Liberty Alone

I’m no fan of Dizzee Rascal’s music, but I love his business model. Hard work, treating fans decently and building up a fan base.

Dizzee Rascal’s manager on filesharing.

Even more interesting is he’s not had any major label involvement, this is all his own work.

It seem my site is available again in China :)

I have my doubts about the site which purports to tell you whether a site is available. I think sometimes it gets broken and supplies false negatives.

Either that or the firewall-bots employed have decided my site is acceptable.

I’ve just come across an interesting idea about the ‘Great Firewall of China’. Freeborn John discovered he was blocked so placed some pseudo communist blurb which an intelligent reader would realise was rubbish but a computer might not. Lo and behold he was removed from the blocked list.

You can find out if you’re blocked here. I appear to be blocked…

The EU has given €9.6 million to fund a trial of Broadband over Power Line (BPL).

This technology pollutes the radio spectrum as has been shown by numerous trials. It emits radiation across the HF spectrum, disabling communications in that part of the spectrum and potentially causing interference across the world. HF is not only used by Radio Amateurs (my particular angle on this) but also by the military, international broadcasters, ships and provides long range emergency communication in disaster areas.

This technology is pushed by energy companies seeking to extract more money out of their infrastructure (as is their right) but they form powerful lobbies, lobbying for an unneeded, polluting technology. If they want to develop it, they can do so without state subsidy and stop interference (or buy the rights to the spectrum they wish to pollute - but that’s not possible).