More on privacy and Google etc.

http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9588_22-6034666.html?tag=st.numWhen Google is not your friend.

Good to use in combination with previous post
http://waraku.blogspot.com/2006/02/google-story.html

Talks about what is stored, how it is stored and can be related back to a user, what laws protect it from abuse and how users can try and maintain their privacy.

The Google Story

http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bookshow/stories/2006/1563305.htm

Following the fortunes of a couple of very bright PhD students at Stanford
who end up running the best known global brand to emerge in a long time, The
Google Story is writer David Vise's introduction to the world of Google – the
empire built on building a better internet search engine. The company with the
founder's mantra 'Don't Do Evil' is now poised to possibly do away with all of
our privacy while delivering us all the knowledge in the whole wide world – at
least the sort of knowledge trappable in some of the greatest libraries in the
world. Cartoonist Gary Trudeau called them the swiss army knife of information
retrieval.

Listen up to the 20 minute mark. Fantastic for senior school IT and provides good information the issues of

• privacy
• copyright
• censorship

Thanks to Mal for finding this for me

Humourous intro to IT

http://www.homestarrunner.com/sbemail143.html
Funny. Probably will be blocked by the education systems filtering thingy in the 'no humour in education' category.
Only suitable for senior school kids as Lappy says that middle school kids are idiots? Is that really appropriate Lappy? Maybe the filter category will be 'abuse'.
When the screen saver comes on at the end look for the couple of links there for a bit of added amusement.

Pixel Tutorial - Sprite making

http://www.derekyu.com/extras/pixel01.html

Looks like a very good tutorial for those students who have a particular interest in the graphical side of making games - sprites.
From and 'free and open education for all' stance it is a pity that it has been written with the Photoshop tool in mind.
The author is the maker of 'Eternal Daughter'. The rest of Derek's site is worth a browse at least.

Class Mascot has arrived

Tux will make it's debut tomorrow.
Cute factor here we go - http://waraku.blogspot.com/2006/01/cute-factor.html
Pattern source noted at - http://waraku.blogspot.com/2006/01/pattern-for-soft-toy-tux.html

Censorship, freedom to information and activism resource

Students for a Free Tibet : No Luv 4 Google

Very recently Google agreed to provide a filtered search facility to China. http://www.google.cn/ There is a lot of chatter about this in the news and blogosphere.

Many seem to feel that this is a sell out to free speech and freedom of information. On the one hand Google has been about providing access to information and now these values seem to be compromised.

contrary to Google co-founder Sergey Brin's promise to inform users when their search results are censored, the company frequently filters out sites without revealing it.
http://news.com.com/What+Google+censors+in+China/2100-1030_3-6031727.html

This is a link to a site which is about trying to do something about this issue - it is an example of activism and the use of ICT's to promote a cause. How quickly a group is able to respond to issues and get people involved on a global scale
http://noluv4google.com/article.php?list=type&type=92

I wonder how successful they will be in creating a stir?

The site has recently been launched by http://studentsforafreetibet.org/ - Students for a free Tibet.

Adding to this

Pollies in US on Wednesday "attacked Google, Microsoft, Cisco Systems and Yahoo for declining to appear at a briefing about China's Internet censorship and called for a new law to outlaw compliance with such requirements."

"These massively successful high-tech companies, which couldn't bring themselves to send their representatives to this meeting today, should be ashamed," said Rep. Tom Lantos, the California Democrat who is co-chairman of the Congressional Human Rights Caucus, which organized the briefing.

"With all their power and influence, wealth and high visibility, they neglected to commit to the kind of positive action that human rights activists in China take every day," Lantos went on. "They caved in to Beijing's demands for the sake of profits, or whatever else they choose to call it."

http://news.com.com/2100-1028_3-6033976.html

I found these links in the Tasmanian IT TEachers talk list

http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/archives/2006/01/25/google_agrees_to_censor_results_in_china.html
http://www.google-watch.org/china.html
http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/filtering/china/block-kw-detail.html

Might be an issue that is worth keeping an eye on in view of the approaching Olympics as well.

Consider this when thinking about the filtering that is happening in schools as well.