Major Websites Preparing To Go Dark On Wednesday

Wikipedia and other websites plan to go dark in protest. Reuters

SOPA Protest Nears Zero Hour -- Politico

Internet companies and activists are hoping to join the Arab Spring and other online democracy movements by taking an estimated 7,000 websites offline Wednesday to send a message to Washington: Don’t pass a pair of anti-piracy bills.

The websites that have announced plans to go dark include Wikipedia, Mozilla, Reddit and Wordpress, but some of the most visited websites are conspicuous in their absence.

And supporters of the copyright bills dismissed the blackout as a “stunt.”

Read more ....

My Comment: To understand the issues that are involved, go here. As for myself .... unless Blogger goes offline .... I will be blogging tomorrow.

World Wide Web Celebrates Its 20th Birthday

Basic: Sir Tim Berners-Lee's first web site was simply a page of links to allow scientists to share data and news

Many Happy Returns! World Wide Web Celebrates Its 20th Birthday -- The Daily Mail

* First web page born on August 6, 1991
* Now there are more than 19.68billion pages

It began as a simple page of links that allowed a group of scientists to share data in the confines of their laboratories.

But in the 20 years since, it has become an inextricable part of the lives of billions of people.

The World Wide Web (WWW) was born on August 6, 1991, when the first web page was launched on the internet by Sir Tim Berners-Lee.

Read more ....

My Comment: I suspect that the web will be around for a little longer.

A Separate Internet Could Curb Cyber Threats

The U.S. Navy Cyber Defense Operations Command The U.S. military and intelligence arms are already defending the nation from cyber attacks. DARPA hopes to give them another tool.

Former CIA Chief: A Separate Internet Could Curb Cyber Threats -- Popular Science

To combat cyber attacks, the U.S. may need more than new cyber defenses. It might need a whole new piece of Internet infrastructure. So says former CIA director Michael Hayden, who served under President G.W. Bush, and he’s not the only one. Several lawmakers and the current Cyber Command chief Gen. Keith Alexander are toying with the notion of creating a “.secure” domain where Fourth Amendment rights to privacy are voluntarily foregone in order to keep that corner of the Internet free of cyber criminals.

Read more ....

My Comment: We are going down this pathway, and while setting up the infrastructure for a separate but secure will be expensive .... the alternative of letting everything continue as is may end up being even more pricey.

Number Of Internet-Connected Devices Set To Reach 15 Billion Globally By 2015

New generation of users: Almost three billion people are expected to be connected to the internet by 2015

Everybody's Doing It: Number Of Internet-Connected Devices Set To Reach 15 Billion Globally By 2015 -- The Daily Mail

Forecasters predict there will be 15billion internet-connected devices in use around the world by 2015 - more than two for every person on the planet.

The recent growth in mobile phones and tablets has already pushed the number of devices above the five billion mark.

And fresh technical developments - including internet-connected televisions and cars - will drive a new surge in appliance use in the next four years, according to technology giant Cisco.

Read more ....

Hackers Finding The Holes In Net Safety

From Philly.com:

No security in cyber world.

Major hacking stories in the personal, political, and industrial worlds have shown recently how widespread cyber attacks - from the silly to the vicious - really are.

"They're happening every nanosecond - that's how you have to think," says Ray O'Hara, 2011 president of ASIS International, a security organization. "You just can't go to sleep at night, thinking you're secure."

Read more ....

U.S. Congress Getting Ready To Tax The Internet

How Will States Tax Internet Downloads? Congress May Decide -- Epicenter

Here’s an interesting conundrum, posed by Representative Dennis Ross (R-Florida), at a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing held on Monday:

“Imagine you are sitting in Dulles airport in Virginia, waiting for a flight back to Florida,” Ross began in his opening remarks. “You download a music file from Apple, which is headquartered in California. The music is sent to you via a server in Oklahoma.”

Which of these states should be allowed to tax the sale?

Without a “clear national rule,” he warned at the hearing, “all four states may attempt to tax the transaction.”

Read more ....

My Comment: Another tax grab .... get ready for it.

A Satellite Network Is One Way To Bypass An Internet Shutdown

Could Satellites Bypass an Internet Shutdown? -- Live Science

Online censorship and Internet kill-switches could meet their match if satellite-enabled services and ground peer-to-peer networks become more widespread in the future. That's the view of Kosta Grammatis, CEO and founder of ahumanright.org, who sees Internet access as a basic necessity.

An independent satellite operator could have kept Egyptian protesters online and connected to the outside world despite the Egyptian government's shutdown of Internet Service Providers (ISPs) this past week. Governments would find it difficult to jam an independent satellite signal across an entire country, Grammatis said in a TIME interview.

