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Iran Blocks Google, Moves Forward With Domestic Network Plans
hlovy writes "Iran moved forward with their previously discussed plans for a domestic version of the Internet over the weekend, as government officials announced that Google would be one of the first websites to be filtered through their state-controlled information network. According to Reuters, officials are claiming that the country's self-contained version of the World Wide Web, which was first announced last week, is part of an initiative to improve cyber security. However, it will reportedly also give the country the ability to better control the type of information that users can access online."
I wonder how hard the Iranian people need to be shit on before they do something about their awful government?
Um, Iran... you're just plain being evil against Google's Don't Be Evil policy. I suggest we allow Google to commit one evil act against Iran with no Slashdot discussion in order to punish the country for rejecting Google.
I'm LostCluster but I lost my password to that user. Hey Slashdot, how about helping me get it back!
What is wrong with Google that made Iran block it? You better have your own national Google ready to run in order to replace it unless you just want your population to get stupid.
I'm LostCluster but I lost my password to that user. Hey Slashdot, how about helping me get it back!
But the effect of cutting their people off from the rest of the world appears to be the goal.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Ask Slashdot: Creating your own network.
Hi Slashdotters, I work for the Ayatollahs of Iran. As you may know, we have decided to create our own internet, without the dangers of a free society like porn (seeing any part of a woman besides her eyes), pictures of Muhammed (Allah Akbar!), and Jewish influence (banks). I bought a Linksys router and am reading the user manual, however I do not understand how this works. There is a thin cable with 2 large metal sticks on one side. I thought it would plug into my camel, but when I tried she just spit on me and kicked me in the face. Also, I only see 4 ports. How am I going to wire the internet for an entire country with only 4 connections? Does the rest of the free world have some sort of timeshare for the internet? Please help my government oppress free speech!
sudo make me a sandwich
Sounds like a big LAN to me. But, it might be harder for us to get viruses into them now.
In the end it won't be about viruses, but Twitter, Facebook, various blogs and forums, which they want to keep their people away from, so the only source of information becomes the state. If you can't trust the state, whom can you trust?
BTW, Ahmadinejad has won the next election by a landslide, take their word for it.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
"self-contained version of the World Wide Web"
You're doing it wrong.
There is a war going on for your mind.
Is this going to free up a bit of IPv4 address space?
Unfettered access to information? How unacceptable to my locked-in dogmas.
But nuclear power? That's a technology my stupid caveman government can support.
Maybe the Americans will just bomb their parking lots with malware-infested USB keys instead, in case somebody gets dumb...
Sounds like a big LAN to me. But, it might be harder for us to get viruses into them now.
A big LAN is a WAN. There are also some technical differences that make a WAN a WAN (WANs use different IP address space, and most specifically are a network composed of networks, unlike a LAN which is almost always a single network), although there isn't really a set rule that I am aware of that distinguishes a large LAN from a WAN.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
BTW, Ahmadinejad has won the next election by a landslide, take their word for it.
No he hasn't because his final term is up soon and he can't run again. That doesn't matter though as he is just a disposable puppet, the real power lies with the Supreme Leader who doesn't need to concern himself with silly things like elections.
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
On a clear day, you can see the Tower of Babel from Tehran.
I'm sure many of us are very interested how well such a blockade holds up. Let them do their worse, and let the games begin. The first one to break through wins an iPhone and a stuffed Mohamed doll.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Will it contain blackjack and hookers?
This should give Lynx a jump in usage.
-- Using the preview button since 2005
It's not really clear how it is supposed to work. The article's descriptions are ambiguous. But it reminds me of the days when you could dial up to a BBS and then access the internet from the BBS server. I can remember doing that for a period of time before widespread direct dial up access was available. Maybe they will also get to use 2400baud modems to surf in text only mode?
IPX/SPX FTW!
Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
A big LAN is a WAN
No, a big LAN is a big LAN. What makes a LAN, CAN, MAN, and WAN is just distance:
-LAN = Local area network. Usually, this is a single building, regardless how many networks are inside
-CAN = Campus area network. Multiple buildings on the same property connected together. These usually take a different set of hardware & may start using routing.
-MAN = Metro area network. Buildings on separate properties connected together in the same metro area. Usually done by radio or laser wireless or private leased fiber connections.
-WAN = Wide area network. Buildings in separate cities connected together.
You CAN run a single bridged network across a WAN, even though it is usually a VERY BAD IDEA. The number of networks is irrelevant, just the separation, as this determines what kind of hardware and layer 1 connections you're dealing with.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
Back when I was in college 10 - 12 years ago the internet was this thing that would never be tamed. It was the wild west of free expression that could never be taken away. Censorship would be automatically routed around and all was good. That was a common belief by many here and in academia. I had one professor, philosophy professor with an undergrad in comp sci from Berkeley back in the 70's and a masters in math, who thought it very differently. He felt by 2020 the beast would be tamed, the powers that be would find ways to regulate it and bring it back under their control. The genie, he insisted, would indeed be put in the bottle. Not only that, but it would be come the tool of easy mass surveillance and that the internet would be the end of privacy as we knew it. I didn't want to believe him either, but a decade later here we are. And it seems like he was more right than wrong.
When China erected its Great Firewall it proved the internet could indeed be censored. Is it perfect, no, but it doesn't have to be. Just good enough. Soon a lot of countries were doing it.
Now, if (and I stress if) Iran can create their own internal network and succeeds then it is the end of the "internet" as we know it. The world wide web will be Balkanized so that content can be better regulated by local regimes.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
I think a nice way to define them is at what network level they operate. e.g. LANs don't use routers... they use switches.
I think we know enough about Iran's internal power dynamic to know that Khameini and the Guardian Council themselves are just figureheads. It certainly was the case when Khomeini was Supreme Leader that the position was unassailable, but Khameini was always considered a relatively weak man, and almost certainly since 2009 Iran is now really run by the Revolutionary Guard and the leadership of the Basij. If Khameini was independent before, he is now a sick old man dominated by the "guardians of the Islamic revolution", and most certainly when he kicks the bucket, the next Supreme Leader will be the Revolutionary Guard's man. The day when the Supreme Leader was an independent authority capable of bringing the other factions to heal are gone. Iran is essentially a thinly veiled military dictatorship.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It's really a nice move from the Iranian Government and it shows us the way things should be handled. They don't like us, so far so good, they can block the :) :), they have goats isn't it ?
western websites but on our side we MUST block any http request from Iran, and especially for these kinds of websites:
* scientific : no scientific information must be given
* commercial : no need to show them what we can produce,sell, etc.
* news : they don't need to know what's going on
* culture : they are not entitled to have access to our culture
* sport : we don't have camel races
* entertainment : movies, music, etc are of no value to them
* porn : we shouldn't allow these people to see our nice girls
Obviously telephone lines should be be cut forever, in order to avoid use of dialup modems.
In addition we should extend these measures to all other Muslim countries and put an extremely strong embargo on:
* all books
* all electronic equipment and tools
* all medicine products
* etc
.
No contact of any kind !
A project that can be outsourced to China due to expertise and not just cheaper labor.
It's not clear that it's not what they wanted. Sure, many in Iran won't want this, but I suspect a good number of people (i.e. the mullas and hard line Islamists) will be more than happy to cut themselves off from the Infidels. Maybe an international islamic internet will emerge from this with Iran being the central hub...where no one insults Muhammed or Islamic governments.
