A Look Into the Chinese Hacker Underworld 198
beachels416 writes "The NY Times gained access to a Chinese hacker-for-profit, referred to as 'Majia,' and observed him during one of his nightly 'sessions.' From the article: 'Oddly, Majia said his parents did not know that he was hacking at night [hacking is illegal in China]. But at one point, he explained the intricacies of computer hacking and stealing data while his mother stood nearby, listening silently, while offering a guest oranges and candy.' At another point Majia spoke about the recent Google attacks, and claimed to have particular knowledge of the exact vector used. Nothing too new, but an interesting read nevertheless."
Well now... (Score:2, Funny)
That article certainly puts a new slant on things.
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Indeed. Who knew they had oranges in China?
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Who knew they had 'for-profit' hackers in a communist country?
Communist country? This is the PRC we are talking about. Oh right, I get it, you took the name of the ruling party literally, OK.
Re:Well now... (Score:5, Funny)
Indeed. Who knew they had oranges in China?
Panda Express.
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Indeed. Who knew they had oranges in China?
Anyone who's ever been there?
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Oranges were first domesticated in China and SE Asia.
Your cultural chauvinism is showing!
Being a gamer makes you a hacker? (Score:3, Interesting)
According to the article:
Umm, I attended a major US university and got degrees in computer engineering and computer science. During my senior year, I lived on a dorm floor that was the home of the "computer science learning community", basically where many of the new freshman CS majors elected to live. All of them, every single one, was a gamer, and many were o
A real hacker... (Score:3, Informative)
...newer brags ...you'll never know - ever.
Re:A real hacker... (Score:4, Funny)
That should be "Never"...damn dworak fingers
Re:A real hacker... (Score:5, Funny)
and that should be "Dvorak"... damn autism...
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I'm an autistic that speaks fluent typoese, you insensitive clod!
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Sexlexia actually.
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No True Scotsman fallacy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman [wikipedia.org]
The reality is that tons of hacking is done explicitly FOR bragging rights. That doesn't make it any less "real" than hacking done for monetary gain, or any other purpose.
Re:A real hacker... (Score:4, Funny)
The reality is that tons of hacking is done explicitly FOR bragging rights. That doesn't make it any less "real" than hacking done for monetary gain, or any other purpose.
No, but it makes you stupid.
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Wow...that was right up there with "I know you are but what am I?"
I think he was trying to say that you'd have to be pretty stupid to go around illegally accessing systems, or other people's personal information, for the sole purpose of bragging about it later. If you see a fault in that observation, please share it.
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Hackers are just like other people and they have egos too. Would you consider publishing something in Phrack bragging? How about speaking at Defcon, or Black Hat? The subject of the article did not even allow the journalist to use his real name, and there wasn't any mention of a handle. Where is the bragging?
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The subject of the article did not even allow the journalist to use his real name, and there wasn't any mention of a handle. Where is the bragging?
From the first line of the article:
With a few quick keystrokes, a computer hacker who goes by the code name Majia calls up a screen displaying his latest victims.
Lots of content (Score:5, Insightful)
To sum up the article for those too lazy to read it
A chinese guy works a day job, works as a hacker at night. Likes to stay anonymous and take money from people's bank accounts.
I guess the fact that this is a chinese guy is shocking to some new york times readers?
Re:Lots of content (Score:4, Funny)
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Re:Lots of content (Score:5, Insightful)
Security researchers have identified the attacks against Google to be largely from the Chinese government [arstechnica.com], as were the politically motivated attacks [slashdot.org] against the Dala Lama and other Tibetan exiles. There is almost no doubt that the majority of the hacking that goes on in China (and elsewhere) is of the sort that TFA reports on, but linking it to the recent attacks on Google and other US government contractors is disingenuous.
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Or this piece is a Chinese govenmet sanctioned bit of propaganda. They WANT you to think that it's some individual...
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Actually, even your negative synopsis of the piece flies in the face of conventional wisdom, which is that attacks of Chinese origin are all a carefully orchestrated by the ruthless and scheming Chinese government...
"Then there are the intelligence-oriented hackers inside the People’s Liberation Army," which you'd know if you'd bother to RTFA instead of trolling, "as well as more shadowy groups that are believed to work with the state government."
