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According to Google’s official blog, the Internet giant has come to an arrangement with three of the biggest mobile operators in Indonesia, to bring Google’s balloon powered Internet to the next stage of development. The move will hopefully bring the web within reach of 100 million Indonesians who currently have either limited, or no access at all to the web.
Inaccessible Terrain
Indonesia is perhaps the perfect environment for Google to put Project Loon through its paces. The Archipelago that makes up the nation has over 17,000 mountain and jungle covered individual islands. Large areas of Indonesia are also difficult to access due to poor transportation and infrastructure links. This makes it difficult to erect mobile phone towers that can communicate with each other. It also makes running fiber optic cable a difficult and expensive proposition.
Enter Project Loon:
Google unveiled it’s super pressure internet balloons back in 2013 when it tested the concept by launching over 20 of small balloons in New Zealand. While the original speed was limited to 3G speed, new kit and technological advances have been made that Google expects to offer speeds of around 10 megabits a second.
“Mike Cassidy, vice-president of Project Loon, told the BBC:
“In the early days, the balloons would last five or seven or 10 days. Now we have had balloons that have lasted as long as 187 days [and it] used to take 14 people an hour or two to launch a balloon, now with an automated crane we can launch a balloon every 15 minutes with two or three people.”
Using a balloon based system to convey Internet traffic isn’t without its own set of problems. The balloons don’t stay up on the air forever. Strong winds can blow them out of position. Air temperature is however, one of the major obstacles the technology had to overcome.
Part of the key needs for Project Loon is that the balloons have to stay at a relative altitude at all times. This is to ensure a line of sight connection with other Loon Internet balloons. While this was issue to begin with, Google says it has now remedied the issue.
The biggest advantage Project Loon has over satellite based Internet system is the comparative cheapness compared to satellites.
All around the world
One of Project Loon’s key aims is to build a continuous ring of balloons around the Earth by 2016. Mike Cassidy estimates that for this to happen they will need 300 balloons.
The post Project Loon Sends Google Internet Balloons Around The World appeared first on TechBeat.
When the Lake Havasu Unified School District (Colorado) school board met recently to address the uproar over large-scale data collection of its students in grades K through 12, a statement from the board president reached heights of ignorance that aren’t often associated with privacy and data concerns. But that didn’t stop the board from voting nearly unanimously to implement a plan to use Synergy software to collect highly sensitive information on students in its district.
When asked why parents had voiced concerns over this software gathering and storing the full details of their children’s personal and academic lives, board president Jo Navaretta actually said (wait for it) that it reminded her of the paranoid and senseless panic in the 1960s over Social Security numbers.
Apparently Ms. Navaretta has never heard of the Office of Personnel Management data breach that resulted in the loss of 21.5 million people’s Social Security numbers being stolen, along with almost 5 million people’s fingerprints. Or the theft of a laptop that resulted in more than 200,000 soldiers having their Social Security numbers stolen. Maybe she’s heard of the case in which a stolen Veterans Administration laptop resulted in the loss of 26 million veterans’ Social Security numbers?
Yes… these parents are simply paranoid.
The board maintains that they might as well start gathering up all the personal information they can on underaged children because it’s part of a statewide mandate that will almost certainly include the adoption of the Synergy software. And after all, these are only kids… no one would want their identities, right?
Except, the FTC estimates of the more than one million new victims of identity theft in any given year, as many as 500,000 of them are believed to be minors. A more recent study showed the children were more likely to be victims of identity theft than their own parents, largely because their credit ratings are a blank slate and most people don’t bother to check up on children’s credit scores.
So does this mean that Synergy’s data collection and storage software is bad? Of course not, assuming effective protocols are in place and due diligence has been done. But clearly the blasé attitude expressed by the board, the air of “oh well, we have to implement it, what’s the big deal?” means they’re probably not responsible enough to oversee its implementation and to keep their network updated and secure in order to assure parents that their children’s identities are safe.
The post New Software Mandates Put Children’s Identities At Risk appeared first on TechBeat.
CorelCAD 2016 brings industry-standard CAD features, precise 2D drafting and 3D design tools, and advanced .DWG file support at an affordable price. The application allows you to open, edit and share files in .DWG format for easy collaboration. You can communicate your ideas with precision using customizable 2D drafting and 3D design tools and you ...
AVG Internet Security 2016 is an essential suite of security tools that detects and removes viruses on your PC. The application operates a robust framework of features that block infected links as you browse, checks files before you download them, and helps protect your personal data online and on your PC with enhanced privacy features. Key fea...
Calibre is a complete e-book library manager that lets you totally organize your collection. With Calibre you can convert your books to multiple formats, and then sync with all of your devices. KEY FEATURES INCLUDE: Library management. Calibre keeps things orderly by creating single entries for books, which contain multiple formats. Calibr...
Calibre is a complete e-book library manager that lets you totally organize your collection. With Calibre you can convert your books to multiple formats, and then sync with all of your devices. KEY FEATURES INCLUDE: Library management. Calibre keeps things orderly by creating single entries for books, which contain multiple formats. Cal...
