You have probably noticed that across the Web, two different things are happening right now:
1. More and more sites are asking you to pay a fee to subscribe to all or part of the Web site.
2. Advertising is becoming more and more "in your face." There are now pop-up ads, ads that play music and sound tracks, ads that swim across the screen, and so on.
The second trend is true of nearly all commercial Web sites. There are many new forms of Web advertising, and they are more and more obvious. Many Web users have questions about all of these new ad types. For example:
* Why do Web sites have so many ads now?
* Why do Web sites allow pop-up ads that open new windows? (Many people hate closing them all.)
* Why do Web sites allow these floating ads that cover the content so I cannot read it?
* How can I make all these ads go away?
In this article, we will look at all the different forms of Web advertising in use today, as well as the economics that are driving them, so that you can have a much better understanding of how Web advertising works. Whether you are a casual surfer or someone running your own Web site, you will find this article to be a real eye-opener.
Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/web-advertising.htm
Online: 3/15/2011
How Domain Name Servers Work
If you spend any time on the Internet sending e-mail or browsing the Web, then you use domain name servers without even realizing it. Domain name servers, or DNS, are an incredibly important but completely hidden part of the Internet, and they are fascinating. The DNS system forms one of the largest and most active distributed databases on the planet. Without DNS, the Internet would shut down very quickly.
When you use the Web or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the URL "http://www.howstuffworks.com" contains the domain name howstuffworks.com. So does the e-mail address "iknow@howstuffworks.com."
Human-readable names like "howstuffworks.com" are easy for people to remember, but they don't do machines any good. All of the machines use names called IP addresses to refer to one another. For example, the machine that humans refer to as "www.howstuffworks.com" has the IP address 70.42.251.42. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet's domain name servers (DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address. During a day of browsing and e-mailing, you might access the domain name servers hundreds of times!
In this article, we'll take a look at the DNS system so you can understand how it works and appreciate its amazing capabilities.
Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm
Online:3/15/2011
When you use the Web or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the URL "http://www.howstuffworks.com" contains the domain name howstuffworks.com. So does the e-mail address "iknow@howstuffworks.com."
Human-readable names like "howstuffworks.com" are easy for people to remember, but they don't do machines any good. All of the machines use names called IP addresses to refer to one another. For example, the machine that humans refer to as "www.howstuffworks.com" has the IP address 70.42.251.42. Every time you use a domain name, you use the Internet's domain name servers (DNS) to translate the human-readable domain name into the machine-readable IP address. During a day of browsing and e-mailing, you might access the domain name servers hundreds of times!
In this article, we'll take a look at the DNS system so you can understand how it works and appreciate its amazing capabilities.
Source: http://computer.howstuffworks.com/dns.htm
Online:3/15/2011
Immortality only 20 years away says scientist
The 61-year-old American, who has predicted new technologies arriving before, says our understanding of genes and computer technology is accelerating at an incredible rate.
He says theoretically, at the rate our understanding is increasing, nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be available in 20 years time.
Mr Kurzweil adds that although his claims may seem far-fetched, artificial pancreases and neural implants are already available.
Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.
"Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.
"Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen.
"Heart-attack victims – who haven't taken advantage of widely available bionic hearts – will calmly drive to the doctors for a minor operation as their blood bots keep them alive.
"Nanotechnology will extend our mental capacities to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes.
"If we want to go into virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. And in our daily lives, hologram like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening.
"So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs."
Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6217676/Immortality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.html
Online: 3/15/2011
He says theoretically, at the rate our understanding is increasing, nanotechnologies capable of replacing many of our vital organs could be available in 20 years time.
Mr Kurzweil adds that although his claims may seem far-fetched, artificial pancreases and neural implants are already available.
Mr Kurzweil calls his theory the Law of Accelerating Returns. Writing in The Sun, Mr Kurzweil said: "I and many other scientists now believe that in around 20 years we will have the means to reprogramme our bodies' stone-age software so we can halt, then reverse, ageing. Then nanotechnology will let us live for ever.
"Ultimately, nanobots will replace blood cells and do their work thousands of times more effectively.
"Within 25 years we will be able to do an Olympic sprint for 15 minutes without taking a breath, or go scuba-diving for four hours without oxygen.
"Heart-attack victims – who haven't taken advantage of widely available bionic hearts – will calmly drive to the doctors for a minor operation as their blood bots keep them alive.
"Nanotechnology will extend our mental capacities to such an extent we will be able to write books within minutes.
"If we want to go into virtual-reality mode, nanobots will shut down brain signals and take us wherever we want to go. Virtual sex will become commonplace. And in our daily lives, hologram like figures will pop in our brain to explain what is happening.
"So we can look forward to a world where humans become cyborgs, with artificial limbs and organs."
Source:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/6217676/Immortality-only-20-years-away-says-scientist.html
Online: 3/15/2011
Can we live without digital technology?
Is it possible to exist without digital technology? Nick Galvin rewinds for two days.
My youngest daughter is in tears. She points accusingly at her older sister. "She's being mean!" she sobs. "She won't show me the picture on the camera."
Daughter No. 1, it turns out, has taken a picture with an old camera we gave her. I explain to my youngest that this is a film camera and that, unlike a digital camera, she will only be able to see the picture once the film is developed.
She looks dubious and, as she wanders off to cause mayhem elsewhere, I can tell she doesn't believe me.
And why should she? She has grown up surrounded by digital devices that make everything instant and convenient. Why would anyone want to go back to the old analog ways, stuffing around with something as old-fashioned as, say, film?
