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Could We Beam Broadband Internet Into Iran?
abenamer writes "Some reporter at a recent White House press briefing just asked the White House press secretary, Robert Gibbs, this question: Was 'the White House....considering beaming broad capability into Iran via satellite so the opposition forces would be able to communicate with themselves and the outside world?' 'Gibbs said he didn't know such a thing was possible. (Is it?) But he said he would check on the technological feasibility and get back with an answer.' I'm not sure what the reporter meant by beaming broadband into Iran: Do they even have 3G? Would we bomb the Iranians with SIM cards that would allow them to get text messages from the VOA? Or somehow put up massive Wi-Fi transmitters from Iraq and beam it into Iran? How would you beam broadband into Iran?"
Nokia Siemens Networks, the joint venture of Siemens AG and Nokia Corp, provided the deep packet inspection monitoring center within the Iranian government's telecom monopoly as part of a larger contract with Iran that included mobile-phone networking technology, according to the following article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124562668777335653.html
Not affiliated with Time-Warner.
Could they beam broadband into New York City first? Thanks.
Just recently there was a story on slashdot about using balloons in Africa to distribute internet connectivity. I don't recall the speeds they considered feasible. Such a deployment in Iran may also have to contend with attempts to shoot down or disable said balloons by those in power.
Camels with Wifi!
How about we "beam broadband" to our own have-nots first?
Caveat Utilitor
Why not set up 802.11 in east Iraq?
Low orbit satellites with directional antennas and GSM network would probably work. Not too different from Iridium.
How would you beam broadband into Iran?
I don't know... but something I once read prompts me to answer that they might beam broadband capability into Iran via satellite.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
We would have to ask Scotty if we had enough power to beam broadband.
Great, one more thing that Iran could accuse us of... meddling in their election, providing support to protesters in hopes of influencing their electoral process, just what we need! Don't get me wrong, it's a good idea, and I'm all for helping but it's just one more thing. Don't we have enough to worry about on our home soil?
It would still be an Iran-only network, unless there are unfiltered gateways, but it would at least allow internal communication.
Join the anonymous, help develop the network: http://www.i2p2.de
There are plenty of places in america that don't have good internet access. Why should our tax dollars go to them when we're still underserved?
Getting a signal TO them is easy. You just have to set up a source with sufficient power. Satellite, ground, shortwave, whatever. I think it would be feasible (I'm not radio guru) to beam them FM from space or Iraq. Basiclly you'd be breaking all the transmit power limits to further your cause.
The problem with networking is they don't have any devices powerful enough to beam the return signal BACK to us. Sure, we can broadcast them a packet 1000 miles away, but their hardware only has the power to return it 1 mile back... Yeah, you can tweak the sensitivity of your receiving equip, but not enough for this. And the idea of cells is that you are counting on a signal only reaching a certain distance, so you can reuse that frequency in another location. Even if they all put 100,000 watt amplifiers on their wifi cards, on our end it's just jumbled garbage.
By the time we got any hardware to them to let them communicate with us, this revolution will be over... R&D, Procurement, Distribution...
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
Does whoever asked that question know absolutely nothing about how "beaming" works? We could easily transmit more or less whatever we like down; but that won't magically turn Iranian cell phones or wifi devices into satellite modems. You'd need to substantially change, and upgrade, the hardware that they are using for any sort of communication to be established.
And, if the plan is to provide large quantities of Officially Discouraged Hardware to all and sundry, we might as well just mix rifles in with the phones and call it a day.
We can send sattelite internet to them quite easily. The real issue is that they have no gear to receive it. I'm sure we could dump stuff off by the truckload... but then I have to ask why? If the opposition loses, we have an even BIGGER diplomatic issue on our hand with a country we need to try to repair relations with over the long-term. I'd say we're best suited sitting back and letting it play out.
There's a number of places that offer satellite internet to geosync satellites. http://www.wildblue.com/aboutWildblue/how_it_works_demo.jsp http://www.ussatellite.com/how-satellite-internet-works.html
There already are various Satellite Providers that offer Internet Connectivity also in Iran, just try to :google it .
I'm pretty sure the US Army already has it's own satellite ISP that works in Iraq, which means it also works in Iran, they'd just have to be so generous to let the Iranis use it, they don't really need special equipment for this, they can buy satellite capable phones in Iran, they just need the access to the US army networks, or commercial networks. Just give them some access to satellite providers, then they can set up their own networks on site if they're the least bit organized, otherwise it's no use anyway.
Wifi from Irak isn't really possible, It would work around the borders, but that's all, Iran is a pretty big country, it's meaningless, satellite is the only option, either that or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IP_over_Avian_Carriers .
The majority of the country lives in mud huts with goats in their yards and are lucky to have elelectricity for even part day if at all. Those that happen to live in the city are a little luckier in that they have a few more amenities- possibly a phone, and even fewer a computer. What use is setting up an infrastructure if the population is unable to use it? Are we going to air-drop netbooks?
WildBlue provides satellite service throughout most of the U.S. Speeds, low. Latency, high. Gaming, impossible. But at least it works.
I believe that they use low earth orbit satellites, which means that they may not have the technical capability to provide coverage over Iran, at least not all the time. And then there's the matter of getting ground stations smuggled in and installed, and they're large enough (the size of a DirectTV dish) to be difficult to conceal.
RFC2549 seems to be a perfect fit here.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." - Napoleon Bonaparte
I wonder if abenamer even knows what SIM cards are? Does he know that they are subject to "approval" from the network? So unless he wants to send a GSM network as well they are useless. There are ways of spoofing and cloning of course, but that would also be quite simple to fix from an Iranian point of view; shut down the whole GSM phone network. Of course if they gave them satellite phones that would work! For both voice and data communications.
Yes, we could beam a high-power 802.11 service into at least the border regions of Iran and we could use well enough focused antenna arrays to pick up the wimpy signals their 802.11 cards sent back. And the nature of spread spectrum is such that they'd have a devil of a time jamming it.
The problem is, the friendly policefolk in Iran would be able to pick up the wimpy 802.11 signals as well, and trace them right back to the Iranians who are transmitting. It isn't like an AM radio signal where the receivers are, in a practical sense, untraceable.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
Iranians don't need broadband right now. All they need is a way of comunicating with the outside world. Maybe someone (read CIA) should teach them about Ham Radio.
It'd be a lot like squirting with your zune, I suppose.
The world has been clamoring for you guys to stop meddling in their affairs and only mind your own. So I suggest that you should do just that: it will cost you nothing and you won't generate any further ill will towards you. What's not to like?
Maybe people will change their mind or maybe they won't, either way you'll be covered.
Global warming is a cube.
The hardware necessary for them to acquire a signal from inside Iran to outside would be pretty damn obvious.
I suppose I would use some sort of dish or antenna. That will be a $400 consulting fee.
I bet a few AWACS aircraft orbiting just outside of the Iranian border could serve as communications relays.
This is my sig.
There are two possible technologies (among other similar ones)
With DVB-S2/RCS you have a bidirectional satellite system that requires a 1.2 meter dish antenna and a satellite terminal composed of an indoor unit (about the size of a bulky cable-modem) and an outdoor unit (transmitter and receiver horn mounted on the focus point of the satellite dish. This costs around US$1000 dollars and it takes about 30min to install (if you are an experienced installer).
