In the case of online ticket purchases, if you actually click to read Ticketmaster’s fine print before buying concert tickets, the terms run nearly 6,200 words. It takes far longer to read than the three minutes and 15 seconds Ticketmaster gives you to make a decision to buy tickets.

It also points out that the terms can be abusive to the point of absurdity:

They’re often lengthy and complicated. Sometimes they can be changed unilaterally by the company, and they usually include a limited corporate liability clause.

Readers are encouraged to comment on this article. In order to do that, you have to agree to this 785-word license release, which also requires you to read and agree to this 10,509-word general website terms of service. Both contain an absolute liability waiver, and the latter contains a clause that allows the company to unilaterally change the terms without notice. It also contains gems like these:

1. Except as provided herein, you agree not to reproduce, make derivative works of, retransmit, distribute, sell, publish, communicate, broadcast or otherwise make available any of the Content obtained through a canada.com Site or any of the Services, including without limitation, by caching, framing, deep-linking or similar means, without the prior written consent of the respective copyright owner of such Content.
2. You shall not have any right to terminate the permissions granted herein, nor to seek, obtain, or enforce any injunctive or other equitable relief against canada.com, all of which such rights are hereby expressly and irrevocably waived by you in favour of canada.com.
3. You acknowledge having obtained independent legal advice in connection with this license, release and waiver, failing which, you shall be deemed to have voluntarily waived the right to seek such independent legal advice.

Don’t let it be said my bosses don’t have a sense of humour.

(By submitting a comment to this blog post, you hereby agree that Fagstein is awesome.)

See also:

• August 2, 2007 — De-NIED!
• July 22, 2008 — It’s all fun and games until a kid goes missing
• June 8, 2008 — Gazette call centre gets pink slip

Some of us are working alone in the Sports department late at night, hoping beyond anything else that an announcement doesn’t come out of the blue to screw everything up.

See also:

• February 20, 2008 — Comeback of a lifetime
• February 2, 2008 — More changes at The Gazette
• November 10, 2007 — Habs Inside/Out redesigned

Patrick Lagacé points to this report about a kid in Georgia who bounced a baby across a room by jumping on an inflatable pillow. He’s now facing charges for child cruelty.

Of course, because there’s video of the incident, TV news was all over this story. Sure, the video is disturbing, but people will watch it. So they play it over and over. That’s an average of one baby launch every 7.5 seconds.

Did they think we’d forget after the first 15 times what it looked like?

See also:

• February 11, 2008 — Live hits gone mad
• December 11, 2007 — Car-wreck TV
• December 4, 2007 — New Fox 44 newscast still has kinks to iron out

For some bizarre reason, the STM started this campaign without updating its web page on the card so that students could learn more about the new system.

One of the claims by the STM, as highlighted by The Gazette, is that the card will eliminate fraud and, hence, taxing by fellow students. The way this will be done, it suggests, is by revoking the card’s credentials once it’s reported stolen.

Let me repeat that: Once it’s reported stolen (This is assuming, of course, that the student in question knows the serial number of the stolen card or the STM can search a large database of personal information to find it).

Now, to those who have never been bullied in high school: What do you think is going to happen after someone has taxed you for your transit pass and you report it stolen?

Of course, the fact that ID and pass are on the same card, and that ID should be checked any time the card is used, should automatically make it impossible to use the card of anyone but an identical twin. But, as we all know, verification of student ID cards is hardly 100 per cent.

See also:

• August 6, 2008 — 11 problems with STM’s new magnetic fare card
• July 30, 2008 — More mobile options for bus times
• July 22, 2008 — Bus route suggestions on the cheap

The piece generated a lot of response from letter-writers, many of whom feel the same way.

See also:

• July 31, 2007 — smyles
• August 6, 2008 — More traffic to Gazette blogs solves newspaper crisis
• August 2, 2008 — Gazette starting Olympics page, photographer blog

Matinternet has a piece about an Info690 report that plagiarizes (without attribution) an OMGclusive article in the Journal de Montréal this morning that says bus drivers in Montreal are doing a lot of overtime, a few of them even doubling their salary with all the extra work they do.

