A kid recommended a piece of music to me recently, and I ended up liking it quite a bit: The Truth That You Leave. I’ve always had a soft spot for this kind of quiet music. It has that calming effect that makes both your mind and body loosen up a little.
Some people have probably already started wondering why I haven’t updated in so long, so I should clear that up first. I started writing on a separate small blog again, and that’s where most of my regular updates have been going. This main site will probably be used more often for WordPress-related technical posts from now on. As for why I opened another blog after all that, the short version is simple: my attempt at changing direction didn’t really work out, so I went back to blogging in a more personal way.
Originally I planned to wait until there were a few more posts there before saying anything publicly, but at this point it felt like enough had accumulated, so this post can double as an explanation.
Since I’m already doing that, I might as well sort out what I’ve actually been doing lately in chronological order.
- In the fourth week after school started, I came back from an internship in Jiangshan. A few days later I set up the new side blog, though the idea had actually been on my mind even before the internship.
- The day after I got back, I was told to attend a training session. Only after sitting through a whole morning of it did I learn it was connected to the first geology skills competition.
- During that training period, I suddenly felt like it and bought a genuine copy of Windows 7 Professional.
- After roughly half a month of training, I went all the way to Chengdu to take part in the competition.
- I reinstalled my system and used Wubi to install Ubuntu. So far the setup has been running in perfect harmony, and I also wrote several Ubuntu tutorial posts along the way.
- After coming back, I ported a Plants vs. Zombies theme from BlogBus over to Typecho.
After listing everything out, I realized I really haven’t done that much serious work. Most of what I’ve been busy with has been random, fairly pointless stuff. A little embarrassing, honestly.
And then there was the mess between 360 and Tencent QQ. The two sides were tearing into each other so hard that ordinary internet users ended up suffering the most. My desktop at least didn’t become an actual battlefield, since I never installed 360 in the first place, but QQ’s pop-up windows were enough to annoy me anyway.
I’ve never had much goodwill toward 360. Part of that is probably because of the old 3721 shadow hanging over it; I’ve always felt there was something deeply rogue-like about it. As for Tencent, its reputation isn’t exactly a secret either. If I had to judge the whole thing, I’d split it into two possibilities.
- If QQ never scanned user privacy, then 360 was making the whole thing up. In that case, the motive is obvious: hype and user acquisition. If so, then 360 is clearly the villain.
- If QQ really was scanning user privacy, then 360 was acting like some vigilante doing what others didn’t dare to do, and Tencent would be the clown in the story.
But whichever version is true, 360 releasing its “QQ Bodyguard” without any regard for industry ethics, and QQ in turn forcing users to uninstall 360 through its own software, were both absurdly irrational moves. It was like a full-on street fight in the lower-right corner of everyone’s screen, and in the end the people taking the damage were still regular users.
Personally, I don’t support 360 at all. I’ve never thought much of its antivirus products either; to me they’ve always felt a bit like a joke, even though plenty of people still install them. So no, I’m not on 360’s side. But QQ using its software to manipulate users into removing another program was shameless too, and I’m not going to support that either.
As for the whole “Tencent scans user privacy” issue, I do want to add one thing: users absolutely should protect their privacy, but there’s also no need to treat every bit of personal data as if it were some earth-shattering state secret.
My own guess at the time was that 360 had very little chance of winning. In the end it would either be a Tencent victory or some kind of settlement. The reason is simple enough: QQ had already become an indispensable instant messaging tool, while security software could be replaced whenever you wanted. Sure, people can say there are other IM tools too. Fine. But try telling my mother to switch to MSN. That was never going to happen.
The major online media outlets weren’t exactly innocent in all this either. A lot of them seemed delighted to fan the flames, all but cheering for a monopolistic giant like QQ to be knocked down, and loudly backing 360 in the process. I wouldn’t say any of them were especially noble.
Then there was a small surprise this morning. I was searching for videos and somehow ended up on YouTube—and the videos actually played. That shocked me enough that I immediately opened Internet Explorer to test it again, and sure enough, YouTube really was accessible. I got so excited that I announced the news to the people around me as if it were some major event.
Unfortunately, some people didn’t believe me. First they said I must be using a proxy. Then they said it had to be IPv6. So I ended up taking screenshots to prove my innocence. I uploaded those screenshots to Douban, and by the afternoon I received a system message saying the album had been deleted for violating image policy.
So this is what Douban has become now—remarkably well-behaved.
Here are the screenshots:
A very glorious homepage, and yes, videos were playable too.
IPv6 was never configured.
IPv4 settings.
No proxy was being used, so the IP was not the issue.
In the end, the most likely explanation was simply that the Great Firewall had a temporary hiccup, because not long after that YouTube became inaccessible again on my end. A bit awkward, really. Apparently some people were even able to get onto Twitter during the same stretch of time.
Picasa, though, really did seem to be unblocked. My Kpicasa Gallery plugin started working again, which at least was some genuine good news.