Tag Archive for 'teh internets'

Censorship police: Google is a browser

wstryder February 26, 2008 0 Comments

DSC_4279
Image Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License by katchi

On February 12, 2008 an Internet activist’s website was blacklisted in Finland, because it contained a list of domains censored in Finland. That list naturally has links to sites which the Finnish National Bureau of Investigation claims contain child pornography. However, many domains on that list were found to contain no child pornography, or pornography of any kind at all. It’s also worth considering that according to the Finnish law, only sites which contain illegal material and that are hosted abroad can be censored.

It’s very troubling to think that the police has extended the scope of the law on their own initiative. When asked why Google, which links to plenty of censored sites, isn’t censored, Lars Henriksson of the NBI replied “It [Google] isn’t a website, it’s a browser.” It would help if the NBI hired someone who has actually seen a computer… The level of incompetence in the NBI is just staggering.

The biggest problem with the current censorship system in Finland is not in the technical implementation of the system (which is very poor by any standard) but rather in the fundamental nature of any censorship system – nothing is done to get rid of the illegal material, it’s just hidden from view. Out of sight out of mind. The people who support the censorship system aren’t creepy despotic politicians who want to establish an authoritarian regime in Finland (or at least I hope so). Nope, they just want your vote, they just want you to believe they’re fighting hard against child pornography, when in fact they haven’t done jack shit to get rid of the problem.

Because I’m a little crazy, I uploaded the entire list of censored domains (JE’s list version 2.14) to del.icio.us. If del.icio.us is not a browser, then Finland has to now blacklist that site as well :P

4:16 pm Tags: , , , , .

More senseless censorship by Finnish Police

wstryder February 17, 2008 0 Comments

censor
Image Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike License by b.franchina

The Finnish Bureau of Censorship has decided to censor the website of a Japanese musical instruments store. No kidding, see this screenshot. Pretty insane. It does raise the question – who the fuck maintains the secret list of censored domains? There’s no one to complain to, nobody is responsible. It’s a secret list you know, made by secret people. Secret people who like wear dark sunglasses and dress in black. If they find a website they don’t like they add it to their little black book. You should not be scared though – they just want to help the children.

To just help the children – you get it? It seems that the only thing that matters to the people in power is that there now exists a mechanism for censoring childporn – whether that mechanism works or not is irrelevant – it’s there and the monkeys who invented it can now smile and say they’ve done everything they can to save the children. Really, they’re just trying to save the children. Did I mention that their cause is good – to help the children? Now who cares if one or two decent websites get censored by accident – there are plenty of other websites on the net!

Oh, also thaimisc.com is now censored. A website dedicated to the Princess of Thailand. No childporn on that site, but it’s censored. Oooops. Everybody makes mistakes, even the secret people. No biggie – there are so many other websites out there that it doesn’t matter!

Way to go Finland – I feel so much closer to North Korea now! Ready, Kafka?

2:28 pm Tags: , , , , .

Sonera – still Finland’s worst broadband

wstryder August 6, 2007 1 Comment

sad SoneraThis happens roughly once a month. You can’t log in. No Internet. Nothing. “System error, please try again.” If you want a working broadband at Helsinki or the capital area, don’t get Sonera. It’s bullshit. It never works. The average wait time for their customer service is two hours (just my experience, you might experience even longer times). No Internet connection on a Sunday? Their customer service is not even available on Sundays. No 24h number to call. Nothing. When you do reach somebody they treat you like an idiot and are not willing to admit that the problem is at their end. They suck.
Sonera Internet connection problem
My connection has been down since yesterday, which was a Sunday, so I wasn’t able to call their customer service. Today the connection is still down, but I managed to call them. They told me that they’ve had problems since Friday and are attending the issue.

So they’ve known about the problem for three days but aren’t able to fix it? I think that’s pretty incredible. So Sonera seems to think it’s OK for customer’s Internet connection to be down for several days? I’m really pissed off now. This is bullshit. How is it even possible for Sonera to be this bad? It’s almost as if they’re deliberately trying to be the worst Internet service provider in Finland. I’ve said this before, but I don’t know what else to say – they suck, big time.

The problem seems to be over now, “only” a 24h break. Shame on you Sonera. I hope you die a slow and painful death.

I have HOASnet, which is a network provided by Sonera for HOAS (Foundation for Student Housing in the Helsinki Region). I could get Welho in my apartment (which is known to work well), but since HOASnet is included in the rent, I expect it to work. I have to try and convice HOAS to change their contract – it’s obvious that Sonera doesn’t give a rat’s ass about HOAS customers.

12:17 pm Tags: , , .

