Get a Clue, Google

Jury Duty Although I am instructed to check to see if I need to report for jury duty every day last week, it turns out that I only need to go to the court house on Wednesday. The entire day is jury selection for a civil trial about a wine maker suing a wine distributor, or the other way around. I can’t remember who is suing whom, but equally uninteresting. There are about over 100 people are assembled to be selected as the jury for this trial. I don’t know how the 20 some people are called up and sit in the box, then the lawyers from both sides start to ask (sometimes very personal) questions one by one, while the rest of us sitting around listening. The suing attorney is pretty bad, and I think I can do better than he! I wonder why his client has not fired him yet if the client wants to seek five million dollars in damage from the defendant. What a wasting of time due to some rich people’s greed for getting richer by suing some other rich people! Totally absurd. I think even I were called to be among those 20 some people, I would be excused quickly because I already had a strong opinion about it. Finally there are 15 some people left as the jury who will go back to the court for about 10 days (we were told this should be a short trial), and I am so glad that I don’t have to be part of it. It’s fascinating to see all walks of live come to one court room and subject to the same question and get ready to judge the same people. Although I am not happy about allegations like this which eats away government resources and wastes so many people’s time by listening non-sense questions from the lawyers, the process is not always dull without entertainment. Everybody is giggling when one lady says she isn’t sure about her son’s age, either 37 or 38. Another gentlemen said he only knew his sons have jobs, but not sure what they do. Isn’t it interesting that how little some people know about their own family members? A New Great Wall on the Internet Will Fail When I close out my vacation days from last year, I learn that I have too many vacations days left from last year, 34 days. Since only 20 days can be carried over to this year, I must use up 14 days before the end of the March. Otherwise, I will lose them. Therefore, the idea of traveling to China for Chinese New Year gets revived again. Would I be able to find the tickets? Will see. Speaking of China, I have been annoyed by Chinese government’s absurd practice of blocking internet access to many Web domains and contents. The Great Wall didn’t protect China, only helped China to become a closed society and fell behind the rest of the world. In the end, Chinese people suffered from the foreign invasions, and the Great Wall becomes a symbol of human suffering and a tourist sight to remind us the unflattering history. We are now living in the 21-century and an electronic age. What are these Chinese politicians thinking when they are trying to build a Great Wall around China on the internet? Are they out of their mind? Can they see that will never work? It’s a losing battle just like the war on terrorism. I understand that stability is extremely important to China. It’s a fundamental condition for China to prosper and to continue its economical growth. However, stability needs to be achieved from within, not by forced upon from the authority. Otherwise, the society can only become a pressure cooker, and sooner or later, it will explode. When that happens, stability will disappear completely. I am very disappointed that Chinese government doesn’t get this and continue to block Web sites around the globe. I hope Chinese government soon can wake up and lift the ban on Web sites. I have been a supporter for greater freedom for people in China to access information through the internet. Google’s Offensive "Suggestions" The latest development regarding this issue, as we all already know, is that Google threatens to leave China blaming Chinese government performing cyber attack to Google’s service. I don’t buy it. I think this is Google’s publicity stunt when they cannot make much progress gaining market share and make more money in China. Isn’t Google claiming that it has smart employees working on various products? If whoever can hack into Google’s system, that means Google fails. So what? Fix it, and move on. After the Pentagon suffered cyber attack, they didn’t leave the internet, did they? ZDNet‘s Editor in Chief Larry Dignan gives excellent insight about this that I cannot agree any more. He is so right about Google’s bluffing, now Google denies leaving China. However, besides Google cries like a baby, it tweaks its "search suggestions" to take a cheap shot not to the Chinese government, but to the Chinese people. If anybody tells me that this is not a human manipulated results, but purely based on internet users’ naive search usage, then he should take a break from the internet and gain some senses. But, do I have any proof that Google is behind this? Of course not. However, here is why I think this is done by some "nerds" inside Google. The behavior fits the "profile" when Google "plays around" on their homepage. Google hides subtle pranks in items that appear normal. You might not notice that it’s a prank unless you are observant and diligent. It’s too easy to manipulate the ranks of the list of the suggested items after the phrase "Chinese people." If one can access the data, he can easily pick up a few offensive terms and bump their ranking by various methods, if not directly manipulate the data by hand. The search frequency of the first item on the suggested list has been steadily flat in the past, until last week in January, which reflect the moment when Google and Chinese government’s dispute becomes public. It shows clearly from this graph generated by Google’s Insights for Search. This is simply juvenile and pothetic. If this is all Google can come up with in light of the fight with Chinese government, I must have over-estimated Google entirely. Does Google think providing such an offensive suggestions about Chinese people will help them gaining more market share or any support? However, supposedly that I am completely wrong about this (I sincerely hope so), supposedly that this is completely done by some morons playing tricks on Google’s search engine and nothing to do with Google, then why hasn’t Google issue any apology about this yet? If Google can issue an apology to one photo about the First Lady, I think Google can apologize to over one billion Chinese people. Wait, maybe no quite that many Chinese people, and I just replaced Google search with something else in my Firefox’s search bar. Get a clue, Google.