Gordon G. Chang, 12.25.09, 12:01 AM EST from Forbes.com reports

Beijing issues rules to make the country more like North Korea.

This week, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology released regulations, dated Dec. 15, requiring the registration of all Web sites.

MIIT’s justification was the need to eliminate sexual content. As aMinistry spokesman stated, “This is about mobile pornography, it’s not referring to any other issue.”

The explanation, however comforting it sounds, is disingenuous. The wording of the rules is broad enough to cover all sites, domestic and foreign, whether or not they carry sex-themed material. “Domain names that have not registered will not be resolved or transferred,” the regulations state. In other words, unregistered sites will become unavailable to users in China.

Today, Beijing blocks a multitude of sites, in effect creating a blacklist. Under the new system, there will be a “whitelist”: only registered sites will be accessible inside the country. Once the regulation is fully implemented, China will no longer have an Internet. In effect, it will downgrade to an intranet. At this moment, there are perhaps 270 million Web sites across the world, and only a miniscule number of them will register with the Chinese authorities.

Of course, the whitelist system, which is to be implemented in three phases next year, is completely incompatible with a modern society such as China’s. Already, the country’s traditionally noisy netizens are complaining. They flooded a Twitter-like service run by the Communist Party’s flagship publication People’s Daily, causing the site to be immediately taken down. Moreover, official publications have expressed caution about putting the sweeping rules into effect. Foreign governments are bound to get in on the act because the expansive regulations, by blocking access to business sites, probably constitute a violation of China’s trade obligations.

MIIT tried a similar stunt this spring with its requirement that the so-called Green Dam-Youth Escort filtering software be installed in all computers sold in China from July 1. The Ministry justified this rule on pornography grounds, but many suspect the software was intended to block unwanted political content. After an uproar–from both home and abroad–Chinese authorities admitted they had made a mistake and backed down. link

Gordon G. Chang is the author of The Coming Collapse of China. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.

hilarious. thnx nico + ems!

‘We Know It’s Good, And That’s Enough’ Says CEO

the onion reports

A relic of pepsi's past

PURCHASE, NY—PepsiCo sent shockwaves through the carbonated beverage industry Monday when the multibillion dollar corporation announced that it would cease all advertising of its popular soda product, effective immediately.

“We know it’s good, and everyone’s pretty happy with the overall taste, so why spend all our time worrying about what other people think?” PepsiCo CEO Indra K. Nooyi told reporters during a press conference at the company’s corporate headquarters. “Frankly, it just feels sort of weird and desperate to put all this energy into telling people what to drink. If they don’t like it, then they don’t like it.”

Added Nooyi, “That’s not really any of our business anyway.”

According to Nooyi, top PepsiCo brass held a series of meetings over the past several months before unanimously agreeing Monday that they all enjoyed Pepsi, and that the company’s century-old history of massive, high-budget ad campaigns, cross-promotional tie-ins, merchandising, and Super Bowl halftime extravaganzas had been “a big mistake.”

Executives then released a statement to shareholders declaring that PepsiCo is now “what it should have been all along: a company that just makes soda, and doesn’t get caught up in trying to make everyone like it.”

Actually drinking Pepsi, not seeing expensive billboards, will tell people whether or not they like the product.

In response to a question about whether the elimination of Pepsi’s marketing and advertising divisions would hurt the company’s ability to compete with rival soda manufacturer Coca-Cola, Nooyi expressed no concern.

“Vying for the greatest market share shouldn’t be a soft drink company’s be-all and end-all,” said Nooyi, who added that if she’s happy at the end of the day, that’s what really matters. “After all, it’s not like this is some kind of Cola War or anything.”

“Look, Coca-Cola is a terrific product,” Nooyi continued. “Millions of people choose it over Pepsi every day. Are those people wrong? Of course not. Concepts like ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ shouldn’t even apply. It’s a soft drink.”

Nooyi told reporters the company’s $1.3 billion annual advertising budget would be put into Pepsi’s savings account, spread among various charitable organizations, and divvied up into generous bonuses for the company’s minimum-wage factory employees.

Claiming that “taste is subjective,” Nooyi further stated that those who hadn’t already heard of Pepsi were unlikely to begin drinking it now, and that the company was perfectly content to rely on word of mouth to sell its product.

“You can’t taste an ad, anyway,” Nooyi said. “People are going to make up their own minds regardless of whether we spend millions trying to inform them that Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi. I mean, seriously, does it really matter if Taylor Swift drinks Pepsi? She’s just a human being like everybody else.”

Concluding the press conference, Nooyi stated that she wasn’t even sure why she was talking about any of this in the first place, asked the assembled reporters whether they didn’t have better uses for their time, and suggested that everybody just go home, hug their loving spouses, and play—really, truly play—with their children before life passes them by.

“Hey, there’s a slogan for you,” Nooyi said. “Spend more time with your families.”

THE ONION LINK TO ARTICLE

This is so much fun. Clearly pakkei on the dell forums is a little bit of a genius.

“I can finally execute my tablet project, now that there is finally a 9″ USB DisplayLink monitor, which has the exact same resolution and size as the monitor of Dell Mini 9.

The Harlequin Project has three purposes: 1) For experimenting with dual screen touch user interfaces, which is a UI model used by a few up-and-coming products, such the Courier project by Microsoft. 2) For experimenting for industrial design methods, since I’m a designer myself. 3) For daily use. It’s my new Magic Doodle since age 5! 

I got the touch screens and monitors all working. Windows 7 detects all the drivers very easily, though calibration of monitor 2 touch is still a little bit off, and CalTouch doesn’t seem to find the other touch screen.

