A Donkey on the Edge

Ok, this is my last post about Verisign, I promise I will leave it be after this.

If you’ve got here by following a “Leaving Verisign” banner, read on, at the bottom of the post are links to help with your move…

Many readers not be big domain name purchasers and of those that have bought a domain name, many will have bought it through a UK dealer. The offshoot of this is that many readers may well never have heard of Verisign, so I’m just going to spell out a twenty word history. Those that don’t know/don’t care can skip down to the next post, or move on to a properly interesting blog;-)

Once upon a time there was a large, monolithic company called Network Solutions, or netsol as it became lovingly known. Well, for many years netsol had the .com .net and .org domains sewn up. If you wanted a dot com, you bought it from netsol (ok, this isn’t exactly true but close enough for the purposes of this story).

While many people complained that this was a monopoly, that they fixed prices etc, we all benefited from the way the ownership of domains was handled. Netsol details were changed by a cryptic ascii format form that had to be emailed back and forth a few times?none of your sissy html form nonsense;-) The process was just complicated enough that users had to think clearly before making any decisions.

As well as an hermetic interface, netsol also protected our collective interests by having the right attitude about what our domains meant to us. Domains where not a commodity, not a utility that could be simply turned on again after a disconnection. No a name was unique and often intimately tied to our most important signifiers.

As a result, even after a domain had expired, it was very difficult to move it to a new person. The best analogy I can think of is the adoption of a child. Something you check and re-check making sure to get it right and something you introduce many failsafes and get-out clauses to (ok, exaggerating a bit again).

The offshoot of all this was that we all trusted Netsol to not give our names away without warning.

Then one day, Verisign, a company who’s strapline reads “the value of trust”, a company whose main business was the provision of secure certificates decided to buy netsol. Ok, I haven’t done my homework here so I’m not actually sure what the exact deal was or what its mechanic was, but I do know what the consequences of the merger were for the customer.

The bright sparks at Verisign set about to merge the services of netsol and verisign, bringing netsol’s archaic system of ascii text forms into the twentieth century and set about designing a fabulous new web interface to domain management.

This is where things started to go wrong.

I am still getting written notices about domains I don’t own, and more importantly, Verisign is sending my expiry notices out to other people (I’m guessing, as I only get them infrequently). The offshoot of this is that instead of being something safe as houses that operates in the background, domain ownership with verisign has become a frighting game of Russian roulette.

So this gets us back to the “Leaving” graphic that linked you to this page.

If you want to post a copy, cut and paste the following onto your site (lookout for line-breaks in the code, the whole thing should fit on one line):

<a href="http://www.donkeyontheedge.com/dugs_random_musings/leaving_verisign.html"><img src="http://www.donkeyontheedge.com/i/imleavingverisign.gif" width="105" height="28" border="0" alt="I'm leaving verisign and you can too. Find an accredited registrar in your area and make the move today." /></a>

If it gets around, I hope it point out the alternatives. The Internic maintains a list of accredited alternatives. Here it is sorted by country please take minute to read the Internic pages before you buy or renew a domain from verisign.

Here are a few links about Verisign’s business practices:

• VERISIGN predatory Domain Expiration Notices
• VeriSign still locking domains
• VeriSign now being investigated

If you are an expert in the details of the above and feel I have incorrectly presented the events, please email me, and I will add your comments to this note.

Hey dug, the Guardian likes your ‘whimsical personal/tech blog’

B-)

Billy,
Yeah, I know;-)

Ok, so I never thought it would ever happen to me.

I could never work out what people thought was so great about cars? My bike has a catalytic converter—yup, it sacrifices lovely horsepower to reprocess unspent fuel molecules so that when I do doughnuts in front of the little kids outside the Seven-Eleven their little lungs aren’t hurt. Even with my bike hobbled, it still runs the pants off anything on four wheels and is just plain fun to drive. Not only that, it’s personal, I/05/not remember my wife’s birthday, but I remember picking up Baby, my 1982 Kawasaki Z1000J2 on the evening of october 10th 1985. I remember walking over to her (large, black, shiny) body as she rested in her seller’s garage. I put the key in the ignition, turned the tumbler and fell in love.

