Every time a politician makes an idiotic statement about the Internet (or technology in general), I think of the pearls of wisdom contained in the Evil Overlord List:
12. One of my advisors will be an average five-year-old child. Any flaws in my plan that he is able to spot will be corrected before implementation.
It seems that Culture Secretary Andy Burnham would like to see “Cinema-style age ratings” for the Internet.
Giving film-style ratings to individual websites is one of the options being considered, he confirms. When asked directly whether age ratings could be introduced, Mr Burnham replies: “Yes, that would be an option. This is an area that is really now coming into full focus.”
ISPs, such as BT, Tiscali, AOL or Sky could also be forced to offer internet services where the only websites accessible are those deemed suitable for children.
It sounds like a good idea, unless you have the faintest clue about what the Internet is and how it works.
Leaving aside the billions of pages, images, videos and everything else that has already been uploaded, who is going to classify new content? And how can it be enforced when (maybe?) 90% of content is hosted outside of the UK?
I can’t see how it could work, but maybe that’s why I’m not a political advisor.
P.S — I cite the Evil Overlord List, but don’t always follow it myself. For instance:
35. I will not grow a goatee. In the old days they made you look diabolic. Now they just make you look like a disaffected member of Generation X.
Interesting.
Christmas isn’t supposed to be hot. I’ve been thoroughly confused by the lack of ice, snow and freezing rain for the last month or so. The lack of rubbish Christmas songs on the radio is quite refreshing, but it’s a Pyrrhic victory really — Fairytale of New York is nowhere to be found (It seems that nobody here has even heard of it!).
Apparently the weather has been pretty mild for the last week or so though. I’m told that most Christmases down here are spent avoiding the North Wind, supposedly similar to standing in front of a huge hair-dryer while somebody throws dust at you. So it could be worse!
Apart from the odd weather, Christmas has been quite nice really. Roast lunch with Meg’s family, enough cold meat to last a couple of days, and little neoprene tubes to keep bottles of beer cold!
It’s all been very interesting anyway!
As I was boarding my flight down to Hobart today I had an odd thought.
I realised that this was the fifth time I’d flown inter-state in Australia and that I’d never been asked for any form of ID at the airport. Flying internationally is different of course, but in the UK I usually have to at least show my drivers licence before getting on an internal flight (Say, Aberdeen to London).
I suppose the airline could check the passenger name against the credit card details used to book the tickets, but that would only work for (at most) one passenger per booking.
I also noticed that my airline’s self-service check-in machine would print a boarding pass with just a name and flight number (No need to know the booking reference or credit card details). I wonder what would happen if someone printed my boarding pass before I got there?
I guess they’d check IDs at the boarding gate if somebody reported it happening. Or maybe have some way to invalidate the bar code on the pass, but it all seems much more trusting than at home.
Since I finished travelling down the East Coast at the end of October I’ve been searching for an IT job in the Melbourne area. This hasn’t been going particularly well. One of the main problems is that nothing seems to happen very quickly over here, and with the New Year fast approaching, I don’t think much is going to change over the next few weeks.
Rather than sit around doing practically nothing I’ve decided to book a flight down to Tasmania, rent a car, and drive around the island for a week. I’m flying tomorrow and other than staying a couple of nights in Hobart, I don’t really have much of a plan. I think I’d like to stick mostly to the coastal routes rather than use the main inland highway between Hobart and Launceston. I’ve heard the scenery around the island described as “spectacular” so I’d like to see as much of it as I can while I’m there!
I’ve called a few dive centres to try to organise some SCUBA diving either around Hobart or further up the East coast off Bicheno. This has exposed one of the downsides to travelling alone — I have no diving buddy. This, combined with my relative inexperience, means that I’ll probably just have to wait until a boat goes out and hope that I can be slotted in with the group. Hopefully something will turn up, as I haven’t been diving since I was sailing around the Whitsunday Islands.
Sometime on over the weekend the Internet Watch Foundation decided to add a Wikipedia article to its “blacklist”, which is blocked by ISPs in the UK. the decision was reversed on Tuesday, but has kicked off a bit of discussion on the state of online censorship in Britain.
I’m not particularly fond of the IWF. Not because of their aim to reduce access to child abuse, but because they are unaccountable to the public and have the ability to reduce access to any document online. Frank Fisher summed it up quite nicely in an article in January.
As of December 31 [2007], all UK ISPs duly agreed to adopt the system. You’re now viewing a state-mandated subset of the internet. How do you feel about that? Like to vote against it? You can’t. Like your MP to sit on a committee to oversee implementation? He can’t. Like to know if the Google results you’re seeing are a full representation of Google’s actual results? You can’t. Censorship at this level – above even ISPs, is all but invisible to the end user. It’s a secret that they’re keeping these secrets from you.
I’m still out in Australia so I can only go by reactions on the Internet, but I’m quite pleased with the outcome.
Firstly, I was surprised to see the number of comments suggesting that the poster had no idea that the IWF and “Cleanfeed” even existed. If the exposure this received on television news was anything like the online exposure, hopefully it’ll lead to more people questioning the wisdom of allowing an unaccountable body to control what we can access online.
Second, the censored article was about a 1970’s heavy metal album, and it was unblocked after a few days. If it’s ever discovered that the IWF or the Home Office have added something “important” (politically or otherwise) to the secret list, this leads me to believe there will be an even stronger reaction against them.
The problem though is that the list is secret. We can’t be sure that there aren’t politically sensitive documents on the “blacklist”, and as the system returns a “404 – Page not found” error instead of a “This URL is censored” type message, we can’t be sure that we are being censored at all.
Mamoru-Kun (”Little Protector”) is a robot that is able to tell his owner where an object he or she lost or misplaced within a certain area is located. He can do it verbally or by pointing at the object.
It seems to be using some pretty heavy computer vision technology to track objects as they’re moved around a room, then point them out when asked later.
The robot stands 40cm tall and weighs 3.8kg. He has 4 joints (two in the neck and one in each arm) and is equipped with a microphone and speakers. Mamoru-Kun is cell phone-controlled.
Users have to register and record items they regularly misplace in advance. Once they did that, the area in question will be constantly covered by various cameras, which are connected to Mamoru-Kun.
This is really cool! It’s aimed toward helping the elderly or disabled, but I’d want one just to hack around with!
Commercialization of the assistance system is planned to begin by 2018.
But I want my Japanese Helper-Robot now!
Original Article
The sands of Fraser Island managed to do what light impacts, alcohol and salt water couldn’t, and killed my old digital camera. Fraser Island also claimed my Boston Red Sox hat, but I’m (mostly) over that now.
With Christmas sales with especially highly-discounted electronics starting up, I thought it would be a good time to buy myself a replacement (Camera, not hat). So after a bit of haggling, and the minor abuse of a staff discount, I’m now the owner of a Sony DSC-T77, an updated, update of my old T-9.
As proof, I give you Meg’s house.
The live-trial of the Australian government’s ISP-level Internet censorship scheme is due to start in a few weeks. BanThisURL has posted a nice analysis of the test framework, and a bit of background for those unfamiliar with it.
My favourite part:
A point is made about formal circumvention testing. It falls short of trying to gain access to the ISP’s network, and … states that a number of techniques that could be used to circumvent the filters will be tried and the results recorded.
I can think of a couple of almost-foolproof techniques off the top of my head. I suppose an effort could be made to block anonymous proxy servers, but I wonder what might happen when the Australian government finds out about SSH and VPNs.
