Unpredictable. Unfocused. Just like life.

In the view of a Canadian "Human Rights" Commission's former longtime investigator, when faced with a person with who he clearly and vehemently disagrees:

What benefit can there be in allowing him to speak?

Apparently in Canada the right to speak exists at the whim of "human rights" commissions that answer to nobody. Rights for some, but not for others.

Via small dead animals.

In an article in my local paper about potentially deceptive "green" labels, I caught the following quote:

"Consumers need to weed out the truth, but consumers are also pressed for time,'' said St. Jacques. "So the best advice is to shop locally whenever you can. That way you keep the profits in your own community rather than shipping them off to head office somewhere in the U.S. It also means you can have a dialogue with the store owner and really know if the business is green or just greenwashing.'' [emphasis mine]

Yes, because all local companies are good while all head offices in the US are inherently evil.And an article about deceptive marketing has become an article about where the profits go, as opposed to how to weed out the truth about green-ness. If the products are not deceptive, why does it matter where the profits go?

That wasn't the best part though. This was my favorite:

With the "alternative land use services'' concept, farmers, who own large swaths of land, can produce environmental products such as clean air, greenhouse gas reductions and clean water to protect fish, wildlife and pastoral landscapes on top of the crops they grow -- and be paid for it.

Farmers can now actually produce clear air and water - though I'm not sure how anyone can do that - and get paid for it.

There is no shortage of places to read about lies told by Dalton McGuinty, Premier or Ontario, Canada. But I could kick myself for not writing down my prediction about the property tax assessment not even two years ago.

April 22, 2006 in the Ottawa Citizen (responding to an Ombudsman's report [PDF] on the credibility crisis of the Municipal Property Tax Assessment Corporation):

I'll fix property tax system, premier vows

McGuinty says government is 'seized' with fixing problem, but it will take 'some time'

June 30, 2006 in The Globe and Mail (deferring the problem until after an election):

TORONTO — The Ontario government is freezing property tax assessments for the next two years, all but guaranteeing that the controversy surrounding homeowners' skyrocketing tax bills will not become an issue during next year's election campaign.

Ontario Finance Minister Greg Sorbara announced yesterday the cancellation of tax reassessments for 2006 and 2007 to give the embattled agency that assesses residential property values enough "breathing space" to overhaul the system. He said he expects the Municipal Property Assessment Corp. can implement the changes by 2009.

March 23, 2007 in the National Post (I wrote about it too):

The McGuinty Liberals yesterday introduced changes to the province's much-maligned property tax system, slowing the pace of assessments to every four years in a move labelled by some as insignificant.

[...]

Beginning in 2009, annual assessments will be scrapped and will instead occur every four years. Rate increases would be phased in slowly over four years. Decreases would apply immediately.

Today in The Globe and Mail (safely past the election):

Double-digit jumps in assessments and resulting property tax increases are going to stun some homeowners this year, the president of the Toronto Real Estate Board warned yesterday, as a provincial freeze on new property assessments nears its end.

And from CityNews:

"You have to wait to see your assessment," explained City Budget Chief Councillor Shelley Carroll. "We're a bit surprised because the current value assessment system is unfair. That's why it was frozen in the first place. The freeze seems to be lifted without any improvement. [emphasis mine]

Lie before the election, get elected, then go about business as usual. Sounds familiar. Could've seen that one coming a mile away.

The IFPI (Europe's RIAA), having failed to stop music downloading through every other avenue, is now pushing the problem on to ISPs, saying that ”Copyright theft has been allowed to run rampant on their networks under the guise of technological advancement".

The IFPI claims that P2P is a huge problem, choking the bandwidth of ISPs using the ridiculous argument that the infrastructure is collapsing, and they want those ISPs to filter that content.

They note that legal digital downloads grew 53% last year and album downloads grew by over 40%, for a total of $2.9 billion in sales, an increase of 40% year over year. But I guess that isn't enough for them.

