Some updates about this blog

Long overdue.

The comment setting is switched to "anyone" which means you can leave comments as "anonymous". However, you are encouraged to get an openID, which will make commenting easier and communication more fluid. If you have a google or Yahoo ID, you already have the openID, you just need to sign in to it. To require openID is to prevent Spam.

I've also been experimenting with the "sphere related content". Sphere is a new search engine said to be content based and intelligent. It gives you links to related blogs and article. More things to read if you find something you are interested. So far, I find it works ad hoc, unless it's a hot topic, and not working at all for Chinese language posts.

This blog, as a blogspot site, is currently available in China. But there is no telling if and when the accessibility will be interrupted by the government, with "the great firewalls of China", although many big companies especially foreign one do not subject to this restriction. It's mostly a nuance, since you can always go around it with a proxy. And if you use firefox (btw, isn't firefox3 lightening quick?), you can always get a proxy add-on.

Also, you can use the translator on the right column. But always be aware the peril of machine translation.

Lastly, for some amusement, the top google keyword to reach this blog is actually for image search - hooters. And I can tell you it was from all over the world. Who would have thunk it?

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Have a case against hypocracy? Google will help

In a review of some of the keywords related to China in 2008, you'll likely to find words like: internet, privacy, moral, Runaway Fan, and and his self-proclaimed crusade against hypocrisy, among others. Now let's switch gear. Here is an interesting case in the U.S. where juries will try to decide whether sexually explicit material is obscene.

In the trial of a pornographic Web site operator, the defense plans to show that residents of Pensacola are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.”

residents...are more likely to use Google to search for terms like “orgy” than for “apple pie” or “watermelon.”

In other words, the defense is trying to use google search to show people are really, alas, hypocrites. To achieve this, they need to intrude into people's privacy, i.e., the google search subpoena. Pure genius.

Granted, defense has still many bars to hurdle. For example, how to pick the controlling "common terms"? How to compare the popularity of sexually explicit searches versus the more benign searches? Do you aggregate them? “Orgy” or "group sex" may be the top search hit, at the same time a very small percentage of all other guilt-free hits. Then you have to worry about the distribution of hits among residents to know how representative of a community those hits are.

Chinese internet users are certainly no strangers to hypocrisy and internet, they long understand the difference in behavior when anonymously online - the so-called internet mob mentality - and offline. But notes to Chinese Fans, The U.S. is a far more conservative, if you wish, country than China, socially or legally. Such a case while may provide occasional boon to police coffer would most likely be ignored in China. And we would lose chance to see such ingenious defense. Maybe the crusaders should pay more attention to google to get the real scoop.

Watch out. Google will shred your hypocrisy.

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