Surviving Beijing since 1980

I love my iMac (PowerMac6,1 – model M6498 – 1GHz PowerPC G4), bought in 2003 but still running so well. A PC would never be able to last as long.
Over time the screen started failing, usually doing a sleep/wake up helped but finally the screen gave up. Once on it would work, as long as I would not switch of or let it go to sleep.
Apple and all so-called specialists said the model was too old and they could not repair. So sad, Chinese technicians have become pretty lousy (and lazy).
Thanks to my good friend Patrik (Swiss and used to mess around with computers and watches) we looked into the problem that appeared to be the screen Backlight/Invertor. The made-in-China spare part was of course nowhere to be found in China but I ordered it online (welovemacs.com) in the USA and got it delivered. Then Patrik simply dismounted the whole iMac, screen and all, to do some cleaning, put in a new internal battery and change the backlight.

All done and … working.
Now the funniest part is, the (in)famous Mac startup “boing” is gone. We tried and checked everything. Nothing. The iMac works great but no more startup sound. We probably must have done something to the hardware while cleaning as all software checks with TechTool Pro and other did not show anything wrong.
Thanks Patrik and too bad for Apple after-sales and the Chinese “specialists”.

And she does not sing “Poker Face”: it’s: “Liar’s Face”

China is getting paranoid, obviously bureaucrats realize some people are really upset with “certain issues”. Like the milk scandal, the new-rich, the astronomical greed by the real estate sector (read: those who have the right guanxi), worker’s exploitation (slavery is sometimes a better word). Too many things people are not supposed to talk about.
One can wonder if they will succeed to stem the flow. The clever people find a way around the New Great Wall. But others are happy to remain uninformed as they only care about playing computer games and … discovering carnal pleasures.

See here part of article dated 12 February 2010, “Innocent websites suffer in Beijing’s anti-porn push” by Stephen Chen in the SCMP:
More than 130,000 websites have been closed in the mainland’s crackdown on internet pornography, although less than 12% of them were actually pornographic.
The figures, buried in a Xinhua report meant to hail the success of the anti-porn campaign, prove a long-held suspicion that the central government is using pornography as a pretext to suppress Web freedom.
Since December, the Communist Party’s Central Committee has ordered the country’s state-owned internet service providers, such as China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom, to examine every website on their servers, an anonymous senior party official in charge of cyberspace told Xinhua.
The official said the telecommunications operators sniffed through more than 1.8 million websites. By Wednesday, more than 136,000 had been shut down.
Among them, “16,000 contained pornographic or sexually explicit contents, and among these, 11,000 were accessible by mobile phones”, the official was quoted as saying.
Porn-free websites were shut down because they were not “officially registered”.
Mainland internet regulations require websites to apply for a government certificate before opening to the public. The process is time-consuming and often abused by corrupt government officials. For years, many small websites, especially non-commercial ones built and maintained by individuals, have skipped the registration process.
At about the same time that the anti-pornography campaign was launched, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced an amendment to the registration regulation. An individual citizen who did not have a business licence or government approval was no longer eligible to register.

The bureaucrats are continuing their clampdown on the Internet in China to kill any unwanted postings. The trend is not new and I always said the country is trying desperately to close down the media since several years. They must be scared like hell as many citizens do not take the injustices anymore. Corruption and bad governance are the cancers in today’s China. By killing – or trying to – the Internet, they can only make it worse. The Internet is also a business tool. Once more, the Chinese bureaucrats shoot themselves in the foot and fail to address the real problems for their citizens. What they don’t realize is that many Chinese get fed up and find new ways around the restrictions.
Since day one I said I would never base my server here in China and never register. That was and is the right decision.
See here a comment from the SCMP

New internet curbs a step in wrong direction
article (part) by LEADER on Dec 16, 2009 – SCMP
The internet is a boundless frontier of business, education and recreation opportunities. The central government has curtailed those benefits by seeing it as a threat. The decision this week to stop individuals from having their own websites damagingly restricts possibilities. Not only are users’ ideas and opinions further censored, but an important outlet for entrepreneurial skills has been shut off.
Only businesspeople and government-authorised organisations can now register new domain names. Individually owned websites are steadily becoming inaccessible. Authorities say the measure is to curb pornography and copyright infringement. It is more likely yet another step to silence perceived dissent. Unwittingly, users are also put at an increased disadvantage to their counterparts elsewhere.
Most of the world’s websites have been established and are operated by individuals. Many are for pleasure and convenience; through them there is communication with relatives and friends and a sharing of images and thoughts. But a good number are also for livelihoods and to supplement incomes. Careers and businesses grow from them – opportunities that would otherwise have been limited or non-existent.