Slashdot Mirror
Iran Caps Net Access to Keep West Out
davidwr writes "The Guardian reports that Iran has banned high-speed internet access to attempt to curb the west's influence. In addition to seizing satellite dishes and filtering more websites than any country save China, Iran is now capping Internet speeds to 128kbps in order to keep out Western influences." From the article: "The latest step has drawn condemnation from MPs, internet service companies and academics, who say it will hamper Iran's progress. 'Every country in the world is moving towards modernization and a major element of this is high-speed internet access,' said Ramazan-ali Sedeghzadeh, chairman of the parliamentary telecommunications committee. 'The country needs it for development and access to contemporary science.'"
They can never stop the signal. Even if the signal is going at 128kbps
How appropriate.
"Nothing for you to see here. Please move along."
Why do I always get this message when I'm trying to view a story about censorship?
Be the Ultimate Ninja! Play Billy Vs. SNAKEMAN today!
Silly Iranians, high-speed Internet is for Westerners!
But seriously, are they going to ban cars and television, too? We use those a lot in here in the west.
I caught the Mountain Wumpus! He gave me his treasure chest ($100) to let him go free again.
...against downloading new headers from a.b.dvd.
You'll see a stable democracy in Iraq before that task completes.
Is this a move to stop their citizens from being connected to the outside work? Or a move to stop westerns from doing digital attacks? If its the first one, I cant imagine that would make their citizens happy. It's basically a current day book burning. Only in the digital sense. Im also not sure what capping it at 128kbps will do, but whatever.
that he will only cap the signal and not eliminate public internet access entirely, although that could be coming as well.
It does make a lot of sense, and is consistant with other recent moves by the government. If you make something inconvenient enough, many people will stop using it. The more people he can keep from accessing information, the stronger his position will be.
I also found it somewhat ironic that the filtering software Iran uses is American made.
But you can not take my porn!
I'd say more, but my guild is raiding.
If you're so worried about western influences, why not just cut off everyone's ears and eyes while you're at it? God forbid they see something different than what they're used to, or be exposed to ideals other than those of their government.
After all, can't interfere with the mullah's beating off to Arabic porn.
Before the slams about being racist: they are men in power. Men in power have always demanded and gotten exception from the rules, especially involving personal matters.
And all men beat off.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
These two nations don't seem all that different to me.
Blar.
(sarcasm) With too much internet exposure, Iranians might start believing crazy things. You know, stuff like "The Holocaust happened." (end sarcasm)
Yes, cripple your country! Better to maintain strict control over a nation in poverty than be in charge of a prosperous one!
(Interestingly, the same comparison can be made for overprotective parents, who would prefer keeping their children...well, children, rather than prepare them to become adults.)
I think the Iranian gov just doesn't want its citizens downloading old episodes of 24.
Help me get a new laptop - http://nocreditcard.yourgiftsfree.com/?id=3012
I'm sure parts of Africa would like to have extra bandwidth, too bad Iran can't just give the wasted bandwidth to them. They are foolish to squander such a resource, when other parts of the world are desperate for the infrastructure.
Of course the bandwidth cap will make it difficult to download gigs of porn. Maybe the "influence" they are concerned about is the western porn, Iranians should only look at pornography of Iranian women and not western women.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
a failing fascist, fundamentalist regime oppressing its people under the guise of protecting their freedom...oh, wait...shit!
"I for one welcome our new Slashdot-reading-bandwidth-sucking-overlords"
-Ahmadinejad's webmaster
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
They should probably be more worried about their roads than their pipes.
End transmission.
WAIT. ISOLATIONISM IS BAD?!
I'm sure it's possible to combine several 128K lines to get one single hi-speed line.
Suppose you and 5 or 6 of your neighbours had 128K each. How would you go about it?
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
The citizens of Iran are ticked off that they are being denied of "Western Culture", which is apparently something they want. Therefore they have been using High Speed internet to download music and videos and whatever else so they can have what they want.
Ahmah-not-gonna-work-here-anymore (couldn't help myself) decides that in order to stop the influence (re: the education of his people outside of what he allows them) he will just cripple the entire nation's communication abilities.... but all this really accomplishes is it takes longer for the people to obtain the goods they want.. This just goes to show his intelligence (lack). The people using the internet to get around his bans and laws are ALREADY influenced by Western Culture. This is just going to cause more discontent among his citizens.. Really, it's only a matter of time before that country becomes a bloodbath with citizens trying to step up to the Government and Ahmadinejad shutting them down forcefully.
