PWN Squadron...?

Further up the discussion, people were complaining about this ruling censoring the public record... and now your suggestion is that we should be going back and rewriting historical documents. That seems far more censorious to me.

Google is suppose to rank pages by relevance. The European ruling was that Google was returning hits that are not relevant.

Only in a handful of cases. I'm sure I said some things on Usenet way back when that would really embarass me if they ever bubbled up to the top of the search results. I'm sure I used some very un-PC terminology about homosexuals in my younger years, and while I am ashamed of my younger intolerance, there really would be nothing to gain from publically shaming me now. I am reformed. I am no longer homophobic. So yeah... If any such comments ever started appearing at the top of the search results, I'd certainly want to get the struck off the index.

Probably something to do with children. Like maybe they gave up on fertility treatment and adopted, and don't want the kid to think he/she was "second choice".

That's exactly what right-to-be-forgotten should be about -- stopping little embarassing moments defining you in other people's eyes.

That's a question for the law of the land and is based on the severity of the crime and bakancing the desire for rehabilitation of offenders against fear of recedivism. Every country has its own laws on the disclosure of criminal offences, and these laws are carefully considered to achieve balance.

Now imagine if you googled your name, and you found that 6 years ago, someone from your hometown, who shares your name and approximate age had gone on a spree of sexual violence and murder fueled by illicit drugs. None of the articles had a photo of the offender. Would you want the article delisted, or would you be standing up for people's right to ostracise you in order to protect the safety of "potential victims"? (See also common Arabic names and the US no-fly list.)

Google is not a dumb index -- Google is a collection of cutting edge data-mining and artificial intelligence algorithms designed to provide data that is of direct relevance to the user's query. That is Google's job.

The European ruling was not about the deletion of information, it was a point about the relevance of information. A spent conviction is legally considered irrelevant, except in certain careers (particularly working with children) and therefore shouldn't be something that Google's algorithm returns. The immediate result was a headache for Google as they were flooded with requests, but this no doubt had an effect on their page ranking, increasing the bias towards recent information (fewer old hits should mean fewer right-to-be-forgotten requests in the long term).

As the internet gets older and bigger, Google's approach to search is starting to look too simple anyway. I can remember when I could find anything I wanted with a few clicks, but now the search resilts are full of amateur "Me too" pages, and the pages with the real information are lost in the noise. When I want to find old stuff I'm often crowded out with new stuff, and vice versa.

In future we will need to return tomore structured search, with date filtering etc to get any useful data out of our systems.

Which is why there are provisions to remove someone's right to practice for crimes affecting their profession. And it's the government's business to ensure that happens. If you think that in your jurisdiction the government isn't doing enough to disqualify fraudulent accountants, campaign for changes in the law.

... which is where the government comes in. Acting on an individual level, emotions override logic, and we need someone to take a detached overview to prevent a descent into mob justice.

You can find them if you want. The point of "right to be forgotten" is that in the pre-Google days, you had to go to the library and actively hunt down historical information. It is still easier to go to the BBC website and search their news archives from the comfort of your own home than it ever was to check the 1960s archives of The Times --the information is still very easy to find if you're specifically looking for it. It just makes it harder to stumble across by accident.

Maybe you believe that no good person ever has anything to hide... but then why post AC....?

His post also uses illegal, and Uber is de facto illegal almost everywhere, because there are laws regulating transport for hire that Uber doesn't respect. The other poster was saying that libertarians view the moral argument as overriding the legal one.

They already had legislated -- as I understand it, the demonstration was against the fact that the law wasn't being applied. Regulation may not be your preferred free market solution, but where regulation exists, it's only fair that it's applied equally.

Modern France is not 18th century France! You might as well be disappointed that they have no emoire any more.... France regulates it's industry very successfuly, and while it's not the world's strongest economy, it has been remarkably stable. One of their strengths is that thte regulation has prevented competition becoming a race to the bottom, so when markets change, there's more give-and-take in the system.

...which is surely a problem for everyone...?

Labour laws exist to serve the principle of an honesty day's pay for an honest day's work. If we allow certain parties to engage in commercial activity but excuse them from labour laws nased on "it's not their main source of income", then we're back on the race to the bottom, even as we're just finally getting rid of unpaid internships.

It's just French for "big launcher".

Do electrosensitives react differently to recieving electric shocks than other people? If not, induced electric shocks are irrelevant to the question at hand.

The atmospheric conditions feel distinctive, but it's a stretch to state categorically that what you are feeling is the charge. What you're detecting could be the combination of fairly particular heat, humidity and air-pressure.