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"Suppose all the information stored on computers everywhere were linked. Suppose I could program my computer to create a space in which everything could be linked to everything." – Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web In 1989 the world’s largest physics laboratory, CERN, was a hive of ideas and information stored on multiple incompatible computers. Tim Berners-Lee envisioned a unifying structure for linking information across different computers, and wrote a proposal in March 1989 called “Information Management: A Proposal”. By 1991 this vision of universal connectivity had become the World Wide Web.

Netflix reported higher profit for the fourth quarter as the company added 2.3 million customers to its TV and movie streaming service in the United States, sending its shares up more than 17 percent in after-hours trading. (Click here to get the latest quote.) The company on Wednesday reported net income of $48 million for the quarter, up from $8 million a year ago. Earnings-per-share were 79 cents, Netflix said in a statement.

The UK and US must do more to protect internet users' privacy, the inventor of the world wide web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, has warned as a survey of online freedoms is released. Berners-Lee warned that "a growing tide of surveillance and censorship" posed a threat to the future of democracy, even as more and more people were using the internet to expose wrongdoing. His remarks came before the second annual release of a global league table that classifies countries according to a set of freedoms. Since last year, the US has dropped from second place to fourth, while the UK...

Thousands may lose Internet access when FBI shuts down serversBy Brendan Sasso - 07/06/12 10:45 AM ET Hundreds of thousands of people could lose Internet service on Monday when the FBI shuts down servers from an online fraud ring that allegedly planted a virus among computer users. The FBI says about 252,000 computers worldwide could be affected and that about 45,000 of those computers are in the United States. Users can check whether their computer is infected with the malicious software — often called malware — by visiting dcwg.org, a site run in cooperation with the FBI, or by visiting...

From the streets of Tunis to Tahrir Square and beyond, protests around the world last year were built on the Internet and the many devices that interact with it... It is no surprise, then, that the protests have raised questions about whether Internet access is or should be a civil or human right.... ...technology is an enabler of rights, not a right itself. There is a high bar for something to be considered a human right. Loosely put, it must be among the things we as humans need in order to lead healthy, meaningful lives, like freedom from torture or...

Seven major websites, including Google and Yahoo, will be monitored and 17 lesser-known sites are being blocked outright for alleged blasphemous material under court orders. The moves follow a temporary ban that Pakistan imposed on Facebook in May. The sites to be monitored include Yahoo, Google, YouTube, Amazon and MSN, Hotmail and Bing from Microsoft, according to a spokesman for the Pakistan Telecommunication Authority. He added: "If any particular link with offensive content appears on these websites, the (link) shall be blocked immediately without disturbing the main website." Scott Rubin, a spokesman for Google, responded that the company intends, in...

Free Speech: President Obama, while addressing college graduates, condemns our access to new media as a subversion of democracy. Is the iPad a threat to democracy or exactly what Thomas Jefferson had in mind? At Hampton University in Virginia on Sunday, the president lamented that in an age of text messaging, the Internet and the iPad, information and its unfettered exchange had become a diversion that was putting a strain on democracy. We are not making this up. The "24/7 media environment," he told the students, "bombards us with all kinds of comments and exposes us to all kinds of...

Just by reading this online story, you are part of a groundbreaking trend. According to a new study from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press released last week, the Internet has passed newspapers as the most popular source for news. Only television surpassed the Net, with about 70 percent of Americans saying they get most of their national and international news from the ubiquitous box. About 40 percent say they get most of their news from the Net, an increase of 16 percent from September 2007. Newspapers are the main source for about 35 percent. This...

Even in economically troubled times, Christmas is still a prime opportunity for children to be showered with the latest in electronic gadgetry, from iPods to laptops. For decades, parents have worried about children wandering into the scariest corners of television. But with new technologies come a lot of new and even scarier trails to follow. Imagine a young teen with a new laptop, and add YouTube, now owned by Google, which performs 63 percent of the world's Internet searches. It's not a farfetched thought: Nearly half of boys and a third of girls ages 13-17 name YouTube as one of...

The celebrated openness of the Internet -- network providers are not supposed to give preferential treatment to any traffic -- is quietly losing powerful defenders. Google Inc. has approached major cable and phone companies that carry Internet traffic with a proposal to create a fast lane for its own content, according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. Google has traditionally been one of the loudest advocates of equal network access for all content providers. At risk is a principle known as network neutrality: Cable and phone companies that operate the data pipelines are supposed to treat all traffic...

