
Node.js 0.6.4 was blocked in China - bmaeser
http://groups.google.com/group/nodejs/browse_thread/thread/8803e5fbe28984af?hl=en%3Fhl%3Den
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charliesome
I was in China just over two years ago and I can confirm just how _insane_ the
GFW is.

Every other Google search wouldn't load, sometimes Wikipedia articles (China,
Tiananmen Square, etc.) would appear to start loading slowly (the top parts of
the page would show) before suddenly cutting off and showing 'Connection
Reset'. I don't know how that worked because usually browsers just show you a
half page if the connection is lost, but in China the page would just
disappear.

~~~
latch
Kinda off topic, but I thought people might be interested to know that there's
absolutely no blocking (or any other kind of censorship) in Hong Kong.

~~~
sandal
Hong Kong and Mainland China have pretty much completely separate political
systems except for military and foreign affairs. I think this is supposed to
last another 40 years or so at the minimum.

It's weird how two regions connected by a subway system can be so different
from one another, and yet still be the same country. My wife is a Chinese
citizen but needs a visa to go to Hong Kong... as an American I don't but I
need a visa to go to mainland PRC. Fun!

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yaix
False alarm. I live in China. Just turned off my VPN and I can access the
site, download the source and docs.

Sometimes there are regional blocks in some provinces, that may be the case,
can't test it. But they are not targeting simple numbers. Maybe some other
keyword triggered a dynamic block in some regional ISP's GFW system. You can
get those dynamic blocks easily by searching on Google for certain keywords.
For the next 3 minutes your Internet will stop working.

If there is any Chinese involved in node, s/he could just write an email to
the "internet police" gov't dept and ask them to lift the blocking, if it
actually exists anywhere in the country.

~~~
briandear
Lol. "Write to the Internet police." Yeah, good luck with that. The government
doesn't ever officially acknowledge sites that are blocked. Even the AWS east
coast data center (read: heroku) is blocked in China intermittently. All
writing to the mythical Internet police would accomplish is getting your name
on a list of people with a stated desire to visit 'pornography'.

Internet companies that don't end in .cn and start with 'Tencent' or 'Baidu'
are better of just leaving China. It'll never be good here as long as the
communists are in power.

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yaix
That is only partially true, I know of websites that have got themselves
unblocked by doing exactly this. But honestly I don't want to discuss that
with somebody starting his/her post with "Lol".

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Bankq
As a Chinese programmer: Please stop talking about it on HN. Save HN for
us.............

EDIT:as being misunderstood I claim that I hate GFW as much as I love freedom
and decent programs.

~~~
randallsquared
If enough people stop talking about it in enough places, then the govt will
have successfully edited the internet at large. Potential tragedy of the
commons, limited mainly by outrage.

~~~
gburt
How is this a tragedy of the commons?

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons>

~~~
randallsquared
In the sense that if each person removes a bit of information from the spot of
the internet they're on, they're improving things for themselves and their
friends, while if enough people do this, the internet as a whole is reduced in
usefulness for everyone. In this analogy, censored information is the
resource, but I realize it's not a perfect match with goats and common fields.
:)

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tarr11
It appears that this is because the Tiananmen Square massacre occurred on June
4 1989 (6/4)

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mmaunder
Tiananmen Square protests:

Year: 89

Date: 6/4

Both 89 and 64 are blocked by the GFW.

Censorship of recent history this blatant seems less like historical
negationism and more like the statement: "Speak of this event and face severe
punishment."

~~~
biesnecker
Neither 89 nor 64 are blocked by GFW -- that's a terribly simplistic view of
how the system works. There are plenty of things that can trigger temporary,
automated blocks, and perhaps the version number _did_ cause the block (as
unlikely as that seems), but to blanket say that certain integers are blocked
by the GFW is FUD.

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mengxy
I am a Chinese programmer and I have to say, we cannot jump the conclusions
that nodejs.org is blocked in China at this period. Only quite few persons
cannot open the site. We shouldn't be that sensitive and lead the topic even
more political.

GFW is really INSANE, but this is not the right place to fuck it.

