Author: Synetech

To Avoid Educating Children

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I just saw an article on Dateline about the things that children see on television today. They showed clips from various shows that depicted scenes inappropriate for young children. The recurring theme and solution was that the children were to be kept from seeing these shows. The parents agreed that they did not want their children—in some cases up to 12 years old—watching them.

This is ridicuolous the solution is not to prevent the children from watching the shows, the solution is to bloody educate them. Stone asked whether it is the networks or the parents who are responsible for keeping the children from watching inappropriate shows and everybody agreed it was the parents. If these parents have not yet had “the talk” with their children then the parents are certainly responsible!

This brings up another question. Isn’t it actually better to over-expose the kids to these things? If you over-expose the children to these images then they will become jaded and they will no longer respond to them. Is that not what is desired? In some cases yes it is. There are however some children who will react differently; becoming over-exposed to the stimulus, they will think that the behaviors are acceptable and when confronted with the descision, they will do it.

Again it comes back to the parents. They must take their children’s education into their own hands instead of hoping that sex-ed at school will do it for them when they are 14.

It’s What’s On The Inside That Counts

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“It’s like we got a face lift and fired our agent.”

That is the slogan that Future Shop is using in it’s new campaign. They have “changed the look” of the stores and are hoping that it will drive up sales.

First of all, the change is barely noticeable. The colors are all the same, the layout is the same, everything looks the same except maybe a little more empty space inside, and the new computer terminals where you can browse their site and make purchases using the attached card readers.

Unfortunately for them the new look does little to cover up the rot that is inside. A little paint or rearrangement does not change the fact that the staff are incompetent morons who are anything but helpful.

Yesterday I went to Future Shop to make a few purchases. I was not impressed with their “new look” and was even less impressed with their same level of—non—service. I was unable to find one of the items I was looking for that I had seen on their web site, another item had a different price saying that it’s only on sale through the web site, and the other item I had questions about.

Once again I found myself performing the Future Shop test that I have done on several occasions in the past year or so. I put on my acting face and did my best to look as confused and helpless as possible. I wandered around, I looked in all directions for sales agents, I checked my watch to indicate that I am in a hurray, I looked at expensive items to make them think I had tons of money to spend. Nothing! Fifteen minutes later and not a single agent came to assist me. Some of them were too busy helping other—somehow more important?—customers, while most of them were busy playing. There were groups of agents just standing around talking to each other, there were groups of agents helping single customers, there were agents watching the TVs, and even some playing the video games (in teams). Like I said this is not the first time I have done this test at Future Shop, however it was the first time I did it specifically in front of the surveillance cameras and in plain sight of the whole store.

I ended it—quite infuriated with the trashy “service” that Future Shop has been “providing” for the past several years—by making quite a show of being fed up and storming out. Of course I know that this will not help at all because Future Shop does not seem to give a damn about customers, they hire inept children who have no interest in their work; any changes they make will be entirely cosmetic.

The old adage is correct as far as stores go, it really is what’s on the inside that counts.

Racism Is More Than Just Classification

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I just heard a commercial for a radio talk show where a guy was calling a woman of being a racist because she said something about Irish people in general. He said it in a very accusing way and she backtracked but he did not relent. He said “you made a statement about a whole group of people, isn’t that racism?” No it is not.

Here’s a definition of racism from Merriam Webster:

  • 1 : a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities and that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race
  • 2 : racial prejudice or discrimination

The first definition contains two parts, first that racism is a scientific observation—whether correct or not—and second that it ascribes a relative measure based on race.

The second definition—the more commonly used definition—requires some sort of negative or derogatory aspect.

Either way, specifically without an insult, racism is not merely making a sweeping statement. Making a general statement about a group or class of people or things is categorization or classification. If that were to be considered racism then the whole taxonomic and nomenclature branch of research, biology, chemistry, medicine, law, computer science, pretty much everything would be racist. Charles Darwin would have to be called a racist. Anyone who groups like objects would have to be called a racist.

People are so sensitive these days with all the politically-correct crap, that you cannot do or say ANYTHING without getting into trouble.

