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Talk:Internet

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Coolcaesar (talk | contribs) at 03:37, 28 October 2005 (→Being a successful netter). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Latest comment: 19 years ago by Knowledge Seeker in topic Censorship countries
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Current status

Since my attempted-NPOV edits from a week ago seem to have held, I'd like to raise two points:

  • Anyone for changing the name to something like 'high-risk subcultures' or 'damaging subcultures'? I wonder if the current title is a little POV... or maybe I'm just mixing up 'harsh reality' with POV.
  • Do we still need the POV section warning? I don't know how NPOV I've made it (since even a relatively open-minded neutral party like myself still has a point of view), but if it's sufficiently NPOV, I'd like consensus to remove the tag.

Thoughts? -- Wisq 18:51, 2005 May 6 (UTC)

Its looking a whole lot better now than when it prompted me to start editing wikipedia back in December (oh how my life has changed!). The title is still slightly POV imo, but is much less perjorative now due to the much more NPOV content.
I think that we should change the title of the section, but I'm not certain that either of your suggestions, although better than the present one, are quite right. I can't unfortunately though come up with anything better atm. I suggest that when we've agreed a new title that we implement it and remove the POV warning tag at the same time. Thryduulf 20:17, 6 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Today's Internet

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Here's my take on previously discussed subjects: The distinction between Internet and internet may be blurring, but I am happy to keep the capitalized version for now. As an aside, I think you need to take into account extranets and the Abilene Network when trying to decide how to differentiate between internet and Internet.

Something that seems to have been ignored in the discussion about subcultures is Usenet and NNTP. Pre-dating the WWW, newsgroups have long been a way for individuals to reach out and find like-minded people. So the statement "Since the early 1990s, it has been widely recognized that the Internet enables broader distribution of all ideas, including those considered distasteful by any portion of the population." is fine. Personally, I would say that since its inception, the Internet has enabled broader distribution of all ideas. It's just that as it grew, the sense of anonymity grew with it, so the ideas could come into the light from the darker recesses of people's minds. –DeweyQ 00:22, 9 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

Removed text

Latest comment: 20 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I removed the following text from the article, this texts includes POV. I don't think this stuff is suitable for an encyclopedia article. --Haham hanuka 07:46, 25 May 2005 (UTC)Reply

How are these POV? They're actual problems. Can it really seriously be argued that the Internet has not faciliated increases in child porn, copyright infringement, viruses, and people finding each other? If you have a problem with an individual section, it can be dealt with, but mass deletion isn't the answer. If the Internet creates problems, as studies show it has, then how can not mentioning them possibly be NPOV? -- Wisq 13:08, 2005 May 25 (UTC)
Well done, Haham. Some of the daft statements in those sections have been irritating me for a long time. --Nigelj 19:05, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Current and potential problems

The Internet, along with its benefits, has a lot of negative publicity associated with it ranging from genuine concerns to tabloid scaremongering.

Child abuse

According to children's charities, the number of annual convictions for child pornography offences have increased by over 1000% since the Internet was first available to the public in the late 1980s. With the recent growth in Chat rooms and instant messaging services in the late 1990s, the potential for a new form of child abuse has emerged: so-called grooming. This involves a pedophile pretending to be a child in a chat room/instant message conversation, to gain the trust of a child before arranging to meet up.

Copyright infringement has also been the focus of much media attention, mainly through peer-to-peer filesharing software, but also through private members-only chatrooms, so-called warez sites (which either offer unauthorised copies of software directly or the means to crack copy protection), or even the sale of counterfeit CDs, DVDs and software masquerading as official product. Many ordinary Internet users are less concerned about the actual infringement itself but more about the effect on the Internet as a whole if tighter controls result from the infringement.

Viruses

In the 1980s and early 1990s, when very few people had access to the Internet, viruses were not a huge problem. They did exist and did cause just as much damage to computers as modern viruses can today, but there was no fast-moving epidemic because there was no means for a virus to directly infect other computers. Before the Internet, the only way for a computer to be infected was through use of a removable disc that was itself infected. As a result, virus infections were mercifully rare.

