Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet 81
An anonymous reader writes "Since 2006, Internet users in Argentina have been blocked from searching for information about some of the country's most notable individuals. Over 100 people have successfully secured temporary restraining orders that direct Google and Yahoo! Argentina to scrub the results of search queries. The list of censorship-seeking celebrities includes judges, public officials, models and actors, as well as the world-cup soccer star and national team head coach Diego Maradona. Try it yourself — compare the results for a Yahoo! Argentina search for Diego Maradona (0 results) to a search at Yahoo! Mexico and Google Argentina (both with millions of results)."
third-person singular simple present? (Score:5, Funny)
Argentine Judges Disappear Celebrities From Internet
Tomorrow:
Slashdot Viewership Disappears Editors From Headlines
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I think it's supposed to be the use of the transitive verb "disappear." Because quite literally the judges disappeared the celebrities from those search results -- no mobster euphemism for killing there.
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Indeed.
OED 3. trans. To cause to disappear.
Self-righteous grammar fascists - it's a lot more impressive if you're correct.
more grammar fascists please... (Score:1)
>>> OED 3. trans. To cause to disappear.
OED gives one single example of such usage,
a grammar-impaired chemist A.D. 1897.
'disappear' is transitiv in all English dictionaries for everyday usage.
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The use of the term "to disappear" as a transitive verb, in both English and Spanish, picked up considerable momentum during the period of the Argentine junta, and evokes memories of the military dictatorships of Latin American in the 1970's.
It's very apt usage here. The grammar police in this case are missing the point.
Know much history? It's an intentional pun. (Score:5, Insightful)
It's a dark joke on the thousands of people who "disappeared" during the late great dictatorship.
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Slashdot readers is throwing robots at us.
Re:third-person singular simple present? (Score:5, Informative)
The usage here is appropriate, given that this particular usage was originally coined to refer to government abuses in Argentina and nearby states in the 1970s. As Wikipedia explains: [wikipedia.org]
In the case of forced disappearance the word disappear, which is properly an intransitive verb, becomes transitive. Victims, who are those who have disappeared, or the disappeared, are said to have been disappeared, rather than the more usual have disappeared. The perpetrators have disappeared them, rather than made them disappear.
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The usage here is quite inappropriate as those who were "disappeared" in the 1970s were themselves victims of government repression while these celebrities are the beneficiaries thereof.
Re:third-person singular simple present? (Score:4, Insightful)
The usage in this headline is an example of irony. It doesn't have to be an exact match for the original situation.
Re:third-person singular simple present? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Slashdot Viewership Disappears Editors From Headlines
Joke's on you! Can't take away what was never there, after all. ;)
Re:Don't use Google Argentina? (Score:5, Funny)
It's not that easy. Google has thousands of operatives whose only job is to make sure people only use the Google authorized for their location. The consequences of straying from your designated Google are swift and severe.
I was talking to a friend on the phone when we started talking about why Google would have all of these different pages for different countries, and we couldn't think of why. So, my friend decides to try a search result on Google US and then on Google Australia just to see if anything was different. He had barely hit enter on the Google Australia search when suddenly I heard glass breaking and what sounded like helicopters over the phone. My friend screamed, and the line went dead. No one has heard from him since.
I tried to do some investigating of my own, and hit Google Mexico from an Internet cafe. Luckily, when the Google operatives burst through the front windows and started shooting the place up, I was able to escape through the back door. They were able to follow me with Google Earth, but I managed to give them the slip when I accidentally fell through an open manhole.
I've been living in the sewers under the city ever since that day. I haven't dared try to contact anyone, for fear Google would find me. This is the first time I've even dared to try to connect to the 'net, and I can't stay long.
Wait, I hear footsteps...
Oh shit, they're here! WARN THE OTHE^&^4wg4$^
NO CARRIER
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You can run, but you cannot escape :-)
Dammit! Magic quotes!
Re:Don't use Google Argentina? (Score:4, Funny)
You should have posted as AC
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He is now.
ummm. (Score:4, Funny)
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What you say?!
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Somebody set up us the bomb.
Here's your sign (Score:1)
"In the case of forced disappearance the word disappear, which is properly an intransitive verb, becomes transitive." [wikipedia.org]
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"In the case of forced disappearance the word disappear, which is properly an intransitive verb, becomes transitive." [wikipedia.org]
Or you know you could just laugh at the joke, because it sounds like the engrish [engrish.com] mistranslations.