A Childs Life: Not So Priceless (<$4,000,000)

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There was just an Amber Alert posted. For those unfamiliar with the term, whenever a child goes missing, an alert is posted in as many forms of media as possible to get as many people as possible to realize that a child has been abducted and to help if they know or have seen anything. The alert was posted but before the text of the message could scroll, the network (CityTV) removed the ticker so as to avoid obscuring the lottery commercial that began airing. As it happens they removed the alert from the screen just as it was about to give a description of the suspect.

Lottery jackpot: $4,000,000
TV Commercial: $10,000
A child’s life: ?

Too bad the standard jackpot wasn’t still only $2,000,000, they might have run the full alert if it was.

“The (Unfair) Cut”

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Last night I saw a couple of minutes from end of an episode of “The Cut”. This is a new reality show where a bunch of people vie to be a new designer for Tommy Hilfiger.

Apparently, the episode involved two groups of people performing a task where the losing team would have someone leave the show. The task they were to perform was to restore a place to its their former glory as accurately as possible for the night (or weekend or whatever). One group had to do the Cotton Club while the other had to do Studio 54. Tommy then judged the two locations to determine which one is more like it was back in its heyday to decide the winner (or more accurately, the loser).

Not surprisingly the group that redid Studio 54 was the losing team. Why is it not surprising? Because. Here are the facts:

  1. 1) Tommy has personally been to Studio 54 back in the 70’s

  2. 2) Tommy has NOT personally been to The Cotton Club back in the 30’s

  3. 3) None of the contestants on either team have been to either club back in its day

  4. 4) Tommy’s mental image of what The Cotton Club should look like is based on pictures, movies, other’s descriptions, etc.

  5. 5) Tommy’s mental image of what Studio 54 should look like is based on his own memories of actually being there

  6. 6) Group “1”‘s mental images of what The Cotton Club should look like is based on pictures, movies, other’s descriptions, etc.

  7. 7) Group “2”‘s mental images of what Studio 54 should look like is based on pictures, movies, other’s descriptions, etc.

  8. 8) The Cotton Club is really old, so there are only so many pictures, movies, people, etc. to describe it

  9. 9) Studio 54 is not that old, so there are still lots of different, varying sources of pictures, movies, people, etc. to describe it.

If you read the facts in order and have even half a brain—or at least a corpus callosotomy—then you can figure out that this was quite an unfair challenge.

Group “1” and Tommy both had to resort to pictures, movies, other people, etc. to get an image of what The Cotton Club should have looked like. Moreover, they probably used the SAME pictures, movies, and people since there are not that many still around from way back in the 30’s. On the other hand, Group “2” had to pick some of the many, many pictures, movies, and people to get an image of Studio 54 (it was only 30 years ago), while Tommy already had a predefined mental image that was much more accurate than the group’s because he was there in person.

Not fair, then again this is “reality” tv and the real world is anything BUT fair.

Canwest’s Stupidity Knows No Bounds

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While I’m on the topic of Canwest’s stupidity I might as well as bring up another beef I have with them.

Like I said previously, Canwest owns multiple channels. They seem to think that this gives them an added benefit for profit but in the wrong way. The best way to demonstrate is to give an example and here’s as good an example as any:

A show—let’s say the Everybody Loves Raymond—normally airs on Global on Monday’s at 9:00pm. About a month ago ELR aired their SERIES FINALE, but did it air on the right channel at the right time? No. What did Canwest do? They took the finale of a 9 year old show and moved it to both a different channel AND time-slot. They put the finale on CH at 10:00pm so that they could air some reality show.

They have committed many other similar offences like always moving Friends from 8:00pm on Thursdays to 7:30pm so that they can air Survivor at eight; moving random episodes of Frasier and other shows to CH; and so on.

Not only is moving a venerable show detestable—especially when it’s to make room for crap—but they also don’t seem to understand that viewers have such things as VCRs and PVRs and such that they need to program in advance. People do not like to have to keep changing the programs to keep up with a networks greed, they want to “set it and forget it”.

