If only all the crackpot policies dreamed up by Congress were so easy to kick to the curb.

Last week, amid furious uproar, lawmakers decided to ditch their highly controversial online anti-piracy proposals.

As I reported, media companies like Fox, internet heavyweights like Google (Nasdaq: GOOG), Facebook, Wikipedia, Reddit and Twitter, plus pressure groups and free speech advocates, were up in arms over Congress’ well-intentioned, but poorly devised, piracy bills.

Known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) and PIPA (Protect Intellectual Property Act), these sweeping measures would have given the US Department of Justice free rein to change the face of the internet… for the worse.

In short, it could have shut down, prosecuted and/or cut off funding to websites that not only illegally host or sell pirated copyright material… but also those that advertise such material, such as search engines. Even if it’s just one offending page.

Given the size of the internet, the DoJ would be shutting down companies left and right… including hundreds who play by the rules but simply can’t keep track of every rogue company and website. Moreover, the bills didn’t just cover the United States… but the entire world!

Several sites protested by going offline for 24 hours and the anger and criticism was such that both SOPA and PIPA have now been shelved, pending revision.

And one new proposal has just come through…

Finally… a Good Idea From Congress

As Wikipedia went dark last Wednesday, Congressman Darrell Issa from California saw the light.

He submitted a new anti-piracy bill called OPEN – the Online Protection and ENforcement of Digital Trade Act – to the House of Representatives. And Senator Ron Wyden from Oregon has introduced it in the Senate.

The big difference? It takes the draconian, all-encompassing shutdown and prosecution power away from the DoJ and puts it instead into the hands of the International Trade Commission (ITC).

The OPEN Act appears to have more targeted laws, which focus on websites that “primarily and willfully” infringe on US copyrights and flagrantly violate the law. Upon discovering an infringing website, the ITC would issue a cease-and-desist order. This order would prohibit banks, credit cards and other payment firms from doing business with the site.

And it’s already garnered some strong support from the likes of Google, Facebook, Twitter and business networking site, LinkedIn.

It’s worth remembering, though, that while OPEN represents a much more sensible step in the right direction toward better, more manageable internet piracy laws, SOPA and PIPA aren’t dead just yet… but merely sleeping.

But with OPEN now in the mix, too, if the new bill is able to gather more momentum and support from those both inside and outside of Congress, SOPA and PIPA might as well stay in bed.

By the way, you can get full details on the OPEN bill – and even give feedback on it – by going to the site that Congressman Issa has set up: www.KeepTheWebOpen.com.

Best regards,

Martin Denholm

Davos: Ahead of a court hearing, technology giant Google facing controversy in India allegedly for hosting obscene and objectionable content on Thursday made it clear that it is not possible for the company to monitor everything on its website.

Google and Facebook are among 21 companies whose executives have been summoned to appear in person in a lower court in Delhi on March 13 for allegedly hosting obscene and objectionable content.

Im hoping there will be a balanced debate around it and eventually the right thing would happen, Googles chief business officer Nikesh Arora said.

The companies have challenged the summons in the high court. The next hearing is due on February 2.

We cannot censor the Web. We cannot censor the ability of people to express themselves around the world, Arora told a news chaneel on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum at Davos.

You are asking not just censor the Web in India, you are asking to censor the entire world wide web. The Web has no borders.

I think the idea of censoring everything and pre- clearing everything is going to fundamentally, sort of, taint the growth of the Indian economy in India and vis-a-vis the world, he added.

During the last hearing in court, Google and Facebook had argued that there was no way for them to screen content before it was posted online.

Google had also said the Indian subsidiary could not be held responsible for an act by its parent company.

The legal trouble for companies including Orkut, Yahoo and YouTube is based on a petition filed by Vinay Rai, a Delhi resident who has pointed the court to obscene depictions that he found online of Hindu deities, the Prophet Mohammed and Jesus Christ.

BEIJING – The number of Chinese who gained access to the Internet in 2011 increased by the smallest rate seen in nearly the past decade, even as the total number of Chinese online hit a record high.

Thats what data released on Monday by the China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) showed.

