Our Internet, Or Theirs?

So, the issue of net neutrality has been circulating for some time now, but two recent news items may well have an effect on internet users as much as net neutrality, they come from two different countries. One is from Sweden, the other the US, and both strike at the core of the internet.

Firstly the Swedish problem. Last week the Swedish government decided, that despite a great deal of protests, they would introduce a wiretapping law. It gives the government the right to monitor phone calls, and internet traffic, within the country without the need for a court order, or other authorisation.

I can already hear the cries of “if you aren’t doing anything illegal then why does it matter” being screamed, but think this through. It means that if you connect to a Swedish website, one hosted in Sweden, then you are going to have the details of your connection sent to the Swedish government, so that it can be saved and stored. I have no objection to being treated like a criminal if there is a reason to believe that I am doing something illegal, however if I am sitting at my PC happily surfing the net, why is there a need to log my activities?

Let us also not forget what the Universal Declaration of Human Rights has to say in article 12:

No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.

I am well aware that ISPs are able to track, to a certain extent, what web pages I view, and other related information, but there is a difference between someone who I pay to provide me with net access having details stored in a database somewhere about my surfing habits and a government storing information on what sites in that country I visit.

The infamous Pirate Bay have put out a call to all ISPs to block any and all traffic to Sweden. Whilst an entertaining idea, and one that would probably give cause for concern in the Swedish parliament, it isn’t going to happen. No ISP in the world will block traffic to a while country purely on the say so of a pressure group. In the mean time TPB is going to offer SSL encryption, and set up a VPN or all the nice international users.

From a government monitoring your traffic to a country who clearly has no concept of the internet. 49% of Americans believe that the federal government should regulate the internet in the way it does TV and radio. Yes, that’s right the same way the FCC throws a hissy fit when there is a ‘wardrobe malfunction’ will be applied to the internet. Now, I’m not an expert on the deep dark depths of the internet, honest,but I think there would be lot of blocking of a lot of websites.

Would there also be restrictions on the websites depending on the amount of swearing in it, would a website which doesn’t fully agree with the government suddenly become inaccessible? The internet, as it stands, is open, free and anyone can say anything they want, as I’m sure this, and any other WordPress blog is proof. This is one reason thatnet neutrality is such a big deal. As soon as you start to filter the internet to something ’safe’ then you get the old familiar website “bringbacktheporn.com” (I don’t actually know what’s on that site so please don’t go there and blame me for what you see).

The other question is why do people in the US feel the US Government has the right to filter the internet, even if it would just be for people in the US. It would, in theory, extend to sites hosted in the US, which is quite a large percentage. The internet is an international entity, no one government can truly lay claim to it all, it is out there, don’t mess with it. People here in the UK have suggested a ‘watershed’, how would that work exactly, 9pm, or whichever time is decided, in which time zone, and does it apply to people who are old enough to see the material whenever they want?

The internet is almost impossible to control, unless you are BT who throttle anything non-HTTP, or you are Virgin and your CEO believes net neutrality is “A load of bollocks”. I find it hard to believe that 49% of Americans voted in this poll and really understood what they were saying.

So, who does own the internet? The ISPs? well, they provide you with access to it. A Government? They may have control over sites in their country, but not else where. Tim Berners-Lee? Well, maybe. I have a better idea. The people who use the internet, the people who make content, the people who aren’t the annoying 12 year-olds who can’t type, they are the ones who make the internet what it is, and they are the ones who ‘own’ the internet.

Well, not me, I wouldn’t want all the responsibility.

MTFBWY

It’s All Over

Well, I have finally finished my final exam, so technically I have finally left Shenfield, so I suppose that I should do some form of look back at the seven years there, just in case some people think I don’t care.

Seven years is a long time, not quite as long as 10, but longer than five, you get the idea. It doesn’t seem seven years ago that I walked into Shenfield High School for the first time. I didn’t actually know anyone there on my first day, simply because all the kids from my old school had gone to the other local secondary, but by the end of the day I knew quite a few people and it would appear that I still have pretty much the same friend seven years on.

