Сервис "Вопросы и ответы" предназначен для обмена профессиональной информацией между пользователями "Вебпланеты". Здесь описано, как это делать.

The administration in the town of Penza has concluded an agreement with Perm company ER-Telecom for the construction of a municipal telecommunications system. By the end of 2007 it is planned to connect 100,000 Penza apartments to the Internet using a high-speed channel. 40 schools and authorities (administrations, management bodies, ministries and the District Department of the Interior Ministry) will be connected to the network free of charge. The agreement also assumes the development of the project known as "Bezopasny Gorod" (Safe City) with video surveillance cameras installed on the streets and central department store. With this project the city administration aims to kill two birds with one stone: provide schools with broadband Internet access and give the authorities the ability to effectively interact using hi-tech resources.

The owner of the dating website Amur.by was summoned to the police and accused of operating without a licence. Last year a resolution was issued in Belarus in accordance with which any activity that is linked with the collection and distribution of information on private individuals for acquaintance purposes is subject to licensing. The administration of the website explains that it is not involved in the collection of information. This resource, as with many others, takes information from the database of the Russian Internet dating service Mamba.ru. Amur.by owners stress that their aim is not to establish unions of marriage. However, if the owner of Amur.by is found to be a "marriage agency" and penalized under Article 154 of the Republic of Belarus Administrative Offences Code, it may have its domain taken away.

The Russian President has proposed the removal of the gambling industry from the cities to special zones (practically the same as "exile to Siberia"). The President compared the harm caused by gambling establishments with the "alcoholization of the population", and he added that they cause "serious moral and at times serious material damage".

It is well known that reasonably large amounts of money circulate in the gambling industry (in 2005 the turnover equalled $5-6 billion), and a part of them are "criminal". Here, on the gambling market the talk is direct: there is no intention of leaving for Siberia, rather of disappearing into the shadows to continue operations. Meantime, the Internet is one of these "shadow zones". It is logical to assume that if the new legislative draft is approved, the war will then be directed to the online casinos. Russia could introduce bans similar to those that were introduced in America earlier in the month.

After the fall of the Soviet Union and the advent of the market economy, the classical media lost the faith of the Russian people. In this situation the Internet communities came to play a decent role, where the audience members consult with one another of practical matters of survival without middle men. It is simply that these systems of social interaction have yet to become a mass phenomenon. This was the main idea behind our report, which we presented at the World Public Forum "Dialogue of Civilizations".

However, Western participants of the forum, it seems, did not really understand this idea. Seymour Papert from MIT voiced the assumption that the Internet in Russia is now at the level of development that it was in Canada five years ago and that in the future we will reach the current Canadian level. Personally I do not doubt that we will overtake Canada, at least in terms of the number of visitors. But the .ru zone will not be the same. For the Westerner with the "self-made-man" and "do-it-yourself" concepts it is sufficient to fill the Internet with services for independent solutions to one’s problems. In Russia, though, with its tendency towards collegiality, platforms have to be created near the services, where your actions can be discussed with a collective group. This is similar to a "veche" popular assembly, such as those applied in ancient Novgorod.

Вот-вот начнется массовое производство "детских" лэптопов за 100 долларов в рамках проекта One Laptop per Child, который призван подключить к Интернету бедные страны. Первый миллион педальных ноутбуков купит Ливия. А значит, там потребуются IT-специалисты. Например, из стран СНГ.