China calms down the commentary incident

A friend working at a popular Chinese portal site told me today that they have been informed by the official to keep "low keyed" in reporting Huang Jianxiang's commentary incident, as well as conducting relevant surveys or publishing the humour audio/video clips that imitate his commentary. Therefore, all the related links about this incident have been removed from their home pages. However, those existing contents are kept as they were.

Huang commentating on Italy vs. Australia

A well-known football commentator in China, Huang Jianxiang (黄健翔), unexpectedly shouted his pro-Italian anti-Australian rant while commentating on the last minutes between the two duelling teams in the live picture broadcasting to an audience of many millions in the country.

"The pro-Italian commentary sparked a barrage of complaints", as well as the "criticisms in the press the following day". The initially unapologetic Huang later apologised on the state-run CCTV for which he works and posted a letter (in Chinese) on its website saying sorry for the injustice and prejudice in his commentary. He did not commentate on the next game.

Huang's outburst caused an uproar and then sparked a huge debate online and offline in China, as well as in Australia. His boss Zhang Bin, the director of CCTV Sports Channel, criticised this incident in four Chinese words: Huang at first lost his voice (失声), then lost his cool (失态) and lost his politeness (失礼), and finally lost his mind (失常).

However, Huang has recently become a subject of gossip in China. His commentary have been widely re-posted at Chinese news sites, blogs, forums and chat rooms, as well as his recording of the commentary. Moreover, a lot of hilariously imitated variants of his recording have also been available on the Chinese websites. Some popular Chinese portal sites, such as NetEase and Sina, have even set up a column to collect and publish those funny audio and video clips in varied Chinese dialects or for alternative matches.

Personally, I really like his passion but not his bias. The following flash movie from NetEase is a funny cartoon showing Huang's passion and excitement using his voice.

The video clip of Huang's original commentary from CCTV Sports Channel is available at YouTube.

Huang commentating in Chinese/English on Italy vs. Australia
(The only full version on the Internet, the Reuters' translation is in italic):

... "点球！点球！点球！格罗索立功了！格罗索立功了！不要给澳大利亚人任何的机会。"

... "Penalty! Penalty! Penalty! Grosso's done it! Grosso's done it! Don't give the Australians any chance."

... "伟大的意大利的左后卫，他继承了意大利的光荣的传统！法切蒂、卡布里尼、马尔蒂尼在这一刻灵魂附体！格罗索一个人，他代表了意大利足球悠久的历史和传统！在这一刻，他不是一个人在战斗！他不是一个人！！"

... "The great Italian left back! He succeeded in the glorious traditions of Italy! Facchetti, Cabrini and Maldini, their souls are infused in him at this moment! Grosso represents the long history and traditions of Italian soccer; he's not fighting alone at this moment! He's not alone!!"

... "托蒂！托蒂面对这个点球。他面对的是全世界意大利球迷的目光和期待。"

... "Totti, Totti is facing the spot kick. He is facing the expectations from Italian soccer fans all over the world."

... "施瓦泽曾经在世界杯预选赛的附加赛当中扑出过两个点球，托蒂肯定深知这一点。他还能够微笑着面对他面前的这个人吗？10秒钟以后，他会是怎样的表情？"

... "Schwarzer has saved two spot kicks in the World Cup qualifying tournaments, both of these were in extra time. Totti should have known this. Will he still be able to face the man in front of him with a smile? How about his expression after 10 seconds?"

... "球进啦！比赛结束了！意大利队获得了胜利！淘汰了澳大利亚队！他们没有再一次倒在希丁克的球队面前。伟大的意大利！伟大的意大利的左后卫！马尔蒂尼今天生日快乐！！意大利万岁！！"

... "Goooooal! Game over! Italy win! Beat the Socceroos! They do not fall in front of Hiddink again! Italy the great! Italian left back the great! Happy birthday to Maldini!! Forza Italia!!"

... "他没有辜负意大利人的期望！这个点球是一个绝对理论上的决杀！绝对的死角！意大利队进入了八强！"

... "He didn't let the Italians down! This penalty kick was an absolute one-off! Absolute one-off! Italy have made the final eight!"

