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This week there were some interesting news stories that came up and I was emailed about but never really got too far into the content of them. News this week: Google Takes on China, Haiti Feels an Earthquake, Jay and Conan: FACE2FACE!, and related.
The coverage of Google coming out and saying that the censorship in China must stop, especially after China has hacked Google seems like a very legitimate reaction. All I have been able to find are stories I can't read. This is what I know. In Dec, Google as well as many other business got hit hard from Asia based hackers. It seems that they did successfully break into some human rights persons gmail accounts. Now Google is upset and thinks that since China broke the trust relationship, Google shouldn't be doing any favors by filtering the search results (which is a very real thing). Google now is wanting to offer unfiltered results and realizes that might mean no Google China. I hope this ends well because I use a lot of Google products to communicate back to the USA. Then I guess, according to new headlines (basically the only thing I can read) the US gov came out and backed Google in saying that censorship needs to end.
We asked our culture teacher what the chines are thinking of this. She said that it really doesn't matter to much of the population of China. The majority of Chinese users don't need a search engine that is like Google, capable of handling english and chinese. There is a search engine called baidu or something - that apparently is chinese and has 65% market share. The people who use google are not the majority and those people who do use it are mostly from academia and research fields. The chinese people don't feel that they are missing out on anything from the censorship. From my prospective, missing out on anything is missing out on something. I don't agree with the generally accepted - "if you say so" approach.
Haiti apparently went through and earthquake this week. The headlines read that it was over 7.0 and 100,000+ are dead located near Port-au-Prince. Thats pretty much all I know. I heard from a friend that the US government is giving $100 million in aid. I know there are likely some troops being sent, but I don't know how many. I just wonder how bad things would be here if a similar earthquake struck. I don't know what I would do as a foreign student, I'd attempt to find the US embassy.
Jay and Conan apparently are having some trouble back home. It seems that Conan's ratings are that great and Jay's are "as predicted" which were low enough that he should clearly be taken off the air. Now NBC wants to put Jay back on during part of Conan's time slot or even give the tonight show back to Jay. It looks like their on the brink of an agreement to allow Jay back on later and pay off Conan. I know I'm missing many details here, but that because I can't read many news stories at all.
I hope that Jay is unsuccessful. I like Conan and he's been doing a great job on the Tonight show. I also think Jimmy Fallon is growing as a host, but still laughs a bit too much to be a host.
The internet here really is crippled. I don't know if it's obvious, but I can't access my own blog. I have no way of uploading pictures to a good file sharing site. I can't embed photos or videos I've taken while I've been here. I can't access the new york times, washington post, or many many other news sites. I must rely on AOL.com and MSN.com for new stories. Facebook is blocked, twitter is blocked, and even worse, it appear that the blocking just gets worse everyday. I get a ping of 130ms to whitehouse.gov (which I can't always load). Many students are having trouble accessing purdue's webmail, blackboard, and other purdue services. Loading webpages often takes multiple attempts and it gets very frustrating. It is quite limiting as to what can actually be done on the internet. For a country who is expected to be beating the USA in multiple years - it feels as though if they lifted their internet restrictions they would be past the USA much quicker if they had full access to the information pool that is the internet. The only way to really stay productive here is to have an VPN back home. I heard this is the only way that there was full coverage of the olympics a couple years ago and I believe thats the only way there will be coverage of the World Expo in may.
The world Expo is going to be huge for Shanghai. It is impossible to walk past a modernized section of the city and not see the signature construction walls with the Expo banners on them. Welding is going on non-stop and can be seen from our window. Cement and semi trucks litter the street and aside from taxi's are the only thing on the roads at night. I believe that the construction is round the clock trying to be done by May. It is impressive.
Facts:
The water everywhere is not drinkable. Always must use water bottles and such.
Be sure to see the post below as it was published earlier this morning,
JBiber
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