Google Disappears In China 334
An anonymous reader submits: "The censorship in China was finally getting better since people were 'allowed' to read the CNN news now (except for certain articles). But since this weekend it seems that a new web page has been censored in China. Since this weekend it looks like everyone in China is not 'allowed' to use google.com anymore. google.com was also gaining populairity in China as the better search engine (which also works fine in Chinese). But now I guess it got too popular and thus not allowed. Or does it have anything to do with Yahoo signing the agreement to censor?" Comments to yesterday's post "Real-Time Testing of China's Internet Filters" also noted that Google has gone missing within China.
Cache (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Cache (Score:2)
Yeah, 10 years from now we're all gonna find out that all this Great Firewall business was just a scheme to "keep out the Mongolians...."
I think history will tell that stuff like this just doesn't work.
Re:Cache (Score:2)
www.google.com = 216.239.33.101
The cache server = 216.239.33.100
Couldn't they have just blocked the cache server?
Re:Cache (Score:2)
www.google.com = 216.239.33.101 The cache server = 216.239.33.100
Couldn't they have just blocked the cache server?
Google =/= 2 machines!
When I ping google I get: PING www.google.com (216.239.53.101)... because they point you to the server farm which is closest to you (or less crowded at the moment).. The IPs change constantly, so it isn't that easy for them to block "the cache server".
An interesting talk on this topic by a Google engineer can be found here: http://technetcast.com/tnc_play_stream.html?stream _id=420 [technetcast.com] (Speech from Atlanta Linux Showcase 2000 I believe) and here: http://www.technetcast.com/tnc_play_stream.html?st ream_id=421 [technetcast.com] (Q&A session after the speech)
Re:Cache (Score:4, Informative)
The probably best documented case of this is the "Operation Clambake" exclusion which was restored after heavy protests. But there were copyright issues involved so this might nut cut the cheese all the way.
What worries me more is the exponation of companies towards insane or just plainly stupid government regulations. Sometime in February a single state within Germany (which is a federal republic composed of 16 states after all) ordered their local Internet providers for exclusion of questionable material, which in this case primarily concerns fascist/white-supremacist sites like stormfront.org. Checking google.com with the query "stormfront.org" delivers a link which is clearly a site in question. Sending the same string to google.de returns nothing. Softening the query to just "stormfront" gives a couple of hits on google.com, including the nazi site. Same string for google.de gives a bunch of sites, none of which is questionable in content. Most of them are sites discussing the current situation on this case.
For the german-speaking crowd, or for those who can get their hands on a decent translator) here are some heise.de articles covering the situation:
This is a sad state of affeirs, and you won't have to go as far as China to find behaviour which should be immoral to the pluralistic and open community the planet pretends to be nowadays.
Germany is a special case (Score:2)
Frankly, I think this is commendable in this specific case. Here's a country that bends over backwards, any way it can, to avoid making the same mistake twice. How many other governments would do the same?
Re:Germany is a special case (Score:2)
And I would disagree. You drive something underground, you make it cool and anti-establishment - which I understand has happened to Naziism in Germany. But in America, Nazis are idiots; it's not cool to be a Nazi, you just make yourself the target of derision and hatred. Of course, there are huge differences, but the difference is thought-provoking.
Here's a country that bends over backwards, any way it can, to avoid making the same mistake twice.
How many countries wouldn't? The US government puts a lot of money and support into combating racism in the US.
IMO, once you cross that path, you'll never go back. Naziism will never be a serious power in Germany, or anywhere else, again. But the question is, how much nasty stuff will be done in the name of Naziism by punks and jerks trying to be cool and anti-establishment?
Good points, but... (Score:2)
Re:Good points, but... (Score:2)
If you are stupid enough to wave a Nazi flag around. On the other hand, I can't remember the last time a synagouge got attacked in the US, whereas there are a number of cases of Jews being attacked in Germany. If you search for Jews on the Amnesty International [amnesty.org], I get them being attacked in Germany and being considered two sympathetic to keep on a jury in the US.
