Chinese bloggers evade censors by writing backwards

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

You have to hand it to Chinese bloggers – they are determined to get the truth out, no matter what.   OK, they are not facing the death sentence like their fellow counterparts in Iran but nevertheless, they still face prison for their opinions.  At the very least, their work will be deleted by faceless humorless bureaucrats.

So the bloggers are trying out new methods to evade Chinese government censors – the latest one is they are using tools and software to write backwards.   Or write vertically instead of horizontally.   This is apparently confusing the censors because they now cannot automatically track “objectionable phrases” (aw my heart bleeds for them).  One such “text flipping” tool is here.   Obviously the government will eventually find a way around it but the resourceful bloggers will probably have found another solution by then and will have moved on.

It’s easy for us in the democratic west to take our freedom of speech for granted.  We don’t think twice about giving an opinion online and then hitting the “publish” button.   We don’t have to fear the knock on the door or awkward questions being asked about our loyalty to the state.   We take our freedoms for granted because they’ve always been there.   But our fellow bloggers in China and Iran are not so lucky.   They have to look over their shoulder all the time and resort to text flipping tools, codes and guarded language to protect themselves and their family, while at the same time trying to break through all the officially sanctioned propaganda and get the real truth out to the world.

These are the unsung unrecognised heroes of the world.   It’s time we should recognise them more.   Plus if Iran passes that idiotic and insane death sentence law, we should all as an international community collectively do something, short of invading the country.

Edit: We’ve received several private threat emails in the past 24 hours because of this article. I’d just like to quote one of Mark’s comment for those of you who think that this text will bring the “limelight” on Chinese bloggers trying to evade attention from their government:

“And as for “dragging the Chinese bloggers into the spotlight”, I hardly think I have done that. I merely linked to and reported on a news report in the Wall Street Journal which is obviously a much bigger and much more influential publication than Geeks Are Sexy. So if you want to accuse anyone of dragging Chinese bloggers into the spotlight, call up the Wall Street Journal and ask for the managing editor.”



Exchange 2003 transaction log files filling up very quickly

I haven’t blogged about any IT-related issues in a while, and I thought that the solution to this little-known exchange 2003 problem would probably interest the SysAdmin crowd among you guys.

If one day, you log into your inbox and find an email waiting for you announcing that the disk containing your exchange 2003 transaction log files has almost no more disk space, you may be experiencing the following issue.

As I’m sure you’re aware, the E00*.log files located in your \exchsrvr\MDBDATA are transaction logs containing everything that happened to your Information Store since it was last backed up. As soon as you perform a backup of the store using an exchange-aware agent, the log files will be cleared. However, in this particular situation, the transaction files are filling up the drive too quickly and will consume all of the remaining disk space before you have the time to back up your store.

In this case, you may want to check out your Outlook 2007 clients that have the “exchange cache mode” option enabled. The station that causes the problem will probably have a large number of “sync issues” in the Outlook folder of the same name. I’m not sure of this though. The client who was causing the issue happened to have this problem. Can anyone confirm this? After locating the rogue workstation, the only thing you have to do to fix the problem is to disable the “exchange cache mode”. If you want to re-enable it after, be sure to delete the old OST file and have Outlook create a new one.

But after fixing the issue, your disk will likely still be out of space, so you’ll need to clear those log files before mounting the exchange store again.

WARNING: NEVER, EVER delete the E00 log files manually. The proper way to remove them in this situation is:

1- Make a full backup of your exchange store using an exchange-aware agent…. OR
2- Enable Circular logging. (Don’t forget to disable the option and restart the information store service after you get your disk space back)

Voilà! Now if your Exchange transaction log files folder start filling very quickly, this little tutorial will give you an extra thing to check for to solve your problem!



How to beat nine chess geniuses simultaneously

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

One of my interests (some would say obsessions) is chess.   I have a chess board constantly set up on the table behind the computer, and whenever someone comes to visit, I challenge them to a game of chess.   Which probably explains why when we invite people round, they have to spend the previous day practicing their chess moves first!

The guy you’re about to see made me laugh out loud at what he was able to pull off.  Derren Brown, who is from the “Trick Of The Mind” TV series in the UK, got nine chess geniuses in the same room (most of them grandmasters) and convinced them that he was a chess genius himself (when in reality his chess skills were awful).   He then proceeded to beat four of them, and when everything was finished, showed them that he was able to predict right at the start how many pieces they would have on their chess board at the end.

Teen arrested after offering to sell his vote on eBay

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Many people are looking forward to this November’s presidential elections.   Some are looking forward to voting in a new president and ushering in a new era, but others are looking forward to it for other reasons – financial opportunities.   A teen has been arrested and charged after allegedly offering to sell his vote on eBay.

Now that he’s been caught, what’s his defense?   “It was a joke”.

If so, Minnesota prosecutors are apparently not seeing the funny side.   They are charging Max P. Sanders with a rarely used 1893 state law that makes it illegal to buy or sell a vote.   If he is convicted (and I fail to see how he can get off this charge), the maximum penalty is 5 years in jail and a $10,000 fine.

The prosecutor’s office said : “There are people that have died for this country for our right to vote, and to take something that lightly, to say, ‘I can be bought.'”

So I guess the moral of this tale is, think twice before listing that “funny” auction on eBay.   You might end up with a cop and a prosecutor at your front door quoting a 115 year old law at you.

Google finally surrenders & posts a privacy link

By Mark O’Neill
Contributing Writer, [GAS]

Google Privacy Link

After constantly refusing to do what other big websites had already done – post a privacy link to their front page – Google has finally surrendered and done the big move.

No-one knows why they suddenly caved in, but Techcrunch speculates that it was probably government pressure or the fact that the absence of a privacy policy may have been illegal under California law.

Now that the privacy link is finally there, you have to ask yourself why Google was making such a fuss over it in the first place.   It is such a tiny link, it takes up hardly any space at all on the page, and realistically, how many people are actually going to click on it?   Is this tiny little link the cause of all the hoo-hah?

If you do click on it, you’re taken to Google’s “Privacy Center” where there are links to the full privacy policy as well as “privacy practices” for certain products and privacy videos at YouTube.   Quite an extensive and well thought out effort but again, how many people are actually going to take the time to read it all?