I'm in China and can get Slashdot's RSS feeds via Google Reader. Now I know why Slashdot always fails to connect if I attempt to go to the original article by clicking on the feed header! If I use the "read the original article" link, which is a direct http URL, I don't have any problems. The topic of blogs seems to make the censors a bit schizophrenic. One day a whole domain such as Typepad.com will be blocked. The next day it won't. Or it may be blocked for two-three months and then suddenly accessible again. It probably all depends on a post someone did somewhere and then how deeply it became buried in their blog archives.