June 25th, 2009
So the earth is beginning to shake over here – at least in Chinese cyberland. The country, according to this press release today, has accused Google of “spreading pornography and breaking Chinese law.” Some of Google’s services have been popping on and off over the past couple days. Yesterday back at my apartment I was unable to access g-mail. Today search engine access began to get chopped off. Unbelievable – if you take the time to read the article you’ll also note that China is vying for mandatory installation of software to screen out pornographic sites. This software would need to be installed on all new computers after July 1 – its called “Green Dam Youth Escort.” I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a spoof porn site pops up in the near future bearing a randition of that name.
On the lighter side of things the article references China as the worlds current largest internet user base. Nice, makes me feel just that much better about uprooting myself and moving here. All the same, being in the IT industry makes me particularly sensitive to issues of blocking. Recently I’ve been contemplating the future of China concerning pornography and whether or not the Chinese people have a sexual revolution to look forward to, makes me curious about the history leading up to our own back in the States. What were the major contributing factors? Are their signs of such a radical change brewing in China? I’ll have to access that train of thought again sometime – could you imagine – can you even fathom the impact an event like that would have on China, I can promise you one thing, I would be as far from the focus of the government as possible if something like that begins to happen.
June 16th, 2009
Bye Bye Blogger *sniff*
This is old news at this point but for those of you that are unaware blogger has been being blocked in China for somewhere in the neighborhood of a month. Proxies are allowing me to access and post at this point. I have plans to relocate this blog to my own domain using wordpress to circumvent this unfortunate mishap. I hope my posting of some “controversial” material pertaining to Tibet and Tian’an’ men square hasn’t provided justification for their blocking. Anything is possible – perhaps I should change my locks and adopt a disguise *chuckle*
A handy tunneling/proxy tool that I’ve heard was developed by an MIT engineer specifically for Chinese netizens is called Freegate it provides the fastest secure proxied connection I’ve seen. Even if your not located in China it may be useful to you for its ease of use. Opening the program automatically updates your network settings in IE/Google to utilize the proxy – closing it restores the original settings (thats usually just “Automatically find settings” in my Lan settings) Give it a go if your curious I’ve already passed it off to anyone I thought could make use of it.
My Apologies! Hot Hot Hot
So sorry for the long absence of posts, I promise to make up for it in the coming weeks! It’s really beginning to get hot over here – time for the body to adjust to the stand and sweat climate. I was out the other night with my American buddies and our discussions revolved around the appeal of saunas in this climate. There was a moment of agreement on how unnecessary they were and then Brent commented a collegue of his jested that he prefered sauna’s because their were no poor people in them (beggers etc.) Some mild-mannered chuckling followed – its true that even I have grown to lack any and all sympathy for beggers.
I suppose its not fair to say that on an individual level – the people who are on the street begging are truly unfortunate. However the sad fact of the matter is that they are most often employees of an inhumane enterprise that preys on the humanity of their fellow human beings. Taking children from birth and dismembering/burning/disfiguring them so as to increase returns when they ship them out to beg on the streets. I guess the correct thing to say would be that I will never give them money – perhaps food if I happen to be carrying any (O! we did give an elderly begger a bottle of beer several weeks ago) – there is very little righteousness in supporting an organization profiteering off of pity.
Here are some pictures illustrating some of the tactics, unfortuantely I’ve seen worse – I believe a man with a gaping wound on his leg, no skin at all covering 1/4 of his shin, you could visibly make out the difference in thickness of flesh covering his leg from the wound to undamaged level of skin – sad, sad, sad.
According to my very limited research and experience there are beggers who are legitimate, those of the organized type (often the most disgustingly disfigured) and those who really have no reason to beg save to make a little extra money on the side. It’s an ugly part of life that I hope will disintegrate with China’s rise out of poverty. P.S.- don’t buy flowers from the underaged salesboy who frequents the hooker bars, he will always find you again… 2nd hand experience of course, come now am I that sort of fellow! *chuckle*
May 15th, 2009
The Video that got Youtube banned in China
After some searching I managed to find this video which may very well be the same video that got Youtube banned in China. You can read more about the worlds view on China’s reaction on Time magazine’s China blog.
April 13th, 2009
Nice Hat Mike! That Shirt is not Business Casual…
After a hard days work Mike and I returned back to my home a mere 3 mintues walk from the office to get a little R&R… well the thought is what counts I suppose. My newly acquired internet effectively turned all of my time at home and at the office into productive working time. The workaholic in me sings cheers of praise. Last night I ended up in bed around 6am, well done sir well done!
April 3rd, 2009
Looking to Talk to Strangers?
Omegle.com is an online chat that will randomly connect you with another online user and allows you to chat annonymously to any end you would like. There is no login or handle to worry about there is only “You” and “Stranger” that converse in cyberspace as mutually ignorant parties. Take a look at the official blog to learn more about whats going on with this webpage.
There is a lot of potential for Leif K-Brooks to make a good deal of money if he can find a way to monetize his traffic. I can think of no short list of ways to do this and I wish him all the best going forward. Maybe if I can open up a dialogue with him I can hitch a ride to the top with him hahah. There is a running dialogue on his blog about it possibly being a copy of www.anicechat.net which I’ll have to take a look into when I get a moment. For now I’m going to get back to discussing nonesense with disembodied voices. Ciao!
FYI – you can also check out
zoom-in.com for a more detailed blog entry about Omegle.
