Godwin's Law of internet arguments - maybe Ken Livingstone should take note

Happy Birthday World Wide Web

The World Wide Web is 25 today, well it's 25 years since Tim Berners-Lee published his paperroposing an “information management” system. This evolved very quickly into a framework for the world wide web.

The world wide web dominated our lives so much that it's hard to remember life before 'the web'. I do, I remember showing 'the web' to a client who opined 'useless, too slow and it'll never replace paper encyclopedias and digests', I wonder what he thinks now?

The web has brought us many things, some good some bad, but on today I thought I'd show a little video that I found called First Kiss. It's film ofwhat happend when 20 people were asked to kiss for the fist time, it's rather sweet and what the web should deliver more of, and less porn and hatred.



FIRST KISS from Tatia Pilieva on Vimeo.

BBC News - British Library's wi-fi service blocks 'violent' Hamlet

Internet content filters are generally either over protective like the British Library one or far too lax. In fact, often they are both...

More here http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-23680689

News report from 1981 about getting your newspaper on your home computer

How far we've come in 32 years... From no pictures in 1981 to what seems like pretty much just pictures of semi naked women in the Daily Mail today.

Pornography filters for the UK

I see that David Cameron has decided that he must 'do something' about children accessing porn on the internet and thus he's decided that everybody will be denied access to porn unless they opt to be able to access it.

Hmm, I foresee a few problems:
1. Proxy Servers - Has David Cameron ever heard of proxy servers? These nifty web services allow you to access any website from anywhere, so long as you can access the proxy server. Using the proxy server means that you can surf anything your heart (or other bodily organ) desires and there's nothing that the UK government can do about it.

Yes usage of proxy servers is low in the UK at present, but that's because the UK has no internet censorship. Just watch usage increase as 1 January 2014 nears. But these are difficult to use, I hear you say. Actually they're not but also when people are denied their access to porn, just watch the proxy server setup services spring up...


2. Misclassification - The existing web filters that I have used at work are poor at best. Misclassification is not uncommon and highly annoying when it occurs. A 1% error rate and I've seen much, much higher rates quoted, would mean many million of sites being mistakenly classified as porn and thus inaccessible from the UK. Imagine if your site had once had an image of Michelangelo's David on one page among hundreds on your site, for some web filter vendors that would be enough to brand your whole site as hosting nudity and thus porn. How would you get your site delisted? Could you? What would it cost you? How much business might you lose?


3. The thin end of the wedge - It's restricting access to porn today, in the interests of the children ("Will nobody think of the children"), what next? Bomb making sites? Radical Islamist sites? anti Islamist sites like Jihad Watch, The EDL website? UKIP? Once a government starts down the road of internet censorship, a precedent has been set and subsequent governments will be always tempted to extend the scope of the restrictions. Today there's no internet censorship in the UK, in 20 years we could be like China or one of the highly restrictive Middle Eastern states (not Israel).


4. Publicity  - How much would these opt-in lists be worth? How much would The Mail pay for such a list, so that they could check on teachers who have opted in? How much would The Guardian pay to see which Conservative MPs have opted in? I presume that you could think of many, many more such examples.



Pornography filters for the UK, it's coming sometime... but should it and will it work?

The internet is expanding - The first half will only make sense if you're over the age of 30 and the second half ...

Monkey Dust's view of the expanding Internet and the sad people who live on it.

Do you think the internet's a bit slow sometimes?

Just think what happens when you request a web page from IE, Firefox, Chrome or Safari...
I think a second is plenty fast enough!

Name that Internet Browser

Thanks to Art of Trolling via Devil's Kitchen for the spot...

Internet Explorer 1 - IE9 compared - Warning very, very geeky

Oh the memories! Thank you Andrew Tait.

If you enjoyed this then you may want to take a look at this recent post that shows 'An experiment to see the effects of installing every major upgrade version of windows, in order, on the same machine.'

Opting in to Internet porn

I read that:

'THE UK Government is to combat the early sexualization of children by blocking internet pornography unless parents request it, it was revealed today.'

