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Lahore High Court Orders to Block Facebook: Press Report [Updated]

PakBee — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 05:56:54 +0000

Pakistan Today has reported that Lahore High Court Justice Sh Azmat Saeed yesterday ordered ministry of information and technology to block Facebook in Pakistan for spreading religious hatred on internet world.

This news is not being covered by any other media outlet so far (which is strange and hence isn’t that convincing) plus we don’t have any official confirmation from ministry of information technology or from PTA as of now.

According to Pakistan Today, during hearing a petition requesting a permanent ban on Facebook for hosting competition featuring blasphemous caricatures, Lahore High Court ordered the government to make sure that Facebook is blocked in Pakistan and to submit a compliance report by October 6, 2011.

The judge, however, made it clear that no search engine including Google would be blocked, reported the paper.

It maybe recalled that Facebook got banned in Pakistan last year for hosting Draw Mohammad Day and for not removing blasphemous pages from it’s server.

This fresh petition in Lahore High Court is filed by Muhammad & Ahmad, a public interest litigation firm, through chairman Muhammad Azhar Siddique advocate praying for a permanent ban on access to Facebook for hosting a fresh blasphemous caricature drawing contest world over under a title “2nd Annual Draw Muhammad Day on May 20, 2011″.

Facebook is a social network and users from around the world are free to post anything, however, it content is moderated based on Facebook terms which state:

You will not post content that: is hateful, threatening, or pornographic; incites violence; or contains nudity or graphic or gratuitous violence.

Facebook became controversial and was condemned for not removing Draw Mohammad Day page from it’s server despite it was reported (as abuse) by hundreds of thousands of Muslim users. While on other hands Facebook tends to remove any anti-Jews or Anti-Israel page in only few minutes.

Update:

We just got confirmation from PTA officials that they have not received any such order, at least as of now, for Facebook blockade.

This is a developing story and may get updated when and if we get any further information on this

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Domain ‘.xxx’ approved for Web Porn Sites

PakBee — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 06:56:30 +0000

On Friday, the board of directors of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers, which oversees the Internet’s naming system, approved the creation of a red-light district online for pornographic websites. It follows a decade-long battle over such a name.

The uproar over the idea has brought together unlikely bedfellows.

Religious groups argue that giving adult websites their own corner of the Internet legitimizes the content.

Pornographers worry it will ghettoize their sites. Although it’s meant to be voluntary, they fear governments could try to mandate the domain’s use, so that pornographic content is more easily blocked.

Diane Duke, executive director of the adult entertainment industry’s Free Speech Coalition, said in a statement that ICANN has “disregarded overwhelming outpouring of opposition from the adult entertainment industry — the supposed sponsorship community” and dismissed the “interests of free speech on the Internet.”

Supporters have maintained that approving the domain is in keeping with the principle of openness that has fueled the Internet’s growth.

While the idea of “.xxx” has provoked a philosophical debate, for the U.S. company that submitted the application for the domain, the issue is little more than a matter of dollars and cents.

ICM Registry and its CEO, Stuart Lawley, who has led the fight for ICANN’s approval of “.xxx,” stand to profit handsomely from the rollout of “.xxx” websites — because he will be in charge of collecting fees for the use of the new domains.

Lawley plans to charge registrars $60 per year for the domain names. He estimates that he could sell as many as 500,000 by the time he rolls them out this summer.

“This was always going to be a very lucrative arrangement,” he said in an interview Friday.

Lawley’s prices have been a critical issue for opponents to his plan, since domain names typically sell for a fraction of what Lawley plans to charge. They often sell for $10 or less.

ICANN had repeatedly rejected Lawley’s application since 2000, under pressure from Christian groups and governments unhappy with the spread of online porn. Lawley has pitched the suffix as a way for parents to more easily block access to the content. He argues it will be easier for Web filtering software to block “.xxx” sites since they are clearly labeled as porn

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Pakistan Muslim League (N) Website Gets Hacked!

PakBee — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 17:15:41 +0000

It a recent development, Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) lost control of its official website when a hacker, apparently from Pakistan, defaced its official website.

Below is the screen shot provided, courtesy of Google Cache as PML N was quick enough to forward their URL to a backup page available here http://www.pmln.org/.

It looks that Hacker is fed-up of the current state of Pakistan. He tried to record his/her protest by hacking into PML-N’s website and left following comment:

Plz stop filling your own pockets, think about for your country, Our country

Agar yeh hi na raha to tum logun ki jaiban kahan sy bharain gi pir ?

Yeh hai To tum log bi ho and if our Pakistan is not on the map then you won’t be Aswell.

Take sometime and Think about it for a moment

PAKISTAN ZINDABAD
Greetingz : | My lovely Pakistani Nation |

Other political parties can mark this event as a warning for their official websites.

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Facebook Blamed for Divorce Cases

PakBee — Mon, 31 Jan 2011 16:17:04 +0000

LONDON: Facebook, which was first blamed for encouraging illicit encounters, is being increasingly cited as an evidence while seeking divorce.

