Saturday, August 30, 2008

GoDaddy Unblocked in China

After a week hiatus, GoDaddy, the world's largest domain name host, is back online in China.

According to my early report, GoDaddy.com was blocked during the Olympics to prevent Chinese nationals from registering domain names after the names of Chinese athletes who won (Gold, Silver or Bronze) in the Olympics. The Chinese government has a policy of protecting famous names from being registered and allows only the owner the right to register it as his/her domain name.

Since GoDaddy has suspend lots of Chinese human rights sites without warning last year, Isaac Mao think GoDaddy "It deserved! No tears" -- The hidden rules in China will change all the time. Just like Godaddy's case, any cases can become your nightmare whether it's an event, a people's name, or a domain name. And the worst thing you can never recover is that you lost the support from users.  There's only one government one business can please today or tomorrow, but there are millions of users one can't be fooled.

Friday, August 22, 2008

GoDaddy Blocked in China

GoDaddy, the largest ICANN-accredited domain registrar in the world, appears to blocked in Mainland China by the evil Net Nanny before the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games came to a close. A screen copy of the command "tracert www.godaddy.com" shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.

The current blocking may be related to the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. China's sport authority has banned the issuing of Internet domain names based on the country's Olympic gold medal-winning athletes to anyone but the medalists themselves,  according to the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC). The General Administration of Sport (GAS) provided the CNNIC with a full list of China's Olympic team prior to the Games opening on Aug. 8, and had registered all available domain names for athletes in Chinese characters and in Pinyin. Those who had already registered before the GAS order could not keep the the domain names any more, they were forced to give it to the medalist "as a gift".



The person that already had domain name hold up to now abandons a domain name of player of Olympic Games of China. If they donot want to abandon the domain, the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) will force to retrieve the domain. But if the domain name is register outside China, such as in GoDaddy.com, the CNNIC can not retrieve that domain.

Now the currently largest Internet domain registrar in the world is blocking in China, the most likely explanation is, CNNIC do not want any Chinese hold a domain name of country's Olympic gold medal-winning athletes by blocking GoDaddy registrar. When the people in China can not visit GoDaddy and register domain outside China, so CNNIC can protect the domain names more easy.

GoDaddy has come under heavy criticism for suspending Chinese human rights sites without warning on August 17, 2007.

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Top Ten Best PlayStation Games

The PlayStation was launched in Japan on December 3, 1994, North America on September 9, 1995. Sony enjoyed a very successful launch with titles of almost every genre, including Battle Arena Toshinden, Twisted Metal, Warhawk, Air Combat Philosoma, and Ridge Racer. Almost all of Sony's and Namco's launch titles went on to spawn numerous sequels. It is nearly impossible to pick the ten best PlayStation 2 games, as there are too many amazing games to choose from. The following is in no particular order and, for the sake of brevity at least, largely ignores multiformat games, the Top 10 Games on PlayStation.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and owned by Square Enix that includes video games, motion pictures, and other merchandise.

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid is a stealth-action video game directed by Hideo Kojima. The game was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan.

Resident Evil

Resident Evil (known in Japan as Biohazard) is a survival horror video game series developed by Capcom.

Dino Crisis

Dino Crisis is a survival horror game developed and published by Capcom that was released for the Sony Playstation on July 1, 1999. It was produced and directed by Resident Evil creator Shinji Mikami.

Silent Hill

Silent Hill is a survival horror video game franchise developed and published by Konami.

Tenchu

Tenchu is the title of a popular stealth game series wherein the player assumes the role of a ninja. Tenchu is known for its stealth gameplay, and the eerie settings of feudal Japan. It was one of the first ninja games to incorporate stealth, a very crucial aspect of Ninjutsu.

Tekken

Tekken is a fighting game and is the first of the series of the same name. It was developed and published by Namco.

Gran Turismo

Gran Turismo (GT) is a hugely successful and critically acclaimed series of racing video games produced for the Sony PlayStation, PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable and PlayStation 3 gaming systems. All of the games are said to simulate the appearance and performance of a large selection of vehicles, nearly all of which are licensed reproductions of real-world automobiles.

Parasite Eve

Parasite Eve is a survival horror role-playing game developed and published by Square (now Square Enix). The game is a sequel to the novel Parasite Eve, written by Hideaki Sena.

Winning Eleven

Winning Eleven is a soccer/football video game series made by Konami Tokyo. It is the original Japanese version of Pro Evolution Soccer. Winning Eleven's popularity has grown over the years, and is currently one of the most popular football games world-wide.

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Websites Unblocked in China

It seems that the Chinese Wikipedia is unblocked in China now. The unblocking of the Chinese Wikipedia in China has probably been extended to cover the whole of China. Chinese users have direct access Chinese Wikipedia from very different corners of the country.

Not only with Chinese Wikipedia, this unblocking also looks like this was part of a broader opening up - mainlanders now have access to a lot of sites. Here's a rather representative list of sites that are now available in China, which include newspaper, magazine and NGO web sites previously hard blocked.

Western media



Hong Kong media



Taiwan media



NGOs