<IT WORLD> China closes digital window By Martin J Young
HUA HIN, Thailand - China's great firewall came into play again this week when
the country's 300 million Internet users found that the digital doors were
closed to YouTube, Google's popular video-sharing website.
Google spokesmen Scott Rubin confirmed that the site was blocked to Chinese
users earlier this week and stated that the company was unaware of the cause
but is working to restore access. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin
Gang
responded by stating that many people have a false impression that the Chinese
government feared the Internet. He also said China's Internet is open enough,
but needs to be regulated by law to prevent the spread of harmful information
and for national security.
The "harmful information" in this instance seemed to be videos recently posted
by Tibetan exiles showing handcuffed Tibetan protesters and monks being beaten
by Chinese police and violent scenes recorded by Chinese officials during a
riot in Lhasa in 1988. Naturally, state-run Chinese news service Xinhua claimed
them to be fake but the government proceeded to block the entire website
anyway.
Other suggestions are that the blockage has been implemented as a result of
YouTube's launch of a Chinese language version of the popular US-based social
website, which will make it easier for the population to "broadcast itself".
The authorities neither confirmed nor denied this or any other reason for the
censorship.
China, with its estimated 30,000-strong Internet police force, has previously
blocked specific YouTube videos, and Google attorneys testified last year that
China blanketed the site while the Communist Party Congress was being held in
Beijing during 2007. A general Internet clampdown that began in January has
resulted in the closure of hundreds of Chinese websites, especially those
popular with Tibetans. It seems as though another level of bricks has been laid
on the great firewall to stifle dissent in the year of sensitive anniversaries.
These include the 20th anniversary of the bloody crackdown on pro-democracy
protesters in Tiananmen Square in 1989 and 60 years of Communist Party rule.
China is not alone in its heavy-handed censorship of YouTube. In recent years
the website has been blocked in Bangladesh, Thailand and Turkey. However, as
China's burgeoning information-hungry Internet population continues to
increase, the number of online resources that are available to it seems to be
following the opposite trend.
Internet
Google has implemented its semantic search this week by altering its existing
algorithm in an attempt to make search results more intuitive and relevant. The
traditional way of generating search results is achieved by page rank, a system
that gives pages with more inbound links priority, and keyword analysis.
Naturally both practices are open to abuse as thousands of "keyword spammers"
can stuff web pages full of words just to get them at the top of the results
pages - it works, and Google, despite its claims, are powerless to stop it.
The new search results will offer longer lines of text called snippets; these
will follow the search title with relevant words in bold. The technology came
in part from Google's acquisition of search company Orion in 2006 and its
attempts to analyze the meaning and a broader area of search relevancy beyond
simply the keywords. It will offer related search terms in addition to the one
entered by the user. This will broaden the results returned by the engine.
With this technology in operation and the new advertising model using
behavioural based user profiling (see
Advantage Google, Asia Times Online, March 14, 2009) Google will soon
know what you're going to search for before you even type it!
Gaming
A Silicon Valley startup has launched a revolutionary service it claims will
change the gaming industry and bring the latest games direct to anyone, without
the need for a gaming console. By using video compression technology, OnLive
aims to deliver on-demand video games via cloud-based Internet servers to users
on a PC, Mac or TV.
The concept is to eliminate the hardware and allow users to access games on
lower-powered laptops, desktops and even televisions by connecting a small
console that communicates with the OnLive servers. During a glitzy product
launch at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, company boss Steve Perlman
boasted that games will appear and run as if they are playing locally.
Running a demo using Crysis Wars, a very graphic-intensive and hardware
demanding game, the team wowed the audience by playing the title on a cheap
laptop streaming it over the Internet from a web server. Console manufacturers
including Sony, Nintendo and Microsoft are not going to be amused if the
service, which will be provided on a monthly subscription basis, takes off.
However as with many new innovative online offerings only those with reliable
high-speed Internet connections will benefit, sadly that excludes most of Asia.
Security
The re-emergence of the notorious net nasty known as the Downadup or Conficker
worm (see An
apple a day, Asia Times Online, January 24, 2009) could be a matter of
days away according to Internet security experts. The worm, which exploits a
Microsoft vulnerability to which a patch was made available in October but
which not all users have downloaded, could be a ticking time bomb set to wreak
havoc across networks on April first. Over the past couple of months it could
have remained dormant in millions of computers across the globe waiting for an
activation command.
When triggered, the worm will act as a drone, or bot, sending spam or malicious
software around the globe, and when combined with thousands of others the
drones become a powerful tool for their commanders. Known as bot-nets, these
networks of obliviously infected computers can bring corporate systems and the
Internet to a standstill .
There is all possibility that nothing will happen on April 1, just as nothing
happened to computer clocks at the turn of the millennium. Yet the threat
remains, and the need to be more vigilant with computer security has never been
stronger.
Microsoft information and a removal tool can be found here:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/962007
Martin J Young is an Asia Times Online correspondent based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact us about
sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
Internet
