Developing a better Signal-to-Stewart ratio

The other day, YouTube announced that it would be removing all of it's comedy central clips due to copyright reasons. I think that just about everyone saw that coming about 30 seconds after Google announced it's intent to acquire the company. A company like YouTube (read: not profitable, not rich, not a big player in the grand scheme of things) can afford to keep copyright infringing material on their site. In the best case scenario, people won't sue cause YouTube doesn't have enough cash to make it worthwhile. In the worst case, they can use the defensethat they are understaffed to patrol all of their user base should they get sued.

Google, on the other hand, can't use either defense. It's a big, high profile and rich company. A good target for a suing if there ever was one. Unfortunately, that means that they will have to play by the rules.

To be honest, I only ever went to YouTube to watch material that shouldn't be there. SouthPark. John Stewart, Colbert(although, he sorta bugs me) etc. In part, this was because I don't have a TV. The larger reason though is that these people produce quality content. Now that the quality clips are gone, I really don't see why I'd ever visit YouTube.

That said, perhaps with the reduction in the content that I'm used to watching, I'll be able to find other stuff which was previously buried beneath John Stewart clips. Maybe a positive side effect of this is a better signal-to-Stewart ratio that will result in the user contributed content being visibleto the average, and lazy, viewer - like myself.

Upside down car

I really wish I had watched this happen so that I could wrap my head around *how* it happened. Sadly, we didn't actually see the action part of the accident. We just looked down the street and thought "Huh. That's weird. That car is upside down."



I just can't see any way that this car managed to flip upside down on a flat street.

Everyone seemed to come out of this more or less OK. Both of the people in the flipped car crawled out of their windows and walked around immediately after the crash.

Credit Card Oh No

Two weekends back Craig was in town on his way back from Florida/Europe. During a night of heavy 'unculturing' Craig used his credit card at a single location - in fact, the only location Canada over the past 3 months.

A few days later, Craig's credit card bought a kayak in Nova Scotia, and sent some money to what must have been a close and personal friend from Pickering Ontario. Pretty active considering the card was actually sitting in Craig's pocket in Whitehorse.

Now that Craig's credit card has been on a spending spree, I'm a little nervous about my own. There's no telling what sort of people my credit card met on a Saturday night in a downtown bar. The only people I remember seeing were a bitter waitress, three surrey girls, and a distracted bartender. Perhaps there was also an evil credit-card leprechaun behind the counter drinking evil whisky and doing an evil I'm-about-to-buy-a-kayak jig. With an unchaperoned card, who knows?

This sort of thing totally sucks. I mean, if I get really really drunk and fly to Nova Scotia and buy a kayak that's one thing. At least in that case I end up with a good story (and a kayak). But if I get really really drunk and my credit card buys a kayak without telling me - I could see getting pretty upset. Worse, I think in Craig's case the credit card may have been drunk while Craig was perfectly sober in the Yukon (never a good combination).

On the plus side, when I called the CIBC lost credit card centre to get the low down on my own card, I was able to speak to someone that didn't speak English, and probably lived in Romania. The upside, of course, is that this added a level of international intrigue to the affair. Everything is more interesting with international intrigue.

It's also fun to listen to a Romanian pronounce 'kayak.'

¡Hoorah para España!

Sometime last year, I managed to score a trip to LA for a Microsoft developers conference. This year, the conference is in Spain, and by some near-miracle, I managed to score a ticket to this event as well. Awesome.
I've never actually been off continent, so this is pretty exciting.