Node.js 0.6.4 was blocked in China • Hacker News Board

Re: Node.js 0.6.4 was blocked in China

#41

Post by randallsquared » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 2:00 PM UTC

gburt wrote: post #28

randallsquared wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If enough people stop talking about it in enough places, then the govt will have successfully edited the internet at large. Potential tragedy of the commons, limited mainly by outrage.

How is this a tragedy of the commons? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tragedy_of_the_commons

In the sense that if each person removes a bit of information from the spot of the internet they're on, they're improving things for themselves and their friends, while if enough people do this, the internet as a whole is reduced in usefulness for everyone. In this analogy, censored information is the resource, but I realize it's not a perfect match with goats and common fields. :)

Re: Node.js 0.6.4 was blocked in China

#42

Post by yaix » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 2:44 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #34

yaix wrote: post #31

False alarm. I live in China. Just turned off my VPN and I can access the site, download the source and docs. Sometimes there are regional blocks in some provinces, that may be the case, can't test it. But they are not targeting simple numbers. Maybe some other keyword triggered a dynamic block in some regional ISP's GFW system. You can get those dynamic blocks easily by searching on Google for certain keywords. For…

Lol. "Write to the Internet police." Yeah, good luck with that. The government doesn't ever officially acknowledge sites that are blocked. Even the AWS east coast data center (read: heroku) is blocked in China intermittently. All writing to the mythical Internet police would accomplish is getting your name on a list of people with a stated desire to visit 'pornography'. Internet companies that don't end in .cn and st…

That is only partially true, I know of websites that have got themselves unblocked by doing exactly this. But honestly I don't want to discuss that with somebody starting his/her post with "Lol".

Re: Node.js 0.6.4 was blocked in China

#43

Post by resettarget » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 4:13 PM UTC

skeptical wrote: post #7

According on the link '64' and '89' are banned numbers. Well, the Chinese government is mathematically limited to a maximum of 98 more such bans.

A Chinese reader resident in China here.

Precisely, it's not 64 that triggers GFW, it's 6.4 I'm not joking... 64 is a number while 6.4 is a date (June 4th). I'm not aware any content that's blocked because of 64 but sometimes 6.4 does make a page get REST (temp for a couple of minutes) or permanently black listed if the page/site draws attentions from some guy behind GFW.

AFAIK it's rare that guys working for GFW are good enough or responsible enough do fine grained filtering so they brutally block everything contain 6.4 no matter what the context is. This is common in a bureaucratic org or a dictatorial nation. Because power in your hands is not audited by people. So blocking everything 6.4 is safe enough to make the boss happy, why bother working hard? Just block everything.

Re: Node.js 0.6.4 was blocked in China

#44

Post by andypants » Sun, Dec 04, 2011, 5:05 PM UTC

jrockway wrote: post #32

What exactly is the point of China's censorship when you can just go to Hong Kong, part of China, and browse a censorship-free version of the Internet? (Also, how do big US companies do business in China? Are they allowed to VPN to the real Internet? What if someone visiting from abroad mentions Tienanmen Square?)

Do you think travelling to 'Hong Kong, part of China' is just a matter of hopping on a bus for a 20 minute journey?

1. China is a very big place.

2. Even if the travel itself is convenient, not all Chinese can travel to Hong Kong. You need a visa, different currency, etc. Hong Kong isn't just another city in China.

3. Would you travel to a different state just to drink fair trade coffee (pretend it is not available in your own state)? Would you go every time you wanted coffee?

Re: Node.js 0.6.4 was blocked in China

#45

Post by jrockway » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 1:28 AM UTC

andypants wrote: post #44

jrockway wrote: post #32

What exactly is the point of China's censorship when you can just go to Hong Kong, part of China, and browse a censorship-free version of the Internet? (Also, how do big US companies do business in China? Are they allowed to VPN to the real Internet? What if someone visiting from abroad mentions Tienanmen Square?)

Do you think travelling to 'Hong Kong, part of China' is just a matter of hopping on a bus for a 20 minute journey? 1. China is a very big place. 2. Even if the travel itself is convenient, not all Chinese can travel to Hong Kong. You need a visa, different currency, etc. Hong Kong isn't just another city in China. 3. Would you travel to a different state just to drink fair trade coffee (pretend it is not available i…

Would you travel to a different state just to drink fair trade coffee (pretend it is not available in your own state)? Would you go every time you wanted coffee?

Yes. And I would tell everyone else how they're missing out, too.

Re: Node.js 0.6.4 was blocked in China

#46

Post by vorg » Mon, Dec 05, 2011, 5:45 AM UTC

be5invis wrote: post #21

Bankq wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[NEW]I just ask my friends in China to visit the site and it turns out to be ok. Don't know how and when it recovered. Another funny story is python.org is blocked for a long time. Somebody say it is the version number 2.6.4; Somebody claim it's because GAE(could be set up as proxy); The other part believe it's because python.com...... We don't know which is the truth or neither of them.

Python.org is blocked BEFORE 2.6.4 releases. If you know Chinese you can read this article: http://www.douban.com/group/topic/8332828/ The date blocking detected is 15th Oct, however, v2.6.4 is released on 25th Oct.

Only the download page http://www.python.org/download/ is blocked by the Great Firewall, and has been for over 2 years now. Your referenced page says 15th Oct 2009, which seems about right.

Perhaps the reason is it's perceived as a "Google" product because the inventor Guido van Rossum works there.

Aside... China PyCon is on now (http://cn.pycon.org/2011/) in Shanghai (Dec 3 & 4th 2011).