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After banning the use of RSS feeds, the Chinese government takes another step towards limiting the access to information, but this time, things look even worse than last time. As I heard recently, 3 popular Chinese universities don't allow their students in the first year to bring computers with them in the campuses, while other universities were forbidding them to do it for years!

How can one imagine a student in a technical university, in the first year, without a personal computer? Speaking for myself, I can't, and if that student attends programming courses, how is he going to improve his skills? Probably the Chinese officials believe that programming on a piece of paper is not really different from the real thing... but let's see what exactly happened!

According to recent reports, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zheijang University and Nanjing University changed their rules so freshmen won't be able to use their own computers. What's the official excuse for this?

Well, as I was expecting, they think freshmen won't be tempted to become dependent on online gaming, so they'll be able to concentrate on their studies. Good, great, awesome, but what about those that really need a computer to study? After all, if you can't have your computer with you in the campus, there are plenty of computers in the cybercafes and university's labs that you can use... for gaming, of course!

What else can I say? Usually, it's much better to work on preventing the addictions, and not trying to ban the object of that addiction. Online gaming addicts will always find a way around the fence put between them and their favorite game, so why bother taking decisions that also affect other people?

We should wait and see what's the result of this decision, but I think that China is playing with their youngs' future here. You can't replace one year of programming and study on your own computer with a crowded university data center , but that's what we shall see in the future...