So now the FCC [Federal Trade Commission] issued a report entitled Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy, concluding that net neutrality is not an important issue to protect.
To read the report, clikc here. [pdf]
free software foundation to campaign against Microsoft
In response to Microsoft’s attack against free software, the FSF has announced on May 16th 2007 the creation of a campaign to fight back by organizing ‘public support into action on software freedom issues’:
The new team will be composed of two campaigns managers and an international group of volunteers, with one position to be filled by current staff member John Sullivan and the other by new appointee Joshua Gay. They will work together on the FSF campaigns BadVista.org and DefectiveByDesign.org, and launch additional campaigns in the near future. [link]
e-waste dumping in Africa
According to a UN report, an estimated 50 million tons of electronic waste generated globally every year, e-waste and its disposal is a growing problem, and much of it is dumped in Africa [link]. The Basel Convention on the Control of Transboundary Movements of Hazardous Wastes and their Disposal is a treaty on waste disposal entered into force in 1992 [link]. It is estimated that
anywhere between 25 to 75 percent of the e-waste that enters Africa, mostly through Mombasa, Lagos and Dar es Salaam ports, is useless.
It is also reported that in Nigeria alone, about 500 containers full of used electronic cargo pass through the Lagos port every month, according to a recent study by Seattle-based Basel Action Network.
firefox extension
TextMarker is a great Firefox extension. It allows you to highlight text on web pages and has 3 customizable highlighter colours. Fascinating!!
After installation, to highlight text, just select the text then right click and click on Highlight Text. If you want to remove the highlighting, then just right click on the highlighting and choose Erase this Highlighting.
To change the colour:
1- Click on Tools | Add ons [a list of extensions will open depending on how many extensions you downloaded]
2- Click on the TextMarker extension. It will give you three options: Disable, Uninstall and Options. Click on Options.
3- Choose the highlight colours that you want.
As you can see from the image, I have several extensions downloaded. The ‘copy plain text extension’ is excellent for the regular user, and the Web Developer Extension is great if you are working on CSS or Javascript etc.
phishing test
Here are some phishing stats from SonicWall:
- 6.1 Billion – Number of phishing e-mails sent world-wide each month
- $1, 200 – Average loss to each person sucessfully phished (Federal Trade Commission)
- 15, 451 – Number of unique phishing attacks in January 2006 (Anti-Phishing Working Group)
- 7, 484 – Number of phishing Web sites found in January 2006 (Anti-Phishing Working Group)
Sonic Wall also puts a very interesting test for your online safety [link]. Try it and see how safe you are. I LOVE that test!!!