Borgwatch: ITAP prosthetics

"Intraosseous transcutaneous amputation prosthesis" - ITAP - is doing the rounds of the news media right now as Kira Mason (wot was blowed up in the London bombings) and her boffins wave their her new arm and their new technique at the world.  In a nutshell, it's a good, strong, non-rejecting non-infecting metal-to-bone-through-skin graft.  Part of it is nifty coatings on the titanium rod that's inserted into the bone where it passes through skin; the other part is the cunning antler-model fusion section, where a basket-shaped piece allows flesh and bone to grow through the implant, making everything fused tight, slightly giving, and biologically calm. 

It ought to do away with harnesses and cuffs, none of which are really very good.  It's more sensitive, more precise, and able to handle heavier loads.  Combined with some of the nifty arm tech coming out of Dean Kamen's skunkworks (a genius and some DARPA funding: two great tastes that taste great together), things are looking up. 

Censorship online

The "wikipedia censorship" flap is over.  The IWG reversed their decision, saying, "Following representations from Wikipedia, IWF invoked its Appeals Procedure and has given careful consideration to the issues involved in this case. The procedure is now complete and has confirmed that the image in question is potentially in breach of the Protection of Children Act 1978. However, the IWF Board has today (9 December 2008) considered these findings and the contextual issues involved in this specific case and, in light of the length of time the image has existed and its wide availability, the decision has been taken to remove this webpage from our list." (full statement here, including acknowledgment of the Streissand Effect)

This is right and proper, and happened in good time. 

But only one of the filtering ISPs - Demon - told users that they were being filtered and pointed users to the IWF's site.  The others gave a fake 404 error page.  This is really the nub of it: if we're to have filters, we need to know what they are and who runs them.  We need to know that there is an appeals procedure and it needs to work in a timely fashion. 

Wikipedia is an edge case, a high-profile and marginal decision.  It's by no means the only error by "decency" filters - I know of swimwear categorized as smut and kids' swimwear categorized as kiddy smut, and away from smut, political sites were being put on blacklists by their political opponents during the recent US election campaign.  You've got to know who's doing the filtering and it has to be quickly and easily reversible when it is wrong.

Ultimately, filters are broken.  John Gilmore, one of the great beardy gurus of the internet, described it most succinctly: "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it."  On a human level, "oh that page is broken, I'll google for another."  On a technical level, proxies and tunnels and encryption and innovation - just ask Chinese nerds.