The report on Yahoo! News says that the teenager, who lives in the south-eastern province of Anhui apparently met a broker on the Internet who arranged everything for him, and then travelled to Chenzhou province in central China where his kidney was removed in a hospital.

His mother was reportedly devastated by the news saying…

“When my son came home he had a laptop computer and an Apple phone.  Where did all that money come from? Only when he could bear it no longer did he tell us.  He said, Mum, I sold my kidney.  When I heard it I felt like the sky was crashing down on our family.”

His mother then alerted the police though they were unable to locate the broker.  The hospital in question was discovered not to be authorised to perform transplants and claimed they had no official record of the surgery taking place.

This news is utterly chilling, not just because some tech products these days are attracting this type of devotion from teenagers and children, but that unscrupulous people are willing to exploit them for financial gain in such an appaling way.  The police certainly must find this ‘broker’ and bring him to justice.

It raises all manner of ethical and moral questions that should be addressed, not just by national governments, hospitals, medical professionals and the legal establishment, but also by the technology companies.  Is there something in the way these products are being advertised that drove this particular teenager into his actions?

Naturally this is the same argument that’s been used against gamers who may or may not later go on to commit violent acts.  All reasonable people recognise there is not a link.  It will be important though not to brush this incident aside, but rather to see if any lessons can be learnt to prevent it ever happening again.

Iran looks set to create its own Internet, just for the Iranian people. In a report by the Wall Street Journal the country sees the project as a way to end the fight for control of the Internet and, possibly, a way to defend the regime against the pro-democracy protests that have spread like wildfire across the middle-east this year.

On that score it would make sense in some ways as social networks including Facebook and especially Twitter were used to help mobilise pro-democracy activists and get people massing on the streets. This move would essentially cut the whole of Iran off from the wider Internet and indeed the wider-world.

Now I said that the way curtailing of Internet freedoms happens usually mirrors the political conventions of the country involved. This is probably going to be seen as an unexpected twist.

China, the world’s largest communist state has broadly allowed access to the general Internet. It took some years to get this far and many websites are still curtailed or blocked completely. The Chinese government are part of the wider world community however and while questions still remain about the country’s Human rights record, it does at least recognise that opening up to the wider world can only be a good thing.

It’s China that has been apparently encouraging the secretive leader of North Korea, Kim Yong Il, to open up his own economy, an idea that has so far failed to gain acceptance.

North Korea is far more closed and secretive than China, and is the most closed society on Earth. It’s widely accepted that only supporters of the regime are permitted to live in the country’s capital city, and footage has been seen of entire villages being forced to watch the public floggings and sometimes executions of those to question the regime.

North Korea has not embraced the Internet. Instead they have their own internal network, a country-wide intranet if you will. This system is available on the only computer operating system available in the country, a modified version of Linux. It is extremely limited and delivers only propaganda about the state. To this day, most people in North Korea live their lives completely oblivious to what’s really happening in the world around them.

Iran however by contrast is a democracy. Its leaders are elected officials. There have been questions raised about just how democratic the country’s political system truly is but you might expect them to adopt a stance more in keeping with China, not the secretive North Koreans.

The answer probably lies in the recent uprisings in the countries around them and the fact that only around 10% of the Iranian people currently have access to the Internet. This move is clearly all about control.

This does raise some interesting questions about what the Internet currently is and what is might be set to become. I’ll talk more about this tomorrow in Part 2 when I’ll look at the challenges faced by western countries.

There’s no confirmation on whether this was intentional or not, but it comes at a time of increased sensitivity over cyber-terrorism.

Among websites who had traffic diverted were the US Senate, The Office of the Secretary of Defence, NASA and the US Commerce Department.

A draft report by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission says “Evidence related to this incident does not clearly indicate whether it was perpetrated intentionally and, if so, to what ends.  However, computer security researchers have noted that the capability could enable severe malicious activities.”

