Oh, this one is for the ‘neat’ files!!!
Abraham Lincoln tried to patent – unsuccessfully – a hardcopy version of what we now know as ‘Facebook’: from the profile picture, to likes, updates and ‘sharing’ all the way to who can see how much of the profile.
Which, of course, begs a gaggle of questions: starting with ‘If Abe Lincoln was denied a patent – why is the Zuckerbaby’s one valid?’
Bloggers can make a difference!
Perhaps not all bloggers get results like this, but then again, not all bloggers are like BCF!!!
He’s been on the trail of Toronto Madrassas and school cafeteria Mosques: documenting and tracing connections. Perhaps it is not surprising that his tenacious labours are bearing fruit:
‘FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 7, 2012The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs Denounces Antisemitic Elements in Toronto Madrassah’s Curriculum
Toronto, ON – It was recently brought to the attention of The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs that curriculum issued by the Toronto-based East End Madrassah contains antisemitic themes. In particular, the Level 8 curriculum document, which is publicly available on the Madrassah’s website, equates the beliefs of Judaism with Nazism and claims that “treacherous Jews” had “conspired to kill Prophet Muhammad”.
“Using religion to promote hatred among youth is not just offensive and abhorrent – it shows a stunning disregard for Canada’s basic values of decency and tolerance. Canadians of all backgrounds would be outraged to learn that horrific conspiracy theories are included in this curriculum, including the blood libel that Jews plotted to kill Muhammad,” said David Spiro, Greater Toronto Co-Chair of The Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, the advocacy arm of Canadian Jewish Federations.
“Such slurs against the Jewish community violate the values that Canadians hold dear – such as goodwill and mutual respect. Instead of promoting such values, this curriculum only serves to promote animosity, racism, and hatred. Given that the Madrassah conducts classes at David & Mary Thompson Collegiate, we will be bringing this to the attention of the Toronto District School Board to ensure that public property is not used to advance racist agendas,” said Sheldon Goodman, Greater Toronto Co-Chair of the Centre.‘
For the background, please, click here.
I have said this often – and in many ways.
I have lamented the disconnect that exists between the people who fight for civil liberties in general and freedom of speech in particular and those who are battling the copyright trolls and those hardly audible voices that are trying to raise alarm about the abuse of patent laws.
Part of the problem – in my never-humble-opinion is that each of these groups comes from a completely different sphere of interest/infuence and, for all practical purposes, from different cultures.
They do not dress alike.
They do not follow the same trends in popular culture.
They do not agree on what ‘societal norms’ are today.
They do not read the same news sources.
And – perhaps most importantly – they do not use language the same way: not only do they not use the same words to express themselves, when they do use ‘common’ words, they do not use them in the same sense.
Example: when Canadian Free Speech acvocate Ezra Levant was being sued for defamation by an HRC troll by the name of Vigna, one of the ‘defamatory’ statements was that Mr. Levant accused Mr. Vigna of ‘hacking’. The judge then started a bit of a lengthy discussion about what does the term ‘hacking’ really mean: the consensus – undisputed by Mr. Levant’s sounsel – was that ‘hacking’ implies an illegal act!
Sitting in the audience, I came close to screaming out: it does no such thing!!!
‘Hacking’ simply means ‘an innovative use of existing code/coding’!
I can easily say that I ‘hacked together’ a new app from bits of code I had from before: no illegal activiy implied! Sure, many people can use hacking for illegal purposes, but ‘cracking a problem’ is not the same as ‘cracking a safe’ – so the word ‘cracking’ does not, in itself, have illegal connotations.
Same with ‘hacking’.
BTW: Mr. Levant was found to have defamed Mr. Vigna for saying he had ‘hacked’ something…
No wonder that the first two groups (civil libertarians/free speachers and anti-copyright-people) as ureasonable and weird… (The last group is perhaps less distasteful to each of the first two, but, being mostly scientists, they are just not that great at communicating just how dire the situation really is….they are trained to overcome problems – not bitch about them: so, that is what they do. Which does not mean the problem is not there and is not desctroying our way of life!)
So, why is the message not resonating?
Perhaps this following article articulates this very point a little bit better than I ever could:
‘At this point in the discussion, the copyright industry will complain that they only take action for the illegal bitpatterns found, and that there is no infraction on the right to legal communications. And in doing so, they put themselves in the exact same spot as the old East German Stasi, which also steamed open all letters sent in the mail – but only took action on those with illegal content, just like the copyright industry describes as their preferred scenario. Stasi, too, sorted legal from illegal, and left the legal alone.’
And that is exactly what the copyright industry is demanding: decrypt and check all the communication, permit the legal bits through and hand the rest over to law-enforcement agencies!
Please, consider the following court ruling in the UK: All UK ISPs are now compelled to block access to Pirate Bay.
Please, c
onsider what is necessary to accomplish this: each and every bit of communication has to be decrypted, analyzed and then either permitted to pass through or not.
That means that a private company not only has the right – it is compelled to – read each and every single email everyone sends.
What do they do with the information they receive in this manner? The ruling does not bother itself with such mundane details….
WTF?!?!?!?
Sorry – please, insert the worst invectives of your choice here….
