On Thursday, in a bipartisan inquiry, eight members of the House sent an official letter requesting more information from Google CEO Larry Page about the recent privacy policy changes that have caused an uproar in the Internet community.

“Google’s consolidation of its privacy policies potentially touches billions of people worldwide,” the members wrote that was posted on USENET newsgroups. ”As an Internet giant, Google has a responsibility to protect the privacy of its users. Therefore, we are writing to learn why Google feels that these changes are necessary, and what steps are being taken to ensure the protection of consumer’s privacy rights.”

One of the representives wrote, ”After all the controversies Google has become entangled in, the question people keep asking is, ‘How can we ever begin to trust Google?’”

“I’ve always said the private industry needs to take the lead in providing consumer choice and transparency before big government rushes in to regulate,” said the rep, ”But Google’s move to eradicate consumer choice all together across their various platforms raises additional questions about how the company’s monopoly power might hurt competition and how their action might unilaterally and unnecessarily invite even broader government regulations on everyone else.”

The letter was signed by Reps. Cliff Stearns, Henry Waxman, Joe Barton, Edward Markey, Marsha Blackburn, Dianne DeGette, G.K. Butterfield and Jackie Speier.

As always, with Thundernews, your privacy is important to us. At ThunderNews.com we do not log what newsgroups or articles you read.

Until this week, entertainment industry executives thought they had the votes for new federal legislation cracking down on foreign websites that traffic in pirated movies and music and cost them billions.

They lined up support from the powerful pharmaceutical industry and labor unions, and organized an impressive bipartisan coalition in Congress.

Then Silicon Valley struck back and appears to have outflanked Hollywood.

The companies oppose bills designed to curb access and payments to overseas websites that traffic in stolen content or counterfeit goods on the grounds that it could put them in legal peril.

Internet companies have furiously opposed the legislation and have stepped up lobbying efforts in recent months, arguing it would undermine innovation and free speech rights, compromise the functioning of the Internet, and would be ineffective in stopping piracy.

Sites made their views clear without cutting off surfers. Google blacked out the logo on its home page, directing surfers to a page where they could add their names to a petition against the bills.

Opponents of SOPA read like a who’s who of the Internet. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Craigslist, eBay, Mozilla, Yahoo, AOL, and LinkedIn wrote a letter to key members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives, saying SOPA poses “a serious risk to our industry’s continued track record of innovation and job creation, as well as to our nation’s cybersecurity.”

The swelling online opposition persuaded the White House to call over the weekend for lawmakers to remove the legislation’s most controversial provision, which would have required U.S. search engines and payment networks to block access to websites focused on pirated materials. Supporters of the legislation say it would target foreign websites trading in stolen intellectual property, including movies and music. Critics say it would unfairly penalize legitimate websites too, such as Google, Craigslist and even other online services including USENET newsgroups.

In short, The proposed infrastructure would damage the security of the Internet and allow the government extensive censorship abilities.
If you would like to join the protest, visit AmericanCensorship.org for instructions on contacting your Senator. The Electronic Frontier Foundation has more information on this and other issues central to your freedom online.

South Korean and Japanese cities dominate the top 100 cities list. Amsterdam is the fastest city in Europe (ranked #33), and San Jose was once again the fastest city in the United States with an average connection speed of 13 Mbps. It was ranked at number 13 amongst the top 100 and was one of the 23 US cities that made the list. Other US cities in the top 100 include Plano, Texas (8.9 Mbps,) Fremont, California (8.6 Mbps,) North Bergen, NJ (8.5 Mbps,) and Jersey City, New Jersey (8.2 Mbps.)

One of the biggest trends according to the report is growing mobile broadband speeds. “Average connection speeds on known mobile providers ranged from 6.1 Mbps down to 327 kbps, while average peak connection speeds in the quarter ranged from 22.2 Mbps to 1.4 Mbps,” the report data shows.

