Slashdot Mirror
China Blocks Typepad, Prompts Weblog Blackout
dcm writes "As U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson prepares to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission to censure the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) government for increasing 'repression of its people using the Internet, democratic dialogue, religious expression,' the regime continues to block discourse.On Friday, China began blocking access to Typepad, a paid weblog hosting service in San Mateo, California. The communist regime previously blocked access to BlogSpot, Blogger's free hosting site. Yan Sham-Shackleton filed a report on the Glutter weblog, mentioning China is '...now using blocking software to stop information from leaking into the county via personal sites, an increasingly vibrant China Internet community, and a place where users are slipping in banned information. Some sites in the blogging community are turning black in protest of this event while others are reporting the incident.'"
Hello,
I am Kim Yee Ho Foo Yun Duck and I live in China. Recently our interweb be blocked by communist party. We don't like communist party but can't have others won't let us vote other. Today we find that China now block sites like blogs.
Please tell your honorable President Bush to liberate us! Tell honorable President Bush we have oil if he need convincing!
Communist party must be stopped at all cos.1!~~
(0fv... . . #@(*!
NO CARRIER
Q: Why are the chinese communists so afraid of free exchange of ideas and criticism?
A: They're afraid they'll have to give up power and find real jobs.
It's not the security of the country tyrants desire, it's their own security. It's unfair to call them leaders.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
This is just the latest front in China's attempt to try to stamp out any form of anti-government speech. Say what you want about the present US Governemnt, the fact that you're allowed to say it here is something that makes us very different from them...
I've got to think that anyone with the will and some time would easily be able to bypass the blockage, either by using underground ISPs, satellite, or other means.
It is technically very hard to block information on the net, without dropping connectivity. Of course, attempting it might provide a major impulse to AI research :)
This is not a signature.
I think this is more like the government blockading the door to your bathroom... of course, there's nothing stopping you from relieving yourself on the front lawn. ;)
A: The short answer is "Gay Movable Type Blogger." This does not quite paint the full picture, however.
A GMTB uses a Mac. A GMTB is excited about "wireless hot spots" and "cafes." The prototypical GMTB can be found at a Starbucks with a 15" PowerBook. He will be wearing a black turtleneck and will go on at length about the wonder years where web designers were paid like programmers.
The GMTB will blog about you. Do not be alarmed. In order to make sense of their fast moving and confusing world, GMTBers need to write at length about even the most trivial encounter. They will likely Google you and turn even the most minor conversation into an exploratory experience. Every experience is like that of the newborn boy who finds touching himself over and over to be a pleasurable experience.
Do not make the GMTB angry. The GMTB has natural defenses known as "Google juice." With the application of this "Google juice," the GMTB will sour any future searches on your name. While there is no physical harm to be done, they can make any attempt at finding relevant and useful information about you a linkfest of armchair philosophy, ill-formed opinions, and broad and insanely overblown reactions to everyday occurrences.
Should you find yourself confronted by a GMTB and wish to escape, one need only mention that their "CSS" is broken. The GMTB invariably considers the CSS "correctness" and "portability" to be a craft, and the output thereof to be an "art." By pointing out that the page renders poorly on the most esoteric browser you can imagine, you will be assured a quick and uneventful escape.
Does anybody know how they go about blocking "unwanted" internet site from the public? I am sure there is a way around it. I mean, unless they don't have any lines to the outside world (and yes, they do have lines to the outside world) it would be impossible for them to absolutely block content.
-- johntracy.com, because everybody else is wrong.
women's nipples.
Which society would you rather live in?
They've implimented a system to block free exchange of ideas about religion, politics and current issues through blogs and the internet...
But even they can't stop spam.
Interesting.
Slashdot Syndrome: the sudden, extreme urge to correct someone in order to validate one's self.
Oh, that'll show them. I can just see China's head of information management saying to himself "I never thought it would come to this! Black weblogs! Damn those clever bastards!"
Webloggers have always had a hugely inflated sense of self-importance, but this is just ridiculous.
--
the strongest word is still the word "free"
I suppose someone could just ban any and all downloads of Freenet-related software so that's not going to solve anything. For anyone who ever said the mantra "Information Wants To Be Free" -- THIS is what it is meant to be.
Government-sanctioned censorship isn't anything new, though. We try to protect children with things like CIPA and the like. We've got watchdogs all over that won't allow us (folks in the US) to hear foul language over public airwaves, are looking to restrain violent video games, and in general trying to police what we do.
