It looks obvious

Do you remember the first ads for cellphones? In the US they were selling the idea that cellphones liberate you, while in Israel they were more honest with the slogan “…make a lost hour to a working hour”. They use to show people to be pretending to be at work while actually being on the beach having good time. As it turns out cellphones were the opposite of liberating and the reality is that most often people on vacation keep working while on the beach when they should have fun.

I wonder what people use to do on the train before the cellphones arrived with all the applications and e-mails and calls. It is pretty rare to see people reading books on the train nowadays. On the other hand I’m very impressed with how important so many people are, as it seems that their workplace simply cannot survive without their immediate response to e-mails. People seems to be unable to make the distinction between the ability to do something immediately, and the need to do it.

It is probably one of the clearest signs that I’m getting old, but I don’t understand why people find it beneficial to subject their time and priorities to someone else? I don’t understand what is the great achievement by checking your e-mail while inline in the coffee shop, on the train or during the intermission in theater.

I’m not a luddite, I don’t thing that technology advancement is bad. I can go here over a long list of technologies that improved our life. I also like cellphones, really. I like the idea that I can make phone calls whenever I want. However, I don’t like the idea of subjecting my schedule to someone else priorities, and therefore when I’m not calling my cellphone is usually turned off. I’m lucky enough not to have cellphone from work, mostly because I clarified that I have no intention of keeping it turned on after office hours.

I love watching TV, sometimes. I love listening to music on my Ipod, sometimes. I love using the internet, sometimes. I also love spending time with my family, I love to read books, I love to travel and being with friends, and many other things. I don’t like the idea of being enslaved for technology that should serve me and I certainly don’t like the idea that it is appropriate to expect from me to keep working after office hours, or while I’m on vacation, simply because some technology enable it.

And why do I tell you all this? because it seems that I’m not alone and that there is a market for cellphone that being marketed as Anti Iphone. And while I’m not anti Iphone I do love the fact that someone is going to make money from selling me a $10 cellphone that is only for making phone calls.

I’ll open this thread of links with good news, and it is coming from no other than New Jersey. There are many questions about privacy in the era of facebook, It will take time until we will be able to sort the right formulation of privacy and the limits we set on corporations like google from using the knowledge the gather about us. But it is even more important to keep the government from abusing its power and protect our privacy:

The Supreme Court of New Jersey became the first court in the nation yesterday to rule that people have an expectation of privacy when they are online, and law enforcement officials need a grand jury warrant to have access to their private information.

In state proceedings, the ruling will take precedence over what attorneys describe as weaker U.S. Supreme Court decisions that hold there is no right to privacy on the internet.

It was somewhat amusing when in France the court ordered Amazon to stop the practice of Free Shipping, in the name of protecting competition and consumers interests. This story joins it proudly . This is how you justify government monopoly on alcohol in Sweden:

Imagine that you suddenly get this question from a tourist. Perhaps you know exactly how you should answer. If not, it might be good to know what the results of a recent survey showed: The Swedish alcohol monopoly saves many lives each year. If strong beer (Note: beer with more that 3.5% alchohol per volume), wine and spirits were sold in grocery stores consumption would increase by 30%, researchers believe. And they stress that this is a conservative estimation—the increase could be more. They calculate that there will be approximately 1,600 more deaths each year, 14,000 more assaults and around 16 million more sick days.

So the monopoly makes a huge difference for a lot of Swedes. And because it will only be around as long as people want it to be, we at Systembolaget have to do everything in our power to make sure our customers are satisfied.

This has resulted in our having perhaps the world’s largest assortment of strong beer, wine and spirits. (And an assortment one not finds in Stockholm and Gothenburg, but also in Jokkmokk and Töreboda.)

