If big-gaming hadn't killed off self-hosted dedicated servers then we wouldn't have this problem because people in isolated regions (e.g. Hawaii, sub-Saharan Africa) could spawn their own servers.
Africa didn't get its own web address. Some company registered the Africa Top Level Domain (TLD). This company has total control over the TLD and likely has no relationship to the continent or any of the countries in it. In all likelyhood the registrant for the TLD is a European or American company hoping to make big bucks charging people to use the TLD. In 10 years 99.999999999% of the domains on this TLD will not even involve an African company or individual.
You don't have a clue. A cursory Google search would tell you that it's operated by a South African company (ZACR), which was awarded control by ICANN following a lengthy legal dispute with a Kenyan competitor (DCA).
The article summary is a bit misleading. There is no indication that the CIA can break Signal's encryption or intercept its communications in-transit.
Wikileaks' press release states that the CIA can root mobile devices, which then allows them to intercept Signal communications *before* encryption is applied.
I'm not obliged to use Facebook. If people want to sell their brains to Mark Zuckerberg, that's their right, but it's hardly a dictatorship in any meaningful use of the word. When we're all forced at gunpoint to use Facebook, then the article may have a point.
Sunde is right. As more people migrate to mobile where data caps are common and zero-rated services are becoming more prevalent (courtesy of Facebook's Internet.org/Free Basics initiative) more people will find themselves locked in to Facebook.
Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist at APNIC, sums up and resolves this debate better than anyone: http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/... It's a long post, but worth the read for anyone interested in the subject. Here's a few excerpts:
The issues around network neutrality and the tensions about who owes who and how much between content and carriage are perhaps superficial manifestations of a more fundamental issue about public and private roles in the provision and maintenance of common public infrastructure. But doing little other than hoping that Adam Smith’s invisible hand will solve all of this through the actions of competitive suppliers to an open market is probably just wishful thinking. It makes as little sense to festoon our streets with a myriad of cables from competing access carriers, as it does to lay down parallel railway tracks for competing railway service providers. In economic study, this is a case of the subadditivity of costs where the economies of scale do not compensate for the high level of sunk capital in duplicated infrastructure investment. It implies that the costs of service delivery from only one supplier is socially less expensive in terms of average costs than costs of production of a fraction of the original quantity by an number of competing suppliers. In general, an observation that a market has a property of subadditive costs is a necessary and sufficient condition to lead to the formation of natural monopolies is that market.
~
The Internet access market is not a market that naturally tends towards strong competition. The tyranny of sunk capital investment in infrastructure leads to a market that naturally aggregates, and such aggregation has an inevitable outcome in the formation of local monopolies. The “light touch” framework to Section 706 in Title I is just not an adequately robust regulatory framework for this space.
~
At its heart, the Internet access business really is a common carrier business. So my advice to the FCC is to take a deep breath, and simply say so.
Geoff Huston, Chief Scientist at APNIC, sums up and resolves this debate better than anyone: http://www.potaroo.net/ispcol/... It's a long post, but worth the read for anyone interested in the subject. Here's a few excerpts:
The issues around network neutrality and the tensions about who owes who and how much between content and carriage are perhaps superficial manifestations of a more fundamental issue about public and private roles in the provision and maintenance of common public infrastructure. But doing little other than hoping that Adam Smith’s invisible hand will solve all of this through the actions of competitive suppliers to an open market is probably just wishful thinking. It makes as little sense to festoon our streets with a myriad of cables from competing access carriers, as it does to lay down parallel railway tracks for competing railway service providers. In economic study, this is a case of the subadditivity of costs where the economies of scale do not compensate for the high level of sunk capital in duplicated infrastructure investment. It implies that the costs of service delivery from only one supplier is so
I don't mean to piss on this girl's project but, unless she's going to do this in places like Goma or Juba, she's not doing anything new or particularly special in Africa.
Many African countries have had successful domestic tech scenes for longer than most people realize. That includes robotics communities, network operator groups, Linux user groups, ICT associations, and more. There are a lot of incredibly talented and dedicated people here who have been tirelessly building these communities for a very long time.
Sub-Saharan Africa started to become hip about three years ago. Ever since then we've been practically drowning in hackathons and other feel-good tech events organized by "movers and shakers" from the west.
I'm ranting a bit, so don't get me wrong; all of these projects have a positive impact. I'm just sick of hearing about how "innovative" some people are for doing stuff that's already been done before just because they're the first people to yap about it on-line.