On a positive note, it's also going to somewhat hamper their technology advanacement, right? Although Im sure his high-and-mighty Government 'is trusted not to abuse the highspeed internet' and therefore will continue to use it, so strike that. (I wonder how long that will go unnoticed by the civilians...)
Its Deluxe, son. Deluxe!
Now their researchers will have a harder time finding instructions to build a nuclear-bomb!
Note to self: Avoid Iran Counterstrike servers due to bad pings.
I will bend like a reed in the wind.
Iran is run by a bunch of wackos... I can live with that. But what really scares me is what happens when the RIAA hears of this - they will go for this shit in an instant.
They will son become world experts in data compression, home construction of undetectable spread spectrum links, ad hoc very long range wireless data connections, and anonymous groupware! Thanks Iran!
The world will not get better through technology. We must seek to be better people.
Yeah, and every country is running at breakneck speed towards the edge of the cliff that leads to the deep abyss too. Think we should all follow them? Didn't think so. NEXT!
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
I read an article recently about some major carding group whose servers were located in Iran. They had a quote from the leader boasting about the protection from the US government by locating in Iran. Reducing their traffic will be one positive from this, I suppose.
My bet is that bittorrent becomes increasingly popular in Iran to help distribute the kind of content that this crackdown is meant to discourage. True, it wouldn't necessarially help individual end-users but it'd help with overall distribution.
The only thing they curb is the influence of the vast population of Iranian youngsters.
Give it another 10 years and that whole country will be torn apart from internal forces.
The country is effectively a theocracy. The country does conduct votes and such, but it ultimately doesn't matter as the Ayatollah have the final say on everything. It is a highly oppressive in many ways. For example in the 2004 election the hardliners won a major victory. You might think this was the people's wish, but in fact the simple matter was the Council of Guardians disqualified most reformist candidates, including many incumbents. As for information access, well I'll quote Freedom House:
"Freedom of expression is limited. The government directly controls all television and radio broadcasting. Satellite dishes are illegal, though widely tolerated, and the authorities have had some success in jamming broadcasts by dissident overseas satellite stations. The Ministry of Culture must approve publication of all books and inspects foreign books prior to domestic distribution. The Press Court has extensive procedural and jurisdictional power in prosecuting journalists, editors, and publishers for such vaguely worded offenses as "insulting Islam" and "damaging the foundations of the Islamic Republic." The authorities frequently issue ad hoc gag orders banning media coverage of specific topics and events. The government systematically censors internet content by forcing internet service providers (ISPs) to block access to a growing list of "immoral sites and political sites that insult the country's political and religious leaders.""
Somebody'd better go and liberate them, quick!
----
Not to be confused with Col.
Many of the condemnations thrown against NK and Iran apply also to China. Yet we gladly trade with China, and impose economic snactions on the others.
Blar.
It's a problem with religious fundementalists of all types, who fundemntally wish people to remain ignorant and uneducated. In America you see fundementalist attacks on education and freedom. Completely illogical thinking like "gay marriage" violates the rights of religious fanatics. A belief that one's particular religious icon should be installed in court houses. Whatever. America needs to worry about the threat of hard-core religious freaks. And note, the type of religion is irrelevant. All fundementalists are budding terrorists whether christian or muslim.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
... not only are they trying to develop nuclear weapons and "wipe Israel off the map," but they're capping bandwidth at 128kbps!
The country needs it for development and access to contemporary science.
Yes, but the philosophy of contemporary science is a little at odds with religious fundamentalism, so I don't see this being an argument that the leadership in Iran is going to listen to very closely.
The Iranian Government has imposed limits on the road network - no traffic is allowed to go faster than a horse-drawn cart. Er, except for Government vehicles.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
'The country needs it for development and access to contemporary science.'
I'm sure there will be no caps on downloads from nuclear.secrets.navy.mil or the alt.binaries.weapons.of.mass.desruction newsgroup.
Just remember Iranian teens are all screaming: 'I want my Al-Jazeera TV.'
This messages has NOT been brought to you by a Religious-rightwing shill for instilling American paranoia.
...the job by keeping Iranians out of the West! Only seems fair.
Everyone knows that Western Influences require at least 1Mbps.
A foolproof plan.
The enemies of Democracy are
Short answer: Instead of quickly downloading western culture, the average Iranian will now be mildly inconvenienced by a cap on bandwidth speeds.
