Well, since there’s a Google unsafe search, I’ve been wondering if there’s a Google uncensored search, where it takes searches from USA and searches in China and filters out only the links that have been blocked by Google China. It’d be interesting to see what links are blocked and which aren’t.
Decathanerd sent me this link a few days ago: Google China Search Comparison and it’s interesting to see the what gets censored and what doesn’t.
Random Crap:
As I was going through my referals, I happened to find this link: Simon’s Site Plan and I found my own link under Inspirational sites and sites of competitors. I wonder if I’m an inspirational site or a competitor… Hehe.
You’ve seen cartoons, movies, media all proclaimed that mouse love cheese. Starting from when I was young, I was already influenced by Tom and Jerry that cheese were mice’s favorite food, but how much truth is there to that? Is it’s just propaganda from the dairy industry just like what they did with milk? This was just a random thought I was thinking when I was watching Match Point and the old lady brings up the fact the cheese didn’t entice the mice, but it was peanut butter. Did mice change their appetite or is there just way better food nowadays than before? Just a random thought.
Half of Britons chat to their motor cars – A survey of 2,000 owners also found 40 percent thought their car had a personality and was capable of being upset whilst 19 percent worried about how their car was feeling. … More people chat happily to their cars in the southwest than anywhere else in the country, with 54 percent enjoying a good chat, compared with the more taciturn Scots where 26 percent indulged.
Top 10 Strangest MP3 Players (from /.) – Very funky and interesting ideas, some which I’ve already seen before like the Altoids one. Others like the toilet or mirror or scented or clip mp3 players were quite interesting.
Sosumi (So Sue Me) (from /.) –
Sosumi is one of the system sounds introduced in Apple Computer’s Macintosh System 7 operating system in 1991. It is an extremely short sample of a xylophone. The sound is still used in modern versions of Mac OS, including Mac OS X.
The sound’s unusual name was coined during a trademark dispute with Apple Records, The Beatles’ recording company. The two Apples have a long litigation history, and on the release of System 7 had recently settled a lawsuit over Apple Computer’s addition of MIDI capabilities to their products.
Apple Records’ legal team began scrutinizing every audio aspect of the computer. During the development of System 7, they objected to one of the new system beep sounds as having a name that was too musical.
The creator of the new beeps for System 7 and the Macintosh Startup Sound, Jim Reekes, had grown frustrated with the legal scrutiny and sought revenge. Reekes first quipped it should be named “Let It Beep”, a pun on The Beatles’ “Let It Be”, but renamed it Sosumi, which is pronounced “so sue me”.
The two Apples reached an agreement in 1991. Still, Apple Records once again launched litigation a decade later when Apple Computer started selling music in the iTunes music store and the iPods. The key terms of the 1991 agreement were made public in the hearings of February 2005.
The sound’s name also exists currently in an inside joke on Apple Computer’s website, where it marks the CSS class denoting a copyright notice. This CSS class is visible only in the source code of pages on Apple’s site where such legal notices occur. The naming of the CSS class is an obvious reference to the sound and its history. An example of this found on Apple’s homepage is below:
Early Apple sound designer Jim Reekes corrects Sosumi myth (from /.) – Here Jim Reekes tells the whole story: So, upon hearing I had to change the name of my new beep, I immediately thougth of the perfect name, “Let it Beep”. Of course, I was joking but it was brilliant right? As everyone was laughing, someone even took me seriously and said I could never get away with that! I said, “so sue me” and that’s when I realized my scheme. I told Sheila the new name would be spelled “s-o-s-u-m-i”. I asked she return the message to legal, but not to use voicemail (since she’d have to pronounce it) and instead send an email with some story about it being Japanese and not meaning anything musical. (so I don’t know what she actually told them).