Zible

Bear with me while I get my blog set-up.

Some links are broken and the site navigation needs to be improved. I will get it fixed within a few days.

The more I use Wordpress, the more impressed I am with it. Highly recommended.

The Thai authorities have placed a block on the betting website www.betfair.com.

I just tried to access Bet Fair from my hotel room in Bangkok and was redirected to a standard blocked URL page written in Thai script. The operator of this page is the Thai Ministry of Information and Communication Technologies (MICT).

While I do not advocate betting, I do support peoples freedom of choice. If people want to gamble, they will find a way. Governments should support responsible gambling rather than attempting to ban it. Like most things, betting is fine in moderation.

For interest's sake, I tried some other betting websites and found that the Thai authorities have blocked some sites but not others.

• Blocked websites: www.betfair.com, www.ladbrokes.com, www.willhill.com
• Available websites: www.betandwin.com, www.sportsbetting.com, www.ultimatebet.com

Governments that attempt to sensor the web face a never-ending challenge. Freedom of speech is almost guaranteed through the very nature of the internet. Information that you cannot reach in one way you can reach in another. It's a web.

The Thai government should spend less time trawling the web for sites of which it disapproves and more time learning how to build proper websites. The MICT homepage breaks all these long established web design rules:

• It includes a giant 721kb file size image (this should be about 18kb)
• It requires left-right scrolling on 800 x 600 pixel resolution screens
• It uses pop-up windows on load
• It uses an illegible font size (example below)
  

MICT should spend some time at Web Standards Project and W3C.

I just installed WordPress. This is my first post!

My first impression of Wordpress is that it is fantastic. The interface is easy to use, its powerful and it is uncluttered. I am looking forward to blogging with it.