Strangely, if they got their wish and every single download was legal, that would choke the bandwidth even more. I suppose it isn't a problem them as long as the cash is flowing in.

Digital downloads have near zero cost - there are no manufacturing, shipping, or inventory costs and the artists are paid a fraction of what they are for a physical CD - yet the record companies still charge 99 cents for a download. So the only motive can be greed.

If I were them I would just shut up about the whole thing and be happy that any money is still rolling in because pretty soon artists are going to realize that they don't need a record company anymore.

In general, over time the performance of technology increases, while the costs of that technology decrease. Except when it comes to telecom/cable providers.

Rogers, a Canadian cable company, is raising their rates across the board:

Rogers, for example, will be raising prices for three of seven high-speed packages - claiming the new rates are being introduced “so we can continue to bring you improvements through innovation, now and in the future”. (Rogers is also raising the price for many of its cable packages, while increasing the “system access fee” for its telephone service by more than 30% to $5.95/month from $4.50.)

The costs never seem to decrease, even though the cable plant probably hasn't seen much change. I'm not sure what they consider innovation either, because the only new things they've introduced are traffic shaping and bandwidth caps, which save them money and do nothing positive for me.

I wonder too why the mobile phone rates never drop either. Is it possible that these companies are just greedy?

I can remember when we paid ridiculously steep prices for long distance service. Then we saw some competition and magically the prices dropped. Perhaps a little competition in this area might help.

They must be if they need to charge me $20 to get five applications (that came free with the iPhone) for my iPod touch. You know, the one I just got for Christmas.

I really like Apple products, but is this any way to treat your customers? Especially given how loyal those customers are?

Time Warner is going to start charging by the byte so to speak for internet usage:

Time Warner Cable this week said it will move away from the “buffet” model of broadband and start experimenting with a “metered” model. The cable operator is rolling out a trial program in Beaumont, Texas, in which customers will be charged based on the amount of bandwidth they use.

Of course this will put the US even further behind in broadband adoption while countries such as Japan have no problem providing speeds in excess of 100Mbps for less.

Though I predict that when Time Warner decides to provide their own TV/movie/content delivery service there will suddenly be plenty of bandwidth for every paying subscriber.

Tim Wu thinks that AT&T's proposal to filter content is crazy based on the fact that it opens them up to all kinds of potential litigation:

Here's the kicker: To maintain that immunity, AT&T must transmit data "without selection of the material by the service provider" and "without modification of its content." Once AT&T gets in the business of picking and choosing what content travels over its network, while the law is not entirely clear, it runs a serious risk of losing its all-important immunity. An Internet provider voluntarily giving up copyright immunity is like an astronaut on the moon taking off his space suit. As the world's largest gatekeeper, AT&T would immediately become the world's largest target for copyright infringement lawsuits.

He also thinks this might be there way to avoid net neutrality:

It may be that AT&T so hates being under the current network neutrality mandate that it sees fighting piracy as a way to begin treating some content differently than others—discriminating—in a politically acceptable way.

I would have another concern. How does AT&T judge whether the content that is being sent is legal or not? How does it know the difference between a movie I purchased on iTunes versus one on YouTube? How does it know that CBS didn't intentionally put an episode of CSI on YouTube? What if I'm watching hulu.com?

Will there pick and choose based on the source website? What happens if a new company licences content for distribution?

Does that mean that every new video company must ask permission from AT&T to operate? And AT&T now gets to pick the winners and losers?

Even if I had the tiniest bit of faith that AT&T could get this right, I would still be very concerned about them essentially controlling what happens on the internet.

According to the National Post:

This week, the (Canadian) federal government announced that Parks Canada, the NAC and TSO have reached an agreement to explore the possibility of building the amphitheatre on a stretch of property in Niagara-on-the Lake, Ont.