Long answer: What makes this restriction really useful to the Iranian government is that it will help curb attempts to get around their filtering. Countries which censor (such as China) have had flourishing peer-to-peer anonymous darknets spring up as a result of technologies such as Tor and Freenet (link to wp article, as the site appears to be down currently). By capping the bandwidth at 128kbps, it's much more difficult to have faster supernodes on such networks, and fewer Iranians will be willing to dedicate bandwidth to running a p2p web server. Between a combination of web censorship, and an added (though not insurmountable) barrier to darknets, this will help Iran rather effectively cut off its citizens from what the government doesn't want them to see.
The other main consequence is to servers; besides the comical bad ping for Iran counter-strike server which a commenter mentioned earlier, this will affect anyone trying to spread subversive material over their connection; on the other hand, this will cripple anyone trying to serve anything over their connection. I wouldn't be surprised if Iran soon gives exemptions to various research and commercial groups to help stem the latter conquences.
Yes, cripple your country! Better to maintain strict control over a nation in poverty than be in charge of a prosperous one!
1. They are simply attempting to control their citizenry. It's done everywhere in the world. I would argue their solution is more obvious than the more complicated, but no less influential methods used in Western countries like the U.S.
2. Declaring this is the fast path to poverty is a little too careless. It doesn't mean they can't use computers/networks to run the country more efficiently. I'm not keeping track of trade restrictions to Iran, but I'd be interested to hear if you can sell big-time networking/computing infrastructure technology to Iran these days.
It's very easy to make these kinds of assertions without reflecting on the controls in our own countries. Consider this an opportunity to objectively examine the way your government controls it's populace through media access control.
http://www.maxineudall.com/2010/02/should-economists-be-sued-for-malpractice.html
Film at 11.
ed
Someone blame the US foreign policy on this!!!
The answer to all your problems
What a wacked-out way to annoy many of your brightest citizens. You take away Satellite TV, reduce the internet speeds and start the removal of many popular styles of women's clothing - the country is backsliding to their conservatives...
Next they'll be banning violent video games...
This sig contains a manual self-destruct. Kindly please put your foot through your monitor in 8 seconds.
The US censor doesn't like these sites at all but right now they're still legal
(even though they're information terrorists, you know).
I wonder though what the Ayatollah Al Censori makes of these here:
Unwelcome Guests
Alex Jones Infowars
Disinformation gateway
Alan Watt's site (do watch Reality Check)
alternate thought, psychodelic substance experimentation
Learn about Astrotheology
History _is_ a weapon
Most of the stuff you can download with a 128kbs connection, okay, so instead of a minute a 20Mb
mpeg like "Reality Check" you will have to wait half an hour to get it. So what. Most of the
stuff out there is text anyway and you could even re- or rather de-educate yourself with a
16Kbps connection.
Btw... don't visit these sites in internet cafes etc, especially in countries where they have
execution buses in the parking lot (China) or whip and hang you in public (Iran, I suppose) or in
countries where somebody peeking at your screen will surreptiously take out his mobile phone to
call Homeland Security (you know where that happens, don't you).
Happy self-deprogramming!
A small army of soldiers marches up.
......*
COMMANDER: Ve are the Judean People's Front, crack suicide squad. Suicide squad... attack!!!
The soldiers all draw their swords, stab themselves, and fall over.
COMMANDER: That showed 'em, huh?
--Life of Brian
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
What did you expect from some third-world shithole ruled by scary religious freaks?
Maybe instead of banning tag, they should've just forced the kids to play it more slowly?
My turnips listen for the soft cry of your love
How exactly will capping connection speeds at 128k per second stop someone from uploading 1k worth of text to 'put the information out' about a gathering? It's not like you need flashy banners and embedded movies... if someone wants to attend your protest rally (and you're serious about organizing one), waiting a few seconds instead of half of a second isn't really going to get in the way.
Much Madness is divinest Sense --
To a discerning Eye --
Much Sense -- the starkest Madness
Most "Western" countries have speeds upwards of 12 Mbitsps, and the Redmond/Seattle area tops out at 6 for Comcast. And you of course never get the "real speed". And you pay more here.
What if they don't want development or contemporary science? They cannot live their lives as they please without us pressuring them to be like us? I guess most people are all for individuality until push comes to shove--in the end, individuality is mostly lip service paid by those who are anything but individual.
