New Zealand Conservative

From The Guardian: Russia threatens to ban Google, Twitter and Facebook over extremist content : Russia’s communications watchdog has threatened to fine Facebook, Google and Twitter and block their services under a controversial law on blogging. In a letter to executives on on Monday, the director of the communications oversight agency warned that the three US companies could face sanctions if they continued alleged illegal activities in Russia, Izvestia newspaper reported on Wednesday. Any action could affect a number of social media sites: besides its eponymous social network, Facebook also owns the photo-sharing service Instagram, while Google owns YouTube, BlogSpot and Google+. Facebook and Twitter, in particular, have been instrumental to organisers of opposition protests in Russia, where the major television news channels are controlled by the state. A spokesman told the state news agency RIA Novosti that the watchdog’s complaints related mainly to deleting pages with ext...

The internet is destroying homogeneity of information and therefore predictability of citizens. No longer are family, friends, work colleges, the local paper or the national TV the sole source of information. Now the internet can give you points of view that you are interested in from around the world, giving people perspectives that they may not have though of from their corner of the world. The aim of modern (Prussian) schooling, to create predictable citizens (see Why Schools Don't Educate ), is being destroyed by technology. Inspired by: The rise of the ‘shy Tory': why pollsters are missing voters on the right

What a terrifying story! Last week, this poor man had all the data on his iPhone, iPad and MacBook deleted, all because someone managed to get into his Google account! In the space of one hour, my entire digital life was destroyed. First my Google account was taken over, then deleted. Next my Twitter account was compromised, and used as a platform to broadcast racist and homophobic messages. And worst of all, my AppleID account was broken into, and my hackers used it to remotely erase all of the data on my iPhone, iPad, and MacBook. In many ways, this was all my fault. My accounts were daisy-chained together. Getting into Amazon let my hackers get into my Apple ID account, which helped them get into Gmail, which gave them access to Twitter. Had I used two-factor authentication for my Google account, it’s possible that none of this would have happened , because their ultimate goal was always to take over my Twitter account and wreak havoc. Lulz. I've just set up two-step veri...

Matthew Warner writes about how the Vatican buying dot-catholic top-level domain will change the Church , while as the deceased Archbishop Cranmer is not happy : Insofar as the Holy Roman Empire of medieval Western Catholicism is past, and the only resonance of the vision of the Emperor Charlemagne subsists in Europe’s latest falling empire, should not the centralising impulse of the See of Rome be challenged once again, and the symbolic bestowal of ‘.catholic’ be subject to a little more scrutiny than “We decided we were best suited to apply for (it)”? The sooner all Anglicans who consider themselves catholic, become Catholic, the less of these sorts of arguments will come about! See these latest stories for conversions of Anglican parishes to Catholic: Pope establishes Australian ordinariate for former Anglicans ~ Catholic News Agency Towson service will bring Christ the King Anglican parishioners into Catholic Church ~ Baltimore Sun

A wealthy Californian pornographer who sued Kim Dotcom for infringing copyright on thousands of nude images says he is delighted the FBI and New Zealand police have smashed Dotcom's Megaupload file-sharing business. It must be really tough to be exploited in that way.

Looks like the SOPA Bill has hit a temporary setback: Hat tip Crusader Rabbit Last I heard, the film and media companies were looking to copyright internet protest action, in the vain hope that the internet would actually pay attention to their copyright. Please copy this post, and pass it on. Th, th, th, that's all folks (c) -------------- Further details bitTorrent, file shared and copied from here: Internet Freedom extended a few months. And covered on NZC here: Please look at this broken link

Here's a link to the details of SOPA which threatens internet freedom: Stop Online Piracy Act Only problem is, the link may not be working for the next 24 hours as Wiki threaten to go dark in protest against the proposed legislation. Apparently, the legislators are backing off and Obama is backing the winds of change - and doesn't support the legislation, at least in its current form. Text of the SOPA Bill Among other things, the bill grants immunity from prosecution to all of the companies and organisations that jump on the bandwagon and help to shut down a "suspect" site. The implication then being they face prosecution if they don't take any action. There are many sites discussing the negative side of SOPA, so I just want to make one point about legislation such as this. That point is that this type of legislation places the onus (costs and risks) on businesses to enforce government mandates, or they themselves be punished. This has been happening...

Melissa Johnson from Paraparaumu never thought that she would work online, until curiosity got the best of her and she filled out a simple online form. Before she knew it, she discovered her secret to beating the recession, and being able to provide for her family while at home with her three children. I read Melissa's blog last month and decided to feature her story in our weekly consumer report. In our phone interview she told me her amazing story. "I actually make about NZD $8,000-$9,000 a month working from home. It's enough to comfortably replace my old jobs' income, especially considering I only work about 15-18 hours a week from home. Melissa Johnson is a very common name I suppose, so it might be hard to verify if the story is actually real or not. The advert even has a bunch of selected comments saying how wonderful and genuine the offer is, but you scroll down to the end and get to see that "comments are closed" now that the required comments ha...

December 2012 could be the end of the world as we know it. No, not the Mayan calendar thing, I'm speaking of Simon Power's musing on internet regulation. Apparently, free speech interferes with democracy. Who would have thought? So the Law Commission is going to see how they can muzzle html pamphleteers. We get to send in a hand written response to this from December 2012. I'm making a note in my diary.