I'm not saying we're communistic, by any means. Just saying that censorship is censorship. Not as extreme, but the seeds are there.
In the end, it unfortunately comes down to "censorship is only bad when they're censoring something I believe in."
They can send their info to some FTP server and their US friends can copy it to Typepad. If FTP gets blocked, there's always e-mail.. and if I recall (can't find the link) there was actually a service that you could e-mail your FTP requests to. (wow, wish I could find that again, it was a list of about a zillion different services which were e-mail enabled)
I think it was on BBC I was reading about goverments blocking their citizens from content, I know Iraq did it at first. All I can see it doing is makeing them mad and giveing them more of a reason to find a way around the block. They might just have to come to the relization that if people want to see if they will find a way to see it
GeekLeak.com - Silly name, serious geeks
Sounds like FCC / Howard Stern to me.. Congrats FCC, you are now offically, on par with Chinese Commi quality filtering.
Stern's complaint is that he's being forced into moving his show onto a subscription-based satellite radio service. However, if he moves there the FCC won't have any abilty to complain about what he says anymore.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are filtering out any negative-to-the-government information of any kind from all forms of media. That's much more serious.
As U.S. Ambassador Richard Williamson prepares to introduce a resolution at the U.N. Human Rights Commission to censure the Chinese Communist Party's (CCP) government for increasing 'repression of its people using the Internet
Somewhat ironic given that U.S. companies are profiting by selling censorship software to China. And of course, the U.S. requiring (or trying to require) libraries to censor the Internet, for the children, of course.
Here come da fudge!
these are the perpetrators of the Tiananmen massacre. do you really think they would hesitate to block a few websites?
sulli
RTFJ.
It's not just the nipples. I believe it's the titty as a whole.
(paraphrased from a great obscure movie)
Remember, China blocked Google for a time out of fears that they could find anti-government info there...
So, it seems any site that lets somebody post infomation without has got to go. It won't be long until they decide Slashdot is not something they should let their people see.
Just other day the WTO said that USA had to allow on line gambling. China has just joined the WTO. Typepad is an for profit company, why not they also can't make WTO force them to allow access to Typepad? At least this shitty globalization would give a little help to free speech. At least by now USA and Britain aren't trying to make WTO become irrelevant as they did with ONU.
Do they only block the http ports?
Or do the block by IP or what?
Yea, Gopher is dead, but don't be insensitive.
Gopher was pretty cool, especially considering some of the terrible backgrounds and colors you sometimes get in http.
Or is this just like suggesting lynx?
Maybe it is a good thing that Apache 2 supports Gopher.
Stop laughing, I'm serious.
It wouldn't suprise me that the communist bastard politicians wouldn't know to block stuff outside http.
p2p is another possibility, but that's been discussed before I'm sure.
Promote Sensitivity on Slashdot, make me your friend.
And it becomes obvious why cryptography is so important...
http://www.t0.or.at/crypto/crossbow.htm
If the WTO can force the U.S to admit offshore online casinos, perhaps the WTO can force China to admit offshore information services. The Chinese consumers should be able to access any commercial internet site (including a paid weblog service like Typepad) as a free trade issue.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
it's the blogosphere. do not fuck with the blogosphere!
sulli
RTFJ.
Do these rules apply to Hong Kong. I'm vague as to how seperatly they are treated since 1997 when ownship reverted back to China. I know for example a Hong Kong resident no longer needs a visa to travel to the mainland, and they still retain certain comercial freedoms.
Chinese government policies that favor Chinese companies over foreign firms are driving some U.S. tech companies from the booming market.
This month, chipmakers Intel and Broadcom said they'll stop selling wireless Internet, or Wi-Fi, chips in China. A new law requires that the chips include a security technology licensed by Chinese companies.
The technology can hurt chips' performance and compatibility with other devices, says Intel spokesman Chuck Mulloy. And implementing it requires U.S. chipmakers to share valuable intellectual property with Chinese companies, says Semiconductor Industry Association President George Scalise.
The Wi-Fi dispute is one of several being waged between the U.S. and Chinese tech industries.
Semiconductor taxes. China slaps a 17% value-added tax on computer chips sold there. But it gives rebates of up to 14% to domestic chip plants. That makes it almost impossible for foreign chipmakers to compete, the SIA says.
