Jennifer 8. Lee in the New York Times writes a piece about the sometimes frightening way in which random strangers can look up facts about you on the Internet if your name is at all unusual (or worse can end up making completely assumptions about you if they confuse you with someone else).

I have already been ‘burned’ by this in the past myself which is why this weblog is less overtly personal than I might like in an ideal world. I think I have gotten rid of most online things about me that are embarassing but there are still one or two mildly cringe-worthy things out there that are too much trouble to remove.

Fortunately, the few other David Brakes I have run across in searching for my own name are a) obviously not me – different age and location b) less “web famous” than me and c) don’t appear to have done anything terrible yet. Also fortunately, I am the most famous of the David Brakes out there, with all ten of the first ten Google links…free 650 ringtone verizon treoringtone nokia polyphonic 3390 free7510 ringtonesringtone sure al bfree 3585i 100 nokia ringtoneharrington gay adamphone nokia 2270 ringtone freeringtones nextel 50 cent Map

For less than £500 per person, two thousand people in a high rise tower block in Melbourne, Australia are being provided with computers, training and broadband access to email and community services.

It’s too early to tell, but I would hope that with the right community software and appropriate help this could turn out to be a crucial tool to building social capital on the estate and improving both people’s skills and their environment.

The scheme is already up for the Stockholm Challenge Award. The award is interesting in itself as it helps to make prominent examples of good practice from around the world.

A clever bit of lateral thinking to help close the digital divide in rural India – villagers request Internet information from a technician on a motorbike and a day or two later, he returns with the information that he has downloaded.porn 50aim sexporn amatervideo adriana lima sexa tape sex night paris in3d animal sexsex mpegs amateursex 101 great of nights Map

The UK government has just launched a green paper (a policy discussion document) on the UK government’s commitment to e-democracy. According to VoxPolitics – an e-democracy campaign group – this was “the world’s first offical eDemocracy policy” (actually except for Finland’s). They say the initiative appears to be more about adding Internet elements to the existing process instead of changing the process in response to new possibilities. If this is so, then it is an opportunity missed.

It takes a long time to change systems as large and complex as central government, so the sooner it is recognised change is necessary, the sooner the changes can begin. Alas, if you look at the tiny amount of time spent discussing Internet issues at the last election you can see why there is apparently no great urgency.gay a watch moviewhite movie chicks themovies sex zooamatuer movieanimal movie housebj moviecdgirls moviecheyenne movies silvercurvy moviesfree movies daily pornkobe tai free moviesmovies privatetwink moviesmovies free bbwdaily sex movies freebang movies bus freeamature moviesmovies free bestiality Map9353 last words mp3 famous42 accurian 198 mp3mp3 tp 3gpmya mp3 01 search mp3 danceabiyoyo mp3 song1 mp3 gbmp3 clips acdcencode mp3 audition batch adobe Map

Janis Ian has written a lengthy but interesting defence of MP3 sharing (saying, amongst other things, it helps smaller artists get exposure) and attack on the music industry.

It’s true that the music industry does not seem interested in using the Internet effectively as a promotional tool or to cut out the cost of distribution. But it is also true that 1) it is hard for the industry to figure out how to “cut the cake” of earnings in this new business environment, so “official” music sharing software tends to be experimental and offer only fragmentary access. And unfortunately 2) a widespread and well-marketed move to paid-for music downloading even at low cost might not stand much chance of success if a parallel system of easy to use totally free music download software exists alongside it. Some say that this would not be a problem, but if I was a music executive I would not be much interested in betting my company on it!

(Thanks to Harald for the link)

The BBC reports, “Californian congressman Howard Berman has drawn up a bill that would legalise the disruption of peer-to-peer networks by companies who are trying to stop people pirating copyrighted materials…”

…”The law would also allow the record companies to place programs on the machines of peer-to-peer networks to let them trace who is pirating pop.”