Gillard is thinking of children . Not hers (obviously), but the countless others of interest to pedophiles. She is backing law changes to get the government involved in censoring the internet, and forcing requiring ISPs to filter government banned sites. Senator Conroy has defended the plan : "The internet is an incredible piece of technology and in our lifetime it's unlikely we'll see anything like it again," he said. But for all its technical brilliance, the internet is a distribution and communications platform. Err, it's actually a positive that it is a distribution and communications platform. That's one of the reasons why it is brilliant. "Having no regulation to combat illegal activity actually weakens all that is good about the internet." I think there are a lot of options to combat illegal activity. The government building filter lists of what is acceptable or unacceptable may not be one of those. "Out of sight, out of ...

Excellent news . Type companies are putting their fonts online which web designers can reference when creating a site. Fonts may be licensed from Webkit (and there is a free 'Trial' option which allows two fonts to be used from quite a large library, as long as monthly traffic is under 5GB). No more sites where the main reader typeface is Arial, Verdana, or Times New Roman.

Here's an online petition that only has a couple of hours to run, so consider reading and signing. What's it about? ACTA is a controversial international treaty that impacts digital rights and is being negotiated in secret meetings. PublicACTA has been organised by InternetNZ so that the public can critique the known and likely content of ACTA proposals ahead of the next round in Wellington. Let's not continue the alarming trend of government signing on to international treaties that we don't get to voice an opinion over. Find out more: The Wellington Declaration

I found this awesome web project today that makes reading stuff on the internet more enjoyable. Just visit THIS LINK , choose three settings for the text size and such and drag the bookmarklet to your bookmarks bar. Now go to a blog site, or a news site like NZ Herald or any site with text you want to read, click on a post/story and then click the Readability bookmark that you put on your bookmarks bar. It turns the story/post into lovely big formatted text and takes away all the ads and other clutter. Beautiful! No more squinting at tiny text.

What's with this Facebook thing - it is apparently the second most visited site in the world. In our household we went through the virtual farm thing a while ago, the virtual farms are presumably covered in virtual weeds by now since that fad burned out a while ago. But I suppose it is inevitable that it attracts scum. I could list story after story of all sorts of low life - doing things like posting garbage on tribute pages for young murder victims, a suicide after naked pictures of the victim were posted and so forth. You've seen some of the stories I'm sure. Is humanity really so depraved? It makes you wonder, really wonder. Anyway Greenpeace is having a go at Facebook for moving its servers to Oregon where they will use electricity generated by coal and it is using Facebook to do it . Most odd.

Here's a strange thing, three Google employees, Peter Fleischer, David Drummond and George De Los Reyes, received suspended six-month sentences, while a fourth defendant, product manager Arvind Desikan, was acquitted of violating Italy's privacy laws. Their crime, a youtube video, incidentally uploaded before Google acquired youtube, which showed an autistic schoolboy being bullied. None of these people had anything to do with the offending video of course. Google pulled the video and provided the authorities with the uploaders details which led to the culprits identification. But they were still prosecuted and convicted . The free flow of information on the internet makes the authorities uncomfortable at times but overall it is a good thing - no? Google is intending to appeal.

China wants to meter all internet traffic that passes through its borders, it has emerged. The move would require international agreement - but it is being discussed by the United Nations body in charge of internet standards. The United Nations seem to be in charge of a lot of things. In principle, they like the idea of monitoring traffic flows and charging for it. Mr Servida, deputy head of unit at the European Commission's Information Society and Media Directorate General, has another opinion. He simply says: "Fencing the internet is not going to help anybody" Related Link: Chinese Walls And have a read of what Liberty Scott has noticed: Australia's draconian approach to the Internet

Climategate goes uber-viral, Gore flees leaving evil henchmen to defend crumbling citadel ~ James Delingpole Climategate is now huge. Way, way bigger than the Mainstream Media (MSM) is admitting it is – as Richard North demonstrates in this fascinating analysis . Using what he calls a Tiger Woods Index (TWI) , he compares the amount of interest being shown by internet users (as shown by the number of general web pages on Google) and compares it with the number of news reports recorded. The ratio indicates what people are really interested in, as opposed to what the MSM thinks they ought to be interested in. North explains: Tiger Woods delivered 22,500,000 web and 46,025 news pages, giving ratio of 489. That is the “Tiger Woods Index” (TWI) against which I chose to measure a raft of other issues. Here are the rankings: 1. Climategate: 28,400,000 – 2,930 = 9693 2. Afghanistan: 143,000,000 – 154,145 = 928 3. Obama: 202,000,000 – 252,583 = 800 4. Tiger Woods: 22,500,000 – 46,025 = 489 ...

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It seems the internet is causing major problems for governments, but none more so that Obama's newly elected Presidency in the US. A majority of Catholics voted for Obama, and now they are turning on him as they realise just what he really is and what he stands for. But, this realisation is being fueled by the internet, where stories are being blown out of proportion by a few rousing the many . Ah well, it had to happen. We've moved from the sanctioned few (the mainstream media) telling the many what to think, to the unsanctioned few (bloggers and alternative media) letting the many know just what is actually happening. And the many don't like what they are reading. Scary times. Internet clamp-down is coming. Related Link: Few Conservative Catholic Groups Fuel Obama Notre Dame Scandal ~ David Weigel, Washington Independent

Old posts. Broken links. Missing quotations. Articles off line and all evidence circumstantial. You-tube songs I once linked to now silent; hilarious animations now still. White space where once words played. The internet equivalent of R.I.P. - Page 404 - an ominous tombstone marking my citation. The internet is decaying around us, and electronic data is data-less. Who stole my link destinations? This is just not on. How can my web log be a journal for historical reflection if the mirror is broken? Surely, a link should last more than 7 months? I'm going back to books if this nonsense keeps up. That reminds me, wonder if the Kindle is available in NZ yet ? --ZenTiger Picture is of the Earth, with an adjustment for gravity anomolies