MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?

Slashdot | MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?: "MSN Search Blocking Results For XFree86?
Posted by simoniker on Wednesday March 03, @05:15PM
from the because-they-made-a-mistake? dept.
Censorship Microsoft
Peacefire writes 'Thomas Shaddack spotted this on http://www.root.cz/ (in Czech) -- if you go to http://search.msn.com/ and search for 'XFree86', it tells you that you've 'entered a search term that is likely to return adult content', and directs you to the porn search engine NightSurf.com, which lists a bunch of porn sites that ostensibly match the term 'XFree86'. If you search for 'XFree86' on Google, however, it's clear that the top matching terms returned by a normal search, are XFree86 sites, are not a bunch of porn sites. MSN is apparently blocking the specific term 'XFree86' and not just filtering on something stupid like the 'X' or the 'Free', since you can search for 'XFree85' and 'XFree87' with no problem. And search terms like 'Linux', 'AOL' and 'Macintosh' are allowed, so at least MSN hasn't simply blacklisted all competitors' keywords as 'porn', but why would they be blocking 'XFree86'?'"

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Mirror List
(Score:5, Informative)
by RobertB-DC (622190) * Alter Relationship on Wednesday March 03, @05:16PM (#8457532)
(http://www.dixie-chicks.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday October 11, @11:20AM)
Since it's about to get Slashdotted, here is the mirror list section from the xfree86.org [xfree86.org] site:

Web Mirrors

Our web site is very busy and often causes timed out connections. The following sites have been verified as being both accurate and reliable in their mirroring process, and so we recommend these for the best access:

Costa Rica [ulatina.ac.cr]
Copenhagen, Denmark [opensource.cph.dk]
Paris, France [ovh.net]
St. Denis, France [univ-paris8.fr]
Berlin, Germany [berlios.de]
Dortmund, Germany [desiato.de]
Athens, Greece [xfree86.ntua.gr]
Seoul, Korea [mirror.or.kr]
Amsterdam, Netherlands [kookel.org]
Bucharest, Romania [unibuc.ro]
London, United Kingdom [earth.li]

Not posting as AC 'cause the troll potential would be too high...
--
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
=----------------


Re:XFree69
(Score:5, Funny)
by Zocalo (252965) Alter Relationship on Wednesday March 03, @05:22PM (#8457623)
(http://www.zocalo.uk.com/)
I wonder if MSN has one of those big screen displays of search queries in real-time like Google does. If they do I bet there's a few people looking at the screen scrolling "XFree69" ad infinitum and wondering "WTF!?!" right about now.
--
UNIX? They're probably not even circumcised! Savages!

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They blocked other things in the past ...
(Score:5, Interesting)
by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 03, @06:12PM (#8458229)
Back in the good old days ... of the dot-com boom, I worked on the first web-based airline-travel reservation system ever (online in June 1995 to be precise). A while later, Microsoft got into that business, and at that point, we discovered that all traffic from MSN customers to our site was blocked. Prior to this, something like 5-10% of all hits came from there, and the drop in traffic was noticable. (We had breakdowns: AOL was about 10%-15%, Prodigy another 5%-10%, and netcom another 10%).

We talked about doing the full investigation, and suing, etc. and even called the district attorney since this seemed to be criminal behaviour to us. We decided we were too small and too poor to pursue the matter as a civil case, and I don't know what happened w/ the DA.

I thought it was pretty foul play, it was one of a number of incidents that helped turn me into a bitter Microsoft-hater
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Re:And people wonder why I worry
(Score:5, Insightful)
by Awptimus Prime (695459) Alter Relationship on Wednesday March 03, @05:51PM (#8457986)

MS gives away IE to shut down Netscape. That wasn't the crime that I thought was terrible - it was going to their OEM partners and threatening them with extra high cost of Windows if they put on Netscape.

It's refreshing to see another person not consider the Netscape fiasco a 'crime'. I was working for an ISP when IE came about. At the time, Netscape charged us $20-40 per copy that we shipped to our customers. You can imagine how quickly that adds up. When IE became an alternative, Netscape refused to negociate and lost out big-time. Meanwhile, MS would do advertising partnerships and offer a wide range of support services for free. A very tempting offer when your shop isn't making much money to begin with.

Anyway, the people at Netscape didn't move quickly to improve their browsers and, for quite some time, IE was way better concerning stability in Windows. It's not like the 2 clicks and 10 minute download destroyed them.

