China's Firewall Stymies Google; Users Confused 34
eldavojohn writes "Massive confusion occurred last night for Google's Chinese search engine and ad services when Google's automated reporting system claimed that everything was blocked in China. The problem was that most users experienced no outage despite Google's reports and Google has backpedaled on those reports. Google explained that their tool for detecting blockage is not 'real-time': 'Because of the way we measure accessibility in China, it's possible that our machines could overestimate the level of blockage. That seems to be what happened last night when there was a relatively small blockage. It appears now that users in China are accessing our properties normally.' The WSJ blogger notes, 'Beijing may not need to cancel Google's license. Death by a thousand disruptions could be just as effective.'"
This is bad for China. (Score:1, Offtopic)
They are trying to modernize their country and become the premier superpower of the 21st century, and yet they are practicing a 1930s-style fascistic repression of free speech which undermines their scientific and economic development.
Only through free exchange of ideas can a society advance and adapt to changing technology and economic conditions. As long as the PRC government maintains even a partial hold on freedom of speech, suppressing those who call out government corruption and inefficiencies, the p
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Re:This is bad for China. (Score:4, Informative)
You clearly didn't read the links in the summary, which in itself provides little information. There's confusion and inconsistency in Google's .cn sites. Some users, especially in Beijing, have reported outages, and others have not. The bottom line is that some unknown factors or persons are causing performance and uptime problems with Google properties within the China firewall. You can choose to define it as a "hiccup" but that's a bit of a leap at this point. If you have information to share, I'd like to see it.
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Steadily improving, yes; but as they started, roughly, in "Vlad the Impaler" territory, I think the admonition to "back off a bit" and "let them sort out their problems" are a both a bit premature and a bit naive. China actively censors content, makes use of heavy and constant propaganda, and jails, tortures, executes and 'disappears' people; saying, "Well, they do it less often now" or "Now the show trials last 2 days sometimes!" is hardly a defense.
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The fact is, China is freer than the UK, about as free as Canada on the civil liberties front
Oh, so I suppose that in the UK there are so many black jails (that is, secret jails where provincial and national governments can "disappear" people to) that it's literally a cottage industry [npr.org]? Or that entire provinces of Canada are barred from journalists, so the international community can't see the human rights abuses? I guess you think that in the US you are required to have registration papers before you can migrate from the poor inland villages into the city? Maybe you think Australia executes nearly [npr.org]
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You clearly didn't read the links in the summary, which in itself provides little information. There's confusion and inconsistency in Google's .cn sites. Some users, especially in Beijing, have reported outages, and others have not. The bottom line is that some unknown factors or persons are causing performance and uptime problems with Google properties within the China firewall. You can choose to define it as a "hiccup" but that's a bit of a leap at this point. If you have information to share, I'd like to see it.
Since when is RTFA or even RTFS a prerequisite to bashing China?
China sells the US childs toys laced with or made entirely from poison. China sells the US fake Advil/Tylenol made from drywall. China is where fucking EVIL GREEDY CEOs buy slaves so they can fire US workers, because, well slaves are cheaper, DUH.
Fuck China, along with every single person that buys Apple products or cheap shit from Wal-Mart. You fuckers own human slaves. That is not flamebait, that is not trolling, that is the truth.
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Based on a book called "China Inc. [amazon.com]", Chinese labor today is even cheaper than slaves of US more than 100 years ago. It's a fact, face it or lose it.
And is the computer you are posting from made in US?
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Based on a book called " China Inc. [amazon.com]", Chinese labor today is even cheaper than slaves of US more than 100 years ago. It's a fact, face it or lose it.
And is the computer you are posting from made in US?
Just because the components were not made in the US does not by default mean they were made by slaves. In fact, I wholeheartedly admit that I do not know enough about the source of parts in the workstation I built.
That said, I am quite sure that they were not made at Foxconn in China, and I would take an educated guess and say that most of the parts were made in Taiwan or Malaysia by fairly compensated workers.
