"Cities, towns pull out stops for superfast Google network" by Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | March 16, 2010
It’s not exactly a sequel to the blockbuster hit “Avatar,’’ but the Town of Shrewsbury has made its own 3-D movie to impress Google Inc. Some Quincy residents put together a music video sans Beyonce or Britney Spears, while a group called Worcester for Woogle is hoping to woo the company, too. Even Boston is making a pitch.
Well, the Globe didn't like "Avatar," and the MSM has never been kind to Ms. bare-bottom there.
At least 100 communities across America — maybe more — are vying for the attention of Google, which is holding an open raffle called “Google Fiber for Communities’’ this month.
The grand prize?
An advanced data network capable of downloading Internet data at one billion bits per second — dozens of times faster than what is available today from cable providers.
Google said it would build the network to show just how fast Internet service can be.
Then the thing never need be shut down or limited, right?
NET NEUTRALITY FOREVER, no?
“I think there’s just a hunger for better and faster Internet across the country,’’ said Google spokesman Dan Martin.
Google, which will need to work with local governments to obtain rights of way to install its equipment, plans to sell its superfast service for prices that are competitive with existing broadband services in an effort to find out how people would use the extra speed and to encourage the nation’s major Internet providers to upgrade their networks. But Google isn’t sure where to build.
Well, they are already buying the U.S. Congress, so why not?
Martin said the company may choose several locations, wire an entire small town, or install a network in one neighborhood of a large city.....
City governments, civic groups, and individuals are invited to submit applications explaining why the network should be built in their communities. Political and civic leaders are scrambling to meet Google’s March 26 deadline and bring the fastest Internet service in the country to their constituents. Google said it will pick a winner later this year.
To win, Bay State communities must overcome good-natured but intense competition from locales big and small. Google won’t say how many cities are competing, but as of yesterday, there were 112 pages on the popular social-networking website Facebook dedicated to municipalities trying to vie for the superfast Internet service.
And they are pulling out all the stops. For instance, the city government of Topeka, Kan., officially renamed the city Google for the month of March. In response, Duluth, Minn., released a YouTube video declaring that every first-born son in the city would henceforth be named Google Fiber, while first-born daughters would be named Googlette Fiber. Huntsville, Ala., home to a host of electronics and biotech companies and NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, boasts one of the most successful Facebook efforts....
Facebook?
Google and Facebook teaming up?
"Google-NSA pairing draws attention" by Bloomberg News, February 5, 2010
Google is working with the National Security Agency to analyze last month's cyber attacks that the company said originated in China, the Washington Post reported yesterday, citing unnamed sources. The NSA is the government's main agency for electronic surveillance and data collection as well as computer network protection.
See: Googling China
Google declined to comment on the Post story. President Obama's spokesman refused to directly address the report Google was working with the spy agency. "We believe that information sharing and cooperation between the government and the private sector is important, nsuring, obvioulsy, that privacy and civil liberties are protected," White House press Secretary Robert Gibbs said.
Of course, Obama can still designate you as a "terrorist" for no reason just like Bush; regulation, whatever, still on the books.
NSA "works with a broad range of commercial partners," the agency said in an e-mail while declining to comment on any Google connection.
Google, owner of the world's most popular Internet search engine, disclosed last month that "a highly sophisticated" cyber attack on it corporate infrastructure originated in China.
That's why I Google everything, including the most idiotic of things.
Just keep the info flood going back the other way.
Sort through this, you spying son-of-a....
"Facebook surpasses Google in US hits" by Bloomberg News | March 18, 2010
NEW YORK — Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social networking site, surpassed Google Inc.’s search engine in weekly hits to become the most visited website in the United States for the first time, according to research firm Hitwise....
Facebook, started in 2004, has lured users by adding games and making it easier to check messages, notifications, and friend requests. To compete, Google added a social networking feature called Buzz to its Gmail e-mail service last month, allowing users to share photos, comments, and clips from its YouTube video site....
--more--"
Yeah, let's all go to Facebook!!
And those "friends" you thought you had?
"FBI uses new tool: social networks; Goes undercover to investigate cases, suspects" by Richard Lardner, Associated Press | March 17, 2010
WASHINGTON — The Feds are on Facebook. MySpace, LinkedIn, and Twitter, too.
Oh, YOUR TAX DOLLARS being WASTED surfing the FACEBOOK PAGES, 'eh, America?
Good thing you have no cash problems.
US law enforcement agents are following the rest of the Internet world into popular social-networking services, going undercover with false online profiles to communicate with suspects and gather private information, according to an internal Justice Department document that offers a tantalizing glimpse of issues related to privacy and crime-fighting.
Yeah, and TRY to SET UP SOME PATSIES in the PROCESS!!!