The number of Chinese on the web was at 513 million for the year. But the annual increase rate was 12.2 percent, the slowest since 2002.

The nation gained fewer than 56 million Internet users in the past year, the smallest annual increase seen since 2006, according to the information center, a quasi-governmental organization that monitors Chinas Internet industry.

A little less than 40 percent of Chinese people were connected to the World Wide Web by December, a number that was 4 percentage points higher than it had been in 2010, the center said.

In Asia, the average proportion of the online population is 24 percent. Still, Chinas connection rate lagged the rates for Japan, South Korea and Singapore, countries where more than 70 percent of the population is online, according to the Internet analysis company Minwatts Marketing Group.

The CNNIC said that China may find it harder to increase the size of its Internet population in coming years. The organization explained that almost everyone who has the minimum schooling and income needed to be able to surf the web is already online.

Even so, Yu Bin, chief financial officer of Tudou Holdings Ltd, the second-largest online video company in China, said she believes there is still room for more people to get access to the Internet. It may be too early to say the proportion of the Chinese population on the Internet has hit a ceiling, she said.

Meanwhile, the growth rate for people who use mobile devices to go online also slowed in 2011.

The number of Chinese users of mobile online devices reached 356 million in December, up by 17.5 percent from the same month a year before, the center said. That rate was smaller than it had been in the previous two years.

Among all Chinese users of cell phones, only 36.5 percent had access to the Internet, the centers statistics showed. At the same time, the center predicted that the Chinese mobile Internet business will see another boom as more online-service providers tailor their products to meet the various demands of customers.

Looking at the number of Internet users is just one way to estimate the value of the industry, said Hu Yanping, general manager of DCCI Data Center of China Internet. Chinese companies can still try to improve the time and expenses users spend on the Internet.

Despite the industrys slower growth, the number of micro-bloggers in China increased quickly in the past year.

The CNNIC estimated that the number of Chinese micro-bloggers in 2011 was four times as great as it had been the year before.

The centers report estimated that China was home to about 250 million micro-bloggers in 2011.

Online companies, for their part, reported even bigger numbers.

China Daily

(China Daily 01/17/2012 page13)

Posted: Jan 16, 2012 08:11 pm EST

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(AdventureStats) Only one day away a century ago, the moment of truth awaited Scott at the pole. Thanks to the world wide web, truth is catching up faster with UK TV celebrity Helen Skelton. There are true world records in the making though, so lets get to them.The longest polar ski without helpAt 1725 km, in 2000 the longest polar skiing trip without airdrops or sails was a fact. The trek went past the North Pole across the Arctic Ocean and made polar heroes of Norwegian Rune Gjeldnes and Torry Larsen. The record stood…

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Soaring the World Wide Web is going to be something Ill be doing pretty frequently from now on. Its basically just a blog entry that gathers all the best Atlanta Hawks news, articles, pictures, videos, or whatever Hawks related media from around the inter-web.

You folks might have missed reading or seeing something really important or something really cool because theres so much content and so much to do in the internet, so I gather all these links that Ive seen the past week, just for you folks.

*Its also important to note that the order of the links arent listed in order of importance or cool-ness. Thats for you, beloved reader, to figure out.

____________________________________________________________________________

1. Yahoo! Sports. Tracy McGrady has some advice for Dwight Howard.

2. Slam Online. He may not have played a regular season game yet, but its hard to root against Donald Sloan to make this Hawks team.

3. Fox Sports South. He may be old and probably cant contribute much, but Jerry Stackhouse is a player the Hawks really need.

4. Hoop Speak. Why did the Hawks lose against the Bulls? Free throws, yes, but dont discredit what the Chicago Bulls did.

5. Ballersblock Youtube. Old video, but Jeff Teague prefers winning over his family.

6. Nathancapers Youtube. Joe Johnson amp; Bob Pettit (0:23), and also Dominique Wilkins (1:23), are part of one of the best NBA intros ever.

7. KC Johnson Twitter. Guess which two Atlanta Hawks teammates live together right now

8. Peachtree Hoops. Difference between this Hawks team vs. last seasons team? Defense. Also, give credit to Coach Drew for his sub patterns so far.