... "胜利属于意大利，属于格罗索，属于卡纳瓦罗，属于赞布罗塔，属于布冯，属于马尔蒂尼，属于所有热爱意大利足球的人！！"

... "The victory belongs to Italy, to Grosso, to Cannavaro, to Zambrotta, to Buffon, to Maldini, to everyone who loves Italian soccer!!"

... "让他们滚蛋吧！" (背景低语)

... "Let them get lost!" (Background voice)

... "澳大利亚队也许会后悔的，希丁克！他在下半场多打一人的情况下他打得太保守、太沉稳了，他失去了自己的勇气。面对意大利足球悠久的历史和传统，他没有再拿出小组赛那样猛扑猛打的作风。他终于自食其果！他们该回家了，他们不用回遥远的澳大利亚，他们大多数都在欧洲生活。再见！"

... "The Socceroos might regret, Hiddink! He played too conservatively and too calmly with one more player (than Italy) in the second half, he lost all his courage. Faced with the long history and traditions of Italian soccer, he didn't attack as fiercely as he did in the group matches. He finally reaped fruits which he had sown! They should go home. They don't need to go as far away as Australia as most of them are living in Europe. Farewell!"

The relevant news reports:
ANSA: Italian team sparks Chinese passion
China Daily: Commentator in spotlight for losing his cool
First Soccer: Huang's apology and Zhang's criticism (in Chinese)
Kunshou: Huang's passional commentary (in Chinese)
Reuters: Chinese commentator just loves Italy
The Times: The great wail of China puts Motson to shame

Commenting on the fried chicken legs

A friend posted the picture of that dish of fried chicken legs I cooked yesterday to a Chinese forum and received many follow-up comments (in Chinese) saying its good looking. :-)) It's unbelievable for me. They might have been starving before viewing the photo, hehe. ;-))

The fried chicken legs

Fried Chicken Legs (红烧鸡腿 in Chinese)! Take a picture of it before enjoying it! The shutter speed was 6 seconds, I couldn't wait!

This is my first time to cook Fried Chicken Legs. Frankly, I actually know nothing about how to cook it. I just did what I thought to be right. Anyway, I finished it! It just looks delicious, as I expected, haha! :-))

Australia's dream, Panasonic's ideas

Australia's Dream for World Cup
Panasonic's Ideas for Life

A Panasonic advertisement located on the top of a building against the Lidcombe Library along the Olympic Drive in Lidcombe, Sydney. Taken by Canon IXUS 50 at 15:43 on 27 June 2006.

The referee sends Socceroos home

In the last seconds, after the last resort, with the last decision, the last kick ends the Australia's dream of World Cup. Italy sends Australia home. Actually, the referee sends Socceroos home. The Aussies believe this.

It seemed not worthwhile, one Italian sent off, for one penalty kick. It seemed unfair, perhaps even cruel, for the accident in the last seconds. But that's football. That's life.

Wow, a landmark goal!

Wow!! It was really incredible!! The goal Beckham just scored was the most wonderful goal I ever watched. I believe it must be one of the most famous marvellous goals in football history!! It's a miracle, unbelievable!!

Why I do NOT use Baidu, never!

Many sources have recently reported that Google (Nasdaq:GOOG) has registered to sell the entire stake in its Chinese competitor, Baidu (Nasdaq:BIDU), to develop a rival product. I think it seems to be good news.

I personally never use Baidu to search online. The search engines I use are just popular ones: Google, Yahoo! and MSN, intensively for Google. The only difference is that I only access their US English versions, NOT their Chinese versions. I never visit any eunuch version (censored version) of the search engines, such as www.google.cn, cn.yahoo.com and of course www.baidu.com!

Briefly, I have 10 reasons NOT to use Baidu.com at all:

1. It cannot search me, for either my nickname or full name in Chinese/English.
   
2. It's not for English content, actually not for all kinds of non-Chinese content.
3. It's full of ads, thanks to its P4P, it's not so much a search engine as an ads portal.
4. It's strictly filtered; there is only one kind of monotonous voice there, no stereo.
   
5. It's not objective, ads and adjustments are mixed in originally incomplete results.
   
6. It does evil; its immoral competitions were reported, including blocking Google.
   
7. It has no creativity, almost all of its product concepts were copied from the others.
   
8. It's not professional, defects and bugs are quite common in all their products.
   
9. It has an ugly logo, and a bear footprint makes no sense to attribute its brand name.
   
10. It designs ugly pages, though the original designs were obviously from Google.
    

Additionally,

1. It's actually not a Chinese company, it is an American firm registered overseas.
   
2. All of its chief executives title an awful Western name though they claim that it is a Chinese company, they are Chinese, and they work for the global Chinese. Actually, they just did the opposites!
   