She has never known anything different in her short life. But this proliferation of digital devices has only really taken off in the past couple of decades.
All of which got me and the Icon editor thinking: what would it be like to abandon digital technology, for a while at least?
What would it be like to do without all these gadgets we take for granted and, as much as possible, to do things the old analog way, even if for only a short period?
The challenge is then made - go digital cold turkey for 48 hours.
Without thinking too much, I agree. I mean, how hard can it be? It's not like doing without food or, God forbid, wine for two days. Surely I am not so far down the path of digital dependence that going tech-free for a short while would be that painful.
How wrong I was.
The first task is to work out how much digital equipment I rely on each day. Even a brief inventory around the house reveals how far digital technology has invaded just about every nook and cranny of my daily life.
There's all the obvious stuff such as the computer, the TV, digital cameras, the mobile phone and iPods and PDAs but then you need to consider all the pieces of kit that come with so-called embedded systems.
These embedded systems processors are the brains behind the microwave in the kitchen, the washing machine in the laundry and even the car in the driveway - its engine control unit and anti-lock braking systems, among others.
Without feeding the family with home-grown vegies, making our own clothes and living in a yurt outside Nimbin, dodging the ubiquitous stream of ones and zeros will be nigh-on impossible.
Time to set some boundaries on my two days of digital deprivation. I am not going to go without power and water and I reserve the right to use my car but otherwise I'll try to do without every other digital device in my life.
Day one does not get off to a good start as I fail to correctly set the old alarm clock that I'd dug out of the bottom of the cupboard. Don't ask me how but after years of pressing the same buttons to set my digital clock, the simple act of setting a wind-up device appears to be beyond me.
The whole family is now late, so the hour before getting the kids off to school becomes even more fraught than usual. Matters are not helped when my wife points out that, under the rules of my self-imposed techno-purdah, I am not allowed to reheat my stone-cold coffee in the microwave.
If I didn't know her better, I'd say she enjoys that particular moment.
I'd already told my boss I would be working from home that day due to my exile from the 21st century (not much she could say to that, although I think it would wear pretty thin if I tried to use it again), so I settle down to work.
Resisting the temptation to turn on the computer and check my email, an action these days that is almost as reflexive as breathing, I take out my notebook and pen and begin making notes for this article. After 20 minutes my wrist begins cramping up and it occurs to me that I haven't sat down and written by hand for this length of time since I was in high school.
Other than making shorthand notes and signing the odd credit card coupon, there is almost no point in my daily life that involves actually writing with a pen - everything is done on a computer or perhaps via text message. Bizarrely, it appears that I've forgotten how to write.
I am also beginning to miss the internet for research purposes. I'm old enough to remember journalism in the pre-internet days when research meant borrowing a dusty envelope of cuttings from the library which was only a few weeks out of date if you were lucky. Now, with the internet at our disposal we have instant access to . . . well . . . everything, including a private database of every story printed in every sizeable publication in the country.
Trying to research a story without going online proves a lot tougher than I imagined so I decide to head off to do the chores my wife has left for me.
She'd asked me to pay a couple of bills. With the incredible convenience of the Bpay system, this is the work of a couple of minutes - however, under my analog regime, I have to resort to old-fashioned methods.
After a five-minute walk from my front door, I am standing in a queue at The Post Office That Time Forgot.
Getting two bills paid becomes a 40-minute task, however, that does include a long chat catching up with a couple of neighbours, who I would ordinarily not have bumped into that day, so it isn't all bad.
Looking back over the first tech-free 24 hours it is clear that it has been a highly unproductive work day. I'm used to working from home and invariably find I get more done than I would in the office. But working remotely involves heavy dependence on technology, using a combination of email, the internet, mobile phones and Fairfax's own sophisticated virtual private network. Without all this gear, I am pretty much lost.
When day two dawns things get off to a better start as I have finally got the hang of the alarm clock. Doing without email and the internet today should be easier as it's a Saturday and there's no work to be done.
However, going without music is a much bigger problem. I love music and we have something playing in the house (generally jazz) pretty much all the time. All my music is now stored on a laptop and iPod, making it easy to pipe around the house via a system of wired and wireless speakers. It's a neat use of digital technology but one I'm going to have to get by without using for a day at least.
A mate who lives nearby owns a turntable, which I can probably use without breaking the spirit of the experiment. After picking up the mobile to call him and copping a warning glare from my wife, I walk around to his house and lug back the turntable plus a few vinyl records from his collection.
Listening to vinyl is fun for a while (the kids call the records "those big, old CDs") but it soon begins to pall, largely due to the inconvenience of mucking about lifting LPs on and off the turntable and the limited amount of music available - when you're used to 500 albums on your iPod, half a dozen albums soon get pretty repetitive.
Later we head down to the beach for a late-afternoon dip. Normally I'd shoot off a couple of text messages to other friends telling them where we are going and inviting them to join us. Not today, though. For the first time I begin to feel a little disconnected from my own personal network. We have a great time at the beach anyway.
My wife and I round off the day sharing dinner cooked on our non-digital, low-tech LPG cooker and a bottle of wine. Typically, a Saturday evening would see us watching a rented DVD but instead we sit and talk, then read for a while.
Next day, as I get back on the digital treadmill and attend to a mountain of emails and text messages (some a little grumpy from friends and colleagues who think they are being ignored), I have time to reflect on my brief, and imperfect, experiment.
There's no doubt the miracle of digital technology adds a lot to my daily life. For instance, I would really miss my vast digital music collection which accompanies me everywhere on my iPod. Likewise, I would not want to give up my digital camera and go back to expensive and messy film.