So anyway, getting a bit side-tracked there—my point was that I couldn’t see any fun at all in car ownership. Not only that, I’ve always thought those big american SUVs were just plain silly, and burned way too much fossil fuel (never mind the fact that they obliterate any other car in an accident…) and I couldn’t see the point and you’d never get me in one of them, and if you did, I’d give it up no trouble for the right reasons if I had to.

So I walk out to the new Jeep, get in (air conditioning), slot Fox Base Alpha into the CD player (not listened to that in years but what a classic album) and floor it down Woodchurch road. I’m tooling down the road with the CD cranked all the way, the aircon going and I’m hitting the speedbumps at high speed, not quite bottoming out the massive wishbones, I get to Waitrose and dive into the underground car park at high speed (slippery floor, lots of lovely tyre squealing) missing the concrete pillars by a hair (this beast is big) and finish up parked right in front of the lift.

Or, in other words, I was driving like a cunt.

Now, normally I wouldn’t. But I’m embarrassed to say it was fun, very fun. A particularly selfish, non-inclusive nasty kind of fun. I think at this point, we’re going to need a bout of legislation to get me out of that car;-)

Leslie has put together a legal defense fund and is going to try and reclaim her hijacked domain hoopla.com. Find out more. And yes, I am about to make a donation.

It’s funny, I was thinking: God I’m glad no one wants me to do javascript rollovers anymore. For some reason, I’ve just stopped using them—they’re a nasty, cheesy hack and I’m desperately trying to stay away from cheesy hacks in my design work. Basically, if there is a “hover” event handler (onmouseover) in a piece of browser software, why not use CSS to do your effect? It’s lighter, cleaner nicer, goes to church and brushes its teeth…

And thank you Jason for reminding me of this:-)

Woo hoo, I’ve just donated twenty bucks to Leslie’s fund I say “woo hoo” as I’ve never used my paypal account before. It was kind of exciting (yes, I will get out more)…

I am so incredibly busy today so why do I keep posting this nonsense? And dude, you have to read this. It’ s like, totally.

This from the MGI-Talk list (Thanks, Joe) this guy is invoicing Verisign for his wasted time:

Put together lamely, but for those that regularly deal with the registrars, the following might be enjoyable for you:

www.deepskytech.com/registrars/

Cheers!

I thought should stick around for a couple of minutes before disappearing down the cronological listings:

Verisign
ICANN strikes
Blood from a stone
Leslie Harpold
Hoopla.com
Leaving Verisign
Fuck Verisign
The value of trust is $35
Say goodbye to NetSol / Verisign
Let’s put NetSol to death

Earth summit
Good clean fun, not
New car

Ian Robson
Stupid design rip-off (2/2)
Stupid design rip-off (1/2)

I’m going to experiment with readme.txt and favourites.html as they take up way too much room. This listing/05/move arount the page in the process.

From ICANN - taking action against Verisign

…over the past eighteen months Network Solutions Registrar (a unit of VeriSign, Inc., commonly known as “VeriSign Registrar”) has exhibited a pattern of persistent violations of its contractual obligations to take reasonable steps to correct inaccurate or incomplete Whois data in spite of repeated requests and reminders…(from blogdex)

Looks like the mountain is beginning to move:-)

You know, when I got my first job in advertising, Mike was being asked to sell Reagan to Black America. When Mike starts a small new media business, I was starting a small new media business, and darn, now that I’ve just bought a SUV this happens

Scaffolding is gone (woohoo). What a week… am at this mo typing via 802.11 on a blanket amongst the weeds in the garden :-) I’m chewing on a very moist montechristo number two (the torpedo roll) and have just cracked the seal on a bottle of jack…

mmm…

…of course, the weather is shit, but if you waited for the sun in this country, you’d never get outside. And of course, if anyone wants to sit on the stoop and use the airport, go for it )(

