Bitcoin Forum

Don't go to Syria (http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2012/11/29/syria_blackout_internet_shutdown_a_bad_sign_for_activists_assad_regime.html?wpisrc=most_viral) if you rely on Bitcoin.

Also, don't go to Syria if you rely on life.

its actually hard to determine who might be responsible for cutting off the Internet.  the rebels could have just as much motivation to do so as the gov't.

What can Bitcoin do now? Nothing.

What can it do in a few years? Fund a meshnet infrastructure.

That genuinely gave me goosebumps.... :(

Now that is a Killer App. Can't mention it enough.

An android smartphone and a sat uplink, problem solved.  Not cheaply, mind you, but solved.

Not at all the rebels don't have the capability at all nor the motivation why the hell would the rebels want the internet down its the only way to get their message out all other forms are controlled by government.

to disrupt gov't and banks.  i assume chaos would help their cause.

Likely not.  The rebels are likely more dependent upon the Internet for command and control communicaitons, while the government forces don't depend upon the Internet, as they have their own networks.

it will be interesting if we get a repeat of what happened in Egypt where the banks and gov't were the first to cry uncle and get the internet back up after just a few days.

That's not really what happened, but this is a field test of this tech...

http://www.servalproject.org/

Of course, it's important for a minimum number of users to have serval's batphone app running on rooted phones before the internet went dark for this to work.

so what did happen?

is serval a phone-phone transfer?  RFC?

It was more of an international business issue that resulted in banks crying uncle.  The government really didn't care.  And the goals of the government in shutting down the Internet proved to only delay, not really prevent, the dissimination of information, so their goals weren't really being met anyway.  The government only started to care once they realized that the international banks wouldn't be paying as much in taxes without the Internet facilitaing business.


With regard to non-real-time data (such as email, texting  etc) it's kind of a hybrid between an ad-hoc meshnet and a store&forward network like fido.  As for the telephony part, that pretty much requires a full meshnet to work, with one node with an uplink in order to call outside of the local mesh.  Within the mesh, it can hop twice to ring the phone of a connected meshnet user.  It doesn't really require special hardware, but beneifts greatly from dedicated mesh wireless hardware.

sounds like a call to action for anonymous lol. taking down the internet seems like a no no for them

I'd love to see a money that still works after you are beaten and robbed and bitten by zombies and unable to even communicate with your trading partners. It would be some true magic.

yo wtf!
Isn't having a connection to the internet a fundamental human right?  :D\

Time to get mad, Syria!  >:(
http://s1.hubimg.com/u/5130908_f520.jpg

A god-given right iirc.

Since Android phones can work as hotspots (master/host mode) shouldn't it be possible to mesh net with these phones. I'm not talking about Syria in particular but hasn't anyone thought of that and created some meshing Android software yet? I'd like to see that as the Android phone density in urban areas ought to be sufficient to keep the area connected.

<sigh>

Yes, and I posted the link only a few posts earlier than this in this same thread.  Dude, just take a moment and read what others have provided.

Oh. Sorry. I saw that but you didn't mention anything about Android so I had no idea what the link was for other than some net project. I wasn't inclined to explore that link based on the description "field test of this tech...". But I will now. Thx.