Is independent Internet possible?

By name itself, Internet in network of networks.. how can you make it independent? I guess, you can only do it by creating island and controlling gateways for inbound and outbound traffic from your country to another if there is any such well defined things..

I totally understand President Dilma's anger on US. Is she also angry at China (her biggest buyer of raw materials) and Russia and many other countries/nations who do it all the time? Instead of getting angry at US, she should focus on more emphasis on technological build up in Brazil... then she can launch her counter offensive against any country she would like to as most of the other countries do it to her country..

Build infrastructure in your country so Google/facebook like companies are created in your own country rather than relying on silicon valley for all such critical to time passing applications and infrastructures.. Attack at fundamentals.. don't try to dress up the fact that your country let go the golden time of minting money on your natural resources without fixing core issues like infrastructure and education.. Now that you are facing the anemic growth music again, you are creating issues out of almost non-sense issues..

Work on fundamentals.. rest nature will take care of you..

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Angered over espionage, Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff is postponing a visit to Washington.


Brazil seeks online independence

President angered over revelations of U.S. spying

By Bradley Brooks and Frank Bajak

Associated Press

RIO DE JANEIRO — Brazil plans to divorce itself from the U.S.-centric Internet over Washington’s widespread online spying, a move that many experts fear will be a potentially dangerous first step toward fracturing a global network built with minimal interference by governments.

President Dilma Rousseff ordered a series of measures aimed at greater Brazilian online independence and security following revelations that the U.S. National Security Agency intercepted her communications, hacked into the state-owned Petrobras oil company’s network and spied on Brazilians who entrusted their personal data to U.S. tech companies such as Facebook and Google.

The leader is so angered by the espionage that on Tuesday she postponed next month’s scheduled trip to Washington.

Internet security and policy experts say the Brazilian government’s reaction to information leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden is understandable, but warn it could set the Internet on a course of Balkanization.“The global backlash is only beginning and will get far more severe in coming months,” said Sascha Meinrath of the Washington-based New America Foundation think tank. “This notion of national privacy sovereignty is going to be an increasingly salient issue around the globe.”

While Brazil isn’t proposing to bar its citizens from U.S.-based Web services, it wants their data to be stored locally as the nation assumes greater control over Brazilians’ Internet use to protect them from NSA snooping.

The danger of mandating that kind of geographic isolation, Meinrath said, is that it could render inoperable popular software applications and services and endanger the Internet’s open, interconnected structure.

The effort by Latin America’s biggest economy to digitally isolate itself from U.S. spying not only could be costly and difficult, it could encourage repressive governments to seek greater technical control over the Internet to crush free expression at home, experts say.

In December, countries advocating greater “cyber-sovereignty” pushed for such control at an International Telecommunications Union meeting in Dubai, with Western democracies led by the United States and the European Union in opposition.

U.S. digital security expert Bruce Schneier says that while Brazil’s response is a rational reaction to NSA spying, it is likely to embolden “some of the worst countries out there to seek more control over their citizens’ Internet. That’s Russia, China, Iran and Syria.”

Brazil is now pushing more aggressively than any other nation to end U.S. commercial hegemony on the Internet. More than 80 percent of online search, for example, is controlled by U.S.-based companies.

Most of Brazil’s global Internet traffic passes through the United States, so Rousseff’s government plans to lay underwater fiber optic cable directly to Europe and also link to all South American nations to create what it hopes will be a network free of U.S. eavesdropping.

Now we race to get Ultra-HD TV

Wondering.. where this will end up. I think Ultra-HD resolution is more relevant for Ultra-Large Size TVs. I don't think that it will make much sense to make Ultra-HD TVs in 40-50 inch range. Not for now.. I am guessing that this is one of few last opportunity for Sony to come back in TV market where they lost big time to Samsung. They lost to Samsung not on quality but I guess more on price/performance ratio. Same will apply for these Ultra-HD TV launch. It is expected to be really highly priced. However, if they price it really Ultra-High-Price.

While pricing it, they should think about gaining customer confidence and changing their Ultra-High-Price TVs perception to good value for money TV. This good value for money perception is currently owned by Samsung and I am sure they will do everything to keep it that way. Sooner or later, Samsung will also launch these Ultra-HD 4K TVs. Sony has very short window of opportunity where they can think about customers instead of thinking their own profit and loss. Even though, there is no guarantee of Sony's turnaround but still there is some chance which has showed up after long time.

I am not planning to go and get these Ultra-HD TVs anytime soon. Though after watching them it may change. Though, again.. I am not sure how much content will be available for these 4K TVs. Only up-scaling is not going to justify higher resolution. They will have to come up with better Blu-rays. It is their chance to revive slowing down Blu-Ray disc sales which internet streaming is killing day by day. You can get 4K content on internet as well but it is going to need real fat pipe or some buffering and hence significant lag.

