我上个周五 (2007.12.21) 在清华大学发了演讲。下面是演讲稿：
上个星期一，国际奥委会发布了新的规定说北京奥运会期间参加比赛的运动员可以开个人博客。 从奥运关注者的角度来看，这肯定是好事情，会让奥运的内容更丰富，更有趣。但是从运动员的角度来看，有一个危险之处：因为中国政府担心奥运博客有可能“导致不实谣言在互联网上蔓延和传播”，所以国际奥委会的官员说他们不反对对运动员的博客进行详细调查。
也就实说参加奥运比赛并想开个人博客的运动员需要深入考虑一道难题：什么样的博客内容会引起中央宣传部的关注？众所周知，中国是一个科学发展，饮食一流，重视环保的礼仪之邦。那么假设你在博客上写一片文章说你在北京遭遇了交通堵塞或者看到当地人随地吐谈，或者说你觉得空气质量不理想乃至不喜欢中国的菜，你是不是传播不实的谣言？你的博客会不会受到有关部门的调整？
很明显在北京写博客不一定能随心所欲。如果你象明星一样只是想把博客当作个人日记的话——告诉大家自己的电影，最喜欢的颜色等等－－当然不成问题。但是如果你想以博客来传播你对社会问题的观点或者批评奥运会的某一个方面，那就是另外一种错综复杂的事情。
虽然许多第二种博客在中国都被关了—或者说被和谐了–但是运动员不用担心。有一名阅历比较深的专家，笔名叫寰平，已经把一个躲避和谐化的原则挖掘出来了，大家都可以学习一下。
寰平挖出的这个躲避和谐化的原则是四个字的原则？这四个字是：放烟雾弹。换一句话说，需要用各种各样的障眼法来掩饰博客的指向，从而逃脱有关部门的关注。
那应该放什么样的烟雾弹，用什么样的障眼法呢？寰平提出了好几个秘诀，其中最实用的有三个：1）讽刺和幽默；2）绕弯子；3）装傻。
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Much hype and media coverage right now surrounding the first ever Beijing-Lhasa train journey, which set out from Beijing yesterday. But the best story has so far nabbed only a sentence in Alexa Olesen’s story on the voyage for AP:
On Friday, three protesters from the United States, Canada and Britain were detained after unfurling a banner at Beijing’s main train station reading, “China’s Tibet Railway, Designed to Destroy.”
Never mind that the train left from a different station. According to a fellow journalist I talked to yesterday, the sign they displayed was in English, not Chinese. They apparently climbed to the top of the station to display it, but no one noticed them because they didn’t say anything. Just stood there silently. And when the calvary arrived—a single policeman, according to my source—they submitted with equal aplomb, quietly rolling up the banner and walking obediently behind the cop to be interrogated.
Real protests have been going on elsewhere, to which the government has responded predictably:
The official Xinhua News Agency lashed out at critics, calling them hypocrites who want Tibet to remain undeveloped and a “stereotyped cultural specimen for them to enjoy.”
Yet one detects just the slightest enjoyment of Tibet as a “stereotyped cultural specimen” in effusive coverage of the trip from the Chinese press. Take the the Beijing News (新京报). The once-rebellious but lately compliant paper led this morning with a front page photo of a 54-year-old Tibetan woman named Qiangba Dama (Chinese transliteration) riding the train in a full complement of traditional garb, smiling beatifically as she eats from a boxed lunch, so so happy to be on her “first ever” train ride!
For those who want to see for themselves what a happy minority are the Tibetans, Duncan Peattie has just produced a fine English translation of the train timetable with prices for major destinations. The less user-friendly Chinese original is here.
Rice Cracker managed to get itself blocked by the Great Firewall after only its first breath outside the womb. Not sure why or how, but the problem’s been fixed with a move to a new IP address.
While it probably doesn’t clear up the Rice Cracker story, some good firewall-related news out of England: Researchers at Cambridge have reportedly discovered how China accomplishes automatic blocking of web pages that contain counterrevolutionary keywords. Andrew Lih, a new media researcher at the University of Hong Kong, explains it in lay terms:
…the simple explanation is that the GFW sends a “TCP reset” packet to both the web server supplying the suspicious page and to the client (ie. your computer) loading it. It’s the equivalent of an “emergency stop” packet usually reserved for situations of bad connectivity so that both sides know to disconnect abruptly.
Lih goes onto to marvel at the system’s simplicity:
GFW operators could use off-the shelf Cisco (or whatever) routers with no modified firmware whatsoever, and just have a set of machines sit on the side detecting keywords, and sending out “TCP resets.” Simple, effective, and with a low impact for network engineering.
This raises the interesting possiblity that Cisco’s claims it hasn’t actively colluded with the CCP in choking off Chinese people’s information supply might actually true. Or more true, at any rate. [Although it doesn't get them off the hook for reaping profits out of the whole odious operation.]
More importantly, the use of TCP reset packets means that banned information gets through into China, all the way to the front porch of your browser, before your computer slams the door in its face. The solution, at least in theory, is as simple as the problem: tell your computer to be more hospitable (i.e., ignore TCP reset orders). Lih points out a catch: Both Web servers and client must be programmed to do this, so builders of major operating systems would have to get on board. Mabye unlikely, but still, score one against bad guys.
The reasearchers–Richard Clayton, Steven Murdoch and Robert Watson–go into more detail on their own blog (with a downloadable PDF of their original report).