June 9th 2007
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Blogging, Life, Politics
When I was listening to the news the other day, I could not believe what I was hearing. I thought the news was replaying a clip from cold war era. Russian President Vladimir Putin was threatening to aim potentially nuclear weapons at sites around Europe because some countries had agreed to play host to American anti-missile and radar sites. If it’s his aim to piss off most of the world, he’s succeeded. I’m going to allow myself some less than appropriate language here and say to mister former secret agent; where the hell do you get off threatening Europe with missile attack? Have you been in a coma for the past sixty years? Mr. Putin, why are you so against a defence system for Europe and America? Is it because it’s America’s system? I don’t understand you, Mr. Putin, why don’t you want me to be safe from the evil in the world? Well, enough of those common words. Let us enjoy a read and discuss the implications of America’s new ‘defence’ system.
Big-Arse America
If you haven’t been keeping up with America’s expanding international presence lately then you may not have heard about their growing plans to set up an anti-missile defence system around Europe and their own territory to combat what they think is a real and growing threat from ‘evil’ countries like Iran and North Korea. Their system involves a number of radar and missile sites throughout Europe - one radar site is located here in the UK. Mr. Putin’s outrageous comments came after it was announced America wanted to place sites in Poland and the Czech Republic - former Soviet states and signatories of the Warsaw Pact.
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May 16th 2007
Life, Politics
I don’t usually talk on here about my political beliefs and my ideas to do with politics because this is a technology focused blog. This time though, I want my thoughts to go on public record rather than hiding them away in the depths of my LiveJournal account.
The world today is probably now at the end of what I call its border transition stage. I don’t expect that from now there will be any major changes in country borders or any new countries springing up. We have to face up to this fact and look to how we can mould what we have rather than trying to wipe it clean. There are many border disputes going on at the moment - from the more well known arguments like the Gaza strip and Tibet to the less well known like the fight for Transnistria’s official recognition as an independent state. Most requests for independence are quite illogical when you look at the requests. For example, asking for independence for a country whose size is less than a few kilometres is ludicrous. I will come back to this idea later.
We’re The Best
I live in the United Kingdom and I’m honestly glad that I was born here - the chances of it were astronomically unthinkable. In the last ten years, the domestic politics of the UK, England especially, has dramatically been changed - mostly due to Tony Blair and New Labour - for the good. We are of course, no where near perfect in our policies and implementation of them but I do think that the UK is one of the best places to live in the world (even if we do get crap weather). It is our international reputation and our policies abroad that needs to be revamped. We have participated in many wars and battles abroad in the last decade and I think this is why our attitude to politics both domestic and abroad have changed. Unfortunately, the battles we have fought as the UK have weakened our politics and made us look weak in the eyes of the international community.
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June 9th 2006
Internet, Life, News, Politics, Technology
So, as American law decides not to back net neutrality, what will become of this wonderful technology? It seems that as the United States takes out one dictator, it becomes one. When ICANN refused to give control of the internet to a European body, I felt it marked doom for the internet. Will the internet become the next capitalist state?
Besides the fee we pay as users to access the internet from our Internet Service Providers, the net is essentially free. Do you think we should have to pay extra to, for example, visit a website hosted in a different country? I don’t think so. Do you think that we should be really restricted to what services we can use because of our location or the amount we pay for our connection? I don’t. The United States seem to think it can mould the world to suit it. First it drags us along to its wars, uses us to commit human rights crimes and now it’s moving towards a tiered internet where we’re not all equal and we don’t all have the same choices available to us. Granted, there are services at the moment that aren’t accessible to all (such as when Channel 4 released the ‘IT Crowd’ online to UK residents only) but this sort of thing will rise. I think that an independant body should be formed - independant of any country, any political view that includes people experienced in the IT industry from countries around the world. This would ensure that this body isn’t corrupted and/or influenced by governments and political views. We cannot let the United States rule us. They are one country - they do not have the right to restrict our access to the internet, nor their own citizens and especially, they do not have the right to change the structure of the internet and turn it into a capitalist state. The internet should remain like Switzerland during WWII - neutral.
What’s your view on this news and this matter?
Here are some opinions of some people on a forum:
It may well be a utopian dream as the internet may have already gone to far to bring it back… The internet and what it means and is capable of is still a very new thing in it’s infancy, whilst in this stage it is showing that it is an increasing threat to a great many of the traditional establishments they will seek to control it, the listings of sites visited, blocking or limiting to access by various nations to differing degrees all show that there is some effort to tame this wild beast with varying degrees of success.
Everyone including the W3C are trying to impose their vision of what the web should be on the public, some with what they think are the average user’s best interests at heart but some users are still content with a nice 56k dial up connection whilst others are addicts who have to have the best and pay for it. There is already a wide gap between those willing to pay for the fastest internet connections and the casual user and it would come as no surprise if this gap continues to grow.
It is impossible for something such as the internet to continue growing without there being some break up, at present this may not be apparent but the bigger it grows the more facets there will be and the more likelihood of break ups, whether it is a two tier system such as the one proposed or something completely different that hasn’t been foreseen.
What should happen and what will happen are likely to be two very different things.
The world already has two Internets, one that can be accessed from within China and one that can be accessed from everywhere else. I know which Internet I want to be connected to.
Now this may be a slightly extreme example, however creating a two-tier Internet is not as different as it may seem. A few weeks ago it emerged that publishers have to pay bookstores to market their books, to create more sales. Applying this principle to the Internet would mean that sites have to pay to get onto ‘premium’ bandwidth, effectively pushing up the price for the end user. Now a large site from a multi-national may be able to pay these fees, however I’m pretty sure the average open source project won’t. A two-tier Internet will push users towards certain chosen sites at the expense of the smaller, independent and possibly better sites.
The current Internet creates innovation, which should be encouraged. A tiered Internet would only benefit large companies endlessly rolling out material to the same tried and tested formula. The question is what do we want out of our Internet?
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May 14th 2006
Blogging, Film/TV, Life, Politics
I’ve gone through all the entries in the Eurovision Song Contest, airing this Saturday, and have picked my list of those I would like to win, and those who I think will win. So, here goes:
- Armenia
- Belarus
- Bosnia & Herzegovina
- Bulgaria
- Denmark
- France
- F.Y.R Macedonia
- Ireland
- Spain
- Ukraine
As you can see, I haven’t listed the United Kingdom. Why, you may ask? Well, let’s just say in the UK, it’s called paedophilia. No, I haven’t listed it simply because I don’t like it and it’s way below our usual (*cough*not gemini*cough*) standards. Oh, and please bare in mind that the above list is based on the songs I liked and not my political views - so the list will probably be wrong on the night.
Toodles.
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