My God can beat up your God. Just kidding...don't take offense. I know there's no God.
a WAN is only a WAN because some western infidel decided that... they might call it something completely different, and they might replace all their evil "routers" with cardboard boxes full of monkeys (blessed monkeys of course)
Stop giving them tips. I prefer it when my enemies destroy themselves from within. Quickly is preferable but I'll go for the slow inevitable destruction from too.
i have NAT in my home network... routing packets between 192.168.1.0/24 and 192.168.0.0/24 (one way only). does that make it a LAN or a WAN? obviously its a LAN but how does that fit into your definition and example? (btw i'm not saying your first sentence definition is wrong)
I think we know enough about Iran's internal power dynamic to know that Khameini and the Guardian Council themselves are just figureheads. It certainly was the case when Khomeini was Supreme Leader that the position was unassailable, but Khameini was always considered a relatively weak man, and almost certainly since 2009 Iran is now really run by the Revolutionary Guard and the leadership of the Basij. If Khameini was independent before, he is now a sick old man dominated by the "guardians of the Islamic revolution", and most certainly when he kicks the bucket, the next Supreme Leader will be the Revolutionary Guard's man. The day when the Supreme Leader was an independent authority capable of bringing the other factions to heal are gone. Iran is essentially a thinly veiled military dictatorship.
Yep. Next president will be hand picked and approved of by the Republican Guard.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Where can I go to quickly buy up their IPs, I'm running out.
http://interserver.net/
After all, they've just boasted of their DDoS attacks against US firms - I say let's help them with their "firewall" (only we'll make sure their government is cut off as well.)
I normally don't respond to AC, but this is too incorrect to let it go:
Network protocols and speeds and boundaries (as in routers vs switches, firewalls, etc) usually differentiate LAN's and WAN's.
So, one place I worked at had 30 locations across a state connected by 1gbit links, running ethernet. Are you really trying to say that such a network is a LAN simply because they are fast links & not talking HDLC?
Wikipedia:
A Wide Area Network (WAN) is a network that covers a broad area (i.e., any network that links across metropolitan, regional, or national boundaries)
Hmm..not mention of protocols or speed.
How about Webster's?
a network of computers (as the Internet) in a large area (as a country or the globe) for sharing resources or exchanging data
How about some fucking common sense:
LOCAL vs WIDE = nothing do to with speed or protocol.
Grammer Nazis - I mod you "troll" unless you actually add something on-topic. Yes, I know I have mispellings in my sig.
This whole concept underlines what is so critically wrong with the Iranian regime. It's not that it is an authoritarian government, it's that it is an authoritarian government that knows a lot about being authoritarian, but lacks the imagination or wit to understand that if you keep adopting measures that suppress economic activity, sooner or later the house of cards will topple and the very power you seek to keep in your clutches will fall away.
You mentioned 3 countries - Iran, China and Burma.
You also pointed out that China and Burma have not done what Iran is doing.
Now, let me ask you this - What truly differentiate the Iranian dictatorship from that of Burma and/or China?
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
My relatives tell me that the Shah was reasonably fair â" sure, kind of a dictator, but he and his father had taken the country from an agragrian backwater to a modern industrial society in a matter of two generations â" and basically... the U.S. funded student groups, pro-democracy organizations, &c and sowed dissent so that none of them would agree enough to stand in unity... and then gave guns to the Ayatollah.
I really like the United States of America. I stayed there for many many years, and there, I have met with a lot of very, very good friends.
I love the American spirit. I truly admire the original intent of America - At least according to what the founding fathers (and also President Abe Lincoln) had written, including the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and the Gettysburg Address.
However, I have to confess that I simply can not understand what the government of USA is doing, for the past few decades.
Instead of carrying out the mission of the founding fathers, the US government has been doing a lot to the opposite.
Many years from now, historians in the future will compile the things the the government of the United States of America had been doing, since World War I, and they will find out that the United States of America is no more than a "name", a "label", a "billboard".
The spirit that made America so much different from the rest is long gone.
It's unfortunate, but it's the truth.
Nowadays it's not cool to say things that I've said, and I know that I will be modded down.
But, if this message (and others) can be archived, so that future generations get the chance to read, they may get to see a clearer picture of what is happening right now.
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
...and now Iran giving them the boot?
:-)
Google must be doing something right!
I'm Erwin Schrodinger and I approve of this message, and I do not approve of this message!