There were of course those who left for another country, those who changed school after year 11, those who decided to go to a posher school down the road and re-do year 12, but for the most part, the same core group who used to stand on a strange cracked path opposite all the important offices at break and lunch are still at Shenfield. We’ve migrated, in fact we did when they chopped out beloved tree down, but we still see each other most breaks and lunch times, or at least did until we finally left.

It’s strange how even after 7 years of seeing each other five days a week for most of the year we still find things that we can talk about, and we even find topics when we talk over the internets and whenever we feel the need to spend some sort of quality time together outside of school.

The gaggle was pretty much formed 7 years ago, it’s changed slightly, it’s got the name, but the foundations were laid that day in September 2001. We all have those little things we can remember from the 7 years. Well, some of us do, Paul’s memory isn’t that great though.

I could, now, launch into things about the X-Team, but that will come later, instead how about the memories of 7/7. Adam, Paul and myself were in an IT lesson with a cover teacher. that teacher happened to be a deputy head. When a technician comes in and tells the deputy head to go on Reuters you know some thing’s happened, especially when it involves the projector being turned off. Quite a few people failed to do any real work that lesson, most were sitting on the BBC website, or Reuters, but no-one stopped us.

But from the tragedy to celebration, a few months before that Paul and myself were pulled out of our History lesson by a different deputy head, along with Josh, Anthony and Ben we were told we had won a competition. A national competition in fact. One that would take us to a different country for 10 days. Pakistan to be precise. That is one day, and one trip that I’m not likely to forget in a hurry.

Memories of coming in one day and reading graffiti on the Sports Hall wall, the open evenings we’ve been there for, the teachers we’ve had, the lessons we’ve been in where we’re supposed to be helping but just end up chatting with either the teacher, the kids, or each other.

People rave about the quality of education in private schools, but you can’t pay for the sort of education I have received at Shenfield. There are so many different kids at Shenfield, and I’ve had the chance to meet them all. I have had to dodge small children running into me, put up with the kids who think they know it all, seen kids who try so hard but just don’t get it finally work out how a Macro works, and that is something I am very grateful to Shenfield for.

I have had some truly great teachers in the past. It is a shame that Shenfield students from now on will never meet teachers like Mr. Diamond, Mr. Mackrory, Ms. Burns or even Mr. Berry. But it’s nice to know that Mr. Graham will still be there in IT, Mr. Garrett still down in Art, Mr. Sheriff teaching kids English and 6th formers Media and film.

No more will I be in a school with a hovercraft that I helped build, I won’t be sitting in the editing suite helping year 12s do their coursework after the PC has corrupted it twice already, and I won’t be standing at the back of a year 7 IT lesson trying to work out why it is kids can’t follow simple instructions.

It has been great fun at Shenfield, there may have been a time I wished I’d gone with my friends from primary school to that other local secondary, but now, after 7 years, I’m glad I didn’t.

Only one thing can truly sum up my memories of Shenfield lessons of the past:

Die kamera ist kaput.

Fly My Pretties

I suppose I should really post some form of update regarding the beautiful flying machine that is the Shenfield High hovercraft. It is quite simple really. IT FLIES.

Well, by ‘fly’ I suppose I really mean that it is able to limp quite happily accross the school field and carry two people. There is a slight fuel problem at the moment however with some extra part arriving on Tuesday we hope to have her flying properly around by the next time the club meets on Thursday.

It has been a long, hard slog. Somewhere in the region of 20 months so far, and it is finally capable of transporting a pilot (Mr. Adams) and a passenger, if only for a short time before it cuts out after the fuel fails to reach the engine. A slightly cut version of a video of the flight is available on google vids and the photos are available, as always, on my Flickr account in the Hovercraft set.

There has always been doubt sitting in our minds that us 6th formers wouldn’t see it finished before we left, let alone have a chance to fly it. However that chance is now very real, well except some idiot who left Shenfield before the rest of us.

It isn’t ready for any races just yet, and chances are that it will be a while before she would pass the safety checks, however she is a very nice toy and safe enough for flying round the school field.

She has been officially named as “The Tuppercraft” and will shortly have a dedicated website on which all updates, photos, videos etc. will be collected and it is doubtless that it will lay un-updated after the gaggle have left Shenfield, but it’s there for now, and will serve as a nice little place for us to see what it is we did during the last two years at the school.

