The Chinese Solar Machine Layer by Layer Fire in the Library The Mystery Behind Anesthesia
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Villeneuve found 313 websites that were censored by at least one of the search engines during at least one of the tests he conducted. However, only 76 were censored at least once by all four, and, of those, only 8 were censored by all four each time he tested. Google had the lowest average number of censored sites, at 15.2 percent of those tested. Microsoft censored 15.7 percent of sites, followed by Yahoo at 20.8 percent and Baidu at 26.4 percent.
Another characteristic Villeneuve tested was transparency, meaning how clearly a search engine notifies a user that a result has been censored. He found that Google maintained the highest transparency, while Microsoft and Yahoo both had slightly less transparency than they did in 2006. Though Microsoft said in a statement that it is committed to providing notification, Villeneuve found that such notices occurred only with general keyword searches, not searches targeted to specific sites. He notes that Yahoo's notifications, which accompany any search, whether its results have been censored or not, makes it difficult to determine which sites have been censored and which were simply not indexed.
"The question in China is made very complex in that there is a combination of tacit government guidance in what one should block, and there's also a lot of guessing by the companies," says Derek Bambauer, an assistant professor of law at Wayne State University. "These factors come together to lead to overblocking." Bambauer says the Citizen Lab's report is important because it provides rigorous methods that can be used to compare the companies' censorship practices.
John Palfrey, executive director of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society, says, "Search companies are plainly conservative about making decisions of what to block because the law is so unclear." He adds that the "biggest thing companies can do is to work together on a common front," a situation that could potentially reduce overblocking.
Villeneuve says that he thinks it's important to independently monitor the search companies so that there's pressure for them to remain accountable for their commitments to minimizing censorship. Going forward, he says, he would like to see companies post clearer notices about what is being blocked and why, perhaps by citing which laws specifically are making content unavailable.
The Internet should be a medium for the freedom of expression, not repression.
Internet censorship helps the Chinese authorities to hide the true extent of human rights abuses - like their use of the death penalty, torture and detention without trial and the persecution of human rights defenders.
Sign Amnesty International Australia's anti-censorship pledge - http://action.uncensor.com.au/pledge/
Today there was a piece in the NY Times explaining how American torture practices have been adopted from communist China:
"China Inspired Interrogations at Guantánamo" Just Google it, and you shall find it.
This is a clear example of how democracies can be weakened and corrupted in our globalized world.
Manufacturing in the United States is in trouble. That's bad news not just for the country's economy but for the future of innovation.
This document is part of the “How-To Guide for Most Common Measurements” centralized resource portal. This tutorial provides a detailed guide for measurement and device considerations to take temperature measurements using thermocouples. Get an introduction to thermocouples, which are inexpensive sensing devices widely used with PC-based data acquisition systems. Also review some specific thermocouple examples and learn how thermocouples work and ways to integrate them into a data acquisition measurement system.
View full PDF >Our list of the 50 most innovative companies, including the following:
gabrielg01
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Sellouts and traitors of democracies.
During the early stages of globalization, there was this view that globalization will be beneficial, because it will open up dictatorial societies and make the world a better place.
Now we see, that we were naive. The spread of influence in a globalized world can go both ways, that is dictatorial societies can promote their iniquitous systems just as well. Instead of spreading freedom and openness, all kinds of restrictions and censorship could spread to formerly free communities. This first happens overseas, but there is no real guarantee that this plague won't spread to Western countries.
As proven by the China experience, the multinational companies have no moral compass whatsoever, except their quarterly returns. If they can make a few extra bucks by selling out human rights, they will do so without batting an eyelash.
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