Just a short filler, this – but YouTube’s chief counsel has written a post about YouTube’s current battle with Viacom about hosting ‘illegal’ videos.
The best bit is this :
For years, Viacom continuously and secretly uploaded its content to YouTube, even while publicly complaining about its presence there. It hired no fewer than 18 different marketing agencies to upload its content to the site. It deliberately “roughed up” the videos to make them look stolen or leaked. It opened YouTube accounts using phony email addresses. It even sent employees to Kinko’s to upload clips from computers that couldn’t be traced to Viacom. And in an effort to promote its own shows, as a matter of company policy Viacom routinely left up clips from shows that had been uploaded to YouTube by ordinary users. Executives as high up as the president of Comedy Central and the head of MTV Networks felt “very strongly” that clips from shows like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report should remain on YouTube.
That’s pretty stunning, however you look at it.
Over the last two days there’ve been two news stories about some truly incredibly bad driving – they really do have to be seen to be believed.
First there’s the story of the person caught driving to the garage – with their bonnet up in front of the windscreen. How they were able to see at all is beyond me.
And then there’s the one (with video footage) of the truck driver pushing a car along the motorway. Not just pushing – the car is sideways-on, and the entire thing is happening in the outside lane. I didn’t think truck drivers were even allowed to use the outside lane…
Gob-smacking.
At work, one of the sites is called – for want of a better name – Money Manager. (That’s not the real name of it, for obvious reasons. But related, in one way or another.) It’s the brainchild – and to some degrees the baby – of one of the directors. His idea, his name, his plan, his approval throughout.
Ever since it was first created, it’s been in my head as Monkey Manager. The scripts for backing it up are called monkeybackup, the database is monkeyDB, so on so forth.
The rest of the web team have also taken to calling it Monkey Manager. No good reason, it’s just catchier and/or easier to remember than Money Manager.
Yesterday, in a “what we’ve been working on this week” email to all the directors, I referred to the site as Monkey Manager. Not once, but three damn times. I didn’t even realise until I re-read the email at work this morning.
No-one’s said anything yet. I don’t know if they will. But all the same, the first reaction from me (and, to be fair, my colleagues) was “You fuckwit.”
Can’t say fairer than that, really.
A few days ago I noticed that a certain hate-filled hypocritical shitrag had a big story about how shocking the latest Lady Gaga video is. And then goes on to have screenshots in the story of all the pieces of the video for Telephone that people should be shocked or offended by.
Anyway, now it’s time to make your own mind up, as the video for Telephone is available online. Choose for yourself, not based on what the hate-rag says.
In a couple of weekends we’ll be going to the O2 to see Peter Gabriel in concert. (Again) So I booked the car-parking a week or so ago.
To be fair, booking the parking spot is pretty easy, and they even give you the name of the gig, so you can check you’re booking for the right day.
Only it turns out that Peter Gabriel’s now doing two nights at the O2, right after each other. You can see where this is going, can’t you?
So yeah, I need to find out whether I can refund the one on the wrong fucking day.
What a twat.
I’ve found myself being repeatedly annoyed by the stories recently about people in Toyota cars suffering from “Unplanned Acceleration”, where the card supposedly won’t slow down. All of the drivers keep on saying that they were using the brakes but not slowing down, and I’ve always wondered why those drivers don’t just turn off the engine, or put the car in neutral.
I still don’t get why they can’t put the car in neutral and coast to a stop, but I do understand more about why they can’t turn off the engine or pull the key out. Put simply, it appears there isn’t a key. The cars involved all appear to have these keyless start buttons.
I’d never really thought of keyed ignitions as a safety feature, but it sure seems like it might become one…
[Updated, 13th March : This YouTube video shows how to fix the problem of 'Unplanned Acceleration' in epic style. Love it.]
I really worry about one of my colleagues. He’s mentioned on several occasions about his lack of navigational ability, but last night took the biscuit.
On leaving Bury after the company bowling trip last night (i.e. not the normal “departure location”) he took the wrong turn. His route should’ve been from Point A on the map below to Point B. A nice easy run. However, the route taken was slightly different…
One hell of a diversion...
Yep – a wrong turning meant that he went from Bury to Norwich, back down to Newmarket – past the place he lives! – to come back to Mildenhall.
I despair…
