BRUSSELS (AP) — Google Inc.’s top lawyer said Wednesday that the world’s leading search engine is asking the U.S. and European governments to press China to lift Internet censorship, describing it as an unfair barrier to free trade.

David Drummond told reporters that western states should defend the free trade in information with the same kind of rules that they use to complain of China’s below-cost sale of products.

He said government talks are “the only way that it’s going to change, that this tide of censorship or this rising censorship is going to be arrested.”

The company sparred with Chinese leaders earlier this year when it stopped self-censoring its search results in line with Chinese rules after it said Chinese hackers had tried to plunder its software coding and hijack the Gmail accounts of human rights activists.

Since late March, Google has been redirecting search requests from mainland China to Hong Kong, which doesn’t have the same restrictions.

“The cyber attack was sort of the final straw because we felt that it was increasingly hard to do business there in accordance with our values,” Drummond said, describing the company as in danger of becoming “part of the same apparatus” of Chinese state censorship.

“Censorship, in addition to being a human rights problem, is a trade barrier,” he said. “If you look at what China does — the censorship, of course, is for political purposes but it is also used as a way of keeping multinational companies disadvantaged in the market.”

“It should be obvious that the Internet sector is very important to the west and so we should be working on seeing that that kind of trade is protected,” he said.

Drummond would not comment on whether he believed the United States could take a case under World Trade Organization rules against China, which can ultimately allow the U.S. to seek trading rights in compensation for any proven harm to its companies.

Instead, he said new trade rules may be needed to cover the Internet.

“Under a lot of trade rules, there’s still this notion that domestic media markets should be off limits to trade and that’s got to change,” he said.

He said he’d had some support in discussions with the U.S., French and German governments and with the European Union executive for pressing Google’s case and Chinese restrictions on the Internet in bilateral and multilateral talks.

The European Union persistently raises human rights issues with China, usually without much success. Indeed, a Chinese state multibillion dollar buying spree to Europe last year pointedly shunned France after President Nicolas Sarkozy threatened to boycott the opening of the Beijing Olympics over unrest in Tibet. China refuses to hold talks with the Tibetan government in exile.

In my opinion, censorship investigation in China Internet really has a terrible influence to foreign enterprises which have business with China. You see, nowadays, more and more company choose internet business and advertisement even customer service. All part of their business can’t be separated with the cyber world. But in China, maybe they have to face a lots of problems that can’t be solved. For example, their web site maybe can’t access for the reason that the host which served their web service is blocked. Or you can say they can do all the business via their own VPN connection or some other way, but how about their customers ? Their Google ads would fail to convince the Chinese people just because the suck CCTV always said that Google is bad and evil. Their twitter client service would fail to receive customers’ feed back just because twitter can’t be access here…

So I agree with the point that WTO should get involved in this case. Just tear down the Internet finance barrier !

PS: I have on idea about the human right arguments in the above article.Just hate the stupid Chinese Great LAN and censorship investigation.

http://www.ubuntu.com/

3/22/2010 12:03:00 PM

On January 12, we announced on this blog that Google and more than twenty other U.S. companies had been the victims of a sophisticated cyber attack originating from China, and that during our investigation into these attacks we had uncovered evidence to suggest that the Gmail accounts of dozens of human rights activists connected with China were being routinely accessed by third parties, most likely via phishing scams or malware placed on their computers. We also made clear that these attacks and the surveillance they uncovered—combined with attempts over the last year to further limit free speech on the web in China including the persistent blocking of websites such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Google Docs and Blogger—had led us to conclude that we could no longer continue censoring our results on Google.cn.

So earlier today we stopped censoring our search services—Google Search, Google News, and Google Images—on Google.cn. Users visiting Google.cn are now being redirected to Google.com.hk, where we are offering uncensored search in simplified Chinese, specifically designed for users in mainland China and delivered via our servers in Hong Kong. Users in Hong Kong will continue to receive their existing uncensored, traditional Chinese service, also from Google.com.hk. Due to the increased load on our Hong Kong servers and the complicated nature of these changes, users may see some slowdown in service or find some products temporarily inaccessible as we switch everything over.