With BGAN you have a very portable terminal (about the size of a netbook) that only requires you to point it in the general vicinity of the satellite location in the horizon.
Both systems use GEO (geostationary) satellites, which means that they have a fixed location in the horizon. They are actually located over the equator (0Â latitude) and they orbit the earth in 24h cycles, thus appearing to be stationary.
With DVB-S2/RCS you can have a 50Mbit/s in the downlink, although most services provide less than 10Mbit/s. The usually upload speed is 1Mbit/s. This speeds are shared between all terminals within a beam (similar to Internet over cable, where you share your Internet within a residential area of about 1000 persons).
With BGAN you only have 492Kbit/s in both the downlink and uplink. On the other hand, it is designed for mobility.
Fear is the mind-killer.
If they planned for this big firewall operation, I have no doubt they also rigged the election. Having the landslide victory why fear the recount ?
The Tor project has taken it upon themselves to help out the resistance in Iran. They have instructions to setup Iran only Tor bridges to provide secure/anonymous internet access to and from Iran.
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/measuring-tor-and-iran
Too bad the press isn't paying attention to the (very successful) efforts by the Tor project in helping out the people of Iran get communications in and out of Iran. No need for the White House to do anything, the good folks and volunteers at Tor are taking care of it in a much more practical way.
Also, whoever wrote this article/said that comment has no idea about physics and technology. Some of the comments here talking about how unbelievably implausible "beaming broadband" into Iran is are very funny.
You can't just throw internet into a country.... not in any practical way anyways, especially from a satellite without proper ground equipment.
Ahchoo: Blinkin - what's the fastest way to reach the villagers? Blinkin: Why don't we fox them? Ahchoo: Fox them!
Just use a satellite phone w/ data connection. Done.
I for one welcome our broadband-beaming overlords. Please beam it into Algonquin, IL first.
Say hello to my little sig.
The mistake I am hearing is that sending and receiving need BIG powerful equipment. What about going way back in history to mirrors, that is to say light? Perhaps a cheap modified DLP mirror chip could act as both receiver and sender (using a cheap hand laser). Hand lasers easily reach jets. Yes, a very cloudy or foggy country would have difficulty but a country with a lot of arid and desert climate has a lot of sunshine and open sky.
Some are born with Internet, some pay a lot for Internet, and others have Internet thrust upon them.
The US is currently sending out satellite TV news in Persian 24 hours a day. It's on Telstar 12; the eastern edge of coverage is near the Iran-Pakistan border, and the whole EU is covered. Someone please take a look and see what they're sending. The IBB doesn't seem to have the transponder number, symbol rate, or frequency on their site, which is lame.
My wife and I were discussing something like this over the weekend: A US Navy ship could have standard GSM cell tower equipment, with much higher gain antennas. If the Iranian's cell phones were being shut off, then the Navy ship cranks up the power and allows cell phones to contact via the ship-based cell site.
With our technical assets, why are we NOT doing this right now???
Also, in any long term situation Iran can set up jamming just as North Korea does.
Where there any revolutions recorded in history before the internet existed? Sorry if this seems like a dumb question. Maybe someone is doing their thesis on it or something.
"The day war was declared, a rain of telephones fell clattering to the coblestones from the skies above Novy Petrograd."
Charles Stross
And a big 'fuck you' to you.
Iranians want democracy. They are willing to fight and shed blood for democracy. Our youths sat by playing fucking XBox whilst our leaders kicked off a bloody and vicious resource war. We complain but do nothing about the constant abuses of our governments, despite the fact we are blessed with free elections, and the worse that happens to most protesters is they have photos taken of them.
Iranians can be imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for standing up to their leaders, and yet they line the streets of the capital without hesitation to demand fair government. We are in no position to lecture them about freedom and democracy - they are giving us a lesson on the concept right now. Arseholes like you who undoubtedly have never done anything political don't get to look down on these people; especially when their home grown secular democracy was originally snatched away from them by the west in order to make money.
If we can put a man on the moon, why can't we shoot people for Apollo-related non-sequiturs?
Before you even indulge in the technology, please think about the consequences of such actions and validate your claim/right to make such decisions on behalf of others. Just because you can doesn't mean you should. Science in the past has repeatedly ignored this vital step; atomic bomb comes into mind. We invent destruction, ignoring what we all know to be harmful, we give blinding incomplete arguments in support of such creation. Once the damage has been done, we still do not confess our wrongs but rather satisfy our consciences with more illogical arguments full of IFs and BUTs.
http://thedailywtf.com/Articles/Virtudyne_0x3a__The_Digital_Donkey.aspx
President Skroob: I don't know about that beaming stuff. Is it safe?
Cmdr. Zircon: Oh, yes. Snotty beamed me twice last night. It was wonderful.
President Skroob: Alright, I'll take a shot at it. What the Hell, it works on Star Trek.
mod me funny
I had already discarded this idea, because of the lack of hardware, but it does open the question as to whether the US should direct future research into broadband into satellite internet. The two birds you could kill at once would be domestic access and, assuming you could get the hardware accepted into other countries, a tool for future operations of this nature.
Promote the hardware, perhaps at a discounted price, perhaps even in partnership with local resellers. It's the newest thing, a great option for getting internet to poor people, heck - you could even throw money at people to deploy it.
You wouldn't need very deep market penetration into a country, though obviously it would be better if the technology worked with mobile devices.
If you're a tinfoil hat type, I would keep my eyes peeled for something like this.
...use it for porn.
Advice: on VPS providers
Iran, murky as it is, is a sovereign nation. Revolutions come from within, which is why we're spending trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan. The clue is: the iranians will figure it out. The more external influences are brought to bear, the more a subsequent government will be suspect by its people. They have to do it. We have to sit back and watch. Otherwise, it won't stick, and it will devolve into the seventh civil war in the Middle East. Here's the current list, if you're not sure: Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon, Palestine, Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea/Ethiopia. A quiet revolution makes much more sense than one that will continue to divide what were once peace-loving peoples.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Well, he's a politician so we can make educated guesses about the depth of his knowledge.
No sig today...
Or giant parrots on the hiltops, screaming in FSK.
To all those who say...
Let's take care of our own first Various versions of "the world doesn't want our interference"
I agree!
But just to play with the idea it seems like a great application for the OLPC and it's mesh networking capability. If we air-dropped enough of them, spread out throughout the country with either the hand crank or solar option.... It would make for an interesting show...
Everyone knows the internet is a series of tubes you moran, the real question is whether we have enough PVC to reach from our satellites down into Iran.
The shortwave band frequencies (2 MHz to 25 MHz ... depending on time of day and other conditions) could be used, too. The underground in Germany did that during World War 2. A lot got caught by direction finders. A lot didn't. It would be low bandwidth, but could supplement satellite based communications. Ham radio operators inside Kuwait used this to communicate out when Iraq invaded Kuwait. And hams are using lots of data/packet communications even over these frequencies these days.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
At the end of the day, when all is said and done, do you really want to start another war?