All that changed with the widespread growth of the Internet. With near-universal Internet access among computer users in developed countries, and the proliferation of high-speed broadband Internet connections, a virus on one person's computer can infect thousands of other computers. In fact, much of the disruption from virus outbreaks is caused not by the payload of the virus (e.g. deleting hard drive, shutting down computer every five minutes), but by the Internet congestion caused by the virus spreading itself.

Security cracking

Main article: Security cracking

When computers were stand alone machines (or at most connected to a company's internal network), to steal data from a system an intruder had to physically steal it. The Internet means that data from an insecure site could be stolen by someone working two blocks from the site, or just as easily from another country.

Some of the recent high-profile examples of this were when a working version of the source code for Half Life 2 was copied from the developer's computer systems by security crackers and when portions of the Windows NT codebase were copied from one of the companies that had access to it via the Microsoft Shared Source initiative. In both cases the Internet was used for dissemination of the leaked code, in particular using P2P networks.

Dated technology

Very few people outside the technical community are aware of the future problems posed by the Internet's archaic technology. It was originally designed for a small number of research institutions to share research data, and was never intended for the multi-billion user behemoth the modern Internet has become.

One serious problem is that the IP address (a unique number assigned to each Internet computer, functioning much like a street address in the real world) will run out eventually. Despite an estimated world population of over six billion, there are only a little over four billion different IP address combinations possible under the current system — see IPv4 address exhaustion for more information. This also does not take into account the fact that there is not a 1:1 person to computer ratio in current computerised countries, where many people will have a desktop machine at home, a laptop machine for on the go, another desktop machine at work, and an e-mail mobile phone, all requiring their own IP address.

This could pose serious problems in the future as more and more nations expand their computer infrastructure (the vast majority of the world's population does not currently use the Internet, that is the so-called digital divide) and even now efforts are proceeding to find new ways of running the Internet. The new version of the Internet Protocol, IPv6, which expands the address space of the Internet, is one proposal for how to deal with some of the technical problems caused by the growth of the Internet.

Self-destructive subcultures

As a decentralized, largely uncensored worldwide network, the Internet promotes free speech. Since the early 1990s, it has been widely recognized that the Internet enables broader distribution of all ideas, including those considered distasteful by any portion of the population. The most widely condemned of these ideas are those that promote, condone, or justify the infliction of violence upon innocent, non-consenting people. Examples include racism, sexism, and fascism.

Around 2000, The Atlantic Monthly and other publications revealed a similar but distinct issue: The Internet also allows people who exhibit or wish to practice abnormal behavior to find one another easily, due to anonymous search engines and online forums or services. As sparse subpopulations, it was often unlikely or difficult to find willing partners or like-minded individuals prior to the Internet.

A small number of these subcultures promote self-destructive or mutually destructive behavior. Websites and mailing lists exist that explicitly promote anorexia, breatharianism, apotemnophilia, necrophilia, and suicide. While these activities are easily recognized as abnormal and self-destructive by most adults, many people fear that children or mentally ill persons visiting such sites would lack the maturity necessary to make that discrimination.

In rare cases, people have used the Internet to find willing partners for abnormal activities, but with disastrous or fatal results. In one case, a German named Armin Meiwes (the "German cannibal") made an online arrangement with Bernd Jürgen Armando Brandes to kill and eat him. Meiwes was later convicted of manslaughter.

"Internet" is obsolete

Please correct. --Dtcdthingy 15:11, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Done. HTH. Andy Mabbett 15:27, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

accommodated?

what does this mean? Can't find it anywhere...