Re:Cache (Score:2)
There's also tits [geocities.com], ass [womenfest.net], wank [sektenauss...allgaeu.de], and nekkid [ianai.net]. Granted, none of those are crazy offensive, but this is China we're talking about, so they'll do.
Re:Cache (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Touche (Score:2)
the reason (Score:5, Insightful)
p2p (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:p2p (Score:5, Informative)
How long before we'll be forced to use it ourselves, i wonder?
Peek-A-Booty URL (Score:2)
Re:p2p (Score:2)
I wonder if that's needed. Lots of websites use Google as their default search engine, for example Netscape search [netscape.com] uses Google.
People smart enough to use Google cache and groups.google.com will always find alternatives .
Ports? Port blocking won't do anything. (Score:2)
There is no reason I couldn't run a web server, or any other server on any other port. I could even run a p2p app on 80 if I wanted to. Blocking ports only makes things more frustrating for people because things don't work 'out of the box'. A little configuration will get it running in no time.
Also, a lot of protocols (such as HTTP, as in the example) include port numbers in URLs or other identification. So rather then getting a packet that says "there's another Freenet node on bla.somesite.com" it says something like "there's another Freenet node on bla.somesite.com port 80"
Freenet can even masquerade as other services, so connecting to them with a non-Freenet client will give you another service ("nothing to see here, move along") which means there is actually (well theoretically) no way to detect Freenet by bulk scanning. (well, actually there's away to get around that... and then another way to get around that workaround, but describing that would take me forever and would be entirely beside the point)
Google API to the rescue? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Google API to the rescue? (Score:3, Informative)
I am more interested in Google search via phone, as done by Google voice search [google.com]. In theory, someone could set up a VoiceXML 2.0 service outside China's borders on a network such as Tellme Studio [tellme.com], avoiding the complexity of the Internet. Too bad the Chinese government has a monopoly on telco (which is why they block Net2Phone).
Google.cn? (Score:3, Interesting)
They could call it google.cn...
Re:Google.cn? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Google.cn? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Google.cn? (Score:3, Informative)
No they couldn't. CN NIC [cnnic.net.cn] gives out third-level domains only. Second-level domains (SLDs) of the cn TLD are fixed at one of com, net, org, gov, ac, bj, sh, tj, cg, he, sx, nm, as well as ln, jl, hl, and also the domains js, zj, ah, fj, jx, not to mention sd, ha, hb, hn, gd, don't forget gx, hi, sc, gz, yn, xz, sn, yet theres more gs, gh, nx, xj, tw, hk, or mo.
These regional domains where originally intended to provide censorship of finer granularity, as to match the legislation or lack thereof in specific providences of China.
Heh, .tw.cn must be pretty popular. (Score:2)
uh, how could they do google.com/china (Score:2)
Waitaminute (Score:4, Funny)
Wow... now that's what I call a strange can of worms.
Goatse's at harvard? (Score:3, Funny)
Goatse's at harvard?
I figued that guy was from Yale...
Re:Waitaminute (Score:2, Funny)
Wow... now that's what I call a strange can of worms.
Ah, but the goat-man *has* to be visible, as a prime example of western decadence.
Currently the average Chinese-off-the-streets thinks *all* westerners look like that
I can imagine the Chinese equivalents to rednecks going around making jokes: "Nope
Re:Waitaminute (Score:2, Funny)
Absolutely untrue! (Score:3, Funny)
Whoever said that china disappearred from google was a complete fucking liar.
Re:Absolutely untrue! (Score:2)
Enjoy your sausage fest.
Blocked? Just use google (Score:5, Funny)
Err... Never mind.
The Way Back Machine (Score:2, Interesting)
Rumors (Score:5, Insightful)
In China there are some search engines like Yam [yam.com] which is google based and use google's queries. Even if you haven't heard of Yam, you might have heard of a China based search engine company suing Yahoo for stealing queries. Yam is more popular than Google here.
If they block Google they might have to block Yam as well, which would then be a real chaos.
