newspeak

Edwards v. Canada (Attorney General) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

“…also known as the Persons Case — is a famous Canadian constitutional case which decided that women were eligible to sit in the Canadian Senate. The case, put forward by the Government of Canada on the lobbying of a group of women known as the Famous Five, began as a reference case in the Supreme Court of Canada, which ruled that women were not “qualified persons” and thus ineligible to sit in the Senate. The case then went to the Judicial Committee of the Imperial Privy Council, at that time the court of last resortfor Canada within the British Empire and Commonwealth. The Judicial Committee overturned the Supreme Court’s decision.”

The Wikipedia article is actually good, and the case is important. So, too, is the 2004 ruling by the SC on gay marriage.

The Best Map Ever Made of America’s Racial Segregation | Wired Design | Wired.com.

Offshoring Will Kill 1.5 Million IT Jobs by 2017 – Network World.

Colocation Data Centers : A crowd-sourced map of datacentres

The map of datacentres around the world may not include corporate centres. Even so, the number is large and complements the Emersen report of 2011 which listed a mere 509147 datacentres.

My question is: which is more energy efficient? A kind of P2P mesh or a server/client database? Of course, the network of datacentres can writhe themselves into a mesh, but I’m thinking more along the lines of small servers (think smartphones or even below, but also above, like desktops) meshed together to store and then serve data upon command, in conjunction with other like servers. I think that the programming for this has to a degree been done now by BitTorrent (BT Sync).

Not all things local, small and held by the hands of the crowd (or bazaar) are more efficient than the cathedral of cathedrals, the datacentre. But some things may very well be, and for those things, perhaps the datacentre is not that slag of iron steaming in the arctic but held in common. And again, this is a question.

I like reading El Reg and though other IT journo sites have gained prominence El Reg and its writers continue to be more provoking and fun to read than most. But, I’m curious (have been for a long time). Are there any women writing for the site?

U.S. sanctions and digital activists | Let them talk.

Sanctions are oddly easy to impose but seemingly hardly ever (if ever) effectual, at least in achieving the ostensible goals. This account gives an interesting take on one instance.

 The Tyee – Canada, Leading the World into Paywalls.

Why is Canada opting for the paywall? For the same reasons, it seems, that shape so many of its economy:

“Picard said two factors are responsible for Canada’s leadership on paywalls: the commercial nature of Canadian journalism, and the high concentration of media ownership.”

Replace “journalism” and “media” with your preferred industry and the statement, if true here, will probably be true there. There is a virtue to an aggressive, flat market filled with interesting competition.

The Tyee – Andrew Nikiforuk: The Big Shift

Journalism in Canada seems less aggressive than in the US, let alone the UK. But the Internet offers opportunity, and The Tyee is not asleep. The series on climate change, and how to negotiate it, is worth reading.

Daily Kos: New community guidelines, final draft.

The NSA’s Global Surveillance Dragnet is Generating More Outrage in Germany Than America | Alternet.