Why Dont You Blog?

“Captcha is the bane of the internet,” says Matt Mullenweg, who runs the massively popular blogging site Wordpress.com. “I can’t figure them out myself half the time!” (from the Guardian technology page today)

This is from a Guardian piece discussiing how captchas are welll and truly broken - by algorithms and by cheap human labour -thus increasing the volume of blog comment spam. The writer suggests Akismet or the type of non-machine readable questions that you find on ApathySketchpad as viable alternatives.

I’m comment-impaired at the best of times. I’ll try and comment on a blog and find that my comment just disappears. Granted, this suggests the universe has an innate capacity for mercy. But, just occasionally, the words that disappear into the net’s black hole were comments that I really wanted to make. So, I’ll try and rewrite it, in a half-hearted fashion. It will disappear again. I’ll have a final stab at writing. And sending. But by this time, it’s incoherent garbage, sent only to show the comment-eating demon who’s boss.

And then the captcha is there mocking you. Matt Mullenweg is so right, except, on his own proud boast, at least he gets them right half of the time. Falling foul of captcha is a daily occurrence here at WhyDontYou Towers. And a score of 50% correct is just a fond dream.

The idea is that only humans can read the things. A reverse Turing test. This whole concept falls down on the point that any shapes that are too unlike characters to be read by a souped up OCR-style algorithm are much too unlike letters or numbers for human beings to interpret them.

Even when you can distinguish those shapes that are meant to be characters from the deliberately inserted wavy lines, you face something like:

oo9I0g

There is no way to reliably distinguish between 9 and g, 0 and O, 1 and l and I.

So you type in zero zero nine one zero g, on the offchance. It rejects you. You don’t get another shot at the ambiguous letters.

Oh no. A fresh bleeding captcha. This time you find you have to choose between identifying a letter as either a very thin letter j or the letter i with a slight curve at the bottom. Failed again.

Next time it’s either an l with a slight curve at the top or an anorexic letter c. Ok, got the c right but then you thought that oddly shaped capital A was a 4, didn’t you? Robotic fool.

By this time, the human-detector software has often decided you are a bot cos you couldn’t even guess one out of 3. So your comment is bounced anyway.

If you’ve ever thought that you might as well go for the disabled option, don’t bother. That’s not worth it either. Captchas that claim to be for the disabled are actually even harder to use than their able-bodied comrades. Different experiences you can have with the accessibility captcha include:

• A long silence. So you think it’s not working and cancel a fraction of a second after it kicks in.
• so much feedback and background weird noises (to simulate the visual noise on the visual captcha) that you couldn’t even work out what it’s saying if you had a comic book aural discrimination superpower.
• Voices so bizarrely accented and echoey that you are stunned by the novelty that this is suposed to represent speech. So you don’t notice, let alone memorise, the content as it racespast you in a jumble of syllables.
• The disabled version sometimes matches the written one and sometimes doesn’t. Which one do you try? The wrong one, of course.

The whole concept of the disabled one seems stupid to me. You are assumed to be too blind to see the captcha image. So how do you see the captcha box and spot where the disabled button is? Are the blind fitted with memory enhancement chips that let them translate a string of meaningless letters and numbers from the native gibberese AND remember them long enough for their screen reader to kick in and tell them where to type?

Popularity: 4% [?]

More from Ted. Following my triumph at posting the Dawkins video link, I’m following up with another. I’m posting this video link because I’ve never seen anyone express such perfect good sense about food. It’s Mark Bittman on what’s wrong with what we eat.

This is something on the blog for those people who come here looking for “5 fruit and veg” posts.

Popularity: 3% [?]

This blog feels slightly shortchanged in the weird searches department. For example, if you look at HjHop’s site, he gets searches that are bizarre enough for him to make a funny feature of them.

Search engine choices that bring unsuspecting people here are generally just odd. Not entertaining, just odd. Normally, there are between 5 and 15 for Schwarzenegger (?) and similar numbers for pictures of guns. (??????) Sometimes, castles come top, usually Bodium castle - but there were only 7 searches for this today. Today’s search referrals also included Rorschach (‎7) art and fine art, (‎6) and (‎5). 5 Fruit and veg is normally a front runner but came nowhere today. I defy anyone to make a readable post out of that lot.

