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  • Nothing escapes the #CRTC’s content regulations. See also: porn.

    written by

    james

    I’ve mocked the CRTC before, for reasons. But I can safely say, uh, I never quite saw this coming. One of the things the CRTC handles is making it mandatory that radio and television stations must broadcast a certain percentage of Canadian content–that is, crap actually produced in Canada. This rule, apparently, has no exceptions whatsoever. So when the porn industry falls behind in its broadcasting of Canadian sexploits, the hammer comes down.

    Wednesday, the CRTC issued a broadcast notice saying AOV Adult Movie Channel, XXX Action Clips and the gay-oriented Maleflixxx were all failing to reach the required 35% threshold for Canadian content.

    Based on a 24-hour broadcast schedule, that translates to about 8.5 hours of Canadian erotica a day.

    Not broadcasting those 8.5 hours of Canadian kink films means the porn channels in question lose their broadcast licenses.

    Here’s a question, though. Exactly how are things like this actively monitored? Wait, no, don’t tell me–I already know. Where do we think the UK gets it from? Canada, I worry for you at times…

  • Quick! Set up a porn filter before I–oops.

    written by

    james

    The secret’s out. The reasoning behind porn filters has been exposed, at least in the UK. It’s not to protect the children, as is repeatedly and all too frequently tossed out there as a way of silencing the masses of folks wondering just in which parallel universe such a beast would actually prove effective. Nope, turns out the porn filters are entirely designed to help addicts in the government break their habbits. To the surprise of absolutely no one, it didn’t do very well there either.

    Given this righteous attempt to legislate morality, it’s a bit ironic then that a scandal has broken out in the UK after Patrick Rock, a top aide to Prime Minister David Cameron and a chief architect of the country’s porn filters, was arrested for possession of child pornography. Cameron himself is taking heat for keeping the February 12 firing quiet, and for the fact that Rock appears to have gotten some advanced warning of his arrest.

    Ironic, yes. But probably not very surprising. And as the article says, I wonder if John Q. Citizen would be given that much room to duck and cover before the jail hammer drops. Either way, someone had better double down on their porn filter efforts–at least when it comes to government internet access. Perhaps they’d have seen this whole Scottish independence thing coming, then. Well, or not, but it’s something–and a far better reason than, you know, for the children. Someone please save the government from itself already.

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  • Does anyone else remember cherry coke?

    written by

    james

    Largely back when I was in highschool, and I think for a while after that, you could almost never walk into a store and not find either cherry or vanilla coke on sale. Usually for cheaper than the regular stuff–which worked well enough for me, on account of I actually preferred that over the regular stuff. Couldn’t tell you why, but there you go. Both were discontinued in Canada several years ago, for reasons I can’t even remember now, but you can still get both pretty near any time you want from the US. So when I decide I’m in a mood to, I’ll bribe someone coming across the border to throw a case or two in the back of their vehicle and make it appear at my front door. Or, you know, if you’re May and will be in the states anyway, just stick some in the suitcase and back you come with it.

    Very few people I talk to even remember we had it up here, though. Which, considering their reaction to the idea of it, comes off as surprising–I’ve heard things to the tune of “Hey, that’d be an awesome combination” and the such. So I got curious. Was it just mainstream enough that I managed to catch it, but obscure enough that pretty much no one else gave it a run? Or do folks just need to get out more?

    I wouldn’t be disappointed if they decided to start bringing things like that back again. And considering they’re at least talking about bringing back drinks I hadn’t even heard of, I don’t think it’s entirely out of the realm of possibility. In the meantime, though, anyone on a return trip from the US feel like taking a stopover in Ottawa?

  • The day kindness stopped being politically correct. Or: What are you smoking, Calgary?

    written by

    james

    We’re heading for another winter that’s supposed to suck, according to folks, in a few ways. So it seems vaguely appropriate that this happened at the end of last winter, which also ended up sucking in a few ways. A Calgary school bus driver ended up running into a problem way too many vehicle owners get to deal with when it’s minus freezing outside. Specificly, her bus decided it’d quit with this whole starting business. Twice. The first day it happened, she shrugged it off and trusted the company she works for to send another bus. Didn’t happen, so kids were either late for school or, well, didn’t show up. So the second time it happened, she decided to show a little initiative.

    Kendra Lindon, who drives for First Student Canada, said her bus wouldn’t start on Feb. 11, and dispatch told her someone else would be sent to drive the route. That never happened, and the kids were left stranded — they either missed school or were driven by parents.

