Internet Censorship by Country

Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Vietnam top the list as countries that would rather control the flow of information from the World Wide Web to their citizens, mostly out of fear that it might spark revolution and civil unrest. They fear freedom of speech as well as losing control of the masses due to inability to censor what the general population consumes as news, entertainment, and political ideas. How far each country will go in controlling the Internet varies from country to country and is not limited to totalitarian regimes, as we shall see.

Burma, also known as Myanmar, is so threatened by the Internet that the very act of going online is considered a dissident act; the use of or importing a modem without official permission is punishable by up to 15 years in prison for threatening state security, national unity, culture, the economy, and/or law and order. The government fears its citizens will be exposed to website relating to human rights, political opposition groups, and organizations that promote democracy in the country.

Most recently, in Iran, an “Internet police force” is being developed to help combat what the government considers “unique and serious threats [that] are felt by users and society. Among these threats are: content that is critical of the government, pornographic websites, political blogs, weblogs, online magazines, and sites that promote women’s rights. Some Iranian bloggers have imprisoned in the past and will most likely be detained in the future for their Internet activities.

Syrians and Vietnamese who express their opinions or report information online have been detained when their country’s “Internet police” have caught them through close monitoring. Tunisia not only blocks access to search engines and pornography but peer-to-peer and FTP services as well.

But do not think that democratic nations are immune to Internet censorship. Australia has been attempting to censor materials that the government deems inappropriate for it’s citizens to consume. So far they have not totally enforced the use of blacklists to block content deemed inappropriate for the masses. The United States has passed several Acts that affect Internet use such as, The Communications Decency Act, the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and the Children’s Internet Protection Act.

So, even if you do live in a free country, do not think for an instant that no one is looking through what you say online to make sure you are not going against the wishes of the government. George Orwell’s “1984″ wasn’t far off the mark, Big Brother is watching you.

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1. By far my biggest source for blogging fodder is paying attention to the news. For some reason some of the most successful blogs are commentary and editorial in nature, so you really cannot go wrong with this type of material. There is bound to be someone out there that agrees with your assessments of a news item. Better yet, those who disagree.
2. Over the past year, the popularity of Twitter has grown with leaps and bounds, as such, you can harvest this wealth of chatter through searching the “hash tags” (those words preceded by the # symbol) on any given topic. Keep your attention on a narrow focus because it is easy to become distracted with the flow of the conversations.
3. Social tagging sites like StumbleUpon and Digg are also a great resource for finding ideas. Again, like Twitter, it is easy to become distracted, so try and stay focused on your topic.
4. One of the oldest and apparently falling into disuse ways of getting ideas is in the form of Memes. These are usually some sort of question another blogger poses on his or her blog and invites their fellow bloggers to respond either in comments or, and this is where it can help you out, on the respondent’s blog. Either way, some link love can occur and benefit both parties in that respect. Another form of Meme is a theme of the day such as “Wordless Wednesday” where bloggers are encouraged to post an image that reflects a given theme; original images are more desirable than snagging them from the net.
5. A place I find a treasure trove of idea for “From My Armchair” is Yahoo! Answers. If your blog has a very narrow focus, you can find all sorts of blogging fodder just by browsing through the questions that are posted in neatly segregated categories. You can also establish a little bit of traffic by posting links to your blog that might be useful in answering someone’s question. The fun on this site is finding the good questions amongst the fluff.
6. Question of the Day sites are useful as well. One such site is Plinky. They have some great questions and you can post your answers on the community site as well as your blog. Another source for this type of material is LiveJournal. I keep an account on there just to look at the Question of Day which can be found in the administration panel.

There are many other places to discover topics for your blog; these are just a few that I use. I hope this has helped you discover new topics for your blog.

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Now, understandably, the Internet has led to some modes of learning deflating. I mean, if you want to know who won the 100 Days War, just Google it. Who was the monarch in England during the Potato Famine in Ireland, again all you have to do is Google. In coming generations, I do not think that fact retention will be as high as it once was. Already, most adults in the United States cannot tell you who was president during the Korean Conflict.

As the Internet becomes more integrated  in our every day lives, it will dramatically affect the way we think. I see this in myself when it comes to being in a discussion forum, my first instinct now is to search the web for relevant info on the topic.  Instead of thinking for myself in an argument, I tend to see if I can find some great stinger to use on the Net. Yes, it is changing the way I think and prolly is doing the same to others.