If it is possible, I'd like to explain the above points one by one. Well, it depends on my time.

Moreover, Wikipedia currently has several articles about Baidu, but all the non-Chinese versions are not comprehensive, which only give the basic information without those objective criticisms mentioned in the Chinese version. This might be an example explaining why most foreigners, especially investors, do not actually know what the real Baidu is.

Basically, I really do NOT like such a company, although it claims as a Chinese company, which I should support or at least I shouldn't be against. Unfortunately, NO! I do NOT, because it seems to be evil!

FoxPro wakes up?

In my last post, I introduced TIOBE Programming Community (TPC) Index, which provably and visually ranks the hottest programming languages available in the market. In fact, the TPC index is not newly introduced to the market. It "exists today for 5 years."

The TPC Index for June 2006 shows an incredible increase for Visual FoxPro (VFP), which was often formerly referred to as a member of traditional "xBase" languages. VFP has doubled its rank from #24 one year ago to #12 this month, even higher than PL/SQL, and become the most fast-growing language! It looks like a dark horse not a little white fox, doesn't it? :)

Moreover, another factor must be helpful in increasing FoxPro's rank: to get Googled. It seems that some VFP fans have done a lot for getting Googled and also encouraged other fans to do so. They even published a site "explaining how to push Visual FoxPro in the TPC ranking." By the way, I believe that the means the enthusiasts practiced can be also used to promote other products, which might be also determined and blocked by Google if the big brother thinks such a way would be harmful to its ranking system.

Anyway, the index shows that FoxPro is still alive and living fine! It is of course alive because I am currently having Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP1 installed on my tablet notebook, as well as Visual Studio .NET 2003 (because my VS2K5 DVDs were mistakenly delivered to China :-(( ). I just never thought that FoxPro could be still so popular nowadays.

Personally, I started using FoxPro in 1993, with its early version FoxPro 2.5 for DOS, as one of the few authorised users in China, for developing a commodity futures trading system. Actually, I personally never saw another authorised copy of it. All the pirated copies I ever saw in China had the SAME registered name and number. :-)) Anyway, I knew its genuine copies were available at that time at a few Microsoft authorised dealers in Zhongguancun, Beijing, but there definitely were few "silly" guys like me who would have bought them. :-)) This is why I speculated that there were only few registered users of FoxPro in China. In fact, after using this genuine software, I made my company become a Microsoft Certified Partner, and I therefore started my relationship with Microsoft. :-)) Now, I sometimes run VFP9 to collect or convert data. I reckon this would be easier than using Access or Excel, though I use these two often.

It is true that Visual FoxPro has been made more powerful than before, it even can be seamlessly integrated into those state of the art systems based on Windows Vista, though "rumours suggesting that Microsoft intends to end support for FoxPro have been common since Microsoft's acquisition of the product." For 14 years, Microsoft has perfectly abided by the promise it made to FoxPro users.

However, although I have never actually seen many developers around me using Visual FoxPro, but I can see from the TPC Index that more and more people are using it. So I am very happy to welcome FoxPro's back with us.

The hottest programming languages

Do you know what the hottest programming languages are nowadays? How are the languages in long term trends? What kinds of languages would be dark horses in the near future?

TIOBE Programming Community (TPC) Index gives the answers and keeps updating monthly. The TPC Index is to rank the popularity of programming languages that we are currently using.

The Index is a really good reference for us to review what kind of programming language we should use or we should learn. It's a visual barometer of programming market and a visual thermometer of programming languages.

The ratings in the index are calculated based on the relevant availabilities reported from search engines Google, MSN and Yahoo!. The site also gives the definition for how the TPC index is assembled due to many enquiries about it. It is reasonable and has been recognised by other organisations. For example, the well-known IT publisher O'Reilly has proven that "there was a correlation between their book sales and the TPC index." Apple and NASA also referred to the TPC index in their strategic documents.