    When her bus failed again the next day, she was skeptical when dispatch again promised a replacement. Several other buses had also failed, and she was covering several routes, and she worried about the students waiting in the cold.

    So Ms. Lindon asked another bus driver to pick up some of the students, and then took her 2005 Cadillac Escalade to pick up some others.

    She picked up five kids, although she had only four seatbelts. Then she picked up another boy, one she’d known for a long time, on crutches with no hat, no gloves and just runners on in what Environment Canada confirms was -26 C wind chill. To make room for the injured boy, two of the other boys jumped into the back of her SUV, where there are no seatbelts.

    Good on her, you’re probably thinking. Give the girl a raise, was roughly what I was thinking. What I wasn’t thinking, but clearly what folks over in Calgary were already heading for, was to hand that girl a good solid firing.

    Look, I know there are rules for a reason. And for the most part, I agree with it. I mean I still think some of them are just plain meant to be broken, but I know the general logic behind it–not to mention, you know, a few that are just common sense. But for every rule, there has got to be at least one exception. Preferably more, because hey, rules that can’t bend are the very first to break. But here’s the thing. If I’m in her position, and I know the company didn’t actually send someone to cover my ass the last time it happened, I’m not going to be altogether inclined to just kick back and trust the company to cover my ass this time–particularly if the company already has me covering off for someone else. Okay, so they have a policy against using your personal vehicle for transportation on your regular bus route. Fine and dandy. But -26 degrees should probably be an exception to that rule, more or less.

    After the new bus arrived, the kids thanked her profusely and Ms. Lindon drove back to her school bus, which a mechanic was just getting started. She then picked up her usual group of elementary school kids — including her son Cody — and went to her job at the school he attends, and where she works as an assistant.

    While at the school, Ms. Lindon received a call from the school bus company and was told to come with her bus to the headquarters “as soon as possible,” where she was fired, because it was against company policy to pick up children in a personal vehicle. She said no one had ever told her that.

    Not sure how far I’ll trust the idea that no one told her it was against policy, but hey, we can run with that for lack of anything else. Even if it was, and someone did tell her that, she’s hardly the first person to decide freezing ass cold is a valid exception to the rule against that. Hell, I’ve had bus drivers around here who’ve missed my stop completely by accident drop everyone else off where they needed to be, then drive me pretty much straight up to my front door because it was freezing freaking cold, and I’m pretty sure that’s against the rules as well. But in that case, the driver screwed up, and while I could have easily found my way back home from wherever, he decided it wasn’t worth freezing to do so. In Calgary, he very probably would have thought about that twice. But, you know, at least he didn’t use his personal vehicle. What are you smoking, Calgary?

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  • I’m… too ‘Sexy’ for my name.

    written by

    james

    People who decide they absolutely despise their given ame aren’t exactly uncommon. Hell, people who decide to do something about it are equally not entirely all that uncommon. But some of the choices folks will come up with kind of makes you wish it were. Take Sheila, for instance. She absolutely hates her name. She’s going to court to have it changed. Her preferred one? Sexy.

    “I wear Victoria’s Secret clothes all the time,” she said. “I was like, ‘Shoot, I’ll just go for Sexy.”

    If that doesn’t work?

    “If it’s not Sexy … then I might go for Sparkle,” Crabtree said.

    And that right there is what’s wrong with the world today, kids. When you’re 15-year-old daughter, who you’d expect to be the more likely source of an idea like that, comes out and says she doesn’t have a clue what the problem is, you know someone’s taken a left turn at loony. Oh, and just in case you thought there might have been some hope for salvaging the situation… nope.

    An Ohio lady legally changed her name from Sheila to Sexy in court just after 10 a.m. Tuesday.

    “That was the last piece I needed for my life to feel complete, kind of like a puzzle,” Sexy Ranea Crabtree told the Daily News. “That’s all I needed, to get rid of that ugly name — thankfully I’m rid of it for good!”

    The world just got a little bit more braindead. Is it too late to get off?

