| To: privacy@thestar.ca |
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| 12:05am 11/09/2009 |
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mood:  sad
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To: privacy@thestar.ca
Subject: Privacy complaint
To the person responsible for the Toronto Star's adherence of their privacy policy.
Humans have a hunger for sensationalism. I understand the Star's market capitalization of that. And luckily, the Star has thought about the balance of sensationalism versus privacy in their privacy policy listed on their own website at http://www.thestar.com/generic/article/108477
Unfortunately, the Star seems only interested in the protection of the privacy of its customers, and therefor really, the protection of their source of income. Apparently, privacy considerations of everyone else is only there to be violated and monetized upon.
That a friend of mine fell to her death was a very unfortunate event for her, her family and her friends. A sensationalist though harmless news article about these events could perhaps even serve a purpose of warning other people against similar fatal mistakes. The article was even useful as a resource for her friends to share information about her tragic death. And I am sure my friend herself would have laughed with approval at the insane headlines about her supposed "ghost hunt", despite the inaccuracy of the information that was there purely to juicen up a headline to ensure the quantity (not quality) of your publication.
However, having your "journalists" uncover her name, locate her Facebook account, and calling her friends to fish for more information is where your "journalists" crossed the line of decency, fairness, professional conduct and perhaps PIPEDA. And for what? It serves no purpose. A million people reading this article have no use for a specific name or other personal details. The handful that have a use for knowing would surely prefer one of many other more personal ways of receiving such tragic news.
I hope that the "journalist" that made those calls will never have to find out themselves about a dear lost one through a phone call made by one of their competitors fishing expedition through Facebook despite them deserving that exact fate.
Contrary to your journalism, my friend will be missed. |
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Read 15 - Post |
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| Our new LED sign at the HackLab! |
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| 11:55pm 31/01/2009 |
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The LED sign is basically a Blinkenlights display, just like the building in Berlin and City hall in Toronto was. Just a different backend, but driven by the same proxy and UDP packet
format.
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Read 6 - Post |
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| Anyone have lots of DNS traffic they can send my way? |
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| 07:05pm 24/01/2009 |
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I am doing some stress testing for our DNSSEC appliance. Two weeks ago, I pointed all my machines at it, and its been running great. I've also fired "resperf" at it with high query rates and it worked fine. But I'd like to have a more real sustained load on it.
Anyone here can send me lots of dns traffic? |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| inauguration gatherings? |
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| 12:08pm 18/01/2009 |
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Are there are local gatherings on Monday night or Tuesday during the day (with tv streams) happening? Apart from the 44 useless hypothetical facebook events, I have nothing in my schedule so far :P |
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Read 4 - Post |
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| Neon Sign! |
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| 10:26pm 16/12/2008 |
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Our HackLab now has a neon sign! It just needs to flicker and make zooming noises now :)
Our logo is a merge between the CN Tower, and the schematic of an LED. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| Woah, what happened to today? |
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| 07:48pm 23/10/2008 |
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mood:  bouncy
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Holy server migration batman!
Started rack move at 8am. It's now 8pm. I left my chair once to get some food and once to get more coffee. WTF happened with the day?
The old rack in Amsterdam only contains old junk servers now, and the core router/IPsec gw. The new rack is filled with all the new servers that got moved. IPsec tunneling glues it all together until the uplink gets moved next week. Phased out some 32bit VM's for 64 bit ones. And then technobabble technobabble technobabble technobabble hate NETKEY technobabble technobabble
Why isn't there more Heroes now?
I want more Heroes! |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| Palintology |
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| 11:09pm 10/10/2008 |
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"I find that Governor Sarah Palin abused her power by violating Alaska Statute 39.52.110 (a) of the Alaska Executive Branch Ethics Act," investigator Steve Branchflower concluded in the panel's 263-page report.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7662820.stm
Isn't it best (for GOP) that Palin is sacrificed now for another running mate? Or is there some legal reason he can't change it anymore? |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| Bike light question..... |
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| 03:41pm 10/09/2008 |
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Yesterday, ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) secretsoflife and me were biking home in the dark. She prefers a blinking back light, while I prefer a solid back light. I know in The Netherlands, blinking lights are not allowed, but I was not aware of the situation here. So I used the intertubes instead of working and found blinking lights are legal, though no preference is mentioned anywhere of one over the other.
I ended up on Wikipedia which only has this one section, amusingly marked with [citation needed]:
Flashing lights have been shown to be three to five times more visible than a steady light of equivalent brightness. But it has been found that people tend to underestimate the distance to flashing lights and that drunken drivers are attracted by them, and there is evidence that they are harder to place than a steady light.
So I'm now more tempted to go with "what most other cyclists are doing and car drivers are expecting". But our own statistical sample was low that night. Two were blinking, one was not.
What are other people's experiences and thoughts on this? (both as a cyclist, and as a car driver) |
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Read 10 - Post |
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| Drinks on Flickr this Friday at C'est What |
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| 02:13pm 07/08/2008 |
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http://www.blogto.com/tech/2008/08/drinks_on_flickr_this_friday/
The Flickr team is in Toronto this week and will be buying drinks and snacks for anyone who shows up this Friday at C'est What between 6 and 8pm.
I emailed with National Flickr product manager Katheline Jean-Pierre who suggested the meetup was simply an informal get-together where she and a bunch of Flickr/Yahoo! folks hope to meet up with some Toronto Flickr fans. She also hinted that they might be giving out some new, free Flickr t-shirts to those who stop by.
Better get there early. |
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Read 1 - Post |
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| OLS ticket, plus VIA tickets, plus shared room available |
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| 12:12am 22/07/2008 |
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My friend Hugh is going to go to OLS (and present there too). His friend, with whom he was sharing a hotel suite with can't make it anymore. Therefor, there is a free OLS + train + accomodation available for someone. I myself am too busy with family visiting me, so I cannot go either. I've asked some friends, but they didn't get back to me.
So, if you want or know someone who wants to go to OLS, expenses paid from Toronto, for next weekend, mail me, and I'll pass it on to my friend. |
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Post |
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| Looking for non-crappy 1u chassis - harder then you think |
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| 12:15am 12/07/2008 |
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For our appliances, we have been looking at 1U chassis'. It's amazing how much bad metal is out there, and even more amazing what bad jobs people can do cutting a custom hole.
So, to my geeky friends, where can I find a nice looking 1U chassis with a 3 1/2" opening (for an LCD display we have), that takes a mini atx with one PCI via riser card.
The only non-crappy thing so far I found is the petabox, but it has its own LCD without buttons, and the LCD we have has a few buttons which we need for one of our appliances' functionality. |
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| It's time for CHANGE |
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| 07:21pm 09/07/2008 |
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Or so people thought when they decided to favour Obama. Unfortunately, he has reversed his previous policy on immunity for illegal wiretapping done by telco's for the Bush government, using the same fear for terrorists rhetorics as the Republicans/ Neocons.
Failure to live up to your own expections: -1 for Obama |
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