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Defeating China's National Firewall
Bruce Schneier is reporting on his blog that a recent paper is discussing how to defeat China's national firewall. From the article: "However, because the original packets are passed through the firewall unscathed, if both of the endpoints were to completely ignore the firewall's reset packets, then the connection will proceed unhindered! We've done some real experiments on this -- and it works just fine!! Think of it as the Harry Potter approach to the Great Firewall -- just shut your eyes and walk onto Platform 9¾."
Okay, now that you let the cat out of the bag, how long before the Great Chinese Firewall gets this hole plugged?
On the otherhand, the more they try to squeeze star systems, the more they will slip out of thier han (or something like that).
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
...is a billion Chinese walking into the great wall of China...all at once.
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
Thanks for doing the security analysis for us. We appreciate your hard work and excellent documentation.
Your Pal,
Wen
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
No one is monitoring that protocol
have a bitchin' summer!
there is no need to sign your posts. this isn't usenet. your username is right there above your post. stop it.
I need gopherchucks!!!!
Wouldn't this be easily detectable and probably illegal (for someone in china)? It sounds like a good way to get in trouble.
that most of the Chinese people don't know/care about the firewall?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
Another way to defeat that firewall is to have everyone on both sides sending, say, ICMP/TCP/UDP pings through it.
Will it be able to deal with this enormous amount of traffic jamming into a "single point"?
Maybe Computers will never be as intelligent as Humans.
For sure they won't ever become so stupid. [VR-1988]
That's the last time you break down my shitty firewall!
Jeez, why is it everytime chinese build a wall, those damn mongolians gotta break it down?
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
How the heck is it anything like shutting your eyes and walking onto Platform 9¾?
Maybe if the Chinese authorities found you on board this 'train', they could act like those terrible dementor things I guess.
It is irresponsible for people to post ways of bypassing the security restrictions a sovereign nation has enacted upon its people. If the Chinese people don't like the way their government is restricting their access to information then they have a moral obligation to overthrow that government, either peacefully via voting in the next election, or by force using a militia formed from the people. By showing the Chinese people ways to exist comfortably within the restrictions imposed by an immoral government we're not helping them to reach a better place in life.. namely a free and democratic Republic of China.
If I'm correct, and I think I am:
This has the potential to triple the traffic through their firewall as resets are sent for every packet. So consequently, not only is it an illegal act of hacking (even by US standards) but the potential does exist for a resulting DOS attack that could take the firewall down completely.
Kids have to much time on their hands. No matter how "horrible" Chinese internet policy is by US standards, it's their damned network segment. Let them work it out for themselves.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
But even in the west I feel more comfortable using Tor, a (well, close enough) anonymizing proxy.
I used to use JAP (a similar project but the client was Java based and less transparent) but Tor is considerably faster. Throughput up to 60K/sec on a 512k/sec DSL line (as fast as it ever goes with no proxy) means that it's practical to use for all traffic and makes the needle much harder to find in the haystack.
Think of the Children; Sleep with your Sister
Or they might actually be able to enjoy their newfound freedom for the three days until it's plugged and they are subsequently arrested.
See the parallel?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Could we just think of this as the "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" approach?
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Everyone knows that its many miles long... one single attack cannot bring it down...
sig goes here!
I really think that the only real long-term solution to the censorship is the freenet project. This is more like a temporary bug than a real solution. Everyone keep moving...nothing to see here...
Huh? [devShell.org]
Just a thought.
the_crowbarHave you read the Moderator Guidelines
Or you just type in:
idspispopd = Walk through wall in noclip style
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
"However, because the original packets are passed through the firewall unscathed, if both of the endpoints were to completely ignore the firewall's reset packets, then the connection will proceed unhindered!"
This is how the loudness war is killing music.
The chinese internet doesn't belong to the chinese government, it belongs to the chinese people. When they have a real democracy then "they" (the people) can decide how to run it. Until then we shouldn't respect how "they" (the government) want to run the internet any more than we would if some bank robbers were holding hostages and "they" (the robbers) wanted to decide how to run the bank.
Firewall 0, Haxors 1.
