Open View

Twitter has become a buzz word in the present world. Internet was being used only for transfer of information in late 90's. But now a days the number of users have multiplied and internet has become a space of booming business. More people started using social networking sites to keep in touch with their kith and kins. Then came a site for updating status messages only. First I thought that what's the use of a site only for that purpose. But it has turned out to be one of the most upcoming site of the year 2009 and Twitter identity has become an important part of the technical world. Every celebrity is now in twitter and there are loads of dumb people who are always ready to follow what the stars do. This has become an amazing way of publicity for everyone. Twitter has proven useful for many communities: vendors to advertise their portfolio, celebrities to increase their publicity. The most interesting fact is that twitter has helped to generate huge funds for the relief of earthquake victims in Haiti. Also, it has paved way to jobs where a person needs to twitter to promote,market and support a product and the person is paid on the basis of number of tweets made. This has proven the use of technology and science for useful purposes and has shown the power of internet. Twitter has made a firm stand in the internet and everyone is in "Twittermania"

Another post regarding the censorship issues relating to the web. I have posted the problems faced by Google in china previously. Internet was introduced to enable free flow of information throughout the world and it has succeeded in doing so. But there are some countries which are prohibiting people from the right of freedom to browse by "censoring the web" .The list of top ten countries where stringent censorship exits are :

10. Pakistan

Pakistan started censoring the web in 2000, when the main target was anti-Islamic content. Over the time, it seems, they liked the possibility to control the Internet traffic, and have been increasing the scope of their censorship system ever since.

9. Burma

Burma, officially the Union of Myanmar, is a country characterized by severe human rights problems, so it would be hard to expect an open and reliable Internet adoption. It is estimated that less than 1% of its population has access to the web, and this happens via a handful of cybercafes, and always under tight surveillance.

8. Yemen

The Yemen government is very hostile to the freedom of the media in general, and the Internet is no exception. Political and social issues are always under their radar, although the digital infrastructure for the censorship here is not as advanced as in some of the other countries on our list.

7. North Korea

North Korea has managed to accomplish a really tough task given our time: they kept the Internet outside of the country borders! For a country that has no independent media at all, however, it makes sense.

6. Syria

The Syrian government admits that it automatically blocks websites with pornographic content and with politically sensitive information. In reality the situation is much worse, and many journalists from around the world consider Syria to be one of the most repressive countries as far as the Internet is concerned.

5. Cuba

The Reporters Without Borders organization considers Cuba “one of the world’s 10 most repressive countries” when it comes to online content.
The local access to the Internet is so controlled, and the punishment to dissent so severe, that they managed to create a state of self-censorship, where people don’t even try to access prohibited material out of fear.

4. United Arab Emirates

The United Arab Emirates is one of the most connected countries in the Middle East. Despite that fact, the country tries to control heavily the flow of information on the web. Virtually any website containing ideas or information that goes against the political, moral or religious values of the country is blocked.

3. Saudi Arabia

Saudi Arabia introduced the Internet on its country many years after other Arab countries, exactly because they didn’t know how they would be able to control the content. Today they have a complex censorship system in place, and they even have laws criminalizing the access to websites that violate Saudi laws or Islamic values.

2. Iran

The censorship of the web in Iran started several years ago, and today they are one of the most efficient countries on this respect. The target? All non-Islamic websites, making Iran probably the country with the most extensive web censorship in the world.

1. China

If you think that The Great Wall of China was already an incredible thing, you should take a look at what critics from around the world call “The Great Firewall of China.” China has undoubtedly the most sophisticated censorship system in the world. In the past they have been able to block all sorts of unfriendly websites, and even to silence movements like the pro-Tibet protest as if they never existed.

We all use facebook. It is one of the most popular social networking sites in the world. The unique aspect of Facebook is its application database. An application called scrabulous was among the most used application. But because of legal problems and privacy breach, facebook decided to remove it from the site and filed a case on January. The application was created by two Indians. Though it can be presently used in India, proceedings are going on to remove it and all the odds are stacked against SCRABULOUS.

