I suggested earlier that my use of Mozilla may have made my PC unstable – I am now reasonably confident that my switch to a Radeon 8500 graphics card is probably largely if not solely to blame.

The deputy features editor of the Guardian newspaper (in the UK) made a whopper of an error a few days ago – he ran a picture of the Blue Lagoon in Iceland as one example of the world’s polluted environment. Of course it is nothing of the kind. Instead of a small retraction, however, he used this as an excuse to visit Iceland himself and pen a lengthy but somewhat entertaining grovel to the country in the form of a feature. I wonder whether this scale of apology was voluntary or whether it was mandated by the Icelandic government in lieu of settlement….accreditation california universities collegesadult cams cards credit nounion force academy credit airamerican milwaukee credit unioncredit financial aaa card servicesschools accredited texascredit score 550college distance learning accredited Map

I just got back from what we were told (with characteristic enthusiasm) was possibly the world’s first official consultation meeting about a government backed e-democracy proposal – set up by Vox Politics.

Given the general apathy about the subject in the media and among the political elite in the UK, I wasn’t sure if there would be more than about ten people but in the event more than 50 people crowded into a small room within earshot of Big Ben and while neither the e-envoy nor the e-commerce minister showed as had been hoped, some good points were raised and experiences shared. I was glad of the opportunity to see Dan Jellinek, author of the very useful e-government bulletin, Bill Thompson, professional e-gadfly and a number of people I met through Haddock and have seen little of since including Tom Loosemore who is responsible for the commendable Fax your MP site, Matt “warchalking” Jones and Azeem Azhar.

I feel minded to write something at a bit more length about the discussion itself but I would prefer to do so for a newspaper, magazine or newsletter, and in any case it will take a little longer – if you are interested in commissioning something, get in touch…

I just had a response from someone representing DataPlay to my earlier posting about this new technology. Nice to see that the industry is out there watching. Unfortunately, the answers given if anything discourage me from inquiring any more. The blank media is $10 apiece, it can’t be erased, only added to, and no information is given about European availability…

Some time ago I started using Mozilla (the open source web browser alternative to Explorer) and have found its tabbed browsing feature really useful, but I have had to give up on it recently because I found it appears to cause my Windows 2000 setup (which is otherwise very stable) to freeze completely at seemingly random intervals when I scroll down web pages. Does this problem seem familiar to anyone?

BBC News has published a revealing photo essay by Jeroen Bouman, who, “gets a rare glimpse inside the illegal Chinese workshops where young teenagers work long hours amid noxious fumes, recycling computers from the US and Europe. The industry has turned four villages in Guiyu, Guangdong province, into toxic waste tips.”