The ever-present consultant's report suggested that the best location was Niagara-on-the-Lake because, among other things:

There are already a number of wineries, food producers, hotels, high-end restaurants and theatre (the Shaw Festival) in the region. They also figured there are about 70 million people within driving distance. [emphasis mine]

Now Niagara-on-the-Lake is a pretty place. I grew up about 10 minutes away from it. But it's about 90 minutes from Toronto, Canada's largest city, and several hours from the closest major American city. I am not counting Buffalo as a major American city.

So where exactly are these 70 million people? Let's just call that about one-third of the population of Canada PLUS one-fifth of the population of the US.

Driving distance to me means how far I would drive to go somewhere for the day. Anything beyond a five hour drive doesn't seem to qualify as driving distance.

Then again, I'm sure they justified the whole project by saying "just imagine if 1% of those 70 million people came".

This study does suggest that the Niagara Region sees millions of overnight visitors annually, but I still think that 70 million is overdoing it a bit.

For some reason yesterday I encountered a number of completely ridiculous situations but none beat the discussion I has when I went to get a new license plate sticker.

The clerk looked at my ownership and said "It's not signed. That's a $110 fine.". Then she noticed it was and said "No, you're ok."

When I asked how I was supposed to know that she said that the police would inform me when they gave me the $110 ticket. When I told her that I was unaware of the requirement, given that it says nothing of the kind anywhere on the ownership slip, she told me that the police feel that ignorance of the law is no excuse.

An internet search on this turned up nothing either.

So basically, If you don't sign your ownership, even though there is absolutely know way you could know that you have to, the police will issue you a $110 ticket and then tell you about a law that you didn't know about.

Yeah, that seems fair.

Frustrated Tim Horton's employees have created a Facebook group to give customers the rules for ordering:

"This is for everyone who gets fed up with people who don't know what they want, and for workers who have to put up with this every day. If people would just listen to these rules when ordering, the world will be a better place," writes Janice Morgan, who identifies herself as the administrator of one group called Tim Hortons Rules of Ordering and More that has some 3,400 members.

The 80 or so rules spell out how to make your visit to Tim's more efficient. "When you want a coffee with no sugar, do not say 'no sugar.' It sounds like you're saying 'one sugar.' "

"If you don't say you want anything in your coffee don't expect to get anything in it, we can't read your mind" and "Stop telling us to 'stir it well' there is no button on the cash register for that."

No button on the cash register for that?

It used to be that service companies like Tim Horton's provided customer service. If they are looking for exact science from customers ordering coffee they are in the wrong business. And these employees aren't exactly pleasant either, given rules like this one:

- ordering drinks so that you need more then one tray. Get off you butt and come in the store! If you are truly that lazy maybe you should make your own coffee at home.

Maybe they should make their own coffee at home and save the employees the trouble.Oh wait, isn't that why they have jobs?

Why is it that Starbucks understands this so clearly that my every experience there is excellent, even without 80 rules?

Much like Radiohead, Trent Reznor offered a new album online as both a free version and a $5 higher quality version. Now he is upset that only 18.3% chose to pay for it.

Why is this surprising? He offered a free version. If the quality was acceptable then why not download that version?

Radiohead merely asked fans to pay what they felt the album was worth; they didn't offer a free version.

Trent notes that nothing was spent on marketing:

Keep in mind not one cent was spent on marketing this record. The only marketing was Saul and myself talking as loudly as we could to anybody that would listen.

But that's not true. The marketing cost is the $5 per copy for the 81.7% of the people who didn't pay for it. They are listening to it - the basic equivalent of free radio airplay. If they like it they might buy more, or at least tell their friends about it. And they might pay to buy a ticket to a live performance. Isn't that the real goal? And an 18.3% royalty dwarfs what a record company would have offered the artist.

By the way, I would have loved to comment on the CNet story about this, but I'm not going to register just to add my thoughts.

TechCrunch and Mathew Ingram have more on the music tax aspect of this story.

