Tag: Internet

ISN Weekly Theme: E-Waste’s Toxic Trail

Recompute
The Recompute computer / Photo:sirtrentalot, flickr

Ever wanted to toss your desktop in the trash?

*Now you can!

Recompute, termed “the sustainable desktop computer” according to its website, has gone into production. The computer’s housing is made out of corrugated cardboard.

But the housing is just the tip of the garbage heap (forgive me, I just had to pop that in there). According to Recompute, the goal is achieving “sustainability in design.”

You can check out the entire development process here.

Recompute says that its computers can be easily taken apart without tools, making not only the cardboard case recyclable, but the components inside easier to access and recycle as well. The machines should be ready by next month…and there’s already a waiting list.

What wonderful news to kick off our weekly theme: E-waste.

In this week’s Special Report:

    • Daniel Ott says in our Analysis that e-waste is the world’s fastest growing waste stream, leading industrialized nations to examine measures to control it. But, the impact of e-waste on the developing world remains to be seen.

 

    • In our Podcast, Dr Mathias Schuelp states that even though e-waste can be a problem, it can also offer those in developing countries various opportunities.

 

    • We’re featuring a UK Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology brief on the environmental hazards of e-waste in Publications.

 

    • You can find the full-text of the Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and Their Disposal, a landmark document signed by 172 countries, in Primary Resources.

 

    • We also have Links to relevant websites, among them an e-waste guide by the Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs.

 

  • In our IR Directory we have more information on relevant organizations, including Empa, an ETH institute for material sciences and technology development.

And don’t forget to follow us on Twitter and join our join our Facebook fan page.

*Okay, okay. Please use proper recycling methods. I was just a tad bit excited.

US Internet Policy: Do as I Say, Not as I Do

Censored, courtesy of gojira75/flickr

Last week, an article in Arab Crunch stated that internet users from Syria, Sudan, N Korea, Iran and Cuba were not allowed to access some services and sites. The US-based open source repository SourceForge is an example.

It must be said though that these countries are also known for their own site-blocking capabilities.

As always on the World Wide Web, nothing is certain. But the evidences point out that it is the US government that is prohibiting access to these websites. These five countries are subject to US sanctions, and as such, Washington is restraining internet access to users in these ‘blacklisted’ countries. It is also worth saying that 4 out of 5 of these countries are the one “sponsoring terrorism” (North Korea having been removed in 2008 following bilateral negotiation on non-proliferation).

But US companies and the citizens of the countries mentioned are not the only ones affected by the sanctions.

Continue reading “US Internet Policy: Do as I Say, Not as I Do”

The Kremlin’s Love-Hate Relationship with the Internet

Vladimir Putin is watching you / Photo: Limbic, flickr

“On the internet 50 percent is porn material. Why should we refer to the internet?” This was Vladimir Putin’s answer to widespread claims on Russian internet websites that the October regional elections were rigged.

But while dismissing the internet as an irrelevant source of information, Putin does take the internet seriously when it comes to quieting his critics. Alexei Dymovsky, the police officer who spoke out publicly about widespread police corruption via YouTube, was duly arrested on Friday (and facing dubious charges).

At least on the surface, Putin’s younger successor Dmitry Medvedev seems to have a more positive approach to the internet as an information platform. Over a year ago, Medvedev proudly discovered the blog as a means of communication with the Russian public. Taking stock of his blogging experience on the occasion of his video blog‘s first anniversary, Medvedev draws the following, rather trite conclusion:

Continue reading “The Kremlin’s Love-Hate Relationship with the Internet”

US President Obama’s Travels Abroad

A couple of days ago, I came across a website, StepMap, that lets you create your own custom and interactive maps for free. StepMap is pretty easy to use, yet a powerful tool to illustrate your thoughts, so I played around with it a bit to trace US President Obama’s travels abroad (17 trips to 14 different countries so far) since taking office, based on Wikipedia’s list of presidential trips. If you click on the tiny flags (the Vatican flag is missing in their toolbox), exact dates and locations visited will appear. The numbers before the flags obviously indicate the sequence of Obama’s visits. You can also enhance your map with a lot of fancy stuff, such as PDFs, images etc. pp. which, for the first try, I didn’t make use of.

Be that as it may, from a geopolitical standpoint I found this admittedly far from perfect map quite interesting, not only for the places the POTUS visited, but even more so for the places he didn’t visit (e.g. South America).  Taking into consideration his Secretary of State’s trips to Japan, Indonesia, South Korea (her husband even travelled to North Korea), China, Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Territories, Belgium, Switzerland, Turkey and Mexico, the map would be more balanced, of course.

US President Obama's Travels Abroad (as of August 21st)
Landkarten erstellen mit StepMap

StepMap US President Obama's Travels Abroad (as of August 21st)

EPC: Waaaahhhhhhh

Photo: Addox/flickr
Photo: Addox/flickr

In one of the whiniest tirades I’ve read written by anyone over 3 feet tall, the European Publishers Council released the the so-called “Hamburg Declaration on Intellecutal Property Rights” in June.

The temper tantrum Declaration was signed by around 160 publishers and was meant to prompt the European Commission into action, calling on it to improve the “protection of intellectual property on the [i]nternet.”

Some gems from the document:

Numerous providers are using the work of authors, publishers and broadcasters without paying for it. Over the long term, this threatens the production of high-quality content and the existence of independent journalism.

I won’t even get into how this is totally not true. Oh by the way, signatories included folks from the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times Group, Ringier and Axel Springer….all bastions of independent journalism.

There should be no parts of the Internet where laws do not apply.

Oh really?

Legislators and governments at the national and international level should protect more effectively the intellectual creation of value by authors, publishers and broadcasters. Unauthorized use of intellectual property must remain prohibited whatever the means of distribution.

Yikes. I didn’t ask permission to cut and paste. Sorry y’all.

In any case, Google was one of the first to respond to the EPC’s call with a helpful hint: Exclude yourself from Google.