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What I don't understand is....why is yahoo now apologizing for this?!?!?

Should be obvious: they don't want to get bad PR, get targeted for an idiotic protest/boycott/letter writing campaign, lose advertisers... money.

I heard about this elsewhere, with quotes by a father who was at the event with his young daughter. I can understand not wanting his daughter to see that. There are, however, people who were -not- there who could hear about this and might be persuaded to go on some campaign against yahoo, for lacking morals or something like that. Why might someone object to this even though they weren't anywhere near taiwan? I don't fully understand their mindset, people who honestly believe the world is becoming more immoral. They seem to ignore the fact that we're no longer burning women at the stake for being witches, we no longer have slavery, we no longer go on crusades (er... as overtly anyway.) To these people, Walmart switching to saying "Happy holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas" is evidence enough that we are becoming corrupt. To combat that decline, they've gotten it in their heads that they must fight what they deem to be immoral behavior whenever they notice it.

If this story were to be picked up by, say, a certain extremely unbalanced cable news network, Yahoo could very easily have a large protest on their hands. "Sex! Sponsored by an american company! Outrageous! Call pastor bill, we need to boycott this company, whatever 'Yahoo' is selling." And that would be annoying.

Fortunately, these people are almost as easily pacified as they are riled up. A semi-sincere sounding apology will shut those people up, they say "oh, they learned their lesson."

For further reading on this subject

so long as you don't make me marry a person of the same gender against my will...

This is pretty good: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/30475

Massachusetts Supreme Court Orders All Citizens To Gay Marry

February 25, 2004 | Issue 4008

BOSTON--Justices of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled 5-2 Monday in favor of full, equal, and mandatory gay marriages for all citizens. The order nullifies all pre-existing heterosexual marriages and lays the groundwork for the 2.4 million compulsory same-sex marriages that will take place in the state by May 15. ...

God Answers Prayers Of Paralyzed Little Boy

LiveCDs are far to insecure to even consider using. Tin Hat Linux is an improvement but it's still far too unsafe for me to use; not with the Illuminati hiding around every corner waiting to perform cold boot attacks. That's why I choose to live in the Google opt-out village.

I was going to respond at greater length, but with your profession of hating tv, I thought I might link to the onion as well: http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694

Art is art and entertainment is entertainment. The two don't always meet! There was (is) a school of avant guard musical thought that music should be written to be enjoyable only those people who truly understand music theory--not just the unwashed masses. Thus you get music that sounds like crap to 99% of people, and britny spears bubble gum pop that is popular. People are entertained by Britney--so what? For every Milton there's a 100 street poets who entertained with vulgar rhymes, etc. High and low, both valid. Just because YOU personally don't like something you see on tv, why is that so bad?

It's really great that you've never had a TV, but I guess my real question is--if you're so ignorant of what's on TV, why are you commenting as if you were an expert of what's on?

I've never understood the anglo (commonwealth + former parts of the british empire) paranoia about ID cards. The rest of the world uses them and abuse is very rare. You could make the argument that in this technological age data is more easily found and correlated to your identity with such a scheme. I look at it from another point of view though. The technology is going in that direction anyway and identity is going to be established by some authority regardless, I'd rather it be controlled by the government than some corporation. At least citizens exert some form of direct control over government as long as we stay vigilant.

After a little research I found that Google has at-least two levels of opt-out: moderate, and complete.

Maybe the second one is for Murdoch.

I'm still a little unclear about weather you can opt-out of news but still be searchable, but then again in my experience "news" is just a slightly different way to list search results, limited to news. If you want to read the article you visit the site anyway!

For instance, Kevin Bacon (and Paul Erdos as well of course).

Mark Shuttleworth announces "Fuck Everything, We're Doing 256 Bits"

But some girls want to look just like that...

This one is brilliant. Thx for reminding me.

BEST Onion article EVER!

I almost wet my pants during the Fusion ads in the Superbowl. Becaues they did go to 5 (+1) blades.
http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930

why is Microsoft interested in something like this?

Appears Microsoft is up to their old tricks again. First, they patent binary, next, patent all the elements, so even if Windows gets the death it so richly deserves, PC makers, including Apple, will forever have to pay them for the silicon, gallium, silver, gold, et al. licensing.

I've heard...

http://www.theonion.com/content/video/sony_releases_new_stupid_piece_of.

... and it can be as normal or as twisted as you want.

Funny, your comment reminded me of this:

Russian Scientists Announce Six-Month Delay In Carving New Space Station

In Google's defense, they do make their opt-out process as painless as they can.

Ha, nice. I came in here looking for the Onion reference.

This one reeks of shades of this article.

With Win7 coming soon, it seems a little strange that Intel is messing around with Vista instead of the upcoming OS.

carp intel gma does not work in 7?

This one reeks of shades of this article.

With Win7 coming soon, it seems a little strange that Intel is messing around with Vista instead of the upcoming OS.