Maybe, but these revolutionaries will need information and the ability to coordinate and communicate across vast distances to be victorious in their campaign, be it political, social, military or all three. Finding a way to bypass government restriction on speech and (virtual) association isn't necessarily antithetical to freedom.
But keep in mind that your ideas about legal and illegal are based on a system of law that does not exist in other societies.
Hormel
Well, at least not yet. I've been in Beijing for the better part of the last year. I've yet to be arrested for anything (though I've nearly beaten the shit out of some guys who cut in line in front of me- happens often here.)
A witty saying proves you are wittier than the next guy.
Well, one could easily set up a proxy server on this side of the firewall that ignores the reset packets. Then it doesn't matter how the web server is configured.
Badass Resumes
Do you recall that little American Revolution way back in the mid 1770's? You know, the one the then-English colonies were LOSING? The U.S. would have been in quite a pickle without the French providing financial and military aid. Sure, it was in their own self-interest, but that makes their aid no less valuable.
Just because a Revolution receives assisstance from the outside makes it no more or less legitimate.
SirWired
In the Republic of China, firewall slashdots you!
The revolution will not be televised... but it will have a page on Wikipedia
I'm getting a bit tired of this...
Creeping legal legislation against porn sites.
Gambling too. Using phone lines to bet shouldn't be illegal. Encroaches on civil liberties.
I find it interesting that the link you provide is to a car enthusiast site. The title is "Death Van for China: Mobile Execution Chamber Makes for a Morbid Conversion Van." What? Are they advocating that people buy these things and trick them out, maybe put wall to wall shag carpeting, a waterbed, and some disco lights in them?
"Hey baby, want to take a ride in my death van? Oh yeah, I'll give YOU a lethal injection!"
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Gimmicks like these wont last long. How many chinese would actually search for information against their government? Even if they do, they will always have the fear of being caught. Until every Ying Yang realizes the need to overthrow the system, nothing is going to happen.
I think your post got cut off. Would you please repost?
You can pick up from "Here's how you can get those poor miserable people the drugs they want and need..."
Thanks!
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Third party off-to-the-side resets are actually hard to do against a modern OS. Remember that big TCP reset against Cisco routers that could tear down BGP sessions... The fix was to be more restrictive on accepting reset packets. To do a third-party reset you have to be able to send the reset in real-time or each endpoint will have advanced their sequence window (actually the ack window is what matters). The reset will be properly ignored as invalid because each endpoint has moved on which would be impossible if one had actually sent the reset.
A third party spoofer can play games with the TCP Timestamps to effectively shut down a connection and he only has to be near-realtime. Send the right value and all of the legitimate packets get dropped by the OSes PAWS checks. I'll leave that one as an exercise to the reader.
They're Mongorians!
And before someone lambasts me for making fun of Engrish, I should clarify that I'm amused by all variations of the English language. A good number of my fellow Maltese citizens butcher English, for example, even though it's supposed to be a first language. Only in Malta can you fill your car up with pitlor (petrol), have your football team lose on a pineltri (penalty), and make windows out of enimielju (aluminium). By the way, those aren't Maltese words, those are what many Maltese people think the English words actually are. Oh, and they also think that Hoover, Jablo, Kenwood, and Geyser literally mean a vacuum cleaner, polystrene foam, a cake mixer, and a hot water heater, respectively.
Here's the South Park clip about Mongorians from YouTube.
*blinking cursor*
Why do you think that the only legitimate way to deal with a bad government is to overthrow it, by election or force? What's wrong with getting a bad government to change its ways?
Do you think that any time a government is doing something bad, that the government should be overthrown (or voted out)? What if a government is doing some really wrong things, but it's also doing some good things? Suppose you think that a President has done one thing that's very wrong, but that aside from that one thing, he's done a fantastic job. Are you morally obliged to vote that President out? Imagine it's 1948. You think Truman did a terrible thing when he used nuclear weapons in Japan, but you approve of everything else he's done, and you don't like Dewey. Are you morally required to vote for Dewey anyway?
