DISQUS

Just because you cannot stop them all is not a reason to not stop some. It's the same with all criminal activity, whether it be robbery, drug dealing, or prostitution. Indicating that Craigslist has no control of what is posted is a "cop-out" used by most websites relying on user generated content. I don't see it as removing their obligation to operate within the law, and they do have the ability to control it.

That prostitution is currently illegal (and whether it should be or not is another matter of debate) indicates that the states have the right, and possibly the duty, to go after a site such as Craigslist. That they have tolerated other areas of 'adult' marketing (like the ads in the back of the free weekly newspapers) may call into question their motivation, and highlights this as a 'political' move by the AG, capitalizing on a current buzzworthy topic.

My general feeling is that if they would like to be seen as deterring the activity itself (instead of just gaining the PR buzz), then their time would be more effective publicizing arrests of those using the service. In fact you often see stings done using the more well known escort websites in the news. The police departments know where to monitor and track down these services, it's really just a question of is it a priority given the resources available. I generally feel that most cities are more concerned about street-prostitution than web-prostitution.

I don't really see it as big brother. However, I personally don't want news that is 'biased' to my personal interest, the same as I don't want personalized search results. I want to see what may not be in the normal realm of my news sources or story interest.

Though, I have also often thought that the growth in use of news aggregators could be used to modify opinion if a hidden agenda was used to select stories. I'm sure someone in corporate America is looking for a way to do it.

I'm surprised you had the issue. It has been awhile, but I tried this Tivo service back when Amazon Unbox first came about, and I had no issues with the downloaded versions (also picked the 99cent specials) and they appeared no different to me than DVD rentals. My problem was waiting for the downloads to complete (well, and always searching for the specials as I'd never pay $3.99 for a rental). Now, with Netflix Player and Hulu I pretty much have enough to fill the gaps while waiting on my normal Netflix deliveries.

I will never trust a tinyurl.com link (or any other shorter url link), regardless of whether it is using custom text or not. Not knowing whether it is a redirect to a malware site is too much risk to take, though usually i just suspect it's a hidden affiliate link.

Building a business on use of another business's API, and being a drain on that business's resources, and not supporting that business financially. No room for complaint in my eyes. This sounds like a smart move by Twitter.

I switched to a yahoo e-mail address back when @home went under. I swore to never have another ISP based e-mail address, and I've never used one since.

I only wonder how they're going to handle POP access. One nice thing with the gmail/apps solution is I can set these up with Thunderbird as my client, and have a nice all-around solution for e-mail (not a fan of the Gmail web interface). I'm actually in the process of switching from a Yahoo Hosting account for my business domain to my own server with the Gmail/Apps solution for the e-mail.

Actually, to think it was not based on a monetary decision is naive. Clearly Google has a need to funnel ads into the content network, and that they have to share the revenue is not a problem. They are actually gaining revenue they would not otherwise have if not for AdSense.

Try as they might (the e-mail I regularly receive trying to get me to turn on content ads), Google will not convince people the content network is worthwhile till they clean-up the sites allowed into the AdSense program.