In The News

Broadband Driven by Online Games

Sirivish Toomgum March 11, 2003
Although the Minister of Information and Communications Technology in Thailand raised concerns over the effects of the massive population of players of online games, it is clear that these gamers are driving up the demand for broadband service. One particular game, Ragnarok, has a registered community of Thai players passing 700,000. Paradoxically, as Thai broadband technology develops, matching...

Microsoft Pact Not Much of a Deal

Jerry Fong 馮震宇 March 11, 2003
US-based Microsoft Corporation, manufacturer of the Windows operating system that runs the majority of computers around the world, has embedded itself more deeply into yet another country. Taiwanese IT companies and IT analysts are not too thrilled about the ROC Fair Trade Commission’s new pact with Microsoft. Jerry Fong, professor of Law at National Chengchi University, highlights major faults...

An Antiwar Demonstration That Does Not Take to the Streets

John Tierney February 26, 2003
On February 15th, hundreds of thousands of people took to the streets in New York City and around the globe to protest the possible war on Iraq. Eleven days later, hundreds of thousands of Americans again protested the Bush Administration’s Iraq policy, this time by flooding the White House and Senate with phone calls, faxes, and e-mails. Given the daunting logistics involved in planning street...

How the Protesters Mobilized

Jennifer Lee February 23, 2003
Between the internet, cell phones, and text messaging, new ways are constantly being invented to disseminate information and organize large bodies of people across the globe. The February 15th worldwide protests against the impending war in Iraq stretched these means to their full potential. Protest organization can now be dispersed, non-hierarchal, and in tune with up-to-date information....

China's Win-Win Globalization

Michael Yahuda February 19, 2003
Since the early 1990s, China has been making a concerted effort to integrate itself into the world economy and cultivate relations with its Asian neighbors, as well as the U.S., in order to promote stability and prosperity in the region. Michael Yahuda, professor of international relations at the London School of Economics and Political Science, explains how China's stance towards...

U.S. Hackers Told to Leave Iraq Alone

February 14, 2003
The FBI is telling Americans not to hack into and sabotage Iraqi websites. There is a possibility that such patriotic hacking could backfire, doing more harm to U.S. computer systems than to Iraqi systems. Nationalistic ‘cyber wars’ launched by patriotic citizens of one country against websites of other countries are increasing, and the U.S. is now drawing up guidelines to deal with them. In...

Anti-Terror Fight Has to Be a Marathon Run on Wilsonian Principle, Not Cheap Oil

Thomas L. Friedman February 8, 2003
Who were the September 11 hijackers? What impelled them to bring about "such a bursting of the frontiers of civilization"? Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist at The New York Times and author of "The Lexus and the Olive Tree," spent the last fourteen months traveling to find answers to these questions. In an address at Yale University, he offered his personal...