China Creates New Agency for Patrolling the Internet

BEIJING — A powerful arm of China’s government said Wednesday that it had created a new central agency to regulate every corner of the nation’s vast Internet community, a move that appeared to complement a continuing crackdown on political dissidents and other social critics.

But the vaguely worded announcement left unclear whether the new agency, the State Internet Information Office, would in fact supersede a welter of ministries and other government offices that already claim jurisdiction over parts of cyberspace.

China’s State Council Information Office said it was transferring its own staff of Internet regulators to the new agency, which would operate under its jurisdiction. Among many other duties, the agency will direct “online content management;” supervise online gaming, video and publications; promote major news Web sites; and oversee online government propaganda. The agency will also have authority to investigate and punish violators of online content rules, and it will oversee the huge telecommunications companies that provide access for Internet users and content providers alike.

The State Council is a cabinetlike agency that effectively manages the government’s day-to-day operations. Two former officials at its Information Office will run the new agency, and executives from two central ministries — public security and information technology — will also serve in senior positions, the announcement stated.

The mushrooming growth of China’s Internet business has spawned a sort of land rush for regulatory turf by government agencies that see in it a chance to gain more authority or more money, or both. At least 14 government units, from the culture and information technology ministries to offices that oversee films and books, have some hand in what appears on China’s Internet. Others have interests in Internet-related ventures like the sale of censorship software that could prove to be lucrative sources of income.

Wednesday’s announcement indicated that the new office would work with other government units that regulate parts of the Internet, which could dilute internal opposition. But the sweeping nature of the announcement left some experts unconvinced.

“My guess is that it’s going to be quite a fight for these existing regulators to give up power, because it’s such a big and lucrative endeavor,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based independent analyst of the Internet industry, said an interview. “It’s not clear from this announcement, either in English or Chinese, whether the new agency is going to oversee them or coordinate with them.”

View the original article here

China Creates New Agency for Patrolling the Internet

BEIJING — A powerful arm of China’s government said Wednesday that it had created a new central agency to regulate every corner of the nation’s vast Internet community, a move that appeared to complement a continuing crackdown on political dissidents and other social critics.

But the vaguely worded announcement left unclear whether the new agency, the State Internet Information Office, would in fact supersede a welter of ministries and other government offices that already claim jurisdiction over parts of cyberspace.

China’s State Council Information Office said it was transferring its own staff of Internet regulators to the new agency, which would operate under its jurisdiction. Among many other duties, the agency will direct “online content management;” supervise online gaming, video and publications; promote major news Web sites; and oversee online government propaganda. The agency will also have authority to investigate and punish violators of online content rules, and it will oversee the huge telecommunications companies that provide access for Internet users and content providers alike.

The State Council is a cabinetlike agency that effectively manages the government’s day-to-day operations. Two former officials at its Information Office will run the new agency, and executives from two central ministries — public security and information technology — will also serve in senior positions, the announcement stated.

The mushrooming growth of China’s Internet business has spawned a sort of land rush for regulatory turf by government agencies that see in it a chance to gain more authority or more money, or both. At least 14 government units, from the culture and information technology ministries to offices that oversee films and books, have some hand in what appears on China’s Internet. Others have interests in Internet-related ventures like the sale of censorship software that could prove to be lucrative sources of income.

Wednesday’s announcement indicated that the new office would work with other government units that regulate parts of the Internet, which could dilute internal opposition. But the sweeping nature of the announcement left some experts unconvinced.

“My guess is that it’s going to be quite a fight for these existing regulators to give up power, because it’s such a big and lucrative endeavor,” Bill Bishop, a Beijing-based independent analyst of the Internet industry, said an interview. “It’s not clear from this announcement, either in English or Chinese, whether the new agency is going to oversee them or coordinate with them.”

 

Pandora Internet Radio Service to Offer Large Archive of Comedy Clips

On Wednesday Pandora will add 10,000 clips by more than 700 comedians to its archive, and allow users to sort through them in the same way they do the site’s music: by picking a starting place — a comedian, type of comedy or even a specific joke — and then letting Pandora send a stream of similar material chosen by analyzing his or her taste.

