Sunday, January 27, 2008

delicate inaccessible subjects


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a quick update to the post below. turns out that it was even easier to get at the blog, after googling 'blogspot proxy china' the first link is here. allowing simple access via way of proxy to the banned website.

With all the technical muscle the banning of information seems trivial. So what's the deal?
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a perfect follow up to the last post.

can't get at my own blog. or wikipedia. or a host of other sites

chinese won't let me.

links die. these things simply aren't available.

the weird thing -- when I click on this link -- it loaded! for an eighth of second and then shut down. This means that somewhere a chinese black box was actively, not preemptively, filtering. So they are watching what i'm looking at....do they know my hotel room #?

so is it sinister, or childish? As the link describes a simple script in firefox circumvents the government firewall-- that's not exactly a whole hearted effort to stop information transfer.

I'm sure if I hunt around there is a lot written on this-- and after a quick look it seems like a smaller and smaller deal. but it was a touch disconcerting to not be able to just go to a website...

so after writing a quick and sincere post about how darn capitalistic shanghai is -- i butt heads against the System that somehow is nurturing this and keeping a finger on the button. As one of these posts mentions 1984 meets 1989 -- throw a little 1999 to the mix and we'll bake cake.
Unknown Merrow

Merrow has manufactured sewing machines since 1838 and remains one of the most interesting companies in the textile space

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