For those that don't RTFA, there's a fairly important detail missing from the summary:
Under the new agreement it would be mandatory for registrars to confirm the phone numbers or addresses of domain name buyers within 15 days of domain registration.
To reduce reliance on connectivity, I suggest deploying games (especially multiplayer ones like OpenArena) and off-line educational content (e.g. RACHEL) on the LAN.
Developing countries tend to have poor connectivity, especially in rural areas. The only available option may be a data-capped SIM-based USB dongle, so I recommend deploying a low-power 3G router with battery backup and traffic shaping capabilities (e.g. ZyXEL MWR211)
Since the launch of celebrated mobile money transfer service M-Pesa five years ago, Kenya has been labelled the ‘Silicon Savannah’ and an ‘ICT hub’ with its supposed technology revolution that has overshadowed other African countries. Yet, outside the tech-focused business incubation centres and conferences, many struggle to ‘feel’ the revolution.
Other than grants and donor funding, very little actual investment has been pumped into local technology startups. Investors say they can’t find investment-ready businesses in Silicon Savannah’s river of startups.
At last month’s Mobile Web East Africa conference, some participants tore into the hype, with some suggesting that Kenya’s ICT sector had no business going by the “cute” title, Silicon Savannah.
The influx of grant money and competitions where entrepreneurs are awarded cash prizes, have also been called a curse because it encourages developers to build apps with a social impact, but with little commercial potential.
If I look at the cross section of my friends who are NRA members, most are Republicans. Of those, most are for limiting all government programs, but especially those which treat "fake" illnesses like mental instability. They post about how the government shouldn't be providing social services because it raises the taxes which chip away at the money they work for every day in their jobs.
Nobody in the NRA ever seems to be asking Congress to fund programs to evaluate and assist the mentally unstable. Quite the opposite, they're more likely to call them weirdos or outcasts or cheats, living off the government dole and asking for service after service for nothing. These are the same people who made fun of the little kid in high school, or hurled epithets from their truck window at the way they dress or called them godless fags as they walked by in the street.
Nice anecdote you've got there. +5 Objective if you ask me.
I support the NRA yet also support social health programmes. I also believe these shootings are merely a symptom of a larger, more complex societal problem. I am not, nor ever was, a bully. I am not alone.
Am I the only one who thinks management teams that bring in consultants to do mass layoffs are pussies? If you fuck up a company so badly 30% of the employees have to go, the very least you can do is not hide in the proverbial closet until it's over.
One could argue that senior management doesn't have enough time in their day to organize and manage a mass layoff process at a company of this size.
The Gods envy us.
They envy us because we’re mortal,
because any moment might be our last.
Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed.
You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
Widespread acceptance of NAT subverts the egalitarian premise of the internet, that all nodes are created equal, and promotes a two-tier system: providers and consumers.
The real power of IPv6 is that it allows us to eliminate NAT. Because of the size of the IPv6 address pool, every mobile device can have a publicly routable address and thus function as a server.
Facebook was originally developed and hosted in a college dorm room. With IPv6, the next "big thing" could be developed and hosted in someone's pocket.
Over time, as the information it provides genuinely proves itself useful, the brain would become increasingly dependent on the additional information being provided by it to convey an accurate presentation of things. Unless they were accustomed to dealing with periodic system disruptions, removing it for even a short period would result in the same sort of disorientation and confusion that arises if a person suddenly lost one of their senses.
I've worked and lived in several African countries for almost ten years now.
Africa is a big place. I live in Uganda and our situation is quite different from what you describe.
There is no shortage of old computer parts, they are shipped in by the cargo container.
Not here. We have no import duty on complete units while parts and accessories are heavily taxed. Furthermore, nobody is sneaking in containers filled with useless garbage. Pro-ban advocates in Uganda (and other places) commonly use emotional rallying cries like "We refuse to be the dumping ground for the rest of the world!" International dumping may be an issue for coastal countries, but nobody in their right mind is going to/pay/ to ship something (especially valuable materials) to Mombasa then/pay more/ to truck it overland through Kenya just to dump it on an inland country like Uganda.
I am well aware of charities out there who like to package up used computers and sent them off to Africa, the truth is, the computers are old and mostly useless.
