Mar 30 '10
S.773 - Cybersecurity Act of 2009 - This is an insanely scary bill that just made it out of committee which includes the ability for the president, without oversight, to
What are we, Iran? Unless "critical infrastructure information system or network" is clarified, this has a high probability of being abused. I really hope congress doesn't give this the time of day, otherwise there is some letter writing that needs to be done."declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network"
Jun 18 '09
Tom Brokaw in 1994, reporting on "The Internet" - Featuring Bill Gates!
listed in: bill gates, classic, internet, tom brokaw, youtube | Comments (1)
Sep 1 '08
perspctv - Election predictions based on tweets, blog posts, and Google searches.
listed in: internet, politics, presidential election | ∞
Sep 1 '08
Internet Traffic Begins to Bypass the U.S. - Internet companies are starting to move away from the United States because fear of the Patriot Act.
Apr 22 '08
Ontology is Overrated: Categories, Links, and Tags - For those hating on Gmail's labels. Why folders are bad and outdated. And there was a comment by somebody that didn't like the conversation view. WTF?!
listed in: internet, organization | ∞
Mar 26 '08
How $5 Makes a Difference in Online Comment Quality - A side-by-side comparison of comments on Metafilter (which costs $5 for an account to comment) and YouTube (where any idiot can comment). Craigslist drastically improved the quality of job postings in large cities by charging $25. Amazon.com improved movie and book ratings by showcasing reviews where the reviewer uses their real name, verified by their credit card. The Ithmus has a high quality of comments because they require people to post with their real name as well. Hopefully other websites will use one of these two methods to improve their own content quality. *cough* youtube, digg *cough*
listed in: internet, metafilter, spam, stupidity, youtube | ∞
Feb 26 '08
Feb 8 '08
H.R. 4137: College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007 - The bill passed house yesterday. Sounds like a good act, but check out this bit snuck into section 494: that requires universities to "develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity."
Feb 4 '08
Google is not happy with Microsoft's $44 billion Bid for Yahoo - And Flickr users are terrified. But I was scared of Flickr's future when Yahoo! bought it. I still am. Does anyone remember GeoCities? The very community-driven web hosting company? Yahoo crippled it.
listed in: flickr, geocities, google, internet, microsoft, yahoo | Comments (1)
Dec 23 '07
Flickr Stats - Flickr very quietly launched a really cool stats page recently. Enable yours today!
listed in: internet, photography | ∞
Dec 22 '07
At 71, Physics Professor Is a Web Star - It's cool that these large universities are sharing their knowledge (for free) with the world. And this professor is so good he could fix our problems in Iraq:
A fan who said he was a physics teacher from Iraq gushed: “You are now my Scientific Father. In spite of the bad occupation and war against my lovely IRAQ, you made me love USA because you are there and MIT is there.”
Apr 1 '07
Free Wireless Internet from Google - Just a toilet away!
Jan 1 '07
Feb 23 '06
Google and Censorship
I read a frustrating opinion piece in the Badger Herald today condemning the Google Censorship of Google.cn in China. He said that all Google cares about is money and their shareholders, and don't care about the Chinese citizens who won't get full search results.
But here's the thing--- without Google censoring their own results, the Chinese government did it for them. The Google search engine became slow and unreliable due to the filters, and at times users were even being redirected to other government-run search engines. At this time, Google -- by far -- provides the best search results. Providing a fast, accurate search engine at http://www.google.cn, with just a few politically sensitive keywords censored, give users in China the ability to find more than they ever had before. Google is also up front about the censoring, and alerts users when their filters are censored. And the final thing is, the original uncensored-by-google http://www.google.com/ig?hl=zh-CN search is still available.
I think it's better to have a fast, accurate, powerful search engine professionally censored by Google than to have an unreliable, poor searching, hack job of censorship search engine. If Google doesn't censor, the government will.
Google explains these same things in their weblog.
