Judge Oscar Magi: No Internet in MY country!

Some people just don't get it. They want to treat Google as a "traditional" media company, because it publishes things made by non-media professionals. So it's supposed to edit and censor everything people put on its sites. Like this here column.

Italian Judge Oscar Magi says Google executives didn't take down an offensive posting fast enough. It was up for two months, but Google says it took it down two hours after being informed it was there.

The New York Times implies that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi may influence such attitudes because he's also Italy's biggest media mogul and does not want the competition.

Poor Italians.

So we're supposed to treat Google like any other media company? Let's see, traditional media companies may have a staff of a couple hundred professionals, all of whose work goes through editors and, if there's any question, the lawyers.

The stuff on Google's sites are produced by a couple billion non-professionals without sending it through any editing steps. These days, Google gets ONE BILLION YouTube postings a day.

Monitoring THAT will keep Sergey pretty busy!

I know! Maybe Judge Magi is counting on the AI supercomputer Google is hiding under the Slice cafe in building 40 on its Mountain View campus! It could fast-forward through all those videos and pull the offensive ones off immediately.

After a day of going through one billion amateur videos, the GoogleAISupercomputer, named Cal, was asked what he thought of that job. His response was, "Huh? Wha- ? Sorry, must've dozed off."

Judge Magi gets a seven on the stupid meter.

San Francisco's Chris Daly: Save prisoners, not police!

San Francisco Supervisor Chris Daly is worried about at least one of his constituencies: imprisoned criminals.

According to the SF Chronicle, he voted against an earthquake-safety bond measure because it will relocate the police from a seismically unsafe structure, but not prisoners.

"I care more about the people at the jail, the people who are there involuntarily, ... than I do about the rest of the people" at the police station, he said. And, added, "These are San Franciscans, my constituents..."

Sure, the prisons need to be upgraded as well, but when money is tight, can't we at least get started on the upgrades? And let's see, which part should we start with? Oh, yeah, let's save those prisoners who, after all, are there "involuntarily," as opposed to police and court workers, who are only there because they voluntarily choose to have a job there.

That's a four on the dumb meter.