Baby's first internet comes amidst other, less illustrated, concerns about the all-consuming 'blogosphere' and increasingly online life. The problems, it seems, are somewhat novel and (one assumes) almost endless.
posted on Jul 22, 2008 - View this thread

The popular online trading site eBay is one of the many companies that wants to have its own domain name.
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - View this thread

According to a new report, children in Sweden are becoming increasingly concerned by their parents' internet habits. "This summer she has been sitting up all day and all night and she forgets what's important to me. And when she's not at the computer she's like a lost soul. She just looks straight ahead and says nothing. I'm not doing so well." Dr Jerald Block from Oregon Health and Science University in Portland is pushing for internet addiction (and its three subtypes: excessive gaming, sexual preoccupations and e-mail/text messaging) to be included as a common disorder in the next update of the DSM (DSM-V). "The relationship is with the computer. It becomes a significant other to them. They exhaust emotions that they could experience in the real world on the computer... It's much more acceptable for kids to talk about game use, whereas adults keep it a secret. Rather than having sex, or arguing with their wife or husband, or feeding their children, these adults are playing games..."
posted on Jun 26, 2008 - View this thread

"Wow, a new user... That's Great! We'd be happy to show you the ropes!" a PSA on conversation starters in forums and comment threads online that have never been heard or used before. Brought to you by Red Vs. Blue.
posted on Jun 25, 2008 - View this thread

"There is no reason that the Internet should be lawless," President Nicolas Sarkozy told his cabinet, as Culture Minister Christine Albanel presented a new bill designed to encourage responsible use of the Internet. The legislation would set up a new administrative body that would receive complaints from the music and film industry and track down offenders through Internet service providers. An e-mail warning would be sent to suspected downloaders followed by a registered letter. After two strikes, offenders would risk losing their Internet subscription for up to a year. "We know that we are not going to eradicate piracy 100 percent, but we think that we can reduce it significantly," Albanel told a news conference.
posted on Jun 24, 2008 - View this thread

Searchme is a search engine that displays results as images of web pages.
posted on Jun 19, 2008 - View this thread

Le réseau - Starting in the late 19th century, Belgian Paul Otlet envisioned the basics of a human powered Wikipedia and Google. He created a 12 million item database on index cards and accepted queries via mail or telegraph. The article describes his work and the Mundaneum museum in his honor. Be sure to watch the video. There is a full documentary on Otlet as well.
posted on Jun 17, 2008 - View this thread

Goodbye alt.* Andrew Cuomo claimed that his office found child porn on 88 newsgroups--out of roughly 100,000 newsgroups that exist. In a press release, he took credit for [Verizon's] blunderbuss-style newsgroup removal by saying: "We are attacking this problem by working with Internet service providers...I commend the companies that have stepped up today to embrace a new standard of responsibility, which should serve as a model for the entire industry." Verizon eliminates the entire alt. subset of usenet. Today, the alt.* hierarchy is by far the most populous on Usenet.
posted on Jun 12, 2008 - View this thread

Attention Geeks and Hackers: Uncle Sam's Cyber Force Wants You!
posted on Jun 5, 2008 - View this thread

Mapping Iran's Online Public: Politics and Culture in the Persian Blogosphere.
posted on Jun 5, 2008 - View this thread

Vanity Fair has a typically excellent article out -- "How the Web Was Won," an oral history of the Web. Even if you're familiar with ARPANet, Metcalfe's Law, Pearl Harbor Day, the VC rush, whatever -- the story told by the often-animated people at the center of the whirlwind is an enlightening and entertaining experience. And for those of you don't know the history of the Internet, learn it! This is part of your heritage now.
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

Timewarner has set a precedent by creating tiered internet use that is capped at certain levels. Pricing will be about $29.95 per month for a 5 GB monthly cap to $54.90 per month for a 40 GB cap.
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

Who do you want her to be... next year? Fans of Joss Whedon and Eliza Dushku vow to save the television series Dollhouse from cancellation by Fox Television - eight months before it is scheduled to broadcast. Is this just guerilla fan-marketing, or are they serious? Or both? (previously on MetaFilter)
posted on Jun 2, 2008 - View this thread

TCP/IP via bongo drums
posted on Jun 2, 2008 - View this thread

The continuity I have in mind has to do with the nature of information itself or, to put it differently, the inherent instability of texts. In place of the long-term view of technological transformations, which underlies the common notion that we have just entered a new era, the information age, I want to argue that every age was an age of information, each in its own way, and that information has always been unstable. Let's begin with the Internet and work backward in time.

