What's Worse ?

If you've kept an occasional eye on Google's difficulties with the Chinese government - you'll know that the mandarins (ha!) in Beijing have been increasingly unhappy with Google's supposedly brave stance against censorship, which lately has involved nothing less blatant than an automatic redirect to their Hong Kong site... which provides results unfettered by China's requirements, which are then filtered by Chinese firewalls anyway, before the average user there gets a chance to see them.

A couple of days ago, Google announced a 'new approach'
"instead of automatically redirecting all our users..."
"and today we re-submitted our ICP license renewal application based on this approach"

Well, their 'new' plan consists of making http://google.cn/ into a make-believe 'landing page' where you can't make searches, or actually do anything - and a mouse-click anywhere at all results in... ? That's right !- an automatic redirect to their Hong Kong site.

I don't imagine that Google think for one moment, that this majorly minor non-change will assuage any Official misgivings about their operations over there - in fact, they seem to be saying
'hey world, we believe the Chinese government to be so backward in matters of the internet, that they won't notice this blatant ruse, ho ho'. Maybe they pulled a comical face too eh?.
.
Business, or rather Brinkmanship, as usual then.



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♫ Death in Vegas  -  23 Lies

Scorpio Rising (2002)

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Home

Back in England - Portsmouth, to be reasonably specific - a car that wouldn't start due to a flat battery and some bugger next door who dug new foundations smack next to/under mine, with the consequential front door that sticks in the frame, & broken glass panel above it, as well as various cracks in walls & ceilings.

Big deal, - and so it is - for one thing that stood out, a reminder that really rankled, was the local 7-11 type store having cheese & bacon tucked safely away, well behind the counter, to prevent their theft by the grubby hands of presumably - more than one or two, regular 'customers'.

There's something rather wrong with that. The booze, other than spirits, is out n about where light fingers might easily lift it. You're (comparatively) welcome to chance your arm shoplifting a meat pie, or a mozzarella salad ready meal - anything in fact, from Apples to umm, whatever they may sell beginning with Z, but cheese & bacon is clearly just too tempting, and must be segregated, along with cigarettes & lottery tickets.

Now, what kind of people live round here, that some crappy convenience store finds it necessary to ring-fence these fairly basic foodstuffs ?. Well I'll tell you - they aren't hugely poor or especially criminally inclined; not mainly students, immigrants, or any other group you could slap a name on.

What the hell? - it's a reasonably ok area - certainly one you could walk alone at night without expecting any problems. So there must be some modern-day Fagin encouraging his 'boys' to pinch particular comestibles,  or a black market in knock-off cheddar & bacon, that I'm not privy to. Or perhaps an underclass of addicted fatties, hoping their ghost appears; anxiously willing the arrival of a guy in PR shoes ? (never mind the hat) .

♫ Home Is Where I Want to Be - Mott the Hoople
Wildlife (1971)
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Love this - tho' it doesn't really sound like Mott the Hoople to me.