Slashdot Mirror
Chinese Schools Ax Green Dam Censorship Software
eldavojohn writes "China's controversial Green Dam Internet Filter died on new PCs a month ago, but it wasn't until recently that Chinese schools silently removed it. Claims that the software inhibited work in schools was cited as the reason by Reuters. 'We will remove all Green Dam software from computers in the school as it has strong conflicts with teaching software we need for normal work,' said one school, while another claimed, 'It had seriously influenced our normal work.'"
We had a SonicWall filter and it blocked pretty much everything. Not saying it was SonicWall's fault as we had a highly incompetent system administrator, but it was very detrimental to doing even the simplest of tasks. So I know how these students and teachers feel.
There's nothing wrong with the translation. I think it's more about your understanding of the word "influence". Influencing their normal work just means it affects their normal work. It doesn't mean a good influence or a bad influence. Is the sentence by itself ambiguous? Yes. But it's in the right context to suggest a bad influence, so there shouldn't be a misunderstanding.
The controversy was that the Chinese government was requiring this software (I believe developed by the Chinese government) to be installed on all new computers sold in China, including those sold by U.S. manufacturers.
Ok, I'm curious now. Exactly what was the controversy about it? Whether it sucks or it blows? :P
You only list two but I was fairly impressed with the number of dimensions of controversy this effort managed to accrue. You have (and this is by no means a complete list) accusations of copyright infringement and stealing code, unencrypted transmission from every machine to the server and accusations that said vulnerabilities make way for a possible government botnet tool. And that's aside from obvious controversy of the citizen privacy violations and the Chinese government manipulating PC manufacturers.
Really, if you were to tell me that a government was pushing this I could not, in my wildest dreams, have guessed all of those controversies springing up. Hats off to the Chinese government. Sometimes I think nothing can else surprise me and then, well, there it is.
My work here is dung.
So Green Dam was an influence and not a hindrance?
Perhaps in countries where you can be prosecuted and/or silently punished for criticizing your government the above ambiguity is a must for public statements made to newspapers. I would surmise that the translation was all too accurate. So that those who know what you mean know they are not alone and those who do not agree cannot hold it against you. Just speculation but I would wager these were carefully chosen words.
My work here is dung.
Ok, the Australian article does state that, but if you read the article linked through the slashdot submission we are currently discussing.
Chinaâ(TM)s industry and information technology minister Li Yizhong said manufacturers, internet users and organisations opposed to the plans had received the wrong message from his department and that installation was never planned to be compulsory.
He said Green Dam would be installed in public places and schools, but would be âoevoluntaryâ for other users who can choose whether to install a software disk that they will receive when buying a new computer.
Most likely the work "influence" was translated from the Chinese word yinxiang, which generally connotes a negative influence. A better translation in this context might be "disturb."
Except that's not what controversy means. Controversy means basically an unsettled and ongoing debate as to whether something is good or bad, black or white, etc, and usually neither side really has more than opinion to support their version. But anyway, the jury is still out on which of them is right.
Exactly which of those aspects you've correctly linked to is still a controversy? Is the jury still out on whether vulnerabilities that could get your machine pwned are good or bad? Do we still have compelling arguments for both sides of the issue of whether private and sensitive user information should be encrypted when sent over the internet? Or what?
It seems to me like nowadays "controversial" has become the euphemism for, basically, "I think it's bad, but I want to pretend to be nice and balanced, so I must find another word."
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.