According to Science Daily, 2008 is likely to be one of the top ten warmest years. So you would think it was going to be warmer, right? Not so fast:

These cyclical influences can mask underlying warming trends with Prof. Phil Jones, Director of the Climatic Research Unit, University of East Anglia, saying: "The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years (and that 2007 did not break the record warmth set on 1998) does not mean that global warming has gone away. What matters is the underlying rate of warming - the period 2001-2007 with an average of 0.44 °C above the 1961-90 average was 0.21 °C warmer than corresponding values for the period 1991-2000."

So why does this prediction sound so familiar? Ah yes, the BBC said pretty much the same thing last year about 2007:

An extended warming period, resulting from an El Nino weather event in the Pacific Ocean, will probably push up global temperatures, experts forecast.

They say there is a 60% chance that the average surface temperature will match or exceed the current record from 1998.

As the Boston Globe notes, that didn't happen: Given the number of worldwide cold events, it is no surprise that 2007 didn't turn out to be the warmest ever. In fact, 2007's global temperature was essentially the same as that in 2006 - and 2005, and 2004, and every year back to 2001. The record set in 1998 has not been surpassed. For nearly a decade now, there has been no global warming. Even though atmospheric carbon dioxide continues to accumulate - it's up about 4 percent since 1998 - the global mean temperature has remained flat. That raises some obvious questions about the theory that CO2 is the cause of climate change.

If you read too quickly you might have missed a key point though:

The fact that 2008 is forecast to be cooler than any of the last seven years (and that 2007 did not break the record warmth set on 1998) does not mean that global warming has gone away. [emphasis mine]

So while it may be one of the ten warmest years, 2008 will be cooler. But that headline wouldn't leave the politically correct image I suppose.

Ok, I just can't hold back any longer though I'm sure that you never thought that you'd be reading about Britney Spears here.

Honestly, is there nothing that family does that isn't calculated for maximum media impact?

Let's see... if you think your daughter might have a mental problem would you call a licensed psychiatrist... or a TV personality like Dr. Phil (though he does have a psychology degree)?I guess that depends on whether you want to solve her problem, or increase your media coverage.

And then you're surprised when he releases a statement.

I love this quote from Gizmodo:

Digital picture frames are the worst gadget out there, tacky garbage that I can't imagine anyone would ever buy. But they do! These companies are all putting them out because you people are buying them by the truckload! They're essentially little flat-panel TVs with no tuners and a crappy frame wrapped around them. They then sit there, sucking up energy 24 hours a day, ruining our environment and making your living room look like the Fox News studio on the slowest news day in history.

Hey, my pictures are just not that good. But at least I'm willing to admit it.

Economists can't predict recessions.

From CNN:

Economic forecasters, in fact, are very bad at predicting recessions. At any given moment, they can't tell you with much certainty whether a recession will begin next quarter, let alone next year. Right now, for instance, there's abundant evidence that the economy is slowing down but no guarantee that it will achieve the so-called soft landing (a slowdown, with lower inflation, followed by renewed expansion) instead of slipping into recession. Hardly any forecasters warn of an imminent downturn, but the truth is that when the next one comes, they probably won't see it until it has already begun. To work the weather analogy one last time, it's as though weatherpersons could tell you whether it was going to rain only hours after the rain had started.

From the Chicago Tribune:

Because the U.S. economy is astonishingly complex and subject to many variables, economists can't predict recessions. They can't even say for certain one is under way until months after it has begun.

From the Huffington Post:

Economists can't pinpoint recessions without the benefit of hindsight, and most usually start while economists are still predicting that we won't have one.

So why do they insist on claiming that they can?

From the Financial Times:

Wall Street stocks retreated again on Wednesday after Goldman Sachs forecast that the US economy would fall into a recession this year, compounding investor concerns about the near-term outlook for equities.

