On May 19, 2024, the Internet's 50th anniversary was celebrated in a virtual event named i50, drawing participation from 1,000 IEEE members and internet enthusiasts from 56 countries. The live-streamed event was a highlight in a series of celebrations marking this milestone. more
Website publishers that want to protect themselves against claims of copyright infringement must participate in a new online registration system created by the U.S. Copyright Office for the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA") -- even if they have participated previously. The new program, launched on December 1, 2016, offers a mandatory online registration system for the DMCA that replaces the original (and clunky) "interim" designation system, which was created in 1998. more
Fedora 19 is the community-supported Linux distribution that is often used as a testing ground for features that eventually find their way into the Red Hat Enterprise Linux commercial distribution and its widely used noncommercial twin, CentOS. Both distributions are enormously popular on servers and so it's often instructive for sysadmins to keep an eye on what's happening with Fedora. more
Ad serving platforms drive a lot of web site revenue. These software platforms grant a site manager control over local or remote ads appearing on his web site. Over the years these platforms grew in functionality and today they offer diverse functions... Performance issues on such a platform can take down the ads on dozens of different sites, causing massive loss of revenues to the site and the platform owners. more
It appears that the FCC will permit exceptions to the standard, plain vanilla best efforts routing standard for Internet traffic, such as the paid peering arrangement recently negotiated between Comcast and Netflix. In both academic and applied papers I have supported this option, with several major conditions... With no opposition that I have seen, companies like Akamai offer better than best efforts routing of "mission critical" traffic from content source to last mile, "retail" Internet Service Providers. more
Modern networks can be attacked in a variety of ways, meaning that companies need different types of protection. This article explains some of the risks involved, and provides some easy ways to deal with them. more
Global internet usage through mobile devices, has almost doubled to 8.5% in January 2012 from 4.3% last year according to a new report from web analytics StatCounter. While this stat excludes tablets, firm's research arm highlights the increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet with market share doubling year on year since 2009. Nokia leads worldwide, most probably driven by its dominance in India. Apple is second globally but leads the US and UK markets. In the UK RIM is second only to Apple. more
Federal databases, such as those being compiled by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and the Federal Trade Commission, contain data about many people and businesses. Although some of this data may be protected personal information (PPI), there is also extensive information in federal databases that is publicly disseminated via the internet. If the information is wrong, it has the potential to be a vector of tortious mischief. more
In marketing terminology this is called 'jumping the S-curve'. Microsoft, however, has left its jump rather late. One could argue that we are well and truly at the top of the S at the moment, so it will be interesting to see if Microsoft can still take the leap towards the enormous growth that is currently taking place in the group of digital media companies such as Google and Apple. more
A Forever URL is one that never expires. You own it and needn't worry about forgetting to renew it. The term itself is inspired by the US Forever Stamps, which you can use even if the postal rate goes up. This article looks at the underlying mechanisms for linking such information and is aimed at a technical audience. The DNS isn't just about websites; it is fundamental to how we connect endpoints, be they websites, devices, documents etc. more
Everyone seems to be talking about how the big boom is set to happen in India for domain names, and there are significant factors to ensure that this growth happens. The internet spends and E-commerce usage is fast becoming the face of modern India, a part of everyday lifestyle. Although awareness is still the biggest barrier domain name Registrars face with consumers, there are signs of significant improvement in trust, usability and the adoption of web services. more
Germany's Justice Minister says Facebook should be treated like a media company rather than a technology platform, suggesting he favors moves to make social media groups criminally liable for failing to remove hate speech. more
Last month in the annual "State of the Word" presentation for 2020, Automattic CEO and WordPress co-founder Matt Mullenweg announced that WordPress now powered 39% of websites, as measured by W3Techs. The number has actually grown a bit more since that time to 39.5%.1 Perhaps by next month it will pass 40%. What is more remarkable to me is to see that in December 2020, for the first time, the number of sites using WordPress passed the number of sites that were NOT using any form of content management system (CMS). more
Back in the early 1980s we witnessed the launch of the first e-payments systems by French banks in Biarritz. A similar project was launched in Japan and a year or so later Berlin also launched their pilot service. In Biarritz the whole town received smartcards and all the shops were given devices to handle e-cash. Over the next 30 years very little happened -- nowhere did banks build on this initiative to take a leadership role in e-payments. more
There was a common catch cry in the early 1990s that "the Internet must be free!" Some thought this was a policy stance relating to the rejection of imposed control over content. Others took this proposition more literally as "free, like free beer!" It might sound naive today, but there was a widespread view at the time that the Internet was able to cast aside conventional economics and operate the Internet infrastructure without charging end-users at all! more
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