There is a point where interference in a country constitutes an act of war.
In Iran.. protesters that have been arrested, have been put on TV to tell how they have been influenced by the BBC and Voice of America to riot.. This is part of their punishment. The government is spinning everything as a western plot.. The latest is that the shooting of the girl Neda, was somehow staged by the west.. The Iranian governments propaganda is is like conspiricist theories on steroids.. They will use a question about beaming broadband to prove that the west is behind it all, you can be sure,
waiting for ad.doubleclick.net
How is Palestine a civil war? Or are you talking about history? The last civil war in that area took place a couple thousand years ago, which makes sense seeing as how that was the last time the area had sovereign rule against which to start a war.
Could we beam broadband internet into Iran? Yes. Could they send anything back? No.
However, everyone assumes that we 'should' be doing this and helping the revolution so they can experience 'freedom'.
For one thing, this isn't a popular uprising. It's taking place in a liberal city and is mostly students (although not entirely). Polls taken beforehand that were trustworthy indicate that Ahmadinejad could've expected between 40-50% of the vote in the election. That means he has a whole lot of supporters out there.
How do you think these supporters would feel if the opposition not only got brought into power on the basis of 'liberal' protesters who didn't represent them, but they were helped and organised through American help? Even if it wasn't state sanctioned, they'll still see it as America behind it.
All this to get a president into power who isn't that much better than the current one in terms of how liberal he is.
Brown and Obama have taken a strictly hands off approach for a reason. It's best at the moment to hope the situation resolves itself without excessive bloodshed. Too much pushing will at best, make a good portion of the country think we're meddling, at worst, it'll push the two entrenched sides into a bloody civil war.
It's currently Iran's problem and it should be up to the Iranian people to resolve it, not for the outside to decide what they think is best for them.
nonsense. they are both two cheeks of the corporate ass that owns them. I'm amused by alot of the intellectual people here that can't see through the whole Left/Right bullshit. Divide and Conquer. It works so well it's sad.
I hear they could simply use a series of tubes.
Just this once, let's not mess with the internal affairs of another country.
Shortwave radio (SW) has been around for years, and if we look at what happened behind the iron curtain, it seems that SW radio was a quite effective communications medium. Sending jazz and news from the free world to Moscow was easy despite KGB jamming attempts. But no, now we have internet, digital media, satellite radio, and most of the SW stations have been dismantled so that the land covered by their antenna could be sold for real estate development. Then sometimes somebody somewhere shuts down internet, jails all opponents who have a parabolic antenna on their roof and voila', another iron curtain has been raised. And now what ?!?
The uplink is the difficult and expensive part. Receiving satellite multi-cast is cheap. Wifi is cheap. So it should be dirt cheap to produce lots of local satellite->wifi repeaters pumping out data, so long as you skip on the uplink. Have some sort of simple one-way streaming multi-cast protocol. (You'd only need to do multi-cast on the LAN, and depend on distributing lots of units to get wide area coverage.) You'd have to distribute a new piece of software so that RSS readers and web browsers could view the content. Opera Unite might be able to do this. Any kind of locally installable web browser would do.
Balloons are cute, but you wouldn't even have to do that. All you have to do is get them to locals somehow. Just make these things self contained, disposable, battery powered with lots of longevity. The locals could stash them in random places out in the open and it would be completely deniable.
Of course, FM radio is a *lot* cheaper. So is analog television.
Reading this thread I somehow got reminded of this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YZdJRDpLHbw
Once again America is trying to make the world a better place. It hasn't always worked out all that well for you. ;)
One one hand: communication should be a basic human right, so what could probably go wrong?. On the other hand the Iraqis didn't much like Saddam, but many of them sure as hell didn't like it either when our tanks started patrolling their streets.
I'm comparing apples to oranges here and im only considering recent history. Just remember the world isn't black and white, but shades of grey.
Sure the Iranians seems pissed about the election fraud, but that doesn't guarantee they are ready for the "western world makeover" either (like the one you gave the Japanese).
Perhaps they really do prefer living in a barbaric society with laws based on religion, made up by some batshit insane clergy. Perhaps they just want their vote to count.
Personally I think helping them out with communication sounds like a great idea (not considering whether its technically possible or not). Just a word of warning from a smug european
A small modification to RFC 1149 for using camels. That should do it.
The whores get mad when the sluts give it away for free.
How is Palestine a civil war? Or are you talking about history? The last civil war in that area took place a couple thousand years ago, which makes sense seeing as how that was the last time the area had sovereign rule against which to start a war.
it seemed pretty civil warrish when Hamas booted out Abbas by using guns.
I'm god, but it's a bit of a drag really...
Iranians have computers and government censored internet, and there are already non-profit groups or for-profit groups working free of charge to circumvent the internet censorship that is in place. Instead of building a new network, how about we fund the people trying to undermine the governments control directly? China does the same thing but their censorship is much weaker.
I am not a nerd, I just play one in real life. My avatar thinks I'm a total loser.
I'm sorry, but rule 14.8.1 says you cannot use politicians' talking points on Slashdot (in this case, Barack Obama's). And you can't hide behind quoting someone else using politicians' talking points. Sorry, those are the rules. (I'm kind of surprised that the Daily Show doesn't have the same rule.)
INMARSAT, THURAYA, IRIDIUM, etc... these are the most common satellite coms available in the middle east, and the most widely used. They are expensive, and are mostly used in maritime shipping but there's nothing Iran could do to stop someone from "obtaining" this equipment and getting on the signal. There's no way they can jam the entire country.
A Care Bear Stare would be far more effective and less complicated from an IT standpoint.
Why do you talk of beaming Iran, or "bombing" Iran with SIM cards?
Can't you just handle the SIM cards gently?
And while we are at it, can we beam these "censorship free"
signals here to the rest of the so called "free world" where
our freedom of speech is under constant attack?
Sometimes they need a little instruction in the hi-tech wizardry we take for granted:
The First IT Professional
Imagination drew in bold strokes, instantly serving hopes and fears, while knowledge advanced by slow increments...
. . . into the Council of Guardians?
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
oh shut up.
The only reason anyone gives a shit about Iran over all the other piece of shit places on earth is because they've got oil.
Why Iran and not Darfur?
Under the influence of Post-Cyberpunk Gonzo Journalism
You didn't mention her hair.
That's significantly more important than her mouth and nose (which are actually a non-issue to many people, but still should be covered according to some others). I know you're a troll, but I couldn't let that piece of information slip by.
I don't get the whole Iran thing at all.
What do I know:
Mousavi ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mir-Hossein_Mousavi ) is not a reformer. He was prime minister during some of the worst days of the revolution. He held high offices and oversaw the imprisonment of tens thousands of peaceful opposition figures (or just ordinary people caught drinking wine for example). Many of whom were tortured and/or killed. For some insight into those horrible times you can check out Persepolis ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persepolis_(comics) ) movie or comic.
Mousavi seems to be a member of a so called "reformist alliance". Former president Khatami also belongs to the same group. He was elected, because many people seemed to hope they could bring some change using the elections. Khatami himself said that he is not a reformer. But still tried to ease up on the restrictions governing the daily lives of the Iranians. It didn't help. Other "more hardcore" elements of the government that are not controlled by the president and the parliament cracked down and reversed changes. As a result the public grew weary of the so called "reformist alliance" that could not (or didn't want to) actually reform anything.
