Kenneth Corbin of Internet News said,

For Google, Super Bowl Sunday was something of a departure.

In the third quarter of the game, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) aired a nearly full-minute ad promoting its search engine, marking one of the few television appearances for the company that rarely advertises and its first spot during a Super Bowl.

At it happens, the ad, “Parisian Love,” had been online for several months, posted on Google’s “Search Stories” page on YouTube where it has been viewed more than a million times.

Dan Goldgeier of AdPulp points out that so has this parody from Slate:

Florida divorce attorneys almost make the cut.  Is Google trying to tell us something?  Is Slate?

h/t Paull Young

You can read the interview on inFocus online, McGill’s news magazine.

An attorney for Aurora Hill filed suit in Multnomah County Circuit Court Wednesday afternoon — stirring memories of a controversial 1994 suit in which a jury awarded $2.86 million to an Albuquerque, New Mexico woman who spilled scalding-hot coffee on herself, suffering severe burns that required hospitalization. Upon appeal, the parties settled for an undisclosed amount.
…She went into “nervous shock,” endured pain and has scarring. She seeks $7,182 for her pain and suffering, plus another $318 for lost wages and medical expenses.

See our previous posts:

• Driving While Under the Influence of Texting
• Defending Liebeck v. McDonald’s
• Liebeck v. Starbucks – The New Chapter of Hot Torts

For law enforcers such as policemen, catching offenders of all sorts and degrees has become a much more serious issue than ever before. Crime especially in many urban areas has increased and vigilant law enforcers are needed who can prevent manipulation and harm to innocent people by these crime-makers. Drunk driving offenders are considered criminals because they usurp the peace and law of the State and policemen have employed various techniques to prove the Blood Alcohol Content or Level of these drivers. A Blood Alcohol Level of 0.08 or more is considered to be illegal but you can get pulled over with a BAC of less than 0.08 as well. This is why, many websites and lawyers too will advise you to never drink and then drive so that you can be on the safe side with the law. To check the BAC of drivers under the suspicion of DUI, policemen ask them to take the Field Sobriety Test or the Breathalyzer test or urine test, all of which give an idea of BAC in the person’s body.

Now newer technology has been devised and its applications in DUI/DWI are being tested to see its validity in this area. Finger printing sensors have been in use for quite a while but not for testing drunk drivers. Now, Lumidigm, a company from New Mexico have devised a new method of identifying and checking drunk drivers. The company designed a scanner that takes three-dimensional pictures of finger prints, these sensors can also test the presence of alcohol emanating from the skin of the suspected drivers. The company has been testing these sensors practically and the Bernallilo County Sheriff’s Department is optimistic that these sensors can help identify drunk drivers and gather enough evidence to convict a suspect of drunk driving. This tool can be an addition to the already existing methods of checking the level of alcohol in the person’s body; while breathalyzer devices have been found to give inaccurate results overtime, it is possible that these fingerprint sensors may give accurate results and prove to be a harmful evidence for the suspect in court. North American Morpho Systems Inc. released a new automatic fingerprint identification system called the Morpho HawkEye. This fingerprint identification system has the ability to solve more crimes but its technology offers the opportunity to identify criminals sooner due to its fingerprint technology.

You should know that suspects of a DUI case who have been charged with a DUI will need a DUI lawyer to represent them in court especially if they have prior DUI convictions or if they have committed a DUI felony. If you are looking for a DUI attorney or looking for more information regarding the local DUI laws, you can check online at MyDUIAttorney

This was a sponsored post by DUI Lawyer

What? Did I read that right?

Strangely yes. On the Ontario Government Public Appointment Secretariat’s website found at: http://www.pas.gov.on.ca/scripts/en/upcomingVac.asp, there are nearly 200 postings for various positions on provincial agencies, boards and commissions.

But in the requirement section for the police services board postings, it states, “No judge, justice of the peace, police officer or person who practises criminal law as a defence counsel may sit as a member of a board.”

Presumably this restriction is present because of a perceived conflict of interest by the enumerated professions. But in the case of criminal defence lawyers, I don’t see it.