Read more ....

My Comment: I support anything that gets us away from the clutches of the government.

Governments Seek Veto Powers Over New Domain Names

U.S. Seeks Veto Powers Over New Domain Names -- CNET News

The Obama administration is quietly seeking the power for it and other governments to veto future top-level domain names, a move that raises questions about free expression, national sovereignty, and the role of states in shaping the future of the Internet.

At stake is who will have authority over the next wave of suffixes to supplement the venerable .com, .org, and .net. At least 115 proposals are expected this year, including .car, .health, .nyc, .movie, and .web, and the application process could be finalized at a meeting in San Francisco next month.

Read more ....

My Comment: So much for freedom on the web.

Is The Cyberhug As Good As The Real Thing?

Scientists Develop The 'Cyberhug' -- The Telegraph

Scientists claim the average hug lasts for three seconds, but it has long been claimed that computers could allow us to do so remotely using electrical sensors.

Sensory equipment enabling people to share a hug across cyberspace has been in development for several years, and experts insist it will one day become part of everyday life.

Adrian Cheok, associate professor at Singapore's Nanyang Technological University developed one such system, based on the award-winning Hug-Shirt, that allows parents and children to share "cyberhugs" while miles apart.

Read more ....

My Comment: It can never be as good as the real thing.

Shutting Down The U.S. Internet: A Doomsday Scenario

From CBS News:

For Americans addicted to Facebook and Google, a day without the Internet might seem to last forever, but the effect of going offline would be no less traumatic for the entire U.S. economy, experts say.

While the economy probably could reverse the damage from being offline a few days, every day without the Internet would be a step closer to calamity for manufacturing, finance and other sectors of the economy.

Read more ....

The Web Will Soon be Out of Addresses

Net Approaches Address Exhaustion -- BBC

The last big blocks of the net's dwindling stock of addresses are about to be handed out.

The event that triggers their distribution is widely expected to take place in the next few days.

When that happens each of the five regional agencies that hand out net addresses will get one of the remaining blocks of 16 million addresses.

The addresses in those last five blocks are expected to be completely exhausted by September 2011.

Read more ....

How Egypt Disconnected The Internet

How Egypt Pulled The Plug On The Internet -- CBS News

Within Six Minutes, Internet Providers for 93 Percent of Egypt Went Down - And Have Not Come Back.

(CBS) NEW YORK - The uprising in Egypt is a quintessential 21st century event - born on Facebook and other social networking sites - which led the government to cut off Internet service.

Science and Technology correspondent Daniel Sieberg reports on this desperate effort to keep a lid on dissent.

The Internet blackout was a surprising move for a nation previously known for being open - compared to other countries in the Mideast.

Read more ....

More News On How Egypt Disconnected The Internet

Egypt's Internet service blockade unprecedented -- USA Today
A Look At How Egypt Shut Down The Internet -- Tech Dirt
Egypt Internet Blockade Worst in History -- Mobilemedia

Noor Group, Egypt's last Internet service provider, shuts down -- L.A. Times
Egypt's last Internet provider, The Noor Group, goes dark; 'speak-to-tweet' service launched -- Canadian Press
Egypt's Last ISP, Noor Group, Vanishes from 'Net -- PC Magazine
Egypt’s Last-Standing ISP Goes Dark -- Threat Level
As Final Internet Provider Goes Off-Line, Egyptians Seek Simpler Options -- NPR

Accessing The Internet From Egypt -- NPR (Audio)
Egypt Turns Off the Internet. Now What Happens? -- Technology Review
Egypt’s Internet gambit misfires. Surprised? -- Reuters
Making sense of the internet and Egypt -- John D. Sutter, CNN
Egypt's big internet disconnect -- Andrew McLaughlin, The Guardian

Will The U.S. Get An "Internet Kill Switch"?

After Egypt, Will U.S. Get 'Internet Kill Switch'? -- PC Magazine

With reports of Egypt's government completing shutting down the Internet in the country, talk about an "Internet kill switch" bill in the U.S. has reemerged. Could it happen here?

The bill in question is the Protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010, a cyber-security measure introduced in June by Sen. Joseph Lieberman. It was an over-arching cyber-security measure that, among other things, would create an office of cyberspace policy within the White House and a new cyber-security center within the Homeland Security Department.

Read more ....

