http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-china.html

This is big news.  Google will likely shutdown operations in China due to highly sophisticated and targeted cyberattacks resulting in the theft of some Google IP and:

“we have evidence to suggest that a primary goal of the attackers was accessing the Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.”

Google has reported it to the relevant authorities, one of them being the state department:
http://www.state.gov/secretary/rm/2010/01/135105.htm

On a related note, if you search “google.blogspot.com” (that’s the official google blog) in any chinese search engine, you won’t get any result, and you may not be able to search for while after that.

Go to baidu.com and search “google.com” or “blogspot.com” and you’ll get results for both.  But search ”google.blogspot.com” and see what happens.

Here is more information about the attack, from cybersecurity firm F-Secure:
http://www.f-secure.com/weblog/archives/00001854.html

I’m very interested in seeing the effect this will have on the democratization of China, given that Internet freedom has become so intertwined with human freedom.

Information flowing out of Iran has slowed to a trickle because of the the governments intense control over the Internet.  The government has banned usage of social networking sites including Twitter, Facebook, and Youtube, and is monitoring traffic to ensure suppression.  But many Iranians are getting around those blocks by browsing over an encrypted network call The Onion Router (Tor). The problem is, Tor relies on bandwidth from it’s users, and since it’s use is not as widespread as regular Internet traffic, users experience very slow transfer speeds when using the Internet.  The more Tor relays (bandwidth donators) there are, the faster the Tor network becomes, so you can help Iran’s Internet users browse safely by becoming a Tor Relay, click on the link above the “Featured Topic” section to download a flyer about Tor relays that contains links to all the information you need to help out.

P.S. - please distribute the flyer whenever and where ever you can.

Thanks to user “Cogs” at the WhyWeProtest forums for making the original flyer.

You know what Flash is, because you’re not stupid.  You know how wonderful Flash can be, and you also know how terrible it can be.  You know that Flash is to the Internet, what peanut butter is to chocolate.

What you may not know, however, is just how limiting Flash is to the potential of the Internet.  You see, the Flash player is patented by Adobe Systems Inc. and comes with a restrictive license agreement.  A few excerpts from the license agreement that you’ve probably never read:

Section 3.4:

No Modification or Reverse Engineering. You may not modify, adapt, translate or create derivative works based upon the Software. You will not reverse engineer, decompile, disassemble or otherwise attempt to discover the source code of the Software except to the extent you may be expressly permitted to reverse engineer or decompile under applicable law.

Section 5:

The Software and any authorized copies that you make are the intellectual property of Adobe Systems Incorporated and its suppliers. The structure, organization and code of the Software are the valuable trade secrets and confidential information of Adobe Systems Incorporated and its suppliers.

So, Adobe has an Intellectual monopoly over Flash.  Aside from the EULA, why is that a bad thing?  It’s bad because it represents centralized, proprietary control over a very significant portion of the Internet, which goes against the open, standardized nature of the Internet.

HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and php are the building blocks of 99.9% of websites, and they are all open standards, sactioned by the World Wide Web Consortium (w3c), which means that anyone can use these languages to build anything they want or need.  The standards are there to help developers ensure that everyone who looks at their website or uses their code sees the same thing no matter what web browser they use.

Flash is not open-source, and it is patented, therefore, it cannot be a w3c standard.  Because of its proprietary nature, Flash lacks the versatility of other standards, which is why I say it limits the potential of the Internet.

Flash has only one true competitor in the market, and that’s Microsoft’s Silverlight, which is also bogged down in patents and licensing agreements, so it’s not an improvement.

The Free Software Foundation sees the development of an open alternative to Flash as the number one priority, so they have Gnash, a less capable (it’s in development), but more open and friendlier player.

But the w3c might just render everyone’s efforts to compete with Flash unnecessary.  With the new draft of HTML (version 5), w3c adds the <video> tag.  Ars Technica explains the benefits of this new feature:

For content providers like YouTube and DailyMotion, the HTML 5 video element offers numerous advantages. It integrates seamlessly with conventional HTML content and can be manipulated with JavaScript and CSS. This enables Web developers to build video player interfaces that are more consistent with the rest of their website. The ability to control playback with JavaScript allows video to be a more native part of the user experience in interactive Web applications.

