Credit reference agencies have millions of people on their files and a legal obligation to make sure that the information is accurate, and to purge it when it is no longer legally relevant.

Credit reference agencies have meta-data about when they were given the information, who they got it from, and specific dollar amounts, and there's a whole legal framework about how reports are made.

And they *still* routinely screw it up.

Google has an indexing date, a URL, and a blob of content. There's a lot of other stuff they can extract/infer from the content and response headers and they can perform an estimate of relevance (PageRank), but accuracy is obviously inconsistent even without things like SEO's messing with results, and the correctness of any content is governed by stuff like libel and copyright laws in balance with civil rights like freedom of speech.

There's a reason Google's search results have been, in court of law, identified as "opinion" rather than "fact".

Isn't the general principle that once you've done the time, you've paid for your crime?

That's a lovely general principle. That's why we, as a society, are perfectly okay with hiring convicted pedophiles to teach kids, or having convicted armed robbers manage the cash in our ATMs?

I'm generally against using a "one-off" crime to punish someone in perpetuity and deny them a decent quality of life, particularly if it was of the "I was young, stupid and desperate" sort of thing. Shit happens. But a criminal history with high recidivism rates or for particularly heinous crimes can arguably have some predictive aspects.

Why would a pardon be any more relevant of a criteria than the successful completion of a prison sentence?

Because a pardon is, getting back on topic, a formal analysis of whether a criminal conviction is still relevant and/or outdated.

In a magical world where completion of a prison sentence implied rehabilitation, then yes, it would be roughly equivalent to a pardon. In the world where we live, successful completion of a prison sentence just means someone hasn't fucked up so badly that they're still in prison.

Of course, even pardons aren't perfect. Depending on jurisdiction, they may be nothing more than a receipt for a large bribe. But that's still a step up from "got out of prison".

I don't see how a conviction for possessing child porn is irrelevant or outdated.

Well, if he was a minor with pictures of his girlfriend, it's technically child porn, but somewhat excusable. If he'd received a pardon for the crime (dunno if that's available in his jurisdiction) there might be a case.

The problem, fundamentally, isn't the crime that he's trying to have erased, but that the standard of "irrelevant or outdated" is so subjective; it's insane to suggest that Google just take the word of some random person, and it's insane to actually make Google try to evaluate the merit of each claim.

The Spanish case that generated the ruling is a particularly good example. If the information was irrelevant or outdated, then why was is still on the net? If it was an individual trash talking someone, that's one thing (and maybe better actioned under a libel or harassment claim), but if it's a news archive or public documents like auction records then *someone* obviously thinks it's still relevant enough to continue publishing.

Simply put, Google's in the business of indexing stuff that *other* people consider relevant or important enough to publish on the Internet. It's a low bar, admittedly, but asking Google (or Bing, or any other third party) to evaluate the motivations of publishers isn't fair or particularly viable.

The whole concept that a single wrong letter could mean the difference between success and 200 error messages just made them ask, "You do this all day?"

shrug Some people just can't hack jobs where attention to detail matters. A missing semi-colon in software isn't much less messier than an accountant misplacing a decimal, or a millwright putting an extra turn on a depth wheel, or a carpenter cutting an inch short.

Did you not read the part about Canada? I believe they have a winter on occasion.

It's more accurate to say that we have summer on occasion.

...is the only person in the Senate who seems to have not been bought and sold by lobbyists.

I'm a bit surprised the comedy lobby hasn't gone after him. If he goes too far in bringing common sense to politics, people like Jon Stewart will be out of a job. Late Night will only be able to do a "Top 8" count. Writers will be forced to actually *think*.

Let's say out of a $100 monthly cable bill, $25 goes to non-content costs, $50 goes to content, and $25 is profit. That suggests the minimum bill in an a la carte plan might be around $50, which would preserve the current profit level.

Yes, that's what a company who gives a shit about consumers would do.

More likely, the cable company would increase the average bill to $110 (because *something* changed that they can spin as being a customer benefit), decrease the payout to content providers, and make just slightly over triple the profits.

It's also possible they might take a "grocery shrink ray" approach to it, and just give you less content the same price.

The sneaky ones might drop it to $90/month, and call it "passing on the savings".

But cutting a $100 monthly bill in half? When there's an entire customer base conditioned to sending them $100/month? What major corporation is going to give up that if they don't absolutely have to?

I am convinced that the price per channel would go up if everyone was able to purchase channels a la carte.

Of course it would. The cable/satellite providers aren't going to allow the average monthly bill to decrease. In fact, they'd be more apt to use any subscription model change as a means to ratchet up the monthly billing.

They schedule a deskside visit to fix your hardware and you end up covered in monkey shit and banana peels.

You mean they actually show up, eventually? That *is* impressive. Comcast should hire some of those monkeys...

Sure, the most important law of robotics is to protect human life... but if it's going to prioritize, it should probably start with its owner.

Unless the owner is a lawyer and/or politician. In which case, in the interest of protecting human life, it should aim for the nearest solid object as soon as it reaches highway speed.

With a key, you switch it to 1 and can run accessories. You switch it to 2 and the ignition computer is powered. Switch and hold it to 3 and you crank. You decide exactly how to start your engine.

With my wife's hybrid, pressing the button with your foot off the brake turns on accessories. Press the button with your foot on the brake "turns on" the engine. IC engine ignition, obviously, isn't under the manual control of the driver, but otherwise it's not that different from a conventional car.

So: Drive is the file manager, Docs is for word processing documents, and Sheets is for spreadsheets.

It makes even more sense to decouple them when you consider another (now Google) product, Quickoffice.

What this lawsuit requests is that operators of other search engines be allowed to pay phone makers and carriers to make a particular search provider the default on a particular make and model.

So, like the "HTC First"?

Makers and carriers are fundamentally mercenaries. They'll do what will make them money. I suspect the real problem that Microsoft (who I assume is funding this lawsuit) has is that aren't able or willing to pay what it'd take to sufficiently compensate a phone maker to produce and market to carriers something along the lines of a "Samsung Galaxy S5 Bing Edition".

Without seeing how it works on the tough woods I can't tell how useful this new axe would be.

Pretty much my feeling. Straight grained woods like maple, poplar, birch, etc are relatively easy to split by hand. Splitting fibrous woods like cherry or elm without a sledge and wedge is an exercise in frustration, and I suspect the added rotation would do some serious damage to the wrist; it's bad enough having a maul bounce back in a straight line.

They stated that they prefer a known corrupt leadership to an entitled leadership.

They stated that they prefer a known corrupt leadership that will keep the gravy train flowing to a known corrupt leadership that's going to do their damndest to cut if off entirely.