9. Peachtree Hoops. Al Horford is just a better version of Chuck Hayes?

10. Yahoo! Sports. Al Horford amp; Larry Drew get into an argument.or at least it looks like it (not trying to start anything!).

11. Hoopinion. Seriously Josh Smith, stop shooting jump shots.

12. Basketball Prospectus. This Hawks defense really is something to keep an eye out for.

13. Associated Press. Coach Larry Drew donated $500 to a political figure.

Special Shoutout:

If you havent seen it, or dont know about it yet, please make sure to check out the best Atlanta Hawks fan site in the web. It has a lot of great content for Hawks fans to enjoy. If youre tired of all the negativity that surrounds this Hawks team, check the site out. No negativity in there, its all love.

____________________________________________________________________________

Facebook Page: Click here.
Twitter Page (Will Sevidal): Click here.
Twitter Page (Brandon McCoy): Click here.
Youtube Page: Click here.

Tags: Al Horford, Atlanta Hawks, Bob Pettit, Chicago Bulls, Dominique Wilkins, Donald Sloan, Fox Sports South, Hoop Speak, Jannero Pargo, Jeff Teague, Jerry Stackhouse, Joe Johnson, Josh Smith, Larry Drew, Slam, Tracy McGrady, Yahoo Sports

Its not too much of a stretch to compare the rise of the World Wide Web with other world-changing innovations including the industrial revolution, the motor car and the invention of the computer itself.

The internet has allowed us access to unparalleled amounts of information from around the world. It has put immense computational power within reach and has provided consumers with access to global retail opportunities. The emergence of our newly hyper-connected world also allowed new business models to flourish.

New models

raquo; 13 comments

Its the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine.REM

Your worst fears have come true, the internet has come to a screeching halt sorta. For a whole day, as part of the anti-SOPA protest, there will be no Wikipedia, no Reddit, no MoveOn.org, no Raw Story and no BoingBoing. Thats practically the entire World Wide Web, but lets be honest, Wikipedia is the one youll probably miss the most, and you found this article Googling for alternatives to Wikipedia.

Todays internet blackout conundrum is like trying to find restaurants open on Christmas Day, they exist, but youre probably going to have to eat Chinese food.

All is not lost, as Twitter is expected to be fully functional today. But if youre a student, Twitter likely wont help you finish your essay thats due in an hour. Where can you find a working encyclopedia today?

The Alternatives To Wikipedia

Wikipedia Wait, I thought Wikipedia was shut down today? Actually, you can still access their database through their mobile site or turn off Javascript in your browser, or use Google cache to access articles, which may or may not be up-to-date. Mediaites Phillip Bump has created a site where you can search the cache at http://pbump.net/wiki/. And Inside Cable News directed users last night to block http://wikimedia.org if youre using Firefox and NoScript and BANG! Youre back in!

Everything2 A pre-Wikipedia database of everything but mostly anecdotes, no neutrality and no power to edit, which is what some attribute to its failure to compete with the more successful free encyclopedia. Still a great resource. The Seattle Monorail has only one stop article pretty much captures the essence of the site.

Encyclopaedia Britannica has 120,000 articles that are accessible with a 30-day free trial.

Scholarpedia is a site in the spirit of Wikipedia, but each article is authored by a top expert who is sponsored by two existing curators and then peer-reviewed and validated by two independent curators. This Weeks Hollie Clemence says if youre researching computational neuroscience its perfect, but looking for the capital of Kosovo and youll need to search elsewhere.

Citizendium is an online encyclopedia that argues it exists because we can do better than Wikipedia. It criticizes Wikipedia as an amateurish, disconnected grab-bag of factoids, with no coherent narrative rife with errors and bias, and is part anarchy, part mob rule. In other words, Citizendium really hates Wikipedia. The site hosts 16,153 articles at different stages of development, of which 155 are expert-approved.

Conservapedia offers an encyclopedia that doesnt allow liberal bias. No other encyclopedic resource on the internet is free of corruption by liberal untruths, the site boasts.