See the update for June 2006:

• Java is the hottest.
• C/C++ is still most widely used.
• VB ranks #4 while VB.NET is knocking on the door of top-20 list.
• C# is the only pure .NET language in top-20 list.
• Script languages, such as PHP, Perl and JavaScript, are active in top-10 list.

and surprisingly

• Visual FoxPro ranks #12, even higher than PL/SQL, as the most fast-growing language!

Visual FoxPro (VFP) ranked 24th one year ago and has incredibly doubled its rank now. In the column for Delta in Position in the Index table, VFP's field even can not be put in with the 12 green up-arrows indicating the growing interest in the language, and has to use "12*" instead. :-)

However, in a few words, the TPC index from TIOBE Software ought to be focused on by all active developers and IT managers, especially those who are hiring developers or who are looking for a job, including me. ;-)

'Time' is the top noun

Associated Press (London) reported yesterday, "for those who think that society is obsessed with time the Concise Oxford English dictionary added support to the theory Thursday in announcing that the word is the most commonly used noun in the English language."

"On the list of the top 25 nouns, time is followed by other indicators of the movement of the clock: 'year' is in third place, then 'day' at No. 5 and 'week' at No. 17."

Every one knows time, everyone seems to understand what time is, but actually not many of us know its true meaning. This is probably why time has so many definitions, by different people from different points of view.

Microsoft Encarta Dictionary gives the following related words for noun 'time':

* period, while, spell, stretch, stint, interval, phase, stage
* occasion, instance, moment, point, instant, minute, hour, point in time, moment in time
* era, age, epoch, period, season, generation
* tempo, measure, rhythm, beat, speed, pace

You can see, no any above words can be used to completely replace 'time'. Exactly speaking, there is no synonym for time. The word 'time' is so unique but general and meaningful. I think this was another reason why it became the top noun, not only for its essential relationship with people's life.

Moreover, "'the' is the most popular word overall, followed by be, to, of, and, a, in, that, have and I." This is just the reason why Google ignores these words in search keywords by default, except you put them in quotation marks or they are the only keywords.

"The list of top 25 nouns: time, person, year, way, day, thing, man, world, life, hand, part, child, eye, woman, place, work, week, case, point, government, company, number, group, problem, fact."

In fact, the list just seems to unveil the attitudes of how most people live, including what and how they do, what and how they think, and what they focus on, doesn't it? :-)

The news source: English dictionary: 'Time' is top noun in English language

The 2nd Google Analytics report

The second weekly Google Analytics report shows that in the last 7 days this blog has been visited by people speaking 12 languages from 27 domains spanning over 41 networks in 46 cities from 31 regions over 22 countries, excluding my traffic.

Overall, since 7 June 2006, in last 14 days, this blog has been visited by the people speaking 18 languages from 73 domains spanning over 102 networks in 121 cities from 77 regions over 32 countries, excluding my traffic. Totally, there were 157 visits and 235 pageviews; averagely, 1/2 visitors viewed two or more pages. Apparently, the most visitors were new guests who accessed here for the first time. The referring sources primarily were blogspot.com (blogger.com), google.com and technorati.com.

This blog is just a beginner.

The left index finger

The left index finger was cut while cooking the lunch. Bled and dressed. :(( Anyway, the lunch was finished and enjoyed. :) Go rest!

6K+ Chinese stung the Google Killer

Since 8 June 2006, 6557 Chinese netizens have visited a blog page to virtually "sting" a puppet, which was imaginarily treated as the Google Killer, to express their hatred for blocking Google in China.

In other words, after I published the following post, more than 5200 websurfers have supportively visited the initiator's blog page in past 10 days.

Sting the Google Killer
http://bbao.blogspot.com/2006/06/sting-google-killer.html

Moreover, Michelle Malkin, a prominent American columnist, blogger and author, has collected several "photoshopped/altered Google logos by bloggers and others", including her design shown in this post, "in response to the search engine company's decision to kowtow to China."

In addition, another American blogger, Drew, posted his method of writing a Greasemonkey user script to find out how every day Google searches would be different if Google China was used. You may try googling the keywords listed in a post at Google Blogoscoped to actually see the differences!