As someone who works for an aerospace consulting agency in the United States, I guess this means fewer DoS, website defacement, software stealing, and general hacking attempts from Iran. I got tons of crap from them and banned netblock after netblock from there. With less bandwidth, it will be harder for people like those at the "holy institute" that took out my web server for two days to cause trouble. Additionally, I will now have more time to tend to my other duties.
i predict a very low number of posts on this story because there is no way to tie this act of stupidity to america or bush, and how they are to blame for conflict in the middle east.
When John Cleese created the character of Basil Fawlty, he basically considered the things that a good hotelier would do, then did the opposite. I wonder if President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has taken a similar approach to running a country.
What do silly conspiracy theory web sites have to do with the freedom of the Iranian people? I don't get it.
Terrible karma and aiming lower, which in this environment of one-sided reason, is higher.
Looking at their total GDP isn't a good measure of poverty, because it doesn't say anything about the distribution of the resulting wealth that's being created. In the case of Iran, I have a feeling it's mostly concentrated in a small number of individuals.
That said, based on some articles that I've read, life there for the average person isn't too bad in the physical sense; it's not poverty-stricken in the same way that parts of Africa or even South-east Asia are. The government uses oil revenues to heavily subsidize some consumer goods in order to keep the people happy (the price of gas there is ridiculous, I want to say around $0.30 a gallon), but there's very little investment in anything that's going to help them once the oil runs out, like education or scientific research (no, building a bomb-factory nuclear reactor that would have been obsolete in 1975 doesn't count) or communications infrastructure.
The government's plan seems to be "hold on to as much as we can, for as long as we can, by any means necessary."
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Maybe the Iranian Mullahs should ban breathing, food and water too, since we do all that in the west. That will solve the whole problem permanently, rather quick.
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
As much as I would like to see two fascist regimes go at each other's throats, I'm afraid that Iran is mildly outside of the Record Industry Association of AMERICA.
Then again, when has that stopped them before?
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
So
Have you been smoking hash with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad again?
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
First, they came for the newspapers, and I did nothing
because the Farsi Side comic was just re-prints now.
Next, they came for the books, and I looked the other way
because the Death to America Book of the Month Club
was only recommending books to burn anyway.
Then, they came for the Satellite Dishes, and I said nothing
because I still had a year left on my Infidelphia Cable contract.
Finally, they came for my Internet Service, and no one was left
to hear my ululation!
"Don't you know you're going to shock the monkey?"- Peter Gabriel
Actually the administration is merely pandering to the evangelicals. They aren't actually getting much of what they want. This group in office has their own agenda. They just convince the religious to support it.
Sounds like someone else watched 60 Minutes over the weekend and listened to David Kuo lamenting the Bush administrations manipulation of the Christian Right, getting the backing they need for a few tokens and runs at legislation which would be unconstitutional anyway (some of the Faith-Based initiatives.)
The Iranian government represents mostly the conservative rural people, not the more cosmopolitan city dwellers, same way most despotic regimes seize power (get the peasants behind you) and then maintain it through fear and intimidation.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Great news. Everytime some bunch of retards wants to stop knowledge it can only work out well for everyone else. I hope they ban literacy soon too. Let them all fucking starve.
I can't think of any society lasting very long once it starts to adopt the ideology of being "open minded". Can anyone come up with an example where having a diverse and rapidly changing set of ideas and values within a society made them stronger? Once a society reaches this stage it tends to get taken over by another society capable of focusing it's energy towards a common objective.
Guy In Iran:
*tries to download our western porn...*
*Picture loads really slow*
"Screw this"
*pulls out the paper with the 900 number*
*Calls, and hears a voice "sorry but the number u tried to call is in the west, please try again" *
"Mutters n Curses"
*Checks mail for playboy and finds mail saying western mail was filtered*
*Now guy wants go out n shoot someone for some*
No wonder they wanna go shoot each other.
Western Influence is Bad for Life and Morality. Its good to keep it out unless you want your daughters turning into hooker and whores.
"The age of religious-controlled nations dominating information is coming to a close."
Can I borrow your crystal ball when your through with it? Virtually all nations are influenced by religion, and have been throughout their history. There has never been an atheist nation, although it's not for lack of trying. The thing you need to keep in mind is that Iran will be a religious nation even if they get rid of the present regeime. Also a nation CAN BE closed off from the world. Like North Korea (a non-religious run nation BTW).
"Well here's the thing though... in the states, the fastest residential broadband we offer is 7Mbps,,, in the Netherlands and Asia, it's easily 15 times as much."
