Cloaking is the act of sending different data to search engine crawlers than to users of a page. You can usually see cloaking in action on shady sites that have a bunch of keywords at the bottom of a page that are the same color as the background text. In the end, those keywords aren’t part of actual content, but designed to inflate search engine stats. Cloaking in the age of Google also involves linking those keywords to increase Page Rank, the stats by which a page moves up or down in Google.

Cloaking is something that search engines frown upon and even ban you for. Yahoo, according to a blog, has actually been caught cloaking.

Below is what you, as a user see (click to embiggen):

And here, below, is what a search engine crawler sees (click to embiggen):

He also points out four ways in which Yahoo! is violating its own guidelines for sites:

# Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking

# The use of text that is hidden from the user

# Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees

# Pages built primarily for the search engines

Not Good, Yahoo!. Not good at all.

via Threadwatch

Tens of thousands of protesters on Saturday denounced President Hugo Chavez’s plans to close an opposition television channel, accusing their leader of maiming Venezuelan democracy as he forges a socialist state.

Chavez says RCTV, the country’s oldest private broadcaster, supported a bungled coup against him in 2002. He has had a long-running battle with opposition television stations, calling them “horsemen of the apocalypse.”

“Let us defend democracy, let us defend freedom, let us defend free independent media such as RCTV,” RCTV’s managing director, Marcel Garnier, told demonstrators in Caracas.

“Or we will allow the president to topple the country over the precipice of totalitarianism where not even his own supporters can express their opinions,” he said as the crowd waved flags, applauded and blew whistles.

Heh… Cindy Sheehan practically performed fellatio on this guy, but hates Bush for silencing opposition.

How ironic is that?

Technorati Tags: cindy sheehan, fellatio

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. (AP) - Former President Carter says President Bush’s administration is “the worst in history” in international relations, taking aim at the White House’s policy of pre-emptive war and its Middle East diplomacy.

The criticism from Carter, which a biographer says is unprecedented for the 39th president, also took aim at Bush’s environmental policies and the administration’s “quite disturbing” faith-based initiative funding.

“I think as far as the adverse impact on the nation around the world, this administration has been the worst in history,” Carter told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette in a story that appeared in the newspaper’s Saturday editions. “The overt reversal of America’s basic values as expressed by previous administrations, including those of George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon and others, has been the most disturbing to me.”

Is there one person who looks at 22% mortgages, massive inflation, super-expensive gas, 15% unemployment, turning Iran into a dictatorship with his meddling, having hostages kept for almost a year, a member of his staff being a Libyan influence peddler and the “misery index” with fondness?

I’d have to say that the last thing Jimmy Carter should ever be proclaiming is success as a President. Nothing he did was ever successful. Hell, he tried to rescue the hostages in Iran and that ended with a helicopter crash in the desert.

There’s a reason he was a one-term President, and wild unrestrained success certainly isn’t it.

Source: Myway

Technorati Tags: jimmy carter, failure

John Murtha (D-Pa. who also happened to serve in Vietnam in case you didn’t know) went guano loco in the House, and now he may have to pay for it.

Rep. John P. Murtha (D-Pa.) threatened to deny any further spending projects to a Republican who challenged him over an earmark last week, the GOP is charging — a potential violation of House rules that could cause a spike in partisan tensions.

Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.), who questioned money that Murtha inserted into an intelligence bill last week, turned the tables Thursday night by saying he would call for Murtha to be reprimanded for violating House rules.

Rogers plans to insert a transcript of their exchange in the Congressional Record to document the potential violation. His resolution will also require a House vote to reprimand Murtha for his comments, according to a draft received by The Politico. Rogers is expected to file it on Monday.

Now normally, I’d pass on even commenting on this because Washington is a shithole full of crying babies and whining douchebags, but I find this particularly ironic because all we heard about was how the Democrats were going to bring back civility and blah blah blah.

So far, it isn’t happening.

Could be why their approval rating is so low…

via The Waterglass

A senior lobbyist at the National Association of Manufacturers nominated by President Bush to lead the Consumer Product Safety Commission will receive a $150,000 departing payment from the association when he takes his new government job, which involves enforcing consumer laws against members of the association.