But if am I already bashing the Europeans for their lack of respect for Human Rights and individual’s liberty I can’t avoid the Brigitte Bardot story. The idea that people stand a trail for insulting others and the lack of freedom of speech in France is simply sad. As a side note it is also very interesting how it is more important to some people, Bardot including, to treat animals like humans while they are treating other humans like animals…

French former film star Brigitte Bardot went on trial on Tuesday for insulting Muslims, the fifth time she has faced the charge of “inciting racial hatred” over her controversial remarks about Islam and its followers.

[...]

Since retiring from the film industry in the 1970s, Bardot has become a prominent animal rights activist but she has also courted controversy by denouncing Muslim traditions and immigration from predominantly Muslim countries.

Reading the NY Times is often upsetting, but than once in awhile it demonstrates why it is an important newspaper. This story dig deep into who are the military analyst appearing on our evening news show, what motivate them and what is the quality of the analysis we are getting. It is not a short reading, but it is highly recommended.

To the public, these men are members of a familiar fraternity, presented tens of thousands of times on television and radio as “military analysts” whose long service has equipped them to give authoritative and unfettered judgments about the most pressing issues of the post-Sept. 11 world.

Hidden behind that appearance of objectivity, though, is a Pentagon information apparatus that has used those analysts in a campaign to generate favorable news coverage of the administration’s wartime performance, an examination by The New York Times has found.

The effort, which began with the buildup to the Iraq war and continues to this day, has sought to exploit ideological and military allegiances, and also a powerful financial dynamic: Most of the analysts have ties to military contractors vested in the very war policies they are asked to assess on air.

Those business relationships are hardly ever disclosed to the viewers, and sometimes not even to the networks themselves. But collectively, the men on the plane and several dozen other military analysts represent more than 150 military contractors either as lobbyists, senior executives, board members or consultants. The companies include defense heavyweights, but also scores of smaller companies, all part of a vast assemblage of contractors scrambling for hundreds of billions in military business generated by the administration’s war on terror. It is a furious competition, one in which inside information and easy access to senior officials are highly prized.

Records and interviews show how the Bush administration has used its control over access and information in an effort to transform the analysts into a kind of media Trojan horse — an instrument intended to shape terrorism coverage from inside the major TV and radio networks.

And the last link for this post will focus on the true conditions of bloggers. Sometimes considered an hobby or a more comfortable for those who chose it as profession the true nature beyond the risk of blogging reveals here:

Please come to rescue me!

If I was a Canadian I would be worry to learn what Human Rights Commissioner views are on ,hmmmm, Human rights:

In fact, for an organization that is supposed to promote “human rights,” the HRC’s agents seem curiously oblivious to basic aspects of constitutional law. In one famous exchange during the Lemire case, Steacy was asked “What value do you give freedom of speech when you investigate?” — to which he replied “Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don’t give it any value.” (I guess Section 2 has been excised from his copy of the Canadian Charter of Rights.)

Privacy is another concept that the HRC seems to find confusing. The most scandalous disclosure to emerge on Tuesday involved the manner by which investigators logged on to Lemire’s Web site. In what appears to be a ham-fisted attempt to avoid revealing the commission’s IP address, they allegedly tapped into the unsecured wi-firouter of a 26-year-old Ottawa woman who lived near the commission’s 344 Slater St. headquarters. At Tuesday’s hearing, a Bell Canada employee read out the woman’s name, address and phone number to shocked audience members. A National Post reporter contacted the woman and found that she’d never heard of Lemire, Steacy, or his investigations. Unless she is secretly working undercover for Steacy, or the HRC is somehow correct in its argument that the allegation is nonsense, it appears that the commission cynically invaded the privacy of an innocent citizen in order to pursue an obscure Web-trawling vendetta; and then caused her name to be read out to the Canadian public, thereby identifying her as an unwitting conduit to neo-Nazi Web sites. One likes to imagine that the privacy commissioner will be having a chat with Dean et al. in coming days.

(emphasizes are mine)

(h/t The Liberty Papers)

This is a holiday I was fast to adopt - happy Repeal Day everyone.