'When asked whether hackers work for the government, or the military, he says “yes.”'
He hacks with C#?! (Score:2)
The fact that one of the few books on this "hackers" desk is a C# book is the surprising part. I wonder how well hacking with C# is working out for him? Lol. Definitely a staged picture. I'm sure it looks good to people who know nothing about computers though.
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I think you meant "Neo-son", if we are going to stereotype, after all.
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Flied Lice ? It is "Fried Rice", you plick !
How to deal with Chinese hackers (Score:3, Funny)
Look, its a simple process of elimination. First we coordinate the offender using black-ops satellites circling above the Himalaya. Once the hacker is pin-pointed in his bunker we upload a 'spike' directly to his IP address, which is gained by triangulating his cell phone signature via wi-fi antennas of surrounding Starbucks coffee shops. The 'spike' will immediately disrupt use of his cerebral cortex, thus rendering said malicious and poorly misguided comrade into a defenseless and innocuous teddy bear.
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Did I fall asleep?
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Did I fall asleep?
For a little while.
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GPS coordinates:
38.9522,-77.144752
:-D
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Bourne is in the building!
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At least one person got it.... *sigh*
Perspective check (Score:5, Insightful)
The article highlights two important facts
1. Fun
2. Profitable
It's been a long time since I broke into my grade school's soda/chips/candy closet from a skylight on the roof. Sitting there drinking soda and enjoying chips, I can clearly remember how exciting (breaking in) and rewarding (chips/soda) it was. Later, I learned to respect other people's property.
So what now? ... expect the back doors to be open and the cargo gone. It's very exciting - it's very rewarding. Is it wrong - sure. Are the thieves the ones to blame - no. Not exactly. The thieves are not the ones to blame - the thieves are to be expected. It's an ongoing game where we square off with human nature - make it furn for the security side - keep building better mouse traps. Don't like this perspective? Ok - change human nature then. Good luck.
If you park a trailer in an accessible area
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That argument doesn't falsify a thing, just as billiard balls are not proven to exhibit free will simply because the 8 ball falls into the corner pocket while the 3 ball goes off to the left.
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Trying to use the word "blame" as the original poster does is simply dropping the context of what that word refers to.
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which is easily falsified in this instance by the simple fact that not everyone acts in this way.
If everyone had the same background, geneology, wealth, intelligence, etc, and still acted in different manners, you might have an argument for non-determinism. But that too is an impossible scenario, so we don't really know, do we? Simple birth order has been shown to change behavior between siblings. The brownian motion of society will cause us to have different histories, and thus to be determined differen
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Those of us who do believe in determinism don't automatically rule out the phenomenon of apparent free will. We simply think it's likely a perception, rather than any true capriciousness of man's mind.
In other words, you believe choice is an illusion, no? Yet the very concept of "illusion" implies that I had a choice, and that I made the wrong choice - where I should have judged that I had no free will, I incorrectly judged that I didn't. The same goes for any other synonym, or even for words themselves. The very words you use, and the concepts in your mind which are represented by those words, imply free will. Anyone attempting to argue that we do not have free will is invalidated by his very attempt to
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Must be a windows box.
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Hmm-m-m. I think you're making what is known as a Bare Assertion Fallacy [wikipedia.org]. With a touch of red herring thrown in for seasoning. I said nothing about illusion.
What I said was that I suspect that free will is a perception that we have. I think an omniscient objective observer would think we have free will like an amoeba, for example, has free will. The amoeba has physical constituents which are determined completely by the laws of physics, it reacts according to environmental factors which are determine
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It's no more settled than whether some guy 2000 years ago really died for our sins.
Nah, that's quite well settled. If he existed, he died for pissing off the Roman authorities. Bitch-slapping the money changers and uniting the poor interferes with tax revenues.
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My response in general to most of your post is this: sometimes, but not necessarily.
There's lots of "depends", the biggest being how you define "stealing". Is it stealing to copy a copyrighted song? Depends on "fair use" -- unless the song is protected by DRM, in which case it breaks laws. As a legal technicality it might not be "stealing", but the effect of the laws is to create a de facto property right, so it is de facto stealing.
