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Posts Tagged ‘US’

Google’s Response to Chinese Attack, or “Go Google!”

14 Jan

Google has detected what appears to be a cyber attack on both it and other US based companies from somewhere in China. The goal of the attack is reported to be information on human rights activists both in the country and abroad. Easy to see the writing on the wall there. What was Google’s response? Public disclosure and the policy change of being unwilling to censor for the Chinese Government anymore (at least on Google.cn, who knows about Android Market and other such Google endeavors). This of course may mean not having anything in China anymore and that seems OK with Google.

I must take this moment to applaud Google for standing up for Freedom of Speech finally even though it may cost them a significant amount of money.

You can read more on this issue at the Official Google Blog where the story originally broke.

Thank you Google for making my day.

 
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Posted in Current Events

 

Mint Map: America’s Most Frugal Cities | MintLife Blog

21 Sep

exerpt
I like Mint.com, so today while I was setting up my budget (and noticing how broke I am as usual), I came across the link to mintlife, the blog for the application.  Interesting stuff there, of particular notice to me as I live in Portland Oregon was Mint.com‘s blog post mentioning discretionary spending cutbacks this year by their users.

Organized by the most hit cities, I was kind of shocked to see Portland on that list, not only on the list but quite close to the top.  The only cities worse were in Southern California and New York State.

We all know that Americans have cut back on their spending during the recession but where are they cutting back the most? Comparing 20 cities across 25 “discretionary” categories we found that five cities spend less than the national average and cut more of their spending (yr over yr) than the national average. Our latest map is based on the aggregate data from over one million Mint.com users, a representative sampling of US consumers.

Full map after the break.

Read the rest of this entry »

 
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Posted in Musings