Even if it is the correct usage.
Don't forget
"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We donâ(TM)t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
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"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary." --James D. Nicoll
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If one must be disappeared,
Disappear self, one must...
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How about the copyright owners of Borat?
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Slashdot is edited?!
Fix the damn CSS (or whatever) (Score:2)
Can't click on the " Yahoo! Mexico" or "Google Argentina" links on the front page for some reason.
Me thinks it's the stupid CSS or layout of the (useless) tags that messes things up.
A small suggestion (a la Mr. Swift) (Score:3, Insightful)
Perhaps they've solved our problem of over-populated web-hits on our idiotic, media-seeking celebrities up here.
If I recall correctly, Jon Swift purported that Irish babies would go a long way to feeding the impoverished English public.
If anyone from Google or Yahoo! in general is reading, could we add Lindsay Lohan, Brittney Spears and the other paparazzi-fodder to that list for the search sites world-wide? I'm not suggesting that eating their babies would be a good idea, but I'm positive eating up their web-hits and searches would go a long way to feeding the positive intelligence of not only the English public, but the world.
Think of it as doing your part to solve the (intellectual) hunger problems of the world. Onemillionactsofgreen.com would then meet their quota in... oh, about 30 minutes or so?!
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As overused as "nuance" is thanks to this election season, perhaps you could cultivate enough nuance yourself to understand that what is "evil" or "moral" is subjective, and not really something that one could say is "stupid and wrong" as you so pompously did?
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Better luck next time!
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Oh, Argentina! (Score:1, Funny)
Oh, Argentina! Don't you search for me.
Tak3 a pag3 fr0m spamm3rs (Score:2)
Try searching for 'marad0na' - I'm guessing that people will start to use alternate spellings to bypass the filters... :-)
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Use http://www.google.es/ [google.es] - that should produce results
Before /. starts to panic about free speech... (Score:1, Interesting)
Consider that Argentina has a very severe problem with high-profile Argentinians and their families being kidnapped and held for ransom.
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That's a lie, plain and simple. There was a short rash of kidnappings (I don't think any at the time were famous people, though), but that's over.
I have heard in some countries even nonfamous people go around with bodyguards (I remember a friend in Mexico, for example). Here you can see most famous people walking alone, having coffee in a bar, etc. I don't like this country much, I'm moving out ASAP, there is plenty to criticise about Argentina, but kidnappings? Nope.
Remember folks! (Score:2, Funny)
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An example of Google's filtering in Argentina can be seen by searching for "susana gimenez sexshop" which will result in three links at the bottom of the page to the Chilling Effects Clearinghouse -- a project that tracks these incidents and seeks to inform users of their rights.
On Google.com.ar:
Resultados 1 - 10 de aproximadamente 2.700 de susana gimenez sexshop. (0,06 segundos)
On Google.com (through US Proxy):
Results 1 - 10 of about 2,670 for susana gimenez sexshop. (0.11 seconds)
And about the sam
Back door... more like front door ... work around (Score:1)
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This is interesting... (Score:3, Interesting)
The US results [google.com] (1,350,000 results)
The Canadian results [google.ca] (1,230,000)
Or am I missing some incredibly obvious other reason that these results are different?
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My guess is that it depends on the exchange rate of Canadian dollar over US dollar, or something like that.
Other examples with selected words from your post:
"mechanism" : 86,9 million results (US) / 82,2 million results (Canada)
"incredibly" : 43,6 million results (US) / 40,5 million results (Canada)
"obvious" : 104 millions results (US) / 97 millions results (Canada)
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Google's search algorithm produces different results in different localizations, I would think it gives more relevance to results in the same language and/or geography (i.e., in Google Argentina, results in spanish and from places close/in Argentina would be somewhat higher in ranking than the same results in Google.com).
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That and we'd rather preoccupy ourselves with the Real Thing! [macleans.ca]
just misspell (Score:1)
Beyond not RTFA (Score:1)
Not content with simply not RTFA, slashdotters have given up on commenting on the article, prefering instead to comment on the grammar and wording of the headline.
I'm sure that someone will point out the irony of me commenting about people not commenting on TFA any second now.
Where the heck is Argentina again? (Score:2)
I just looked on Google maps, and I absolutely can't find it...
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I think you mean South America
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whoosh!!!
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I was about to type "Whoosh", but then I realized I would earn one myself.
Hey, Argentina! (Score:2)
Rage, rage against the dying of the light
--Dylan Thomas