Group items tagged

mulling an Internet filtering system similar to China’s controversial “Green Dam” project

Government has called for a tender for a system that could block “undesirable websites.”

The MSC Malaysia Bill of Guarantees specifies that the Internet will not be censored to ensure the success of the MSC Malaysia initiative

Tech giants unite against Google By Maggie Shiels Technology reporter, BBC News, Silicon Valley Not everyone in the coalition wants the deal blocked, some want revisions Three technology heavyweights are joining a coalition to fight Google's attempt to create what could be the world's largest virtual library.Amazon, Microsoft and Yahoo will sign up to the Open Book Alliance being spearheaded by the Internet Archive. They oppose a legal settlement that could make Google the main source for many online works. "Google is trying to monopolise the library system," the Internet Archive's founder Brewster Kahle told BBC News.

Critics have claimed the settlement will transform the future of the book industry and of public access to the cultural heritage of mankind embodied in books. The Internet Archive scans around 1000 books a day at 10 cents a page "The techniques we have built up since the enlightenment of having open access, public support for libraries, lots of different organisational structures, lots of distributed ownership of books that can be exchanged, resold and repackaged in different ways - all of that is being thrown out in this particular approach," warned Mr Kahle. The non-profit Internet Archive has long been a vocal opponent of this agreement. It is also in the business of scanning books and has digitised over half a million of them to date. All are available free. As the 4 September deadline approaches, the number of groups and organisations voicing their opposition is growing. But with three of the world's best-known technology companies joining the chorus, the Open Book Alliance can expect to make headlines the world over.

In its defence, Google has argued that the deal brings great benefits to authors and will make millions of out-of-print books widely available online and in libraries. In a statement, the company said: "The Google Books settlement is injecting more competition into the digital books space, so it's understandable why our competitors might fight hard to prevent more competition."

Twitter taken down to silence one man New York August 9, 2009 CYBER attacks on Twitter and other popular web services last week disrupted the lives of millions of internet users, but the real target was one man: a 34-year-old economics professor from the republic of Georgia.

The attacks were ''the equivalent of bombing a TV station because you don't like one of the newscasters'', said Mikko Hypponen, chief research officer at internet security company F-Secure.

The hackers used a botnet, a network of thousands of infected personal computers, to direct massive amounts of junk traffic to Cyxymu's pages on Twitter, LiveJournal, YouTube and Facebook in an attempt to disable them.The millions that were affected were, in a sense, simply bystanders, experiencing shrapnel from an internet blitzkrieg that took aim at one person and knocked out an entire community.

more than one in four Europeans had never used a PC

People above the age of 65 and the unemployed were the least active online

Nearly 70% of people under the age of 24 use the internet every day, compared to the EU average of 43%. But this same group is reluctant to pay to download or use online content, such as music or video, with 33% saying that they would not pay anything at all.

This year more than a thousand Web sites have been shut down for “vulgar” content, although some critics complain that academic or public service sites that deal with sexually transmitted diseases have also been swept up in the juggernaut.

Industry experts say that at least 90 percent of all online games in China have some form of violence, whether they involve homicidal kung-fu masters, sword-wielding hobbits or monsters with a taste for human flesh

There are summer camps for teenagers who spend too much online,

first official clampdown on a local site

went against the government's promise not to censor the internet.

The U.S. government should advance an "ambitious" plan for universal broadband availability and should ensure that broadband networks are open to all content and applications, according to a new study on public information needs in the digital age.

calls for new ideas to share news and information, even as the traditional newspaper industry appears near death.

The study calls for the U.S. government to increase support for public media and push ahead with the government transparency and accountability efforts

And so, to the surprise of buyers, Amazon erased the two books -- which had been paid for and delivered -- from the electronic reader.

In the age of networked digital devices, it seems that values such as the sanctity of the private sphere, the protection of our private property and the inviolability of our correspondence no longer count for very much

All of these devices can be remotely modified at any time through software updates. So you could say that an iPhone doesn't really belong to you -- at least not in quite the same way that your refrigerator or bicycle does.