“This is a logical step under the umbrella of personalized radio,” said Tim Westergren, the founder and chief strategy officer of Pandora Media, the company behind the service.

The comedy offerings stretch back to the days of Will Rogers and W. C. Fields, and include most of the greats, past and present: Bill Cosby, George Carlin, Bob Newhart, Jerry Seinfeld, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, Joan Rivers, and Cheech & Chong. For more specialized tastes, there are routines by Triumph the Insult Comic Dog, Minnie Pearl and Yakov Smirnoff.

As with music, Pandora has developed a system to predict what its listeners will like. With the help of professional comedians, the company identified more than 100 traits common in jokes, from basic themes (ethnicity, family) and styles of delivery (dry, self-deprecating) to broader categorizations of how comedians toy with logic and language (spoonerisms, juxtaposition, misdirection).

Put together, these traits make a “genomic” composite of a joke or routine, and can be strung together to follow unexpected themes. For example, a listener who begins with Chris Rock may end up listening to Bill Hicks because of his similar “male perspectives, subject explorations, sarcastic delivery and slow delivery,” as the service explains.

For Pandora, comedy is one piece in a broad expansion that has made the company one of the biggest players in digital music. For most of its history it struggled to stay alive and raise money, but now, largely thanks to its popularity on smartphones, it has 82 million registered users and is preparing to raise $100 million in an initial public offering.

The company is still reporting losses, but they are getting smaller. According to Securities and Exchange Commission filings, Pandora Media lost $1.7 million for the year that ended Jan. 31, compared with $16.8 million the year before; advertising revenue, its main source of income, was $119.3 million in fiscal 2011, compared with $50.1 million in 2010.

Comedians and their record companies are hoping that Pandora will be a boon. Comedy videos may be hugely popular online, but aside from the occasional hit — like Dane Cook’s “Retaliation,” for example, which has sold 1.4 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan — most comedy albums have minuscule sales. The most popular current comedy album is Mike Birbiglia’s “Sleepwalk With Me Live,” whose 3,400 sales were not enough for it to make Billboard’s standard Top 200 album chart.

“One of our biggest challenges is that of discovery,” said Jack Vaughn, vice president of Mr. Birbiglia’s label, Comedy Central Records. “How do we get people who like a certain comic to find out about another comic they might like? This seems like the next phase of what the Internet can do for comedy.”

Each comedy track on Pandora is about three to six minutes, with some made up of multiple bits by the same artist. As with music, the comedy service is offered in a free version supported by advertising, and paid, ad-free version. For its introduction, the free comedy streams will be supported by two Unilever brands with a penchant for comedic advertising: Klondike bars and Axe male grooming products.

Axe favors a bawdy, locker-room style of humor, said Rob Candelino, the brand’s marketing director. Since Pandora’s user registration includes demographic information like age and sex, Axe will show its 15-second ad spots only to men aged 18 to 24.

“We thought it was a sensational opportunity to reach our guy,” Mr. Candelino said.

Since it entered the market in 2005, Pandora has collected a mountain of data to help it parse what music people like and why. But some of the people involved in the comedy service are just waiting to see exactly how Pandora’s comedic algorithms will work.

“It’ll be interesting when I find out who I’m paired up with,” said the comedian Adam Carolla, whose material will be included in the service. “I’m sure at some point someone will be insulted. There may be a lot of unintended comedy.”

 

India Puts Tight Leash on Internet Free Speech

 

MUMBAI, India — Free speech advocates and Internet users are protesting new Indian regulations restricting Web content that, among other things, can be considered “disparaging,” “harassing,” “blasphemous” or “hateful.”

The new rules, quietly issued by the country’s Department of Information Technology earlier this month and only now attracting attention, allow officials and private citizens to demand that Internet sites and service providers remove content they consider objectionable on the basis of a long list of criteria.

Critics of the new rules say the restrictions could severely curtail debate and discussion on the Internet, whose use has been growing fast in India.