Family lawyers have revealed that the problem has become so great that almost every divorce they have dealt with in the past year has involved the website.

One expert said she had dealt with 30 cases in the last nine months and Facebook had been implicated in them all.

Whilst another online law company said one in five of their divorce petitions in the past year contain references to Facebook.

Emma Patel, the head of family law at Hart Scales & Hodges Solicitors, said the site acted like a “virtual third party” in splits.

“Facebook is being blamed for an increasing number of marital breakdowns, and it is quite remarkable that all the petitions that I have seen here since May have cited Facebook one way or another,” she said.

“Its huge popularity as well as the lure of sites like Second Life, Illicit Encounters and Friends Reunited are tempting couples to cheat on each other.

“Suspicious spouses have used these to spy and find evidence of flirting and even affairs, which have then led to break-ups.”

She said that many of divorces came after partners found “flirty messages” on the Facebook wall of their partner – and also “inappropriate suggestive chats” which spouse’s can see.

The lawyer said that she urged all clients to “stay off” Facebook during divorce proceedings – as it could throw a spanner in the works of it going smoothly – especially if they post photos of new lovers.

She said: “They feel compelled to share their feelings online, and, in some cases, they not only express their stress, but also make inflammatory accusations against their partner.

“Divorce is a highly-charged and emotional time, but it is vital not to turn the situation into a public slagging match, played out for everyone to see online.

“The situation has deteriorated so badly that we advise feuding couples to avoid these sites until their divorces are settled.”

The family law specialist based in Dorking, Surrey, said that one divorcing couple’s rows on Facebook got so bad one party was charged with malicious communication after the police got involved.

James Wrigley, 34, of Hackney, east London, said: “My girlfriend left me after finding out I had been sending Facebook messages to a girl at work.

“She got my password and read the messages and that was the end of that – four years together down the drain, but at least we hadn’t got married.”

Other examples include Marianna Gini, 32, a housing support worker and mother-of-one who was married for six years before she found out through Facebook that her husband Robert, 34, was having an affair.

Sarah Picket, 36, a housewife from Oldham and mother-of-three was married to taxi driver Chris, also 36, for eight years, until her Facebook flirtations led to their split.

She did not have an affair but her husband found flirtatious messages and the relationship ended in acrimony and jealousy.

In 2009, a 28-year- old woman, from Newquay in Cornwall, ended her marriage after discovering her husband had been having a virtual affair in cyberspace with someone he had never met.

Amy Taylor split from David Pollard after discovering he was sleeping with an escort in the game Second Life, a virtual world where players reinvent themselves.

Lauren Booth, the sister-in-law of Tony Blair, ended up causing problems in her relationship when in a fit of pique she changed the status on her Facebook profile from married to single.

Miss Booth, who is half-sister of Cherie Blair, said it was a rash decision which she changed back but not before it upset her husband.

A spokesman for Facebook said it was “tosh” that Facebook could ruin a relationship.

“It is like blaming your mobile phone or your emails,” he said.

“Does being on Facebook force you to do something – absolutely not I would say.”

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Mark Zukerberg Fan Page Hacked

PakBee — Wed, 26 Jan 2011 22:11:14 +0000

Facebook’s CEO Mark Zukerberg came out with a strange message for his friends today. It reads as follows:

“Let the hacking begin: If facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn’t Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way? Why not transform Facebook into a ‘social business’ the way Nobel Price winner Muhammad Yunus described it? http://bit.ly/fs6rT3 What do you think?″

Do you think that this message actually came from Zukerberg. Well it may be if he was drunk. But what appears more obvious is that his fan page was actually hacked. Shorly after the post came it had over 1,800 likes and about 500 comments as techcrunch reports but soon the page was taken down by facebook and is still down or they might have shifted the link to a more secured code. This very much confirms it was a hack.

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Facebook Shutting Down on March 15th?

PakBee — Sun, 16 Jan 2011 15:09:09 +0000

This rumor is spreading all across the web that facebook would shut down its operations on March 15, 2011.

This news initiated from Twitter and later on got published on various blogs and news websites. The source mentioned everywhere is a press conference conducted by March Mark Zuckerberg outside his Palo Alto office.

Zuckerberg was quoted as “Facebook has gotten out of control, and the stress of managing this company has ruined my life. I need to put an end to all the madness.”

Zuckerberg went on to explain that starting March 15th, users will no longer be able to access their Facebook accounts.

Not only this, there are comments of Vice President of Technical Affairs at Facebook “Mr. Avrat Humarthi” as well saying “After March 15th the whole website shuts down, So if you ever want to see your pictures again, I recommend you take them off the internet. You won’t be able to get them back once Facebook goes out of business”.

The news quite obviously seems a rumor, since Mark himself is fond of posting such astounding things on his Facebook page, as last time we saw the Time Magazine update on his page.

“I don’t care about the money,” said Zuckerberg. “I just want my old life back.”

The way different sources have posted his “I Don’t Care attitude” about the billions of money he is earning from Facebook does not give a very realistic picture. The truth on the other hand is that it is not at all easy to wind up such immensely growing business. The website with over 500 million active users no doubt looks difficult to manage, but instead of shutting it down every sane would definitely think of selling it out to get max benefit possible.