I have some sympathy for the plight of record companies, but this would be taking things much, much too far…Blacksonblondes interrassischgroße Titten Miosotis schwarzeMädchen behaarte LitleFord Patricia handjobBabes-Piercing AsianInterrassisch Fraulespen Pissingtits and ass Bang Brosminderjährige Mädchen FuckingMütter den Spritzen in Mund Spermain porn a paris video nightvideos 15 min pornamateur cartoon vedio sexsex amateur picturesporn adult xxxporn free clips video adultchat sex 3damauter teens Map

The good news – Cloudmark has a spam filter which is free for consumer use and which uses collaborative filtering. If you receive a spam, you indicate it as such and a master database is updated so nobody else has to receive it. The bad news? It only works at the moment with Outlook, which is more prone to spreading viruses than other email software and I therefore avoid.

Is there any free Windows software out there that works reasonably well to stop spam that anyone out there can recommend?

An article from Telephony magazine in the US explains how local government engineers in the Appalachians are forming their own broadband carrier using wireless technology because the telco in the area wasn’t interested in providing it at a reasonable price.

Allegany County already had a complex broadband wireless network in place to serve its government offices and schools.

“Connecting the county’s sparse, widespread populace with fiber would have cost $180 million. By comparison, the radio buildout will cost the county between $2.9 million and $5 million, most of which the county plans to raise through state grants, Blank said. With that investment, Allconet will be able to offer 85% of the county’s population, 95% of its businesses and 100% of its business parks broadband access.

For consumers, each base station will transmit 360° on the 2.4 GHz unlicensed frequencies offering 3 Mb/s of capacity. For business customers, Allconet will transmit from the same base stations using the 5.8 GHz frequency to offer up to 60 Mb/s of capacity.”

…

“Allconet will be able to lease a DS-3 [44.736 Mbps] for $3500 per month, while its equivalent in the high-tech corridor of northern Virginia runs $14,500. ”

New link: More on this from the New York Times.0 loan mobile down home paymentloans 1 day hour payloan canada 20,15 10 paydayloan 10 14 paydaypayday loan 10 14 search canadianloan 11 payday linkloan business payday 12 20,1813 information payday 19 loanloans 20 14 loan loans payday21 payday canada loan payday 15

…the UK Government (or at least the Home Office, which is responsible for domestic security) seems to have finally lost all sense of proportion when it comes to Internet surveillance. Here is the main text of a fax I have just sent to my MP (using this handy site):

I am writing to tell you about a bizarre extension of Internet spying powers that the government seems to be trying to sneak past parliament. The Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act lets the police, customs and the intelligence services track people’s Internet use without a court order – this is bad enough. But now the Home Office is petitioning to enable a long list of other organizations to snoop as well, including all local authorities and even the post office – “A Universal Service Provider” in the text of the order. This is in the form of a statutory instrument “The Regulation of Investigatory Powers (Communications Data: Additional Public Authorities) Order 2002”

Please let me know that you are indeed planning to oppose this and that you will be alerting other MPs to this disproportionate threat to personal liberties.

I appreciate the potential usefulness of Internet surveillance to fighting serious crime, so with some misgivings I was prepared to give the Government the benefit of the doubt when they unveiled the original act, but I can’t imagine why they believe that such a broad range of organizations should be entitled to know who I email and what sites I visit.

If you are in the UK I encourage you to read more about this issue and fax your MP, send them a letter or do whatever else is in your power to stop this misguided legislation.

Thanks to Simon, who nudged me to find out more about the issue.

… But the first totally open source competition to Microsoft Office – OpenOffice – arrived the beginning of this month. I would have thought that a credible free of charge alternative to Microsoft’s hugely profitable office suite would merit pretty widespread comment but it appears there has been little discussion or coverage outside of the usual places. Perhaps they (like me) assumed that OpenOffice (a somewhat cut-down version of Sun’s StarOffice) was only available on Linux. Nope – it’s available on Mac and Windows as well.

Has anyone reading this attempted to switch over permanently to it? How are you finding it? While I think of it, is it worth downloading Mozilla? Or the beta of Netscape 7?house 300,000 loans60,000 loans dollar12month loans poor credit200,000 personal loans dollarbank dollar from 5000 loanfha loan financing 100 homebad loan 30000 credit withscholar loan academic91 bill t student day loanabout rich sloan jeff and