Barrel Strength

A scoop by Forbes magazine or idle conspiracy making?

As much as I tried to pin [CIA director Leon] Panetta down on who the culprits were, he wouldn’t name names, but indirectly hinted that the main hacker-in-chief was China. This comes on the heels of General Wesley Clark’s admission that the Chinese cleaned out the web connected mainframes at both the Pentagon and the State Department in 2007. The Bush administration kept the greatest security breach in US history secret to duck a hit in the opinion polls.

When you use the Internet, you do not need prior government permission. When you broadcast, you do, and you become subject to myriad rules regarding Canadian content. Also vast fines for broadcasting without a licence. So it is essential that the Courts not classify the activities of Internet service providers, as well as you and me, as “broadasting”.

The CRTC referred the issue to the Federal Court of Appeal for a decision. The answer came back from Mr. Justice Noel:

The answer to the reference question is as follows: Retail Internet service providers  (ISPs) do not carry on, in whole or in part, “broadcasting undertakings” subject to the Broadcasting Act, S.C. 1991, c. 11 when, in their role as ISPs, they provide access through the Internet to “broadcasting” requested by end-users.

The importance of this decision is that it makes it much more difficult for some future set of commissioners at the CRTC to decide that the Internet is “broadcasting” and thereby subject it and you, dear reader, to a vast expansion of government licencing of speech. Thank you, Mr. Justice Noel and colleagues Nadon and Dawson on the Federal Court of Appeal.

From Facebook front page today.

Help translate Facebook into English so that it can be used by people all over the world, in all languages.

Click on the Translate Facebook button to add the Translations application, developed by Facebook, so that you can be part of the community of translators.

Excuse my language, but what the fuck is this?!  A company with revenues estimated to be in the range of $1bn to $1.5bn this year is looking for free work?  A company that, according to research firm Hitwise, accounts for 7.07% of all US internet visits last week compared to 7.03% for Google is looking to freeload?  How many ways can you say fuck off to them?

Maybe a well placed ad on the Canadian Cynic blog will elicit the fools that Facebook needs.

Was this a case of Charles Johnson traveling with his fan club?

Man caught at airport with 44 lizards in pants

This is as stylized as kabuki and as predictable as left-wing lunacy.  The Citizen and Canwest don’t want to get caught off-base on this Climategate thing, so they test the waters with David Warren.  If the sky does not fall, then perhaps in a few days John Robson might mention it.  At the Globe, it will almost certainly be their house contrarian Margaret Wente who touches the story first – and maybe last.  Don’t misunderstand. These writers are not being used to legitimize or validate these stories, they are used to signify that the newspaper is aware of them but does not consider them newsworthy. The Citizen and the Globe want to make it clear that they noticed strange people saying strange things. That’s all. That is why they use their in-house ‘writers on strange topics’ – to ensure that the publications are broadcasting their distaste, their distrust and their distance from the topics they are writing about.  As for the CBC? Forget the CBC.

The Wall Street Journal reports that various senators are showing interest in the climate fraud.

A more moderate interpetation of the behaviour of the Climate Club scientists appears today at the Air Vent. This is a letter from a climate skeptic to the New York Times reporter,  Andy Revkin, who it appears from the hacked data, has been working hand in glove with the Climate Club scientists. Identified as Ryan O, he writes:

“These (a selection of emails) serve to illustrate not that the scientists involved are engaged in fraudulent behavior for personal gain, but rather that they feel that it is their right or duty to be the gatekeepers of what information is allowed to be seen. I think it is clear that the scientists believe that they are correct. I think it is clear that they use this belief to justify actively engage in censoring their own results (and pressure others to censor theirs) to prevent full disclosure of the uncertainties involved in the methods they employ. I think it is clear that they use this belief to justify attempts to discredit legitimate criticisms, in some cases with the knowledge that those criticisms are accurate. I think it is clear that they use this belief to advocate suppressing free expression on the internet. I think it is clear that they use this belief to attempt to manipulate the peer review process to present their results in a way that lends more credibility to their conclusions than otherwise would be the case. This is advocacy, not science. It in no way invalidates AGW theory, but it does call into question the certainty with which these scientists claim to understand the magnitude of the AGW effect – and, by extension, the magnitude and timing of the anticipated consequences.”

“This naturally leads into another important lesson: the insular nature of this relatively small, yet incredibly influential, group of scientists leads them to believe that it is their right to decide who should be privy to data and code. As a party to several of the FOIA requests of the University of East Anglia and CRU, I find myself appalled at the cavalier manner in which several key individuals handled FOIA requests.”

An excellent review of the nature of the offences against science is given at Pajamas Media: “Three things you absolutely must know about climategate“, by Iain Murray. He states that the data released show unequivocally that:

1. They have manipulated data to produce predetermined results (NB All computer modelling does this to some extent).

2. They have discussed methods of subverting the scientific peer review process to ensure that skeptical papers had no access to publication. (ANd then said that opponents, such as Stephen McIntyre,  should not be listened to because they have not been published in peer-reviewed journals.

3. They have worked to circumvent the Freedom of Information process of the United Kingdom.

All this is unequivocal. What is alluded to but not mentioned in Murray’s article is that the data does not produce the published results when it is run through the algorithms they say they have used. Too many “parameterizations”, what we know as fudge factors, have been employed, I reckon. We will be hearing more about this aspect soon.

A major blow was struck at the basis of Canadian hate speech controls by this judgment of the Canadian Human Rights Tribunal.

In the Human Rights Tribunal decision of Athansios Hadjis, the Tribunal has ruled that the constitutionality of section 13(1) of the Human Rights Act is in grave doubt, and refused to find Lemire guilty on that basis. The specific extension of the hate-speech prohibition to the Internet was contained in section 13(2), adopted by Parliament in 2001.