It would appear from your argument that stealing is by definition irrati
Re:Perspective check (Score:5, Insightful)
if(X>Y){
stealing = rational
} else {
stealing = irrational
}
You may be wrong about Y, but given the set of information you behaved rationally. In other words: If you feel you would benefit a net life-improvement by taking the object, it seems rational to do so. Doesn't mean it's ethical, but the debate of moral absolutes and human nature is another subject entirely.
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You may be wrong about Y, but given the set of information you behaved rationally.
Reason doesn't occur in a vacuum, just as your actions don't occur in a vacuum. The rational choice is that which is objectively determined to be in the interest of your life. Thus, theft is always irrational, as it is never in the interest of your life to steal - you violate the rights of others, you make yourself dependent on the failures of others, you cannot pretend to know enough to properly assess the situation (Y), and you encourage others to violate your rights in the process.
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The rational choice is that which is objectively determined to be in the interest of your life. Thus, theft is always irrational, as it is never in the interest of your life to steal - you violate the rights of others, you make yourself dependent on the failures of others, you cannot pretend to know enough to properly assess the situation (Y), and you encourage others to violate your rights in the process.
Nonsense. This is a simple cost-benefit analysis. Suppose I'm homeless and penniless. If the penalty for stealing 10 million dollars from an endangered money tree is a fine of $100,000 and a year in white collar prison trading high-fives with my fellow inmates, and I get to keep the money, then I would be up $9,900,000. That is an objectively measurable improvement in my circumstances, end of story.
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If the penalty for stealing 10 million dollars from an endangered money tree is a fine of $100,000 and a year in white collar prison trading high-fives with my fellow inmates, and I get to keep the money, then I would be up $9,900,000.
As I said - and you ignored - you 1) can't pretend to know ahead of time that you'll definitely get away with such an action, 2) make yourself dependent on the failures of others, and 3) encourage others to violate your rights in the future.
As for your specific incident, 1) your money would be confiscated when you were caught, 2) your penalty would increase with repeated incidents, and 3) your ability to get a job or do any interaction with society would be completely destroyed. And what do you do with y
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As I said - and you ignored - you 1) can't pretend to know ahead of time that you'll definitely get away with such an action, 2) make yourself dependent on the failures of others, and 3) encourage others to violate your rights in the future.
1)Don't have to, the penalty is acceptable.
2) You're welcome to explain whatever that means, because it sounds like you're saying that trying to buy a foreclosed home is somehow irrational because your success depends on the failure of others to pay their mortgage. It sounds like an ethical quandary, not an objective valuation.
3) I encouraged them to exploit the legal loophole surrounding money trees. I will put my money in a bank.
As for your specific incident,
1) I stipulated that the money is not confiscated.
2) Irrelevant, there w
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All you've done is make up a fictional world where the odds of getting caught are low, the penalties of the crime are sufficiently proportionate to act as a deterent, and people behave as rational animals instead of what they are, which is social primates. That's not much like the world we actually live in, where if you're a white collar criminal the situation is not too different from what the GP described.
If you don't take into account the actual nature of human beings as they objectively exist you can't
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You ignore morality. Some people refuse to do things because they believe they are wrong.
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You ignore morality. Some people refuse to do things because they believe they are wrong.
I am intentionally ignoring morality to keep this simple. I find it is impossible to assert that moral injury has an objective value without descending into a debate on moral relativism.
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You need to look into prescriptive vs normative decision making.
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It's not in the interest of your life to get money? With that argument, all work seems pretty useless. A lot of careers make you dependent on others, and you don't encourage others to violate your rights - the whole point of crime (of the plebeian variety, not of the banking variety) is that if you don't get caught nobody knows you did it, so the effect on you particularly is insignificant.
So yes, theft can be a consequence of rational self-interest. That's why it's been one of the few industries to be arou
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it is never in the interest of your life to steal
Since when was theft punished by a public execution?
And if you don't mean that, then what's this "your life" thing you speak of? You may have forgotten, but life--living--is survival. If it is the interest of survival to steal, then it is obviously a rational choice.