I suspect noone has ever been directed by a search engine to what we fondly believe is the normal content of our posts.

But this blog could acquit itself well, if it ever gets in a competitive event relating to volumes of blogspam. According to Wordpress stats for this blog, there have been 2,624 approved comments but

Akismet has protected your site from 13,409 spam comments already

Akismet doesn’t even cover the whole life span of the blog and it’s probably been reinstalled a couple of times - hence, reset to 0 - but even on these figures, that’s a good few times as many spam comments as there were legit ones.

There are clearly spam fashions. I quite admire the craftsmanship involved in the ones that have generic phrases designed to flatter you into allowing the comment through the filter:

Love your blog. I’ll bookmark it and return later.

or the old favourite from last year, with words to the effect that:

I didn’t quite understand what you said on [insert name of blog] but I’m interested to know more.

However, it’s as if the heart has gone out of the spammers. This week’s “new black” for spam seems to involve sending some random syllables, occasionally with a load of links:

qkncihdf tjnprcd mitqlanp oznqx eaqrpzu imfwatulo sjmxrqgh

for example. Or, what about this, where even the links don’t make an effort to disguise their innate spammishness, let alone entice the unwary with promises of free meds or unfeasible bodily expansion?

biprong unbrimming martinetism bosn amative biota spongida expectingly
ziafm wnwwqwuy
http://jdskmnffl.com
ktuhbdk info
http://jlvxkeva.com
uosgu wcmqjs
http://sgqwajre.com
kxrrd qzfkagqn

What’s going on? There are eleven of these in the Akismet spam queue today. Not one has an English word in it.

The Register had a long security post about blogspam, on Friday. The article was about a malware scam that claims to take the user to various legit sounding places.

Over the next several weeks I noticed a lot more of these, not only pointing to Google but also to Yahoo and MSN. The servers they pointed to all had the same basic structure, such as google-homepage.google-us.info, msn-us.info, yahoo-us.info, etc. Every one resolves to the same IP address: 124.217.253.8. That IP address is registered to Piradius.net in Singapore. The server appears to be hosted out of Kuala Lumpur. The domains, however, are registered in Ukraine:

(They’ve all moved since the article was written, of course.)

The rest of the article is fascinating. Click on one of these imaginary images and they run an executable. The article shows a series of legit looking screendumps, with the alerts very well designed. They put the fear of malware into you and offer you apparently Microsoft-approved solutions. There’s even a blag Microsoft Security Centre. The only intrinsic design flaw was that it said XP Security Centre, which was immediately suspicious to someone running Vista.

I’m as much of a mug as anyone. I just hope I haven’t fallen for any of these…….

One thing I’m pretty sure this blog been subject to (thanks to Firestats’ fund of fascinating information on referrers) is a hack of restricted Wordpress content using the Google cache. It just involves asking for things from the cache by modifying the url request string. (I’ve done that by accident I suspect)

That password-protected site of yours - it ain’t
It’s one of the simplest hacks we’ve seen in a long time, and the more elite computer users have known about it for a while, but it’s still kinda cool and just a little bit unnerving: A hacker has revealed a way to use Google and other search engines to gain unauthorized access to password-protected content on a dizzying number of websites.

We don’t have any restricted or pay-per-view content,so no loss as far as this blog is concerned. But, it’s sort of blog-validating to be in there in a “dizzying number.”

Popularity: 4% [?]

To retain the will to live, I’ve bunched up the alphabetical-order challenged members of the Atheist Blogroll all in one final burst of links.

Sorry if your blog is called “Zeebedee’s Journal.” This blog, starting as it does with an unappealing W, feels your pain.

