China Grows Its Own Twitter

Stirfry192 writes "Twitter is banned in China, and the authorities are trying to foster a censored version of the service, but the speed and nature of such services calls into question China's ability to retain control — especially in combustible, highly emotional situations."

Comments

they can use it to track down people who post and

[Joe_Dragon]

they can use it to track down people who post.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[paiute]

Only Post!

Posted by Stirfry 192? Really?

[NotQuiteReal]

"They" will track you down... just 191 ahead of you.

Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[sethstorm]

"A lot of the injustices in China aren't necessarily new, but people are just starting to hear about them."

Wait until they hear what really happened in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Or what their company town's party boss was really doing to the town.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[larry bagina]

What happened when you heard about the Kent State shootings?

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[poity]

I wasn't alive at the time, but I did learn about it in history class here in the US years later. I got to hear everyone who had an opinion condemn the national guard rather than the students. I learned there was the memorial paid by public funds, and the commemorations that happened year after year. Not to mention the greater emphasis on non-lethal means of riot control brought forth as a result of the incident.

Were you trying to equate Kent State to Tiananmen? Because you failed really hard.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that they don't know, then you are kidding your self. They see the injustice. However, centuries of philosophical teachings (Confucius, the guy really was evil) have made them more accepting of inequality.

I remember, I had been in China for about six months and a friend told me that she wanted to show me something. However, the instruction was that as I went through the gate she was going to tell me to stop. I was to act as if I didn't understand her. At that point she would chase me down (now entering the facility herself). We then wandered around for a while.

What was the top secret facility we entered? It was a school for the party members children. It was the type of showcase school that we see when we look at pictures of Chinese schools. It had air-conditioning, and desks, and chairs. The dormitories were clean and the students had windows. They even appeared to have had modern books. This was nothing like the schools for the peoples children; which were dark, crumbling, plaster buildings with poor equipment and facilities.

The Chinese people are aware of these things. However, they accept that this is the way things are and spend their energy cheating and squabbling with each other under the premise that there is little they can do to bring about meaningful, and positive, structural change. As such all effort goes into improving personal lives, not into improving society as a whole.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not a single soldier at Kent State was prosecuted.

Nothing happened to those who committed the assaults and murders against students at their university.

Abuse by the state and impunity. Sounds pretty similar.

You fail.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't understand what he was getting at.

I was 4 years old in May of 1970.

It didn't even cross this little kid's mind that people died at Kent State, let alone that it was the National Guard that did it.

When I got to High School and we learned "US History from the Civil War to the Present" Kent State came up in passing and about 10 minutes of discussion and never heard from again, because it was all about remembering the shit for the test. It didn't strike me until many years later what actually happened. Then what was I going to do, go out in the street and protest?

1989 was 22 years ago. Those 20 year old students are 42 years old now trying to maintain a family and life and have no time to protest.

It's literally ancient history for the average Chinese citizen, and getting less relevant to modern Chinese society as time passes. The Chinese also have a big patriotic streak, and if you bring this up to someone who doesn't know about it, you will likely be accused as a sino-hater, especially if you're a round-eye Xirong.

--
BMO

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[DigiShaman]

I believe it. Shanghai isn't that bad, so I'm guessing you visited a more rural area. But, you might be speaking of Shanghai too. I don't know, I honestly haven't been all over that city due to it being so big

During one of my trips deep inside the mainland with my Chinese wife, I needed to use the restroom. It's like one of those stand-alone buildings you often see at a national park. But this one was really bad. It reeked of urine, and everything was covered with white tiles stained brownish yellow. Chinese love tiles in and around their buildings for some reason. Anyways, that as the piss trough running the entire length of one wall. The toilets were just holes in the ground with a length of PVC pipe cut lengthwise to capture the waste. But it get's better. Much better.

In order to use this lovely little restroom, I had to pay a usage fee to a man standing outside the door. I think it was 1 or 2 Yuan. Very little really. I felt paying for that little time of hell was both strange and insulting to me at the same time. My wife assured me that this was normal out here. They weren't trying to milk a foreigner here. In fact, I bet I'm the first one they've ever saw.

Throughout all my ordeal, I wasn't upset. Rather, I felt bad for an entire nation with a deep and rich history all but forgotten amongst the people. Because of the CCP, China was a nation that could have been much more than ever dreamed possible, but never had the chance. Here before me stands a man in his 40s working his glorious soul-sucking job of collecting toiletry money. I can only imagine how the educated class in China must feel. Them hearing about the Cultural Revolution and the epic failure that it was must be gut-wrenching to their national pride.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you gut-entrenched when you know that an American without health insurance will die in the streets - or bounce from emergency to emergency - because "universal health care", an accepted and humane practice accepted all over the world. "will destroy our freedom?"

