For a change, the Chinese government have decided to impose their holier-than-thou ideals on the public by preventing access to common social networking sites, including twitter.com

Not happy with just blocking Blogger, YouTube and a plethora of others, the Great Firewall of China has put a stop to Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live.com, Hotmail.com and others too. I’m guessing that China are looking to slowly remove Chinese social networking & reduce communication generally online, in a hope to stop this pesky freedom of speech stuff.

You may remember an article I wrote previously about China’s efforts to stifle freedom of speech, after YouTube and a few other video sites were “unplugged” from China’s network overnight – and it seems now that things are getting worse. Come on China! What are you afraid of? A revolution?!

The BBC demonstrated that by acquiring some software from chatrooms on the internet, they were able to set up their own botnet and take control of 22,000 user’s PCs.

Apparently the BBC are voicing that as this was not done with "criminal intent" it’s not illegal – and that no personal information was obtained from the slave machines.

I’m a little shocked, I must admit. When has a TV corporation had the power to take it on themselves to hack thousands of computers and then in the same breath say it’s not illegal? Just the mere fact that the BBC took control, means they have broken the law. They have unlawfully obtained use of equipment that they didn’t pay for, don’t pay the electricity bill for & don’t pay the user’s ISP for use of the bandwidth. Stealing, as far as I have been aware has always been a criminal activity – and it doesn’t matter if you dress this with "criminal intent" or not. And if it’s not stealing, then it’s a breach of privacy in the most basic form – you have the right to use your own property without interference from anyone else.

So what happens next? I think if you were one of the 22,000 users that had their PCs hijacked – maybe you should send a letter to your local MP, or perhaps contact the Electronic Frontier Foundation. I know that’s the route I would be taking. Read the BBC article here.

Deal after deal have fallen through, and now Sky Broadband are the latest on the list of companies unwilling to front the £600 million asking price.

Sky, only prepared to part with £450 million, ended talks with the Italian owned ISP (who also have Pipex & Homechoice under the Tiscali umbrella). Of course, you can argue that the company should be worth less anyway, after loosing 37,000 customers since it was announced they were looking for buyers.

I personally have a lot of history with the ISP that includes appalling download rates and congestion. I also have friends and family that have had similar stories to mine. However, I do understand that cheap broadband breeds that sort of thing – and as many people around the country have already done, you should vote with your feet.

So with Tiscali’s bad press will a buyer ever be found that is willing to cough up £600 million?

People turned out in their thousands to protest against Australia’s equivalent to the Great Firewall of China.

It seems as though Australian MPs had decided a nanny state is the way forward, instead of educating the (mis)users of the internet. All but one of the ISPs in Australia refused recently to conduct trials with the new system, so it should have been plain enough to expect a reaction.

The Digital Liberty Coalition organised the rallies in every capital city on the 13th of December to bring home the message that the average Australian isn’t going to take the censorship sitting down. 15,000 were expected plus speeches from Amnesty International and the Electronic Frontiers of Australia (EFA). Read the nocensorhip.info article for details.

—This article supersedes the previous OpenDNS article, to bring everything up to date.—

I previously wrote an article about how to fix the search results that get thrown up by OpenDNS when you’re trying a quick search in Firefox’s address bar. However, if you use the Google Toolbar, you will have the same problem. There also appear to be issues with OpenDNS’s default behaviour (which perhaps should be an "opt-in" rather than an "opt-out"?)

It’s surprising how used to the Firefox address bar feature you get. I, for instance, just type “gmail” into the address bar and Firefox/Google gets me to where I want to go. Some people I know of have actually got rid of OpenDNS for this reason alone. Well all is not lost!

First things first, go to the address bar of Firefox and type about:config and hit return. You may be given a warning message, simply click “I’ll be careful, I promise!”. What appears is a list of the configurable variables that Firefox uses. Beware, messing with the wrong ones can break your browser. We’re interested in only one of them. In the filter box, type keyword. Double click the keyword.URL entry in the list and change the contents of the box that appears to http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q= click OK. And for those of us in the UK, just substitute the google.com with a google.co.uk.

Secondly, you’ll need to have an account with OpenDNS, so you can manage your network settings. For those of you that have a static IP it’s very simple, simply register your IP with OpenDNS, give it a friendly name (like Home Broadband or something) and you can start managing everything within minutes. If you do not have a static IP address, please read their section on Dynamic DNS first and then download a small program that notifies OpenDNS when your network address changes.

Once you have your IP address registered with OpenDNS, you can manage the settings yourself. Click on advanced settings for the network and make sure, right at the bottom of the page, Enable OpenDNS proxy is ticked. The OpenDNS proxy will allow Firefox address bar traffic through unscathed (hopefully) – but it only appears to work in combination with the Firefox fix above (at least in my case). You may also want to disable the typo correction (personal choice).