Do you think that armed rebellion is the only way for a non-democratic government to become democratic? If so, why do you think this? There are examples in recent history of non-democratic governments becoming democratic without a shot being fired (e.g., most of Eastern Europe). Or think about the way the U.K. changed from a non-democratic monarchy to a parliamentary democracy with a figurehead monarch.
Have you thought about what would be involved in overthrowing China's government by force? For some period of time, China would be without any government at all. Think how wonderful it would be for a country with a population of over a billion and a large supply of nuclear weapons to find itself suddenly without a government.
One way to get a government to stop trying to regulate something is to make its efforts to regulate it spectacularly ineffective. This happened in the United States with Prohibition. Why can't it happen in China?
http://www.strangemilitary.com/images/content/2376 .jpg
Why yes, I do. It is why I am a Libertarian. It is a huge waste of time, effort and money to stop drugs. Instead the government should regulate the HELL out of them like they do Cigarettes and Alcohol, and tax them into oblivian. Prolly would get rid of the Income Tax with the revenue.
.........
AND it would clean up the Drug Cartel Violence found in Brazil, Argentina, Mexico
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
This sort of reminds me of the way the Mongols defeated the Great Wall of China.
Did they tear the wall down? No.
Did they march around one end of the wall? No.
They simply bribed a guard to open the gates.
Maybe China shouldn't be so fixated on walls.
China even had a war with Britain over that kind of issue.... Both sides were wrong in that one, with governments trying to control people's lives and force or ban trade, rather like the US wars on politically-incorrect drugs. This time it's politically-incorrect speech that China's trying to ban.
Bill Stewart
New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
I feel a lot of sympathy for the Chinese who've died or who've been jailed and tortured for disobeying their formerly communist and now fascist regime, but in the end changing that is up to the admittedly indifferent and mostly indoctrinated Chinese population.
However when the Chinese people allow their communist party gestapo to continue raping and demolishing their *peaceful* Tibetan neighbours, *that's* something no decent person in the whole world should tolerate without taking some action.
It's both ridiculous and ironic at the same time that the general indoctrinated (everyone's spending a minute in the Chinese "education system" gets a full load of brainwashing, that is a verifiable fact) Chinese population is taught to hate the Japanese to their guts for what took place in *parts* of China during their *civil war* over sixty years ago while these same idiots are absolutely idolizing their own expansionism-driven 100% destruction of Tibet.
*That* is what should drive the action against the Chinese regime by both decent Chinese people (who are few but do exist) and anybody else who feels that wiping out a peaceful nation (which Tibet was for centuries after adopting buddhism) can not be tolerated.
Geeks with respect for human life and dignity can play a major part in breaking the fascist Communist Party's stranglehold on information. I've made my informed choice and you can either 1) play ignorant and sympathize with the Chinese regime, 2) wash your hands and ignore the whole thing, or 3) figure out ways to try and stop the madness driven by the Chinese dictatorship. It's that simple.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
f**king Mongols!
as is the government of myanmar, zimbabwe, north korea, etc.
basically, any government that does not have a process that respects the will of the common man on the street above all other groups of people, when choosing who should lead them, on a regular basis, is illegitimate, and has no reason to be respected
in other words, i respect the chinese people
and if i respect the chinese people, then it is logically impossible for me to respect, at the same time, a government which did not consult the chinese people when deciding who rules them
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If they're gonna move to another country with a less invasive government anyway, then they might want to skip the US for the duration of the current administration. We're better than China, but, as you stated, we're not really doing that well. NSA phone tapping, banking surveillance, and saving the children, oh my!
On another, semi-related note, the Chinese, at least in practice, have almost no copyright restrictions put on them when in comes to music. Users of http://www.baidu.com/ (Chinese search engine) can just pull tunes off of Chinese websites. In this area, the average Chinese person excercises more freedom than citizens of other countries. I think copyright infringment is still illegal. It's just that nobody cares. So if you were Chinese and all you cared about was free music (some people I know), then it would be to your disadvantage to come to America. BTW, I haven't been able to successfully use Baidu because I can't read or type Chinese, so I'm not speaking from personal experience.
This space reserved for administrative use.
It helped that there was a large public sentiment in favor of the colonies back in the mother country, too. Didn't necessarily mean ol' George was forced to quit, but it did mean that there was never a real popular opposition to him calling it off.
