Websites Unblocked in China

It seems that the Chinese Wikipedia is unblocked in China now. The unblocking of the Chinese Wikipedia in China has probably been extended to cover the whole of China. Chinese users have direct access Chinese Wikipedia from very different corners of the country.

Not only with Chinese Wikipedia, this unblocking also looks like this was part of a broader opening up - mainlanders now have access to a lot of sites. Here's a rather representative list of sites that are now available in China, which include newspaper, magazine and NGO web sites previously hard blocked.

Western media

• Chinese Reuters


• Chinese Wikipedia


• Radio Free Asia


• Voice of America


• Wall Street Journal


• Financial Times Chinese

Hong Kong media

• Ming Pao


• Ming Pao Monthly


• Asia Times Online


• Yazhou Zhoukan


• South China Morning Post


• Apple Daily

Taiwan media

• United Daily News


• China Times


• Liberty Times

NGOs

• Human Rights Watch


• Reporters Sans Frontiers


• Amnesty International

SourceForge Unblocked in China

After a month hiatus, SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, is again accessible from China on the eve of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games.

Chinese authorities has never admitted to blocking access to SourceForge, the only way for people in China to reach the site was by using a proxy server based outside of the country. There has been also no official confirmation that the website has been unblocked, but China unblocked it anyway. The Chinese authorities had promised to give foreign journalists more freedom in the run-up to this summer's Olympic Games.

China censors internet content that it finds objectionable, usually political material and occasionally pornography. The SourceForge blocking may be related to the author of SourceForge's anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games. China programmers needs SourceForge, and SourceForge is a professional technology website without political material. Now, SourceForge has been unblocked in China, Chinese programmers should enjoy SourceForge while it's available because we may never know when it will disappear.

Disable Wordpress 2.6 Post Revisions

Post Revisions Tracking is a new features of Wordpress 2.6, Which makes it a lot easier to share writing between people. Since you can save your copy, and the other person can see what you changed. Also you can revert to previous revisions of posts you've made.

But if there is only one author of WordPress blog, Post Revisions will taking too much space as every revision is a new row in wp_post table. It creates a alot of useless database-entries.

To disable Post Revisions, Add:

define('WP_POST_REVISIONS', false);

into wp-config.php, the wordpress 2.6 Post Revisions now disabled.

In my little opinion, there should be an option in general or writing settings to enable/disable the post revision feature.

Top Ten Best PS2 Games

It is nearly impossible to pick the ten best PlayStation 2 games, as there are too many amazing games to choose from. I know some of your favorite PS2 games are not on this list; some of mine are missing too, but sacrifices were made in an attempt to cull the list down to 10. The best proof for just how wide the range of quality games is for the PS2 is the impossible task of trying to create a top ten. The following is in no particular order and, for the sake of brevity at least, largely ignores multiformat games.

God of War

God of War is an action-adventure game based on Greek mythology. God of War was developed by Sony Computer Entertainment's Santa Monica division.

Dynasty Warriors

Dynasty Warriors (Shin Sangokumusou) is a series of tactical action video games developed and published by Koei.

ICO

Ico is a action-adventure video game developed by Sony Computer Entertainment and released for the PlayStation 2 video game console. Ico was designed and directed by Fumito Ueda, and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy is a media franchise created by Hironobu Sakaguchi and owned by Square Enix that includes video games, motion pictures, and other merchandise.

Metal Gear Solid

Metal Gear Solid is a stealth-action video game directed by Hideo Kojima. The game was developed by Konami Computer Entertainment Japan.

Resident Evil

Resident Evil (known in Japan as Biohazard) is a survival horror video game series developed by Capcom.

Silent Hill

Silent Hill is a survival horror video game franchise developed and published by Konami.

Tekken

Tekken is a fighting game and is the first of the series of the same name. It was developed and published by Namco.

Soul Calibur

Soulcalibur is the second game in the Soul series of fighting games developed and produced by Namco.

Burnout

Burnout, also known as Shiny Red Car (working title) is a racing game developed by Criterion Games and published by Acclaim.

Google Retiring AdSense Referrals Program

Google started introducing the AdSense Referral Program in November 2005 where publishers can get $100 bonus when they successfully referred someone into the AdSense network.

They slowly continued this program to include Google products (AdWords, AdSense, Picasa) as well as FireFox with Google Toolbar. And though western publishers get $1 for every Firefox downloads they refer, Asian publishers like in the China only get 10% of that referral fee or $0.10 (sometimes ever as low as $0.01).

