In 2002 the Irish government, at what many would consider to be great expense, introduced a pilot exercise in electronic voting. Only three constituencies took part, one being mine. In practice, the process was quite smooth and efficient, perhaps too efficient as some people complained of the loss of the post-election counting spectacle in which the voters were subjected to hours of tension before finally discovering who had won and who had lost. Somehow this traditionally slow phase of the election process was seen as an important factor in bringing proper closure to the election, and giving everyone a chance to become familiar with the final result. The electronic alternative was almost instantaneous, and somehow felt cold and detached from [click title to read more…]
Once again, privacy is a hot topic. In recent days we’ve become more and more exercised about our right to determine what can be known about us, and how that knowledge can be used. As Google have said on their new policy page, “this stuff matters”. Some of the concern relates to the possible changes in the way personal information might be combined in the future, thus revealing complex relationships that would otherwise remain hidden. Interesting things happen when you combine separate sources of information, as over 100,000 pensioners discovered recently. Google intends to make it possible to share personal information across more than 60 services that are currently under separate privacy policies. The automated cross-referencing of such information will [click title to read more…]
Today I logged into my online bank and was confronted with a new page containing some new and rather complex Terms and Conditions. I started to read them, but found the going tedious. My bank doesn’t generally try to pull the wool over my eyes, so I doubted there would be anything to be worried about. Nevertheless, I did a “select-all/copy” before I clicked “Accept”, so that I could examine this latest bundle of legal mumbo-jumbo at my leisure.
For security reasons, the bank site uses a short session timeout of just a few minutes. Out of curiosity, I later decided to time how long it would take me to give the legal text the attention it deserves. From start [click title to read more…]
What did the Web community learn yesterday? Apart from discovering that the Web community has a voice that one cannot easily ignore, there were a few other nuggets in yesterday’s online protest. Some examples:
Wikipedia is not exclusively in English. (Yes, that fact was known already, but not really appreciated.)
Online translation reveals a whole new world worth exploring.
Turning off JavaScript breaks a lot of things.
The DNS is too important to be controlled by so few. (Maybe the UN should run it?)
Most people have no idea what the Internet is.
Most people can’t distinguish between the Internet and the Web.
IPR is a mess.
Online data is becoming as important as food, water and oxygen. (OK, [click title to read more…]
Wikipedia has been true to its word and is today (in the English-speaking world) dark, and it’s not alone.
The Wikipedia home page will remain dark for 24 hours in protest against SOPA and PIPA. It would be interesting to see the effect on network communication patterns created by this action, now that one of the most popular sites on the Web is no longer serving data. Meanwhile, Google added a black-out to its logo for US visitors, while WordPress had similar black-outs on its home page. Other popular Web sites are protesting in similar fashion, while the news media have flooded the Internet with SOPA-related commentary.
It’s still early here in Europe. Just wait [click title to read more…]