The list of objectionable content is sweeping and includes anything that “threatens the unity, integrity, defense, security or sovereignty of India, friendly relations with foreign states or public order.”

The rules highlight the ambivalence with which Indian officials have long treated freedom of expression. The country’s constitution allows “reasonable restrictions” on free speech but lawmakers have periodically stretched that definition to ban books, movies and other material about sensitive subjects like sex, politics and religion.

An Indian state, for example, recently banned an American author’s new biography of the Indian freedom fighter Mohandas Gandhi that critics have argued disparages Mr. Gandhi by talking about his relationship with another man.

Although fewer than 10 percent of Indians have access to the Internet, that number has been growing fast — especially on mobile devices. There are more than 700 million cellphone accounts in India.

The country has also established a thriving technology industry that writes software and creates Web services primarily for Western clients.

Even before the new rules — known as the Information Technology (Intermediaries guidelines) Rules, 2011 — India has periodically tried to restrict speech on the Internet. In 2009, the government banned a popular and graphic online comic strip, Savita Bhabhi, about a housewife with an active sex life. Indian officials have also required social networking sites like Orkut to take down posts deemed offensive to ethnic and religious groups.

Using a freedom of information law, the Center for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based research and advocacy group, recently obtained and published a list of 11 Web sites banned by the Department of Information Technology. Other government agencies have probably blocked more sites, the group said.

The new Internet rules go further than existing Indian laws and restrictions, said Sunil Abraham, the executive director for the Center for Internet and Society. The rules require Internet “intermediaries” — an all-encompassing group that includes sites like YouTube and Facebook and companies that host Web sites or provide Internet connections — to respond to any demand to take down offensive content within 36 hours. The rules do not provide a way for content producers to defend their work or appeal a decision to take content down.

“These rules overly favor those who want to clamp down on freedom of expression,” Mr. Abraham said. “Whenever there are limits of freedom of expression, in order for those limits to be considered constitutionally valid, those limits have to be clear and not be very vague. Many of these rules that seek to place limits are very, very vague.”

An official for the People’s Union for Civil Liberties, an advocacy group based in New Delhi, said on Wednesday that it was considering a legal challenge to the constitutionality of the new rules.

“What are we, Saudi Arabia?” said Pushkar Raj, the group’s general secretary. “We don’t expect this from India. This is something very serious.”

An official at the Department of Information Technology, Gulshan Rai, did not return calls and messages.

The rules are based on a 2008 information technology law that India’s Parliament passed shortly after a three-day siege on Mumbai by Pakistan-based terrorists that killed more than 163 people. That law, among other things, granted authorities more expansive powers to monitor electronic communications for reasons of national security. It also granted privacy protections to consumers.

While advocates for free speech and civil liberties have complained that the 2008 law goes too far in violating the rights of Indians, Internet firms have expressed support for it. The law removed liability from Internet intermediaries as long as they were not active participants in creating content that was later deemed to be offensive.

Subho Ray, the president of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, which represents companies like Google and eBay, said the liability waiver was a big improvement over a previous law that had been used to hold intermediaries liable for hosting content created by others. In 2004, for instance, the police arrested eBay’s top India executive because a user of the company’s Indian auction site had offered to sell a video clip of a teenage couple having sex.

“The new I.T. Act (2008) is, in fact, a large improvement on the old one,” Mr. Ray said in an e-mail response to questions.

Mr. Ray said his association had not taken a stand on the new regulations. An India-based spokeswoman for Google declined to comment on the new rules, saying the company needed more time to respond.

Along with the new content regulations, the government also issued rules governing data security, Internet cafes and the electronic provision of government services.

 

Well-Connected Evacuees of Texas Wildfire Turn to Internet

Jackie Fewell, a local real estate agent who had been evacuated to a hotel here from her home at Possum Kingdom Lake, posted complaints about AT&T on a blog that she had started on her company’s Web site.

At the same time, Amy Sabbatini, who owns a weekend home at Possum Kingdom Lake, called a friend whose business is a major AT&T customer. That friend called executives at the phone company.

