Suspicious CBL Issues

John B first reported to me about two weeks ago that he was getting “Document Contains No Data” errors when he tried to view the China Blog List from Hangzhou. Now, since yesterday I’ve been getting the same errors consistently. Other sections of my website seem to load fine, but as soon as I try to go to https://www.sinosplice.com/cbl/ (or http://cbl.www.sinosplice.com/) I get “Document Contains No Data.”

If you are in China, could you please try going to the CBL page and let me know the results? (Warning: if you get the DCND error, you may need to close your browser and reopen it to view any pages on Sinosplice again.) Thanks!

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John Pasden

John is a Shanghai-based linguist and entrepreneur, founder of AllSet Learning.

Comments

  1. I can see the list by https://www.sinosplice.com/cbl/, but http://cbl.www.sinosplice.com is not working.(Error:The requested URL could not be retrieved)

    But I’m in CERNET so I am using a proxy now.

  2. In Shanghai.
    I’m not using a proxy. https://www.sinosplice.com/cbl/ is okay but I cannot see http://cbl.www.sinosplice.com .
    I got ‘ Page cannot be found’.

  3. Thanks guys!

    Weird… right before writing this entry it didn’t work. After seeing your comments I checked again, and it works! I thought the cbl.www.sinosplice.com subdomain was set up, but maybe it wasn’t set up right after all.

    Maybe the whole incident was just “practice”?

    ConFusIOn….

  4. John,

    I have tried both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox,

    http://cbl.www.sinosplice.com/ does not work in either one.

    https://www.sinosplice.com/cbl/ works fine for both.

    I think it is because your server is not automatically reroute to the subdomain from the /cbl/ directory.

    similar thing has happened to my server as well.

    you can always create a script that would manually redirect to the subdomain.

  5. Tian,

    Thanks. I’ll look into that.

    D’oh! Back to DCND errors again. It comes and goes…

  6. It works for me sometimes, and sometimes it doesn’t. My guess (unsupported though it may be) is that there is a link in there that the content filter doesn’t like (as I can connect to the server, which on totally blocked sites I cannot do), but that the filter only checks an arbitrary amount of data near the top of the page (easing the load when you’re talking about millions of pageviews per second), and since the blogs are initially randomly ordered it only gets into the that range occassionally.

    What I would be worried about is that, if I were designing this system, the pages that trigger automated filtering like this would be recorded and eventually added to the ‘outright banned’ list.

    The fun part is figuring out which blog it is…

  7. Here in Xi’an, sometimes I get the DCND errors and sometimes I don’t. But in either case, the page doesn’t fully load up. I’m not sure if you’re temporarily taking stuff on and off the page, but all that pops up for me in the best-case scenario (no DCND error) is that white “ÖД background graphic, and most of the time all of the text up until “…facilitate your search” and then a small box that looks like a picture file isn’t showing but says “Newest Additions:”

  8. No problem here from the IP range of nbip.net

  9. Direct access: nothing.

    Domestic proxy (1bu.com): loads sidebar and top of blog table to the href= of the first link, then halts. Fails on reload.

  10. I get DCND all the time and for tons of sites-Google included. I just keep hitting it until it comes through and it usually doesn’t take me too long. It happens for the comment box as well.

  11. I get DCND too:( There must be some “sensitive words” or something like that. It happens to google all the time.

  12. in Guangzhou on a mac using safari, no proxies. firewall active and connected via wireless in a cafe in tianhe. all fine and nothing wierd (unlike so much else)

  13. Since the list sorts each time it is presented, it might be something on the list that gets hammered when it bubbles to the top once and awhile.

  14. here in jinhua, zhejiang, neither one works…

  15. Neither works here in Wuhan. I didn’t use a proxy.

  16. chengdude Says: May 17, 2005 at 9:43 am

    I’m on CERNET in Chengdu; as with other replies, no problem with https://www.sinosplice.com/cbl/ but http://cbl.www.sinosplice.com gives me “Page cannot be displayed.”

  17. Anonymous Says: May 17, 2005 at 10:14 am

    Blocked in Beijing – available with proxy

  18. SHanghai – Shanghai Telecom

    Proxy – yes, no worries
    No proxy – data contains no data. although i have found this to be variable over the past few days as well.

  19. hangzhou- no problems today, but last week couldn’t see a thing.

  20. Both ‘contains no data’ here in Beijing.

  21. Thanks for all the reports! There’s definitely something going on.

    Now the question is what to do about it…

  22. I guess this is as good a place as any to mention that I like your new comment attribution system – it’s more readable now. One thing, though – I believe the [div] elements should go within the [li] tags; currently I see all comments as “1.” in Opera.

  23. zhwj,

    Thanks. For a while now I’ve been meaning to implement this numbered system (for ease of reference to other comments) with the commenters’ names at the top (as comments are often long, and it’s nice to know who’s saying it from the get-go). Seeing Tom Vamvanij’s blog reminded me of it.

    I realize the div is in an illegal place; I was trying to do something that didn’t work out. I’ll fix it soon.

  24. If you can figure out what words are causing trouble, you can set them up as photos instead. Not sure about links though, since the web address has to be in the html somewhere. break it up like an email address?

  25. Donald,

    There are definitely some URL obfuscaton methods that could be implemented with PHP. The biggest headache is figuring out which sites are causing the problem.

  26. zhwj,

    There, it’s fixed. I have no idea how it looks in Opera, however. Right now I think it looks great in Firefox, but stupid IE screws everything up, as usual.

  27. I have had a hard time accessing this site ever since I first found it about 10 days ago. Sometimes I can get it, sometimes I can’t. If I can’t get https://www.sinosplice.com, I try it without the www and that has worked a few times. Just yesterday I read this post, but when I clicked on responses, the pop-up came up “page unavailable,” and then the whole site became unavailable.

    I’m in Hangzhou using IE6.

  28. No problems viewing the list in Harbin…

  29. Dude, I’m in Hangzhou and I discovered this site about 10 days ago, and I have had a heck of a time accessing it ever since I found it. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. One trick that has worked for me a couple of times is taking the www out of the address line (www.sinosplice.com instead of https://www.sinosplice.com). Maybe that was just a freak coincidence, though.

    Just yesterday I read this post, but when I clicked on response the pop-up came up page unavailable.

  30. Dude, sorry for the double post — the first time I wrote it, I hit “post” and it went to an error page, so I didn’t realize that my reply had gone through.

    Something wacky is definitely going on with your site.

  31. And sorry for calling you “dude” twice now.

    I am actually NOT a surfer or anything like that.

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