The Free Dictionary Encyclopedia is compiled from a number of sources, including Wikipedia content.

(Correction: Fark and CraigsList are still accessible through a link from a homepage advocating against SOPA)

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Think of your browser as your window into Internet web pages and applications. Which browser should you choose, and what security measures should you take to protect your view?

The most popular browsers are Microsofts Windows Internet Explorer, Googles Chrome and Mozillas Foxfire. Internet Explorer — preinstalled on all Windows machines — dominates with 40 percent of all users. But Chrome is coming on strong, according to StatCounter, a global web analytics company. It reports that among those browsers latest versions, Chrome 15 edged past Internet Explorer 8 during Novembers final week, taking 23.6 percent of the worldwide market compared with IEs 23.5 percent.

People primarily try out a new browser for appearance and ease of use, but security should be a concern, too. Choosing the right one can help you surf more safely, particularly when the browsers code is written to block functions typically exploited by virus and spyware writers.

Look for these security features:

Sandboxing. If you use tabs instead of opening another window every time you visit a new site, sandboxing isolates each tab from the rest of your system. If one tab gets infected, crashes or runs a piece of harmful code, simply closing the affected tab kills the process and leaves the other tabs — and all parts of the system — untouched. Internet Explorer and Chrome use sandboxing; Firefox does not.

Plug-in security. Plug-ins are the small applications that run within your browser to enhance functionality, customize the user interface or let you play games. One of the most popular plug-ins is AdBlock (http://adblockplus.org/en/), which blocks annoying website ads, leaving only the content. From a hackers point of view, finding vulnerability in a plug-in is easier than attacking the whole browser. Each browser differs in the amount of access it allows plug-in on your system. Chrome is the only one that doesnt allow plug-ins to install software or run scripts without user interaction.

Just-in-time (JIT) hardening. Viewing a static page on the Internet isnt a security risk, but many websites let users do stuff, from calculating mortgage payments to playing games or creating a spreadsheet. But if you allow a website to run code on your machine and stumble upon an infected website, BAM! Suddenly youre hosting Season 7 of Entourage for Internet pirates in Denmark. While Chrome and Internet Explorer block this type of malicious code from running, Firefox does not.

Firefox lovers, dont despair. With good anti-virus and anti-spyware protection and a little effort, you can make your browser safer than the default configuration. Firefox offers a plug-in called HTTPS Everywhere (www.eff.org/https-everywhere) that will let you browse over 1,000 websites securely. Https encrypts the website pages you see so that passwords, emails and other data you send and receive cant be easily recreated by a hacker via the browser youre using. Ironically, the security settings in Chrome and Internet Explorer block this plug-in.

Ultimately, your online activities will have far more impact on your safety than the browser you choose. Using Chrome isnt going to make much difference if you install programs from untrusted sources or download content of questionable origin. However, in the wild west of the World Wide Web, why not do everything possible to be safe?

For more tips on which side to pick in the browser wars, drop me a note.

(Andrea Eldridge is CEO of Nerds on Call, which offers on-site computer and home theater set-up and repair. Based in Redding, Calif., it has locations in five states. Contact Eldridge at www.callnerds.com/andrea.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, http://www.scrippsnews.com)

Computerworld –

The nice thing about standards is there are so many of them to choose from.

That old chestnut, attributed to any number of different parties, has been in circulation since long before there was an Internet, but it still speaks volumes to the curious situation developing today:

With multiple, parallel versions of HTML in use; a slew of different browsers in play, all of which implement those HTML versions slightly differently; and two separate standards-setting bodies directing traffic, the World Wide Web looks to have any number of possible futures.

For those of us in IT — the people, after all, who have to deploy, test and support the browsers and systems everyone uses — the decisions of the World Wide Web Consortium and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group are more than just academic, and they raise some sticky questions.

How should we go about supporting browsers that are becoming more fluid, with point revisions every few weeks instead of every several months to a year? And how do we tap all of HTMLs new, evolving functionality without breaking existing designs or compatibility?