And on the topic of airport, this is unbelievable, a piece of software with security by obscurity actually built in

We’re off to the National Gallery to show Clementine the disputed Samson and Delila. Recently, a work was attributed to Rubens and sold for a huge pile of cash. Ever since then, the experts have been haggling about the attribution. Personally, I think The Massacre of the Innocents looks nothing like Rubens - some of the compositional aspects (the figures at the rear-left-hand-side) don’t look too well worked out. Rubens made extensive oil sketches before finalising a large work, I don’t see any sign of that experimentation or research. Another giveaway (tho I’ve never had anyone agree with me on this one…) is that PPR couldn’t paint breasts. His women look like men with two oranges pasted on their front. Now, at the time, the life-models were all men, it’s just that most artists of the time could interpret the different body. Hell, most of PPR’s women have adam’s apples;-)

Anyway, I’ve always thought the Samson looks like a ‘real’ Rubens, and what a nice way to spend an afternoon:-)

well, I’m not sure what Clem made of the Rubens… I still can’t get over how bright and clean it is. In some sense this makes it seem more of a fake, but the Delila figure is so obviously his, I’m going to side with the ‘authentic’ camp. Anyway, it was good fun, and seeing as we had made it all the way to Trafalgar Square, we figured it would be rude to not check out the BP portrait show at the NPG.

The BP show was surprising in that it lacked a single arresting, original or interesting image. Ok, I’m exaggerating, there was a set of works looking at tensions inherent in immigration/culture clash in the Asian community (I’m guessing) which managed to be both beautiful and funny (a portrait of Mother Father and Son is hung next to portrait of two gay skinheads, lots of pcs in uniform sitting next to their parent on the couch - this sort of thing), but on the whole the show left the three of us cold.

On the bright side, the NPG also had the Kobal retrospective. This is a show which is approximately 34% up its own arse, but the remaining 66% make it a must see;-) I used to enter the Kobal award when I was a photographer (spurred on by having a print in the Victoria and Albert for being short listed in another competition). Every time I entered, I lost, but every time I was stunned by the winners. The judges have consistently picked winners that are truly challenging. In fact, most years my initial reaction is “god, how did that win?” only to come round shortly thereafter kicking myself for not “having understood” the work in question. Anyway, the NPG is free, so get your ass down there.

Dear family members, Clem is now officially too big for her carry-cot. Her proper cot was moved into our bedroom yesterday, and her carry-cot has been folded up and put away (for the next baby?)…

doesn’t mean you can’t be an evil swine. Billy discovers this (with full history and gory details re Blunkett)

Well, it’s just gone midnight here in London and I thought I’d scribble few thoughts about 9/11 before going to bed.

Today, let’s mourn the dead. Let’s pay our respects, and by giving each victim a name, respect and celebrate the value of human life. I suspect most readers were probably going to do that anyway, without this soapbox’s prompting.

This note is targeted at a particular fan of donkeyontheedge, George W Bush. George is a keen reader of history?an intellectual, moral and ethical giant in the field. So George, here are a few fragments of text and links from America’s history for your edification.

First of all, from http://www.oz.net/~cyu/internment/main.html

…May it serve as a constant reminder of our past so that Americans in the future will never again be denied their constitutional rights and/05/the remembrance of that experience serve to advance the evolution of the human spirit…
From a plaque at the Poston Relocation Center

Now George, for our next exercise spot the difference between the two following passages:

Following the Al Quaida attack on New York in September 2001, the United States was gripped by war hysteria. This was especially strong along the Atlantic coast of the U.S., where residents feared more Al Quaida attacks on their cities, homes, and businesses. Leaders in California, Oregon, and Washington, demanded that the residents of muslim ancestry be removed from their homes along the coast and relocated in isolated inland areas.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, the United States was gripped by war hysteria. This was especially strong along the Pacific coast of the U.S., where residents feared more Japanese attacks on their cities, homes, and businesses. Leaders in California, Oregon, and Washington, demanded that the residents of Japanese ancestry be removed from their homes along the coast and relocated in isolated inland areas (like Guantanamo).

