Webonaut

Conservative Ed Vaisey has announced that he wants the UK to filter Porn by default - either with a Chinese style country-wide wall, or by encouraging ISPs to do so. Nobly he is including the provision to then allow people to call up their ISPs and have it turned off for them. It's an interesting idea, and you can see why this is a great thing for kids accessing the Internet, but - and it's quite a big but - it won't be easy to do. Why? We filter out child-porn don't we? Isn't this just an extension? Well... no. Here's why. There is a grand consensus between all major ISPs and - crucially - web-sites that child-porn is a freedom-of-speech bridge too far. But the same is NOT true of mainstream porn. In order to block it, you would therefore have to block Flickr, Google, MySpace and a whole host of other pillars of the web-world. Without them also agreeing, you would be looking at such a crippled net that the majority would simply opt to have it switched off,

I'm not a big fan of Microsoft or Facebook, but I am hugely impressed by Gate's Philanthropy - as it is making a real difference. His example is now being followed by Mark Zuckerberg amongst others in giving away at least half of their great wealth: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/dec/09/billionaires-giving-pledge-wealth You could argue that this is simply the most exclusive vanity badge in existence (which it is), but regardless of their reasons for doing it - that does not stop the fact that what they are doing is great. Massage their egos with the full list here: http://givingpledge.org/#enter

If you look at the speed with which Wikileaks is trending (go on - open up Echofon or any other Twitter client and search for wikileaks) it's ASTONISHING. Faster than the royal wedding did immediately after announcement a couple weeks back. What's more, it's almost ENTIRELY in support of what Wikileaks are doing - and disgust at how they are being attacked by governments who supposedly enshrine free speech (or free speech about OTHER people perhaps) Scarily, not only have Amazon, PayPal and American Express bowed to government pressure (and - after all - WL have not actually done anything illegal) but Twitter are NOT trending this. Now - go back to Echofon and try searching on what Twitter say is actually trending, for example #jedwardreply - notice any difference is speed of tweeting? TWITTER - THIS IS NOT ACCEPTABLE

The meaning of life? It's easy*: 1) a means of passive income 2) longevity research to have a breakthrough with regenerative health 3) permanent subscription to OnLive + monster broadband (*If you're a selfish hedonist with no responsibilities and a trust fund)