Yeah! So? The bottleneck is usually not at the last mile.
"We still have DIALUP in America.
How backwards is that?"
How very CONSUMER of you.
Pekov,
Do you think the current state of Israel has a right to exist? I do think they have that right.
i understand that you are joking, but from what i have heard, they are world leader in small satellite receiver designs.
no kidding, sat dishes are illegal, so in black market you can find dishes that are shaped like doors, windows, bricks and so on!
(note, this was not a joke)
Hi all.
...), half by mullahs. Now this problem. I don't know what the hell will happen next time.
First every US based company (virtually %90 of software companies) reject to work with us. Few weeks ago I just lost a $4000 consulting contract just because I'm Iranian (I'm a java programmer and $4000 is a big money here). Commonly I pretend I'm Turkish or other country just to use very basic things in internet like paypal or activating a web hosting. we say half of the web sites are blocked by USA (iee, sun download section,
Regarding music and movie it's not a big problem as most of contents are either from satellite or cd or dvd. Sometimes I think western music groups will be surprised when they know how many fans they have in Islamic Iran and specially in Tehran (my favorites are dire straits and Shania twain among others). Here most of the people have dishes and I think it's between 70%-80%.
Maybe you think we are happy with creating nuclear bomb and this government But I can say must of us are sick of these things. We just want to live a little better like any body else and have some kind of freedom, unlike what this government pretend, we have no kind of problem with outer world.
In Iran young people call the "ali khameneii" (supreme leader) as "ali Galile" because like galile he look at stars (for creating Islamic rules).
The biggest use of internet in Iran is for chatting with yahoo. Girls looking for boys and boys looking for girls (talking in public can result in prison or forced marriage if government arrests). So this will not affect the biggest use of internet in Iran. If you take a look at asia rooms in yahoo messenger and if you know farsi you will see almost every body is Iranian. Other things like orkut are already blocked. You may wonder but this fool (president) already forced coffeenets (small shops which let you connect to internet in the shop) in specified days don't let boys use internet and the same for girls meaning avoid both boys and girls be at the coffeenet at the same time. Some people wish USA drop a bomb and kill this government and if we die, it's not a big problem.
It's funny but this kind of governments fear from virtually every thing. Like high speed internet, dishes, and even yahoo messenger.
Also we are not Arab we are persian, some people hate arabs for what they have done to our country (including me).
Some times I think life is a little tough with us but maybe it's our predecessors fault.
I guess its time for me to step in and end your confusion:
ed
My other OS is the MCP!
Why do you think America should decide that, instead of the people who's land Isreal stole?
Just check this google trends analysis :-)
http://www.google.com/trends?q=jeniffer+lopez
No comments
was it / then n to search for the next one.. no wait shift g.. no that brings me to the bottom... ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
MISSING - Sig file. 2 years old black and white and very funny. If found please email me.
Sniff! Eyes mist up and almost but not quite shed a single tear.
There, I'm over it.
Who freaking cares - ITS IRAN WE'RE TALKING ABOUT HERE.
Like the lack of high speed Internet will make the county suck significantly more then it already does.
Don't they realize at that low a speed they'll fall DECADES behind the rest of the world in pr0n downloading!
Name a country who didn't steal their land from someone at some point.
Literally. Can the average Iranian afford high-speed internet access? I doubt this is going to cause a huge uproar in Iran, given that per capita GDP is a little over $8,000. On the other hand, what would an uproar look like in a country like Iran? Probably burning American flags, since any other form of free speech is routinely squelched anyway. File this under: "It's ALREADY worse."
Iran is a preview of what our society will look like after the MPAA/RIAA get through with us.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
I can't seem to find this story confirmed anywhere, and I certainly wouldn't trust the Guardian to be accurate. Does anyone out there have a confirmation?
No wars have ever been fought on Antarctica. Antarctica is considered a neutral territory
Whew! Betcha didn't think anyone could name one.
1. He doesn't want Israel wiped off the map.
2. He thinks Israel should be wiped off the map.
ERROR: DOES NOT COMPUTE
I know a movie you'd probably enjoy.
Iran achieves nirvana.
Antarctica is not a country.
..... ..... no one I can think of.
If you want a country, then you'll have to say Vatican. I'm assuming they didn't take their land by force.
