The Jester, a vigilante hacker opposed to Anonymous and Wikileaks, was finally exposed over the last few days. Some, however, think he’s just acting out a scheme to raise money for a favored cause. [Sean Gallagher at Ars Technica ]
A forensic worker walks at the city’s morgue past the recovered bodies of people that had been dumped around Veracruz September 22, 2011. At least 11 more bodies were dumped around the Mexican city of Veracruz on Thursday, according to local media reports, two days after the discovery of 35 other corpses in the once-quiet Gulf port.The bodies found on Thursday were in small groups scattered in various parts of the city, despite high security for a summit of attorneys general and justice officials. (REUTERS/Yahir Ceballos) NPR’s John Burnett , whose reporting I have admired for many years, has a story on All Things Considered today about social media and the drug war in Mexico. In areas where they are powerful, the Mexican drug cartels silenced the mainstream media by threatening and killing journalists. Now they seem to be extending the practice to social media. Many Mexicans have had to rely on social media to find out what’s going on in their cities after newspapers, TV and radio stations stopped reporting on drug-related violence. But last week, the mangled bodies of a young man and woman were hung from a highway bridge in Nuevo Laredo along with a sign that read: “This is what happens to people who post funny things on the Internet. Pay attention.” People are paying attention. “It suggests that the blogosphere has been included in the media landscape that the cartels are looking at. Because up until now it has only been traditional media — print, TV and radio,” says Javier Garza, the editor of El Siglo de Torreon, a newspaper in the neighboring Coahuila state, which is also aflame with cartel violence. Listen here .
A forensic worker walks at the city’s morgue past the recovered bodies of people that had been dumped around Veracruz September 22, 2011. At least 11 more bodies were dumped around the Mexican city of Veracruz on Thursday, according to local media reports, two days after the discovery of 35 other corpses in the once-quiet Gulf port.The bodies found on Thursday were in small groups scattered in various parts of the city, despite high security for a summit of attorneys general and justice officials. (REUTERS/Yahir Ceballos) NPR’s John Burnett , whose reporting I have admired for many years, has a story on All Things Considered today about social media and the drug war in Mexico. In areas where they are powerful, the Mexican drug cartels silenced the mainstream media by threatening and killing journalists. Now they seem to be extending the practice to social media. Many Mexicans have had to rely on social media to find out what’s going on in their cities after newspapers, TV and radio stations stopped reporting on drug-related violence. But last week, the mangled bodies of a young man and woman were hung from a highway bridge in Nuevo Laredo along with a sign that read: “This is what happens to people who post funny things on the Internet. Pay attention.” People are paying attention. “It suggests that the blogosphere has been included in the media landscape that the cartels are looking at. Because up until now it has only been traditional media — print, TV and radio,” says Javier Garza, the editor of El Siglo de Torreon, a newspaper in the neighboring Coahuila state, which is also aflame with cartel violence. Listen here .
The Internet Archive’s Book Scanning project just added its three millionth text. Unlike Google Book Search, the Archive only scans public domain works, and, more significantly, places no restrictions on the scans’ usage. Another significant difference is the Archive’s privacy policy, which, unlike Google, promises not to release your personal information without a court order. More than 100 people digitize books in Internet Archive scanning centers in 27 libraries in 6 countries. At 10 cents a page, we are bringing over 1,000 new books online every day. Archive.org is visited by more than 1 million different users every day. Books are downloaded or read on archive.org about 10 million times each month, and approximately 2,000 books for the blind and dyslexic (print disabled) are downloaded every day. Other projects use the texts archive in bulk. Researches at the University of Massachusetts have used millions of archive.org books to do digital scholarship. OpenLibrary.org integrates these books with many thousands of recent books for the print disabled and library borrowers. All of the public domain books are full text searchable, indexed by multuiple search engines, and downloadable individually or in bulk. Please help us build the library of free books by scanning and uploading, by donating physical books to the Internet Archive, or by sponsoring the digitization of great collections! 3 million texts for free
Astronaut Ron Garan takes photos in space and posts them to Google+ . This photo was taken yesterday, aboard the ISS, and shows the Southern Lights. Real-time astronaut photos may be my favorite benefit of social media networks.
Tagged: light , luggage , particle , photon , science , wave Submitted by: Unknown Via: I Raff I Ruse
Phil Are Go! has unearthed this 1963 advertisement for “broadband” data services from Western Union: “So, by 1963, business guys who were rich enough to have those little egg cups could transmit pictures, charts, stock data and stuff over the phone lines. Who knew? Well, the internet knew. It’s just jarring to see the word “broadband” appearing in print as early as the sixties. I tried to find some numbers on what qualified as broadband back then, but couldn’t find anything. Shazbot.” I don’t know what 1963 considered “broadband” either, but I’m guessing 300 baud? Western Union – Broadband 1963 style.
