81–90 of 196 posts
A startup in Europe should create a free proxy to use Coursera for these guys living in those unfortunate countries. Berlin, London, Munich, etc. anything?
So that startup can have their Paypal account frozen? No thank you. Probably the best way is to create a Coursera competitor.
As someone who lives in Iran, this is sad but not news. I have gotten used to see half the websites blocked by my government(Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, etc) and the other half by your government(Java SE or anything else from Oracle, Google Code, Google Play Store, anything from Xilinx, etc). If one of my favorite websites was blocked, I may have considered not using it anymore. When virtually all websites…
If you can find or make a list of websites you want to scan, you can script it. The biggest problem is doing it in a way that doesn't bring you to the attention of those doing the blocking.
1. Where can I find a list of all domain names, top 1000, top 100000?
Alexa's "top 1,000,000" list (~10.2 MB download) is at http://s3.amazonaws.com/alexa-static/top-1m.csv.zip
2. Is it possible to conclusively determine censorship from headers only or do I have to load the whole page and compare HTML code with a sample? Bandwidth is very expensive here.
It depends on the method used to block you from visiting a website.
If DNS-based blocking is used, you can use very small DNS lookups to identify whether or not a website is blocked — all of the hostnames of blocked websites will probably resolve to the same IP address. (You can check this with "nslookup www.website.com" in Windows or "host www.website.com" on Linux, OS X, etc.) If this method works, it's probably the best way — DNS requests are less likely to be logged than HTTP requests, and DNS requests and responses are small.
If the blocking uses a transparent proxy instead of forged DNS records, you could use HTTP HEAD requests and match against the "Server" header in the reply:
Server: Apache/2.2.12 (Unix) mod_ssl/2.2.12 OpenSSL/0.9.7d mod_wsgi/3.2 mod_perl/1.29 PHP/4.4.1
> Why has this not been an issue in the past? > Until now the interpretation of export control regulations as they relate to MOOCs has been unclear and Coursera has been operating under the interpretation that MOOCs would not be restricted. We recently received information that has led to the understanding that the services offered on Coursera are not in compliance with the law as it stands. Accordingly we have insti…
The other countries on that list I'm more skeptical too especially when they are not fully peaceful as knowledge can be miss used.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The kids in these countries are already suffering under oppression/war/famine/ you name it.. Just a nitpick. Maybe in the other three countries this is true, but Cuba is pretty well off in those respects. Especially education wise.
You're clueless about what goes on in Cuba. Informers for the secret police are everywhere, nobody dares speak their mind in public. People are limited by a maximum wage. There are regular inspections of people traveling to ensure that they aren't sneaking illegal food, especially meat, around. And so on. It's as oppressive a totalitarian dictatorship as they come.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you were in the US they wouldn't listen to you either, so don't feel too bad.
Bullshit. If you work at it, you can change things. Sometimes it's not as fast, or as much as you want. And it's likely to be a lot of hard work. But you can help change things for the better.
[Edit: Can't reply to message below so I'll clarify here - my intent was that instead of arguing with politicians, they could consider options that wouldn't even involve politicians. Coursera could close their US business and move to a country that does not have the same restrictions. Doing so may also help persuade US politicians that their policies are having the reverse impact of what they want.]
Coursera could suggest (and eventually subsidize) non-US VPN services for those students.
As someone who lives in Iran, this is sad but not news. I have gotten used to see half the websites blocked by my government(Facebook, YouTube, Flickr, WordPress, etc) and the other half by your government(Java SE or anything else from Oracle, Google Code, Google Play Store, anything from Xilinx, etc). If one of my favorite websites was blocked, I may have considered not using it anymore. When virtually all websites…
Why?
We have already lifted restrictions for Syrians as the OFAC (Office of Foreign Assets Control) has a general license for educational content (Syria General License No. 11A) issued. We are working with the State Department and OFAC for licenses or exemptions for the other affected countries and we hope to get the remaining blocks lifted soon.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Bullshit. If you work at it, you can change things. Sometimes it's not as fast, or as much as you want. And it's likely to be a lot of hard work. But you can help change things for the better.
You can change things, but sometimes it's better to walk around the brick wall or climb over it, instead of having a conversation with the wall asking it to please move out of the way for you. [Edit: Can't reply to message below so I'll clarify here - my intent was that instead of arguing with politicians, they could consider options that wouldn't even involve politicians. Coursera could close their US business and m…
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."
Now, not every issue has to be everyone's fight, and for some things for some people, maybe skirting the issue is the best bet. We all owe a debt of gratitude to those who stand and fight, though.