“Ako na yata ang kauna-unahang senador ng Pilipinas na naging biktima ng cyber-bullying,” lamented Sotto. (I am probably the first Philippine senator to be a victim of cyber-bullying.)
Sotto added, “Ang iba pa’y may sinusulat na gusto daw ako kasuhan. Nais kong ipaalam sa kanila: walang krimen na plagiarism sa Pilipinas.” (Others write that they want to sue me. I want to inform them: there is no such crime as plagiarism in the Philippines.)And I am with Batman on this:
They say there should always be attribution. If we do that, all those singing Magkaisa, Balatkayo and songs of VST & Co.,, when they don't say they are the composer, we can charge them with plagiarism if we follow what critics say. - Sen. Vicente Sotto III, http://www.rappler.com/nation/11405-sotto-blasts-critics,-backs-blogging-billSotto's defense so far:
You may have noticed that all smartphones and tablets tend to look like each other. There's a reason for that. They all do the same things, they're all meant to fit in a human hand, and the phones are meant to place the receiver at your ear and the transmitter at your mouth. None of Apple's design patents should have been granted in the first place. - SourceAng masasabi ko lang: Always think out of the box! Is the box patented? Tear. It. Up. Put some cedar garland. Make it original! :-)
Fr. Efren Balistoy, chaplain of the Bureau of Fire Protection, and Fr. Antonio Gerente, chaplain of the Bureau of Jail Management and Penology, notably used iPad instead of the usual Bible during the mass offered for the late Interior Secretary Jesse Robredo on Wednesday, according to a report of Radyo Inquirer 990AM. But Balistoy, who owned the iPad, immediately defended the use of technology during the Mass, saying he only uses it in emergency cases. - SourceNow, some people say this is very wrong because it somehow undermines the sanctity of the mass. What do I say? I think this is VERY UNACCEPTABLE!
"Plagiarism is rampant in the Senate, but some staff members of senators consider it an acceptable practice.---
Passages from various authors are included in the speeches of senators and entire legislative bills are being copied and passed off as their own.
The chief of staff of Senate Majority Leader Vicente Sotto on Wednesday said it was a common practice among Senate staff members to scout for bills that a previous Congress had failed to enact into law and repackage them as their bosses’ pet measures.
For instance, the reproductive health (RH) bill that Sen. Miriam Santiago filed in 1997 has undergone so many incarnations before its current packaging as the committee report that she and Pia Cayetano, chairperson of the committee on women and family relations, now endorse.
Why reinvent the wheel?
“Copying is a common practice. Why do you need to think of a brand-new measure when a good one that was not enacted already exists?” said Hector Villacorta, Sotto’s chief of staff.
At a breakfast forum, Villacorta said former senators would sometimes approach incumbent ones and ask them to refile the measures that failed to reach approval during the former senators’ term.
“They request new senators to refile [the bills] because (these are) already in the archives. Why reinvent the wheel? Re-filing is an accepted practice. It is called copying,” he said.
Word for word
There are also instances when a senator’s staff goes through bills not enacted by a previous Congress and copy these word for word.
“It’s really copying …. Why exert effort when these bills are just lying around?” Villacorta said.
He explained that this was an acceptable practice because “a bill not acted upon dies with an old Congress. So when the new Congress takes over, the staff of the new senators will find out that can still be revived.”
Two senators are being assailed on social networking sites for their alleged failure to attribute information from sources on the Internet contained in their speeches.
Sotto was chastised for not acknowledging a US blogger whose work his researcher cited in a speech against the RH bill last week.
Cayetano was similarly ridiculed for allegedly not mentioning two institutions in separate speeches on maternal health and the environment.
Rationalization
Even Villacorta himself was whipped on the Web for saying that Philippine laws do not have provisions that penalize anyone who freely lifts information from the Internet.
Still, Villacorta said it was easier to rationalize the filing of unoriginal bills than delivering unoriginal speeches because even the Constitution was “plagiarized” from the US charter.
“We plagiarized the US Constitution. All the amendments became our Bill of Rights. But do they call us a plagiaristic country? No, because the law is based on precedent,” Sotto’s chief of staff said.
“Even our Insurance Code is a plagiarized document. The proposed freedom of information bill is plagiarized. What’s more, the Senate and House (of Representatives) versions of the RH bill are very similar. So who is plagiarizing who?” he added.
Villacorta reminded everyone that “the Bible reached us today because the monks copied from the Greeks. Everything really started from a little copying.”