Not Rumors (Score:5, Interesting)
Yam is accessible, and so is Yahoo.
Too bad China overlooked Google proxies [soapclient.com]...they exist you know.
Re:Not Rumors (Score:2)
Starting testing...
Stage one testing complete.
Stage two testing complete.
Testing complete for http://www.google.com. Result:
Reported as accessible in China
http://google.com inaccessable, but http://www.google.com accessable? What's going on here?
Later the same day... (Score:2)
Re:Rumors (Score:2)
Fight The Man (Score:3, Informative)
To the Chinese Government: don't think you can get away with this. We are watching you. Remember the IIS fuck China worm? Remember when Americans penetrated Chinese censorship sites [wired.com]. One particularly activist group is the Cult of The Dead Cow, as they are involved with a US-Canada-Europe anti-China-human-rights-abuses hacking group [wired.com], the Hong Kong Blondes.
Its only a matter of time until the Internet disappears in China, and the Chinese government succumbs under its own agenda.
Re:f*** PoizonBOx (Score:2)
From inside the lines :) (Score:5, Informative)
First it was www.google.com that went down, then the country specific versions, now the wwwN.google.com types.
IP addresses work for viewing, but a get/post doesn't work, so no searching.
From what I can see, the firewall is just dropping packets on those ports at the 80,443 addresses.
You can ping google, and see what open ports are on, but a raw GET on port 80 or 443 does nothing.
Net Scan returns this:
IP Address : 216.239.51.100
Resolved : www.google.com
Operating System : probably Unix
Time to live (TTL) : 42 (64) - 22 hop(s) away
Open Ports (2)
80 [ Http => World Wide Web, HTTP ]
H 400 Bad Request
Content-Length: 1210
Connection: Close
Server: GWS/2.0
Content-Type: text/html
Date: Mon, 02 Sep 2002 06:45:23 GMT
443 [ HttpS => Secure HTTP ]
Looks like its back to the dark old days of proxy's again.
Lawrence
www.shanghaiguide.com
Internet vs. Governments (Score:2, Interesting)
Or better make it this way - for how long peer connections will be possible?
sourceforge.net is also forbidden (Score:2, Informative)
Re:sourceforge.net is also forbidden (Score:2)
Slashdot is not blocked [harvard.edu], so is gnu.org [harvard.edu].
Hmm, may be I shouldn't speak too loud.
More on the Great Firewall of China (Score:5, Informative)
The government of the PRC, through Zhonghua Telecom, continues to filter traffic going in and out of China.
The filters do not work. This is old news. Proxy servers are everywhere.
Here's the secret which doesn't seem to have gotten out of China yet, the filters don't have to work. They're not designed for the users.
Contrary to popular belief, China is not run as an absolute dictatorship. It's run by a circle of maybe a few dozen people who's opinions really matter. Like any good-sized group, there's a lot of disagreeement about how much (or little) openness there should be to the rest of the world.
The filters exist to appease the more close-minded members of the circle and to let them know that the best efforts are being made to keep bad stuff out of the minds of users.
My best guess about Google disappearing is that one [sina.com.cn] or more [sohu.com] companies [263.net] who are providing portal and search services in China have been complaining to the Ministry of the Information Industry [mii.gov.cn] about loss of market share to Google. The solution? If Google gets blocked, the market share for locally-produced Chinese portals goes up!
Is this good policy? No. Probably not. I've seen protectionist policy used all over the world and it's generally not the consumer or even the producers who benefit. It's a few well-placed friends of the folks in power. At least in this case, there's always another open proxy server which someone "forgot" to close up to work around this bit of government silliness.
Happy hunting all!
j.
Re:More on the Great Firewall of China (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting. If they're indeed left open for that reason, I'd almost change my opinion of the admins running them...
Re:More on the Great Firewall of China (Score:3, Insightful)
But a web proxy isn't the same thing as an open SMTP relay. Anyone with one of those should be shot, burned, dragged through the streets naked, and then really punished.
tasteless (Score:2)
Given recent Chinese history (and the content of several of the blocked sites dealing with human rights abuses) your gag is somewhat tasteless...