Obligatory Onion article.

There is resistance to the change because of 'menus are the way we are used to doing things' not necessarily the way things should be done.

The problem here is that 'the way we are used to doing things' is what is "intuitive". The only genuinely intuitive interface is the nipple. Everything else is learned behavior.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with hierarchical menus, and there are arguably few if any better ways to present hierarchical data than in a tree form, of which menus are one example. It does require one to learn and understand the hierarchy and for the design of the hierarchy to be well-considered, and of course many users are highly resistant to learning and neither Microsoft nor Mozilla are very good at thinking out menu hierarchies. That said, the situation is not likely to be improved by leaving the most common functions in the hands of a badly designed automated context-awareness routine and making less commonly used functions even harder to find.

Of course, being a bad idea makes it almost certain that the rush towards the least common denominator will continue unabated.

Well, I'm guessing it flips around and you can hold it like a laptop - maybe use the lower screen for typing (which would probably be miserable). What would be really cool is if the second screen could go all the way around like a spiral notbook, so it holds the form factor of a single screen device.

And as for upper management, I think the thinking goes more like: Apple has a single screen tablet device? Fuck it, we're doing two screens!

Of course, the possibility that they bugger it up is always there. :)

It wouldn't surprise me, Disney has been known to ruin even the very thing that made them popular.

Indeed. Check out what happened to this one.

Seriously though, it does suck to be a lab rat; however, omelet, eggs.

That's funny, The Onion just ran a story on this very topic: http://www.theonion.com/content/news_briefs/dhs_sets_security_alert?utm_source=b-section

That's not exactly true. DHS Sets Security Alert Level To Green For 8 Seconds

Cat got your tounge?

One's a Serb, one's a Croat. May I suggest "ethniklashinauts?"

Quite seriously, good for them.

Or this. The third response is apropos here.

but once we get 4, it's only a matter of time before 5...

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/33930

you heard it here first.

"You just know that somebody, somewhere, in a board meeting is saying "Fuck it, we're going to 9 monitors, with an aloe bezel""

"Fuck everything, we're doing FIVE blades!"

I'd have just gone with: if daily mail, no. This is the paper that is (unknown to them, apparently) the British cousin of The Onion - despite Private Eye's best efforts.

It seems like a rather low tech solution for mere transportation in Japan did they have another earth quake? http://www.theonion.com/content/news/earthquake_sets_japan_back_to_2147

Yes, but The Onion predicted that. They didn't predict a dual display e-book.

Let's take a look at ANWR...

Oil reserves are estimated at 5 to 10 billion barrels of oil, with the number of those barrels that are economically feasible to extract rising and falling in line with the price of a barrel.
http://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/fs-0028-01/fs-0028-01.htm

Now let's take a look at our oil consumption...

We are the leading consumer of oil in the world, with a consumption rate of around 20 million barrels a day.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html
http://www.eia.doe.gov/basics/quickoil.html

Hypothetically speaking, if all 10 billion barrels are extracted in ANWR, this gives us 500 days worth of oil. This is not something that will make a bit of difference to our reliance on foreign oil reserves, especially when you consider that it wouldn't be possible to add this oil to the market all at once.

"If I may be allowed to pursue the idea of 'addiction to oil,' I think the nation just reached the point where we sold our wedding ring for one night's fix."

I found it:

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/39082

AR's usually just keep going straight and leave small holes, often just wounding the enemy.

Well, that's a pity. Maybe you've got some defective ammo.

The reference, for those who aren't Onion fans.

Oblig. article from The Onion

They could just opt out, as The Onion explains how.

I may need to opt out, as I saw the Google Car south of Moose Jaw as I was driving by. At first I thought it was a car with a bike on top, but then I saw it was a big camera system. I was looking right at it too! And my face has never appeared on the Internet before (while I've been in my car). I'm gravely worried (but not really).

Don't you know that the moon landings were faked? Even Neil Armstrong is convinced that his historic moonwalk was faked.

He wouldn't know, he doesn't even own a TV.

Am I the only one left in the US that doesn't want everyone to know my every move of every day life??

No, you're not. I've yet to join twitter, facebook, myspace, flickr, etc. I enjoy searching for myself on the internet and finding next to nothing.

It's kind of weird since I am a webservices developer (emphasis on services). I enjoy reading about what things people are doing with these social networks and what the latest trends are, but spending my time on them seems too much like work I guess.

Besides, Google already provides a way for people who want to keep their privacy online.

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694

"I'm not one of the "younger" audience. I'm 37. I grew up on TV. "

"(37-year-old) Area resident Jonathan Green does not own a television, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers - as well as to his mailman, neighborhood convenience-store clerks, and the man who cleans the hallways in his apartment building."

What is this TV thing people talk about?

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/28694

The PETA is a dehumanizing organization :P http://www.theonion.com/content/video/advocacy_group_decries_petas

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,177380,00.html

http://www.theonion.com/content/node/27509