I guess this is news for some people. If you’ve ever seen an STM driver’s schedule (four hours on, two hours off, three hours on, etc.), you’d start to understand a bit better.

The articles, of course, offer no solutions to this problem. The STM is doing the best they can to hire more drivers, but that takes time, and the number of retirements is creeping upward at the same time as the transit agency wants to add more service.

See also:

• February 27, 2008 — No STM strike on the horizon
• November 26, 2007 — If only bus drivers had writers like these
• November 14, 2007 — Another STM strike?

I know summer is the time for lots and lots of filler (ahem), but I was considering making fun of the West Island Chonicle for doing the exact same thing. At least they have “we have no budget” as an excuse.

Besides, everyone knows Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough is the only ice cream worth having.

See also:

• July 21, 2008 — Anglo comedians don’t want to talk to La Presse
• July 14, 2008 — A day in the life of uninteresting people
• July 13, 2008 — Brunet launches music blog

See also:

• July 28, 2008 — Globe reduces TV listings
• July 13, 2008 — Olympics blogs ahoy!
• July 4, 2008 — Collected Wisdom is not

The Canadian embassy in Washington is apologizing to Impératif français, among others, after it used a photoshopped picture of Samuel de Champlain holding a poutine on invites (now scrubbed of the poutine offensiveness) to Canada Day celebrations. IF reacted to the image with their usual measured response.

Perhaps I missed something in Political Correctness 101, but what’s so offensive about this again? Is it some stereotype that we eat poutine? Is it because the image of Champlain was sullied in some way?

Frankly, I think the fact that Canadian Press had to explain what poutine was is offensive to me.

See also:

• November 8, 2007 — Angryphones and frangryphones
• July 31, 2008 — Attractiveness of the community
• July 3, 2008 — O CanadOMG

The first part of his rant is against a lame This Hour Has 22 Minutes sketch that makes fun of Quebecers. Since Martin Patriquin already has a response to that one, I won’t bother here.

The second part attacks my newspaper for the most curious of reasons:

On faisait un appel à tous pour savoir si une famille du West Island pouvait accueillir une petite fille de 13 ans un week-end par mois, histoire de laisser sa mère souffler un peu.

«La jeune fille est très active, elle garde sa chambre propre et respecte les règlements de la maison, pouvait-on lire. Idéalement, la famille d’accueil serait noire…»

Imaginez comment The Gazette réagirait si le Journal se mettait à la recherche d’une famille d’accueil BLANCHE pour une jeune fille. On crierait au racisme !

The Gazette has regular columns in its arts and life section which profile kids looking for foster homes and organizations in need of volunteers. It’s about a step and a half below actually rescuing orphans from a burning building.

But Martineau takes issue with the fact that it’s suggested a black kid would ideally (but necessarily) best be placed with a black family.

To answer his straw-man hypothetical, if the Journal was trying more to place troubled children with foster parents, I would certainly welcome it. And if an ad requested white parents, I’d probably be more confused than offended. Statistically there are always more black kids in these situations and fewer black parents in a position to adopt.

But even if I grant that this is racism at its core, is this really the biggest injustice he could find?

The Gazette can be criticized for a lot of things (ask me, I’ll write you up a list), but in 1,000 years this would not have stricken me as one of them.

See also:

• August 2, 2008 — Gazette starting Olympics page, photographer blog
• July 25, 2008 — Myles has given up on baseball
• July 22, 2008 — Gazette live-blogging Impact game

See also:

• July 24, 2008 — Ste. Anne bike path looks really cool
• July 1, 2008 — Strawberries!
• May 23, 2008 — Forbidden burger…

(There Jeff, I posted one of your stories. Happy now?)

UPDATE: Farked.

See also:

• July 30, 2008 — Back in the closet
• June 17, 2008 — Please publsh and send a reporter
• June 8, 2008 — Slow down, Lewis

As a side note, I’ve noticed that mainstream media websites, when talking about the Hockey Night theme, have been linking to a version of it on YouTube which was clearly infringing on copyright. Later, when some of these same media websites talked about the Colbert Report talking about the Hockey Night in Canada theme, they linked to another YouTube video, which was also infringing on copyright. (Both those videos have since been taken down.) Is it appropriate for media websites to be promoting content they know to be infringing on other people’s copyright?

