This Forum Blocked in China

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This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Steve Anderson » Sat Apr 18, 2015 1:03 pm

I've just returned from Changsha in China where as most know Google, g-mail and many other sites and services are blocked.

Rather surprisingly so was this forum. I didn't have the time to see if it was the whole taswegian.com domain had been blocked, or just us. When I return in a couple of weeks I'll probably have more time to investigate. Not that there's much we can do about it.

Gary's site was quite OK though.

I didn't have the time to try the nbtv.org site.

We must be careful not to turn this into a political thread.

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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby DrZarkov » Sat Apr 18, 2015 3:52 pm

Maybe this forum is in the eyes of the Chinese censors already political? :?: I can't find an explanation. Maybe it's just a mistake of the nameserver.
Another explanation would be that they confused us with the black TV news station, also called NBTV: http://nbtv1.com/

Or simply somebody made a mistake. At my work some websites are not possible to reach, too. For example porn (I haven't tried it, because it could cost my job), most cooking, travel price compare sites, etc. By a strange mistake also the "Forum64.de", a website about the Commodore C64, is also "illegal" at work, but no website about Amiga, Sinclair, Acorn, Apple, etc.
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby M3DVQ » Wed Apr 22, 2015 10:08 am

DrZarkov wrote:Maybe this forum is in the eyes of the Chinese censors already political? :?: I can't find an explanation. Maybe it's just a mistake of the nameserver.
Another explanation would be that they confused us with the black TV news station, also called NBTV: http://nbtv1.com/

Or simply somebody made a mistake. At my work some websites are not possible to reach, too. For example porn (I haven't tried it, because it could cost my job), most cooking, travel price compare sites, etc. By a strange mistake also the "Forum64.de", a website about the Commodore C64, is also "illegal" at work, but no website about Amiga, Sinclair, Acorn, Apple, etc.


It's down to trying to use software to do things automatically and not being very good at it. Much the same as false positives in spam filtering or virus detection.
Surprised it doesn't block worldofspectrum.org as that seems to be a real favourite of corporate filtering software. Probably something to do with the rather out of date "largest on-line gaming center on the Internet" tag line on the front page :)
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Harry Dalek » Wed Apr 22, 2015 4:51 pm

DrZarkov wrote:Maybe this forum is in the eyes of the Chinese censors already political?


We are free thinkers who make their own tvs good or bad can not have any of that ! next thing the people will bypass the local digital tv and be watching 32 line analog they will learn to make their own electronic devices they will know to much :shock:
Last edited by Harry Dalek on Wed Apr 22, 2015 8:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Steve Anderson » Wed Apr 22, 2015 6:07 pm

I'll probably be returning to China in 2-3 weeks. I will see if it's the whole taswegian.com domain that is blocked or just parts - like us. Also I'll see if the nbtv.org site works or not. But as I said, there's not much we can do about it anyway.

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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby DrZarkov » Thu Apr 23, 2015 1:40 am

We could paint the forum red?
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Steve Anderson » Sun Apr 26, 2015 6:42 pm

DrZarkov wrote:We could paint the forum red?

And of course gold, the two colours so beloved by the Chinese...as per the restaurant we had lunch at one day below.

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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby gary » Sun Apr 26, 2015 7:49 pm

Aaaaah, the Chinese equivalent of the "Golden Arches"?
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Harry Dalek » Mon May 04, 2015 8:49 pm

I suppose being there in China is a real test .

I found this site and i tested the forum and it says its ok ...mmmm


Beijing OK
Shenzhen OK
Inner Mongolia OK
Heilongjiang Province OK
Yunnan Province OK

All servers were able to reach your site. This means that your site should be accessible from within mainland China.

http://www.blockedinchina.net
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Harry Dalek » Mon May 04, 2015 9:19 pm

I don't know if its because windows is set in english for most of us or if its a problem at all for the chinese as if we view their web sites most of the pages look like stuff written is tiny squares and such strange looking as no chinese characters come up .

I was wondering can the chinese see our English letters on their computers ? or does it not decode correctly so they would not be able to see our forum any way ?

Not sure i would think there must be another nbtver in asia apart from Steve :shock:
Last edited by Harry Dalek on Tue May 05, 2015 3:33 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Steve Anderson » Tue May 05, 2015 1:25 pm

All Asian OS editions are bilingual (at least). Windows OS sold here by default works in English, Thai and both versions of Chinese, simplified and traditional. Adding others is quite easy but after about six languages things start slowing down a bit in text-heavy applications.

Non-M$ applications, e.g. AutoCad, are often only bilingual, I have two versions installed, English/Thai and English/Chinese. This sort of limit doesn't seem to apply to European languages though where the difference is only a few extra characters or accents per language.

How this stuff copes with right-to-left script (Arabic) or top-to-bottom text (often Chinese and Japanese) I have no idea,

Steve A.

It's fascinating to watch someone typing in Arabic, "How do they do that?" is what run's through my mind.
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby gary » Tue May 05, 2015 1:51 pm

Steve Anderson wrote:top-to-bottom text (often Chinese and Japanese) I have no idea,


My brain refuses to focus on how I did it now, but do it I had to, and it is no fun and games I can assure you - *especially* when there are no third party products to assist (as there generally is in MsW, for example). Fortunately I had the assistance of a very capable developer who had the patience of Job, and the customer did the translation.
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Dave Moll » Tue May 05, 2015 8:58 pm

Steve Anderson wrote:Non-M$ applications, e.g. AutoCad, are often only bilingual... This sort of limit doesn't seem to apply to European languages though where the difference is only a few extra characters or accents per language.


I would be inlcined to qualify that as most European languages. Greek and Slavic languages (such as Russian and its cousins) spring to mind as exceptions where the differences are somewhat greater, though basically along the same lines.

Steve Anderson wrote:How this stuff copes with right-to-left script (Arabic) or top-to-bottom text (often Chinese and Japanese) I have no idea.


Although I have a specifically multilingual word processor (called Global Writer) to cope with such things, I seem to remember that MS Word (which I have since abandoned in favour of LibreOffice) correctly inserted Hebrew characters from right to left.
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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby Steve Anderson » Wed May 06, 2015 11:55 am

Yes, I forgot about Greek and other languages as they are part of Europe, I should have used the word 'most' in the sentence.

I too use Open Office and it seems to cope fine with those Asian languages I've thrown at it so far, not tried anything right-to-left though.

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Re: This Forum Blocked in China

Postby DrZarkov » Wed May 06, 2015 8:26 pm

Currently all modern operating systems use Unicode ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unicode ) which makes it possible to use practically any character from any alphabet. The only trouble are alphabets which are written from the right to the left on western computers: Not every software is capable with that. Libre Office (and Open Office) will work fine with Hebrew, Arabic or Persian letters on Windows 7 or better (Linux oder MacOS X). The basic Latin Alphabet is practically in every PC since the 1970s built in, as it uses only a few bytes in a ROM. A BIOS with chinese alphabet would have been much too complicated and too expensive 20 years ago.
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