feeling threatened by the Internet, why don't they just change the default policy of the firewall to deny? Instead of keeping a "deny" list, keep an "accept" list?

But, it seems, the issue isn't even really the firewall - the reference in the news article is to an INTERNAL event that spread via email and a web posting.

The Internet is a can of worms, and the worms have been let loose. If China wants to keep control of the information, they are simply going to have to drop the 'net.

Good luck, guys!

The future belongs to...

[totierne]

The future is uncertain so let it guide you. The Chinese/U.S./Cubans/British/Irish/Church can manipulate the media, but they could have a lot of explaining to do in the future if they block off peoples way to grow with their lies, half truths and bias. There is no reason to believe that the Chinese cannot come up with reasonable news feed while avoiding 'human rights' and 'subversive' politics while still keeping people 'entertained' and culturally distinct, burgers or no burgers. Confucius
[still] rules. Where is my Chinese dictionary?

Re:Intresting thought control method

[xmedar]

Actually it was Harry S. Trumans idea, this was to placate Jews for two reasons, first the US government and the media were aware of The Holocaust, and used to refer to WWII as "The European War" before Pearl Harbour (get copies of newspapers from the time and check for yourself) and second that the US actually took in alot of Nazis as someone mentioned in another post somewhere in the thread so they could boost the US technology programs. The other groups that had genocide committed against them by the Nazis such as the Romany gipsies, gays, and mentally and psychically disabled didnt have the same political voice, so got nothing.

Middle East: Mind your language

Arab-Israeli partition: a Middle East milestone

How about controls the other direction

[scoove]

All this talk about China's attempt to control content coming in, but nothing about its traffic going out, is amusing.

China's AS's are great candidates for blocking given the hourly scans from chinanet.cn and other notorious abusers. Scans, relentless spam, and other ilk seems to be the primary product of China's information technology society (and we thought their manufacturing created garbage!).

Then there's last week's article about China launching attacks on US Internet networks in order to "balance the world order" or such. And I want AS connectivity to China for what again?

Snip the cables and let them spam themselves...

*scoove*

Re:Irony is the fruit of the gods

[blue trane]

You struggle nobly against those who would use arbitrary language rules in an attempt to humiliate or dominate.

Re:rob sliips cowboikneal his special egg roll

[blue trane]

If the word still has a high probability of being interpreted as intended, what's the difference...

Re:You just can't even imagine another goverment

[joss]

Weird, I thought the Chinese government system changed slightly a few decades ago. Remind me, which dynasty are we they in now ?

Re:Intresting thought control method

[blue trane]

I think the companies that control the media are in collusion with the government on a lot of things, also the companies can control a lot of information that affects their bottom line.

Triangle Boy

[Artifice_Eternity]

The CIA's venture capital company, In-Q-Tel, has funded a project called Triangle Boy:

http://www.cnn.com/2001/TECH/internet/02/15/anonym ity.software.idg/

This CNN article from Feb. 2001 talks a little about it. But at that time it supposedly hadn't been deployed. Since then I've heard that Chinese Internet users are using Triangle Boy for secure connections to the outside world, bypassing the government firewalls.

Most Chineese don't live where they have internet

[leereyno]

The vast majority of Chineese people live in rural areas and are utterly uneducated. Only a relative few live in or near cities and have any sort of education or access to the internet in the first place. This may slowly change of course, but for the short term at least China's ability to overshadow the internet is basically non-existant.

Lee

Internet The Chinese Way

[Anonymous Coward]

I was in an Internet place in Yunnan a while ago. The shop had large official posters pasted on the wall setting out the obligations of the managers (register each user's id, don't gab with friends, check the computer when a user's finished, give a receipt, etc, etc) and the obligations of the users (one user to a terminal, no smoking, no shouting, no pornography, etc, etc).

In fact, the place was a smoke-filled madhouse, with two or three users at each terminal screaming back and forth, the manager had to be pried away from his friends to find me a seat, I was never asked for id and no surprise I didn't get a receipt when I paid.

The point is that this is what China is really like -- lots of rules and regulations upfront but everyone instinctively knows most are for show and ignore them. Of course, that's "most" not "all" and some how some way Chinese seem to know which rules are for real.

