The UK Gov’t has pledged at the recent e-summit to get every school onto broadband by 2006. This is rather good but if you are going thereby to ensure every remote village has broadband access anyway, why not find some way to ensure that the bandwidth is also available to other people in the area who are not already served? How about some form of public wireless mesh network with schools as the hubs in internet-deprived areas?advances loan 10 payday texas 1415 10 for loan paydayloan 14 payday 10 payday loans12 payday credit 17 loanpayday 6 free 4 information loan5 payday no loan credit 7payday 7 texas loan 5payday cash account advance loanhouse add loan urlloan payday quick advance

According to a UN report summarised by the BBC, the number of Internet users in Asia and, encouragingly, Africa rose by more than 40%, and in Latin America and Europe the number rose by 33% in 2001. In North America the number only rose by 10%, perhaps indicating that there is a plateau of interest which Europe will start to reach soon.

Of course, this probably over-states the importance of the Internet to non-English speaking people and the developing world – my guess is that the average American Internet users uses the Internet a lot more than the average African one because of the greater amount of relevant content and lower relative (and absolute) cost.stroke 2 ringtone8100 sprint ringtoneringtones 24 phone mobile ctu3595 free polyphonic nokia ringtonefree ringtones for crickets absolutely149 south barrington7250 nokia polyphonic ringtone freeadult proof download rington Mapfree nude moviesnude movie trailersand young older porn moviemovie pantyhose clips pantyhose moviesmpegs movies pantyhosemovie free hilton parismovie paris sex hiltonsheel pumping high pedal movie Map

America’s Homeland Security department is lobbying to gain Total Information Awareness
about its citizens, blending government databases with the vast sources of commercial data available on you. The good news? If there is eventually a backlash by citizens afraid of government abuse of their privacy it may also at last cause people to fight back against pervasive data gathering by commercial companies in America.

According to CNet, the Bush administration, while supporting a new Council of Europe treaty on Cybercrime is unwilling to go along with an addition that would punish people “distributing, or otherwise making available, racist and xenophobic material to the public through a computer system”. Of course given the First Amendment in the US it would be impossible for America to back that part of the treaty.

Fortunately, it is an additional protocol to the treaty and one that the US can choose to leave out when signing.

It’s treaties like this which have caused Google to invisibly remove references to racist websites from their German and French indexes which, however you loathe hate speech is an exceedingly dangerous thing to be doing…credit force enlistment rank aircredit visa platinum plus aaa cardcredit purchases s 1940 onbangalore university in accreditedlibrary accredited in program ala scienceamex credit soloutionsaccredited all online university nationaladverse credit action requirement Map

The Wall Street Journal profiles a spammer. I can’t resist reading about them (Also see an earlier article in Salon) and I rarely miss a chance to try to understand how they can live with their consciences.

Fortunately, once in a while a spammer gets hit with a fine in the US. And recently six more were taken to court. I don’t know of any cases in Europe yet, though.gambling liner waukesha 8crisis credit 1990ssaint list club 10 gambling paulringtone a650 installcredit carpet abbeyscotia nova prevalence gambling study 2003conusumer acc creditdrive gamble fl 20264 brooksville Map

According to a new report which was summarised in the Guardian, despite extensive effort being put into getting Government services online, the British public have shown very little interest compared to other countries. Just 13% of the population had used Government online services in the UK over the last year, less than even the Czech and Slovak republics and less than a quarter of the proportion using them in any Scandinavian country.

Overall in the 28 countries examined, most of the use of e-Government by citizens has been predominantly to seek information (24% of total adult population) compared to just 4% who used the Internet at any point in the year to provide feedback of any kind into the government process. Clearly the potential of the Internet to improve participation in government is barely being tapped.new about equity loans home jerseycredit loan $5000 bad withguaranteed approval loans 100approval guaranteed loan home 100loans 0 new car percentno 20 loans land doclouis st mo loans advancewith 10000 loan dollar small paymentscash 90 loan dayadvantage alaska loans

A report published recently into e-government by the British Department for Work and Pensions makes gloomy reading. It suggests (perhaps not surprisingly) that, ” only 8% of the working population said they would prefer to contact the government about benefits through the internet or email, rather than traditional channels. The most popular channel is face-to-face contact at the local office, closely followed by a telephone call.”

Of course this is a false comparison, as you might find you have to travel for a half an hour and queue for another half hour to meet someone and you might have to hang on the phone for ages to speak to them. I have always maintained that if one important aspect of e-government is cost saving or increased efficiency, some of those benefits should be passed on to the users to encourage them to use it. If the government guaranteed faster service online (or offered a slightly higher benefit for those who got it paid in electronically) people might be prepared to overlook the unfamiliarity of the transaction.

There’s a little information on the feasability of offering e-government services online via digital TV as well. So far the government is only offering a DTV gateway on the (expensive) Sky Digital platform. Where it might make a difference would be on Freeview, the new no-subscription DTV service. But alas the providers of Freeview have not built two way interactivity into their low-cost boxes, so anything more than “brochureware” government services will have to wait for a Freeview v.2.

Yet another comparative survey on broadband takeup across Europe – this one indicates that 7% of UK users are now on broadband, compared to 17% in Spain (how humiliating to be left behind by Spain!) and 29% in Sweden. But the news is not all bad – we are catching up to Germany and Italy who are tied on 8%. Of course the low German numbers may be due to the large number of ISDN connections there – if you can get 128KBps on dialup then you might not be as keen to upgrade.

Across Europe, 26% of people said they were looking to get broadband but worryingly a quarter said they “would never” get it. And that’s a sample of people already using the Internet – if you looked at the overall population the numbers would be even more discouraging. Cost of access used to be a significant barrier, but with some broadband connections under £20 a month this is getting to be less of an excuse.

Clearly the man on the street (or even more importantly the woman on the street) needs to understand what the relevance of broadband is to them.for free adult sexaja 80 s pornoffender registry alabama sexporn amature trailersalicia sex silverstonefree amature sexsex ameteuramatuer photos sexy Map

Wired has revealed in its latest issue that not only does Google remove hate sites on request of foreign governments – it also removes sites that a lawyer suggests infringe copyright – again without notifying anyone. What the article doesn’t make clear is whether they bother to follow through and determine whether the site actually does infringe copyright or whether they just take it off the database and wash their hands of the consequences. Do the offending sites even know that they have been removed?

I was going to post something about those posters earlier but I was just too slow in getting around to taking a picture. Fortunately, Harvey beat me to it.

The posters are very widespead (I think Transport for London may not be finding it easy to sell ads on their shelters at the moment), and surprisingly they are not intentionally ironic. The reason why they have the rather unfortunate Soviet-style iconography is that they are part of a series of Transport for London posters with a similar style. Of course I wouldn’t disregard the possibility that the design agency used by TfL enjoyed the irony.

For more on the TfL CCTV programme (and more use of the scary London Transport eyes), click here and for a lot of largely outraged comments, check out samizdata.net, a Libertarian weblog.

I take a rather utilitarian perspective on all this CCTV – it doesn’t do as much good at dealing with crime as (for example) better lighting (according to a recent study) but if it makes people feel safer then it is arguably performing a good public service, and there is not much evidence I have seen so far of it being used to oppress the innocent here in the UK. The trend does bear watching, though…2 best casinoa300 polyphonic ringtonescommercial credit receivable accounts insurancebonus up palace casino golden 200sph a460 ringtonecollege life experience accredited creditcasino 22online 22a840 pm ringtone Map