Sunday, July 19, 2009

Four Supreme Court cases of note last week concerning search and seizure. Application of R. v. Grant as the new standard of detention by police.

This is the key to the four cases of July 17th, 2009.

From R. v. Suberu. 2009 SCC 33 at 5.

Not every interaction with the police, however, will amount to a detention for the purposes of the Charter, even when a person is under investigation for criminal activity, is asked questions, or is physically delayed by contact with the police. Section 9 of the Charter does not dictate that police abstain from interacting with members of the public until they have specific grounds to connect the individual to the commission of a crime. Likewise, not every police encounter, even with a suspect, will trigger an individual’s right to counsel under s. 10(b). According to the purposive approach adopted in R. v. Grant, 2009 SCC 32, detention under ss. 9 and 10 of the Charter refers to a suspension of the individual’s liberty interest by a significant physical or psychological restraint. Psychological detention is established either where the individual has a legal obligation to comply with the restrictive request or demand, or a reasonable person would conclude by reason of the state conduct that he or she had no choice but to comply. The onus is on the applicant to show that, in the circumstances, he or she was effectively deprived of his or her liberty of choice. The test is an objective one and the failure of the applicant to testify as to his or her perceptions of the encounter is not fatal to the application. However, the applicant’s contention that the police by their conduct effected a significant deprivation of his or her liberty must find support in the evidence. The line between general questioning and focussed interrogation amounting to detention may be difficult to draw in particular cases. It is the task of the trial judge on a Charter application to assess the circumstances and determine whether the line between general questioning and detention has been crossed. [3] [23] [25] [28‑29] see case at http://scc.lexum.umontreal.ca/en/2009/2009scc33/2009scc33.html

Monday, July 13, 2009

Saturday, July 11, 2009

The goal today is to complete reading Working Knowledge by Davenport and Prusak

I have just finished chapter six. I have about 65 pages left to read in this book. So with the end of the book in sight I am settled into finishing it today.

Monday, July 06, 2009

Reading goals this past weekend are partly done.

I had set out to read chapters three, four and five of the book Working Knowledge this weekend. I succeed and got that reading done. I had also set out to read chapters five and six of the book Knowledge Representation and Reasoning. I only got chapter five read but read it completely which means I read the beginning again. I had also set out to read chapters five and six of my web semantics textbook but only got chapter five read. So either I wasn't working hard enough or I set my goals to high.

Sunday, July 05, 2009

Framing quote.

This really frames my thesis.
In general, the greatest value of modeling knowledge processes lies not in reaching an exact understanding of knowledge input, output, and flow rates but in identifying the variables in the model that can be affected by management action.
Davenport, Thomas H. and Prusak, Laurence. Working Knowledge (Boston: Harvard Business School, 1998) at 80.

Friday, July 03, 2009

Studies continue over the weekend.

I got chapter three now read in Working Knowledge and started chapter four. I see that the author of the Complete Idiots Guide to Knowledge Management has lifted her examples from this book I am reading.

Studies continue with a background literature reading term underway.

I have managed to continue reading Working Knowledge by Davenport and Prusak. Focusing on this book is good. I am nearly done chapter two of this book. The book is under two hundred pages long.

I should also read more of the book Knowledge Representation and Reasoning by Brachman and Levesque. I have almost finished chapter five now and still have chapters six, seven, nine, ten and sixteen to read on my supervisor's recommendation. This is about 90 pages of logic to read.

In my course textbook on the semantic web I have started chapter 5 of 14 chapters.

Thursday, July 02, 2009

I am trying to focus on school more this summer and it looks like I am recoverying some of my study habits.

This term should be my background literature reading term. I am trying to find more time to read. The problem is I have a full time job every day of the week. This has slowed down other graduate students in the past and is typically a show stopper for something like completing a PhD. I am trying to focus myself by blogging here more.

These past few days I have started to read the textbook for my fall course Semantic Web: Concepts & Technique COMP 4900-C (The course outline is here: http://www.scs.carleton.ca/~bertossi/semweb/syll09.pdf) and am now about one sixth done reading this book on web semantics. Here is the citation to my course textbook:

Allemang, Dean and Hendler, Jim. Semantic Web for the Working Ontologist: Effective Modeling in RDFS and OWL (Amsterdam: Morgan Kaufmann, 2008).
So far I have read three chapters. I have learned the rational behind the semantic web. I have been introduced to coding in RDF and a few related languages. I am now learning in chapter four about RDF parsers and serializers and RDF stores.