Other related posts of mine:

Behind the blocking on Google
http://bbao.blogspot.com/2006/06/behind-blocking-on-google.html

Respecting legitimate government considerations
http://bbao.blogspot.com/2006/04/respecting-legitimate-government.html

A crazy soccer night

Tonight is a crazy soccer night in Australia. It is just reported on TV that several thousands of fans are currently crowding at the Circular Quay in Sydney and the Federation Square in Melbourne to wait for the historical match between Brazil and Australia, a contest between the king and the new star.

Other two important matches are also arranged tonight: Japan vs. Croatia match and France vs. South Korea. There are million Asian and Middle-East immigrants living in Australia, so these two games would be also well focused on by them.

Almost all the TV advertisements have recently updated to soccer related content. Soccer seems to be the only subject on TV.

As the commentator shouted loudly on TV while Australia just scored its first goal in the fight against Japan, "it was the landmark moment for Australian football", I believe that tonight ought to be also a landmark, sleepless night for Australian soccer.

Cutting hair in Sydney

I had a crew cut yesterday afternoon at a Chinese mini salon in Ashfield, Sydney. The barber used a specialized and numbered mold, which I had never seen before, to associate with the clipper for making the crew cut efficiently, even in five minutes. I was even told to declare my number, the mold number I used, rather than the hair style, the next time I go there. The barber was funny. The dialogue between us is as follows in oral Chinese.

昨天下午理发，去了朋友推荐的一个位于 Ashfield 的迷你发廊。据说这里平头理得好，而且便宜，六澳元一位。沿街找到 Liverpool 街的东头，终于看到它的中文招牌。挺好，没有客人，坐下就理。以下是我和理发师（简称“理”）的对话：

理：座。
我：好。
理：几号？
我：什么几号？
理：理几号头？
我：？！我……，理个平头，要短的。
理：几号平头？
我：？！我……，不知道啊，有几号？
理：（拿出一个盒子，里面有电推子，还有模子若干）看到没？从一号到五号。
我：哦？！这号咋算的？
理：号越小越短。
我：哦……，那就一号吧！
理：哦？一号很短哦！
我：我一直留很短的平头啊，一号应该可以吧？
理：哦……，还是先试试五号吧！长了可以再短，短了就没辙了。
我：那也好。
理：（模子装上，顺手沿我脑门中线贴头皮一把儿就整出一道宽宽的分界线来）如何？
我：（看着镜中自己脑袋两边长草的怪像，又瞅了瞅那能看到头皮的分界线）啊？五号就这么短了？！
理：我说什么来着，你还选一号呢！
我：哦，那就……，就五号吧！哎？五号就已经这么短了，那一号不就得剃光头了？！
理：是嘛！一号就是光头嘛！
我：哦？！（有点儿晕）
理：我没错吧？呵呵。以前有一主儿就不听我劝，结果一推子下去，他就急了，还说女朋友这下吹了！
我：哦？这怕啥？等长出来再找嘛！
理：（三下五除二，我已成了劳改头，其实没有发型，等长的短发贴着头皮）人家可不干呢！瞧，如何？
我：哦？效率蛮高啊！有工具就是不一样嘛！
理：可不！要不只收六块钱？
我：哦？！
理：要是没这个，指着我一点点儿地给你蹭，就这头儿，你跑遍悉尼，六十块钱也拿不下呀！
我：哦？！我在国内，就是这么蹭的，就在我楼下的小店儿，三块钱，人民币啊！
理：敢情！在这里早就赔掉腚了！
我：哦，用这个模子理发，看来不要手艺嘛。这模子你自己做的？买的？
理：买的。卖理发工具的地儿就有。有些人就是自己买着推。
我：（摸了摸发顶）哦？那好啊，我也弄一个去吧。我看，这五号还是长点儿，整个四号儿？
理：可以。（转眼四号模子已经装上，心不在焉地又把我的脑袋蹭了一遍，然后又利索地换了一个模子）
我：（对着镜子上下左右打量了一番）嗯，四号应该是我平时的长度。
理：哦，那你就记住，以后再来，不用说什么样式，直接说四号头就可以了。
我：哦？！
理：准确地说是“顶四边二”。平头嘛，怎么说两边儿也得短点儿不是？边儿上用二号就可以了。
我：哦？还整一日本名儿？好，我记住了。
理：其实，虽然用了工具，手艺还是要的！看这蹭边儿没有？得恰到好处，二号到四号得有过渡才行!
我：哦，那我自己在家里单练还不成了？
理：可不咋的！用工具啊，就是提高一下效率，可是基本功还是要的！瞧！这儿，这儿，还这儿，是吧？
我：哦，那还得来找你？
理：对嘛！
我：好。
理：看看如何？
我：（看了看镜中那个利利索索的老改头）不错！这“平头”的英文咋说？
理：哦……，叫“Crew Cut”！
我：哦？就是机组人员的那个“Crew”？
理：对！开飞机的都理这个头！
我：哦？！
理：齐活儿了！
我：谢了！（看了看表，从座下到再站起来，也就五分钟左右！）
理：别客气！