The whole thing looks like trouble within the supposedly ruling class of clerics. Why do so many people protest on the streets? Most likely it wouldn't make a difference if Mousavi was elected. Also AFAIK the Pasdaran actually control Iran. A very corrupt military organization ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Army_of_the_Guardians_of_the_Islamic_Revolution ).
Can anyone shed some light on this whole thing? Could it not be that Ahmadinejad actually got 60% of the popular vote? After all he is a populist. Maybe he is popular after all. Why would the rulers of Iran risk a popular uprising for nothing. Khatami couldn't do anything at all. He didn't have much actual power. Same with Ahmadinejad. He is just a puppet. Mousavi would also just be a puppet.
We have to sit back and watch. Otherwise, it won't stick
Not to split hairs, but Iran's governments haven't proven particularly sticky, regardless of our (or anyone else's) attempts to fiddle with them.
That said, I do agree with your sentiment.
Just another ignorant American.
"propping up the Shah, funding Iraq in a war against them"
Those were blatant means of changing specific policy/removing governments we didn't like, etc..
I see no reason why the US can't help promote general ideals (freedom of press, etc..) while not commenting on any one leader. I think it is morally correct to pressure Iran into NOT arresting reporters and killing protesters for example.
Obama seems to be increasing the verbal pressure in denouncing some things, which I think it good. However, I see no reason why we should pursue additional means of pressure, sanctions, etc.. whatever.
It is a fine line between 'interferring' and upholding basic human rights. That is, assuming you agree that we should attempt to promote what we consider basic human rights in other nations (I do, but I know that some do not)
Why bother with this when the Blizzard and Xbox chat rooms are working just fine.. .
"Trusting every aspect of our lives to a giant computer was the smartest thing we ever did.." Homer Simpson
How is Palestine a civil war? The last civil war in that area took place a couple months ago,
The Palestinian Territories, those parts in which Israel is not involved, are divided between the Hamas and the Fatah, who have been actively (and as violently as war gets) fighting each other for years already:
the administration of the territories has been contested by two rival entities, with Hamas controlling the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian National Authority (with Mahmoud Abbas of Fatah in leadership) continuing to administer the West Bank. Both groups claim legitimacy over leadership of the Palestinian territories and neither recognizes the legitimacy of the other.
.
The world is not black and white. And with Google and Wikipedia at your fingers' reach, you literally have no excuse. But then your sig tells enough about you.
AltSlashdot. Because f'k the beta
There's a reason we propped up the Shah. And there a reason we went into Iraq. There's a reason we're in Afghanistan. Everything has to do with resource control. Meddling with Iran has less to do with defeating evil, and more to do with destabilization.
internet through ham radio: packet radio, d-star, winlink, AMPRNet, etc. would work
Sorry, have to post anonymously since I modded something else on this topic.
Our youths sat by playing fucking XBox whilst our leaders kicked off a bloody and vicious resource war. We complain but do nothing about the constant abuses of our governments, despite the fact we are blessed with free elections, and the worse that happens to most protesters is they have photos taken of them.
A bloody and vicious resource war? For the record, ALL wars are bloody and vicious. And I presume you're talking about Iraq? Tell me - after we conquered Iraq, how many barrels of oil did we plunder from that country? Oh yeah, we didn't do that, did we? We rebuilt their infrastructure at our expense, and gave it back to them. We put ourselves in-between the various factions to make sure civil war didn't erupt, and the country has a chance for a peaceful future.
I suppose some of our young men and women fighting in Iraq played Xbox as well. But it was our youths that are on the frontlines of Iraq and Afghanistan. I'll pit out best youths among the Iranians any day.
Iranians can be imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for standing up to their leaders, and yet they line the streets of the capital without hesitation to demand fair government. We are in no position to lecture them about freedom and democracy - they are giving us a lesson on the concept right now.
Yeah... sort of like what life was like in Iraq just a few years ago... before we invaded, then turned the country over to the Iraqi people. Remember what used to happen to political or ethnic enemies in Iraq? Entire villages were gassed. Rape squads. Torture. Fun stuff like that.
The reason we propped up the Shah was wrong. Look what happened.
The reason we went into Iraq was wrong. There was no reason, only BS lies. Yes, Saddam Hussein was a murderer; there are many such murderers.
The reason we destabilized the Taliban has certain justification, but is otherwise wrong. The Afghani difficulties are long and historical; we needed to target a specific group and didn't. We had no plan, and our plans currently are dubious.
Meddling with Iran is wrong. Destabilization isn't needed; it's already tottering.
Evil is in the eye of the beholder. There is a right and wrong, and murder-- involuntary life-taking-- is wrong.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
The author of this article seems totally clueless about what "beaming broadband via satellite" means, as it has absolutely nothing to to with 3G or anything cellular related. Cell phones require widespread wireless installation to cover a given area and just couldn't be done remotely!
Broadband internet can work via satellite using a dish antenna, just like with any satellite TV. It has a high latency (~500 ms in each direction AFAIK, so if you're not using terrestrial lines for outbound traffic that means ~1000 ms) but could definitely be used for that purpose.
Q: Why do some camels have two humps?
A: Dual channel
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I think he's just labeling every conflict in the region a 'civil war'. Eritrea vs Ethiopia is about as close to a state-vs-state conventional war as we're going to get in this era even if currently in an "irregular" phase.
The enemies of Democracy are
And, if the plan is to provide large quantities of Officially Discouraged Hardware to all and sundry, we might as well just mix rifles in with the phones and call it a day.
I had the exact same thought. I fully encourage the protesters and express my support, but if we start airdropping satellite internet equipment we have officially crossed the line into the dreaded Meddling category.
Now maybe we should send that (along with the rifles) but that's a whole different discussion!!
Someday in the future there will be Quantum Twitterers that let you twitter from anywhere to a secure facility, but we are not there yet. Until then, you need a network to reach others...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
People here are saying it would be trivial for us to send, but difficult for the Iranians to respond. I think that's mistaken.
I recall seeing an extensive feature on TV a few months back regarding the illegal use of US satellites in Columbia by drug traffickers (I'd cite a source, but I'm afraid I can't find anything). It turns out that with a few parts you could buy at the third-world equivalent of a Radio Shack, you can easily modify existing radio handsets to communicate via some of the older US satellites. Traffickers have been using this trick for several years now to evade the authorities by telling remote locations when they need to pack up and move out because raids are on the way.
From what I recall, the satellites can't be software patched to handle the issue, so the only way to stop the traffic is to get rid of the handsets, which is nearly impossible, since they're so cheap and easy to produce illegally. I don't see why it would be so difficult to slap a modem on it and turn it into a mobile satellite modem using a few spare parts and a couple hours of work if you knew what you were doing. Granted, it's not a private channel of communication, but it's something at least.
It's a civil war inside Israel: Palestine isn't a separate country, in any sense of the word. (At best they are a semi-independent province.)