This month, the U.S. trade office filed a case against China's semiconductor tax with the World Trade Organization (news - web sites), which China joined in 2001. China must abide by the WTO's decision or risk censure. Friday, China said it would enter talks with the United States.
Proprietary standards and practices. China is developing its own standards for 3G cell phone networks and DVD players. (The Chinese version is called EVD, or extended versatile disk.) If the standards are widely adopted, they will allow Chinese manufacturers to avoid paying some licensing fees to foreign companies and force tech firms to make special products only for China. Officials also have taken steps to keep government agencies from using non-Chinese software.
U.S. companies urgently want to do business in China because it's a huge, growing market. China has a $1.4 trillion economy and gross domestic product growth near 10%, according to the U.S. State Department. Political changes in recent years have increasingly opened the once-isolated country to foreign companies. U.S. tech firms are eager to sell PCs, DVD players and other products to China's 1.3 billion citizens.
Chinese officials talk about fair trade, yet "behave like a protective dictatorship when it serves their best interests," says Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America, a trade group. Chinese officials deny that and say they're working to understand U.S. concerns.
Nearly every country has some policies to boost and protect domestic industries. The U.S. gives tech companies a tax break for research and development, for example. But trade groups such as the ITAA say China's policies are so extreme, they infringe on free trade. In 2003, the USA exported $28 billion worth of goods to China and imported $152 billion.
--00--00--00--
Philippe Lacoste, director of French retail giant Lacoste and grandson of founder Rene Lacoste (L), gives a brief history of the company during a news conference in Shanghai March 29, 2004. French retailer Lacoste, frustrated over what it calls widespread piracy in China, may pull out of the market if it fails to stop a Singapore-based rival from also using a crocodile logo. REUTERS/Claro Cortes IV
The most troubling thing about this is that PRC is using US companies to write and implement the software and hard technologies that permit all this censorship. It seems to me that if our government is willing to prevent easy export of offensive military weapons, it should have similar strictures for the export of defensive weapons designed to promote closed minds in populations that want open minds.
Wireless blogging is going to be a way to get around many restrictions. Of course this doesn't help if they are blocking the servers. Fortunately these days there are a vast number of hosting companies which provide blog hosting. And wireless net is huge in China, with hundreds of millions of WAP-enabled phones. I think that the government will at some point just give up on this and realize that free expression is not that much of a threat. They should look over at the example of Singapore, where the government is very strict, but it tolerates a little joking commentary. The PRC will realize that people complaining is not the same thing as a real challenge.
That's not really the point, however. The point is, everyone claiming that information = insta-revolution well...I seriously doubt it. A lot of people left Hong Kong before PRC took it over...and then moved back when they saw that PRC didn't really change the system at all, and things were peaceful.
Seriously, they didn't really keep out outside information before; that fully explains the Tiananmen Square protests, as people knew that Communist leaderships everywere were falling appart so they wanted to try in China too. If people wanted a protest/revolution it would happen; I honestly don't think they do, and I don't think the internet will change that, blocked or unblocked.
It's totally understandable that China's gov't will be overthrown if people are given free access to information
Why do you say this? Have you been to China, asked anyone there what they think? Of course China is oppressive, and of course its views don't fall in line with those of the US. But that doesn't necessarily mean people would instantly overthrow it given the chance.
As an architect, I've been keeping a very close eye on growth in China. Quite simply, China is where it's at. The growth rate there is just insane, and with the Olympics coming up there is now intense international pressure on very accellerated modernization. Remember the dot com boom? China is like that right now, except their economy is based on tangible things.
I'm not saying that giving up freedom is worth some prosperity, but I am saying that if China were to all of a sudden take down its Great Firewall there is no guarantee that its people would want to risk destroying one of the largest economic expansions in history just because they can read the whiny ramblings of a 13 year old girl on Blogspot.
If you get nervous, just remember that there are a few billion other people who don't really give a damn.
exactly how much off a @#$# China cares about what anybody thinks of them. I mean, gee whiz, if they're willing to shoot their citizens in the street (Tianneman Sq (sp?)) do you really think some UN resolution is going to matter?
BC
U.S. news agencies stopped broadcasting Bin Laden's speeches at the request of the U.S. government.
The U.S. government made the absurd claim that Bin Laden was "sending secret messages to his supporters" through his speeches, when it was blatantly obvious that the U.S. was simply interested in suppressing him.
Understandably in fact. Bin Laden was making a whole lot of sense and sounded extremely reasonable when compared to Bush.