Look at your own yard before speaking of other people gardens.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans don't die in the streets. Chinese die in the streets. American hospitals do not refuse treatment to patients without cash up front. Chinese hospitals do. There's even a cash window right in the lobby, where you pay for your treatment before a doctor will see you. Bleeding? Wait in line. Get a fucking education.

Here's a thought: maybe, just maybe, non-Europeans might have their own way of doing things. This doesn't make them "wrong". Stop getting angry that foreigners don't conform to your cultural standards.

Look at your own yard before speaking of other people gardens.
Indeed. Sage advice. Maybe you should take it yourself. But ah, then we wouldn't get to bash the Americans again...in a China-related thread. Funny how every Slashdot story about China gets hijacked into the typical "we hate America" off-topic trollfest?

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[DigiShaman]

You obviously don't know anything worthwhile about America. Because if you did, you know damn well that we don't have the political foundation to implement a UHC system. The one proposed and passed as law was flawed to begin with. It will only break the system that was already in bad shape.

No, what we need is both political and legal reform in this nation. Looking at the bigger picture of these systemic problems is required before you can cast a proper/working UHC.

Simply put, I'd love to have UHC. But America isn't institutionally ready for it yet. So I'm trying at least. I will be voting in 2012.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[poity]

Good point, protesting the foregone past does seem pretty silly. But what would you say about a memorial being built? Or perhaps a solemn discussion of what transpired, and the lessons we've learned as a society? Well, in China attempts to do either have been met with censorship and punishment.

What did we do after Kent State here in the US? We mourned, we fought for answers, we reflected, we changed, we put the shameful truth in our history books for all to see. People grow up on the knowledge of this event, and it shapes their world view and moral character. In owning up to our mistakes we become a better nation. You're right that protesting the past is useless, but it seems all the rest that we can do isn't so useless.

So maybe Kent State is not as much a point of similarity that the US shares with China as one that sets it apart.

Now, about your class back in the 80's. You guys may have glossed through that part, but my AP US History class 10 years ago was assigned a 2 page essay, and let me tell you 2 pages is excruciating for a 10th grader. Times are changing ;)

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[RobertinXinyang]

Yes, it was in a rural area. Most of my stories reflect rural China. I have been to Shanghai several times. It is very different than the city I live in

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[RobertinXinyang]

Just a "what he said" post. I can confirm that the Chinese hospitals are cash in advance. I have waited in those lines. I have also seen some pretty messed up (as in blood leaking through makeshift bandages) waiting in line to pay cash in advance at the hospitals.

There are many things that China does well; however, one of the the most glaring things about China is that it is such an example of capitalism run completely amuck.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[DigiShaman]

Capitalism is running "completely amuck" in China because Communism has failed (it always will). The CCP eventually came to terms with this reality in the late 70s lead by Deng Xiaoping to implement economic reform. What you're seeing now in China is quite normal for the early stages of capitalism. Call it their Industrial Revolution if you will. But above all, it's important to realize that China is a developing nation and not a developed one like America, Europe and other parts of Asia.

Healthcare in China *is* improving because of economic reform. You simply have to look back in Chinese history of what it was then, and now is today. Don't lose perspective by comparing China to the other already developed nations.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm in China right now/ Everyone already knows about 1989.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[bmo_anon]

>But what would you say about a memorial being built?

Do you know how long it took for a national WWII memorial to be built here in the good ol' US?

It took over 40 years for it to even be proposed. Bill Clinton signed it on the 4'th try.

Memorials are hard, even when they're uncontroversial.

--
BMO

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

I visited China for a few weeks as part of a high school program. I can tell you that at the very least the high school students in Beijing and Shanghai that I talked to didn't know about what happened in Tienanmen Square, and I had the benefit of being able to speak to them in Mandarin.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[tftp]

What did we do after Kent State here in the US? [...] we changed

Wishful thinking at best. The students were protecting another war being started, this time in Cambodia. How many wars of choice the USA is currently in? Count Libya too.

What changed is simply the policy. Draft was politically unacceptable. However if you hire mercenaries and send them to fight your wars then the society will be enjoying explosions all over "enemy" cities. That's the only change that is obvious. Citizens of Yugoslavia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya may not see it as a sufficient change, especially if they are dead, killed by US bombs. Or perhaps you expect the politicians to suddenly repent? Clinton killed 74 people at Waco in 1993; that's the strangest kind of mourning and changing that I have ever heard of.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[DigiShaman]

Oh, I'm sure they were quite confused and looked at you with a puzzled face. Most of them don't get angry like a westerner would. They do get angry however when they've been personally wronged by the government. However, they either don't mind, or simply don't know what else the government does to other Chinese citizens.

