Kill It, Kill It, Kill It Dead

Let me dance on its grave.

Google move signals the death of hated Flash advertising:

The day that Steve Jobs prophesied back in 2010 in one of his most famous screeds is finally upon us -- the death of Adobe's Flash web format.

Beloved by advertisers, hated by users, security experts and pretty much everyone else, Flash is still all too common, especially on media sites. One survey found 90% of all so-called rich media ads -- the ones with videos or other moving elements -- relied on Flash in the first quarter.

But starting today, Google's Chrome, the browser of choice for a majority of desktop users, will be effectively cutting off Flash advertising at the knees, ignoring those intrusive, battery-sucking, fan-spinning, auto-play videos and banners. (Now people will have to click on the ads to see them in Flash.)

Flash has to be one of the worst bits of software on the internet. I don't understand why Adobe didn't kill it years ago. It simply made the company look bad, really, really bad. It was like free advertising that said "look at the crappy software we make."

Now, if only someone would get rid of javascript.

This Site May Harm Your Computer

This is weird. I just googled Bill Moyers. All the results tell me that “This site may harm your computer.” Even pbs.org and wikipedia. What’s going on here Mr. Google?

Update:
It’s not doing it anymore. Apparently Mr. Google thinks Bill Moyers is now safe for computer consumption.

Apple, Gays, Google, And Religion

From Apple gives $100,000 to fight California gay marriage ban by Prince McLean:

Apple has joined Google in publicly opposing California's Proposition 8, a measure intended to ban the rights of gay Californians to legally marry, and has contributed $100,000 to defeat the measure.

Both companies have a history of remaining politically neutral, but have chosen to take sides on this issue because it relates directly to the civil rights and opportunities of their employees.

The No on 8 campaign notes that "Virtually every major paper in California is against Prop 8. The L.A. Times says it is 'a drastic step to strip people of rights.' La Opinión called Prop 8 'an unnecessary initiative.' The San Diego Union Tribune wrote that Prop 8 'offends many Californians' sense of fairness.'"

Apple's $100,000 contribution to the No on 8 campaign is significant because the effort to stop the proposition has been systematically outgunned by out-of-state religious groups, who have poured cash into TV advertisements that threaten dire consequences if gays' right to marry continue in the state. Among other claims, the ads state that if the proposition isn't passed, California schools will force children to study gay marriage.

That claim prompted California Superintendent of Schools Jack O'Connell to announce that the proposition "has nothing to do with schools or kids. Our schools aren't required to teach anything about marriage, and using kids to lie about that is shameful."

A thank you to Irate Weirdos.

Google Google Everywhere

From Where Are All The Google Data Centers? by Erick Schonfeld:

Google’s data infrastructure is massive and spread across the world. All that Web crawling, indexing, and searching takes enormous amounts of computing power, not to mention everyone pounding away at Gmail, Google Apps, Blogger, Google Reader, and every other project dreamed up at the Googleplex. But where are all of these data centers and how many are there? Google doesn’t really say. But that doesn’t keep people from trying to figure it out.