The U.S. does not have the moral standing to criticise other nations. To do so is the height of hypocrisy.
It all started when Hao Feng Xi submitted a request for unemployment support:
This, of course, infuriated the whole fucking country, and now they're on a mission to stamp out this new form of "viral illiteracy."
REM Old programmers don't die. They just GOSUB without RETURN.
Stern's complaint is that he's being forced into moving his show onto a subscription-based satellite radio service. However, if he moves there the FCC won't have any abilty to complain about what he says anymore.
I'm not a big fan of Stern my self... I don't watch or listen to his program because I find it uninteresting. I appricate his need to protest our cencorships laws, and support him to that end. If he must move to a satellite radio service, that would be fine too, as he can protest all he wants nation wide.
Meanwhile, the Chinese are filtering out any negative-to-the-government information of any kind from all forms of media. That's much more serious.
I would agree... but just like Howard Stern being forced to move to satellite radio, wouldn't it be reasonable that a population who wants free access to information switch to a standard that can't be blocked by boarders... like radio perhaps?
There is no sanctuary. There is no sanctuary. SHUT UP! There is no shut up. There is no shut up.
I don't know which is more mind-boggling - the fact that this was seriously posed as a question or the fact that it was modded insightful.
Kindly go to a strip club, get HBO, google for "nipple", or buy a magazine in a brown wrapper ALL LEGALLY and THEN tell me how terrible the US is just because most people who live here think it might be smart to not allow nudity during the Superbowl.
Just include a few nukes in some shipping containers and take out most of our ports. That would 'impact severly' the US economy for 5-7 years.
The breadth of censored content there is simply amazing.
First of all I find it very unusual any US politician would have anything to do with the UN.
I remember on CNN after two planes, of the anti-Castro group, were shot down by Cuba, a US polictican ( Helms...Burton? ) said that all the more reason to continue the economic boycott of Cuba.
The next story was on China and another politician speaking about China said that keeping dialogue open with China was the only way to make progress.
If the Internet in China, and also keeping dialogue open, is so important, why not do that for every enemy or the US?
China is so huge I wouldn't worry about the government controlling the Internet. They seem to be where the USSR was in the late 80's just before Communism fell.
... how the same people tend to curse at US for being oppressive, aggressive, and otherwise evil, and yet completely ignore China's record on the same issues.
For example, the French -- among the noisiest critics of US nowadays lit/painted the Eiffel tower red to greet the Chinese leader and to comfort him with support for his hostility towards Taiwan.
Italians, protesting every one of the executions in US, seem to completely ignore the public executions in China, which sometimes take place in stadiums and are often caused merely by alleged economic crimes.
Now this (as if we did not know about the Great Chinese Firewall before)... Where are the condemnations from the people, accusing the US for "suffocating the independent media" -- because Howard Stern was kicked off by his employer?
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
Geez. I suppose you are the only people who are informed about the worldly events. All Chinese people in China are blind and stupid, therefore are totally brainwashed by Commie doctrines, and has no idea what Western countries are like. If you are truly interested, you are more than welcome to travel to China and ask people on the street their opinions, do a fact check yourself for once. Private bitching about government is allowed and goes on everyday in China. Thats why corruption is dealt so severally by the government, because it is the most discussed topics among Chinese citizens.
VOA, Voice of America, was a primary propaganda machine to China. Government had local efforts of jamming the signals but it was never effective. University students in China listened to it loyally, as a medium to learn English and learn about the world. But the fundamental problem with VOA was that being an American radio station, it broadcast contents to China as if it is the CNN. Feeding incredible biased "news" that people in China know aren't true. You think people will continue to listen to that bullsh#t? Thats why almost nobody listens to it nowadays.
Look, I'm not saying that the Commie Chinese government is an angel. It has done some pretty nasty stuffs and the people in China knows it. But they still approves because overall the government has done a lot of good things, for Chinese of course. Don't think that the Chinese people are not capable of another revolution if they don't see the government acting in their interests. The commie knows that too. Thats why changes are happening, steadily. And people like that instead of big bang solution that hurt the Chinese people's bottom line.
then why does the CCP have to spend so much energy to prevent people from getting information uncongenial to it? If the CCP's decisions and methods are correct, won't an open discussion of them reveal that? If so many concur, then the agreement would strengthen the Chinesse government, and give it the far stronger backing of >600 M people. Instead, the CCP spends its time trying to prevent uncongenial information from getting to its people and keeping an army to suppress them, moves which cost it both resources to build itself better and standing in the markets and the world community upon which its future rests.
