As you can see, Submit Response has risen from the dead with a brand new look, like some crazy hypertext phoenix. Assuming I didn’t cock up the DNS thingy when I changed hosts, that is. Some things may well be horribly broken, or look hideous in your browser—if you spot anything amiss, do leave a comment on this post and I’ll try to fix it. Screenshots from Internet Explorer users would also be appreciated.

Tumble is back too, though I still have a bit of tinkering to do before various other sections of the site are ship-shape and Bristol fashion.

Apologies to my tiny band of readers for going quiet for so long. To be honest, I could’ve had the site up and running back in September, but… I couldn’t be arsed and decided I fancied an extended hiatus from wittering online.

Since last we spoke, I got a new job, as art critic for The Herald (the world’s oldest continuously-published English-language newspaper, fact fans), which is proving to be great fun—looking at art and writing about it are two of my favourite things, and I’m getting to do a lot more of both. I’m hoping to be able to post some of that writing on Submit Response, but since The Herald keeps its content behind a paywall, I’ll have to consult the powers that be. Whether or not I can re-publish reviews from The Herald, I expect Submit Response will be a bit more focussed on visual art than it was before.

A not-particularly-interesting post about the redesign of the site follows shortly.

These past few weeks, politicians and newspapers and business leaders have been falling over one another to support the NatWest Three, the bankers extradited to the US to stand trial for their alleged part in the Enron collapse. And as they do, I think: what about north London hacker Gary McKinnon? He’s about to be extradited, too. Why is nobody interested in Gary McKinnon?

The NatWest Three have secured the services of a PR company; Gary McKinnon hasn’t: he can barely afford to pay his phone bill. People such as Sir Digby Jones, the former director general of the CBI, have been giving speeches about how US-UK business relations are suffering in the wake of the NatWest Three’s extradition; nobody is giving influential speeches in support of Gary McKinnon. The only people who seem to care much about him - besides the odd Lib Dem MP - are his fellow stoner UFO nerds. And who is going to listen to them?

…

The prison sentence the US justice department is seeking is up to 70 years. What Gary was hunting for, as he snooped around Nasa and the Pentagon’s network, was evidence of a UFO cover-up.

Given the state of their prison system, I don’t think we should extradite anyone to the US, let alone this chap, who comitted his crimes in the UK and should therefore be prosecuted under the Computer Misuse Act 1990.

See also: Game Over, Ronson’s 2005 Guardian piece on McKinnon, and the campaigning website Free Gary McKinnon.

In a post titled Don’t get me wrong, I really like BBC News Online, Stef explains the thinking behind the site, and its features:

My first project for 8 years aims to demonstrate a tiny fraction of what a more open News Online could be.

It’s a proxy for the site, that does the following things:

• retrieves a page from News Online, and regexes out “Capitalised Phrases” and acronyms. It then tests these against a database of wikipedia topic titles. If the phrase is a topic in wikipedia, then it’s turned into a hyperlink
• uses the technorati API to add a sidebar of links to blogs referencing the story. Now you can see who’s talking about the story from the story itself
• as a bonus, my code breaks that bloody awful ticker. I’m not fixing it.
• because that’s how links should be, my links are underlined.
• reduces page bloat by about 10% by stripping acres of whitespace.

No doubt, I’m breaking all kinds of copyright and being incredibly naughty doing this, but it’s just a toy, and if they really want to sue a licence fee payer, well, I guess I’ll just have to take it down.

Let’s hope the Beeb take the hint, even if they do send in the legal attack dogs - News Online is an essential site, but it should go beyond tossing in a few external links in connecting to the wider web.

(Via Ben Hammersley.)

