China's Internet Boom, Games, Addiction & other news

solarz said:

This is hilarious. If the Chinese government wanted some information out of gmail, apparently they have to hack it. If the US government wanted some information out of gmail, all they have to do is ask.

Or are you not aware of the massive keyword filters that the US government has on any electronic communication inside, and possibly outside, the US?

Do you know what's funnier than any Chinese activist being labeled as a Tibetan separatist? Any disgruntled airport customer who sends a twitter can be labeled, and arrested, as a terrorist.

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Even in the US, requesting confidential email information requires a court order. If any government can intrude in web based email system, then simply nothing can be trusted---Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, your local ISP provider. This is the same level as a bank account. Privacy issues is extremely vital to keep a free society, which at least the US and other countries aspire to. Please note the ability to access confidential mail accounts literally can be used by any administration on power to smear opposition party, politicians and media as well. That would be the equivalent of illegal wire tapping.

Keyword filters are done along the backend core IP routers. You really should not be asking Google for this, you should be asking for CISCO. BTW, these are among the 20 companies that were hacked along with Google; another company surprisingly on the list---Northrop Grumman.

Please note another tapping issue. Iranian government were able to track dissenters with alleged Nokia-Siemens complicity. Hence the so called "Nokia boycott" among the Iranian dissident community. Tapping is done on the telco side, not on the servers.

Right now in China, a dirty word on your text (sexting) can get your phone account banned, maybe get you in jail. That's right. They're filtering even the text messages now. Does that mean you will get in trouble with flirtatious text messages to your wife or girlfriend?

And lately even the Chinese censors seem uncomfortable with Avatar showing now in China, apparently because of the "urban renewal" theme.

jantxv said:

When or how does "cyber warfare" or "cyber attacks" cross that line into a legitimate arm of general warfare? Did Google suffer financial losses due to cyber attacks? Do people actually get harmed in cyber attacks?

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Yes, companies like Google can suffer financial losses due to cyber attacks. Any company involved with Cloud Computing can suffer: Microsoft, Amazon, eBay, Yahoo, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc,.

Microsoft right now suffering some fallout. German government said Nein and the French government said Non to using Internet Explorer. Does not appear that IE7 and IE8 managed to fully close this issue.

Tremendous amount of productivity is lost due to cyber attack. Most frequent kind of attack involve botnets, many of whom appear to even escape virus detection. They hide in any PC, thousands of them across the world, then on a single command, start spamming the target DNS. The spamming is enough to cause serious slowdowns with various ISPs where networks have been infected with botnet PCs.

Microsoft spent sums of money and years of efforts, patching, patching, patching, IE and Windows for security flaws one after another.

Twitter and Facebook have been victims of politically motivated attack. One Twitter and Facebook related attack was by Russian hackers who didn't like what a particular Georgian blogger had to say. Lately Iranian hackers or allegedly from such, hacked on Twitter and then Baidu. Baidu was defaced and was taken down for four hours.

Security is vital an issue to sell IT services to governments, corporations and institutions. You could gain or lose entire city and provincial level contracts from these. For example, Blackberry selling to an entire European government. Losing business because your institutional customer thinks you're vulnerable can amount to millions.

Believe me, web security will be a dominant theme in IT for this coming decade.


Now in other news.

1. Google is reported to be in business as usual. They are now in talks with the Chinese government. Sounds like some compromise is being made. However they pulled out the launch of two G-Phones, one by Motorola and one by Samsung. These are Androids heavily dependent on Google cloud services such as Google Maps; for these won't affect China Androids like OPhone or UPhone that are more dependent on local carrier services and apps. The fate of these phones depend whether there might be some guarantee or set ground rules that the Chinese government can assure that the Google cloud services won't be blocked, assuming they comply with the law.

2. In another unrelated event, big strike on Wintek plants today, and it may appear to affect Apple iPhone, Nokia and Huawei phone production.

