umarkalim - Slashdot User

Submission + - Living Under Drones (livingunderdrones.org)

Submitted by umarkalim on Tuesday September 25, 2012 @04:06PM

umarkalim writes: In the United States, the dominant narrative about the use of drones in Pakistan is of a surgically precise and effective tool that makes the US safer by enabling “targeted killing” of terrorists, with minimal downsides or collateral impacts. This narrative is false. Following nine months of intensive research—including two investigations in Pakistan, more than 130 interviews with victims, witnesses, and experts, and review of thousands of pages of documentation and media reporting—this report presents evidence of the damaging and counterproductive effects of current US drone strike policies. ... This report is the result of nine months of research by the International Human Rights and Conflict Resolution Clinic of Stanford Law School (Stanford Clinic) and the Global Justice Clinic at New York University School of Law (NYU Clinic).

Submission + - Can Pakistan survive without US aid? (dawn.com)

Submitted by umarkalim on Wednesday February 15, 2012 @05:41PM

umarkalim writes: In a blog post at dawn.com Murtaza Haider writes
The British newspaper Guardian maintains an active database documenting six decades of American aid to Pakistan. The data is compiled by Wren Elhai of the Center for Global Development in Washington, DC. The database reveals that since 1948 the US assistance to Pakistan has largely been for civilian purposes. Of the $61.7 billion in total assistance (in constant 2009 dollars) provided to Pakistan between 1948 and 2010, $40.4 billion were provided for economic assistance and $21.3 billion in military assistance. The economic assistance to Pakistan peaked in the early 60s when in excess of $2 billion annually were provided to Pakistan.

Submission + - Biggest Maps of Dark Matter to Date (lbl.gov)

Submitted by umarkalim on Wednesday January 11, 2012 @12:03PM

umarkalim writes: Fermilab Press Release:
Two teams of physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have independently made the largest direct measurements of the invisible scaffolding of the universe, building maps of dark matter using new methods that, in turn, will remove key hurdles for understanding dark energy with ground-based telescopes.

Submission + - Fermilab, Berkeley Lab Build Biggest Maps of Dark (lbl.gov)

Submitted by umarkalim on Wednesday January 11, 2012 @11:52AM

umarkalim writes: Two teams of physicists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Fermilab and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have independently made the largest direct measurements of the invisible scaffolding of the universe, building maps of dark matter using new methods that, in turn, will remove key hurdles for understanding dark energy with ground-based telescopes.

Submission + - Viewing the Ultra-fast (stanford.edu)

Submitted by umarkalim on Tuesday May 31, 2011 @12:25PM

umarkalim writes: Staff Scientist Apurva Mehta says, "For 40 years at Stanford Synchrotron Radiation Lightsource (SSRL), we have been taking very high-resolution photographs-photographs of atoms in molecules and crystals and of electronic structures. But now we want to make movies." He and his colleagues are developing a new "pump-probe" facility that promises to expand SSRL's capabilities and complement those of SLAC's X-ray laser, the Linac Coherent Light Source.

Submission + - Japanese Internet survives the earthquake (stanford.edu) 1

Submitted by umarkalim on Friday March 18, 2011 @01:19PM

umarkalim writes: Despite the devastating earthquake, Internet connectivity to Japan was maintained. The PingER project which monitors interregional connectivity in terms of Latencies, Losses, Throughput and Reachability metrics allowed researchers to conclude that Internet connectivity to Japan was maintained. Round Trip Times (RTT) to some hosts increased significantly as seen from SLAC, USA. However as seen from RIKEN in Japan they did not increase. It appears the increase in RTT depends on the route from the monitoring host to Japan. This suggests a possible cable disruption. For more on cables see here.

Submission + - Internet performance seen by PingER and Mid-East i (stanford.edu)

Submitted by

umarkalim

on Tuesday February 22, 2011 @12:07PM

umarkalim writes: "February 2011 saw much instability in North African and Middle Eastern countries including Tunisia, Egypt, Algeria, Bahrain, Libya, and Morocco. In some of these countries such as Egypt and Libya there were overt efforts to limit Internet access. It is interesting to see the consequent impact of Internet performance to these countries."

Submission + - Egypt pulls the plug on their internet (stanford.edu)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 10, 2011 @05:11AM

An anonymous reader writes: In an historic move, the Egyptian government decided to unplug the country from the Internet. According to internet monitoring firm Renesys, shortly before 2300 GMT on 27 January virtually all routes to Egyptian networks were simultaneously withdrawn from the Internet’s global routing table. This led to all the requests to websites and resources hosted in Egypt to timeout. However the services have now been restored.

Submission + - East Africa gets high speed Internet access (stanford.edu)

Submitted by

umarkalim

on Wednesday August 12, 2009 @04:57PM

umarkalim writes: "With the 2010 Soccer World Cup fast approaching the Seacom undersea fibre optic cable, plugging East Africa into high speed Internet, went live on Thursday July 23, 2009 — as reported by the BBC and CNN. Such a cable should dramatically reduce the cost of bandwidth measured in $/Mbps, reduce the Round Trip Times (RTT) from >~ 480 ms for a geostationary satellite, down to 200-350ms by using shorter distance terrestrial routes, and by increasing the capacity reduce the losses and jitter. In this case study we look at the current state of Internet access for Africa as measured by the PingER project and also at the effect of the new submarine cable connections on the RTTs to countries of Africa as seen from the SLAC National Accelerator Center near San Francisco. The main effects seen so far are on the RTTs for selected sites that have converted to using the terrestrial links. As the new routes stabilize and more and more customers, e.g academia and commercial organizations, subscribe to the service, we can expect to also see lower losses and jitter and higher through-puts together with a wider impact on deployment."

Submission + - East Africa gets high speed Internet access (stanford.edu)

Submitted by

umarkalim

on Monday August 10, 2009 @04:35PM

umarkalim writes: "With the 2010 Soccer World Cup fast approaching the Seacom undersea fibre optic cable, plugging East Africa into high speed Internet, went live on Thursday July 23, 2009 — as reported by the BBC and CNN. Such a cable should dramatically reduce the cost of bandwidth measured in $/Mbps, reduce the Round Trip Times (RTT) from >~ 480 ms for a geostationary satellite, down to 200-350ms by using shorter distance terrestrial routes, and by increasing the capacity reduce the losses and jitter. In this case study we look at the current state of Internet access for Africa as measured by the PingER project and also at the effect of the new submarine cable connections on the RTTs to countries of Africa as seen from the SLAC National Accelerator Center near San Francisco. The main effects seen so far are on the RTTs for selected sites that have converted to using the terrestrial links. As the new routes stabilize and more and more customers, e.g academia and commercial organizations, subscribe to the service, we can expect to also see lower losses and jitter and higher through-puts together with a wider impact on deployment."

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