Of course the text refers to Executive Order 9066, which resulted in the forcible internment of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry in 1942, but it’s surprisingly easy to replace ‘Japanese’ with ‘Muslim’—I don’t know about you, but this worries me. Forgive me for bashing this point to death, check out Ansel Adam’s portraits of the interned Americans. And repeat after me, “Muslims are people too”.

Finally, I’d like you to read an address by President Dwight D Eisenhower, one of America’s greatest Commanders in Chief, regarding American foreign policy in a global, post-conflict situation (not too dissimilar from the feel of your own boots right now I should think…)

I notice the White House website lauds “The Spirit of Freedom”. I ask you to not be the instrument of its corruption.

Took Clem to her first swimming lesson yesterday. Nick walked up and down the pool with her in various positions and she seems to like it. Keep this up and we’ll have a wee swimmer in no time :-)

well, if you are in the UK and you read blogs, you’ll have heard about the Guardian’s “best British weblog” competition. Well, the competition closed last Friday, so the judges are hard at it right now.

In the spirit of healthy debate, I thought I’d add Tom Coates’ little javascript of those who chose not to enter. I tried to enter both because I’m a mercenary shit out for glory, but he wouldn’t let me…

As a friend used to say years ago while fiddling the rules of tournament four-hand tarot, a rule is a rule;-)

(ed: had to cut the js call, it was breaking the template for pc users)

If you want to post this pod on your site, the code goes something like this (mind the line breaks, the whole lot should fit on one line):

<script language=”javascript” type=”javascript” src=”http://www.plasticbag.org/files/ misc/bestbritishblog.js”> </script>

Finally, if any of you UK bloggers feel left out, confused or just plain bored with our new found celebrity (I’m sure we’re due to drift out of the zeitgeist any second now…) why not comment on the judges blogs? Here are the three that are posted on the Guardian site…

http://www.bowbrick.com/bowblog/
http://www.anitaroddick.com/
http://www.evhead.com/

Answers on a postcard, please:-)

Makes me want to take off all my clothes and do naughty things:-)

Have just been interviewed by Aline Pestana, a very nice lady from the International Herald Tribune TV station (from Rio, actually) - she’s interviewed Tom Coates and now me! (we are not worthy, grovel grovel) - am at present drinking pint with James at the Crown in Victoria Park and am about to tuck in to fantastic smoked mackerel:

Good to know donkey is not being filtered out by Chinese censorship (thanks, Tom)

My uncle Jim stayed in Paris for a year and came out with a new mantra, “where are the lawyers?”—he would spend hours watching crazy French game shows where contestants performed acts that fear-of-lawsuit would ban from American television. I was reminded of this earlier this evening at Homebase.

This has nothing to do with this post, I just found it at a page by Micah Wright and loved the art and wanted to squeeze a link in. My only problem is that technically, it’s impossible to re-elect George Bush as he wasn’t properly elected in the first place (see Richard Dawkins’ pertinent comment) but where was I…

Oh yeah, the lawyers;-) Anyway, I popped into homebase to buy sheets of MDF (tropical hardwood forests burnt, mashed, pulped in horrendous chemicals and shipped to the west for morons like me to make bad furniture with) to finish the bench in the hall. Now, if you’ve ever done this before, you’ll know about those giant machines they have in the back of the store—these machines will cut a 4×8 piece of MDF into millimetre-perfect chunks of wood making assembly almost as easy as an IKEA bookcase (in some cases easier). Except that in 9 out of 10 trips to the diy store the machine is either out of order or the operator is out to lunch, and even if all is well, the spotty teenager operating the thing tells you to bugger off and be happy with only one cut per sheet to allow you to fit the stuff into your car.