From the CBC:

Canada's economic growth will slow down this year, but will avoid a recession, top economists at Canada's biggest banks agreed Wednesday.

I understand the point about indicators, but it's all just a guess at best.

Though I wish someone could explain to me why even though 75% of Canada's exports go to the US, Canada is completely unaffected by US recessions.

In the New York Times, John Tierney talks about "availability entrepreneurs", those people who selectively interpret some weather as evidence of global warming, yet ignore contradictory evidence:

Today’s interpreters of the weather are what social scientists call availability entrepreneurs: the activists, journalists and publicity-savvy scientists who selectively monitor the globe looking for newsworthy evidence of a new form of sinfulness, burning fossil fuels.

A year ago, British meteorologists made headlines predicting that the buildup of greenhouse gases would help make 2007 the hottest year on record. At year’s end, even though the British scientists reported the global temperature average was not a new record — it was actually lower than any year since 2001 — the BBC confidently proclaimed, “2007 Data Confirms Warming Trend.”

He provides several examples of this bias, all well worth a read.

Via Fighting for Taxpayers.

Link Byfield of the Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy coins a new kind of logical argument:

Down the fading hallways of memory I recall from school that there are in logic several kinds of argument: argument by evidence (very good), argument by authority (weaker), argumentum ad hominem (attacking the man, completely invalid), etc.

To these I propose we add “argumentum ab hysteria.”

Argument by hysteria is all around us. “Unless we shut down free speech minorities will be attacked!” “Unless we pay a carbon tax the planet will die!” “Unless we ban every last trace of second-hand smoke in public, children could die!” “Unless we ban guns people will die!”

Never mind that the evidence for all these things ranges from sketchy to nil. It’s the induced fear – the pictures and self-righteous sermons – that clinch it.

Tip of the hat to Jason Hayes.

Yes they are a $16 billion dollar company, but this is the company that owned the photocopier market and lost it. They created the mouse and the graphical user interface among numerous other things and failed to capitalize on them.

If you aren't in the document printing - err, document management - market, then when was the last time you heard of Xerox?Is a new logo going to suddenly make them relevant again?

Can you even recall what the old logo looked like?

According to the Toronto Star:

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have to accept carbon taxes or other charges on greenhouse gases if his government is to have any hope of meeting its climate-change targets.

That is the main message from a blue-ribbon panel on the environment asked by the federal Conservatives to assess their long-term strategy for cutting greenhouse gas emissions.

I've never understood the correlation here.I suppose the thinking is that if industry has to pay through the nose they might cut back on carbon emissions.

Of course the truth is that they'll just pass along the increased cost to consumers:

The report acknowledges there will be "pain" for Canadians as fossil fuels are slapped with a tax based on their carbon content. That could mean a 50 per cent increase in electricity costs, a 60 per cent jump in natural gas costs and a doubling of gas prices by 2050, the report predicts.

You can tax emissions all you want but I doubt that will reduce emissions one bit.

These reports are always quick to suggest raising taxes, yet never provide the slightest suggestion as to how much emissions will actually be reduced as a result. They'll just shovel all that extra cash into new bureaucracies. And as if by magic Canadians will now voluntarily do what they wouldn't do before:

And the report also makes clear that it expects higher costs to pressure Canadians to do more to conserve energy, by retrofitting homes and switching to more fuel-efficient cars. As a result, the report says overall energy costs could fall by 15 per cent for the average household, despite the higher prices.

small dead animals comments as well, and has a poll so that you can provide your thoughts.

Why is it that whenever a government agency studies a problem, the solution is always more taxes combined with hopes and prayers?

Fighting for Taxpayers has a series of posts about municipal property taxes. They make an excellent point: Budgeting in the real world is about limitations. No one creates a household budget with new vehicles, vacations and maid service and then determines what salary their employer must pay them each year to make it all work. Taxpaying households have a limited budget to work with each year, and so should municipal governments. Other levels of government are giving tax breaks. Why not here?