...it's really a sad day for America when we require a goddamn ACT OF CONGRESS to make our DVD players work properly. ~
I agree with you, and I digagree with the first reply, that stated the US should get involved.
I have to problem with the US *CITIZENS* getting involved, or any from other country for that matter. But a governmet judging a whole country and it's people and going to war for matters that don't involve it's own citizens, makes no sense to me.
We all agree that Irak (well, all the middle-east) is about Oil... it's, therefore, an Economical war, seeking economical expansion for some companies in the US or some other countries. It's not a political war. You're proposing a political war (or action) against china, and that's not going to happen, not in this world, and I agree with that. Economical wars I also disagree with, but that is offtopic.
Excellent. So we should be the World Police? Hey, I know...how about we adopt the Team America World Police theme song, "America, fuck yeah!". Sorry but just because you think they're assholes doesn't mean it's right to fuck with them. There are lots of people who think we're a bunch of assholes too (Al Queda anyone?). Do you want them fucking with our country?
Sorry but it's arrogance. I don't think it's cool that they've been beating up on poor Tibet but it's not our fight. Life isn't fair and it's not our job to save the world from injustice (or our perceived sense of it).
As long as America has the attitude that you have, and I think most Americans do, we will have big problems with the rest of the world.
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
"By showing the Chinese people ways to exist comfortably within the restrictions imposed by an immoral government we're not helping them to reach a better place in life."
free and unfettered access to information is the way for the chinese people to achieve that which we both agree they deserve: a government that is formed according to their wishes in a democratic process
so in other words, what you represent as a propping up of an unacceptable status quo: circumventing firewalls rather than challenging them directly, is actually a threat to the larger, more important, status quo: covertly circumenting a government which wishes to control the information the chinese people have access to
via a free exchange of information, the larger more important goal of freedom from propagandistic control by a central authority is achieved, regardless that you think the methodology isn't "pure"
i suggest that you don't be so idealistic about how change is actually achieved in this world. progress is messy and full of grey areas
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Are you promoting a view that when an expansionist fascist regime totally wipes out its peaceful neighbouring state to steal their national resources and to advance their militaristic geo-political position, the rest of the world should just... do exactly nothing? Actually just keep doing business with that regime??
Of course governments, those representatives of the people, must make their choices wrt. China based on facts. If China was not committing genocide outside its borders I'd give it more time but their victims in Tibet don't have that luxury.
In the end the people of China are responsible for their regime's crimes whether they were elected them or not.
Should invading one's peaceful neighbours be opposed, or rewarded with trade deals?
Does the firewall run linux?
Isn't "idclip" for walking through things?
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
We would be offended if China would try to defeat US or EU labor laws, immigration policy, or othther domestic or international policies.
Then he'll go home to his wife and kids, proud that he's done a good job. If you're here, raise your hand.
Kind of funny, eh, that repression has been outsourced to us now. (Yes, Cisco helped set up the great firewall, sold the equipment, and worked extensively to prevent free access by Chinese citizens.)
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
-1 point for trying to mount a expression using refferal to the Harry Potter universe.
/ MackanZoor
As our forefathers correctly surmised, all societies are in the end judged based upon their treatment of the minorities, not the majority. So yeah maybe the majority is okay with the gov, but those that are in prison, being forced to work, and having their organs harvested because they stole a loaf of bread, they might not like it so much. Now the question, which you have proposed, is what can we as foriegners do to help the country? I don't know. Somtimes a wink and a nod are all thats needed ( see ukraine, belarus, ect), other times even millitary intervention just causes more problems ( see Iraq). Will destroying the Great Chinese firewall help or hurt? I think in the end it will help, as currently only those that really wnat the information and are highly technincal can get around it. They want information that the government doesn't want the mto see, and they are highly motivated to get it. Hopefully, they can put the banned information to the greatest possible use for the country, and they aren't just trying to look at illegal pron, or anything else of a lower social redeaming nature.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
Maybe you ought to wait till the last book comes out. If you saw the news, you know what I'm talking about.
What?