It's saddens me to learn that even with their 30% "pay" raise, that Foxconn slaves are still wor
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>>>unknown factors or persons are causing performance and uptime problems with Google properties within the China firewall. You can choose to define it as a "hiccup" but that's a bit of a leap
(ahem) Some unknown factor or persons are causing performance and uptime issues with my Verizon internet and phone service. Why we were without service for 2 whole days! I suspect the chinese..... er, I mean the american government. Or maybe it's that dude Hister that Nostradamus talked about.
Look at that
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China here: we are subject to constant "hiccups" in gmail and google. This has been a fact of life and often it has to do with physical problems as well as deliberate blockage.
What I mean is that google goes down sometimes and that affects us here, the cables sometimes create disruptions and that causes problems here, the firewall is not exactly a foolproof thing (or ... well, each provider blocks things as well as the firewall, sometimes it is the ISP office that makes decisions. At work if one person goog
Re:This is bad for China. (Score:5, Funny)
*Perks up*
What's this? China is mentioned on a slashdot article! Oh boy! I've been saving up a nice big rant-post since the last article, keeping it on my desktop so I can copy and paste the very second this moment comes up! People will be in awe and wonder about how much I have the world political perspective in such a clear and defined view. I shall be modded to infinite and beyond!
Oh... Wait... Not relevant? Damn.
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Who cares about mod points? I like to look at the big picture, and to me the main point of these continuing problems for Google in China is that China is shooting itself in the foot. What a pity that you can't or won't discuss the issues at hand and prefer to merely mock others who do. It's also a pity that some moderators actually found your rant funny while dismissing my ideas as off topic. Slashdot as a forum to discuss anything but the latest chips and copyright wars continues to fall flat.
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Oh, don't be sour. We're just jesting that the article was about a bug in Google's Code and you went off about China. I mean in an article about Apple's App Store, we don't make serious long posts about the iPhone 4's reception problems.
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No, but "we" might make serious long posts about the iPhone's effect on Western civilization and its possible contribution to our civilization's collapse, or some such tangential yet important topic. What's wrong with expanding on a theme? After all, if it were such a crime, you would never have heard Beethoven or Mozart compose any variations.
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Some American said "But it does me no injury for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods or no God. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg." Don't judge or condemn political structure used in other country. After all only democrats used a-bomb in anger and last American military campaig
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The American who said that, Thomas Jefferson, did so in response to why Virginia's Official State Religion should be abolished, and the VA Constitution amended to allow freedom of worship. He'd probably say exactly the same about China's Official State Religion(s), and why the Chinese people should not be persecuted if they worship in a manner the state does not approve.
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My point was that Americans (or any other democrats) should not criticize different government form. It only differs from the one that are used to.
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Tyranny is tyranny, and deserves condemnation whether the tyrant is named George, Kim, or Wu. Your quote speaks to toleration of religious belief by another individual, not cultural relativism.
That was, after a
Weekly (Score:1)
Huh? (Score:3, Informative)
Death by a thousand disruptions could be just as effective
What disruption? The service continued to work fine. It was only the status page that reported it was down, which doesn't actually impact the service.
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They (as in the Wall Street Journal, Fox News, etc) only have a "hard-on" for anything that fits in with the Murdoch agenda. In this case, the goal is to criticize the Chinese government's growing favoritism for local, government-owned business (Baidu) over legitimate foreign competitors (Google). They're not even necessarily wrong; at least, this is one of the few places where I'm not immediately dismissing the article as blatant right-wing shilling just because it's coming from a News Corp property.
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If you've been paying attention to the opinion section of the WSJ, it's been sliding closer and closer to Fox's view ever since Murdoch bought them; they're definitely cribbing off the same set of notes. And the only thing Murdoch hates more than Google is the thought of a government being anti-business, specifically being anti-his-business, and that's what's going on here in China.
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Death by a thousand disruptions could be just as effective
What disruption? The service continued to work fine. It was only the status page that reported it was down, which doesn't actually impact the service.
You would be confused too if your firewall was 'erectiflied".