... When I first saw the article, I searched for "Alfaques camping" (camping is the spanish word for campsite, as well as quite a few other languages) on a "pure" Firefox install that I *only* use for compatibility (always in Incognito mode). The business' website was the first answer, and on the right hand side there was a map and five/six pictures of the campsite as it is *today*. I'm in France, so perhaps that affected the search, but my experience is quite simply the opposite of yours.

Sure the pictures of the accident, including photos of what seem to be charred corpses are also "above the fold" (I can't remember if they were 2nd or if they were 3rd and the wiki article about the disaster was 2nd). But given that it's the most important thing that has happened to the campsite ever, I'm not surprised. Hell, it even got a film 9 years ago.

*You* might want "slashdut", *I* am fine with Google suggesting answers for "slashdot" and offering me the option to cancel the correction. If Google didn't go beyond the very limited input you provide it, most searches would be tedious and unproductive. If you type in Tchernobyl, should Google not serve up a single result that mentions the nuclear plant nor nuclear disaster? I mean, after all, you're implying that if I *wanted* to know about the Tchernobyl disaster, I'd have appended "nuclear plant meltdown and graphite fire" to my initial search. The only results should be "current" or "up-to-date"... So what exactly should Google return for my initial search? The weather, a few websites that offer visits of the exclusion zone, perhaps the relevant tourist information bureau, the wikipedia article for the town... And that's it? What about articles in newspapers talking about the effects of the nuclear plant disaster? What about blog posts people made of visiting Tchernobyl where they talk extensively about the disaster?

I find the campsite's complaint understandable, but not valid. Sure, they don't want potential customers to be put off by the graphic images they are likely to see when searching for the campsite on Google. But that does not make it valid, even if they had nothing to do with the disaster. They had the opportunity in 1978 (or since) of suing the newspapers for calling the accident "El accidente del camping de Los Alfaques", something they declined to do. They were compensated by the transport company following court orders, and I assume part of that compensation was for brand/reputation damage. They are now asking for materials of public record to be made harder to find in order to facilitate their business. Effectively, this is asking the courts to be compensated a second time for the same event. In 1983, the courts decided that the campsite was the victim and that their business had been damaged, and awarded them compensation for lost business/brand value. Today, the campsite wants the courts to force other businesses to change how they operate to accommodate them. Understandable, but not valid.

Wikipedia's article and the photos in no way obstruct the view of the campsite's web-site. Yes, they are also present, but they are not limiting the view to people making absurdly precise search (which would be the equivalent of people being "not one door away"). If one searches for "Alfaquez", the campsite is still amongst the top views (1st for me, even in a "clean" copy of Firefox in incognito mode, despite Firefox not being my primary browser). Google isn't putting anything "on [their] lawn", as their website & metadata are completely clean. I even get a map and photos of the campsite today on the right hand side of the results if I search for "camping alfaquez". If anything, Google is doing the appropriate thing and giving me data that benefits the campsite, at no cost to them.

I can't really see the validity of the analogy between signs. The "biggest sign" (1st result) is still the campsite's. They're just pissed off that a smaller sign to the side, one that people can't help but see when they look at the set of signs, is of something unpleasant. Regarding the analogy I made, you've just shown that it was completely absurd to suggest that w77 could force me to "hide" my business. Sure, if I'm not in compliance with building code, etc. then the urban authority can take me to task. But as an individual business, unless w77 can prove I'm doing something illegal, there is nothing preventing me from setting up a business that sells photos of my kid's murder. Exclusively. Even if I lose money each year.

This is an interesting discussion, but I quite simply can't see how one can give free reign to a company to erase history, even when it's not their fault. Alfacs camping got paid money by the transport company. Perhaps they should have sued the Spanish newspapers for calling the disaster after the campsite? Perhaps they should change their name? Simply put, asking for history to be hidden isn't something I'm in favour of. If the ruling is that Google has to remove all references to the Alfaques disaster for the search queries "Alfaques", "camping alfaques", "alfacs", "holiday alfaques", and whatever other variations the campsite owners can imagine, then that's a great cost for society to bear. If someone wishes to know something about the disaster, they then have much more limited access to this information. Whilst I am aware of the slippery slope fallacy, it seems in a certain respect valid here. This campsite can claim that the disaster wasn't caused by them, that the search queries for people looking for the disaster can easily include "leak", "explosion", "disaster", etc. and that the burden is on the person looking for the information to make it clear they're looking for the disaster rather than a holiday. But what about cases where responsibility is harder to determine? What about cases that aren't 30 years old, but 20, 10 or 5? What about cases where the qualifiers required by the person looking for negative information become too few and too uncommon for someone who doesn't know about the event to be able to access it?

If I set up my business across the street from the site of the accident, I'm effectively doing the "defamation" you're claiming in person. If someone comes to his business, they have to see my memorial. They can still go to his business, just like they can still click through on the Google search page. I'm not talking about using their brand, but just using the fact that customers are likely to see my memorial and the facts I present if they wish to engage in business with webnut77. For all intents and purposes, I can genuinely not give a damn about webnut77's business (I just happened to be able to buy the place across the street to build my memorial), its location means webnut77's potential customers will see the facts I present. Should he be entitled to shut down my memorial (or have me build a "shop front" that hides the memorial from view in the street) because the facts I present might make some customers feel uneasy and therefore not patronise his business?

So if my child was the one killed in front of webnut77's business, you'd argue that I cannot purchase the store across the road and set up a museum/mausoleum dedicated to my child, with a large banner in the window saying "across the road from here, in front of webnut77's business, my child was brutally stabbed to death"? Can I petition the city to replace a piece of pavement with a plaque honouring my child's death? If I create an association aimed at preventing child murder, can I name it the address designated by the law as my child's place of death? If I maintain a website that has material dedicated to my child's murder, do I have to be "prevented" from being on the first page of Google's results unless there's the word "murder" or a variant thereof in the query? It's not defamation to point out facts. The campsite is very unlucky that the name that caught on for the accident was that of the campsite. Perhaps they should have sued the media back then to get them to call it the "N-340 km159" disaster. The fact remains that 217 people died and 200 others were severely burnt, most of which were residing in that campsite. Asking for that to be "forgotten" is IMO ridiculous and extremely dangerous, since it opens up the door to whitewashing history. "That food poisoning accident we had a few years ago because of unsanitary practices? Don't worry about it, we've changed ownership." "That boat that capsized in Italy? That was a whole month ago! Google's insistence on bringing it up in searches about us is damaging our business."

So the best option is Lotus Notes, blocking Facebook and Gmail, as well as not allowing for Skype and Live Messenger installs?

I turned down a job with a big IT consulting company exactly because of that line of thought. I'm under-25, I had a very good first contract with them, but there was no way I was going to dick around losing ages each day because the company's IT system was so locked-down nobody really used it. 20Mb e-mail storage on server? My job involved collaborating on client presentations and analysis... receiving 4-5 10Mb reports in a day wasn't something rare, so I had to check pretty much constantly that I had transferred all my e-mails to local storage. Rather than enhancing my productivity, Lotus Notes completely threw my habits (I usually use Gmail, so tags, extensions and search are how I usually keep track of things) and I realised very quickly that few people in the company used anything else than the e-mail client -- I tried the integrated instant communication tool Sametime, there were not even 20 people in the entire company online, out of over 8000. Conference calls had to be placed through the company's Cisco system, which was good, except when something went wrong, and then nobody (not even the IT people) knew how to trouble-shoot it. "Just send an e-mail to Cisco explaining your problem, and in the meanwhile, use a colleague's ident to log in".

