Feb
7
2010
Here’s the second part to our series of posts regarding the Garbage Island in the Pacific Ocean.
The Northern Gyre in the Pacific Ocean, a spot where currents spin and cycle, churning up tons of plastic into a giant pool of chemical soup, flecked with bits and whole chunks of refuse that cannot biodegrade.
Feb
7
2010
So, some of us may have heard of this island in the middle of the Pacific the size of Texas. Well Here’s some stuff that I’ve gathered about it. So over the course of the next week or so I’m going to be uploading stuff about it.
The first is a video series that I found. A documentary about a trip out to this area.
For years we’ve been reading about a patch of garbage the size of Texas floating in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, ingeniously dubbed the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Basically, any trash that gets dumped in the water rides the currents to this one spot and joins an ever-increasing flotilla of crap. For all the breathless accounts of the mess and its impact on the area’s sealife, however, no one seemed to have a picture of the buildup.
In order to sate our own curiosity, VBS joined the crew of a research vessel studying the trash and sailed out into one of the most remote spots of open water in the world, the North Pacific Gyre, in search of this mythical garbage island. What we discovered once we got there was an ecological disaster beyond any of our expectations and possibly the single worst thing human beings have done to the planet and ourselves. Hope you’re into cancer and sex-reversal!
This is originally from vbs.tv
Jan
23
2010
Alright, so this article is from China Daily. It is known to be full of propaganda and tends to try to put China in the best of light. I’ve read many articles from them, including environmental and they are quite Pro-China. Anyways, here’s what China has to say about the Google getting rid of google.cn. It is a very interesting article.
Without Google? It is fine
By Gao Qihui (chinadaily.com.cn)
Google’s bombshell announcement to retreat from China puts the country’s Internet management system in the spotlight. In the west’s eyes, there is no network freedom in China and Chinese netizens are kept silent out of fear, the truth might be another story.
The Internet world is characterized by opening and anarchy. To maintaining a healthy and stable Internet environment, China has its obligation to block any Internet contents relating to national security, pornography and violence.
Moreover, China is not the only one with the management of Internet. In US, after the 9/11 attacks, George. W. Bush enacted the The 2001 USA Patriot Act to censor the Internet and authorize the US government or law enforcing departments to block any on-line content that endangers national security and in Germany, laws also require all the Internet cafes to censor and block anything about racism, terrorism, violence and pornography.
So the Internet world is not absolutely free, but it can develop well by proper management. Under the government’s regulation, China’s Internet society and business are not refrained, but going into their prosperity.
The Chinese Internet society is expanding in terms of volume and power. Internet users hit 384 million by the end of 2009, according to report by China Internet Network Center (CNNIC). It has the largest population of Internet users.
Besides that, Chinese netizens are flexing their muscles. As more and more news is exposed and hyped by Internet instead of traditional media, the Internet has grown to be an independent source of news and a main channel for grass root netizens to express their opinion and participate in the public affairs. Netizen’s supervision has helped improve the governance and achieve judicial justice
It is still clearly remembered that netizens’ scrutiny of a traffic accident, in which a wealthy drag racer killed a pedestrian at a high speed in Hanzhou the capital city of Zhejiang province, forced the police to revise its original arbitrary investigation statement and finally got the driver into jail. The Internet is on its way to promote China to be a more open and democratic society.
China’s Internet industry also shows its energy. The economic scale of China’s Internet industry reached 74.3 billion yuan in 2009, increasing by 30.7% to 2008 and it is estimate to be more than 100 billion yuan in 2010, according to the report by iResearch, a professional organization specializing in in-depth studying of customer behavior in Internet media and e-commerce.
The Internet market is also full of opportunities. Quite a number of Chinese Internet enterprises grow to be a giant from scratch. China’s privately hold the Alibaba Group, has reached Internet users in more than 240 countries and regions and successfully purchased Yahoo.cn in 2005 and its subsidiary Alibaba.com is the global leader in business-to-business (B2B) e-commerce. This has proved to world that Internet companies can succeed in China if they operate in the right way.
Baidu defeats Google in the Chinese market. Compared to Google, Baidu does a better job in the understanding of the local market, understanding of Chinese characters in Mandarin and the relations with advertisers.
China’s flourishing Internet industry and society demonstrates the country’s Internet world develops well under its characteristic management. The market will continue its development in its own way, no matter whether there is Google.cn or not. It is unfair to China that the west puts their finger into China’s Internet regulation.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2010-01/22/content_9361150.htm
Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Jan
17
2010
Wow, so heard about this while in China. Here’s the article from Mashable.com
Sadly some other News sites with the story were blocked for me. Hooray for China!
HUGE: Google Considers Pulling Out of China in the Name of Free Speech
In a lengthy blog post today, Google announced that it would no longer censor its Chinese search engine, even if it means pulling out of China entirely. This comes in the wake of a wide-ranging attack on its infrastructure targeting Chinese human rights activists.
In the post, Google outlined in rather striking detail a “highly sophisticated and targeted attack” that occurred last month, targeting around 20 companies. In its investigation, the search giant found that the attackers’ primary objective was accessing Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists. It also found that dozens of other Gmail accounts owned by human rights activists worldwide were compromised, most likely due to phishing scams or malware.
Google wouldn’t say it, but implications are that the Chinese government had something to do with these attacks.
As a result of the attacks, Google has decided to reassess its presence in China. The Chinese government and Google have fought over censorship before, but currently the search engine does block certain results (such as images of the Tiananmen Square massacre).
Now Google’s making it clear that it won’t comply with China’s demands any longer. Here’s the key paragraph from the Google post:
“These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered–combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web–have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.”
Google has taken a very public stand against censorship, albeit one that is years overdue. How this series of events plays out could not only affect Google and the tech community, but global politics as a whole.
Original article”
http://mashable.com/2010/01/12/google-china-attack/