3. Just when Baidu appears poised to take advantage of the event, both COO and CTO left within days of each other for "private reasons". That's turnover at the top. Doesn't really reflect if Baidu is doing well at all. Still, Baidu gained good publicity among foreign media because of this. Suddenly people know who Baidu is.

crobato said:

Right now in China, a dirty word on your text (sexting) can get your phone account banned, maybe get you in jail. That's right. They're filtering even the text messages now. Does that mean you will get in trouble with flirtatious text messages to your wife or girlfriend?

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That's silly. Where did you this get from?

Roger604 said:

That's silly. Where did you this get from?

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Maybe you should check the news.



China mobile users risk SMS ban in porn crackdown

(AFP) – 6 days ago

BEIJING — Mobile users in China will be banned from sending short messages if they are found to have distributed pornography or other "illegal" content by phone, state media said Wednesday.

China Mobile, the world's biggest cell-phone operator, is helping Chinese police in a campaign to crack down on "illegal short messages", the Nanfang Daily newspaper reported.

Subscribers will have their text messaging services cut if they are found by the company's "checking system" or reported by other users to have distributed obscene, violent or other "unhealthy" messages, it said.

The US government says it only spies on people for legitimate purposes. Then the US government spies on people such as John Lennon, Elvis Presley, Jesse Ventura, and others who are "threats to society." 1950s to 1980s China was even worse. China was bested by Russia.

Did you know the US government sometimes spies on various citizens, corporate officers,on its own government officials, and foreigners on US soil and on foreign soil? There are news reports, books, and documents detailing the persuasive power of blackmail by the US government and other governments. The US government uses espionage for blackmail and much more controversial goals, and so does China's government.

Major news corporations and the US government: "Iraq has weapons of mass destruction (that was bought from us). Iraq has ties to the 9/11 terrorists (the relationship is as deep as the relationship between the 9/11 terrorists and their stay in the US)." In other words, don't believe in everything you read, even from "authoritative" sources.

China has sent pornography sellers to prison, and the US has heavily fined and/or imprisoned copyright violators. Most porno sellers and copyright violators are unpunished (thankfully, or else China's and America's male youth would all be in big trouble, haha). China bans lots of stuff, but there are many ways to circumvent the bans. Yeah, the bans suck, but let's focus on what's actually happening in the real world. Let's not exaggerate problems or be hypocritical.


Off-topic stuff:

Seems like Google, Apple, and other companies may be parting ways and building new relationships on mobile devices: .

Even Nvidia has plans: . Nvidia's Ion for small laptops and super small desktops is awesome. It would save resources, save energy, save space, generate low heat and sound, and offer good performance. Nvidia seems to be diversifying its portfolio faster and more broad than ATI.


On a side note, does anyone have any experience with this web site's Linux OS?

I am interested in its Simplified/Traditional Chinese and English capabilities, plus compatibility with security software and other software. If only testing out OS's was so simple . . .

I can't stand most US-based Linux due to compatibility problems. Linus OS is improving really well, but still not enough for me to use. However, I really like open source software like Firefox, Thunderbird, Open Office, and few others.

China is planning its own GPS system by 2020.


Damn, the world is changing so quickly and unpredictably.

Naturally, nations will disagree on what constitutes acceptable cyber behavior. Given the global nature of the internet, disagreements are sure to continue. Although not all will agree what types of passive actions like content screening is acceptable, it seems each nation has the ability to decide for itself.

However, offensive cyber action, like denial of service attacks, viral bots, etc..., are clearly hostile and damaging to the victims. Nations and other entities have a right to protect themselves from harm in these forms. Regardless of political disagreements, entities should not attack others that have not attacked them. Attacking previously passive victims only serves to escalate conflicts which may ultimately result in unforeseen and unsatisfactory outcomes.

