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To: privacy@thestar.ca   
12:05am 11/09/2009
 
mood: sad
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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GiveAway: Pentium 3 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, towercase - no disk   
06:00pm 16/03/2009
  GiveAway: Pentium 3 1Ghz, 512MB RAM, towercase - no disk

Can take a 2nd CPU that's not installed. Has a cdrom drive too.

If you want it, come by at the hacklab on tuesday or make an appointment with me.
 
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Battlestar question.....   
12:25am 16/03/2009
  Though it should not contain spoilers, unless you havent watched the last 7 episodes, I'll put in the safety spoiler click.
battlestar question )
 
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Lazor in action video!   
12:13am 16/03/2009
   
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Our new LED sign at the HackLab!   
11:55pm 31/01/2009
 

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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My Battlestar predictions (don't read unless you saw S4E12)   
12:47pm 25/01/2009
  There be spoilers here )  
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Anyone have lots of DNS traffic they can send my way?   
07:05pm 24/01/2009
  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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inauguration gatherings?   
12:08pm 18/01/2009
  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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Neon Sign!   
10:26pm 16/12/2008
  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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Welcome back USA   
01:37am 05/11/2008
  We missed you!  
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Halloween parties this weekend?   
12:14pm 29/10/2008
  So far, I am seeing a lack of Halloween parties. Where are people going to? Is an emergency party required?  
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Woah, what happened to today?   
07:48pm 23/10/2008
 
mood: bouncy
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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Palintology   
11:09pm 10/10/2008
  "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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Bike light question.....   
03:41pm 10/09/2008
  Yesterday, [info]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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Palin   
08:54pm 03/09/2008
   
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Drinks on Flickr this Friday at C'est What   
02:13pm 07/08/2008
  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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The notion that boys are better than girls at math simply doesn't add up   
08:26am 25/07/2008
 
Math scores for girls and boys no different, study finds



The notion that boys are better than girls at math simply doesn't add up, according to a study published today in the journal Science.

An analysis of standardized test scores from more than 7.2 million students in grades 2 through 11 found no difference in math scores for girls and boys, contradicting the pervasive belief that most women aren't hard-wired for careers in science and technology.
 
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OLS ticket, plus VIA tickets, plus shared room available   
12:12am 22/07/2008
  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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Looking for non-crappy 1u chassis - harder then you think   
12:15am 12/07/2008
  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   
07:21pm 09/07/2008
  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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