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  • June 6th 2012: IPv6 goes live

    by 
    Daniel Cooper
    Daniel Cooper
    01.18.2012

    When Vint Cerf and his friends at DARPA concocted a system that allowed for 4.3 billion IP addresses, it was never conceived that everyone's computer would be able to access the internet -- before the age when your telephone, fridge and air conditioning unit would too. The IPv4 system officially ran out of addresses last year, but fortunately the moment was prepared for: June 8th 2011 was "World IPv6 Day," where a host of sites including Google, Bing and Facebook quietly tried out the new system for 24 hours to make sure it wouldn't cause the internet to explode. June 6th this year will see the final activation of the new network provision that has a capacity of around 340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456 unique addresses, which we figure will keep us going until Black Friday, at least.

  • Late mid-week shocker: young adults get their 'news' from the 'net, not from television

    by 
    Laura June Dziuban
    Laura June Dziuban
    01.06.2011

    In what is undoubtedly a shocking and groundbreaking revelation, the Pew Research Center has conducted a recent study which has caused it to conclude that young adults now get their news predominantly from the internet, rather than from television (and even less from ham radio). According to the study, which the center seems to have been conducting yearly for a while now, 67 percent of adults under 30 said in 2010 that the 'net was their primary source of news, up from 34 percent in 2007. Curiously, respondents could choose up to two 'main' news sources, so 52 percent report that television is a main news source in 2010, down from 68 percent in 2007. While none of this probably comes as any surprise to any of you, our readers, it does tend to explain that strange and ever-growing tendency we've noticed in our friends of talking about things like Groupon, Facebook, and some meme some webpage made up to sell something as if they were talking about actual news.

  • Director of National Intelligence says major cyber attack could wreak havoc on the U.S. of A.

    by 
    Laura June Dziuban
    Laura June Dziuban
    02.03.2010

    Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair told the National Intelligence Committee that the United States is at risk of a "crippling" cyber-attack, and without the proper tools to defend against such an attack. Blair counseled the US to "deal with that reality," saying that catastrophic consequences would result if it did not deal with said reality. Specific problem areas he cited include the fact that more and more, foreign companies supply both the hardware and software for private businesses. Blair also noted the fact that the net has served as a breeding ground for "homegrown radicalism." You don't say? Hit the source link a fuller detail of yesterday's proceedings.