Saw this article ‘Political correctness comes to the tech arena’ about government officials in California asking equipment manufacturers to stop using the terms ‘master’ and ‘slave. Perhaps it’s because I live in a country which never knew slavery, but I find it hard to get excited. Then again political correctness is all pervasive. There’s a classic tale of, I think, an Australian customs officer confiscating a book called something like ‘Fun in Bed’ many years ago. Pity he never actually opened the cover – it was a book of games for kids.

Saw this article ‘Political correctness comes to the tech arena’ about government officials in California asking equipment manufacturers to stop using the terms ‘master’ and ‘slave. Perhaps it’s because I live in a country which never knew slavery, but I find it hard to get excited. Then again political correctness is all pervasive. There’s a classic tale of, I think, an Australian customs officer confiscating a book called something like ‘Fun in Bed’ many years ago. Pity he never actually opened the cover – it was a book of games for kids.

I saw two anti-spam stories in the same day, one from Australia and one from the USA. The Australian government looks like its done the deals necessary to get their anti-spam laws through the Senate. (Story from Sydney Morning Herald)

And in the USA the President is reported to be close to signing in a USA anti-spam law.

I get a couple of hundred spams a day, and use Mcafee’s SpamKiller software to try and keep it under control. Although I find it sometimes a frustrating program, and it occasionally mis-behaves on my XP laptop, it does on the whole do the job.

What I know for sure is neither of the two pieces of legislation are going to have much effect at all. Most spam is relayed via badly configured mail servers in places like Korea and China, the businesses behind the spams are spread around the world, and tough to track down or prosecute.

Again it highlights a) the price we pay for the magic of email. b) the complete inability of politicians the world over to come to grips with technological issues. They continue to apply old-world concepts to new-world problems. ‘Too many constituents complaining about spam? No problem. Pass a bill, and prosecute’.

Pity they’ll find it impractical and impossible to enforce.

Well I set this Blog up many months ago just to see how it all worked. Then promptly ignored it for ages. But I’ve had a resergence of interest, particularly because I keep seeing things I want to make comment on, or make note of. My daytime job involves me in online publishing of paid subscription content, focussing on people working in the arts and entertainment industry. As part of that I’m the webmaster and main programmer for a number of large content-rich sites, and I also write an occasional column published on one of the sites, highlighting issues revolving around technology and the internet in the arts industry.

The two main sites my company publishes are Arts Hub Australia and Arts Hub UK. My column is called ‘Click to Start’. Behind the scenes I program, generally large, web sites specialising in content management and publishing, subscriber management and email distribution.