But there is also no doubt that the stream of ones and zeros that have insinuated themselves into every corner of our lives also has a downside.
The digital revolution has always been about making things faster but faster doesn't always mean better. Sometimes it's good to flick the off switch and remind ourselves what it is like to live life at a more human pace.
Now where's my PDA?
The future is digital - just don't ask me what it means
Talk about any modern technology and sooner or later - probably sooner - the word digital is bound to crop up.
But it's a pretty good guess that, pressed to define what it means to digitise something, average users, me included, would be hard pushed to come up with a convincing explanation.
The Macquarie Dictionary defines "digital" as "of or relating to a device which represents a variable as a series of digits".
It goes on to give the example of a digital watch, which "shows the passing of time by a series of changing numbers", presumably as opposed to an analog watch which uses a hand sweeping around a dial.
"If you create something that relies on a naturally occurring underlying physics then it is normally analog," says Tim Hesketh, associate professor at the University of NSW's School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. "The world is inherently analog - there are very few naturally occurring digital systems. Nearly all digital systems are man-made."
A film camera is an example of an analog device because it relies on the underlying physics of light falling on grains of silver halide on the surface of a piece of film. It's counterpart, the digital camera, interprets that image as a series of numbers that go together to form a digital file.
Turning data of any kind, be it music, images or words, into digital information has advantages that have rendered analog technology all but obsolete in many cases.
The main advantages of digitisation are digital signals don't pick up "noise" or distortion the same way analog signals do, plus they are easier to transmit and store (think of the number of vinyl records it would take to store the songs on the average MP3 player).
A digital file can also be copied endlessly without becoming degraded - a source of angst for those charged with protecting against the "piracy" of software or music.
Digital information is the "language" spoken by the processors in computers and many other devices, from cars to microwaves.
These latter processors are referred to as being "embedded" or built-in, Hesketh says.
"We are now so reliant on embedded systems," he says. "They are there in your fridge and your washing machine and masses of the other devices. We just take that sort of power and convenience ... for granted."
Vinyl or CD? Music fans spin out over debate
There is little doubt digital technology is superior to its analog equivalent in many areas but when it comes to music the debate still rages fiercely.
When compact discs first began appearing in the early 1980s, vinyl records rapidly began disappearing from stores.
Within a few years, the dominance of the new digital medium was complete and many music aficionados such as Steve Danno abandoned the "old-fashioned" vinyl for CDs.
"Initially, I was, like, 'Wow! This is new technology. It must be better - it's digital,"' says Danno, who works at Ashwood's (www.ashwoods.com), a Sydney shop that has sold vinyl records for 75 years. "I got right into CDs for a while and I foolishly sold a lot of the old records."
Gradually, however, Danno realised listening to a CD was not the same as the old vinyl experience. "You just don't get the same buzz that you do with a record," he says. "The sound on records just jumps out more - a lot of people say that they sound 'warmer'. The cymbals sound so much more real and the guitars ring a lot clearer."
With 20,000 albums for sale, Ashwood's is still doing brisk business selling vinyl to keen music fans who love the analog sound.
And it's not just the sound that keeps some shoppers coming back to Ashwood's and a handful of other specialist stores, Danno says. There is a sense of romance attached to vinyl records and their packaging that you just don't get with CDs. "There's nothing like the thrill of walking out of the shop with a big LP bag," he says. "You're actually carrying a piece of art, not just a little CD."
Source:http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/can-we-live-without-digital-technology/2007/05/19/1179497332260.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Online: 3/15/2011
My youngest daughter is in tears. She points accusingly at her older sister. "She's being mean!" she sobs. "She won't show me the picture on the camera."
Daughter No. 1, it turns out, has taken a picture with an old camera we gave her. I explain to my youngest that this is a film camera and that, unlike a digital camera, she will only be able to see the picture once the film is developed.
She looks dubious and, as she wanders off to cause mayhem elsewhere, I can tell she doesn't believe me.
And why should she? She has grown up surrounded by digital devices that make everything instant and convenient. Why would anyone want to go back to the old analog ways, stuffing around with something as old-fashioned as, say, film?
She has never known anything different in her short life. But this proliferation of digital devices has only really taken off in the past couple of decades.
All of which got me and the Icon editor thinking: what would it be like to abandon digital technology, for a while at least?
What would it be like to do without all these gadgets we take for granted and, as much as possible, to do things the old analog way, even if for only a short period?
The challenge is then made - go digital cold turkey for 48 hours.
Without thinking too much, I agree. I mean, how hard can it be? It's not like doing without food or, God forbid, wine for two days. Surely I am not so far down the path of digital dependence that going tech-free for a short while would be that painful.
How wrong I was.
The first task is to work out how much digital equipment I rely on each day. Even a brief inventory around the house reveals how far digital technology has invaded just about every nook and cranny of my daily life.
There's all the obvious stuff such as the computer, the TV, digital cameras, the mobile phone and iPods and PDAs but then you need to consider all the pieces of kit that come with so-called embedded systems.
These embedded systems processors are the brains behind the microwave in the kitchen, the washing machine in the laundry and even the car in the driveway - its engine control unit and anti-lock braking systems, among others.
Without feeding the family with home-grown vegies, making our own clothes and living in a yurt outside Nimbin, dodging the ubiquitous stream of ones and zeros will be nigh-on impossible.
Time to set some boundaries on my two days of digital deprivation. I am not going to go without power and water and I reserve the right to use my car but otherwise I'll try to do without every other digital device in my life.
