The Week in Your Words: Craigslist considers celibacy

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 8 May 2009 at 17:17

In a week that saw Craigslist consider a smut ban, Virgin turn the broadband screw on BT and researchers begin sprinkling secrets like confetti, we take a look back to see what you've made of it.

Craiglist facing ban on erotic ads

Craigslist has always been something of an enigma to PC Pro. As far as we can tell, it's terribly laid out, populated by tools and about as popular as a Mexican with a pork burrito at customs. Indeed, if it wasn't for the smut we'd barely visit at all. And now the US Government wants to ban it because a murderer used one of the classifieds to select his victim. We can't have any fun.

"There are many places that erotic services are advertised," says milliganp, huddling up in his mac. "In central London most telephone boxes have walls lined with advert cards. If someone decided on a career as the telephone box killer it would seem strange for the police to suggest that the best way of preventing such a thing happening again would be to remove all telephone boxes from London."

No stranger than killing telephone boxes, surely? Ah well, each to their own.

"There are plenty of good reasons that there should be an erotic services section. They can be liable for tax being one very legitimate one," says Hugh Hefner's accountant Amnesia10. "The state's treatment of such services is based on moral reasons. Which drives the service underground."

bodnid was feeling far more succinct: "A lot of mad nutters about. It will be best to ban us all from communicating with anyone just in case we get killed."

Virgin trials 200Mbit/sec broadband

As BT continues to lay the cans and string that will form its next generation 21CN network, Virgin Media's been indulging in a spot of wound salting by announcing trials of a 200Mbits/sec service. Oddly, the news didn't impress the forums the way Virgin may have hoped.

This week qwertyqwerty87 will be playing the voice of the common man: "These speeds are just silly, you really don't need them. Why not spend the money getting broadband in rural areas? About 10 miles [from where I live] there's people who have to make do with dial up, even though they live in a pretty big village."

We assume this is because they can't receive decent broadband, and not simply because Gordon Brown's cleaning bill/tax burden means they can't afford to upgrade.

"I wish Virgin would concentrate on building out its network rather than increasing the broadband gap to increasingly ludicrous levels," rages JohnAHind, who's most certainly not getting a go on our magic lamp should one fall into our possession.

"Is it still expanding its network coverage at all? I live in a densely populated part of the nation's capital and yet Virgin will not sell me service at any rate. Come on Virgin, you've won the battle on bandwidth and there is no need to rub it in. Now start competing on coverage."

Hijacked botnet exposes startling online habits

One of the week's oddest stories came courtesy of Californian researchers who took over a 180,000-PC strong botnet to see how it worked... oh, and to have a gander at the assorted emails, forum posts and bank details it collected. Ethics be damned, this is research.