Basically it's a war over whether non-Jews have equal rights in Israel, with the stated option being to create a separate country for the non-Jews. (That's grossly oversimplified.)
'Sensible' is a curse word.
"For one thing, this isn't a popular uprising. It's taking place in a liberal city and is mostly students (although not entirely)."
the protests are not by a few iranian hippies. this is a gross distortion of the facts of the wide appeal this uprising has across all demographic groups
"It's currently Iran's problem and it should be up to the Iranian people to resolve it, not for the outside to decide what they think is best for them."
good. so shut up and stop trying to characterize what is going on iran as anything else but a genuine, vast, multidemographic uprising
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
There's a reason we propped up the Shah. And there a reason we went into Iraq. There's a reason we're in Afghanistan. Everything has to do with resource control. Meddling with Iran has less to do with defeating evil, and more to do with destabilization.
Well, at least you didn't continue that ludicrous diatribe of "we're stealing their oil!!!" As though we don't pay top dollar (along with the rest of the World) for every barrel we use.
"Don't be a martyr -- BE THE ONE WHO GOT AWAY!"
The United States doesn't give a crap about protecting people from tyranny unless it is anti-capitalist tyranny. The US only acts against tyranny if it gets in the way of multinational corporations or the harvesting of strategic resources.
Nate silver discusses it here.
I too keep hearing this "argument". apparently many attribute living outside big cities to being idiots. The rural areas are those most in need, 4 years ago Ahmadinejad made some incredible promises to them, none of which he delivered.
On the other hand they know Mousavi as the guy who saved the nation from starving when oil wells were burning during the Iran-Iraq war. He successfully kept inflation low and economy alive. Ahmadinejad on the other hand promised to make inflation single digit, and instead raised it to ~30% (almost doubled it).
Lastly, since mid-seventies with the rise in oil prices and ensuing mismanagement of wealth, i.e. huge consentration of wealth in cities, a wave of migration to cities started and is still ongoing. A 30 to 70 population ratio of the 70s has come to a near 50-50 ratio. Which means urban+suburban population is now almost equal to rural population. In elections the cities are as important as the rural areas, none of which are particular fan clubs of Ahmadinejad.
Seriously, it didn't work out too well the last time you guys did it.
I don't see any problem. All we need is a series of tubes and there are plenty of tubes in that oil-rich country.
If you gave the Iranians access to the internet, they'd just suck up all the bandwidth with YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Second Life. Half of them would be inspired to overthrow their government, and the other half would see the outside world as a vast wasteland, and embrace their isolation. I'm pretty sure that this is why North Korea's like this. They saw an episode of "Mr. Ed" and decided that isolationism isn't so bad after all.
Should we "beam" broadband internet into Iran? I dont know if interfering with other governments is a good idea. A lot of people seem to be for interfering with a regime until we actually go to war with them at which point those same people scorn and point blame at others for doing exactly what they wanted.
I'm not trying to troll, I'm bringing up a valid point.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
When I hear this, why do I think of a bunch of garden hoses linked together going across the Iran border?
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
Notice I didn't say anything about evil or moral. Right and wrong are in the eye of the beholder as well. Saying life-taking is "wrong" is ridiculous. The laws of the universe could care less. It's just as "wrong" to slaughter a pig or pluck grass from the earth.
Sure we could, hell we already do with satellites..
Bigger question is should we. They are a sovereign nation, don't they have a right to decide what their people have access to? And if you say no they don't have a right, i bet you would be opposed to another nation telling YOU what you can and cant get access to. Cant have it both ways.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Why on Earth should the USA interfere with the communications of a sovereign country to benefit one of the parties of an election? Would you have liked Iran giving free broadband in the USA to Al Gore when Bush Jr. stole the election?
Mind your own business. Let the Iranians solve their own problems. Every time you interfere, things get shittier.
This is fairly disturbing.
It is and it isn't. People can only learn so much about the world around them without focused study. I think science has just passed the point where laymen can be expected to absorb all of it.
No, no... that hasn't happened yet... It's going to be...
wait for it...
Now. Now laymen can no longer be expected to absorb all of science. (Seriously, was there ever a time when laymen could be expected to absorb all of science?)
Bow-ties are cool.
Wouldn't the Iraqi government have to sign off on that, since Iraq is sovereign nation? I suspect there is enough Iranian influence that they would not allow it.
I'm sorry, what?
We're the United States of America. Hadn't you heard? We'll just find some excuse to make the Monroe Doctrine apply to the Middle East and we'll call it good. If Iraq doesn't like it, they know where to find us.
Bow-ties are cool.
Well Iran has also "meddled" in US affairs and their regional neighbors as well.
After the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in late 1990's- their embassy was overrun and staff murdered. Iran had concerns that Taliban would target Iran in their jihad. After 9/11 foresaw an opportunity to defeat the Taliban without blooding their hands. Iran provided the US with intelligence to help defeat the Taliban in northern Afghanistan with assistance with the Northern Alliance (who had good ties with Iranian Government).
When the tea leaves showed that US was planning to invade Iraq, Iran was offering to provided the US with intelligence for the upcoming battles. Their angle was that after the Saddam regime was defeated Iran would have a solution. Exiled Iraqi politicians in Iran who were sympathetic to Iranian politics would be instilled as the new government. US declined this generous offer.
Iran now provides arms and training to opposition forces in Iraq
Why can't we just let people revolt without our interference?
Because in the history of revolting THAT IS WHAT HAS ALWAYS HAPPENED
In the history of revolting your mom occupies a field of study all her own.
Bow-ties are cool.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Eritrea/Ethiopia are not in the middle east. Somalia, Eritrea/Ethiopia are in Africa. Check your geography
...Revolutions come from within, which is why we're spending trillions in Iraq and Afghanistan. ...
Not sure I follow that logic.
Planning to be moderated ± 1: Bad Pun.
And Texas is in the Midwest. Go fish.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
And I'm not going to listen to a "suggestion" from a squalid peasant on slashdot, because I don't care about your "ill will" or the "clamoring" of some rabble of untermensch. We *will* meddle in your affairs if it suits us, and the only thing left for you to do is to yell "yes sir" and step the fuck out of our way. Judging by your user name however, I have to assume that you're posting from some irrelevant, mediterranean old-europe country; some open-air mausoleum with a rapidly-aging population- flyover country for that side of the atlantic. In that case your comment comes off as yet another nobody talking shit about his employer. Maybe you're the one who needs to do a better job minding his own affairs- as your neighborhoods are being inundated by khat-chewing somalis, and yemeni men who wipe their asses with their own hands and grope your women- because while we might decide to park some f16s or construct a missle silo on your land, you probably don't have anything that's worth any serious "meddling." ^_^
Have a nice day.
I remember reading a story about how some African nations were creating a wifi network via balloon. The wireless router hangs off a weather balloon and gets it's network connection either via satellite or a dedicated link to a ground station. The advantage may be that it could be done cheaply and easily replenished.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
In theory, amateur radio satellites could be used to beam Internet access into Iran, since it is possible to use TCP/IP via ham radio. It would, however, be very slow.
However, if they have ham radios to begin with, why bother making them Internet enabled?
