Charles Curley's Weblog

As coincidence would have it, today two items on privacy come from two of my favorite people in the world. From the inimitable Wendy McElroy, this heartfelt explanation of her interest in privacy, both on line and in meatspace. Happy 98th birthday, Wendy, and I hope you get to well past the Old Took. Keep throwing jelly beans into the escalators!

From the irrepressible Claire Wolfe, this article mentions an add-on for the Google Chrome web browser, Disconnect. It says here:

A browser extension that stops major third parties and search engines from tracking the webpages you go to and searches you do[.]

According to a blog entry by the author, disconnect and its predecessor, Facebook Disconnect, have been downloaded over 100,000 times. In two months. With no advertising and minimal publicity.

Yo, Googleplex, Farcebook: what do we need to do, beat you about the ears with a cluestick?

An interesting collection of essays and how-tos on Linux, entrepreneurship and other subjects in India. 2INDYA

A couple of customers and the staff of a pub get snowed in for eight days at the pub on top of North York Moors National Park. They were fine: they had plenty of food and ale. They improvised sleds from serving trays. Best of all, at least from the staff's point of view, the owners (management) were snowed out, meaning they couldn't get in to microman, er, supervise.

Not to say they didn't have their problems. Chef Daniel Butterworth admitted he had been talking to himself during the enforced lock-in. Waitress Katie Underwood, 18, said "the novelty is definitely starting to wear off." For the first few days, the staff hit the inventory a bit hard, but by the third they eased off.

Butterworth told the Beeb "It's been fun and we have had a laugh…. We have wireless internet here and the television works so we have been fine." Right oh! O tempora o mores, as Cicero would have said.