Information Policy

History of the internet - 40 years on

29 Oct 1969 - The first ARPAnet message is sent between the University of California and Stanford University. The message reads: "lo". It is meant to spell log-in, but the system crashed.

March 1972 - The first basic email program is written.

The @ sign is chosen for its 'at' meaning.

1974 - Intel releases its first processor - the 8080.

1976 - Apple Computer is founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak.

Queen Elizabeth sends her first email.

1979 - Bob Metcalfe and others found 3Com (Computer Communication Compatibility).

1980 - Tim Berners-Lee writes a program called Enquire Within, the predecessor to the World Wide Web.

1981 - IBM announces its first Personal Computer (PC).

Microsoft creates DOS.

1983 - Cisco Systems founded.

November 1983 - The Domain Name System (DNS) is designed by Jon Postel, Paul Mockapetris, and Craig Partridge. The domain names .edu, .gov, .com, .mil, .org, .net, and .int are created.

24 January 1984 - Apple Computer introduces the first Macintosh computer.

15 March 1985 - Symbolic.com becomes the first registered domain name.

1987 - 25 million PCs are sold in the U.S.

1990 - ARPAnet ends and Tim Berners-Lee creates the World Wide Web.

1992 - The term "surfing the internet" is coined by Jean Armour Polly.

December 1994 - Microsoft licenses technology from Spyglass to create a web browser for Windows 95.

24 August 1995 - Windows 95 released.

1999 - AOL buys Netscape and, along with Microsoft, shares almost 100% of the browser market.

Oct 1999 - Shawn Fanning creates Napster, which opens up the possibilities of peer-to-peer file sharing and begins a copyright war in the music industry.

February 2000 - A large-scale denial of service attack is launched against major sites including Yahoo and eBay, sparking a security alert.

The 10-millionth domain name is registered.

2000 - Fixed wireless, high-speed internet technology is used instead of copper and fiber-optic lines placed in the ground.

Many of the 'dotcom' companies set up during the dotcom boom of the 1990s fold.

July 2001 - A judge rules that Napster must remain offline until it can prevent copyrighted material from being shared by its users.

The Code Red worm and Sircam virus attack hundreds of servers and email accounts, causing major security breaches.

January 2003 - The Internet celebrates its 'unofficial' 20th birthday.

2005 - YouTube launched.

2006 - There are an estimated 92 million websites in existence.

August 2006 - AOL announces that it will give the majority of its services away for free using funding from advertising income (services were previously charged on a monthly basis).

January 2007 - Microsoft launches its various consumer versions of Microsoft Vista.

February 2007 - Apple surpasses one billion iTunes downloads.

March 2007 - 1.1 billion people used the internet, according to Internet World Stats.

April 2007 - Search engine giant Google surpasses Microsoft as 'most valuable global brand' and also becomes the most visited website.

Christmas 2007 - BBC iPlayer launched.

2008 - Google celebrates it tenth birthday and launches the Google Chrome web browser.

Wikileaks is disabled.

Microsoft offers to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion.

January 2009 - Actor Ashton Kutcher becomes the first Twitter member with more than a million followers.

October 2009 - Microsoft launches the Windows 7 operating system.

The internet reaches its 40th birthday.

By Vicky Woollaston

http://news.hostexploit.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=2333:history-of-the-internet-40-years-on&catid=3:host-and-registrar-news&Itemid=30/

Botnet Attack on Polish Government Network

According to security researchers, computer servers at the government institutions of Poland suffered a well-synchronized cyber attack, which was allegedly launched by Russian sources in September 2009.

The details of this attack on the Polish government are not yet revealed, as reported by the daily Rzeczpospolita. The attack took place in the beginning of September, a particularly intense moment, near about Westerplatte visit of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. The purpose of his visit was to commemorate the outburst of the Second World War, as reported by NATIONAL on October 11, 2009.

Meanwhile, security experts informed that generally botnets are behind such attacks. Botnet is a sort of robot network of PCs that are connected to the Internet, with all sharing a common technology, i.e. a spyware/virus that permits a remote hacker to access and control the system. A botnet may vary from 10 computers to 10,000 computers or even more. Further, the fact that most of these systems are located in a particular country does not mean that the hacker who is controlling the process is also there.

