McFreedom

I was glad to see this BBC piece about how China's country-wide filtering hasn't completely blocked "dangerous" (to the tyrants in charge) ideas from making their way to the Chinese people. In part it seems that they're seeing the rise of things like message boards and chat rooms, which are enabling people to build their own dissident momentums from within China, thus reducing the importance of the country-wide firewall (as an aside, Sun's supplying of the hardware for that venture really proved to me how morally bankrupt they are).

I'd always figured that even the Chinese couldn't stop the great tidal wave of information that is the Internet. Especially since they have to depend on techs to do it for them. I remember when I was at PGP, Dave DelTorto told me about one such tech he met at a conference, who confided that they'd managed to convince their superiors that PGP was an image format and didn't need to be blocked. With people that brave working on the firewall, I figure it's just a matter of time before the free exchange of ideas begins to erode the foundation of that oligarchy. And good riddance.