antinomian.com

Disparaging the boot is a bootable offense!

(Link via BoingBoing)

Google’s corporate motto (formal or informal, I’m not sure) is supposed to be “Don’t be Evil.” Meaning, base your decisions about how to run your business on what’s most important, returning accurate, meaningful search results, and the money will beat a path to your door. Don’t attempt to manage content via “featured” sections, “value-added” articles and “user friendly” search helpers, the way competitors MSN and Yahoo do, just put the links up on the glass and let the people get on with their lives. Of course, there’s always room for improvement. The Google search bar, Page Link rankings and Google News and Groups have been great examples of adding functionality to the site, while staying the fuck out of the way of the content. The “Don’t be Evil” philosophy, and Google’s hands-off approach to content has led to ridiculously high customer loyalty and many have come to think of Google as a kind of internet “Public Utility,” in spite of their status as a for-profit organization. There have, of course, been scrapes in the past with censorship and litigation, most notably involving a long-running dispute between Scientologists and their opponents, but these have usually been motivated by lawsuits directed against Google.

Last week however, Google launched it’s own attack against LA-based retailer Y-Que, asking them to remove several pieces of offending merchandise from their online storefront, or forfeit the right to advertise on Google. These included T-Shirts bearing anti-Bush, Cheney, and Kerry slogans, as well as “other merchandise similar in nature to the items listed above.” Huh? Did I miss something? Now, I understand that a business needs to protect its own interests, and for that reason, Google blocks advertisers from buying such potentially inflammatory words such as “KKK” and “Hate Group,” but these are T-Shirts expressing a political viewpoint, something I’m pretty sure is protected by the First Amendment. It’s not hate speech, and it’s certainly not something that puts Google at risk of litigation, so what’s the deal? Google needs to explain itself, like tout de suite, or risk eroding the reputation that it has worked so hard to build over the past several years!

(Link via BoingBoing)

Okay, several things about this cat-decapitation [UK] article:

1. First of all, your vehicle’s called a Sportka?! If you wanted to conjure up mental images of huge, 20-year-old, diesel powered sedans puttering around downtown Moscow and belching out sooty black smoke… Mission Accomplished! (This is kind of like how the VW Tourareg’s name makes me think of either some weird wart-hog like animal, or intenstinal discomfort… I’d love to know what sorts of connotations these names are supposed to have!)
2. Dude have you seen this shit? It’s way funnier than any decapitation video could ever possibly hope to be, and was probably made on a fraction of the budget! (Yes, I know it’s not really a Nokia ad but the point is, viral marketing really does work, provided you leave it to people with some imagination, rather than hipster ad execs who grew up listening to Mark & Lard, or whatever the hell the Opie & Anthony clones in the UK are named, and who think that shock automatically equals funny)
3. It’s depressing to realize that even in countries that supposedly understand the concept of irony, people still get bent out of shape about a dumb joke!
4. Finally, can we please just stop with all the quote-unquote Viral Marketing already? Isn’t it time for a new, vaguely scientific-sounding buzzword? Here I’ll give you a start: “Elemental Marketing.” I have no idea what it means, but I’m sure if I was somebody’s boss and I started dropping it all the time, I’d find out soon enough. =)

Based on last night’s drinking/eating experience, I would argue that all bars should be relocated to within pissing distance of a good bakery that starts cooking bread at 2 AM and will sell it to you, 3 loaves for a dollar! Fermenting, milling, baking… Is there anything you can’t do with grain?!

I want to get one of these and use it to watch The Passion. Also, I wonder if the firmware could be hacked so I _only_ saw violence, nudity and explicit drug use? That woudl be cool =)