UPDATE: Scott Moore, the executive director of CBC TV sports, has a post up about the HNIC theme and the responses he’s gotten about it.

See also:

• July 28, 2008 — “Nuked the fridge”? Please
• June 18, 2008 — Another blogger war with the Evil MSM
• June 9, 2008 — The theme that wouldn’t die

See also:

• May 14, 2008 — NDG Monitor is back
• March 20, 2008 — Nat Lauzon likes puppies

xkcd has gone mainstream. Now I need something else to like that’s cool and ensures my geek cred. The Daily WTF isn’t enough.

(And yeah, you’re damn right I’m going to use this as an excuse to post a comic)

See also:

• July 22, 2008 — Scissors bomb mailbox!
• July 17, 2008 — Dr. Horrible: Adorable evil
• June 23, 2008 — Tonight’s forecast: dark

From Associated Press’s YouTube channel (which doesn’t use the pretentious “The” in its username), a clip on the deep family histories of the presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton is linked with some Canadian superstars (Alanis, Trudeau, Celine, Kerouac) through her French-Canadian background.

See also:

• No related posts

The word “duh” comes to mind.

See also:

• No related posts

Those numbers seemed suspiciously high to me, especially since before this week Facebook was an English website and therefore its reach in Quebec was lower than the rest of Canada.

Then I came across this:

Ce sondage a été effectué en ligne auprès de 1257 répondants du 11 au 15 février 2008. Sa marge d’erreur est de 2,8%.

So this was an online survey. Not only does that outright dismiss the non-trivial (albeit dwindling) portion of Quebecers without regular Internet access, but online surveys are notoriously unreliable. More importantly, it wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to conclude that those willing to take online surveys are more likely to have the kind of free time to waste online that would make them more likely to be members of Facebook in the first place.

So take those results with a grain of salt.

See also:

• May 31, 2008 — Facebook destroys privacy, eats babies
• March 23, 2008 — Who got the Facebook scoop?
• March 15, 2008 — Facebook watches you poop

Date: Tuesday, March 4
Time: 6:30pm
Location: Sud-Ouest borough hall
815 rue Bel-Air, about three blocks west of the station

And if you can’t come up with an opinion on your own, feel free to check out what other random uninformed people think.

No word yet on whether there will be a counter-protest from the anti-name-change group.

Previously: Oscar Peterson metro won’t be easy to accomplish

See also:

• February 27, 2008 — Oscar Peterson metro won’t be easy to accomplish
• July 31, 2008 — Attractiveness of the community
• July 15, 2008 — The metro car ice cream parlor, and other Just for Laughs outdoor fun

The Gazette, you’ll recall, had taken the Journal to task for its “exposé” on businesses that dare to hire anglophones, calling it bad journalism. (I still think the fast food thing was worse.)

Needless to say, the dual-blind taste tests (which involved flying bagels from one city to the other to maintain freshness) ended in Montreal’s favour, and the city is now 3-0 in Gazette bagel taste tests. Hamilton is licking its wounds, or at least it will be once its Chamber of Commerce CEO realizes that coming in second in a two-man race isn’t “like getting the silver medal in the Olympics.”

Of course, I might point out that this had nothing to do with taste and everything to do with naming. But trademark lawyer battles aren’t as interesting as blind taste tests I guess.

So now you can sleep tight, confident in the fact that the best place to get a Montreal-style bagel is Montreal.

Now what about this “Montreal-style” steak spice mix?

Oh, and if you’re captivated by pointless newspaper gimmicks like I am, be sure to check out the most boring video ever made, featuring the Hamilton Spectator’s taste test and some bad pronunciations of “assuage” and “St. Viateur”.

See also:

• January 21, 2008 — The boring bagel brouhaha
• March 1, 2008 — Local newspaper union news
• January 29, 2008 — Anglos really do speak French