Microsoft shuts down Chinese dissident’s Blog

Posted on by

From today’s New York Times…

BEIJING, Jan. 5 – Microsoft has shut the blog site of a well-known Chinese blogger who uses its MSN online service in China after he discussed a high-profile newspaper strike that broke out here one week ago.

The decision is the latest in a series of measures in which some of America’s biggest technology companies have cooperated with the Chinese authorities to censor Web sites and curb dissent or free speech online as they seek access to China’s booming Internet marketplace.

Microsoft drew criticism last summer when it was discovered that its blog tool in China was designed to filter words like “democracy” and “human rights” from blog titles. The company said Thursday that it must “comply with global and local laws.”

“This is a complex and difficult issue,” said Brooke Richardson, a group product manager for MSN in Seattle. “We think it’s better to be there with our services than not be there.”

The site pulled down was a popular one created by Zhao Jing, a well-known blogger with an online pen name, An Ti. Mr. Zhao, 30, also works as a research assistant in the Beijing bureau of The New York Times.

Lots of stuff on the Web about this. Here, for example, is a translation of what Zhao has said about the experience on his blog-city site (mirrored at ZonaLatina.com):

On the afternoon when Microsoft deleted my space, I did not feel anything at all. A few days ago, I was at Peking University speaking to students and someone asked me whether MSN Spaces would be shut down on account of me. My response was, “When the warning comes, Microsoft will sell me out first. So everybody should feel free to use MSN Spaces.” I sensed that the day will be coming. Over the last days, the daily traffic was about 15,000, and then everything was deleted. Damn Great Wall, damn Microsoft. I will make Microsoft pay.

That night, I felt bad and I cried.

It is so hard to be a free Chinese person. This year, my blog was shut down twice because I supported media (Chinese Youth Daily and Beijing News). When I was in Hong Kong, I told the reporters that I know where the bottom line is. The problem is that when my fellow media are in trouble, it is my obligation as a member of the news media to offer support immediately. Under this type of moral obligation, personal bottom lines are irrelevant. One can continue to live meticulously and technically, but one must also have another side that puts everything aside to express true feelings.

One of the most interesting developments is a post by Microsoft’s most famous Blogger, Scobelizer, in which he says:

OK, this one is depressing to me. It’s one thing to pull a list of words out of blogs using an algorithm. It’s another thing to become an agent of a government and censor an entire blogger’s work. Yes, I know the consequences. Yes, there are thousands of jobs at stake. Billions of dollars. But, the behavior of my company in this instance is not right.

Some people within the Microsoft chain of command are reported to be taking this issue up. So they should.

A picture is worth a thousand pounds

Posted on by

Hilarious story on The Register. A guy offered a picture on eBay of a 42-inch Panasonic plasma TV (which retails at about £3,000). Bidding had reached £1,020 before it was rumbled by a Register reader. In the end, the seller ended the auction saying

I had to bid on the item myself and end the listing early. the price was getting rediculous. There was no way that I was going to allow someone to pay £2000 for a picture. I couldnt live with myself with that. Also an ebay [official?] told me that I needed permision from panasonic to sell a picture of their item, which I did not know.

Other than the permision that I needed, there was nothing wrong with what I was selling as far as I can see. It was listed under home and garden: decorative items and there was also another note further down the listing that said ‘note: you are bidding on a picture of the plasma being described and not the actual plasma itself’. And no where on the listing does it say that you the buyer is bidding on a plasma screen.

Caveat Emptor and all that; but it does make one wonder about some of the emptors on eBay. Apparently some bidders have paid serious money for photographs of Microsoft XBoxes!

The latest Windows security hole

Posted on by

There’s a nasty Windows vulnerability about. First reported on December 27. Details:

Microsoft Windows contains a vulnerability that can allow an attacker to execute arbitrary code. The vulnerability is due to improper handling of Windows metafiles by the Graphics Rendering Engine. Attackers can exploit the vulnerability by creating a metafile and enticing a victim into opening the file. Use of the Windows Picture and Fax Viewer is one known vector of attack through the automatic display of certain metafiles. Known file types that will launch Windows Picture and Fax Viewer when opened are .wmf, .emf, .gif, .jpeg, .jpg, .bmp, and .png. Note: Additional attack vectors may exist.