Internet shops have now spread to almost every town in China; price is a fairly uniform 2RMB/hour, about 25 cents US, and they're crowded all day and night. In many places, the settings are locked, so it's not easy to set up a proxy server or clean the cache and history unless you've got your own machine. It's also true that in the past month, for some reason, many foreign sites that were blocked have become available.

It's like putting perfume on a pig (Cap'n Crunch)

[Anonymous Coward]

stage4 has published the latest section of their interview with 70's hacker and now security expert Captain Crunch. He talks about the shortcomings of any government trying to restrict net access.

Security expert Captain Crunch says that China's attempts to create a 'national firewall' restricting it's citizens access to the internet is "like trying to put perfume on a pig - it's totally useless man! It's not gonna work...".

Re:Intresting thought control method

[Tepic]

How can you state what people in the US want? You, judging from the your article, come from a country with 50 states, all of which are equivalent or larger in size than a not insignicant number of other countries, which contains a large and diverse population. I don't see how you can make the statements that you did about a population like that.

Not everyone wants to know what is happening. And people do blindly believe what the media tells them.

I think you were annoyed at blanket statements made against the US (that sounds like racist stereotyping from outsiders). A more useful response would have been something to the effect that, there are people in the US that do question and care about the validity of what the media reports - and also englighten us 'foreigners' about news sources in the US that are less sensational and more thoughtful than some of the mainstream US reporting we see from outside.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[brejc8]

I live in the UK and I watch a lot of CNN etc. compared with BBC etc. I can tell you that the US media giants are deliberately trying to insight patriotism and bad racial
feelings so you would watch more of the news even go as far as to rise the public feelings to want war.

They are doing this quite well so that anyone who speaks out against this will be slapped for being unpatriotic.
No one dares to say things like "The army killed loads of innocent people on your behalf" because that is not what people want to hear. They want to hear how great
their nation is and what good things its doing for the world.

I don't want to hear how every pair of trainers is made by some 7 year old in a country in debt to the WTO. I wanna hear how my country is fighting for freedom and
justice.

freenet?

[bcrowell]

It's interesting that the stuff the article describes doesn't involve any technological maneuvering at all. What it seems to come down to is that there are some very brave people, who are willing to go to jail if they have to.

I tried out Freenet recently, and if there were any political dissidents using it, it wasn't apparent. The single biggest application of Freenet seems to be child pornography.

Re:freenet?

[Benjaman McFree]

Child porn on Freenet? Funny thing, i've had my freenet node going for over two years and i've yet to come across any child porn!

Wait a minute here!; freenet keeps information closest to where it's most requested.. What city do you live in{So I know where not to take my family on vacation}

Re:freenet?

[bcrowell]

Well, I'm assuming the first part is serious and the second part is a joke.

Child porn on Freenet? Funny thing, i've had my freenet node going for over two years and i've yet to come across any child porn!
I was basing that on a list of bulletin boards someone posted on Frost.

Wait a minute here!; freenet keeps information closest to where it's most requested..
...which is kind of irrelevant with respect to the present discussion, since the information stored on your node is encrypted, and you'll never know what it is.

Re:freenet?

[Benjaman McFree]

Wait a minute here!; freenet keeps information closest to where it's most requested..

...which is kind of irrelevant with respect to the present discussion, since the information stored on your node is encrypted, and you'll never know what it is.

Again I'll ask you what city do you live in, The last thing I want is a bunch of reprobate child molestors around family while on vacation; It does matter, it *is* relevant, If you are comming accross child porn, You are obviousley in a local that is a hot bed of reprobates!

Re:Intresting thought control method

[brejc8]

By the way note these are BBC reports as they wouldn't apear on CNN, M$NBC ...

Re:Intresting thought control method

[brejc8]

Search for "Edward L. Bernays"
He did some fantastic PR work. Everything from getting women to smoke to convincing the anerican public that the banana republics were communist

Yes, there is a way to stop that!

[gd23ka]

As a matter of fact there is an easy way to prevent direct uplink satellite access in China. It's a death warrant.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[JimFromJersey]

No actually the Brits are directly responsible for what is going on. They are also responsible for Kuwait, Saudia Arabia, Lebennon, India and Pakistan. The French are responsible for the mess west of there in North Africa.

