Skimming through the news headlines, as expected its full of news about the Michale Jackson verdict. There is another news item though regarding Microsoft and its blog censorship. Having read the article, it really doesn’t look like Microsoft can be blamed too much over this, they’re only following local laws (much like Yahoo and Google). It does make you wonder about the Chinese Government though. Requiring all Chinese bloggers to register their blogs by the 30th June with the Government and censoring words such as “freedom” and “democracy”.
Just as worrying though is the last paragraph of the news item,
Some net writers in the US have discovered that MSN Spaces in the US also censors blog names, though albeit in a way that is easy to get around.
The Internet is changing and in some cases for the worse. News such as this just shows the importance of anonymous networks such as Tor. At least via Tor people can air their views without censorship, with as much anonymity as they need.
In other news, Astronomers at the University of California have found another ExtraSolar Planet, bringing the total to 155. The planet was found orbitting the 10th magnitude Red-Dwarf Gliese 876 in Aquarius (which plays host to M2 one of the best globular clusters in the nights sky). What makes this planet special compared to the other 154 planets, is its mass. Around 7.5 times that of the earth, makes this the most earth like ExtraSolar planet found to date.
Don’t get your hopes up and expect to find life on this planet though. With an orbital period of roughly 2 days, the planet is so close to its Star that the Star fills 12degrees of the sky. To bring that into context, our moon and Sun fill a mere 1/2 degree, imagine if it filled 24x as much of the sky! The researchers predict the planets temperature as a result to be in the region of 200-400C.