The anti-MS folks who always find fault in MS never really seemed to complain about Trumpet Winsock being put through the ringer by NT and 95 including their own network stacks. How about notepad.exe and calc.exe? Before that time, you could download and register shareware editors or look for freebies. I've never heard somone argue that Windows was destroying software companies by including it's own program to display image files.

But anything to do with [potentially] commerical media, such as web pages and audio/video content, grabs everyones attention and ends up with MS back in court acting confused and innocent.

I know, totally off topic. Back on topic, I promise:

I think the reason for the search results problem is likely a goof-up. Likely a low-level employee who had no idea what XFree86 is, didn't care, didn't double-check, etc before adding it to the DB. It seems reasonable that many MS employees would not be familar with Unix at all.
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Follow the money folks
(Score:5, Informative)
by Tin Foil Hat (705308) Alter Relationship on Wednesday March 03, @06:21PM (#8458322)
I'm a fairly competent internet programmer, so here's my analysis: follow the money. First thing to examine is the url that MS presents. I've split it into multiple lines for readability. Notice that it contains two other urls as parameters.

http://search.msn.com/adpassthru.aspx
?ADTARGET=http://ads.msn.com/ads/adredir.asp
%3F&TARGET=http://apps.NightSurf.com/~wsapi/nssear ch.dll
%3Fdealcode%3Dmsn%26src%3D1%26key%3D&QUERY=xfree86
&IMG=http://ads.msn.com/ads/IMGWB3/004400170001_TR .gif

This url takes you back to the msn search site so that it can record your click. The search site responds with a code 302 (Document moved) and redirects you to ads.msn.com. Here is the url for that. Notice the similarity.

http://ads.msn.com/ads/adredir.asp
?url=http%3a%2f%2fapps.NightSurf.com
%2f%7ewsapi%2fnssearch.dll
%3fdealcode%3dmsn%26src%3d1%26key%3dxfree86
&image=http://ads.msn.com/ads/IMGWB3/004400170001_ TR.gif

This ad site responds with another redirect that finally takes you to nightsurf. Here is the url for that.

http://apps.NightSurf.com/~wsapi/nssearch.dll?de al code=msn&src=1&key=xfree86

Now here's where it really gets interesting. Notice the dealcode and key parameters in particular. They would seem to imply that MSN has some kind of deal with NightSurf.

I have to conclude that NightSurf paid MSN to feature it's ad (that's what it is, not a search result) when users type in 'XFree86'. I had difficulty understanding why a porn search site would want to do something like that, so I started investigating. First stop, betterwhois.com. Here's what they have to say about NightSurf.com.

Registrant:
WebPower Inc.
ATTN: NIGHTSURF.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA. 20172-0447

Domain Name: NIGHTSURF.COM

Administrative Contact, Technical Contact:
Inc., WP av4xg8hq3ck@networksolutionsprivateregistration.co m
ATTN: NIGHTSURF.COM
c/o Network Solutions
P.O. Box 447
Herndon, VA 20172-0447
570-708-8780

It seems that this is a private listing from Network Solutions and any further investigation will have to include sending an email to the listed address.

So the question remains, why is NightSurf.com (A.K.A. Web Power, Inc.) paying Microsoft for the XFree86 keyword? Did Microsoft knowingly accept that or was it more automated? Do I or do I not have a hole in my hat?

--
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
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What's a Modern Girl to Do? - Maureen Down NYT

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/30/magazine/30feminism.html?pagewanted=4&th&emc=th

What's a Modern Girl to Do? - New York Times

A 2005 report by researchers at four British universities indicated that a high I.Q. hampers a woman's chance to marry, while it is a plus for men. The prospect for marriage increased by 35 percent for guys for each 16-point increase in I.Q.; for women, there is a 40 percent drop for each 16-point rise.

On a "60 Minutes" report on the Hewlett book, Lesley Stahl talked to two young women who went to Harvard Business School. They agreed that while they were the perfect age to start families, they didn't find it easy to meet the right mates.

Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. The girls said they hid the fact that they went to Harvard from guys they met because it was the kiss of death. "The H-bomb," they dubbed it. "As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that's the end of the conversation," Ani Vartanian said. "As soon as the guys say, 'Oh, I go to Harvard Business School,' all the girls start falling into them."

