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Gosper, chairman of the IOC's press commission, had previously said that internet access for the 21,500 media accredited for the Aug. 8-24 Games would be "open". "I ... now understand that some IOC officials negotiated with the Chinese that some sensitive sites would be blocked on the basis they were not considered Games related," the Australian told Reuters on Wednesday.

In July, 2001, after arriving in Beijing, Adelson and Weidner saw Olympic banners flying along the streets. They soon learned that the country was waiting to find out whether it would be selected as the site for the 2008 Summer Games. In addition to seeing the Vice-Premier, Adelson and Weidner met with the mayor of Beijing, who asked Adelson for help with a matter pending in the U.S. House of Representatives, which he believed was threatening China’s chance to host the Olympics. (In the United States, China was widely perceived as the frontrunner, and it is not clear that Congress’s position would have had any impact on its chances.) Adelson said in court that he immediately made calls on his cell phone to Republican friends in Congress—including Tom DeLay, then the majority whip—who had received generous support from Adelson. DeLay told him that there was indeed a resolution pending about China and the Olympics. (Representative Tom Lantos, then the highest-ranking Democrat on the House International Relations Committee, had introduced a resolution opposing China’s Olympic bid, saying, “China’s abominable human rights record violates the spirit of the games and should disqualify Beijing from consideration.”)

What can Facebook and Western social networks learn, if anything? If monetizing a social network is so easy, then why hasn’t Facebook opened up its payment API to third party developers? While the aggressive and intrusive hyper-viral aspects of the apps in China may not be replicable in a Western Market, the problems for creating a more viable business model run deeper. Western companies cannot innovate in the same way due to institutional problems stemming from their own struggle for an identity and revenue. Facebook has just recently announced a “credits” system, but it seems to miss the mark. The new system demonstrates little incentive for users to shell over money, and does not speak to the same need as paying for a social application that all your friends are already on and talking about. Facebook may be afraid to become a marketplace for applications, because they are reluctant to be labeled as a social gaming network or a social app store. Instead, they are a self-styled guru of dynamic human interaction. If they opened up their platform to become an apps store, their major revenue streams would put them into a pigeonhole, calling their $15 billion valuation into question. They obviously don’t want to be labeled as a “gaming platform” either, and don’t want to fully depend on selling digital trinkets. Like during the American gold rush in 1849, where Chinese merchants prospered while most prospectors went bust in search of striking gold, it appears that building viable, scalable businesses for Social Networking sites may still be an ancient Chinese secret for Westerners.

The games have been billed as China's "coming out party" to the world. They are far more significant than that. These Olympics are the coming out party for a disturbingly efficient way of organizing society, one that China has perfected over the past three decades, and is finally ready to show off. It is a potent hybrid of the most powerful political tools of authoritarianism communism -- central planning, merciless repression, constant surveillance -- harnessed to advance the goals of global capitalism. Some call it "authoritarian capitalism," others "market Stalinism," personally I prefer "McCommunism."

By next year, the Chinese internal security market is set to be worth $33-billion. Several of the larger Chinese players in the field have recently taken their stocks public on U.S. exchanges, hoping to cash in the fact that, in volatile times, security and defense stocks are seen as the safe bets. China Information Security Technology, for instance, is now listed on the NASDAQ and China Security and Surveillance is on the NYSE. A small clique of U.S. hedge funds has been floating these ventures, investing more than $150-million in the past two years. The returns have been striking. Between October 2006 and October 2007, China Security and Surveillance's stock went up 306 percent.

Ever since the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre, U.S. companies have been barred from selling police equipment and technology to China, since lawmakers feared it would be directed, once again, at peaceful demonstrators. That law has been completely disregarded in the lead up to the Olympics, when, in the name of safety for athletes and VIPs (including George W. Bush), no new toy has been denied the Chinese state.

"There was a lot of repression during the Olympic Games. Now is a golden opportunity to underline that repression is unacceptable," said Janne Haaland Matlary, a professor of international relations at the University of Oslo, and a previous candidate to be a member of the Nobel committee.

The Chechen human rights lawyer Lydia Yusupova is another contender. "It would be an opportunity to focus on Russia at a time of increased interest following the conflict with Georgia," said Matlary.

