Mozilla Releases New Open Source 'Internet Health Report' (venturebeat.com) 69
Slashdot reader Krystalo shared this VentureBeat article:
Fresh off its brand redesign, Mozilla has released The Internet Health Report, an open-source initiative to document the state of the internet, combining research and reporting from multiple sources... Mozilla's goal is to start a constructive discussion about the health of the internet by exploring what is currently healthy and unhealthy, as well as what lies ahead...
One notable statistic is the number of people who can't get online in the first place. The report shows that 57.8% of the world's population cannot afford broadband internet, and 39.5% cannot afford an internet connection on their mobile device. Other findings include the fact that there were 51 intentional internet shutdowns across 18 countries in the first 10 months of 2016; almost one-third of the world's population has no data protection rights; and 52% of all websites are in English, even though only 25% of the global population understands the language.
They're now gathering feedback and choosing which metrics to revisit every year, but five key topics include "decentralization: who controls the internet" and "open innovation: how open is it?" as well as security, web literacy, and digital inclusion. But Mozilla says their ultimate goal is very simple: to identify what's helping -- and what's hurting -- the internet.
One notable statistic is the number of people who can't get online in the first place. The report shows that 57.8% of the world's population cannot afford broadband internet, and 39.5% cannot afford an internet connection on their mobile device. Other findings include the fact that there were 51 intentional internet shutdowns across 18 countries in the first 10 months of 2016; almost one-third of the world's population has no data protection rights; and 52% of all websites are in English, even though only 25% of the global population understands the language.
They're now gathering feedback and choosing which metrics to revisit every year, but five key topics include "decentralization: who controls the internet" and "open innovation: how open is it?" as well as security, web literacy, and digital inclusion. But Mozilla says their ultimate goal is very simple: to identify what's helping -- and what's hurting -- the internet.
People should learn english (Score:1)
Its pointless to translate all the world's content into countless languages. Instead, we should have one lingua franca that everyone understands. Chinese has maybe more total speakers than english, but english is already now used as lingua franca in many areas around the world. Also, then we maybe can understand each other better and have a more peaceful world.
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They'll fire you for that.
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And conveniently, you don't have to change anything about what you're doing at all, or learn anything, or even try. Just put the work on billions of other people. Must be a coincidence.
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I learned English as a second language, and I agree that everyone should learn English. It's not only the native speakers who think it's a useful skill.
Re:People should learn english (Score:5, Interesting)
And conveniently, you don't have to change anything about what you're doing at all, or learn anything, or even try. Just put the work on billions of other people. Must be a coincidence.
It's very convenient for us English speakers, but it also happens to be true. English is fast becoming the world's "common" tongue, especially in areas of technology. If one knows their native language plus English, they'll have the vast majority of the world's knowledge at their fingertips. Some languages are not well suited for general-purpose computing, like the 50K+ logosyllabic Chinese characters. English, with its simple alphabet, most certainly is.
Learning English, especially if you want to code, work in a technical field, or communicate with others online, is very important. Japan has known this for decades, as their schools teach mandatory English from early on. Slightly over half of Europeans speak English as well. It makes no sense to move against the natural flow and promote a more neutral or even an invented language, because then you just inconvenience everyone equally. Perhaps more fair, but infinitely less practical. Besides which, I'd argue English-only speakers are the poorer for not knowing a second or third language.
That being said, I'm certainly not opposed to native-language resources being made available to people, of course. If the tools are made available, I think that will tend to happen organically over time as demand grows.
Re:People should learn english (Score:5, Interesting)
If one knows their native language plus English, they'll have the vast majority of the world's knowledge at their fingertips.
And tools. For every mainstream app there's ten obscure apps that haven't been translated to your language. And other people interested in the same things you are. The Internet has made a vast difference here, dubs / subtitles / translations worked pretty well for broadcast and print media and international calls was rare. And I don't mean just chit-chats, go on eBay and the whole world is your marketplace as long as you pay shipping. There are so many other benefits to language convergence that you won't get through more translations.
There's really no credible competitor to English because there's no other big pairings. If you know two major languages it's likely Chinese/English, Spanish/English, French/English, Portuguese/English, Japanese/English, Arabic/English, Russian/English, German/English, Hindi/English etc. you just don't find many Chinese/Spanish or Hindi/Portuguese speakers. If you look at the EU [europa.eu] it's quite clear that 94% now learn English and fewer people learn French and German, I don't have the numbers for Spanish or Portuguese but I'm guessing the trend is the same.
Sure it's always possible that English is locally going a little backwards like that Spanish is creeping up into the US but for the world as a whole there's no debate. Particularly since China as the only potential challenger has put huge effort into English proficiency, giving everybody else much less reason to learn Chinese instead. I know linguists hate it but I think that's misunderstood, if all you needed to know was your native language and English most can be bi-lingual. If you should learn your Amazon tribe's language, Portuguese, Spanish and English then it's for the few.