Hardly. Prior to the Finance Amendment Bill of 2009 which banned/all/ second-hand imports, the most commonly imported units were Pentium 4s with 512MB RAM, a 40GB HD, keyboard, monitor, and mouse. That's more than enough power to run a modern OS, Photoshop/Gimp, AutoCAD, office software, and a web browser.
It's actually much cheaper just to source a brand new dell laptop from a local supplier than to ship in in from half way around the world.
Prior to the ban, a working second-hand computer (as described above) cost $100 from retailers selling/at a profit/. It's now two years since the ban took effect and the cheapest new computer (desktop/laptop/netbook) costs $300. Essentially, computers are now far less affordable than they already were.
but realistically, setting up a refurbished CPU, monitor, keyboard, powersupply, stabilizer, ect... it takes a lot of work. It also takes maintenance and training. It takes a lot of money to do all this.
So we should increase costs further by by eliminating a source of inexpensive computers? Just so you know, many organizations which were building school labs and training thousands of teachers in Uganda (like Camara) were funded by profits from second-hand sales. Since the ban, they've halted these operations and/or left the country.
I'm rambling now, but back to the e-waste, it's a huge problem, but on the other hand, if someone were to set up a properly functioning e-waste recycling business and properly employ the young men, give them training, and safety equipment, they could do a lot better for themselves.
Here's a fun story: An organization in Uganda (Second Life) had been promised land by the government to set up a commercial e-waste recycling facility. When the Finance ministry decided to ban second-hand imports (see above) they also wrongly assumed they had solved the e-waste problem and took the recycling facility land back. Here's a quote by Dr. Aryamanya, Director of Uganda's National Environment Management Authority, on why the government decided to pull out of the project (source):
it would encourage the continuous importation of second hand computers and other electronic waste and would therefore negate the objectives of the ban.
Who the hell gave this guy a PHD? Tell me, doc, what are we going to do with all of our new and used electronic devices when they reach end-of-life? Have witch-doctors banish them to another dimension?
Slashdot Mirror
Brilliant documentary by Adam Curtis. Long, but worth it: https://vimeo.com/191817381
If big-gaming hadn't killed off self-hosted dedicated servers then we wouldn't have this problem because people in isolated regions (e.g. Hawaii, sub-Saharan Africa) could spawn their own servers.
Africa didn't get its own web address. Some company registered the Africa Top Level Domain (TLD). This company has total control over the TLD and likely has no relationship to the continent or any of the countries in it. In all likelyhood the registrant for the TLD is a European or American company hoping to make big bucks charging people to use the TLD. In 10 years 99.999999999% of the domains on this TLD will not even involve an African company or individual.
You don't have a clue. A cursory Google search would tell you that it's operated by a South African company (ZACR), which was awarded control by ICANN following a lengthy legal dispute with a Kenyan competitor (DCA).
The article summary is a bit misleading. There is no indication that the CIA can break Signal's encryption or intercept its communications in-transit.
Wikileaks' press release states that the CIA can root mobile devices, which then allows them to intercept Signal communications *before* encryption is applied.
I'm not obliged to use Facebook. If people want to sell their brains to Mark Zuckerberg, that's their right, but it's hardly a dictatorship in any meaningful use of the word. When we're all forced at gunpoint to use Facebook, then the article may have a point.
Sunde is right. As more people migrate to mobile where data caps are common and zero-rated services are becoming more prevalent (courtesy of Facebook's Internet.org/Free Basics initiative) more people will find themselves locked in to Facebook.
The issues around network neutrality and the tensions about who owes who and how much between content and carriage are perhaps superficial manifestations of a more fundamental issue about public and private roles in the provision and maintenance of common public infrastructure. But doing little other than hoping that Adam Smith’s invisible hand will solve all of this through the actions of competitive suppliers to an open market is probably just wishful thinking. It makes as little sense to festoon our streets with a myriad of cables from competing access carriers, as it does to lay down parallel railway tracks for competing railway service providers. In economic study, this is a case of the subadditivity of costs where the economies of scale do not compensate for the high level of sunk capital in duplicated infrastructure investment. It implies that the costs of service delivery from only one supplier is socially less expensive in terms of average costs than costs of production of a fraction of the original quantity by an number of competing suppliers. In general, an observation that a market has a property of subadditive costs is a necessary and sufficient condition to lead to the formation of natural monopolies is that market.