中文 BLOG 参见 http://baobing.mblogger.cn 处。

Breaking news

The first weekly Google Analytics report shows that in the last 7 days this blog has been visited by the people speaking 16 languages from 85 cities via 78 networks in 63 regions from 27 countries, excluding my traffic.

Pharming, Anti-pharming and DNS Cache Poisoning

The following are today's revisions at Wikipedia (in italic), finished while watching the France vs. Switzerland match, FIFA World Cup 2006. ;-)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharming

... Machines on the Internet identify each other by using their IP addresses, and every portion of data transmitting on the Internet (packet) is tagged with the IP addresses of the putative sender and intended recipient. ... The DNS server thus performs the service as the telephone book to return an IP address for any domain name submitted it.

... But if the criminal hijacks the victim's DNS server, changing the IP address of the target website from its real IP address to the IP address of his fake website, the victim can enter the web address (URL) properly and be directed to the fake website. Note that this is only possible when the victim accesses the original site via HTTP but not HTTPS (that is, with no SSL protection), or if the user ignores a warning about invalid server certificates.

Another method of pharming is to prevent the user's computer from contacting the legitimate DNS, either by installing a virus or trojan on the victim's computer, or compromising the user's firewall or router, or simply changing the user's "hosts" file which statically maps a domain name to an IP address. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-pharming

... Currently the most efficient way to prevent pharming is for end users to make sure they are using secure web connections (HTTPS) to access privacy sensitive sites such as those for banking or taxing, and only accept the valid public key certificates issued by trusted sources. A certificate from an unknown organisation or an expired certificate should not be accepted all the time for crucial business. ...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNS_Cache_Poisoning

... A poisoning attack on a single ISP DNS server can affect the users serviced directly by the compromised server or indirectly by its downstream server(s) if applicable. ...

A famous, historic school in Jinan

The Chinese Wikipedia article I completely rewrote today, regarding the Jinan ZhengYi Middle School, a famous private school established in 1913 in my hometown Jinan, China.

济南私立正谊中学
http://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/济南正谊中学

济南正谊中学是由知名教育家鞠思敏先生于1913年创建的一所私立学校，也是济南教育史上最早的中学之一，位于中国山东省济南市大明湖南岸。该校于1956年改为公立，改称“济南第十七中学”。1984年6月济南市政府批准学校更名为“济南职业中等专业学校”，1985年5月更名为“济南第一职业中等专业学校”暨“济南书法艺术专业学校”。1998年4月该校挂牌成立“济南艺术中学”。
……

China and Internet Censorship

CNN provides an interactive explainer that "allows people to learn more about who is involved in Internet censorship" in China, "how it works and what people do to get around it."

The sources are from Reporters Without Borders, The OpenNet Initiative, and China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC).

The Interactive:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/world/0603/explainer.china.internet/frameset.exclude.html

Sting the Google Killer

Yesterday, I firstly found this funny picture from a Chinese IT guy's blog, dubbed Keso's blog, and then traced back to its original post at Keepwalking's blog.

The Chinese words beside the doll in the picture read "This guy caused Google inaccessible. Click this page to sting him" in English.

I have noticed that a lot of bloggers at DoNews.com, where the above two blogs reside, have added this sign and its link on their homepages. So far, more than 1300 visitors have "stung" since 13:12 8 June 2006, as the counter showed in the original post. Many supportive comments followed up as well.

It seems a creative but actually helpless cure for the helpless netizens in China who are NOT able to access the Internet freely.

In Chinese culture, for the common people especially the vulnerable group of them, this would be the most extreme approach to express hatred or curse a person, in which a doll is used to represent the person to be cursed and the people puncture stingers into its body particularly the heart. This is called "巫蛊" (Wu Huo) in Chinese.

