Ok first of all - in China, you can certainly sue state owned enterprises. It's likely about as successful as say, suing a corporation in the US with massive lobbyists, of course, and the guy acknowledges this. Second - in his own words - he's making a statement. Where's the class action possibility, I'd love to see how ridiculous it would get if it was opened up to be a class action of sorts, given that we're talking about hundreds of millions of subscribers all with gripes about censorship. To all the dumb fucks commenting above this - why you gotta hate on someone trying to fight for his rights, isn't that the FOUNDATION of freedom and a founding principal of the rights in the nations many of you call home? Give me a break, rather than be a douchebag why not be supportive of this type of positive fight.

I use a VPN to access Hulu in the US, ie. circumvent geo-blocking. I rarely do any more, but I preferred supporting shows I liked like Colbert Report/Daily Show by letting their shitty commercials play and interrupt my viewing. Most shows, I torrent, and VPN is actually a hindrance -- because my provider is based on the US and adheres strictly to DMCA complaints as well as the fact it would be far slower to torrent over VPN than directly from my China connection, which doesn't hinder torrent traffic OR care about DMCA.

That being said, I suppose my point was that the indication was VPNs are a tool which supports piracy and adds to the BBC's pain, while in my circumstance, it's the opposite - I require my VPN to be turned off when torrenting and use my VPN for more legitimate purposes which are either blocked by China (Google, Youtube, etc) or by geo-blocked sites that have content I truly want to support via legitimate viewing but simply don't have access to.

"This situation is further amplified by the adoption of virtual private networks (VPNs) and proxy servers by some users, allowing them to circumvent geo-blocking technologies and further evade detection,"

It also helps me circumvent geo-blocking technologies, ie. access GOOGLE, from China. Ooooohohhhhh....the evil!

"it is very disingenuous"
Disagree completely.

The verbiage is very clear. When the meteor exploded, it had a kinetic energy measurement. That measurement was approximated to equivalent of 20 or so Hiroshima equivalent atomic bombs. The meteor itself, as a whole, did not impact the earth - as a car would have impacted (whatever) in an accident -- instead, it exploded into many smaller pieces, some of which made it to Earth. To match your analogy, the meteor's explosive kinetic energy is a meaningless measurement - but rather only the individual shards that actually touched the planet matter, no? I don't get that. When cars brake, they also don't have farther reaching explosive qualities that impact thousands of people..even given the remoteness of the explosion.

The meteor exploded far enough above the planet, seemingly due to the composition and changes it experienced during entry, that it did not cause catastrophic damage..but, it could have had it exploded some kilometers later. I don't see how it is disingenuous when they clearly state that the measurement is *of the explosion*, not *of the impact at Earth touchdown*, and if you have trouble making that articulation in the verbiage I don't have much else to say on the topic.

Cause science?

It detonated about 30km above Earth, and most of the kinetic energy was absorbed by the atmosphere. If the detonation happened *in* or near a city, the devastation would have been what you'd imagine it would have been, rather than what it really was -- an atmospheric explosion in one of the most remote inhabited areas of the planet.

while I was at bible camp during the summer, to find out about this porn empire's boss. My parents explained I was a 12 year old, and wanted to know wtf they were talking about. Some kid bought some porn (I also sold mad games/apps) from me on 1.44 disks, a kid from another school, $1 per pic - and his mom caught him looking at it....she called the cops, I ended up as a target. When they found out I was just a kid they basically interrogated me to find out any of my sources -- I ratted out this dude who had a private board that couldn't be accessed by anyone and they basically let me go without charges. Oh, they also asked if I had ever smoked weed, and went on about weed for a bit - and told stories about "just one joint kid, just one joint! leads to murder! I've seen it all, you think you're small time, think it's just 1 joint, then you get SHOT in a DRUG DEAL gone WRONG.." that type of stuff - which I think made me cry for a minute or two.

None of the credit card or more interesting mischief ever made it to the authorities. I can only think back and imagine how bad it would have been for me now - early 90's was the shit, could actually explore and play and try things, now...........play around and expect to get ass raped in prison before you reach the age of chest hair.

If he were to turn into a popsicle.

Isn't one of the main arguments for the current state of madness in the states something like:

If you ban guns only the criminals would have them!