But then there is even bigger problem on disc based as they might need player upgrade which can be even more slower. This entire ecosystem is so messed up.. I wish that we had Gig Ethernet at home just like we have telephone line.. that would have solved most of these streaming bottlenecks and we could easily switch to complete streaming based solution rather transporting these discs all the places..


Sony to debut TVs with ultra-HD

Diagonal measure will be 84 inches, with ‘4K’ resolution

By Peter Svensson

Associated Press

NEW YORK — Highdefinition TVs roughly quadrupled the resolution of the sets that came before them. Now, the industry is poised to do it again. By December, U.S. stores will sell a TV set with four times the resolution of today’s best HDTVs, Sony said Wednesday. The set will measure 84 inches on the diagonal, making the screen area four times as large as the common 42-inch set.

Executives said Sony will reveal the price of the set next week. There is, for now, very little video content available that can take advantage of the higher resolution. With some work and know-how, a computer connected to the set can display video in the ultra-HD “4K” resolution.
The set will also do its best to “upscale” TV, DVD and Blu-ray movies, so they look better.

Phil Molyneux, chief operating officer of Sony Electronics, said the situation was no different from the launch of the cassette tape, the CD or the DVD.

“We always get this question when we launch beautiful new technology: Where’s the content?” Molyneux told journalists at an event in New York. “Did we bring the content to market? Yes, we did.”

The resolution of the set is 3,840 by 2,160 pixels. It’s known as “4K” because it has nearly 4,000 pixels on the horizontal edge. That compares with 1,920 by 1,080 pixels in “1080p” sets. More pixels allow TV makers to make bigger screens without compromising sharpness.

Sony makes digital projectors operating at 4K resolution for movie theaters.

The TV industry has been looking for a technology that will get consumers to upgrade their HDTV sets. Sales are slumping after an initial wave of upgrades from standard-definition sets, and 3-D sets attract only a small number of consumers.

Apple has slowly been quadrupling the resolution of its devices, starting with the iPhone 4 two years ago. This year, it released iPads and MacBooks with ultrahigh- resolution screens.

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SONY VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS

Sony’s new ultra-HD 4K TV sets with resolution of 3,840 by 2,160 pixels are scheduled to be in stores by December. Prices will be announced next week.

Again.. We need Gigi Ethernet just like phone in every house..

This is great news.. Kudos to Google for taking this initiative.. I hope it is successful and results in eye opener for US government. It has to be done.. sooner or later.. better we do it sooner and realize this potential..

It will be really interesting to watch the use cases coming out of this. Let us see, how city and its residents and hopefully young enterprising companies come up with to utilize this blazing fast internet pipe. Definitely most advantage will be in pervasive video applications and related areas. Off course Kansas City will be limited by non availability of Gigi internet on other side. But thye can definitely set up streaming services to take advantage of great upload service. Local LAN based applications will also be worth watching. With this speed, entire Kansas City should only have high def video phones or even 3D Halo type of video connectivity instead of POT (Plain Old Telephone) service.

Gaming industry should come up with more intuitive 3D type of Games where they can project other side as a Halo so you can really feel that you are playing with each other instead of playing with TV/LCD Display. I am sure, it is still early.. but once more and more Kansas Cities start coming up they will be come reality.


Cheers!!!

KANSAS CITY WIRED FOR SPEED

Google puts $70 price on ultrafast Net service

Firm installed optical fiber to create test bed for tech


By Maria Fisher and Peter Svensson

Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Google revealed Thursday what it will charge for its long-awaited, ultrafast Internet service in Kansas City: $70 a month.

The service is intended as a showcase for what’s technically possible and as a test bed for the development of new ways to use the Internet. Bypassing the local cable and phone companies, Mountain View-based Google has spent months and an unknown amount of money pulling its own optical fiber through the two-state Kansas City region.

After vetting many contenders, Google announced last year that the Kansas City metro area would be the first to get its Fiber for Communities broadband service.

Some cities had used gimmicks to get the company’s attention. Topeka informally renamed itself “Google, Kansas.” A group in Baltimore launched a website that used Google’s mapping service to plot the location of more than 1,000 residents and give their reasons for wanting the service. Hundreds of groups on Facebook implored Google to come to their cities. The $70 monthly fee will pay for “gigabit” Internet service, about 100 times faster than a basic cable modem. For an additional $50 a month, Google will provide cable-TV-like service over the fiber, too, and a tablet computer that works as a remote. 

The channel lineup includes Nickelodeon, Discovery, Bravo, Starz and Showtime (which may require additional fees) but is missing AMC, HBO, CNN, Fox News and ESPN. Google spokeswoman Jenna Wandres wouldn’t say why the channels were missing, but said the lineup would expand. 

