Egypt unrest/revolution

[Iceman]

Anyone else notice how this story is slowly working it's way off (most) of the front pages?

Most of the US papers today are concerned with the Superbowl, but even before that, it's getting less and less attention.

[st33med]

Originally Posted by Iceman

Anyone else notice how this story is slowly working it's way off (most) of the front pages?

Most of the US papers today are concerned with the Superbowl, but even before that, it's getting less and less attention.

Because that is the way newspapers roll. If it's two weeks old and nothing has changed, it's old news. They stop reporting because people would become bored with the same damn story.

News needs to be new for newspaper. New, new, new!

[Plays With Life]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Being able to communicate over a few hundred meters (or less) isn't very useful.

When the internet in the entire country is out, a link of any distance is useful if the node on the other end of the link has an active internet connection.

[Brutha]

When the internet in the entire country is out, a link of any distance is useful if the node on the other end of the link has an active internet connection.

Plain old boots also allow you to go to your neighbor. You don't need fancy high tech if your neighbor already has an internet connection.

[Plays With Life]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Plain old boots also allow you to go to your neighbor. You don't need fancy high tech if your neighbor already has an internet connection.

I feel like I'm in a high school debate tournament, here.

If the internet connection is across an international border, it may not be so easy to get to. If the government has locked down communication, they may also have imposed stricter-than-usual regulations on who they allow to leave the country. Even under normal circumstances, crossing an international border is not usually as easy as just walking down the street. People who don't have travel papers would likely not be permitted to cross the border at all.

[Brutha]

There quite a bit of distance between Cairo and the next border.

Some people who live far away from the actions might tell their relatives that they are still healthy. There however not much political payoff.

The idea that the target audience is outside of the country is also a bit strange. Egyptions don't make a revolution to allow Americans to follow their revolution on twitter.

@PWL - a lot of the large news organisations have satellite telephones and internet connections I think. I did look a year ago into that and having a satellite internet connection was not only quite slow but phenomenally expensive for an individual - something like $1500 per MONTH

There are cheaper tariffs. Tooway Satellite Internet - Fast Satellite Broadband Internet Services from Bentley Walker for example provides 6GB traffic per month for £48.43 (you need to pay an additional 200 dollar for the hardware).

6GB is okay if you don't want to transfer too much video. It however not enough to allow a lot of neighbors to use your connection as well.

[Plays With Life]

Originally Posted by Brutha

There quite a bit of distance between Cairo and the next border.

Some people who live far away from the actions might tell their relatives that they are still healthy. There however not much political payoff.

The idea that the target audience is outside of the country is also a bit strange. Egyptions don't make a revolution to allow Americans to follow their revolution on twitter.

Cairo wouldn't work as a location for a cross-border link.

I don't know what you mean by political payoff. If you mean - it wouldn't serve Egyptian national politics, I agree.

The idea that people want to communicate with the world outside of Egypt is strange? Really? If that were true, nobody would have minded that the internet was cut off. It would not have been a significant event.

Did you look at Google's Twitter feed? Every time I looked at it, there were several new messages every minute. The fact that people took advantage of an international communications capability when it was offered proves that people wanted an international communications capability.

I don't know why you're thinking of Americans, here. There's more in the world outside of Egypt than the U.S.

[Brutha]

The idea that people want to communicate with the world outside of Egypt is strange? Really? If that were true, nobody would have minded that the internet was cut off.

Maybe, just maybe, the Egyptians want to discuss and coordinate their revolution with each other?

[sebtanic]

I think we should give the Egyptian people all the support we can. Our governments seem to be supporting the dictatorship there, so it would be only fair if the "free" (this is relative but we are definitely freer than the Egyptians right now) peoples of the world assist their sisters and brothers in Egypt who are risking their lives, health, and freedom in trying to overthrow their decade-long oppressors.

[CoolBee]

It's been absolutely fascinating watching the external politicians squirm and find their weasel-worded way around things!

Most of it seems to be along the lines of 'well while we pay lip service to the notion of democracy, we don't think your lot are capable of democracy and anyway, you might not vote for the party we want you to vote for'.

[garentee]

CoolBee whats your take on this? Or anyone for that matter
News Desk: Who Is Omar Suleiman? : The New Yorker

[CoolBee]

I'm keeping my views to myself and not sharing over the electrons for reasons you may infer, but I am certainly not stating!
I'm a foreigner and have only lived here just over 3.5 years.
I have friends and neighbours on both sides (or on all nodes/edges of the polygon - it's far from straight one side or the other!).
One thing I have learned in the past week or so is that reading or listening to translations does not give you the messages native speakers are receiving.