Canwest is not the only moron in this arena either, it seems pretty much all Canadian networks are run by idiots. CTV recently moved the LOST SEASON FINALE from it’s normal time-slot to ANOTHER DAY! Instead of airing the finale on Wednesday, they aired it to Thursday so that they could air American Idol on Wednesday. Do they not realize that not only is LOST a massive ratings hit but that forcing people to watch it a day late would aggravate people to no end? Thankfully there are affiliates of American networks so we could still watch it on Wednesday on ABC (without simulcasting) so Canadians did not have to stand around the water-cooler the next day not being able to discuss it with those who have satellite.

(In this one case it was actually a good thing that CTV did such a stupid thing because had they aired it, we would have seen Canadian commercials simulcast and would have missed the American commercial informing us that Good Morning America would air a deleted scene the next day)

Canwest Does Not Understand Specialty Channels

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Canwest owns several channels in Canada including Global, CH, and Prime. Unfortunately everything they touch turns to crap.

This complaint is about how they don’t seem to understand the concept of specialty channels. Prime is the Canadian counterpart to DejaView, airing classic shows from a long time ago. Canwest however thinks that a second channel is a video “bit bucket” or “junk drawer”, a place to store extra stuff. Besides airing old shows on Prime, they also air reruns of current shows (as recent as just 3 days ago). For example they will air an episode of some show (often reality shows) on Global during the regular time-slot, then show the episode again on Prime on the weekend. This may be fine for viewers of those shows who missed an episode, but it is ridiculous for the people who actually pay the extra money for the specialty channel and get which airs current shows instead of the classic shows they expected.

Disappointing Media Key

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Ever wonder how that little “media” key on your “multimedia keyboard” works? It’s not as fancy or great as you thought. First of all it requires Windows Explorer (the main shell) to be running, so if you’ve crashed it out or are running an alternate shell, it won’t work. You may have noticed that it seems to be smart too, it will run whatever media player you choose, for example it may launch WIMP but then you switch to XMPlay and all of a sudden, it starts launching that instead. How clever. Not quite. Here’s the truth:

Whenever EXPLORER.EXE detects that key has been pressed, it goes to the registry and finds the entry for .CDA (the file extension associated with audio CD tracks). It then looks up what media player is associated with it and launches that.

You may say that’s not too bad, but what if you don’t use your computer to play audio CDs? What if MP3s, MODs, WAVs, or some other is your main format and you’ve never associated CD tracks with your favorite media player? What if you want to use different media players for different audio types?

Most importantly of all, it just disappointing to see how basic the way it works is. I thought there was a clever formula behind the scenes that determined what media player to launch. I guess drawing the curtains back all the time has it’s disadvantages, sometimes it’s just a wrinkly old man.

Of Cowards and Idiots

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Recently, I was riding the bus and it occurred to me that all of the riders were either cowards or idiots.

It was a bright, warm (but not too hot), sunny day. All of the windows on the bus were as open as they could be. The air-conditioning was on full-blast, making a lot of noise and burning a lot of fuel. And bafflingly, the heater was on!

Like I said, while it was fairly warm, it was not that hot, so having the windows open would have been sufficient to keep the heat at bay, at least it would have been, had the infernal heaters not been blasting heat into the bus, on our legs. (How can the heaters and air-conditioning even be on at the same time? Shouldn’t the bus designers have made that impossible‽) Somehow, I suspect that even if the heaters were off, the air-conditioning would still have remained on, despite the known fact that air-conditioning requires the windows to be closed, lest it be nothing but a waste of energy.

Anyway, I realized that everybody on the bus was either too stupid to notice the idiotic combination of conditions, or were too cowardly to step up and say anything to the driver.

Ostensibly I fall into the latter group; sadly, having social-anxiety disorder made it impossible for me to say anything.

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No, You Print It!

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For the past few years, in addition to magazines and newspapers discontinuing print subscriptions (especially free ones), many companies also stopped sending out paper coupons and such.

For example, Rogers stopped sending VIP customers coupons with the bill and instead sends a link to a web page where you can print one yourself. I recall hearing about the airline Delta requiring passengers to print their own plane tickets when they book online instead of issuing them one themselves.

Of course they explains this as being green and environmentally-friendly, but the truth is that they just don’t want to spend the money on paper and especially ink, which as anyone with a printer knows is expensive.