Monthly Archive for December, 2010

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Hackers Give Web Companies a Test of Free Speech

Published on December 9, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

From Ashlee Vance and Miguel Helft in The New York Times:

A hacking free-for-all has exploded on the Web, and Facebook and Twitter are stuck in the middle.

On Wednesday, anonymous hackers took aim at companies perceived to have harmed WikiLeaksafter its release of a flood of confidential diplomatic documents. MasterCard, Visa and PayPal, which had cut off people’s ability to donate money to WikiLeaks, were hit by attacks that tried to block access to the companies’ Web sites and services.

To organize their efforts, the hackers have turned to sites like Facebook and Twitter. That has drawn these Web giants into the fray and created a precarious situation for them.

Both Facebook and Twitter — but particularly Twitter — have received praise in recent years as outlets for free speech. Governments trying to control the flow of information have found it difficult to block people from voicing their concerns or setting up meetings through the sites.

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Space colonization in three histories of the future

Published on December 8, 2010 in News and Newsletter. 0 Comments

From John Hickman in i09:

Could we be colonizing Mars in your lifetime? Three different non-fiction books offered different scenarios — including bombarding Mars with “greenhouse gases” and using it as a kind of quasi-penal colony. John Hickman, author of Reopening the Space Frontier, explains.

Popular science writers have been colonizing space via descriptions of the near future akin to science fiction at least since the 1920s. Retrospective story telling is attractive not only because of the overlap in the audiences for popular science and hard science fiction but also it lends a measure of pleasing inevitability to the promise of space colonization. For writers intent on sneaking past the messy problems of financing and populating their future space colony, there is nothing quite so effective as the sense of inevitability for giving readers permission to engage in wishful thinking. Crucial to the perpetration of this literary deception is analogy to some incorrectly conceived historical episode of frontier opening on Earth.

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Mixed Reaction to F.C.C. Internet Plan

Published on December 2, 2010 in News. 0 Comments

From Edward Wyatt in the New York Times:

WASHINGTON — The plan from the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission to ensure an open and neutral Internet drew mixed reviews on Wednesday from consumer advocates and Internet service providers, presenting the agency with an uncertain way forward as it considers new broadband regulation.

The proposal, by Julius Genachowski, would forbid both wired and wireless Internet service providers from blocking lawful content. It would also require broadband Internet service providers to give consumers basic information about how the companies manage their networks and would forbid discrimination in transmitting lawful content.

But it relies in part on a novel legal interpretation of how much authority the agency has over the Internet, one that some critics think is almost certain to invite Congressional opposition and court challenges. And it drew lukewarm support from one of the most important voices in the debate, Michael J. Copps, an F.C.C. commissioner, who has advocated stricter regulation and whose vote the chairman will need in order to get an order approved by a majority vote of the five-member commission.

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