P! PA Nonbelievers parenthetical remarks Persephone’s Box Pharyngula Philippine Atheists Philosophers’ Playground phreedom.us physicshead Pink Prozac Pink Triangle Pinoy Atheist Pinoy Freethinker Pinoy-Korean Atheist Planet Atheism Planet Humanism Plonka’s Blog Podblack Blog Polypyloctomy PONZO Pooflingers Anonymous Post Thought Primordial Blog Principles of Parsimony Prose Justice Protium the Heathen Psychodiva’s Mutterings PURPOSE OF LIFE
QuarkScrew Quintessential Rambling quird

Radical Atheist Ramblings Ramblings of an Atheist Undergrad Random Intelligence Rank Atheism Rarus vir Rational Expression Rational Mom Rational Russian RationalEyes Ravings of an Angry Leftist Re-imagine Ritual Real Virtuality Reality Heroes Reason & Society Reason Makes Sense… Right? Reason TV Reasonable Doubts Recalcitrance Reduce to Common Sense Reeding and Writing RejectMoses.com Religion is Bullshit ! Religion is Man-Made Replace the lies with truth Resurrecting Reason REV. ART’S ATHEIST PIN-UPS! Rev. BigDumbChimp reVAMPed Reverend Mark J. Seydel Richard Carrier Blogs Rideo ergo sum Robert’s Thought’s Rodibidably Ron’s Rants Rupture the Rapture Russell’s Teapot RWANDAN ATHEIST

Sacred Celtic exiled in Bruxelles Saint Gasoline Salad Is Slaughter Salient SAMIZDAT Sans God Sarahnomics Scary Reasoner Scripture For Skeptics SDARI Sean the Blogonaut Secular Humanism with a human face Secular Philosophy Secular Sunday Sermon See For Yourself Seeing Beauty Shared Difference SHUFFL Silly Humans Situation normal Skeptic Journal Skeptic Rant Skeptical Monkey skepticisme Skeptico Skepticology Skepticum Skeptic’s Play Skeptigator So long, and thanks for all the guilt! Societal (R)evolution Something From Nothing Something to Say Son Shines Zee 365 Soup’s Soapbox Southern Atheist Spanish Inquisitor Specter of Reason Spectrum of Beliefs Spewing Truth in the face of Lies Splendid Elles Spoliarium Spread Rationality stacy, interrupted Stardust Musings and Thoughts for the Freethinker Stargazer Staring At Empty Pages State of Protest stereoroid.com Steven Carr’s Blog Strange Land Strappado Stupid Evil Bastard Stupid, Lazy, Fat & Crazy Suburban Panic! Success lies within us all Summer Squirrel Synapostasy Tabula rasa tales of an ordinary girl Tangled Up In Blue Guy Tarpan’s Blog Terahertz - From Physics to Life
Terminal Atheist Thank God I’m An Atheist That is so Queer…

The A Word The Affable Atheist The Amanda Show The Amiable Atheist The Anatomy of a Coming-Out The Angry Atheist The Anonymous Atheist The Anti-Church Zone The Antichristian Phenomenon The Apostate The arrogant atheist The Arrogant Atheist The Atheist Blog The Atheist Blogger The Atheist Camel the atheist chronicles The Atheist Endeavor The Atheist Experience The Atheist Handbook The Atheist Jew The Atheist Mama The Atheist Resistance The Atheist Response The Atheist Rock Band The Atheist Spot The Atheocracy The Atheologist The Bach The Blasphemous The Blog of M’Gath The blue roads of thinking The Calladus Blog The Cat Ranch The Choice is Now The Circus of Doctor Lao The Clever Atheist The Conscious Earth The Coptic Atheist The Crazy Christian Blog The Creationist Monkey The Crooked Gremlins The Daily Awesome The Daily Cat Chase The Daily Taylor The Eloquent Atheist The End of Hereditary Religion The End of Silence The Enlightenment of the Healy The Eternal Gaijin The Eupraxsopher The Extended Penotype The Feminist Francophile The Flying Bagpiper The Flying Trilobite The Frame Problem The Freethought Cafe The Fundy Post The Gay Black Jew The Gaytheist Agenda The God Complex The God Dam the God-jeering ATHEIST The Godless Grief The Good Atheist The GORGON’s Mask The Great Lie Of Islam The Great Realization The Greenbelt

