• Most Popular
  • Most Shared

Pictures

Vincent Padois, head tutor at the Pierre and Marie Curie University who teaches robotics and is babysitting the Paris ICub, makes a demonstration with ICub robot, a ?hybrid embodied cognitive system for a humanoid robot" about 1 metre (3.2 feet) high, at the Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris September 4, 2009. Six versions of ICub exist in laboratories across Europe, where scientists are painstakingly tweaking its electronic brain to make it capable of learning, just like a human child and hoping it will learn how to adapt its behaviour to changing circumstances, offering new insights into the development of human consciousness. REUTERS/Philippe Wojazer

Pictures of the year: Technology

A look at the year's best science and technology photos.   Slideshow 

    China allows access to English Wikipedia

    Mon Apr 7, 2008 4:18am EDT
    A soldier unfurls the Chinese national flag as it is raised in front of the giant portrait of Chairman Mao Zedong in Beijing's Tiananmen Square, October 15, 2007. Chinese authorities appeared to have lifted a block on the English-language version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, but politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square are still off limits. REUTERS/David Gray

    HONG KONG/BEIJING (Reuters) - Chinese authorities appeared to have lifted a block on the English-language version of online encyclopedia Wikipedia, but politically sensitive topics such as Tibet and Tiananmen Square are still off limits.

    Technology

    Internet users in Beijing and Shanghai confirmed on Saturday that they could access the English-language version of one of the world's most popular websites, but the Chinese language version was still restricted.

    While searches of random topics such as "Johann Sebastian Bach" and "dim sum" brought up English-language articles, sensitive words such as Tibet were met with a message that the browser was unable to connect to the Internet.

    The move comes after International Olympic Committee (IOC) inspectors told Beijing organizers that the Internet must be open for the duration of the 2008 Olympics and that blocking it "would reflect very poorly" on the host country.

    China's government, keen to avoid sparking social discontent, keeps a tight watch over the media and often blocks or censors popular Web sites and forums where dissent may brew.

    Wikipedia and Yahoo's photo-sharing network Flickr have been periodically blocked before, while Google's YouTube is often blocked during high-level political events in China.

    Wikipedia, which is written collaboratively by volunteers, has more than 2 million articles in English.

    These include politically sensitive subjects such as Tibet and Taiwan independence, the banned Falun Gong spiritual group and the bloodily suppressed pro-democracy protests of 1989.

    (Reporting by Jeffrey Hodgson in Hong Kong and Lucy Hornby in Beijing; Additional reporting by Sophie Taylor in Shanghai; Editing by David Fox)
    Technology


    More from Reuters

    Photo

    Employers see uptick in hiring in 2010

    NEW YORK (Reuters) - U.S. employers expect to hire more new workers in 2010 than they did in 2009, a sign the U.S. recession may be easing its grip, research showed on Tuesday.

    » More Top News
    An employee swipes a customer's credit card through the card reader at a restaurant in Tokyo February 19, 2005.REUTERS/Issei Kato

    Taking a swipe at credit cards

    New legislation meant to protect consumers could be a "game changer" for the industry -- and not in a good way.  Full Article 

    Economy
    dealer shuffles a deck of cards during a poker game at a casino in Budapest September 15, 2009. REUTERS/Katoly Arvai

    Placing their bets

    Two IPO filings will test investors' appetite for risk that they probably would've avoided in the past year.  Full Article 

    DEALS