Saudi Arabia Blocked Major Torrent Sites

The country’s Ministry of Culture and Information has recently blocked access to The Pirate Bay, without providing any explanation. Aside from the largest BitTorrent tracker in the world, a number of similar portals were also censored, including Torrentz.eu, Rarbg and possibly several others. Of course, the Saudi Arabian users are already trying to find a way to circumvent the restrictions.

Actually, the censorship of the torrent portals didn’t become a great surprise to anyone. It is known that blocking The Pirate Bay has become common around the EU in recent years, and now this practice spread to Saudi Arabia as well.

Local media report that without any prior warnings or official announcements, the Saudi Arabian Ministry for Culture and Information requested that local Internet service providers block access to the torrent sites, including The Pirate Bay, Torrentz.eu and Rarbg.com.

Although the reason for the blockade wasn’t officially announced, the piracy concerns seem plausible, because the move is coming from the Ministry of Culture, rather than from the Communications Commission that administers the regular filters in Saudi Arabia. In addition, you can see that the blocking notification for The Pirate Bay differs from the green notice which means that the websites are blocked in violation of the Islamic religion.

The interesting part here is that the move comes 2 months after a number of copyright holder groups urged the American government to place Saudi Arabia on its priority watch list. The entertainment industry and its outfits blamed Saudi Arabia for doing not enough to stop Internet piracy.

At the moment, the blockade is active on almost all broadband providers, except for maybe Zain, whose customers still have access to the website. Of course, this ISP does block the tracker’s porn category, but it’s an Islamic country.

Like almost anywhere in the world, The Pirate Bay was in the top 50 most visited portals in the country, so its blockade has caused quite a bit of uproar in social networks. For example, you can see the topic being currently trending on Twitter, where many users are expressing their frustration. Well, the numerous ways to bypass the blockade are known to the entire world, so Saudi Arabia can do what all other victims of censorship do.
ARTICLE SOURCE::EXTRATORRENT

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The room where the internet was born

From the outside, room 3420 at UCLA's Boelter Hall campus looks rather nondescript - housing what looks like a large typrwriter and a cupboard stuffed with old electronics.
However, this is in fact the birthplace of the internet - and where the first message was sent from.
On October 29, 1969 at 10:30pm,  Leonard Kleinrock and his team sent a message to Stanford University using what we know know as the internet - only to find in crash after two letters.

THE BIRTH OF THE INTERNET

While a grad student at MIT, Kleinrock developed a mathematical theory of packet switching, where data is broken up into 'packets' that can be exchanged over a network to allow users in multiple locations to access them.
The research was spotted by the Defense Department's Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA—later named DARPA), which wanted to use it to distribute academic papers.
It wanted to test a network, and a contract was awarded to a team of computer engineers at Bolt Beranek and Newman (BBN), who built the Interface Message Processor, which was similar to the routers still used today.
The first node was placed at UCLA. the second at Stanford.

the first message was supposed to be 'log in', but their first success also spelled their first failure – the system crashed after the 'L' and 'O' were transmitted.
About an hour later, having recovered from the crash, the SDS Sigma 7 computer sent a full 'login'.
The first permanent ARPANET link was then established on November 21, 1969, between the IMP (interface message processor) at UCLA and the IMP at the Stanford Research Institute.
By December of 1969, four nodes were permanently installed at UCLA, Stanford Research Institute, University of Utah, and University of California at Santa Barbara.
By 1975 there were 57 IMPs. By 1981 there were 213, and it has continued to explode inpopularity ever since.

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A detailed view of UCLA's Interface Message Processor (IMP) is pictured in a storage closet, where it had been stored for over 20 years, at 3420 Boelter Hall in UCLA

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A detailed view of UCLA's Interface Message Processor (IMP) is seen in a storage closet, where it had been stored for over 20 years, at 3420 Boelter Hall in UCLA

'How many revolutions can you think about where you can see—within a few feet!—where it began? This machine is where the internet breathed to life, spoke its first words,' Leonard Kleinrock, the computer scientist for whom the Kleinrock Center for Internet Studies is named, told Gizmodo.
However, Kleinrock admits the machines were almost lost.
There are currently only two IMPs still in existence.
UCLA's IMP was replaced by new technology in 1982 and moved to a staff break room.

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The tiny mention of the project in the University paper was the only mention of it at the time

He also managed to save a SDS Sigma 7 computer, the refrigerator-sized machine that was used to host that first message.
The restored room was first opened in 2011, after being converted to a computer lab for current students, and was restored by the original team - who even matched the paint for photographs.
'We didn't know what we were doing,' says Kleinrock.
'We didn't even take a photo.'
The only mention of the world-changing experiment was a small item in the school paper.

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UCLA's Interface Message Processor (IMP) is pictured in the birthplace of the Internet, at 3420 Boelter Hall, the original location of the first ARPANET node at UCLA in Los Angeles.