Internet television host Revision3 was the victim of a denial of service attack this weekend. The source of the attack? None other than RIAA and MPAA-funded MediaDefender.
posted on May 29, 2008 - View this thread

The Future Without IPv6 "...imagine you're in the business of squatting on domain names today. It's pretty easy to see that a market is going to be opening up soon allowing you to speculate on the future value of IPv4 address allocations. What would you do? You'd be trying to eat up as much of that free pool as you can before it's all gone."
posted on May 23, 2008 - View this thread

On May 13, security advisories published by Debian and Ubuntu revealed that, for over a year, their OpenSSL libraries have had a major flaw in their CSPRNG, which is used by key generation functions in many widely-used applications, which caused the "random" numbers produced to be extremely predictable. [lolcat summary]
posted on May 16, 2008 - View this thread

Blue, green and grey must have a calming effect. Elsewhere, discussions can be...ignited. Flame Warriors. via
posted on May 4, 2008 - View this thread

Gin, Television, and Social Surplus — Clay Shirky on post-broadcast societal outlets.
posted on Apr 26, 2008 - View this thread

BBC Sound Index -- an excellent way to confirm your worst fears about the music Internet users are listening to.
posted on Apr 18, 2008 - View this thread

ArsTechnica is reporting on the practice of altering and editing web-traffic enroute from the server to your client/browser. Is your ISP, work or connection path altering your requested documents? Find out here.
posted on Apr 16, 2008 - View this thread

Just one more reason not to trust Network Solutions.
posted on Apr 10, 2008 - View this thread

As a result of the Dutch film Fitna, Indonesia has blocked several websites including MySpace and YouTube. This follows hot on the heels of a new bill which could see people face six years of jail time or a 1 billion rupiah fine for being caught sending out porn, “false news” or racial or religious slurs on the Web. The Indonesian government will start censoring the Internet next month with specialised software. Very disappointing for a country which had a reasonably free press.
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - View this thread

Having trouble connecting to a site? It may be you and many others got too close to a network event horizon and the packets ...disappeared.... The internets has black holes, too. via
posted on Apr 8, 2008 - View this thread

Welcome to Mosaic Communications Corporation! It was 1994, and the World Wide Web as we know it today was about to be born.
posted on Mar 31, 2008 - View this thread

Live from her minivan, it’s The Jeannie Tate Show! Everyone’s favorite soccer mom runs errands around town with the help of special guests like Bill Hader (SNL), Rashida Jones (The Office), Lonny Ross (30 Rock), and Rob Riggle (The Daily Show). Of course, she’s willing to leave the van behind to visit her heroines, Hillary and Oprah.
posted on Mar 24, 2008 - View this thread

George Clooney meets the internet.
posted on Mar 17, 2008 - View this thread

The world's 50 most powerful blogs
posted on Mar 12, 2008 - View this thread

Revenge of the Experts. The individual user has been king on the Internet, but the pendulum seems to be swinging back toward edited information vetted by professionals. "Fueling this is advertising revenue, it is easier to woo advertisers with the promise of controlled content than with hit-and-miss blog blather. 'Nobody wants to advertise next to crap' ".
posted on Mar 10, 2008 - View this thread

Kentucky Lawmaker Wants to Ban Anonymous Internet Posting. This bill is pretty much a nonstarter, but should online defamation be criminalized? [pdf]
posted on Mar 10, 2008 - View this thread

When the wire won't carry your subversive tract, distribute your digital screed via flash drive. Last month, students at a prestigious computer science university videotaped an ugly confrontation they had with Ricardo Alarcón, the president of the National Assembly. Mr. Alarcón seemed flummoxed when students grilled him on why they could not travel abroad, stay at hotels, earn better wages or use search engines like Google. The video spread like wildfire ...[passed via flash drives]... and seriously damaged Mr. Alarcón’s reputation in some circles.
posted on Mar 6, 2008 - View this thread