The Happy Humanist The Humanist Life The Humanist Observer The Huntress’ Domain The Inanity that is Life The Incomer The Information Paradox The Inoculated Mind The Invisible Pink Unicorn The Iron Chariot The Irrational Theorist The Jesus Myth The Jewish Atheist The JFC Show The Labour Humanist The Lay Scientist The Libertarian Defender The Life and Opinions of Mcmoogol, Gentleman The Life Of An Atheist The Lippard Blog the LITTLE things The Mary Blog the meme pool The Mutt’s Nuts The Nate and Di Show The Natural Skeptic The Nerd The New Atheist The New Horizon The O Project The One With Aldacron the otherwhirled The Pagan Prattle Online The Panda’s Thumb The Passionate Skeptic The Perplexed Observer The Phytophactor the post-bicameral mind The Primate Diaries The Proud Atheist The Psycho Atheist

The Questionable Authority The Rad Guy Blog The Raving Atheist The Red Ferret The Religion Virus the religious atheist The Renegade Writings The Right Wing Professor’s Blog the Science Ethicist The Science Pundit The Scottish Atheist The Second Mouses Guide to Life The Second Oldest Question The Secular Outpost The Secular-Man Blog (An Oasis of Clear Thinking) The Serenity of Reason The Seven Solitudes The shadows of an open mind The Skepbitch The Skeptic Review the skeptical alchemist The Skeptical Sorcerer The Smug Baldy Speaks The Stubborn Curmudgeon! The Thermal Vent The Thinkers’ Podium The Truth Of Islam The Truth of Rational Thought The Uncredible Hallq The Underground Unbeliever The Uninformed Suburban Housewife The Uninspired Manifesto The Universe According to Tim The Untraditionalist The View from Here The View from the Pond The Water is Poison The Word and The Golden Monkey The World is a Lesson in Perspective The World Wide Rant The Zen Of G

These Twisted Times Thought Room Thought Theater Thoughts and Opinions Tidbits for Atheists Tolerance and Peace toomanytribbles Toxic thought waste site Trifling Ideas Trinity’s Christian Dairy Troffle Trudging the Gentle Path of Happy Destiny True Bible Knowledge Tungtide UberKuh Uncouth.net Ungodly Cynic Unorthodox Atheism Unreasonable Faith Unscrewing The Inscrutable Urikalization - Uri Kalish Variable Veracity Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy Velocity Inversion Vetenskap & Förnuft View From Earth Villa Nandes Vincent Geloso: 100% libéralisé

Wanderin’ Weeta WASP Waving Not Drowning Way of the Mind We Are Alone We have a voice Well, that would be telling whatever will bewilder me Where The Rubber Meets The Road Where We Make Our Stand Why Believe? Why Dont You Blog? Why I hate Jesus Wishwords WithoutGods WORKS WITHOUT FAITH Wrong In Their Mind Tanks Yet Another Atheist Blog Yet Another Blog You Call This Culture? You Made Me Say It Young Earth Creationists Anonymous Zatheist Zen of Zero zenbullets ‘Satan Is Real’ Atheist Music Blog

Popularity: 8% [?]

This has got to stop. The end is in sight though. I hope this is the next to last of these lists.

Just to remind you where this information comes from, it’s Mojoey’s Atheist Blogroll. ( Brits. Please note. It’s not the Atheist Bogroll.)

