Aaargh - one thing I miss (besides affordable chocolate) is a reliable Internet connection. It didn't help that just getting our wireless set up at home involved four visits by two different companies, but once you are online, you still have to deal with the fact that access is bit slower than in the U.S. and that you just can't visit certain sites without finding a work-around.
If you are interested, this article gives a bit of an overview of the situation with the "Great Firewall". It's a little bit dated already, but it shows the options I have: Use a proxy (to bypass the firewall that restricts Internet access), get VPN (to establish a secure, encrypted line to the outside world), or quit using Facebook all together.
http://www.chinatravel.net/forum/Internet-access-in-China-proxies-VPNs-and-other-solutions/3430.html
(I’d list the sites that I can’t access, but when I clicked on the link in the article above that lists those sites… I can’t access the page that would show the list! :-)
So for the last three weeks I was using a proxy: There was program on my computer that helped me access restricted sites, so I could update Facebook (once in a while!) and this blog. But then, two days ago, that proxy got blocked and now I have to look for the next best thing. It’s so darn time consuming! If you read the article above, you probably also got a sense of the changing nature of what is blocked. Something that is accessible today may not be there tomorrow, and a solution that works today, can also be gone the next time the censorship guy (or girl) goes to work …. Aargh!
(And in case you are wondering how this post made it up here: I asked someone else to post it for me! I hope you enjoy reading it, because I can’t....)
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment