Google pulls, replaces anti-Scientology site

Google Inc. restored a Web site critical of the Church of Scientology on its Internet search engine on Thursday while free speech advocates slammed the company for removing the site in the first place.

Build a collage of your favorite sites

Redneck Neighbor

In case you’re wondering, this Web page is about my next-door neighbors. Since my neighbors have been driving me crazy since the day they moved in, I have decided to dedicate a small corner of cyber-space to them. My family and friends are constantly asking me to tell them the “latest” thing my neighbors have done so this page will save me from repeating myself. Besides, I thought it would be fun. Everything you read here is entirely true, that’s what makes it so funny. Enjoy!

Spamradio

My cursor is not a damn carrot, LET GO!

Playtime Is Over

The state has barred a child psychologist from using adult sex toys in therapy sessions.

Thumbs Are the New Fingers for GameBoy Youth

The use of gadgets such as mobile phones and GameBoys has caused a physical mutation in young people’s hands, according to a British Sunday newspaper.

Speedy Gonzales: Banned in the USA

Cartoon Network officials have banished Speedy Gonzales from their day and prime time lineups for fear of offending Mexican Americans, but fans of the Mexican mouse hero are fighting back

When elephants dance

When elephants dance, it?s best to get out of the way. That?s exactly what?s happening now as the entertainment industry?the recording, publishing, and motion picture industries, mainly?attempts a worldwide intellectual property power grab with two distinct targets. Think of it: a coup and a lock on all published content in the same year, amazing isn?t it?

Dan Gillmor: Bleak future looms if you don’t take a stand

Webcasting Legally

Today’s word is “labyrinthine.” Keep it in mind.

The laws related to the reproduction and distribution of music are very complicated, and there are a number of different organizations responsible for collecting royalties on behalf of the artists. In order to operate an internet radio station legally, one has to deal with a lot of different groups.

The Shy Girl’s Guide to Becoming a Whore Just incase any of you are interested…

Friday Five!!!!

1. What is your favorite time of year? SPRING! I don’t know, the warming weather and everything getting all pretty like usually makes me happy. What? Quit looking at me like that.

2. What is it about your favorite season that, well, makes it your favorite season? The weather is getting warmer, everything’s blooming, *singing* the sky is blue and all the leaves are green, my heart’s as big as a bake potato, I think I know exactly what I mean, when I say it’s a spoidokal day!!! What? You’re looking at me like that again!

3. What is your least favorite time of year? Why? Tie between winter and summer, dead of summer’s probably worst just because it’s so damn hot out.

4. Do you do anything to celebrate or recognize the changing of seasons? Um… does sleeping count?

5. What’s your favorite thing to do outside? Walk to my car.

Didn’t blog the last two days. I am too concerned about the terrorism apologetics and inane moral equivalency going on in the blogging community. (Please don’t take this personally.)

Have a nice weekend.

Wow, now I want to know exactly what he’s talking about.

And while I’m at Keep Trying, if any of you are thinking about starting a blog, here’s a great Q&A for ya to get started.

More Scientology Bull And as my friend Will reminded me, all this over a stupid bet.

Google Yanks Anti-Church Sites

The Church of Scientology has managed to yank references to anti-Scientology websites from the Google search engine.

Scientology and Google

One of the hazards of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act, or DMCA, came home today, in a decision by the leading search engine, Google, to ban a site that’s critical of the Church of Scientology. The net-effect is that a search for the term Scientology will only yield links to sites that are controlled by the church itself.

How it works. The DMCA has a provision for copyright violations. If a party believes its rights are being infringed, in this case the Scientologists, they can send a demand to an ISP anywhere in the chain of access for the offending material, in this case Google (a bit of a stretch, since Google is hardly an ISP), and if the ISP complies, they cannot be held liable for the infringement.

The site that’s being blocked, xenu.net, is in Norway, so they are not subject to the DMCA. The Scientologists can’t shut the site itself down because it’s outside the US. So they sent a demand to Google, which is based in California, and they complied with the request to remove the content from their index. Now, according to the DMCA, the accused infringer has the right to demand that Google reinstate the content, but there’s a catch, if they do, they then would have to agree to the juristiction of the US courts.

Church v. Google

Can a pseudo-religious organization muzzle the Web’s favorite search engine?

Google bows to Scientology’s DMCA request, yanks critics’ site

Here’s the site that got pulled: Operation Clambake

The DCMA

And now back to your regularly scheduled blogging…

Anti-Copy Bill Hits D.C. The bill, called the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA), prohibits the sale or distribution of nearly any kind of electronic device — unless that device includes copy-protection standards to be set by the federal government.

A Mac Box Worth Weight in Gold A lot of seemingly worthless items are auctioned on eBay every day. But perhaps taking the phenomenon to new heights, an empty cardboard box has just been auctioned for more than $500.

Our Mission: This campaign is designed to tell the world what we think of those mindless suburban drones that insist on getting 8 mpg while driving their kids to soccer practice. Join us as we direct our social activist energies toward the exciting new sport of Big Game SUV Hunting.

God Names Next “Chosen People”; It’s Jews Again “Oh Shit,” Say Jews

Canadian Warship Seizes Tanker in… Wait… Canada Has A Warship? Oh Right, and Switzerland Has Nuclear Weapons

Jesus - With You Always

The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Web Search Engine In this paper, we present Google, a prototype of a large-scale search engine which makes heavy use of the structure present in hypertext. Google is designed to crawl and index the Web efficiently and produce much more satisfying search results than existing systems. The prototype with a full text and hyperlink database of at least 24 million pages is available at http://google.stanford.edu/

I just did a search, and I wasn’t happy with the results. Who should feel my wrath?

ASCII art of what Beck has on his iPod

Good bye, DUKE!

If you ask me, Michael Moore is a gasbag who, if stuck with a pin, would fly around the room until he ended up on the floor as three pounds of wrinkled hot-dog skin and a sweat-stained ballcap. And if he is a balloon, that would mean that his penis is twisted in a tight little knot.

Which would certainly explain a lot.

Flo Control

“You know, it’s a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana is Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists.”

You are Spaceman Spiff! Zounds! You are the intrepid Spaceman Spiff, the engaging explorer ensconsed in an unending universe of exotic and evil extraterrestrials! You’re brave, but you should give that dictionary a rest. Take the What Calvin are You? Quiz by contessina_2000@yahoo.com!

Quick shout out to reenhead.com to give massive props for linking to me. Thanks, Maureen, much obliged.

Google censors Scientology critics The search engine Google is censoring the Internet’s leading critic of the Church of Scientology, Operation Clambake. The site has been completely removed from the search engine and from the Google Directory, which uses data from the Open Directory Project, DMOZ.

A spokesman for Google was unable to tell Daily Rotten why or how the site had been removed, explaining that many staffers were away at an offsite meeting. The spokesman did not return our phone calls today.

Must be all them invisible aliens and all that. And what the hell, screw Scientology, how do you copyright a name and sue when folks use it? Isn’t that a violation of one’s First Amendment rights? I mean, okay, there’s slander, but anything else falls under the same rules that apply when I critique a public figure or organization in the oped pages. Sigh.

Here, wanna law suit?

Scientology is nuts.

There, I’m waiting for it.

UPDATE I’m now a member of the BlogTank team. Nifty!

BlogTank looks like a neat set up where they’re gathering a bunch of bloggers to discuss various events and attempt to find solutions and what not. Or, how the wonderful host Gary Turner puts it:

Well, I’ve noticed that you’re a bunch of very clever people, with expertise in many areas. So, I’m looking for willing volunteers from all areas, disciplines and professions to create a crack team of experts, visionaries and above all, humans to try this out. Hell, we might even achieve something special.

Check it out.

Bloggers vs Journalists Bickering like a pair of sitcom characters, webloggers and professional pundits have been arguing for three years over who’s cooler. When will these two crazy kids admit it’s love?

“Hunt the Boeing” Answers

Crater City The penciller of this series is a pal of mine.

Midsummernight’s Burn I was thinking of proposing something like this recently but I don’t get nearly enough traffic to make it work. Any of you famous or bloggers who get a hell of a lot more hits than me willing to look into an American version of this project?

Fish fillets grow in tank Scientists trying to create alternative food sources for astronauts believe we could grow meat on demand, without slaughtering fish or animals.

In a bid to make a simple source of nutritious food for long-distance space travellers, scientists at Touro College in New York have managed to make slices of fish grow bigger. Their achievement holds out the prospect of growing meat in industrial quantities from the muscle cell lines of various animals or fish.

How do you debate against emotion? Really. I’m on this mailing list for political discussion and while the majority of the posts are conspiracy theory and rants from people who are just there to have a soap box, some messages are people trying to engage in actual conversations. A few base their arguements and beliefs off of facts that they can hold up and show to the rest of the world and that’s great, that’s what I want to see, if you’re going to have an opinion at least have a foundation for it. And those are the people you can debate with other facts as well.

But what do you do against people who base their opinions purely off of emotions without a single care for the facts of the matter? How do you convince them they’re wrong when it’s not a matter of proving anything, facts are pointless, they didn’t even dig any up for their opinion, why are they going to listen to facts supporting yours?