Downloading flash might not be a big problem for the end user, but for site owners who want to host video, the licensing costs are tremendous.  HTML 5 helps to change that.

Mozilla’s Firefox 3.5 (coming out very soon!) is HTML 5 compatible, and all the other web browsers will follow suite in the near future, so say “good bye!” to Flash, and hello to HTML 5!

The developer community around Wave will hopefully become as large as that of Mozilla.  Imagine seeing the quality and qauntity of extensions that firefox has, on the Wave api.

With radio, television, newspapers, and all other classic information dissemination mediums, ads pay for things, so pissing the advertisers off with objectionable content is a bad idea.  You don’t want to loose funding or be canceled outright for saying something the advertisers don’t like.  Even some websites are subject to this if their advertisers or sponsors are corporate in nature.

Mythbusters vs. RFID

Jeff Gerstmann vs. Eidos

CNN + Exxon Mobil

With the internet, as it exists today, ads rarely effect the content you see on a website, unless the ads are corporate sponsors of some kind.  But for sites like this one, Joystiq, Engadget, and Ars Technica, ads are placed through an ad service like Google Adsense, which detects the kind of content on the site, and displays ads that are relevant.  The pool of ads that Adsense pulls from is maintained by Google, not the manufacturer of the product being advertised.  So you could have an ad about remington guns on a blog that favors Smith and Weston guns, and there would be absolutely no backlash from Smith and Weston, probably no backlash from readers of the blog, and certainly no backlash from Google.

Ads on websites are not a bad thing.  They help the owner of the domain pay for things, they help the company whos product is being advertised, and they help the ad service thats displaying the ads.  All of this without much complaint from anybody.

You are not under the thumb of an advertiser when you’re on the internet, and that’s one reason the medium is so great.  If net neutrality is protected, this remains true.

update: I want to add one point.  Though Pay-per-click advertising cannot, by its very nature, affect a websites content, it is a scammable system.  Pyrabang.com is trying to reduce that scamming with an earn-per-click system:

“With PyraBang’s earn-per-click system you’ll earn micro-payments on clicks of your news, entertainment, music or advertising. Pay per click systems are wrought with fraud since it’s the advertiser who pays for the click. There are actually groups of webmasters out there who make a killing clicking on each-other’s websites! With earn-per-click, there is no incentive for webmasters to be fraudulent because they are actually paying for each click in return for new members being added to their groups. This is a win-win for both the webmaster and the advertiser!”

S. 773, the Cyber Security Act of 2009, was introduced by Senator John Rockefeller (D, WV) with Senators Evan Bayh (D, IN), Bill Nelson (D, FL), and Olympia Snowe (R, ME) as cosponsors.

Leslie Harris of the Center for Democracy and Technology (CDT):

“The cybersecurity threat is real, but such a drastic federal intervention in private communications technology and networks could harm both security and privacy.”

The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Jennifer Granick:

“Essentially, the Act would federalize critical infrastructure security. Since many of our critical infrastructure systems (banks, telecommunications, energy) are in the hands of the private sector, the bill would create a major shift of power away from users and companies to the federal government. This is a potentially dangerous approach that favors the dramatic over the sober response.”

In forums and comment threads across the internet, users are typing in all caps, scared that this act will give the president unfettered power to “SHUT DOWN THE INTERNET”. I’ve read the bill, and it is as scary as everybody makes it out to be, but let me remind you:  one cannot simply shut down the Internet, that’s virtually impossible.

There are a few ways for you to understand this legislation:

1. Read the full text of the bill, and use your superb linguistic abilities to comprehend it.  Here’s the full text.

2. Read this bill breakdown in it’s entirety, it’ll take awhile, but you’ll understand everything about the bill and you’ll know pretty well how to talk about the bill with others.  In bold lettering throughout the text, you’ll find key points which you can follow if you’re speed reading it.