Because in a very real sense, this does indeed mean the end of private speech on the internet and the end of anonymous speech on the internet.
And let’s not forget our not-so-distant history: anonymous speach is the cornerstone of liberty!
Without anonymous speach, there would be no Federalist Papers.
Without anonymous speach, there would be no way to overthrow tyrants.
No wonder those who want to hold power will use any pretext that presents itself in order to eliminate private communication and anonymous speech!!!
Which is a good reminder: only 19 more days till the 3rd annual Draw Muhammad Day!
It will take place on May 20th, 2012.
This year, I have read, people will try to make it a Twitter-event.
I will be publishing a special post for Draw Muhammad day. It will include a short video of actual pious Islamic depictions of Muhammad throughout the ages, proving the current lie that depicting him is offensive and an insult to both Islam and to Muslims.
In addition, I will be publishing Mohammed cartoons created especially for the occassion. If you’d like to submit one of you own works for inclusion on this day, please, leave a comment and I will get in touch with you.
UPDATE: This is why we must continue to draw, post and exhibit cartoons of Muhammad.
Hey, that’s just like in Ender’s Game – you know, that award-winning, classic sci-fi novel for youth that a teachecher in North Carolina got suspended for reading from to students? (OK – you don’t learn about the chip in the clothing that tracks the students’ every movement until book 2 in the series, Ender’s Shadow, but you get the picture…)
In February 2006, he drove to his ex-wife’s home and shot her new husband 24 times – in self defense!!!
Where were all the politicians then, who are now so upset about people being shot in self-defense?!?!?
How do you even shoot somebody 24 times -with a gun and bullets, not ‘shoot with a camera’ – and have the gall to call this ‘self defense’?
Well, officer Lloyd did just that – but did not really get into trouble over it.
Now, working for a different police department in the Chicago area, officer Lloyd is in trouble again – it seems he had beaten up a teenager for having an untucked shirt…
Oh, yeah, he is also accused of raping a woman while smothering her with a pillow…
Gee, with cops like these, who needs bad laws?
This is the problem with ‘scaling up’: something necessarily gets lost in the process.
I recall when the Canadian government was ‘standardizing’ their IM/IT infrastructure, implementings seamless inter-operability and portability and other optimization measures: the result was that the whole system was now monolithic, with the necessary loss of flexibility and adaptability to specific, perhaps non-typical applications.
But it gets worse: the only vendors who could service this behemoth were those who were bundling and re-selling ‘the one big solution’. No independant little companies with clever, efficient and cost-effective solutions for particular applications could possibly penetrate this marketplace.
It got even worse: when employees, burdened by the monolithic ‘optimized’ system would write their own bits of code to add back the functionality their specific little segment needed, but which was lost due to this stadardization, they were not celebrated as innovators – they were punished as rogues and ‘not team players’ and, eventually, this sort of innovative initiative had been completely stamped out of our Federal civil service.
This predictably depressing – but important to read nonetheless – article in Washington Monthly shows how this process had occurred in the US, as hospitals strove to optimize their purchasing practices: they had ‘optimized’ them to such a level that now, highly superior products that would save lives – but which come from small innovators – have little or no chance to even enter the market, much less succeed in it.
‘ … Edward Goodman, the hospital’s director of infection control, wrote a letter to the purchasing department, saying Shaw’s product was “essential to the safety and health of our employees, staff and patients.” But Shaw soon learned that the enthusiasm of health care workers was not enough to gain him entrée; the hospital initially promised him a contract, only to back out three months later. Though he didn’t realize it at the time, Shaw had just stumbled into the path of a juggernaut. ‘
…
‘… One of the first witnesses was California entrepreneur Joe Kiani, who had invented a machine to monitor blood-oxygen levels. Unlike other similar devices, Kiani’s worked even when patients moved around or had little blood flowing to their extremities, a crucial innovation for treating sickly, premature infants, who tend to squirm and need to be monitored constantly for oxygen saturation—too little and they suffocate, too much and they go blind. But most hospitals couldn’t buy Kiani’s product because his larger rival, Nellcor, had cut a deal with the GPOs. ‘ (Note: GPO’s are the ‘purchasing optimization’ which has now gridlocked the hospitals, preventing them from purchasing better, safer and cheaper equipment.)
It also highlights something that ought to be a ‘no-brainer’, but that seems to be a mystery to our law-makers: exempting anyone – ANYONE – from anti-trust, anti-racketeering and similar legislation is destructive and will end badly, no matter how noble the motivations may be.
‘Then, in 1986 Congress passed a bill exempting GPOs from the anti-kickback provisions embedded in Medicare law. This meant that instead of collecting membership dues, GPOs could collect “fees”—in other industries they might be called kickbacks or bribes—from suppliers in the form of a share of sales revenue.’
‘…But, as with many well-intended laws, the shift had some ground-shaking unintended consequences. Most importantly, it turned the incentives for GPOs upside down. Instead of being tied to the dues paid by members, GPOs’ revenues were now tied to the profits of the suppliers they were supposed to be pressing for lower prices. This created an incentive to cater to the sellers rather than to the buyers—to big companies like Becton Dickinson rather than to member hospitals.’
The article is long – but important and we should heed its message!
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