My response was to make fun of this man who is national treasure:

1. Ron MacLean jumps into the Delaware river to save a man while Don Cherry stands on shore and signals rescue aircraft with his jacket.
2. Ron MacLean was able to rescue that guy because he is used to working with dead weight.
3. Ron MacLean was able to be cool under pressure because he’s used to working with the man beside him complaining that he’s running out of time.
4. Run MacLean asked the man he pulled out of the river in Philadelphia if he received a “brotherly shove”. The man asked to be thrown back.
5. Run MacLean saved this mans life, but he was trying to take his life. Bud Selig, commissioner of Major League Baseball, has ruled “too bad” he still has to die.

Matt McKeon has created an excellent “Evolution of Privacy on Facebook” infographic. It’s a great demonstration of how what was a great private place to share information surreptitiously became a tool for selling your information to marketers and disclosing your private information to the entire Internet.

The Evolution of Facebook Privacy on MattMckeon.com

It is worth noting that Matt McKeon’s infographic assumes a user has left their privacy settings at the default.  If you go through the 50 settings with more than 170 options you can eventually configure your Facebook privacy to be more like 2006.  The New York Times has their own infographic to explain these settings:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html

If you haven’t been there yet I highly recommend MP Dan McTeague’s “Tomorrow’s Gas Prices Today” web site. It delivers what it promises based on a formula that factors in today’s closing price for bulk gas on the New York exchange and projects tomorrow’s price.

–Updated Friday; March 12, 2010
The site even provides an RSS feed of the prices (featured above)!

If you have a phone with a mobile browser I recommend bookmarking either the web site or one of the RSS feeds. You could even use that RSS feed and a service like RSSFWD to forward that information to your E-Mail (or Blackberry, etc.)

If Brock University’s back on the Internet it’s probably fixed, but if not then there’s probably still now power at Brock University.

It’s official, as of 12:48:

Due to a power outage affecting portions of the Niagara Region,
Brock University is closed and classes are cancelled for Wednesday,
January 21.

All other campus programs, events and activities are also cancelled.
It is expected that the university will reopen on Thursday, January 22
at 7am.

Listen to local radio stations or watch www.BrockU.CA for updates.

For those who would like to meet Sid Ryan, I know he will be at Brock University on Friday to talk about CUPE’s “Unbottle It! – Kick the bottle. Tap into public drinking water.” campaign and speaking with the local membership. I would encourage anyone who wants to speak with Sid Ryan and Maude Barlow about the commercialization and commoditification of a natural resource they are welcome to do so Friday evening. If you want to take issue with Mr. Ryan’s comments about Israel I suggest you contact CUPE 4207 about when that can be done (and not confuse the two events).

I have no issue with the commendation of Isreal’s disproportional reaction to Hamas rockets, and I have no problems with CUPE’s previous or future condemnations of Israel’s treatment of Palestine, but threats to make anyone denounce anything as a condition of employment is not something I want to be associated with. Gratefully, CUPE Ontario has clarified/stepped back from this position but it’s my hope this doesn’t even make it to the May 27-30^th CUPE Ontario convention — but if it does I know I’ll be interested in making sure it is not adopted.

With the Canadian GP now off the FIA calender for 2009 and Abu Dhabi, a race that is owned by Bernie Ecclestone, now joining the schedule have this comment to share:

Go to hell Bernie Ecclestone.

It took almost a full year to mount your challenge for the the number one spot, but you finally achieved it this week. Many asked if you were too young for this role, many asked if the world was not ready to give the number one spot to a black man, but you proved them wrong.

Your determination and willingness to fight right to the very end demonstrated your innate skill; skill that was evident from when you first appeared on the scene a few years ago. The only thing that is regrettable is that your victory means that your chief opponent, who was very deserving himself, is denied the victory that he too had worked so hard for.

This is why I send my most sincere congratulations to you, Lewis Hamilton, the 2008 Formula 1 Champion!

Thanks for the imagepaulwoolrich

Everyone at Brock University would love it if you could make a donation at: http://my.e2rm.com/TeamPage.aspx?EventID=15008&LangPref=en-CA&TeamID=84330

Its simple way to make a big impact and save lives.

www.spreadthenet.org” width=”380″ height=”71″ border=”0″ />

Additionally, I will NOT be buying the Rogers iPhone on July 11th after previously calling it the best devices ever made. The only way to affect change in the Canadian cell phone market is to resist it. Sorry Rogers, you ruined the iPhone.

I’m often just as apt to do it, but it fascinates me how different people interpret the same vents differently. Remember your semiotics, all meaning is negotiated!

Your article doesn’t make clear how refusal to pay for something and then not using it (in this case the Hockey Song) is anti-copyright? I thought it had something to do with payment/permission for use and no use without it – the CBC’s not even trying to argue a fair use/fair dealing situation.

Unless the only thing copyright stands for is paying people, and if that’s the case then I submit that its in fact you who’ve fallen into the “kid downloading an MP3 mindset”.

In any case, thanks for contributing to the public dialogue.

