Blackout
Feb0
Nick Jackson is blacked out:
Stand up against “Guilt Upon Accusation” for New Zealand
http://creativefreedom.org.nz/blackout.html
You might have noticed the header image on this blog going entirely black (apart from the text) along with my Twitter avatar. The reasoning for this is explained above – the New Zealand government seem to think it’s fine to assume guilt as soon as someone is accused of copyright infringement. No evidence needed, no trial necessary.
Anyone else spot a problem with this? Quite a few people seem to, including the current star of the internet Mr. Stephen Fry and nearly 7,000 over 10,000 petition signers. Details on how to get involved are at the Creative Freedom website linked above, but there’s also a nice group on Facebook you might want to join.
Rate This
Dec1
According to the BBC, Culture Secretary Andy Burnham has said that websites having age ratings should be considered. You can see what everybody else’s comments on this are (BBC), but I’d like to take a moment to explore a few alternative solutions which don’t rely on the government setting up a system which is bound to fail.
OpenDNS is a fantastic system which everybody should use anyway. It can manage DNS controls for your whole network, and includes über-efficient filtering and parental controls, complete with community-driven categories. It’s really easy to use, and only suffers a downfall if your child is intelligent enough to change the DNS servers, in which case most filtering tools are useless anyway. It’s quick, easy and efficient.
Both Windows Vista and OS X Leopard have comprehensive parental controls, allowing you to limit time, block websites, use filters, ban activities, limit time doing certain activities and so on. These are included with any version you’re likely to have on a home PC, and are easy to set up.
NetNanny is the most common installable utility for parents to restrict web browsing, for Windows or OS X. It costs, but a lot of people associate cost with quality so it should keep those who don’t know better happy.
Real-Life Electronic Soap Operas
Nov0
MSN News leads me to a curious article on a woman who divorced her husband after catching him having virtual sex in Second Life. This would be fairly normal, except for the fact that the pair originally met in an online chat room.
The icing on the cake is the revelation that the woman has since found another man to replace her erring husband – using World of Warcraft.
Seriously people, go get a real life.
Bad idea ICANN!
Jun0
Apparently the folks over at ICANN, the body responsible for all the IP addresses and domain names on the internet, have unanimously voted to allow arbitrary TLDs to be registered. This is a monumentally bad idea.
Certainly, some organisations will make good use of this system. We could have a nice set of stuff from Google:
- http://google/
- http://mail.google/
- http://maps.google/
All of which is very nice. Trouble is, we’re also in for a huge swathe of new domain squatting where irritating companies with lots of money will buy TLDs just to clog the system. All it takes is one company to register the “con” domain and they receive all the mistyped .com requests. This is not good. Perhaps Pepsi will register “cola”, so http://pepsi.cola is good, but http://coca.cola will then be blocked.
I’m personally all in favour of more restriction, and forcing sites back into their appropriate country TLD and keeping the global domains for global companies and organisations. Screw .cola, .facebook, .google, .microsoft and the rest.
Why Does This Hub Suck So?
Mar0
This is the BT Home Hub. It’s a nice white box with blinky lights on the front, a phone, and a load of cables coming out of the box. It is also one of the singularly worst pieces of communications hardware it has ever been my misfortune to have to deal with.
The Home Hub is BT’s “plug-and-play” router for home users, and indeed it does have some plug-and-play elements. If you plug in the power supply and the ADSL cable, it connects to the internet for you with zero configuration. Shove in an ethernet cable and it sets itself as a default gateway router through DHCP, or it serves as a WiFi hotspot. At least, all this happens with the latest software.
When we got it, it had the original software. Oh joy of joys, this needed configuring through a terrible user interface. We were promised it would get better though, it had automatic updating! Sure enough, a few weeks later, it was updated with the new user interface, better stability, automatic configuration and so on.
Well, automatic except for everything else. Whenever your hub is reset to the factory settings, it forgets extra things you have as addons. This means that our IP phone stopped working until we re-activated it.
Enough with the Applications
Mar0
And lo, with the blocking of “Have You Ever?” and “Which Les Miserables Character Are You?”, my Facebook blocked applications list now includes over 100 of the most irritating bits of the internet to ever have been created.
I’ll admit to having had a couple of Facebook applications installed. I had a couple of interesting network visualisation ones installed, and still do have one for inserting mathematical formulas in messages around the site. I have even shared applications with people who I thought would find them interesting. However, I object to having people mindlessly send invites to everybody on their address list. Anybody who knows me will know that I don’t do the pointless quizzes, and I have a penchant for elegance and simplicity in websites. Why anybody believes that I would want to fill my profile with things saying “I am most like: Peter Petrelli” and “I have 1,285,395.4 fish in my tank!” is beyond me.
Seriously guys, I don’t want your app invites unless you think I’ll genuinely be interested. I’m far more likely to spot a useful application on your profile and just add it myself.
Oh, and as for the coloured profile people? You can go swivel on it as far as I’m concerned. Facebook started as a simple, elegant method for students to keep in touch. Despite the opening to everybody (Bad idea in my opinion, but oh well) it’s being kept mostly that way, providing you know how to block all the crap. Coloured profiles, even if limited to preselected themes, are a bad idea. Sure, allow users to theme their own view but please, for the love of all things holy, don’t let people expose us to fuschia pink on green.