Fuddland
Back in March I reported on certain restricted groups of websites [specifically, weblogs], blocked from viewing in China unless you used alternative means. At some point—and I can’t be certain how recently it was—someone somewhere decided to lift part of the Great Firewall, for I can now directly view Blogger-hosted [that is, *.blogspot.com sites]. Wordpress-hosted sites remain unavailable, but for whatever reason, no-one whose weblog I read is hosted there, so it doesn’t affect me at the moment.
For the record, here are a few sites I would like to be able to view but currently cannot [directly, or even at all]:
BBC News Online. For some bizarre reason, this is the only member of the *.bbc.co.uk family that I cannot view—for example, I can listen to BBC News via the Today Programme Listen Again feature, but even the above alternative means cannot help: the BBC News site is simply unavailable. Access to other major news sites, such as The Guardian and The Times, is unrestricted, which makes things all the more peculiar. It’s particularly annoying because every weblogger and his/her mother links to BBC News stories on a daily basis and I can never read what they’re comenting on.
Wikipedia. By ‘eck it’d be handy if this was directly available, but at least I can still get there indirectly, and Answers.com is unrestricted.
Technorati. Not something I use all that regularly—I’m more intrigued as to why this weblog-tracking/searching service is completely unavailable to me.
Anyone got any sites they’d like me to test, in the interests of research? [Nothing too subversive, I don’t want to trigger too many warning flags!]
Comments
Brown | 2006 / 08 / 14 – 23:18
I hope you’ve been able to access www.channel4.com/bigbrother or bigbrother.digitalspy.co.uk.
Anglofille | 2006 / 08 / 15 – 01:43
Since you can’t access the BBC website, you could try the website of America’s most “fair and balanced” news source, Fox State News (aka the Fox News Channel).
But since their “news” comes directly from the Bush White House, their site could very well be blocked by The Great Firewall — if you’re lucky. ;)
David | 2006 / 08 / 15 – 13:59
Re #1 & #2: “Thankfully” all three of those seem to be available here—but I shan’t be accessing any of them regularly. I don’t think I need to explain the reason why for Fox News, and Big Brother just ain’t as addictive in text-only form!
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