Now, can one say that it is in the interest of survival to have luxury goods? Certainly not. But people can derive an excuse to steal anything predicated on this one fact alone. Yes, that's how the human mind works. It's not particularly logical
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Doesn't mean it's ethical, but the debate of moral absolutes and human nature is another subject entirely.
Don't confuse "moral absolutes" with "moral concretes".
"Stealing in wrong" is not just absolute (context free), it is also concrete (it describes the absolute in terms of a particular, very narrowly defined act.)
It is quite possible to believe that there are no concrete moral absolutes, while continuing to believe in abstract moral absolutes. Concrete moral absolutes are like engineer's rules, or Aristotelian physics. They describe particular, limited systems in very concrete terms. Newtonian physics des
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Well of course that assumes that x and y are the only variables in play. Once you start with the Socratic questioning it gets a lot more messy.
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That implies that stealing is the irrational choice. Is it always?
Yes. Irrational actions are contrary to your life as the fundamental standard of value. Theft is an act of force against another individual, and so violates their rights. Theft is irrational, because it is not in the long-term interest of your life. Not only can you not pretend to know that your theft will succeed, but you also make yourself dependent on the failures of others. In addition, you encourage a society of theft in the process, making it more likely to impact your own life in other situations.
cracking is illegal in any civilized country (Score:3, Insightful)
Not if the place you are hacking pays you to do it (Score:2)
Not if the place you are hacking pays you to do it.
Wait, the NYT didn't get hold of this guy on... (Score:3, Insightful)
I guess the NYT needs to attach a disclaimer to the story, because whenever a journalist tries to interview a "hacker" I can't decide to laugh or cry. Something like this would do nicely:
But, They watched him work! (Score:2, Interesting)
...he showed how he hacked into the Web site of a Chinese company. Once the Web site popped up on his screen, he created additional pages and typed the word “hacked” onto one of them.
Perhaps the journalist had no idea how web browsers work...
Perhaps the "hacker" just pressed Ctrl+T then typed:
javascript:document.write('<h1>HACKED</H1>');
into the address bar...(try it)
Point being: The journalist didn't describe "Majia" doing anything that I would consider cracking... From the description given, Majia could have just been updating his own blog.
You can add the word "Hacked" to the top of almost any web page (incuding this one) by pasting this into your address bar:
javascript:
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Contact the Sales dept... (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, please enter your Credit or Debit card info along with Name, Address ... Allow six weeks for delivery.
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Pffft, like hackers know anything about "penetration". Fake!
Re:Contact the Sales dept... (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, please enter your Credit or Debit card info along with Name, Address ... Allow six weeks for delivery.
I did that. Not a very good book. "Chapter One: Social Engineering." is just six pages of "LOL!" repeated over and over.
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Shh. It's a secret code. You have to read the letters 7, 14, 25, and 44 to know what it says.
Shocking! (Score:2, Funny)
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But otherwise if you're a hacker and you can't find out how to write C# from the documentations and from Google, it's kinda duh...
Wrong word? (Score:2, Insightful)
I didn't see anything in the article about hacking. It all looked like cracking to me.
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Re:Wrong word? (Score:5, Informative)
Welcome to the English language. When 99% of the population understands a certain word to mean a certain thing, then that word does, in fact, mean that thing.
What you will find even more confusing is that words sometimes have multiple meanings! For example, the word "hacker" could mean both "a clever programmer", "a golfer", and "a person who circumvents computer system security." All three at the same time! It's amazing.
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Welcome to the English language. When 99% of the population understands a certain word to mean a certain thing, then that word does, in fact, mean that thing.
And this makes those who use it properly even more 1337.
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I think you missed the point. To use "hacker" to refer to someone who breaks computer security is using the word properly.
And in all honesty, nobody outside of slashdot says "cracker" unless they are talking about password-cracking software, delicious snacks, or white people. In the pro IT security world, we say "attacker" or "hacker" these days. You crack a password, but you hack a computer system.
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And get off my lawn!
Anyone here thinks it's actually a good thing? (Score:5, Insightful)
Sure it's not healthy if all you do are these minor thing and you keep doing these stuff for years. But it's a good inlet for kids to learn computing nevertheless.
