Fun Links for Friday

What's better than Furry Friday? More links that allow you to waste even more time than usual with your browser. Speaking of which, if you haven't tried Opera in three or four years like the Captain here, then it's worth downloading and giving it a go. It's speed really impressed me, especially compared to IE. On to the links...

• Not Proud is absolutely fascinating in a deviant, morbid kind of way.
• Pandora is one of the most interesting ways to explore music that I have seen [thanks, John!]
• Rollyo puts a neat spin on search - roll your own from sources that you know and trust. Features some 'celebrity' rolls which are interesting in and of themselves...
• The Internet Archive is like the proverbial gift that keeps on giving - if you haven't been there in while it's worth taking a look at their audio and video collections. Live music and modern history buffs will have a grand time. And don't forget the Wayback Machine and its 40 Billion web pages.
• If you haven't seen the Gigapxl Project yet, it's especially cool the first time. Plus they keep adding to their collection of intriguing images.
• Keith Carter is an impressive photographer. Not your usual 'nice' photographs.
  
• PhotoMuse presents a small sample of the images from the George Eastman House and the International Center of Photography.
• Put this in your projector and smoke it. Flickeur gathers random images from Flickr and "creates an infinite film with a style that can vary between stream-of-consciousness, documentary or video clip. All the blends, motions, zooms or timeleaps are completely random."
• If you're more into sound than vision, click over to radioio where you're almost guaranteed to hear tunes you like but have never heard before. The Captain has been recently digging on the Jam channel. Also, Soul Sides is a heavenly place for those of us who like soul, r&b, rap and rhythm in general. Oliver W. is like a god in his musical knowledge and selections...
  
• Lastly, speaking of digging, if you want to keep up with what's going on vis a vis the Interweb in near real time then Digg is the place. And they have a blog. Doesn't everyone these days? ;)
  

Enjoy and Happy Friday All.

From the 'See No Evil, Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil' Department

It's been too long. If anything, the Captain's been scuppered with subjects to blog on about recently. And then there's the workaday stuff that gets in the way of doing fun things like this...

Google is a fascinating phenomena. So much has been written and said over the years. And then there's the amazing, gravity and logic defying stock price. Now that's something. Kind of like a Black Hole bending light around itself. But I digress... recently the buzz has increased a bit with the dual Google China and US subpoena hububs. And now the US congress is getting into the act lol.

It seems that Google is conveniently duplicitous when it comes to dealing with governments.

China: we need your site locked down so we can keep our boot on our people's head.
Google: sure, no problem. Give us a couple of minutes. Would you like fries with that?

USA: We need a complete record of your searches related to porn for these months.
Google: Go pound sand, Uncle Sam.
USA: Uh, okay. How about one week's worth?
Google: Talk to our attorney's hand. Did we mention we have more money than god?

Yes, I am firmly in the camp of cynics who believe this to be all about money. About 25% of all web traffic circles around pr0n. And the love of money is the root of all evil we're told. And someone at Google sure seems like they love that green stuff to do some evil when it comes down to it. Don't get me worng here - if this is about privacy, then rock on, Google. But somehow I don't buy that as the primary motivation in Mountain View.

Check out this poll over at FT.com and cast a vote - is Google being evil? Maybe not anymore than other large companies addicted to profits [including MSN and Yahoo!]. But then again those companies don't go around on their high horses saying not to do evil.

Larry and Sergey - either STFU about good and evil, or get real and be true to your words, and possibly yourselves. Not doing evil is a heavy cross to bear when you're a multi-billionaire whose company is very, very much in the public eye I imagine.

Is it immoral to profit in this way?

It is so common that you hardly read a thing about it these days, but yesterday's news from IBM got me to thinking. They are going to freeze their $48 billion pension plan in 2008, shifting everyone to a 401K plan.

As The Register puts it:

They have had their pensions switched from defined benefit (guaranteed pension income) to defined contribution (income guaranteed only for the pension company).

Meanwhile, IBM stock is up today. Hooray for the death of the American Dream! Hooray for increased uncertainty and insecurity! Pass the soma around, boys, it's a brave, new world we're sailing for...

It's kind of funny to compare this pension news to this news from several years back. Peace and Love, indeed.