Wouldn't that imply that if you ban testing ultra-violent weaponry, only the rogue states would test them?

"Does that system go to every hamlet and village in China?" I can't answer this definitively, but from what I gather, the answer is close to yes.. what I mean is, they operate in a quantity/batch mode. Actually one of my company's largest domestic (China) clients is SF, one of the two largest courier companies in China - they don't limit their business to just delivery but are expanding into so many other sort of related markets - like selling imported goods over the net.. I guess I could find out how 'distant' they ship, but I would put my money on *as distant as people want to receive*, keep in mind China is an extremely highly populated country, and even the most remote inhabited mountain regions have groupings of people growing and drying their corn who need stuff delivered. :D

"I'd also venture to bet that the system in China hasn't funded pension liabilities out for 100 years." absolutely true. That isn't really an argument against the fact that the USPS is a dogged pile of shit that will either end up debilitated to the point of uselessness or needs a massive overhaul in how it operates, though, is it? That's essentially saying the way they operated and the length of time they operated warrants them a pass for becoming essentially irrelevant, so lets keep funding it just because. I don't follow that logic...

If human expansion into space is thwarted by broad patents, I have nothing more than a big fuck you on behalf of humanity for those who sit on given patents.

Why oh why isn't the patent system getting a massive overhaul: the world has changed ffs.

Correct. Using delivery services in Canada, in my experience, were much more of a hassle and much more costly than they are in China. There is no chance drone delivery would be considered in China considering:

I can order something from jd.com this morning and it arrives this afternoon COD.
I can ship documents from the middle of China to Hong Kong within a business day or two for, in USD, a few dollars.
I can ensure everything I arrives promptly and get automatic updates when items I'm shipping are either picked up by delivery people, sorted at delivery centres, arrive at delivery centres, or any other significant milestone in the process.

US Postal System. Yes, rain, snow, wind, sleet, good luck with that.

Imagine the chaos if the skies are full of these delivery drones - carrying shit everywhere - and for some reason they start dropping like flies. The random stuff dropping from the skies pelleting, in addition to the drones themselves.. surely this scene would fit into a sci-fi 'sharknado'-bad low-budget film as a surprisingly amusing scene.

I want to see it happen either way.

China already beat Google's ass, I suppose it's MS's turn. MS was pretty much OK with the fact China has free-for-all piracy with their OS/office products with the expectations that they would be charging companies for licenses and the more people are familiar with/use their OS the more it'll be the OS of choice in the future, any computer plaza has any version available for 5 yuan (less than a buck), fully cracked..but now that China is putting some effort into getting involved in the desktop OS game - target MS! Fun.

I know first hand that the SAIC *can be controlled* like an attack dog, it's a very corrupt agency. I'm not saying that MS isn't in breach of any regulations or anti-monopolistic practices in this case...what I'm saying is China doesn't typically give a shit about anything media/software companies are doing until they have an interest or feel a threat, then they decide to bring the hammer down hard and there is very little you can do about it because the general public doesn't care enough to start a ruckus - pirated copies of whatever you're selling will always be available anyways. If anyone could have evaded, Google would have - but simply got exhausted and pulled out with significant internal pains (and continuing pains.)

The Chinese government's censors? I'm not Chinese. You obviously have gone far beyond your depth of understanding anything about the nation and obviously have never lived here in an effort to understand more about, or circumvention of, or work closely with industries most affected by internet related obstacles or suppression. I have er, and am. So --- I'll take your laughable article which IN THE FIRST PARAGRAPH clearly states that viral misinformation/rumours which may cause riots or protests or anything like that, as in, if it gets reposted or spread across the 'net with haste hence causes some sort of political issue, is illegal. That's what I said, no? As long as I'm having my own conversation or consuming my own information with some privacy, not ranting about the government on f'n twitter equivalent (weibo, lets say) hoping my message gets out to a few hundred million people, then I'm OK. Who suffers most under this type of law? People like Alex Jones, he'd be locked up for life.

You obviously don't know anything about China, do you.

Downloading anything Tian'An'Men is not going to get me in trouble. Protesting in public and gathering people to try to get them to join me - is. Get it? Fuck. Monkeys talking about shit they simply don't understand - keep banging the bone against your computer, eventually you'll write Shakespeare.