"platform plays" entries
US Judge censors WikiLeaks.org by ordering DNS records removed
The BBC and many others report that the international whistle-blower website WikiLeaks.org has been taken down as of this morning. Judge Jeffery White ordered that the WikiLeaks.org domain be removed at the request of Julius Baer Bank & Trust. Not only does the judge order that the site be removed, he orders that the whois privacy protections be turned off…
Understanding the undersea cable cuts… (updated: "fifth cable cut")
The Fiber Cuts in the Middle East are getting a lot of attention. The economic damage is real and the geopolitical issues are extremely complex (which is why I edited my earlier post). From an operations perspective these kinds of outages are nothing new, and underscore why having "many eggs in few baskets" is such a problem. I believe we…
Failure Happens: Transcontinental fiber-optic submarine cables
The Guardian published a summary of the ongoing impact from the transcontinental fiber-optic submarine cable cuts along with a map from Telegeography.com: According to reports, the internet blackout, which has left 75 million people with only limited access, was caused by a ship that tried to moor off the coast of Egypt in bad weather on Wednesday. Since then phone…
One Laptop Per Child will succeed even if it "fails"
The way people are dismissing the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project this week reminds me of how people were treating Hillary Clinton during the five days between her Iowa defeat and her New Hampshire comeback. To many observers, the inevitable has become the disaster in record time. Some of the anti-OLPC notes that have appeared since Intel was kicked…