Websites to 'close' for China's 'Internet maintenance day' Today, 4 June, is the 24th anniversary of what China calls the “counterrevolutionary riot” in Beijing's Tiananmen Square . Much of the rest of the world records the incident as a massacre, after Chinese troops ended protests in the square by dealing out lethal force. China now represses discussion about the events of 4 June, …
"Democracy is no base of success"
Are you kidding? Sure, democracy is far from perfect but it has worked quite well for the last 400 years. And it's a lot better than totalitarianism, which is what China is based on. Education is important; democracy, if it is anything, is mostly about letting people get on with using their education to better their lives without being hindered by the State too much.
If you think an uneven veneer of prosperity and an education system is going to bring long term stability and prosperity (a.k.a. 'Success') to Totalitarian China then I think you need to re-read your history books, or just look at news articles from the Middle East over the past two years.
I can't help wondering in which country has democracy been working for 400 years?
Democracy, that is, as we mean today: without slavery, with actual freedom of religion or unreligion, with women not being men's property, with sexual orientation not being a reason for jail time, with the color of the skin not preventing getting married to somebody, or even to sit on a bus seat.
All that comes to mind of the current great beacons of Democracy would be about 50 years of relative success, not much more.
And please do remember those same great beacons of Democracy did actually win wars with China, much less than 400 years ago, and invade them. And curiously, did not spend much time there establishing anything looking like democracy. More like, carving themselves some concessions where white men would be untouchable by yellow men, generously granting control over uninteresting Tibet to whatever Chinese government there allowed to be, and making sure that the Japanese would not be bothered unduly while they were slaughtering civilians (but later, decided it was okay to slaughter Japanese civilians when white men were attacked).
So please, excuse my cynicism about the great success that Democracy is. I like it. But I don't see people being much involved in keeping it working, nor remembering the mistakes it did to avoid repeating them.
Democracy is no measure of freedom, either. It's possible that the political, social and religious repression in China could be exactly the same if the politicians there had been democratically elected; all it would take would be a suitable majority of people to vote for them. The only hard and fast guarantee against tyranny is a government with strict constitutional limits, together with a population that are willing and able to rise up in armed revolt if the government oversteps their bounds.
"Education is, and China seems to be doing quite well in that regard"
Your 100% correct and there is little wonder. Its simple, as children get older their school day gets longer, infants may finish at 15:30, but older seniors can be at school until 20:00 to 21:00. Children understand that schooling is the most important part of their life. If they fail, then there is no second chance. They treat education, schools and teachers with the respect it deserves (largely re-inforced by extreme pressure from parents).
Which in many ways is the complete opposite of the West!
@K I love the idea of schools in asia. A friend of mine is teaching english as a foreign language in Japan.
So much respect from the students. In primary school they play games which teach the kids things, unlike the west where they just play games.
In middle school things are a bit more serious, they teach them propperly but they still have some fun since it's a gradual taper into high school. They also have club activities ranging from sports through to educational persuits like reading or writing etc. These last until 6pm if I remember right.
And senior school is full on study for exams, very little joking about if any at all, as well as the club activities.
Over there teachers are respected, rather than shat on like over here.
The one big change I'd love to see though is the club activities. Right now being a working parent is a pain in the rear. There should be some kind of 'study club' at least at school so after 3:15 when most kids go home, the others can stay behind and learn while their parents finish at work and go pick them up at 5:30 - 6pm.
That'd make so many parents lives so much easier.
"That'd make so many parents lives so much easier."
- Which is, after all, what education is for right? What would we do if kids were treated like kids and allowed to bond with their parents and enjoy life outside the school walls. Playing games? Pah! That's for weakling westerners!
"There should be some kind of 'study club' at least at school so after 3:15 when most kids go home, the others can stay behind and learn while their parents finish at work and go pick them up at 5:30 - 6pm."
There are - they are called "After School Clubs", although the ones based in schools dont tend to last very long because the LAST thing the children want to do is hang around somewhere they find boring.
Ré playing v learning through play - it should be the same thing, but blame the chavs who are too lazy to teach their children the basics, or to send their children to FREE nursery schools; so the Reception and Primary school teachers have to waste 1-2 years teaching them how to hold a cup, how to use the toilet, and how to socialise with other children before even attempting to teach the rest of the group.
PS, I work in child care / education.
China seems to be doing quite well in that regard
Education is a tool, both for the recipients and those who control its dissemination. This article places that in stark relief. Those in charge of China are still there in no small part because of their success in this regard. The West as a whole, and the US in particular, has its own shortfalls. They in no way excuse (or take credit for) what another nation or culture has done.
Back to the point about education. Why should information and discussion of events from some 20 odd years ago be suppressed? Why should the current Chinese government fear its own citizens knowing about this episode in their own history? Yes, education can lead to a better life (presumably this involves having a clear say in it as in a democracy). The cracks begin to show when that butts up against the illusion that it is available.
To play the "I was there" card, I was on a tour in Beijing less than two weeks prior to the riots. It was clear that the government was aware of what the students were up to, had infiltrated the movement, and were working in advance to squelch it. This is based on who they would let us talk to, conversations with expats who had been in the area long term, and the reactions of our handlers when anything involving students came up.
We have, in our own stunted way, ealt with our past by calling thing what they are... Massacres....
We don't refuse to talk about the original Bloody Sunday, the reason for it (retaliation for Michael Collins 'squad' and their assassimation campaign against the 'Cairo Gang' of British counter espionage agents in Dublin) and the aftermath...