It doesn’t really get any better than that, does it?

via Consumerist

Answer: Something you’ll never hear about on Cable News, mainstream news, in papers, or anywhere else…

Question: What is Congress’ approval rating?

As it turns out, the Democratic Congress’ approval ratings, well, they just flat out suck.

With Bush hanging in there at 33%, you’d think the irony of the Congress of Change^tm having such a low rating would be an interesting story, but of course it isn’t. Only Bush’s numbers matter. If his numbers represent a record-low approval rating, what about Congress?

Oh, and registered Democrats or self-identified Democrats are only about 37% behind the Dems, so it isn’t like this is some kind of Republican / Democrat thing.

Not a good sign Speaker Pelosi and Majority Leader Reid…

Technorati Tags: congress, us, democrats, republicans

Nearly 1,000 copies of the Framingham State College student newspaper were stolen by students embarrassed by the journal’s front-page photo of them as bare-bellied FSC lacrosse fans attending a recent home game.

“I guess they were embarrassed about how they looked in the photo,” said college spokesman Peter Chisholm.

The color picture, which ran in the April 27 edition of the student newspaper, The Gatepost, shows seven women in tank tops and low-rise shorts standing on bleachers during a women’s lacrosse home game. In a show of school spirit, the women had the letters of the name of a woman lacrosse player painted over their stomachs.

But school spirit seemingly faded after someone got a look at the front-page photo, which led some of the FSC students in the photo to swipe close to half the paper’s 2,000-copy press run featuring the picture on April 27 and over the following weekend.

According to Desmond McCarthy, an English professor and the paper’s faculty adviser, school members said some fans depicted in the photo believed they looked fat.

I’d say that plan failed spectacularly… I mean, I don’t even go to the school and I saw the picture. And now you have too…

And what I don’t get is that these girls are pretty damn cute… Maybe they should work on their body image issues before they work on stealing papers?

via Fark

Technorati Tags: framingham state, lacrosse, picture, funny, ironic

Forget the fact that I stuck this sign to it with like 5 pushpins…

The irony of this is so palpable…

via Gothamist

Technorati Tags: gothamist, sign, dog, tree

The right wing is so disappointed with the not-so-great Rudy Giuliani. They’ve pegged him as a social liberal and have made numerous other criticisms of his positions, usually with regards to abortion and gay marriage. Well, here’s an interesting tidbit about Fred Thompson, the savior who’s supposedly going to bring nice cozy conservative values to our country:

* Under abortion: He checked the box for: “Abortions should be legal in all circumstances as long as the procedure is completed within the first trimester of the pregnancy.” He did, however, support a number of restrictions on abortion: requiring parental notification, allowing states to impose waiting periods, and eliminating all federal funding of abortion. Lastly, he said Congress should leave legislation on abortion to the states.

Sounds pretty liberal to me…

* Under education: He does not support nationwide standards, such as those that would later be included in No Child Left Behind. He does, on the other hand, support vouchers. (He also declined to check the box for “Eliminate the U.S. Department of Education.” Back in 1994, plenty of Republicans still did want to eliminate it. Some of us would still like to do so today.)

Yep… That too…

* Under health care: Mr. Thompson’s already gotten in a scrape with National Review for not supporting federal medical malpractice reform while in Congress.

And so does that.

Look, I’m not faulting Thomspon for his positions, particularly since these were from 1994, but there is a point to be made here, and that’s if you’re going to bag on Rudy for not being the right guy for the job, and call Fred Thompson the white knight on a valiant steed, you really need to educate yourself on his positions not just the ideal of what he represents.

via the NY Sun.

Michael Ayers, chair of the AACS business group says that he hopes the public will respect his anti-copying mechanism…

“Some people clearly think it’s a First Amendment issue. There is no intent from us to interfere with people’s right to discuss copy protection. We respect free speech.

“They can discuss the pros and cons. We know some people are critical of the technology.

“But a line is crossed when we start seeing keys being distributed and tools for circumvention. You step outside of the realm of protected free speech then.”

He said tracking down everyone who had published the keys was a “resource intensive exercise”. A search on Google shows almost 700,000 pages have published the key.

Mr Ayers said that while he could not reveal the specific steps the group would be taking, it would be using both “legal and technical” steps to prevent the circumvention of copy protection.

