The use of the loaded question may imply that I believe they should. I shall be frank and admit that this is precisely the intention of this post, but please allow me to explain my reasoning before you dismiss such a ludicrous notion. What inspired me to write this post Read more…
As an observer of that interesting case study in Internet regulation that is Anonymous, recent developments have been quite an eye-opener in the potential long-term survival of the group. When Anonymous coordinated a series of denial-of-service attacks against payment systems and electronic commerce giants in response to the perceived attack Read more…
Following up from the story about the Internet group Anonymous taking itself too seriously, the organisers of the now infamous Operation Payback have issued a statement of intentions. It seems like they were honestly thinking that they would be getting more serious attention by then, given the grandiose claims they Read more…
SocialMediaLand has been flooded in the last couple of days with stories about Firesheep. In case you have not heard about it, Firesheep is a Firefox add-on that allows anyone to hijack other people’s social network accounts in open wifi zones. The way the application works is staggeringly simple. If Read more…
For some time now English law firm ACS:Law has been in the middle of controversy for its use of dubious tactics against copyright infringers. ACS:Law’s cause célèbre is that they became famous when they teamed-up with porn producers and then they started sending cease-and-desist letters to people claiming that they Read more…
As one of the millions of people who reuses passwords, I found this xkcd utterly brilliant: I wonder if it would be possible to program a web search that looks for the frequency of use of the words ‘xkcd’ and ‘brilliant’, ‘wonderful’, ‘utterly brilliant’, ‘amazing’ and ‘WTF?’ The results I Read more…
This is a wonderful parody video about plans by European Commissioner Cecilia Malmström to introduce a website blocking system in Europe. I find it amusing that some people believe that widespread filtering is usually advocated as a solution to minority behaviour that, while abhorrent, does not justify putting in place Read more…
Several press outlets have been giving ample coverage to ChatRoulette, an online video chat service that connects two random people. What seemed to be a great idea, quickly turned into a service for online voyeurs, public self-gratification and much public outrage. It also prompted one of the funniest Daily Show Read more…
How do you get to your favourite pages? This may seem like a deceivingly simple question. In my case, I have my most used pages in my Firefox toolbar, and while I have a very extensive collection of Bookmarks, I tend not to use them that often. Instead, like most Read more…
Things are heating up in the fight against piracy in the UK. Virgin Media has announced that it will use deep packet inspection (DPI) software to analyse whether its customers are sharing copyright infringing material. Privacy International has brought this practice to the attention of both the European Commission and Read more…