Requested move

  • Talk:Internet – Internet ? internet – (NB I know technically this doesn't require the page to actually move, but this still seems the most appropriate forum to bring it up) Whatever the gramattical/practical arguments, "Internet" with a capital letter is already an archaic convention and has never been used by the vast majority of its users. Here's a short Wired article on the topic.
Support — Dtcdthingy 09:01, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Oppose. Unique instances are capitalised. A sun is a star; the Sun is teh star we orbit. A moon is a celestial body; the Moon orbits the Earth. A web is a network; the Web is where Wikipedia lives. An internet is a computer network; the Internet is what we're using. Since when were Wired magazine arbiters of the English language? How (and by whom) was this "vast majority" counted? Andy Mabbett 10:47, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. Internet is a proper noun. I remember when the Wired article came out and from what I remember, the decision was derided or ignored. As far as I can tell, the majority of other media and publishers use a capital Internet (for instance, see a Google news search). You're right that the majority of Internet users probably don't capitalize Internet, but I think that's because the majority of Internet users don't capitalize in general. — Knowledge Seeker দ 14:59, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Support. I've noticed that many quality newspapers and books are now losing the I in favour of i, too. And we can take out that piece of mis-guided pedantry at the start about all these other alleged small 'internets'. Don't confuse a network of computers with internetworking, which led to the internet. Small, private sets of interconnected networks or sub-nets are universally referred to as LANs, WANs or intranets in my experience; no-one ever says 'internets'. --Nigelj 19:17, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
Except certain leaders of global superpowers. —Michael Z. 2005-06-17 05:41 Z
  • Oppose. The Internet was created in the United States, and nearly all of the underlying technologies were developed in the United States. In American English grammar, Internet is a proper noun, which means it should be capitalized. The vast majority of American publications continue to refer to "the Internet" — see my previous research contribution to the earlier version of this same discussion above. ICANN, the Internet Society, and the Internet Engineering Task Force continue to refer to "the Internet" as well. American English has grammar and style rules that are much more strict than most other dialects of English, especially with regards to capitalization. In my opinion, the 290 million speakers of American English have the prerogative on how to describe the network their government invented! --Coolcaesar 21:53, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • This isn't a "US English vs. English (or any other) English" debate. Andy Mabbett 21:58, 16 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Actually, I think it is. When I did that LexisNexis search a while back (scroll up to see my research), I noticed that nearly all of the published sources for "the internet" were located outside of the United States. I think what is going on is that there is some "linguistic drift" going on in English-speaking countries outside of the United States, while the U.S., with its slightly more conservative attitude towards written English, continues to capitalize "the Internet" as it always has. --Coolcaesar 00:26, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Well that's that settled, then. Wikipedia isn't a US-centric publication. There's no need to stick to US usage, if the rest of the English-speaking world is evolving in a different way. It's just like any of the color/colour, gasoline/petrol and other US/rest-of-world spelling debates. What normally happens? --Nigelj 09:14, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • not possible. The wikimedia software does not support article names with an initial lower case letter, see Wikipedia:Naming_conventions. -- Rick Block (talk) 22:02, Jun 16, 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose, even though it's pointless as there are no plans to move w:en to case-sensitivity on the first character, as the Internet is a proper noun (as distinct from the concept of an internet). James F. (talk) 00:58, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose It's academic in terms of the page title, but we should use the correct orthography in the body of this article and others. Wired may be an important indicator of computer culture, but certainly not of the English language. Yes, inter-networking did lead to the Internet, but the misguided pedantry here is to call capitalizing a proper noun archaic. —Michael Z. 2005-06-17 05:29 Z
    • Tell that to the London Times, Guardian, Financial Times - archaic? Just because the US is the biggest consumer of it, do we all have to say 'gasoline'? There's no need to argue 'US is right', just let go. --Nigelj 09:20, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • How about using the compromise position that's been adopted in most Wikipedia articles for such terms? Lead the article with something like: "The Internet (American English), or internet (Commonwealth English), is ..." Of course, that still doesn't solve the problem of what to do with the rest of the article.