Waterloo, where I liveis going to limit the property tax increase to only 3.61% this year, as if they were doing citizens some great favor, even though the rate of inflation is only 2.5%. They also approved an increase of 14% in water and sewer rates. This after an increase of almost 25% in the past four years.

Kitchener, the next town over, is planning a 6.4% increase.

These increases are calculated on top of increased property assessments, providing a windfall for these cities. Yet rather than try to live within their means they constantly tax and spend more, building new buildings rather than maintaining existing infrastructure. Local councils complain that to maintain infrastructure would require them to raise taxes, conveniently forgetting the millions in funding from federal gas taxes, $9 million in 2006 alone.Where has that money gone?

When will local politicians consider living within their means, instead of drawing up wishlists and giving in to every special interest group, then telling citizens that they'll just have to cough up more?

I hear constantly that our cities must grow and prosper, but this won't mean a thing if the existing roads and bridges crumble. And a start would be taking the millions we are already getting to maintain infrastructure and actually spend it to maintain infrastructure.

Maybe it's time for a Proposition 2.5. Any increase in property taxes beyond 2.5% would required approval by referendum. That might keep politicians under control since they seem unwilling or unable to do so themselves.

I've disabled my comments temporarily. I'm just tired of the comment spam. It's pointless, and the worst part of blogging.

I'm pretty tired of hearing people say how much more expensive Macs are than PCs. They are simply comparing the purchase price. Sure you can by a PC laptop running Windows for about $700, while a similar MacBook would set you back about $1300.

I did just that a couple of years ago. I paid that premium for a Mac laptop. My two sons switched to Macs as well, but my wife continued to use a Dell PC. And every day since then our Macs just work. They run flawlessly every day. When we install software, it just works. When we connect hardware, it just works. We don't get viruses. And our computers look cool too.

Last week I spent an hour unsuccessfully trying to help my father install a modem in his Windows PC.Windows would not recognize the modem - which should be dead simple after 20 years of use - and would not allow us to manually configure it.

Today I bought a new HP OfficeJet 6310 networked printer/scanner/copier/fax. About a minute after I inserted the CD I was printing and scanning over the network from the Mac. Yet I'm going on about three hours - THAT'S THREE HOURS - attempting to install the same software on a Dell laptop, again unsuccessfully.

Three hours to install a printer driver.

Yeah you save few bucks when you buy your machine. Then you suffer every time you try to do anything.

I spent a little more to buy quality. And my MacBook just works.

Of course it's amazing that people who might understand the value in buying a well built automobile that lasts they 3-5 years feel the need to buy the cheapest PC even though they probably expect that to last 2-3 years as well.

I would love it if my toaster had a web site with a constantly updated status to tell me that my toast was done.

It would be even better if it would Twitter to me when it was ready. Right now I have to depend on hearing the click in the kitchen, which is all the way across the foyer from my office. So low tech.

I've seen some entertaining thoughts in the past few hours related to the issue of Robert Scoble attempting unsuccessfully to take "his" data out of Facebook.

Paul Buchheit wonders if Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail should ban Facebook: So the question is, should Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail block Facebook (or close the accounts of anyone who uses Facebook's "friend finder") for violating their Terms of Use?

I can see Paul's point about the letter of the law, but I personally entered that information into those services, and they provide an export mechanism for my contact information, so I should be able to use it. I already use an automated service with Gmail that they clearly allow - Thunderbird gets my Gmail via POP3.

At any rate, the contact information was already mine, and I probably could just retype it in to the next service, but Google probably just imported it themselves from somewhere else anyway.

However, the situation with Facebook is quite different. Neither Robert Scoble or you or I ever entered our contact data into Facebook. We allowed Facebook to compare our list of email addresses to their list of email addresses and highlight the matches. They already had the data; we didn't give them anything new. Since we didn't enter any data, then how can it be said that we own any data?

