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None of the materials framing the World Summit for the Information Society (WSIS) provide a basis to recognize when the policies or technological solutions promoted as part of WSIS will affect the Internet. This basic oversight has critical implications as the World Telecommunications Development Conference (WTDC) approaches in early 2014. The implications relate not just to impacts on the Internet, but to impacts on developing countries, and on the objectives of the WSIS itself.
The following is an analysis of the 2010 WTDC Resolutions to identify where they need to be adapted to enable recognition of how the WSIS project will impact the Internet. It is organized based on the framework of Study Groups and Programmes for the work of ITU-D outlined in the Hyderabad Action Plan, issued at the 2010 WTDC.
We preface our commentary by first providing a description of the distinctions between the terms Internet, IP-based Networks and Next-generation Networks (NGNs), and then noting the important role of a number of 2010 Plenipotentiary Resolutions that are shaping the ITU’s WSIS activities.
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Bitcoin Internet Payment Services, a Denmark-based exchange billing itself as Europe's biggest, was robbed of bitcoins worth more than $1 million in a theft that took place over the course of the past several days.
Bitcoins are a decentralized digital currency generated by computers “mining” for the solutions to complex math problems, and authenticated on a peer-to-peer basis – not by a central banking authority. It’s the third major heist this month – about $1.4 million worth was stolen several weeks ago from an anonymous Australian who ran an online wallet service known as Inputs.io, and a Chinese exchange abruptly vanished two weeks ago, taking more than $4 million with it.
Smaller thefts, which affected consumer exchanges in the Czech Republic and Poland, have also taken place this month.
In the latest incident, BIPS was apparently targeted by a distributed denial-of-service attack earlier this month. A follow-up attack, according to bitcoin news site Coindesk, subsequently knocked out key security systems and allowed the thieves to make off with 1,295 BTC.
In response to the incident, BIPS said in a statement that it was forced to pull the consumer payments functionality of its services off-line, and warned users that they would have to transfer any balances to a different wallet service.
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The New York Times has published further details of an NSA operation that involves spying on the fiberoptic cables running between the data centers of companies such as Google and Yahoo.
The piece highlights the role played by Level 3, the company that runs such cables for Google and Yahoo. Level 3 has already been identified as one of the telecommunications firms working with the UK’s NSA partner, GCHQ.
These fiber connections are crucial to the affair, as they may provide a way for the NSA and GCHQ to effectively tap into major web firms’ systems without their cooperation.
Australia’s Optus is reportedly testing technology which will allow its customers to make voice calls over its 4G LTE network, according to ZDNet Australia, which cites the operator’s new managing director of networks, Vic Mcclelland. ‘Optus follows all mobile network technology developments closely… We have been carrying out trials for both HD Voice and voice-over-LTE (VoLTE), and we are examining the benefits these technologies can potentially deliver to our customers,’ the executive said. It is understood that some of the trials of the technology were conducted in partnership with Finnish vendor Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN).
The report comes hot on the heels of similar revelations by the news source last week that Australia’s largest cellco by subscribers Telstra was also trialling VoLTE, with a spokeperson for the operator having confirmed: ‘Telstra is currently trailing VoLTE in our lab environment but have no immediate rollout plans … However, our customers already experience the benefits of a High Definition voice service on compatible devices across our entire network.’ Nonetheless, it has been suggested that Telstra could actually look to deploy VoLTE commercially next year.
At first glance, there’s nothing particularly Jetsons-like about Marco Krapels’ 1940s-era home in a prosperous suburb that lies in the shadow of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County, California. Open the garage door, though, and it’s Tomorrowland.
Attached to the wall is a charging station for Krapels’ Tesla Motors Model S electric sports sedan. And next to the charger are two metal boxes that effectively render Pacific Gas & Electric, the 108-year-old utility that serves Northern California, irrelevant. One box channels electricity generated by the SolarCity photovoltaic panels on the house’s roof. The other, a 10-kilowatt Tesla lithium-ion battery pack, can store up to three days’ worth of carbon-free electricity generated by Krapels’ solar array.