The Internet, such as it is, is at some risk of attacks that could threaten national infrastructure and so countries around the world have been working on methods of defending their Internet servers from such threats.  A recent attack was, allegedly, made on Iran and saw plants in the country experiencing significant disruption.  There is no evidence of who was responsible for the attack though it is widely considered that only a major power would have the resources to instigate such a project.

The title has gone to the country’s Tianhe-1A supercomputer according to a report by the BBC, that is capable of more than 2.5 thousand trillion calculations a second.  It contains a massive 7,000 graphics processors and 14,000 Intel chips.

The computer, known as Milky Way, has taken the top spot from the US-based XT5 Jaguar in Tennessee which is capable of 1.75 petaflops per second, equivalent to 1,000 trillion calculations per second.  The new winner now stands some way out in front.

Milky Way is a reported 47% faster than the XT5 and does this by uniting its thousands of Intel chips with graphics processors made by rival firm Nvidia.

The supercomputer, based in the Chinese city of Tianjin,  houses its vast array of processors in more than 100 fridge-sized cabinets and weighs in at over 155 tonnes.

The filter is part of a long-standing plan by the Australian government to block the countries access to dangerous and inappropriate web content, but it has come under repeated attack from Internet and privacy activists who claim that it is a breach of people’s civil liberties and human rights.

The country’s Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said the review was needed to see if the scheme “reflects current community standards”.

He said the review would look at what content should fall under the “refused classification” rating that would result in it being banned.  The Australian government has yet to vote on making the censorship mandatory for all ISPs.

In Australia, films that feature a high level of sexual or violent content or that deal with “drug misuse, addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena” and that “offend the standards of morality” are rated RC and banned.  This rating system also applies to video games but critics argue that it is not appropriate to apply the same rules to the Internet.

The move would make Australia the world’s only demoncratic country to block portions of the Internet.  The only other countries to do so tend to be communist or opressive regimes such as China and North Korea.

While the idea behind the move, which would make it much harder for people to access images of, for instance, child abuse is laudable, the move is still seen as deeply unpopular with one Australian Senator suggesting that the review is a way to “clear away bad news” in the run up to a general Election.

Now though they’re back up and running, but who, if anybody, has won the row and can it last this time?

Google had previously got around censorship simply by redirecting it’s google.cn domain to it’s .com.hk Hong Kong equivalent.  Hong Kong it still a Chinese province after being handed back by the UK in 2000, but it was too much of a centre for the free-market economy to ever be tamed.

Now, instead of a blanket redirect, users searching for blocked content will simply be offered a link to the Hong Kong site.  This has, for now at least, helped the company get around a threat to suspend it’s operating licence in the country.

The company has also started hosting content in China, a legal requirement for internet companies that wish top operate there, though they say that even that content can’t be censored.  In a statement they “Without an ICP licence, we can’t operate a commercial website like Google.cn—so Google would effectively go dark in China.”

The fact remains that China is such a huge market that a company such as Google, which has struggled to gain market share there, would suffer tremendously if they chose not to operate in the world’s fastest-growing economy.

So is this a climb-down by the Chinese government, Google, both or neither?  At the moment it’s stalemate between the two sides.  Neither is caving in but neither is giving the other what they want.  This argument is set to roll on and on but it will be watched carefully by other internet companies, such as Microsoft with their Bing search engine, and campaigners for freedom of speech and freedom of expression.

On the face of it this PC is pretty normal netbook fare with a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 dual-core, between 2Gb and 4Gb of Ram, a 160Gb to 500Gb hard disk and on board graphics.

Externally there’s the now customary HDMI port and support for wireless 802.11n networking.  But what is it that will give this media centre it’s unique selling point?