Day one does not get off to a good start as I fail to correctly set the old alarm clock that I'd dug out of the bottom of the cupboard. Don't ask me how but after years of pressing the same buttons to set my digital clock, the simple act of setting a wind-up device appears to be beyond me.
The whole family is now late, so the hour before getting the kids off to school becomes even more fraught than usual. Matters are not helped when my wife points out that, under the rules of my self-imposed techno-purdah, I am not allowed to reheat my stone-cold coffee in the microwave.
If I didn't know her better, I'd say she enjoys that particular moment.
I'd already told my boss I would be working from home that day due to my exile from the 21st century (not much she could say to that, although I think it would wear pretty thin if I tried to use it again), so I settle down to work.
Resisting the temptation to turn on the computer and check my email, an action these days that is almost as reflexive as breathing, I take out my notebook and pen and begin making notes for this article. After 20 minutes my wrist begins cramping up and it occurs to me that I haven't sat down and written by hand for this length of time since I was in high school.
Other than making shorthand notes and signing the odd credit card coupon, there is almost no point in my daily life that involves actually writing with a pen - everything is done on a computer or perhaps via text message. Bizarrely, it appears that I've forgotten how to write.
I am also beginning to miss the internet for research purposes. I'm old enough to remember journalism in the pre-internet days when research meant borrowing a dusty envelope of cuttings from the library which was only a few weeks out of date if you were lucky. Now, with the internet at our disposal we have instant access to . . . well . . . everything, including a private database of every story printed in every sizeable publication in the country.
Trying to research a story without going online proves a lot tougher than I imagined so I decide to head off to do the chores my wife has left for me.
She'd asked me to pay a couple of bills. With the incredible convenience of the Bpay system, this is the work of a couple of minutes - however, under my analog regime, I have to resort to old-fashioned methods.
After a five-minute walk from my front door, I am standing in a queue at The Post Office That Time Forgot.
Getting two bills paid becomes a 40-minute task, however, that does include a long chat catching up with a couple of neighbours, who I would ordinarily not have bumped into that day, so it isn't all bad.
Looking back over the first tech-free 24 hours it is clear that it has been a highly unproductive work day. I'm used to working from home and invariably find I get more done than I would in the office. But working remotely involves heavy dependence on technology, using a combination of email, the internet, mobile phones and Fairfax's own sophisticated virtual private network. Without all this gear, I am pretty much lost.
When day two dawns things get off to a better start as I have finally got the hang of the alarm clock. Doing without email and the internet today should be easier as it's a Saturday and there's no work to be done.
However, going without music is a much bigger problem. I love music and we have something playing in the house (generally jazz) pretty much all the time. All my music is now stored on a laptop and iPod, making it easy to pipe around the house via a system of wired and wireless speakers. It's a neat use of digital technology but one I'm going to have to get by without using for a day at least.
A mate who lives nearby owns a turntable, which I can probably use without breaking the spirit of the experiment. After picking up the mobile to call him and copping a warning glare from my wife, I walk around to his house and lug back the turntable plus a few vinyl records from his collection.
Listening to vinyl is fun for a while (the kids call the records "those big, old CDs") but it soon begins to pall, largely due to the inconvenience of mucking about lifting LPs on and off the turntable and the limited amount of music available - when you're used to 500 albums on your iPod, half a dozen albums soon get pretty repetitive.
Later we head down to the beach for a late-afternoon dip. Normally I'd shoot off a couple of text messages to other friends telling them where we are going and inviting them to join us. Not today, though. For the first time I begin to feel a little disconnected from my own personal network. We have a great time at the beach anyway.
My wife and I round off the day sharing dinner cooked on our non-digital, low-tech LPG cooker and a bottle of wine. Typically, a Saturday evening would see us watching a rented DVD but instead we sit and talk, then read for a while.
Next day, as I get back on the digital treadmill and attend to a mountain of emails and text messages (some a little grumpy from friends and colleagues who think they are being ignored), I have time to reflect on my brief, and imperfect, experiment.
There's no doubt the miracle of digital technology adds a lot to my daily life. For instance, I would really miss my vast digital music collection which accompanies me everywhere on my iPod. Likewise, I would not want to give up my digital camera and go back to expensive and messy film.
But there is also no doubt that the stream of ones and zeros that have insinuated themselves into every corner of our lives also has a downside.
The digital revolution has always been about making things faster but faster doesn't always mean better. Sometimes it's good to flick the off switch and remind ourselves what it is like to live life at a more human pace.
Now where's my PDA?
The future is digital - just don't ask me what it means
Talk about any modern technology and sooner or later - probably sooner - the word digital is bound to crop up.
But it's a pretty good guess that, pressed to define what it means to digitise something, average users, me included, would be hard pushed to come up with a convincing explanation.
The Macquarie Dictionary defines "digital" as "of or relating to a device which represents a variable as a series of digits".
It goes on to give the example of a digital watch, which "shows the passing of time by a series of changing numbers", presumably as opposed to an analog watch which uses a hand sweeping around a dial.
"If you create something that relies on a naturally occurring underlying physics then it is normally analog," says Tim Hesketh, associate professor at the University of NSW's School of Electrical Engineering and Telecommunications. "The world is inherently analog - there are very few naturally occurring digital systems. Nearly all digital systems are man-made."
A film camera is an example of an analog device because it relies on the underlying physics of light falling on grains of silver halide on the surface of a piece of film. It's counterpart, the digital camera, interprets that image as a series of numbers that go together to form a digital file.