Multinational corporations manufacture products in many countries and sell to consumers around the world. Money, technology and raw materials move ever more swiftly across national borders.

The term globalization encompasses a range of social, political, and economic changes. Within the section Defining Globalization, we provide an introduction to the key debates on this issue. The materials look at the main features of globalization, asking what is new, what drives the process, how it changes politics, and how it affects global institutions like the UN.

Cases of Globalization explore the various manifestations of interconnectedness in the world, noting how globalization affects real people and places.

most everybody around the world stopped what they were doing — on television, on the Internet and on the street — to look and listen.

as the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, showed in 1997, communal sorrow is moving, public frenzy is alarming, but the two together make for irresistible television.

Brian Williams of NBC, who sat on a special platform outside the Staples Center, told his colleague Lester Holt that the public had a way of deciding for itself what matters, “despite, at some times, the news media’s better wishes.” He added ruefully, “And this is an event because it is.”

Charter 08

He feels a deep bond with people who are treated unjustly, he says, and he advocates on their behalf on the Internet, in police stations and in courtrooms, for which he has earned a reputation with the powers that be.

It revolves around his fifth, and most prominent, client in Fujian, the man who disappeared during the Olympic Games in Beijing almost a year ago, all because he had applied for a permit to protest in one of the "protest parks" the government had designated for that purpose.

Students to dump textbooks for e-books Carmel EganAugust 16, 2009 HEAVY book-filled school bags could soon be a thing of the past, with the e-book industry claiming most of students' textbooks will be contained in light hand-held portable devices within three years. The internet-linked reading devices will store hundreds of e-textbooks bought online or borrowed from school libraries. ''E-textbooks will be mainstream within three years,'' the executive director of DA Direct, Australia's largest distributor of portable reading devices and e-books, Richard Siegersma, predicted. Mr Siegersma said digital technology would lead to the costs of e-textbooks falling in a year to 18 months. ''There will be just-in-time and customised delivery to flexible, full-colour screens; textbooks with audio and video components; touch screens for handwriting and margin note-taking and text highlighting,'' he said.

HEAVY book-filled school bags could soon be a thing of the past, with the e-book industry claiming most of students' textbooks will be contained in light hand-held portable devices within three years.

''E-textbooks will be mainstream within three years,''

out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media

1 out of 8 couples married in the U.S. last year met via social media

Generation Y and Z consider e-mail passé…In 2009 Boston College stopped distributing e-mail addresses to incoming freshme

QQ is China’s largest instant messenger service; in 2008 it owned 86% of the market, with MSN owning 5%, and a bunch of others owning less. QQ dominates the market – but the money made seems not to be from its instant messenger; rather its leveraging and channeling that huge audience through a gauntlet of micro-payments.

How is this achieved? It’s very smart – QQ doesn’t aim for the brain, it aims for the heart using QQshow – which is very similar to Yahoo Avatars, but with a  “billion’s of RMB from China youth market” twist.

QQ is head and shoulder’s above its competition, of this there is no doubt. Why? QQ is more than an instant messenger service, it’s a portal to a vast array of entertainment services in China; ie: while MSN, skype, etc, focus solely on instant messages, QQ IM is just the first step in a long sale.

over 30 types of China's online games worth 71.78 million USD were exported to overseas markets. Revenue from overseas markets has become a new profit growth point for China's online game enterprises

If China's cultural industry seeks to "go global," Chinese enterprises must improve their "skills" to establish their own brands

the introduction of traditional theatrical repertoire and performances, toy manufacturing and other sectors to overseas markets have also had a rich "Chinese flavor."

One of President Obama's campaign promises was to make the US government more open and transparent.

"It's a great opportunity to redefine how government works," said Mr O'Reilly

"We've got to recognise that we can't treat the American people as subjects but as co-creators of ideas. We need to tap into the vast amounts of knowledge... in communities across the country.

One task at a time the only way to get things done San Francisco August 27, 2009 MULTITASKING is a bane not a blessing