After that we may have just friended people or had them friend us, which again does not grant us any right to the data outside of Facebook. You do own your list of friends though, which Facebook does allow you to extract - though without personal information such as email addresses, but then we already had that information in the first place.

The social graph that Robert was trying to extract doesn't belong to him. It is merely a benefit that he gets from using the Facebook service.One that clearly benefits many users of Facebook or they wouldn't be using the service.

That's the current state of affairs, but it doesn't mean that I agree with it. Scott Karp thinks that the next war on the web will be fought over the ownership of data. Dave Winer thinks that Facebook is at a tipping point here:

So Facebook has the opportunity to be a crossover company, part of the next generation -- or a last gasp of the generation that's about to run out of gas. It's their choice.

I agree. You should own your data, and you should be able to control what you share and what you don't in a granular fashion.

Though I doubt that this is really such a big deal for the average user. They are happy in the Facebook world and aren't really thinking about what happens when they leave. As Mark Evans notes, Facebook has just become mainstream:

So what’s going on, and does is suggest anything other than the people who embraced Facebook early have just grown tired of it, and moved on to the next exciting thing - be it Twitter, Seesmic, etc.?

It probably means nothing. It’s likely just a sign that Facebook has moved into the mainstream while those ahead of the pack are already ready to move on.

But expecting a company like Facebook, whose valuation is solely based on the data they have and control, to change just because you've now decided that the Terms of Use you agreed to no longer suit you is a bit like closing the barn door after the horse is already loose.

If that were the case then Google could just create a totally open Facebook clone with complete data portability based on ad revenue alone and everyone would flock to it. Though it may be too late for that now.

I have a Facebook account, but I don't keep personal information there and I don't depend on it to maintain my contact information. If you have concerns about your data, then you shouldn't either.

Robert Scoble's Facebook account was disabled today (only to be later turned back on) because he ran a script that scraped their site and therefore violated their Terms if Use. He knew what he was doing:

I am working with a company to move my social graph to other places and that isn’t allowable under Facebook’s terms of service.

And he broke these terms of use:

In addition, you agree not to use the Service or the Site to:

* harvest or collect email addresses or other contact information of other users from the Service or the Site by electronic or other means for the purposes of sending unsolicited emails or other unsolicited communications;

* use the Service or the Site in any unlawful manner or in any other manner that could damage, disable, overburden or impair the Site;

* use automated scripts to collect information from or otherwise interact with the Service or the Site;

Nick Carr gets it right:

Facebook has an obligation to protect the data entrusted to it by its members. At the very least, members should have the right to decide whether or not their personal information can be scraped out of the Facebook database. Scoble did not give them that choice. That doesn't mean that Facebook is the hero. It, like other social networks, happily scrapes information from members' email accounts to identify possible new members. Facebook will scrape when it suits its commercial interest but will block scraping when it doesn't. Still, in this particular case, Facebook did what it needed to do: protect the information and the interests of its members. Until controls are in place, unauthorized scraping of other members' personal information shouldn't be allowed.

Mathew Ingram asks who the data belongs to:

The big question here — which the Scobleizer has cleverly put himself at the centre of — is: Who does that data belong to? It might have been collected and organized in the way it has because of Facebook’s tools, and he obviously agreed to the terms of use that he has since broken, but there’s no question that the information itself should belong to Scoble (and the rest of us). So what rights should he have when it comes to removing that data from a site like Facebook? And who gets to decide?

Facebook's Terms of Use is pretty clear; the data belongs to them:

All content on the Site and available through the Service, including designs, text, graphics, pictures, video, information, applications, software, music, sound and other files, and their selection and arrangement (the "Site Content"), are the proprietary property of the Company, its users or its licensors with all rights reserved. No Site Content may be modified, copied, distributed, framed, reproduced, republished, downloaded, displayed, posted, transmitted, or sold in any form or by any means, in whole or in part, without the Company's prior written permission, except that the foregoing does not apply to your own User Content (as defined below) that you legally post on the Site.

