Archive for March, 2007

Beware the Daylight Savings Time Echo!

Mar 29, 2007 

In 2005, the U.S. enacted the Energy Policy Act which changed the date we “Spring Forward” from the first weekend of April to the first weekend of March effective this year. So one month ago, we shifted forward by an hour to help save energy (with minimal success).

Many of our household devices are designed to make this change for us, shifting forward in the spring and backwards in the fall, so that we don’t have to worry about it. While some devices, like computers, can automatically patch themselves, others like digital watches are hard-coded into their firmware.

So when March 11 came along, we found those devices that did not change themselves automatically, and made the change manually. Well guess what? Those devices are about to shift forward again this weekend! Don’t get caught looking at one of these clocks, or you’ll rip yourself off of an extra hour of sleep!

And yes, we will go through this again in the fall, but the date will only move by one week this time.

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Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act

Mar 14, 2007 

Stephan Dion announced today his new “tough on crime” platform. In it, he introduces the “Modernization of Investigative Techniques Act” to assist law enforcement in fighting crime.

“This bill will allow the police and CSIS adapt to new communications technology. Telephone and internet service providers will be required, subject to vigorous privacy safeguards, to include an interception capability in new technology, and make subscriber contact information available on request to designated law enforcement officials”

This is yet another example of treating the public as guilty before proven innocent. Essentially, he is asking ISP’s and Telephone companies to search and record the activities of all of their customers; collectively, all of the Canadian population… just in case we happen to be doing something wrong.

We don’t allow officers to randomly search people as they walk through Union Station. Why is randomly searching people online allowed?

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