Then, there is.... well,
For an example of countries being created and destroyed see Poland. Huge empire in 1500s, disappeared in 1700s until Napolean got the city state back. Got border shifted west by Soviets after WWII. I guess Germany should be pissed off, eh? Poland too as the east Poland became parts of Latvia,Ukraine,Litva,Estonia,etc...
Palestinians should kick themselves in the ass and keep on living. Shit happens. And there was no country there before Israel either. AFAIK, it was England's colony, just like half of the world at one point or another.
The best decision the US ever made was to put the Shah into Iran. We should have done a better job putting a successor to the Shah into Iran. Muslim countries need a strong dictator to keep the lid on things. Bush has proved in Iraq that democracy can't work in a muslim country. We should put Saddam back in charge there.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
When did Antarctica become a country? What's the capitol? What sort of government does it have? Either I completely missed something that could be very important (in which case, please do inform me) or you have failed to name a country.
Remember RFC 873!
Oh my god! I *can not* believe how such stupid rumors get started and even published in the media!!! Yes the ICT ministry has asked ADSL internet service providers to stop giving high speed (higher than 128kbps) to their users. However, being the totalitarian regime that they are, this one had nothing to do with censorship! The ICT ministry announced that this is a *temporary* limitation which will be removed *within 4 months* and that it has to do with the gradual implementation of the new structure for ISP companies (which are going to be divided into several different categories based on their type of activity and the amount of bandwidth that they are allowed to provide). And forget this post, didn't any of you think how stupid it sounds to *censor* the internet by just reducing the speed to 128kbps which is actually quite a fast connection for a home user in this part of the world (because of high price of internet bandwidth). It just doesn't make sense. source: http://www.iribnews.ir/MainContent.aspx?news_num=6 5777
this is a parody of a quote by Pastor Martin Niemöller http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Niemoeller here is the translated version of his orginal poem. When the Nazis came for the communists, I remained silent; I was not a communist. When they locked up the social democrats, I remained silent; I was not a social democrat. When they came for the trade unionists, I did not speak out; I was not a trade unionist. When they came for the Jews, I did not speak out; I was not a Jew. When they came for me, there was no one left to speak out.
www.tdobson.net #### Dare to Dream #### blog.tdobson.net
President Bush Jr. said on national television that he believes that God works through him. The bulk of our political figures regularly cite God as their motivation for their actions. The republican party, which is currently in control of our government, has been hijacked by the religious fundamentalists. If you don't think that this adds up to the US being a religiously-controlled nation, then I don't think you're thinking hard enough.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
The Guardian reports that Iran has banned high-speed internet access to attempt to curb the west's influence.
Yeah, that'll work. Dial-up didn't prevent a growing North American obsession with Japanese animation. It admittedly made it as far as pop culture after high-speed access became popular, but devotees were maxing out their dial-up bandwidth and "spreading the word" online almost as soon as the Internet came into existence.
Actually, making high-speed mandatory might have the effect of making citizens get tired of the West. It's easy to get weighed down with the glut of information and media on the net, and you can get very tired very quickly of page after page of uninformed rants and horrible netspeak. You're also not so choosy nor so covetous of what you've downloaded when it takes 5min vs. 5 hours to finish.
This is not a big surprise, but this moderation is just ridiculous. I mean, in a world in which the CIA was repeatedly caught actually importing drugs and selling seized drugs to fund so-called "black" operations, is there really anyone who has a hard time believing that anyone in our current administration, which has been shown to be completely devoid of honesty, is involved with drug trafficking?
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Uh, yeah. We got it.
Ever hear of
?
In the US, it's forbidden to youth. Which means they're that much more interested in it. And since they have to drink it illicitly, they're more likely to binge drink. Which leads to forming lifelong bad drinking habits, to overdoses, and to doing stupid things that result in injury, death, unwanted pregnancies, STDs, etc. Which leads to more concern that alcohol is dangerous, and an even stronger determination to keep it out of the hands of teens. Which makes them more interested in it...
Luckily, the PDF "How to Make a Nuke Out of Normal Household Items" is only 96k.
>Iran had a democratically elected president in the 1950s
and it has one today. Ahmedinajad was democraticly elected unlike Chineese leadership, but that's not really helpfull as the democratic majority would like Isreal wiped of the map.
No. At least, not in Palestine where the Arabs were living for well over a thousand years, whereas the Israelis' ancestors hadn't lived there for over sixteen hundred years. Israel should have been cut out of Germany.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
Last year I was in Teheran. And indeed they filter a lot of websites. But a quick ssh login to my box at home with a port-forward to my proxy server solved the problem in like 10 seconds.