This isn't the behavior of a stable government in concurrence with its people, but a government perched on a pinnacle, which can be toppled with just a few of the right words. The US tolerates a lot of hypocrisy, but it endures because the availability of information allows people to judge their government (somewhat openly); thus while there is dissent on a daily basis, the dissent doesn't destroy the gov't system. The US has many small cracks, but it doesn't fall apart because it isn't brittle and the cracks don't spread - people have enough confidence in it that dissent doesn't coalesce against the system. The CCP doesn't behave as if it were confident in its correctness - dissent not expressed hardens into rebellion, and threatens the entire nation. The Chinese gov't behaves like a brittle structure - the CCP has to prevent cracks (dissent) because their disagreement with their people means that cracks will propagate and break the structure. If your structure can tolerate cracks and still stands, you don't worry about them because it's a waste of time and money. Cutting off information that disagrees with the CCP implies either 1) the people aren't smart enough to succeed (which means China will go nowhere anyway) or 2) the people would rebel against the CCP if they read the information. 1) doesn't concur with experience (the large number of successful Chinese graduate students in America), so 2) is pretty likely, which doesn't agree with your initial statement.
A gov't in the right doesn't need to shield its people from the truth.
A properly constructed communist state would only require the dictatorship of the proletariat for a generation or so. After this time, no one would own any goods any more, and the only formalized government required would be for lawmaking and policing. The "communist" societies of the former Soviet Union and China are not really communist at all, as the parent poster said. They're really just state sponsored capitalism, and there are still people hoarding the wealth.
Some sites in the blogging community are turning black in protest of this event while others are reporting the incident.
Well thank God the all powerful blog-o-sphere is finally using its power to do something instead of just creating a rebellion symbol/meme and linking to real news sources.
Oh wait.
-Colin
And I would like to share a few things to anyone who is interested:
... US allies ... )
First of all: China is changing a such a rapid pace that no Cisco routers that are used to block a couple websites will have any major impact.
We are talking of about 100 million people rapidly moving up the social ladder. The communist party just aknowledged that they have to do something about the rest (more than 900 million btw), many of them on the way trying to get on board with the first group.
That said I would like to share some insight into history. Even though we know oppresive regimes are bad and the usual American only pokes at Communism with a 9 foot pole the regime served the majority of the Chinese people pretty well in the past 40-50 years. The cultural revolution was a major setback and the party says it was very wrong. Apart from that they had some great success at poverty reduction during the 70s and 80s.
Compare that to what You know about India, which has had a stable democracy during most of that time or South America which has been under US influence since the infamous "Teddy".
IMHO India lags behind China on the rights of the woman (in practial terms, theoratically all Communist coutries should be heaven for women, which never was) over all for example. I am sure You will find more.
At the moment the US govt. is using the "human rights tool" to apply pressure to China on the international diplomatic level. You know it, they know it and everyone else knows it too. (Saudi Arabia and human rights
Still we have an issue with free speech in China, since a corrupt govt. that has nothing left to justify its hold on power (they promote market economics for heavens sake) is trying to keep the country out of major shakeups. Remember what happened to Russia after the change? Live expectency is still going down there. Anyways, there are people in the party that try to move towards democracy, but that is not easy and they don't want civil war.
That said the most important problems that China is facing at the moment are corruption and trying not to loose the 900 million people on the way to wealth and prosperity. That is what the party is saying. IMHO the biggest problem is for the officials to stay on top of this huge moving mass that China represents at the moment. And it is gaining speed.
Exactly because of that the central government is trying to promote free speech to get more accurate reports from the various parts of China, since the official channels are slow and always change facts around so the local govt. looks good.
I'm skeptical, so let's do a scientific test.
Rather than a straw-man test, why not paint up a placcard that says something like "Bush Sucks" or "Get US out of Iraq" and visit one of his campaign stops.
They have these nice little lots, well away from where the president is actually speaking for protesters. That, my dear friend, is a limitation of free speech. Bush said, years ago, that "there ought to be limits to freedom."