“We will take whatever action is appropriate,” he said. “We hope the public respects our position and complies with applicable laws.”

Maybe all you scumbags should start respecting the public?

When you think about it, the plea for respect coming from a guy whose entire business model begins with the fact that all customers are thieves and then goes on from there. I think that the constant cracking of the much ballyhooed Blu Ray and HD DVD copy protection is going to serve to prove one thing. You can’t keep this stuff locked up as long as you want people to use it.

The sooner the entire entertainment industry stops assuming that anyone buying their products is a thief, the better.

via the Beeb

Technorati Tags: aacs, hd dvd, hypocrites

Howard Dean who, during the last Presidential election when he made a complete ass of himself (not to mention proved that being a great “internet candidate” doesn’t mean shit) criticized the Bush administration for their lack of transparency and accountability (all the time trying like hell to keep his records secret).

Well, as if to prove that he’s serious about transparency and accountability, Howard Dean called for candidates to have meetings with potential constituents and bar the media from attending.

No, I’m not shitting you.

During the Mortgage Bankers Association conference, a banker expressed frustration with candidates who only talk in sound bites and wondered how that could be changed. Howard Dean, once a presidential candidate, offered a simple solution.

“I suggest you have candidates in to meetings like this and bar the press,” Dean said.

The Democratic National Committee chairman criticized media coverage, arguing that networks such as CBS used to put content first and didn’t mind losing money for the prestige of delivering a quality news report. Dean said the days of Walter Cronkite are gone and the corporatization of the media has led to a desire to boost profits.

“The media has been reduced to info-tainment,” Dean said. “Info-tainment sells, the problem is they reach the lowest common denominator instead of forcing a little education down our throats, which we are probably in need of from time to time.”

I’d love for Mr. Dean to give an education on transparency and accountability. I’d openly laugh right in his hypocritical face.

New Jersey Gov. Jon Corzine wasn’t wearing a seat belt when he was badly injured in a highway crash - violating a law that the Garden State spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to promote.

Corzine’s spokesman admitted yesterday that the former Goldman Sachs boss - who doesn’t particularly like to buckle up - didn’t fasten his seat belt when he climbed into the SUV’s front passenger seat Thursday. He was on his way to mediate talks between shock jock Don Imus and the Rutgers women’s basketball team on Thursday.

The governor was left in serious condition when he went flying around the passenger compartment after his state-trooper driver swerved into a guardrail to avoid a pickup truck. That truck had swerved to avoid yet another vehicle.

“It does not appear the governor was wearing a seat belt,” said spokesman Anthony Coley. When asked if the governor ever wears a seat belt, he said: “Again, the State Police are investigating.”

Expect any and all of the following from the crash dummy:

1. New PSA’s about the importance of seatbelt wearing lest you end up like him.
2. A spate of enforcement, the likes of which will lead people to think that everything is safer and the government is looking out for them.
3. A bunch of schmucks commending him for his bravery but not condemning him for his blatant and obvious stupidity.

We’ll keep you posted as any of those develop.

via Gothamist

Technorati Tags: corzine, john corzine, seatbelt, safety, hypocrite

PHILADELPHIA One person was injured after gunfire erupted in West Philadelphia during a vigil for a young murder victim Tuesday evening.

Approximately 150 people gathered on Market Street between 60th and 61st Streets to remember 19-year-old Terrence Walker who was shot and killed Easter Sunday.

As Walker’s family spoke, police said gunshots were fired into the large crowd from a gold car, striking a young female in the back.

“A male gets out of the car and fires what we believe two shots in the direction of the crowd. We know we have one female who was struck by the gunfire in the back. She is at the University of Pennsylvania in stable condition,” Lt. John Walker of Southwest Detectives said.

I blame Don Imus. He’s the true reason there’s violence in the black community. Once he’s fired, everything will be back to its utopian normality.

via CBS News

On April 2, I posted about how some folks over in the UK had formed stem cells into heart tissue to form valves to replace defective ones. Now, also out of the UK, we find that another advancement has been made, this time in the treatment of diabetes:

Diabetics using stem-cell therapy have been able to stop taking insulin injections for the first time, after their bodies started to produce the hormone naturally again.

