According to Sony, Sony is going to win the HD DVD war, thanks to Sony’s PS3, which is outselling the Wii and XBox 360 and can’t be found on store shelves because it’s selling so fast.
Exactly how do people with such delusions run a big company effectively?
And why are there so many press-release-regurgitation organizations not asking even the simplest of questions about this?
CBC just finished its live telecast of Test the Nation, its hyped-up “event” of IQ-test-type questions.
My reactions to it are mixed. On the one hand, the questions themselves are complex, even for a genius like me. The crazy computer graphics are eye-catching, and they’ve collected some interesting people in their studio.
On the other hand, there are many drawbacks, some of which started weeks ago. Besides that, the show seemed awkward. Wendy Mesley (who I hate to put down because I actually really like her – even though she agreed to marry me but never called like she said she would) was forcing herself to grin throughout the entire two hours, making her seem fake and almost creepy. That and she (or the producers — probably both) screwed up quite a few times with answers and timing.
What got me most was that one of the questions even has an error in it (and I’m not the only one to notice). Question 41 dealt with algebra. If 2 < x < 6 and 4 < y < 6, what is the maximum value of x + y? It’s a simple enough question, but it leaves out an important part: The assumption that both x and y are integers. Without that, the maximum value is just less than 12. With it, the answer is 10. Since 11 is given as a selection and marked as wrong, I think the CBC owes an apology to some of us.
As for the guest test-takers, the CBC found out for us that (surprise!) surgeons are smart, and tattoo artists not so much.
Oh, and according to the test, I have an IQ of 132, which puts me well into the 90th percentile. While I’m flattered, I’m afraid that’s a bit of an overestimation.
Those who still care about Jeopardy! are all atwitter about its first ever three-way tie. It sounds amazing, that three people could have exactly the same score.
But it’s not. Two players were tied and both doubled-up. The third, who was leading by a large margin, bet the difference between his score and their theoretical doubled-up scores. Except, as commenters on the YouTube video point out, he forgot to add an extra dollar so he’d come out on top. It wasn’t a fluke. Someone just forgot his basic Jeopardy strategy.
YouTube visitors also note that Trebek was rushing through the answers and seemed a bit scripted through all this.
Vanou points me to this video from Quebec Solidaire’s candidate in Terrebonne Jean Baril, who is frustrated that our public institutions are serving crappy cafeteria food and letting people go to McDonald’s instead of buying locally-produced (and he argues healthier) food. Le Devoir has a short story.
Meanwhile, the Bloc Pot’s Richard Lemagnifique (yes, that’s his real name) has a slightly less serious video about the benefits of hemp.
After a couple of weeks without anything in the paper, today I have a whole page to myself with a feature about Wikitravel, a Wikipedia-like website for collaborative travel guides run by a Montrealer. There’s also companion stories about wikis in general and about its founder’s blog, which uses the French Revolutionary Calendar. And there’s an online extra massive list of wikis from Memory Alpha to Wikocracy. Taken together, it’s my longest story to date (2500 words, give or take), and I’m pretty happy with it. But it was a mess trying to keep it all in my head near the end.
Also today, another blog profile. This time, of Chaos Theory, a blog mostly about mothering two young daughters.
UPDATE: MtlWebLog’s Kate McDonnell notes that “pissed off” is used in the main feature in a quote. To be honest, I didn’t even think when writing it that it might be considered an expletive. Does that say something?
ALSO: Can anyone tell me what Patricia’s beef is? I’m an idiot. I read “except” when I should have read “excerpt”, which meant I mistook Patricia’s praise for criticism. Sorry.
As 24 parodies go, this one‘s pretty good. And it’s not their only masterpiece.
(via Sillytech)
Another day, another group of angry rich homeowners who want nobody to use their streets but them.
James Shaw Street in Beaconsfield, the Cavendish extension, and now residents of Montreal West are upset because one of their roads is being used by people who are not them. And their arguments just don’t hold water.
For the unfamiliar, “Confrontation at Concordia” was a “documentary” created by “journalist” Martin Himel after the Sept. 9, 2002 riot at Concordia University which stopped a planned speech there by former Israeli Prime Minsiter Benjamin Netanyahu.
I put words in quotes because the Global TV special was insanely biased in favour of one side of the conflict (namely, the right-wing, pro-Netanyahu, anti-Palestinian side). It was so bad the matter was taken up with the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council. Its decision (which I reported on) said in part:
The Panel recognizes that the documentary film at issue was not detached and objective in a journalistic sense; however, the Panel is not of the view that its broadcast was in breach of any of the foregoing provisions of the either the CAB Code of Ethics or the RTNDA Code of (Journalistic) Ethics. That being said, the Panel considers that it would have been helpful to the audience to inform viewers that the broadcast was a point-of-view documentary.
The council made the point that since it was a documentary, not a news piece, it didn’t have to be objective. I disagree, but c’est la vie. Now because of this, people think Concordia’s Muslim groups are funded by the Saudi government.
As far as documentary coverage of that era of Concordia history, I recommend the far more balanced documentary Discordia.
Nice to see some people still do things the way our forefathers did.
Yesterday afternoon I didn’t have anything better to do, so I decided I’d check out the anti-police brutality protest.
Past experience has shown me that these protests tend to get rather tense when the radical wing confronts police near the end. I could never quite figure out the cause of the pattern until yesterday when I realized something I should have concluded earlier was obvious:
The entire purpose of anti-police brutality protests is to prompt police brutality.
Some letters are appearing following this Ottawa Citizen piece I blogged about earlier.
The piece argues that blanket bans on cellphones, audio players, digital cameras and almost any handheld electronic device in schools are going too far.
The letters argue that these buzzing contraptions are distractions in class. They are. They should be banned from class. But the opinion argues that they should not be banned from school. It’s a small distinction, but an important one.
After all, last time I checked, students were still allowed to socialize between classes. Or has that been banned too?
Now that the debate is over, the media is ready to declare a clear winner:
Glad we cleared that up.
The Ottawa Citizen has an opinion piece which makes a lot of sense. It says schools shouldn’t put blanket bans on cellphones, digital audio players, digital cameras and anything else electronic and handheld, because these devices have legitimate uses.
When I was in high school, they had a lot of rules that either were unenforceable or just didn’t make sense. They banned public displays of affection. They banned visitors. They banned name-calling (a lot of good that did). They banned gossip. They banned fire. They banned juniors buying things during lunch.
The most annoying rule they had in place when I was a student was the rule that said you couldn’t go to your locker during lunch. It was a stupid rule. It meant any lunch I ate either had to be completely disposable, or I’d have to carry it around everywhere – to the library, to lunchtime activities – until the bell sounded ending lunch.
And this was before they started coming up with the really stupid stuff…
With little fanfare, and what sources tell me was quite a bit of bureaucratic delays, The Gazette has lifted its subscriber wall, for all but its letters to the editor (which is a shame, because its letters are actually pretty good this week).
It’s an experiment. A newspaper’s content is its commodity, and giving it away free online does little to encourage people to subscribe. On the other hand, blocking original content behind a wall means it won’t turn up in search engines, can’t be linked to from blogs, and ends up not being talked about online.
Will the experiment work? Will the increased exposure make up for those who ask themselves why they should pay for something they already get free? Only time will tell.
Not the leaders, the Canadiens. And they’re already down 1-0. Mike Boone has details.
Meanwhile, Quebec’s political party leaders are having their makeup done while they practice memorizing which members of opposing parties’ teams have put their foot in it since the campaign began.
Live blog of the debate after the jump.