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How about a universal programming language based upon English, maths and physics uses. A properly designed from scratch programming language with no psychopathically insanely greedy encumbrances. English is just the text in a container, the underlying programming language is more important and none of the current ones are good enough.
Access by people and countries is also tied to the craziness of religions, authoritarian states controlling and limiting access. Then there is extreme corporate invasion of p
Re:People should learn english (Score:4, Funny)
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Get the goddamn multiprocess support working.
Firefox 50 supports multiprocess for users with no extensions or select extensions, and Firefox 51 (currently in beta and in use on my PC) will add support for multiprocess with more extensions. To see if you're already using multiprocess, go to about:support and search the page for "Multiprocess". If it shows up as disabled, go to about:config and set browser.tabs.remote.autostart to true. If it shows up as blocked by add-ons, install Firefox Beta. If you were asking why it's not already enabled for more
Only for a moment.. (Score:2)
And then I got sleepy.
Mozilla thinks it's the judge? Snore.
Woah, woah, woah!! (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, are you trying to kill Mozilla's efforts to refresh their brand experience? You're aware they have a new logo now [slashdot.org], right? What's with the logo-shaming? I thought Slashdot was better than this. Disappointed.
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ping tunnel I assume?
Is home Internet a necessity? (Score:4, Insightful)
From the summary: "The report shows that 57.8% of the world's population cannot afford broadband internet"
In the 2010s, Internet access has become a necessity to find and keep a job. But how is Internet access at home a necessity? I've found a bunch of people on Slashdot and elsewhere who claim that home Internet is a luxury, as opposed to (say) Internet access at the local public library or in a restaurant.
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From the summary:
You wrote:
For one thing, 39.5% do not. In my personal case, adding a data plan would increase my T-Mobile bill from $3 per month to $50 per month. Both home Internet and cellular Internet are luxuries, of which I can afford one as of January 2017, and my usage pattern (60 GB per month) currently favors home Internet over cellular Internet.
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I use 50 GB per month on a 2 GB data plan
I don't see your 2 GB/mo plan. I see a 3 GB/mo plan for $40 per month (source [t-mobile.com]).
because data caps are a total joke
The loophole described in the article you cite uses an HTTP proxy in a subpath of /speedtest. First, you need to pay for a VPS and bandwidth to run this proxy. Second, once T-Mobile plugs this loophole, I don't see how to use 50 GB per month because after the monthly data usage allowance expires, throughput decreases to 0.128 Mbps, and 0.128 Mbps used continuously for a month is only 41.4 GB. That's not even enough to download a
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Mozilla's actual inclusion report [internethealthreport.org] is confusing. First it says "58% of people in the world can't afford an Internet connection." Then it contrasts the same number "57.8% of the world’s population cannot afford broadband Internet service" with "39.5% of the world’s population cannot afford Internet on their phone or mobile device". My best guess, based on the wording of the Affordability Report [a4ai.org] that Mozilla's inclusion report cites, is that "broadband" means "either wired service at home or cellul
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No body is going to drive to their local library to pay bills for too long.
These purist capitalists would call owning an automobile also a luxury.
Maybe for a few years in college or pre-family style of living, but once life gets super real- you'll need this 'luxury'.
These purist capitalists would recommend that people remain in the "pre-family style of living" by abstaining from sex. There's a reason the "taxed enough already" crowd and the religiously motivated social conservative crowd have found an alliance in legislatures.
Mozilla's slashfic-esque relations with Google (Score:1, Troll)
Basically, the fact that Firefox basically chased away all their programming talent, and now have some cockeyed scheme to basically just wrap Chrome as "their" browser is VASTLY unhealthy.
On the flip side, it basically renders them utterly incapable of actually having a worthwhile opinion on the health of Open Source. Because they're essentially a marketing company now (and a shitty one at that). Basically Mozilla has become the symbol for pure lack of any discernible shred of excellence.
Like Warner Bros.
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So you're telling me that they're not in the process of reworking their plugin framework to be more like Chrome's limited plugin framework?
That they're not taking development and visual cues from Chrome?
Name "Internet Health Report" Already in Use (Score:2)
There already is a Web page called "Internet Health Report" at http://internetpulse.keynote.c... [keynote.com]. It has been reporting the status of the U.S. backbone providers since possibly 1993 (23+ years). At least, that was when the domain keynote.com was first registered.
It reports latency in msec, percent availability, and percent of packets lost. The page is copyrighted. The terms of service indicate there might be a trademark on the name "Internet Health Report".
Goals (Score:3)
New brand design, Internet health report... I would be more pleased if Mozilla could focus on writing good software instead.
Adding to thre problem (Score:1)