Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Rapid Internet Growth In Iran

Posted by timothy on from the cia-factbook-time dept.

securitas writes "The BBC's Abbas Azimi reports on the rapid growth of the Internet and Internet cafes in Iran, apparently with the tacit approval of the government. Seven million Iranians have Internet access, or 10% of the population - double the rate two years ago. Access costs 60 cents/hour. The article describes how the Internet is used for everything from VoIP phone calls to chat and Web logs. Even Iran's vice-president has a daily blog on a popular site with 'musings about politics and life.' All of this despite the ban on many sites, which is easily circumvented by Iran's webmasters and geeks. An interesting point is that most of the PCs used in Iran are assembled from smuggled parts and run pirated versions of all the latest software (due to foreign embargo?). It sounds like a great opportunity for open source software."

17 of 315 comments (clear)

  1. fp by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    fp

  2. Iran is still fucked up... by MSBob · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    ...and now thanks to Dubya yapping about "Axes of Evil" Islamic hardliners have won a landslide victory there. A ain't going there to install Linux!

    --
    Your pizza just the way you ought to have it.
  3. Re:sneaky sneaky by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    (Score:-1, Flamebait)

    I'd say "+2, Sarcastic" - but then again, this is SlashBot, and I don't have any mod points, and there's no Sarcastic category.

    Meh.

  4. Interesting fact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    Spy Magazine had a long, perhaps unnecessarily detailed piece about Chuck Berry's legal troubles concerning the installation of videos cameras in a women's restroom at a restaurant he owned. Evidently there were two; one at, shall we say, seat level, so the camera could record bowel movements falling into the toilet, and another in the ceiling, to record the waste swirling around in the bowl as it exited for the sewer system.

    There are also tapes of him rendez-vousing with young women. In one tape that's described, he urinates voluminously on a woman's face, and then has her squat over his mouth and empty her bowels.

    1. Re:Interesting fact by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

      dear oh dear! i never knew that Chuck Berry was a scat master... i knew he was dodgy (re: the whole secret cameras) but i never knew he was into the golden shower and scat eating...

      although, if ya look at this pic the way he's got his knees together with that "shiteating" grin, you can kinda see that he's keen for it.

      Johny B Good indeed...

  5. Re:Perfect excuse to let people call open source t by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. 2 The earth was without form and void, and darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit of God was moving over the face of the waters. 3 And God said, "Let there be light"; and there was light. 4 And God saw that the light was good; and God separated the light from the darkness. 5 God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, one day. 6 And God said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it separate the waters from the waters." 7 And God made the firmament and separated the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament. And it was so. 8 And God called the firmament Heaven. And there was evening and there was morning, a second day. 9 And God said, "Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear." And it was so. 10 God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good. 11 And God said, "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so. 12 The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 13 And there was evening and there was morning, a third day. 14 And God said, "Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night; and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, 15 and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth." And it was so. 16 And God made the two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; he made the stars also. 17 And God set them in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth, 18 to rule over the day and over the night, and to separate the light from the darkness. And God saw that it was good. 19 And there was evening and there was morning, a fourth day. 20 And God said, "Let the waters bring forth swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth across the firmament of the heavens." 21 So God created the great sea monsters and every living creature that moves, with which the waters swarm, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 22 And God blessed them, saying, "Be fruitful and multiply and fill the waters in the seas, and let birds multiply on the earth." 23 And there was evening and there was morning, a fifth day. 24 And God said, "Let the earth bring forth living creatures according to their kinds: cattle and creeping things and beasts of the earth according to their kinds." And it was so. 25 And God made the beasts of the earth according to their kinds and the cattle according to their kinds, and everything that creeps upon the ground according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. 26 Then God said, "Let us make man in our image, after our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. 28 And God blessed them, and God said to them, "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the air and over every living thing that moves upon the earth." 29 And God said, "Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit; you shall have them for food. 30 And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird of the air, and to everything that creeps on the earth, everything that has the breath of life, I have given every green plant f

  6. i'm in iran... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    and slashdot my favorite site. i read every day. all my friend love cowboy neal. cmdr taco is greatest thing since allah. iran sad to loose mr goatse.

    first p0st to all my friend,

    babajaer beezer

  7. give me a break by segment · · Score: 1, Offtopic

    As if someone in any country couldn't throw on a proxy server and download crypto source. Oh wait they might have forms to fill out on a site. I started writing a document about this but got bored with it, so here is a briefer on crypto and government errata...

    It's become so fundamental to the operations of these groups that bin Laden and other Muslim extremists are teaching it at their camps in Afghanistan and Sudan, they add.

    How can the then director of the FBI get away with making statements like this without offering a shred of proof that, indeed shows, ANY terrorist organisation using crypto and or steg? It's boggling considering that again, most persons with a decent (note the word DECENT) amount of compsec knowledge, would know, or at least assume PGP would be the way to go in efforts to safeguard messages. 4096 bit keys? They're supposed to be unbreakable, yet those in office are convinced that terrorists are using encryption. So the government has broken it, or are lying.

    Another puzzling thing to note, if encryption is being used, and the government can support their claims, someone in government must have the capability to crack encryption, and assuming "Muslim extremists in Afghanistan, Albania, Britain, Kashmir, Kosovo, the Philippines, Syria, the USA, the West Bank and Gaza and Yemen" are using crypto, some agency must have some ultra powerful quantum based grid computer up to crack anything in seconds.

    Reasoning for me stating this is simple, many times these stories break, the government has quickly 'broken the code', 'broken the code', and 'broken the code', in just enough time for most media outlets to report an all inclusive -- from-arrest-to-code-breaking -- article in time for headline news. Perplexing? No. Moronic? Yes.

    "There is a tendency out there to envision a stereotypical Muslim fighter standing with an AK-47 in barren Afghanistan," says Ben Venzke, director of special intelligence projects for iDEFENSE, a cyberintelligence and risk management company based in Fairfax, Va.

    "But Hamas, Hezbollah and bin Laden's groups have very sophisticated, well-educated people. Their technical equipment is good, and they have the bright, young minds to operate them," he said.

    iDefense happens to have government contracts so I would not trust their word on anything in this article, nor any input on the subject. Nothing personal to iDefense per-se but business is business, and iDefense will try to sway the issue to their favour, perhaps on hopes of spooking some business out of government.

    I never finished it because I didn't have time to do so, but you should think twice about believing everything you hear.The document is here and keep in mind I never finished, since it was becoming too long and boring to sift through the BS.
    --
    MoFscker
  8. Re:First post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic
    May your harem always overflow with virginal beauties, my fellow AC friend.

  9. frIst stop by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    a9nd Michael Smith to get involved in

  10. Re:It seems the propaganda works by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    It frightens me to see how so many people reply with "they are all terrorists" in this thread. Seem the new nazi state propaganda is working a little too well.

    Hey, why not burn all books as well!

    Heh. You are trying to draw conclusions from flamebait on the internet? You must be new here.

  11. Re:First post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    ever since i was a young boy, it has been my lifelong hope and dream that my harem would always overflow with virginal beauties - your wish of kindness has inspired me to believe that one day this may happen - may your harem, and your childrens harems, overflow with said virginal beauties as well.

    or something like that =)

  12. Wow! What a modbombing! by James+A.+F.+Joyce · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    nt

  13. Re:First post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    Allah ate my pig onik

  14. Re:First post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    that camelfucking son of a crab louse!!!

    i will kill allah in the name of allah!!

  15. Target Acquired.. by Jediman1138 · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    I can just see it now...AOL:Iran...Have mercy on them..

    --

    nothing.can.stop.me.now

  16. oh good... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    another country for spammers to flock to.