Actually their filtering technology is completely bogus and easily fooled.
I salute you Captain Obvious! :)
The most revolutionary ideas are often the most concise.
I could deliver my anti-establisment (be it a western or eastern one) message over 1200 bps acoustically coupled modems just as effectively, if not more so.
In fact, one is better off to open the floodgates and let the torrents (pun intended) of porn and Shakira videos flow.
Methinks Iran has missed the boat on modern propaganda and information flow control.
It seems to work quite well here in the west.
I say this from my 28.8 Kbps connection.
A few PR suggestion to roll this new policy out to their citizens...
Silly iranians, clicks are for infid[el]s...
Have I.T. OUR way...
Yo quiero Dial-up Hell!
Surf city yoU abStAin!
Aren't you glad you use dial-[up]?
[downloads] keep going, and going, and going...
Where you don't want to go today...
Just DON'T do I.T.
Shout I.T. out...
Don't leave home with I.T.
I.T. is everywhere you want to be, [but can't]...
The network is the computer [and only YOUR computer]...
Think outside the box [just don't surf there]
Let your fingers do the walking, [but not the surfing]...
A mind is a terrible thing to waste, [surfing the internet]...
The state of Israel has been in existence for 50 years now. For children who are being born into this world today, what would you have them do? Should they be burdened with the old grudges? Let's bury the hatchet and move on.
Actually, today, I think they should just ignore their parents trying to get them to kill each other. On both sides.
Please, for the good of Humanity, vote Obama.
When someone figures out how to make a buck off of "hellish frozen wasteland" then lets see how neutral it is.
I don't consider myself pro-Israel, but honestly, check your facts*. There have been Jews in the Middle East pretty much continuously since there were Jews, admittedly in small numbers, but they never entirely went away. Western history as typically taught tends to follow the story of European Jewry, not unreasonably, since most Jews today are of course of European ancestry. But that doesn't mean Palestinian, Lebanese, Iranian and African Jews ceased to exist.
*On this subject, particularly, I don't know if it's even possible to find factual information that is entirely free of political agenda, but this page seems to be fairly free of BS. Can't vouch for the rest of the website, just that particular page.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
You know, this sucks for Iran and all, but if you're China, it must be pretty telling of how controlling your government is when Iran has a more lax Internet policy than you do.
Did you ever notice that *nix doesn't even cover Linux?
i know i know, but someone's going to say it
Would this not then bring a rise in suicide blogging?
Hehe, brilliant.
Like BitTorrent and eMule was fast-track developed because of RIAA.
Soon, possibly because of the RIAA - the world will see good ad-hoc network software where the IP-address doesn't give you away.
Go and watch some more CNN then :-). No, honestly. This is America. Nobody has to use their brain here.
I thought it might be skewed due to being a common misspelling in that part of the world. But, no, it's even more dramatic with the normal spelling! http://www.google.com/trends?q=jennifer+lopez Oh, and you realize that by pointing this out you may have Heisenburg'd the data...
gas prices.
Imagine every net junkie, script kiddie, phone phreak, hacker, cracker ane leet sysadmin, suddenly denied access to evertyhing that mkes the internet interesting. There is nothing left but to tinker with the network itself. If the internet suddenly has no value to them, then there is no reson not to tear it apart for amusement.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Fag, learn to write in HTML. Learn to speak English. Learn to spell.
You're one dumb lump of shit and you should be flushed.
We're all laughing at you.
This sounds like the Republican Party in the runup to the next election...
Iran, aka West Korea :-p
In my next incarnation, I hope to come back as a code monkey.
Or Pat Robertson.
Since the US seems to be preparing to attack Iran or at least engage in some type of 'regime change', they'll probably have to rebuild their infrastructure anyhow. Maybe the new 'supreme leader' will allow broadband, that is, if the Iranians aren't all dead or suffering for radiation sickness from our depleted uranium munitions.
h s_nuclear_apocalypse/ 4 71020612 1 6/144204
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/200601009_bus
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101806Q.shtml
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=981427969
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/
It's really quite simple. Iran (the country, not the people) needs the bandwidth for research.
How else will they simulate all those nuclear "energy producing devices" they're building?
Narrow minded sons of beaches...Such closed minds (if any). What is the so-called 'Western influence'?? Those mullahs force their own women to wear veils and then ogle at other people's wives and daughters at every place imaginable. In a word - hypocrites.
