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In BBC news...

BBC News is one of the few traditional news sites that I read. Google News is great too, but without RSS feeds, it's a bit more work to keep up with. I'll keep this regurgitation of other news short, but there are a couple new posts on BBC News that are worth mentioning:

First is that the Bush site bars overseas visitors. That's right, President Bush's website is blocking access to visitors from outside the U.S. From the article, they "see no reason to distribute content to people who will not be voting next week", which is a rather short-sighted view and sends an odd message about U.S. global policy. The two arguments made in the article are that the bandwidth costs are too high for the site when accessed globally, and that there are security threats coming from outside U.S. networks. However, it doesn't take a rocket surgeon to call shenanigans on those claims. I'm willing to bet that Bush gets a decent discount on his hosting costs, and that he never actually sees or pays the bill himself. And in this case, traffic is high because people are actually interested in global politics! As for the security issue, this sounds like FUD to me. It's another claim that the outside world is full of terror without acknowledging that online crime is a global issue. Crackers can just as easily route through a U.S. based machine as they can from anywhere else, and the Homeland Security folks should be able to lock down a web server. If you're operating a site this important, hire a hacker to do it right.

Continuing the political theme, I found my 'quote of the day' in a Blogging the US election post. It reads, "BuyCostumes.com polled 12 national costume chains and found that Halloween mask sales of the candidates have accurately predicted the outcome of the election in every race since 1980." Wow. Who would have thought it was that simple?

My final citation comes from a different struggle -- the ongoing Blogger vs. Corporation landscape where many individuals are learning that Free Speech does not apply to the workplace. Blogger grounded by her airline describes yet another case where a blogger has been fired, without warning, for posting online.