In response to new rules, GoDaddy to stop registering domain names in China

By Ellen Nakashima and Cecilia Kang
Thursday, March 25, 2010

GoDaddy.com, the world's largest domain name registration company, told lawmakers Wednesday that it will cease registering Web sites in China in response to intrusive new government rules that require applicants to provide extensive personal data, including photographs of themselves.

The rules, the company said, are an effort by China to increase monitoring and surveillance of Web site content and could put individuals who register their sites with the firm at risk. The company also said the rules will have a "chilling effect" on new domain name registrations.

GoDaddy's move follows Google's announcement Monday that it will no longer censor search results on its site in China. Analysts and human rights advocates have warned that China's insistence on censorship and control over information is becoming a serious barrier to trade.

"GoDaddy and Google deserve more than praise for doing the right thing in China -- they deserve our government's support," said Rep. Christopher H. Smith (R-N.J.), who has sponsored a bill that would prevent U.S. companies from sharing personal user information with "Internet-restricting" countries.

In December, China began to enforce a new policy that required any registrant of a new .cn domain name to provide a color, head-and-shoulders photograph and other business identification, including a Chinese business registration number and physical, signed registration forms. That data was to be forwarded to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC), a quasi-governmental agency. Most domain name registries require only a name, address, telephone number and e-mail address.

"We were immediately concerned about the motives behind the increased level of registrant verification being required," Christine N. Jones, general counsel of the Go Daddy Group, told the Congressional-Executive Commission on China on Wednesday. "The intent of the procedures appeared, to us, to be based on a desire by the Chinese authorities to exercise increased control over the subject matter of domain name registrations by Chinese nationals."

GoDaddy has been registering domain names since 2000 and has more than 40 million under management.

Jones said China was the first government to retroactively seek additional verification and documentation of registrants.

Jones also said GoDaddy customers with Chinese domain names have recently been attacked more frequently than in the past. The sites targeted tend to be those "deemed not appropriate" by Beijing -- sites that contain content about the Tiananmen Square uprising or human rights, for instance.

"When our sites get shut down in China, we are never told why . . . and it's impossible to know why," Jones said.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington did not respond to a request for comment.

Arvind Ganesan, business and human rights director at Human Rights Watch, said China's new rules are yet another example of the country tightening its censorship policies and undermining the ability of U.S. companies to operate freely.

"The underlying intent is, if you're engaging in political speech, we want to know who's engaging in it and what Web site is behind it," Ganesan said. "This is a way the Chinese government can send a chilling message to people that they shouldn't speak freely online. It's forcing us companies to be both the censor and the spy on behalf of the Chinese government."

Jones said GoDaddy's decision to stop registering new domains was unrelated to Google's recent decision.

"With all due respect, this has nothing to do with Google," she said. She added that the company had been deliberating what it would do about its business in China before Google's announcement.

"We decided we didn't want to be agents of China," she said.

At Wednesday's hearing, Alan Davidson, Google's director of public policy, said governments worldwide should develop new rules to combat unfair trade barriers online and should make Internet freedom part of the criteria for receiving development aid. He noted that the number of governments that routinely censor the Internet has grown from a handful in 2002 to more than 40 today.

Proud for GOOGLE

关于谷歌中国的最新声明
2010 年3 月 23 日

David Drummond, SVP, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer

今年1月12日，我们在本博客上宣布，Google及另外二十余家美国公司受到了来自中国的、复杂的网络攻击，在对这些攻击进 行深入调查的过程中，通过我们所收集到的证据表明，几十个与中国有关的人权人士的Gmail帐号定期受到第三方的侵入，而这大部分侵入是通过安装在他们电脑上的钓鱼软件或恶意软件进行的。这些攻击以及它们所暴露的网络审查问题，加上去年以来中国进一步限制网络言论自由，包括 对FaceBook、Twitter、YouTube、Google Docs 和 Blogger 等网站的持续屏蔽，使我们做出结论：我们不能继续在Google.cn搜索结果上进行自我审查。

从今天早上开始，我们已停止了在Google.cn搜索服务上的自我审查，包括 Google Search （网页搜索）、Google News（资讯搜索）和Google Images （图片搜索）。 访问 Google.cn 的用 户从现在开始将被指向Google.com.hk，在这个域名上，我们将提供未经审查的简体中文搜索结果，这些为中国大陆用户设计的服务将通过我们在香港的服务器实现。香港地区的用户还将继续通过Google.com.hk获得跟现在一样的、未经审查的繁体中文搜索服务。在我们进行迁移的过程中，由于香港服务器负荷的增加以及这些变化的复杂程度，用户可能会发现搜索速度变慢，或发现某些产品暂时不能访问。

