Certainly whatever the North Korean dictator wants to unchain will make the fictional dragon look like a Game, but there was another item in the news that I find more alarming: the Google censorship story.
Read my post, Of movers and dragons
American and Latin American Politics, Society, and Culture
By Fausta
Certainly whatever the North Korean dictator wants to unchain will make the fictional dragon look like a Game, but there was another item in the news that I find more alarming: the Google censorship story.
Read my post, Of movers and dragons
By Fausta
The servers will only speed up access for existing users, as the CSM points out.
Headlines:
Google just became the first foreign internet company to launch in Cuba
Cuba is on the brink of an internet revolution
Currently, Cuba gets most of its internet through an underwater cable from Venezuela, which makes connection speeds very slow.
“Right now, it’s cumbersome to access the Internet in Cuba, even in a big metropolitan area like Havana – and forget about the countryside,” Mark Grabowski, an an associate professor of Internet Law and Ethics at Adelphi University on Long Island, tells the Monitor via email. “Typically, to get online, you have to buy a card from a street vendor, and it has a code that gives you internet access for an hour. These cards are relatively expensive – perhaps $2 or $3, which is a lot in a country where the average person makes the equivalent of $25 per month. Then you must find one of the rare hot spots to login with your card. And, of course, you need some sort of device, like a smart phone or laptop, that will allow you to get online. To put it in perspective, I had easier and more access to the internet when I lived in Cairo, Egypt, in 1998 than I did when I visited Havana last year.”
Then there’s the matter of censorship, too.
In other news, Uber comes to Cuba,
By Fausta
By Fausta
By Fausta
Google celebrates Celia Cruz (via Babalu)
Eventus, the leading multicultural experiential, sports and entertainment marketing company in the United States, and the Celia Cruz Estate, proudly honor the Queen of Salsa’s birthday today with a custom-designed Google Doodle celebrating her life and legacy. Google, Inc., the multinational corporation specializing in Internet-related services and products, chose the music icon, who died in 2003, to grace their search engine’s home page today, on what would have been her 88th birthday.
Azuca!!
By Fausta
I have almost 300 feeds in Google Reader (which I use for the Monday Carnival) so my reaction pretty much matches this:
As of the writing of this post, there are Google search 27,000 results for google reader alternatives.
Lesson learned:
I’m not going to buy a Google car. I can see them shutting down the self drive service when I’m overtaking a truck at 70 MPH.
— the real darryl rowe (@darrylr) March 14, 2013
UPDATE
Google Reader: The End
By Fausta
This is censorship:
Google’s Brazil Chief Detained; Court Bans Anti-Islam Video
SÃO PAULO, Brazil—The country’s Federal Police detained the head of Google Inc.’s Brazilian operations after the company failed to act on an electoral judge’s order to remove videos from its YouTube site criticizing a candidate in a rural state election.
Separately, a Brazilian judge ordered Google to remove versions of the “Innocence of the Muslims” video that has sparked deadly riots across the Middle East from Brazilian YouTube within 10 days or face fines. The ruling was in response to a suit brought by a group called the National Union of Islamic Entities, according to court documents.
Apparently no one will be sent to prison, but Google will be fined $4,926/day if Google doesn’t remove the “Innocence of the Muslims” video.
Sharia-by-the inch?