See: The Boston Globe's Invisible Ink: Hiding Hal Turner, FBI Agent Provocateur
Yeah, that's your FBI FACEBOOK FRIEND right there!!
The COINTELPRO AGENTS AT IT AGAIN, huh?
Think you know who’s behind that “friend’’ request? Think again. Your new “friend’’ just might be the FBI.
Then you don't need enemies, America. THEY ARE the ENEMY!
The document, obtained in a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit, makes it clear that US agents are already logging on surreptitiously to exchange messages with suspects, identify a target’s friends or relatives, and browse private information such as postings, personal photographs, and video clips.
What, NO REAL CRIMES to solve, huh?
Or is all the LOOTING and LYING not in your jurisdiction, DoJ?
Among other purposes: Investigators can check suspects’ alibis by comparing stories told to police with Tweets sent at the same time about their whereabouts. Online photos from a suspicious spending spree — people posing with jewelry, guns, or fancy cars — can link suspects or their friends to robberies or burglaries.
With all the corruption and looting in this government?
Go follow the bank bailouts that when only God knows where.
Welcome to the TYRANNY of FASCISM, AmeriKa!!!!
The Electronic Frontier Foundation, a San Francisco-based civil liberties group, obtained the Justice Department document when it sued the agency and five others in federal court. The 33-page document underscores the importance of social-networking sites to US authorities. The foundation said it would publish the document on its website.
With agents going undercover, state and local police coordinate their online activities with the Secret Service, FBI, and other federal agencies in a strategy known as “deconfliction’’ to keep out of one another’s way.
“You could really mess up someone’s investigation because you’re investigating the same person and maybe doing things that are counterproductive to what another agency is doing,’’ said Detective Frank Dannahey of the Rocky Hill Police Department in Connecticut, a veteran of dozens of undercover cases.
And YOU are PAYING for all this DOUBLE-TALKING, DOUBLE-CROSSING GARBAGE, America!!!
Maybe you need LESS LAWS and LESS GOVERNMENT on a few things, huh?
Of course, that would mean LESS TAXES and we know where that is going.
A decade ago, agents kept watch over AOL and MSN chat rooms to nab sexual predators. But those text-only chat services are old-school compared with today’s social media, which contain mountains of personal data, photographs, videos, and audio clips — a potential treasure trove of evidence for cases.
Yeah, the GOVERNMENT MOVED ON and LET the PORNO FREAKS RUN WILD, huh? WTF? Now they have to CHECK OUT ALL of YOU on Facelook?
The Justice Department document, part of a presentation given in August by top cybercrime officials, describes the value of Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, LinkedIn, and other services to government investigators. It does not describe in detail the boundaries for using them....
The Electronic Frontier Foundation also obtained an Internal Revenue Service document that instructs employees on how to use to use Internet tools, including social-networking sites, to investigate taxpayers.
I thought this was all to "CATCH TERRORISTS?"
You have been had, America, and paid for your own imprisonment.
The document states that IRS employees are barred from using deception or creating fake accounts to get information.
Like that ever stopped any government agency from lying.
For all we know it could be NOC for CIA again.
Covert investigations on social-networking services are legal and governed by internal rules, according to Justice Department officials. But they would not say what those rules are.
In our "transparent democracy?"
--more--"
Still want them "WIRING" YOUR TOWN?
"Boston joins race to lure Google" by Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | March 27, 2010
Boston is “Google-ready,’’ according to Mayor Thomas M. Menino, but plenty of other communities say they would be the right place for search giant Google Inc. to build a new, super-fast Internet service.
Then no "terror attack" ever, right?
In February, Google revealed a plan to build one or more high-speed Internet networks, serving between 50,000 and 500,000 Americans, and asked cities and towns to apply for the chance to host the service. Yesterday was the deadline for applications, and as of yesterday morning, at least 600 communities and more than 190,000 individuals had applied to bring the network to their neighborhoods. But it will be months before the company decides where to build the new system.
Although the company will not read every one of the applications from individuals, it will aggregate data from those submissions to determine, among other things, where there is strong grass-roots enthusiasm for the project, the company said. Google project manager Minnie Ingersoll said the company does plan to read each of the hundreds of official submissions from communities. “Our team will be reading every response and making its decisions based on a number of factors,’’ she said.
The new Google networks would offer speeds of 1 billion bits per second, which is some 100 times faster than what is currently received by most customers of cable broadband services. Google plans to build the networks at its own expense. The company could choose a single location, or it might build several networks in communities of varying size. Residential and business users would pay for the service at a rate comparable to what they pay for existing broadband services.
Boston, Quincy, Worcester, Newburyport, Shrewsbury, and a host of other Massachusetts cities and towns applied for the Google network. Many places across the country promoted their bids with humorous stunts. In Sarasota, Fla., Mayor Richard Clapp dove into an aquarium tank filled with sharks to demonstrate his eagerness, while Don Ness, mayor of Duluth, Minn., leaped into the icy waters of Lake Superior.