      • Also, WP may not be an U.S.-centric institution, but the Internet is. In the case of the Internet, the U.S. is not only the biggest consumer (though soon to be overtaken by China), but the country that created it and continues to do a large part of the work of advancing it. There was simply no equivalent to ARPA in the European Union during the 1960s — that is, there was no equivalent of J.C.R. Licklider to dispense millions of dollars to creative research scientists. Then, as you may know, European governments foolishly blew a large portion of their computer science research budgets during the 1980s on the ill-fated OSI project, while Japan wasted over a billion dollars on artificial intelligence research. That's why all of the high-level Internet institutions are based in the United States. ICANN is a California corporation based in Marina Del Rey. Both the Internet Society and the IETF are based in northern Virginia. And until recently, W3C's de facto main research center (the one where Tim Berners-Lee was actually living at) was the MIT Media Lab in Massachusetts. Until those institutions (particularly the Internet Architecture Board at ISOC) collectively vote to drop the capitalization, I feel that Wikipedia should not prop up what is really an unofficial and minority spelling at this point. Certainly, I concede it should be mentioned, but it should not be overemphasized. To point out another example, Wikipedia uses "aluminium" because that's the spelling adopted by the official chemistry institutions, even though it annoys us Americans.
      • Finally, I have to point out that although the London Times, the Guardian, and the FT are well-respected and reliable sources of information, they reflect only the minority language position of the UK on this issue. In contrast, all major American newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the San Jose Mercury News, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Globe, etc., all continue to respect the official spelling used by the Internet Society and IETF. The WP, the Merc, the L.A. Times, and the Globe, of course, are the newspapers that serve the majority of the members of the Internet institutions I just mentioned above.--Coolcaesar 18:03, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)
        • Sorry, no matter how big your bullet-points become, you'll never convince me that "the internet is a US-centric institution", but if it helps you sleep soundly to think so - well, hey-ho... --Nigelj 22:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • I simply cannot see where you are coming from with your perspective, because you have adduced very few factual assertions in support of your position, and in your most recent edit, you actually misstated the facts. The opening of the article does correspond with contemporary technical, practical and linguistic usage in the United States and in the broader Internet community, as I have repeatedly pointed out. In any case, as you have probably noticed, the majority of Wikipedia users responding to this point by now have expressed their opposition to the lowercase spelling. I am beginning to draw an inference that you may have some kind of anti-American bias or you are just playing troll games. --Coolcaesar 04:21, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • Fine, keep it how you like it - and try not be so rude and aggressive, please. --Nigelj 17:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
          • Also, as I noted above (scroll up to read the earlier discussion) when I ran some searches on LexisNexis in January, Internet is still clearly the majority usage at well over 70%. Note that Lexis does carry most Australian and British newspapers, so this is not an issue of overrepresentation of American and Canadian sources. --Coolcaesar 04:27, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
  • Oppose. It would be incorrect to fail to capitalize it. It's capitalized for the same reason as the Sun and the Moon. --Yath 17:14, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
    • Maybe, by some (in the US, it seems). But not to distinguish it from some other kind of non-existent, lower-case internets, as the artcle goes to some lengths to try to establish in both its opening paragraphs. That's the problem, not whether Wikipedia uses US or rest-of-world English spelling here, but that those Americans who are perhaps a little obsessed with this have ended up distorting the whole emphasis of the opening of the article in their attempt to make a point that does not correspond with any modern technical, practical or linguistic usage. --Nigelj 22:02, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • I agree that the article is a bit wordy and excessively apologetic. Any explanation for the capitalization should be moved down further in the article. On the other hand, it's easy to make a strong case that there are other internets out there, such as Internet2. As for people obsessing... you'll notice that I never brought up the subject of whose version of English is being promoted. And in fact I'm not convinced that Brits and Americans are all that divided on the matter. --Yath 04:04, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)
      • Quote from Internet2: "This is misleading since Internet2 is in fact a consortium and not a computer network." But I give up on this one - I'll leave it until either you guys are too old to care, or I am :-) --Nigelj 17:20, 20 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Template:Notmoved violet/riga (t) 19:15, 21 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Proposal for a compromise