The IT department certainly had very good reasons for limiting access to some tools and resources (SOX, etc.), but it reached a point where combined with a corporate culture that generally rejected "not developed here" solutions, it meant that the tools we were using required various passwords -- no two tools could use the same login-pw combo, and each one had to be changed every two weeks, and couldn't be the same as any of the last 4 pws; so naturally either people were writing down their passwords, or they were forgetting them every few weeks and going through IT to get them re-set -- didn't really do anything, and worst of all, weren't used. Working with 5 other people on a customer document didn't involve having a central place to "dump" related documents, have a visible chat with other team members about the project, and keep the latest version of the document. On the contrary, it involved massive 6-way e-mail chains, where you had to dig through the entire archive you stored locally to find the related documents that had been sent, and the client document always had 3 or 4 "current" versions, as at one point or another, several people were working on local copies based on the version in different e-mails.

I didn't mind too much that I couldn't use my phone. I can get over that. But when the main tool I'm supposed to be using is crippled, it doesn't make me want to come to work each morning, no matter how interesting the job is in itself.

P.S. Before the job in question, I interned in a Chinese company where the "official" internal communications program was QQ. Main advantage? Everyone was always on it.

"Better yet, rather than testing the student with the question and just getting a boolean pass/fail - the teacher should ask the pupil around their thought processes when they look at the problem - "talk me through it". "

This is actually -partly- how it is done in France. During mandatory education, there are no standardized tests with multiple choice answers, and calculators were (I don't know if it's still the case) generally not allowed. Most tests consisted of 10 to 20 questions, of which a quarter or a third were obvious direct applications of what had been learnt "(47*75)/25=?", then most of the remaining part of the test involved putting these numbers in situation "Jane has 47 cows..." where the student had to determine what signs to use, as well as what information provided was relevant to solving the question. The last part of the test would be slightly more complex, asking students to build upon what they know and show understanding of more general rules "Jane wishes to know how many cows she should sell in order to make the most money...".

Each questions is not to be answered merely by a number, but the method of solving should be provided to the corrector/teacher. This can involve writing what the student is doing in mathematical notation or in plain writing. Part of the "credit" is for showing understanding of the method, although this is often only the case for the intermediary and advanced questions, whilst the basic questions are boolean right/wrong. This means that the teacher can point out where in the reasoning the student made a mistake, and judge if it was inattention or a mistake in understanding the question rather than in the actual mathematical process (i.e. a student who at one point mis-copies a 8 as a 9 can still be awarded full credit if the method used is correct, and had the copying error not occured, the correct answer provided).

However, I don't know if this has increased mathematical literacy in French youth compared to other countries.

For the first example, I did it in a similar manner : 47 is close to 50, and 75 is 3/4 of 100. 50 times 100 is 5000, three quarters of 5000 is 3750 (trivial because 4*1000+4*250 = 4000+1000), and since your dividing by more than 4, it can't be anything but the smallest answer. It's not as elegant, but if I'd re-written it in proper notation (with the divisor underneath), I'd have done it like you did. Again, how a question is written changes how you answer it.

I'm still flummoxed at how the person in the article has a friend who has two Master's degrees, is going towards a doctorate, and can't do basic maths like this... with a calculator.

There's an app for that!

Pretty sure the Groupon sales rep didn't, and even discouraged her from taking up that option saying that if the deal was limited to too few customers they wouldn't run it.

Sadly, Groupon doesn't care about the businesses that run the deals. As they continue to burn through their goodwill, promising "exposure" to a "new audience" that never translates into long-term sales increases, they'll eventually find it harder to con businesses into stupid deals. About that time, their stock will tank and they'll go bankrupt, exposing them for the Ponzi scheme they are.

Sadly, I believe he'd have probably have been turned in, since Sulzberger Jr. doesn't pack it like daddy did.

I wonder if all the people that call for Manning to wallow in prison believe that systematic and massive overclassification is conducive to proper democratic process in this country, and if they therefore believe that Ellsberg should share his shackles.

Isn't that why the Genius Bar was invented in the first place?

Cue "organic" and "wholesome" varieties of in-vitro meat that were cultured in "fair trade" nutrient mediums.