For instance, I was reeled into a conversation on immigration and the current push to grand amnesty to all of the illegal immagrants from Mexico (which is really a misunderstanding, it’s the reinstatement of a policy that expired last year that allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the country while they applied for residency as long as they paid a $1000 fine).

I said that we should grant amnisty and allow illegal immigrants to remain here. I feel that a free and open border is necessary for America to continue on the path of freedom and what is right. It’s one of the many things that make this country great and as soon as we start to limit that we become no better than the regimes we fight against.

A response I get goes off about how these people are stealing jobs from Americans and are abusive and have fifty children and live off of the system and so many other points that are really such broad generalizations that hurt their arguement more than help it. Then they close with the wonderful:

I say no more, go home….I’m tierd of working 60 or so hours a week and only bringing home pay for 40, and knowing that most of the taxes I pay are going towards people that just want to have kids and live on my money. Get a job, quit screwing (get fixed if you can’t say “NO”) or leave my Country!

There were no facts in their arguement, there were no points to focus on and tear down because how do you tear into a man’s emotions? I mean, yes, I could say “you’re wrong here, here, here and here” but why should they believe me? They’re tired of working 60 hours and only get paid for 40. Nevermind that ILLEGAL immigrants are not receiving any government money. Many states won’t allow the children of illegal immigrants to even go to school. And even the legal ones only make up a small percentage of the recipients of these tax dollars.

But will they listen to that? Nope.

I don’t understand people who argue off of emotion, especially when you can find “facts” that support pretty much any thing you want. I’m sure you could find some source that looks all official that says the sky is brown. And these people have access to this information, they’re on the internet, have a look, it’s not that hard.

Or is it because they KNOW one can’t argue against them? Or is it that they only want to hear themselves speak?

It just blows my mind.

Apple’s Grammy Acceptance Speech This year, the music industry gave Apple Computer a Grammy award for “bringing computer technology into the studio and revolutionizing the way music is written, produced, mixed, recorded and creatively imagined.” Unfortunately, Apple’s acceptance speech was cut from the Grammy awards broadcast. As a service to Macintosh users, music fans, and all humanity, we are reproducing it here in its entirety.

Morpheus gives Web surfers a detour StreamCast Networks, distributor of the popular Morpheus software, is quietly counting the number of times its file swappers visit high-profile shopping sites.

The company on Tuesday said it has begun installing a Web browser add-on that sends some Morpheus users on an invisible Web detour aimed at capturing data about file swappers’ surfing habits.

American greenbacks to get dash of colour to fox forgers The good old American greenbacks are going to get a dash of colour starting from next year as the US Treasury explores new methods of thwarting counterfeiters.

News Is Free

OfficeMax Rats Out Its Customers Laura Hershey of Denver, Colorado, went to her local OfficeMax to do some copying on March 9, and she was astonished to see a “Notice to Our Customers” that read: “During this time of heightened security awareness, we will report suspicious or questionable requests for printing or document reproduction to law enforcement authorities.”

Peg Ball Kick ass game, just takes a little getting used to.

Jesus swims

Earthlink sucks? Good thing I don’t use them.

Comics I Don’t Understand

The American Religious Right

Santo and Friends Welcome to the “SANTO AND FRIENDS” Website!! This page is being designed as a fan appreciation page to honor Mexican wrestling super-star “SANTO” and other related “LUCHADORES ENMASCARADOS” who fought their way across the screen in dozens of great Mexican movies!

Do you believe that we are not alone in the universe? Have you seen a UFO? Have you or your friends been abducted by aliens?

Slaughter House Cam Makes ya want to eat a steak, doesn’t it?

Targeted Serendipity Weblogs aren’t just glorified pages of links and rambling personal sites; they are an antidote to mass media. According to the author of “The Weblog Handbook,” Rebecca Blood, they are also bringing creative expression to everyday people when they need it most.

And have I linked to Microcontent News yet? I’m gonna add a perma link too.

At Airport Gate, a Cyborg Unplugged Steve Mann, an engineering professor at the University of Toronto, has lived as a cyborg for more than 20 years, wearing a web of wires, computers and electronic sensors that are designed to augment his memory, enhance his vision and keep tabs on his vital signs. Although his wearable computer system sometimes elicited stares, he never encountered any problems going through the security gates at airports.

The Incredible Rubberband Machine Gun! It’s the only fully automatic machine gun that’s legal in all 50 states! This beauty is a fully funcitonal machine gun with TWELVE rotating barrels and a live action trigger. Loads 12 bands per barrel for a whopping 144 rubber bands that shoot off as fast as you can turn the handle! Great fun for kids of all ages. MORE than just an amazing machine, this is a true work of art.