Which explains why I was so gobsmacked by the MDF guy at Homebase Finchley Road this evening. I mean it was late—pretty near closing time—but this guy was professional, courteous, helpful I just don’t get it? He cut a jillion slices of all different sizes and thicknesses, didn’t charge me for off-cuts, I mean if I didn’t know better, I’d of thought I was in a Frank Capra movie:-)

Oh, and about the lawyers… I just wanted to add, I have just spend 30 minutes playing with that giant cutting machine. That’s right, I was behind the counter, chewing the fat with guy, helping shlep the timber, inches away from the giant cutting jaws, I mean, where are the lawyers;-)

I can’t believe this was posted almost a year ago and I never came across it. There’s fourteen pages of it too:-)

…Oh my God, this War On Terrorism is gonna rule! I can’t wait until the war is over and there’s no more terrorism!

I know! Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can’t buy drugs anymore? It’ll be just like that…

And from the same author, check out all the great posters.

Well, letting the side down again I’m afraid—things are getting a bit frantic at work (which is good). Just crankin away at my “to do” list… Ok, I’d better provide a link: just had a slightly surreal conversation with mo via icq:

mo: you’re not the bloke down the road from me who plays hip-hop very loudly at 3am are you? ;)

dug: actually, there are a couple of german chaps upstairs who like to test the structural integrity of my ceiling…

Ok, in a week where it looked like nothing unusual was going to happen, something finally did.

At exactly 02:44 (Nicki watches the clock all night long) I hear a horn that might be Nicki’s car, go out in my jim jams and find our jeep on fire surrounded by firemen trying to get the bonnet open. Apparently, there’s no sign of forced entry so they reckon it’s a fault with the car.

I was reminded of that awful scene in Fight Club:

Two technicians lead jack to the burnt-out shell of a wrecked automobile. jack sets down his briefcase, opens it and starts to make notes on a clip boarded form.

Jack (v.o.):
I’m a recall coordinator. my job is to apply the formula. it’s a story problem.

Technician 1
Here’s where the infant went through the windshield. three points.

Jack (v.o.)
A new car built by my company leaves somewhere traveling at 60 miles per hour. the rear differential locks up.

Technician 2
the teenager’s braces around the backseat ashtray would make a good “anti-smoking” ad.

Jack (v.o.)
the car crushes and burns with everyone trapped inside. now: do we initiate a recall?

Technician 1
the father’s must’ve been huge. see how the fat burnt into the driver’s seat with the polyester shirt? very “modern art”.

Jack (v.o.)
take the number of vehicles in the field (a), multiply it by the probable rate of failure (b), then multiply the result by the average out-of-court settlement ©.

a times b times c equals x. If x is less that the cost of a recall, we don’t do one.

It would be good if this didn’t happen when Nick was driving :-( Have you got a similar jeep? Do you know of this happening to a friend - let me know

Chrimble has just pointed out that the London Fire Brigade looks just like Automan when photographed at three am

Good Guardian today. Nelson Mandella reckons America is a ‘threat to world peace’ and something we already suspected about the Tories (they make you want to kill yourself, apparently)

I won’t remind everyone of that ancient and venerable gag’s punchline, it’s just that this reminded me of it;-)

Came accross this site (in French) as a result of searching my referer logs. Some assumption-challenging stuff here, from the perspective of a Muslim living in a Western country—things like problems with what they teach our kids in school, becoming a Muslim as well as a number of interesting personal histories.

Man I am getting sick of supporting Apple. I mean it’s one long lonely road, you know? I used to believe my box was better than the other guy’s windoze machine, but now I’m getting really bored of paying for the same thing over and over. There has to come a point were I just stop.

Nope, I don’t need an upgrade.

Really.

I went ‘pro’ (large fries with that?) by registering my copy of Quicktime three years ago. I would go out of my way to evangelize Quicktime over Realplayer, in several cases, getting QT media included in sites that were just going with Real. So I bought the ‘pro’ upgrade.