Robert's contacts' information does not belong to him; it belongs to his contacts.In fact, the only information that belongs to him is the list contact names that he already had and may have imported to determine if those contacts were also Facebook users. Friending someone in Facebook let's you see their information - it does not grant you the license to use it somewhere else. Dare Obasanjo makes this point also.

Yes it would be great if Facebook let you take that information away in some portable format. But they don't. And we all knew that when we signed up for the service, and for as long as we continue to use the service.

But please don't claim to be the victim when you break the rules you agreed to and the service you are using kicks you off.

I guess the alarmist global warming/climate change hue and cry isn't having its intended effect. Perhaps that's because science and reality seem to be contradicting the scare tactics.

Whatever the reason, I've started to notice a different rallying cry of late. The was even a video by a science teacher from Independence, Oregon, and just a couple of days ago my local paper printed it almost verbatim in an editorial:

How much more evidence do you need? And isn't it better to do something even if the warnings about climate change are overstated, than to do nothing to stop global warming and risk stumbling into a first-rate, full-blown global catastrophe?

Now we do purchase insurance in case of catastrophic events, so on its face this makes sense. So yes, it might be good to do something, and some folks do. We turn our thermostats down. We drive less. We wash the dishes by hand. We turn off lights we aren't using.

But these statements are always predicated on a "full-blown global catastophe". Just a really scary line with nothing more specific. And the people warning us about the catastrophe, such as Al Gore, have no plans to do anything such as change their lifestyle in any way.

Furthermore, the proposed solutions always seem to involve taxes and carbon trading. There are just money transfers that do absolutely nothing to resolve the problem if there is one. The occasional talk of actually cutting emissions centers purely on a few developed countries, regardless of where the emissions actually come from.

The statement above is a wedge; it convinces you that maybe we should do a little bit just in case. Then once we start we should do a little more. Then a little more. Well you should anyway, because the people that are warning you about it are too important to do so.

Today's paper had an even more questionable message:

As for the charge that global warming is science fiction, the fact that delegates from nearly 190 countries met in Bali last month to confront climate change should silence the skeptics. If the governments of virtually every country in the world can't agree exactly what to do about this crisis, they at least concur that it exists and demands urgent, comprehensive action.

Is the fact that people from 190 countries wanted to take a free tropical vacation at this time in the year now accepted as proof that global warming is real? Bali seemed to be all about chastizing North American countries. After all, it isn't about 190 countries cuttiing emissions; it's all about a few developed countries cutting emissions, regardless of the effect globally.

I especially love reading biased statements such as this one:

Despite assurances that it will cut emissions by 20 per cent by 2020, the government of Prime Minister Stephen Harper has failed to provide either a credible action plan or the moral leadership needed to enlist 33 million Canadians in a national initiative that will be as all-encompassing as fighting a war.

The Conservatives should, in short order, show that they can lead on climate change -- or make way for a party that can.

Neglecting of course to mention that a previous government made a similar claim then did nothing - for 10 years. Will that government be running on their record?

Perhaps both of these governments realize something the media fail to grasp; that people like to appear concerned about the environment, but that concern fades pretty quickly once it hits you directly in the wallet. And regardless of how bit a hit to the wallet, global warming won't change in the slightest.

Wait. Of course global warming will change. Climate is constantly changing, and it always will be. We should certainly endeavor to treat our planet well. But buying carbon credits and throwing money arbitrarily at the problem does nothing to improve the situation.

Last night just after midnight our friends, my wife, and I were trying to phone or text family and we hit a message we hadn't seen before. Network overload.

This could be a result of the fact that Canada has passed 60% wireless penetration, or about 19.3 million wireless subscribers, and the network is just not provisioned for peak demand, but it is certainly something I've never seen in over 20 years of wireless usage.