IMS_Blog

The newly redesigned EngDesign website (Click for bigger

I thought I’d mentioned something about this before but it seems the last time I mentioned the EngDesign website was when I was surprised by it (and complained of its tag soup). Since then I’ve pretty much taken over webmastering it. I knocked that design into semantic HTML and CSS shape (screen shot here, taken from local archive copy), and just recently it’s underwent another redesign (based on the same underlying mark-up, more of less, as I didn’t have time to change too much). Comparison screen shot for posterity.

It certainly feels more crisp and even, so to speak. Anyway, just thought I’d mention.

Sometimes the internet strikes me as a very strange place, a little like a library full of books which would have been published (if they’d ever seen the light of day) as thick hardbacks put on a shelf to gather dust. Only a few would have been sold, probably to libraries, and there would be no second edition for corrections and updates. On the internet however there’s no such dust. Hence the Lighthouse Directory, which I’ve filed alongside Windmill World (random fact: As part of EngDesign I’m currently involved in the restoration of Ashby’s [AKA Brixton] Windmill). Of course, speaking of libraries, Wikipedia has a list of lighthouses and lightvessels and a list of windmills.

This is more a note to myself than anything else, but just to say commenting on the photo galleries has been disabled for the time being. It was receiving a stupid amount of spam of late (and unlike this blog has little in the way of spam capture so was publishing said spam). Enabling CAPTCHA didn’t seem to help so comments are off until I look into it further.

I got bored of how the front page of norcimo.com looks, so I gave it a quick refresh, because I can. Look, whizziness!

China, land of governmental blocking of the internet to “protect” the populous. Right? Or the UK.

(comic by WellingtonGrey, Creative Commons Attribution, Non-Commercial License). Currently the page in question returns a supposed 404 page not found error. Which is interesting because a) I’ve never seen Wikipedia return such a thing. It offers to let you create the page if it doesn’t exist. b) The link from the Scorpions page clearly shows that page to be existing (by default non-existing or broken links are indicated as such) c) Connecting through a non-UK proxy gets me that page.

The complete stupidity is the aforementioned Wikinews page carries the very image being objected to, and is accessible. Oh, and a quick Google Search. And the Google Cache of the blocked page, in case you’re unfortunate enough to live in a totalitarian state. I’m sure there are probably copies of this album floating around with that cover too—is anyone owning such, or a shop selling such, really in need of being locked off from public view?

This is of course obviously the tip of a very large iceberg (particularly, I must say, the dishonest attempt at portraying the page as returning a 404 error). Stand up, while you’re still allowed.

Update: The BBC report that the IWF have withdrawn the page from the blacklist. How very kind of them. The point is that it is not the place of a wholly unelected, unaccountable charity (not even a governmental organisation) with a manifesto and agenda set and overseen by no one but themselves to police what may be illegal. It is for courts of law to decide legality, nothing else. It is also very disturbing that at least one (Be—owned by O2) ISP, and I believe others, chose to return a fake 404 page not found error message rather than at least 403 forbidden or even better redirecting to an explanatory page. Of course, the whole concept of ISP filtering at all is uncomfortable, and it is an interesting point what this does to their justification of merely being a “provider” most often cited in illegal file sharing activities.

One can’t help believe that the IWF have backed down simply because of the publicity caused (and maybe the fact that even lowly Wikipedia were considering legal action; they certainly wouldn’t want to face Amazon or Google). IWF would rather quietly get on with there “work” out of the public eye, in the shadows, unseen, the way secret police normally operate. The scary thought is that there is no obviously simple way to continually discover what their latest addition to their watch list is. What if they’d blacklisted all the pages carrying negative coverage of themselves?

And we haven’t even touched on the obvious futility of attempting to censor such a widely disseminatedimage.

There is undoubtedly more to be said here, but this was supposed to be a quick update. The coming reactions will be interesting.