The BBC reports that Stalin has been voted into third place in a poll for the greatest Russian, held by a Russian TV station.

Never mind that he was born in Gori in Georgia! (You may recall Gori from the Russian military action in 2008).  Anyway, the result is a little astonishing, given his three decade reign of terror in which millions of Soviet citizens died.  His claim to greatness (other than being a hugely important figure in the 20th century) is presumably his reputation as the person who led the Soviet Union to victory over Nazi Germany.  As the BBC says:

The Guardian yesterday reported that the UK Culture Secretary plans to introduce a cinema-style "age-rating" for websites.  He's apparently going to contact Barack Obama once he's got up and running in the White House to try and set up some form of web site certification.  Not being one to set his sights too high, the "plan" is to involve only English language sites, but to compel ISPs to provide packages to provide the means to block unrated sites.

I presume such packages would be OS-independent, and an optional add-on.  Of course a number of likely problems loom over the horizon, including the scale of the internet.  How many web sites are there out there?  Back in February 2007, this question was asked at Boutell.com, and the answer was " more than 108 million".  Goodness knows how accurate that estimate is, and how the number may have increased since then!   The same site estimates the number of web pages in February 2007 to be in excess of 29.7 billion.

News reports on the BBC somewhat precede April 1st.  Apparently the Scottish National Party want an airbase in Scotland  to be used as a Scottish spaceport.

The party's Westminster leader, Angus Robertson, wants Virgin Galactic to use RAF Lossiemouth in his constituency as a base for space tourism.  

I see from the BBC news site that panda diplomacy is on again - China has gifted two giant pandas to Taiwan.  I admit that giant pandas are cute, and have the interesting novelty of a extra digit (the "Panda's Thumb") that is derived from a modified sesamoid bone.  But, really, a carnivore that subsists on a diet that is 99% bamboo, that cannot digest cellulose, and which needs to consume 9-14 kg of bamboo shoots a day has been dealt a rather unfortunate hand!

On the other hand, this YouTube video never fails to make me laugh:

The Register reports another of the original Star Trek cast has died: Majel Roddenberry, who must have had more roles in the Star Trek franchise than any other cast member:

• First officer in the pilot
• Nurse Christine Chapel 
• Lwaxana Troi (Deanna Troi's rather irritating mother) in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
• The computer voice in many of the Star Trek shows and animations.  

When Astana rider Alxender Vinokourov was busted from the 2007 Tour de France for a pretty obvious case of blood doping, he received an astonishingly light 12 month ban from the Kazakhstan cycling federation.  A UCI challenge to the lack of severity was postponed because the dope cheat retired at that point.

Now that Vinokourov has announced his return from retirement, cyclingnews.com reports that the UCI has reactivated the appeal.  The UCI apparently seeks a doubling of his ban.  And so they should.  The guy is a fraud and cheat, and lied about the blood doping bust at the time, with flimsy excuses that his abnormal blood results were due to his injuries sustained earlier in the Tour de France.

 While browsing through Biogerontology looking for the citation details of one of my publications (which appears to still be available only online), I came across this review, which kind of stands out because of its subject matter.  And any paper with two citations from 300AD and 1300AD has to be looked at!

At the outset, I should say that I know next to nothing about Ayurveda, and that I am unwilling to take claims of efficacy of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) that lack a serious evidence-base seriously. (I regard Ayurveda as a CAM, as it most certainly is that from a western perspective).  This paper is a brief review article that I suppose has been peer-reviewed, and seeks to review the impact of the therapy on brain ageing.  Does it convince me?

I've spent a fair bit of time lately modifying websites.  I run several websites: Flies and Bikes (which you're reading now), my cycling club's website, the Oriel Cell Senescence conference website, and a simpler html-based website for the defunct cycling club Northwood Wheelers. 

The first three sites use the Joomla!* content management system, which I find to be very flexible and with plenty of useful add-ons.

I found this cartoon at jesusandmo.net over at Pharyngula.

The Register reports that a senior Vodafone network architect has be recruited by the Home Secretary to draw up proposals for the Interception Modernisation Program (IMP).

Tim Hayward, erstwhile senior programme manager at the UK's second largest mobile operator, was appointed IMP director in August. While at Vodafone he was responsible for 3G network architecture, according to careers information posted on the web.

