Shanghaiist: China blows minds at Athens IGF

WLW

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 21:09:23 +0800

Good question. There was a paper released by researchers at Cambridge University in July, which describes the GFC in some detail. Here and here are articles that describe the paper. Here is another more general article on the topic.

Mike

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 20:45:26 +0800

Can somone explain how the Great Firewall works? I'm a little confused. According to my understanding, as requests are made out out of China the the Great Firewall routers look to see if it is blacklisted and if so returns a reset. What I don't understand is why ISP's seem to provide different results. Do most ISP's use their own filtering software? Is it just packet-loss from bad routing?

Peter

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 17:30:02 +0800

The actual censorship takes place as local as possible. Sometimes I can see something, but my friend a few blocks away on chat can't see the very thing I'm looking at. It's probably because someone on that same connection was looking for something the government didn't want them too... so, access was denied for a while. Google image search only turns up a few pages of results before it quits, and then it doesn't work again for a few hours. Who knows how they actually do it... and what sort of system it is that allows leaders to phrase their denials like this guy has. So, I was chatting with a Chinese friend about Qigong. I sent her the Wiki on Qigong, and she couldn't open it. She said, "Oh, it's forbidden." I'm like, "What are you talking about? I'm looking at it right now." She said, "Hm." So I said, "I have two questions: 1) why does the government block websites, and 2) how do Chinese people feel about this." She just sent me a smiley face :) and moved right on in the conversation. On another occassion, she was talking about the "bad things" of the internet. I'm like, "What bad things?" She says, "You know, just forbidden things." Do Chinese citizens actually believe they're being protected from something?

Phil

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 17:13:27 +0800

99% of Chinese make up 99.7% the world's most bald faced liars.

killy-the-frog

Thu, 02 Nov 2006 08:33:56 +0800

I am always surprise of the capacity that many Chinese have to deny the basic reality. I think they do that either to try not to loose face (but when they do that to foreigner they loose even more face), either they simply want to stop the subject. Can a Chinese explain us how someone can say something like that ?

nanheyangrouchuan

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 23:50:58 +0800

He drowned the audience in a sea of words, aka "confuse and obfuscate" aka a filibuster in the US congress. Here's a more dangerous China lie: http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2006/11/01/asia/AS_GEN_China_Bird_Flu.php

WLW

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 23:17:26 +0800

Personally, I think this was his emotional and passive aggressive response to the panel's persistent criticism of China. He didn't really believe what he was saying, but he was embarrassed and said these things to spite the others. Read the transcript and you'll see what I mean.

Anirban

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 22:56:25 +0800

Hi Rindy, I dont think it was his job to do that but he still did. I wonder if he really beleives that there is no internet censorship in China. Did none of the other attendees in the Forum talk to this guy afterwards to find if he had more to say on this?

nanheyangrouchuan

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 22:00:51 +0800

How dare anyone challenge the Word of Heaven!

Rindy

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 16:19:09 +0800

Man, what a job this guy has. He's like the Scott McClellan of China.