Oh, how soft....the pearly luster....the cleavage.....
Posted on 06/08/2009 12:13:00 PM PDT by Ernest_at_the_Beach
There comes a time when despite the allure of the market, Western industry should band together and turn its back on China. A time when the computer and Internet industry realizes that the censorship-and-repression tax the government is intent on levying is too high a price to pay.
Is this, at long last, that moment? Well, it’s doubtful. But it should be.
Starting July 1, computers sold in China must include government-provided spyware that blocks pornography and political dissent from Chinese citizens’ view, The New York Times reports, following up a Wall Street Journal report.
Called “Green Dam” — green being a foil to the yellow smut of pornography — the software is designed to filter out sexually explicit images and words, according to the company that designed it. Computer experts, however, warn that once installed, the software could be directed to block all manner of content or allow the government to monitor Internet use and collect personal information.
PC makers are said to be irritated with the new rules but presumably not enough to buck the government. The major irritation seems to be that July 1 isn’t enough time to add the software to massive production lines.
(Excerpt) Read more at government.zdnet.com ...
I imagine all the other suggestions would be also.
And probably any computer found on the net that doesn’t give a ping back from the spyware will get the owner a stint in a reeducation camp.
Good point.
Just about anything the government doesn't explicitly permit is illegal in China. Enforcement, however, is lax - to say the least. If they enforced every law on their books, they'd probably have an armed revolt on their hands.
You'd sell exactly one copy of it. After that, it'd explode across the pirate/reverse engineering gray market there. The Chinese will find ways around this nonsense.
You're on the right track but not thinking widely enough. What they want is for "The Authorities" to be able to access your system to perform a host of surreptitious activities that include little things like poisoning users hosts file to steer them away from proxies, keylog login codes to ... well anything but I imagine counter-government websites would be of particular interest, scan documents for frequent occurances of interesting phrases such as "Free Tibet" "Dalai lama" especially in proximity to "Demonstration", and bigger things such as installing root level worms to further enhance their capabilities. Having the capability to install software surreptitiously for instance means that they could set up a nationwide bot-net that would be staggering in its DDoS capability. I mean we're talking serious weapon-grade capability here.
The possibilities of what they can do are by and large limited only by the government's imagination.
Coming to a formerly-free nation near you.
If I lived in China I’d just decline to upgrade my hardware. I still got a 386 upstairs doing e-mail and basic stuff with 1994-vintage software. Works fine.
Exactly. Whatever they want to stop, the upstream end of the ISP connection would be a much better choice. OTOH, if tyrant commies are technical retards, that's not such a bad thing.
Ooh, here's a scary thought: What if this is all just cover for Dell, HP, etc, to start putting this crap on all OUR machines "so they won't have to make two versions"? Not that they don't already (Windows).
They'd better have start planning to override the electrical tape, then.
Precisely! I swear, the Chinese government does this just to “make a good show”; if anyone should know about the level of software counterfeiting, it should be the Chinese government!
I bet you can get the OS wiped and re-installed even at the neighborhood Suning store!
My experience with Chinese consumer electronics stores is that they're about as knowledgeable as the sales people in Best Buy or the late Circuit City - i.e. they're clueless. To do an OS install, I suspect the local PC mall or computer repair store is the best bet.
All your PC's are monitored by thousands of worker ants at Chinese state security organizations.
Oh, how soft....the pearly luster....the cleavage.....
Don't forget the twinning.
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