Other readers wrote to the blog, saying they also had high-level contacts at AT&T and would see if they could help. One reader said he worked there and would get on the case “A.S.A.P.”

Within hours, an AT&T truck with a mobile cell tower had pulled up to the Mineral Wells hotel where Ms. Fewell was staying. The tower has been providing five strong bars ever since.

“We all are feeling really empowered,” Ms. Fewell said in an interview at the blog’s command center here, about 25 miles east of Possum Kingdom Lake and 50 miles west of Fort Worth.

The blog is another example of citizens harnessing social media to cope with a disaster, but this one has an advantage: it is written by and for a moneyed and well-connected clientele. These are people who are used to making things happen, not being passive victims. Their power, combined with that of the Internet, has produced a blog with clout.

“We’ve got influential people, and let me tell you, we capitalize on it,” Ms. Fewell said.

One is Ms. Sabbatini, 35, who works with the evacuees during the day and at night returns to Fort Worth, where she lives with her husband, Rory Sabbatini, the professional golfer, and their three children. She grew up in the Possum Kingdom area, and her parents live there full time.

“My husband plays pro golf on the P.G.A. tour, and I’ve been fortunate enough to travel the country and meet a lot of people, and I have had a lot of resources at my fingertips,” said Ms. Sabbatini, who was working the phones in the command center. “At the same time, the Internet is an amazing place.”

Some of the blog’s readers and area residents were able to have aerial surveys conducted of their properties — even though the airspace was restricted because of the fires — and they shared them on the blog.

Another resident, Mike Rhoden, a former president of the area’s Chamber of Commerce, asked his son, who has a friend who once worked at Google Earth, to see if its satellites could rescan the lake community to provide updated images. On Friday evening at the command center, Mr. Rhoden flashed around his cellphone with a message that Google Earth was “already on it.”

The blog sprang up here in the shadow of the blazing fires that have scorched great swaths of drought-ridden Texas. At Possum Kingdom Lake, they have destroyed at least 167 homes, 124 outbuildings and two churches and scorched 126,000 acres of ranchland, making it one of the worst-hit areas of the state.

The fires are 50 percent contained, but the ground is still smoldering, and officials said the flames could reignite. Power and water are only sporadically available, and live electrical wires are exposed, so the authorities are continuing to bar some residents from their homes.

Anita Foster, a spokeswoman for the Dallas chapter of the American Red Cross, who is overseeing a shelter here (mostly for firefighters) at the junior high school, said Ms. Fewell’s blog was one of the first that she had seen take hold during a natural disaster in the United States.

“It’s the first time in my experience in a domestic disaster where citizens are taking control of their information,” Ms. Foster said. “We’re on the cusp of how we can use digital media to respond to these things. But it takes citizens to keep it together.”

The blog also took off because there is no single government entity that oversees the lake community, leaving a vacuum in terms of centralized information. Several Facebook pages and other Web sites, including one for the local newspaper and the federal fire management team, are also devoted to the Possum Kingdom Lake fire.

But the citizen blog is the most comprehensive and immediate. Ms. Fewell, 53, a Sally Field type who has no qualms about challenging authority, started typing from her hotel room nine days ago because she was frustrated by the lack of reliable information and as getting questions from property owners.

About 80 percent of the 3,000 houses at Possum Kingdom Lake — some worth up to $6 million — are vacation property or weekend retreats, with owners living in Dallas, Fort Worth or farther afield. (“This is our Hamptons,” Ms. Sabbatini said.)

Right away, the site drew 650 page views; within a week, it had drawn more than 900,000. By then, Ms. Fewell and Michelle Steuber, 30, who works with her at a marketing firm, and other evacuees had taken over the conference room of the Holiday Inn Express in Mineral Wells and turned it into a campaign-style war room.

The bloggers spend their days on the phone getting notes from the field, trying to sort rumor from fact, and directing help where it is needed.

Responses can be fast.