Living in Britain, and lacking a cable or satellite connection, I don’t get to see much of Fox News. (Maybe thankfully.) The station has already been censured by Ofcom for broadcasting imflammatory material in the UK, but that’s nothing compared to some of its programming in America. A documentary called OutFoxed which investigates the channel’s bias - not just conservative, but defiantly partisan and supportive of Bush’s administraition - might be stating the obvious: corporate news media favours those who pass bills which help them (no shit, Sherlock). But what’s horrific about it is the way in which Fox (motto: Fair and Balanced) and its presenters such as Bill O’Reilly equate any questioning of the Republican/Neo-con agenda with unqualified support for al-Qaeda and every other filthy terrist stalking the land (well, I say every other terrist; what I mean is every other terrist with brown skin). This clip from Outfoxed (16mb download; worth every minute) is an analysis of an interview by O’Reilly with Jonathan Glick, whose father, a Port Authority worker in Manhattan, was killed on September 11, 2001. Apart from the fact that O’Reilly says to Glick that he’s “done more for victims of 9/11 than you ever have”, apart from the fact that O’Reilly accuses Glick of saying that Bush orchestrated the attacks on the World Trade Center and The Pentagon, apart from the fact that Glick is ordered out of the studio in case O’Reilly beats the shit out of him, it’s interesting for the fact that here - on prime time television - is a presenter telling someone whose father has just been murdered in a brutal attack that he has no right to speak: O’Reilly continually tells Glick to “shut up” before saying “cut his mic; I’m not gonna dress you down any more” when Glick starts to talk about how the American government funded Osama bin Laden when he was part of the mujahideen in Afghanistan, fighting against the USSR.

Yes, Fox are an easy target, and yes, their anchors are foaming-at-the-mouth nutjobs. But you know the scary thing? They’re the apparent antidote to the supposedly liberal media in the US. That would be the same “liberal” media which swallowed whole the claims of the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein had WMD, the “liberal” media which swallowed whole the lies peddled by a possible Iranian agent in order to invade Iraq.

Once again, it’s not like this is anything approaching a surprise. But it’s worth reflecting on just how vitriolic Fox is when it comes to maintaining the Bush status quo; can you imagine someone like Jeremy Paxman or Nicholas Witchell telling the grieving son of a terrorist bombing that they’re not qualified to speak about the fact that the IRA killed their father?

Iyad Allawi, the new Prime Minister of Iraq, pulled a pistol and executed as many as six suspected insurgents at a Baghdad police station, just days before Washington handed control of the country to his interim government, according to two people who allege they witnessed the killings.

Who does that remind you of?

[via the ever-useful American Dynamics]

PUNK rock fan Mike Devine sent an innocent text message containing lyrics by The Clash - and was quizzed as a terror suspect after it was INTERCEPTED.

Computer worker Mike, 35, was confronted by a Special Branch cop at his office and taken for a grilling.

He was stunned to be shown a printout of his text which contained the words gun and jet airliner.

Okay, so The Sun isn’t exactly the most reputable source out there, but if true, it represents a step up in intrusive surveillance of our everyday communications.

And, as Spyblog points out, either David Blunkett has expressley given permission to spooks to scan SMS messages for dodgy content, or the security services were acting illegally.

The Register and the Evening Standard have a different take on the affair, quoting a Somerset & Avon Police source claiming that the text was mistakenly sent to a woman in Bristol who alerted the authorities, with The Register casting doubt on this explanation. (It does sound just like something a spy would make up to cover her tracks, no? And, like, does Somerset & Avon sound like a real place to you?)

Perhaps readers braver than I would like to try sending out a few inflammatory SMS messages and waiting to see whether any Special Branch goons pop by for a quiet chat?

Can anyone explain why the Rovers always do so much better in the second half, in terms of both matches and the season?

Presumably the latter is down to the boost provided by the semi-traditional FA Cup run, but every time I see them play they skitter about like headless chickens in the first half, then run out for the second like some sort of crack squad of tactical ninjas. Or something.

Yes, I am posting about football. Please do not adjust your browser. Normal service will resume tomorrow.

But I - like all the news journalists sitting on the story - just can’t due to the certainty of legal action. In fact, I suspect even this blind item might be sailing a little close to the wind. Oh well, I’m sure one of the less reputable journals in a country with less stringent privacy laws will pick up on it soon enough.

I bet that’s the most annoying weblog post you’ll read all day.