Google said it will start hooking up households in neighborhoods only where a sufficient number of people want service. Kansas City residents have six weeks to preregister for service, after which Google will decide which areas have enough interest. 

Google will also offer a slower Internet option, at a DSL-like 5 megabits per second, with no monthly fee to households that pay a $300 installation fee. The free service is guaranteed for at least seven years, but is available only in neighborhoods where enough people have preregistered. 

The $70 fee is more than what cable or phone companies charge for basic Internet service, but the service is also much faster. Gigabit speeds, or 1,000 megabits per second, are generally unavailable from other companies. One exception is the city-owned electric utility in Chattanooga, Tenn., which has pulled its own fiber and sells gigabit service for $350 a month. 

Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Sly James, who attended the news conference Google held in a converted yoga studio in midtown Kansas City, was clearly pleased with the announcement. 

“We now have an opportunity to take a giant step and if we don’t it’s all on us,” James said. “It’s going to be a great educational tool ... that’s going to create innovators and entrepreneurs, and that’s exactly what we want.” 

There are few ways for consumers to take advantage of gigabit speeds. For everyday activities such as Web surfing, email and video-watching, there will most likely be no substantial difference. The higher speeds will help with video sharing and online backups. 

Google is hoping that the network could help the development of other advanced applications that can take advantage of the high speeds. It’s also hoping to spur phone and cable companies into upgrading their own networks. 

“Access speeds have simply not kept pace with the phenomenal increases in computing power and storage capacity that’s spurred innovation over the last decade,” Milo Medin, Google’s vice president of Access Services, said in a blog post. 

However, it’s expensive to pull optical fiber compared with using existing phone and cable lines to provide Internet service. Verizon Communications is the only major U.S. telecommunications company to have connected homes directly to fiber. Wall Street analysts say that project, which has cost $23 billion, is not paying off. 

Verizon has stopped adding new communities to its network, dubbed FiOS. It charges $70 a month for download speeds of 15 megabits per second, less than 2 percent the speed of Google’s gigabit. 

Justin Venech, spokesman for Time Warner Cable, which provides service in Kansas City, said Thursday that he watched Google’s announcement online and said he didn’t see “too many things that jumped out at me beyond the speed.” 

“Kansas City has been competitive for video and broadband services for a long time,” Venech said. “We offer advanced products and services today and we have experienced local employees delivering local services.” 

Power of Internet - Free and Quality Education

These examples demonstrated real power of internet.. amazingly great classes and courses available from top schools and universities of world available for free.. If you only care about knowledge and don't care about piece of paper (degree) then you can literally do PhD.. You just need to have desire and passion and decent internet connection. off-course you need time as well (which is most common excuse for grown ups like  me ;-) )

UC Berkeley joining or I should say expanding the free courses available online. I think lot of courses from lot of great universities are already available online on different platforms and locations. I know MIT, Stanford and many other great schools have superb presence online. Now a days, with iTunesU kicking in more and more courses in its portfolio.. This is great for someone studying in remote engineering colleges in India where Professor and other resources availability could be challenge (that is the best decent political correct term I can think off). In-fact those type of kids can easily attend in group setting along with their Professor or lecturers.. This can simply revolutionize quality of education across the globe..

Good Job!!! Keep it up!!

UC BERKELEY

Courses by Cal going online

Some UC faculty are worried about diluting prestige

By Matt Krupnick

mkrupnick@bayareanewsgroup.com 

With some professors grumbling over the University of California’s expanding online presence, UC Berkeley is joining two of its top competitors to bring free college courses to the masses.

The university will offer two free online classes this fall as part of the edX collaboration, which also includes Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. UC Berkeley employees were told about the partnership Monday.

The edX venture is Berkeley’s latest foray into the MOOC, or massive open online course, arena. The school already offers classes with Coursera, another free program that also includes Stanford, Princeton and the University of Michigan. Together the two ventures have some 950,000 students.

Some educators have complained that free online classes could hurt UC Berkeley’s reputation. Participants are working hard to keep that from happening, said Armando Fox, a UC Berkeley computer science professor who has helped teach a Coursera class and will do the same with edX.

“We would not have agreed to do an online course if we did not think we could maintain that standard of quality,” he said. More than 100,000 students from around the world have enrolled in his Coursera classes, he said. 

The edX experiment comes as the 10-campus UC system works to expand its own online program. The university recently began offering a handful of credit classes online to UC students and will bring non-UC students into the mix this year at up to $2,100 a class. 

Faculty leaders have cautioned the university against moving too quickly with the online courses. The UC Academic Senate has said it worries about the quality and finances of the UC Online project. 

In contrast, some of those most concerned about UC’s plans say they support free projects like Coursera and edX. 

“I’m not at all opposed to the open-sourced courses,” said Wendy Brown, a UC Berkeley political-science professor who has criticized the university’s approach to online education. “The experiments need to happen to develop these technologies.” 