Is it suggesting that criminal lawyers are blindly partial to criminals and that they do not want to live in safe communities? Or perhaps they are too inclined towards Charter rights, fairness and the rule of law?

Unlike the police and members of the judiciary, the defence bar is not paid through government salaries. If they are paid government money at all, it is by piecemeal legal aid certificates. But if you think about it, it is in everyone’s best interest including defence lawyers for the police to do a good job.

Let’s be clear, police services boards exist for effective administration of police organizations. They do not, or at least should not, direct or participate in police operations. Their role is to set administrative and fiscal policy.

Accordingly, a defence lawyer serving on a police services board is not in any conflict of interest.

Neither is it a general conflict for other professions like chartered accountants, business owners, or Commedia dell’Arte clowns for that matter to serve. The question that should be asked is who best can serve in the required capacity.

To say that criminal defence lawyers are in conflict because they make their living representing “criminals” is to miss the point. Having a thorough understanding of the criminal justice system is an asset and indubitably would be a positive influence on the effectiveness of police services boards.

Canada spends $3.5 billion per year on crime. It costs $108,000 per year to incarcerate one inmate. Stephen Harper is proposing $5 billion in “tough on crime” spending, with none of the increase earmarked for crime prevention.

There is a systemic dilemma: in politics, proponents of judicial reform are forcibly grouped into one of two camps; Falconer referred to this division as “hug-a-thug vs. Law and Order.” If a politician questions the “tough on crime” approach, they are instantly categorized as weak, as someone who would embrace the criminal threatening your family.

Falconer compared Harper’s agenda to similar “tough on crime” agendas implemented decades ago in both California and New York State (largely part of the War on Drugs). Incarceration rates were dramatically increased, and today California houses 170,000 prisoners.

The American experiment has failed. While incarceration rates increased dramatically in the US compared to Canada, the crime rates of both countries remained similar. The US now has a financially unsustainable prison population, and nothing to show for it. Arnold Schwarzenegger has abandoned the “tough on crime” approach in favour of funding schools.

Studies have shown that incarceration raises an individual’s disposition toward crime. Incarceration disproportionately affects native communities, the poor, the mentally ill, and other disadvantaged groups. Yet instead of seeking to remedy the causes of crime, instead of seeking to ameliorate the conditions of these groups, we have the newly-minted Senator Bob Runciman crowing,

“For too long, the Ignatieff Liberals have abused their majority in the Senate by obstructing law-and-order bills that are urgently needed and strongly supported by Canadians. Today, this abuse comes to an end.”

This despite the fact that crime rates have been dropping for years. This despite empirical evidence that tough-on-crime has failed in the US. The politicization of dialogue creates the false illusion of irreconcilable extremes. The reality should not be “hug-a-thug vs. Law and Order” – there is a solution that rests without the extremes.

I think that journalist Carol Goar is absolutely right when she suggests that this effort will be insufficient to deal with the enormous structural problem facing our legal system; however, Heidi Mottahedin deserves high praise for her efforts, as do the lawyers who are sacrificing income to be a part of justicenet.

Meanwhile, Legal Aid Ontario is planning to open a Family Law Services Centre in North York. No doubt this will be similar to the Family Law Information Centre at the London Superior Court, where those in need can get information about the law, shelters, counseling and mediation services in the area etc..

Family Law is an area where the lack of affordable legal help is particularly acute, and although the legal assistance provided at these service centres is limited, it is quite helpful nonetheless. A brief consultation will ensure that matters that don’t belong in court are redirected while matters that do belong in court are refined to exclude extraneous issues. The result is a more streamlined court system. At a lecture at Western Law a few weeks ago, Justice Harper expressed his desire for every court to have a Family Law Information Centre. He left me with the impression that he is working behind the scenes to try to make it happen.

Apparently there are people in the legal community doing the hard work to bring about change. If enough people step up to the plate, who knows? Maybe the problem of the unrepresented can be wrestled to the ground without resorting to harsher measures.