THE MCCAIN NEGATIVE WORDCLOUDWords Not in McCain’s Tech Policy | blog |social network | collaboration | hyperlink | democracy | google | wikipedia | open access | open source | standards | gnu | linux | | BitTorrent | anonymity | facebook | wiki | free speech | games | comcast | media concentration | media | lolcats |

Even if we ignore the cultural, social, and democratic aspects of the Net, even if we consider the Net to be nothing but a way to move content to “consumers” (his word), McCain still gets it wrong. There’s nothing in his policy about encouraging the free flow of ideas. Instead, when McCain thinks about ideas, he thinks about how to increase the walls around them by cracking down on “pirates” and ensuring ” fair rewards to intellectual property” (which, technically speaking, I think isn’t even English). Ideas and culture are, to John McCain, business commodities. He totally misses the dramatic and startling success of the Web in generating new value via open access to ideas and cultural products. The two candidates’ visions of the Internet could not be clearer. We can have a national LAN designed first and foremost to benefit business, and delivered to passive consumers for whom the Net is a type of cable TV. Or, we can have an Internet that is of the people, by the people, for the people. Is it going to be our Internet or theirs?

“Senator McCain’s technology plan doesn’t put Americans first—it is a rehash of tax breaks and giveaways to the big corporations and their lobbyists who advise the McCain campaign. This plan won’t do enough for hardworking Americans who are still waiting for competitive and affordable broadband service at their homes and businesses. It won’t do enough to ensure a free and open Internet that guarantees freedom of speech. It won’t do anything to ensure that we use technology to bring transparency to government and free Washington from the grip of lobbyists and special interests. Senator McCain’s plan would continue George Bush’s neglect of this critical sector and relegate America’s communications infrastructure to second-class status. That’s not acceptable,” said William Kennard, Former Chairman, Federal Communications Commission.

Cindi Rigsbee, for example, makes sure her students know when text language is appropriate and, more important, when it's not. She talks frequently in class about types of writing, the intended reader, and the evolution of language. At the beginning of each school year, she introduces a discussion about the way English has transformed over time. "We look at Old English, Middle English, and what was contemporary English in the time of Jane Eyre. Then I show them a MySpace page."

他以前还学过这么一篇《制造小人》，中间有这么一段： 　　东林之集矢于阮大铖，因为团体需要公敌，来把集体凝聚起来；更重要的是，好人主义需要坏人，来做制度性失败的替罪羊。西谚有云：Hate the game，don’t hate the player。我们的传统反是。

今年73岁的达赖恐怕没有机会破一世达赖根敦主的生命记录了。达赖一死，无论按照政府政策还是民间习俗，农奴制度下的政教一体自然是game over，但是大限临头前选择撕破脸皮孤注一掷的全力对抗而不是委曲求全黯然回国，却使人大跌眼镜。看来，对奴隶主的日子很怀念的人不在少数。只是他们可能没注意到，虽然《飘》将奴隶主庄园描述的很美好，但是奴隶制并没有随林肯的死亡而死灰复燃。虽然大多数藏民还按习俗分前后藏在家里面供奉着班禅、达赖，但神龛里面还有一个人，那就是中华人民共和国的第一任主席毛泽东。有些东西会随个某一个人的消散而消散，有些却不会。那是历史的必然。

Wu claims the Chinese support the games. Of course they do - Chinese who don't support them are arrested and sent off to prison as witnessed by the detention of anti-Olympics bloggers and activists.

Another challenge could be a shallow pool of local Chinese translators, production assistants and helpers available to foreign reporters because of the potential for arrest for aiding foreign journalists on sensitive stories.

What is occurring is the meltdown of the biggest pyramid game in human history.

The right course of action is for the US government to establish a Resolution Trust Corporation to take over failing financial institutions, including hedge funds and private equity firms, and leave the Fed to tackle inflation. But a Republican administration could not go to a Democratic Congress for money to capitalise such a corporation. It could not justify spending US$1 trillion to bail out those who deceived investors around the world and destroyed the finest financial institutions in America for their own gains. Instead, the Fed will be called on to save the financial system, boost the economy and suppress inflation at the same time.

这年头，跟中国沾边的游戏，做成邪恶的，被定性为辱华，做成正义的一方，还是辱华。

我喜欢玩辐射，里边的一切反派总头目，坏事做绝，什么贩卖奴隶、制造毒品、人体实验，总之把想得出的坏事都干了一遍的的幕后大黑手设定为美国政府，从没见有什么美国人怀疑这是辱美了。我想也没一个大脑正常的玩家会玩着游戏把游戏里的美国政府和现实的一个同名政府混淆起来。 但请注意我说的只是大脑正常的，国内偏有些大脑不正常的玩家，因为游戏里还 提到了中国，提到了中国和美国发生对抗发生核战争，慌手慌脚地跑论坛上来议论，是否该在汉化的时候去掉这部分，以免影响“中美关系”（老天在上，“影响中美关系”这可是他们的原话，绝不是我在编笑话……）。文化部门还没来得出“影响中美关系”的结论，我们的爱国人士们却自发认识到了这种高度，多高的政治觉悟啊！