The government of Myanmar, in an attempt to... to...
Well, truthfully, I don't know what they're attempting to do, actually. Make themselves look like even bigger jerks? Trigger world outrage? Create sympathy for the protesters? Anyhow, in an attempt to (whatever) the government of Myanmar thinks it has "turned off the internet" in its borders, cutting millions of Myanmarese off from Viagra spam, porn, and 419 scams, and cutting the outside world off from pictures from inside Myanmar. Like the one that just appeared on CNN a minute ago. Because, hello? Myanmar Government? You do know that they have teh intarw3bz on wireless things now, too, right? What are you going to do now, throw a big mylar blanket over the country so we can't watch you beat people up on Google Earth?
What the Burmese government probably did was cut the only high-speed landline connection to the Internet. Countries with authoritarian governments frequently arrange their Internet access so that it feeds through a single large trunk line to a single server cluster that the government controls. They can then watch every packet of data that comes in or out over the trunk line. With that connection gone, the only Internet access inside the country now is by satellite transmitter or by dial-up to a server outside the country.
ReplyDeleteSo the Burmese government hasn't completely cut off its people from Internet access. It's impossible to do that. But it has severely restricted Internet access, to those who have satellite dishes or wireless phones ... and in a country as poor as Burma, there probably aren't very many of those.
Stupid move. Removes one of the greatest sources of distraction and time wasting from the teenagers :-)
ReplyDeleteSounds like they need to smuggle in a few AK's and have a real protest.
ReplyDeleteNope. It's an 'only ones' situation taken to it's logical conclusion.
ReplyDeleteGood thing only the Government has the guns so no one will get hurt, huh?
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wonder the same thing about our government here...the junior level police state which has already taken hold in a chilling way since 9/11.
ReplyDeleteThat reminds me.
ReplyDeleteI still don't have a bayonet for my 1944 No.5MK1 that came from there.
Tokarev