Monday, July 17, 2006

OK to Incite Islamic Violence

We read:

"An Islamic hate book that encourages martyrdom and war against non-Muslims has been approved by Australian regulators...

It contains references to bloodletting in the name of Allah and calls to rail against other faiths. "When you meet those who disbelieve, smite at their necks 'til when you have killed and wounded many of them, then take them as captives," it reads. "You are ordered by Allah to continue carrying out jihad against the disbelievers until they embrace Islam"

Source


Apparently, the book was approved because it is "old".




Google Wins One

I am no fan of Google. I think the political bias of its news service stinks. But it is a private company that charges users nothing for its services so should be entitled to do its reporting any way it likes. If people don't like it, they can go elsewhere -- as I do.

So I was pleased at this judgment which says that the courts have got no jurisdiction to decide how Google does and reports its searches. Excerpt:

"US District Court Judge Jeremy Fogel tossed out claims that Google unfairly discriminated against KinderStart.com and stifled its free speech rights by giving it the lowest ranking in searches, court documents showed today. Fogel ruled Google was entitled to express its subjective opinion in page rankings"

Source


I seem to remember that Kinderstart had been using artificial means to inflate its page ranking and thus make itself appear more popular than it is. Whenever Google discovers that, it seems to be their system to assign a bottom page-ranking to the site concerned as a way of cancelling out the deceptive conduct. Google was, in other words, protecting the accuracy of its searches.

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