halls of macadamia Happily Godless Happy Jihad’s House of Pancakes HASSERS Heathen Queer Heathen.TV Hellbound Alleee hell’s handmaiden Heretic’s Altar Heuristicism Hokum-Balderdash Assay Homo economicus’ Weblog Homologous Legs Honjii’s Harangues Hot Dogs, Pretzels, and Perplexing Questions http://www.skepticaleye.com/ Human Psyche of J.D. Crow Humans: The Other White Meat Humbuggery I Am An Atheist I Never Shut Up I traded my soul for happiness Ian’s Brain Ice Station Tango IDiosyntocracy In Defence Of Reason In the grip of hysteria Incessant Expressions indoctriNATION Infidel boy in Blabber mode INFIDELIS MAXIMUS Infinite monkeys, infinite keyboards Infophilia Inkblot Icon intelligent or silly design ? Interested Interesting INTJ Mom Intrepidon Ionian Enchantment Is it just me? it’s about time izzworld dot org jdc325’s Weblog Jeber’s Jeebus Freaks Jewelisms Jewish Atheist Joe’s Big Blog Judith’s thought-provoking hard-hitting journal Juke of Flow Just a whisper in the wind Just Another Atheist Jyunri Kankei

Nor is it working seamlessly. It’s taking span tags.

K H A L A S ! KafirGirl Kapanalig Sa Wala Kergillian Kieran Bennett Kill The Afterlife King Aardvark le tiers monde leaping rabbit/lapin sauteur Leicester Secularist Les non-sens de Jean Staune Let Go - Forget God Let There Be Light Letras Nocturnas Letters from a broad Liars, Lunatics and What’s Left Liberal Debutante Life & Otherwise Life According to Mike White Life before death Life is an adventure Life Without Faith Life, the Universe and Everything Lifecruiser Living the Scientific Life Living with Missy and other thoughts Logic’s Last Stand LOL god Look at the Bright’s Side Lord of the atheists Love the Nimbu Lubab No More lynn’s daughter, thinking

Madman’s Paradise Masala Skeptic Matt’s Notepad Matt’s Truthonomics Maximum Likelihood Mechanical Crowds mediawatchwatch.org.uk Meet An Atheist Memoirs of a (G)a(y)theist Memoirs of an ex-Christian Mere Skepticism Merit-bound Alley Mickipedia Midwest Atheist Migrations Mike’s Weekly Skeptic Rant mindcore MINISTER OF RANTS Mirth, Musings, & More Misc. Musing Mississippi Atheists Missives from the Frontal Lobe mister jebs blog Modern Agnostic Modern Atheist Moiz Khan - The godless Liberal Mothrust Much ado about nothing My Case Against God My Elemental Muse My Goddless Drama My Life Thinly Disguised as Groove My Long Apostasy My Single Mom Life Mystery of Mysteries

Naastika Nanovirus Natural Reckonings Naturalistic Atheism Neural Gourmet New Humanist Blog New National Reformer News From the Front - Fair and Balanced Nicest Girl and Destroyer of Planets Nick Harding Nihilist Future No Double Standards No Gods Allowed No More Fake Gods No More Hornets No more Mr. Nice Guy! Nobody’s There… NoBS Radio Show NoGodBlog.com Non Credo Deus Non-Prophet North Alabama Rant Not really, Alice. Nothing Is Sacred Null Session Nullifidian Nut Watch Obscene Desserts Odder Stories Of Microbes and Men ohm sweet ohm oldcola olio Oliver Benen On Fire For Reason on the street and in my head One Fewer God onegoodmove Onion Breath Onwards and Forwards Open Parachute Oracle and Atheism Order of St. Nick Our Freedom of Espresso Outchurched Oz Atheist’s Weblog

Still I’m up to O. Once you get past the As, the list goes much faster.

Popularity: 5% [?]

This is getting boring…

Daily Atheist DAILY BBG Daily Rant Dark Christianity Dark Matter, USA Dark Side of Mars darwinian remiix Darwin’s Dagger Day & Nite Daylight Atheism Debunking Christianity Deconverts Deep Thoughts Deeply Blasphemous Deranged Ramblings of an Angry Reptile Keeper Desperately Seeking Ethics and Reason Deutschland Uber Elvis DEVOUT Atheist Godless Grief Diaphanitas Diary of a Teenage Atheist Did a guy named Phil start Philosophy? Dikkii’s Diatribe Dime a dozen Disaffected and it Feels So Good discernible chaos DisComforting Ignorance Disgusted Beyond Belief Disillusioned Words Dispatches from the Culture Wars do not read this blog DoctorE Dorset Humanists blog Doubting Even Thomas DOUBTING FAITH? Dr. Joan Bushwell’s Chimpanzee Refuge Dragged From the Bottom Drunk in Ontario Dubito Ergo Sum Duplicitous Primates Dwindling In Unbelief

