Just wondering

July 2, 2006

Lighter thoughts in honour of the holiday weekend.

Three of us went out golfing yesterday in the beauty of Muskoka. Interesting juxtaposition to be with a Rogers executive, wearing a Bell golf cap walking through the doors at the clubhouse with the logo of the TELUS Skins match as we were discussing what the future would hold for all of these companies and others.

Summertime is a great time to just put up your feet and wonder. I think that too little time is spent on that kind of work activity. Too easy for people to call it ‘goofing off’.

I’d argue that for executives, it is important activity that is needed in order to compete.

And besides – it’s a nice thing to do when it is sunny and warm (but not hot) and the ball gets an extra 30 yards on a lucky bounce off the granite protruding in the middle of the fairway.

Just conversations?

July 1, 2006

The recent appeal ruling on the Ahenakew hate case in Canada may have far reaching implications.

In that case, the appeal judge, Chief Justice Laing, ruled that conversations with a reporter can not be considered to be ‘private’. He upheld the original trial judge, who wrote:

The same subsection 2(b) of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects your freedom of thought, belief and opinion and expression also protects the freedom of the press and other media of communication. You may not like what the media says about you nor how your comments were reported by Mr. Parker and the consequences of your statements but you did state them to Mr. Parker, a reporter, who had every right and indeed possibly a professional responsibility to accurately record them and to communicate them by way of print and audio publication. In your testimony both on examination in chief and in cross-examination you attempted to portray yourself as the wronged party and that Mr. Parker was responsible for communicating your remarks and the consequences flowing from them. Your counsel, Mr. Christie, in his closing arguments argued that you were the victim of a [sic] insensitive self-promoting reporter. As a Provincial Court trial judge who spends 95% of judicial time in criminal court, the analogy that instantly came to mind was that of a man charged with spousal assault who argues that his spouse made him do it and that he was simply defending himself by putting up his fists which his spouse insisted on running her face into which unfortunately resulted in her nose being broken and her two front teeth being fractured.

Who is a reporter?

Couple this ruling with Michael Geist’s views on the California appellate court ruling that expands US First Amendment protections to bloggers and I wonder if we have the potential to remove conversations from ‘private domain’.

Ice cream

August 10, 2014

Quite often, I like to eat vanilla ice cream. Not the cheap, gummy, goopy vanilla ice cream that can sit out of the fridge for hours at a time and still not melt. I used to like the original Breyers – remember the stuff that had an ingredients list that read “Cream, sugar, vanilla bean and nothin’ else.” Perfect for topping with fresh fruit, hot fudge or anything else that is good or bad for you.I haven’t been able to find Breyers original vanilla in years.

Why the ice cream theme? Partly because of the start of the summer holiday weekend. And partly because ice cream is a wonderful metaphor for IP network technology. I invite your comments to carry this theme forward… think about it this weekend with your favourite toppings. I welcome photos of your OSI ice cream models.

It seems to me that the “net neutrality” folks want plain vanilla IP from network providers. They think the other flavours should only be added by application providers or users. Dumb pipes – vanilla ice cream.

I just think that committing vanilla flavoured IP into legislation will stifle innovation in the long run. I agree that vanilla should be available. I wish we could legislate the old formulation of Breyers back into existence.

Some people need something more than a rich and creamy vanilla base – don’t you think we also should allow other base flavours to emerge? If I want a coffee-toffee crunch, isn’t it ok for me to pay to start with a dark chocolate base instead?

It reminds me of the movie Pleasantville – where the cast are thrown from the present into a B&W; 1950’s era family values show. Life in Pleasantville is ok – it is just missing the colour.

But that is another metaphor – we’ll save that for another time.

Nationalism and Canadian telecom

June 29, 2006

At the annual ITAC dinner in Toronto on Tuesday, Ted Rogers delivered a patriotic message, referring to Canada Day on Saturday, supporting increases in military spending and in response to a question from the floor, he expressed concerns about the announcement that Canadian mining giants Falconbridge and Inco are being sold to Arizona-based Phelps Dodge.

In a reference to corporate philanthropy, Ted took a swipe at the challenge of getting a foreign based company interested in making substantive contributions to local hospital.

With Nortel’s CEO Mike Zafirovski facing shareholders today at its AGM, we note that speculation is rampant about what kind of company it will be next year – and will it remain a technology powerhouse, let alone a Canadian business icon. There are lots of Canadian institutions that are watching for signals.

Annual Report of the Privacy Commissioner

January 25, 2017

Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddard, released her annual report recently.

In the report, she notes that her predecessor, Bruce Phillips, in his outgoing report 6 years ago, already called the weaknesses of the Privacy Act

… all the more striking now that Parliament has passed the Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act. This act (which regulates personal information handling in the private sector) contains many features that are superior to the Privacy Act, making a comprehensive review of the existing law both urgent and unavoidable.

Such a review has still not taken place. As the current report states, “If the review of the Act was both ‘urgent and unavoidable’ in 2000, it is even more so today.”

As we have written, there are numerous privacy issues that arise from new technologies and applications that cry out for review. As Commissioner Stoddard’s report notes:

Technological and social changes in the last 20 years – the creation of the Internet and the World Wide Web, new information and communication technologies, globalization, global positioning systems, video surveillance, outsourcing, data mining and the commodification of personal information – have not just changed the landscape, they have put us on another planet.

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