Irony

[shr3k]

The irony is that the Chinese government distrusts the US government and Microsoft while embracing an Open Source solution (Red Flag Linux?). If anything, they should embrace Microsoft and work with them to get the control that they want. The source would be closed. They would be in control.

Either that, or they can subvert the GPL and distribute binary-only versions of a Linux distro with tricks up their sleeve.

It remains to be seen how/if they can control the Internet by creating "special versions" of various software.

Just being the devil's advocate here...

Don't mess with Texas, especially not with big oil

[gd23ka]

"US trained and funded death squads kill 1/3rd of population of East Timor to supress an independence movement that could damage the interests of US oil companies in nearby waters". I'm not sure whether they really killed 1/3rd of the population but it does remind me of the general business practices of big oil:

MARY HARRIS "MOTHER" JONES ON THE 1914 MINERS' STRIKE AGAINST THE ROCKEFELLER HOLDINGS (Colorado Fuel and Iron Company) IN SOUTHERN COLORADO: The miners armed, armed as it is permitted every American citizen to do in defense of his home, his family; as he is permitted to do against invasion. The smoke of armed battle rose from the arroyos and ravines of the Rocky Mountains. No one listened. No one cared. The tickers in the offices of 26 Broadway sounded louder than the sobs of women and children. Men in the steam heated luxury of Broadway offices could not feel the stinging cold of Colorado hillsides where families lived in tents. Then came Ludlow and the nation heard. Little children roasted alive make a front page story. Dying by inches of starvation and exposure does not. On the 19th of April, 1914, machine guns... were placed in position above the tent colony of Ludlow. Major Pat Hamrock and Lieutenant K. E. Linderfelt were in charge of the militia, the majority of whom were company gunmen sworn in as soldiers. Early in the morning soldiers approached the colony with a demand from headquarters that Louis Tikas, leader of the Greeks, surrender two Italians. Tikas demanded a warrant for their arrest. They had none. Tikas refused to surrender them. The soldiers returned to headquarters. A signal bomb was fired. Then another. Immediately the machine guns began spraying the flimsy tent colony, the only home the wretched families of the miners had, spraying it with bullets. Like iron rain, bullets fell upon men, women and children. The women and children fled to the hills. Others tarried. The men defended their homes with their guns. All day long the firing continued. Men fell dead, their faces to the ground. Women dropped. The little Snyder boy was shot through the head, trying to save his kitten. A child carrying water to his dying mother was killed. By five o'clock in the afternoon, the miners had no more food, nor water, nor ammunition. They had to retreat with their wives and little ones into the hills. Louis Tikas was riddled with shots while he tried to lead women and children to safety. They perished with him. Night came. A raw wind blew down the canyons where men, women and children shivered and wept. Then a blaze lighted the sky. The soldiers, drunk with blood and with the liquor they had looted from the saloon, set fire to the tents of Ludlow with oil-soaked torches. The tents, all the poor furnishings, the clothes and bedding of the miners' families burned. Coils of barbed wire were stuffed into the well, the miners' only water supply. After it was over, the wretched people crept back to bury their dead. In a dugout under a burned tent, the charred bodies of eleven little children and two women were found -- unrecognizable. Everything lay in ruins. The wires of bed springs writhed on the ground as if they, too, had tried to flee the horror. Oil and fire and guns had robbed men and women and children of their homes and slaughtered tiny babies and defenseless women. Done by order of Lieutenant Linderfelt, a savage, brutal executor of the will of the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company. The Autobiography of Mother Jones, Chicago, 1977, pp. 191-193

Re:Intresting thought control method

[JimFromJersey]

It is understandable that the Palestinians are mad enough to kill. However, their plight has its roots in two places. First is British colonialism and the failure of its post-colonial policies. The second is Arab aggression against Israel. That is where they should direct their grudge. Blowing up a pool hall full of teenagers is not an appropriate reponse to having a military commander assassinated. Look, if the PFLP, Hammas, Islamic Jihad, ect. limited their activities to military targets in the occupied territories my guess is that American public opinion would be far less supportive of Israel. Particulary if the wealthy arab countires spent some of their money on a media and political lobbying campaign. Unfortunatly, it may be too late, the Israelies will wipe out the Palestinians and the world will stand by: America, because it rightfully views arabs as enemies; Europe, because it values security over freedom; Arabs, because they are afraid. Sorry, it would have been nice if everything worked out.

