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China's War Against Wires

Posted by timothy on from the stephensonian-detritus dept.

hodet writes "On sections of Beijing Road, you can barely see the sky. On Tibet Road, they dangle in garden-hose rolls and knots intricate enough to confound a Boy Scout. Over on Hefei Street, one enterprising apartment dweller even used them to hang-dry selected cuts of meat. Tech-happy Shanghai, the most wired city in China, has a problem: wires. Telephone wires. Fiber-optic wires. Electrical wires. Wires no one can seem to identify. Black wires. Blue wires. Magenta wires. They're everywhere, and they're gumming up the works."

8 of 244 comments (clear)

  1. Who'd of known... by Ignis+Flatus · · Score: 5, Funny

    ... that stealing cable TV would be such a problem in a Communist country?

  2. Looks Like... by VariableSanity · · Score: 5, Funny

    Why does this article make me want to look behind my desk? I think its the picture of clothes hanging from the wires... maybe that is where my right sock went!

    1. Re:Looks Like... by aardwolf204 · · Score: 5, Funny

      last time you moved your equipment from one room to another, when you booted up did you notice that a third of the wires you once had in your old setup were unused...

      where do these buggers come from? its like they're breeding and no matter how hard i try to keep the female ends on the other side of the desk from the male ones it seems to happen every time.

      And why is it that even though CAT5 cables are male-male they too seem to multiply!

      --
      Im dreaming ofa big bndwdth, That can resist the /.crowd.May ur days b merry & bright & may al
  3. Rodent contraceptives by CityZen · · Score: 5, Funny

    From the article:

    > Wires are just one urban challenge. Bedeviled by ballooning rat populations,
    > Shanghai has turned not to poison but to rodent contraceptives.

    Who gets the job of fitting all the little guys with condoms? :-)

  4. Pfft... by dupper · · Score: 5, Funny

    They sould see my desk behind my computer. Just last month I lost 3 good men in an expedition to unplug my monitor.

  5. Asking the masses? Askslashdot? by millwall · · Score: 5, Funny

    "So China is doing what China usually does when confronted with such dilemmas[...]: It's mounting a campaign, asking the masses for help"

    So why didn't China post this in Askslashdot?

  6. Re:Not that big a problem by LittleBigLui · · Score: 5, Funny
    run a wire from it to a cold water pipe


    that's one more wire radiating electromagnetic dirt! can't we make that grounding wireless?
    --
    Free as in mason.
  7. Re:Lots of digging up roads though by rpjs · · Score: 5, Funny

    That sounds like far too sensible an idea to ever catch on in the UK!