Internet has become so common such that not even a single day passes without using some sort of its services like mails, chatting, blogging, social networking, etc. But have you ever thought about the tool you use to surf the internet - "THE BROWSER". Do you know how it works or what it is based on? How much secure a browser is? Is the browser you are using is better than others? What all you can do with it? We never care for such things as long as we are able to surf the internet using the old crap installed in most of the operating systems.
A browser is rated by WEB STANDARDS PROJECT using the Acid3 test. The acid test basically that tests how well a browser follows certain elements from web standards, especially relating to the Document Object Model and JavaScript It actually tests how a browser runs CSS, DOM objects, Web2.0 modules and gives a score for 100 based on the performance. These are the scores of Acid3 test of some of the popular browsers:
1.) Google Chrome 4.0.295.0 - 100/100
2.) Safari 4 - 100/100
3.) Opera 10 - 100/100
4.) Mozilla Firefox 3.5.2 - 93/100
5.) Internet explorer 9 - 32/100
Source: Wikipedia
From the above pictures we get that Chrome, Safari and Opera have 100/100 but it is not that all are of same standard. It just implies that all the browsers have passes all tests in Acid3. Chrome out lasts every other browser in terms of speed and captures the 'Numero uno' spot. Also I would like to add a detailed performance report on popular browsers where Google Chrome is the clear winner.

Test has been done on basis of 6 performance aspects namely: JavaScript speed, CPU speed, DOM selection speed, CSS rendering speed, page load time and browser cache performance. Chrome leads in four of the six categories and thus comes first ahead of others. Chrome is called the new baby in the field of browsers but it has showed us that it is a lion in terms of performance.
Along with performance there are lot of other factors which influences people to use various browsers such as add-ons, themes, plug-ins, etc. The race is on and every competitor is trying to become better over the other. In the end we the end user is benefited by these as our browsing experience increase day by day :) . Enjoy surfing the internet.

As an update to the previous entry on Google's strategy in China i would like to add some details to it . China has stringent censorship rules regarding internet content. Hacking into Google server has led to theft of intellectual property. More details of the hack has been made available to the public recently by the media.
1. The hack has been done using an IE6 exploit which was released by the hackers on the net.
Note: Patch has been released the next day by Microsoft.
2. Google suspects insiders to have helped in hacking the accounts of Chinese Human right activists.
3. Google has closed down it china office temporarily to check for the integrity of the network and to arrive at a more clear picture of the situation.
4. Google may close down in China.
5. Along with Google, more than 30 other US based companies have been hacked by the same exploit by the hackers.
6. US government has plans to ask Chinese government to ask clarification about the attacks on Google and US companies.
This is a case of "Internet Freedom" and the future of 'Internet CHINA' lies in the hands of the decision makers.

Perhaps the biggest battle software vendors fight today is against piracy. Not only the software vendors but also governments, other social and legal organizations too fight against piracy to help the vendors, the revenue generated from software piracy may be used to fund terrorists and also a pirated software could compromise security. Different methods are adopted to fight piracy. The most commonly used methods are to blacklisting the key, providing online activation of the product, changing the architecture of the software so as to make it tough to crack at registry level etc. A few of these methods are effective while majority still fail. Crackers still prove to be increasingly anomalous.  However Apple was one company which was able to fight piracy at a better level. Mainly because their software and hardware come bundled. After the release of the Apple store in July 2008, this was not the case. In a recent estimation Apple has lost over $450 million due to piracy. Almost 75 percent of the software downloaded and used in the iPhones and iPods are pirated. It is unwise to assume that these pirates would pay and download these software if they do not pirate it. Like every other company in the bandwagon, Apple too tries the same methods to cut down piracy. Figures suggesting that they were able to convert 10 percent of the pirates to paid users is heartening. Hope better methods are used and the battle is won by the good side. 

Finally I installed Ubuntu 8.04 in my Dell Inspiron 1525 yesterday. Now I can dual boot Vista with Ubuntu. Installation is very easy. Here is how
1. You just need to save some space (4 GB atleast) by shrinking some volume and make sure its a free space partition.
2. Put the Ubuntu CD in and reboot from it.
3. The installation process will start and you can easily navigate through it. When it asks for the partition check whether it shows your HDD with the used space for Windows Vista/Longhorn and some space for Ubuntu. This means all is ok and you can proceed with the installation.
4. The partition manager should start and press manual in it and select the longest continous free space (which obviously will be your new volume)nt.
5. Now press Install and and Ubuntu will get installed in less than 15 mins! This is seriously faster than Vista. :-)
6. Reboot your machine without the CD and it should display the GRUB bootloader and it should show both Windows and Ubuntu. Log in where ever you feel like and enjoy!!!