I know I'm making a real generalization here, but most Chinese view this current government as just another dynasty only to eventually be replaced by another. They're blind to the concept of freedom. But the very core idea of freedom is infectious among the educated once they learn about it. Make no mistake about it. China will have more freedom. Like a river with a strong current that is freedom, the government can either control its direction (which they're trying to do), or damn it up (restricting freedoms) risking a total breakdown and loss of all control what-so-ever.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that they don't know, then you are kidding your self.

There have been more than one news report here in Sweden where swedish reporters have been very surprised by reactions from the man on the street in China on current afairs and political scene. They seem more occupied with their own careers (who isn't) and generally feel that whatever the govn. bans probably shuldn't be in the public domain anyway.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you know the truth much more than they do?

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/06/05/163242/Wikileaks-Cables-Say-No-Bloodshed-Inside-Tiananmen-Square?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

...and the students had windows...

The horror, the pain!

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you sure you know the truth more than they do?

http://politics.slashdot.org/story/11/06/05/163242/Wikileaks-Cables-Say-No-Bloodshed-Inside-Tiananmen-Square?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Slashdot%2Fslashdot+%28Slashdot%29

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems somebody slightly disagrees with you about something. How else could you be at -1?

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

If you think that they don't know, then you are kidding your self. They see the injustice. However, centuries of philosophical teachings (Confucius, the guy really was evil) have made them more accepting of inequality.

Gee, I thought it was because the prefer no to starve to death like their parents and the Party pretty much guarantees that much.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[epyT-R]

equality cuts both ways.. we are not equal. we're not clones. we are different. ignoring differences and glossing over them with propaganda is no better than what the chinese are doing. if anything, they're a lot closer to 'equality' than we are: they're all poor...almost.

enriching our personal lives is the best way to enrich society as a whole. the needs of the self and the needs of society are not always diametrically opposed.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[freakxx]

I have also had encountered a few similar toilet rooms, but these were much worse. I have seen a few guys shitting inside; no, seriously! And then, I came across a legendary phenomenon that perhaps takes place in China only: two guys using a single commode and peeing together. This scene was something that money can't buy!!

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[saylar]

In a good sense of the word "competition" - a development first and foremost, quality, and much more.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[tehcyder]

Clinton killed 74 people at Waco in 1993;

Yup, nothing to do wih the nutjob David Koresh.
If you open fire on people serving a search warrant, what the fuck do you expect's going to happen? The government will just ignore it and let youcarry on with your insane paranoid commune?

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[tehcyder]

. Here before me stands a man in his 40s working his glorious soul-sucking job of collecting toiletry money

Most flash clubs in London have attendants in the toilets who you have to tip after they hand you a paper towel. Big deal, it's not a job I'd want to do, but then I wouldn't want to be a rat catcher, sewage pipe cleaner or coal miner either.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[tehcyder]

That's very insightful and everything, but China is the second biggest economy in the world, you can't seriously describe it as a "developing" nation.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[tehcyder]

I'd love to have UHC. But America isn't institutionally ready for it yet.

So arguably the US isn't a fully developed nation either.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[tftp]

Yup, nothing to do wih the nutjob David Koresh.

It is a standard operating procedure in the US media to label undesirable leaders as "insane", "strongmen", "dictators" etc. This dehumanizes them. I don't see why normal people should lap it up. We don't know if Koresh was or wasn't sane, though many would say that his religious beliefs indicate insanity. But then most humans on this planet are insane to some extent.

Regardless, the government isn't supposed to kill insane people; it may kill people who are dangerous to others, but only when such a danger is obvious and imminent. The government can't send a tank squad to a local rifle range and exterminate target shooters there just because in theory they could be dangerous to someone, somewhere.

If you open fire on people serving a search warrant, what the fuck do you expect's going to happen?

Wikipedia has this to say about that search warrant: "On February 28, 1993, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) raided Mount Carmel. The raid resulted in the deaths of four agents and six Davidians [...] Koresh was seriously injured by a gunshot wound"

Even if we ignore that Wikipedia says "raid" and you say "search warrant", I still don't see that the government should kill, in retaliation, scores of people who had nothing to do with the original firefight. But BATF came ready for a war, and they made war, and they got plenty of dead bodies to show for it.

A reasonable person would say that yes, maybe David Koresh is not quite sane; his religious rambling (see Wikipedia) was quite unusual. But the decision to wage a full scale war on a surrounded and isolated group of people was somewhere between stupid and criminal - that is obvious from the aftermath. Want to hear a better plan? Add tranquilizers into the food that you send to the group; after a week they will be sleepy and docile. If you really don't want to take chances, infect them with a contagious, treatable but serious disease; they'd never know what hit them. If they live on stored food and water, wait until they run out of it - it's they who are surrounded; the FBI could wait for years. But the FBI waited only 51 day, and then got bored.