Re:More on the Great Firewall of China (Score:3, Insightful)
Another helpful poster pointed out the difference between a web proxy and an open mail server.
A proxy server is only useful if it is outside of the routers which do the filtering, i.e. outside of the PRC.
Most of the open mail relays in Asia are just due to ham-handed systems administration. There are lots of small companies running mail and web servers, and not nearly enough qualified people to administer them.
j.
Shouldn't this scare the shit out of you? (Score:5, Funny)
They are blocking 2 Billion + people of an Internetsite that's something like the cornerstone of online information!
Don't you also think that a lot of powerpeople in the US and elsewhere envy the chinese powermongers for this? What will the world look like in 10 years from now, when books are getting scarce and drm is all over us like a polyester safari suit and each of us will be paying hard bucks only to view data - and even that will be censored?
Pretty grim if you ask me...
What I'm saying is: This is not the least bit funny!
Re:Shouldn't this scare the shit out of you? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Cornerstone? (Score:3, Informative)
No they can't. [google.com]
Re:Shouldn't this scare the shit out of you? (Score:2, Interesting)
Without guns you have NO way of overthrowing an oppressive regime.
India's independance, Yugoslavia's revolution, Soviet Perestroika, fall of the berlin wall. Must I go on?
Wielding a gun will only give them an excuse to masacre you. Do you think you can overpower any modern day army with a bunch of mercenaries and guns? Can you give me an example of a succesful armed revolution in the last 50 years?
It seems to me that modern day revolutions are fought without guns. Armed conflict tends to end up in a stalemate of massive bloodshed (Ruanda). How much firepower would it require for you to take down the US government?
Conflicting Results.... (Score:2, Interesting)
In the recent results box:
http://www.google.com - Reported as inaccessible in China
http://www.google.com - Reported as accessible in China
Tests were completed within a few minutes of each other (I know because I did them both).
If I wanted to censor web content (Score:2)
Anyway, I wish China could realize and use this (internet) as a chance to stop censorship without loosing their face.
censorship--it's all the rage (Score:2)
In my opinion, both the US and China have, in different ways, crossed the line of what is reasonable in terms of controlling on-line information. Both societies seem to be driven by irrational fear, and neither is afraid to crush people with the full force of the respective government and police force.
(What would be reasonable you ask? In the US, copyright violations should be treated as civil matters, not criminal matters. Tax payers shouldn't have to pay for enforcing conformance to bizarre contractual obligations imposed by companies like Microsoft.)
Re:censorship--it's all the rage (Score:5, Insightful)
He was part of a rally in Times Square, and they arrested him. Sucks that we live in a country without peaceable assembly.
Wait...I think it was actually someone I didn't know who was killed in Tiananmen square [christusrex.org] for a pro-democracy demonstration.
I think I got it straight now. The US is NOTHING like China when it comes to censorship. We don't imprison and kill people because we don't like what they say. We certainly don't use full force; on the contrary, our main censorship punishment is fines, or at the very most, a minimum security prison sentence. Of course, you have to consider that we are not trying to censor, our goal is to avoid copyright violations. You can say anything you want, as long as it isn't libel (untrue statement of FACTS - all opinions are allowed).
Don't belittle our freedom or China's suffering by such a comparison.
Re:censorship--it's all the rage (Score:2)
Sure we do--read your US history. The Haymarket Massacre and Kent State come to mind immediately. The history of American Indians, slavery, suffrage, and the civil rights movement provide plenty more examples.
There are lots of other ways in which speech or information can get you imprisoned for a long time or executed: "espionage", "child pornography", "promotion of terrorism", "treason", "incitement of civil unrest", etc.
Don't belittle our freedom or China's suffering by such a comparison.
It has nothing to do with belittling or judging the relative merits of the US and Chinese forms of governments. The US today is clearly freer and kills fewer of its citizens than China.
