Posts Tagged: ‘Internet’

It’s no secret that censorship is a historically controversial topic, and the rise of the internet has reinvigorated some of the traditional, ongoing debates. For example, how should a country determine what information becomes classified? Or, to take it from another angle, how much power should the state have when it comes to censoring material [...]

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If there is one thing that Digg and Gawker have taught us with their redesigns, it’s this: If you run a major website, you should consider making changes to the design carefully, incrementally and with audience permission/buy-in. If you don’t do this, you risk losing your audience. This article tells the tale for Gawker, which [...]

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With Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in Canada and the United States planning to impose monthly bandwidth caps on us, and with extra fees being planned for people who exceed those caps (e.g. $1 per gigabyte), it brings up a great question – how much does it really cost to provide Internet access? We can get [...]

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I read an Associated Press report on IndyStar.com about the passing of a man whose work was instrumental in building the Internet: Paul Baran. Baran was one of two people who came up with an intriguing concept in the early 1960s (the other was Donald Davies, both men came up with the idea independently). What if you could send digital information through a series of small packets of data? The receiving computer could read information recorded at the front and back ends of the packets to piece everything back together. It would be like putting together a digital puzzle and could allow for rapid data transmission.

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To follow up on yesterday’s Firefox post… Firefox Downloads in real time – Plus a Firefox 4 preview …almost exactly 10 million copies of Firefox 4 were downloaded between 8AM yesterday and 8AM today. The average right now is about 9,000 downloads per minute. More info on Firefox 4 – particularly interesting are the Panorama [...]

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Last June, Senator Joseph Lieberman introduced an act in Congress that would give the executive branch of government — essentially, the President — to command key pieces of infrastructure to sever ties to the Internet. Some critics of the proposed legislation fear it could lead to a situation similar to what happened in Egypt earlier this month. What if the President were to command Internet Service Providers to shut down in order to silence protesters? Despite multiple statements from Lieberman and others saying that the language of the act specifically prohibits the President from such actions, distrust and suspicion continue to fester. Perhaps Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s words about Internet restrictions and censorship will help.

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Yesterday I was able to bear witness to an interesting event – I got to watch history being rewritten. I submit a newspaper column on Monday. Yesterday’s column was about strokes: How strokes work The opening paragraph of the story goes like this: A video made the rounds on YouTube. It shows a newscaster named [...]

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This video provides a nice high-level description of deep packet inspection and its use in Egypt: A traditional router looks only at the packet header to route the packet. Deep packet inspection looks into the contents of packets, looking for keywords. Why should you care about deep packet inspection? If you look back to the [...]

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The protests, looting and government response in Egypt has dominated the news recently. The Egyptian government has shut down nearly all forms of digital communication, including Internet traffic and text messaging, while attempting to resolve the situation. Egyptian citizens had been using the Internet and services like Twitter to organize protests and stay informed. The situation has prompted officials in other nations to comment on the matter, many of whom criticize the Egyptian government’s decision to hamper communication systems. But could the same thing happen in the United States?

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This week, there have been demonstrations and riots against the government in Egypt. Protesters have been shot, as shown here: A quick time line of events: Timeline: Egypt unrest Yesterday, Egypt’s government unplugged the Internet and cell phones: January 28: Internet and mobile phone text message users in Egypt report major disruption to services as [...]

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