I don't get it (Score:2, Insightful)
Why is this guy living with his mom if he's such a great and skilled hacker? Where's his money? Where's his grandiose lifestyle? What is he doing with all those computers he's woven into a bot-net? If he's making all that money, why isn't he spending it?
I wonder if we're making the Chinese Dragon out to be far more fearsome than it actually is. Why exactly should I be afraid of him, and all his Chinese brethren? Yes, they can hack, yes they can start and fight a cyber-war. But I am underwhelmed by their
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O.K., so he was living with his mom.
But, if he was also living in his mom's basement, then be on par with a good portion of Slashdot minions.
If he has also never been laid, and no the new rubber dolls do not count, he would be revered here on Slashdot.
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Computers for them are a luxury. Computers for us are a necessity. You have a kid in a desolate region smacking your system. If the Internet dies, he loses a form of amusement. If the Internet dies, American business collapses. American systems rely on technical infrastructures that are very vulnerable. You think you can get up and leave your computer? Well, I hope you don't need your lights, which hackers can probably shut down. Or that you don't need traffic lights working to drive home. China is mostly a
No, they're as vulnerable as we are (Score:2)
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Someone already said it, but in many places around the world, especially china, families tend to live together.
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In some foreign cultures you're expected to stay with your parents, then take care of them when they get old. If you marry, the bride joins you in the family house. It's a mutually beneficial arrangement: you're taken care of during the first part of your life, they're taken care of during the last part of theirs.
Not everyone subscribes to the "you're 18? Get the fuck out, good luck with everything" mentality so prevalent in the west.
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Allow me to present a scenerio:
Super elite Chinese Hacker 1: Whoa, taking some heat from that Google thing. We need to lay low a bit.
Super elite Chinese Hacker 2: Or, look at this. The NYT is looking to interview a hacker to do an expose.
Super elite Chinese Hacker 1: How'd you find that out?
Super elite Chinese Hacker 2: We _are_ Super Elite Chinese Hackers, you know. It even says so in bold to the left.
Super elite Chinese Hac
Re:I don't get it (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is this guy living with his mom if he's such a great and skilled hacker? Where's his money? Where's his grandiose lifestyle? What is he doing with all those computers he's woven into a bot-net? If he's making all that money, why isn't he spending it?
Because it's traditional in Chinese society to live with your parents until you're married. It's becoming less common as time goes on, but I have several friends in China in their mid-to-late 20s who have good-paying careers but still live with their parents. It doesn't have the stigma that it has in the west. And he's probably saving his money up because that's prudent. Another thing about Chinese culture, prudence doesn't make you "uncool".
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So, actually, when a young Chinese tells you he's living with his mom, it's because he's taking up his familial responsibilities. The western notion of nerd in a basement has no place in China.
orly? (Score:2)
[hacking is illegal in China]
Um, isn't hacking illegal pretty much everywhere?...
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[hacking is illegal in China]
It only illegal if you do it against the Chinese Government. Hacking anyone else is okay.
sockpuppet (Score:3, Informative)
"Majia" can mean "sockpuppet" in Mandarin.
Chinese organ banks.. (Score:2)
Will soon be parting out "Majia" watch your local transplant center for NEW, only slightly used hacker parts coming soon!
She's not stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
His parents know. If he hacks for money, is up late at night fiddling with computers all the time, and talks about hacking with unusual guests right in front of his mom, she knows what is going on. This is a mother with traditional, conservative beliefs who does not want to be rude and is reluctant to admit that her son is a criminal, so she ignores the entire situation. Not that unusual, and not indicative of some strange counter cultural underworld that is unique to China. Though I'm sure my folks and my friends' parents all thought our blue boxes, black boxes, and mobile (as in, in a car) collections of computers and cordless phones were all for educational purposes back in the day, and the 2600 meetings were just to hang out and drink coffee, since that's what we told them.
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As the character in American Beauty said, "Never underestimate the power of denial".
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Or is China obsessed with kdawson? We can never know.
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Come on, everyone knows the Great Firewall of China is only in place to filter out kdawson posts.
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It's disgusting.
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