More News On The Possibility Of The U.S. Developing And Installing An "Internet Kill Switch"

Internet ‘Kill Switch’ Legislation Back in Play -- Threat Level
Zombie internet 'kill switch' bill back to haunt the Senate -- Washington Examiner
How Governments Flip the Internet’s Kill Switch -- New York Magazine
So how do you shut off a whole nation's Internet? -- MSNBC
Could Egypt Happen Here? Obama's Internet "Kill Switch" -- Fast Company
Internet Kill Switch: Should the United States Emulate Egypt? -- Aol News
What Could Possibly Go Wrong: An Internet "Off" Switch -- Popular Science
Tunisia, Egypt, Miami: The Importance of Internet Choke Points -- The Atlantic
Egypt's 'Net Shutdown a Wakeup Call for Companies -- PC World

A Cybermap Of The Scientific World

(Image: Computed by Olivier H. Beauchesne @ Science-Metrix, inc. Data from Scopus, using books, trade journals and peer-reviewed journals)

Info-Streams Create Cybermap Of The Scientific World -- New Scientist:

Inspired by an earlier image showing connections among Facebook friends, Olivier Beauchesne of the consulting firm Science-Metrix has now created this global map of scientific collaborations.

Read more ....

My Comment: Impressive map.

What Can Go Wrong With An Internet "Off" Switch?

Dropped Connection Turning off the Internet could shut down financial networks, and it wouldn't be easy to turn them back on Jamie Sneddon

What Could Possibly Go Wrong: An Internet "Off" Switch -- Popular Science

The last time someone could shut down the Internet was probably in 1969, when it consisted of two computers. But in recent years, concerned with the possibility of a “cyberattack,” Congress has been exploring such an option.

Read more ....

My Comment: The last paragraph is the best point in this report ....

.... A more subtle (or cash-strapped) cyberterrorist might simply fake a cyberattack that would trick the U.S. itself into flipping the switch. No one really knows what would happen then—not only would e-mails go undelivered, but ATMs, stock exchanges and the flow of funds of all kinds could be disrupted. And then we would still face another challenge: how to turn the thing back on.

Indeed.

Three Questions: The Internet's Next Generation

Photo: photos.com

From Voice of America:

Add this to the list of things you didn't know you had to worry about: the most commonly used version of the Internet is almost out of room.

The global organization that helps coordinate the allocation of Internet addresses is warning only about 200 million are left. That may sound like a lot, but the Number Resource Organization says more than 200 million addresses were assigned in just the last nine months.

Read more ....

A Herculean Effort To Deliver Broadband By Satellite

Image: The payload for Hylas was developed through Esa's Artes telecoms research programme

From The BBC:

The date was September 1999 and banker David Williams was sitting on a beach in Santa Monica:

"I'd just spent a soul-destroying day at a satellite manufacturer, trying to push forward a project and getting bogged down in just the most ridiculous bureaucracy. And I was thinking there had to be an easier way of doing the satellite business. It's not that complicated - you get some money, you pay someone to build a satellite, you launch it, you flog the capacity. How hard can that be? I was venting my frustration to my wife and she said: 'if you think you're so bloody clever, go and do it yourself!'"

Read more ....

Global ‘Internet Treaty’ Proposed

Proposals put before the Internet Governance Forum would enshrine in law the principles of free speech and net neutrality for the web Photo: ALAMY

From The Telegraph:

Deal would enshrine in law the founding principles of open standards and net neutrality, and protect the web from political interference.

The proposal was presented at the Internet Governance Forum in Lithuania last week, and outlined 12 “principles of internet governance”, including a commitment from countries to sustain the technological foundations that underpin the web’s infrastructure.

Read more ....

Why Isn't The Price Of Broadband Obeying Moore's Law?

From Technology Review:

The quality and cost of broadband Internet access haven't budged in years.

The U.S. government doesn't keep an index of broadband internet prices by which to evaluate the success of its broadband promotion policies - the statistics they do have are mushed together with prices for dial-up access - so a couple of researchers at Northwestern University decided to build their own.

What they discovered is that broadband internet prices have remained nearly stagnant since 2004, despite the explosive pace of adoption since then - from approximately 20 percent of U.S. households in 2004 to more than 65 percent today.

Read more ....

CrackBerries And Games Addicts: Beware An Internet Hit

Just 10 more minutes (Image: Bay Ismoyo/Getty)

From New Scientist:

WHEN does our predilection for internet technology cross over into harmful, addictive behaviour? It's a question that is taxing law-makers and health professionals.

For some, the idea that technology can be addictive is simply wrong-headed (see "User or abuser?"). That notion may soon be tested in the American courts. Last month, 51-year-old Craig Smallwood, an online gamer, was given leave by a court in Hawaii to proceed with a lawsuit against NC Interactive, complaining that he received insufficient warnings regarding the alleged "addictiveness" of its online game Lineage II, which he claims to have spent 20,000 hours playing since 2004.

Read more ....