Sad day - flickr completely banned in my country of residence UAE

robfitsy said:

Hahaha, you're funny. The'll block anything they don't like. Since
the telcos are state owned monopolies, vicious immoral perverted
sites like skype, freecall and any other voip service are blocked. We
are paying US$700 per month for a 2Mb line. Competition? They've
heard something about it on the foreign news.

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Admittedly, I know little about the UAE save for their location on the map, and the glittering, huge buildings going up in Dubai, which gave me the impression of a more Western-leaning culture than the rest of their Middle Eastern neighbors.

At least this thread got me up to speed. We learn something new everyday.

I work for a Telco (not in the middle East) and the way we usually block sites is by blocking the domain on our DNS - which is very common way to do it. This is what some telco's have been forced to do to PirateBay in the west.

But luckily it is very easy to get around. All you have to do is to change your DNS to an open one - like opendns.org - their name servers are: 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220

Very easy to do - let me know if you want to try.

--
Never bite the Apple...

Ronni

http://www.pbase.com/ronnihansen

Darrin Behm said:

Gil

I have not read those books since they came out and unfortunately
don't remember a whole lot about them since there has been countless
other since. I'll have to dig them out of the basement and give them
a re-read.

Darrin

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Darrin Behm said:

Darrin Behm said:

1. Crescent in the Sky (1989)
2. A Gathering of Stars (1990)

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Click to expand...

I just reread them and kept shaking my head at what I was reading.
It was written in the late Eighties, BUT they are SO bloody current in
what they represent.

Anyone who thinks Islam would be a better "choice" than was the
Catholic Church and all the Protestant churches circa 1632 during
the Thirty Years War is deluding themselves. NONE of them are
good choices. Mixing church and state always has lead, historically,
to some pretty scary life-styles for the common folk.

The "rich" just work their way around and through "religion" and
manage to screw the little guy.... who usually just tries to keep his
head down and not come into someones sights.

Believe me, at that time, Joe Sixpack wasn't worrying about what
camera.... or equivalent expensive toy... he would buy... he was
worrying about providing bread and housing for his family. Extras
like we here on DPR take for granted were totally unimaginable to
the average person.

...AND, if things keep going in the direction they presently are, those
days may not be too far in the future for us either!!!!

--
Gil
Sardis, BC
Canada

Hi thanks for all the recommendations.

The blocking is quite sophisticated, yes there are ways around it, opendns is not one of them.

If you want to know what is considered "bad, immoral, etc." here:

http://www.du.ae/en/internet-access-management#annex

My main concern is also the speed. I pay exactly 68 US$ per months for a 1mbit line that is painfully slow in ping times etc. I have so many hops, proxies etc in between for all the filtering that it feels slower than a 768kbit line I had 4 years ago in germany for 1/3rd of the price.

No wonder broadband penetration in the UAE is less than 10%. Did I mention that skype is also blocked?

So long,
Ralf

--

paid vpn works fine and fast, though it take away bandwidth for all the overhead.

:-0
--

Glenn said:

the worst thing about polital correctness is it's not the
minoroities that are driving it. it's the majority trying to be too
carefull and giving the radical elements some traction

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Yeah, I know what you mean. Everyone wants to do whatever
they can to "not offend" someone.... and in the end, offend
everyone.

Everyone shuts up, and because no one is complaining, "everyone"
thinks things are fine.... because no one is complaining. Hence, things
get worse.

Here in Canada, we are really bad.... we are so bloody polite... don't
dare say a thing out of line, for fear it may offend. (There are no
curmudgeons! And, every society NEEDS curmudgeons! They are
like the miners canary's. )

Sheep!!!

--
Gil
Sardis, BC
Canada

i do it all the time when i need a work around!

from where do you get $700 for 2MB?
Eti charges 349 AED/mo ($95) for 2MB and 549 AED/mo ($150) for 16MB.

--

well here it's having the reverse effect. every time the media picks up a story. for example there was a Sikh here trying to get exempted from the Helmut law for his motorcycle... it went to court and was told no and the story went away. but it cause a whole raft of anecdotal and what if stories and spawned lots of vapour bogeymen who are trying to take over! .. it's almost comical because then the worriers overreact wanting to accommodate these bogeymen that don't really exist the the others who aren't really paying attention get the feeling theres huge problems with the new imiigrants and causes a backlash... The poor immigrants that are witnessing this conflagration are confused and are wondering where the bogeymen that don't exist are because all of a sudden their integration is a little harder. I think this has always been here it's just the speed of media accelerates this process these days.
--
F717 (Legendary)
A700 (what a fantastic machine)
A200 (Almost as fantastic)

Koolpep said:

The subject says it all.

youtube under discussion too.

What usually happens is that certain parts of websites with
immoral/etc content are blocked, but the whole site?

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/17/uae-youtube-ban-possible-goodbye-flickr/

My Pro-Account and all my pics now inaccessible. Thank god for smugmug.

That means that all UAE users see only question marks instead of
embedded images in so many posts...sad...

Ralf

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Well there is always deviantART, a lot of people from the UAE and Saudi Arabia are on there, heck Iran as well
--
John De Bord Photography
Showcasing the Images of Colorado using the Mind of Minolta
website: http://jdebordphoto.com
deviantArt: http://kkart.deviantart.com

xty said:

from where do you get $700 for 2MB?
Eti charges 349 AED/mo ($95) for 2MB and 549 AED/mo ($150) for 16MB.

--

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My mistake, it's USD400

Look at their business rates:

http://www.etisalat.ae/index.jsp?lang=en&type=package&currentid=c830a5714ec5b010VgnVCM1000000c24a8c0____&contentid=c41c83535fe2b010VgnVCM1000000c24a8c0RCRD&offer=Package&order=4

KEITH-C said:

I sympathise with the loss of freedom of choice which exists in your
part of the World but your post drew my attention to a much greater
injustice which is described here. The evil which men commit when
they believe that they understand the mind of God is unbelievable.

http://globalvoicesonline.org/2009/03/16/saudi-arabia-forty-lashes-for-a-75-year-old-woman-for-mingling-with-men/

Keith-C

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The important thing is that Saudis are our oil friends - which is why you won't see their lack of freedom/democracy and backwards ways adequately covered in our free press. Much better to talk about lack of freedom/democracy and backwards ways in Russia, and to a somewhat lesser extent China.

Ironically in many cases one may find each respective country's extent of those problems reversed compared to the extent it's covered.
--AK