saudi arabia

Wikipedia now totally free to mobile users in the Middle East

A full 25 million mobile users in the Middle East can now use Wikipedia without worrying about data charges.

The Wikimedia Foundation and Saudi Telecom (STC) have teamed up to offer the free access through a program known as Wikipedia Zero. The goal behind this initiative is to help people in developing countries more easily get information through Wikipedia. Many users in these countries surf the Internet via mobile devices, so the Wikimedia Foundation tries to work with local carriers to eliminate data charges and other obstacles.

The foundation has given high priority to Arabic-language countries but has reached out … Read more

Saudi Oil firm says 30,000 computers hit by virus

Saudi Arabia's oil company, Saudi Aramco, says its main internal network is back up after a virus affected 30,000 work stations in mid-August, but the source of the attack remains unclear.

Saudi Aramco said all of the affected workstations have all been cleaned and restored to service and normal business resumed on Saturday when employees returned to work following the Muslim Eid holidays. The primary enterprise systems of hydrocarbon exploration and production were unaffected because they are kept on isolated network systems. Meanwhile, remote Internet access to online resources has been restricted, the statement said.

Saudi Aramco blamed … Read more

Reuters hacked (again) with fake story of Saudi minister's death

Someone must have it out for Reuters. For the second time in two weeks, the blogging platform for the news source's Web site has been hacked into and false stories have been illicitly published.

Today's sham article reported that Saudi Arabia's Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal had died, according to Reuters. The first bogus story, posted earlier this month, was about the rebel Free Syrian Army suffering setbacks in their battle against Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime.

"Reuters did not report the false story and the post was immediately deleted," Reuters News' director of … Read more

Saudi Arabia objects to .bible

Live and let live. Love and let love. Surf and let surf.

These are just some of the philosophical principles that are not readily accepted everywhere in the world.

Currently, some of the world's heightened sensitivities are on display during the Application Comment period for new generic Top Level Domains (gTLDs). There are currently 22 of these, but ICANN wants to broaden the horizons to embrace different cultures and languages.

Running through the objections at ICANN's site is like running through thistle fields in your underwear.

Some of the argumentation would make even a politician think twice. Well, … Read more

No 'Arab Spring' in Saudi Arabia anytime soon

SAN FRANCISCO -- The autocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia doesn't have much to worry about, at least not yet, from democracy activists and the Internet, one of the country's best known bloggers predicts.

"It is very unlikely that we will see any change in the country in the short and medium term," Ahmed Al Omran, creator of SaudiJeans.org, said at an event in CNET's offices in downtown San Francisco yesterday evening. Al Omran left Saudi Arabia to study at Columbia University and now lives in Washington, D.C.

A so-called Day of Rage protest … Read more

Saudi blogger's tweets could cost him his life

Saudi Arabian blogger Hamza Kashgari tweeted last week about an imaginary conversation with the Prophet Mohammad, writing he "loved the rebel in you" and that he "loved some aspects of you, hated others."

Little did Kashgari know that these tweets could culminate in his possible death sentence.

Shortly after his tweets, tens of thousands of angry commenters denounced Kashgari and demanded his punishment.

"The only choice is for Kashgari to be killed and crucified in order to be a lesson to other secularists," commented an online reader of al-Madina newspaper Abu Abdulrahman, according to … Read more

RIM says it can't give India keys to secure e-mails

RIM yesterday reiterated that it's unable to provide the Indian government with the means to access secure e-mails on its enterprise network, despite a looming deadline.

Robert Crow, Research In Motion's vice president for Industry, Government and University, repeated the company's familiar position. Speaking to reporters yesterday in New Delhi, Crow said that RIM does not have the ability to turn over the keys to the encrypted data flowing over its BlackBerry Enterprise Server because those keys are held by its corporate customers.

Despite promises to India that it would offer a permanent solution by January 31, … Read more

BlackBerry wins U.S. government security approval

Research In Motion has been butting heads with foreign governments over its tight security, but its latest BlackBerry 6 OS has won approval from the U.S. government for those same standards.

RIM announced today that its BlackBerry 6 operating system is now FIPS 140-2 certified. FIPS (Federal Information Processing Standard) is a series of standards set up by the U.S. government to ensure that computer products meet certain high-level security requirements. The standard is used by government agencies, regulated industries, and other organizations that store and send data dealing with sensitive information.

The FIPS 140-2 standard (PDF) specifically … Read more

Facebook temporarily blocked in Saudi Arabia

Facebook was down for several hours in Saudi Arabia on Saturday. But was it a technical problem or a takedown by the government?

An official with Saudi Arabia's Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) said Saturday that the social-networking site was temporarily blocked that morning because it doesn't conform to the country's conservative values, according to the Associated Press.

The official, who spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity, said Facebook's content "crossed a line" but added that the block was only temporary.

But yesterday, the CITC denied that the site had purposely … Read more