AMY GOODMAN: The Obama administration’s budget proposal for the Office of National Drug Control Policy sets aside nearly twice the amount of funding for law enforcement and criminalization than for treatment and prevention of drug addiction. Out of a total of $15.5 billion, some $10 billion are used for enforcement. National Drug Control Policy Gil Kerlikowske praised the numbers as reflecting a “balanced and comprehensive drug strategy.”

Well, just last year, the newly appointed drug czar and former Seattle police chief had called for an end to the so-called “war on drugs,” raising hopes among advocates of harm-reduction approaches to curbing drug use. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal last May, Kerlikowske said, “People see a war as a war on them. We’re not at war with people in this country.”

Well, I’m joined right now here in the Democracy Now! studio by a doctor who has spent the last twelve years working with one of the densest populations of drug addicts in the world. Dr. Gabor Maté is the staff physician at the Portland Hotel, a residence and harm reduction facility in Vancouver, Canada’s Downtown Eastside. Dr. Maté also treats addicts at the only safe-injection site in North America, a center that’s come under fire from Canada’s Conservative government led by Stephen Harper.

Dr. Gabor Maté is the bestselling author of four books. His latest, just out in the United States, is called In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts: Close Encounters with Addiction…

DR. GABOR MATÉ: Well, the first point to get there is that if people who become severe addicts, as shown by all the studies, were for the most part abused children, then we realize that the war on drugs is actually waged against people that were abused from the moment they were born, or from an early age on. In other words, we’re punishing people for having been abused. That’s the first point.

The second point is, is that the research clearly shows that the biggest driver of addictive relapse and addictive behavior is actually stress. In North America right now, because of the economic crisis, a lot of people are eating junk food, because junk foods release endorphins and dopamine in the brain. So that stress drives addiction.

Now imagine a situation where we’re trying to figure out how to help addicts. Would we come up with a system that stresses them to the max? Who would design a system that ostracizes, marginalizes, impoverishes and ensures the disease of the addict, and hope, through that system, to rehabilitate large numbers? It can’t be done. In other words, the so-called “war on drugs,” which, as the new drug czar points out, is a war on people, actually entrenches addiction deeply. Furthermore, it institutionalizes people in facilities where the care is very—there’s no care. We call it a “correctional” system, but it doesn’t correct anything. It’s a punitive system. So people suffer more, and then they come out, and of course they’re more entrenched in their addiction than they were when they went in.

Openness

In order for any device to be useful, it needs some kind of software. This is true of everything electronic,  from calculators, to TV’s, to telephones and to most obviously, computers. In the past few years, there has been an explosion in computer-like devices, that is hardware that has an operating system and which can run software other than what is preloaded.

To use an easy example, take a cell phone. Originally, all the cell phone is programmed to do is make phone calls. Then, someone said “why don’t we put games on it?”. Then, “why not a camera?”. Followed by “why don’t we connect it to the internet?”. Lo and behold, we have smartphones. We can now extend the capabilities of our phones and similar devices in ways that were not imagined by their original designers.

Original multi-purpose phones were relatively open. This was done mostly as a convenience to developers: they did not want to reinvent the wheel by writing a new operating system, so they used one that was time-tested: java. This meant that anything that was created using java mobile edition (J2ME) could probably run on a java-enabled cell phone.

Even the original smartphones were open (“smartphone” is a difficult concept. I’ll refer to anything that connects to the internet and allows user-installed programs as a “smartphone”). Windows Mobile (used to be called Windows CE) allowed developers basically unlimited flexibility in creating and distributing software for Windows Mobile devices. Installing software did not require any reverse-engineering, hacking or any type of security bypasses.

I use the term “openness” to refer to precisely this flexibility. Openness does not mean open source, does not mean free software, does not guarantee any freedoms to users. However, developers have a lot of freedom that they can choose to pass on to their users (or not). They can distribute their creations in any form, on any website, charge fees or not, etc.

Current State

Since the introduction of the iphone, there has been a trend in the opposite direction. To use the example of the iphone itself, the only (legal) way for software developers to distribute their wares is through a process that is controlled by Apple from end to end. Apple controls what applications can be distributed, it tracks each user that installs the application, and of course, takes a nice commission from the sale of each app. There are obvious problems with such end-to-end control, including this one.

