internet

Dawkins site censored

Technollama point to an article in the Guardian that Richard Dawkins, has had his website banned in Turkey because a Creationist has found it “defamatory and blasphemous”.

Apparently the whole thing blew up when Dawkins commented on a the book of a Muslim Creationist (that had been sent to him by the creationist) and called it preposterous and wrote on his website that he was at “a loss to reconcile the expensive and glossy production values of this book with the ‘breathtaking inanity’ of the content.”.

Some comments from the Creationists office say it all:

We are not against freedom of speech or expression but you cannot insult people.

We found the comments hurtful. It was not a scientific discussion. There was a line and the limit has been passed.

And I thought mindless creationists were a particularly american thing but apparently they, as with all stupidity, are international.

Posted on by mklang

Google browser

Google’s browser Chrome is being released soon after 2 years of development – but are we excited? I don’t know the whole browser war is a thing of the past. Oh well bring it on, lets see what you’ve got.

At Google, we have a saying: “launch early and iterate.” While this approach is usually limited to our engineers, it apparently applies to our mailroom as well! As you may have read in the blogosphere, we hit “send” a bit early on a comic book introducing our new open source browser, Google Chrome…We will be launching the beta version of Google Chrome tomorrow in more than 100 countries.

At least they have a colorless cartoon to explain what it does…

Posted on by mklang

Facebook and Suicide

A British psychiatrist addressing the Royal College of Psychiatrists states that Facebook can increase the likelihood that teenagers will kill themselves

It may be possible that young people who have no experience of a world without online societies put less value on their real world identities and can therefore be at risk in their real lives, perhaps more vulnerable to impulsive behaviour or even suicide.

A paranoid, luddite psychiatrist – who would have guessed?

(via Infocult)

Posted on by mklang

Frenchmen risk being banned from the Internet

The French have gone and done it! Times Online reports:

Anyone who persists in illicit downloading of music or films will be barred from broadband access under a controversial new law that makes France a pioneer in combating internet piracy.

“There is no reason that the internet should be a lawless zone,” President Sarkozy told his Cabinet yesterday as it endorsed the “three-strikes-and-you’re-out” scheme that from next January will hit illegal downloaders where it hurts.

This is, as I have argued earlier (last time in January), a really bad idea. Why is banning people from the Internet a bad idea?

The Internet has been promoted and become our most basic communications infrastructure (my focus here is Europe since this is where the the French are).

1. The punishment does not fit the crime: We have changed the way Banks, Post Offices, ticket sales, hotel booking, insurance (etc, etc) work and banning someone from the Internet will be tantamount to branding a symbol of guilt onto the person. Not to mention the increased costs involved in time and money. Indeed why should copyright violation prevent me from online banking?

2. Group punishment: If an Internet connection is involved in copyright violation this does not mean that all those dependent upon that connection should be punished. The actual violator may be underage or the network may be open to others.

3. Privatizing the law: The ability to punish copyright violators should not be delegated to private bodies. Internet providers are not equipped to mete out legal punishments.

Earlier, when arguing against proposals such as these I wrote:

The proposals seen above are simplistic, naive and dangerous they show a fundamental lack of understanding not only of technology or its role in society but also a lack of understanding of the role of communication in a democratic society. The actions of the politicians proposing such measures show that they are not acting in the interests of the individuals they are there to serve.

Even if the French have chosen to go the other way – I still believe that they are wrong…

Posted on by mklang