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Showing posts from May, 2014

Mark Cuban, and the Difference Between Racism and Common Sense

So Mark Cuban is being criticized for some comments  he made recently, tangentially related to the Donald Sterling controversy. Essentially, what Cuban said is that he would be cautious around people he perceived as potentially dangerous, and that perception could be based on many factors: area, race, clothing, tattoos, general appearance, etc. Then he characterized those perceptions as based on stereotypes... which is true, in a certain sense. In another sense, though, we might call that behavior by another characterization: common sense. People (as well as animals in general) have evolved to be cautious of things they perceive as potentially dangerous, and for good reason. Dangerous things threaten us, and it would be foolish to ignore potential signs of danger, or wander through life intentionally ignorant of your perceptions of your environment, and the people and things in it. You wouldn't wander across a busy freeway, intentionally ignoring the cars whizzing by in some absu...

Google and the EU: The Right to be Forgotten

So there was an EU court ruling recently, in which google lost an appeal to remove links to someone's information which was deemed to be "out of date". Without getting into the specifics of the case or the ruling (both of which were dumb), the aftermath raises a few interesting points. Among them: how should google comply with the ruling, and what should google do to prepare for similar future rulings in other jurisdictions. One publication, for example, suggested that google should modify its core search algorithm to generate results which were more compliant with the EU court rulings. I think that idea is absurd and unworkable, and I have a better idea for them. See, one of the problems google faces with complying with this ruling is the verification issue. Not only is verification of "outdated" data time consuming and expensive, but its also highly subjective. However, since fines in the EU can run as high as 5% of gross revenue per day , non-compliance is...