Google vs. Evil

wideangle writes "'The world's biggest, best-loved search engine owes its success to supreme technology and a simple rule: Don't be evil. Now the geek icon is finding that moral compromise is just the cost of doing big business. Take Brin's decision to refuse all alcohol and tobacco advertising. The fact that Google accepts advertising for adult content sites is an intriguing commentary on Brin's morality: Cigarettes and booze are evil; porn is not. It's a policy that would become progressively harder to defend were Google to go public.'"

Comments

if you want to filter..

[gl4ss]

..do your own front end to google and filter for all your hearts content. http://www.google.com/apis/

it's fun and geeky to play around too..
the free key allows up to 1000 searches/person per day using googleapi..

i experimented with it to filter out some linkfarm-sht-sites while looking for *cough*roms. happily the same authors linkfarm sites shared quite a bit of content(and linked to eachother of course)..

Re:Activism

[Wyatt Earp]

"Guns are like cigarettes and booze in that way -- they're a real viceral thrill, and they're not a really good thing in the long haul."

Well, the Resistance in France, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union really thought guns were helpful against the Nazis. The Viet Cong used them to good effect against the French, Japanese, Americans and Republic of Vietnam. In 1989 guns were quite helpful dealing with Nicolae Ceausescu.

Guns helped the SAS and Norwegian Resistance in stopping the Nazi heavy-water production.

http://www.uh.edu/~dbarclay/rm/stats.htm
"Every year, more than 2,400,000 people in the United States use a gun to defend themselves against criminals-or more than 6,500 people a day. This means that, each year, firearms are used 60 times more often to protect the lives of honest citizens than to take lives.

Of the 2,400,000 self-defense cases, more than 192,000 are by women defending themselves against sexual abuse.
(C) Of the 2,400,000 times citizens use their guns to defend themselves every year, 92 percent merely brandish their gun or fire a warning shot to scare off their attackers. Less than 8 percent of the time, does a citizen kill or wound his or her attacker."

Re:It makes sense

[kernelistic]

Mind you, Christianity is not the only religion which states that you're not to defile the body: The Hindus and Muslims have this very same belief.

Huh?

[MenTaLguY]

Some minor corrections...

1. There is no "Book of David" in the Bible
2. Bathsheba was not related to (King) David at all
3. "religious" prostitutes, while common in neighboring cultures, were forbidden in Israel
4. There was no temple in Israel at that time; they used a tent (the Tabernacle)

The real story isn't exactly "family values", but that's the point. It's about how David screwed up big time.

The actual story's in II Samuel 11-12:

1. David stays home from battle one weekend.
2. He sees Bathsheba bathing from the roof of his palace, and after a bit of voyeurism gets one of his servants to bring her to the palace.
3. Guess.
4. Oh. Did I mention she's married? Her husband Uriah's off fighting in David's army.
5. Oh, crap. She's pregnant.
6. David calls Uriah back and tells him he's done a great job fighting, and he should come back home and spend some quality time with his wife. Make it look like it could be Uriah's kid.
7. Uriah refuses, since it's unfair to the rest of the guys in the army.
8. David sends Uriah back to the front lines, and David tells General Joab (David's cousin) to make sure that Uriah doesn't come back.
9. Joab dies. David marries Bathsheba.
10. God is not happy.
11. God sends Nathan the Prophet to tell David off.
12. Nathan tells David a story about this guy who stole a sheep. The story sounds sounds strangely familiar.
13. David: "What a dick! The guy should be put to death... and... er... wait a minute..."
14. Nathan: "Yeah, and you killed some guy and stole his WIFE. What do you think God's going to do to YOU now?"

God does forgive David when David sincerely repents, but He still makes David deal with the (pretty nasty) consequences of this whole episode for the rest of his life (and explicitly forbids David from building a temple).

The point being that even someone in a position of authority isn't magically allowed to do what he wants with people.