Russia was, however, linked to some other major cyber attacks in past. It was in 2007 that Russian hackers disabled the entire IT infrastructure of Estonia, after the Estonian government decided to shift a WWII soviet memorial monument. Then, the websites of Georgian Presidency and other government institutions were compromised during the armed conflict between Georgia and Russia in 2008. It is also suspected that the Russia's cyber-militia was responsible for the incident that took place in January 2009, wherein Internet across Kyrgyzstan collapsed.

The deputy chief of Poland's internal security agency Agencja Bezpieczenstwa Wewnetrznego, Colonel Pawel Bialek, told the daily that several anonymous agencies of Polish government became direct target of the attack. The agency's cyber patrol, that identified the suspicious traffic, blocked the assaults, as reported by SOFTPEDIA on October 15, 2009.

Furthermore, the ARAKIS-GOV system registered more than 1 Million incidents in 2008. However, so far this year, nearly 450,000 attacks have been identified. As per the data collected, majority of these attacks were launched from systems based in the US and China, although this does not indicate the actual origin of these attacks.

http://www.spamfighter.com/News-13346-Botnet-Attack-on-Polish-Government-Network.htm

European Commision Announces Additional ICT Research Budget For Internet Technologies

The European Commission said on 28 October that it would allocate €300 million to kick-start European Union research efforts into new Internet technologies that could see the Internet used as a medium for the collection of real-time data and its use across a range of services.

Examples of possible future services might include public transport, smart traffic or energy systems that use sensor networks or mobile devices to collect constantly updated information, which is then used to optimise the operation of the system. The Commission claimed that the efficiencies generated by such systems could reduce road congestion in the EU by 20 percent, and greenhouse gas emissions by 15 percent, also leading to savings of billions of euros.

Viviane Reding, EU Commissioner for Information Society and Media said that such technologies could also "make our health care systems more efficient and treat patients from afar."

The Commission said it would spend the €300 million additional budget between 2011-2013, and that the money would be on top of €200 million annually being spent on ICT research through the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Develoment. Projects applying for a share of the €300 million would have to match the Commission’s contribution with their own finance. A call for proposals will be published in 2010.

http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/activities/foi/library/fi-communication_en.pdf

Germany looks at ways to protect online journalism

As Angela Merkel begins her second term as chancellor of Germany, her government is promoting a novel way to help embattled newspaper and magazine publishers manage the transition to a digital future. The new governing coalition, led by Ms. Merkel’s Christian Democrats and including the Free Democratic Party, has pledged to create a new kind of copyright to protect online journalism. The goal is to level the playing field with Internet companies like Google, which German publishers accuse of exploiting their content to build lucrative businesses without sharing the rewards. “The Internet cannot be a copyright-free zone,” the coalition says in a document setting out its policies. Supporters of the proposal include Hubert Burda Media, a magazine publisher, and Axel Springer, owner of the newspapers Bild and Die Welt, who say it could be employed to help build new online business models. Analysts say it might allow them to try to claim royalties for the use of their content by Google or other online “aggregators” of news, for example. But the plan is raising hackles on the Internet, where opponents say an extension of copyright law runs counter to the spirit of openness that characterizes the Web. The government, they say, has succumbed to lobbying by big publishing interests that are fighting a rear-guard action against technological changes. State intervention in the media is a sensitive topic in Germany because of memories of the Nazis’ control of the press during the Third Reich. Direct financial subsidies, which keep some newspapers alive in France and other European countries, would be out of the question, German publishers say

http://www.ejc.net/media_news/germany_looks_at_ways_to_protect_online_journalism/

European Commission wants airwaves freed-up by move to digital TV to work for swift economic recovery

As digital TV replaces our old analogue TV, four-fifths of the airwaves that used to carry TV broadcasts to our homes will be freed up. This means that they can be used for new, innovative services that use radio spectrum, from wireless internet and more advanced mobile phones to new interactive and high-definition TV channels. Remote regions could be big winners from this as wireless broadband could use the new spectrum to deliver high-speed internet to areas not yet reached by landlines. The Commission today set out plans for a coordinated distribution of spectrum that encourages investment and competition in these potential new services. If the allocation of the newly freed airwaves - the "digital dividend" - to new services is coordinated across Europe it could give the economy a boost of EUR 20 to EUR 50 billion. The plan for the realisation of the digital dividend's full potential involves the European Parliament and EU countries, reflecting the major part they have to play.

