I'm not sure why you say the earth pin being on top or bottom matters.
It wouldn't do us much good anyway, as we have most of our receptacles the wrong way around anyway.
Surely if most sockets have the earth pin on the bottom, then you could make the plug (or wall-wart) so that the cord comes out at that end, and still have plugs that sit against the wall like the UK ones? What is it that I'm missing?
Contrary to the picture shown in TFA, Australian plugs are orientated so that the earth pin is at the bottom (their picture is upside-down). Both flush-fitting (cord out the bottom) and standard (cord coming straight out) plugs are readily available.
(Interestingly, China adopted the Australian plug as their national standard a few years ago... but they turned it up-side down so that earth *is* on the top - I have no idea why!)
Your Sig: "Gay Marriage redefines your marriage as "no different than that of a gay couple". - Paraphrased from hitchkitty"
I'm intrigued, and not sure if you're on the "support" or "oppose" side of the gay marriage debate. I think that's one of the reasons people oppose gay marriage - they don't want their marriage to be seen the same way as gay marriage, since they have an irrational hatred/distaste/whatever of gay people and can't possibly believe that they might actually have a "real" relationship.
Are you one of these people, or are you putting this on your sig to show how absurd you think the idea is?
China's blocking system also includes manipulating DNS. Chinese DNS servers currently return toally random IP addresses for www.youtube.com; and queries to non-Chinese DNS servers are transparently proxied and altered with the same effect. I haven't seen a case of DNS being blocked without a corresponding IP block, but it's certainly do-able. I don't think just saying "but the IPs aren't blocked, it's only a DNS problem!" doesn't mean it's not the gov't doing it.
My personal opinion is that the randomness is a tool to coax people into changing their behaviour. If you find that some foreign site is frequently unreliable, you'll change to another one (possibly domestic) that is more reliable.
Part of what China's blocking/filtering systems do is to transparently filter all DNS requests. e.g. to block YouTube at the moment, not only do they do IP filtering, but they screw with the DNS. If I try to look up www.youtube.com, I get a totally random, totally different IP address each time. This happens EVEN if point dig/nslookup/resolv.conf to a DNS server outside China... they just transparently filter it and give me a bugus response.
So a "failure of DNS", as you put it, doesn't necessarily absolve China of anything. The "failure" could well have been deliberately caused.
Hell, the article itself said service came back for some before others... That in itself says that it's probably the net and not China.
In my experience (I'm in China), that's not really an indication. The "great firewall" seems to be constructed in various parts, and they don't always do the same things at the same times.
"The Nationalists" usually refers to the KMT - the party that were defeated in the civil war by the communists, and fled to Taiwan.
To be fair, I think you should refer to the "deranged Chinese Nationalists" AS WELL AS the "deranged Chinese Communists". Please be a little more inclusive. Thank you.
Well, I'm unclear on whether the discussion is about whether Macs in general are slower reading/writing network shares than other systems... or if the network filesystem (and implementation thereof) is the issue. My comments presumed that the complaint was the former, not the latter.
Maybe he's saying that browsing and file operations appear slow to the user because of all the extra metadata, hi-res icons and what-not being processed.
Remember that on the Mac filesystem, files have various forks - resource fork & what-not. If the Mac is working with a non-HFS filesystem, it saves all this extra data into other hidden files on the filesystem. Each file may have one (or two or more?) hidden files (non-HFS) or forks (HFS) associated with it.
Extra processing &/or transfer time for these files/forks might be what the GP is talking about.
Yeah! Toilet-seat-belts and an electronic reservation system on the passenger entertainment units... and magnetic shoes too keep you on the floor while you walk to the loo!
I've been living in a rented apartment in Beijing, using a cable "broadband" internet service for about 6 months now. Skype has never been blocked during this period, that I have noticed. I have Chinese people from various parts of the country on my "buddy list" (or whatever it's called) in Skype, and they are regularly online.
So if Skype is blocked now, I certainly can't see any signs of it, and if it has been blocked in the past, I have not noticed it.
iTunes Store was unblocked (at least where I am) several days ago. I'm not sure if the Tibet album is still available on there or not, I haven't looked for it.
BBC News in Chinese was unblocked in the lead-up to the Olympic Games and still is. When I first came to Beijing, Wikipedia in Chinese was blocked, but it is currently accessible.
Slashdot Mirror
Great, that's not a bad reason at all. That must be why China flipped it upside-down when they adopted it.
I'm not sure why you say the earth pin being on top or bottom matters.
Surely if most sockets have the earth pin on the bottom, then you could make the plug (or wall-wart) so that the cord comes out at that end, and still have plugs that sit against the wall like the UK ones? What is it that I'm missing?
Contrary to the picture shown in TFA, Australian plugs are orientated so that the earth pin is at the bottom (their picture is upside-down). Both flush-fitting (cord out the bottom) and standard (cord coming straight out) plugs are readily available.
