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Google Goes Las Vegas

Robert Cringely has a very interesting piece on how Google Adwords might be working. Another reason to think maybe Google are not so nice afterall

I have no idea what the heck is happening here, but my friendly reader, who makes his living from this stuff, has a theory. He believes the Google AdWords algorithm tries to do many things and one of those is to encourage advertisers to pay more for words. By modifying something that in turn modifies the results, Google is effectively encouraging advertisers to change their behavior.

So increasing the amount per word DID increase sales, though not enough to justify the additional cost. Google’s revenue per word, of course, went up by 10X. But dropping the price by more than half was greeted by a huge decrease in clicks-through that could only have resulted from some unknown resultant change in GOOGLE’s behavior, given that all other variables were constant.

If that’s indeed what’s happening, it isn’t illegal and to some might not even be unethical (I guess) but it feels just a little bit EVIL.

Bird flu 'could kill 150m people'

Finally someone is quoting some figures (more reasonable to me anyway) that the inevitable flu pandemic could bring. Foreign Affairs had a special edition a while back on the avian flu threat, and back then I guesstimated a figure of 500 million was more likely than the figure of 20 million being suggested by most news sites. 150 milion would be 50 more than the 1918 pandemic, but I guess the outcome would be entirely dependent on how quickly the world’s governments cooperate and pull together to deal with it.

On lectures

Caoimhe suggested that having Wifi in lectures could help for making an argument with a lecturer, as the facts are there before you while the lecturer is going on memory. At politics today the lecturer cited Robert Fisk in the course of a discussion about pre-war democracies such as the Weimar Republic or some such. I lost track when Fisk was mentioned…best not to get into arguments with lecturers methinks.

A tankful of sugar, Brazil's ethanol

I never knew that Brazil had previously gone down the road of ethanol based fuel for cars.

Prompted by the oil shocks of the 1970s, Brazilian governments used laws and subsidies to promote ethanol-only cars, which had 90% of the market by the late 1980s. But supplies of sugar-based fuel dried up suddenly when planters rushed to meet a surge in demand for sugar. Sales of ethanol-powered cars dropped to nearly zero by 1990—one taxi driver famously set his alight outside Congress.

Flex-fuel cars have persuaded Brazilians to give ethanol a second try. The initiative came from the Brazilian operations of parts suppliers such as Magneti Marelli, owned by Fiat of Italy, and Bosch, a German company. They persuaded the government to extend to flex-fuel cars the tax break previously applied to ethanol-only models. Volkswagen was first to the market, followed quickly by other big manufacturers.

Ford announced this week that flexi-fuel based cars will go on sale in Ireland in November. Ford are hoping that Brian Cowen will give tax breaks on bio-ethanol based cars. They have already proved very popular in Scandanavian countries. However flexi-fuel in Ireland will apparently be produced from the waste made during certain dairy processes, a product known as bio-ethanol. I am not sure if that produced from sugar is better or worse.

Empty beds, empty stomachs

Gitmo, as it has become known, still remains in a sort legal limbo. I had wondered what had happened since the Supreme Court ruling in June last year, the Economist clarifies:

Earlier this summer, there was talk of Guantánamo being shut down. Patrick Leahy, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, called it a “national disgraceâ€? and “the primary recruiting tool for our enemiesâ€?. George Bush also seemed to wobble on the issue. But Mr Rumsfeld, who has just spent $100m refurbishing the camp, has never wavered from the idea that America needs a place to hold people indefinitely. If you want to create a “legal black holeâ€?, to use the words of a British law lord, it is certainly a lot easier to do so outside the American mainland.

But what about the Supreme Court’s ruling in June last year giving Guantánamo detainees the right to challenge their detention in American courts? The justices, alas, did not give any details as to how this could happen. The administration promptly set up review panels to determine whether detainees had been rightly designated as “enemy combatantsâ€?; all but 38 of the 558 detainees had their status confirmed. Banned from attending the proceedings, their lawyers have dismissed them as a sham.

Dozens of habeas corpus lawsuits are working their way up through the federal courts. In January this year, a Washington, DC, district court judge ruled that the detainees were entitled to challenge their detention in normal courts. But a few days later, another district court judge issued a contradictory ruling. Both sides have appealed (oral arguments were heard by the DC appeals court this month), but the issue will surely go to the Supreme Court.

What appears to have gone largely unreported is that many of the current ‘prisoners’ are on hunger strike.

Over the past month, more than 100 detainees have been on hunger strike in protest against their indefinite detention without charge. Many have been held for nearly four years. A military spokesman said this week that 85 were still refusing food, including 15 hardliners who were undergoing “involuntary feedingâ€? in hospital. Preventing prisoners from harming themselves was part of “standard operating proceduresâ€? in both American civilian and military prisons, he said.

Although not specifically banned under international law, force-feeding of prisoners is prohibited under the World Medical Association’s 1975 Declaration of Tokyo, which has been endorsed by the American Medical Association. The International Committee of the Red Cross also strongly advises against it. Its use in Guantánamo is likely to further enflame anti-American sentiment among Muslims; on the other hand, it may be preferable to a succession of deaths in Guantánamo.

I tend to agree with comments Ann-Marie Slaughter made at the Terrorism and Security Conference in Washington earlier this month – Gitmo is essentially America shooting itself in the foot, do as we say but not as we do.

The end of the affair: Rupert Murdoch in China

So Rupert Murdoch is criticising Yahoo for its policies in China. Speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York during the UN summit, the Economist reports that Murdoch castigated Yahoo:

FIERCELY independent media mogul and defender of democracy everywhere—that was the Rupert Murdoch on display at a Bill Clinton-organised conference in New York on September 16th. The News Corporation chairman castigated Yahoo! for leading Chinese authorities to the identity of a local dissident journalist, subsequently jailed for ten years. He excoriated Beijing’s policymakers as “paranoidâ€? for reversing an opening of the mainland media market. And he admitted that his own business in China had “hit a brick wallâ€?. In August, News Corporation’s Star TV had its innovative joint-venture with Qinghai Satellite, a regional broadcaster, cancelled; and since July, it has been investigated for illegally selling decoders to forbidden News Corp channels.

What is curious is that despite trying to cosy up to a succession of Chinese Presidents, Murdoch still remains on the periphery of the media landscape, perhaps is because he is not towing the line as Yahoo and Microsoft have been.


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