In other words, during the sunniest part of the day, when no one is at home and power demand is low, the Tesla battery pack can store the excess electricity for use in the late afternoon and evening when power prices spike. No dirty and expensive utility electrons needed. “I should technically be able to function with solar and just the battery indefinitely as long as the sun shines,” says Krapels, a renewable energy financer.
And the cost? Thanks to California incentives that subsidize 60 percent of the cost of energy storage, Krapels is paying less than $40 a month for the battery pack as part of a lease deal with SolarCity, the Silicon Valley company that installed the solar battery system.
“To be able to make my own power and store my own power and use it when I want to is liberating,” says Krapels as he stands in his garage. “I don’t want to have to buy power from PG&E at peak rates, I want to use my own power. You see this power line going from the street to my house? I look forward to the day when I cut that wire.”
But that day has not quite arrived. The Tesla energy storage unit – it’s is a smaller version of the battery pack that powers the Model S – has sat unused since it was installed in Krapels’ garage last spring. PG&E, like other big California utilities, has refused to connect residential solar-battery storage systems to the grid unless homeowners pay a fee that can run $800 or more.
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Fuel cells have long been lurking around in the shadows of the automotive world, promising great things but without much real-world availability to deliver them.
At this week's LA Auto Show, they took some small but sure steps into the light, as both Honda and Hyundai shared their respective visions for the future of fuel cell automobiles.
These debuts have people talking a little more about hydrogen-fueled electric driving.
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Microsoft launched Xbox One game consoles in 13 countries, selling over one million consoles within 24 hours, making Xbox One the biggest launch in Xbox history. In the first 24 hours, Microsoft reported that Xbox One gamers killed over 60 million zombies in "Dead Rising 3," and drove more than 3.6 million miles in "Forza Motorsport 5."
Reuters pointed out that Sony also sold one million PS4 units, priced at $399, within 24 hours in just the U.S. and Canada. Sony, trying to avoid comparisons to Xbox's Red Ring of Death, said "less than 1%" of customers experienced a "Blue Light of Death" on PS4s. Similarly, after Xbox One launched, a reportedly "small number" of customers experienced hardware failure with their new $499.99 Xbox One units; Microsoft promised to quickly send out replacements.
With Xbox One sold out in retail stores, Yusuf Mehdi, corporate vice president of marketing and strategy at Xbox, said, "We are working hard to create more Xbox One consoles and look forward to fulfilling holiday gift wishes this season." However, Xbox vice president Phil Harrison told MCV that supplying retailers with stock "will be a struggle. There will be difficulty getting stock through until Christmas but we will do everything we can to accelerate that."
Xbox One "Day One" editions were only available to people who preordered consoles and were bundled with a special "Day One" achievement. Those "Day One" achievements quickly showed up for sale on eBay.
If you like cheat sheets for gaming, Microsoft put out a Xbox One cheat sheet for all of Kinect's new voice commands as well as Kinect gesture commands.
In what The Register dubbed as a "global Microsoft cloud catastrophe," the Xbox One launch coincided with the official Xbox.com site, microsoft.com and Office 365 going down and showing "Service Unavailable - DNS failure." Although people speculated that Windows Azure was to blame, after services were restored, Microsoft stated:
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The price of a bitcoin topped $900 last week, an enormous surge in value that arrived amidst Congressional hearings where top U.S. financial regulators took a surprisingly rosy view of digital currency. Just 10 months ago, a bitcoin sold for a measly $13.
The spike was big news across the globe, from Washington to Tokyo to China, and it left many asking themselves: “What the hell is a bitcoin?” It’s a good question — not only for those with little understanding of the modern financial system and how it intersects with modern technology, but also for those steeped in the new internet-driven economy that has so quickly remade our world over the last 20 years.
Bitcoin is a digital currency, meaning it’s money controlled and stored entirely by computers spread across the internet, and this money is finding its way to more and more people and businesses around the world. But it’s much more than that, and many people — including the sharpest of internet pioneers as well as seasoned economists — are still struggling to come to terms with its many identities.
With that in mind, we give you this: an idiot’s guide to bitcoin. And there’s no shame in reading. Nowadays, as bitcoin is just beginning to show what it’s capable of, we’re all neophytes.