The Commissioner found that the measure (suppression of free speech in the way section 13 envisages) was disproportionate, in that it was not a minimal impairment of the Charter right of free speech.

Read the rest…

http://westernstandard.ca/website/article.php?id=3007

More investigation needed before commenting.

The following is an imagined future talk between a teacher and student in about 2025.

- You mean they had less than a billion addresses on the Internet?”

- They had no Internet. They only had about 85 endpoints, and they were called channels then.

-  Channels?

- The information only flowed one way.

- You have to be kidding. You’re kidding me, aren’t you sir?

- No, I am not. When broadcasting technology started, there were only three or four channels of television.

- What’s television?

- A pre-computer analog distribution system which employed vast amounts of spectrum to convey signals one-way. It was highly inefficient, but it was better at conveying pictures than what went before, which was only the printed word.

- How did they talk back?

- They didn’t.

- You mean they just sat there and watched stuff?

- Yes.

- Ah sir!  That’s just too weird!

- Nevertheless, for a few decades after radio communication was invented, but before computers re-organized how it was done, there was a period there when signals went out but the back-channel was missing.

- It must have been a period of extreme conformity, I mean, everybody watching the same stuff must have meant they all thought alike.

-  Good insight. It was. The 20^th century was the century of the mass-man and the collective state, even in the parliamentary democracies. There were even people who tried to maintain that system. They called the expansion of choices ‘fragmentation of the audience’, as if we were all supposed to be watching the same thing.

- Why did they think we should all be watching the same thing?

- That’s a tough one. Your essay has to be on the social implications of “broadcasting”, and that’s an issue you should address in your paper.

A great take on the CanCon lobby’s latest shakedown of the CRTC for online dollars, in response to a piece by a Globe and Mail B-team scribbler:

ACTRA thinks it is tragic that subpar actors work at McDonalds. I think it is tragic that subpar McDonalds workers get public funding to try to act.

Ooh, snap!

 Even the Chinese government recognizes the growing street credibility of bloggers versus traditional authorities:

In wake of the widespread disbelief expressed across the Chinese internet with regard to the official explanation that a 24-year-old man died from serious brain injuries while playing hide-and-seek in a detention center, the Yunnan government has taken the unusual step of appointing one of Kunming’s most popular bloggers head of the investigation into the incident.

[...]

The unorthodox move to make popular bloggers heads of an investigation committee is a tacit admission by the Yunnan government of the power of the internet – especially blogs – in shaping Chinese public opinion. It also belies the widespread suspicion of the official version of Li’s death.

H/T Slashdot

From the National Post article by Joseph Brean
 

“The Ontario Human Rights Commission is calling for Parliament to force all Canadian magazines, newspapers and “media services” Web sites to join a national press council with the power to adjudicate breaches of professional standards and complaints of discrimination.

“The media’s freedom of expression comes with a duty to “address issues of hate expression, and [media] should do so either voluntarily through provincial press councils, or through statutory creation of a national press council with compulsory membership,” the report reads.

“At the same time, the OHRC recognizes the media have full freedom and control over what they publish. Ensuring mechanisms are in place to provide opportunity for public scrutiny and the receipt of complaints, particularly from vulnerable groups, is important, but it must not cross the line into censorship.”

“Barbara Hall, OHRC chief commissioner, said in an interview the rise of the Internet has strengthened the case for a national media watchdog. In her vision, a national press council would be “a vehicle for full discussion about what’s written in the media” that is less strict and more accessible than the courts. ”

 She is right: the rise of the Internet has strengthened the case for a national media watchdog, if your goal is thought control.

Read the rest…

Here Comes Everybody
The Long Tail
Planet Google

The world we are currently experiencing is a consequence of technical arrangements which have transformed the nature of markets and drastically lowered the costs of social organization. Lower costs of sorting information on a massive scale have produced a transformation of several activities which characterized the twentieth century: mass markets, hits, the star system, and limited choice. The Long Tail explores the implications of the change from limited to unlimited shelf space. Here Comes Everybody describes the consequences and social implications of these dramatically lowered costs of organizing people for all forms of collective organization.

Of the three, Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing without Organizations” dwells best on the social implications of the new technologies. His major argument is that what used to be enormously difficult and expensive, such as social organization, has been rendered trivially easy. People can self-identify, collaborate, organize, sign-up, cooperate, and disperse, the prime example being Facebook. The fact that some things that used to be extremely difficult are now easy has grave implications for the professions. Professions exist, he says, to solve a problem of scarce knowledge and limited technical capacity. He argues that printed news media, and the journalists who go with them, are in the process of being eliminated. We do not need the news “profession” any longer. A profession exists to solve a technical problem, in this case, the scarcity of airwaves or printing presses. With the arrival of ubiquitous publishing and picture taking capacities in the general population, the profession of journalism is being gutted, like monks being thrown out of monasteries when printing replaced hand-writing as the way to produce books. The decline of newspaper advertising powerfully combines with increased amateur news collection to reduce reliance on newspapers.

Read the rest…

Some time ago I was walking through Vancouver’s West End a few streets east of Denman, in the heart of the village bounded by Burrard St. to the east, Stanley Park to the west, English Bay to the south, and Burrard Inlet to the north. As I walked by the playground of a public school, I heard the screams and cries of children playing. I thought it fine that so densely urban a place as the west end would still have a playground full of children. Then I noticed the flag flying over the school yard.

It was the rainbow flag of gay.

Read the rest…

Periodically a book comes along that explains much, in simple language, about vitally important questions. Why does the Internet matter? Exactly what is it doing to us? Clay Shirky’s Here Comes Everybody answers these questions with insight, by linking large areas of economic and social theory in a cogent, jargon-free explanation.

Read the rest…