Preachers on the pulpit, Guns N' Roses and others who fear their wireless microphones would be disrupted by widespread public access to certain unused airwaves were drowned out by high-tech titans Google and Microsoft in a federal ruling yesterday. The Federal Communications Commission approved a plan that would allow those airwaves, called white spaces, to be used by gadgets such as cellphones and laptops connected to the Internet once that spectrum becomes available after the national transition from analog to digital television in February. Opponents of the plan, including preachers and entertainers, say such devices could interfere with broadcast channels...

BBC News (09/15/08) Ghosh, Pallab Sir Tim Berners-Lee is helping to create the World Wide Web Foundation, a new organization that will certify Web sites it finds to be trustworthy and a reliable source of information. Berners-Lee says there needs to be a new system that will give Web sites a label for trustworthiness once they have proven to be a reliable source. “On the Web the thinking of cults can spread very rapidly and suddenly a cult which was 12 people who had some deep personal issues suddenly find a formula which is very believable,” he says. “A...

A new version of the Firefox Web browser is scheduled for release Tuesday with improvements in security, speed and design. Many of the enhancements in Firefox 3 involve bookmarks. The new version lets Web surfers add keywords, or tags, to sort bookmarks by topic. A new "Places" feature lets users quickly access sites they recently bookmarked or tagged and pages they visit frequently but haven't bookmarked. There's also a new star button for easily adding sites to your bookmark list-similar to what's already available on Microsoft Corp.'s Internet Explorer 7 browser. Other new features include the ability to resume downloads...

Ashley Qualls doesn't sound like a typical high school student. Maybe that's because the 17-year-old is the CEO of a million-dollar business. Ashley is the head of whateverlife.com, a website she started when she was just 14 — with eight dollars borrowed from her mother. Now, just three years later, the website grosses more than $1 million a year, providing Ashley and her working class family a sense of security they had never really known. It all started with capitalism 101, the law of supply and demand. Ashley became interested in graphic design just as the online social networking craze...

This is a question to all you freepers (the last 2-4) years I have really notices that there is ~NOT~ balance in the search results I have recieved from googe + yahoo. In fact if you look for alternate search engines from those websites they don't lead you anywhere either.. I am SO Sick of the liberal bias- I never used to get unbalanced results from these website engines. Please IF anyone knows about any good alternate search engines: Please tell me!! I am trapped..!

I just received the transcript to my testimony before Congress earlier this month on Internet gambling. I thought you might enjoy one of the odder exchanges I had at the hearing. The exchange was with Rep. Spence Bachus, and I guess this was supposed to be his "gotcha" question for me. To be honest, I was so floored by the sheer ignorance of the question, I didn't quite know how to respond. To set up the exchange, one of the points of contention during the hearing was the reliability of age verification systems. Enjoy. Mr. Bachus: Mr. Balko, in your...

"Legend has it that every new technology is first used for something related to sex or pornography. That seems to be the way of humankind." — Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web Last week, Playboy Enterprises, Inc. teamed with a Toronto-based specialist in gambling software to announce the launch later this year of the first Playboy-branded online poker website. CryptoLogic Inc.'s president, Lewis Rose, lauded Playboy as "one of the world's premier entertainment brands." And Christie Hefner, CEO of Playboy, blew an air kiss Rose's way, heaping praise on his firm's "technical and industry strength." In the United...

For some, the Internet it has become an addiction, adversely affecting their lives and their family's lives. While not yet defined as a true addiction, many people are suffering the consequences of obsession with the online world, warns Dr. Diane M. Wieland, who treats patients with computer addiction in her practice in Lansdale, Pennsylvania. For some people, the Internet may promote addictive behaviors and pseudo-intimate interpersonal relationships, reports Wieland in the journal, Perspectives in Psychiatric Care. "Such cyberspace contacts may result in cyber disorders such as virtual relationships that evolve into online marital infidelity (cybersex) or online sexually compulsive behaviors,"...

Some 694 million people worldwide over age 15 are now using the Internet, about 14 percent of the total population in this age group, according to a survey released Thursday. The report by research firm comScore Networks claims to be "the first true estimate of global online audience size and behavior" using consistent methodology. The estimate was based on a survey of major markets including China and India. "Today, the online audience in the US represents less than a quarter of Internet users across the globe, versus 10 years ago when it accounted for two-thirds of the global audience,"...

Unnoticed by the public the fight for control of the only allegedly anarchischen InterNet escalates far away. The fronts are clear: the USA against the remainder of the world. With the information summit in Tunis this week hard arguments are approaching. Who travels in these days after Tunesien, already in the airport terminal by Postern and posters with strange abbreviations one welcomes. The "gate to the Orient", admits spectacular excavation places and Kamel-safari, welcomed on it proudly and wide the participants of the "WSIS 2005", for the beaches by Djerba or Monastir, for its the world summit of the information...