The next step is to flatten all the components in the USB monitor, and laser-cut a custom case for it. For the custom case, I will need two sets of monitor hinges, so that they can be unfolded at 180 degrees without touching each other (which would trigger the touch screen).”

Clean boot with Windows 7.

Testing out UI – I foresee the left screen to be used for reading and the right screen for writing, completing the read/write cycle. For it shows Facebook (iPhone version) and New York Times on the left for research, and InkSeine on the right for jotting down the notes I just read. (EDIT: Oh. Wait. I just realized it’s some pretty politically-incorrect commentary.)

forum link / Pak-Kei Mak link

mMmmMmm Mondrian speakers…sthexxy.

Speaker manufacturer ELAC has designed the Art Edition FS 247 speaker that is customizable, so you can suit your own style. The designs include a tiger, several floral designs and the geometric shaped. These tattoo motifs serve the purpose of protecting the speakers from scratches or water, and they can be removed and switched with a new one. The ELAC Art Edition FS 247 speaker is priced at $1500 upwards.

link

i’ll attach the actress/models name in a hot sec. enjoi for now tho

“Black skinnies? Check.

Both feet ever so slightly inverted? Check.

Unassuming grin? Check.

Homemade cologne that attracts white chicks like fly’s to dog-shit?Motherfuckin check!”

link

…are as easy to peg as Somalians, Peruvians, Ethiopians or Philippinos.

What i mean by that is, those nations (for a myriad of reasons) produce people who look so undeniably similar that guessing their nationality wouldn’t be as hard as…oh, let’s say, trying to guess the nationality of a Korean, Chinese, Argentinian, Grenadian or Welsh person.

The 2 photos below are perfect examples – to me the female with Somalian ancestry is blaringly obvious.

Which one do you think is Somalian? (scroll down to find out)

The top picture is the Somalian woman. – Think Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs, K’naan, Iman and BAM you have a mental image of classic somali features.

anywhoooo

So as i start skimming around  looking at all these different ethnicities and i find this little nugget that makes me wanna be Peruvian. So so dope! ADIDAS ORIGINALS PERU TRACK TOP $85usd

buy it here!

oh wait…nope, i’ll stick with my appropriate Canadian one, it’s surprisingly pretty dope too!

buy here! $39.99CAN

I didn’t include videos, sorry!  but i guarentee if you poke around my blog you’ll find numerous posts w/ JAW-DROPPING vids + pics of MAJOR althete injuries. srsly badass. I find broken bones the most fascinating thing to watch. ..errm, there’s no way of saying that without sounding like a creeeper…but srsly i know i’m not the only one.

scroll down to the bottom for the full Top 12 list link.

On February 19th, 2006, while playing in the Italian Championship against Empoli F.C., he suffered a leg injury fracturing his left fibula and severing the interconnecting ligaments with the malleolus. He was operated the same night by Prof. Mariani, a renowned Italian orthopedic surgeon.

The (kinda totally cute’ish) German midfielder Ewald Lienen suffered an injury in 1981, which proves that it’s not just broken bones that can be horrific. A sliding tackle from a Werder Bremen defender slices open Lienen’s thigh, to reveal the tissue and bone of the player’s leg.

The Coventry defender David Busst suffered a compound fracture of the tibia and fibula in this collision with Manchester United defender Denis Irwin during a match at Old Trafford in April 1996. The leg break was so bad that the bone pierced the skin and Busst’s blood had to be cleared from the pitch. He never played professionally again. United goalkeeper Peter Schmeichel, who witnessed the injury, required counseling afterwards.

Cisse fractured his right leg after being tackled by the Shandong Lunengdefender during a friendly international soccer match in Saint Etienne, France in 2006. The accident happened during the 10th minute of the match, in which France got a 3-1 victory over China.

In a match between Cruz Azul and Tecos UAG on June 12th, 2007, the Mexican soccer player suffered a dramatic fracture while attempting to recover a ball for his team and twisted his ankle. After many months of recovery, he returned to the field in 2007 and has become an important starting eleven player on the team

top 12 of the worst soccer injuries link here

I mean, we all go off on our random and slightly-dark google search-a-thons from time to time, right? anyone?? no?….not so much?

eitherway…this just reeks of bangkok hotel rooms, and for that reason it’s another  perfect random gooder to add to the swarm of ‘wtf’ness’ floating around in the Internet Ocean…probably dont need to tell you this is NSFW, but just in case the name and/or pic didn’t tip u off,  this is NSFW.

..granted this aint even that wtf’ish, i mean, to a hentai watcher this is just plain ol’ PG-13 non-CGI shit, but there was just something about that picture (featured above) that inspired me to share this.

Also, i don’t want to sound condescending and assume… but while we’re on the porn topic everyone has at least heard of youporn right? I wouldn’t want to leave  one jaded soul behind in having access to free quality user-submitted porn videos, it just wouldn’t be right in this day and age.

mmmm dead eyes and genitalia.

it’s so cute when God (Oprah) starts freaking out and jumping up and down!

“That is just the COOLEST thing EVAR” – Oprah

This happened awhile back but had to post it. It’s still  one of my favs for flash mob vids out there.

it’s up there with the Hammer Pants flashmob video I posted awhile back, watchie here.

Total Eclipse of the Heart: Literal Video Version

GUYS. sysly! SRSLY! WATCH THIS!

the write up says it’s “TIME’s #2 Top Viral Video of 2009!!!” and after watching I’m lefting wondering what the F could beat this video for the #1 position??

I thought i was having a real productive day until I watched this and then promptly gave up. why fucking bother, nothing can top this shit. nothing.

Alanna you are a GENIUS for sending me this gem!!!