Just read from a friend’s twitter update that Google.cn has banned a Chinese name "Shijing(石靖)". I tried to search that name in google.cn, here is what I got:

无法访问您所搜索的信息,请返回 google.cn 查询其它信息.

The above Chinese is: "Access denied for the information you are searching, please back to google.cn to search other information".

The name "Shijing" is a very common Chinese name for male or female, maybe in China there are around several hundred thousands of people are named as "Shijing". However, for google China, they not exist any more.

"Shijing" became a popular search keyword in the last couple weeks because someone discovered her naked photo were appeared in an American idiot Robert Kugler’s online photo album. That guy post many Chinese girl’s photo(include some naked) in his myspace pages, and declared that he  had sex with lots of Chinese women and post those photo to show off. All I can say for this is, that stupid guy is a complete idiot, he should pay price for what he did( Publishing private photos to public without permission).

No doubt, it’s because some department of our government’s pressure, generally they just ask a web site to remove any thing they want to remove, they don’t care what they are and how they related to the daily life.

Since Google launched a self censored web site: Google.cn, she was blamed a lot in Chinese "google fans", many people feel they were betrayed or cheated by google’s famous slagon "don’t be evil". As a person who ever ran a web site in China, I am a few of people who support the self censored version google — "google.cn", it’s not possible to fight with a government like China when you decided to do business in China. Open a self censored google.cn is a win-win situation for both google and google users. However those self secorship only related to those political related content and some sexual/pornographic contents.

But this time is complete different, this is the first time google banned a keyword completely (without display anything!), and this keyword is not related to any political terms, it’s just a common name that several hundred thousands of people are sharing! I believe it is so "EVIL" for those people who using this name or they have some relative who using this name.

Goodbye, "don’t be evil", I believe it’s  only a start point that google China become far and far away from what it said before.

(Chinese version: 和谐了的谷歌算Evil呢还是不Evil呢？)

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Skype was down some days ago, now it’s back, but what their excuse really sucks:

The disruption was triggered by a massive restart of our users’ computers across the globe within a very short timeframe as they re-booted after receiving a routine set of patches through Windows Update.

It’s because Windows update?! Skype’s P2P network stability relays on Microsoft Windows Update?! What an excuse !!!

Here is what they explained more technically:

The high number of restarts affected Skype’s network resources. This caused a flood of log-in requests, which, combined with the lack of peer-to-peer network resources, prompted a chain reaction that had a critical impact.

Well, it’s reasonable, however it still means Skype have a weak design in stability and redundency which is really critical for a telecommunication carrier. Even though, unfortunately, they are still feeling so  "proud"…

We are very proud that over the four years of its operation, Skype has provided a technically resilient communications tool to millions of people worldwide.

Well, this world have plenty of choices, this is not 3 years ago…now GIPS codec are widely used by most of VoIP softwares, and there is no secret about how to make AEC better and "so called P2P voip" network. Maybe GizmoProject is a better choice:

Gizmo is a Free Phone for Your Computer

That makes calling as easy as instant messaging

Gizmo Project is an internet telephone, that is as simple as instant messaging

Make all of your calls from the comfort of your desktop, with Gizmo Project it is point, click, talk. For FREE

Why use Gizmo?

• It’s FREE!
• FREE call’s to any Gizmo Project, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Talk, or Windows Live user
• Chat with AIM and MSN buddies
• Free Voicemail and Conference calling.
• Super clear call quality
• Inexpensive add-ons that let you make and receive calls from any mobile phone or landline

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I just read a blog post “How to bring Internet freedom to China” from Patrick Fitzsimmons, he suggest  to host the web server on the domain of a critical business site, so China goverment will not block those web site:

 The solution is to host the web server on the domain of a critical business site. A huge number of Chinese businesses run off of Microsoft services. When I spent time in China, most of the people I met used Microsoft Hotmail for their email - work and personal. Block Hotmail and the government cripples tens of millions of people going about their daily business. Other business critical web sites include American corporate sites, such as Microsoft Update, Google, PayPal, and Chase Manhattan Bank. The government cannot ban those services without suffering severe economic repercussions.

An of Congress should require that all major US companies doing business with China host proxy servers on their domains. A person in China would simply go to https://www.hotmail.com/FreeInternet/ and be able to access the entire web without restriction. By using the secure “https” protocol, the “FreeInternet” part of the address would be encrypted. Thus the Chinese government would have absolutely no way of detecting whether the user was using the free internet or sending a business email. Chinese citizens would be completely free to write blogs, read foreign news, and engage in political discourse all with complete security and anonymity.

Even without an act of Congress, we in free countries can create these proxy services by convincing the right organizations to host the servers on their domains. Domains such as apache.org or mozilla.org would be very difficult for China to block without doing severe damage to their software industry. We could build a movement to host proxy servers on these types of domains.

Firstly, as a Chinese who deep sufered by the Great Fire Wall (GFW), I should say thanks to Patrick, thank him gave a solution to bring Internet freedom  to China.

However,  unfortunately, this idea totally can’t work, even if the US goverment can push company to provide such proxy, or a great amount of company willing to do so, it still helpless:

• Greate Fire Wall can easily block partial web site based on the URL pattern. That’s to say even all popular web site implement a “/proxy/…” service for us, those part could be easily wiped off by our Great Fire Wall.
•  ”Block Hotmail and the government cripples tens of millions of people going about their daily business”, yes, but will our GFW care a shit?! NO, they don’t care. They blocked Google, the blocked Sourceforge, they blocked FreeBSD, they blocked Wikipedia, … Any thing which threaten the interests of GFW will be blocked, no matter how many people may be affected. Unfortunately, that’s the situation in China.
• Will those “big” company be so kind to provide such proxy? No, I don’t think so.  Actually, I never expect them to be this good, I only wish they could not sell us to the government…but unfortunately they did, just no too long ago, Yahoo provided  personal email content to our government and eventually become a evident to put someone in prison! Even google surrened, they run a selfcensored version google  “google.cn” in China.
• How about apache.org, mozilla.org ? No, please not, even they willing to so, I believe many Chinese people wish NOT!  because all we know that only make us lost apache and mozilla in the future forever! At least now we can still access them easily.

Internet freedom is not a technical problem, so technical solution may not so easy to help.

At last, I should still say thanks to Patrick, let’s pray that some day in the future, free Internet access will not just a dream anymore.

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Skype didn’t work any more since yesterday, and till now it still not work! Does anyone also experience this problem?

Something interest is, though I was not able to login the skype, I was still able to setup the call transfer configuration successfully! I just open up the configure window and fill the new transfer number, submit, it show a never ending wait prompt…but actually it worked! Some one called my skypein number it did transferred to the number.

Just found this, seemed I am not alone…

Problems with Skype login

By Joosep on August 16, 2007.

UPDATED 14:02 GMT: Some of you may be having problems logging into Skype. Our engineering team has determined that it’s a software issue. We expect this to be resolved within 12 to 24 hours. Meanwhile, you can simply leave your Skype client running and as soon as the issue is resolved, you will be logged in. We apologize for the inconvenience.

Additionally, downloads of Skype have been temporarily disabled. We will make downloads available again as quickly as possible.

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