“We posted that we needed 200 gloves at such and such a location,” Ms. Fewell said. “And someone wrote right back and said, ‘We’ll buy every glove in Fort Worth.’ And we suddenly had 50 people all wanting to bring 200 gloves, and they couldn’t be stopped.”

The command center has become a gathering spot for those unable to go home, and the mood is fairly upbeat for a natural disaster. The blog has already raised $100,000 for the volunteer firefighters. And someone showed up the other day to donate $500 in cash and a 12-pack of beer.

Still, some residents who have been home for brief periods come back with grim reports.

“There are stalks sticking up in the sky, like a surreal dream, just black stalks,” said Ruth White, 71, whose bookshop and home were spared.

Ira Mercer, Palo Pinto County sheriff, called the blog “a stroke of genius” and said it had helped his office do its job. “We don’t have the time, the staff or, frankly, the wherewithal to do it,” he said. “It’s a very effective tool.”

But he is worried about the long-term effects of the fires and predicts that despite the affluence of the community, recovery will be slow.

“It looks like a moonscape now,” the sheriff said. “Long after the circus has left town, we will be dealing with it.”

 

South Pacific's Vanuatu grabbing fiber internet connection, sidesteps 'remote' stereotype

 Ever been to Vanuatu? Neither have the vast majority of the world's inhabitants -- particularly those who simply can't function off the grid. For ages, the island archipelago has relied on sluggish, unpredictable satellite connections for eBay bids and liveblog following, but it looks as if fares to the blossoming nation are about to head even further north. Around this time next year, the Pacific Island destination will be connected to the real internet, thanks to an undersea optical fiber backbone cable linking it to nearby Fiji. Interchange and Alcatel-Lucent will be working to lay and operate the 1,230 kilometer cable system, which will "link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii." At first, the system will be equipped to handle 20Gbis/sec -- a figure that dwarfs the country's current capacity by 200x. In time, that should creep up to 320Gbit/sec, enabling your future vacation videos to hit YouTube in record time. Total cost? $30 million, or a drop in the bucket compared to the economic boom that's bound to transpire.

Pacific Island's Vanuatu to join the world's optical fibre Internet backbone

Paris, April 14, 2011 – Interchange Limited, a Vanuatu based company, and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) have signed a landmark agreement to deploy Vanuatu's first international submarine cable system linking Port Vila, Vanuatu, to Suva, Fiji. Scheduled for completion in mid 2012, this new system will deliver faster, more efficient and cost-effective Internet connectivity to the pacific island nation, while removing the current dependence on satellite and strengthening Vanuatu's competitive position as an e-business hub.

Interchange will construct, own, and operate the 1230 kilometre submarine cable system, which will link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii enabling Vanuatu businesses to connect to global telecommunications highway via USA, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Initially equipped for 20 Gbit/s data transfer, which is over 200 times Vanuatu's current capacity, the new submarine cable system is designed with an ultimate capacity of up to 320 Gbit/s to support the continued growth of Vanuatu's e-business economy well into the future. Its deployment will increase internet speeds for new and existing Internet Service Providers and deliver the lower cost capacity that Vanuatu needs to encourage economic growth and support its burgeoning tourist industry.

Interchange CEO, Simon Fletcher said: "This submarine cable will open new growth opportunities for the local economy. Vanuatu's current satellite connectivity is relatively expensive, with high latency and is capacity constrained. Interchange believes telecommunications infrastructure, via submarine cable systems, is the most cost effective and reliable means to bring high bandwidth capacity and technologies to Vanuatu facilitating growth in tourism and other industries."

"Projects like Vanuatu are further proof of the need for connectivity to extend high-speed communications in area that are still unserved or currently depending on satellite connections," said Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks SAS. "Submarine cable networks provide a cost-effective and direct operational way to accelerate penetration of broadband access, while prepare for reliably supporting new applications such as data centre interconnections over time."

At a cost of USD $30 million, the submarine cable project is largely funded by the private sector. However the Government of Vanuatu has shown strong support for telecommunications infrastructure project with Vanuatu Post coming forward as a seed investor in Interchange Limited. The Vanuatu Government has also committed to the pre-purchase of capacity to enhance the utility of the e-government network by extending it internationally.