Turning data of any kind, be it music, images or words, into digital information has advantages that have rendered analog technology all but obsolete in many cases.
The main advantages of digitisation are digital signals don't pick up "noise" or distortion the same way analog signals do, plus they are easier to transmit and store (think of the number of vinyl records it would take to store the songs on the average MP3 player).
A digital file can also be copied endlessly without becoming degraded - a source of angst for those charged with protecting against the "piracy" of software or music.
Digital information is the "language" spoken by the processors in computers and many other devices, from cars to microwaves.
These latter processors are referred to as being "embedded" or built-in, Hesketh says.
"We are now so reliant on embedded systems," he says. "They are there in your fridge and your washing machine and masses of the other devices. We just take that sort of power and convenience ... for granted."
Vinyl or CD? Music fans spin out over debate
There is little doubt digital technology is superior to its analog equivalent in many areas but when it comes to music the debate still rages fiercely.
When compact discs first began appearing in the early 1980s, vinyl records rapidly began disappearing from stores.
Within a few years, the dominance of the new digital medium was complete and many music aficionados such as Steve Danno abandoned the "old-fashioned" vinyl for CDs.
"Initially, I was, like, 'Wow! This is new technology. It must be better - it's digital,"' says Danno, who works at Ashwood's (www.ashwoods.com), a Sydney shop that has sold vinyl records for 75 years. "I got right into CDs for a while and I foolishly sold a lot of the old records."
Gradually, however, Danno realised listening to a CD was not the same as the old vinyl experience. "You just don't get the same buzz that you do with a record," he says. "The sound on records just jumps out more - a lot of people say that they sound 'warmer'. The cymbals sound so much more real and the guitars ring a lot clearer."
With 20,000 albums for sale, Ashwood's is still doing brisk business selling vinyl to keen music fans who love the analog sound.
And it's not just the sound that keeps some shoppers coming back to Ashwood's and a handful of other specialist stores, Danno says. There is a sense of romance attached to vinyl records and their packaging that you just don't get with CDs. "There's nothing like the thrill of walking out of the shop with a big LP bag," he says. "You're actually carrying a piece of art, not just a little CD."
Source:http://www.theage.com.au/news/technology/can-we-live-without-digital-technology/2007/05/19/1179497332260.html?page=fullpage#contentSwap1
Online: 3/15/2011
SXSW 2011: Al Franken warns of 'outright disaster' over net neutrality
Democratic senator Al Franken has has issued a rallying cry to "innovators and entrepreneurs" at SXSW to fight back against Comcast and other companies lobbying to pave the way for a two-speed internet.
The principle of net neutrality, under which all content is delivered equally to internet users' homes, is "in big trouble", Franken warned in a passionate rallying cry at the conference on Monday.
Franken's address was always going to be a preach to the converted – SXSW is the spiritual home for small, independent media and technology firms – but he warned that unless the 200,000 attendees "use the internet to save the internet", then big telecoms firms will muscle through plans for a two-tier net.
"The one thing that big corporations have that we don't is the ability to purchase favourable political outcomes," he said.
"Big corporations like the telecoms firms have lots of lobbyists – and good ones too. Every policy-maker in Washington is hearing much more from the anti-net neutrality side than the side without lobbyists. But everyone has more to fear from these big corporations than from us. [Their proposals] would benefit no one but them."
In the US, where the net neutrality debate rages on despite a conciliatory bill by the Federal Communications Commission in December, telecoms giant Verizon is fighting the rules in a bid to allow internet providers to choose which content they can charge for. Net neutrality advocates fear that internet providers, most pertinently Comcast which controls a large stake in both TV and internet provision, could downgrade rivals' content and boost delivery of their own.
"[On today's internet] you don't need a record deal to make a song and have people hear it, or a major film studio for people to see your film, or a fancy R&D job. But the party may almost be over," Franken said.
"There is nothing more motivated than a corporation that thinks it is leaving money on the table. They are coming on the internet and wanting to destroy its freedom and openness. All of this is bad for consumers but an outright disaster for the independent creative community."
Big corporations like Verizon and Comcast are not "inherently evil," he added, but their duty to shareholders "to make as much money as they can" could change the internet for every American as they know it.
Comcast was last month accused of effectively erecting a tollbooth that puts competitive video streaming service, namely Netflix, at a competitive disadvantage. Franken on Monday accused Comcast of thinly disguising its "real endgame," which he argued was "to put Netflix out of business".
He added: "Today SXSW is a hotbed of creative entrepreneurship and innovation.
"But what will it be 20 years from now? Will Americans have no choice but to consumer corporate content? Will entrepreneurs still matter? Or will conglomerates have so much control that only the innovations that they profit from will make it onto the market.
"Let's not sell out. Let's not let the government sell us out. Let's fight for net neutrality. Let's keep Austin weird. Let's keep the internet weird. Let's keep the internet free."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/mar/14/sxsw-2011-al-franken-net-neutrality
Online: 3/15/2011
The principle of net neutrality, under which all content is delivered equally to internet users' homes, is "in big trouble", Franken warned in a passionate rallying cry at the conference on Monday.
Franken's address was always going to be a preach to the converted – SXSW is the spiritual home for small, independent media and technology firms – but he warned that unless the 200,000 attendees "use the internet to save the internet", then big telecoms firms will muscle through plans for a two-tier net.
"The one thing that big corporations have that we don't is the ability to purchase favourable political outcomes," he said.