The Edge Annual Question — 2010

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New Media is a generic term applied to the many differing forms of electronic communications made possible through the use of personalcomputer technology.  It is also an expression of how this technology relates to traditional forms of media, such as “dead tree” newspapers and magazines.  The biggest difference there is that the “old” media is static; whereas the new media is capable of changing as fast as a story evelopes.

Some examples of new media:

• Web sites
• chat rooms
• blogs
• instant messaging

As the technology improves and permeates our homes, we see traditional media falling to the wayside.  Most do not see the advantage of subscribing to the daily newspaper or a weekly magazine when the info described between their pages is already digested and processed before it even hit the press.  Over the past few years the number of papers that have ceased publishing has risen due to lack of circulation and growth.  The same can be said of the magazine industry.  With the spread of amature journalism and more of the population going online tog et their news, this trend will continue to accelerate.

The future is new media and with that future, those who are writing the news must be held accountable.  The speed of the Internet for news is astounding.  One example of this was the death of Michael Jackson; thirty minutes before CNN announced that the King of Pop was dead, the news had already hit Twitter.  Shortly after his death was verified by television media, accounts of other celebrity deaths ran rampant on Twitter and the blogosphere.  It was quickly found that all these rumours were unfounded.  This alone showed how the new media is still going through growing pains.  In order for us to trust what we read on the Net we often times have to check with several sources to verify what we are reading is true.

In his book “The Vanishing Newspaper”, Philip Meyer calculates that the first quarter of 2043 will be the moment when newsprint dies in America as the last exhausted reader tosses aside the last crumpled edition.  With the rate things are going, that could come sooner.  With our newspapers either going out of business or totally online, we will see new media become our number one source for what is happening around us.  As this happens, let us hope that the integrity of that news will be much improved and will reflect that of the printed press it has replaced.

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• Do they offer a lot of web space and traffic? Just because they are offering low cost web hosting doesn’t always mean they offer very little service. Sometimes you will find they offer the same amount of bells and whistles the big boys do.

• Are they available 24/7? Sometimes web hosting companies offer such low prices because they don’t have the best customer service. Make sure when you are looking for discount web hosting that you test their support before you actually purchase from them.

• What is their stated uptime? Sometimes a budget web host provider will cut back on their web server’s uptime. Make sure the host your choose offers at least 99.5% or better uptime. Everyone has different needs, so make sure you take this into account when looking around.

• How long has the web hosting company been in business? If they just got established recently you might want to look for one that has been around for several years. While not always true, most newer companies do not last long. If you do choose to go with a newer company, be sure to back up your site often, just in case something happens.

These are just the basics. Just remember to do your research before selecting a provider and you will avoid headaches down the road.

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Some key notes:

• Not a full-blown, self-contained OS
  They say it will be built on top of a Linux based system, so they are relying on already existing code to have a platform to launch their browser.
• Web Apps
  One of the driving forces behind this OS is the belief that the future of applications is going to based on the web instead of residing on your desktop.  And if this is the case, you can run these apps from any platform that conforms to modern web conventions. And this leads to the question, why another OS?
• Affordability
  The fact that this puppy is going to be able to run on x86 and ARM chipsets will make the thing really easy to acquire the hardware to run it on. Your average computer geek will prolly have a machine setting in the garage this thing can run on.
• Target Users
  Right now, Google is targeting those of us who spend most of our time just surfing the internet and how we can take that experience to the next level. They are not looking to bring in people who use their computers for photo editing of playing massive games (although there are quite a few games that will run under the platform, just forget World of Warcraft or Halo.

With that said, it will be interesting to see what the future will bring if they can pull this off.  For a blogger, this would be a really cool idea, would make getting the laptop we’ve always wanted that much easier.  But for those who need to have the power to edit photos, it is not for you, unless you can get by using something online.

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The top blog for Technology news is, without a doubt, Ars Technica. They mostly deal with the computer industry, but that’s okay, thereisenough to read here and you will find something that will grab your attention.  Their reporting is also unbiased which is hard to come by in the tech world, check them out and see what you think.

Over the years, it seems that the Fourth Estate has seen the writing on the wall and have embraced the whole blogging idea.  The New York Times has a great tech blog called Bits and their team of bloggers have some great content. Bits stands for Business, Innovation, Technology, and Society; and they cover all quite well within the context of each other.

If your thing is gadgets, then Gizmodo is the blog for you. They cover all gadgets from pen cameras to super sized TVs, it’s all here. They are not above making fun of gadgets either, which I find to be a bonus to my reading.