Bitcoin isn’t just a currency, like dollars or euros or yen. It’s a way of making payments, like PayPal or the Visa credit card network. It lets you hold money, but it also lets you spend it and trade it and move it from place to place, almost as cheaply and easily as you’d send an email.
As the press so often points out, Bitcoin lets you do all this without revealing your identity, a phenomenon that drove its use on The Silk Road, an online marketplace for illegal drugs. But at the same time, it’s a system that operates completely in the public view. All Bitcoin transactions are recorded online for anyone to see, lending a certain transparency to the system, a transparency that can drive a new trust in the economy and subvert the anonymity sought by those on The Silk Road, which the feds shut down last month.
Bitcoin is much more than a money service for illegal operations. It’s a re-imagining of international finance, something that breaks down barriers between countries and frees currency from the control of federal governments. Bitcoin is controlled by open source software that operates according to the laws of mathematics — and by the people who collectively oversee this software. The software runs on thousands of machines across the globe, but it can be changed. It’s just that a majority of those overseeing the software must agree to the change.
In short, Bitcoin is kind of like the internet, but for money.
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Despite strong declarations over the years that it is both an absolute disgrace and a shining example of legacy infrastructure, Telstra's copper remains the subject of great confusion – with mixed messages from Malcolm Turnbull, NBN Co, Telstra and others confirming that nobody really knows whether Telstra's pivotal copper access network (CAN) is up to the task of delivering next-generation broadband or not.
Detractors have certainly had their say: iiNet CTO John Lindsay recently said parts of the network were "dilapidated" and many others have followed suit – including recent NBN Co board appointee Simon Hackett, who has previously harangued Telstra's "blackmail" of the NBN; argued for government ownership of Telstra's CAN; said Telstra will ultimately control how the Coalition's policy is rolled out; turned to Clarke & Dawe to explain the Coalition's NBN policy; and in April this year delivered a speech entitled 'The Problem with FttN'.
Most famously, a decade ago – under Switkowski's watch, no less – Telstra group manager for regulatory strategy Tony Warren told a Senate committee that the company's network was "at five minutes to midnight" and that the company was already engaged in "the last sweating...of the old copper network assets."
At the time, co-witness Bill Scales tried to qualify Warren's statements by saying that they were looking ten years into the future. Well, that was ten years ago – and here we are, still being told that Telstra's network is struggling – and that it has actually never felt better.
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No one knows who Satoshi Nakamoto was – or at least, if they do, they’re not saying.
Whoever he is, he stopped working on the project around the end of 2010, and is worth a lot of money thanks to his early mining.
There are several theories about who he is.
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Michael Hudson is President of The Institute for the Study of Long-Term Economic Trends (ISLET), a Wall Street Financial Analyst, Distinguished Research Professor of Economics at the University of Missouri, Kansas City and author of The Bubble and Beyond (2012), Super-Imperialism: The Economic Strategy of American Empire (1968 & 2003), Trade, Development and Foreign Debt (1992 & 2009) and of The Myth of Aid (1971).
ISLET engages in research regarding domestic and international finance, national income and balance-sheet accounting with regard to real estate, and the economic history of the ancient Near East.
Michael acts as an economic advisor to governments worldwide including Iceland, Latvia and China on finance and tax law. He gives presentations on various topics at conferences and meetings and can be booked here. Listen to some of his many radio interviews to hear his hyperspeed analysis of the geo-political machinations of global economics
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The United Arab Emirates has recorded the highest increase in its ranking in a major ICT development index, shooting up 12 places to 33rd globally.
Value increases in the access and use sub-indices are both considerably above the global average, according to the latest ICT Development Index (IDI) which captures the level of ICT developments in 157 economies worldwide and compares progress made during the last year.
The IDI is featured in the fifth edition of the Measuring the Information Society (MIS) report released by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU).
All indicators included in the access sub-index showed improvement from 2011 to 2012, said the report.
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Within 22 years the number of people living in Malta over 65 is projected to shoot up to nearly 103,000 compared to 68,400 in 2011.