... or else ....
And the next time the rest of us hear anyone criticizing anonymous speech on the Internet -- or, worse, proposing restrictions on it -- please point them at the parent post.
(Finally, I sure hope the Slashdot servers are secure. Slashdot tech guys, please take this stuff really, really seriously.)
Fine, |I will admit the Jews have the upper hand RIGHT NOW since they are backed by the all mightly US which is cleverly using UN to do their bidding. But Israel is supported monetary and finacially by the USA. Take away US's help and Israel is a gonner. the Grand vision of taking over the Middle East by the USA is NOT going very well, is it? We still have to see how the "new world order" game is played out.
I got permanently modded -1 because I dared to question Israel on
Keep your eyes to the sky.
And how many times has America stepped in to one of those land battles and not totally f'ed things up. Besides times where we went in with assistance, like in WW2.
And how many million black americans were illegally prevented from voting (presumably) democrat in the last presedential elections?
US-UK-Israel: The real Axis of Evil
Or maybe a Shinyman.
You may be mentioning to the Spanish-American War, where the US substituted Spain as the colonial power in Cuba, the Philippines and Puerto Rico. The "democracy" in Cuba was limited and no longer exists. The democracy in Philippines was limited and took several decades to be conceded. Puerto Rico became democratic though.
Or you may be mentioning how Eisenhower sided with a friend of Hitler and Mussolini.
We (the US) got the right-wing fundamentalist whackos that fled tolerant Europe. Said whackos exert a disproportiate influence on the US electoral system. Alcohol, gambling, evolution -- all tools of the devil.
I bartended in Texas as a high school senior; the rules were truly weird, like no cleaning supplies could be behind the bar -- apparently, we might cut a nice single malt scotch with drano, or something. Liquor bottles sold to bars were serialized (!!!?!), and the serial number had to be scratched off after the bottle was finished, on pain of a $10k fine and a shutdown for a week (!!!). In the land of the bible belt, goofy rules (bar rules, blue laws, and so on) were common.
I'm very glad to be living in Seattle (northwest corner of the continental US) now.
It's Linux, damnit! Pay no attention to renaming attempts by self-aggrandizing blowhards.
Um.. Antarctica is a continent.
country (n) kúntree - 1, The territory occupied by a nation, "he visited several European countries" 2, A politically organized body of people under a single government, "the country's largest manufacturer" 3, The people who live in a nation or country "the whole country worshipped him" 4, An area outside of cities and towns "his poetry celebrated the slower pace of life in the country" 5, A particular geographical region of indefinite boundary (usually serving some special purpose or distinguished by its people or culture or geography)
Since Antarctica has no permanent or indigenous human population, people, it is not a country.
As an IT Techi guy living in Iran for the past 6 years here's what we used to have and what we have now: 6 years ago if you wanted access you had to apply to an ISP, with a copy of your "birth certificate" and address, work address, parent's phone number, 2-3 guys addresses and birth certificate serial numbers, a lot of money and a signature that accepted all their stupid terms.
Internet access was through 2 methods: Hourly or Per Kilobyte. You'd opt for the second method if you only chatted, and chose first if you used the web more.
After a couple of years things became more sensible. You could buy cards, scratch off and find the password, then call up teh now 56K E1 number and get online. No more filling forms.
Speeds were 56K theoritical, 45K actual, and actual throughput was something around 28.8 - 33.6 even though the "Bandwidth" was 45K. This fooled a lot of people into forking out more money for "E1" lines.
After a couple of years (2 years ago) a few major ISP's started advertising for DSL. I live in Tehran, the capital and we have something around 30 telecommunications centers, each covering an area of Tehran. Of 30 or so telecommunications areas, even today, only a handful offer digital lines, (DSL) so internet for your average guy is still through 56K (so it's called) dialup. The telecommunications authority (the main one that controls the 30 or so smaller branches) keeps saying we're going to have digital lines soon, but 2 years on and there are around 5 or 6 areas (mainly in central town where the offices are) that offer DSL. Even then, they offer 128K connection at stupid prices, speeds are capped, sites are banned, and you have download limits of something around 1 GB/month. Some, like Datak (www.datak-telecom.com) offer unlimited downloads and speeds of up to 256K. It actually starts from 64K. So for all of you who think 128K is too little. Hey: less than 1% of internet users have access to DSL ! What is the government talking about ?!!!
Tehran - Iran
-573417h F16h73r