Then when I upgraded to QT4 I had to buy another license.

Same with QT5

Now, having bought two QT license off Apple (you’re welcome, S.J.) I’m looking at OSX 10.2 and the built-in Quicktime 6. I have to say, the fact that I am now supposed to buy a third, for the same product if I want the damn ‘shareware’ notice to go away? I would expect that of Bill Gates, but Apple?, why?

I keep getting punished for being an early adopter and frankly, it’s getting to me:-( I mean, to compound the Quicktime license problem, I own a once-top-of-the-range powerbook G3. And guess what, my model shipped with a dodgy DVD unit (see the class action in the making) which means I can’t boot from CDROM which means the likelihood of my successfully installing Jaguar (stupid name given to OSX10.2) is pretty much nil anyhow.

arse:-(

Damn it Steve, you should be sending me a copy of 10.2 with a big fat thank you note for my paying talented perl programmers to go overtime creating applications on your unfinished server OS. Why did I take the extra trouble? Why didn’t I just go with openBSD? Tell me why Steve? It’s not for Aqua, my servers don’t use monitors.

Steve, I bought OSX 10.0 beta (which felt pretty darn cheeky - I mean charge for a beta?!?) and then I bought the first proper version. I bought OSX server when it was 1.x (ie a slightly repackaged NextStep). And then, I bought it again when it went to version one. Finally, I shelled out for a copy of 10.1

What do I do now Steve? What advice should I give my customers?

Salam’alicum, today is officially Iraq dossier day. The dossier is a document in which the Ministry of Truth Tony Blair attempts to explain to the nation why we should invade Iraq, topple the government and supervise “regime change”.

As a pleb, I understand the need for a clearly defined enemy and appreciate the difficult work the Ministry has to do to ensure that I properly understand who to hate, and to make sure I send my as yet unborn son the front. All I ask, is the answer to a few questions.

a) Since when are sovereign states only allowed to possess weapons of moderate destruction?
b) When did Tony Blair stop giving a fuck what voters of my ilk think?
c) If the Americans want to act unilaterally and aren’t ashamed of it, why do I need to support them?
d) Why isn’t anybody upset at Israel going for the final solution to the Palestinian question?
e) How can the people of Iraq be expected to think and act, if they can’t even eat or read?

Anyway, happy dossier day.

Piece in the Guardian today with editorial commentary re the countryside alliance march.

As I read about this ragtag bunch of tweed-wearing rebels, I am reminded of the disjointed mob marching for States’ rights in the USA. They are similar in that they cannot express a united political position, but are clearly united in their dislike of central government. Could this be the beginning of the Unites States of Great Britain?

Maybe what we’ll get when the dust settles is a federal Britain with urban ‘city states’ on the one hand, and large ‘farm states’ on the other. They can all vie for influence in Westminster while running most local government issues locally…

Congratulations to Scary Duck for taking away the Guardian BBB. I’m embarrassed to admit I’d not read the duck before, but in any case, there’s five-hundred pounds headed for the pub:-)

I was thinking about Orwell’s Ministry of Information again today and started trying to find some bad guys to focus on. I’m showing my age a bit here, but it seems to me that Carlos, Andreas and Ulricke and even young Yasser, made very credible enemies. It might be to do with the degree of definition of their belief systems or their politics, but it was generally possible to pin-point this threat without their cause being extended to cover a people,race or religion.

O’Connor does a reasonable job of classifying the terror groups of my youth:

Nationalist terrorism is “traditional” terrorism, also called revolutionary or ideological terrorism. It is practiced by individuals belonging to an identifiable organization with a well-defined command-and-control structure, clear political, social or economic objectives, and a comprehensible ideology or self-interest (Hoffman 1999). Their target selection is highly selective and mostly discriminate - ambassadors, bankers, dignitaries - symbols they blame for economic or political repression.

