Slashdot Mirror

It's still misleading. The title implies they have released a statement arguing against net neutrality. The reality is that one division has a product restriction that an internet journalist thinks contradicts their official company position.

Google play store fails to remove gay-cure app. Slashdot: Google argues homosexuality is an abomination.

From TFA: "For the past few days, a mystery has been unfolding in Silicon Valley. Somebody, it seems, hired Burson-Marsteller, a top public-relations firm, to pitch anti-Google stories to newspapers, urging them to investigate claims that Google was invading people’s privacy"

Burson-Marsteller, Burson-Marsteller... Why does that name sound so familiar? Oh yeah. They were slinging anti-Google propaganda for ICOMP (Initiative for a Competitive Online Marketplace), which (scroll down to the very bottom) is a lobbying arm of Microsoft.

BM has claimed that the smear job for Facebook "was not at all standard operating procedure and is against our policies", but it seems to me that it's just business as usual for them. The last time they did this, pitching to business executives that time, they also didn't disclose who hired them ("Others suggested that by not disclosing who Burson-Marsteller was representing, the firm was breaking the spirit of political lobby firms' code of conduct.").

Not only that, but BM also hired Eric Schmidt's ex mistress/fiancée, presumably connected with their ongoing anti-Google efforts. And they were behind the National Smokers Alliance campaign back in the mid '90s. Plus, if this post is to be believed, they were also involved with a number of other very dubious organizations (I didn't have time to run them all down, but the ones I did check into seem true).


The whole "Facebook and Google are having a spat" thing isn't really news, but I find it interesting how such a scummy company can be considered "one of the top international PR firms out there". Also, I regret that I didn't find this Slate article until after typing this post. It backs up the list of clients in the forum post above (but in case you don't want to follow either link: the Argentine junta, the Nigerian junta, Union Carbide, Blackwater, and Nicolae Ceausescu are among the undeniably bad/evil ones).

The congresswoman supports gun rights according to wikipedia but earned a "D+" from the NRA. I don't think guns should be banned either, but I think we clearly don't have enough control on them given how much gun violence there is compared to other first world countries.

If the NRA labeled me an enemy of gun rights and then I got shot, that might change my views on whether or not we should ban guns.

The suspect appears to have been delusional for some time. Yet he was apparently able to buy a gun.

Call me crazy, but I think we need to start having psychological evaluations for people seeking to buy firearms. If you want a handgun, okay, but you'll have to convince someone that you're sane enough not to use it except in self defense first. I think we can all agree that crazy people should not have guns. I'm dubious that the founding fathers would have been so convinced of the right to bear arms if they knew exactly what arms we'd develop in the future, but I'm positive they would not have suggested that the right to bear arms extends to people who aren't right in the head.

I think that would be a fair compromise as opposed to banning all guns.

We have the same thing here in Arizona as well. http://www.tucsonweekly.com/TheRange/archives/2010/03/02/wtf-lawmakers-no-more-creating-goat-people

This reminds me of a letter to the editor I wrote back in the day about the Arizona standardized AIMS test:

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/mailbag/Content?oid=1066326

Ignoring off topic comments about McDonald's, this is really a question raised in books like, say, "The Razor's Edge". What we do for employment does not ultimately define who we are. Stephen Jay Gould also definitively rejects the premise of "smartness" in his "Mismeasure of Man".

And, of course, the proper business model for staffing entry level jobs such as McDonald's is to provide a way for employees to work the counter or the grill for a few years and then move on to better paying careers.

I don't really know how it can be solved

I live in Tucson. We solved it by a combination of strict lighting laws and lack of funds. There are absolutely no street lamps in my neighborhood, and I can see the Milky Way from my backyard.

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tucson/Currents/Content?oid=oid%3A68227

>It would only work if we ... use prison labor ... US companies take advantage of the low cost labor.

They already do. Some states employ inmates in for-profit call centers. Others in factories. Some inmates only get paid 12 an cents hour.

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2004/02/62430

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/2002-03-28/curr2.html

This was posted on digg, and as someone pointed out, Haut also ran a UFO museum. So .. yeah .. no ulterior motives ..

A simple google search gives one of many such links:

http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/07-20-95/cover.htm

Not to say that's the only reason he did that .. who knows. It just a bit odd. Other military people have come forward, including a high ranking general (who released a book). The general claimed all our current technology came from UFOs. Such as the night-vision goggles. This is a fairly outrageous claim even for someone with a rudimentary understanding of electronics.

It's not that I think aliens are impossible. I just am highly suspicious that they'd sneak about so much. Or that our government could keep anything a secret for so long. And crackpots coming out with books on UFOs does not count as the leaks.

Speaking of which, I just have to plug this review. I don't know how they managed it, but our little free weekly rag has one of the best reviewers I've ever read.

We apparently can't afford $4.2 million per year for discovering the origins of universe and having a presence beyond our solar system, but $1 million per year for studying wild shrimp is apparently a needed project.

I know that pointing out frivolous spending is the easy way to attack spending cuts for what one considers important, but this is just goofy.

" Say you want to protect a salamander that's on my land. Well, get your own piece of land, and put the salamander there."

One good way to minimize gerrymandering is to create compact districts. This is a requirement that districts be roughly uniform in shape (like a hexagon or circle). This doesn't prevent all gerrymandering, but makes it much more difficult. Typically gerrymandered districst are easy to spot, because they come in odd shapes.

More info on a clear channel scandal regarding their traffic "reporting" can be found here.