~~~
billpatrianakos
I'm very sorry but some of what you said was lost on me as there was a little
bit of broken English in there. If I understand correctly, are you trying to
say that nodejs.org isn't being locked and that only a few people are having
this issue? And are you also trying to say that we shouldn't be jumping to
conclusions and this isn't a political issue and that while the GFW is
ridiculous this isn't the place for a political discussion? I'm just trying to
understand because I honestly didn't completely understand your comment.

I disagree and think this is a perfect time to talk about the politics of it
even if this is a false alarm and an isolated issue. Does the GWF really help
China politically? Don't the Chinese citizens know that information is being
kept from them.

I think just knowing that your government is keeping information from you is
enough to make a person dislike and distrust their government. At the same
time I wonder if I'd feel the same if I grew up with censorship. It's one
thing to have freedom then have someone take it away and it's another to not
even know what you're missing out on. If the Chinese people don't know that
there's a whole wealth of information they cannot access then they probably
don't care. But if they once had full access and now it's gone I'd imagine
they would be very angry about it.

~~~
be5invis
An interesting fact is that the way most Chinese people knows that they are
information-managed is from "inside". "Lords" of Weibo (a soceity site) have
controlled almost ALL WEIBO USERS. And they don't like the gov though most of
them are beneficiaries of the gov, or the "system" they called.

Nodejs.org is NOT blocked on both China Telecom and China Unicom's 3G network.
I've tested.

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AznHisoka
this is lame and I bet half the government officials in China don't even care
about implementing such a policy.. heck, I bet 95% don't care, they just
follow orders and fear rebelling. Heck, I bet just a handful of them care at
most. I mean, it can't be that fulfilling to make censorship your life
purpose.

~~~
xenophanes
I sort of agree with your general point, but I think there's something else
going on too:

Actively favoring and _caring_ about this kind of thing advances your career,
social status, etc, in China (for some career paths, not all). There are
incentives to care. Consequently, many people learn to care and become true
believers. (Faking like you care is harder to get right than being genuine,
and requires better thinking, and the people who can do that usually go for
other jobs, so it's much rarer.)

Lots of people do more than follow orders, they internalize some of the values
of the people they are trying to please. And they learn skills like figuring
out which way the wind is blowing without being told, and figuring out how to
convince themselves that is good, and then (if they are ambitious, or under
pressure from their wife to make more money, or whatever) they may even try to
get out in front of the thing, show their dedicated enthusiasm, take
initiative, seek a leadership role, etc... All the while, they are not in
general thinking about how they are secretly opposed to what they are doing,
which would be unpleasant and get in the way of their success.

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jrockway
What exactly is the point of China's censorship when you can just go to Hong
Kong, part of China, and browse a censorship-free version of the Internet?

(Also, how do big US companies do business in China? Are they allowed to VPN
to the real Internet? What if someone visiting from abroad mentions Tienanmen
Square?)

~~~
andypants
Do you think travelling to 'Hong Kong, part of China' is just a matter of
hopping on a bus for a 20 minute journey?

1\. China is a very big place.

2\. Even if the travel itself is convenient, not all Chinese can travel to
Hong Kong. You need a visa, different currency, etc. Hong Kong isn't just
another city in China.

3\. Would you travel to a different state just to drink fair trade coffee
(pretend it is not available in your own state)? Would you go every time you
wanted coffee?

~~~
jrockway
_Would you travel to a different state just to drink fair trade coffee
(pretend it is not available in your own state)? Would you go every time you
wanted coffee?_

Yes. And I would tell everyone else how they're missing out, too.

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skeptical
According on the link '64' and '89' are banned numbers. Well, the Chinese
government is mathematically limited to a maximum of 98 more such bans.

~~~
grannyg00se
Why on earth would a government ban a particular integer?

And what exactly does this entail? Are you allowed to utter the words? When
you learn to count to 100 do you have to skip them?

~~~
getsat
> Why on earth would a government ban a particular integer?

See: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3309452>

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RShackleford
fuck all the chineese, idiots :)