 I have a small media centre under my TV through which I experience all of my television, video and music.  It’s a small Acer that’s pre-netbooks and, thus considerably more powerful than this HTPC and probably just as quiet (at least from across the room).  It’s about the same size too and most importantly wasn’t too expensive.  So what’s my point?  While I can easily see the market for large screen all-in-one HTPCs, this I feel will be a bit of a gimmick and owned only by a few people who feel it will be cool to have a lime green computer in their life, Bridget Jones springs immediately to mind.  :)

It’s a truly lovely piece of design though, nice and simple all round and easy on the eye.  In fact it’s not what I’d expect a PC to look like at all so on that score it’s going to win.  Should it make to Europe and the Americas though it’ll all come down to price on whether this one’s a winner.

It’s the first time a Chinese supercomputer has appeared in the list of the top ten fastest machines.

Top place is a US-based supercomputer known as Jaguar.  The US dominate more than 50% of the computers on the list.

The world’s fastest Cray computer, the legendary supercomputing company, is owned by Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee and has a top speed of 1.75 Petaflops.

So what does this all mean?  1 Petaflop is the equivalent of 1,000 Trillion calculations every second.

This means that this computer would be able to calculate in a single second something it would take an ordinary desktop PC 10 hours to do.  In a day it can get through as many calculations as a PC would manage, flat out, over 100 years.

China now has 24 supercomputers on the list with the faster having a speed of 1.2 Petaflops.  It’s next fastest computer is less than half as quick.

To put things into perspective, the fastest machine in the UK, at the University of Edinburgh, sits far down the list at only 0.27 Petaflops.

The Chinese aren’t resting on their laurels however and are already working on an even faster machine to take the top spot from the US.

Supercomputers have become more popular in recent years because of their high performance in industrial research, aircraft design and petroleum exploration.  They can also play chess.

The official in charge of the Internet bureau under the State Council Information Office told the Xinhuanet.com that Google had “violated its written promise it made when entering the Chinese market by stopping filtering its searching service and blaming China in insinuation for alleged hacker attacks”.

The official added that Google’s move was totally wrong and that China opposed the politicization of commercial issues and expressed discontent to “to Google for its unreasonable accusations and conducts”.

Google had been in talks with Chinese officials before to resolve the issue without having to pull out of China completely. The current move can be seen as a compromise between pulling out completely and continuing to censor search results and other services in China.

The official did not reveal China’s reaction to Google’s move. It is likely that additional Google services will be blocked in China. Google has created a Google China Service Availability information page where users from all over the world can see which Google services are blocked in China. The page however has not been updated since March 21.

The google.cn domain has been redirected to google.com.hk, the Google Search engine of Hong Kong. Users from Chinese mainland are automatically redirected to the Hong Kong search engine which is displayed in simplified Chinese to them.

Google mentioned further that they will carefully monitor the situation as it can very well be that the Chinese government decides to block access to the Google search engine and other Google services in the future.

Users from all over the world can take a look at the new Google China Service Availability page that displays status information about Google Services in China. It will in particular tell visitors if Google services such as Google Search, Youtube, Gmail, Blogger or Picasa are accessible, blocked or partially blocked.

The Google service availability page will be updated daily to reflect changes in the availability. It is interesting that Google decided to go forward with it as it surely means that they will lose some money and probably even access to the Chinese market completely.

What’s your opinion on the matter? Good or bad move by Google?

According to a news article on ce.cn, local manufacturers in China have been stealthily getting ready to explode on to the Android market. And explode they are going to even if only by their sheer numbers.

Apparently, these companies have actually been hiring Android experts in order to make sure that they know what they are doing. These experts come from companies like Samsung in order to lend their in-depth knowhow to these small manufacturers.

R&D is apparently happening rapidly because the phones are expected to hit the markets some time in 2010. So you can expect a flood of Android phones in 2010 that range from boring to bizarre and beyond.

This is something I love about Chinese manufacturers. They hardly sell outside their premises and yet no technology is too big or too new for them. If it is technically possible, they will do not. So what if you don’t need 4 cameras on your mobile handset or slots for 4 SIM cards? It is technically possible and they are here to give you the best that modern technology has too offer. Besides, you will have to throw it away after a few months anyway.

