So Slashdot ran a short article on the rise of religious search engines — customized web search engines to return preferred sources to fit one’s personal superstitions. I can’t say how true that is, because the examples they gave, such as the Christian SeekFind page, has collapsed under the sudden weight of a multitude of geeks overwhelming their database.

This isn’t the Christian world anymore. We live on Nerd World. And I for one welcome our new aspie overlords.

This is very bad news: I don’t mind at all that Apple’s Mac/iPhone/iPad technology is closed and proprietary, but when they use that to censor delivered content, I get very, very unhappy. Mark Fiore is a fabulous web political cartoonist, and he came out with an iPhone app to provide access to his work…and Apple rejected it.

But there’s just one problem. In December, Apple rejected his iPhone app, NewsToons, because, as Apple put it, his satire “ridicules public figures,” a violation of the iPhone Developer Program License Agreement, which bars any apps whose content in “Apple’s reasonable judgement may be found objectionable, for example, materials that may be considered obscene, pornographic, or defamatory.”

A while back, apparently Apple blocked a whole bunch of apps that were basically soft-core porn — girls in bikinis, that sort of thing — and I didn’t notice, because I’m not in the market for that stuff, and don’t favor that kind of exploitation of women anyway. But when we didn’t stop the censorship of soft-core girlie pictures, who knew the next stop would be the censorship of political satire?

Apple needs to get out of the censorship game. Review apps for compatibility, but not content; it’s OK if Apple will only market neutered, innocuous apps through their branded store, but not OK if they use their tech to restrict access and allow no other app outlets.

This is a serious enough danger that I’ve decided to put off any purchase of an iPad until I see some resolution of this problem. Unlock the apps.

It’s here. The iPad. Stephen Fry reviews. I am reduced to a Homer-esque gurgle.

One of the big problems with YouTube is that science channels that criticize creationists are often shut down — they are targeted by votebots that lower their ratings, and there are plenty of people who file frivolous notifications of DMCA violations that lead to whole channels being shut down until the case is fought out. This is not good — the system is hair-trigger sensitive to complaints, but does nothing to filter out the noise of unwarranted claims made solely to silence people.

A science regular on YouTube, Andromeda’s Wake, has put up a short video requesting more confrontation with Google/YouTube on the issue of DMCA abuse. The problem has been brought to the attention of Google developers, and there is a petition demanding censorship reform. You should sign it!

(Hmmm…I wonder if this approach would work to get Seed to fix the broken comment registration system here…)

I hope not, but they have filed one of those ridiculously broad, sweeping patents that covers a big chunk of basic techniques in the field:

The patent, filed by Microsoft researcher Steve Ozer in July 2007 and recently discovered by a graduate student at the University of Texas in Austin, claims ownership of several common phylogenetic methods. At its most basic, however, it seems to patent identifying any evolutionary relationship from sequences: “receiving a plurality of sequences across a plurality of species [and] mapping at least a portion of the plurality of sequences to an evolutionary tree.” 

The patent hasn’t been approved, and there’s a good chance it won’t be…but keep an eye on that evil empire in Washington state.

Imagine a titanic battle. No, not T. rex vs. a killer whale, but something more alarming, like T. rex vs. a massive bacterial infection. Which side do you think will win?

Something similar is going on right now. AT&T, the T. rex of the story, is going after 4chan, the infamous nest of /b/tards and fierce crackers and hackers, an unstoppable plague of corruption. AT&T is doomed if they continue.

AT&T has been sneakily trying to silence 4chan by quietly dropping access requests to the site by users on their network. I am not a great fan of 4chan (actually, I tremble in fear at even mentioning them, so I have to respect them—I’d rather piss off the Catholic Church than 4chan), but in this case I have to be on their side without reservation. AT&T is violating net neutrality and trying to censor voices on the web…and even if they succeeded in completely silencing one site on the web, the net is fluid, and they’ll just emerge elsewhere. With a grudge and a cause.

An update direct from 4chan:

For the past three weeks, 4chan has been under a constant DDoS attack.
We were able to filter this specific type of attack in a fashion that
was more or less transparent to the end user.

Unfortunately, as an unintended consequence of the method used, some
Internet users received errant traffic from one of our network
switches. A handful happened to be AT&T customers.

In response, AT&T filtered all traffic to and from our img.4chan.org
IPs (which serve /b/ & /r9k/) for their entire network, instead of only
the affected customers. AT&T did not contact us prior to implementing
the block. Here is their statement regarding the matter.

In the end, this wasn’t a sinister act of censorship, but rather a bit
of a mistake and a poorly executed, disproportionate response on AT&T’s
part. Whoever pulled the trigger on blackholing the site probably
didn’t anticipate [nor intend] the consequences of doing so.

We’re glad to see this short-lived debacle has prompted renewed
interest and debate over net neutrality and internet censorship?two
very important issues that don’t get nearly enough attention?so
perhaps this was all just a blessing in disguise.

Aside from that, I’ll also add that there is some big news due later
this week. Keep an eye on the News page, Twitter, and global message
for updates.