Here are some other notable facts from the report:

• The global average connection speed continued to see extremely strong yearly growth, increasing 39 percent from the third quarter of 2010.
• The global average peak connection speed grew 45 percent from the third quarter of 2010 to 11.7 Mbps in Q3 2011. South Korea is the country with the highest average peak connection speed, at 46.8 Mbps. Hong Kong also had an average peak connection speed above 40 Mbps, while Romania, Japan, and Latvia were all above 30 Mbps.
• India finally achieved a 10 percent broadband adoption rate, which China had achieved in the second quarter.
• Despite rapid growth, China and India are only two countries with high broadband adoption of 1 percent or less — China stand at 1.0 percent adoption and India has a 0.6 percent adoption. Akamai deems connections faster than 5 Mbps as “high broadband.”
• In the third quarter of 2011, global broadband adoption (2Mbps or higher) grew 1.6 percent to reach 66 percent. United States now has 81 percent broadband adoption, the report says.
• By average speeds, Netherlands might be tops in Europe (9.5 Mbps), but when it comes to peak speeds, the Romanian city of Timisoara leave it in dust at 41.5 Mbps.

Three-quarters of online users find the Web an important source of information, but most people still don’t deem the content they see online reliable versus those found on USENET newsgroups, according to a report out this week from the University of Southern California.

In 2010, 15 percent of online users said they find only a small portion of web information reliable. That’s greater than the 7 percent who were likewise skeptical of the vast majority of information they come across on the Internet.

Trust grows when it comes to established media outlets and government websites. In 2010, 79 percent of Internet users said they found content posted on government websites reliable, about the same as in 2003, the first year the center looked at that question.

The center has surveyed more than 2,000 U.S. households each year since 1999. The latest report is a look back at the past decade of Americans’ Internet use

If any of those rang a bell, you’re in company with others who posted about similar events.

Amongst the most popular posts on the web this past year you probably saw major events interspersed amid anecdotes about their kids, and at the top of the 2011 global topics were the death of Osama bin Laden, the Green Bay Packers Super Bowl victory and the Casey Anthony verdict.

Facebook culled the status updates of its 750 million-plus members and created a “Memology 2011″ that they explain as taking “the pulse of this global community by comparing this year’s status updates to last year’s, unearthing the most popular topics and cultural trends — or memes — emerging on Facebook. Whether it’s hmu, lms or tbh, each year brings a new set of three letter acronyms that go viral.”

Here are the biggest topics posted on USENET and on Facebook status updates over the past year: the ever “winning” Charlie Sheen, the death of Steve Jobs, the royal nuptials of William and Kate, Amy Winehouse’s early exit from this world, the videogame Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Libya military ops and Hurricane Irene.

As for memes, the hands-down winner in 2011, at least on Facebook, was planking.
And as for those three letter acronyms, the top 2011 ones were “lms” (like my status) and “tbh” (to be honest), with “the most iconic status update” for the year was a mash-up of the two: “lms for a tbh.”

Premium providers such as ThunderNews.com offers completely uncensored access to Usenet, control over which belongs to no one entity. Make sure that you do your homework when selecting a premium provider so you choose what’s right for you. First, though, the following are some helpful tips when searching for your provider.

You need a Newsreader. A newsreader is a software program that allows you to browse and search through the thousands of newsgroups available on Usenet. A newsgroup is a group dedicated to a specific topic. NewsRover is an example of a feature-rich, easy to use newsreader.

Newsreaders that offer a search feature can make finding newsgroups you’re looking to subscribe to on Usenet much easier. Providers such as ThunderNews provides all-in-one access allow for easy searching and discovering, making the Usenet experience a more pleasant one.

Choose a premium provider with uncapped speeds. Make sure that you choose a premium provider that does not cap your speed. Providers should allow you to download at high speeds. ThunderNews does not throttle accounts.

The data on Usenet is stored on a network of servers around the world. The provider allows you to access the servers. Data is transferred from the server to your computer when you access it. With other services, you might be forced to share connection speeds with others, or the service might restrict download speed. Usenet, on the other hand, allows you to download at whatever speed is allowable by your ISP.