In his piece, he moves on to define a few more classes, ending with ethno-nationalist terrorism (ethnoterrorism). I guess old Bin Laden falls into this category. His article is extremely dry and perhaps a bit over-confident (I always wonder about the principle of understanding by putting things in boxes) but is worth reading if you’re going through a process of trying to understand how we got where we are.

Specifically, when we add the suffix “terrorism” to a word (agro-terrorism) we instantly define the person or group so labelled in a way which prohibits negotiation or diplomacy. When the Red Brigades Kidnapped Aldo Moro or the IRA bombed Mountbatten, it was crystal clear that these were the actions of mad, sub-human, crazy nutters who could under no circumstances be dealt with other than by force.

Mountbatten’s death was the first incident that struck me as a young boy. I remember my father trying to explain what it meant and why he was so angry about it. If we are to grow as people, then the very least we can do is try and learn from our mistakes. Ignoring history just doesn’t make sense. From where I’m sitting, it’s beginning to look like the Catholics of Northern Ireland might of had a point.

Clearly, there can be no moral justification for bombing people, but surely the peace process in Northern Ireland is a more preferable outcome than the bombing of Iraq or indeed the classification of the entire Muslim world as our mortal enemy.

People have been asking about Nicki’s car. The news so far is that Clive Sutton, the UK dealership has replaced it with apologies and we are waiting for the official response from Daimler-Chrysler. If I had polls enabled on Donkey, I’d ask what sort of position I should take. I mean, they could have killed my whole family.

What if the thing had flared up in traffic?

The imobiliser would have come on, the electric doors and windows would have been locked and Nick and Clem would have both been dead in seconds. I’m trying to avoid thinking along those lines as it is freaking me out a bit, but I’d still like to hear from anyone out there who has had a similar experience. Anyone?

Have just re-discovered a photo library I used when I worked in New York. They’re called IBID. They were the first to organise photoshoots with the specific aim of producing one-half of an ad (the other being the headline, of course).

Ok, I’d like someone to explain what the robot or crawler or whatever it is that keeps searching for “quaint or donkey or prosodic or compels or counterbalance” is doing? Is it a component of some large web-cataloging device, is it using the results to generate some incredibly clever semantic maps of our virtual world, ¿che pasa? here…

Or is it just some smartass giving me a hard time;-)

Have just downloaded the Iraq dossier. While the body of the text is rather crudely set in workmanlike Times Roman, the title page has been worked up by some anonymous designer at the HMSO.

I can sympathise with the designer—I can see the briefs coming in: “Her Majesty’s Government’s Response to EC Agricultural Legislation” and so on. Then one day he gets this brief and his boss tells him, “have fun with this one, let rip, let those creative juices flow…” (ok, so they don’t really say shit like that at the HMSO but you get the idea).

So what does he do? He sets it in Goudy. Is this a coincidence? A subliminal message? Does the special relationship include implicating American type designers in our government’s warmongering?

Where do you want to go today? Try typing “go to hell” into Google.

Thank you Sashinka

(dug adds:) It would appear Bill Gates has the power to change search engine listings at a stroke. As of Sunday 29 Sept, he no longer makes top billing…

Not entirely sure what this has to do with donkeys really. But check it out anyway (with your sound turned on).

Saw a piece on NTK about a site which had been shut down at the request of a Jim Pearce from the met’s Obscene Publications Unit (though the fax header seems to say “clubs and vice” whatever that means…). All that Jim had to do to shut down this site was send a fax.

Nobody was charged, no warrants issued, nobody arrested. In other words, no crime committed.

The site’s publisher is understandably pissed off that his host shut him down without a warrant. Whether or not the whole incident is a scam, a hoax or a publicity stunt, it does raise some important questions about freedom of expression.

From the author’s open letter to the police:

…If you seriously believe that thinkofthechildren.co.uk is likely to incite violence or public disorder then I would be grateful if you would d