The Squirrels Are Watching: July 2006

Open-source AIDS vaccine?

Bill Gates tries an an open-source approach to finding a cure for AIDS. Wonder if anyone's asked them why this doesn't apply to Windows too?

More in common ...

Oh look, India's banned blogspot too!

Report a Chicken

In the Mong Kok MTR stop, Argyle Exit (D), there's a "report a (mosquito?) chicken and be pleasantly surprised" sign.

7-Eleven + Chicken = Self Reporting Station, Prevent a chicken left close? My translating ability needs work. Perhaps it's a reference to Bird Flu?

Beyond Whiteness

I dunno, sounds like something that'd cause cancer.

A Scarlet Letter Crime

How serious of a crime is theft in Hong Kong? Well, apparently it's worthy of big red A. Sticker located near some place that sells suits across the street from G2000 (?) in Mong Kok.

Eye Infections

This Hong Kong ad by the Jordan MTR station tells us to wash our hands because clearly, hovering land sharks with white hats are the number one cause of eye infections.

The Search and the Clickstream

"The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture" (John Battelle)
Ellen Kim gave me this book before I took off, and I read it while in Hong Kong. She also gave me Freakonomics : A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything" (Steven D. Levitt, Stephen J. Dubner), really interesting stuff as well, but there's nothing in it I feel like blogging about (the fact that the book is back home is contributing somewhat to that disincentive).

Anyhow, The Search is worth blogging about, but there's a lot to cover, so it'll be over a few posts. The first thing worth thinking about is, as Battelle calls it, the "clickstream." The clickstream, loosely put, is the sum of everything you do online. It consists of which websites you go to, what terms you search for, and what items you buy. In other words, it's a digital paper trail.

By mining that clickstream, we can create, as Battelle puts it, a "database of intentions." As far as business is concerned, that means being able to know exactly what consumers want, when they want it, and, with a little web magic, getting it to them on the spot. That's the power of search.

More on the flip.

The Piracy Trump Card?

So as I was thinking how Microsoft could bring down the Great Firewall in an earlier post, I concluded, "What's the PRC going to do? Ban Windows?"

The answer I was thinking of was, even if it does, people would just get illegal copies of it. But since this isn't in Microsoft's interest, the PRC could force even a mega-standard like Windows to comply by simply threatening (subtly of course given its WTO commitments).

Maybe it's time for Microsoft to move to a new business model.

Playing God with Missile Defense

This was started by the Essembly resolve:

An effective defense against ballistic missiles is in the best interest of the United States, and as such it should actively and aggressively peruse developing and deploying such a defense.

The link goes to the discussion I'm having with Andrew Berman about why I disagree. This is probably harks back to me debating why space-based weapons (i.e. Star Wars) is a bad idea during junior year of high school. So yeah, I'm not exactly approaching this with an open mind.

More on the flip.

A Way Around the Great Firewall?

Researchers from the University of Cambridge have found a way to circumvent the Great Firewall of China. Unfortunately, it won't do me much good since it involves "using special software or modifications to firewall software that would ignore RST packets to circumvent the Great Firewall," software that isn't readily available yet. And as the article notes, this doesn't offer that much of an advantage over encrypted proxy servers.

But given all my troubles recently, I'm willing to bet that finding encrypted proxy servers isn't exactly easy for the average user. And given that a fair chunk, if not most, of the Chinese don't really question the content the government is blocking (they think it's propaganda, porn, or both -- pornproganda!), you're going to have to make it fairly easy for them to access banned sites for them to do so.

More on the flip.

Delaying a Switch to Wordpress

So after a short stint on Blogger, I've been considering a switch to Wordpress. One of the more annoying things about Blogger is that there really isn't an easy way to implement tags or categories. Wordpress has categories built in, and given how easy it is to add in plugins, with something like Ultimate Tag Warrior, it's fairly easy to get tags up and running too. Given the general good press surrounding Wordpress, I though I'd give it a try.

Of course, Wordpress.com is banned in China. Wordpress.org is still up and running, but unlike the Blogger / Blogspot relationship, it doesn't allow me to access the Wordpress.com blog I set up. Ecto doesn't work either, which I guess is for the same reason. Furthermore, I can't even login via proxy. My guess is that I need to use an HTTPS connection, and finding a free public HTTPS proxy isn't as easy as finding a free public HTTP proxy.

More on the flip.

Blogging in China

Blogging in China is a pain. Well, it can be at least. The Great Firewall of China works on several levels, sometimes scanning data passing through your connection and causing it to timeout if it doesn't like what it sees and sometimes just blocking entire IPs all together.

One of those blocked IPs is Blogspot. You can get to blogger.com, but you can't necessarily login and edit your blogspot page. You can use a proxy service like Anonymouse to get around it, but it doesn't work so well when you need to edit a blog page (i.e. you don't really want anonymous people editing your webpage). Fortunately, as you can you see, I'm still able to edit this Blogspot page.

More on the flip.

Blog Updates

Okay, so the promised updates are about a week late. What can I say? I'm busy, and updating in China is a pain. More on that in the next post.

First, a few blog-related things. As mentioned before, I have a backlog of stuff I want to blog, so there should be a log of content going up relatively soon. For those of you who prefer content in smaller more regular doses, my apologies.

Also, I've just opened up del.icio.us and flickr accounts. I've also added some links to the side, so feel free to check them out.

More on the flip.

Happy 4th

Happy 4th of July from the People's Republic of China. Have been lax on posting due to lack of time and the detrimental effect using English has upon my ability to use Chinese, but I have a huge backlog of things I want to post about that I'll work on getting up over the weekend.