Slashdot Mirror
Internet Blackout in Myanmar Stalls Citizen Report
StonyandCher writes "The government in Myanmar has reportedly cut off Internet access in the troubled country.
The loss of Internet access in Myanmar has slowed the tide of photos and videos shared with the rest of the world but people outside of the troubled country continue to use new media sites and other technologies to protest military activity in the Southeast Asia country."
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... is exactly why you don't want to destroy the utility of the HF radio spectrum to sell it to broadband-over-power-line Internet providers.
You don't want to put all of your communication eggs in one government-controlled basket.
The first thing an oppressive government usually does when unrest is rising is to make sure independent news and reports can't escape, so the only source for information is the official one. They actually took their time to do that, given that the civil war has started almost half a month ago.
Well, maybe their astrologer said they should wait 2 more weeks 'cause then the stars are aligned or something.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I have never used a satellite internet provider, but I know that they do exist. Could someone on slashdot explain what is required for such service? I assume a modem which would be registered with a satellite provider. What is the feasibility of smuggling such things into Burma?
Now I'm no birdkeeper, but have you ever tried to gzip a pigeon before?
coding is life
as someone mentioned before, call the country Burma. That's the name which signifies that you don't accept the legitimacy of the murders who have stolen the country and ruled over it for all these years.
Also, I don't get the anti-bush tag, he seems to be doing a lot more than most to help the situation...
*''I can't believe it's not a hyperlink.''
have you ever tried to gzip a pigeon before?
Compressing a pigeon is not difficult (though a little messy), it's decompressing it that I can't quite figure out.
Burma is a very resource-rich country. The problem is that rather than the wealth going to the people, it is funneled into the pockets of the military generals (who then splurge on their daughters' weddings)
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, Burma has tons of oil. Chevron and Total are the two Western companies profiting the most, but China, India and Russia all have significant (read multi-BILLION dollar) investments as well..
If they've cut off every single international phone line you can still radio data in and out. People tend to think that going high tech is the way to break out of these kinds of situations - e.g. satellites etc. - when often going back to flashing light semaphore or carrier pigeon is more likely to succeed.
Losing the connection to Burma slightly, the Romans employed four flags on poles to communicate messages up and down Hadrian's Wall. In ideal conditions they could get a 4-bit message from one end to the other (70-something miles) in a matter of seconds - that's a pretty good bitrate for something with no electricity behind it. Granted you can't get streaming video of monks being beaten up at that kind of bandwidth but radio's a different story.
And setting up mobile radio stations is probably easier than installing a massive communications line of wooden poles without the military noticing. Many brave individuals carefully concealed both receivers and transmitters throughout occupied Europe often at great personal risk, for example. Communications routed around damage even back then. I'm sure there are people within that country right now beaming data out. I wonder where messages in bottles cast out on their beaches would wash ashore. You could squeeze quite a bit of memory into a bottle.
Anyway, I think what I'm rambling about is that there's always a way. I just hope there are enough people with the balls out there taking these risks and, much more importantly, I hope that their messages do not fall on deaf ears. Sadly I feel some of the more powerful countries, who might otherwise be in a position to levy some immense pressure on the Burmese junta, are somewhat under-staffed at the moment. Although it's fair to say that some other countries - that are most definitely not under-staffed - remain on the outside of this affair for rather more cryptic and apparently self-serving reasons.
All said with humble and awkward apologies for commenting on the topic while enjoying a comfortable yet-to-be-oppressed privileged lifestyle.