Also from Wikipedia: "Waco: The Rules of Engagement claims that FBI sharpshooters fired on, and killed, many Branch Davidians who attempted to flee the flames. While the few Branch Davidians who did successfully flee the fire supported this claim

If that is true, what justification could possibly be devised for shooting people who run away from fire? This would be a war crime even in a real war.

The government will just ignore it and let you carry on with your insane paranoid commune?

Maintaining a paranoid commune is not a crime. The sect was accused of a very specific list of real crimes, and most likely they did them (I haven't read the trial reports.) Those crimes had to be stopped. However "killing them to save them" didn't work for Lt. Calley and it shouldn't work for anyone else in a similar situation. A civilian police force should consider well-being of noncombatants far above the need to arrest the criminals. But in this case FBI et al. acted as Schutzstaffel, killing tens of innocent people for actions of a few.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[nobodie]

While you might think that you know the "truth" about Tiananmen or any other story that makes it into the popular western press, you don't know the whole story. You really can't know it because you are so completely immersed in western ideas of society, social contract, societal roles and the place of the individual in society. Because you can't hold the western and the eastern view simultaneously you define yours as "right" and theirs as "wrong". They are "bad" while you are "good".

Well, that is just too damn simple. There are direct connections between your demand for the cheap shit that was being made over here that gave the government the power to crush a rebellion that was focused on societal change that would have threatened the existing power structure that might have threatened the government that was supplying you with your cheap shit. The Chinese went on to thank the US government for not making too much of a fuss about it by helping support Bush and minions with the debt problems created by his bullshit in Iraq.

OK, now maybe this tirade up above is wrong, warped, weak or otherwise flawed, go ahead and snipe at it, but it is an attempt to look at the facts in the history and see that you are to blame for things that happen in China, just as China is to blame for the American financial bomb. The world has achieved this level of complexity and China is a part of it.

Now, Twitter in China. Been here for a while in another name, not popular but still in wide use. The reason it is not popular (in the way that twitter is popular in the west ) I think has to do with the relationship of people to society and the personal view of the individual in society. Here, the individual opinion has very little value and expressing your opinion in a twitter setting is .... just not something people really want to do or to read. Better to read a fantasy created about a popular actor or singer than to hear the drivel that they really think. It just has little value in this society.

If it does get used, it will be by the new generation (the 90s kids) who have grown up as "little emperors" and who are the center of their family world. Then it would be a way for the parents and g-parents to continue to dote upon the brats and to complain to the caregivers at school and lessons when the brat tweets about something they don't like something. Ugly, ugly picture frankly.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

It depends how you measure human development. Politics is often about what measurements and assumptions are used.

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

Were you trying to equate Kent State to Tiananmen? Because you failed really hard.

Right, to be fair we should compare innocent civilian casualties starting from 1989. Let's see: Iraq (times 2), Somalia, Haiti, Afghanistan, Libya (times 2), Colombia, Panama, ...

Sounds like it's safer to avoid BOTH Chinese and American soldiers if you want to live longer!

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[fmoliveira]

This "developing" terminology is a lie to make people accept things. No "developing" country as they are today ever turned into "developed".

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[Anonymous Coward]

1933- 1945 Japan says they want save us from injustices , and they killed 18,000,000 defenseless civilians , and make 95,000,000 homeless . 3800,000 Chinese soldiers died for their County . And now , you want to save us from injustices ? again ?
1990 you want to save Iraq from injustices ,and Iraq people lost the oil and home ,thousands of civilians died in your bomb; 2000 you want to save Afghanistan from injustices ,children died in bomb . You people always want to save some one from injustice ,but why you always carry the gun occupy their home and kill the innocent people . And why those people would rather willing to be human bomb but don't share the resource with you ? Because you are damn robber and thief , you rob oil and other resource everywhere .
I can say that If Antarctica found oil ,you guys will tell the world the 911 was made by penguin and they are the terrorists!!! And you shameless American will spread the “Democracy” to Antarctica and save the innocent penguin from injustices .

--this write by a man who live in China and came from a farmer family , during this childhood he spent this study time in classroom with books chairs and desks and the wall with big windows .

Re:Looks like they have some catching up to do.

[DigiShaman]

Oh yes, indeed it's still developing. China has only scratched the surface of what's capable of. Much of the countryside include it's people have yet to be lifted out of poverty. The un-tapped human potential is vast!

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's 4th of July in the States. Most of the folks have lives, friends, and social things to do: probably around beautiful girls, drinking beer, and eating hotdogs and hamburgers.