Figuring out how to make good on our promise to stop censoring search on Google.cn has been hard. We want as many people in the world as possible to have access to our services, including users in mainland China, yet the Chinese government has been crystal clear throughout our discussions that self-censorship is a non-negotiable legal requirement. We believe this new approach of providing uncensored search in simplified Chinese from Google.com.hk is a sensible solution to the challenges we’ve faced—it’s entirely legal and will meaningfully increase access to information for people in China. We very much hope that the Chinese government respects our decision, though we are well aware that it could at any time block access to our services. We will therefore be carefully monitoring access issues, and have created this new web page, which we will update regularly each day, so that everyone can see which Google services are available in China.

In terms of Google’s wider business operations, we intend to continue R&D work in China and also to maintain a sales presence there, though the size of the sales team will obviously be partially dependent on the ability of mainland Chinese users to access Google.com.hk. Finally, we would like to make clear that all these decisions have been driven and implemented by our executives in the United States, and that none of our employees in China can, or should, be held responsible for them. Despite all the uncertainty and difficulties they have faced since we made our announcement in January, they have continued to focus on serving our Chinese users and customers. We are immensely proud of them.

God damned !

new approach to china


I read the entire post on blogspot.com and felt the determination of Google. As a ordinary user, I am always thankful about what Google did for us. Then I don’t use the other .cn search services too much(I go to .com for searching directly), but I feel happy to use Gmail service freely here. I still can’t image that the days with Google….

God bless Google.cn…..

At the same day in 20 years ago,the Berlin Wall was torn down.Today,another higher invisible “Wall” is still standing in China.  ( tweeted by @icalcifer )

Today is the day that Berlin Wall crashed at 20 years ago. The fall of Berlin Wall is the symbol of democracy freedom. The West takes it as a great victory and the opposite side try to make it less attractive. However the fall of Berlin Wall takes the world into a new direction and will be remember forever.

Where there is a wall, there would be some mice hole on it. So the stories of the cat and the mouses will never stop until the day that wall crashed.

There are tricks  for the mice to dig holes on the Wall, such as VPN, SSH, Proxy and so on. Tor is my favorite trick cause its untraceable and free to use. But unlucky it got a VIP treatment from the Wall and we have to do something to make it work again.

There is a small trick note for myself below. You can take it if you need it too.

Step 1: Write a request letter to bridges@torproject.org via a reliable email service likes Gmail. (It’s especially important if you are behind the Wall) Then we would get a list likes ” bridge 123.123.123.123 ” .

Step 2: Edit the /etc/tor/torrc file as root. To add that list you have got to the “bridge relays” section at the bottom of the file. Save and exit.

Step 3: Restart the Tor and Privoxy(if you need) services by the commands:

sudo /etc/init.d/tor restart

sudo /etc/init.d/privoxy restart

[copied from www.internetnews.com original link: here]

As new Linux release nears, founder Mark Shuttleworth explains his company’s plan for profitability.

With more than 8 million users, Ubuntu Linux is among the most popular Linux distributions.

But what is its mission? What are Ubuntu and Canonical, its lead commercial sponsor, really all about?

Ubuntu has desktop and server releases, and is gearing up both user and cloud services, all of which are set to be updated in the new Karmic Koala release due out later this week. With all the different products and directions, Ubuntu founder Mark Shuttleworth faces questions about the focus and definition of the distribution, as well as the profitability of its corporate backer.

In a press conference call today, Shuttleworth tried to explain.

“The mission of Canonical is to deliver all the benefit of free software to a variety of audiences,” Shuttleworth said. “We started with desktop, because we thought that was place we could make the most distinctive splash. The desktop was largely neglected and at the same time there were changes afoot in the core infrastructure of Linux at the kernel level that meant we were confident we could surprise people at how easy [it was] to install and use the desktop if someone was focused on it.”

