:: NEWS COCKTAIL aka BlahBlahBlog ::
"Everything is being compressed into tiny tablets. You take a little pill of news every day - 23 minutes - and that's supposed to be enough." -Walter Cronkite, RE TV news. The Web has changed that for many, however, and here is an extra dose for your daily news cocktail. This prescription tends to include surveillance and now war-related links, along with the occasional pop culture junk and whatever else seizes my attention as I scan online news sites.:: 8.05.2003 ::
:: RE Sealand ::
From CNET News.com:
Has 'haven' for questionable sites sunk?
By Declan McCullagh
LAS VEGAS--A widely publicized project to transform a platform in the English Channel into a "safe haven" for controversial Web businesses has failed due to political, technical and management problems, one of the company's founders said.
Ryan Lackey, former chief technology officer of HavenCo, said on Sunday afternoon that he left the project because his business partners had become nervous about hosting objectionable material and were leading the company toward financial ruin, with only about six customers remaining.
"The key lesson on this is if you're going to put a 'co-lo' facility somewhere, political and contract stability in that jurisdiction is very important," Lackey said, referring to co-location setups, or virtual site-hosting facilities. "Customers want stability. They don't want the network to be down for two months." The 24-year-old Lackey spoke to an audience of about 600 at the DefCon hacker convention here.
A HavenCo representative disputed Lackey's characterization of the company's problems and said he was no longer in a position to know details about its workings. "We have a moderate-sized installation which is growing monthly, very many more than the alleged six customers and their servers in operation, and in the last eight months or so have been able completely to re-engineer our network and its international connectivity arrangements," the representative said in e-mail Monday.
When HavenCo launched in June 2000 to widespread press acclaim--including a cover story in Wired magazine--its founders promised to transform a windswept gun tower anchored six miles off the stormy coast of England into a co-location facility that would be a virtual home for businesses that were too controversial to place their servers elsewhere. The name of the company was derived from the concept of a safe haven from governments around the world that have become increasingly interested in Internet regulation and taxation.
HavenCo is located on a rusting, basketball-court-size fortress erected by the British military during World War II to shoot down Nazi aircraft. Roy Bates, the quirky "crown prince" of "Sealand" landed on the abandoned platform in 1966 and claimed it as an independent nation with its own currency, stamps and flag. Although its legal status is unclear, Sealand lies within the territorial boundary of 10 miles claimed by England.
posted by me
:: 10:34:00 AM [+] ::
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