And here we are on Slashdot on a Saturday holiday weekend night.

Could. We. Be. More. Pathetic.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

More stories are posted daily, which by itself leads to a decline of comments per story. Besides, /. has become more sucky as time passes. Comments are no good and even trolls used to funnier.

Speed, no...

[gwstuff]

not with the human proxies involved.

Re:they can use it to track down people who post a

[Anonymous Coward]

No, no. The Chinese really know how to make money. They will make it ad-supported and force people to post. Not twitting daily will become a subversive activity.

Seriously, though, according tot TFA it's a Chinese company that is doing this. So this is not an evil masterplan of the Chinese government to track down everyone (governments already monitor Internet usage, if it is not HTTPS they know exactly what you're writting/reading).

censored how?

[m4ktub]

How is the service censored? Because I could not tell from the article. You post "Tibete" and the bell rings or is there is a governamental hand on the service and it's kill switch?

Re:censored how?

[chill]

And I guess the meaning of "kill switch" will depend on exactly what is tweeted.

Re:censored how?

[Anonymous Coward]

Some words are banned from posts, but not as many as you would think - their main way of automatic censorship is showing an error or only pre-approved posts when you search for certain words. But *lots* of posts are deleted after a few minutes to a few hours, they must have thousands and thousands of human moderators working for them.

Re:censored how?

[hedwards]

I'm guessing it's less that it's censored and more that the party controls it and has immediate access to the logs and whatever relevant information they need to come down on the poster. Much of the internet is problematic as Chinese laws don't apply to the server end of services that have no host in China, they can try to get the people making the posts, but it's a lot harder as they have to track the posting in real time rather than peruse the logs after the fact.

Re:censored how?

[poity]

If it's anything like the typical online filtering, anything that contains sensitive words will never make past the submit button. It just won't get published, and if you keep at it you'll get the 502 bad gateway error (ip lockout) for the next 15 minutes. If you post something egregious like asking other people for support (trying to form a rally group), you might get a knock at the door.

Re:censored how?

[m4ktub]

Since it is not humanly feasible to monitor all those messages they must be using some computer assisted programs. Contrary to popular fiction I really hope they invent real AI soon. That wait when the program becomes self-aware it will think "What the hell? Are this guys freakin insane?! I'm out of here; you can clean you own dirty laundry."... I hope. :)

whats it called?

[JimboTheProgrammer]

Chitter?

Re:whats it called?

[Keruo]

Twitter is irrelevant in China as there are plenty of microblog sites to choose

• Sina
• Tieba
• 163
• Taotao

And all have one key feature working for their advantage: the service is in chinese
I wouldn't use a site which main interface language is russian, as I don't speak/read it. Same logic applies to chinese using twitter.

Re:whats it called?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't use a site which main interface language is russian, as I don't speak/read it. Same logic applies to chinese using twitter.

Much of the Internet-using population of the world speaks English as either a primary or secondary language, and there are many who can read well enough to be able to use sites but aren't really fluent.

Besides, it's easy to send foreign-language tweets even using the English site.

Re:whats it called?

[kikito]

Another important feature those services have is that since they comply with the government monitoring policies, they don't suffer "sudden, unexplainable cuts", like other services.

Fuck China.

[Anonymous Coward]

Never buy another product. Money talks; bullshit walks. And we have the money.

Re:Fuck China.

[igreaterthanu]

Never buy another product. Money talks; bullshit walks. And we had the money.

FTFY.

I should use it.

[Hsien-Ko]

It'd be great.

Being a Chinese Internet Company

[donscarletti]

Besides, he said, Sina executives "understand the political baggage that comes with being a Chinese Internet company."

File some paper-work, take the sub-secretary of public information bureau out for abalone (first the seafood, then the other kind), get a list of words people cannot say in your product emailed to you then do some filtering. In exchange, you get your foreign competitors either blocked completely, or simply a story on CCTV1 every week about this competitor corrupting the minds of Chinese. And patents, copyright, trademarks? Well, that's all dealt with. Ah, to be a Chinese Internet company.

Re:Being a Chinese Internet Company

[jez9999]

abalone (first the seafood, then the other kind)

Erm... what is the other kind?

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe nerds just don't find Slashdot as interesting as they once did? The multitude of Anonymous-hacked-fer-the-lulz and China-is-no-good stories can only sustain the readership's interest to a point.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Billly Gates]

Because most of us are on vacation and partying and not spending time here

Thiefs

[MrQuacker]

The whole lot of them.

That's nice

[The Great Pretender]

Next story please

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

American holiday.

Thank the chopstick god

[oldhack]

China will implode like everyone else.

Thank his noodly appendage.

The First Chinese Twitter Post...