Latest comment: 20 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

After thinking a lot about our huge debate last month, and today's revert war between Dtcdthingy and Yath, I think the best position is to have either a compromise lead paragraph or a compromise "Nomenclature" section. That is, we should continue to use "Internet" (the standard American English usage) throughout the article, but acknowledge in the lead paragraph and/or in a new Nomenclature section that Commonwealth English appears to be standardizing on "internet," and that several Americans have called for (unsuccessfully so far) for American English to follow.

The Nomenclature section, of course, would have to explain that "Internet" is the traditional usage among Americans and computer scientists in general, and is still the official usage of all key Internet institutions like the Internet Society, the IETF, the IAB, ICANN, and so on.

I think this will reasonably accommodate the views of the speakers of the various dialects of English. For example, we use a Nomenclature section in the Freeway article to explain the current freeway/expressway terminology mess, and that section seems to work quite well. What does everyone think? --Coolcaesar 4 July 2005 20:49 (UTC)

Internet is capitalised in British English. It's not an Atlantic-divide issue. Andy Mabbett 4 July 2005 20:51 (UTC)
"internet" is in common usage everywhere. Whether or not it's grammatically or formally correct is kind of irrelevant. Pretending the usage doesn't exist benefits no one. I'd support a nomenclature section, as long as it was NPOV --Dtcdthingy 4 July 2005 22:53 (UTC)
I don't know that it's a US/rest of English-speaking world issue either. I think it's more likely a 5-years ago/present day issue, a title-case/body-text issue and a geek/general public issue mixed with perhaps a Microsoft spell-checker issue. But if that is the prevailing view, we're going to have to do better than dragging some anachonistic reference to the British Commonwealth into it - see Commonwealth and Commonwealth English to see what a fur-ball that could become! It feels like there's about as much of a put-down for us implied in that suggestion, as their would be for the US if we insisted on 'mother-country/former colony'! I would prefer such staunch nationalism be left out of such a discussion, rather than slipped into the argument like some kind of 'condition of surrender'. --Nigelj 22:20, 10 July 2005 (UTC)Reply
Uh, I completely disagree. Here's a simple test. Go to Google News at news.google.com. Click on the Advanced News Search link next to the main search box. Type internet into the main search field. Then try typing different English-speaking countries and U.S. states into the field that limits searches by geography, and running searches. You will immediately notice that news sources in Australia, New Zealand, and the United Kingdom prefer "internet" much, much more than their counterparts in California, New York, and Massachusetts.
Google News searches all major newspapers, periodicals, and Slashdot, as well as many well-established blogs, so its results are quite representative of the usage of a term among both professional journalists and ordinary people. --Coolcaesar 02:52, 11 July 2005 (UTC)Reply

Being a successful netter

I've briefly compiled a user-friendly list of things a newcommer to the internet and computers in general may need to know about before they begin using the internet extensively. This was sort of a flow-of-thoughts kind of a thing, but I figured the basic list may be helpful in improving this article for "newbies" to the internet. You could possibly link to the article the things a new commer may need to know. But here is the list; do as you will with it:

read about netiquette
read about internet slang, acronyms, emoticons, memes, internet phenomenons, and cultural literacy in terms of the internet
learn to type, and the basics of using an OS and an internet explorer browser (basically, the basics of using a computer)
learn how to use a search engine (google)
learn how to email
learn how to use chatrooms, message boards, forums, instant messages
read about identity theft, viruses, privary issues, state laws, adwares, hacks, shock sites, false contests, banners and ads, pop-ups, pranksters, spyware, file-sharing, cencorship, downloading&uploading, the WWW, Usenet, blogs, viruses in email, etc., etc., and how to deal with these common internet problems (internet safety)


RE: I'm with you. I think there really should be a super user friendly wtf am I doing on the net wiki. Information streamlining and clarity for the lay man is exactly what needs to go into a how to use the internet guy. However, this doesn't really belong in the Wikipedia namespace. The format would have to be extremely biased, tailored for a standard set of recommended software: FireFox, Google, etc. A "WTF is the internet and how do I surf it" page shouldn't contrast software titles and have a user choose between specs and layouts. This is analogous to asking which editor I want to edit this wiki in. anyways... suggest... Wikibook: Windows and Firefox

I concur with the second editor's analysis. Wikipedia is not about "how to," it is more of an answer to the question "what is."
Latest comment: 19 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

It appears that every marginal web business (you know, the kind who's business plan depends on generating popups rather than displaying actual content) wants a link from this page, presumably for PageRank purposes.

I suggest that a site should only be linked from this article (in the general links section) if it meets at least one of these three criteria:

1. It is authoritative; e.g. it is a well-known and respected archive of RFC documents. The link to the ISOC site comes into this category.

OR

2. It illustrates, demonstrates, or further explains specific points of article content. The link to Hobbes Internet Timeline fits in here.

OR

3. It is otherwise genuinely useful to someone who would read an encyclopedia article called "Internet". The internet statistics links would fit in here (although perhaps we don't need so many of them?)

Lastly I'd suggest we should avoid duplication. If two sites cover essentially the same material, we should think very hard about whether both links should be kept or if the poorer one can be dropped. For instance, we currently have two links to two different "show my IP" sites. I think this (marginally) qualifies under (2) above (although perhaps it would be better on the IP article, since this article doesn't actually discuss IP addresses at all). But we sure don't need two of them.

