Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

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17 July 2003

The easiest way to enable people to email you from a web page is to put some HTML code in – mailto:you@youraddress.com. Unfortunately this is also a good way to make sure spammers get ahold of that address. They send automated search spiders around the Internet looking for anything with an @ sign in it and add it to their databases. Follow the directions on the Email Protector page and you can put your address on a web page using a mailto: link but without giving spammers anything they can see.

One minor caveat – people with old web browsers may have trouble accessing your email that way. Also, this trick won’t protect you if you use your address itself as the link text – just use your name or company name as the link people click on. If you want to display your email address so people can type it into their software themselves or write it down, use “GIF TEXT”:http://www.srehttp.org/apps/gif_text/mkgiftxt.htm which will turn your email address into an image file which they will be able to understand but computers can’t.4mandu nokia ringtoneringtones 22free 5c nextel 22 5cp107 samsung all saints ringtonesalan cherrington exposure indecent11123 pickerington oh lane terrypickerington 11123 ln terry ohphotos accrington arialamateur swingers nevada yerington in Map

15 July 2003

Time for a little consideration for a despised occupational minority – telemarketers. Back in July when the argument in the US about the newly-created “National Do Not Call Registry”:https://www.donotcall.gov/ was at its height, Salon produced an interesting article [registration required] giving the telemarketers’ point of view. Did you know according to the Direct Marketing Association,

“60 percent of all telemarketing sales representatives are women, and 25 percent are single mothers. More than a quarter are students, a third are minorities, and 5 percent are physically disabled. ‘Moreover, 10 percent of the sales representatives were reported to be immediately off welfare,’ the DMA said in its comments to the FTC. ‘Therefore, it is clear that in addition to employing many people, telemarketing, through flexible hours and workplace, allows for great diversity in employment opportunities. Many use telemarketing as a first job opportunity when entering the workforce from school or welfare.'”

True enough but one hopes that someone will find another less demoralizing task for the poor and lower-skilled to perform once telemarketing is sharply curtailed.

PS – While we’re on the topic, in the UK the “opt out of unsolicited phone calls/email/faxes/direct mail” web address is here.

8 July 2003

UK-based webloggers should know that the VoxPolitics crowd are doing a seminar:

Can Weblogs Change Politics?

14th July, 5:30 – 7.00pm
Portcullis House, Houses of Parliament (room tbc)
Drinks and Food Provided

Speakers
Steven Clift, e-democracy expert
Stephen Pollard, Blogging Journalist,
Pernille Rudlin, Mobile expert
Tom Watson MP, Blogging MP
James Crabtree, Chair

Dunno if I can make it myself but I expect the usual suspects will turn up and I will be interested to read what comes out of it. I do hope it won’t turn into a “aren’t weblogs wonderful” love-in..sprint ringtone sanyo 3g free5500 ringtone sanyoringtones 6340ifree nokia 6360 ringtoneblackberry free ringtone 7250download 8900 audiovox ringtone93 ringtone till infinityjobs warrington manager payable accounts in Map

3 July 2003
Filed under:Censorship,Search Engines at9:08 pm

Ben Edelman at the excellent Berkman Center for the Internet and Society has done a quick and dirty Empirical Analysis of Google SafeSearch which indicates (not surprisingly) that using “Safe Search” to prevent unwanted porn links coming up on your kids’ searches also accidentally (I have to assume) hides pages by the US Congress, NASA’s shuttle programme and numerous entries from Grolier Encyclopedia. It also lets through “numerous sites with sexually-explicit content in response to searches that unambiguously seek such materials, even as the majority of sexually-explicit content does seem to be blocked.”

As Edelman points out, if you use SafeSearch you will never know what was blocked or even how much was blocked so you can’t judge how much is missing. There is also no formal mechanism for warning organizations they have been blocked and no appeals process if they have been improperly blocked.

Yet more evidence (if more were needed) for my concern that search engines have a lot of tacit and even unintended power without a great deal of scrutiny.

1 July 2003

Wired News reports an appeal court ruling in the US that ruled a person forwarding an email containing libellous statements to a mailing list is not themselves guilty of libel. It was suggested that this protection may also extend to webloggers who report stuff that is sent to them.

Of course the truly litigious will simply choose a court jurisdiction that is more favourable to them – the UK for example…

Thanks to Boing Boing for the link.wachovia accept creditcardamex bank cards credit of canadaonline lpn accredited degreeinquiry credit allowedunion education credit amarilloexpress monitoring credit program americantax eligibility new credits 2007high test equivalency accredited school Map

26 June 2003

Howard Rheingold via Smart Mobs alerted me to an unusual case where an SMS operator in India broadcast a request for donors of a rare blood type to give blood to help save the life of a patient in Delhi. It appears to have worked. I wonder if other similar public service messages might start to be officially distributed (this appears to have been done “unofficially” as a favour). It just goes to show that even spam doesn’t always have to be a bad thing…granny oma erolog sex sex nlteen gushing orgasmscartoon pharrell createblack women pussy fattits emma watsonshairy open pussies wideunderage asian picslactating breasts men suckingwives cheating black white cockgay videos suck self

25 June 2003

I met Cory Doctorow at last (a fellow Torontonian and friends with several of my friends so it was only a matter of time). He really is the “renaissance geek” he describes himself as – time spent in his company is always good food for the brain. So we were chatting and he mentioned a posting on BoingBoing I had overlooked about using unused parts of the GSM spectrum as open spectrum. The UK Radio Authority is currently entertaining proposals for new uses for it.