A national active ageing policy being released tomorrow attempts to facilitate this delicate transition.
Ariadne Massa speaks to Elderly Parliamentary Secretary Franco Mercieca and Active Ageing Commission chairman Marvin Formosa.
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Wouldn’t it be nice to delete those geo-block usurping settings from your router or browser to access Netflix? Soon you might be able to, with a new report out this morning saying that geo-block jumpers are changing Netflix’s mind about coming to Australia.
A report in The Australian this morning says that Netflix has been swayed by the number of people jumping the geo-block to subscribe to the service from Australia.
In case you have been living under a rock, Netflix offers an all-you-can-eat TV and movie streaming service for $US7.99 per month. It accounts for a huge percentage of web traffic in the US, and is arguably the most popular streaming service on the planet, despite it only being available in select North American and European markets.
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Italian telecom operator Telecom Italia announces their plans to offer fiber optic services to Brescia. Brescia is the capital of the province of Brescia, which is in the northern Italy. Situated at the foot of Alps with a population of 197,000, Brescia is the second largest city in the region of Lombardy.
Telecom Italia has laid optical fiber cables spanning 210 kilometers to Brescia. This fiber optic cable network connects 454 street cabinets. Telecom Italia can cover around 75,000 houses with this network. The telecom operator can provide high speed broadband services through its optical networks in Brescia. Broadband speeds can be upto 30 Mbps. The operator plans to provide high speed broadband services to more than 50% of Italian houses by the year 2016.
The U.S. National Security Agency reportedly hacked into over 50,000 computer networks around the world as part of its global intelligence gathering efforts, and also taps into large fiber optic cables that transport Internet traffic between continents at 20 different major points.
The agency installed specialized malware referred to as "implants" on over 50,000 devices in order to perform Computer Network Exploitation (CNE), Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported Saturday based on documents it said were leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
The information is reportedly taken from a 2012 top secret presentation about the NSA's worldwide signals intelligence gathering capabilities that was shared with the intelligence services of Australia, Canada, the U.K. and New Zealand that form the Five Eyes partnership.
CNE is one of three types of Computer Network Operations that NSA computer specialists perform. It "includes enabling actions and intelligence collection via computer networks that exploit data gathered from target or enemy information systems or networks," the NSA says on its careers website.
According to a presentation slide published by NRC, the NSA deployed over 50,000 CNE "implants" world-wide.
The Washington Post reported in August that the attack tools used for these implants are developed by a specialized NSA team called Tailored Access Operations (TAO) and are designed to compromise routers, switches and firewalls to monitor entire networks.
The implants persist through software and equipment upgrades and can be used to harvest communications, copy stored data and tunnel into the compromised networks from outside, according to the Washington Post. Their number is expected to reach over 85,000 by the end of 2013.
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When an environmental disaster occurs, it can be devastating to ecosystems. More often that not, the public only hears about these incidents when they first become a problem. What we don’t often hear about is the fact that the ramifications of such incidents reach far and wide – impacting the environment for years and years to come.
The monetary and health-related consequences of these types of disasters are enormous. Cleanup costs, the initial costs associated with a disaster are defined as the amount it will take to return the affected area to normal. What isn’t accounted for in these “cleanup costs,” is the impact on communities and wildlife that will span decades. Oftentimes, the true impact of a disaster isn’t truly known for years.
As this infographic from Vermont Law School’s Master of Environmental Law & Policy Online clearly illustrates, from the Exxon Valdez incident to the Deepwater Horizon spill, billions had to be spent on cleanup, lives were lost, and wildlife suffered. The only thing certain is that the impacted communities will continue to struggle to recuperate from the after effects of these environmental disasters.
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Two computer scientists in Israel say a bitcoin transaction now worth more than US$1 million suggests a possible link between a creator of the virtual currency and Ross William Ulbricht, the 29-year-old accused of running the Silk Road underground online marketplace.
The 1,000-bitcoin transfer was found during an analysis of the movement of the Silk Road's bitcoins, according to a forthcoming research paper written by Adi Shamir and Dorit Ron of the Weizmann Institute of Science.