Yes you are right. BOTH ends need to drop the resets. But all they need are for a few web proxies on the outside to dop packets. I could set one up in my house in 20 minutes. I imagine a few thousand people could set up proxy servers. This is so simple to do. You do not even need to write software in can be done with a firewall rule
The problem is not the firewall. Having traveled in and around China with my laptop I never had difficulty getting around the firewall. However what is much more insidious is the active monitoring of your hotel room's internet connection. And they even let you know your being monitored because a little icon pops up in the lower right hand corner of the screen.
Personally I used vpn software to get around a bunch of these issues. However I could have been arrested and charged with crimes against the state for even possessing the software. Let alone using it.
The Great Chinese Firewall is a sham...if the government wants to get you they'll just watch what you type. ALL hotel connections are monitored, maybe not continuously but they are monitored.
-anon because I still need to travel in China on occasion.
I cannot believe the utter gall of the parent. Are you trying to insinuate that resentment to the atrocities by the Japanese is nothing more than some kind of evil conspiracy by the Chinese government? Have you talked to any Koreans recently?
And even worse, how dare you try to downplay what the Japanese had done? Are you saying that the incidents are any less of an atrocity simply because it was only in certain regions?
Do you even know what happened in the "rape of Nanking?" Have you seen/heard the statistics and accounts? (And even yet, I have never seen any victim accounts say anything bad about the Japanese.)
And what is this about the "these same idiots are absolutely idolizing their own expansionism-driven 100% destruction of Tibet." "decent Chinese people (who are few but do exist)" What kind of ludicrous overgeneralization is this? I do not know any Chinese people who "idolize" the destruction of Tibet and I would like to think the many nice Chinese people I met on my last trip to mainland China were decent people.
As an American born Chinese, I find the statements extremely offensive. And the worst part is that it seems to be the consensus.
I have talked from time to time with my father, who grew up entirely in Taiwan, about the issue of Japan. and yet I can sense he has resentment towards Japan. And wouldn't you?
A country whose prime minister still visits the shrines of World War II criminals?
A country who until relatively recently pretty much denied it ever happened?
A country who replies to protests and outcries by the Chinese by telling the Chinese they should just move on?
I am often told by my peers in school that the Chinese have suffered little racism. But from day to day I often see evidence to the contrary. Like being mocked at fast food restaurant drive thru with people acting as if they cannot understand my mother's accent, and doing the "ching chong" crap, or being called a gook at a gas station, and now this.
Do you want to know why the Chinese dont "suffer from racism?" Because the Chinese rarely say anything.
But I digress, why is the parent whose comments are so blatantly racist modded so high?
Please mod parent down.
Who says the chinese internet belongs to the people? your worldview? your philosophy? international law? sorry but those things don't exist nor matter when guns and death is involved.
Yes, I'd like for the Chinese to be free and I'd like to drink and drive as they are two of my favorite activities but sadly the Man is keeping me down. My worldview doesn't change the facts.
To say the Chinese Internet belongs to the people is absurd. Sure, you can hope and fancy it but in reality, it does not and will not for some time it seems. Governments have the ability to enforce their will. You can oppose it but without a greater force, you will lose and die. If you want to rise up and have the ability to remove their Internet policy, I support it.
I assume it is some local idiom. And anyway, Chinese internet cafes are 99% full of people playing on-line games or watching videos. (and smoking) They COULD NOT care less about the firewall.
Well, it seems that although you're not restricted by the Great Fireware, you're buried in floods of fake news. Remember the "Massive destructive weapons"?
In many respects sending Reset packets to both sides of an unwanted connection based on the content of the traffic is much more the behavior of an Intrusion Detection System than just a firewall. The Cisco IDS devices and I would imagine other brands as well typically have an entire interface just for sending reset packets to close unwanted connections between hosts based on certain rules and content inspection.
Don't by angry about what they say. They like bad news about china and the media knows how to please them. It's like drugs which make them feel like the best people in the world.