Boston has taken a more conservative approach. The city’s application stressed Boston’s role as a global academic and research center and a major financial hub. It notes that large amounts of unused, or “dark,’’ optical fiber have already been installed under the city’s streets. Google could use this fiber as the backbone of its system, enabling the company to complete construction quickly and at low cost.
Rather than wire the entire city, Boston’s application proposes that Google’s network serve the Longwood medical area and a 5-square-mile residential area that includes Roxbury, Dorchester, and parts of Mission Hill and the South End.
Craig Settles, an independent telecom analyst based in Oakland, Calif., said the Google competition has boosted public interest in better Internet access. “It has gotten a lot more attention focused on broadband, and extremely fast broadband, than anyone has done to date,’’ he said.
--more--"Yes, broadband.....
"Critics say broadband plan falls short on speed, competition" by Joelle Tessler, Associated Press | March 23, 2010
WASHINGTON — The sweeping national broadband plan that federal regulators delivered to Congress last week doesn’t go far enough to satisfy some experts who warn that the United States would still trail other industrialized nations in prices and speed.
Those specialists insist that the FCC plan is not nearly ambitious enough to bring faster Internet connections at lower prices to more Americans. That is because the proposal fails to bring adequate competition, they say, to a duopoly broadband market now controlled by giant phone and cable TV companies.
How much are they paying us for the use of our airwaves, taxpayers?
What do you mean we let them use 'em for free?
According to the New America Foundation, a 100-megabit broadband connection costs as little $16 per month in Sweden and $24 per month in Korea, while service that is only half that fast costs $145 per month in the United States.
In other words, you are getting ROYALLY-EFFIN-RIPPED OFF, Americans!
“What I want is big bandwidth for cheap prices,’’ said Sascha Meinrath, director of the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Initiative. “But the plan punts on competition.’’
The national broadband plan, mandated by last year’s stimulus bill, offers a road map for bringing affordable high-speed Internet access to Americans who currently don’t have it and dramatically increasing speeds for those who do. With Congress holding two hearings on the plan this week, some interest groups are already voicing concern.
Try calling it what it is: stimuloot, because it didn't create any jobs.
Although wireless companies are pleased with a recommendation to free up more airwaves for mobile broadband access, television broadcasters fear most of that spectrum would come from them — whether they want to give it up or not.
After we gave it to them for free?
Rural phone companies are concerned about proposals to overhaul two federal programs that are significant sources of revenue for them: the Universal Service Fund, which subsidizes phone service in poor and rural areas, and the intercarrier compensation system, which governs charges that telecom carriers pay to connect calls.
Always about $ when it COMES TO YOU and YOUR SERVICES, Americans; however, there is ALWAYS a PILE of $$$ for LOOTING LEGISLATORS, WARS, and BANKS!
And public safety officials are upset that the plan does not include a proposal to give them exclusive access to more spectrum for emergency communications networks. But some of the loudest criticisms are coming from those who have been most vocal in pushing for a national broadband plan.....
Sigh!!
--more--"
Globe Editorial Google in the broadband fray
Broadband goals won’t be met easily
Globe Editorial Here comes the broadband
And the winnaaaahhh.....
"Google donates $2m to Wikipedia" by Associated Press | February 18, 2010
SAN FRANCISCO - Google is giving $2 million to the foundation that runs Wikipedia, matching the largest donation ever made to the popular Internet encyclopedia.
The grant, announced yesterday, catapulted the Wikimedia Foundation beyond its $10.6 million revenue target for the fiscal year ending in June, a spokesman said.
Six months ago, Wikimedia got a $2 million donation from the investment arm of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.
The nonprofit Wikimedia operation has received donations from more than 240,000 people so far this fiscal year, primarily in small amounts from Wikipedia users and unpaid contributors.
The Internet encyclopedia consists of more than 14 million entries written and edited by volunteers in more than 270 languages.--more--"
Maybe you guys should have kept that dough for the legal defense:
"Google is sued over photos" by Larry Neumeister, Associated Press | April 8, 2010
NEW YORK — Groups representing photographers and artists yesterday accused Internet search leader Google of copyright infringement in a lawsuit that mirrors complaints book publishers and authors have made for years about the company’s attempt to create the world’s largest digital library....
Fine, you don't want me to listen or read your work I will not. I'll write my own.
--more--"
As for feeling sorry for the big cheese, well, stop helping out NSA with the spying; however, I expect the blogs be to kept up and running.
This ain't China, right?
Btw, TAKE ANYTHING YOU WANT from me, dear readers.
You don't even have to link me, and I never want money.
