Explore the Web From China

An anonymous reader writes with this excerpt from Download.com: "It slows down your browsing. It makes some Web sites inaccessible for no discernible reason. It doesn't even offer you any xiao long bao or pu'er tea for your troubles. But if you want to know what life behind the Great Firewall of China is like, then the Firefox plug-in China Channel is the cheapest and fastest way to experience using the Internet in China without actually being there."

Proxy or simulation?

Does this plugin actually proxy your web browsing through a Chinese host? Or does it just randomly mess with your requests?

Kind of reminds me of apt-gentoo [livejournal.com].

Answer: Proxy

Sorry to reply to my own post, but I just found in TFA where it says that the plugin routes you through a Chinese proxy.

I can't imagine this open proxy will last long.

TFA is terrible

A ghastly article that is shoddy on details. It barely mentioned it was a proxy (as I was also wondering if this was a simulation). The article describes that the toolbar will display your new IP, but the screenshots do not show it.

Also, in regards to the extension:

1. The "China Channel" is a horrid name
2. w00t, just what every browser needs, yet another screen-real-estate-sucking toolbar
3. To get the same experience, why not use one of the many [mozilla.org] proxy [mozilla.org] switching extensions. Then go find a list of Chinese proxies so you can cycle through them.

I do, however, respect the point of showing the rest of the world how the web "feels" inside of China.

On a related note, does anyone have a list of proxies organized by country? As a web developer, I would love to test various web sites that geo-code the IP and dynamically display different content.

Re:Answer: Proxy

Are people really going to develop web applications for Chinese users and not host them in China? Do they think Chinese users surf a lot of English language content on budget shared hosts?

Not to trivialize the censorship issues involved, but if someone really wants to know what surfing the Internet is like for Chinese people, they should learn Chinese and read their complaints in person. There are plenty of sites that offer language lessons basically for free these days. My favorite is Popup Chinese [popupchinese.com] because their hosts speak standard mandarin and they have a great popup dictionary plugin.

Once you know the language you can get out into the actual Chinese Internet. Find out the difference between Baidu and Google. Have Tencent screw up your computer. Watch videos on youku and surf chat forums. It takes time to get to the point where this is comfortable for second language speakers, but Chinese is looking a lot more valuable than banking at this point.....

Re:Answer: Proxy

As an Australian this is a look into the near future.

Fear

Can it recreate the fear that making the wrong post on a blog will get you arrested?

Re:Fear

no, there is nothing to fear. i have been making posts thr

Re:Fear

There is nothing to see here, move along.

Re:Fear

(Score:-1, Unpatriotic)

Forthcoming Update

I hear there is an update coming soon that simulates what its like to disagree with the government in China. It's pretty cool. You install the plugin and a tank will instantly appear and run you over.

Hm

We should make a system that loads every page you visit from 3~4 countries. Then have a notification if any differences are found, and what they are. It'd be interesting to see who's blocking what. Curious about Australia recently, I like hearing about the supposed good guys doing bad things. It makes the 'i hate commies' people uncomfortable, atleast enough to shut it.

Re:Hm

For the record, the Australian proposal is unlikely to go ahead, due to opposition in the senate [theage.com.au]. Yay for divided parliament.

North Korea

That's nothing. I made a plugin to simulate internet experience from North Korea. I will release it if I can get on the slashdot front page.

Re:North Korea

Usually those things going inside of you are battery-powered, not plug-ins...

Meh

When I was using the internet in various cafes in Beijing, I didn't notice any blocks from sites I wanted to visit. I could update my livejournal, and ssh to my computer in America, so I'm not really sure what the great firewall really could accomplish. I mean, I could feasibly tunnel all of my connection through the ssh link, after all.

That said, while I was ssh-ed into my home computer, a Beijing police officer came in and started walking around looking at people's computers...

Re:Meh

I can't even tell if you're joking. I can't even tell if that's ironic or just depressing.

Re:Meh

Yeah, no intimidation for the locals with an officer walking around. Could you imagine that at a public library or Starbucks in the US? Oh, wait, we do have to show ID before we can use the computer at our local library. But no police walking around.

No doubt you had full access due to your foreign ID/passport that I'm sure you were required to show before you were given access.

If you were in China during or up to the Olympics, you experienced a totally different internet than before and again now with things back to normal. Things were wide open at the internet cafes - but of course they still had all the IDs of whatever citizens were foolish enough to do something or try something they shouldn't. They needn't arrest them in the cafe, they'll just wait for them to go home and arrest them there.

Re:Meh

I have never had to show my passport to use an internet cafe in P.R. China. It is pretty obvious that I am a foreigner. However, my friend has a special card that she uses to use an internet cafe.

I have posted on this in the past, but always get modded down for it. The Chinese students have positive feelings about the "real ID" used to access the internet. There a tremendous amount of cheating and scamming in Chinese daily life, much more so than in America, and they feel that the "real ID" decreases the possibility that they will be cheated.

This is particularly true in social chat rooms and on QQ (a popular chat program in China).

Keep one thng in mind...

Many ISPs outside of China, ban entire blocks of addresses that originate inside China.

If you happen to be browsing from a computer that has an IP address corresponding to a range that has been banned in North America, as an example, you will find it hard to reach various sources that people in NA can reach without issue. Example: GoDaddy hosted sites.

This has nothing to do with anything related to 'The Great Firewall'...

sounds like a bad tour brochure

explore the web from china!

practice christianity in saudi arabia!

be an outspoken journalist in russia!

be a part of the world tour of persecution!

Comcast in China?

"It slows down your browsing. It makes some Web sites inaccessible for no discernible reason."

heh, I thought, Comcast was only in Americas.

Re:Comcast in China?

The comment is funny, but even for Slashdot the punctuation is awful. you probably mean:

Heh, I thought Comcast was only in the Americas.
or
"Heh", I thought, "Comcast was only in the Americas."
or
Heh, I thought. Comcast was only in the Americas.
or if the separate sentences are consequential:
Heh, I thought; Comcast was only in the Americas.
or use a conjunction:
Heh, I thought and Comcast was only in the Americas.

What were you doing during 7th grade english class?

Depends...

As someone who lives in China and travels extensively within the country, I can tell you that everything depends on the city. Internet is slow generally, but sites that work in Shanghai or Wuhan or don't necessarily work in Beijing or Nanjing. Most every site that I've ever wanted to visit and is not something that would be obviously banned (not hard to guess what these topics might be) has been available. One site I haven't been able to get for whatever reason is the Huffington Post, though I can access cached copies and referenced articles...

Re:Or, for Aussies...

I was more thinking that Australians can now use this add-on to get more open internet access.

Re:Or, for Aussies...

Regarding the Australian filter, it doesn't look like it's going to happen.

The Green party and the Liberal party are both going to block the legislation in the Upper House. Their numbers combined are enough to stop the bill from passing.

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2008/10/30/1224956188036.html [theage.com.au]

The Greens don't get much of their other policies talked about very much, besides the environment, but they have the most pro-Slashdot internet platform out of any political party. By that I mean they support open standards, net-neutrality and internet freedom (no censorship). They also want the government to embrace open source and all government documents to saved in an open document standard.