Easy to be Entreated eAtheists.com Ecstathy Edward T. Babinski Elaine Vigneault Elliptica EnoNomi EonBlue Ethics Gradient evanescent Everyday Humanist Everything Is Pointless Evolution Evolutionary Middleman EvolutionBlog Evolved and Rational exapologist ExChristian.Net Excursions into the mundane and the revealing… Exercise in Futility Expletive Deleted Explicit Atheist Exsisto Sane Eyebrow Ascendant f think faith in honest doubt Fed Up with Religion Feersum Endjinn Ferret’s Cage Fish Wars on Cars Five Public Opinions Fleeing Nergal, Seeking Stars Flex Your Head Flumadiddle forms most beautiful… Free Infidel Freethought FreeThought by a FreeThinker Freethought Weekly FreThink Friendly Atheist Gary William Murning Online Geoff Arnold Ghosts of Minnesota God Be Gone - Atheist News God is for Suckers! God is Pretend Godless in America Godless on the Wasatch Front Godless Sunday Goosing the Antithesis Gospel of Reason grattans.us Gratuitous Common Sense Greg Hartnett Greg Laden’s Blog Greta Christina’s Blog Grey and White Matter Gynocide

The text that accompanies these list bits (I guess you could call them “posts”) is there to try and persuade Technorati that this blog isn’t just a link farm. (Though it feels like it today.) Not that it seems to care. Despite not getting any credit for atheist blogroll links, in the normal course of events, Technorati gives us link from a fair number of spamblogs.

Linkfarm sites are extra-annoying when they print your posts and attribute them to someone else. This has an upside when the posts are landfill in text format like this one. I am looking forward to seeing:
“Freemeds had an interesting post today on..” followed by sections of the Atheist Blogroll.

I think that’s called social networking.

Popularity: 4% [?]

Still only up to the Cs. Arrgh.

I’m going to rattle on about converting information between sources as an example of why computers appeal to people. (Well, to me.) It’s the mental challenge.

If I was even halfway competent at using a keyboard, I’d just type lots of things. But, I’m a terrible typist.

(In case, that sounds as if I’m any better at handwriting, you’d be dead wrong. I can barely write a legible sentence by hand, since I took up spending my life at computers. I bet that’s true of many people.)

And I get bored by any repetitive task way too easily. So, if I have any task to do, I look for a more interesting way of doing it. Even if it takes MUCH longer. And fails to work.

I bet this is true of most people who read this. (Except, maybe, for the people who get here looking for Arnold Schwarzenegger or pictures of guns, about 10 and 5 every day respectively, in case you wondered.)

Of course, since it’s me and you I’m talking about, we can take it for granted that this is a good thing. “Creative thinking” and so on. (A less charitable person might say “butterfly mind.” ) But, maybe it’s part of why it’s possible to get people to do things for the buzz of working out how to do them, without thinking of the consequences.

Things like using computers and the internet to collect information from a huge variety of sources and putting them together.

cabhara’s zeitgeist Canterbury Atheists Can’t make a difference CaroLINES CASE: The Center for Atheistic Secular Evangelism CHADMAC Speaks Chaos Maniac chedstone.com Chimaera Contemplations Choosing Atheism CHRISTIAN PWNAGE 101 Christianity is Bullshit! ChristopherSisk.com Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster Circular Reasoning Cogita Tute - Think For Yourself cognitive dissident Coming Out Godless Compendium of Religious Evil Conclusions worth jumping to Confessions of an Anonymous Coward Cosmic Variance Covert History Creative Century Critical Mass Crowded Head, Cozy Bed Culture for all Cupcakes in Hell

Popularity: 4% [?]

