Facebook out to buy solar drone maker to provide WiFi Internet access

Facebook is in talks to buy a solar-powered drone startup in what could lead to making wireless Internet available in regions without online access.

An unidentified source disclosed that the leading social network is considering buying Titan Aerospace for about $60 million.

Facebook declined to comment Tuesday on what it referred to in a statement to reporters as "rumours and speculation."

Titan Aerospace makes high-altitude, solar-powered drones that can fly for as long as five years without touching down.

Facebook-backed Internet.org, which has a stated mission of making online access available everywhere in the world, could put such drones to work as airborne wireless hotspots.

Titan Aerospace would start by making about 11,000 drones to fly above Africa and other parts of the world with minimal to no Internet access.

Titan Aerospace was founded in 2012 and has its headquarters in the state of New Mexico where it handles research and development.

The takeover, if confirmed, would come as Google works on a Project Loon to spread Internet access using balloons.

Titan Aerospace also provide a 'Space Denial Threat Solution' that pollutes the upper atmosphere with ball bearing projectiles travelling at high speed, intending to damage and disable GPS satellites.

Clearly this 'solution' is a weapon against all satellites and is a threat to humans and space travel.

It is not known whether Facebook would be interested in this 'solution' but any entity wanting to dominate space and the Earth could use it to threaten the peaceful and scientific use of Space.

Google Loon believes it's possible to create a ring of balloons that fly around the globe on the stratospheric winds and provide Internet access to the earth below.

'Mars Rat' Takes Internet by Storm - Mars Curiosity Rover

A Mars rock that bears a passing resemblance to a rodent is scuttling across the Internet with gusto, even inspiring some fans to set up a Twitter account in its name.

UFO buffs spotted the purported "Mars rat" in a panoramic photo snapped in September 2012 by NASA's Curiosity rover. Zooming in on a portion of the image reveals what appears to be a rodent crouching between two rocks, its nose to the ground.

"It's a cute rodent on Mars. Note its lighter-color upper and lower eyelids, its nose and cheek areas, its ear, its front leg and stomach," Scott Waring wrote at UFO Sightings Daily back in December. "Looks similar to a squirrel camouflaged in the stones and sand by its colors."

Memes from 'Infectious' Bloggers & Twitters

The way that certain images, videos or concepts can suddenly spread like wildfire across the web, using email and social websites to propagate, is one of online culture's most unique phenomena.

Now Spanish researchers claim to have found a way to accurately predict how quickly and widely new "memes", as they are called, will spread. The ability to forecast this "viral" behaviour would be of great interest to sociologists and marketeers, among others.

The secret, they say, is to recognise the fact that people vary in how "infectious" they are when it comes to sharing content online. While some people pass on things they receive right away, others do so after some delay, or not at all.

Medical models
The viral spread of information online has conventionally been modelled using epidemiological tools developed to analyse the spread of biological viruses.

One of the concepts borrowed is that of an infection's R₀, or basic reproductive number, which describes how many other people someone with the virus can be expected to infect. Knowing the R₀ number help predict the likelihood and extent of real life epidemics, such as H1N1 swine flu.

Rememebr that models that apply the idea to online information can only indicate whether an internet meme is likely to be successful or to die out quickly, says Esteban Moro at the Carlos III University of Madrid, Spain.

Moro, working with José Luis Iribarren at IBM in Madrid, used IBM's company email newsletter to show the importance of variations between people's infectiousness in propagating memes online.

Skype May Be Axed: eBay Faces Licence Court Case

The web phone call service Skype may be axed if its owner eBay loses a legal battle with its founders, the parent company has admitted.

More than 480 million people worldwide use Skype to make inexpensive calls over the web, using their broadband connections.

Internet firm eBay bought the popular service for more than £1bn in 2005. Skype enables users to make free calls from PC to PC through their internet connection.

Joltid, a company run by Skype's founders, still owns the technology behind it. It leases the peer-to-peer connection software to eBay.

A row over whether eBay broke its licence agreement could threaten a planned stock market flotation of the service or may force eBay to axe Skype altogether.

Documents submitted to regulators in the United States revealed the extent of the legal wrangles. Despite this action, eBay said it was "confident" about the outcome but if it lost, the "continued operation of Skype's business as currently conducted, would likely not be possible".

Background

eBay bought a controlling share of Skype but Joltid accused eBay of modifying a code used in the system, which it said went against the agreed terms.

As a result, eBay launched legal action at the High Court arguing that the software lease could not be terminated. Joltid then made a counter-claim threatening to pull out of the licence agreement.

The documents filed to the Securities and Exchange Commission reveal eBay is attempting to create new software in order to break its reliance on Joltid.

The Internet: How easily could it be shut down?

How easy is it to SHUTDOWN the Internet?

The experts and geeks alike will tell you that it is impossible! "Almost, certainly not." They would say in their clearly doubtful manner.

Why not?, you ask. Well, much of the infrastructure, the servers, cabling, satellites, and the internet service providers (ISPs) that run them, is in private hands. A single government might be able to command ISPs in their territory to shut down, but people could still receive data through satellite links controlled by other companies not answerable to that government. Hmm! OK so far.

To extend that shutdown across national borders is barely conceivable. "One very powerful government could have strong effects on their own country, but it would be very difficult to do this on a worldwide basis," says Milton Mueller, and he should know, he represents the international Internet Governance Project.

Who would 'want' to shut down the internet? Even the biggest cyber-attacks cause much less economic damage than closing the internet would. What's more, the experts say, malicious attempts to disable the internet are testimony to the difficulty of the task: the biggest attack in history came in February 2007, and you probably didn't even notice.

This attack attempted to overwhelm the 13 "root name servers" that carry the directory of all the internet addresses in use worldwide - data vital to the smooth running of the net. Two servers, both in the US, were affected, but with 11 others untouched, the attack failed.

ICANN has now begun to implement a further safeguard system, known as Anycast, by which each of the internet's 13 root name servers also acts as a duplicate, or mirror, for some of the others. "A root server in California can be mirrored in Taiwan or the Middle East," Mueller says. "By playing tricks with the addressing, we effectively have hundreds of these root servers."

If cyber-assaults get nowhere in shutting down the net, physical attacks on the infrastructure are unlikely to fare any better. You would have to physically plant bombs to destroy undersea cables, before launching missile attacks on the root name servers that are spread around the planet. "Then the internet will be the least of your worries," says Mueller. "We're talking about full-fledged international war."

There is another question that puzzles me. Why would the cyber-criminals and hackers want to shut down the web? It is the source of all their revenue, thrills and raison d'etre. I believe that the 'manipulation' and 'control' of the internet is a more probably target and that again is only partly possible with or without government funding, allegedly.