Ubuntu competes against multiple Linux distributions, including those from Red Hat and Novell, as well as community-based distributions. Both Red Hat and Novell offer enterprise Linux desktops, though specific efforts focused on the consumer segment are not currently the main thrust.

Shuttleworth said that Ubuntu to date has been successful in expanding the Linux desktop footprint, and is now interested in increasing the number of places where it can deliver the benefits of open source software.

“We’ve already done a lot of work in developer ecosystem and we’re now increasingly interested in the non-developer consumer ecosystem, so that’s what all the OEM work is about,” Shuttleworth said, declaring that his focus was on “making sure that Ubuntu gets pre-installed and Ubuntu is available from Dell.com and others and making sure that Ubuntu is the default alternative to Windows.”

He added that Canonical has a similar vision for Ubuntu on servers and in the cloud. He admitted that having different products for different market segments does represent some real challenges for Canonical as a small firm.

In terms of the company’s organizational structure, Shuttleworth said that there is a core Ubuntu platform team at Canonical, which is divided into desktop, server, mobile and netbook groups. On the sales and marketing front, separate groups are tasked with focusing on OEM, enterprise and consumer efforts.

“It is a stretch and it is a challenge,” Shuttleworth said. “But the real prize for us is to show that the free software ecosystem can be delivered as a platform which spans from the most lightweight devices right the way through to the most heavy-duty devices.”

He added that there are real benefits to having a complete platform, giving developers the opportunity to both develop and deploy applications using Ubuntu’s brand of Linux.

“The consistency of platform and ecosystem is highly valuable to us and to our users. That’s why we’ve given ourselves the harder job of delivering a complete platform rather than going for a specific niche market,” Shuttleworth said. “Time will tell whether it’s achievable. It’s wonderful to do the impossible so long as it’s not actually impossible. We’re certainly surfing close to the edge of that line.”

But the broad product mix poses a threat to Canonical’s profitability, at least in the short term. It’s a concern that Shuttleworth recognizes, but he sees the silver lining in the longer-term picture.

“I have no concerns about our ability to be profitable,” Shuttleworth said. “If necessary, we would have the option to focus on specific areas that are already self-sustainable. My preference is to push the organization faster, to continue to invest in and to continue to create the feeling of a complete platform.”

Canonical is a privately-held company, and Shuttleworth does not disclose its financial performance. Last year, he admitted that Canonical was not cash-flow positive.

“Profitability is a matter of choice as to how much we’re willing to invest, whether we see the appropriate returns on that investment and whether we see it as the right thing to be doing,” Shuttleworth said. “Right now I’m absolutely convinced that we want to be delivering Ubuntu as an end-to-end solution, and that requires us to invest in multiple theatres of battle at the same time.”

mask men(I'm not there...)

Jul 22th 8:00 am, a sun eclipse not seen once in five hundred years started at China

The whole country focused at the sky, many people took out various stuffs, like electric welding mask, sun glasses, X-ray film and so on, the see this natural miracle by their own eyes.

It’s said that the Yangtze River Basin Area will be the best site to see this solar eclipse, even a total solar eclipse

That’s awesome but we are not kind of lucky, Canton is not in that area. The latitude and longitude made us only can see a partial eclipse.

I just went to see the television and a live show that taken at Sichuan Area. A beautiful and amazing total solar eclipse made everyone exciting. When we are young boys and girls, we had seen the stories and pictures about solar and lunar eclipse. We learned the truth about them in our learning book about nature. But today, a true real-time sun eclipse is more than any words and images.

eclipse

Maybe many unknown “gifted” guys that born during the eclipse time will make a new season of “Heroes”

Of course, Let’s try it out~

Then I noticed that this is a CVS version software. Cause we need the CVS support and some libraries.
But for the damn slow network connection to the source host… I have to give up and go to bed~
I will try it again tomorrow

Finally, the install was finished. But…

OMG, Is there Anybody can fix it?