Splashed across a banner on the top of the corporate internet home page yesterday was an announcement that my employer had teamed up with Facebook to raise an impressive amount of money for charitable causes and were encouraging employees to get involved. Clicking on the proffered Facebook link I was greeted with a message “Social Networking. Access to social networking sites is forbidden on the corporate network.”

A better example of shooting yourself in the foot I haven’t seen in some considerable time.

With all the articles in the news about various websites being blocked in China continuing to roll in, it got me thinking.

The widely accepted principals of the internet are that each host has equal rights of access and no packet should be given priority over any other. For the tech savvy, this is known as net-neutrality. While I am aware that this is far from reality in many corners of the internet, by and large, these principles are upheld by the major players, indeed when it isn’t there is usually a small media storm in the technical community and swift rectification usually follows.

The question that has been bothering me is what should happen when an organisation or even an entire country doesn’t comply with the principals of net-neutrality, even after pressure from the technical, or even world media? At the moment what tends to happen is there is a whole lot of talking and muttering about the problem, but very little action.

The truth is that China, blocking access to the internet from within as it does, is as dependant on it’s connectivity as anyone else. Commerce, education, recreation, all are provided through the internet to the people of China. If the media won’t bring them into line on free speech and net-neutrality then I perhaps the stick could be made bigger - should *we* block China?

This might seem a far-fetched or even crazy idea and I accept that it is a little extreme, but I can’t be the only person who thinks that how China behave towards the internet is in poor taste at best and at worst darn right sinister.

Those not opposed to the notion of actually implementing such a block might question the technical ability of the world to block China on the internet. That little problem is actually easily solved by the net’s open nature.

Anyone running an end point (web server, chat service, etc.) has control over the groups of IP addresses that do or don’t have access to that particular end point. This suddenly makes the block a lot easier to implement, because all you need to do is persuade those running servers to change a few rules. Due to the number of hacks originating from China, this persuasion is surprisingly easy to do - many organisations are already blocking China for this reason alone.

While I’m sure that we’re not going to suddenly find large areas of the internet going dark for the residents of China (although one could argue they already have due the internal blocking that goes on), this is certainly something you should give some thought to. I don’t feel the likes of China should be able to take a western invention with principled beginnings and twist it to their own ends, leaving all morality at the door. If you don’t like the internet in it’s pure form and attempt to impose those feelings on others then you shouldn’t have a right to access it yourself.

Matt Mullenweg muses about starting his own bank and goes into some detail about how the open source philosophy could work in this area. While WordPress development isn’t about to stop and financial investments start, it’s certainly food for thought.

As Matt said at WordCamp UK

For everything good in your life there should be an open source alternative

Open source banking is surely just another step along this road.

Six years ago I wrote the Halifax College website when I sat on the college committee. Since then, I have left the University of York and gained a degree at another university but throughout that time my old website has been kept in use, different content, different webmaster, but still the same design and code.

This week sees the launch of a new site in it’s entirety, code, design the works. The site is still hosted on my server which is why you will see a link to this blog on the bottom of the site but apart from that it’s now entirely out of my hands.

In some way I’m sad to see it change but 6 years is a very good run for a site design/back-end without any changes and it was only right that full control should pass from the hands of an old alumni into fresh ownership, after all I think you’ll agree that the new look is rather pleasing to the eye.

Anyone interested in what the site used to look like when I ran it, can check it’s internet archive entry.

Halifax Online is dead, long live Halifax Online!

I was in a sweet shop in York last weekend (I have a sweet tooth, I just can’t resist) and I overheard someone say that the traditional sherbet fountains are going to be removed from sale in the near future for “health and safety reasons”. This is apparently despite acknowledgements from all parties concerned that no harm has ever come to anyone through the fact the liquorice is open to the air.

Day by day I hear of more ludicrous actions being taken in the name of health and safety which merely seem to reduce our enjoyment of life. Sherbet fountains have been around my entire life and I remember buying them as a child. Not only that but my parents remember buying them as children. Bureaucrats and paranoid health officials shouldn’t be allowed to meddle.

Anyone unacquainted with my views on health and safety and it’s run-away tendency to mess with every part of our lives in ways that spoil our freedom and enjoyment should consult one of my past articles, “Health & Safety rules must die”