But you have to understand the history and the inconsistencies in our own position in order to deal effectively with the Chinese. When we think they restrict free speech, they think they are preventing riots and political instability. If we want them to change, we better make some pretty convincing arguments. Your kind of self-righteous drivel isn't going to cut it.
And there is plenty more work we have to do at home. Free speech in the US is not exactly all that alive and well, given the concentration of media power in a small number of private hands. Sure, we can talk here, but 99% of Americans are going to believe the junk that FOX feeds them. And try to hold a public rally or demonstration in a mall or any other place where most people actually spend their time--most have gotten privatized and don't have to bother with niceties like allowing free speech.
Time for google.cn! (Score:2)
It's ideal in a couple of ways:
- The 1+ billion people (yes I know that they don't have all access to the internet) have access to a good working search-engine. Even if it's without the "view cache" feature, at least they have the search-engine.
- The traffic of the 1+ billion people searching through the Google database doesn't have to go over the ocean toward the US anymore (yes I know that US ISPs don't pay for the intercontinental links)
- (think of some other advantages yourself)
Of course, the first thing what is going to be said now is "Who is going to pay for this?"...
Which is better: censorship or propaganda (Score:5, Interesting)
Basicly, if the media wants, they can brainwash majority of people in believing anything they want.
In the case of censorship, you know atleast, that you don't have access to unbiased information - and you know that if you want to create an unbiased opinion, you need to do it yourself.
But, as we have free speech, it is easy to leave thinking to the media, and let someone else form your opinion. So, to some extent, I think that the fact that media is controlled by tiny interest groups, is maybe even a bigger threat than censorship.
Re:Which is better: censorship or propaganda (Score:2, Insightful)
You raise an interesting point though. +5 from me.
Re:Which is better: censorship or propaganda (Score:2)
Sure there'll be techie ways around it, as always; it doesn't serve any good purpose except to chop their own foot off - see what happens when they want to go for a jog.
Re:Which is better: censorship or propaganda (Score:4, Insightful)
> of views, it has problems all its own.
The problem is that majority of people think that they have formed their opinion after inspecting a wide range of views (as there's free speech, this must be the case, right?) - when in reality their opinion was formed by only 1 or 2 views that reflect the view of a very small interest group or they formed their opinion based on biased "information".
You saw it in TV news, it must be true - effect.
Re:Which is better: censorship or propaganda (Score:2)
mod parent up, please
Re:Which is better: censorship or propaganda (Score:2)
I > lived in shanghai for 6 months and I did not get this impression
Well, in that case you have better insight on this than me. I, "just" assumed that educated people atleast would in todays world ave some connections to outer (uncensored) world and would have heard about censoring. I am probably mistaken in this :)
Anyway, even the well educated people in the "uncensored" world seem to not process - but just eat -unprocessed - the information that they receive and believe for example that what they hear from TV/Radio whatever, is unbiased and relevant information to be used to base one's own opinion on.
Re:Which is better: censorship or propaganda (Score:2)
I agree with this 100 % - I put things to extreme just in effort to try to make people think and realize that the fact that they live in US, Europe, Australia or whatever considered as an "uncensored" country, does not mean that they do not need to use their brains to form their own opinion.
It's good that you made this comment, I was waiting for it to complete the story, thanks :)
Re:Which is better: censorship or propaganda (Score:2)
Or Taiwan? In Chongqing just last week I spent nearly an hour listening to a Chinese acquaintance telling me why Taiwan should be independent. Anyone who thinks the Chinese are unable to form independent opinions overestimates the reach of Chinese censorship and propoganda.
Lee Kai Wen, Taiwan, ROC
To hell with Google. (Score:2)
We will never see the benefit of IBM's 1 billion dollar investment in Linux because the majority of that investment is in China which is blocked by Cisco for China.
Hate to sound like chicken little but it shure looks like IBM is hijacking GNU/Linux.
What difference does it make if source is posted if it never makes it out of the country?
