January 27, 2007
Google Regrets Being Evil in Red China
But Google's founders don't regret being evil because of moral principles. It's about the bottom line [emphasis added]:
Google's decision to censor its search engine in China was bad for the company, its founders admitted yesterday.So, they don't regret being evil because they've helped a communist regime oppress their people, they regret being evil because it affected their profit margins.
Google, launched in 1998 by two Stanford University dropouts, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, was accused of selling out and reneging on its "Don't be evil" motto when it launched in China in 2005. The company modified the version of its search engine in China to exclude controversial topics such as the Tiananmen Square massacre or the Falun Gong movement, provoking a backlash in its core western markets.Asked whether he regretted the decision, Mr Brin admitted yesterday: "On a business level, that decision to censor... was a net negative."
No word yet on whether Google regrets being evil by supporting jihadi propaganda and suppressing American counter-propaganda on their popular YouTube subsidiary. Maybe they'll decide after YouTube's next profit and loss statement.
January 16, 2007
Joost : YouTube Killer?
As you know, we right-wing bloggers have had our issues with YouTube. The problem for us is, YouTube is the "place to be" when it comes to reaching the internet public with video. There's a new service coming out, called "Joost," that's being billed as the "YouTube killer." If you want to check it out, you can download the Joost client applet here.
Contrary to the hype, it sounds to me that it's essentially an internet-based television broadcast. I haven't seen any information touting the capability to do personal video broadcasts or any of the other community elements that make YouTube so popular with the internet public. Not that there's anything wrong with an internet-based television broadcast, but I don't quite see how Joost is a "YouTube killer" if that's what it is. Here's more info:
If the track record of Skype and Kazaa founders is any indication, then the burgeoning online video industry will need to gird for its latest contender. Janus Friis and Niklas Zennstrom aim to do for online video what their earlier work has done for telecommunications and file sharing.Stay tuned.Joost, the official name of the new online video service previously code-named “The Venice Project”, aims to be nothing less than a global television distribution platform, they say.
(About the name, Friis explains on his blog: ”While it does not mean anything now we think it will come to mean great quality Internet TV the way it should be.”)
Top Donors and Recipients Per Sector
Interesting. Hillary got the most from the lawyers, communications, media, and liquor services. Murtha got the most from defense contractors. The retail and construction gave oodles to Robert Menendez and Charles Schumer. Give it a click and see how the pigs are eating at the trough.
The Democrats over all get more support from and give more to the lawyers and the insurance/real estate trade. You don't say?
View the bottom of the WaPo chart here.
January 10, 2007
The Apple iPhone : "The Holy Grail of Gadgets?"
I've been avoiding the iPhone buzz, mostly because it's pretty far from what we usually do here (i.e., religion, death and sex,) but it's been pegging the buzz-o-meter for several days now. Engadget notes:
CES may have been the big deal on the 8th, but as soon as Jobs took the stage at Macworld, any news coming out of CES suddenly didn't seem to matter a whole lot.At any rate, here's some skinny on it:
A major Canadian newspaper has called it the holy grail of gadgets… Gizmodo nicknamed it the Jesus Phone. Apple’s iPhone launched by CEO Steve Jobs Tuesday during his Macworld keynote. The online buzz began immediately as people reacted to the details gleaned from live blogs of Jobs’ address.There’s been some lavish praise in the tech and gadget blogs, particularly for the phone’s design. NextLust called iPhone “the sexiest thing we’ve seen today.” SciAm Observations summed the device up as “a juggernaut/vanity mirror/black hole into the matrix of iLife.”
The iPhone’s partnerships with Yahoo and Google for email, maps and web searching position it as “the latest Blackberry killer,” said ReadWriteWeb. Blackberry manufacturer RIM’s stock took a tumble yesterday, along with Palm. Gizmodo said “I have a bit of sympathy for our friends at RIM and Nokia.”
November 12, 2006
Reclaiming The GOP
Sout al-Kuffar (of All Your Fakes Are Belong To Us fame) has another startingly effective moodpiece to get you all fired up for the unenviable task of cleaning out the current GOP House and Senate leadership.
For old time's sake, All Your Fakes is below the jump.
ht: Allah
UPDATE by Rusty: Bonus video added below. It's a Sunday "Reclaiming the GOP" twofer! I'm not a big Gingrich for Prez guy, but I do support him for elevation to Sith Master and possibly even Galactic Emperor.
Double Update: Since when did The Jawa Report's own Sout al-Kuffar start working for Hot Air? Whatever Malkin is paying you to make videos, Sout ol' buddy, I'll double it. (What's zero times two again?)
Triple Update: It's not Allah's fault. I'd sent him a link to the YouTube vid instead of the Jawa Report post. My bad.
April 27, 2006
Exxon Mobil's 'In Your Face' Rape And Pillage Of America: Part 3 - Fighting Back
Take home message below: Just Say No To Exxon Mobil - Get Mad, and pass it around!
In our first post on this topic I said that after hearing about Exxon Mobil's "in your face greed" involving their $400 million share of the booty awarded to their CEO (one Democratic Senator called it a "shameful display of greed"), I decided to do two things - establish a new category on this blog entitled "Corporate Greed", and never never never ever buy anything from Exxon Mobil or it's subsidiaries for the rest of my life. I also suggested that readers do the same, and to pass the word around.
Now it looks like Bee County in Texas has the same idea, and they're asking the entire state of Texas to take similar action:
This week, Bee County became the first in the state, possibly the country, to pass a resolution asking motorists to boycott (Exxon Mobile) fuel pumps beginning Monday.While I'm not suggesting we boycott until Exxon Mobile brings the gasoline prices all the way down to $1.30 a gallon, I am suggesting that we do so until prices return to pre-Katrina prices. It's time that we fought back against corporate greed and Exxon Mobile is as good a place as any to begin to engage the oil companies and fight back. Call it picking our own battleground and time - the place is Exxon Mobile and the time is now.County elected officials said they would ask others in the state to follow suit.
"Hey, the American people are tired," Martinez said. "What we did is we simply took action instead of complaining.
"We're offering our residents a beacon of hope."
... the boycott call is targeted only at Exxon Mobil gasoline until retailers agree to drop the price to $1.30 a gallon. Martinez said he's especially miffed about reports that former Exxon Mobil CEO Lee Raymond received a retirement package worth $400 million.