The finding suggests a partnership or investment in the Silk Road on the part of someone involved very early on in Bitcoin "but this is pure speculation," the researchers wrote.
The amount was transferred on March 20 from an account established just a week after the bitcoin network launched in January 2009. Early bitcoin accounts are believed to be controlled by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonym for the person or group of people who created Bitcoin.
The receiving account has been linked to "DPR," short for "Dread Pirate Roberts," the operator of the Silk Road who authorities alleged is Ulbricht. The bitcoins were worth about $60,000 at the time, but the price of bitcoin has since surged.
"The short path we found suggests (but does not prove) the existence of a surprising link between the two mysterious figures of the Bitcoin community, Satoshi Nakamoto and DPR," they wrote.
Nakamoto's real identity has never been uncovered despite attempts to figure out who has the cryptography and mathematical skills to create such a system. He stopped writing posts on a bitcoin forum in 2010.
As many as 20,000 of the first groupings of transactions, known as "blocks" in bitcoin's public ledger, are believed to have been performed by computers controlled by Nakamoto, according to the paper. He may have accumulated up to 1 million bitcoins worth close to $1 billion today.
The bulk of the research paper focuses on the movement of the Silk Road's bitcoin commissions. Before it was shut down in October, the site collected as many as 633,000 bitcoins from its commissions, which ranged from 1.5 to 10 percent of the value a product sold on the Silk Road.
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Xinhua writes that China’s first 4G networks are expected to begin commercial operations on 18 December with China Mobile, the world’s largest cellco by subscribers, leading the charge with the launch of a new 4G brand ‘He’ – meaning ‘harmonious’ in Chinese. Beijing, Guangzhou and Chongqing will be the first cities to be covered by active Time Division Long Term Evolution (TD-LTE) networks, although Shanghai is expected to follow soon after.
Chinese telecoms regulator the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology (MIIT) has allocated 4G spectrum to the nation’s trio of operators, and is expected to distribute operating licences shortly.
Marbridge Daily writes that China Mobile was handed spectrum in the 1880MHz-1900MHz, 2320MHz-2370MHz and 2575MHz-2635MHz bands, whilst China Unicom was awarded frequencies at 2300MHz-2320MHz and 2555MHz-2575MHz and China Telecom received the following bands: 2370MHz-2390MHz and 2635MHz-2655MHz.
Xie Feibo, head of MIIT’s State Radio Regulatory Commission (SRRC) added that the watchdog was considering using the 1400MHz and 3500MHz bands for TD-LTE.
When Google chairman Eric Schmidt complained recently about the tapping of the company's internal network traffic by U.S. and U.K. intelligence agencies, he certainly had a point. America's National Security Agency and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters were clearly abusing their powers. But Schmidt's complaints had a hollow ring, because Google's own policies have left it—and its users—too open to abuse.
Unless Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and the rest of the Internet "cloud" providers stop using our data for their own commercial purposes, and start offering users a way to keep it truly private, we have to assume our information has been compromised. Unless they create a supplemental business model that allows us to pay directly for services in return for genuine security, they are making clear that their commercial priorities trump our privacy.
That's one reason why you should be highly skeptical of piece from the New America Foundation’s Weekly Wonk that's gaining some traction. The author, Marvin Ammori, argues that the technology industry is getting unfair criticism for its part in government surveillance. (Disclosure: Ammori is a Future Tense fellow at the New America Foundation; Schmidt is the chairman of the NAF board; I’m a professor at Arizona State University; and Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and ASU. Life is complicated.) Ammori approvingly cites Schmidt's remarks and condemns the “vilification of the tech companies.” (One reason you might be skeptical is that Ammori is "an attorney advising companies including Google and Dropbox on surveillance matters," as the tagline notes.)
No one I know in the civil liberties arena fully blames the tech companies for the government's shredding of our privacy and fundamental liberties. We do put the primary responsibility squarely where it belongs: on the government agencies—including the CIA, as we've just learned, and probably others—that treat the Bill of Rights like a doormat in their zeal to know everything at all times.