Re:Most Chineese don't live where they have intern

[rsmah]

The vast majority of Chineese people live in rural areas and are utterly uneducated. Only a relative few live in or near cities and have any sort of education or access to the internet in the first place.

This statement is indicative of western ignorance of modern China.

The literacy rate in China is 81.5% [CIA WorldFactbook], which when you consider the difficulty of memorizing 10's of thousands of ideograms is pretty good. There are over 11 mil university students in China right now, which means roughly 15% of people go on to university.

Second, agriculture represents only 15% of the chinese economy (50% industry and 35% services) [CIA WorldFactbook]. While apx. 50% of the population is still rural (far higher than in the US) that's far from "the vast majority".

Third, in 1990, China had 102 cities with populations over 1 million [UN Statistics Division] and probably a lot more today given China's rapid urbanization (which creates a lot of problems). In fact, as many people (apx. 210 mil in 1990) live in China's "large" (1mil+) cities as in the entire United States.

China is, of course, still relatively poor compared to the US and Western Europe. And large regions of western China are still underdeveloped. Given income levels, it is no suprise that that only a small percentage use the Internet (it's not suprising that A/C's, TV's and other modern conveniences are purchased first). But we should try to update outdated views of China as we start the 21st century.

my experience of chinese style internet control

[mooncake]

i was teaching basic internet classes to chinese kids on the mainland in '99. on the day of the 10th anniversary of tiannamen square, a really simple block was arranged to prevent online information access. we were met by a line of guys standing in front of the computer lab who, without any explanation, stopped us from entering the building. i heard some of the net cafes around town were closed too. the kids were pretty cool about it. "it's for political reasons", they told me in their sweet, reasonable fashion. we went and did something else that day.

The contradiction in communist societies

[razvedchik]

The problem with a communist state is that there is a conflict of ideas between stability and progress. I have studied this quite a bit wrt the Soviet Union.

In order for a society to progress technologically, it has to have free speach of some sort. The more free speech it has, the more ideas get shared and the more technology can advance. That's why the "information revolution" is, for the most part, self-propogating.

However, in a closed society such as the Soviet Union and China, there is a certain level of control that the government needs to keep on speech otherwise the populace will talk about how they don't like their situation in life.

The contradiction is like a business who needs techies to make the IT infrastructure work but doesn't necessarily want to let them out of the basement for fear that they'll scare away the customers and the salespeople.

The end result is that these 2 conflicting ideas make a government seem bipolar. If you look at the Soviet leadership, there was a pattern of alternating conservative (ie, pro control) and liberal (ie, free speech) leaders. There's a joke that the way you can tell which leader is which is by their hair...bushy or bald

Lenin-liberal (ok, debatable, but between the revolution and his death, very relaxed) bald
Stalin- arch-conservative, very bushy hair
Khruschev-liberal (that's why he went on a "leave of absense for health reasons" when the pendulum swung the other way) bald as a baby's bottom
Brezhnev-conservative, had hair like Elvis
Andropov-liberal, didn't live too long, bald
Gromiko-conservative, didn't live too long, hairy
Gorbachev-liberal, started glasnost and perestrojka, balding with red-wine stain
Yeltsin-conservative in a different way, manipulated privatization to make him and his friends rich, hairy
Putin-the only guy maybe to break the trend. seems to be conservative, but has "thinning" hair. Of couse, there is no more Soviet Union, so....

Alot of this contradiction can be seen in the way that Soviet scientists were treated. For example, as long as they held to the party line, they were given all the priviledges that they could ask for. Once they started to dissent, they were imprisoned and did the same work but at a gulag.

For a good example of this, I recommend Solzhenitsyn's The Inner Circle or some of the biographies of Sakharov.

