September 2003

I’ve never been much of a fan of web comics other than Dilbert, and of course that’s really only a web comic if like me you’re too cheap to buy a newspaper. After an hour or so browsing around and laughing out loud, though, I think The Joy of Tech by Nitrozac and Snaggy has changed my mind.

There is a continual flurry of secondary legislation being laid before the UK parliament every day it is in session. Most of it, like the The Tonnage Tax (Training Requirement) (Amendment) Regulations 2003 (Statutory Instrument 2003 No. 2320), is of interest to very few of us. An exception to this general rule might be The Privacy and Electronic Communications (EC Directive) Regulations 2003, laid before parliament on the 18th of September and coming into force on December 11th.

Along with computer viruses, spam (however defined) is becoming a significant barrier to actually getting things done with these computer things. Almost everyone would love it if there was an easy solution to the problems spam causes: either a technical solution or a non-technical (legal or social) one would do.