Vanuatu will now join Fiji, PNG, Samoa, American Samoa, New Caledonia and French Polynesia as smaller South Pacific Island countries which have a submarine cable.

Interchange Limited has secured an option with ASN for the extension of the system from Vanuatu to Noumea. This extension would enable connectivity for New Caledonia to Fiji as well providing Vanuatu with diverse cable outlets. The option can afford the benefit of an integrated solution reducing the cost compared to a separate standalone implementation. Such an extension would further enhance the network security for both New Caledonia and Vanuatu. This greater certainty of continued operation will equip Vanuatu to exploit its position as a pivotal location for e-business and data centres in the Pacific. Additionally the extension cable can run in close proximity to Tanna offering the potential for a cable connection between Vila and Tanna.

 

South Pacific's Vanuatu grabbing fiber internet connection, sidesteps 'remote' stereotype

 Ever been to Vanuatu? Neither have the vast majority of the world's inhabitants -- particularly those who simply can't function off the grid. For ages, the island archipelago has relied on sluggish, unpredictable satellite connections for eBay bids and liveblog following, but it looks as if fares to the blossoming nation are about to head even further north. Around this time next year, the Pacific Island destination will be connected to the real internet, thanks to an undersea optical fiber backbone cable linking it to nearby Fiji. Interchange and Alcatel-Lucent will be working to lay and operate the 1,230 kilometer cable system, which will "link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii." At first, the system will be equipped to handle 20Gbis/sec -- a figure that dwarfs the country's current capacity by 200x. In time, that should creep up to 320Gbit/sec, enabling your future vacation videos to hit YouTube in record time. Total cost? $30 million, or a drop in the bucket compared to the economic boom that's bound to transpire.

Pacific Island's Vanuatu to join the world's optical fibre Internet backbone

Paris, April 14, 2011 – Interchange Limited, a Vanuatu based company, and Alcatel-Lucent (Euronext Paris and NYSE: ALU) have signed a landmark agreement to deploy Vanuatu's first international submarine cable system linking Port Vila, Vanuatu, to Suva, Fiji. Scheduled for completion in mid 2012, this new system will deliver faster, more efficient and cost-effective Internet connectivity to the pacific island nation, while removing the current dependence on satellite and strengthening Vanuatu's competitive position as an e-business hub.

Interchange will construct, own, and operate the 1230 kilometre submarine cable system, which will link directly into the high capacity Southern Cross Cable between Sydney and Hawaii enabling Vanuatu businesses to connect to global telecommunications highway via USA, Australia, Asia and Europe.

Initially equipped for 20 Gbit/s data transfer, which is over 200 times Vanuatu's current capacity, the new submarine cable system is designed with an ultimate capacity of up to 320 Gbit/s to support the continued growth of Vanuatu's e-business economy well into the future. Its deployment will increase internet speeds for new and existing Internet Service Providers and deliver the lower cost capacity that Vanuatu needs to encourage economic growth and support its burgeoning tourist industry.

Interchange CEO, Simon Fletcher said: "This submarine cable will open new growth opportunities for the local economy. Vanuatu's current satellite connectivity is relatively expensive, with high latency and is capacity constrained. Interchange believes telecommunications infrastructure, via submarine cable systems, is the most cost effective and reliable means to bring high bandwidth capacity and technologies to Vanuatu facilitating growth in tourism and other industries."

"Projects like Vanuatu are further proof of the need for connectivity to extend high-speed communications in area that are still unserved or currently depending on satellite connections," said Philippe Dumont, President of Alcatel-Lucent Submarine Networks SAS. "Submarine cable networks provide a cost-effective and direct operational way to accelerate penetration of broadband access, while prepare for reliably supporting new applications such as data centre interconnections over time."

