There is another country where the government controls/monitors the internet usage of its citzens. The name of this country is China, a place that the US government loves to critize for their "human rights" record. When will Americans start realizing that with every step we take, we're becoming more and more like that.
Wouldn't it be funny/ironic/sad if in 2010 the citizens of China had greater personal freedom than people living in the great United States of America? You laugh now, but it's happening.
Protection from terrorism, yes. Giving up what makes us Americans, HELL NO!
I just arrived in Dalian, China three weeks ago and I'm going to be here for a year working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
One of my main fears about coming here was the internet access. I was afraid that they would block any western site that could talk about democracy or badly about China in any way. Could it be possible that I might not be able to, gasp, read slashdot for an entire year? After I got here I found at that isn't the case at all. I can get to Slashdot, CNN, Yahoo, pretty much every site that I use on a regular basis. The only one that really pisses me off is sourceforge. Out of all the sites to block, why the hell did they pick that one? Maybe because they figure that if anyone does find a way to write a piece of software that could get around their firewall, that would probably be one of the first places it would be posted. I can't seem to come up with a better answer. Any ideas?
Anyway, Google is not blocked, and neither is the cache, so if I ever do find a site that I can't get to, I just use Google's cache to get a general idea of what is there.
Also, as far as the blocking of Playboy and other sex sites goes, any country where you can walk into a bar and have two prostitutes sitting on your lap within 5 minutes (no joke) has far more serious moral issues to deal with than a few internet sex sites. Enough said.
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There is another country where the government controls/monitors the internet usage of its citzens. The name of this country is China, a place that the US government loves to critize for their "human rights" record. When will Americans start realizing that with every step we take, we're becoming more and more like that.
Wouldn't it be funny/ironic/sad if in 2010 the citizens of China had greater personal freedom than people living in the great United States of America? You laugh now, but it's happening.
Protection from terrorism, yes. Giving up what makes us Americans, HELL NO!
I just arrived in Dalian, China three weeks ago and I'm going to be here for a year working at the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
One of my main fears about coming here was the internet access. I was afraid that they would block any western site that could talk about democracy or badly about China in any way. Could it be possible that I might not be able to, gasp, read slashdot for an entire year? After I got here I found at that isn't the case at all. I can get to Slashdot, CNN, Yahoo, pretty much every site that I use on a regular basis. The only one that really pisses me off is sourceforge. Out of all the sites to block, why the hell did they pick that one? Maybe because they figure that if anyone does find a way to write a piece of software that could get around their firewall, that would probably be one of the first places it would be posted. I can't seem to come up with a better answer. Any ideas?
Anyway, Google is not blocked, and neither is the cache, so if I ever do find a site that I can't get to, I just use Google's cache to get a general idea of what is there.
Also, as far as the blocking of Playboy and other sex sites goes, any country where you can walk into a bar and have two prostitutes sitting on your lap within 5 minutes (no joke) has far more serious moral issues to deal with than a few internet sex sites. Enough said.