I have already deleted some links which in my opinion are clearly poor quality:

Silly number of gaming links (gaming is a very minor topic in this article)

Out of date statistics

News sites with no original content (but lots of ads)

Borderline kookery

Thparkth

Good work. I agree with your suggested policy. I've pruned some more.

, * provides information about your computer relating to the internet. All of these are IP address viewers(some with other "about your computer"-type info - the article does not talk about IP addresses, and IP viewers are a dime a hundred - we could add a google link if it is really necessary.

(forgot to sign) JesseW, the juggling janitor 02:39, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

OK JesseW the junggling Janiter :) cheap shot I know but it made me feel better about you and your chainsaw approach to things.... OK let me guess. This article is about the 'internet'. Right? Yes! Right. So I add an external link, NO advertising, NO products, NO service, just information relating to the 'INTERNET' and you, duuuuuuuuuuuuh? delete it? Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuh? :) 0waldo 02:54, 13 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

(Copied from User_talk:JesseW) JesseW :) you bad boy you! OK so all I have to do is add a page of text to getmypc.info and that is all it will take to get an external link to park? 'talk' about the internet? 0waldo 03:23, 13 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

No. External links need to provide material that adds value to the article, and should not be added by their controller, if there is opposition. I find your persistence in trying to "do Wikipedia a favor" after that favor has been rather strenuously, but mostly politely, refused, to be quite odd. In any case, this should be discussed at Talk:Internet. JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:35, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

(End copied text) For the sake of any uninvolved viewers: For the considerable previous discussion, see Talk:IP address. Search for 0waldo. JesseW, the juggling janitor 03:35, 13 September 2005 (UTC)

OK JesseW my friend: I see how your mind works so I will narrow my scope and play your game. "Welcome to Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit" - gee, I wonder what that means? 24.214.176.87 04:16, 13 September 2005 (UTC)Reply


It means anybody; it doesn't mean any kind of edit is legitimate. If there weren't rules it would be anarchy, whereas wikipedia has been described as a benevolent dictatorship, and not as a social experiment, SqueakBox 05:06, September 13, 2005 (UTC)

question

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

can someone tell me how do you clear the list on search engines when you look for something?

Pece Kocovski 07:13, 13 September 2005 (UTC)Reply


For pretty much any dropdown box you can hold down the shift key and press delete to delete items from the list. That will remove individual items, for removing the whole list just look around in the options for clearing the cache and history and stuff. Charles (Kznf) 13:26, 13 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

Net access list stats

Latest comment: 19 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Hi

I see that India and China are included in the list where the majority of the population has internet access. Does majority mean more than 50 percent ? Looking at http://www.cs.columbia.edu/~hgs/internet/population.html (outdated stats from 2000) India and China don't figure in the above 30% list. Has the growth been that sharp in India and China from 2000 to 2005 ?

-Kghose 14:38, 30 September 2005 (UTC)Reply

no. For India & China, the pencentage of internet access in population is probably less then 25%. In China, for some regigions such as Taiwan, Hong Kong, Shanghai... it's probably above 70%, but in rural areas, almost zero. Xah Lee 03:34, 8 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Censorship countries

Latest comment: 19 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

USA has laws about nudity, any photos that may be thought of as “underage” sexuality, the censorship of encryption codes... See the internet censorship article... and of course, the censorship of publishing bomb making etc. Xah Lee 03:23, 8 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Well, in that case every country on the planet censors the 'net - why single out the US? Seems like you are just trying to make a point. The other two countries mentioned make a particular point of restricting access to the certain web pages and even cached Google content. Since when did the USA do that? --PhilipO 14:50, 12 October 2005 (UTC)Reply
well, then aren't you being selective? What makes you to be the judge of the type and severity of censorship? The word censorship does not mean Speaclized Censorship. For example, in much of Europe, you can have nudity just about everyday life on the web. (car ads, etc.) But in US, you can't. Even the full article of wikipedia on censorship listed USA. Please check that. Xah Lee 04:21, 13 October 2005 (UTC)Reply
Xah Lee, I am not certain what you mean. It is certainly possible to access nudity on the Web in the United States. — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:40, 13 October 2005 (UTC)Reply

Ugly white space

As soon as I load the page, the first thing I see is that big ugly white space next to the index. I'm not that great with wiki formatting, but is there any way we could put a picture of something there, maybe with a table? Just looking for aesthetics here.

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