Saddam was switching to Euros for his oil. Don't neglect that little datapoint. Losing the petrodollar as world's reserve currency will put the US in a world of hurt. That's when we went in, not before, but then. His actions, if they had been successful, would have encouraged other providers to do the same.
Anyway, why we went in isn't *any* sort of secret, it is all laid out in black and white at pnac.org. They just needed an excuse, a new "pearl harbor" event. Gee, one seemed to magically show up, too. How timely, coincidental and convenient.
How did your revolution against the British turn out on your own? Oh wait - it didn't. The French helped - as did the Dutch & Spanish.
But go on it seems to be the prevailing thought process on Slashdot today so you'll get your +5 insightful. Iraq & Afghanistan btw have different problems as to why they are currently expensive (probably has a lot to do with the horrible mismanagement & wide-spread corruption with the private contractors Bush liked so much).
BTW the CIA promised help thus encouraging the Hungary Revolution in 1956 against the Soviets. Guess how well that turned out for them without any external help. What do you realistically expect to happen here? If we leave things alone, the Iranians potentially could get slaughtered (however, I'm not going to presume to understand all the intricacies of the political system - it's extremely complex with lots of factors like the guardian council, which elects the Ayatollah actually supporting a recount AFAIK). Simply saying it's in our best interest to stay out of it is extremely stupid - it's hedging the bet that everything will remain status quo. If there is a successful overthrow, they probably won't appreciate not getting help from the States while they were dying - they might not care, they might understand, they might not.
Using HF radio you could easily beam internet to anyone who wanted it in the country and has an appropriate transceiver, knows how to put up a good directional antenna (at about 1200 baud... shared) But people who have that equipment and know how likely aren't having any problems communicating anyway
VHF would yield much better throughput, with standard modems managing about 9600baud, but greatly diminished range and a lot more juice needed to extend it.
We toppled a government in Iraq that had two distinct factions, Sunni and Shiite Muslims held at bay from each other. Other factions, like the Kurds, and non-Muslim populations kind of lived together when Saddam wasn't gassing one or another opponents, or the Iranians.
There are plenty of varieties of ethnic and religious subgroups in Afghanistan that have been plundered for several hundred years, most recently by the former Soviet Union before we got there.
If our problem after 9/11 was with "Al Qaeda' then we should have found its leaders, and brought them to justice. This hasn't happened yet, and until other blood is extracted from the reason, won't likely happen.
So, we screwed up not targeting a very distinct religious group (not the Taliban; they were just cooperative) called 'Al Qaeda' in Afghanistan. We went to war in Iraq based on trumped up lies, admitted to by the prior administration, based on provocation from Saddam Hussein, who was found and hung after a 'trial'. Yes, he probably deserved it.
But because we screwed up Afghanistan, and we had no real plan in invading Iraq, we're paying untold billions of dollars to bring 'peace' there. Correction: we're spending billions of dollars of future earnings there.
If either had had internal revolutions, we'd've been better off. Let the Iranians earn their own revolution. We needn't help. Let them own their success--it's better that way.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
Team America, World Police.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0372588/
The title was one of the best jokes in the whole movie... Well that and the puppet sex scene.
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
THE UPRISING IN IRAN IS NOT A FEW HIPPIES
REPEAT
THE UPRISING IN IRAN IS WIDE THROUGHOUT ALL IRANIAN SOCIETY
understand?
but why take my word for it. let an iranian tell you:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/19/opinion/19shane.html
recant your ignorance. or claim you know more about iranian demographics and the uprising than actual iranians
douchebag
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Sit down.
Get rid of your bile and your testosterone. Leave them alone.
If our interests are the Iranians, let's watch them win this one. If it's US interests, then you're just one more corporate stooge looking for your next earnings statement.
Hedging your bet means getting your hands dirty. Let them win by exposing bias and distortions of the truth within their process. External pressure from the US and/or UK will have a negative reaction. Give them tools; let them do the work. Things are much more valued if you really have to earn them.
And the US tendency to meddle in the affairs of sovereign nations is plainly stupid and serves (often) only corporate interests, not those of the US people or those of the sovereign nation. Look at what history tells you. Look at the damage done.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
You can't beam a series of tubes!
In theory, WIMAX can give you usable (if somewhat slow) speeds out to 50km - which might get some villages close to Iran's borders but won't help Tehran at all.
Anyone who has the right sort of CPE, the right knowledge, and proper credentials can use a dish subscriber network to get as much as 2mbps down and 1mbps up. The latency blows, but it's not like the service is meant for playing the latest FPS. The big downside is the customer equipment - satellite dishes are thick on the ground in most areas of the middle east, but I'd be a little surprised if enough of them are the right sort of dish to matter. If they are, it may not matter - Iran's been taking various measures to reduce citizen's access to satellites
The situations are largely different in Iran currently vs America during the independence. And there is also the very important matter of US having interfered with Iran before, with negative consequences for the people in general. So interfering in favor of the opposition would pretty much kill their support from the general public - in Iran, US-backing means US-puppet and they have no reason to believe it would be different this time. Hell, probably the best way for US to support the opposition would be to declare support for the government, though how you'd do that and still be believable I have no idea.
A little meddling certainly helped us in our revolutionary war. I tend to agree with you but it is not always so clear cut.
Just aim the laser beams to those few people harassing the Iranian people.
There are allies, and meddlers. France had it in for Great Britain. So did some of the Germans and Poles. But that's not what we're talking about here at all, is it? Let the Iranians find the center themselves-- it's far cleaner that way.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
"A student who's participated in the protests does not make for an authoritative and unbiased report..."
oh, but some western asshole on a comment board does
gee, maybe you're arguing out of stubborn ignorance at this point?
you've been proven absolutely wrong. the protests are NOT just in tehran, they are all over the country. they are men, they are women, they are young, they are old, they are devout, they are westernized
that's the fucking truth
now if you're not man enough to admit when you are you clearly and wholly wrong, then simply shut up, you ignorant asshole
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
We could always just use hot air balloons like in this comic here... http://toblender.com/comic/?p=360
I belive I am on to something.
We need Vader and a swarm of droids.
Have some sort of simple one-way streaming multi-cast protocol. (You'd only need to do multi-cast on the LAN, and depend on distributing lots of units to get wide area coverage.) You'd have to distribute a new piece of software so that RSS readers and web browsers could view the content. Opera Unite might be able to do this. Any kind of locally installable web browser would do.
Basically, Teletext?
Who's baby was that? Brzezinski mostly. Notice who the main foreign policy advisor is today to the prez? There's some more change for ya.
But if that's problematic, doesn't it imply that you don't have a reasonable understanding of human behavior? And shouldn't human behavior itself be part of the baseline - way before power grids and fuel production?
...requires two way communication. So, beaming whatever into Iran, even assuming it's the right thing to do, is easy. But unless they have a way to beam back ... it's called "AM radio".
The answer to "proper" Internet access would depend on whether access is needed "this week" "this month" or "this year". Also, access for a few? The many? etc, etc.
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
Do they even have 3G?
You could ask the same question about the US. *ducks*
May as well drop several crates of pistols, assault rifles and grenades if you want to support a revolution.
It's sickening to hear the talking heads insist we must speak out over this crooked election.