"Big corporations like the telecoms firms have lots of lobbyists – and good ones too. Every policy-maker in Washington is hearing much more from the anti-net neutrality side than the side without lobbyists. But everyone has more to fear from these big corporations than from us. [Their proposals] would benefit no one but them."
In the US, where the net neutrality debate rages on despite a conciliatory bill by the Federal Communications Commission in December, telecoms giant Verizon is fighting the rules in a bid to allow internet providers to choose which content they can charge for. Net neutrality advocates fear that internet providers, most pertinently Comcast which controls a large stake in both TV and internet provision, could downgrade rivals' content and boost delivery of their own.
"[On today's internet] you don't need a record deal to make a song and have people hear it, or a major film studio for people to see your film, or a fancy R&D job. But the party may almost be over," Franken said.
"There is nothing more motivated than a corporation that thinks it is leaving money on the table. They are coming on the internet and wanting to destroy its freedom and openness. All of this is bad for consumers but an outright disaster for the independent creative community."
Big corporations like Verizon and Comcast are not "inherently evil," he added, but their duty to shareholders "to make as much money as they can" could change the internet for every American as they know it.
Comcast was last month accused of effectively erecting a tollbooth that puts competitive video streaming service, namely Netflix, at a competitive disadvantage. Franken on Monday accused Comcast of thinly disguising its "real endgame," which he argued was "to put Netflix out of business".
He added: "Today SXSW is a hotbed of creative entrepreneurship and innovation.
"But what will it be 20 years from now? Will Americans have no choice but to consumer corporate content? Will entrepreneurs still matter? Or will conglomerates have so much control that only the innovations that they profit from will make it onto the market.
"Let's not sell out. Let's not let the government sell us out. Let's fight for net neutrality. Let's keep Austin weird. Let's keep the internet weird. Let's keep the internet free."
Source: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/blog/2011/mar/14/sxsw-2011-al-franken-net-neutrality
Online: 3/15/2011
Earth's Climate Warming Abruptly, Scientist Says
COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Earth's climate is undergoing an abrupt change, ending a cooler period that began with a swift "cold snap" in the tropics 5,200 years ago that coincided with the start of cities, the beginning of calendars and the biblical great flood, a leading expert on glaciers has concluded.
The warming around Earth's tropical belt is a signal suggesting that the "climate system has exceeded a critical threshold," which has sent tropical-zone glaciers in full retreat and will melt them completely "in the near future," said Lonnie G. Thompson, a scientist who for 23 years has been taking core samples from the ancient ice of glaciers.
Thompson, writing with eight other researchers in an article published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the ice samples show that the climate can and did cool quickly, and that a similarly abrupt warming change started about 50 years ago. Humans may not have the luxury of adapting to slow changes, he suggests.
"There are thresholds in the system," Thompson said in an interview in his lab at Ohio State University. When they are crossed, "there is the risk of changing the world as we know it to some form in which a lot of people on the planet will be put at risk."
"I think the temperature will continue to rise, the glaciers will continue to melt. Sea levels will continue to rise. I think there is a good indication now that the magnitude of severe storms will rise," he said.
Thompson's work summarizes evidence from around the world and ice core sampling from seven locations in the South American Andes and the Asian Himalayas. It considerably extends the reach of a growing number of scientific findings documenting the historically unusual warming of Earth. A top scientific panel last week endorsed an earlier study, by Penn State professor Michael E. Mann, that concluded the recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere is of a scale probably unseen for 400 to 1,000 years.
Thompson, whose research has focused on glaciers in the high mountains of the tropics, writes that the warming there "is unprecedented for at least two millennia." He teamed with his wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, an expert in polar ice sampling, and concluded that the glacial retreat "signals a recent and abrupt change in the Earth's climate system."
Caspar Amman, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said Thompson's "perspective of the changes over the past 2,000 years is striking. Something is definitely different towards the end of the 20th century."
But the finding likely to cause the most debate is Thompson's conclusion that a swift and sudden cooling of the climate five millennia ago occurred simultaneously with key changes in civilizations.
"It represents a time where, for many parts of the world, people ceased to be hunters and gatherers and formed cities," he said. "Many of the modern calendars began around this time. It would also fall in the general time frame of the biblical flood."
Thompson said he does not know what caused the abrupt change -- one possibility is a "mega La Ni?a" shift in upper air currents. But he said the evidence from such diverse sources as Mount Kilimanjaro; African lakes; Greenland and Antarctic ice cores; the Andes and the Alps point to a sudden arrival of cool and often wet conditions, all about the same time.
That time saw cities form in the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, his paper says, and the end of a humid period in Africa that "seems to have begun and ended abruptly, within decades to a century." In what is now Florida, water levels rose rapidly. In Washington state, glaciers covered whole trees. In the Alps, a mortally wounded hunter nicknamed Otzi was buried quickly by snow and captured within a growing glacier until it melted enough to expose him in 1991.
Theories linking climate change with changes in the history of humans are increasingly popular. The book "The Winds of Change" by Eugene Linden argues that climate shifts accompanied the fall of many civilizations.
Gavin Schmidt, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, applauded Thompson's work but said his conclusions about events 5,200 years ago have many skeptics.
"You would have to put that argument as more intriguing rather than definitive," Schmidt said. "There are a number of issues in the tropical ice cores that are problematic for dating things 4,000 to 5,000 years ago."
Thompson and other scientists typically drill down to layers of glaciers put down by snow thousands of years ago. The air bubbles caught in those cores are analyzed to determine the atmosphere at the time. Sediment, insects and pollen are further clues to the climate in ancient history.