Most would not think of Lifehacker as a tech site, but they do help you with “tips and downloads for getting things done”.  They gie you tips from the mundane to the unexpected.  Check it out, you will enjoy your read.

My last blog to recomend is Geeks Are Sexy, just the name sounds cool.  Well, the whole blog is cool.  The topics covered here are science, technology and other things that makes geeks go weak in the knees.  This is also a great place to find out what should be the next youTube viral video.

Well that wraps it up for me and what is cool and sweet for Technology Blogs.  Check them out, you won’t be disappointed.

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TweetDeck is an excellent Adobe Air application that allows you to follow all your favorite tweeps and keep tabs on your FaceBook pals while allowing you to send updates to both Twitter and FaceBook.   It further lets you organize your feeds into seperate columns for general feeds, FaceBook updates, and even lets you add your own categories to follow, including hashmarked tags.  And when it comes to sharing what your doing with the world, it even allows for shortened, Twitter friendly, URLs.

If you have an iPhone, there is even a version for you.

Even though this product is still in beta, you will find that it is feature rich and pretty much intuitive in use.  I encourage you to go out and try this app and see for yourself how much it makes your tweeting easier.

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Purpose

This website has a three-fold purpose.

1. To present a blog about my views of what is going on toady today throughout the internet.
2. To promote a business that I hope to get off the ground.
3. To establish a permanent presence on the web.

About me

For the past 14 years, I have been online in one form or another. I remember the glory days of the local BBS systems and when AOL was still three seperate entities (AppleLink, QLink, and PCLink). I have seen the Internet go from something that only geeks knew about to where it has become part of almost everyone’s everyday lives.

Advertising on my blog

If you wish to advertise on my blog, please feel free to drop me a line at baedonwebz dot gmail dot com or utilize the contact form below. Some advertisement links I will provide for free others are charged a rate of $5.00 per week. If I charge is totally based on the make up of the site advertised. (Further info will be posted in the near future.)

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Productivity

OpenOffice – Extremely great for the home. You could run into small compatibility issues (formatting) when sending documents to Microsoft Office users. It isn’t Microsoft Office, but it gets the job done. I’ve also noticed that if you are used to using the MS product, you’ll have little difficulty in adapting to this one.

Foxit Reader – ”a free PDF document viewer, with incredible small size, breezing-fast launch speed and rich feature set.”

Paint.Net – Image editor.  This product is not bad for those who just want to tweak an image or two. If you need more advanced tools, you might want to consider Corel’s PaintShop Pro (commercial product).

Picasa – “Picasa is a software download from Google that helps you organize, edit, and share your photos. It’s free, and easy to use.”

Security

The best security you can have is you. Here are the basic steps for security:

1 -DON’T EVER CLICK a link in an email from a source you do not know.  For emails from people you do know, if you put your cursor over the link, the actual address should show.
2 – Keep your Operating System and applications up to date.
3 – Firewall.  Both a hardware (router) and software firewall.
4 – Use anti-virus and anti-spyware.
5 – Use a pop-up blocker in your browser  Most modern browsers have this ability built in, use it.

Some of the freeware available to you to help with security are:

Anti-Virus
Free anti-virus licenses state that you may use it on ONE computer.

Avira AntiVir Personal – This one has won a few awards and is pretty good.  It is a scaled down version of the Pay-Version.

AVG Free Antivirus – Consistently rated high by Virus Bulletin. With it’s low resource usage and unobtrusiveness, this is one that I most recommend to people.

Anti-Spyware
Most pay-for anti-virus programs include this.  But, if you are going with freeware, use these to help protect yourself.

Windows Defender – Included with Vista.

Ad-Aware (free) – The free version of this software is not at all bad, but you might want to use Spybot S&D along side it.

Spybot S&D – This one catches a lot of the stuff that the other two miss.  It also provides a good dump option to share with geeks to help you.

Browsers

To me, there is only one good freeware browser and that is Firefox.  Don’t ask me why, but I like the thing.  Might be the scalability of it, I don’t know.

Firefox – I am not one of those people who preach that Firefox is more secure than IE 7, especially after I add all my plugins. But, in practice, if you strip it down and use noscript then it could be very secure.

Google Chrome – Google’s new browser.  (One draw back, for Windows anyway, is that this only works on Vista or higher.)

This is just a few of the freeware products that I recommend.  I’ll most likely write a few more posts on niche topics in the future.

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