[Plays With Life]

Originally Posted by Brutha

Maybe, just maybe, the Egyptians want to discuss and coordinate their revolution with each other?

It's possible that the average person on the street wanted their internet connection cut off, but I don't think that idea matches the reality.

[Brutha]

It's possible that the average person on the street wanted their internet connection cut off, but I don't think that idea matches the reality.

The average person on the street doesn't live near a border where a friendly person with an internet connection lives directly at the other side.

In 2006 (I have no later data) less than five percent of Egyptians had a computer. Who do you mean when you speak of an "average person"?

I think we should give the Egyptian people all the support we can.

What do you mean with assisting?

[Plays With Life]

Originally Posted by Brutha

The average person on the street doesn't live near a border where a friendly person with an internet connection lives directly at the other side.

In 2006 (I have no later data) less than five percent of Egyptians had a computer. Who do you mean when you speak of an "average person"?

By "average person" I meant "average internet user". I'll rephrase it:

It's possible that the average internet user in Egypt wanted their internet connection cut off, but I don't think that idea matches the reality.

I see here that in 2008 there were 13.5 million internet users in Egypt: World Bank, World Development Indicators - Google public data

Once a node with access to the internet exists in a town within Egypt, the community network can be extended to cover the rest of the town. Inland, I would be looking at satellite internet connections as a way to achieve an internet connection which would persist through a situation like this.

Originally Posted by Brutha

Given that 40% of Egyptians live on 2$ or less a day I'm not even sure whether the average Egyptian has a computer.

This supports the idea of a community network. If someone in the community has an internet connection which they allow the community to use, those people would have internet access available to them.

[garentee]

Originally Posted by CoolBee

I'm keeping my views to myself and not sharing over the electrons for reasons you may infer, but I am certainly not stating!
I'm a foreigner and have only lived here just over 3.5 years.
I have friends and neighbours on both sides (or on all nodes/edges of the polygon - it's far from straight one side or the other!).
One thing I have learned in the past week or so is that reading or listening to translations does not give you the messages native speakers are receiving.

Fair enough..

[Brutha]

I see here that in 2008 there were 13.5 million internet users in Egypt: World Bank, World Development Indicators - Google public data

A lot of those will access the internet via mobile phones.

Even CoolBee who has a real computer seems to use the internet via an USB device instead of using a WLan router.

It's not clear whether some town has to hardware to create it's own community network if everyone in the town would work together.

Inland, I would be looking at satellite internet connections as a way to achieve an internet connection which would persist through a situation like this.

If you pay 10$ per gigabyte of of traffic for your satellite connection than you probably don't want to everyone in your town free access to your connection.
If you would your traffic amount would soon be used up.

With technology it's important to understand the constraints.

[Plays With Life]

I agree that it would be a technical challenge.

Again, I wouldn't be trying to replace the country's (or a town's) internet service with a community network. It would provide limited access for people who wanted to get messages in and out which they consider important. Nobody would be sitting around watching YouTube videos on the limited connection. It would be useful for low-bandwidth communications like email and access to Twitter.

This article:
Protesters Left in the Dark as Egypt Blocks Internet, Cell Phones
Reports that the people involved in the protests were using the internet as a central part of coordinating their activities:

.. social media has played a vital role in the uprising. Pro-democracy campaigners have used sites such as Twitter and Facebook to organize rallies and share cell phone video footage of their often-violent clashes with police.

But that online activism all stopped at 12:30 a.m. today, when President Hosni Mubarak's regime abruptly switched off the country's main Internet and cell phone networks.

I think this disproves the idea that Egyptians want to discuss and coordinate their revolution without access to the global internet. In fact, it was the protesters' use of the global internet which prompted the government to cut off internet access. Cutting off internet access was an attempt to interfere with the actions of the protesters rather than an attempt to support the revolution.

This article:
Egypt Internet Ban: 5 Ways the Protesters Are Beating the Blackout
Lists 4 ways Egyptians used to access the global internet during the period when it was cut off:

Despite President Hosni Mubarak's effort to stifle communication among protesters .. the Egyptian people are identifying creative methods to circumvent the Internet ban.

This posting:
20 Ways to Circumvent the Egyptians Governments In - Ghaha
Is a list of 20 ways to access the internet during the internet blackout:

20 Ways to Circumvent the Egyptians Governments Internet Block

I think the fact that people searched for, distributed information about and took advantage of ways to access the internet during the blackout proves that people wanted to access the internet during the blackout.