Your cry is useless because your post will be modded down as well as mine. The truth is not as good as drugs.
http://www.chinalaw.gov.cn/jsp/contentpub/browser/ contentpro.jsp?contentid=co214114811-
mugabe was once a hero on the street in zimbabwe
ask the street what they think of him now
i have no doubt that nationalism is fervent in china. i also have no doubt that a chinese person can separate pride in china from pride in the CCP. i am proud to be an american, but i don't like the bush administration. see how that works?
additionally, in 2008, i know bush won't be in the white house anymore. and i will get to add my voice to who the next leader will be. and so i am happy with how my government works, even though i don't like its composition right now
that's called legitimacy in the eyes of the people. it creates confidence, stability. can your average chinese citizen say the same about their relationship with their government?
my point is very simple, but if you don't want to accept it, that's fine: but democracy is the only form of government known to mankind that manufactures legitimacy. every other form of government, legitimacy decays over time
i'm certain other governments have and will retain mythical status in the eyes of their people, even if they aren't democratic, for decades even
but unless the people are consulted again, that legitimacy will eventually decay into resentment
it's a simple straightforward concept
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Where are my mod points when I need 'em?
Any VPN provider that terminates in the US will allow you to bypass your local government's firewall. Providers include:
* PublicVPN.com
* HotspotVPN.com
* SpotLock (via iPass)
* iPig
Some (most?) of them also allow VoIP access, so you can bypass those pesky local telcos.
Heck, money from oil has been known to be used to buy entire UN Security Council votes and a UN Secretary General, all in the service of keeping a dictator in power (scream all you want about "Bush LIED!", Saddam still had the UN bought, lock, stock and barrel. Deal with it.).
What makes you think legalized the drug trade will remove the use of the money they generate from keeping entrenched interests in power?
human beings don't like to be slaves
therefore, they appreciate it when those who rule them are chosen by them, rather than be led by some self-important caste of aristocrats or technocrats who believe they know better than the people themselves about how the people want to live their lives
No mechanisms but those that have operated in China have any relevance.
i believe i am appealing to universal human characteristics. such as: americans don't like to be slaves not less than, not more than, but just as much as the chinese don't want to be slaves. it's a universal human desire. it is not modified by culture or race or religion. it is true everywhere you go in the world, for every person
Go back to your life of course work and leave governmental analysis to the professionals
said the "anonymous coward" (snicker)
i would like to see your credentials for passing judgment on my words, ehem. because i am not sure you are professional enough to find my statements invalid (snicker)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Most vacation time of any president.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
The politicians won't go for that. Doing so would be tantamount to a deathwish. They like their cushy jobs too much to surrender their seats to the cartels who'd either fill the chairs themselves, or appoint pro-illicit-drug-distribution types.
Hence, I guess we can probably safely presume the in-situ leaders are pro-chaos, pro-drug-addiction, pro-demand-for-drugs...
Hmmm....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
what is the proper relationship between the chinese people and their culture and their history? how does it explain why they just love living under an elite that assumes to know better than they do about how they should live their lives?
...but that some questions go above and beyond cultural differences!
see, silly me, i'm someone who believes that cultural differences DO matter
in other words, some issues are simply true for all human beings, regardless
for example: wearing the hijab. as a westerner i find the idea repugnant. but i respect that in the islamic world, it is accepted and embraced. so i respect that cultural difference, because in a different cultural context, it has a different meaning, and i realize that. to me, as a westerner, it seems to be a way to demean women as anonymous property. but in the islamic world, it is meant to convey the idea of that a woman is not just a sex object, to allow her to live outside of the contraints as defined by prurient male interest. so i respect that interpretation, because i don't live in the islamic world, so i have no right or ability to comment on the hijab as it is used in the context of another culture
another example: cannibalism. some tribes in highland papua new guinea still practice it. this is a cultural difference, with a cultural and historical context. however, i do not respect it. i don't respect it, not as a westerner, i don't respect it, as a human being. the right to life and limb is a right that exists ABOVE and BEYOND the question of cultural and historical context
see how that works? cultural differences matter. but some questions exist ABOVE and BEYOND cultural concerns, that no flimsy excuse should excuse. "it's ok to murder someone, because it's acceptable in this culture." bullshit. no human being wants to be murdered. that right exists as something more important than any respect for any culture, end of story
but, silly me, to say that makes me a western cultural imperialist right?
to get back to the original point: no one on the planet should live under an aristocracy or technocracy that assumes it knows better than the people themselves about how to live their lives. to believe that is just a limited western viewpoint of mine, right?
or maybe not, asshole, as agreed by all peoples of all cultures a long time ago, having nothing to do with western interests whatsoever
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
The "Digital Barbarians" are breaking down the other Great Wall in China- good news and good stuff. I always waanted to do something like host Triangle Boy- but now w/ this workaround maybe I won't have to.