In a breakthrough trial, 15 young patients with newly diagnosed type 1 diabetes were given drugs to suppress their immune systems followed by transfusions of stem cells drawn from their own blood.

The results show that insulin-dependent diabetics can be freed from reliance on needles by an injection of their own stem cells. The therapy could signal a revolution in the treatment of the condition, which affects more than 300,000 Britons.

People with type 1 diabetes have to give themselves regular injections to control blood-sugar levels, as their ability to create the hormone naturally is destroyed by an immune disorder.
Related Links

All but two of the volunteers in the trial, details of which are published today in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA), do not need daily insulin injections up to three years after stopping their treatment regimes.

The findings were released to reporters yesterday as the future of US stem-cell research was being debated in Washington.

So while the government debates how best to turn human embryos into cell farms, the folks over in the UK are passing us in stem cell advancement in a way that is both profound and embarassing. The funniest part, of course, is that the fact that they’re kicking our asses can’t be blamed on the fact that we don’t fund the research. In fact, non-embryonic stem cell research is not only 100% legal, it’s funded by the government.

The way we’re going about research is best compared to the following.

We want to design cars in this country, but we’re obsessed with the paint being yellow and won’t build a car unless it can be yellow. In the UK, they don’t care what color the car is. They’re more worried about the tires, the engine, and the materials to build the body.

We’re so focused on the paint (embryonic stem cells) that other countries are out there building rockets.

If we focused as much energy on working on the stem cells we have and can legally use as we did on how we can turn embryos into gardens, we’d be right there. Instead, we talk. And people die. And we point fingers.

Adult stem cells have potential, but they aren’t politically sexy and thus are not being worked on.

Technorati Tags: stem cells, stem cell research, science, biology, biotech

In an obvious conflict of interest, we find that the author of the Alabama bill recommending opposition to the merger of XM and Sirius was written by a legislator who happens to own a local radio station!

The Alabama House bill was introduced by Mike Hubbard, the Republican Minority Leader who owns AM radio stations not to mention a production company in the broadcast industry. The Sirius/XM merger is direct competition to his personal business and creates a definitive conflict of interest. Though he was elected to do the people’s business, is this rep who owns and operates the terrestrial radio WANI News-Talk 1400 now attempting to line his pockets via his position?

The Consumer Coalition for Competition in Satellite Radio is 4-5 people, the leader of whom is an employee of a public business hired by the NAB - the lobby of AM and FM broadcasters. The study commissioned was paid for by..? The real story here is the dirty tricks and misrepresentation that the AM & FM industry, via their lobbyists (NAB) will go to stifle competition and offer consumers less choice.

*cough*

Orbitcast does indeed have more:

In his legislative bio, we also learn that Hubbard is a member of the Alabama Broadcasters Association which identifies itself as a trade association representing radio and televisions stations. The ABA itself has officially denounced the XM-Sirius merger, obviously using the strength of its 287 members (particularly one certain House Minority Leader) to push forward their agenda.

Nope, no conflict of interest there. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with using your publicly paid position to further the agenda of your private corporation. Shame more people don’t give a damn about stuff like this because it’s a pretty obvious abuse of power.

Technorati Tags: xm, sirius, mike hubbard, alabama, corruption

So since Vista launched, all we’ve heard from the fanboys is how Apple f’ed up and how Apple didn’t have iTunes and the iPod ready and Apple had Vista for months before launch and should’ve done better. It was an Apple-bashing fiesta from minute one! I have to admit my own puzzlement at how Apple could’ve done such a poor job with Vista support considering how damned long it took for it to become reality.

Recently, Apple released a patch for Vista users. While it didn’t fix all the issues, it mitigated a lot of them, but the critics were still not pleased with Apple because if for some reason they manually ejected their iPod using Vista itself and not iTunes, their library could get corrupted.

Well, as it turns out, that wasn’t an Apple issue. How do I know?

Because Microsoft fixed it today…

Microsoft released several patches for Windows Vista on Tuesday, including one designed to put the iPod and the new operating system back on speaking terms.

The software maker issued a patch that is designed to fix a problem that had left iPods vulnerable to being corrupted if Vista users select the operating system’s Safely Remove Hardware option to eject the music player.