To answer those questions — and chart a course for HTML evolution in murky waters — it helps to know a bit of background about these august institutions.

In this corner, W3C

The World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), the standards-setting body most directly responsible for the Web as weve come to know it, was formed in 1994 as a way to corral together a single, consistent version of HTML. This it achieved, at two costs.

The first involves enforcement, or the lack thereof: The W3Cs standards are Recommendations (they insist on the capital R), which arent backed by any enforcement. Thats because attempts in the early 2000s to provide official conformance testing for W3C recommendations fizzled out amid concerns that the group would become too authoritarian or too commercial.

The other cost is the speed of decision-making. The W3C, whose membership is a broad and diverse mixture of companies, educational institutions and individuals, has been consistently criticized for being stodgy and hidebound. After XHTML 1.1 was published in 2001, it took the W3C until 2006 to release eight working drafts for XHTML 2.0. Such a pace just wasnt working for a Web that was becoming more consumer-focused and commercially driven.

In that corner, WHATWG

In retrospect, its no surprise that another group — the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG) — arose in 2003 to tackle the development of HTML and APIs needed for Web applications. WHATWG is a conglomeration of engineers from Apple, Mozilla and Opera; all three have a hand in the browser market, and thats how WHATWG drives progress — from the browser side.

The WHATWG is faster-moving and able to take direct action on standards because many of the members own the browsers that users rely on, explains Forrester researcher Jeffrey Hammond. The WHATWG follows the golden rule: He who has the gold — browsers in this case — makes the rules.

San Francisco: Jerry Yang built Yahoo! into an online colossus but the co-founder of the Internet pioneer has become a lightning rod for investor criticism of the recent management of the company.

Yang resigned on Tuesday from the Yahoo! board of directors and all of his other positions at the company he founded nearly 17 years ago, saying the time has come for him to pursue other interests.

Born in Taiwan on November 6, 1968, Yang moved to the United States with his family when he was around 10 years old and was raised in San Jose, California.

While studying electrical engineering at Stanford University in California, Yang and a classmate, David Filo, created a directory for websites in their spare time called Jerrys Guide to the World Wide Web.

They founded Internet portal Yahoo! in 1995 and Yang became one of the original Silicon Valley dotcom billionaires the following year when the Sunnyvale, California-based company went public.

Yahoo! survived the bursting of the dotcom bubble five years later and despite its recent struggles has remained one of the most popular sites on the Web, drawing millions of users a day as a gateway to the Internet.

However, despite its strong content and popular websites, Yahoo! has been losing online advertising business to search giant Google, social networking king Facebook and specialized websites.

Yang served as chief executive of Yahoo! from June 2007 to January 2009, during which time he notably turned down a $33-a-share offer by Microsoft for Yahoo! worth a total of more than $47 billion.

The rejection of the Microsoft bid earned Yang the ire of many shareholders and accusations that he was putting his personal affection for the company he created over the interests of investors.

Yahoo! shares rose more than 3.5 percent to $15.99 in after-hours trading following Tuesdays announcement that Yang was stepping down from the board of Yahoo! and from the boards of Yahoo! Japan and Alibaba Group Holding Ltd.

In a letter to Roy Bostock, the chairman of the Yahoo! board, Yang said my time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo!

Bostock described Yang as a visionary and a pioneer, who has contributed enormously to Yahoo! during his many years of service.

He has always remained focused on the best interests of Yahoo!s stakeholders, including shareholders, employees and more than 700 million users, he said.

And while I and the entire board respect his decision, we will miss his remarkable perspective, vision and wise counsel, Bostock said.

Scott Thompson, who was named Yahoo!s chief executive nearly two weeks ago, replacing Carol Bartz, who was fired in September, said Yang leaves behind a legacy of innovation and customer focus for this iconic brand.

Since Bartzs departure in September, Yahoo!s board has reportedly been looking at selling all or part of the company and Yang was seen by some shareholders as a fierce opponent of a breakup.

According to Forbes magazine, Yang is the 938th richest person in the world with a fortune estimated at $1.1 billion. He still owns around 3.6 percent of Yahoo!s shares.

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