And just because China is free with other people's intellectual property does not mean they are free with their own.
google.ca (Score:2)
Re:google.ca (Score:2)
Not Quite (Score:2)
I'm currently in China right now on a project, and coding without Google is not easy - especially since there isn't any english bookstore I can run over to while I'm here to pick up a tech manual.
But maybe I shouldn't be posting this? I guess this is a good chance to see if the Chinese government reads
Quote (Score:3, Insightful)
As the Americans learned so painfully in Earth's final century, free flow of information is the only safeguard against tyranny. The once-chained people whose leaders at last lose their grip on information flow will soon burst with freedom and vitality, but the free nation gradually constricting its grip on public discourse has begun its rapid slide into despotism. Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
Commissioner Pravin Lal
"U.N. Declaration of Rights"
And every one of these articles I see reinforces that belief.
Typical (Score:2)
Help the Chinese learn to use Peekabooty (Score:2, Interesting)
I am helping a friend in China get set up to use Peekabooty [peekabooty.org].
The way it works is basically that lots of people outside the firewall run proxy servers. People inside the firewall need to get Peekabooty's IP address list, and then they select a proxy to use. You can get the host.lst file from http://pabdb.cjb.net/ [cjb.net].
Their web browsing is private because the connection to the proxy uses SSL encryption. The chinese will think you're shopping online. If they try to block the SSL port, then China will be unable to participate fully in the world economic system, increasingly so in the next few years.
The problem is that if Peekabooty's website isn't already blocked, it certainly will be soon. To avoid stimulating the interest of the authorities, I am making arrangements for my friend and I to have an encrypted conversation where I will tell him what he needs to do.
The peekabooty proxy runs on windows, but there is a linux port in progress. The people inside the firewall don't need to install any software, only configure their browser to use one of the SSL proxies.
It would be helpful for people to mirror Peekabooty's documentation and the IP address list. Likely many of the mirrors won't be blocked and so the chinese (and the Singaporeans, and residents of many Muslim countries) can access the information.
If you personally know anyone inside a firewalled country, do your part by helping them learn to use peekabooty. But find a way to arrange to tell them how while using encryption.
Unfortunately, PGP messages are pretty obvious that they're encrypted. If someone starts sending and receiving them, the authorities might take notice even of that.
But most web browsers nowadays support 128-bit SSL encryption. Thus it is possible to arrange to have a conversation with someone via SSL encrypted form submission.
There doesn't appear to be a way right now to do this, but it is being worked on.
In the meantime, mirroring the peekabooty instructions and proxy list and making the URL's available where the Chinese might pick them up will help get things started.
Re:Help the Chinese learn to use Peekabooty (Score:2)
Probably ssh and talk would get me started the quickest.
Translated from the Official China News Service (Score:5, Funny)
"Google was long known as a tool for hackers and perverts," said Truth Minister Chu. "It didn't serve any purpose for the greater good of the people, which is why it presumably went out of business without even a goodbye. Every economist knows this rude, erratic behavior is common among companies that can not find a way to serve the needs state."
Most good citizens won't even miss the Web site.
"It was too boring," said Jie Zhang, a rice farmer. "There was only one picture on the whole site and it was promoting the self-serving ideals of capitalist branding. Plus many of the pages were in other languages, so the site was useless to me. I'm glad I couldn't understand it, because I wouldn't want to be imprisoned for reading dangerous materials."
Many citizens said they have never used Google; they remain true to the official Chinese search engine: http:///www...
(If this had been a real news story, I would have linked to the source. If you still take it seriously after reading this, you deserve to be laughed at. A lot.)
Re:Translated from the Official China News Service (Score:2)
Replace "hackers and perverts" with "thought criminals" and you'd have 1984...
Sites inaccessible in China (Score:5, Informative)
Does the US currently have any plans for a "regime shift" over there?
Re:Sites inaccessible in China (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Sites inaccessible in China (Score:3, Interesting)
No - China, unlike Iraq, has already developed nuclear weapons.