Dell's Mini 3i

My question right now is this – with so many companies working on a platform that is essentially freely available to them, can we expect at least one decent phone that breaks the mould in some way and manages to run alongside the big players? [read]

The reason for Google is that they are only number two in the search engine market in China. Baidu is first there and offering music downloads as well albeit without a similar deal. The reason why the Music Industry agreed to the deal is simple: Money. The majority of Chinese do not pay for music but download it from the Internet. And so it was decided that sharing some advertising revenue with Google is better than fighting illegal music downloads.

Google is restricting file downloads to Chinese users according to Mashable who were the first to publish the story. The search interface on the other hand is available for everyone.

Definitely an interesting progression especially for Chinese users who can now download music legally while everyone else in the world cannot.

Skype messages were in the focus of privacy groups since first news about text filtering messages in China became known to the public. Back then Skype released an official statement that the text filter applied by the Chinese Skype partner Tom Online would not affect security and encryption mechanisms of Skype, that people’s privacy would not be compromised and calls, chats and other forms of communication on Skype would continue to be encrypted and secure.

Researchers and privacy activists of the University of Toronto discovered files on unprotected Chinese computers that contained filtered Skype messages that were recorded in China.

The filtering system uses a blacklist that contains words that will not be shown in Skype conversations. If a blacklisted word is send over Skype the word will be filtered and the conversation recorded including personal information about the users taking part in the chat.

Some of the words that cause the filtering and recording are Tibet, Taiwan Independence and Voice of America. There is no way of telling if and how Skype is working with authorities in other countries but who would want to risk that?

The Electronic Frontier Foundation has Skype replacements on their priority list with links to multiple voip clients that can be downloaded freely.

The complete report from the researchers can be downloaded at the Infowar Monitor website. The major findings list:

• The full text chat messages of TOM-Skype users, along with Skype users who have
  communicated with TOM-Skype users, are regularly scanned for sensitive keywords, and
  if present, the resulting data are uploaded and stored on servers in China.
• These text messages, along with millions of records containing personal information, are
  stored on insecure publicly-accessible web servers together with the encryption key required to
  decrypt the data.
• The captured messages contain specifc keywords relating to sensitive political topics such
  as Taiwan independence, the Falun Gong, and political opposition to the Communist Party
  of China.
• Our analysis suggests that the surveillance is not solely keyword-driven. Many of the
  captured messages contain words that are too common for extensive logging, suggesting
  that there may be criteria, such as specifc usernames, that determine whether messages are
  captured by the system.

The Opennet website offers a form where users can enter a url and check if it is banned in a country. Not every filtered url is know and not every country of the world can be selected, I guess it would be an impossible task to keep up with every countries filtering efforts. Just take a look at Turkey and Youtube if you know what I mean, feels like they ban and unban the video portal every other day.

The main emphasize lies on countries that are known to filter the Internet heavily which amounts to a list of roughly 20 countries currently. The website offers a global Internet filtering map that displays the level of political, social, conflict / security and Internet Tools filtering for each country in the world.

The website offers additional research which is more valuable than the two tools that I described before. Extensive country profiles are available for selected countries which give a in depths analysis of the current filtering situation in that country with lots of sources at the end of each report. It is furthermore possible to read regional overviews, articles about the subject, book recommendations and general news.

After discovering this they decided to ban URLs starting with ‘feeds’, ‘blog’, ‘rss’ and probably a handful of other related words. Several of my readers from China mentioned to me that my feed was blocked in China as well but the website was not. So, they started visiting my website again.

If you want to check if your website or feed is blocked as well in China you can use the website test behind the Great Firewall of China to do so. Just enter the url of your website, blog or feed, choose a location (Hong Kong, Beijing or Shanghai), enter the validation code and wait for a response from the script.

An alternative to RSS feeds is to get those feeds by mail or using a service on the web that displays them. Newsgator is supposed to work fine at the moment. It would be nice to receive information about Netvibes and Google Reader.

Read More:

Test if you website is blocked in China
Newsgator
Email Digests of RSS Feeds