Citywall.org – Incredible public multi-touch user interface!

wstryder May 11, 2007 0 Comments

Citywall.org

If you’re in Helsinki, you want to check out CityWall at the corner of Lasipalatsi (map). I took some pics in Helsinki, then went home to upload them to Flickr. When I came back a couple hours later I walked past the CityWall and saw my pictures there. That was pretty awesome! The CityWall automatically fetches pictures from Flickr that are tagged “Helsinki”. Kind of neat, you can watch in close to real time what’s happening in the city. For mobile users it works even better. The user interface is like something from Minority Report, it’s something you’ve never seen before but you know straight away how to use it. You can rotate and stretch pictures, you can zoom into the timeline and throw the pictures around… I saw a couple of little kids try it out – even the kids knew immediately how to use it! This is really the user interface of the future, the most intuitive thing I have ever seen. Cooler than the iPhone. Really awesome. Jeff Han has demonstrated this kind of technology earlier, but this wall is the first public multi-touch interface of this scale in the world. Just come to Helsinki if you want to play with it ;) If you don’t believe me, check out this video. Oh and they interviewed me about my experience. I hope I managed to say something sensible.

10:23 am Tags: , , .

Überhyperlinking

wstryder April 13, 2007 1 Comment

PageRank, An art draw drawn by Felipe Micaroni Lalli

I’ve written about hyperlinks before. I have argued that it is absolutely ludicrous that some websites want to prevent you from deep linking to content on their websites, or mandate special conditions for hyperlinking. I sent dozens of requests to such sites asking for permission to link to their sites. I was honored, but more than slightly amused, when I received a formal permission to link to the website of the government of Australia. Here it is again, a friggin government approved link!

Only one request was explicitly denied, the others never replied to my requests.

According to Tim Berners-Lee, on the web, to make reference without making a link is possible “but ineffective – like speaking but with a paper bag over your head.“

Linking is not only our fundamental right, it’s our duty. Not linking to relevant sources causes extreme frustration in most readers. I find it incredible that most online newspapers don’t link to external sites at all. Some, like engadget.com, even have a perverse habit of linking only to their own stories, whereas bloggers usually utilize a sane habit of linking.

I stumbled upon this article by John C. Dvorak. He argues (and quite rightly so) that overlinking is probably better than null-linking. He also discusses the concept of dimensional linking – the idea of different levels of links that can be turned on or off with the browser.

This would be a great idea for many sites, but no doubt difficult to implement without making it overly complex. Imagine a blog, where you could hide all unnecessary links with just one click, leaving only the really important links visible. Now wouldn’t that be awesome!

9:58 pm Tags: , , .

Kerro kaverille!

wstryder March 23, 2007 0 Comments

<Finnish rant>

Hajotti hemmetisti kun sain jälleen “ystävältä” roskapostia:

“Jeah!! Ibizalle!!

Tähän kannattaa lähteä mukaan!
Olen mukana Takeoffin järjestämässä kilpailussa, jossa pääpalkintona on Ibizan matka neljälle. Haastan myös sinut mukaan kisaamaan. Jos me voitamme, voimme ottaa vielä pari kaveria mukaan Ibizalle. Parempaa paikkaa ja tapaa kesäloman viettämiseen on paha keksiä.
Tämä kilpailu on täysin ilmainen ja siihen on helppo osallistua netin kautta. Voittomahdollisuudet ovat myös hyvät. Kilpailun järjestää uusi suomalainen matkanjärjestäjä Takeoff. Lisätietoa saat klikkaamalla alla olevaa linkkiä. Älä siis lähetä tätä sähköpostia eteenpäin! “

Ideahan näissä on aina sama, eli lähetä kaikille tutuille ja tuntemattomille roskapostia, niin voit voittaa milloin mitäkin ihanuuksia. Järjestäjänä kukas muu kuin Korkeapaine. Tämä oli meikäläiselle viimeinen niitti. Kyhäsin nopeasti kasaan pienen propaganda pläjäyksen: kerrokaverille.org. Tätä viestiä voi halutessaan levittää eteenpäin esim. tällaisella bannerilla:

Älä kerro kaverille!

Toivotaan että sanoma leviäisi laajemminkin. Je.org on näistä vitsauksista kirjoittanut enemmän.

</Finnish rant>

Just a rant in Finnish, won’t happen again ;)

5:28 pm Tags: .

Amazing Fun Universal Icon Language

wstryder February 13, 2007 0 Comments

Will Zlango soon been the lingua franca of all mobile and web communication?

5:30 pm Tags: , .

How interesting is your IP?

wstryder November 4, 2006 0 Comments

Here’s your IP address as a bitmap:

Your IP address as a bitmap

Click on the image above to find out how much your IP scores. I got a 5, although my IP definately looks like a guy falling with skis:

ipbitmap.png ipbitmapfalling.png

IP spotting… what’s next – MAC address spotting?

3:57 pm Tags: .