[CoolBee]

I use a USB device to get my net because I had a major dust up with the Telecoms and ISP companies, each of which blamed the other for the fact that I had no landline AND no ADSL for 3 months at all. They went back and forth for ages, how could I a mere punter sort it out? Yet I was paying for both!!! I decided the landline was more important and asked the telco to rip the ISP gadget out of the connection.

In many parts of Egypt, people have no landline access in any case often because landline infrastructure does not exist hence USB dongles are the only way of connecting to the net and internet cafes are very popular too.

Anyway, whatever - time for all technos, geeks and nerds to get their heads together and come up with ways of ensuring the internet is way too widely distributed in some way to make sure this can't happen again - and as I posted higher up the thread, it could happen in any country!

It took less than 4 hours to wipe a country of 80 million off the face of the netosphere!

Also, as others elsewhere have pointed out, this could happen with natural disasters as much as with government action. When a single cable was cut by a trawler in the Mediterranean about 2 or 3 years ago, same impact was felt by large parts of Africa, Middle East and Asia with no net for a few days.

[CoolBee]

If you can watch tv now please do.
History is being made
The atmosphere is phenomental.

[Plays With Life]

I'm able to watch this streaming live on YouTube here:

YouTube - AlJazeeraEnglish's Channel

[CoolBee]

Great I was just going to post a link to Al Jazeera English for you guys in the Land of the Free

Al Jazeera English: Live Stream - Watch Now - Al Jazeera English

Mubarak is expected to give a speech live on State TV at 10pm Egypt time (approx 15 mins from the time of this post for those living elsewhere!!!!0

It will probably be simultaneously translated on Al Jazeera.

The atmosphere is palpable. The streets are silent, everyone waiting.

Foreigners have done the right thing by staying away - it is by Egyptians with zero help from anyone else.

Global prayers at midnight Egypt Time (10pm UK time) no matter what your faith - for the peace of Egypt.

[sebtanic]

Originally Posted by Brutha

What do you mean with assisting?

I mean we should assist them by any peaceful (and legal) means we can think of. For example, voicing our support to the Egyptian people and letting our governments know that we are not happy with them backing the dictatorship there.

If the Western world stands up to its values and helps the Egyptians to construct a decent democracy, Egypt will be grateful to us for that very reason. Let us not succumb to the fears being voiced in many media right now that an Islamistic government could come into power. I am sure that the Egyptian people want nothing less than another oppressive regime. They are yearning for freedom and human rights.

[Plays With Life]

Mubarak: "Hey guys. Just wanted to tell you that I'm not giving you what you want. *pat on head*"

[CoolBee]

o o o

[Criseyde]

I can only imagine what the next 24 hours will hold. The people of Egypt have all my best.

[supertom]

At critical point right now. Mubarak behaving like a dictator in denial, wouldnt be surprised if he started playing the lyre when this goes down.

[CoolBee]

Yeah yeah yeah

Dancin' in the streets: He's gone!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Callin' out around the world
Are you ready for a brand new beat?
Summer's here and the time is right
For dancin' in the streets
They're dancin' in Chicago
Down in New Orleans
Up in New York City

All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swingin', swayin' and records playin'
And dancin' in the streets

Oh, it doesn't matter what you wear
Just as long as you are there
So come on, every guy grab a girl
Everywhere around the world
There'll be dancin'
They're dancin' in the street

This is an invitation
Across the nation
A chance for the folks to meet
There'll be laughin' and singin' and music swingin'
And dancin' in the streets

Philadelphia, P.A. (Philadelphia, P.A.)
Baltimore and DC now (Baltimore and DC now)
Yeah don't forget the Motor City (can't forget the Motor City)

All we need is music, sweet music
There'll be music everywhere
There'll be swingin', swayin' and records playin'
And dancin' in the street, yeah

Oh, it doesn't matter what you wear
Just as long as you are there
So come on, every guy grasp a girl
Everywhere around the world
There'll be dancin'
They're dancin' in the streets

YouTube - David Bowie & Mick Jagger - Dancing In The Street

Phenomenal atmosphere - guns firing in the air, horns tooting everyone SO happy!

This has been one of the least bloody and most peaceful revolutions ever.

Long live the Egyptians I am so proud of the people. And they did it without the foreigners.

[Bliss Sage]

Yayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Happy happy Egyptians!!!
Finally!!!

Hosni Mubarak resigns as president - Middle East - Al Jazeera English

YouTube - Scorpions - Wind Of Change

[sorter]

YouTube - Isley Brothers - Fight the Power! Official (HQ) (Lyrics)
or of course
YouTube - Public Enemy - Fight The Power
.