"When copies are free, you need to sell things which cannot be copied." Kevin Kelly (previously) describes eight "generative" values that increase in value as the price tag on making copies goes down. He also has some advice for creators who want to make money off the long tail. Via
posted on Mar 5, 2008 - View this thread

Her actions were juvenile and libelous, but they may have gone too far as well.
posted on Mar 2, 2008 - View this thread

The Great Firewall of China (previously), the Games of the XXIX Olympiad, athlete bloggers (allowed for the first time by the IOC), visitors, and freedom in Beijing, 2008.
posted on Mar 1, 2008 - View this thread

Net Neutrality Update: Comcast admits to paying people to stack the room in their favor at a public hearing with FCC commissioners in Boston. Via savetheinternet. Previously.
posted on Feb 27, 2008 - View this thread

How to act on an internet forum. Yup, just a single link to a video – informative on how to behave nevertheless. Even here on Metafiler.
posted on Feb 22, 2008 - View this thread

The '...is your new bicycle' meme is your new bicycle. I like bikes.
posted on Feb 21, 2008 - View this thread

PMOG stands for Passively Multiplayer Online Game. Players play without playing; clicking around the internet turns into experience points and currency. Players can bomb each other, wage war over web sites, and lead other users on web missions. Ordinary web sites become caches for items and currency. PMOG fuses an MMO into our WWW.
posted on Feb 16, 2008 - View this thread

British internet users face ban for illegal downloads. A draft copy of a Green Paper produced by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport was leaked to The Times newspaper which detailed how the government was considering introducing legislation that would require ISPs to take action against users who access pirated material.
posted on Feb 12, 2008 - View this thread

I was going to share the many amazing videos that StSanders has uploaded to youtube featuring guitar gods like Van Halen and Santana shredding, since they have inexplicably only received scant mention on mefi so far. But StSanders' account has been suspended all all videos have been removed!
posted on Feb 5, 2008 - View this thread

Opencongress.org is a website for keeping track of the U.S. Congress. (previously) But, now it also a social network. So, sign-up and see what your favourite Senator has been doing, track bills and, follow important issues. Then, share that information with your friends or write about it on your blog.
posted on Feb 4, 2008 - View this thread

Edward Samuel's Illustrated History of Copyright A fascinating illustrated historical tour, looking at how different technologies have shaped how we think about copyright and intellectual property.
posted on Jan 31, 2008 - View this thread

PBS Frontline explores Growing Up Online. Here's what they learned.
posted on Jan 31, 2008 - View this thread

What did the Internet look like in 1996? "...very few web designers had even the most rudimentary of aesthetic sensibilities, and nearly half of them were clinically retarded."
posted on Jan 26, 2008 - View this thread

Mutilated Furries, Flying Phalluses: Put the Blame on Griefers, the Sociopaths of the Virtual World. Wired on internet asshats.
posted on Jan 24, 2008 - View this thread

The Internet Party: When the Google's parents leave town all those Web 2.0 kids go crazy. [video via]
posted on Jan 17, 2008 - View this thread

RIP Netscape browser, 1994-2007. AOL, who acquired the groundbreaking browser as part of a $4.2 billion deal in 1998, announced the end today. Good-bye or good riddance?
posted on Dec 28, 2007 - View this thread

Potrait of an internet troll (with actual potrait of the internet troll). Includes one-bedroom apartment, dead-end and part-time jobs, and not-so-secret underground lair.
posted on Dec 24, 2007 - View this thread

Pages Unbound is a portal for serialized web novels, similar to web comic portals such as Buzz Comix and Top Web Comics, if not nearly as fancy. It is a new project by Tales of MU author Alexandra Erin. Note: Tales of MU and some of the novels found on Pages Unbound may be NSFW, as they contain explicit material of various sorts. MU, specifically, is concerned with LGBT issues and racism in a fantasy setting.
posted on Dec 18, 2007 - View this thread