News: Big Brother’s Net

By | November 24, 2011
 For those of you interested in how the Internet is not an unrestricted place for everyone, Reporters Sans Frontieres/Reporters Without Borders last month published their second annual report on censorship in cyberspace, “The Internet under Surveillance – Obstacles to the free flow of information online” which details “attitudes to the Internet by the powerful in 60 countries, between spring 2001 and spring 2003”.
 
 
The report looks at quite a few countries, although it leaves some obvious ones out: It looks at Australia, for example, but leaves out Indonesia and Brunei. Looking at China, for example: “Population : 1,284,972,000; Internet users : 59,100,000; Privately-owned ISPs : no; Internet Users and cyber-dissidents in prison : 42. The number of Internet users doubles nearly every six months and the number of websites every year. But this dizzying growth is matched by the authorities’ energetic attempts to monitor, censor and repress Internet activity, with tough laws, jailing cyber-dissidents, blocking access to websites, monitoring online forums and shutting down cybercafes.”
 
Download the full report as a PDF file here (2.5 MB).

News: Another Thai crackdown

By | November 24, 2011
 
  After terrorists and drug dealers, Thailand is launching another crackdown, this time on online gamers. According to a report by the BBC, Thailand will impose a night curfew on online gaming, because of concerns about rising addiction rates among young players. The curfew will block game servers between 2200 and 0600 daily from 15 July, on the instructions of technology minister Surapong Suebwonglee. Particularly popular is the Korean game Ragnarok.
 
Needless to say, Khun Surapong has become the object of scorn in Thailand’s chatrooms.

News: Copy the customer, get a bigger tip

By | November 24, 2011
  A report in Nature confirms what we all knew: the waitress (or waiter, presumably) who imitates the customers gets a bigger tip. Huh?
 
 
Turns out, according to some Dutch psychologist Rick van Baaren of the University of Nijmegen, that “Mimicry creates bonds between people – it induces a sense of ‘we-ness.  You know that what you’re doing is ok, and you become more generous.” Van Baaren’s team studied staff in an American-style restaurant in southern Holland: In half of the tests, they primed a waitress to repeat customers’ orders back to them. In the other half, she said something else positive, such as “Coming right up!”
 
When copycatting, the waitresses’ average tip almost doubled, to nearly 3 guilders (US$1.20). 

News: The Law and Blogging Revisited

By | November 24, 2011
 Further to my earlier posting about a court ruling last week that Web loggers, website operators and e-mail list editors can’t be held responsible for libel for information they republish, Mark Glaser of the University of Southern California’s Online Journalism Review takes a more nuanced view, saying “What really happened in this ruling is much more complex than that and only protects third-party content that’s being passed along to an e-mail listserv, a forum or perhaps a Weblog’s comments section. When a blogger starts making original commentary, he/she is liable for these comments.”

News: Baffled by tech terms? You’re not alone

By | November 24, 2011
 
  A new study from the Global Consumer Advisory Board of chip maker AMD says many people are delaying buying new technologies because they don’t understand the language of the technology industry. The Technology Terminology and Complexity Study found, among other things that only 3% of correspondents “aced” their quiz, correctly identifying 11 of 11 multiple-choice definitions for various technology terms.
  • Most respondents got only 7 or fewer correct
  • Less than one quarter (22%) got 5 or fewer
  • Less than one tenth (9%) got 3 or fewer
Needless to say, I’m not surprised. If everyone adopted my own suggested terms, I think we’d all be happier.
 
Download the summary in PDF format.