My testing result (Score:3, Informative)
test 1: As all of you already know, www.google.com access was filtered, although i can still visite it through ircache proxy (sv.us.ircache.net)ï¼OEbut if i input some FORBIDDEN WORDS to search, it instantly stops, and what i get is "connection reset by peer", and in short time it is not available.
test 2: About the havard testing page, they have a link contains all of the inaccessable sites, but i even can not fully open that page, why? That site is not in the ban list, but it contains some FORBIDDEN WORDS, such of "frxxnet"(i think this is the main reason why they banned sxxxxxfxxge.net).So my explorer just stops after shows the word "frxxnet".
My opinion is, they are doing pattern matching in packets to stop sensored words, that surely stopped most sites & proxies & emails from working. I think the only thing we can do is build a ssh tunnel outside....FXXK!
Google does a body good (Score:2)
Chinsese shopper #1 (looking at a milk carton) I didn't know google had their own brand of milk.
Chinese shopper #2: It's not a brand logo, it's a "missing" picture.
It is a culture thing. (Score:2, Insightful)
1. Culturally, we are comfortable with others making decsions for us, well into adulthood. Many Indians are fine with arranged marriages, so what's wrong with arranged browsing?!
2. The other reason of course is there is usually a way to get around censorship. For instance, it is common knowledge that benned X-rated films are freely available. But any talk of legalizing them would be met with huge outcries. As a society, we sometimes have a need to tell ourselves that we are clean of all offensive stuff, though the reality may be something else. I mean, we sometimes willingly fool ourselves...
Slashdotters from non-Asian countries need to keep this in mind whenever issues of censorship come up.
Re:Its not (Score:2, Informative)
Ok, the "subservient attitude" you speak of in Asian countries is a byproduct of the Asian stereotype broadcasted throughout your country. (assuming you live in America). That stereotype labels Asians as submissive, docile people. However, as I am of Asian descent myself, I can state that most of the Asians you will encounter today in their native homelands, for example the Chinese, are, for the most part, either aggresive, fast-paced, witty, or a combination of all three.
That's why y'all got colonized by Europe in the 19th century.
Against their will, that is. The "subservient attitude" is not entirely to blame for European colonization in Asian countries; rather, it was concepts of Social Darwinism and the "White Man's Burden" ideals popular during the time. Note that this idea was definetly not well accepted by the Filipinos (as depicted by the war between America and the Phillipines after the Spanish-American war), China's Communist and Cultural Revolution (in which almost all peoples of non-Chinese descent were banished from the country, and "foreign" buildings such as churchs were destroyed). Also, China's Boxer Rebellion is a perfect example to disprove the "submissive, docile" stereotype.
Who are you referring to by the word "y'all"? The Asiatic peoples as a whole? If so, the "y'all got colonized by the Europeans..." statement is partially incorrect. While India, Vietnam, Laos, the Phillipines, and a throng of other Asian countries were technically colonized, China, Thailand, and especially Japan, were not.
Anybody notice a pattern? (Score:2)
CNN as archetype of freedom in journalism? (Score:2, Insightful)
This is tangential to the story, but worth mentioning:
The original anonymous poster mentions CNN, ostensibly as an example of free western journalism; this is a dangerous premise. As a dual citizen of the USA and a Western European country, I have the opportunity to see things from both sides of the fence, as it were, and I'm here to tell you that most of the mainstream U.S. "news" channels, and particularly CNN, are regarded outside the USA as little more than the U.S.'s propaganda machine; at best a joke, and at worst a shameful abdication of journalistic integrity.
Here's just one example (there are dozens!): Some of the Slashdot audience may not be old enough to remember the role of the news in the Vietnam era: during that conflict, news channels carried real, uncensored battlefield footage, which was by its nature often graphic and gruesome. People in the USA were able to see what was going on and what it was like; dead people and napalm and all. Consequently, there arose a tremendous opposition to the war, with lots of protests and high-profile objectors; the U.S. government's involvement was highly criticized. These factors certainly influenced the course of the war itself and U.S. policy afterward.
But the government learned their lesson.
