Archives for February,2004
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Tuesday, February 17, 2004
Just say NO!
Goodness knows I'm not the type to be preachy about drugs. I've had my own experiences with illicit materials, and decided that at this point in my life, they aren't for me. In my opinion, the war on drugs is stupid. I think dope should be legalized and most other drugs decriminalized and treated as a health problem instead of a crime problem. Having said that, I had an experience on Saturday night that scared the shit out of me. This is why they try to brainwash kids into "Just say NO!".
Dave and I were driving to my parents place at about 9:00 pm on Valentine's night and we'd got halfway down the street around the corner. It's a small one way with cars parked on one side. Blocking the street was a mini-van half on the sidewalk and half in the street. Dave stopped the car, "WTF? Why are they blocking the street?", he fumed.
A squirrely little man in his fifties approached the car and Dave rolled down his window, "Can you come help us? We've got to get a very sick man into the van and to the hospital". Sure. We hopped out of the car. Both of us were expecting some old guy having a heart attack or something. As we walked up to the front porch we saw a young guy - about 20 years old - with no shirt on lying (in the -11 degree C weather) on the concrete floor of the porch. He was completely unconscious. His face was grey, lips blue. He looked dead. He was barely breathing - wheezing in short light breaths every few seconds.
The three of us tried to lift his slippery, dead-weight body. We carried him down the steps and out onto the street. The older guy tried to open the van's sliding door and couldn't. He dropped the young man on the street in the ice. I tried to hold his head off the ground. He'd stopped breathing. Dave checked his pulse. He still had a pulse but it was very slow. The guy started gargling. He sounded like he was going to puke, but I think he was just trying to breathe. He was still totally unconscious. His gargling must have cleared his airway because he started breathing again. The older man finally got the van door open. We tried to lift him up into the van - but he was wet and very slippery and very very heavy (not a big guy - just a complete dead weight). The young guy's girlfriend (or maybe she was his sister) came rushing out of the house. She was flipping out. From inside the van she grabbed his shoulders and with enormous strength - an amazing display of will power - she pulled him up into the van. We slammed the door and she jumped into the drivers seat. The van was stuck in the snow and ice, but after some frantic spinning wheels, shouting of directions and pushing, she took off for the hospital. We continued on to my parents house. Stunned.
Dave and I have talked about how we wished we were trained to deal with situations like that. I took first aid years ago when I was a kid, but I wasn't ready for that. The whole situation was very chaotic. The friends of the guy had a plan and I'm not sure it would have been helpful to argue with them. But I should have remembered to get the emergency blanket out of the car (yes, we do carry a car emergency kit). With some training I would have been better prepared and calmer in the moment when I actually had to do something. So we might be taking some St. John Ambulance First Aid Courses in the future.
I suppose the guy could have been sick with something else. But Dave said saw track marks on the guy's arm. The symptoms of a heroin overdose match what I saw that night. Plus, they didn't call an ambulance, which is usually what people do when someone's not breathing, unless they don't want the cops to show up and find their drugs. So I'm calling it a heroin overdose.
And it totally freaked me out. So kids, that's why they say "Just say NO!" - even if it's a totally misguided education campaign, and the war on drugs is a terrible strategy for dealing with drug addiction.
Posted by Me @ 12:47PM [Link]
Friday, February 13, 2004
Canada's Recording Industry Copies the RIAA
Well the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CIRA) has announced that it's going after a bunch of ISPs to get the names behind the IPs of music swappers. There are a few problems with this - other than the obvious - like THE MUSIC INDUSTRY SUCKS.
They've been sweating cash out of people, demanding ridiculous prices for CDs, concerts and other merchandise while promoting mediocre and completely vanilla-slot-into-a-specific-radio-format-and-market-to-death-type artists (can I even really call them artists?) for years. It's no wonder people don't care about "stealing" from them. Maybe the recording industry should take a look at it's own business model and see if there's a way they can make money without going after grandpa and little 12-year-old Brianna. Sheesh!
Okay, after that rant here are the other main problems with what CIRA is trying to accomplish:
- In Canada it's legal to make a copy of a song for personal use. We can legally copy all of our CDs onto our hard drives. This is different than in the US where it would be a copyright violation. CIRA has said they're going after uploaders. Because Canadians can legally have a folder full of music on their harddrives, it's possible that someone's computer has sharing software on it that is breaking the law behind the scenes, making them a massive uploader and a target of the CIRA - without them really knowing about it. I remember when I tried out Napster it was pretty easy to mistakenly leave on the uploading and have your computer sharing music without you knowing that it was happening. I don't know if the new generation of music swapping software is the same, but since the RIAA went after a couple of people who pretty obviously weren't intentionally sharing eminem's new single, it's probably similar.
- The new privacy law in Canada means that it's illegal for the ISPs to share any customer information with CIRA without that customer's permission. This is what Shaw (a cable ISP) is arguing so it doesn't have to give CIRA customer IP info. I think Shaw is probably right, but CIRA may get a court to force the ISPs to give up customer information.