    ,

  • Precrime preorder.

    written by

    james

    Most folks figure, you know, they’ll wander into a video game store, grab a bunch of whatever’s handy, make a break for it. Maybe they’ll get lucky and the junk they grab will mostly be stuff they won’t want to toss on the side of the road just to decrease the suck factor. Only a special few will plan to show up with the explicit goal of grabbing specific items fitting specific criteria and pulling off the same sort of escape in which they pray to $being that’s the day the security cameras go on vacation. But it takes a special kind of someone not very sneaky to call the store, explicitly reserve what they plan to steal, then show up to do exactly that. That was either really smart, or really freaking stupid. And that will depend entirely on whether or not he’s currently sitting in jail, Xboxless. But, judging by what I’m not finding, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say it’s that first one…

  • Games you should probably not play on the internet: “Name My Baby”.

    written by

    james

    Okay, I get it. I really do. The internet is an absolutely amazing resource, most of the time. Hell, I’ve done many a research paper/essay/general futzing around project with all kinds of help from the internet. But there are just some things you don’t want to leave up to a mess of people you don’t know. Like ever. Well, unless you fancy the kind of folks who find it hillarious to send a relatively () well-known rapper to a Walmart in Alaska. One of those things, probably *the thing, you may not want to inflict the internet on is the naming of your kid–see also: previous disclaimer re: if you’re a fan of those types. On the up side, at least the dad behind the deal kind of knew what he was getting into. On the upper side, the selection of names that were suggested could probably be worse. Rather, it could have very probably flopped spectacularly. It didn’t, which is absolutely freaking awesome. Yes, even if the names they chose for her turned out to be a mouthful. I really hope they’re not the type of parents to bust out the full name when she ticks them off–or, you know, that she learns not to do that quite so much. Getting your tongue around that can’t be doing your irritation levels any favours…

  • This is not the drug deal you are looking for.

    written by

    james

    Payment for services rendered has a whole variety of meanings depending on the people involved and the situation in question. Probably depending exactly on the services rendered, if we’re honest about it. In certain parts of Oregon, payment for services rendered apparently means you feed me, and as part of your payment, I slip you a little meth on the side. Somewhere along the way, it was a little bit, well, lost in translation. So taking a shot at fixing that, the waitress who was paid in full took it as a confession. You… can probably take a stab at what happened next.

    The Daily Astorian newspaper reports the Oregon waitress contacted police Friday after a couple included the envelope while paying for their drinks.

    The responding officer identified the substance and arrested 40-year-old Ryan Bensen and 37-year-old Erica Manley.

    Somehow, I don’t suppose their tip money was in the other envelope. You know, the one back at the hotel room.

    Police said they found more of the drug when searching Manley’s purse and the couple’s motel and vehicle.

    Well, it was worth a shot.

  • Once more with feeling: Default passwords are bad. Not kidding.

    written by

    james

    If you’ve been reading this thing for any amount of time, you’ll probably notice I tend to come up with all manner of very strongly worded opinions. Particularly in the neighbourhood of geek things. Like, for instance, when it comes to folks who set up a piece of hardware–like, say, a router, or a server–and decide to leave the default password in place. So your state-of-the-art Lynksys router, which you’ve had for all of 24 hours, has become a hot spot for the local script kiddy and the mass amount of software he’s employing even as I’m writing this so he can expand his porn collection–and all because, well, you didn’t follow the first rule of basic security. Change the goddamn password. That goes double if you run a website for a school district, and its default login credentials are, uh, well, only slightly above no login credentials at all.

    A Texas school district is learning the hard way about website security basics. If you’d like to keep your site from being compromised, the very least you can do is reset the default login. According to a post at Hackforums, the Round Rock Independent School District of Austin, TX was using the following name and password for its admin account. (h/t to Techdirt reader Vidiot)

    hacked – idiots used default login/pass

    u; admin
    p; admin1

    Needless to say I’m not exactly world’s most qualified hacker, and if it were me on the delivering end of all of that, I figure it’d take me about a minute to gain access. Provided I was 1: doing it manually and 2: not trying very hard. I’m going to go out on a bit of a limb, here, and disprove the theory that you get what you paid for. Whatever the school district paid the folks what set up and apparently didn’t maintain the website, I’m making the offfer right here–not, you know, that I figure it’ll go anywhere, but hey. Take the amount that supposed third-party company brought in. Divide it by 2. Now, write me a check for that amount. Stick it in the mail. Upon receipt, I’ll hand you a website infinitely more secure/stable than that hot mess. No? Well, I tried. In the meantime, for the love of all things holely somebody please provide SharpSchool with a better selection of passwords. Because clearly, they’ve got approximately nothing.

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  • When performing evasive maneuvers, it’s probably best if you maneuver your vehicle…

    written by

    james

    And not do, say, what the pilot of a 747 decided to do when he thought he up and saw himself a UFO. Rather than pull his plane out of the way of a possible collision with another vehicle, the pilot pulled himself out of the way of said possible collision–by ducking. Fortunately for pilot and passengers alike, if there was a UFO in the area, it missed them. Unfortunately for both 34000 feet in the air is quite probably not a very good time to find out your pilot’s losing his goddamned mind. Next time, might I suggest the bus?

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