Anyhow, The Facebook Corporation suggests that users remove all of their personal information from the website before March 15th. After that date, all photos, notes, links, and videos will be permanently erased.

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Facebook Data Center now equipped with 30,000 Servers

PakBee — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:37:11 +0000

How many servers does Facebook have? For some time now, the stock answer has been “more than 10,000 servers,” a number the company began using in April 2008. Facebook has continued to use that number, even as it has soared past 300 million users and dramatically expanded its data center space.

We now have an update: Facebook has 30,000 servers supporting its operations. That number comes from Jeff Rothschild, the vice president of technology at Facebook, who discussed the company’s infrastructure in a presentation last week at UC San Diego.

“Today we have somewhere in the neighborhood of 30,000 servers,” Rothschild said during the Q&A session following his talk, adding that the number ”will be different today than it was yesterday” because Facebook is adding capacity on a daily basis.

That places Facebook among the largest Internet companies that have publicly discussed their server counts, but still well behind hosting providers Rackspace, 1&1 Internet and OVH, which each house more than 50,000 servers in their data centers. See Who Has The Most Web Servers for more date on the largest infrastructures.

20,000 Servers In 18 Months
It also suggests that Facebook has added about 20,000 servers since early 2008, which explains why it borrowed $100 million in May 2008 to fund server purchases.

Rothschild also shared some huge numbers associated with Facebook’s photo storage operation, which now stores 80 billion images (20 billion images, each in four sizes). Rothschild said the real challenge isn’t storage, but delivery. ”We serve up 600,000 photos a second,” he said.

25 Terabytes of Log Data – Daily
The amount of log data amassed in Facebook’s operations is staggering. Rothschild said Facebook manages more than 25 terabytes of data per day in logging data, which he said was the equivalent of about 1,000 times the volume of mail delivered daily by the U.S. Postal Service.

Rothschild also discussed the effectiveness of the company’s engineering operations. Facebook currently has about 230 engineers on staff, who manage data for more than 300 million users. Rothschild said that having one engineer for more than 1 million active users has been a consistent historic ratio at Facebook. ”We believe engineers at Facebook have a dramatic impact.”

The 1-hour, 10-minute presentation discusses the company’s commitment to open source technologies and the importance of memcached and Hadoop in their operations.

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Facebook paid $8.5 million for fb.com

PakBee — Fri, 14 Jan 2011 19:13:43 +0000

Just a few tidbits of Facebook news to report here. Reuters is reporting that the social networking site paid a hefty $8.5 million to acquire the domain fb.com from the American Farm Bureau Federation. Last year, Facebook launched its revamped messaging service, offering its users facebook.com email address in the process. The alternate domain fb.com was purchased by the company for internal employee email addressing. The Farm Bureau now calls fb.org as its home.

In conjunction with this new messaging service, Facebook also announced a new profile layout designed to easily present and share more information with friends. For the past month, users have been able to voluntarily opt-in to the new design by visiting www.facebook.com/about/profile. Now, it seems as though the update will be pushed out to all users over the next several days, like it or not.

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Google Bangladesh Hacked

PakBee — Sat, 08 Jan 2011 18:53:26 +0000

Dhaka, Hackers have broken into the Bangladesh site of leading search engine Google, internet service experts said Saturday evening.

The site is inaccessible from some ISPs, as their DNS settings have been hacked.

Visitors to the site are seeing a defaced landing page rather than the usual search site.

Users can at times view the google.com.bd homepage due to the cache on their browser, but the page entertains no search.

Attempts to access the site by users are rebounded with message reading, “Google Bangladesh OwN3D by TiGER-M@TE.”

“The site has definitely been hacked,” said Pradip Dey, chief technical officer of ADN, a leading ISP.

“A couple of other ISPs have also got similar complaints from their clients,” he said.

Earlier, privately managed International Internet Gateway operator, Mango Teleservices, said they can enter google.com.bd.

“I can access it from here. But, many are calling us about this problem.”

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Oldest Facebook user is 103 Years Old

PakBee — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 14:10:03 +0000

LONDON: A woman from Tenby is thought to be the oldest member of social networking site, Facebook.

A BBC News report highlighted Lillian Lowe, who is 103-years-old, and now thought to be the eldest member of the site after Ivy Bean from Bradford, 104 (who was also a big tweeter) passed away this summer.

Lillian used to run a hotel, but unsurprisingly has retired now, so has plenty of pottering time. Unlike most pensioners, however, her pottering is done on an iPad (which she finds easier to cope with than a laptop due to the touch interface).

The technologically aware great-grandmother has just a small collection of friends, and uses Facebook mainly to keep in touch with family. Although since she’s been handed the crown of Facebook’s oldest user, she has been inundated with congratulations, and something in the order of a thousand friend requests.

She told the Beeb: “We’ve had messages from all over the world. I’d like to say thank you very much.”

Local paper the Tenby Observer dubbed Lillian “Superhighway Gran.”

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