Everywhere! Broadband claims it will shortly be launching a broadband-by-satellite service in the UK (via Eutelsat) which will give consumers unable to get broadband via ADSL or cable access to download speeds of 1Mb/sec for £19.95 a month. SatDrive (also a Eutelsat partner) is already offering a similar deal for £14.99 a month. Alas, it isn’t quite as good as it seems:

• Charges don’t include the cost of your telephone, which will have to be connected as long as you are doing any “active surfing” (you can disconnect once you have requested a big download, however, and you will be notified of new email without needing to dial up).
• Files will arrive very quickly, but I am told that at least with existing satellite services there is often an annoying delay before any given file starts to be downloaded (this is because of the distance between you and the satellite). This also makes satellite Internet pretty hopeless for online gaming.
• In the case of Satdrive at least (for Everywhere it is not clear) the bandwidth on offer is shared, so if others on the same service are downloading large files your own download speeds may drop.
• Everywhere! installation costs “from £99”, and Satdrive’s installation costs £399+ (unless you already have the equipment).

Last but not least, one has to wonder how they can afford to offer this service for such low prices. But this is still unquestionably good news…

Interesting editorial on thedogmatism of the geek community. The author, Tom Steinberg, rightly points out that there is a depressing unanimity of expressed views about Internet issues among Internet old-timers. He worries that if “we” lose on one of those issues (like digital rights management) then “we” may find it difficult to re-group and keep fighting on other issues.

I worry that the community may be viewed as self-interested and naive because, for example, it preaches that you should be allowed to copy as much music or movies as you want because “hey, those industries are owned by The Man who is exploiting the artists anyway”. This may mean that when we want to be heard about what are IMHO more important issues like privacy rights and anti-spam legislation our credibility will be tarnished.

Google has agreed to remove – without notice, public debate or scrutiny – more than 100 racist sites from its database when that database is accessed via Google’s French and German gateways (google.com retains the sites).

Since for many people the results they get from Google effectively constitute their “window” onto the Internet, this decision is deeply disturbing. It is one thing for people to deliberately choose to filter out search results from their own searches (or that of their children) using “safe search” engines like the BBC’s, but until this research was published in Harvard, these search restrictions were taking place without people even realising it.

To me, possibly the best way around this problem would be to present websites containing the most offensive material with a warning and a link to a site containing counter-arguments alongside it.

In the case of child pornography sites, if one could expunge those links manually from search engine databases without removing other, legitimate sites, I would certainly be tempted to try…

BBC News Online working alongside Go Digital, a World Service programme, has produced a series of profiles of how people in Bangladesh and Senegal are putting new technology to use to help the disadvantaged. Not all of these technological experiments will make sense in the long term, but it is good to see people trying…ringtone free nokia polyphonic 228551 squad ringtoneringtone 6010 nokia polyphonicnokia ringtone 6260 polyphonicfree download nokia ringtone 3285ringtone free polyphonic 2260 nokiaring actor ring funny ring ringtonesa55 siemens ringtone Map

According to the BBC, they are refusing to sign up to a “voluntary” code which would have them hand over details of when email from any of their subscribers was sent and to whom – but not their content. It’s not surprising they are a little unwilling to cooperate as the big question is – who is entitled to ask for this information. Back in June the government seemed ready to allow just about anybody to go fishing for information. This was nipped in the bud but they still aren’t saying who they think should be entitled to this information.

ISPs are right to be nervous of collecting this data until the government clarifies its views.boob big women movies of freemovies porn free thumbsporn quality movies freeporn retro free moviesmovie hardcore sample freemovies swinger freesamples teen movie freemovie free clips twinkmovies wired pussy freedownload xxx movies free

In E-Government Bulletin last month (only now published on the web) there is a report of an interesting meeting I attended aimed at helping UK civil servants to produce a paper on e-democracy.

It is followed by an editorial by me on how ICT can be used to re-engage people in the political process (my view, in brief, is that technology won’t change anything unless the Government visibly responds to the opportunity it provides).

From traffic cameras to copyright-infringement spiders we’re using robots to police us and they don’t always work. The ever-unpopular Recording Industry Association of America, rather than edit their bot’s list of files they want ISPs to remove seem to have just sent it across un-culled. As a result, files like “harry potter book report.rtf” (1k in size) are flagged as copyright infringement.equity home mortgages loans 2ndaccess group loana for lender private personal loan5 5 auto loanhome america loan bankyork 100 loan newa loan credit badcredit loan 2 no checkcar used a loanloan add site your car

According to news.com , “the new Kazaa allows searches by “playlist,” letting groups of songs be downloaded as a single item. The company touts this as a way for people to share diverse lists of songs by different artists, while warning against trading copyrighted works. In reality, this new option provides a new, simple way to download albums all at once instead of song by song.”

Likewise, “Kazaa’s new software allows people to rate files so that corrupt or false files will quickly collect ratings poor enough to warn people away from downloading them. It also comes with a setting called “filter bogus music and video files” that is set by default as active. ”

Of course most bogus files will be put there by copyright owners who want to frustrate people trying to pirate their music.

UK members of parliament don’t tend to read their email so the web to fax gateway FaxYourMP.com is a real boon in putting constituents in touch with their elected representatives quickly and easily. Unfortunately, MPs don’t always read their faxes either, according to some interesting statistics just published by the site. In fact, the Conservative leader, Iain Duncan Smith joined a rogues gallery of 26 MPs who have not responded to any faxes, including six who have publicly stated they will not respond to any.

I tried to use faxyourmp to contact my own MP, Jeremy Corbyn, some time ago and was among the 75% of faxes sent to him which have remained un-acknowledged…

Overall, 61% of faxes to local were responded to within 14 days (the site’s “cut-off date”).dirty moviesmovies homemade webcamclips porno moviemovie adult free formovie amc theatresmovies kiss girlindian movies sexfuck movies lolita Map

Despammed
Register with this site (free) and you get an address which will forward email sent to it to any address you like, but will filter it to remove spam first. I haven’t tried it but it sounds useful. The main drawback is that it also appends a short advertisement at the bottom of every email it filters.