Sky’s Blog @ The Dalai Lama Foundation — Spreading the word in a networked world

It’s finally coming around to bite us. For so long I’ve had friends who would help test (maybe I should say “beat up”) my web sites before I’d launch them. And I needed help on Windows, using MS Internet Explorer and other Windows browsers, because I spend 98% of my time on a Macintosh. And recently I’ve noticed that so many of my friends are using Macintosh that actually I sometimes launch a site modification without adequate testing on Windows.

In fact, at a meeting the other day, someone said in all honesty “Is anyone here running Windows? I need to check something.” - there were 40 or so people in the room, and only a couple of them were running Windows.

Time to get Parallels, I guess, and an Intel Mac so I can have Windows running all the time “beside” Mac OSX to do adequate testing. Times are changing.

Here’s another, very recent, report on how well China’s Golden Shield (otherwise known as the Great Firewall of China) is or isn’t working. By Oliver August, in WIRED. I was encouraged to read here (and other places as well) news that blogging continues to increase in China and although there’s plenty of repression of bloggers, there are just more and more of them every day.

For example, one tale from this article… “As Chinese citizens become aware that their most potent advantage over censorship is their sheer numbers, more and more grievances are aired online — sometimes with significant consequences. The first cyber-rebellion to have a major political impact took place in 2003. Sun Zhigang, a young migrant worker in Guangzhou, died in police detention after failing to produce identity documents during a street check. Sun’s friends protested his death on discussion boards, and soon other sites picked up a campaign demanding police accountability and reform of the laws affecting migrant workers. Before the unprepared system monitors could react, an avalanche was in motion. …”

“Of course, China is hardly a Jeffersonian paradise. Thousands languish in prison because of harmless online activities. A recent example is Zhang Jianhong — blogging as Li Hong — who was sentenced to six years for posting political essays. Cases like his justify strong criticism of China. But they don’t prove that its monitoring system is successful on a national scale. …”

One of the blogs I track that makes me think a bit is Web Worker Daily. In a post How to succeed for tech entrepreneurs - stroll down University Avenue? the question is raised of whether it’s useful for an entrepreneur to have a presence in a high-tech hub, like University Avenue in Palo Alto (or I suppose any other University Avenue). My answer is “yes, but only once a week.”

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