racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

The good Philippine Congressman Joseph Santiago is at it again. He blamed broadband for porn proliferation.  Now he’s worried that 3G (third-generation mobile technology) will bring about more porn, this time over the mobile networks.

The advance of broadband or high-speed Internet access, coupled with the coming of 3G mobile telecommunications technology, will surely open the floodgates to the cell phone delivery of pornography.

via Inq7.net

Dude, you must accept the fact that whenever you have access to a web-enabled computer or mobile terminal, you are sure to be able to access porn if you wanted to.

But I agree that it’s good to have a content-rating system.

The lawmaker suggested that NTC adopt a content-rating systems for audio and video materials delivered over cell phones. “Either this or mobile telephone operators themselves initiate their own content-rating systems,” he added.

But–yes, another but–even if you had content-rating systems for the content delivered by the telcos, you would need to have mobile phone support for such to work.  And I doubt that Philippine laws can influence, much less force, the mobile phone producers to implement this across their mobile offerings.  And still, if you have open WAP access with any compatible mobile, you can just go over to wap.google.com, key in some porn-related keywords, and voila, you’ve got porn!

Good intentions.  But it’s either Mr. Santiago’s staff isn’t doing proper research, or he’s just grandstanding to get the conservative citizens’ support.  Reminds me of the .XXX top-level-domain debate, wherein the “conservative” groups strongly lobbied against the creation of .XXX for porn sites, sort of like the red light district of the Internet.  John C. Dvorak puts it so well in his December 5, 2005 PC Magazine Article:

Exactly how these folks [religious and women’s groups] became enamored of resisting the .xxx domain is somewhat mysterious, and I suspect the pornographers themselves are behind it. These women have been tricked. Who benefits from the death of .xxx? The pornographers, that’s who.

…

Concerned Women for America claims that the .xxx domain will increase porn by giving the pornographers a “new platform.” What? Can someone tell me exactly how this creates a new platform? Don’t these people understand how a ghetto works? Do they know what a platform is?

At any rate, IMHO, Mr. Santiago’s proposals just won’t work.  We live in a world where pornography is a driver of technological innovation.  I’m not saying that porn is good (alright, the guys over at the Man Blog would most likely have an opposing view), but it’s a fact that where there’s access to multimedia, then porn is also easily available.

Why don’t we focus our energies on properly educating the people we intend to keep away from this stuff (our kids) instead?  Now that’s a longer-term solution!

(via Yugatech)

Check out this statement from the Business World online link policy:

Other website operators (”Other Operators”) may create a link from their respective websites to any website within the BusinessWorld Online network only upon prior written approval of BusinessWorld. For this purpose, kindly send requests for such approval to us via our Contact Us page. BusinessWorld reserves the right to require any additional information from applicants in assessing applications for consent.

Reminds me of the Coca Cola Denmark link policy.

OMG! I think I just violated BW’s linking policy.  I guess I should never read up and link to news on BW. They might not like that.

(thanks to Migs for the info)

Just noticed this this morning.  Wordpress.org, makers of one of the more popular (if not the most) open source blogging tools, has a new look.

According to this DIGG post, version 2.0 is official. But there must have been some misunderstanding, since latest “stable” build is still Strayhorn. I guess we all got pretty excited about that one.

Good news for Globe subscribers. Part of Globe’s CELEBRATE, Globe is offering per-second charging (as opposed to the normal per-minute, rounded-off charge). Up to January 16, 2006, Globe-to-Globe calls are now priced at Php 0.10 (about US$ 0.002) per second with a special dialing prefix.

Check it out at Pinoy.tech.blog.

Credit it to a catchy title–a play on the title of a popular play–or perhaps to interesting “medium-term” plans: “… to visit France and Germany to ask, ‘Why do you ladies never shave your armpit hair when we Asians spend a fortune plucking and subjecting underarms to laser treatments?’”

Aptly named Gina Monologues, government economist / singer / dedicated daughter / new auntie Gina’s blog is sure to be an interesting read.  While the author only has two posts to date, it would be understandable given the very busy workweek she puts into saving the world from poverty in her own little way (like reviewing government contracts, writing to heads of agencies, and attending those endless Committee meetings).

Be sure to check out Gina’s site.  Maybe someday she’ll get to star in that very own upbeat concert of hers.  This girl knows how to sing!

This article is part of the Blog-a-Day project I’m trying–not without difficulty–to start and maintain.  The idea is for me to make a short writeup each day about one blog I find interesting, cool, or downright crazy. Want me to write about your site?  Drop me a line.