I actually think a World Police wouldn't be that bad of an idea, but it shouldn't be us. The USA has the muscle to be the world police - our military spending almost matches the rest of the world combined, and we have overseas bases out the ying-yang. In a lot of ways, we are functioning as a de facto world government. The problem is that we don't have a mandate to do so. What is pissing off the rest of the world isn't so much any one thing we're doing (or at least that's what I would have said before 2003...), but the fact that they don't have a *say* in what we're doing. (Of course, with this administration, the American people and the Senate don't have a lot of say in the matter either - signing statements anyone?)
What I'd like to see is some mandated world body we could sluff off the job to. This massive millitary of ours is a drain on our economy - our GDP certainly isn't nearly half the world's! I'm also tired of our country being the Great Satan to every would-be Hitler that comes along. Let somebody else have the headache! The UN isn't set up to handle the job - five members with veto powers, representation has no proportion to the relative power of each nation, and hell-hole dictatorships keep being put on the human rights committee. Bleech!
So how about some sort of Federation of Free Nations? Membership would be limited to multiparty democracies (and I would expect to see a lot of wrangling over just what that means...) You'd have a two body legilature - a Senate, where each member state has two votes, and a lower body where representation would be proportional to GDP. I think that would be the best way to do it, in order for the representation to reflect the relative real-world power of the members - you don't want India to have four times as many votes as the USA unless they have the guns to back it up. The only way I can figure out to fund it is to levy tarriffs on trade between member nations and between member nations and outsiders. You don't want to rely on handouts from the member states (it would emasculate the Federation too much), and something like the IRS would be too invasive. Bad economics, but it might throw a bone to the anti-globalists. There would be a standing military, of course, but it would be smaller than many of the member states' own national militaries. Would could help out by turning over some of our aircraft carriers and our overseas bases. (But still keeping a healthy military, just in case.)
Of course, this wouldn't work until both China and Russia are democratic. And good luck convincing the USA to sign up! But I can dream, can't I?
At any rate, I once set up a spreadsheet with this scenario, and tried to figure out how well the Iraq War would have gone through back in 2003. (I used Freedom House to figure out which nations count as "multiparty democracies.") The pro-War side definitely had the lower body tied up - a lot of rich nations backing the War - but it looked like the Senate was about a third for, a third against, and a third undecided. Instead of just calling France a spoilsport and going in anyway, Bush would have had to convince the middle third. I think this process might have brought out just how weak our case for war was, and given diplomacy more time to work.
I've been living in China for the past year, and have asked lots of people about this. The only people who care about the firewall are foreigners, because the firewall blocks foreign sites. The vast majority of Chinese don't care that they can't read bbc.co.uk. What they DO care about is the staggering number of domestic blogs and news sites that get shut down each month for being labled "obscene" or "seditious," and no amount of internet wizardry is going to let you access a site whose server has been confiscated and webmaster imprisoned. I suppose Google could step up to the plate and start caching all of these doubleplus ungood blogs before they get taken down, and then perhaps bypassing the firewall would be useful, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.
You just identify yourself as (an overseas) Chinese and your only reference to your people's remorseless genocide of the whole Tibetan nation is labelling my quote as ludicrous?
Would you condemn the Chinese genocide of the Tibetan nation if you actually knew what it's like suffering in that hell?
What if chinese monitor it and record those who drop the packets and continue to connect(at same time when they suppose to disconnect)?
This is a flaw in the implementation of TCP/IP in the OS at both ends:
Allowing a unknown, unauthorized third party to reset a connection.
