Blocking content from the Internet is getting a lot of press of late. The last couple of weeks has seen the Pirate Bay being blocked by a number of large ISPs and debate over whether the blocking of “adult” content should be opt-in or opt-out.

Unfortunately the enthusiasm to “protect the children” and “protect the copyright holders” seems to have pushed aside much of the debate of whether we should be doing this at all or whether it’s practical.

You’ve probably seen that it’s the Sinclair Spectrum’s thirtieth birthday today. There are lots of great retrospectives — this is probably the best single source I read — so I’m not going to rehash all that. But I thought it might be worth a few words of my own.

Like many Brits my age, the Spectrum was my first computer. Technically it was the family computer, but after a few weeks I was pretty much the only one who used it.

• The BBC Micro turns 30 – Pretty much every Brit around my age will remember the Model B. It felt so… professional after using the Sinclair Spectrum!
• Thanksgiving Is Un-American – Socialism and illegal immigration… Why thanksgiving is un-American.
• Coders are creatives too: Where’s our love? – “How did a person whose greatest educational achievement is crayoning without going over the lines get termed ‘a creative’, when the people who built our world are dismissed as geeks and bottom feeders?”

• Coders are creatives too: Where’s our love? – “How did a person whose greatest educational achievement is crayoning without going over the lines get termed ‘a creative’, when the people who built our world are dismissed as geeks and bottom feeders?”
• Happy 40th birthday, Intel 4004! – In a way this stated the whole microcomputer… I hate to say “revolution” but I can’t think of a better word.
• Steve Jobs: The parable of the stones – “It’s the disease of thinking that a really great idea is 90% of the work. And if you just tell all these other people ‘here’s this great idea,’ then of course they can go off and make it happen. And the problem with that is that there’s just a tremendous amount of craftsmanship in between a great idea and a great product.”

• Happy 40th birthday, Intel 4004! – In a way this stated the whole microcomputer… I hate to say “revolution” but I can’t think of a better word.
• How the BBC’s HD DRM plot was kept secret … and why – Your licence money going to benefit rights holders at your expense…
• The Real Cost of Patent Trolls – “They conclude that the loss of billions of dollars of wealth associated with these lawsuits harm society and state.”

• Android Orphans: Visualizing a Sad History of Support – I think this is one of Androids biggest failings.
• John McCarthy — Father of AI and Lisp — Dies at 84 – Really not a good month for IT or Computer Science.
• The original iPod, 10 years later: a re-review – The original iPod is ten years old and, actually, stands up pretty well.

• The IBM PC is 30 today – Look how far we’ve come in thirty years…
• photoshoplooter – I think this is a typically British response to the rioting currently going on around the UK this week.

This weeks PhotoFriday theme is “Enormous,” which is kind of a difficult word to get across. A lot of people have just gone for big things or small things at high magnifications. I thought I’d go for a 3.5″ floppy disk, as I remember 1.44Mb being enormous, way more than anyone could reasonably use — and far more than the 100K per side that my BBC Micro managed on its 5.25″ disks. Of course, a single raw image from my 50D would need fourteen of them…

• Average App Store Review Times – Displays the average app review time by pattern-matching tweets. Clever. (Currently around seven days, apparently.)
• Osborne! – Nice article about the Osborne-1 and the man behind it.

• ‘should be cheaper than free’ – “I’m angry at the customers who send me nasty emails or reviews, threatening me with ‘telling Apple to remove it’ or rating it 1 star with a ’should be cheaper than free’ remark because after paying the ridiculously exorbitant 99c, they found it didn’t live up to expectations. "
• Hurdie Ho! – Maybe you had to be there and read the copy of Your Sinclair that this was originally published in, but this still makes me laugh.
• Museum looks at 2000-year history of the computer – The Computer History Museum was excellent even before this new exhibit. Recommended.