Can they track and destroy software pirates from space?

Protecting civilians means also protecting armed rebels? I'm surprised no one spotted this.

As far as I know, facebook wasn't banned until the 2008 Tibet riot, when facebook was used to rally people to anti-government demonstrations. As said in the summary, a facebook clone, Renren, is extremely popular in China with 150 million users, among other social networking sites such as dating-oriented ones. It has pretty much all the fancy features of facebook plus its own innovations, but it's NOT censored, because i) Most of its users are Chinese. What Chinese government really fears is the connection with foreigners in the case of Facebook and Twitter. Though it sounds paradoxical, most people calling for more democracy and freedom in China are foreigners and Chinese expatriates in western countries, rather than people within China who tend to be rather indifferent. ii) Renren is the product an indigenous company in China. Therefore the government naturally expects that the company is more cooperative and controllable. LinkedIn is obviously also not banned, because its scope is limited to professional activities. It's not likely that people will use it to promote anti-government demonstrations. In short, social networking is big business in China and censorship is very selective.

After seeing this video, I'm finally convinced that Chrome OS has absolutely nothing to do with the cause of desktop Linux adoption, except in a technical sense. Another blow to those endless advocates.

Under censorship, most ordinary Chinese had never heard of Xiaobo Liu, until they saw news headlines of the sort "Ministry of Foreign Affairs Condemn Nobel Committee for Interfering with Chinese Politics".

This would cause even more drama. I can't wait until that happens... Though his rape charges may prevent him from getting the prize.

China is trying to spread authoritarianism to the west? You view of the world must be stuck in the era when the Soviets sponsored communist parties in Europe. All China is saying, all the time, is "leave us alone".

No need for a large government like China's to control the Internet!

Thanks for your elaborate explanation. But from what you said, the worm itself wasn't enough to do all the damage, but a lot of spying was needed to probe the internal operation of the nuclear plant, so the worm could be specifically designed to damage the centrifuge, the steam valves etc. I'm also thinking about another question. Are there alternatives to Siemens control system, of comparable quality, in operating systems other than Windows? This is the crucial factor deciding the long-term threat of this Siemens-specific worm.

Just disconnect any sensitive nuclear facility from the freaking Internet. Are they so stupid?

Brad Manning is the real leaker. Anyone else could have done Assange's job.

Nothing is easier for amateurs, even though I'm no Microsoft fan.

If they can't prove some part of your hard disc is an encrypted file rather than random data, they have no grounds of sentencing you.

China's rare earth supply should be boycotted anyway, because of the massive pollution caused by their unregulated mining practice.

The west once invaded China, a sovereign country, to force them to trade. So trade is really about moral issues? Was China at that time so democratic that the west was desperate to trade with them?