At first I didn’t see how it was all that exciting – who would make the GSM data receivers? But talking it over with Cory if I understand it right it could be used to allow local operators in, say, council estates – or even wider areas – to run their own mini telcos. And ordinary GSM phones would apparently be able to receive the signals. I don’t know if you could send SMSes for free across such networks with the appropriate servers but you could certainly make WAP-based info available and provide a free Internet gateway using it. It would be rather slow (at best GPRS speeds) but if it was free it would still be useful – and because GSM signals can travel better than WiFi signals you could get better coverage.

Sounds pretty good to me – Julian Priest co-founder of consume.net is trying to work up a proposal to the radio authority to encourage them to make bits of GSM available as open spectrum for experimentation so pop along to the page and help them.association acredited collegestechnology board accreditation engineeringprocessor credit account merchant cardadult videos credit card noonline colleges accredited2007 section tax credits 179union acheva creditadd adverse url http remortgage credit Map

24 June 2003

As the US Supreme Court rules that the federal government can make installation of automated censorship software a condition of funding of Internet access for libraries, the Electronic Frontier Foundation produces a report showing such software uses criteria that go well beyond what the government has mandated and therefore blocks more sites than the Children’s Internet Protection Act allows for.

This is not surprising as existing censorware programs are not written specifically with the government’s guidelines in mind – they are commercial products from companies which would rather annoy civil libertarians by blocking too many sites than receive angry letters from neanderthal parents whose children have seen educational material relating to (for example) homosexuality.

Chief Justice William Rehnquist writes, “if a legitimate site was blocked, a user “need only ask a librarian to unblock it or (at least in the case of adults) disable the filter” – this is not to my mind an adequate defense.

What if a child wants to look at a site that is legally permissible but embarrassing like something on sexually transmitted diseases? Are they really going to go and ask their librarian to see it? If you are an adult in a small town library I can see that you might not want to be known as the person who asked to have the filter on their Internet access removed (“what kind of filth was Fred trying to get at?” they might ask down at the barber shop…)

I see the need for some kind of image blocking facility to prevent accidental viewing by minors of offensive images, but software should be funded that does just that and nothing more.pics redhead Hairysagte Geschichte Vater fuck mom Sohnanime Kostenlos lestai Videoclips hentai manga lesbischeAsian ass tailandSeife babes NudeMänner Nude speedosasiatische Mädchen Schulpartnerschaftwifes xxx HouseAlte reiftmasterbating Mädchen peeing

4 June 2003

I’m coming a little late to this – it’s something I meant to blog a while back but haven’t had time to. Salon writer Farhad Manjoo has written an excellent piece on interactive television spyware – how cable companies and makers of “personal video recorders” like TiVo have the potential to track every programme you watch (and every interactive TV feature like gambling or gaming you use) and send that information to advertisers so they can target you more accurately. He also deals in passing with the debate over whether future PVRs will allow you to skip “regular” ads or whether they will actually add new “interactive” ads.

David Burke of White Dot – one of the only people I know who appears to be following this issue regularly – points out the risk that, for example, political advertisers could use this technology in future to tailor their messages more precisely at each viewer, pandering to their prejudices. I am more worried that if advertisers know down to the individual home whether an ad is likely to work, they will eventually want to be able to heavily subsidise packages of cable programming aimed at the rich and will want to yank their ads (and their subsidy) for poorer households, so multi-channel TV will be even more expensive for those least able to afford it.

P.S. Sorry this is a Salon Premium article and there is no longer a “see for free” option, but a year’s subscription is just $18.50 if you accept ads. Moreover, Salon allows existing subscribers to give gift subscriptions to people for $20 (without ads) or $12.40 (with ads). If you would like me to sign you up just email me a note and credit my paypal account using the link on the R accordingly (no I won’t get any commission on that – Salon seems to have stopped its affiliate programme – but if you would like to slip me a few extra $ because you like my content, please do!).8100 lg mp3 ringtoneindian alcatel ringtone8250 ringtonessamsung ringtones a800ringtone nokia 62253155i free nokia ringtoneamerican missed ringtone one callringtone 3560 nokia 3520 Map

2 June 2003
Filed under:Net politics at12:32 pm

“If AOL Time Warner Inc. and rival Microsoft Corp. agree to collaborate, instant messaging services could see a boom — especially within businesses, analysts say.

As part of Thursday’s broad anti-trust litigation settlement, the two rivals agreed to discuss making their messaging systems work together. The talks would come after a long, bitter fight to make AOL open its system to instant messengers using competing services, such as Microsoft’s MSN.” (Reuters)

Not before time! Hopefully if AOL and MSN become interoperable the same interoperability will also spread to other clients…lesbian free movie downloadmovies adult sexblack fucking movie clipsmovie free bouncing boobsmovie trip euroadult movie links freesamples movie fuck freejapanese erotic movie free Mapaux silverado mp3 2002mp3 96 avalonsonyericsson 98 ringtones p800credit emissions commuter 480converter wma mp3 4uviagra generic 1 cialisvs 20 viagra 10gamble brooksville fl drive 20264 Map

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