Chinese Internet censorship is retarded. It accomplishes absolutely nothing other than to make them look bad, and to annoy the hell out of its citizens. Who are they even trying to fool? The Chinese people already know what's going on. It's useless to try and hide what happened in Tiananmen Square. The government is so paranoid that if they give free access to information, people will revolt and try to overthrow the government. This kind of paranoia is why they cracked down so harshly in Tiananmen Square in the first place.

It's even more ridiculous that they temporarily lifted the Great Firewall during the Olympics ... but then brought it back once it was over. So, what? People got to check out the BBC and CNN and see what they were saying for that period of time, but now they can't? Either have North Korean style control of all forms of media so you can effectively brainwash your citizens, or don't bother trying to hide anything. People will find out, and they already know what's going on.

The CCP seriously needs a new strategy for public relations, because what they're doing now isn't working out for them. Riots in Tibet? Don't block YouTube. That will just make people say, "Aha! See, it's true that China is oppressing Tibet, they banned anyone from looking at YouTube so they can't see them beating up Tibetans!" Instead, just rationally explain that the rioters destroyed property and murdered Han Chinese, and that the police did not use any more force than was necessary. It's so easy to talk about things when you have the truth on your side, because you don't have to make shit up. Sharon Stone called the Sichuan earthquake "karma"? Don't ban all of her movies. Just shrug her off as a stupid cow, her idiocy speaks for itself.

The only reason I can think of as to why they even try censoring the Internet in the first place, is that the top brass of the CCP are old and don't really understand the Internet. They don't want to ban it completely, because so much useful stuff is on there. But the idea of people talking freely on it scares them, so they order people to make sure it's controlled, not understanding that attempting to control the Internet is folly.

Steve Hsu, the creator of SafeWeb and a guy who spent a lot of effort teaching Chinese citizens how to use his product to bypass Internet censors said it best: "In China, as long as people are getting the right information they will make the right judgments or decisions. I believe that."

It's not so much about websites about Tiananmen, but user-generated content websites which are used for generating and organizing riots.

Gents be sure to read the captions...

People use computers at an internet cafe in Wuhan, Hubei province, January 23, 2010. China needs no lessons about its Internet from the United States, the head of an online media association said through official media on Saturday after the United States rapped Beijing over information freedom.

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A cultural inspection authority official installs a surveillance camera in an Internet cafe in Suining in southwestern China's Sichuan province Saturday Jan. 23, 2010. Beijing has issued a stinging response to Hillary Rodham Clinton's criticism that it is jamming the free flow of words and ideas on the Internet, accusing the United States of damaging relations between the two countries by imposing its "information imperialism" on China. (AP Photo)

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crobato said:

Even in the US, requesting confidential email information requires a court order. If any government can intrude in web based email system, then simply nothing can be trusted---Yahoo, Hotmail, GMail, your local ISP provider. This is the same level as a bank account. Privacy issues is extremely vital to keep a free society, which at least the US and other countries aspire to. Please note the ability to access confidential mail accounts literally can be used by any administration on power to smear opposition party, politicians and media as well. That would be the equivalent of illegal wire tapping.

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Okay, I'm guess you're working under the assumption that a court order from a US court has more legitimacy than a court order from a Chinese court?

You still admit, though, that in the US, the government (which the court system is a part of) only has to ask to get the private and confidential information?

Keyword filters are done along the backend core IP routers. You really should not be asking Google for this, you should be asking for CISCO. BTW, these are among the 20 companies that were hacked along with Google; another company surprisingly on the list---Northrop Grumman.

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That's completely irrelevant, you know. The point is, the US government is able to obtain such private information whenever it wants.

A cultural inspection authority official installs a surveillance camera in an Internet cafe in Suining in southwestern China's Sichuan province Saturday Jan. 23, 2010. Beijing has issued a stinging response to Hillary Rodham Clinton's criticism that it is jamming the free flow of words and ideas on the Internet, accusingthe United States of damaging relations between the two countries by imposing its "information imperialism" on China. (AP Photo)

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Maybe I'm paranoid, but this caption makes it sound so "repressive" to install a security camera in a public area.