There's a rather depressing article in Ars Technica (UK ISPs playing Grinch with P2P throttling, surf data, video?)about ISP attitudes to the service they provide (or not) in the UK.  AT focusses on  three areas in which the ISPs want to maximise their profits, in some cases by restricting costs (throttling P2P services), selling our data (by deep packet inspection, such as the vile Phorm system), and by demanding payments from broadcasters such as the BBC (because they have the temerity to introduce a very popular service such as iPlayer).

I'm not a BitTorrent user, but I feel rather anxious that a legal application like BitTorrent, which can of course be used for entirely legal activities such as legal downloading of videos, games, and software can be throttled back on the basis (or rather the explanation used to deflect criticism) that some people abuse it for illegal activities.  Of course this is a bit weasly, the real situation is that the ISPs have pitched their services at a price that doesn't cover the bandwidth people use.  Their solution seems to be to throttle back P2P services under the guise of copyright protection.

Well, I have to confess that I have some sympathy with this Iraqi journalist.  One might suspect Bush was lucky they were only shoes, after the mayhem he wreaked on the Middle East.

 [video:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=9uIj0YvDBKE 425x340]

Following the the IWF-Wikipedia fracas for the last week or so, will there be any lasting changes to internet censorship in the UK?  I hope so.

Until the IWF saw to it that UK access to editing Wikipedia pages was prevented, I doubt that UK broadband customers were aware their internet service was subject to censorship.  The revelations surrounding the banning of the Scorpions LP sleeve Virgin Killer pushed the activities of the IWF into the public spotlight for the first time, and will perhaps precipitate a change into their operations.

So, is a belief in Santa Claus (he of the Coca-Cola-inspired red outfit) any less resonable than a belief in God (any God)?  The Unreasonable Faith blog thinks not:

BT and Phorm have recently concluded their latest trial of the vile WebWise deep packet inspection system, in which they propose to ride roughshod over privacy and copyright concerns to make money targeting adverts at ISP subscribers.  Interestingly this trial was proposed to involve 10,000 customers, and take  two weeks.  In fact, BT refuse to reveal how many participants there were, took two and a half months over the trial, and in their press release say:

RNS Number : 0686K Phorm Inc 15 December 2008

The UK Consumer advocacy group Which? has filed a complaint with the Solicitors Regulatory Authority about the activities of UK legal firm Davenport Lyons, who have been sending threatening letters to individuals accused of illegally downloading movies and games.

This is welcome news, as in many cases individuals appear to be wrongly accused, and the overall strategy appears to be to obtain a users ID from the ISP (based upon logged IP addresses) and to pitch the demand at a level below that which would justify paying for legal advice and above that which would just be ignored by the recipient.  In most cases this is around £500.  The internet is full of postings from outraged internet users, many claiming innocence.  Furthermore, it's clear from online news reports that whatever method Davenport Lyons' technical advisers are using to identify downloaders is rather suspect - not least because most domestic broadbad users have dynamic IP addresses. One example is that of an elederly couple accused by Davenport Lyons of downloading a hardcore gay porn movie.  It seems likely that in many cases, the accusation arises from unsecured wireless networks.

After the Home Secretary announced that the Intercept Modernisation Programme (IMP) was not going to be included in the Queen's Speech, but that it was to be the subject of a public consultation, the Home Office has replied to the Open Rights Group's August 2008 FOI request  for information about the proposed scheme for spying into all our communications. 

Well, unsurprisingly, they have clammed up almost entirely.  The pdf response is here; the ORG article is here; one of the documents supplied is here.  Of course, any political moves with any kind of claim to be associated with national security can probably claim to be exempt from the FOI act.  It's to be hoped that the ORG will continue chasing the information in the run upto the publict consultation exercise our increasingly authoritarian Home Secretary will actually emark on in the New Year.

The IWF, those self-appointed and unregulated guardians of our morality have backed down over listing the Wikipedia page on the Scorpions album Virgin Killer.  You can read their statement here, and how ungracious and unapolgetic they are too.

I imagine they are a bit upset that their surreptitious filtering activities got thrust suddenly into the public view (including a major item on Channel 4 news).   From the notes appended to the statment:

 Here's a demo film from 1968 showing one of the first computer mice...I love the peculiar combined keyboard/mouse pad that resembles an airline meal tray.

[video:http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1MPJZ6M52dI&feature=related 425x344] 

So, who watches the Internet Watch Foundation watchmen?  Wikipedia entry "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?".

A ZDnet article says "Wind up the Internet Watch Foundation"...