Hewlett thinks that the 2005 American workplace is more macho than ever. "It's actually much more difficult now than 10 years ago to have a career and raise a family," she told me. "The trend lines continue that highly educated women in many countries are increasingly dealing with this creeping nonchoice and end up on this path of delaying finding a mate and delaying childbearing. Whether you're looking at Italy, Russia or the U.S., all of that is true." Many women continue to fear that the more they accomplish, the more they may have to sacrifice. They worry that men still veer away from "challenging" women because of a male atavistic desire to be the superior force in a relationship.
- --- -------

Art is imitating life, turning women who seek equality into selfish narcissists and objects of rejection rather than of affection.

It's funny. I come from a family of Irish domestics - statuesque, 6-foot-tall women who cooked, kept house and acted as nannies for some of America's first families. I was always so proud of achieving more - succeeding in a high-powered career that would have been closed to my great-aunts. How odd, then, to find out now that being a maid would have enhanced my chances with men.

An upstairs maid, of course.

Women's Magazines

Cosmo is still the best-selling magazine on college campuses, as it was when I was in college, and the best-selling monthly magazine on the newsstand. The June 2005 issue, with Jessica Simpson on the cover, her cleavage spilling out of an orange croqueted halter dress, could have been June 1970. The headlines are familiar: "How to turn him on in 10 words or less," "Do You Make Men M-E-L-T? Take our quiz," "Bridal Special," Cosmo's stud search and "Cosmo's Most Famous Sex Tips; the Legendary Tricks That Have Brought Countless Guys to Their Knees." .../...

Oddly enough, Felix Dennis, who created the top-selling Maxim, said he stole his "us against the world" lad-magazine attitude from women's magazines like Cosmo. Just as women didn't mind losing Cosmo's prestigious fiction as the magazine got raunchier, plenty of guys were happy to lose the literary pretensions of venerable men's magazines and embrace simple-minded gender stereotypes, like the Maxim manifesto instructing women, "If we see you in the morning and night, why call us at work?"

.../...
Jessica Simpson and Eva Longoria move seamlessly from showing their curves on the covers of Cosmo and Glamour to Maxim, which dubbed Simpson "America's favorite ball and chain!" In the summer of 2005, both British GQ and FHM featured Pamela Anderson busting out of their covers. ("I think of my breasts as props," she told FHM.)

Beauty

While I never related to the unstyled look of the early feminists and I tangled with boyfriends who did not want me to wear makeup and heels, I always assumed that one positive result of the feminist movement would be a more flexible and capacious notion of female beauty, a release from the tyranny of the girdled, primped ideal of the 50's.

I was wrong. Forty years after the dawn of feminism, the ideal of feminine beauty is more rigid and unnatural than ever.

When Gloria Steinem wrote that "all women are Bunnies," she did not mean it as a compliment; it was a feminist call to arms. Decades later, it's just an aesthetic fact, as more and more women embrace Botox and implants and stretch and protrude to extreme proportions to satisfy male desires. Now that technology is biology, all women can look like inflatable dolls. It's clear that American narcissism has trumped American feminism.

It was naïve and misguided for the early feminists to tendentiously demonize Barbie and Cosmo girl, to disdain such female proclivities as shopping, applying makeup and hunting for sexy shoes and cute boyfriends and to prognosticate a world where men and women dressed alike and worked alike in navy suits and were equal in every way.

But it is equally naïve and misguided for young women now to fritter away all their time shopping for boudoirish clothes and text-messaging about guys while they disdainfully ignore gender politics and the seismic shifts on the Supreme Court that will affect women's rights for a generation.

What I didn't like at the start of the feminist movement was that young women were dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. They were supposed to be liberated, but it just seemed like stifling conformity.

What I don't like now is that the young women rejecting the feminist movement are dressing alike, looking alike and thinking alike. The plumage is more colorful, the shapes are more curvy, the look is more plastic, the message is diametrically opposite - before it was don't be a sex object; now it's be a sex object - but the conformity is just as stifling.

And the Future . . .

Having boomeranged once, will women do it again in a couple of decades? If we flash forward to 2030, will we see all those young women who thought trying to Have It All was a pointless slog, now middle-aged and stranded in suburbia, popping Ativan, struggling with rebellious teenagers, deserted by husbands for younger babes, unable to get back into a work force they never tried to be part of?

It's easy to picture a surreally familiar scene when women realize they bought into a raw deal and old trap. With no power or money or independence, they'll be mere domestic robots, lasering their legs and waxing their floors - or vice versa - and desperately seeking a new Betty Friedan

xox

One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy

One Market Under God: Extreme Capitalism, Market Populism, and the End of Economic Democracy