实施我们做出的在Google.cn上停止审查搜索结果的承诺是一个十分艰难的过程。我们希望全球尽可能多的用户都能访问到我们的服务，包括在中国大陆的用户。中国政府在与我们讨论的过程中已经十分明确地表示，自我审查是一个不可谈判的法律要求。为此，我们相信，一个解决我们所面临挑战的可行方案是在Google.com.hk上提供未经审查的简体中文搜索结果——它完全符合法律要求，同时也有助于提高中国大陆用户对信息的访问。我们十分希望中国政府尊重我们的这一决定，尽管我们知道，用户对Google服务的访问有可能随时被阻止。为此，我们将密切监测网址访问问题，并制作了一个新页面，用户可以实时地了解到在中国哪些Google服务是可用的。

至于Google的广泛的业务运营，我们计划继续在中国的研发工作，并将保留销售团队，然而销售团队的规模显然部分取决于中国大陆用户能否访问Google.com.hk 。最后，我们要清楚表明：所有这些决定都是由美国的管理团队做出和实施的，没有任何一位中国员工能够、或者应该为这些决定负责。自我们在1月份发布博客以 来，尽管面临着众多的不确定性和困难，他们仍然坚守在工作岗位，专注于服务我们的中国用户和客户。我们为拥有这样的员工感到深深的骄傲。

©2010 Google

Buy Dell laptop Inspiron 15 (1564) on March 15

Bought a inspiron laptop from dell.ca, it is supposed to take 3 weeks to deliver to me! (far too long)






Processor: NEW 2010 Intel®Core™ i3 - 330M
Memory: 4GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz
LCD Panel: 15.6" HD WLED
Video Card Intel® HD Graphics
Hard Drive 320GB, 5400 RPM
System Color Ice Blue IMR
Operating System Genuine Windows® 7 Home Premium, 64bit
Network Card Integrated 10/100 Network Card
Adobe Reader Adobe® Acrobat® Reader 9.0
DVD+RW Drive 8X CD/DVD Burner (Dual Layer DVD+/-R Drive)
Sound High Definition Audio 2.0
Wireless Dell Wireless 1397 802.11g Half Mini-Card
Camera Integrated 1.3M Pixel Webcam W/Facial Recognition
Office Software Microsoft® Works 9
Anti-Virus McAfee SecurityCenter, 15-Months
Battery Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
Hardware Support Services 1 Year Limited Warranty w/1 Year Return To Depot Service
Price: 629 plus tax

Disney world

Visit disney world at Orlando between March 2 and March 9.

Disney Photo Pass Low Res Hack

So its summer and you went to disneyland, you got a few pictures taken by the Disney folk, they sent you an email with a link to DisneyPhotoPass where you can view your pictures. Well this hack will help you retrieve that picture. Its gonna be low resolution, but hey a picture is better than no picture.

Each picture has an unique id, its a long sequence of numbers and letters and what Disney tries to do is to obfuscate it so that its very difficult to get to. Off of the preview, there is no right click functionality, so you have to be creative.

The hard part is getting the image id. I've already took the liberty of finding you the link to get the image, so all you need to do is fill in the image id.

1. Make sure your using firefox 3.x, if your not go download it here
2. Your gonna install a plugin/add-on called Firebug, you can get it here
3. Goto the first page where you see your first picture, goto Firefox > Tools > Firebug > Open Firebug
4. From there you will see this complicated mess of data, what we will be looking for is under the "DOM" tab.
5. From there go all the way down to where it says "PhotoInfo" on the left hand side directly across from it you will see "ObjectImageId" - That is the magic key to each individual image.
6. Copy that and open a new window and use this url:

http://www.disneyphotopass.com/API/photostore/previewEdits.pix?ImageID=

alternate url:
http://www.disneyphotopass.com/API/photostore/Getlowresimage.pix?ImageID=

7. Paste the id at the end of this string. so your resulting URL should look something like:

http://www.disneyphotopass.com/API/photostore/previewEdits.pix?ImageID=c21a90dc-6415-43a2-96e1-e8940eb71f16