(Interestingly, China adopted the Australian plug as their national standard a few years ago... but they turned it up-side down so that earth *is* on the top - I have no idea why!)
Woman.
Is that like Meta-Moderating?
Your Sig: "Gay Marriage redefines your marriage as "no different than that of a gay couple". - Paraphrased from hitchkitty"
I'm intrigued, and not sure if you're on the "support" or "oppose" side of the gay marriage debate. I think that's one of the reasons people oppose gay marriage - they don't want their marriage to be seen the same way as gay marriage, since they have an irrational hatred/distaste/whatever of gay people and can't possibly believe that they might actually have a "real" relationship.
Are you one of these people, or are you putting this on your sig to show how absurd you think the idea is?
Most cities here in Australia have them now. A lot of them are solar-powered, too.
China's filtering capabilities include screwing with DNS.
China transparently redirects/alters DNS requests to non-Chinese DNS servers.
China's blocking system also includes manipulating DNS. Chinese DNS servers currently return toally random IP addresses for www.youtube.com; and queries to non-Chinese DNS servers are transparently proxied and altered with the same effect. I haven't seen a case of DNS being blocked without a corresponding IP block, but it's certainly do-able. I don't think just saying "but the IPs aren't blocked, it's only a DNS problem!" doesn't mean it's not the gov't doing it.
My personal opinion is that the randomness is a tool to coax people into changing their behaviour. If you find that some foreign site is frequently unreliable, you'll change to another one (possibly domestic) that is more reliable.
Part of what China's blocking/filtering systems do is to transparently filter all DNS requests. e.g. to block YouTube at the moment, not only do they do IP filtering, but they screw with the DNS. If I try to look up www.youtube.com, I get a totally random, totally different IP address each time. This happens EVEN if point dig/nslookup/resolv.conf to a DNS server outside China... they just transparently filter it and give me a bugus response.
So a "failure of DNS", as you put it, doesn't necessarily absolve China of anything. The "failure" could well have been deliberately caused.
Hell, the article itself said service came back for some before others... That in itself says that it's probably the net and not China.
In my experience (I'm in China), that's not really an indication. The "great firewall" seems to be constructed in various parts, and they don't always do the same things at the same times.
Republic of China is Taiwan, not mainland China.
There, fixed that for you.
There, fixed that for you.
"The Nationalists" usually refers to the KMT - the party that were defeated in the civil war by the communists, and fled to Taiwan.
To be fair, I think you should refer to the "deranged Chinese Nationalists" AS WELL AS the "deranged Chinese Communists". Please be a little more inclusive. Thank you.
Do you mean NIMBYs?
Agreed, I've seen my fellow Aussies type/write the same thing. :(
He *does* use the word "gorgeous" a lot (but that's as close as he gets to saying anything is "sexy").
Well, horns are no longer effective. It's time for everyone to replace their horns with loud, digital recordings of screeching tyres.
Ah, and don't forget to mention the Dalai Lama.
You mean, don't forget not to mention the Dalai Lama? :)
Hi from Beijing. Not using a proxy, not using an SSL tunnel. Not blocked.
Well, I'm unclear on whether the discussion is about whether Macs in general are slower reading/writing network shares than other systems... or if the network filesystem (and implementation thereof) is the issue. My comments presumed that the complaint was the former, not the latter.
Maybe he's saying that browsing and file operations appear slow to the user because of all the extra metadata, hi-res icons and what-not being processed.
Remember that on the Mac filesystem, files have various forks - resource fork & what-not. If the Mac is working with a non-HFS filesystem, it saves all this extra data into other hidden files on the filesystem. Each file may have one (or two or more?) hidden files (non-HFS) or forks (HFS) associated with it.
Extra processing &/or transfer time for these files/forks might be what the GP is talking about.
Murdoch knew Fox wouldn't work in Australia, so he took it to the only place in the world where it would ;)
Yeah! Toilet-seat-belts and an electronic reservation system on the passenger entertainment units... and magnetic shoes too keep you on the floor while you walk to the loo!
Problem solved!
I've been living in a rented apartment in Beijing, using a cable "broadband" internet service for about 6 months now. Skype has never been blocked during this period, that I have noticed. I have Chinese people from various parts of the country on my "buddy list" (or whatever it's called) in Skype, and they are regularly online.
So if Skype is blocked now, I certainly can't see any signs of it, and if it has been blocked in the past, I have not noticed it.
iTunes Store was unblocked (at least where I am) several days ago. I'm not sure if the Tibet album is still available on there or not, I haven't looked for it.
BBC News in Chinese was unblocked in the lead-up to the Olympic Games and still is. When I first came to Beijing, Wikipedia in Chinese was blocked, but it is currently accessible.