I did forget to divulge my conflict of interest: mattclare.ca/wordpress/2008/05/31/i-won-tfc-tickets/

Ironically, the op-ed posting on the educational exceptions of Bill C-611, Straw in the wind: the mindset behind C-61, is bang on.

Thus concludes post 500.

Want to send Grandma a DVD (OK, maybe play for her a DVD) of the latest baby pictures with your favourite Beatles songs in the background? If Canada’s proposed update to copyright law makes it into law it will result in a $500 fine for Grandma and a $20,000 fine for Mom and Dad! The only saving grace is baby might be able to extract $20,000 from Grandma if she screened the DVD for her knitting circle.

This is one of the many individual uses that generally considered fair use (dealing) in Canada that is being attacked by bill C-61, the proposed amendments to Canada’s Copyright Act.

Canadians will have to consider every time they press play: “will this cost me $20,000?”

This bill is about protecting or creating failed business models and it is anti-consumer, anti-innovation, does little for actual artists (rarely the actual rights holder), circumvents the market and tramples on fair use/fair dealing while ensuring rights holders are entitled to extra revenue for content they’ve already sold to consumers transferring play-back devices.

The same government that refuses to change the rules to protect Canadians when circumstances change are apparently willing to protect largely American owned rights-holders when circumstances change for them. Canadian consumers worried about unfair prices when the Canadian dollar overtook the American dollar ignored, Canadian workers in the finance minister’s home riding can’t even get a visit from their MP when their contract was violated, but when technology makes it hard for companies to enforce unreasonable contract restrictions the Harper government offers up a federal law to remove rights from Canadians.

On the surface the bill’s set fines for private use infringement aren’t unreasonable, as theft should not be tolerated and Canada need not make itself a land where it is. What makes the fines etc. unreasonable is the amount of use restrictions and rights that are removed by this bill that make simple acts like watching a DVD from Europe or Japan illegal.

Restrictions on un-locking mobile phones (to be used on other carriers at home or abroad) , that consumers may own outright, are very anti-competitive and anti-consumer. Other provisions, like those for education, are laughable: Librarians can distribute electronic materials, but must ensure that the use of those materials not extend beyond five days — I know librarians who have trouble removing things from their own computers, let alone remote ones. In fact, the bill would likely be better without the education exemptions because it just makes the current confusing situation even more so; would this bill take supersede any distribution agreements? (Agreements that use a lot of words to answer the re-use question with no or, yes but you can’t afford it).

For these reasons and more I’ve already E-Mailed Minister Prentice and asked him to reconsider his proposals in the interest of fair use/fair dealing. I encourage you to do the same! I’m working on a collection of concerns using them to program a daily E-Mail to the minister and others.

Here are somethings you can do:

P.S:

1. That CBC screen-shot below: illegal. \/
2. My local MP Garth Turner made some speculation about what the C-61 press conference might have cost

Credit to Giulia for spotting it.

There were 10 total issues raised in the reexamination request covering all 44 of the claims in the Blackboard patent. The process isn’t over, and the patent is technically still valid, but it is very unlikely that it’ll cover much at all when it’s all over. As I’ve always said, Blackboard might have invented some things, but not everything to do with on-line learning.

My favourite quote (as it often does) come from Eben Moglen “… the education community should be pleased to hear that Blackboard has now been deprived of the opportunity to commit more ‘thuggery’”.

For want of a tenth of a liter they cut out the Honda Fit, a very eco-friendly car. Apparently they’ve given-up and instead pledged research money ( www.autoblog.com ) I like to encourage eco-friendly cars, but as I pointed out in my blog posting when it came out (Conservative auto rebate plan affront to nature and market), I don’t think the PC’s want to be known for distorting the make.

Here’s hopping the re-purposed $250 million pledged to the auto industry for the development and research of environmentally-friendly technologies will be more effective.

If you love cars or just appreciate a great laugh, the current Emmey-Award winning BBC show is best summed-up as:

Reviews and creative testing automotive issues presented by an expert panel that are in fact, idiots.

Recently I mentioned to Lindsay that I was thinking of running for our condo-board president on a platform of being the first socialist condo board and doubling our condo fees in order to start a local daycare and to use one of our homes as a homeless shelter. That campaign has yet to begin.

Despite my own plans, I like this North Toronto Collegiate Institute plan. The specifications for the condos were drafted by the communities involved then given to Tridel (not argued over after it was proposed by the developer); the new school will not be named after Tridel and there is no other synergistic nomenclature in use, and the TDSB will continue to build new schools that only meet the highest standards for energy use.

The government should be building schools and can’t abdicate this role to the private sector, but this is a good move. Real estate, education, health and safety, city planning, etc. all converge on the issue of building schools and their is no single solution and assuming that the money to build schools can only come from one source does not reflect the complexity of the issue.

This plan is good for central Toronto and demonstrates that the TDSB is creative, reasonable and not full of ideologues. I can only assume this demonstrates the best meaning of “running government like a business” (as opposed to its most common meaning: “I don’t care how crapy things get, I’m not paying my taxes”).

When it comes time to rebuild the next school let no level of government suggest that the TDSB is not worthy of more funds because they clearly put more thought into what to do with their funds then those that refuse to hand it out do into their denials.