“Let’s all just pretend”

More mind control through exclusions of information and expression. China keeps chopping off bits of the Web.

Seems that the web is not only cause of youthful addiction to games, but also can cause people to think in non-socialist and non-communist ways. Clearly bad all around.

Made with the GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP)

couple of years ago I complained about AdSense placing anti-Linux ads (from Microsoft) right inside my Linux pages. It was then that I was told about an option which prevents this from happening.

Earlier today I logged in to my AdSense account again. It’s something that I only do twice a month. What did I discover? A new little feature that apparently gives advice to publishers. Here is the message I received:

Aha! So the high payers are apparently not allowed on my sites. Who could that be?

The apple does not fall far from the tree. This may explain why many Linux sites out there still display blatantly anti-Linux ads from Microsoft. Isn’t advertising lovely? Microsoft knows no bounds.

ACK when I communicated with Google, I came to realise that they have engineers whose sole/main purpose was to ensure the site stays online at all times. A few days ago I had another odd realisation, but perhaps a very obvious one. To search engines, downtimes are a hugely damaging thing. If people are unable to search for something immediately, they will choose a different tool. They must. By testing the water elsewhere—as such a downtime would lead to—failure can encourage them to switch to the rival.

Ordinary sites, as opposed to such complex tools, do not have this problem. How many of us use a single search engine exclusively? What would happen if one day we found that the grass is greener elsewhere? Search, as opposed to a flow of information, tends to have immediate need. It cannot be deferred until the favourite site returns. So, defection can be a matter of availability and its impact should not be underestimated. Downtime on a corporate network rarely has any long-term impact, unlike search tools whose quality is a subjective thing.

My Web log seems to have transformed (maybe even devolved) into a bunch of articles that attract my attention. A quick look at the archives will reveal that I used to write much more in here, but I digress. Maybe blogs have just lost their appeal or style.

Here is an article which repeats that theme of ‘music under stress’. I would like to share it with the readers.

You’ll still have a hard time finding vinyl 45s or their modern counterpart, CD singles, in record stores. For that matter, you’ll have a tough time finding record stores. Today’s single is an individual track downloaded online from legal sites like iTunes or eMusic, or the multiple illegal sites that cater to less scrupulous music lovers. The album, or collection of songs — the de facto way to buy pop music for the last 40 years — is suddenly looking old-fashioned. And the record store itself is going the way of the shoehorn.