All plagiarists
“Even our image was copied from God. We are all plagiarists,” he said.
Former Sen. Ernesto Maceda was in the Senate Wednesday and acknowledged that the copying of bills from a previous Congress was indeed considered acceptable among his peers during his term.
In the case of speeches, “when we lifted a passage or quotation, we gave the corresponding attribution to the source,” he said.
However, Maceda would not hold Sotto and Cayetano personally accountable for passages in their speeches that might have failed to attribute the right sources.
“I can believe the two senators if they say their speeches were prepared by their staff. It was an omission…. I think to me it’s not a big thing. It’s forgivable if it does not really affect the overall content of the speech…. Almost all senators depend on staff work,” he explained.
Magnanimous
Santiago was also magnanimous when asked about the issue.
“Maybe the speech writer just overlooked it…. This is politics so I guess we should give more leeway to the senators as long as later on they admit that they took it from some other source and they acknowledge that source,” she said.
“This is not academe where it is grave, in effect a mortal sin not to attribute something to its source or author,” Santiago added.
Still, Maceda said it would be good if the senators would “express an apology to authors asking it.”
Not on Villacorta’s watch in the case of Sotto. “Senator Sotto was not personally responsible for preparing the speech. He only read it on the floor. Besides, I already apologized to (US blogger) Sarah Pope,” he said.
Too awkward
Villacorta said Sotto’s researchers initially tried searching for the website of US author Natasha Campbell-McBride but could not open it.
The researchers resorted instead to Sarah Pope’s blog, believing her quotes of Campbell-McBride’s work was verbatim.
“We cannot draw up a speech that says ‘according to this blogger who quoted this author.’ It’s simply too awkward. Besides, what would the Senate President say,” Villacorta said.
“A whole gamut of ‘according to’ would also not make the speech credible. This is the Senate we are talking about,” he added."
“In my view, what happened was not fair,” Mr. Aquino said. “Their rules say that those with disbarment cases will not be considered. There are those facing cases, but were suddenly cleared. There are others who don’t have any case, but were suddenly disqualified. [X: Emphasis mine.] How can that be fair?”
The Nexus 7 is an amazing package for something that costs a penny less than $200. It feels like something that could sell for much more. It has a great screen, solid performance and a clean, clear, uncluttered version of Google's latest operating system, Jelly Bean.
...[W]hile we tend to prefer larger tablets that better differentiate themselves from phones, if you've been toying with the idea of getting a real Android slate but didn't want to spend big bucks for a big device, this is what you've been waiting for. This is the best Android tablet for less than $200 and the best budget 7-inch tablet on the market. For the moment. The race to the bottom in the tablet space is, after all, just getting started and, if the Nexus 7 is any indication of what's to come, we're in for a very good ride.Oh, did I mention this gadget was developed by Google? :-P
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| Here she is. |
minsan madarama mo kay bigat ng problemaactually, i thought of sponsoring a regular contest but i don't think i can afford good prizes, hehehe. but if the participants (to my would-be contest) are ok with, say, rayban rb3293, then, we can have a contest! :-)
minsan mahihirapan ka at masasabing "di ko makakaya"
tumingin ka lang sa langit
baka sakaling may masumpungan
o di kaya ako'y tawagin
malalaman mong kahit kailan
hawak-kamay
di kita iiwan sa paglakbay
dito sa mundong walang katiyakan
hawak-kamay
di kita bibitawan sa paglalakbay
sa mundo ng kawalan
minsan madarama mo
ang mundo'y gumuho sa ilalim ng iyong mga paa
at ang agos ng problema'y tinatangay ka
tumingin ka lang sa langit
baka sakaling may masumpungan
o di kaya ako'y tawagin
malalaman mong kahit kailan
wag mong sabihin nag-iisa ka
laging isipin meron kang kasama
narito ako oh, narito ako…
sa mundo ng kawalan
hawak-kamay, hawak-kamay
sa mundo ng kawalan…
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Pick up a box of condoms at the pharmacy, go to the counter and ask "WHERE IS THE FITTING ROOM?"___
Siyam-siyam or (literally nine-nine) is a term used for the annual prolonged rains brought about by the southwest monsoon or habagat weather system in the western parts of the Philippines during the months of May to September. The siyam-siyam is said to have arrived when everything in the environment looks gray and misty, and the rain pours intermittently several times a day.I hope everyone is safe.
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If you want something in your life you've never had,
you'll have to do something you've never done.
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