The different models — UC’s own versus edX and Coursera — provide disparate benefits to students. 

UC’s online program is meant to expand the reach of UC classes, and students gain college credits for completing the courses. The stakes, professors say, are higher when the UC brand on a class is so prominent. 

But Coursera and edX offer only certificates, so the risk to an individual school is not as high. The programs offer free education to people who might otherwise be shut out from elite universities, said John Wilton, a UC Berkeley vice chancellor who has helped develop the school’s online partnerships. 

“There’s a public-good component to this, which I think is very appealing to the universities involved,” Wilton said. Universities have an obligation to improve online education, he said. “It’s not like we cannot do this. We have to do this.” The free courses do have detractors, however. UC campuses should concentrate more on their own students, particularly in the midst of a budget crisis, before leaping into such partnerships, said Christopher Edley, the UC Berkeley law dean who has helped guide the university system’s online development. 

“I worry that jumping into what our private peer institutions are doing feels a little like me-tooism rather than a vision,” he said. “Our mission has to do more with figuring out how to serve the thousands of California students who won’t fit on a UC campus. 

“It risks being a distraction from the somewhat urgent need to figure this stuff out.” 

Contact Matt Krupnick at 510-208-6488. 

New Law in Russia for Internet?

I had much better hopes from Mr. Putin on his second tenure. But seems that things are not going in right direction. I thought, he would work hard to be better president who would like to leave legacy..legacy of someone who united and took out Russia from chaos and anarchy and constructed Russia.. not only that, the person, who left really clean and democratic Russia.

These type of laws which inhibit basic freedom for common man is not right direction.. what ever justification you give.. if you want real progress, you have to open up country and give real freedom of expression and choice to your citizens. Law of Stick is not going to sustain for long. May be Putin if lucky could survive as a leader during his life time though I have low hopes if things continue like this.. Definitely it is going to kill his legacy like legacy of Stalin and other leaders was dead very soon after their demise.

Russia is such a beautiful country and has amazing potential.. amazingly lovely people.. these kind of things are simply killing Russia and taking it back to stone age.. I hope these so called God Fathers of Russia come back to senses before it is too late or it becomes point of no return..

Russia enacts new rules for Internet, nonprofit groups

By Ellen Barry

New York Times

MOSCOW — The upper house of the Russian Parliament overwhelmingly approved draft laws Wednesday that will give the government greater power over the Internet and nonprofit organizations. The measures, the latest in a series being rushed through as President Vladimir Putin begins a six-year term, will become law when he signs them, strengthening his hand against an increasingly assertive opposition.

The bills approved Wednesday empower the government to block any website it deems dangerous to children and require nonprofit groups that receive any money from outside Russia to describe themselves as “foreign agents” if they are deemed by the government to be engaged in political activities. “We understand that events have begun to take place at a faster rate, that the degree of tension in society is growing,” Aleksandr Petrov, a lawmaker from the ruling United Russia party, said in a meeting Tuesday with the leaders of nonprofit groups, held by the American Chamber of Commerce.

“We have one goal — to try, with the help of a number of laws, to create a certain stability, to provide for the integrity of the Russian Federation,” he said. “Yes, there should be political activity, but it should not be allowed to rock the boat which is called Russia.”

The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay, condemned the new laws in a statement Wednesday, saying they “will have a detrimental effect on human rights in the country.” The past two months, Pillay said, have brought “a worrying shift in the legislative environment governing the enjoyment of the freedoms of assembly, association, speech and information in the Russian Federation.”

Power of Internet in Egypt

Lot of discussions are going on this issue. Media and news groups are openly saying that Twitter and Facebook has lot do with these revolutions in Tunisia and now in Egypt.
I would say that, they had some impact on these revolutions. Definitely, these are great collaboration tools and you do need great collaboration to organize something on that big scale.

However, one story in a way further validated very interesting role of internet and these applications in revolution. This is about Egyptian revolution. Revolution supporters were almost double very next day after Internet was shut down in the Egypt. I think that was Mubarak's biggest mistake and final nail on his coffin. Without Facebook and twitter, people didn't had anything to do at home. They came out in even bigger numbers. No offense to these revolutionist, but it would have been better for Mubarak if he had not only continued access for Facebook and Twitter so people keep on screaming on it sitting inside home but also ask ISPs to open some streaming of nice movies on Internet free of cost so people can enjoy at home. May be he won't have to appoint Vice-President. Just kidding.

I think power of internet with support of these excellent applications and tools is becoming more and more. Unfortunately US has very big role in supporting these regimes in all over the world. However, it is these same US companies, which are kind of counteracting US government's sins. So we are even out and in process making good money by first selling arms and ammunition then further hype our Companies like Facebook and Twitter and get huge valuations for them.. I smell conspiracy by Goldman Sachs on this ;-)