~
The Internet access market is not a market that naturally tends towards strong competition. The tyranny of sunk capital investment in infrastructure leads to a market that naturally aggregates, and such aggregation has an inevitable outcome in the formation of local monopolies. The “light touch” framework to Section 706 in Title I is just not an adequately robust regulatory framework for this space.
~
At its heart, the Internet access business really is a common carrier business. So my advice to the FCC is to take a deep breath, and simply say so.
The issues around network neutrality and the tensions about who owes who and how much between content and carriage are perhaps superficial manifestations of a more fundamental issue about public and private roles in the provision and maintenance of common public infrastructure. But doing little other than hoping that Adam Smith’s invisible hand will solve all of this through the actions of competitive suppliers to an open market is probably just wishful thinking. It makes as little sense to festoon our streets with a myriad of cables from competing access carriers, as it does to lay down parallel railway tracks for competing railway service providers. In economic study, this is a case of the subadditivity of costs where the economies of scale do not compensate for the high level of sunk capital in duplicated infrastructure investment. It implies that the costs of service delivery from only one supplier is so
I don't mean to piss on this girl's project but, unless she's going to do this in places like Goma or Juba, she's not doing anything new or particularly special in Africa.
Many African countries have had successful domestic tech scenes for longer than most people realize. That includes robotics communities, network operator groups, Linux user groups, ICT associations, and more. There are a lot of incredibly talented and dedicated people here who have been tirelessly building these communities for a very long time.
Sub-Saharan Africa started to become hip about three years ago. Ever since then we've been practically drowning in hackathons and other feel-good tech events organized by "movers and shakers" from the west.
I'm ranting a bit, so don't get me wrong; all of these projects have a positive impact. I'm just sick of hearing about how "innovative" some people are for doing stuff that's already been done before just because they're the first people to yap about it on-line.
In addition, the prime minister said possessing online pornography depicting rape would become illegal in England and Wales - in line with Scotland.
Under the new agreement it would be mandatory for registrars to confirm the phone numbers or addresses of domain name buyers within 15 days of domain registration.
To reduce reliance on connectivity, I suggest deploying games (especially multiplayer ones like OpenArena) and off-line educational content (e.g. RACHEL) on the LAN.
Developing countries tend to have poor connectivity, especially in rural areas. The only available option may be a data-capped SIM-based USB dongle, so I recommend deploying a low-power 3G router with battery backup and traffic shaping capabilities (e.g. ZyXEL MWR211)
Since the launch of celebrated mobile money transfer service M-Pesa five years ago, Kenya has been labelled the ‘Silicon Savannah’ and an ‘ICT hub’ with its supposed technology revolution that has overshadowed other African countries. Yet, outside the tech-focused business incubation centres and conferences, many struggle to ‘feel’ the revolution.
Other than grants and donor funding, very little actual investment has been pumped into local technology startups. Investors say they can’t find investment-ready businesses in Silicon Savannah’s river of startups.
At last month’s Mobile Web East Africa conference, some participants tore into the hype, with some suggesting that Kenya’s ICT sector had no business going by the “cute” title, Silicon Savannah.
The influx of grant money and competitions where entrepreneurs are awarded cash prizes, have also been called a curse because it encourages developers to build apps with a social impact, but with little commercial potential.
I assume this will initially be used to facilitate impulsive donations to #favoritecause.
Value is a function of scarcity; packets of data are not a scarce resource. How, then, do ISPs get away with selling them in units of volume?
If I look at the cross section of my friends who are NRA members, most are Republicans. Of those, most are for limiting all government programs, but especially those which treat "fake" illnesses like mental instability. They post about how the government shouldn't be providing social services because it raises the taxes which chip away at the money they work for every day in their jobs.
Nobody in the NRA ever seems to be asking Congress to fund programs to evaluate and assist the mentally unstable. Quite the opposite, they're more likely to call them weirdos or outcasts or cheats, living off the government dole and asking for service after service for nothing. These are the same people who made fun of the little kid in high school, or hurled epithets from their truck window at the way they dress or called them godless fags as they walked by in the street.
Nice anecdote you've got there. +5 Objective if you ask me. I support the NRA yet also support social health programmes. I also believe these shootings are merely a symptom of a larger, more complex societal problem. I am not, nor ever was, a bully. I am not alone.
Am I the only one who thinks management teams that bring in consultants to do mass layoffs are pussies? If you fuck up a company so badly 30% of the employees have to go, the very least you can do is not hide in the proverbial closet until it's over.
