I hate to sound like a broken record but this is getting ridiculous - in further efforts to “create a harmonious and prosperous society” China has begun to block RSS feeds in addition to their other draconian internet censorship measures [via]. From the communist party’s perspective this makes perfect sense as RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a great way to stay up to date with the latest news and up till now has flown under the radar.
At the beginning of the year you could read and subscribe to my blog in China with no problems at all. Now both images and feeds are blocked. I wonder how long before the whole thing’s out-of-bounds? It really makes me mad to see the internet being abused like this, after all, its founding principles were to create a platform for free information exchange without boarders or controls.
Along with blocking other major sites like Wikipedia, BBC News, & Flickr this just marks another blow to the governments credibility, especially in the run-up to the Olympics.
How about a nice propaganda video to round it all off:
United States Population: 298,444,215
Chinese Womens’ Army: 324,701,244
Check out my post here about how to get around the “Great Firewall of China”.
Why is it that the Japanese have had bullet trains (Shinkansen) for decades which can travel at over 300 km/h (186 mph) and experimental Maglev trains which have set a world record of 581 km/h (361 mph) while here in Britain our ageing trains rarely reach 130 km/h (80 mph)… are overpriced… unreliable… and overcrowded… you get my point!
Considering we invented the railways it’s a pretty depressing situation. Sometimes I wonder if we just gave up after the Industrial Revolution and decided to leave it to the rest of the world to invent the future!
This is how it should be done!
Interestingly a group called UK Ultraspeed are proposing a network of high speed Maglev trains based on the German Transrapid technology, first used in Shanghai, which would link the major cities of Britain at speeds up to 500 km/h (311mph). Sadly their website is a rather amateur affair which doesn’t add much credibility to their cause, but all the same we painfully need some like this to bring our rail infrastructure into the 21st century.
I’ve been trying to work out some travel plans for the summer this week but have been stumped by the rather ridiculous cost of flights. Even though I’m looking to book more than two months in advance I’m only left with the option of an £850 11 hour flight or a £350 20 hour flight with a stopover in Dubai. Of course there’s no way I would ever shell out for the former but it seems rather a lot to endure almost a full day of my holiday (each way) sitting in a cattle class coffin for the pleasure of a cheap ticket but I guess that’s the catch. Something tells me my body clock is going to be so messed up by the end of this next adventure.
“Create a new dynasty in the air”… oh for the good old days!
If anyone has any advice on finding cheap flights I’d love to hear from you… perhaps advice on how to survive flying half way around the world would be more appropriate though!
In other news… I just noticed I’ve been linked to by a blog about Chinese law which not only brought a smile to my face (if you know my views you’ll know why) but is also an interesting read for those in the business of outsourcing
In case anyone’s wondering where I am, I’m currently in Seoul, South Korea for a short holiday before heading back to London next week. The journey here on Friday afternoon from Beijing unfortunately turned into a big nightmare - plane was delayed two hours (whilst sitting in it on the tarmac), upon landing discovered my phone doesn’t work in Korea (their telecoms networks are way ahead of ours!), i got off at the wrong bus stop so missed my friend (who had already been waiting for hours) and then to top it off I lost my credit card in a moment of being completely stressed out with the situation. Did I mention I only speak one word of Korean? It was not a fun evening but eventually managed to get to the hotel, meet my friend and cancel my lost card but I’m hoping that’s the last of my troubles for this journey! To be continued…
Update (2/5): After another tortuous journey lasting around 24 hours I’m back in the UK. I’ll give a fuller update once the jet-lag has worn off, sufficed to say Korea was great!
I got a curious call on Saturday night from my bank asking if I was in Sri Lanka. At this point alarm bells were ringing as No, I was definitely not in Sri Lanka and nor should my debit card be withdrawing money from any ATM’s there. Luckily it seems my bank has a pretty good fraud detection system - the card was canceled immediately and I’ll be getting the £250 they stole back.
A quick search on Google shows that I’m not the only one who’s been victim to this sort of high-tech fraud. Only last Friday were more than 5000 cloned credit cards seized in Sri Lanka -
“About 2300 of the fake cards had been encoded with genuine credit card data from England, one official said, adding that if all 5350 cards were used, the men could have withdrawn up to 400 million baht ($11 million).”
Apparently it’s believed that the credit card details are stolen in England then encoded onto fake cards in Thailand. What’s even more worrying is that there is very we can do to stop this as individuals aside from the usual precautions. At the end of the day it’s more of a hassle than anything else to sort out and one which I could do without!
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