So that’s the end of that update, and quite possibly the last on this blog regarding the hovercraft, but hey, she flies, that’s all I really care about.

MTFBWY

–Update–

The website has now gone live and is available here. including the full video and my Flickr photoset.

It’s Really not Cricket

I mentioned before the possible death of county cricket, it would appear that perhaps Scykd Berry was correct to say that county cricket was soon to die, as new plans the ECB have unveiled may mark the death of the county game as we know it.

As it stands the county cricket championship is split into two divisions, with the 18 counties playing 16 matches a piece, this appears set to change. The ECB have announced plans to change the format to 3 divisions with a 12 match format. This seems to be a drastic shift away from the 5(well, now 4 day) game towards the increasingly popular one day game, or even the one evening game that is Twenty20. The plans are for the gaps to be filled primarily by a new T20 league the “English Premiere League”, does that name sound familiar to anyone else?

The EPL will consist of the 18 current first class counties and three other teams, possibly from abroad. There will also be a change to the Pro40 game. Instead of the current 40 over innings being delivered in one chunk the innings will be split into smaller chunks of, you’ll never guess, twenty overs. Yes, that will make Pro 40 effectively two Twenty20 games tacked together. but the 50 over game, that will remain pretty much unchanged.

Now, I am aware that we are living in a society with an increasingly short attention span, but why is it that a game which is most easily identified as cricket being cut back in favour of what is effectively an English baseball. The England side performs fairly well in the test game, as has just been proved by the series win over New Zealand, however the England Captain Michael Vaughan, has warned over this shift in emphasis.

The test match is the basis for cricket, why do we now need to cut it back? The players love the game, OK so the crowd drawn at a Twenty20 match is greater than that at a day of a test match, but combine the crowd of all 4 days and you will see that the draw still exists. The players enjoy playing the game, it is where many of them started, but it would appear that all the ECB are concerned with is the money that can be drawn in, and of course we can’t have Sky losing viewers of their shiny cricket coverage because the game is too long.

The Ashes is a series of test matches, and it will hopefully remain that way. Now it is clear that we aren’t exactly the team with the best record in that particular series but there is one way to improve. Let the future country players get a bit of practice at surviving five days on the field. That isn’t going to happen by taking four games out of the county calendar and training the team up in Twenty20 matches.

The atmosphere at Twenty20 matches is clearly a plus, and it isn’t there for the 4 days of a county test match, but why is it that we need to split Pro40 down as well as taking out test matches? These changes seem to be a road towards the death of the game, and it’s something the ECB really need to think hard about before 2010 when they plan to implement all of these changes.

MTFBWY

The Fight Against Creationism

I have made a few posts in the past about creationism and its place in schools, but the fight to have it removed from science classrooms, and to reduce the number of strict believers is about to be brought out even more by Darwin200.

I won’t go into great detail about Darwin200 here, except to say that it is an organisation to celebrate to rather large Darwin related anniversaries. Firstly, on the 1st July, we see the 250th anniversary of Darwin’s theory of evolution, it is the day on which Darwin first presented the theory to fellow scientists. Secondly, on 12th February next year we celebrate the 200th anniversary of the man’s birth. And to coincide with these important dates in scientific history we will see an 18 month celebration, starting this week.

As part of this we will see various books, a series of programmes will appear on the BBC, an OU course will be started, and a study into the evolution of snails will begin. This will all be started by the unveiling of competition entries at the Natural History Museum in London for “Darwin’s canopy” a painting to be displayed on the ceiling. And a major Darwin exhibition will begin in November.

The main concern that exists is the number of people who believe in either Creationism or Intelligent Design as solid, undeniable, fact. 40%. no, that isn’t a typo, it really is that high. A professor at University College in London has said that students are accusing him of “teaching lies” and “insulting people’s religion”. He says that in his 30 year career of teaching genetics and evolutionary biology in the first 20 years the issue of students wishing to be exempt from lectures and certain exam questions on religious grounds was raised once. That has changed dramatically. I question whether these students should actually be studying evolutionary biology, but of course we can’t stop them just because they don’t believe in the theory of evolution, that would be discrimination.