A few thoughts: first I doubt that this will not just apply to parents but in fact to every internet user, second how long before the names of those who opt in to accessing pornography are stored on a database and thirdly how long until that database is leaked?

Wikileaks on the web

Wikileaks seems to be down due to its host deleting its DNS records following a multitude of DNS attacks. Allegedly you can still reach the site by trying to access the site via its ip address of 68.178.232.99, however I find that site to be down as well and tracert shows the following (missing my part of the trace):

' 7 123 ms 103 ms 305 ms Opal-ge-2.2.0.mpr1.lhr3.above.net [213.161.78.21
3]
8 122 ms 205 ms 101 ms so-0-0-0.mpr1.lhr2.uk.above.net [64.125.27.225]

9 120 ms 204 ms 204 ms so-1-1-0.mpr1.dca2.us.above.net [64.125.31.186]

10 226 ms 204 ms 204 ms xe-1-3-0.cr1.dca2.us.above.net [64.125.29.21]
11 220 ms 309 ms 202 ms xe-0-2-0.cr1.iah1.us.above.net [64.125.25.114]
12 246 ms 191 ms 195 ms xe-1-1-0.mpr3.phx2.us.above.net [64.125.30.149]

13 216 ms 204 ms 205 ms 64.124.196.38.allocated.above.net [64.124.196.38
]
14 * * * Request timed out.
15 * * * Request timed out.
16 * * * Request timed out.
17 * * * Request timed out.
18 311 ms 204 ms 206 ms ip-64-202-160-153.secureserver.net [64.202.160.1
53]
19 * * * Request timed out.
20 224 ms 209 ms 199 ms parkwebwin-v02.prod.mesa1.secureserver.net [68.1
78.232.99]

Trace complete.'

Interesting stuff...

'Say what?!'

Yessterday I posted a piece entitled 'F**k the pain away meets the Muppets! NSFW'. I just liked the sight of Miss Piggy singing that song...

I was surprised to receive any comments on that item and even more surprised to receive this one from 'Joan' at 21:18:

'Some months, ago I suffered a pull in the short part of the back and me he causes a terrible ache in the lumbar zone, I have gone to the doctor and Hydrocodone has prescribed me to relieve my ache, though I have not much time this medicine, newly, I have noted some changes and thereby I have looked for information and I found in findrxonline that points out that this medicine has side effects that can be dangerous if one combines with alcohol or with other medicines.'

I feel sad for joan's pain but why post that on my blog?

I think they might be confused.com

Confused.com's latest TV advertisement says that the internet is 'the most important invention of the 21st Century'.

The Most important I..
Watch the ad...

Do they not realise that not only did ARPANET start in 1969, TELNET in 1975, IPSS in 1978 and so on and so on until in 1989 and 1990 Compuserve, UUNET and JANET linked in with the nascent 'internet'; oh happy days when the internet was bulletin boards, newsgroups and the like. Now if Confused.com don't know that then surely they know that in 1991 CERN made the World Wide Web possible and thus what most consider the internet to be came into being. Indeed I was happily, albeit slowly, browsing the web using Mosaic and Netscape in the mid 1990s as well as via Compuserve and by the late 1990s I was using Internet Explorer. So was the internet invented this century or last?

So why are confused.com so confused.

Pakistan the “Land of the Pure”?

Fox News reports to the contrary:

'Pakistan is top dog in searches per-person for "horse sex" since 2004, "donkey sex" since 2007, "rape pictures" between 2004 and 2009, "rape sex" since 2004, "child sex" between 2004 and 2007 and since 2009, "animal sex" since 2004 and "dog sex" since 2005, according to Google Trends and Google Insights, features of Google that generate data based on popular search terms.

The country also is tops -- or has been No. 1 -- in searches for "sex," "camel sex," "rape video," "child sex video" and some other searches that can't be printed here.

...

The Embassy of Islamic Republic of Pakistan did not reply to a request for an interview.'

Ahem... could I have your attention please?