Apple had resolved several Vista compatibility issues in iTunes, but has continued to warn users to only use the eject function within iTunes to remove an iPod in Vista.

What the hell? What the f’ing hell?

I wonder if the Microsoft fanboys will be as hard on Microsoft as they were on Apple? I mean, you would think that of all the hardware tested for the Vista launch, the digital media player that makes up 80% of the market would’ve been tested.

Then again, the Zune still isn’t compatible with Vista out of the box, so I don’t know why I would think that anyway…

Technorati Tags: zune, vista, microsoft, apple, ipod

That’s right folks. Muslim women, tired of the misconception that Islam is oppressive to women are holding a meeting of female empowerment. The idea is to show that women do play an active role in Islam and they’re even rewriting some of the Koran to take away the blanket justification religious Muslim men seem to have found in it to beat their wives to discipline them.

Sounds like a good thing. The meeting will take place in one of the Muslim centers of the world, proving that they are indeed correct and not marginalized in anyway.

It’s happening in the United States.

Doesn’t where they’re having the meeting say a lot more about the state of Islam than anything they write during the meeting?

I tend to think so.

via Dvorak.org

With Mike Nifong gone, there’s now an actual investigation happening, and look what we find out?

The woman who accused three members of the Duke University men’s lacrosse team of sexual assault is not being forthcoming with special prosecutors, law enforcement sources close to the case tell ABC News.

The accuser has met at least twice with prosecutors from the North Carolina attorney general’s office, which took over the case from Durham District Attorney Mike Nifong in January.

In those interviews, she gave incomplete answers when asked about the alleged assault and the events surrounding it, according to sources.

Nice… I guess she forgot which story she made up and now doesn’t want to make up another. You know… She doesn’t wanna look like a liar or anything.

Technorati Tags: duke, lacrosse, scandal

Bill Gates is arguing that if immigration curbs are put in place, it’ll hurt competition in the market.

Bill Gates, the chairman of Micro≠soft, on Wednesday warned that restrictions on the number of skilled workers allowed to enter the US put the country’s competitiveness at risk.

The comments marked the latest attack on restrictive US immigration policies by the technology industry, which is facing a shortage of skilled workers even as demand for their skills is increasing.

Speaking before the Senate committee on health, education, labour and pensions, Mr Gates said that tighter US immigration policies – governed partly by concerns over terrorism – were “driving away the world’s best and brightest precisely when we need them most”.

“It makes no sense to tell well-trained, highly skilled individuals, many of whom are educated at our top colleges and universities, that the United States does not welcome or value them,” Mr Gates said. “America will find it infinitely more difficult to maintain its technological leadership if it shuts out the very people who are most able to help us compete.”

Anyone care to share just one example of Microsoft doing anything that promoted competition?

Hell, just read some of the crap that came out of the Comes v. Microsoft case and then tell me what Billy has done to promote competitiveness.

via The Financial Times

Technorati Tags: bill gates, microsoft, hypocrite

This is classic. The original clip that Joe Rogan posted on YouTube was DMCA’d off the site, so, like good little soldiers, people took hundreds of copies and put it up on YouTube. The oddest part, of course, is that Mencia made a copyright claim to a video that Rogan produced. Speaks volumes for Mencia and what a piece of garbage he is. He might be a funny comedian, but he’s a piece of trash (video NSFW so turn the volume down, slackers).

Techdirt was where I first saw this story and they caught on to the irony immediately:

However, it does seem ironic that Mencia is claiming copyright violations to takedown a video that pretty clearly shows him using other’s material. It’s difficult to see how Mencia has a DMCA claim at all. The video material was mostly taken by Rogan’s associates — so he holds the copyright to it. The short clips he used from other sources to prove his point are pretty clearly fair use. Either way, it seems pretty ridiculous to claim copyright infringement on a video revealing evidence that you used someone else’s material without credit.

Since this story, Joe’s been banned from the Comedy Store, the club it happened in, and his agent dropped him.

Screw ‘em, Joe. Come to NY and I’ll come see you.

And Carlos? As Techdirt noted, you may want to ease up on the copyright enforcement when people are accusing you of violating copyright.

Dumbass.

Technorati Tags: joe rogan, carlos mencia, dmca