- We pay a levy (77 cents per CD-R Audio!) on most recordable media here in Canada (MP3 players, CD-RW/Audio, CD-R/Audio, Mini-Discs and audio cassettes). It doesn't matter what the CD-R is actually used for, if I buy a blank CD, I pay money to various musicians and recording industry groups. And that sucks. I don't get an Internet usage levy paid to me just because someone might steal my words or my designs - so why should a musician get money because I back up my hard drive? I should get benefits from it... like the ability to steal music ;-P. Okay maybe that's going too far - but you can see why people are pissed at the recording industry. We pay have to pay them money and seem to get nothing in return.
- It may actually be (technically) legal to "share" music in this way. It certainly wouldn't be within the spirit of the law, but in this case it might be a case of the recording industry's greed coming back to bite it on the bum. The Copyright Act amendment (mentioned above) that added levies also made legal "the copying of pre-recorded music for the private use of the person who makes the copy". Now, if I'm not mistaken, when you "share" music the person making the copy is also the person who will use it... so maybe it's actually legal. This I'm sure is all semantics and I'm not sure how legal it would be, but I'm not the first one to point this out.
CIRA's attempt to stamp out music sharing here in Canada may not be as much of a cakewalk as it was for the RIAA in the US.
Posted by Me @ 11:47AM [Link]
Tuesday, February 10, 2004
Web Standards Awards
A new site celebrating web sites built with standards has launched. So far the Web Standards Awards only has three sites listed, so it's a bit hard to tell how high the quality of the sites will be - but so far so good. The best thing about it is that we've now got a place to celebrate and give kudos to well designed standards-based sites. And that's a Good Thing (TM).
Posted by Me @ 05:58PM [Link]
Saturday, February 7, 2004
Canadian Privacy Law Affects Web Site Owners
This article is based on one from my main business site. It was originally intended as advice for clients, but, who knows, it might apply to you. Oh yah, and if your company is from outside Canada, but does business in Canada, the law applies to you too.
The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is a Canadian law that came into effect in 2001 for federally regulated industries but since January 1, 2004 it now affects all commercial activity where personal information is collected. If you have a web site for your business this means you. It makes no difference where your server is hosted - the government can impose consequences upon businesses within Canada for actions that occur outside of Canada. Since virtually every web site collects information of one sort or another, it may now be time to review (or write) your privacy policy.
What is "personal information" anyway?
According to this law personal information is "any information about an identifiable individual except the name, title, business address and business phone number of an employee." The following is considered personal information:
- age, name, ID numbers, income, ethnic origin, or blood type
- opinions, evaluations, comments, social status, or disciplinary actions
- employee files, credit records, loan records, medical records, existence of a dispute between a consumer and a merchant, intentions (for example, to acquire goods or services, or change jobs)
What personal information does a web site gather?
Most web sites gather large quantities of data. For example, your web statistics program will track each person that visits your site. It can tell you which pages they visited, how long the looked at your web site for, what time and day they came to visit and if they've been to your site before - and that's just the start of the information that can be gathered from web statistics programs. But statistics programs aren't the only ways that a site can gather information. If you have a poll or a survey on your site - then you are gathering information. If you have any kind of a form that visitors fill out, then you are gathering information. If you sell anything from your site then you are gathering information - and this is usually sensitive personal information. So not all information that your web site gathers will be personal information - but it may be prudent to explain to your visitors what information is gathered and why - regardless of how personal the information is.
What does the law say I have to do?
Consent
- You must have consent to gather personal information.
- There is implied consent for general non-sensitive information, so if you are gathering general information a privacy policy posted on your site is probably okay.
- But you must get specific consent for sensitive information. So, for example, if you are collecting information about people's earnings or their social insurance number, you need to specifically ask for permission to take that information before you collect it and you must say what you are going to do with it.
- You can only collect information that most people would consider reasonable and appropriate. It's best to err on the side of caution, so explain what you are taking and what you are doing with all the information you take.
Existing Information
- If you have an existing database of customer information, a point to consider is that information already collected cannot be used now without consent. So you'll have to ask permission to use information you already have.
Privacy Policies
- You must appoint a privacy officer to ensure privacy compliance.
- You must have detailed policies and procedures for dealing with privacy. This is good practice in any case even if you aren't collecting personally identifiable information.
Limitations and Complaints
- You must:
- limit collection to what's necessary,
- limit disclosure to only those employees that need to know,
- keep the information only as long as necessary,
- maintain accuracy of information and
- maintain security measures against loss, theft, disclosure, etc..
- Anyone who requests it must be given access to their personal information within 30 days.
- You must receive and respond to any complaints against you by individuals in regards to privacy legislation.
What should I do now?
Talk to your lawyer and your web designer or developer. It may not be a crisis situation. You should probably have a privacy policy, but that's not too hard to develop. And you should consider the implications of this law on any projects that you plan for the future. So that's the skinny on the new privacy law.
RESOURCES
Posted by Me @ 11:45AM [Link]
Monday, February 2, 2004
How to fall through the ceiling in 4 easy steps.
- Go up into the attic and do some insulating work. Spread fibreglass insulation around loosely on the floor making sure to obscure where the floorboards end.
- Step onto the area where there are no floorboards and no lath, just plaster that could fall at anytime.
- Fall through the ceiling - but make sure that all the plaster ends up on the bed below and that you fall so that one foot and one arm are still in the attic.
- As you hang halfway between the bedroom and the attic, contemplate how you will tell your wife what's happened in an amusing and unalarming kind of way.
Posted by Me @ 11:37AM [Link]