Look at providers’ retention. Don’t overlook the retention rate offered by the premium provider, either. This is the length of time that files are kept on the server. Higher retention rates mean a higher storage time. ThunderNews , for instance, offers retention of over  1,145 days for binary files. It offers over 720 days of text retention.

With technology improving every day, greater amounts of data may be stored on the server. The retention rates of premium providers increase constantly, but make sure you check them out when searching for a provider. If you have any other questions, you can contact our 24/7 support department at ThunderNews.com USENET.

A pioneer and thought leader in areas such as artificial intelligence and ‘utility computing’, which in many ways maps to the ever popular ‘cloud computing’ offerings of today, John McCarthy’s work has had a significant impact on many aspects of the day to day activities of computer programmers and IT professionals alike, especially those regarding USENET newsgroups.

McCarthy designed the LISP programming language in 1958 while a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Lisp, one of the oldest high-level programming languages second only to Fortran, is still in use today.

Tributes to McCarthy poured in Tuesday, some from posters on Usenet, where McCarthy had an active presence.

McCarthy received the Turing Award in 1971 for his major contributions to the field of AI.

He was born in Boston on September 4, 1927 to an Irish immigrant father and a Lithuanian Jewish immigrant mother.

McCarthy showed an early aptitude for mathematics and he taught himself mathematics by studying the textbooks used at the nearby California Institute of Technology

McCarthy, who retired from Stanford in 2000, was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences.

Ritchie’s work with Unix is the basis of the Apple iOS, and the programming language C has been vital to the writing and development of websites. He may not be as well-known as many other computer scientists and innovators, but his work has made a lasting impact on personal computing. Every day consumers use products that relied on his work to develop to their current state.

Ritchie was known as ‘dmr’ in Usenet circles. In fact, Usenet would not have been possible without UNIX code co-developed by Ritchie. Usenet has been a prominent means of sharing and communication amongst the computer programming and technology community, and it’s even been used to announce various projects and innovations.

Reports have indicated that Ritchie had been treated for prostate cancer and heart disease. He worked for Bell Labs beginning in 1967 until 2007, earning a Ph.D from Harvard a year after starting. He, along with Ken Thompson, is a recipient of the Turing Award in 1983, and the pair were awarded the National Medal of Technology in 1998 for the development of C and Unix.

According to certain newsgroups, Free Press and the nonprofit ISP Mountain Area Informational Network (MAIN) filed their own suits not long ago, arguing that laws governing mobile broadband providers should be stronger to keep up with laws that govern providers of wire line service. Basically, they are arguing that the FCC’s new rules are not as far-reaching as they should be, while Verizon argues the opposite.

Senior vice president and deputy general counsel Michael Glover notes, “Verizon is fully committed to an open Internet. We are deeply concerned by the FCC’s assertion of broad authority to impose potentially sweeping and unneeded regulations on broadband networks and services and on the Internet itself. We believe this assertion of authority is inconsistent with the statute and will create uncertainty for the communications industry, innovators, investors and consumers.”

For its part, the FCC argues that the new net neutrality rules provide providers with certainty as to what they can and cannot do. The new rules will prevent broadband providers from blocking consumers’ access to Web content deemed to be legal. That means that providers are not allowed to prevent customers from viewing online channels, including USENET.

Usenet, which precedes the Internet, has always been based on an open and free network of communication and sharing. Through various newsgroups, users may share ideas, debates, and files with other users from around the world. There is no supreme authority of Usenet, as each provider dictates to which newsgroups they provide access, and also may come up with its own policies for service. Usenet survives because it continues to serve as a vibrant community of users who believe in the openness of communication and the sharing of ideas.

Be careful. The new terms and conditions say that even if you cancel your subscription, they may continue to collect your data and sell it. To prevent this, you’ll have to shut down their data connection to your car after you cancel your service.

Even though the terms and condition say that your data will remain anonymized, it’s still drew the ire of many who have become aware of this. With GPS tracking you to where you live, anonymized suddenly doesn’t seem so anonymous.

Usenet is an open forum in which users from around the world discuss various topics of importance. It’s divided into hierarchies for organization, making it simpler to find newsgroups discussing topics that interest you.