Like they all did in 2000, huh?
>a couple thousand years ago
You mean before the Jews were exiled from there? I'd call that an Israeli civil war.
http://iansbrain.com/2009/06/18/anonymous-launches-first-satellite/
As for the "image" of the US among the rest of the world, it doesn't really matter what the US government does - you see, if we help the Iranian voters, everybody hates us for interfering yet again in somebody's business when they may well have been able to get through it themselves, only to have the US fuck it up for them. On the other side, if we don't do anything, as some people on here are advocating, and the Iranian voters all get slaughtered by the new regime, the whole world goes and says "Look at those hypocritical bastards in the US! They claim to love democracy and give full support to any nation that wants to oust a tyrant to put democracy in, but see what they do in the real world! Nothing!"
So like I said, its not like anything good is going to come out of it for the US anyway. We help them and are seen as warmongers, or not and seen as hypocrites...
They can all refer eachother and get 2 months free!
The best way to distribute Internet in peace/neutral zones is with high altitude solar powered WIFI helium crafts (NASA working on prototypes), low maintenance cost, free broadband for the population. ;)
In an hostile zone the best way to distribute Internet is still through satelitte, but it's so slow for gaming
BEAM ME UP SCOTTY!!!!!!
Revolutions usually have substantial external influences.
American Revolution: the American founding fathers were partially armed, equipped, and funded by the French who at the time were all about meddling with England.
American Civil War: the United States worked very hard to prevent the British from supplying the Confederate States. A lack of supplies, weapons, and trade partners on the Confederate front and the industrial prowess of the North are thought to be some of the deciding factors in the war.
This isn't complex tech. You launch a bunch of helium-filled weather balloons from bordering countries; under each one is a payload of wifi gear that repeats a transmission from ground-based terminals. 60,000 feet is nothing for consumer-grade wifi gear. At around $1000 a pop, they are cheap (disposable), and a turn-key package can be shipped out for deployment by regional hackers (hackerswithoutborders.org, for example). Alternatively, you spend a bit of real money and deploy Stratellites. Of course, those would probably be easier to shoot down, and the loss would sting a bit financially. Also, see "Still a Prototype".
"Apparatus dignosco occultus, satis non supernus."
I used to install consumer grade satellite internet. It was not simple though. The dish had to be properly aligned (crosspol/copoll) or it caused trouble at the satellite. The probability of Iran's dishes getting aligned correctly (harder than satellite tv) is iffy and someone would have to donate a properly placed satellite and relay services to the enterprise, which is not cheap. These satellites are 22K miles out and have substantial lag, but that is not an issue I guess. These dishes are easy to spot though unless very cleverly disguised. The technology is sexy though and it would be a generous gesture.
Seems to me the best thing to help free speech in Iran or many other countries is to allow the transfer, to civilians, of really good encryption technology. Our government may not be able to read their stuff, but their government won't either, and that's probably more in line with what we want. If anything, the fact that our government could not read their stuff would probably garner more popular acceptance of it.
This is my sig.
We could provide software to support ad hoc networking between smart phones. All they really seem to need is a crush-resistant way to send text messages.
If I absolutely had to get information into iran via satellite I would do it this way: create a system that broadcasts via satellite into iran a set of websites / tv stations / misc. news outlets that is reflective of demand for news in iran. The request side of this system could be composed of: continuously rotating proxies (freenet?) ip dns requests via shortwave ip dns requests via satellite ip dns requests via cellphone ip dns requests via point to point transmission to afghanistan / persin gulf where possible There would have to be designed a software suite capable of amalgamating various sources of demand for news from various sources that could be dynamic. The satellite would then broadcast the information most in demand from the people within iran. with the prohibitive cost of satellites it might be more pragmatic to float high altitude balloons over the persian gulf that contained satellite type broadcast equipment, or better yet more common wireless internet technology that would be harder to trace via equipment purchases or by having a frakking dish on your roof. A dynamic set of locations for receiving point to point wireless transmissions from the persion gulf (cantenna anyone) with requests coming from sources within iran would work. It would be like old school satellite where the dns request was sent out via modem, but the transmission was received via more capable wireless transmission.
Could "we" provide broadband to Iran?
First, a description of the existing systems. They, in short, use a ground satellite dish (like Dish Network sized or a bit bigger) to receive signals from a satellite, and (on older systems) use a dialup return or (on newer systems) a transmitter on the satellite dish beams signals back to the satellite. See hughesnet and wildblue for 2 US examples that do multi-megabit speeds. This will have a regular beam, and "spot beams" to cover higher usage areas. This is not just a SIM card, this is a whole satellite receiver/transmit system. Sat phone systems exist but typically run about 9600bps data (that is 0.9kbps or so), with a larger antenna required for higher-speed data.
Problems with this:
A) Who's "we"? There are commercial companies that do provide satellite data, and at reasonable speeds at that, but most use geosynchronous satellites and aren't goint to just let someone move a sat over Iran. It's not like the gov't going to magically make a satellite appear either.
B) No. Barring the practical reasons of the satellite and distributing receivers, there is:
1) Legal reasons. There's FCC-like regulations at the international level, there's licenses for certain frequencies at a certain orbital location. And don't forget, the ground stations are transmitting out on reserved frequencies as well. Countries do take this stuff seriously too! Leading to:
2) Within-the-country legal problems. You've got a special data receiver setup on-site, and it's *transmitting*, so it's not like it'll be hard to track them down. This won't be a portable solution if you're "on the lam" either.
3) Practical reasons. Iran's got like 30 million people in it. Put a fat satellite in place, get people using it, and it'll be uselessly overloaded and slow.
Bull, the Palestinian territories are occupied territories that a small but vocal minority of Israelis would like to annex (to their own demise, the idiots). While many consider them a part of "Eretz Yisrael", the old Land of Israel, nobody really considers them Israeli territories in the way of Tel-Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, or Be'er-Sheva. The broad assumption is that once the terrorism problem gets solved the Palestinian Arabs will have an independent state in, roughly speaking, those territories.
Something like this:
http://www.v3.co.uk/vnunet/news/2144393/wi-balloon-delivers-broadband
A series of balloons launched in sequence using omni gain antennas at 5GHz to form a mesh backbone between them.
These 5GHz radios would be amp'ed up to 10 watts or so. The base station outside Iran would use high gain antennas to link up to 1 or more
of these balloons. Each balloon has a patch antenna pointing down at 2.45GHz and would provide the range needed to connect with ppl on the ground. The launch site must be chosen carefully to make the balloons fly over populated areas. One would perhaps need some altitude control unit regulating the balloon pressure to maintain correct altitude to be within range for people with normal wifi gear to get connection. It's however very easy to make a 10dBi or so antenna for your wlan card on the ground to get a better/stable link.
The point here is not for US or anyone to root for one side or the other, but to provide the people of Iran the tools to organize and communicate
against the oppressing forces in their society.
Our youths sat by playing fucking XBox
When the time comes that XBox youth is going to lay waste to the sons of cyrus. And their nukes.
Iranians can be imprisoned, tortured, and even killed for standing up to their leaders, and yet they line the streets of the capital without hesitation to demand fair government.