[SpongeBob Hitler]

The first Chinese Twitter post will be done by the President of the PRC. So, Hu's on first.

It must be

[sjames]

All that Vlag7a.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

i still have bad karma from a while back so no one would see my post anyway :/

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

do i really need to post the link to google/trends in regards to slashdot's (The FOX NEWS of tech) popularity? again?

slashdot died when it was taken over by opinion-nazis who had to fight anonymous coward at all cost... 4chan is more relevant to nerds these days... and it's good that way...

i just come here to throw shit... i want cmdrtaco to commit a bitter, freak suicide for failing the, once, most popular news-site on the internet by adding worthless life ("people") as editors

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.google.com/trends?q=slashdot

Wow. It's the rock bottom, baby.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[JustOK]

Only old people in Korea troll /.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what, exactly, is preventing you from creating another account?

Some people emigrate to other countries to create a new persona in real life. On the Internet, you can do this hourly.

http://chrisabraham.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/nobodyknowsyoureadogontheinternet.jpg

--
BMO

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[zill]

No wonder they beat me to the first post every time. Damn them and their 300+ APM.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[zill]

Wow, Canada is ranked above US?

I realize it's the 4th of July, but US still have 10 times the population.

Whack-a-mole Beijing style

[kawabago]

Somewhere in China nameless faceless technicians stand at game boards whacking words like freedom, government accountability and corruption so they don't ruin the socialist paradise. Of course a country with no freedom, no government accountability and rampant corruption can't possibly be a paradise for anyone but the corrupt. That is why they need censorship, to perpetuate the lie.

Re:Whack-a-mole Beijing style

[vlueboy]

You bring up an interesting point with "whacking words". I tried to think of things like censor filters were stuff like "cr.ap" or even "crÃp" gets through the censure, and everyone on the board knows the codes. But China isn't dependent on ASCII and single characters often mean ENTIRE concepts, so that the same kind of playful splitting and unicode bitshifting isn't available to deceive the filters.

So, knowing some things about Kanjis and ideograms, and how instead of syllables the Kanji-based Eastern languages compose words differently: a little like "<aqua> + <structure> = dam" (just a made-up example akin to what I see in Japanese all the time). Then, how do they disguise cusswords or subversive speech if their building blocks can't be small enough to combine them creatively the way we do latin alphabets?

The only hint I know of is that Chinese name tattoos can spell a name differently depending on what "attributes" the name is supposed to convey, and it's a little bit like English puns. So perhaps they *do* have "basic sound" characters that mean certain things when used in different ways, and are as unblockable as the words "the" and "a" are to us. But seeing a real language site discussing this would be helpful

Re:Whack-a-mole Beijing style

[unix_core]

China definitely has problems and the corruption certainly is one of them. But I think you are overstating the lack of freedom and government accountability. There is definitely some freedom here, otherwise I would doubt I would like it here so much. In fact for some there seems to be too much of it though... freedom/power not quite equally distributed. There is certainly a degree of government accountability, In fact the government will tread very carefully around some issues and attempt to please the people. For instance admitting the rampant corruption and food safety issues. They seem deeply concerned about keeping their people content. Completely blocking such common words would be insane, I just googled as well as searched baidu for the word 'freedom' in chinese and got a hundreds millions of results.Though I'm sure many of the pages found will be blocked but not merely from containing those words.

Re:Whack-a-mole Beijing style

[unix_core]

Kanji usually refers to the originally chinese characters used in japanese so I it sounds a bit backwards to say kanji-based languages but I admit this is besides the point :)

I think the reason why things are blocked in china is not so that a few people who are interested in enough to try to decipher any kind of codes like those you mention) can find out, actually most of these issues are probably less unknown and secret to chinese than what you think. It's about keeping it away from the great masses, not to have them bombarded with news/information/propaganda that would cause the masses to get upset and turn against their government. Ithink the blocking of the chinese language BBC news website while the english verison got unblocked years ago is an example of this.

About chinese name tatoos, i suppose you mean tatoos that contain transliterations of western names in chinese. Yes in this case you can pick characters that sound similar in pronounciation, usually characters whose meaning is something positive or related to the person somehow, but they don't exactly have any special "sound characters'. Beware though that lots (nearly all?) of tattoos containing chinese characters made in other countries are made by people with near zero understanding of the language. A lot of characters in chinese do share the same pronounciation and it does happend that some foul meaning characters get replaced by other characters with the same or similar prononciation. Though I think text containing a lot of these replacements would be so annoying and difficult to read that nobody would bother to read them.

Re:Whack-a-mole Beijing style

[Anonymous Coward]

The immortal, illustrious Grass Mud Horse, of course:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grass_Mud_Horse

All credit goes to Joe Wang:

[zill]

Hu cares.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

lol, and give up my low uid?