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Professor Leonard Kleinrock, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at UCLA is shown next to UCLA's Interface Message Processor (IMP)

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A plaque placed by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers is pictured at the birthplace of the Internet

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A visitor compares modern-day 3420 Boelter Hall, the birthplace of the Internet, with an archival photograph during the grand opening of the Kleinrock Internet Heritage Site at UCLA in Los Angeles, California October 29, 2011. The first message to pass over the ARPANET was sent from 3420 Boelter Hall on October 29, 1969 led by UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock and his team. The ARPANET evolved into the Internet we use today. REUTERS/Fred Prouser (UNITED STATES - Tags: BUSINESS TELECOMS SCIENCE TECHNOLOGY) - RTR2TEKP

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A visitor attends the grand opening of the Kleinrock Internet Heritage Site and Archive in 3420 Boelter Hall, the birthplace of the Internet at UCLA in Los Angeles, California October 29, 2011. The first message to pass over the ARPANET was sent from 3420 Boelter Hall on October 29, 1969 led by UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock and his team. The recreated lab features a replica of the Sigma 7 computer (L), a teletype (C) similar to one used to communicate with the SIGMA 7 computer, which was connected to UCLA's Interface Message Processor (R). The ARPANET evolved into the Internet we use today.

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This is the power distribution unit on the Interface Message Processor, taken at the grand re-opening of the original Boelter 3420 lab at UCLA, the birthplace of the Internet

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Wifi in the sky looks set for takeoff

 
More airlines are rolling out new and improved services thanks to satellite technology.

SINGAPORE (AFP) - Wifi in aircraft, hobbled in the past by slow speeds, could soon take off as new technology enables passengers to surf the web as if they were in a coffee shop, Internet executives say.
More airlines are rolling out new and improved services thanks to satellite technology, industry leaders said at the recent Singapore Airshow, with the public increasingly demanding wifi on planes.
US-based Honeywell Aerospace and Gogo, which supply inflight connectivity systems to airlines, are collaborating with satellite giant Inmarsat to implement the "first global high-speed broadband for the skies" dubbed the Global Xpress (GX) Aviation network.
Briand Greer, president of Honeywell Aerospace Asia Pacific, said inflight wifi could generate $2.8 billion for the company alone over the next 20 years.
He estimates that around seven to eight percent of airlines currently offer wireless connection, but says this number is expected to grow to 25 percent by 2018.
After years of being bogged down by weak demand due to poor signal quality, inflight wifi can now enable download speeds of up to 50 megabits per second, Greer said.
"How we describe it is it will be like you are sitting at Starbucks with your smartphone, your computer and your iPad," Greer told reporters.
Onboard wifi is not a new idea -- European carrier Lufthansa debuted Conexxion by Boeing's system in 2004.
But by 2006 the company announced its exit after the expected growth in the market did not materialise.
Recent surveys by Airbus and Honeywell, however, suggest that the market might now be ready as passengers increasingly expect airlines to have inflight wireless services.
Airbus published a report in February about the comfort demands of Asian passengers, carried out by global consultancy Future Laboratory.
One of the future trends highlighted was that Asian business passengers would expect wifi enabled cabins with telephone and conference calling facilities.
Honeywell also conducted a survey of 3,000 passengers from the United States, Britain and Singapore and nearly 90 percent would give up an amenity, such as drinks or a better seat, for a faster and more consistent wireless connection.
When flying over land, planes use telecommunication towers to transmit Internet signals but during long-haul flights, when they fly over large expanses of water, consistent connectivity becomes a problem.
In those cases, a satellite network is needed.
In December last year, Inmarsat launched the first of three satellites that will serve the GX network. Air China will be the first airline to test it, on its A330 fleet in the second quarter of 2015.
Singapore Airlines, which launched its $50 million inflight connectivity programme in September 2012, said it planned to finish equipping its aircraft with the hardware by 2015.
A Lufthansa spokesman said that it would also begin rolling out inflight wifi on all of its planes in the middle of this year.
Even no-frills airlines are catching on.
Thai budget airline Nok Air announced during the Singapore Airshow that it will equip its new Boeing 737 fleet with wifi.
Peter Andersson, general manager of aviation navigation company Jeppesen, also said that the technology could benefit cockpit and airport operation.
"If you have something that you need to repair, you can get the status check to the ground level so they can be prepared so they can actually do the maintenance quicker," Andersson told AFP.
"You can reduce the turnaround and maintenance (of airplanes) dramatically."
Sashangar Sreetharan, an analyst at McKinsey and Co. who flies twice a week, said that only airlines with wifi were considered "preferred carriers" for his firm.
But he admitted that although he often worked during flights, the wireless service quality so far has been sub-par.
"The speed is quite slow and every now and then you lose signal, but it isn't too bad. However, once you are on a Virtual Private Network (VPN), the speed is so slow that gateway timeouts occur," Sreetharan told AFP.
Sreetharan said he was not sure everyone would necessarily want wifi on planes.
"Honestly, if the wifi was better I'd rather have it. I mean that is because my bosses are reasonable and don't push me while I'm flying," Sreetharan told AFP.
"But if they started harassing me on flights, I guess I would swap to not having it, I don't want to be emailing back and forth during a long flight."

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