Welcome to the first instalment of VanRamblings’ new Wednesday night TV feature. Each week, we’ll publish the latest television news, hot watercooler gossip, as well as seek to provide insight into the role of TV in our culture.
Throughout the month of July, VanRamblings will publish the upcoming fall TV schedules for each of the Canadian networks (the fall 2004 schedules for the American networks were published earlier, in Television — all you have to do is scroll down). This week, we begin with an introduction to the CBC’s fall television schedule, to be followed by CTV, Global and CHUM.
CBC Hopes For A ‘Must See’ Fall Line-Up … shyeeah, right
Here it is, the beginning of summer and the Canadian television networks are just getting around to announcing their fall television schedules.
Decidedly less exciting that the American fall television schedules (because Canadian TV, for the most part, acts simply as a re-broadcaster of American sitcoms, dramas and specials), there are nonetheless a few pleasant surprises, particularly on the CBC 2004 TV schedule.
Even so, Canada’s public broadcaster has unveiled a rather ho-hum fall schedule featuring familiar faces in unfamiliar places, a pair of new reality-based series, and an ensemble family comedy titled Ciao Bella (Adobe Acrobat required), about the trials and tribulations of an Italian-Canadian family in Montreal, from Mambo Italiano-writer Emile Gaudreault.
Something to look forward to: CBC will air a series of dramas, movies and miniseries this fall, titled High Impact, including a prequel to the successful miniseries Trudeau (Trudeau: The Prequel), and a sure to be groundbreaking, four-hour miniseries based on the life of five-time Saskatchewan premier Tommy Douglas (The Tommy Douglas Project).
CBC will also broadcast a drama based on the illegal trade in human trafficking across Europe, titled Sex Traffic, and H20, a futuristic political thriller. The British soap opera Coronation Street is scheduled to air four nights a week this fall, on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday.
CBC’s Sunday Report will expand to a full hour come September, will go by a new name, Sunday Night, and have as its new hosts, Evan Solomon and Carole MacNeil. The much-praised Marketplace and the watchable and intriguing business programme, Venture, will kick off CBC’s Sunday evening programming this fall, at 7 and 7:30, respectively.
CBC’s award-winning drama, Da Vinci’s Inquest will move to Tuesdays, where it will follow Making The Cut, a reality TV series — a nationwide talent search for six of the best unsigned professional hockey players — at 9.
Returning series include The Nature of Things, the fifth estate, Royal Canadian Air Farce, This Hour Has 22 Minutes, On the Road Again, Just for Laughs Gags, The Red Green Show, Rick Mercer’s Monday Report, The Wonderful World of Disney and Mary Walsh’s Open Book.
Tom Stone and the investigative news programme Disclosure have been cancelled. The powers that be at the CBC ought to have cut the execrable This Is Wonderland from their schedule, but apparently this laughably awful programme will be returning after Christmas.
As for the remaining Canadian television network schedules: here’s a peek at CHUM’s fall TV schedule, as well as a glimpse of CTV’s fall 2004 schedule.
For the major U.S. networks fall television schedules, click on the following direct VanRamblings’ links: ABC, NBC, the WB, Fox and UPN, and CBS.
Tech Tuesday: Security, Shutdown and Service
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This week, a potpourri of items, mostly revolving around PC security issues, everything from security flaws in Internet Explorer to the latest variant on the Bagle / Beagle worm, and what Microsoft is planning to do about it.
U.S. Steers Consumers Away From IE
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Was reading fellow Vancouver blogger Darren Barefoot the other day, and ran across this EE Times story in which the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT) “recommended for security reasons using browsers other than Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer.”
Whether the forthcoming release of Windows Service Pack 2 (Windows Media Player video) will resolve the IE security flaw is yet to be seen.
In the meantime, as Darren suggests, you might consider downloading the latest version of the Firefox browser, which among its other features offers pop-up blocking and tabbed browsing (an amazing and addictive innovation), as well as, with its Thunderbird add-on, a next generation e-mail client that makes “e-mailing safer, faster and easier than ever before with features such as intelligent spam filters and a built-in spell checker.”
VanRamblings employs Firefox parent Mozilla as our default browser.
An Oxymoron: Microsoft Customer Service?
Allison Linn, an Associated Press business writer, in a story titled Microsoft Beefing Up Customer Service, writes that in response to “increased grumbling over its litany of security flaws (Microsoft will be) paying more attention its customers.” About time, wouldn’t you say?
Question of the Week
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My PC takes about 5 minutes to shut down. What’s causing the problem, and how can I fix it? — Submitted by: Georgia S., Annapolis Royal, Nova Scotia
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Remember when turning off an electronic gadget meant flipping a switch? Shutting down a PC is much more complicated. Sometimes Windows takes an extremely long time to close, and too often the operating system doesn’t shut down at all.
First, the more programmes you have running on your system, the longer it takes for Windows to close each one before shutting itself down. You should simply close your programmes manually before exiting Windows.