The print version of the the Metro, the free bus paper, headlined a story that “Interception of Communications Commissioner” Sir Paul Kennedy believes that UK councils haven’t yet been making the full use of terrorist powers to investigate people. And he’s disappointed.

“Terror laws should be used even more to snoop on the public, councils have been urged” (Quotes painstakingly copied out by me from the print Metro, 12/08/08)

Apparently, last year, there were a mere 500,000 “spying requests from councils, police and other officials” to phone and internet companies. Half a million. What a pathetic waste of the Stasi powers, hey? There are over 60 million of us, ffs. Must try harder. In fact, local councils only checked the comms of 3,000 people.

So, whom does the unusually honestly-job-titled Commissioner say that councils should be spying on?

criminals who “persistently rip off consumers, cheat the taxpayer, deal in counterfeit goods and prey on the elderly and vulnerable”

See what he did there? Threw in preying on “the elderly and vulnerable”, in case the listener dared to imagine that dealing in counterfeit goods and ripping off consumers wasn’t quite a serious enough crime to warrant the use of anti-terrorist laws. Oh, those poor vulnerable people…. Apparently the police can’t protect them so plucky local councils have to spring to their defence.

It is very very hard to see what even the shadiest blag goods market stall has to do with terrorism. In fact, dare I say it, but it’s even hard to see what robbing the vulnerable has to do with terrorism. Or councils. Either crimes are police issues or they aren’t. If they are, then what use will a council’s intercepting comms do, ffs? Are council investigators so superior to the police that they can get all manner of information about scams straight from lists of phone calls? Maybe I just lack the breadth of vision of the town hall experts but it smells of bullshit.

The online Metro apparently doesn’t think this news item, which fills the print edition’s front page, is lively enough for the morons who they must think read the news on tinterweb. The online version leads with some content-free Sienna Miller story. It doesn’t bother with text on the dull old freedoms issue, but it it has tried to give it a nuMedia buzz by mentioning the topic in a sentence and having a “poll”. For what it’s worth, 81% of respondents to the question Should councils be allowed to use terror laws to spy on members of the public? think that it’s well out of order.

This is exactly the point that Jenni Russell made in the Guardian last week. Acknowledging that there are still plenty of us who would rather gnaw off their own arms at the elbow than welcome a Conservative government, let alone vote for the buggers, she pointed out that the nuLabour government has come to be overwhelmingly identified with totally illiberal policies.

The new dividing line between Labour and the Tories is less about a left-right split than about an authoritarian approach on one side and a more liberal one on the other. And Labour are on the wrong side of it. Many of their social and economic policies may have failed, but where they have succeeded is in developing a targeting, controlling, distrustful state. From the micromanagement of civil servants, teachers, doctors and the police, to ID cards, super databases and the growth of surveillance.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Long suffering readers of this blog will be aware of the problems I have had with my crappy ISP. Pipex used to be really good, and I have used them for years, then one day they were taken over by Tiscali. Tiscali had a reputation for being a terrible ISP, so logic would have said they’d buy a good one and learn how to improve.

No.

Tiscali took over Pipex and it went down the toilet. My internet connection is normally barely better than a 56k dial up modem. I have been trying to change ISPs, however I am caught between the problems of being on a contract with (the no longer existant) Pipex and being due to move house in a few months (making a new contract a pain in the ass). As a result I have to suffer this interminable service for a while longer.

To prove a point, this is what my connection has been like for the last year:

Speedtest Results from Thinkbroadband.com

There are some gaps in the results - normally because for long periods of time my connection is so slow it wont run. Isn’t that a fantastic example of the modern, 24/7 connected society we live in.

Sadly, there is nothing I can do about it except continue in my quest to spread the word about what poor service Tiscali/Pipex offer. If you know anyone in the UK, please feel free to warn them!

Popularity: 9% [?]

For the techies amongst you, WP 2.6 is now on the streets. (and has been for over a week - but I’ve been away). The promo video is:

When I get back to my proper PC, real content will be blogged once more.

Popularity: 14% [?]