As this blog sinks down the monthly Wikio Political Blogging charts, all but breaking my heart as every months rankings are released; I notice that it is time for Total Politics's blog poll for 2010. It was the surprise appearance of this blog in Iain Dale's 2007 political blogging list, after just a few months of my blogging, that gave me the impetus to take blogging more seriously/waste more time writing instead of working.


So here are some questions that you might be asking regarding voting in this poll along with my answers:

Why should I vote?

If you appreciate this blog; whether for its incisive comments on political matters, for its regular highlighting of the faults of Gordon Brown & the other people who runruin this country every day or even for its regular publishing of photos of a scantily-clad Lily Allen then do take the time to vote for it. The higher this blog appears the more I will post... Is that really an incentive?


How do I vote?

Email your ten favourite blogs (ranked from 1-10) to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com

Are there any rules?

1. You must vote for your ten favourite blogs and ranks them from 1 (your favourite) to 10 (your tenth favourite).
2. Your votes must be ranked from 1 to 10. Any votes which do not have rankings will not be counted.
3. You MUST include at least FIVE blogs in your list, but please list ten if you can. If you include fewer than five, your vote will not count.
4. Email your vote to toptenblogs@totalpolitics.com
5. Only vote once.
6. Only blogs based in the UK, run by UK residents or based on UK politics are eligible. No blog will be excluded from voting.
7. Anonymous votes left in the comments will not count. You must give a name
8. All votes must be received by midnight on 31 July 2010. Any votes received after that date will not count.


Go on vote, you know you want to...

The Times behind the 'pay wall'

Today The Times disappears behind a pay wall... The front news page now looks like something from 10 years ago and if you click on any headline you get this

'To see the page you've chosen, register now

To access the great content on our sites, just register your details and we'll give you an exclusive free preview for a limited period - starting today. No payment details required.'

Good luck with that Rupert, I'll stick with the Telegraph, the BBC and the blogosphere.

What has happened to the British?

Some very disturbing news in The Telegraph, it seems that:

'Britons 'spend more web time reading news than looking at pornography'

The article continues:

'Web users spend an average of 2.8 per cent of their surfing time looking at news, as against 2.7 per cent for adult websites.

The proportion of web time Britons spent looking at explicit content has fallen over the last three years, according to research by the United Kingdom Online Measurement Company (UKOM).

Over the same period news consumption has nearly doubled.'

I am disgusted!

Are you addicted to porn?

Cracked.com have an interesting article which is well worth a read. Here's 'The Ten Steps to Porn Addiction' from the article:

1. You find yourself using a great deal of porn;

2. You often look at porn rather than other things that are not porn;

3. You call in sick to work so you can look at porn;

4. You look at porn while at work;

5. You apply for and take a job where looking at porn is a requirement;

6. You hide your porn habit from your friends and family;

7. You no longer feel the need to hide your porn habit from friends and family;

8. You find yourself reading porn at a funeral;

9. You read porn at the funeral of a man whom you killed for his porn;

10. You have paid for internet porn.

Happy Birthday internet

I note that today is the 25th anniversary of the first .com domains being registered - Symbolics a Massachusetts-based computer added dotcom to its name on 15 March 1985, it was shortly followed by Bbn.com and Think.com. There are now around 84 million domain names registered.

The future of Internet browsing choice

Microsoft reveal that:

"Over the next few weeks, Microsoft will begin offering a “Web browser choice screen” to Internet Explorer users in Europe, as required by the European Commission. Internal testing of the choice screen is underway now. We’ll begin a limited roll-out externally next week, and expect that a full scale roll-out will begin around March 1, a couple of weeks ahead of schedule."

Read the whole article to see how it will work and how happy Microsoft are!

To summarise, Windows 7 users will have Internet Explorer automatically "unpinned" from their task bars as part of the choice process and users will get a screen warning that they have "an important choice to make", before getting the list of what Microsoft describes as "leading browsers".

Of course the web savvy will already be using alternative browsers and those that don't will not really understand that there is an alternative to Internet Explorer or what that means, they just want to access the Internet.