Robert Accettura's
Fun With Wordage

China’s Great Firewall has now started blocking RSS, a long known loophole to get information blocked all other ways. An entire syndication standard is now blocked. According to the Ars Technica:

PSB appears to have extended this block to all incoming URLs that begin with “feeds,” “RSS,” and “blog,” thus rendering the RSS feeds from many sites—including ones that aren’t blocked in China, such as Ars Technica—useless.

I wonder if a good workaround would be to just use yourdomain.com/d0e862d00be15796f/ or some other randomness. It would be a better way around filtering of just the URL. Then the government would need to start sniffing content-type. The problem they would encounter there is that it’s far from standardized when it comes to feeds on the web. As a result they would have to either live with a high error rate. Unless of course the would resort to content sniffing, which has a ton of overhead when your talking about an entire countries internet bandwidth. That would be extremely expensive and either: slow down the internet in China, make it much more expensive, or just shut things down. My guess is a slowdown.

You can also just switch to atom until they catch on and block that too. The article mentions several other tricks including RSS aggregators, SSH tunnels, etc.

[Hat Tip: Slashdot]

According to CNet:

The Senate Commerce Committee approved legislation Thursday asking the Federal Communications Commission to oversee the development of a super V-chip that could screen content on everything from cell phones to the Internet.

The article omits the fact that it’s 99.99997% sure to fail and the committee knows that. Taking a look at it from a tech and historical view of the Internet alone proves that. From a web developer perspective, this stuff is pretty interesting.

The V-Chip is really not a complicated device. Essentially it works on the following logic (written in js for psudocode fun):

if(content.rating > user_setting.max_rating){
    interface.block();
}

Pretty simple right? Well that’s all the true “technology” does. The science of meta data decides how rating is determined and organized (what’s “Violent”, and what’s “Gore”?). That’s the tech side of things in a nutshell.

Here’s where the problem lies. The rating must come from somewhere. In order for this system to have any sort of effectiveness, every site on the Internet needs to be accurately rated. That’s right, every site. Doesn’t matter if it’s in English, German, or Japanese. It doesn’t matter if it’s hosted in the US, or in Korea. It still needs to be rated. But who does this? You could pass a law requiring content to be labeled. But that would only apply to US based sites. Enforcement overseas is virtually impossible. Enforcement in the US is virtually impossible. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project in 2005 “more than 11 million American adults who say they have created blogs”. I’m sure that numbers higher now. That means there’s at least 11 million blogs that need to be patrolled by the FCC to ensure they are labeled, and labeled correctly. Forget about the rest of the blogs in the world and the millions of different owners.

Still think this plan has a shot at working? Well it’s been done and pretty much failed before. It was the ICRA Rating Sytem. At first it was thought every site would label themselves. A quick glance around the web shows most sites don’t bother. AOL and Yahoo both do (both were big backers years ago), Microsoft also was, and even equipped IE with “Content Adviser”, but they no longer have their homepage labeled. MySpace, Facebook? Despite all the criticism about safety they receive: not labeled. PBS Kids, Disney, Sesame Street, Nickelodeon? Nope, though Disney does use P3P, which also never took off. Now you’d expect the Senate, who deeply wants to keep the net safe for kids would set a good example. Think again. Same goes for the White House. We could go on for quite a while.

Think you can automate calculating ratings for sites that don’t provide (or lie)? Fat chance. Just ask the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation who is famous for being considered a porn site by filters. I can’t even imagine how filters would interpret something like YouTube, where the content in question is binary garbage like most other Flash heavy sites.

The tech side is pretty easy. It’s been around for about a decade now. The precedent for enforcing US laws upon content providers overseas? That’s a new one. Enforcing laws by checking millions of websites owned by millions of people around the world? Good luck.

I’m not going to even bother with Mobile phones, because since the iPhone, the precedent has been set that the phone is just a mobile browser and is subject to the same rules.

Bush has taken his political policies to the web. He’s blocking non-american IP addresses now. Once again telling every non-American to go to hell. An interesting note is that he might by trying to keep Americans overseas from reading his website before deciding who to vote for. Vote blind rather than see how anti-world his agenda may be. Many are saying these foreign based Americans may be key to the election. Not letting them see his foreign policy may provide him with an advantage.

Some things are just sick. The list of banned books is one of them. Lets take a little look at a few shall we?

5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

Ok, who are we kidding here? I’ve had to read this one dozens of times growing up.

6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

Traditional High School Reading

7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling

Even the most conservative body in the civilized world approves. Saying it’s a good thing for kids to read it. Hmm…

9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

I’ve got this one on my bookshelf. I read it in 5th grade. In a Catholic Elementary School. Class Reading.

13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger

I’ve had to read this one too in High School. Required reading for pretty much all American students for a long time.

14. The Giver by Lois Lowry

Here’s another we had to read in 8th grade. In a Catholic School. In Class Reading. Read, and discuss.

16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine

Another silly one, considering everyone had no problem in a conservative Catholic elementary school.

18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Pretty standard reading for High School students in America. I was able to dodge this one.

22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle

Read it… Catholic School… Go figure.

27. The Witches by Roald Dahl

5th Grade.. Catholic School. Required in class reading.

41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Has anyone with a High School diploma gotten away without sitting through the book or the movie?

88. Where’s Waldo? by Martin Hanford

I can’t even comment on this stupidity anymore.

The ones where I even mention the grade, it’s because I had to write down the homeroom on the inside of the front cover. Which also shows the grade. So I know exactly when I read it. This is by no means a complete analysis. I just picked a few I thought would be fun to mention.

And America is still a land of the free?

Here’s a great idea for a new law: Any school district who bans a book is prohibited by law from teaching that America is a ‘free’ nation. The word ‘free’ may not be used in association with ‘America’ (or any comparable terms).

This is the best thing I’ve heard in ages:

http://www.pythonline.com/plugs/idle/FCCSong.mp3

So true, so true. And F**** you Bush, F*** you Cheney, F*** Asscrot, F*** you FCC.