They line the streets for Ahmadinejad as well. They line the streets and celebrate when some gang of terrorists commits mass murder someplace in the West. Frankly, a bunch of madrasah educated atavists yelling 'death to' _fill_in_your_great_satan_here_ doesn't mean much to me.
We are in no position to lecture them...
That's bullshit; we are position to lecture them, but we shouldn't, which was my point. Thanks for the help with it.
especially when their home grown secular democracy was originally snatched away from them by the west in order to make money
Cry me a fucking river. Please, keep believing your mullah's propaganda. Eat that shit up.
I believe one of the best ways to "BEAM" data into areas with little or no net access would be to bounce RF encoded data packets off the moon. Any HAM radio operator knows that voice streams can be bounced off the surface of the moon and picked up in far away places. Moonbounce would be perfect for underground low bit-rate data streams, such as twitter or facebook posts.
If coordinated properly with someone in an outside country (possibly even via amateur radio) these µblogs could then be posted to the net.
Also there is the possibility for internal communications within local communities via packet radio technologies like AX.25 which can be used to access local bulletin boards to post updates, coordinate with others, etc.
Then there is also the possibility of 802.11s which can be used to create shared connections over longer distances, and also can provide some redundancy when nodes are taken down.
The options for providing connectivity are plethora, the problem is in coordinating an approach between enough people for it to make a difference.
Cheers!
Any US governmental response will only make it harder for the Iranian protesters. The Iranians do not like external governments meddling with their affairs given their history. As much as it may suck to watch them suffer going it alone, anything the US government does will only make it worse & give the middle east another reason to hate the US.
Of course we can - it is technically feasible. The question is if it is the right thing to do, morally and politically.
Morals first: Does any nation have the moral right to go and interfere in the affairs of another? Well, of course, if they attack us we have to defend ourselves, which certainly amounts to "interference", but for all their hostile rhetorics, Iran are not actually attacking any western country or threatening to do so. In fact, all their signals are that they have no intentions to do so. I don't know what it is that gives certain Americans the idea that they have a right to go and dictate what is right or not - after all, you guys don't certainly like having others tell you what you should do.
Apart from that, the political effect of doing so would not be to help the Iranian opposition; on the contrary. It would play into the hands of Ahmadinejad, giving him a clear example of what a threat the US are to the people of Iran, and it would once again make the rest of world lose confidence in America's fitness as a top-player in international politics. I mean, after nearly a century of idiotic, bungled attempts at interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, you still don't get it? How many Vietnams and Iraqs does it take?
The two-state solution is a relatively recent innovation on the solution, actually. There are several legal fictions regarding the situation, but the basic facts are that 'Palestine' (or what is called that) lies entirely inside Israel, and the fighting is between two groups of people who are governed by the same government. (The 'Palestinian Authority' has no authority, no money, is more recent than the idea of a two-state solution, and is subservient at this point to the Israeli government.)
The Palestinian territories are already annexed by Israel, in the sense that Israel claimed them 50 years ago when it formed: They are inside the original borders of the country.
Oh, and BTW: Jerusalem is technically at least half in the Palestinian territories. Unless you talk to the Israelis.
'Sensible' is a curse word.
Wait, the Old Land of Isreal ? It's what now, 50 years old ?
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
In answer to the reporter's question, yes, we CAN beam The Internet into Iran.
If we re-route The Internet signal carrier using multi-nodal reflection sorting to feed the main dish, we can create an anomaly that would allow a inverted tachyon field to penetrate the Iranian government's censorship thereby allowing Iranians to access The Internet or at least print it out.
And on a related note, I'd like to point out that without traditional media news outlets, penetrating questions like this would never be asked of government officials. No "blogger" would ever had thought to ask a question like that.
I think you make his point for him with the quote you supplied. "The Americans formed an alliance with France " Note that France did not invade, but the Americans worked with the French to form an Alliance. Also note that the conflict you reference there is not quite the same thing. Separatists in England trying to secede from England or overthrow the English gov't would be a closer analogy. A remote colony seeking independence might be philosophically the same (freedom) but not geo-politically the same because it's a separate, distant geographical region seeking independence/gov't overthrow.
I know where you were going on this but you analogy doesn't seem to quite fit. I think the poster has a good point in that the people of Iran must be fed up enough to lay their lives on the line in the interests of freedom before any intervention/support from us will be welcome or useful. I say we try to ensure that people have access to information, but otherwise keep out of it. The US has done enough nation building (or destroying) in the last few decades, and I think we should take some time off from "promoting freedom" (or whatever the current political catchphrase designed to pacify the blindly patriotic and weak-minded) and turn our resources to fixing/restoring some freedoms here at home that seem to have been eroded lately. Sort of a "physician heal thyself" approach before we meddle any more.
And who the fuck is going to pay for this idea of yours? I really can give a rat's ass about Iran at the moment, I have more pressing concerns closer to home.
We are thinking of bringing broadband to the censored Iranians, but not the citizens of other censored countries? I love this slippery slope. No offense, but we apparently love pushing OUR values on others (but our justification is: in the name of peace)
Perspective on how relevant this "revolution" is to many Iranians: http://www.stratfor.com/weekly/20090622_iranian_election_and_revolution_test
Analysts at Stratfor, a well-respected geopolitical intelligence company, believe that the media have over-covered a small segment of the population interested in regime change. They assert that Ahmadinejad remains popular with a majority of Iranians and in their article they give 3 justifications (See "Ahmadinejad's Popularity" within the Stratfor article). Stratfor also describes, rather concisely, why our perceptions are distorted:
"...And these people [those accessible to English-speaking journalists] give Westerners a wildly distorted view of Iran. They can create the impression that a fantastic liberalization is at hand -- but not when you realize that iPod-owning Anglophones are not exactly the majority in Iran.
"Last Friday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was re-elected with about two-thirds of the vote. Supporters of his opponent, both inside and outside Iran, were stunned. A poll revealed that former Iranian Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi was beating Ahmadinejad. It is, of course, interesting to meditate on how you could conduct a poll in a country where phones are not universal, and making a call once you have found a phone can be a trial. A poll therefore would probably reach people who had phones and lived in Tehran and other urban areas. Among those, Mousavi probably did win. But outside Tehran, and beyond persons easy to poll, the numbers turned out quite different."
I am not suggesting that I agree with Ahmadinejad's policies or global intent; I am just suggesting that our (the Western world's) response to the election situation in Iran is perhaps wrong. I wanted to make this idea available to the well-equipped minds of Slashdot readers-- maybe the question isn't just "How can we beam Internet into Iran right now?" but "How can we help technology to reach and positively influence a majority of Iranians in the future?"
-Sam
sam at screpair d0t com
I am glad the French didn't just "let people revolt without ... interference". The American colonists might not have won their independence.
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
The world has been clamoring for you guys to stop meddling in their affairs and only mind your own. So I suggest that you should do just that: it will cost you nothing and you won't generate any further ill will towards you. What's not to like?
Maybe people will change their mind or maybe they won't, either way you'll be covered.
If I watch people die, and I have the power to act, but don't, am I innocent or guilty?
Beware: I believe all are created equal, and have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.