China and America have alot in common

[Benjaman McFree]

"Today patriotism in China means loving the Party and loving Socialism," said one contributor. "You can destroy China's environment, but you can't criticise the Party." For the first time ever the internet is allowing people from every corner of China to engage with each other in conversation and debate. And it is changing China in other ways too.

If the people of China have a revolution and overthrow the tyrants, I hope they decide to have no "government"; a free wide open china, like the wild, wild west. Be Polite or risk getting shot in a duel. Every community is responsible for ensuring it's members are not perkulating nuclear granades. I wonder how China's gun laws compare to the democrats and some republicans ideals of wanting to disarm it's United States citizenry?

A democrat will tell you that those "militia's" were state run, but we all know from the stories our grandaddy passed onto us, it was the American Farmers who drove the British out, not state run militia's; perhaps this is why both parties love to beat up on American Farmers today?

Re:Most Chineese don't live where they have intern

[Jonavin]

This is so true. I used to hold the ignorant view of China until I went there for a vacation earlier this year.

Mind you, I didn't ventured into the really small villages (pop less than 1000) and rural areas, but I could tell things are a lot different that what I used to perceive it as.

I was in a fishing village in souther China with no paved roads, but they had buses with VCD videos playing. And in the same area were more Internet cafe than I'd image people could use. Sure enough when I went in there were half a dozen kids, no more than 12 years old, playing network games.

I spent 2 hours in there checking email and reading news. I certainly didn't feel like anything was being blocked. They had 128bit I.E. browser so I was able to do my banking too.

I could go on forever. Bottom line is that people should stop making ignorant comments about China unless they've been there.

e_a_l m_s_a_e

[JJ]

There are no internet censors in the People's Republic of China.

INSTANT WINNER!!!!

[jbrelie]

Heh... If they don't do anything about the spam that comes from those domains, the government won't have to do anything. The rest of the world with firewall them off.

They can

[lanren]

I'm a Chinese, currently in the U.S. When some time ago slashdot posted a story about a Chinese linux company didn't publish their source code there are a lot of discussion in Chinese linux community so I know they can read slashdot. The reason you don't see many Chinese people here is probably because most slashdot stories and discussions are more about politics than technology, or technology that is too far away for average Chinese people. And the general air here is not very Chinese-friendly (my personal view, of course). If you really want to check out the linux community in China, here's a link:
http://www.linuxforum.net, it's in Chinese, good luck!

Re:They can

[Alsee]

And the general air here is not very Chinese-friendly

Hopefully any un-friendlyness is aimed at the Chinese government and not at the Chinese people.

In your experience, how often do people make the distinction and how often to people lump them together?

-

Re:re your sig...

[zulux]

Criminal prisioners vs. prisioners of stupid laws, or criminals that should be punished by other means than prision.

My reasioning is that we, as citizens, have to work hard for our food and housing - prisioners should be required to work as hard a we do. 60 hour weeks of hard labor would keep our taxes low and help the recitivism rate. Prisioners should not keep any of the proceeds of their labor, and if, they choose not to work, then they should starve.

This hard tratment should be reserved for prisioners of violent crime and abusive fraud, and not for the schmuk that gets caught with a joint in his pocket.

Re:Intresting thought control method

[Beliskner]

No person can have fun at a party, meeting or anything else when you realise somebody is lying to you about serious stuff that affects you, regardless of what country they come from. Like Total Recall 2070.

American news agencies perform self-censorship for conformity according to the wishes of the ancien regime of the day (industrial leaders, offensive military interests at this time). There are some that breach this such as the website that published Daniel Pearl's execution video - Ogrish (WARNING IF YOU CLICK THIS LINK AT WORK YOU'RE SCREWED, REGARD LINK AS PAEDOPHILE MATERIAL) but they were forced to take it down by the FBI. I never knew that putting an MPEG on your website was illegal. Interesting tactic of make everything illegal so that Feds and buddies can force you to do their dirty work by threatening to charge you with the 100 offences you committed just to wake up in the morning.