None of this is done in the Tianenman Square context...
And you're underplaying the significance of the fact that you can even type "Croke Park", "Amritsar", et. al., and have your post not get nuked from above within two minutes - assuming the server didn't just bounce the submission in the first place.
Sense of scale, people. Sense of scale!
So the Chinese have a fixed date to perform government sponsored maintenance. At least as a sysadmin you can plan for it.
In the good ole U.S. of A. the Merkins have a much better system. They just shut you down whenever and wherever they like. They'll seize your domain name and replace it with the FBI seal. They'll spy on you even if you aren't a citizen or resident in the country, and ask foreign powers to do their dirty work. They'll force you out of business by putting pressure on bank and payment handlers not to deal with you. And they'll make exaggerated claims about losses greater then the entire world debt over those MP3s you stole.
OK, so America isn't China, and there is an element of free speech. But don't for one minute think America is either free or a democracy.
I recently had a morning without water at home as the water company had to perform maintenance, they put a note through the door a week beforehand and as I was due to be at work on the day in question all was fine. At work however we regularly need to do work that would be done so much quicker if we were able to say "We need to turn everything off network wise for about 30 mins" - If we were able to do this without the panic setting in that a few hundred emails wouldn't be unreplied to for those 30 minutes we would be able to provide a better IT service in the longer term.
We've become a little too accustomed to 99.9999% uptime that when any unplanned outage occurs, even when they are on free services it becomes a catastrophe. When we try to schedule a planned outage it is like we are asking for something totally preposterous.
You need to engineer a series of 'outages' over the course of two or three months. Once you've demonstrated that you can survive them, you'll be able to get maintenance windows.
Or you can relegate yourself to working July 4th, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years. Just make sure your CFO doesn't move your end-of-year to June 30th (because it means that they'll be finishing up on July 4...)
COL: "Hello, this is China Online... How can we help you today?"
Customer: "Yes, I'm trying to get to the Internet but it's not working."
COL: "I'm very sorry to hear that. As you know the Internet is a separate service and COL is not responsible for its content or its maintenance. We'll raise a support ticket with the Internet and you should have your service back shortly."
Customer: "Is there an estimated time for a fix?"
COL: "Tomorrow at 12:00am exactly. Have a nice day."
As we in the UK (and to an extent the USA) continue to allow our governments to ban 'child porn' and 'extremist' websites we will find the governments will get ever bolder an more an more will be banned as incorrect and immoral until we don't have a maintenance day because such sites will not be allowed to exist.
To run your own server, you primarily need your own public IP address. While you usually can still get one from your ISP in the west, the situation in Asia is much different. Your ISP might have a /24 network to share among millions of users. While it's comparatively easy to run your own server here in your bedroom, it's near impossible in Asia.
If you have IPv6 running your own server is as trivial as plugging in a small device.
I live and work in China, I have a Playstation 3 which are technically not for official sale here (for the sake of the children) but can easily be found on the 'grey' market. Over the past few days I've found I can not access the playstation network. I have a pre-existing Australian store and a second account with the Hong Kong store. Both stores, since June 3rd, have displayed the message 'currently undergoing maintenance'. My Australian friends can access the store without a problem.
Now, China has messed with this in the past. During the leadership changeover earlier, they outright blocked psn as they do with many websites... Thing is we get error messages or operation timeouts as you would when a third party blocks you. This time we get a standard maintenance message in the PS os framework.
This leads me to the possible conclusion that the timely (and lengthy) 'maintenance' is a Sony driven government favour. Either that or PSN has been hacked again by the government. I tend to suspect the former. When the block was lifted before Sony got a certificate of quality which led to speculation that the Playstation was about to become legitimate. Look for PS4 getting an official release in China and PSN China personal details to get a little less protected.
I'm a private school english language teacher in China. Believe me the education system here is NOT to be envied... Sure students often respect or pay lip service respect but that is irrelevant.
Education style is rote repetition from middle school on and by highschool, children are burdened with ridiculous workloads and homework, leading to the gaocao - The final test whose score determines which universities will accept you. The pressure from schools and parents is immense and there are recurring stories of student suicides.
Once you get to a good university, you can put up your feet and relax. As long as school fees are paid, you are graduating.... Wether or not you have skills isn't as important as the certificate from the 'reputable' university.
Students are told answers to pass tests and honestly don't really know how to internalise most of what they learn. Creativity is dead and disrespected. This country's education system is deliberately a sham. Like much of society here, it's all smoke and mirrors.
I live and work in China, I have a Playstation 3 which are technically not for official sale here (for the sake of the children) but can easily be found on the 'grey' market. Over the past few days I've found I can not access the playstation network. I have a pre-existing Australian store and a second account with the Hong Kong store. Both stores, since June 3rd, have displayed the message 'currently undergoing maintenance'. My Australian friends can access the store without a problem.
Now, China has messed with this in the past. During the leadership changeover earlier, they outright blocked psn as they do with many websites... Thing is we get error messages or operation timeouts as you would when a third party blocks you. This time we get a standard maintenance message in the PS os framework.
This leads me to the possible conclusion the the timely (and lengthy) 'maintenance' is a Sony driven government favour. Either that or PSN has been hacked again by the government. I tend to suspect the former. When the block was lifted before Sony got a certificate of quality which led to speculation that the Playstation was about to become legitimate. Look for PS4 getting an official release in China and PSN China personal details to get a little less protected.
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