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Communism, as true idea not as it has been implemented, is a wonderful idea. It was summarised best in a quote which goes something like "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Basically everyone works at doing what it is they do best. But they don't work for personal gain, as we do in a Capitalism, they work for the common good. Everything is then distributed equally, so everyone has the worth. You don't get tons of stuff just because you act in movies or struggle to make ends meet just because you work in a factory. Everyone is treated fairly and equally, and everyone works for the greater good.
Of course that rosy ideal has almost nothing to do with how Communism is actually implemented. It also utterly fails to accomidate basic human nature. Though there are notable exceptions, and varying behaviour in each individual, when you take humanity as a whole for economic design you have to regard them as lazy and greedy. Communism fails to provide any reward for hard work, since it doesn't appeal to greed (you get the same no matter what you do) so laziness sets in. Most workers do the minimum needed. Also all actual implementations of Communism have been combined with a very totalitarian government, which leads to corruption.
Capatalism isn't the most fair or best economic system we've come up with, it is the most fair and best economic system we've come up with that works in the real world. It deals with the objective realities of humans and tries to reward them (it's been accurately called a system of controlled greed) for hard work and risk taking. This leads to inequities, but it DOES work and makes economies work efficiently in the real world.
So Communism DOES look good on the chalk board. It's a wonderful idea, but it makes assumptions and requirements that don't exist in the real world. So it looks good on the chalkboard, but fails the real world test.
1. Should we intervene? That is, are the Xites being really, really offensive?
2. Can we intervene? That is, does X have a massive nuclear arsenal? (Note: China does, Iraq didn't but wanted one)
3. Is our interest being served? That is, does attacking X serve national strategic goals? Does X have it in for us in some way?
Your mileage may vary on how to answer these questions for Iraq and China, but my readings suggest that the US executive branch does think this way.
In a Platonic world of Good Smiting Evil, question #1 and #2 would be the only ones considered. But in our world question #3 must also be considered. Note also that the extent to which #3 outweighs #1 is the distance we are into the Gray Area (tm).
china blocking the freedom of speech?!
WHAT HAS THIS WORLD COME TO?!
Hello there, I am a Canadian and I'm now in China teaching English and doing some freelance web development. I've been in China (Shanghai) for about 9 months now and to be honest it is VERY rare that I can't access any particuliar website. I remember just when I got here I did have some problems with a very few sites but then they seemed to have really cooled down lately about it since now these sites are easily accessible. Same thing with Google, they un-blocked it long time ago. I just tried both of the supposedly blocked websites (blogger and typepad) and I have absolutely no problem accessing these sites. I don't know where this information came from but they surely didn't block it for me! ;)
I'm also pretty amazed by how easy and cheap it is to go online here (compared to Canada). I'm on a very fast cable connection, with no restrictions or quotas at all, and I pay about US 14$ (splitted between me and my flatmate). In Canada I have to pay over CDN 35$ for a cable connection that gives me like 6 gig max of downloads and a crappy 15k/s upload speed limit...
Anyways I just thought I should share that information with you guys as I feel sometimes we westerners tend to bitch a lot about China and its government without really seeing how things really are in the real world. China is under very heavy and fast transformations right now, as much economically than socially, and I think Shanghai is probably the best place to actually see that LIVE in front of your eyes. Shanghai is definately opening up to the world and its a pretty cool and fun place to live in (and party!) nowadays. You should see how fast skyscrapers are growing like mushrooms around here, it's quite unbelievable. And I haven't said anything about the amazing transportation system and its modern facilities... I still can't believe they can put these flat LCDs and huge plasma screens about every 5 meters in the metro, when I can't even afford one of those myself (Grr). Oh btw, I saw those terminals reboot once or twice, and yes it runs under Linux ;) The cultural changes are there as well, as the younger generations seem not to differ as much as westerners anymore... But at the same time it's a bit of a shame cuz with McDonalds and KFC invading China (There's a famous street in Shanghai, Nanjing rd. where there is a McDonald's or KFC about every 100 meters!) I see SO many very FAT youngsters, which is something almost impossible to see amongst the 20+ and older generations... Too bad, I guess the amazing fact that chinese woman are all very thin and healthy looking will be something of the past and to remember... sigh! ;)
There's a lot more to say but oh well, that was just my 2 cents about China...
Yeah, what toogreen said -- I'm sitting in a school in Shandong at the moment and could access both "blocked" sites without a problem. I've had nary a problem with accessing sites, except for the frequently-down local DNS.
$ echo "ceci n'est pas une pipe" | sed -Ee 's/(eci n|pas )//g'