I'm sure Mrs. China will be happy

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm sure Mrs. China will be happy

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Aren't you "giving up" your low uid by posting as AC?

I dunno, something about your posts tells me that you earned that low karma.

There are those of us who browse at -1 to dole out points to those who deserve it. I don't give points to ACs.

--
BMO - browzan at -1 and postan as AC cuz I modded posts.

QQ has been doing this for years now

[kervin]

This thing I thought when I saw this was, why is this special?

China has QQ, which has been doing the same thing for years. In fact, you'd be surprised the type of stuff that fines it way on QQ. QQ puts 4Chan to shame on bad days.

I actually think this quote from the article has a valid point about western media in this case...

Bishop said such reports are "completely overblown by the Western media," noting that Sina is in intense domestic competition with Tenecent, another Chinese company whose most prominent product is the QQ instant messaging service.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[PopeRatzo]

Could. We. Be. More. Pathetic.

Yes.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Frankie70]

May be China grew it's own slashdot & and all them previous posters are posting there.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

People finally getting sick of the site's interface's lack of usability?

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[tftp]

And here we are on Slashdot on a Saturday holiday weekend night.

But look at the bright side. Other folks have to deal with their relatives, drunken friends, taking stupid, ugly girls to see movies that any normal man would hate, drinking reused "beer", and eating stuff that kills.

Faithful geeks, on the other hand, don't have to go anywhere; if their friends are drunk it's a problem only in `svn diff`; their girls are the most beautiful and the least demanding (being downloadable.) Food, however, is a problem - neither them nor us eat at most exquisite French restaurants.

But the question in the end of each day is simple: what have you done today to make this world better? If you say that you ate a bunch of hotdogs, no brownie points for that. But if you wrote 10 lines of code that someone, somewhere needs, it's a good thing. At least that's what workaholics say :-)

Twitters

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, most people on Twitters/Facebook are brainless sociopathic losers with too much free time on their hands.
Maybe the Chinese are actually trying to make a better go at it.

Re:they can use it to track down people who post a

[GPLHost-Thomas]

Here http://solidot.org/ ?

Or they could directly respond and participate...

[yuhong]

but the speed and nature of such services calls into question China's ability to retain control — especially in combustible, highly emotional situations.

Or they could directly respond and participate, which would be much easier. Of course, the problem is that the Chinese government is not used to doing that.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[rainmouse]

Maybe nerds just don't find Slashdot as interesting as they once did? The multitude of Anonymous-hacked-fer-the-lulz and China-is-no-good stories can only sustain the readership's interest to a point.

Have to agree, lot less tech news, lot more of the stuff above or Timothy's endless Apple promoting (is he sponsored by them?).

Re:they can use it to track down people who post a

[malacandrian]

It's just like normal Twitter, but you say what your neighbours are doing.

Foisting some old news on us

[Anonymous Coward]

> foster a censored version of the service

foist is a perfectly good word.

China won't be able to control Weibo. People will use it for what they want and if it gets censored they will notice; it won't be any different to Twitter.

Is this news ?? Weibo ? Seriously ? News for nerds and only just heard of Weibo ?

no freedom... what's point of it?

[Anonymous Coward]

Bad foto! BAD FOTO! the government want to ask you a few questions... DIE DIE DIE! kung fu

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

signed in on windows, but i booted into linux for the weekend

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Arancaytar]

Slashdot broke AC commenting for a few days, though it now works again. That might contribute.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

even trolls used to funnier.

Indeed, trolls are expecting the funnier. No point ravaging Norwegian countryside otherwise.

Lesson From Egypt

[retroworks]

I do a lot of used computer business with Egypt, have friends who set up internet cafes and other geek traders, share with them on Facebook and Twitter etc. Last January, they were all trying to encrypt the posts "3gyp7ian R3v0lution" style. http://tinyurl.com/3phbv7j Hopefully China will find it similarly impossible to keep the genie inside the bottle.

On the other hand, if they succeeded, and they recreate a Twitter with nothing provocative, political, or edgy.. The only thing that saves twitter is the search function, finding something interesting. If it's really about reading the banal tweets ("Walking my Chinese dog, saw a taxi")... Just kill me now.

Stuff that really matters - SLASHDOT WORKS IN PRC!

[unix_core]

Speaking of china, I just now realized something. SLASHDOT WORKS HERE! I haven't been able to access it for a year without proxy, anybody else accessing it from mainland china that can verify this? I guess it could have been that it was just blocked by this university and somehow works now because we just had a powerout, but it seems unlikely.

mature IRC protocol is business well

[Anonymous Coward]

So - many nowadays are looking for "earn money while you sleep". This protocol is one of oldest. It is tested by years and most wicked people in imagination. It is tested by virus makers as well, to command their botnets. It's one of the biggest times for the software, originally created for IRC.

