What's Government's Role in Making the Web Secure?

In cybercrisis, what's government's role in protecting the Internet? Congress is sorting it out.

There is no kill switch for the Internet, no secret on-off button in an Oval Office drawer. Yet when a Senate committee was exploring ways to secure computer networks, a provision to give the president the power to shut down Internet traffic to compromised Web sites in an emergency set off alarms. Corporate leaders and privacy advocates quickly objected, saying the government must not seize control of the Internet. Lawmakers dropped it, but the debate rages on. How much control should federal authorities have over the Web in a crisis? How much should be left to the private sector? It does own and operate at least 80 percent of the Internet and argues it can do a better job. Read More >

Report: FCC to Propose 'Net Neutrality' Rules

The head of the FCC plans to propose new rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from interfering with the free flow of information and certain applications over their networks, according to reports published Saturday.

The Washington Post and New York Times said the Federal Communications Commission chairman, Julius Genachowski, will announced the proposed rules in a speech Monday at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank.

The proposals would uphold a pledge Barack Obama made during the presidential campaign to support Internet neutrality and would bar companies like Verizon, Comcast or ATT&T, from slowing or blocking certain services or content flowing through their vast networks.

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Google Fast Flip is Geared to Generate More Ad Dollars

Google Fast Flip aims to accelerate the pace at which readers devour online news. Google is sharing ad revenue generated from Fast Flip clicks with participating publishing partners, including TechCrunch, the New York Times, Fast Company and Business Week. Fast Flip also works on Google Android and Apple iPhone smartphones.

Google Labs Sept. 14 unleashed Google Fast Flip, which the company hopes will speed up the way readers read online news while yielding more advertising dollars for the publishers that participate in the experiment.

As the name suggests, Fast Flip is designed to make the news Web browsing more like the way readers turn the pages of print newspapers and magazines: Fast. Web pages with publishers' articles are rendered on the Fast Flip page, where users can click on them to begin reading. Users may also scroll through scores of articles simply by clicking the mouse on up, down or side-to-side arrows.

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The $100 Million Question: Where's Broadband in the US?

The national stimulus package passed by Congress in February may have been too enthusiastic about spending money on one particular project: figuring out where broadband Internet access is available and how fast it is.

The $787 billion stimulus bill championed by the Obama administration set aside up to $350 million to create a national broadband map that could guide policies aimed at expanding high-speed Internet access. That $350 million tag struck some people in the telecommunications industry as excessive, compared with existing, smaller efforts. The map won't even be done in time to help decide where to spend much of the $7.2 billion in stimulus money earmarked for broadband programs.

Now it appears the final cost won't be as high as $350 million -- though just how much it will be is unclear.

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Internet Turns 40 years Old … Or Does It?

Though it might try to hide its graying hairs, it was 40 years ago today that computer scientists at the University of California, Los Angeles, established a network connection between two computers, creating the very first node of what we now know as the Internet.

At the time, Leonard Kleinrock and his colleagues were charged with developing the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (or ARPANET), a government-funded research project in global computer communications that eventually grew into the Internet.

On Sept. 2, 1969, Kleinrock and his team succeeded in getting two computers to exchange data over a network for the first time.

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