At the time of writing (January 5) Microsoft hasn’t issued a patch. They’re going to wait until Tuesday January 10 because that’s the next scheduled date for the release of Microsoft upgrades and fixes. Now that’s what I call customer service.

Update (January 6): According to The Register, Microsoft has now issued a patch.

CCD inventors get recognition — finally

Posted on by

The US National Academy of Engineering has awarded the 2006 Charles Stark Draper Prize, described by the New York Times as “the engineering equivalent of a Nobel award” to two former Bell Laboratories researchers who invented the imaging microchip or Charge Coupled Device — the chip at the heart of digital cameras and camcorders. The device converts light particles, or photons, into packets of electrical charges that are shifted in rows to the edge of the chip for scanning. Willard Boyle, 81, and George Smith, 75, invented the CCD in 1969 in an hour’s brainstorming session in the good old days when Bell Labs was one of the intellectual powerhouses of the world.

Well, fancy that!

Posted on by

The Wall Street Journal journal is reporting (from behind a paywall) that “Young people tend to drink more in areas with more alcohol advertising compared to areas with less advertising, according to a NIH-funded study”. Wow! Wish I could get funding for research like that.

Sony to settle anti-piracy CD row

Posted on by

According to BBC NEWS,

Free music downloads and cash refunds could soon be offered to owners of Sony BMG CDs loaded with controversial anti-piracy software.

The offers are part of a proposed settlement of lawsuits against Sony BMG over the use of software aimed at thwarting illegal copying of CDs.

Tyranny and normality

Posted on by

I’ve been watching Heimat over the Christmas break, and finding it even better than I remembered. For those unfamiliar with it, Heimat is an eleven-part fictional account of life in a small German village during the rise of the Nazis and afterwards.

On paper, it must seem very dull. The characters are not in the least flamboyant — it’s very much a story about ‘ordinary’ folk; and nothing much happens — except that the Nazification of life and the annexation of the state for ideological purposes gradually seeps into every crevice of daily living. There are few real villains, and only the quietest of heroes (or, more accurately, heroines — the central women characters come out of it well.) People who were weak and/or nasty before the rise of Hitler become exploiters of, or slaves to, the new ideology; while those who were always strong or balanced tend to retain their judgement and common sense — even if they sometimes have to rein in their tongues.

And it also communicates vividly how convincing prosperity is to the average citizen — especially if s/he has previously experienced economic hardship (as most German citizens did in the 1920s.) It’s as if prosperity dissolves doubt and uncertainty. (We saw a lot of that in booming Ireland a few weeks ago, as people thronged shops in a frantic Christmas spending splurge.) Heimat captures very well the growing public acceptance of the regime as economic conditions improve, shopkeepers’ turnover increases and people are able to buy cars and consumer goods. (One memorable episode is entitled “The Best Christmas Ever”, and chronicles the quiet satisfaction the villagers felt as 1935 turned into 1936.)

The series is a masterful evocation of the steady perversion of a civic culture. It is also an antidote to complacency: I myself come from a rural background, and could imagine many of the same things happening in the communities in which I was reared. So I was very struck by this quote from Richard Evans’s new book, The Third Reich in Power.

‘The further in time we get from Nazi Germany, the more difficult it becomes for historians living in democratic political systems … to make the leap of imagination necessary to understand people’s behaviour in a state such as Nazi Germany.’

The significance of Heimat as a creative work is that it makes that ‘leap of imagination’ possible.

What is it with the Wikipedia?

Posted on by

Quentin had a link to some thoughtful musing by Bill Thompson about the current Wikipedia controversies. His conclusion:

I use the Wikipedia a lot. It’s a good starting point for serious research, but I’d never accept something that I read there without checking. If the fuss over Siegenthaler, Stoltenberg and Curry means that other readers do the same then it will have been worthwhile. We shouldn’t dismiss the Wikipedia, but we shouldn’t venerate it either.

Last chance to see…

Posted on by

The Observer, the newspaper I’ve written for since 1972, has been published in broadsheet format ever since it was founded in 1791. But today’s is the last broadsheet edition. From next Sunday it will be published in the Berliner format of its sister paper, the Guardian. The change was inevitable, but it’s the end of an era all the same.