I’m normally a pretty binary guy. There are very few shades of grey in my world. There’s right and wrong. Black and white. Moral or immoral. But sometimes I just can’t make up my mind, and this is one of them.
Vancouver operations manager John Mang sent out this directive today:
Do not, under any circumstances, install any applications / programs on DaletPlus workstations. Installation of non-CBC software must be done by our radio maintenance team, and requires my express approval.
Why?
The operational parameters of DaletPlus are very specific and can be adversely affected by other applications. These effects can be local to your computer, or spread to other computers and even infect the networks.
(Translation: There’s a chance, as with any software, that something you install could conflict with another app on your system.)
John goes on to warn that in “the very near future,” all DaletPlus workstations will be “locked to ensure the ongoing reliability of the system.” More than that, any “non-approved applications” are going to be removed — along with all related data.
Take that, you naughty iTunes installers! You know who you are!
Listen, John’s a good guy and I know he’s not doing this because he’s having a bad day today. Having spent a lot of my career in I.T. I get the logic at work here. Having a “clean-slate” computer is always easiest to support. And frankly, left to our own devices, many of us plebs would install all sorts of weird-ass software.
But.
A far bigger risk to CBC workstations is actually our web browser standard: IE6. Its “Active X” technology can install all sorts of crap on workstations. I’ve seen far too many people blindly click Yes on pop-ups that say “Do you want a fancy-pants toolbar for your browser?” and then wonder why their computer is slow, Dalet crashes, etc.
Applications aren’t our big problem. Our web browser standard is.
We need to move to Firefox, and fast.
The always-excellent Ryerson Review of Journalism has published a feature article about George Stroumboulopoulos.
Here’s a sample from it:
The program drew immediate and heavy criticism for dumbing down the news in order to reach younger viewers, but then George isn’t trying to be a youth-friendly Peter Mansbridge. Nor is he trying to be a pundit, an academic or a politician — or a journalist, for that matter.
George is just some guy who likes his music, sports and politics mixed together in one fast, long conversation. The Hour gives that guy the chance to speak with the newsmakers of the day and interpret the news his own way.
Given the roasting George has received so far, it’s suprising to see that — every so often — he delivers an original kind of television product.
What is a little more difficult to calculate is whether or not it’s news programming or infotainment.
I dunno. I’m kind of tired of the boxes we try to put things into. To me, The Hour is more entertaining that news, but far more journalistically sound than what is traditionally known as “infotainment.”
Is there a middle ground here? “Strombotainment”?
Sometimes, there are lots of great stories about the broadcasting business that just aren’t quite right for a full story on this blog — either they’re not 100% relevant to CBC or they’re too short or whatever.
So I’ve now started a “linkblog” in the right-column called “A Little Somethin’ Extra” to collect those stories that I think might pique your interest. (I’m open to better ideas for a name!)
It’s over here 
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You can also subscribe to its feed if you like.
Update: Internet Explorer screws it up, so I’ve taken it off the page for now. The feed still works. 
Hey, haven’t I seen this somewhere before?
Yes, turns out an American network comedy bears a striking resemblance to the CBC’s Little Mosque on the Prairie.
Aliens in America is about a Muslim who finds himself living in a community of white North Americans in a Midwest, heartland setting. Although in this case, the plot revolves around a 16-year-old Muslim exchange student from Pakistan sent to live with a suburban family in Wisconsin, not an imam trying to establish a mosque in Saskatchewan.
The producers of Aliens In America admit that Little Mosque was on their radar as early as 2005, while they were developing their own series. “We had finished the script when we first read a blurb in Variety about them developing a show up in Canada,” executive producer David Guarascio (”Just Shoot Me”) said.
Suuuuuuuuure. 
The program airs on the CW network (Copied Wildly? Comedy Withheld?)
When viewers first tuned in to CBC Newsworld, they saw a slew of technical hiccups. Satellites lost their signals, audio crackled in and out, and hosts clumsily stumbled through their first demanding day.
A spider has spun a web smack-dab in front of 
