Welcome to Wallyworld

I read about Li Datong's stand, glad to hear the outcome. It's a far cry from when I first connected to the Internet, and terrified Chinese using dialup email at high expense had to ask people on email lists to post them the works of various American poets in plain text - then quickly break off the contact.

A friend of mine has just spent two years living in Dalian. Prolly won't be allowed back, because he's the iconoclast to end them all, but in just that 8-year span, he had low-cost ADSL connection. (Hotmail and AOL email though can be hard to contact.)

I don't think much of Microsoft recently bowing to Chinese censorship and restrictions, or Google, but I believe Google has apologised and may be rethinking it. In any case, the first Chinese who learn about anonymous web browsing services are sure to let their friends know! (Then there are the anonymous email senders that don't need an STMP engine...)

Pardon my ignorance, Lou...but WTF is a "STMP engine". We're not all geeks on this site, you know. :)

Whoops! - typo! SMTP - Simple Mail Transfer Protocol - what sends your outgoing email (pop3 or eg IMAP for incoming). Some viruses and trojans come with their own, eg to send out infected emails to everyone in your email address book without you knowing.

And some, like anonymous email, don't need 'em <g>

Arrggh, more typos - supposed to be 'poets' in the first post! (It's the Lake Breeze 2002 Cab Sauv - magniffy...)

Mal: I fixed it, juicehead.

Yes, the advent of the internet and its proliferation in China are excellent steps forward on the road to Democracy and free speech. Personally I didn't hear about that Li dude but you have to wonder whether or not he's going to cop it in a year or so when the publicity surrounding him/her dies down. The Chinese government has an exceedingly long memory.

One of the things I find hardest to understand about the whole democracy/communism/dictatorship thing is that those of us that live in a democracy are so complacent that we never stand up and make a stink about those things that we do not agree with. We rely on our votes and the votes of our compatriots to carry the day. But increasingly, the hip pocket carries more power in a democracy rather than right/wrong. We need to all be more outspoken about those things that we don't agree with. We have just as much at stake but less at risk compared to those people in China.