CA brings you the news

After my recent experimentation with ringback tones (Bossy on the weekends, I keep forgettin' during the week), I found this article about racist ringtones in South Africa rather interesting. The concept of banning racist terms in countries with a history of government-sanctioned racism has always been fascinating to me. We had government-sanctioned racism until the '60s (and arguably still today) and have no bans on racist terms. Was slavery, Jim Crow, seperate but equal, and segregation not enough to deem some words illegal? Or is it that our freedom of speech trumps that, whereas other nations don't have as broad of a right to free speech as we do (which we all know is narrowing by the second)? This is something I need to read up on more.

Also on a technology related, but much less political, matter: A downed MySpace makes headline news. This is incredible to me, that a social networking site that is primarly used for band promotion and stalking past High School classmates or current crushes can have such power. Its pretty crazy that if its down for a few hours BBC has to write about it. A full article no less. I must admit that when I got bored yesterday and was going to bum around on MySpace I was mildly annoyed at its outage. However, it gave me the opportunity to turn off the computer and do a much needed house cleaning. Blackouts do have their positive sides.