Today Google has announced they will be ending their AdSense referrals program. AdSense Referrals allows you to include product referral links which cane be bought or downloaded. When a user from your site buys or downloads something via that link, you get a commission of the sale. Most popular referral links include Firefox and AdSense ad units. Today they announced that they will be officially stopping them by the end of August 2008.

An email from Google AdSense confirms that Google is terminating AdSense referrals:

We’re constantly looking for ways to improve AdSense by developing and supporting features which drive the best monetization results for our publishers. Sometimes, this requires retiring existing features so we can focus our efforts on the ones that will be most effective in the long term. For this reason, we will be retiring the AdSense Referrals program during the last week of August. We appreciate your patience during this transition and here are some alternative options to consider:

• Google Affiliate Network: As part of the integration of DoubleClick, the DoubleClick Performics Affiliate Network will now operate as the Google Affiliate Network for advertisers targeting users located in the United States. Similar to the AdSense Referrals program, the Google Affiliate Network enables publishers to apply for advertiser programs and get paid based on advertiser-defined actions instead of clicks or impressions. For further details, please visit: http://www.google.com/ads/affiliatenetwork/.


• AdSense for content ads: If you have less than three AdSense for content ad units on a page, you may wish to replace the referral ad units with standard AdSense for content ad units.

If you currently use referral ads, either to promote Google products or offerings from AdWords advertisers, AdSense Referrals code will no longer display ads beginning the last week of August. We encourage you to take the following steps before the product is retired:

• Remove the referral code from your site(s): Please take a moment to remove all referral code from your sites before the last week of August, so you can continue to effectively monetize your ad space.


• Run and save all referrals reports on your desktop: Create and save all reports related to the referrals program on your desktop, so you continue to have access to your valuable campaign information.

SourceForge Blocked In China

SourceForge, the world's largest development and download repository of Open Source code and applications, appears to blocked in Mainland China on the eve of Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. A screen copy of the command "tracert www.sourceforge.net" shows that the problem is a router inside China Telecom.



The current blocking may be related to the recent anti-China protests of Beijing Olympic Games, which began on 8 August in Beijing. Some days before, the author of a very popular free source code editor in SourceForge named Notepad++ start to boycott Beijing 2008, he said that the action is not against Chinese people, but against Chinese government's repression in 2008 Tibetan unrest. The boycotting is surely a politic issue, but refers to human rights problems in China.

Is that the reason of this blocking? Chinese authorities regularly blocks access to websites that it finds objectionable, including those dealing with politically sensitive subjects. That's what we have been. Blocked.

DB2ASP - Free Access Database to ASP Converter

DB2ASP generates an Active Server Page framework from an Access database. The framework contains Script subroutines to display and validate html forms and update the selected table or query. This won't do everything for you but it will jumpstart your development process by automatically generating tedious code.

Overview

So many of the applications I create involve using web-based html forms to update Access databases that one day I just got tired of doing the same stuff over and over and came up with the idea for this program. The framework created by the program will display a blank form and data view, you can enter data into the form and write the form data back to the database. The wizard eliminates about 80% of the redundant coding associated with these types of applications. You'll still have to make modifications to the resulting code to fit your specific situations.

You need VB6 with service pack 5 and DAO 3.6 on your machine for the db2asp to run.

UI Details

Run db2asp.exe.

In the Register Form, if you don't have a register code, Click Cancel.

Click Select.

Select an existing Access database.

Select a table.

Select the fields you want to appear on the html form.

Select the filter method and search field.

Verify your selections.

Click Start.

Some ASP file which containing the JavaScript code will be generated on the output path. Copy this file and database to your Inetput/wwwroot path and run it. You can also edit it with your editor.

Code Details

The prgoram creates a Dim statement for each database field you selected. It also dims several other variables used throughout the framework.

Verify that sDBName points to a valid path on your server.

db.asp :

You can change your database connect string here. You can also change your database to another database system, such as SQL Server.

If you use SQLServer, change your connstr as below.
connstr="driver={SQL Server};server=localhost;uid=sa;pwd=;database=DatabaseName"

fileedit.asp :

This file is your data edit form. You can change your edit form interface here.

filelist.asp :

This file is your data listview interface.

filefilter.asp :

This file is your data data filter form.

Hints

Your Access database must have a field named "ID", and it should auto increase.

Your Access database must writeble. check the property of the database file.

Requirements

At least 32 MB RAM

MS Access 7.0 or higher (ODBC is not required)

Necessary privileges to write into the destination database

Price

DB2ASP Converter is totally free with no limited features.

Downloads

Click here to download totally free version of DB2ASP converter.

Installation

After downloading the zip program you should simply unzip it and run the db2asp program.

Contact

William Long
e-mail: williamlone(at)gmail.com
website:http://www.moon-blog.com