Anything you now type into the address bar of Firefox, if it’s not a valid website address, will be redirected to Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. I’m Feeling Lucky, for the uninitiated, is a button next to Search on the Google homepage that you can use if you’re sure the first entry that’s going to be returned by Google’s normal search will be what you’re looking for. Firefox will now act exactly the same way when you type your search term into the address bar – bypassing that horrible (and annoying) OpenDNS search page.

The old fort, which it’s owner (Roy Bates) declared a principality – although the UK still claim it’s within their waters – was involved in hosting data off-shore, in an attempt to circumvent internet hosting laws in most countries.

For the last couple of days, however, the main website for "HavenCo" is not hosted on Sealand anymore. This almost certainly points to the end for HavenCo after a troubled recent history. Although the idea initially is pretty good, it’s such a niche market that the customer base must have been pretty small to begin with. Couple that with the reality that any traffic that flows through the Sealand servers, also flows through the UK, and it seems less and less attractive.

Personally, I’ve always seen Sealand as a bit of a quirk. And once the novelty wears off (worn off?), it’s just an old heap of bricks in the middle of the channel.

£1 Billion has already been ploughed into a monitoring system in the UK that could make every user of technology in the country a target for Big Brother.

The system, based in a building in Benhall, and reported by TechSnake in July, is being funded to intercept all email, SMS and internet traffic to the tune of £12 Billion, once running. Reported in a post on the This Is Gloucestershire website, the move has caused councillors and MPs to question the Government’s morality.

I, personally, can’t believe what is happening. In a modern society too. It is the civil right of every person to have private communications with each other without the government spying over their shoulders. This typical attitude by government agencies is of course wrapped up in the “threat of terrorism” cliché, that is starting to wear just a little too thin. Preventing terrorism is important, but not to the detriment of every other law-abiding citizen. The fishing net mentality is ridiculous – the process is already in place whereby a government agency can get a court order to track individual’s messages for potential terrorism involvement – the government doesn’t need to employ this level of privacy invasion. So what can we do about this – in the UK and globally?

Read all of this article…

China has just overtaken the US, as the country with the largest online population in the world. China, according to sources, has a massive 253 million people surfing the net.

They may be online, but as we know, they aren’t exactly experiencing the net to it’s “fullest” shall we say, with censorship and government restrictions in place. But on the plus side, at least they’re enjoying their Great Firewall of China filtered content quickly – 95% of connections are on broadband or better. The world’s faster growing economy is starting to become the world’s most tech-savvy community too.

Photo source: Flickr

—Superseded by a newer OpenDNS article, written to bring everything up to date. —

It’s a common question, and most people don’t really look for the answer. If you make the switch to using OpenDNS, all of a sudden the feature of typing anything into your address bar in firefox, and being redirected to the best-match page from google doesn’t work. And it’s surprising how used to that feature you get. I, for instance, just type “gmail” into the address bar and Firefox/Google gets me to where I want to go. Some people I know of have actually got rid of OpenDNS for this reason alone. Well all is not lost! Don’t change your settings just yet – you can make a simple tweak in Firefox to make it all better.

First things first, go to the address bar of Firefox and type about:config and hit return. You may be given a warning message, simply click “I’ll be careful, I promise!”. What appears is a list of the configurable variables that Firefox uses. Beware, messing with the wrong ones can break your browser. We’re interested in only one of them. In the filter box, type keyword. Double click the keyword.URL entry in the list and change the contents of the box that appears to http://www.google.com/search?btnI=I%27m+Feeling+Lucky&q= click OK and you’re done. And for those of us in the UK, just substitute the google.com with a google.co.uk.

Anything you now type into the address bar of Firefox, if it’s not a valid website address, will be redirected to Google’s “I’m Feeling Lucky” search. I’m Feeling Lucky, for the uninitiated, is a button next to Search on the Google homepage that you can use if you’re sure the first entry that’s going to be returned by Google’s normal search will be what you’re looking for. Firefox will now act exactly the same way when you type your search term into the address bar – bypassing that horrible OpenDNS search page.

Firstly, I would like to say that using a wireless network which is not yours, will probably land you in some trouble. But, hey, it’s not for me to judge, I’m just here to provide the information!

After very recently looking for some admin-like answers to some wireless network problems I was having, I found this article that details in a Make Magazine or Instructables style, how to create a “Predator” wireless access point sniffer.

The Predator is a hacked router and huge wireless receiver, plus a tripod. It will scan the surrounding area for the strongest unencrypted, or “open” wireless network and repeat it into your network. And because of the over-average size of the receiver, you should be able to get a good signal as long as you have a fairly good line-of-sight. So you will have free wireless internet, while still retaining control of your network security. Very cool, but remember it might be illegal depending on where you live and laws in that country etc. Also, I wouldn’t suggest sticking the thing right next to the window as in the pictures, unless you want the SAS zip-lining into your lounge after reports of a sniper in your building!