The problem is that this is not limited to the iphone. Blackberry is doing something similar with App World, although I believe it’s still possible to install apps without appworld. Even the supposedly open source Android platform is jumping on the bandwagon with Android Market.

The only holdout thus far is Windows Mobile probably because the users of those phones are way too used to not having any restrictions on them. We will see what happens once Windows Mobile 7 comes out later this year. I would not be surprised if it has new limitations on the type of software that can be installed.

Of course this is not a problem that is limited to phones. For example, the PSP, a device that is theoretically capable of many computer-like features has been completely locked down and can only play games (that you have to buy and where Sony can take a cut). The Wii has bluetooth functionality that can only work with its own wiimote. Why not other bluetooth devices? This is not even considering upcoming hardware such as the Apple iPad that will mimic the iphone in every way in terms of dealing with third party software.

This is a shame

The main reason I don’t like this is that a lot of potential remains under lock and key. If you look at what the latest iPod Touch is, it’s a computer with 800MhZ, 256MB of RAM, and a 32 (or 64) GB hard disk. I had a computer with similar specs in 2002. My computer in 2002 could do a lot more than my iPod today, even though they are technologically similar. The reason has nothing to do with technology, but has everything to do with poor decisions that keep such devices locked down.

Solutions

Unfortunately, the current solutions to this problem are quasi-legal at best (downright illegal at worst). It involves a healthy dose of hacking and looking for exploits. This in turn can lead to serious breaches of security when the same hack that can be used to install an unauthorized program is used to distribute a virus (again, an iphone example).

The easiest way to prevent this is to avoid having as many people looking for these kinds of hacks. The overwhelming majority of hackers are not malicious people and would not be hacking if their phones were open to third party software. And even if they were hacking, there would not be a need for a wide dissemination of these hacks. This means that the efforts of people who mean well would not end up in the hands of the malicious.

The Business Case

I am well aware of the fact that companies that release locked down devices see a business opportunity in controlling the software that can be loaded onto them. Indeed taking a cut of every program sold online is a good revenue model. However, opening up these devices will inevitably increase their sales. This is pure common sense: the more a device can do, the more people it attracts.

By the way, I am not saying that hardware manufacturers have to stop selling software. Indeed it may continue to make a lot of sense to sell through a centralized place where users know and trust the source of the program. Opening up the device up to users “at their own risk” though needs to be done. Users need to have control over their devices.

Conclusion

The PC industry has realized a long time ago that openness is the way to go. It allows devices to what was never intended or imagined by the original designers of computers. Who would have through 40 years ago that computers would be used for live DJing or advanced image creation (Traktor and Photoshop, respectively)? The engineers that created modern computers 40 years ago were looking for advanced calculators and processing power. Openness and ingenious software developers did the rest.

It’s time for the same thing to happen to our phones, games, and other devices.

Cross-posted at Lawyerling.ca

Here’s a transcript of the best parts:

All of the same sob story that we are hearing for Omar with a slightly different spin on it. This guy is a little terrorist, he deserves to stay in jail until he faces a trial. What Omar Khadr’s lawyer would like and some of the bleeding hearts in law school would like to have Omar Khadr come back to Canada and walk free. In fact I think they would take it a step further, like to sue the Canadian government and try to get him millions
…
So, I don’t think that Canadians are going to be offended, this sort of line of “his rights are abused” might win applause at law schools but not with regular Canadians.

Aside from showcasing the Harper government’s ideological approach to human rights, Teneycke’s dialogue serves to remind us of the importance of the Charter with respect to individual rights. As eloquently stated by then-Chief Justice Dickson, the Charter safeguards minorities from the “tyranny of the majority” (R. v. Big M Drug Mart Ltd., [1985] S.C.J. No. 17 at para. 96).

I personally hope that most Canadians would prefer to see an alleged terrorist brought before our functional justice system, rather than lower our justice system to a terrorist-like level of disregard for human rights. But even if the Harper government, and the majority of Canadians, wouldn’t care to see Khadr treated as a human being, there is still Charter-based justification for the judiciary (and the “bleeding hearts in law school”) to seek protection of his fundamental rights.