America created the extremists, probably deliberately so that they could invent "good colonialism" same as the British empire in their heyday claiming, "We are liberating these uncivilised people..." yada yada. The US media is amplifying the South Asian and Middle Eastern phenomenon of the "aggressive Mullah" which the US has its own equivalent of in its bible belt. If other countries were to judge the US by Utah then they'd blockade the US.

marx

[beakburke]

actually thats not quite right either

In the beginning, most capitalist socitety's had a incredible concentration of wealth, very few people could afford to own the means of production. Land was owned by the "noble classes"

Marx was convinced that the great masses would never have the resources to own captial. Thus he reasoned that the masses would rise up and over throw the extreamly wealthy.

What he didnt count on was publicly held stock, wide spread education, and that the investment of the extremely wealthy would make the whole country more wealthy.
Thus marx's prediction never came to fruition.

Re:marx

[Zeinfeld]

Marx was convinced that the great masses would never have the resources to own captial. Thus he reasoned that the masses would rise up and over throw the extreamly wealthy.

I actually wonder if he really believed that. Although he tries very hard to persuade people that the revolution is at hand he also said that philosophers have analysed the world in many ways, the real task is to change it.

I think that Marx's prophecy of a revolution should be considered in the same light as 1984, not primarily prophecy but instead a means of effecting change. Victorian Britain was scared of revolution above all else, revolution meant the horrors of the French reign of terror and the Bonapartist attempt to establish dictatorship across Europe.

Victorian society did change, they may have changed in part because Marx's prophecy meant that liberal reformers were listened to and the elites accepted gradual change rather than risk revolution.

What he didnt count on was publicly held stock, wide spread education, and that the investment of the extremely wealthy would make the whole country more wealthy.

I think that Marx's ideas reached their sell by date long before we got to the point where the middle class was the majority of the population and most people owned stock. Certainly after WWI with the Bolshevick coup the forces of reactionism are doing their utmost to reform social conditions before the revolution sweeps them away.

Incidentally, the term 'Bolshevick revolution' is a misnomer, actually the Tzar was removed from power in a relatively peaceful revolution led by the Menchevicks who tried to establish a liberal democratic state. The mistake they made was not announcing an end to the war which is what gave Lenin and Stalin an opportunity. The proletariat cared more about ending the war than the promise of a democratic society.

Internet / 2 as cheap as Internet / 2 ?

[freaker_TuC]

I wonder if the chinese Internet users pay half price for half they get? Since they are only getting half the content of the Internet :p

Is their glass half-full or half-empty ?

Re:Huh-- the US was involved here?

[Zeinfeld]

Could you elaborate on the "US" part? I don't remember that from my high-school history books

Could that be because they were US history books? Try reading 'Lies my teacher told me'..

During the Teddy Roosevelt administration the US adopted an 'open door' policy to China. What that meant was that China was going to accept goods from the US regardless of whether they wanted to or not.

The Chineese were at the time about 100 years behind the West in military technology. However in most other respects they were equally civilized. But as Belloc observed 'Whatever else we have got, the Maxim gun, and they have not'.

The US helped the other great powers to dismember China into a collection of 'spheres of influence' then later on helped Japan invade most of the country. Despite the fact that China had not been a beligerent power in WWI the US imposed peace conditions that gave Japan control of much of the country.

The US even continued to do so after WWII by recognising the anexation by Japan of islands that before US and Japanese meddling had been part of China for over 500 years.

Re:Huh-- the US was involved here?

[Deadstick]

Some keys for your googling pleasure: "Yangtze gunboat" "gunboat diplomacy" "USS Panay" "The Sand Pebbles" rj

Re:Intresting thought control method

[JimFromJersey]

After the Brits failed, in 1947 the General Assembly of the United Nations voted to establish a Jewish State. It was the UN, having to clean up one of the first post-colonial messes (and just one of many such failures), not the US and the first country to recognize the Jewish State .... the USSR. I suppose that you are right about the Karma thing, since Israel is an international creation, I guess it is only fitting that more then half of those killed were not Americans.

Largest Chinese Daily Falls For Onion Gag

[jonerik]

Read story here.

Not likely...

[Jungle guy]

All internet cafes in Beijing were shutdown this monday. 24 people died in a fire in an internet cafe, and the government says "the internet is destroying our children". The story can be found here.