3. If you’re lazy, just skip to the summary at the bottom.  You’ll get the main points of the bill, but it’ll be out of context and you won’t be well-read enough to discuss the bill with others.

I’ve broken the bill down into each section.  I summarize what each section proposes and provide excerpts of the sections.  Have fun.

Section 2, (6):

Paul Kurtz, a Partner and chief operating officer of Good Harbor Consulting as well as a senior advisor to the Obama Transition Team for cybersecurity, recently stated that the United States is unprepared to respond to a ‘cyber-Katrina’ and that ‘a massive cyber disruption could have a cascading, long-term impact without adequate co-ordination between government and the private sector.’.

Read the rest of this entry »

Full story

Thje “Creation and Internet” bill is a piece of French legislation, backed by President Sarkozy, that would put stif penalties on Internet users caught downloading illegal material.  The bill would implement a three-strikes rule, allowing ISP’s (or forcing them), to disconnect repeat offenders of the new law.

The legislation passed both houses on the first reading, but during the final vote in the National Assembly, a bunch of Socialists (as in the political affiliation, not the swear) showed up to a nearly empty chamber, and tilted the vote against the bill, 21-15.

The bill is nicknamed HADOPI because of a clause in the text proposing the creation of a High Authority for the dissemination of works and protection of rights on the Internet.

Full Story

A National fiber broadband network to reach 90% of Australia’s residents with speeds of 100mbps and up.  The partially government funded infrastructure overhaul will cost approximately AUS$43 billion over the next 8 years, and the network will be available for any ISP to use.

The government intends to create a public/private company to contruct the network, and 51% of the company will be owned by the government.  Five years after the development of the network, the government will sell off all of it’s share of the company, leaving it in the hands of the private sector.

What’s still unclear is what rules the government will impose on the use of the fiber lines, and whether there will be regulations preventing monopolization of the network.  Not to mention how the private company will operate when the government relinquishes its majority share.

Although Wikapedia is very mainstream, and is a commonly used some may still not know where the functionality, and ease of use comes from. The software for Wikapedia is actually available for free download and has a GNU license. Recently I had the chance to work on a project for work that allowed me to install, test, and observe the flexibility and ease of use of this software.

Starting with the good. The installation process only took 10-15 minutes. The majority of the time was spend setting up a folder with write privileges, and the MYSQL database, and users. Once installed it only required that the localsettings.php file be moved to the main directory.

Once up and running it is incredibly easy to just start throwing information and documents into the WIKI. I however recommend that you take a moment to first decide what additions to the main layout you may need in terms of user management, and extra functionality as it is much easier to add this prior to filling up your wiki with everything in your hearts desire. There is one other bonus to setting up all your preferences ahead of time, the oops I broke it rule is pretty much a given on the first time install of any new software.

In addition to ease of install, and use the wiki also allows for one of the best search features I have ever seen. The only issue found with searching was from sub name spaces (sub sections of the wiki) not searching for less that 4 characters.

For the bad the user management features are limited without adding additional extensions. This would not be a real issue if you have access to PHP files, and know how to edit them. With the theme of ease of use it is surprising that user management still required knowledge of PHP.

Overall the software is a great addition to any site that needs to store mass amounts of information provided by its users, or for any company looking to centralize their training documents, and other company information. Please feel free to visit the link below, and download a copy for yourself.

MediaWiki

In an effort to close the 15 billion dollar budget deficit, New York Governor David Paterson proposed a 4% tax on all internet downloads. The proposal is raising eye-brows, considering the tax would likely not benefit the state, and may even harm it.

For businesses based in New York, sales tax on goods distributed within the state makes sense. Otherwise Internet tax should not exist.

If I buy an item from Newegg.com, which is based in California, I shouldn’t have to pay California sales tax, because I don’t live in California. On the other hand, I shouldn’t have to pay my states sales tax, because Newegg.com isn’t based in my state.

It should be that simple. The Streamlined Sales Tax Project (SSTP) is not necessary, and potentially dangerous for consumers.

More information:

Background of ITFA (PDF)

E-Commerce Taxation Links