What we question is the industry's commitment to privacy and liberty when a) some companies, notably the telecoms, are complicit enablers of untrammeled surveillance, and others are outright arms merchants to the warriors against privacy; b) they don't fight back as loudly and visibly as we believe they should; and c) they continue to engineer their services and products in ways that make surveillance easier for governments.
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Long delays in providing phone lines are seriously affecting SMEs' ability to run their businesses, warns Heather Baker, founder of video production business Top Line Communications. Baker, who had to delay moving into new offices after BT took three months to provide new phone lines, said: "This is holding back the business community, particularly small businesses. No business can run without a phone or broadband connection. You can't run a card payment system, you can't run a cash machine, and you can't run a computer without them."
She added: "I launched my business as a naive 27-year old in the recession in 2008. Yet the biggest challenge I have faced as a small business owner has not been a bank manager's inability to return my calls nor has it been a client's inability to pay its bills, it has been BT's inability to furnish us with the internet and telecoms facilities for which we have paid good money."
Baker called on the government to take urgent action to end the monopoly that BT has on phone lines and exchanges through its Openreach division, saying that it was seriously affecting SME's ability to run their businesses.
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Around the world universities, R&E networks and researchers in general are looking at an increasingly austere future of budget cutbacks and reduced funding for higher education.
This environment is unlikely to change, even if the current global economic situation improves. Healthcare, long term debt and aging populations are continue to put enormous pressure on government budgets for the foreseeable future. In times of budget constraints education and research usually always gets the short shrift, even though it is argued that it is an investment in our future economic growth.
The only bright spot in terms of new funding are various public and private sector programs related to climate change. Even “denialist” governments as in Ottawa, Washington and now Canberra have launched several programs to fund new initiatives in energy, GHG abatement, green programs etc. The private financial sector has also started to launch several new instruments in this area with the development of Green Bonds and revolving funds. Many of these funds are also supported by generous tax breaks.
Green Bond, revolving funds and related initiatives are usually used to underwrite the capital costs of large renewable energy or energy efficiency projects. Examples include deploying large solar arrays, wind farms, etc. The funds earn their return on investment through the payback on energy savings or from feed in tariffs to the electrical grid.
Green bonds in the United States got a major boost from the America Jobs Creation Act of 2004. It was designed to provide funding - in the form of $2 billion worth of AAA-rated bonds issued by the United States Treasury - to finance environmentally friendly development. Many individual states are also issuing Green Bond funds. Some countries like the Netherlands Green Fund programs also fund innovation through the use of these funds.
There is a significant opportunity for universities and R&E networks to tap into this programs. But the challenge for most universities is their relative small size and lack of experience or knowledge in negotiating with Green Bond brokers. Most Green Bond and Revolving funds are several hundred million dollars in size. It is very hard for even a large university to come up with green projects of sufficient size to attract the attention of such investment vehicles. Click headline to read more--
My colleague Manuel Buencamino calls it the biggest reconstruction project in the Philippines after World War II. President Noy Aquino (PNoy) calls it a "comprehensive rehabilitation program."
Typhoon Yolanda has brought incalculable, terrible costs. Two weeks after the most powerful storm in more than a century ripped through central Philippines, more than 5,200 people have died, more than a thousand are still missing, and scores of thousands are recuperating from physical injury and emotional trauma.
The calculation of economic losses brought about by Typhoon Yolanda’s devastation varies widely. The International Business Times (UK edition) provides some information on the economic impact:
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The UK economy isn't the only one seeing green shoots. Some global powerhouses are picking up pace and could offer returns for intrepid investors who can hold their nerve, say experts. Japan is among those enjoying a turn in fortune, with economic reforms to kick-start growth prompting a surge in profits for investors.
The average Japan unit trust generated returns of 34%, compared with 28% from the UK all-companies sector over the past 12 months, say analysts Morningstar, while Japanese smaller companies posted a stellar 45% return.
"Returns like these have seen the pendulum swing for investors – from a fear of losing money, to fear of missing out on gains in global markets," says Tom Becket, chief investment officer at PSigma. But can Asian and eastern stock markets continue climbing into next year? And what about the risk for investors?
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