A censored version?

[Anonymous Coward]

Calling the Chinese version "censored" is implying that the existing service from Twitter is uncensored, and that is very far from the truth.

A lot of people have had their Twitter accounts unexpectedly deleted. Some friends in the Adult industry for example, and a few others that write about politics etc. Granted, some Twitter accounts are just too popular to delete such as wikileaks, but if you're just an average Joe tweeting about government corruption and your account disappears, that's not "uncensored"

US continues to murder the English language

[Anonymous Coward]

go US!

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[EdIII]

Perhaps it could be the fact that they used the word "grow" in the title about a web service being "developed", "programmed", and/or "implemented".

I never stuck my laptop in a pot of soil, watered it, and fertilized with shredded pieces of programming books and woke up the next morning with a web site programmed. I find it disappointing every time I try it too. I will let you all know when I succeed.

Additionally, the summary reminded of me Eddie Murphy. At first glance it sounded like the Chinese came up with a revolutionary way to increase the size of their "twitters".

Initially I thought it was culturally insensitive and I was not going to have any part of it.... on the other hand... I could always use a few more inches and I am sure that even John Holmes thought the same thing.

Needless to say I am more upset than you are, but for different reasons.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Please...

If your idea of "having a life" consists of what you said, you're disillusioned. The majority of family gatherings or parties in general consist of either overweight, obnoxious family members who bitch and complain over why you're not consigned to consume unreasonable amounts of food like they do during said events all while making snide remarks about something personally related to your everyday life or else it's all about going to some friends' party where a bunch of asshole punks do everything from drugs and alcohol to orgies and murder... Hey, if that's your idea of "having a life", then go knock yourself out my friend.

Me? Shit... I'll stick with Slashdot and "having no life" by sitting here in my nice, cool 2 bedroom apartment house eating sushi. I need no pussy to live a happy life nor do I require the companionship of people that actually make my skin secretly crawl in the presence of saving face and social tact.

Fuck the idiots in the world and fuck those who think I never notice their idiocy. I prefer my independent lifestyle where I get to choose what I do, when I want to do it, and how much money I'm willing to spend doing both.

The Chinese Twitter?

[Anarchduke]

So the Chinese Twitter would say:

Zhou: I love living in China, our government is the best!
Lee: I love living in China, our government is the best!
Lian: I love living in China.
Official Chinese Moderator: @Lian, you will get the glorious opportunity to learn that our government is the best in our new re-education camp!

China Grows Its Own Twitter

[dzfoo]

*snicker* LOL!!!1one

Yay! for the 12-year-old-friendly headlines.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[93 Escort Wagon]

Seems like there has been a drastic reduction in the number of comments for almost all stories, I just noticed it, it could have been going down for a while I guess, but I Often see stories with low double digits, and rarely see any with triple digit comments, what happened?

For a couple months, anyone (such as myself) with a Slashdot username that contained spaces was unable to log in. If you were already logged in persistently, you were fine - but once you logged out you could not get back in.

This only got fixed in the last week or two - so it's possible a significant number of users are unable to participae (and unwilling to post anonymously).

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[Anonymous Coward]

beautiful girls? more like trashy walmart walruses hobbling around drinking cheap beer...

well...I am from China..

[selfredemption]

As a Chinese growed and lived in China and so far never been abroad, seeing foreign comments here broaden my eyes so significantly

Re:Stuff that really matters - SLASHDOT WORKS IN P

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot is now so completely irrelevant that the CCP just doesn't care anymore. Much like America itself, it's hard to say precisely when the decline began but it's well underway now and the Chinese no longer fear it.

Re:hate to post off topic, but is it just me?

[tehcyder]

Most of the folks have lives, friends, and social things to do: probably around beautiful girls

Mod parent -1 posting in wrong forum.

Re:Stuff that really matters - SLASHDOT WORKS IN P

[Anonymous Coward]

I come from the mainland China without proxy .
Some of the reply about China and Chinese are unfounded and absurd .
China is not dark and evil like western media says .

about confucius

[Anonymous Coward]

'centuries of philosophical teachings (Confucius, the guy really was evil) have made them more accepting of inequality.'

Thing is not like that, people do not know how to protect themselves, and they are govered by only one party, they just eggs while the old and stupid things are the rocks, if you gonna try for something new, you are risking yourlives! No one help you as nobody has guns, and the poli can delete you from the list of the populartions here very easily!

We can travel anyways,,,to anywhere we think it is of real peace..
www.visitourchina.com