russbo.com attacked by "Great Chinese Firewall"?

[Steve]

Google blocks itself in China

US tech firms that abet China censors face scrutiny
Reuters
WASHINGTON - Google Inc's decision to block politically sensitive terms on its new Chinese search site has drawn the scrutiny of U.S. lawmakers, who next month will probe American technology companies that help Beijing's censors.
Representatives from Google and other Internet companies have been called to a Congressional Human Rights Caucus hearing on Wednesday and to a February 16 session of the House of Representatives subcommittee on Global Human Rights.
The hearings follow Google's announcement on Tuesday that the company would block taboo terms in China such as democracy, Tibet, Falun Gong, and not offer e-mail, chat and Web log (blog) publishing services that could be used for political protest.
The moves by lawmakers come as Internet experts are evaluating the effectiveness of the self-censorship, which one Chinese blogger called Google's "eunuch version" -- a reference to the emasculated palace servants of historic China.
Human Rights Subcommittee Chairman Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, has invited Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Cisco, as well as State Department officials and press freedom watchdog groups to the Feb 16. hearing, he said in a statement.
Smith, a frequent critic of China's human rights practices, seized on Google's corporate motto, "Don't be evil," saying in a statement that the firm "would enable evil by cooperating with China's censorship policies just to make a buck."
Smith told Reuters: "The question is not whether companies should be promoting democracy. The real question is should they partner with the secret police in cracking down on dissidents and enabling human rights abuses?"
CODE OF CONDUCT
Freedom of speech advocates, who have been critical of U.S. companies that have compromised with Chinese authorities, are pressing for U.S. legislation establishing a code of conduct for Internet companies working in countries deemed repressive in annual U.S. State Department human rights reports.
"Our lobbying within the United States is calling for a bipartisan effort to support us in getting the legislation passed," said Tala Dowlatshahi, the New York representative of Reporters Without Borders, a France-based watchdog group.
She said the group was also pressing shareholder groups of those companies to insist on upholding "ethics, principles and universal standards" enshrined in the Geneva Convention.
The legislation envisioned by Reporters Without Borders was spelled out in a January 6 online campaign calls on U.S. firms to refrain from hosting e-mail servers, filtering search engines, hosting blogs and discussion forums in repressive countries.
The proposal would either ban U.S. firms from selling Internet censorship software to repressive states or force them to make censorship of some terms impossible.
It would also require firms to get Department of Commerce permission to sell Internet censorship equipment or conduct related training in countries deemed repressive by the State Department.
In Davos, Switzerland on Wednesday, Google co-founder Sergey Brin told Reuters that China's government had already been censoring the search engine.
The decision to block sensitive terms on the China site "is not something I enjoy," Brin said, "but I think it was a reasonable decision."

Copyright 2006 Reuters News Service.

[Inevitable]

well as it seems so for the forums working good, the updates doc did this afternoon, seemed to really help!!

[blooming tianshi lotus]

oor it could be something simple and less conspirital like maybe downloading some some software....

kind of still travelling and on different computers all the time here so not really in position to download much of anything ...

thx for the advice ... the moment I arrive somewhere will definately check that out l-)

cheers

BtL

[Inevitable]

Maybe it's another Evil Plot by the Russbo Cult. (And she called me a Drama Queen?)

hmm to frustrate us beyond our normal limits?

[Steve]

what's the story with be logged out nearly everytime I try to post?? Is there something I can do?

Maybe it's another Evil Plot by the Russbo Cult. (And she called me a Drama Queen?)

[doc]

It is an issue with IE not playing well with the new software. I have sent out PM's to all about this issue.

If you have to use IE, make sure that you go to http://www.russbo.org/vb, and not, http://russbo.org/vb.... The "www" is important for the cookies. I have cleaned up the entire site (I think) and made all the http calls to include www.

Second, clear all your cookies in IE, and try logging in again.

This is an issue, which doesn't seem to occur with FF or Netscape. The site works better with Mozilla based browsers, sorry. We're working on getting this issue with IE nailed down. Please email me directly if you have any further problems, or if you find any links that do not include the "www" (as the lack of that will screw up the cookies that the server sends to you)

[Inevitable]

are you using internet explorer?, try using firefox, makes a big difference, don't have that problem

[blooming tianshi lotus]

what's the story with be logged out nearly everytime I try to post?? Is there something I can do?

[Inevitable]

haha, i'ld like to see them try after, but who said anything about hacking

[LeiYunFat]

If you hack them, they'll launch nukes at Taiwan and blame it on you.

[Inevitable]

hmm, that problem can be easily solved.....
not by me of course!!

[doc]

by posting the name and IP address are you suggesting we should do something about it? We don't want to overstep our boundaries...unlesss....no one would know....I know a guy who...nvm

No, by posting the name and address I am just showing accuracy and honesty. I have no reason to start causing them issues, despite the fact that they first started with us.

I have other, more concerning things, to deal with, than those people. Not sure what they expected to accomplish.

[tetsumaru]

by posting the name and IP address are you suggesting we should do something about it? We don't want to overstep our boundaries...unlesss....no one would know....I know a guy who...nvm

[Firbolg]

You need to block it with the great russbo firewall..

[LeiYunFat]

GTFO, newbs!