Online identity is quite a stong subject that has been worried about for a number of years, especially when fraud is concerned. I read an article on the bbc website, which was posted on 2nd August 2006 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/5238992.stm) which is about a new child online saftey card which allows parents to pay £10 per year for the privilege of having an online identity card for their children to use to enable them to safely chat and serf online. I feel that this would be a good idea as it will only allow children to speak to other children who have the safety card up and running. Although they only need a password and an email address to access the service, it will still probably cut down the number of adults trying to pose as a child. Because of that fact, I believe parents would be obligated to persue the card to give them the peace of mind they need to allow their children to access the internet without any worry.

Another subject that is in debate is anonymity. An article on the bbc website (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/click_online/4227578.stm) indicates that Ian Clarke, Founder and co-ordinator of Freenet, has been engaging in a project for the past 5 years to try and get complete online anonymity. His aim is to try and allow users to share information, no matter what the content, with complete anonymity. The way it would work, is that users would have to share their hard disk with everyone else in order to store all of the content. This content is not checked for anything illegal, so it means that paedophiles and other online abusers will be able to gain access to child pornography and other illegal content. Is this not just fueling their habbit? It seems to me like this would be a terrible mistake as the government are supposed to be trying to control all of the illegal online activity so its a safe environment to use by all.
The article states "What worries many, is that Freenet is a lawless area". I believe this is extremely true as users of freenet will be carrying unknown data on their hard drives. This could be some seriously nasty information and data. So where do we draw the line? Are laws not there for a reason? It just seems like people are trying to see how much they can get away with online as it is without the introduction of freenet causing some interesting issues.

Until next week

last week was a little hectic, so the blog has been put on hold untill today.

This week i've decided to treat this space as a sort of diary. Maybe just a thought log.

I broke up with my girlfriend about a month and a half ago. The relationship lasted about 5 months until then, and certain things have happened recently which has made me think whether I made the right choice by ending it.

Now, this relationship was probably the maturist relationship I've had with someone. We did the whole holiday thing in the summer, and we both met eachothers parents. I know what you're thinking, "scary", but it was actually quite a relief to find that Lizi's parents were great. Hopefully she felt the same about mine.
Anyway, it all ended because I felt that the relationship moved extremely fast in terms of practically living together and spending the majority of time with eachother. I can here all those who are married and are in long-term relationships saying "yes I remember those days" and "you need to have the appropriate time apart from eachother in order for it to work". Well thats what I've been told thus far anyway.
I felt that we needed more time apart in order for things to work, but I ask myself "Is it too late?". In some ways, I feel like I made the right choice by ending it, but as time goes on, and I look at my history of girlfriends, I see a little resemblence in pattern. An old friend of mine said to me "you always seem to end it". Now this scared me!
Why do I always end the relationship? Is there something wrong with me? I ask myself. Maybe its because I've been hurt in the past, or because I find myself getting bored. But looking at one of my best friends relationship, I've seen them both go through so much together. A break up, large arguements, the usual relationship antics in some cases.
It just seems like, looking back on it all, that I escaped at the second hurdle instead of fighting through to get past it.
Another factor in this equasion is that a mutual friend likes Lizi and has done for a while apparently. This is why I keep questioning myself when I think about it. "Am I just jealous, or have I finally realised what it is that I really want?". James is a decent bloke and at the end of the day I just want her to be happy, but a part of me inside wants to speak to her about how I'm feeling. Another part of me says "If I do, it could bring back alot of pain for her if I start all of this again and she's been doing great since the break-up".

I suppose if anyone reads this, the moral is 'Think about what you have before you throw it all away for what you think you are looking for.

Until next week

Now, this week our lecture was about "addiction".
When we think of addiction, straight away we think about the most obvious things such as smoking, gambling and drinking. Another type of addiction which was brought up in the lecture was internet addiction. One of the factors of this could be online gambling. Now there are millions of people out there that gamble, but online gambling has become extremely popular over the past couple of years with the introduction of new online poker sites and online casinos. I have had a few experiences with playing poker online, and I have to say that it can become very addictive. Especially at times where you have nothing to do and decide "I might aswell deposit ten pounds into be betting account and play for a couple of hours". Its as easy as it sounds. In some ways it can be thought as monopoly money as there isn't any real money actually leaving your hands going to a cashier. You can understand how this can become addictive.

From looking on the BBC news website, I came accross an article about a case of online gaming in South Korea last month. The website states "South Korea is one of the most wired societies in the world". Apparently there are over 25,000 cyber cafes in South Korea that are open 24 hours a day accross the country. This alone tells you that online activity is widely available all accross country. In fact, the number of broadband subscribers are exceeding 10 million.
What drew my attention to the article in the first place was the fact that a 24 year old named Kim Kyung-jae collapsed and died after a crazy 86 hours of continuous online gaming. Now my first thoughts about this let me in disbelieve as, personally, I cannot believe that someone could sit in front of a computer screen for 86 hours playing a game. This may be because I'm not one for online gaming and dont understand the obsession with it. I'm not saying it cant be done, because it blatently can as this has proved, but I still dont understand the obsession.
I can imagine that an addiction to the internet could leave your social skills depleeted, as with any addiction, but feel that help should be widely available for those who may have the problem, or for those that dont know they have the problem of addiction. If this help is not available, or the message is not put accross, we could be seeing alot more cases like Kim Kyung-jae.
Until next week.