At a cost of USD $30 million, the submarine cable project is largely funded by the private sector. However the Government of Vanuatu has shown strong support for telecommunications infrastructure project with Vanuatu Post coming forward as a seed investor in Interchange Limited. The Vanuatu Government has also committed to the pre-purchase of capacity to enhance the utility of the e-government network by extending it internationally.

Vanuatu will now join Fiji, PNG, Samoa, American Samoa, New Caledonia and French Polynesia as smaller South Pacific Island countries which have a submarine cable.

Interchange Limited has secured an option with ASN for the extension of the system from Vanuatu to Noumea. This extension would enable connectivity for New Caledonia to Fiji as well providing Vanuatu with diverse cable outlets. The option can afford the benefit of an integrated solution reducing the cost compared to a separate standalone implementation. Such an extension would further enhance the network security for both New Caledonia and Vanuatu. This greater certainty of continued operation will equip Vanuatu to exploit its position as a pivotal location for e-business and data centres in the Pacific. Additionally the extension cable can run in close proximity to Tanna offering the potential for a cable connection between Vila and Tanna.

 

Pensioner cuts Armenia's internet

在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
在 ServiceModel 客户端配置部分中，找不到引用协定“TranslatorService.LanguageService”的默认终结点元素。这可能是因为未找到应用程序的配置文件，或者是因为客户端元素中找不到与此协定匹配的终结点元素。
6 April 2011 Last updated at 07:39 ET Fibre-optic cables carry services via Georgia to Armenia An elderly woman in Georgia is facing a prison sentence after reportedly causing internet services in neighbouring Armenia to crash.

The country found itself offline for hours on 28 March after cables linking Georgia to Armenia were damaged.

A Georgian interior ministry spokesman said a 75-year-old woman had admitted damaging fibre-optic cables while scavenging for copper.

She has been charged and reportedly faces up to three years in prison.

"Taking into account her advancing years, she has been released pending the end of the investigation and subsequent trial," spokesman Zura Gvenetadze told AFP news agency.

She had been searching for copper in the Georgian village of Ksani.

The cables, owned by the Georgian Railway Telecom company, serve eastern Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan.

All three wholesale internet providers in Armenia - ArmenTel, FiberNet Communication and GNC-Alfa - were unable to provide their usual service on the evening of 28 March, Armenia's Arka news agency reported.

Services were eventually restored after midnight.

View the original article here

Could New High-Speed Wireless Internet Threaten GPS?

A new, ultra-fast wireless Internet network is threatening to overpower GPS signals across the U.S. and interfere with everything from airplanes to police cars to consumer navigation devices.

The problem stems from a recent government decision to let a Virginia company called LightSquared build a nationwide broadband network using airwaves next to those used for GPS. Manufacturers of GPS equipment warn that strong signals from the planned network could jam existing navigation systems.

A technical fix could be expensive — billions of dollars by one estimate — and there's no agreement on who should pay. Government officials pledge to block LightSquared from turning on its network as scheduled this year unless they receive assurances that GPS systems will still work.

The stakes are high not only for the GPS industry and its users, but also for those who would use LightSquared's network. In approving it, the Federal Communications Commission seeks to boost wireless competition and bring faster and cheaper Internet connections to all Americans — even in remote corners of the country.

LightSquared and the FCC both insist the new network can co-exist with GPS systems. But device makers fear GPS signals will suffer the way a radio station can get drowned out by a stronger broadcast in a nearby channel.

The problem, they say, is that sensitive satellite receivers — designed to pick up relatively weak signals coming from space — could be overwhelmed when LightSquared starts sending high-power signals from as many as 40,000 transmitters on the ground using the airwaves next door.

"The potential impact of GPS interference is so vast, it's hard to get your head around," said Jim Kirkland, vice president and general counsel of Trimble Navigation Ltd., which makes GPS systems. "Think 40,000 GPS dead spots covering millions of square miles in cities and towns throughout the U.S."

One of the biggest risks is to the GPS navigation systems used by about 40 percent of commercial and private planes. Backup systems that rely on ground-based radio signals are not as accurate and have coverage gaps. Some older private planes have no backup at all.

View the original article here