It confuses me how teachers can be accused of teaching lies when teaching evolution as it is the current, accepted, scientific fact. It may well change, most things in science do, but as it stands the theory of evolution is not a lie, at least not more so than “The earth is 6-10,000 years old and was made in 7 days by God”.

40% is not a majority, but it is getting worryingly close, and if it continues to be taught is some of our state funded schools as fact the number may rise. It is wrong for the adults of our future to leave school believing that it is a fact a sky fairy created us all. It is wrong for them to blindly accept evolution is true, as it is for them to blindly accept anything. Evolution is a scientific theory, currently accepted as fact. For children to simply sit in a science class and be told “Evolution is true, it always will be, just accept it”, is almost as wrong as them sitting and being told “God created us, it will always be true, just accept it.” It is very important that the children are taught why it is true, that it is supported by evidence, such as the snail study, that is what science is.

We will never completely eradicate the idea in some people’s minds that they were created by an almighty being, but we can at least attempt to teach the correct thing as fact in schools. It is likely that some children will be taught at home, by their parents, that they were created by [insert parent's God]. And any child that is taught this at home should have the courage in school, when evolution is being taught to put up their hand. They should however not say “You’re wrong, I want to leave.” I hope, however, that they will say “That’s not what I believe, I believe X, why do you think you are more right than me?”. At this point the teacher will do one of two things. A not-so-good teacher will simply say “Because this book said so.” or some equally useless answer, a good teacher however will begin a debate, hopefully involving the class, and thus any child who didn’t question the theory. This will then at least give the class a chance to see why it is that evolution is the accepted theory, not creationism.

So let’s all hope that Darwin 200 can do its job and reduce 40% to something more in keeping with an idea that is, quite simply, so far out of the scientific truth it hurts.

MTFBWY

Crystal Skulls and Indy

There seems to be a problem with Mr. Lucas and story lines for the 4th films in a set. Take a look at Star Wars, Episode 4 was great, so were episodes 5 and 6, but when we got to Episode 1 there was some form of let down. Now take a look at Indianna Jones IV, then cry.

I walked into the cinema waiting to see some good, old fashioned, Indianna Jones action, and it was delivered, in a slightly newer way, but it was there. Then he rolls out of the fridge. As much as I wanted to go “wow, that’s really clever” I was closer to “OK, that’s just silly”. But I was willing to let one piece of silliness slide, because this was Indianna Jones and I wanted to like this film. So on we went, with the quest. I should mention that the little glimpse of the Ark was very good, and all the other little referances did give me some hope that there was something good in this film.

The quest was there, and as always the bad guys have something that Indy doesn’t think they should have. It is an object of great power and he’s doing it to stop those pesky Nazis commies getting away. The item this time round is the Skull of the film’s title and I was hoping so much that it was the head of a statue with mythical powers, that would have almost been in keeping with true Indy style. But it isn’t, so don’t hold your breath.

Now, somewhere between the Quicksand and the monkey swinging there is a pretty good chase. the moment where you can sit back and pretend that you are really watching Indy. But then Shia goes all Tarzan and your come back down to realise that maybe this film should not have been given the name of our hero and that no matter how many quips are there, and however many times that whip is cracked this film isn’t going to a good place.

Then the quest comes to its close. It had my friends and myself staring at the screen wishing that what we were seeing wasn’t true. It is hard to describe quite what it is I felt without giving away the ending, but let me just say that of only George hadn’t taken an Action/Adventure franchise and added in some sci-fi the ending may have been bearable.

I am desperately thinking of a way to describe how I felt with this film. I think I liked it, but then I’m not entirely sure. I think it is that Episode One feeling all over again. The “This film has to be good because the old ones were, but there’s something wrong.” It has that horrible after taste that you just can’t get rid of.

So many people have given this film good reviews, I’ve seen 8s, 9s, and 10s thrown around, but take it from me, had this film been anything but Indianna Jones there would have been rolling heads.

And one final thing before I go, it is the birthday of some little cuddly creatures on a forest moon far away. The anniversary of a giant battle won by the good guys. And we mark the death of a good man who went off the path of light. 25 years ago today Star Wars: Episode VI: Return of the Jedi was first shown to the public. So happy birthday Wicket, Logray, Chirpa and the rest.

MTFBWY