EU Digital Dividend proposals: Frequently Asked Questions:

http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=MEMO/09/482&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en

The 10 best educational websites

If you bought a computer a few years ago, it would invariably come with a free CD-Rom encyclopedia. At the time it seemed like a life-changer, but after an hour or two spent looking at ancient wildlife clips and a timeline about the Romans, the excitement wore off. Today’s internet equivalents are bigger, faster and more interactive, whether you’re helping youngsters with their homework or cramming for the pub quiz.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/education/article6887649.ece

Google chief gives view of Internet's future

The ranking of real-time social-media content by search engines is "the great challenge of the age," Google CEO Eric Schmidt told an audience at an industry event in Orlando, Fla. In Schmidt's view, the Web in 2014 will have significantly more content in Chinese, boast an even greater level of social media and be available at much faster bandwidth speeds.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/google_web_in_five_years.php#comment-165317

Wireless Network Tracks People

University of Utah engineers have demonstrated a wireless network that can track people, even when they are moving behind solid walls. The system promises to help police, firefighters and other public service workers apprehend intruders as well as rescue hostages, fire victims and elderly people who fall in their homes.

The new system uses radio tomographic imaging (RTI), which can "see," locate and track moving people or objects in an area surrounded by inexpensive radio transceivers that send and receive signals. (RTI) is different and significantly less expensive than radar, in which signals are bounced off of objects and the returning echoes or reflections provide the target's location and speed. RTI measures "shadows" in radio waves created when they pass through a moving person or object.

"By showing the locations of people within a building during hostage situations, fires or other emergencies, radio tomography can help law enforcement and emergency responders to know where they should focus their attention," says Joey Wilson, who along with co-investigator Neal Patwari is a researcher in the university's electrical and computer engineering department.

The researchers tested their concept by placing a wireless network of 28 inexpensive radio transceivers around a square-shaped section of an atrium and part of a nearby lawn. In the atrium, each side of the square was almost 14 feet long and the eight nodes were spaced two feet apart. On the lawn, the square measured about 21 feet on each side and the nodes were spaced three feet apart. The transceivers were installed on four-foot-tall stands made of plastic pipe, allowing them to make measurements at human torso level. Radio signal strengths between all nodes were measured as people walked into each area. Processed radio signal strength data was displayed on a computer screen, producing a bird's-eye-view, blob-like image of the people being tracked.

A second study tested an improved method that allowed tracking through obstacles. The study showed how variations in radio signal strength within a wireless network of 34 nodes allowed tracking of moving people behind a brick wall. The method was tested around an addition to Patwari's Salt Lake City home. Variations in radio waves were measured as Wilson walked around inside. The system successfully tracked Wilson's location to within three feet, the researchers say.

Patwari says the system uses Zigbee technology, the type of network used by a growing number of wireless home thermostats and other residential and factory automation equipment. "I have aspirations to commercialize this [technology]," says Wilson, who has founded a spinoff company named Xandem Technology LLC in Salt Lake City. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

https://communicationsdirectnews.com/do.php/100/37681?7649

WiMAX in Taipei by end-2009

According to a report by DigiTimes.com, Taiwan’s VMAX Telecom will complete the deployment of 250 mobile WiMAX base stations across the capital and commercially launch its 802.16e network by the end of the year. The report, which was compiled from data supplied by the country’s operators, adds that Far EasTone (FET) and Vee Telecom will also be prepared to launch mobile broadband networks by year-end, in Taichung and Kinmen respectively. Global Mobile and Fitel plan to light up networks in Hsinchu in the first quarter of 2010. The operators will join Tatung InfoComm in the mobile broadband market, which launched its networks in Penghu and Kaohsiung in April and July this year. The firm currently claims to have around 15,000 customers subscribed to the networks paying TWD699 (USD21.6) a month for WiMAX services. VMAX, meanwhile, is hoping to make more of an impact with its network, targeting to attract between 160,000 and 180,000 retail customers and 30,000 corporate clients to its network during its initial phase of operation.

http://www.telegeography.com/cu/article.php?article_id=30686

Civil Society Media and Global Governance

Intervening into the World Summit on the Information Society

Arne Hintz

How do community, alternative and citizens media activists and advocates interact with global media policy processes? Are their concerns recognised, and do new forms of multi-stakeholder governance offer a place for them? Focusing on the United Nations World Summit on the Information Society, "Civil Society Media and Global Governance" examines agendas and strategies of media actors, traces successes and failures, and proposes a new conceptual framework for the relation of these media with global policy processes.

http://iamcr.org/members-books-newsmenu-325/545-civil-society-media-and-global-governance