During recent U.S. conflicts such as the "Gulf War" and the action in Afghanistan, the American "news" has been subject to governmental "guidelines," which allows them to show the public only press briefings and select footage from missile-mounted cameras depicting "surgical strikes" which only kill bad guys, never women and children and civilians. No bodies, not even body counts. Why? The government knows it needs to control public opinion; if we don't know what's going on, we won't object - so the media are subjected to "guidelines" invoked in the name of national security.
Again: this is only one example; there are many others. The point is that accepting what you see and hear and read in the American mainstream news media at face value is dangerous, like burying your head in the sand. These days, they tell us only what they want us to hear.
Spreading the word (Score:2)
Try the recently released Googlemai;
http://www.capescience.com/google/index.shtml [capescience.com]
send an e-mail to: google@capeclear.com [mailto] with your query in the subject line.
Of course, google cache is probably not accessible
Re:Thank God I'm an American? (Score:2)
Then read this. [slashdot.org]
Re:Thank God I'm an American? (Score:2)
Maybe you read it too fast.
"The Weekly Standard writes that despite expectations, the Chinese Government has been very successful in suppressing free internet access for their citizens. Key to this success was the assistance of Cisco, who built a giant firewall tailored to the state's needs, Yahoo (who helpfully censors search results and monitors online chats), and other Western companies."
Re:Slashdot still readable (Score:2, Funny)
Stage one testing complete.
Stage two testing complete.
Testing complete for http://www.asianhookers.com. Result:
Reported as accessible in China
and the nation of China rejoices.
Re:yahoo (Score:2)
Alltheweb.com? (Score:2)
They also have a nicer graphic design
Of course, I still use google most of the time because 1) Its easier to type 2) Its hardcoded into my homepage and 3) It usually finds anything I'm looking for.
If I couldn't get to google, (or if alltheweb had a better domain name) I'd probably use them.
Otoh, doing in a search in Chinese for "车" (new car) on Alltheweb and got only two results, vs about 4,450 on google.
Altavista converted the chinese characters into HTML entities (新汽车) and found nothing
Metacrawler found about 27 results, but displayed the link titles and 'abstracts' in ASCII so they all looked like "ÓÐ×ÅÓƾÃÄÀúÊ£" or whatever.
So I dunno. For chinese people doing queries in english alltheweb would be great. I have no idea what could replace google for chinese language searches. Since I'm only barely literate in Chinese I can't really go looking around for native-chinese pages to comment on
What a suprise, slashdot censors unicode chars.... (Score:2)
Otoh, doing in a search in Chinese for "车" (new car) on Alltheweb and got only two results, vs about 4,450 on google.
The 'new car' would have been 'xin qi che', which theoreticaly you could see by going to the URL about: [about]
Anyway...
ugh (Score:2)
And no, I (apperantly) can't make it clickable, because
It's so hypocritical the way slashdot argues for free speech but then places so many filters on what you can post, especially since they do it in such a ham-fisted manner, frequently preventing valid points from being posted.
Oh well, enough bitching for one day.
Google.yahoo.com alive and well for now (Score:2)
NOT COOL. (Score:2)
It burns me up that we think we need to parade our values around town and make everybody assymilate. I can't stand it when religious people try that crap on me.
Trolling indeed.
Re:Is this really our business? (Score:2)
Well, they don't celebrate Christmas, their new year is different... Come to think of it, why are you asking me such a stupid question? Betcha don't got the balls to answer.
"I seem to remember they did that before, but their government sent the tanks in..."
Okay, tell me when exactly the people asked our government to unblock Google? 'I seem to remember' is not a fact.
"Cant remember who said it but....The only thing necessary for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing..."
Apples....oranges....bowling balls... If they can't say 'help us' then what good are we gonna do them? Try replying with good points instead of just arguing me for the sake of arguing.
Re:Is this really our business? (Score:2)
At the time I wrote that, I hadn't seen anybody saying "Im from China". Sue me.
Re:Is this really our business? (Score:2)
Seriously dude, gain some perspective. Everybody acts like I'm stuck on autopilot until the end!