SOurce: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/26/AR2006062601237.html
Online: 3/13/2011
The warming around Earth's tropical belt is a signal suggesting that the "climate system has exceeded a critical threshold," which has sent tropical-zone glaciers in full retreat and will melt them completely "in the near future," said Lonnie G. Thompson, a scientist who for 23 years has been taking core samples from the ancient ice of glaciers.
Thompson, writing with eight other researchers in an article published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, said the ice samples show that the climate can and did cool quickly, and that a similarly abrupt warming change started about 50 years ago. Humans may not have the luxury of adapting to slow changes, he suggests.
"There are thresholds in the system," Thompson said in an interview in his lab at Ohio State University. When they are crossed, "there is the risk of changing the world as we know it to some form in which a lot of people on the planet will be put at risk."
"I think the temperature will continue to rise, the glaciers will continue to melt. Sea levels will continue to rise. I think there is a good indication now that the magnitude of severe storms will rise," he said.
Thompson's work summarizes evidence from around the world and ice core sampling from seven locations in the South American Andes and the Asian Himalayas. It considerably extends the reach of a growing number of scientific findings documenting the historically unusual warming of Earth. A top scientific panel last week endorsed an earlier study, by Penn State professor Michael E. Mann, that concluded the recent warming in the Northern Hemisphere is of a scale probably unseen for 400 to 1,000 years.
Thompson, whose research has focused on glaciers in the high mountains of the tropics, writes that the warming there "is unprecedented for at least two millennia." He teamed with his wife, Ellen Mosley-Thompson, an expert in polar ice sampling, and concluded that the glacial retreat "signals a recent and abrupt change in the Earth's climate system."
Caspar Amman, a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo., said Thompson's "perspective of the changes over the past 2,000 years is striking. Something is definitely different towards the end of the 20th century."
But the finding likely to cause the most debate is Thompson's conclusion that a swift and sudden cooling of the climate five millennia ago occurred simultaneously with key changes in civilizations.
"It represents a time where, for many parts of the world, people ceased to be hunters and gatherers and formed cities," he said. "Many of the modern calendars began around this time. It would also fall in the general time frame of the biblical flood."
Thompson said he does not know what caused the abrupt change -- one possibility is a "mega La Ni?a" shift in upper air currents. But he said the evidence from such diverse sources as Mount Kilimanjaro; African lakes; Greenland and Antarctic ice cores; the Andes and the Alps point to a sudden arrival of cool and often wet conditions, all about the same time.
That time saw cities form in the Nile Valley and Mesopotamia, his paper says, and the end of a humid period in Africa that "seems to have begun and ended abruptly, within decades to a century." In what is now Florida, water levels rose rapidly. In Washington state, glaciers covered whole trees. In the Alps, a mortally wounded hunter nicknamed Otzi was buried quickly by snow and captured within a growing glacier until it melted enough to expose him in 1991.
Theories linking climate change with changes in the history of humans are increasingly popular. The book "The Winds of Change" by Eugene Linden argues that climate shifts accompanied the fall of many civilizations.
Gavin Schmidt, a scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, applauded Thompson's work but said his conclusions about events 5,200 years ago have many skeptics.
"You would have to put that argument as more intriguing rather than definitive," Schmidt said. "There are a number of issues in the tropical ice cores that are problematic for dating things 4,000 to 5,000 years ago."
Thompson and other scientists typically drill down to layers of glaciers put down by snow thousands of years ago. The air bubbles caught in those cores are analyzed to determine the atmosphere at the time. Sediment, insects and pollen are further clues to the climate in ancient history.
SOurce: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/06/26/AR2006062601237.html
Online: 3/13/2011
Kids Online: Parent's Guide to Internet Safety
The headlines and statistics about Internet predators can be unnerving. It’s difficult enough being a parent without worrying about Internet safety as well. Luckily, parenting a child online is not so different from parenting a child in the “real world.” The key is to remember that the Internet is a lot more like the real world than like television, to which it is so often compared.
Parents often set curfews and have rules about visiting a friend’s house without an adult present. They expect to meet friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends in person. They want to know where a child is going and what they’re going to be doing before they leave the house. When kids are young or if they are going further from home, there is usually a chaperone present. Parents frequently ground their children or take away privileges for not obeying. You may or may not enforce similar rules in your home, but they are an excellent starting place for creating a positive and safe online experience.
Talk to your children. Much like anything else, it’s important that your child knows what your expectations are, understands the basics of Internet safety, and feels comfortable talking to you about problems and concerns.
Set guidelines. Create a set of guidelines about when and how long your children can use the computer. Be clear about what they can and cannot do online. If they need to complete chores or homework first, outline that as well. Discuss things like instant messaging, chat rooms, blogs, and social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook), virtual worlds (Club Penguin, RuneScape, Gaia, Webkinz). Work out a contract with your children about household expectations and have everyone sign it. Don't forget to come up with consequences for breaking the rules.
Follow through. It is important to stick with your rules. It’s true that kids need boundaries and, as much as they fight you on it, count on you to set them. Set a timer for online activity. Use monitoring software that tracks where they are going and what they are doing.
Pay attention. It’s not enough for your computer to be in a central location in your home if you’re not paying attention to what your kids are doing. Make a habit of pulling up a chair and talking to your child about what they’re doing. If you expect to know who your kids are with and where they go when they leave the house, this is no different.
Read more about it. If you ask your child what they’re doing and you don’t understand the answer, it’s time to read more about it. Visit the website if possible, search for related news about it and see if you can find an article here on About.com or another site. You can even email the Family Computing Guide to ask. Whatever path you take, it’s important to understand what your kids are going when they’re online.