Bruce described this could be used as a DOS attack. This is the essence.
The great firewall of China is a popular example, because of the political dimension.
Mention this as a defeat for the great firewall of china is a way of packaging the message.
i think a lot shit we get here about china is to distract us from a very systemmatic, and calculated erosion of our rights here. better secure freedom in the usa before interfering with another unjust government.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I have a little experience of working in China. ;-)
We run an encrypted ssl vpn for our company data, which the chinese authorities are probably a little nervous about us using in china for obvious reasons. What I find is that after about 24 hours usage , the internet goes mysteriously down a lot of the time. This would be the response to somebody who's firewall was rejecting their block packets surely. They just shut down your access to the net unless you play by their rules....and probably take you out the back and shoot you in the back of the head if you keep breaking their rules.....
After another 5 years of George W, that's where you'll probably be at in the "land of the free" too
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i live in China and so far had very few issues
...
with the great firewall.
it mainly blocks BBC and Blogspot.com, and slows
down foreign pop3 and smtp servers.
apart that, all the sites i usually need work
like a charm, speed isnt even an issue since
i download often at 80kB/s.
MSN, Skype, eMule, and so on, they all work
perfectly.
as well as western media sites like CNN, LeMonde, Guardian,
NY Times,
any decent proxy (like anonymouse.de) works fine, as
well as TOR and less known ones.
now,why the chineses don't give a shit ?
simple, because they DO NOT read foreign web sites !
very few chineses speak english, german, french, or spanish.
blogs : blogger.com and blogspot.com are blocked, but ANY
other decent free-blog provider works fine.
mobile phones : unlike in some western countries,
you can buy any cell phone completely
anonymous, just buy the rechargeable SIM card and you're done.
concept : the chinese goverment blocks blogs containing ILLEGAL
material, first of all dissident stuff.
it has any rights for that, and in the US and EU they blocks
for the same reason child pornography and nazi sites.
i'm writing this because i've never read so much bullshits and ignorance
about China like in this article and your ugly replies.
and i can confirm that here there's more freedom than in the west,
if you just follow the rules as in any other country.
get a life before spitting on things you dont know.
Hi Guys
Im an american living in beijing. I mostly dont encounter trouble with the firewall and i have found some ways around it, but i am wondering how this new information could actully be used from my side to get to, say, wikipedia, when it is blocked?
Cheers
Fotoflo
...and how many people realise that the Great Firewall is provided by the good old USA ?
If you want to be a little more clever you can examine the hop count (TTL) in the reset packets and determine whether the values are consistent with them arriving from the far end, or if the value indicates they have come from the intervening censorship device.
leave it to china to turn lag into something good.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
DDoS the great firewall of china. Good plan. Possibly one of the most obvious, pointless and karma-targetting posts I've ever seen. TOTALLY untraceable/organisable/practical and wont get you lynched. Oh wait...........
The author of the parent comment is obviously ignorant about what a Libertarian is. If a person doesn't know enough information about a topic to comment, they shouldn't fill in the gaps with rumors and opinions, only to play these off as if they were common fact.
Have you driven a fnord... lately?
You must wait a little bit before using this resource; please try again later.
Sure there are many regimes and even indifferent democracies committing criminal deeds, but which in your opinion equal ("just as quilty and cruel") China's systematic destruction of a peaceful civilization in its entirety?
You get your panties in a knot when someone dares to point out to the Chinese how utterly shameful and hypocritical their collective behavior is. Howm any chinese you have met or talked to inside CHina who understand and acknowledge their nation's crimes? Or outside China? How many victims of China's policies? Have you as someone presumably with access to information spent even a little time studying the issues on both sides? Why are you attacking someone who defends the victims? Is any rights advocacy invalid unless all other violations of past and present are also addressed in the same breath?
What makes you think legalized the drug trade will remove the use of the money they generate from keeping entrenched interests in power?
There are quite a few regeimes in central/south america that are controled by minority groups. The vast majority of the money for these groups comes from the drug trade. Cut off the drug money and you cut off the supplies for a minority to keep the masses down.
unzip; strip; touch; finger; mount; fsck; more; yes; unmount; sleep