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Kazakhstan Disables the Internet , Telecomix Restores
bs0d3 writes "In the face of oil protests on their 20th independence day, Kazakhstan has blocked the internet and disabled cellphone towers in the city of Zhanaozen. As with previous internet blackouts, hactivist group telecomix is putting together free dial-up servers for people blacked out in this region."
Very nice!
s/[stupid comments]/[intelligent discourse]/gi
Who still has a modem thats capable of dial-up????
THANK YOU, Edward Snowden!! Americans owe you a debt of gratitude (whether they know it or not..)
To be fair, I'd say that is about as reliable as the media, not necessarily more or less.
At least in the Land of the Free we don't kill protesters. We just pepper spray them, beat them senseless, and arrest them only to let them go 24 hours later without charges.
America's dead. Long live America.
AccountKiller
I would just curl
Not without Internet, you wouldn't!
Dilbert RSS feed
Other than e-mail, what is the best way to get your message across (probably text only) to the largest number of people?
Some sort of newsgroup, bulletin board? Or is it twitter? (But then you need to have a following right? I don't know, I don't tweet).
Heaven forbid that we (in the democratic west) ever face this problem but maybe while traveling we might face a situation where just getting a few characters out of info could mean a world of difference. I'm reminded of the time when that Israeli scientist who blew the cover on their nuclear program was caught. As he was being transported via a van in front of a bunch of photographers, he pressed his palm up to the glass where, clearly legible, was a short message (I think it said where he had been kidnapped). I think there was another short message sent by a journalist right when he was being taken in by the Egyptian police (a long time ago) which helped keep him from "disappearing".
Hope that never, ever happens to me. Maybe having a tiny USB modem should be part of my travel kit.
We used to use usenet. Simple and effective. RIP
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HAM Radio
He still doesn't wget it....
Even if you don't have a large following on Twitter, for things like this situation, there is almost always a hashtag for the protest in use. For Egypt, it was #jan25, so if you wanted to send a message about Egypt to as many people as possible, you send a message with #jan25 somewhere in it, and people would easily find it, and retweet it to their followers.
Abstractly, in a lot of ways a hashtag on Twitter is like an asynchronous equivalent to an IRC channel, in that you can search for it and get any messages from that tag at any time, and share them with your followers. Hope that helps.
Disagree != mod troll.
More or less all a modem is in a laptop these days is the hardware to convert the impedance and voltage to work with the 48v balanced phone system. There is no logic, it is all handled in software. Computers are so powerful it isn't hard to do anymore and there's no real performance issue. As such adding one to a system is dirt cheap.
Also there are some geeks, like me, that still have a modem laying around. I have an old USR Courier in my closet. Should I need it for any reason, like when I move to a new place and am waiting on cable to get hooked up (though they are much faster now) I have it. I haven't used it in years, particularly what with having a smartphone, but I still keep it because why not?
It adds more to the conversation that using buzzwords like "hacktivist".
I happen to like that word. What's wrong with it?
English is a bastard language, stealing from wherever and then mangling what it stole into whatever form it pleases. What's your problem?
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit
Of all Asian Soviet republics, Kazakhstan was the most well developed. Among other things, it's where Baikonur is.
A "hacktivist" is someone who is either a Black Hat or a Grey Hat who uses their skills for political activist purposes rather than curiosity, non-directional malice, boredom or because they have a script. It has a definite meaning, it serves a definite purpose, so it's not a buzzword. It may be overused, but that's not the word's fault.
I don't know if the word is in the OED yet, but if it is then it is a proper word. The OED is the bastion of the English Language and what it say goes. It is the only definitive source for the language and therefore any word therein is a part of the language.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Point of reference: lesbian vaginal sex.
Why do you assume that nothing has progressed since those places were opened in in the 1990s? That's a very strange assumption if you ask me and implies that you think the place should have stayed as it was.
Yes the English language had diverse roots but came to a standardised form MANY moons ago ...
Hogwash! As recently as Churchill ("... up with which, I will not put!"), it's been a lively language. Hell, all you need to do is put an Englishman in a room with a Scot, an Irish, an Aussie/Zealander, a Canuck, and a North and a South US-ian, and you'll be hard pressed to understand what anyone's saying. Extra points if the Englishman is Cockney.
The French have been trying to set their language in stone for quite a while by law, and look how that's turned out.
"Tongue tied and twisted, just an Earth bound misfit