China Vows To Purify Internet

Chinese Communist Party big shot Hu Jintao today announced China’s intention to maximise the economic potential of the web, while seeking to “purify the internet environment”, Reuters reports.

The comments came as the party’s politburo met to cast an eye over China’s burgeoning internet - boasting 137m registered users at the end of 2006, up by almost a quarter from 2005, according to China Internet Network Information Centre figures released yesterday.
“Ensure that one hand grasps development while one hand grasps administration,” he concluded. I am thankful that he has only two hands.

I think this commendable effort ranks in the same league as downloading the internet project.

But the saddest news today is that a poor substitute school teacher faces 10 years imprisonment in US for having popups on her computer which exposed “minors to porn”.

Local prosecutors charged that the teacher was caught red-handed surfing for porn in the presence of seventh graders. The defense claimed the graphic images were pop-up ads generated by spyware already present on the computer prior to the teacher’s arrival. Julie Amero is the kind of person who can hardly find the power button on a computer, saying she often relies on written instructions from her husband explaining how to access e-mail, sign into instant messaging accounts and other relatively simple tasks. Is the world getting dumber?