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US No Longer the World's Internet Hub
museumpeace brings us a New York Times story about how internet traffic is increasingly flowing around the US as web-based industries catch up in other parts of the world. Other issues, such as the Patriot Act, have made foreign companies wary about having their data on US servers. From the NYTimes:
"Internet industry executives and government officials have acknowledged that Internet traffic passing through the switching equipment of companies based in the United States has proved a distinct advantage for American intelligence agencies. In December 2005, The New York Times reported that the National Security Agency had established a program with the cooperation of American telecommunications firms that included the interception of foreign Internet communications. Some Internet technologists and privacy advocates say those actions and other government policies may be hastening the shift in Canadian and European traffic away from the United States."
I'm pretty sure the world has a center... but it'd be a heck of a feat trying to cool that server farm.
The only way to tell the difference between a hamster and a gerbil is that the hamster has more white meat.
Other countries wouldn't have a problem with routing their traffic through the United States if we had good public relations...
"For every packet your country sends through the U.S., you will automatically be entered in a drawing for one of your citizens to win an all-expenses paid trip to exotic, sunny Cuba!"
That would get them excited!
I'm a big tall mofo.
to stop this harmful globalization of our internet. i mean, its america where the tubes are and it needs to stay that way. globalization of the internet harms our way of life, and the future of our children.
why, just last week a boy in arkansas was forced to GeoIP his way to a foreign server so he could has cheezburger. what next? rich icons like goatse and the fat lightsaber guy? but only in that weird numa numa language? the mustard man hosted in russia?
Good people go to bed earlier.
Yeah, because American intelligence agencies have morals!
Aha! So that's what Al Gore was proving with global warming! That the world's servers are overheating.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
The Earth has a center, because it is a sphere. But no one lives outside a small band +/- 400m from the surface, so "the world" is a shell that has no center.
No one except the Mole Men, and they've got their own Internet. Which is really more an "Infranet", but that's their problem.
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make install -not war
So you are saying I could leave the world by going up or down?
Hmm, I think there are religions based on that...
If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
How about we have an international network that is completely free from politics and that politicians can't touch?
Ah, you Americans and your quaint complaining about the price of petrol :-).