One could argue that senior management doesn't have enough time in their day to organize and manage a mass layoff process at a company of this size.
The Gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment might be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
- Homer, The Iliad
Bloomberg is correct in a way: The motivations of both parties are the same. They both want to control your behavior.
Widespread acceptance of NAT subverts the egalitarian premise of the internet, that all nodes are created equal, and promotes a two-tier system: providers and consumers.
Yes, exactly!
The real power of IPv6 is that it allows us to eliminate NAT. Because of the size of the IPv6 address pool, every mobile device can have a publicly routable address and thus function as a server.
Facebook was originally developed and hosted in a college dorm room. With IPv6, the next "big thing" could be developed and hosted in someone's pocket.
1GB data plan from Verizon: $50
1GB data plan from Uganda Telecom: $17
conversations going on now
but that he was
not going to go into more detail because obviously if I do, it becomes counterproductive.
It becomes counterproductive because nobody fucking wants this, and the people you're "having discussions" with are probably corrupt.
Over time, as the information it provides genuinely proves itself useful, the brain would become increasingly dependent on the additional information being provided by it to convey an accurate presentation of things. Unless they were accustomed to dealing with periodic system disruptions, removing it for even a short period would result in the same sort of disorientation and confusion that arises if a person suddenly lost one of their senses.
This is when mobile ISPs become drug-dealers.
Firewall: shoresofhell
LDAP: shodan
Terminal Services: portal
Mail: postal
DB (crashes/dies 5 times a day): king-graham
I've worked and lived in several African countries for almost ten years now.
Africa is a big place. I live in Uganda and our situation is quite different from what you describe.
There is no shortage of old computer parts, they are shipped in by the cargo container.
Not here. We have no import duty on complete units while parts and accessories are heavily taxed. Furthermore, nobody is sneaking in containers filled with useless garbage. Pro-ban advocates in Uganda (and other places) commonly use emotional rallying cries like "We refuse to be the dumping ground for the rest of the world!" International dumping may be an issue for coastal countries, but nobody in their right mind is going to /pay/ to ship something (especially valuable materials) to Mombasa then /pay more/ to truck it overland through Kenya just to dump it on an inland country like Uganda.
I am well aware of charities out there who like to package up used computers and sent them off to Africa, the truth is, the computers are old and mostly useless.
Hardly. Prior to the Finance Amendment Bill of 2009 which banned /all/ second-hand imports, the most commonly imported units were Pentium 4s with 512MB RAM, a 40GB HD, keyboard, monitor, and mouse. That's more than enough power to run a modern OS, Photoshop/Gimp, AutoCAD, office software, and a web browser.
It's actually much cheaper just to source a brand new dell laptop from a local supplier than to ship in in from half way around the world.
Prior to the ban, a working second-hand computer (as described above) cost $100 from retailers selling /at a profit/. It's now two years since the ban took effect and the cheapest new computer (desktop/laptop/netbook) costs $300. Essentially, computers are now far less affordable than they already were.
but realistically, setting up a refurbished CPU, monitor, keyboard, powersupply, stabilizer, ect... it takes a lot of work. It also takes maintenance and training. It takes a lot of money to do all this.
So we should increase costs further by by eliminating a source of inexpensive computers? Just so you know, many organizations which were building school labs and training thousands of teachers in Uganda (like Camara) were funded by profits from second-hand sales. Since the ban, they've halted these operations and/or left the country.
I'm rambling now, but back to the e-waste, it's a huge problem, but on the other hand, if someone were to set up a properly functioning e-waste recycling business and properly employ the young men, give them training, and safety equipment, they could do a lot better for themselves.
Here's a fun story: An organization in Uganda (Second Life) had been promised land by the government to set up a commercial e-waste recycling facility. When the Finance ministry decided to ban second-hand imports (see above) they also wrongly assumed they had solved the e-waste problem and took the recycling facility land back. Here's a quote by Dr. Aryamanya, Director of Uganda's National Environment Management Authority, on why the government decided to pull out of the project (source):
it would encourage the continuous importation of second hand computers and other electronic waste and would therefore negate the objectives of the ban.
Who the hell gave this guy a PHD? Tell me, doc, what are we going to do with all of our new and used electronic devices when they reach end-of-life? Have witch-doctors banish them to another dimension?