Europe wants to spend at least £1.9bn to create the Galileo network – essentially duplicate the functions of both the GPS and Russia’s similar Glonass network. Why? Because they want a system they can control (and because doubtless politicians across Europe will use this opportunity to spread the contracts for the work around their key constituencies). If things got bad enough that the US turned its GPS system off over us in order to piss of Europe, we would have more to worry about than our location…9 right 6 loan paydayadvance 9 cash loanhome 95 loanno loan checking account day payloan accpunt underwriter processor executiverate mortgage 20 home adjustable loanadjustable loanloan advance kansas cashloans advance san diego cashamerica consolidate bank loan studentjames glory told swearington allnutter william accringtonalong ringtone qw thelg ringtones 3200 amerieairtelworld ringtonestext 10p ringtones htmfree ringtone nokia 23123000 usaringtone 3ga Map

A TV critic for The Nation believes that the latest Star Trek series (Enterprise) is significantly more right wing than its predecessors. The analysis is a little shrill and over-wrought, but I think there is a germ of truth in there and I fear it may demonstrate a slide to the right in mainstream American thought over the last few years. As she points out:

The newest offering is a frank vehicle for white male suprematism and resentment.

Let’s start with white. The titles, set to a hymn that combines the first Christian references ever heard on Star Trek with some boasts about resisting alien domination, show drawings of the ships of fifteenth-century European colonial powers and European maps and globes from the same period.

On one is scripted “HMS Enterprise.” This jibes neatly with the plot, the first ever on Star Trek in which racism is applauded. The normal, virile, white spacemen of Earth are being held back by the ridiculous sensitivities of the Vulcans, pushy, geeky aliens who want them to respect the cultural differences of all the alien races.”

If you like nerf guns, squirt guns and other “harmless” weaponry, you’ll love this attractive carved wood rubber band machine gun, sneaky catapult watches, backyard mangonels and other big toys for big boys (passed on to me by chk).desktops movie horrorhorror themes movieimb moviessex interracial jungle samples moviejackass soundtrack the movielatex movieslatina movies sexwatch lesbian movie freemovies sapphic lickingtheater local movie schedule

AOL (which owns Netscape) is now testing a version of Netscape’s browser to replace Internet Explorer as its interface. While this could have made a difference a few years ago, it is unlikely to touch off a new round of the browser wars now – instead it will just annoy web designers who will now have to make sure their sites cater to Netscape’s preferences as well as IE’s if they are going to be presented to AOL’s vast customer base in a good light.

Of course, in principle web designers shouldn’t rely on browser specific standards, so this discipline should be good for them…

(and what is the Internet but a way to get random interesting stuff to you?) I knew I was going to like didyouknow.com when it revealed the average American male is 1.75m (5’7″) tall – exactly my height.

I was also intrigued to learn that the official language of Vatican City is Latin and the Basque language is not related to any other language in the world – mind you, since the site relies on user submissions, this may or may not be true. Then again, you could say the same of anything you find on the Internet…

Every week I am emailed a list of the keywords people have searched this site for when they use the search box at the right (don’t worry – it doesn’t tell me who makes these searches). No more than one in ten of these seem to be searching for anything that makes sense to me, however. I just don’t understand what these people are looking for and why they think I might have alluded to it.

I am even starting to wonder whether somehow I might be getting someone else’s searches… Here are the 12 searches made last week:

200 million
200 million hours
dilmah
filipino
megan schoendorf
new survey
pedo
phillipines
sdfg
tabb

Could anyone who made one of those searches tell me why? Any other strange search stories people would like to share?

Interesting article about the effect of weblogs on Google. Briefly, Google favours sites that update regularly and sites with lots of links – weblogs tend to have both. And there are lots of them and many weblog owners are reading each other’s sites, so many sites can end up linking to the same site at the same time.

In other words, weblog owners can have a disproportionate impact on which sites come up when you do a search using Google – something that was demonstrated when a weblog campaign was formed to criticise a company called Critical IP by linking to the critical page. (The campaign since lost force because the links “dropped off” the pages of participating weblogs as new entries replaced them).

The article and a follow-up go on to examine whether this phenomenon is open to abuse. Inevitably, it occurs to me that this is a chance for me to do myself a good turn, so if you have a website and have a reason to provide a link to a UK Internet consultant (using those words and that link) I would be grateful…

Interesting piece on Sputnik which is trying to create an ad hoc commercial wireless network through “affiliates” who make their broadband connections available to Sputnik’s fee-paying members (presumably receiving some kick-back from Sputnik when they do so).

What isn’t mentioned in the article above is that to use Sputnik you have to dedicate a machine completely to acting as a server and you have to burn a CD-R with the software for the machine to boot from. My guess is that this will limit the user base to eager early adopters. If it were a Windows/Mac app that people could install and run in the background, then it might really take off…

Also not mentioned is what happens if DSL providers find large amounts of their bandwidth is being used by a bunch of people who are not only not paying the ISP any additional money but are paying some third party company. Sputnik itself asserts “Sputnik offers many benefits to ISPs” (without enumerating them) and they add, “Sputnik does not support any activities that violate an ISP’s acceptable usage policy”.

It remains to be seen whether they can resolve the underlying problems – but it is still good to see inventive people trying to create new solutions to the “last mile” problem!

P.S. Boingo Wireless is also offering wireless roaming, but with a more conventional business model.

William Shatner has a messageboard on his site and posts to it from time to time. I wonder if he is jealous of Wil Wheaton (the actor who played Wesley Crusher on Star Trek) – his weblog has received several awards…

Have a happy International Women’s Day!

And a happy birthday to me…