Second, here’s some general advice: Bugs in hardware drivers cause most shutdown difficulties. Before you do anything else, go to the Web sites of your hardware (i.e. graphics card, network interface card, sound card, modem, printer) manufacturers and look up the latest updates.
Third, you might try restoring your Windows registry to an earlier point, when your computer was functioning properly (you will lose the use all programmes installed since that restore point, but you will not lose data).
Close all programmes, and return to your desktop. Select Start / Programs / Accessories / System Tools / System Restore. ‘Restore my computer to an earlier time’ should be selected. Click Next. Choose an earlier restore point. Click Next. On the following screen, click Next again. Wait. Your computer will restart in about 5 minutes, and your computer registry will have been restored to an earlier, hopefully pristine, restore point.
Fourth, the root of the s-s-l-l-o-o-w-w shutdown problem could be a software conflict. You might try updating the programmes you use (e.g. Irfanview, Quicktime, RealPlayer, Mozilla, Spybot, Acrobat Reader) to the latest versions. Oftentimes this will resolve a shutdown problem.
Otherwise, you might try this: to verify that you’re not clearing your virtually memory (swap file) whenever you exit Windows. Select Start / Run, type in gpedit.msc, and press Enter. Navigate the left pane as if you’re in Windows Explorer to Computer Configuration \ Windows Settings \ Security Settings \ Local Policies \ Security Options. In the right pane, scroll to Shutdown: Clear virtually memory pagefile. If the option is enabled, double-click it, select Disabled, and click OK.
For additional shutdown tricks, surf to PC World for more hints.
Security: Bagle/Beagle Variant Includes Source Code
According to a ZDNet story, “two new Bagle worm variants and the worm’s original assembler source code were spreading around the Internet on Sunday — a dangerous development, according to security experts.”
The gist of the story is this: infected PCs download a Trojan that effectively enlists that computer into the worm author’s Zombie army, which can be used to distribute spam and other malware and to launch distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks.
Because the Bagle worm’s author has included the source code comments, the fear is that several new variants could be authored and distributed, employing tricks to bypass mail filters and antivirus scanners, thus disabling our computers when their nefarious work has been completed.
By the way, Network Associates has just released their version 2.3.0 of McAfee Stinger which will rid you of several of the Bagle / Beagle variants. The latest version of McAfee Stinger is your best defense against Trojans.
Aviation Growth ‘Risk To The Planet’
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The rise in demand for air travel is one of the most serious environmental threats facing the world, according to a British report issued this past weekend. The report says that government plans for expansion of airport facilities are in direct conflict with targets to reduce greenhouse gases, stating that as polluting gases from aircraft exhaust fumes increase further, rapid degradation of the environment will take place.
Friends of the Earth claim this will push up the aviation contribution to carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) emissions to 10-12% by 2020 — from the current 5%.
“We are at war with the Earth itself,” says Cambridge University Professor James Lovelock. “Our goal should be the cessation of fossil fuel consumption as quickly as possible.”
In a BBC report (RealPlayer required) on aviation greenhouse gases, the Stockholm Institute is quoted as saying …
“For too long, airlines have been largely exempt from efforts to combat global warming. The world’s airlines currently create 300 million tonnes of greenhouse gases each year, and that figure is rising fast. By the middle of the century, airlines will account for 15% of the total contribution to global warming.”
The head of one of the world’s biggest oil giants — Ron Oxburgh, Chairman of Shell Oil — in an interview with The Guardian, has said unless carbon dioxide emissions are dealt with, he sees “very little hope for the world.”
“No one can be comfortable at the prospect of continuing to pump out the amounts of carbon dioxide that we are at present,” Lord Oxburgh told the Guardian. “People are going to go on allowing this atmospheric carbon dioxide to build up, with consequences that we really can’t predict, but are probably not good.”
The Kyoto Treaty was drawn up in Kyoto, Japan, in 1997 to implement the United Nations Framework Convention for Climate Change. It legally binds industrialized nations to reduce worldwide emissions of greenhouse gases by an average of 5.2% below their 1990 levels over the next decade.
After the U.S. pulled out in March 2001, the treaty was left shattered. A compromise was reached four months later, with nearly 180 nations (including Canada) opting for a scaled-down version of the treaty, but President Bush has stated that the U.S. will never sign it, in spite of dire warnings from within his own government.
Minority Government Bodes Well for Kyoto
Canada’s first minority government in 25 years will have to ensure it acts on environmental and sustainable development issues if it is to maintain support from the New Democratic Party and the Bloc Québécois.
According to International Institute for Sustainable Development Board Member Mary Simon — also a former Canadian Ambassador for Circumpolar Affairs — climate change should be at the top of the Liberal government’s environmental priority list. As someone with close connections to Canada’s north she is well aware of climate change’s “profound implications for the social, cultural and economic well-being of the 50,000 aboriginal people who live in the Canadian Arctic.”
Ms. Simon’s compellingly readable two-page report (Adobe Acrobat required) is available here.