firefox over-download day

And the site had glitches because it was overwhelmed when Mozilla tried to pull off a Download Firefox 3 Day.

Well.. Firefox is still the best.

[link]

beware, your computer is controlled by external forces

From Tom Dispatch and William Astore: Militarizing your cyberspace

Working with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the Department of Homeland Security, and other governmental agencies, the Air Force’s stated goal is to gain access to, and control over, any and all networked computers, anywhere on Earth, at a proposed cost to you, the American taxpayer, of $30 billion over the first five years.

…on May 12th of this year, the Air Force Research Laboratory posted an official “request for proposal” seeking contractor bids to begin the push to achieve “dominant cyber offensive engagement.” The desired capabilities constitute a disturbing militarization of cyberspace

…If that’s not enough for you, it’s now proposing a massive $30 billion cyberspace boondoggle, as retired Air Force Lt. Col. William Astore writes below, that will, theoretically, provide the Air Force with the ability to fry any computer on Earth.

Need I say more?

data mining of Second Life and World of Warcarft

Here is what I found on Bill Moyers’ site:

Rick Karr on Internet Surveillance

Congress is still deadlocked over the Bush Administration’s efforts to listen in to phone calls and read emails without search warrants. The sticking point is whether or not to allow private citizens to sue telecom conglomerates, the huge firms that provide most of us with phone and internet service - and helped the Administration spy on us. Now, the Administration wants to try to spy on Americans in another way. My colleague Rick Karr has this to bring you up to speed.
-Bill Moyers

And view the video

The project is called Project Reynard, and the report may be downloaded here in pdf format.

Terrorist avatars bewaaaaaaare of the big bad wolf Reynard [incidentally, he IS a wolf].

human rights in virtual worlds

Nothing wrong with bragging every once in a blue moon, right?

So once again Virtual Activism - my nonprofit organization - is at the forefront of technology in the Arab World. We have been the first to go on the web, we had the first blog in the entire Arab World, the first to have a Wiki, and now the first to be a nonprofit in a virtual world, namely Second Life.

Now I have an Education and Human Rights Center which is part of a sim but hopefully will expand beyond that. Here are some images:

So why is this important? Well the center is expanding into providing a visual tour of human rights violation and providing knowledge and information on human rights abuses worldwide. It will draw heavily on several world reports on human rights as well as on local human rights reports. The visual tour provides an experiential and immersive education to those who will visit it. It will also provide videos and other information on such violations, as well as monthly discussions and meetings. The center is still undergoing construction and I will be announcing meetings shortly.

If you are already on second life, you might want to visit the center at this slurl:

http://slurl.com/secondlife/Odessa Captivating/191/216/21/?title=Odessa Captivating

On the same sim, a little at a distance from the Center is a replica of the St. Catherine’s Monastery from the
Sinai, Egypt.

Enjoy.

on wikileaks

Wikileaks is a place for whistle-blowers of all nationalities and walks of life may go and post their information anonymously. Here is what they say of themselves:

Wikileaks is developing an uncensorable system for untraceable mass document leaking and public analysis. Our primary interests are in Asia, the former Soviet bloc, Latin America, Sub-Saharan Africa and the Middle East, but we expect to be of assistance to peoples of all countries who wish to reveal unethical behavior in their governments and corporations. We aim for maximum political impact..

They are true to their word. They succeeded in raising the ire of Swiss Banks by publishing internal documents that show that they deal with money laundering. The banks filed suite to shut down the website in the US, and a court ruled in the banks’ favour. However, there is an appeal process and it remains to be seen what will transpire.

youtube stopped for 45 minutes

This is amazing and unbelievable. When Pakistan decided to block youtube this past week because of it contains content it deemed offensive [in particular the infamous cartoons of the Prophet], it ended up blocking youtube from the entire world. One of its ISPs rerouted youtube into a ‘black hole’.  It amounted to a denial of service attack - albeit unintentional.

Here is a technical analysis of how this happened link 

What does this tell us about the status of the internet? that it is so fragile, it is scary.

buzz words

blogtopia - blogistan - moblog - converging technologies - mashups - locative media - social media - social networking - micro blogging - socialmedia metrics - semantic web

cutting off the internet: we knew it was coming

I wonder what Tim Berners Lee thinks of that. Sarkozy of France decided to ‘cut off the Internet’ on anyone who downloads music or any ‘illegal’ downloads:

 music and films without paying for them could find their web access shut down by a government body, under a ground-breaking industry agreement backed by President Nicolas Sarkozy. [link]

I am sure the Bush admin will be very pleased. They now have a ‘buddy’ in supporting corporate interests.

social nets

I created a new wiki on social networking. Please visit the wiki and contribute if you would like. The wiki discusses the phenomenon of social networking from its initial evolution through IMs and chats to its current form of social tagging and metaverses.

It is at http://socialnets.wikispaces.com

clutzr

Yet another social networking site - I can’t keep up with them any more:

According to its website, Cluztr lets you share your web-browsing with your friends and discover new sites and people relevant to you and your interests.

* See who’s on the same web page as you.
* Find out what sites your friends are visiting and follow them around the web.
* Chat and leave messages on any website you visit.

http://www.cluztr.com/