Moreover, today is the first National Cultural Heritage Day in China. "Since 2006, the second Saturday of every June will be designated as the National Cultural Heritage Day in China, which has provided a strong guarantee for the intensification of cultural heritage protection." Those Chinese bloggers are just creatively using the most traditional way to voice themselves. They pragmatically responded the government's directive, didn't they? :-))

Finally, a few excerpted words about DoNews.com. DoNews.com, established in April 2000, "advocates the spirit of freedom, fairness and open", claims itself "the largest IT writing community in China" which "consists of 13 thousand editors, journalists, free writers and IT employees as its columnists and forum users."

Behind the blocking on Google

Several Western media recently reported that Google was blocked again in China. Financial Times reported, “users in many Chinese cities have been able to access Google.com only intermittently in recent days”. I have confirmed this with my friends in China, particularly in Beijing, Shandong and Shanghai. In addition, it was early reported that Microsoft's MSN Messenger Service and Passport service recently had the similar problems in China, too.

According to the symptoms of recent accessibility issues of Google.com and MSN Messenger Service in China, I reasonably speculate that China might be experimenting some new means or technology to intercept the sensitive information that possibly offends the government, though its current system, known as the Great Firewall, has been already reported as the most advanced online censorship system in the world.

I presume that the system under experiment might NOT be only to simply terminate the connections to forbidden websites or content-sensitive pages, but also to try:

• unknowingly redirecting web requests (with URL parameters) initially targeting forbidden sites to other sites under control or well filtered (such as the eunuch version of Google — Google.cn), and
• unwittingly prying private IM (Instant Messaging) communications, especially those via MSN Messenger Service and QQ service.

The recent anniversary of June 4th Incident would be a good chance to test, troubleshoot and evaluate the new system in a real environment, including the real contexts, real keywords and real network traffic. This was probably why accessing Google or MSN was intermittent in China in recent days.

I think the main technical challenges in the censorship would be:

• an appropriate and more efficient algorithm to correctly recognize the banned keywords and their variants based on the contexts captured from web requests, and
• a more efficient mechanism to reduce inevitable bandwidth usage and delay at the checkpoints where connect China's internal networks to the backbone of the Internet.

Briefly, one aspect would be filtering algorithm, another would be traffic control.

Anyway, I believe that till now the most efficient way in the game would still be to simply block the IP addresses of the forbidden sites, especially those providing audio/video streams. Hence, it is not doubted that China is currently maintaining a large blacklist for the unwelcome and controversial sites.

Such a blacklist would have been converted to the ACL (Access Control List) items and then deployed to the routers connecting to the Internet backbone, which would also unavoidably and significantly decrease the network performance of accessing the Internet from China because the ACLs have to be executed serially.

It is obvious that the new kind of online censorship would consume more network bandwidth and cause more bottlenecks, which would certainly lead to more delays in end-to-end communications from/to every Internet user in China. Of course, the related system would also need a more powerful hardware platform and more fast backbone bandwidth.

This sounds like a paradox, except the fact of wasting money and human resources. No wonder it is a "perfect" practice to “represent the developmental requirement of China's advanced productive force”, the first demands of the well-known mission statement “Three Representatives” put forward by the party and the government.

In a few words, I would speculate that the recent blocking on Google would be the prelude of next round of large scale censorship in China, which would probably be carried out in less than 10 months even half a year.

The related news:

BBC: China 'blocks' main Google site
Earth Times: Google founder admits the company compromised in China
FairFax Digital: We were evil, Google founder admits
Financial Times: Beijing's censors accused of disrupting Google.com
InterFax China: Hotmail and Windows Live Mail widely inaccessible in mainland China
P2P Net: Hotmail problems in China
PC Advisor UK: Hotmail problems persist in China
The Australian: Google's regret on Great Firewall
Wired News: China Tightens Grip on Web

Heavy rains in Sydney

Sydney had heavy rain for the past week, regardless of the days and nights. It became colder and colder, even down to 6°C in the nights, as my FireFox's extension Forecastfox reported. As a guy living on the net, I measure outdoor temperature with my wirelessly networked tablet computer even I sit by the window or near the door, sounds terrible, hehe.

Anyway, it's the good time for me to read books or surf online in the raining days.