It's complicated.. basically it is de facto a nation, but it is not necessarily a nation de jure. But if you want one of the most likely kick-off points for World War III it is the issue of Taiwanese independence..

The actual article is here. TheNextWeb is a stupid site that doesn't work at all if you are not running Javascript. I choose to block most scripts, partly because.. a lot of ads are infected with malware. Yuk.

The critical thing that killed BlackBerry was the huge delays in getting anything done. As the article points out, they spent a whole year arguing about their BB10 devices while competitors were eating there lunch, and when they finally got to market it was TWO YEARS too late. They'd been in a dead end for years with no strategy to get out of it.. and when they finally did the smart thing and bought QNX it took *forever* to get a decent working product out.

And if it wasn't late.. it wasn't finished properly. Like the Storm. And then the PlayBook was both late *and* not finished properly.

Nokia found itself in the same dead end, but at least it had some sort of strategy when it jumped off the infamous "burning platform". I think that Apple is at risk of the same pitfalls.. they are a much more defensive, conservative company than they were six years ago. The only people who really seem to have a clue are Samsung, and they've got all the appeal of the Borg collective as far as I'm concerned..

Correct, the IP address block (65.222.202.48/29) was allocated to a Verizon Business customer probably located in the Washington DC or Virginia area. Some neighboring blocks in the same /24 included the US government, some government contractors and some private commercial businesses. Given the geographical location and nature of the customers then it is almost definitely a government agency or contractor, but there's nothing else to be gleaned. I did an analysis analysis at the time when people were screaming that it was the NSA via a private firm called SAIC.

As for "legality".. the block is allocated to Verizon who break it down into smaller chunks for customers who may or may not wish to identify themselves in the WHOIS records. It is just 8 IP addresses in any case.

I have a speed limiter. In fact, a lot of people have speed limiters.. but a surprising number of people don't know it. What am I talking about? Well, if you own a Citroen, Peugeot, Renault, Mercedes, late model Ford or very recent Opel or Vauxhall (plus some others) with cruise control, then you have a user-adjustable speed limiter built in already.

Going into a 30 mph zone? Set the speed limiter for 30.. then you can watch the road, not your speedometer. 50 mph average speed cameras? No problem.. set the speed limiter to 50 and you won't go any faster. Going down a motorway in France? Set it to 80 mph. Taking it on a track? Leave it switched off. Bloody marvellous.. all cars with cruise control should have it fitted. But a surprising number of people who DO have it fitted don't know how to use it.

The assertion that ad networks do not check code is certainly untrue overall. But some networks check code more closely than others, and the bad guys use all sorts of techniques to evade detection (geotargetting, for example, or changing the behaviour of the ad when it is being examined on the ad network's own IP range). The lengths some bad actors go to are impressive, and be in no doubt that there is a state of war between most ad networks and the bad guys.

However, it is true that certain ad networks do very minimal checking or even seem to be in league with malware pushers. But publishers soon drop ad networks like this and they end up being relegated to the scummy tier of publishers only.

Oh.. it's hardly new anyway. Here's a report from 2004.

Thorn already exists as an obsolete form of "th". I don't think it will work it I try to enter it here, but here goes..

Even when Google became dominant, AllTheWeb was still excellent and was real competition. It had a much bigger index than Google and highly accurate results, so naturally it had to be killed off. Although AllTheWeb.com ended up with Yahoo (via Overture), the core underlying technology (called FAST) is still in use today and is owned by Microsoft.

Those were my thoughts exactly. I seem to remember a similar lack of fuss when Dennis Ritchie passed away a couple of years ago. But his contributions to the field will certainly live on..

Let's time-travel back to the 1980s and try to research a topic. You might need to allot a whole day for this.

Where would you start to look? Well, probably the library. If you really know nothing about a topic you might want to start with one the Encyclopaedia Britannica, something that hardly anybody would be able to afford to own at home. Then, if you want more specific information you might find out the Dewey classification for the topic area and check out the books on the shelves, or rummage through index cards. Perhaps (if you are lucky) the library has a computerised index. Want to look up something more topical? We used to have the Times Index, a printed index of what had been published in the Times (of London). Then it was a trip to the microfilm collection to look up back issues. Perhaps if you weren't making much progress you would have to ask around to see if someone had some pointers, maybe a contact of a contact. You *could* use the Internet and post a question to Usenet, perhaps someone would give you an answer in a few days. Maybe after a hard day's work you might be able to tease the nugget of information you wanted out of the library. Perhaps not.

Today? Well, you either Google it or look it up on Wikipedia. You'll have your answer in minutes and you can then get on and apply that knowledge. Now, tell me how that is NOT progress?

It's not going to happen overnight (assuming it works). And you can guess that it will be *expensive* to start with. But for some people the difference in quality of life will be enormous, with children in particular. But the demand for this would be huge..

I can beat you on that..type 2, 6.1" and 160 lbs. That raised a few eyebrows, but it can happen to anybody it seems..

Cyberbunker are trying to paint themselves as proponents of free speach (sic) and through some magic PR they've got Anon worked up into a frenzy. But I don't really equate being able to blast out pharma spam and hosting malware as a freedom that I cherish. Blocking traffic to and from 84.22.96.0/19 is pretty effective IMO.

Sadly no longer a Googlewhack.