Join the fun. This is no different from attending a sporting match or chaperoning a dance or field trip. If your child has taken an interest in an online community such as Webkinz, Neopets, MySpace, Facebook, etc., find out what they like about it. Sign up for your own account and add your child as a “friend.” This allows you to have a better sense of what they’re doing and what sort of things they’re coming in contact with, but it also shows your kids that you’re interested in their activities.
Use available technology. There is no shortage of Internet Safety tools available to help you control, track and/or limit what your kids can say and do online. Take the time to learn about Internet filters, firewalls, monitoring software, browsers for kids and other tools. While they are not a replacement for strong parenting, they can help make your task easier, especially with younger children.
Do a little sleuthing. Use your browser history, cache and cookies to find out what sites your kids have been visiting. This is not to suggest that you should spy on your child, but a spot check now and again is a good idea. Enter their names (including nicknames) into popular search engines to see if they have public profiles on social networking sites. Do the same with your address and phone number. You might be surprised by how much of your personal information is online!
Watch for warning signals. A child who is reluctant to talk to you about what they’re doing online or seems to be withdrawing from family and/or friends may have a problem. It can be easy to chalk up certain things to normal teenage behavior, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore changes in your child’s personality. Cyberbullying is just one experience that may cause your child to withdraw.
Know when to say, “No.” If your child continually spends too much time online or ignores rules about what they can and cannot do, it may be time to pull the plug on the Internet as a sort of "virtual grounding." Although your child may disagree, they can survive without it. Make sure you’re clear about why you’re doing it and how long it will last. Consider what you’ll do if they have a homework project that requires access, and remember that they may be able to use computers at school, the library, and a friend’s house. They may even be able to browse the web on their cellphone.
Source: http://familyinternet.about.com/od/computingsafetyprivacy/a/parentsafetyg.htm
Online: 3/13/2011
Parents often set curfews and have rules about visiting a friend’s house without an adult present. They expect to meet friends, boyfriends, and girlfriends in person. They want to know where a child is going and what they’re going to be doing before they leave the house. When kids are young or if they are going further from home, there is usually a chaperone present. Parents frequently ground their children or take away privileges for not obeying. You may or may not enforce similar rules in your home, but they are an excellent starting place for creating a positive and safe online experience.
Talk to your children. Much like anything else, it’s important that your child knows what your expectations are, understands the basics of Internet safety, and feels comfortable talking to you about problems and concerns.
Set guidelines. Create a set of guidelines about when and how long your children can use the computer. Be clear about what they can and cannot do online. If they need to complete chores or homework first, outline that as well. Discuss things like instant messaging, chat rooms, blogs, and social networking sites (MySpace, Facebook), virtual worlds (Club Penguin, RuneScape, Gaia, Webkinz). Work out a contract with your children about household expectations and have everyone sign it. Don't forget to come up with consequences for breaking the rules.
Follow through. It is important to stick with your rules. It’s true that kids need boundaries and, as much as they fight you on it, count on you to set them. Set a timer for online activity. Use monitoring software that tracks where they are going and what they are doing.
Pay attention. It’s not enough for your computer to be in a central location in your home if you’re not paying attention to what your kids are doing. Make a habit of pulling up a chair and talking to your child about what they’re doing. If you expect to know who your kids are with and where they go when they leave the house, this is no different.
Read more about it. If you ask your child what they’re doing and you don’t understand the answer, it’s time to read more about it. Visit the website if possible, search for related news about it and see if you can find an article here on About.com or another site. You can even email the Family Computing Guide to ask. Whatever path you take, it’s important to understand what your kids are going when they’re online.
Join the fun. This is no different from attending a sporting match or chaperoning a dance or field trip. If your child has taken an interest in an online community such as Webkinz, Neopets, MySpace, Facebook, etc., find out what they like about it. Sign up for your own account and add your child as a “friend.” This allows you to have a better sense of what they’re doing and what sort of things they’re coming in contact with, but it also shows your kids that you’re interested in their activities.
Use available technology. There is no shortage of Internet Safety tools available to help you control, track and/or limit what your kids can say and do online. Take the time to learn about Internet filters, firewalls, monitoring software, browsers for kids and other tools. While they are not a replacement for strong parenting, they can help make your task easier, especially with younger children.
Do a little sleuthing. Use your browser history, cache and cookies to find out what sites your kids have been visiting. This is not to suggest that you should spy on your child, but a spot check now and again is a good idea. Enter their names (including nicknames) into popular search engines to see if they have public profiles on social networking sites. Do the same with your address and phone number. You might be surprised by how much of your personal information is online!
Watch for warning signals. A child who is reluctant to talk to you about what they’re doing online or seems to be withdrawing from family and/or friends may have a problem. It can be easy to chalk up certain things to normal teenage behavior, but that doesn’t mean you should ignore changes in your child’s personality. Cyberbullying is just one experience that may cause your child to withdraw.
Know when to say, “No.” If your child continually spends too much time online or ignores rules about what they can and cannot do, it may be time to pull the plug on the Internet as a sort of "virtual grounding." Although your child may disagree, they can survive without it. Make sure you’re clear about why you’re doing it and how long it will last. Consider what you’ll do if they have a homework project that requires access, and remember that they may be able to use computers at school, the library, and a friend’s house. They may even be able to browse the web on their cellphone.
Source: http://familyinternet.about.com/od/computingsafetyprivacy/a/parentsafetyg.htm
Online: 3/13/2011
