The CBC is reporting a CRTC ruling that will allow the American channel “Spike TV” to remain on the air in Canada. Most interesting in the CBC report:

The CRTC saw a difference between Spike, which targets middle-class American males, and Men TV which features lifestyle programming for men from an urbane, sophisticated perspective.

Here’s what the CRTC wrote in its decision:

Spike TV argued that it is not competitive with Men TV for four key reasons. First, it argued that its nature of service is different from that of Men TV, given that Spike TV focuses on programming for “middle class American working men” while Men TV focuses on “men’s lifestyle programming from an urbane, sophisticated, cultured and slightly older Canadian men’s perspective.”

In other words, Spike is claiming that its programming is aimed at people who aren’t urbane, sophisticated, or cultured. American men.

This is another one of those “I’m putting this here because I know that someone, someday, somewhere will be looking for a solution to this problem” posts.

If you have a delimited ASCII file that you want to import into the OpenOffice.org spreadsheet, in the File \| Open dialog, you need to select Text CSV (*.csv;*.txt) as the “File type.” You have to scroll way down the list of file types to find this option.

If you just open the file, or open it with file type of “Spreadsheet” or even open it with file type of Text (*.txt) near the top of the file type list, the file will open in the word processor, not the spreadsheet.

In what can only be called a stunningly generous and sensible move, Aliant is making all residential calls to 13 tsunami-affected areas free until February 28, 2005. Here’s their news release; they’re also running ads to this effect.

Regular overseas long distance rates to these countries are expensive: Thailand is $2.29 a minute, India is $1.69 a minute, Burma is $5.69 a minute. Even Somalia, with Aliant’s most expensive per-minute rate of $5.79, is covered under this offer. Bravo Aliant!

Another post from Steve today: this one concerns his memories of appearing on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.

Via my friend Harold Stephens comes a report on the post-tsunami situation in Phuket.

In a move intended to solve, once and for all, the problem of how to best arrange its parking lots and the various entrances thereto, administration at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Charlottetown today unveiled details of a new “Entrance 2000” plan in a report to the public.

The hospital, which has rearranged its entrance road system several times in recent years, has been plagued with “chronic underperformance of entrance schemology,” says the report.

Under the new plan all parking for the facility will be moved across the Hillsborough River to Stratford. Patients and visitors will be routed to the hospital by a series of high technology pedestrian bridges and zodiac boats.

To ensure the needs of emergency patients are met, a special high-speed luge ramp will be installed over the river, terminating in the outpatient department.

An unnamed source at the hospital, responding to questions about the plan from the media, said “We know there will be challenges adjusting to the new system, but we have faith that this new plan, by moving parking offsite and introducing high technology, will ultimately prove successful.”

Construction is to begin immediately. During construction, patients and visitors will be bused by special high-speed shuttle, from a remote parking lot in Cornwall.

The CBC is reporting that “Northwest Airlines will be offering a new nonstop service between Detroit Metropolitan Airport and Charlottetown this summer.”

On first blush, you might think “who the heck wants to go to Detroit?”

But remember that Detroit Metro Airport is also served by the low-fare Southwest Airlines. Direct service to Detroit means direct service to connecting Southwest flights, which might turn out to be an excellent thing both for Islanders leaving and visitors coming.

For example, an early-June flight from Detroit to Chicago is $39 each way; Burbank, California is $99 each way; New Orleans is $104 each way. Depending on where Northwest sets the Charlottetown to Detroit fares, this could make for very economical travel within North America.

Besides the Southwest possibilities, travel on Northwest itself might prove to be interesting: Detroit is a major hub for Northwest, and they offer direct flights to Tokyo.

Here’s the Detroit Free Press coverage of the story.

It appears as though staff at Online Support are offered company hosted public web pages. That’s a good idea on many levels. I’m a little put off by this part of the Terms and Conditions, though:

Any files created or stored on OLS servers may, at any time, be modified, moved, copied, or deleted, by the OLS IT Department as any work stored on or created with OLS property becomes the property of OLS unless otherwise indicated, in writing, by a senior member of the OLS administration, in advance of creation of each item in question.

Perhaps this is standard corporatespeak; to my eyes, however, it reads like “we own you.” Uck.

Why is the music in this trailer for Ron Howard’s film Cinderella Man the Alan Silvestri score from the Robert Zemeckis film Cast Away (heard as the last track on this album)? Is there so little film music in the world that it must be re-used? Is this some sort of “people who liked Cast Away will come and see this, so let’s use the same music” device? I feel used, mostly because I cry every time I see the “I thought you were dead” scenes of Cast Away.

As our friends at the Formosa Tea House are off in Taiwan for a month, we regulars are left to look elsewhere for dietary and emotional sustenance. Today’s tip: Mavor’s, in the Confederation Centre of the Arts. I’ve just come from there, and I had the entire bar to myself and spent a couple of hours reading about Slovenia, drinking a chai latte, and eating a tasty club sandwich on a comfortable easy chair. Not a bad place to spend a Saturday afternoon at all. There’s free Wifi to, if you need to stay connected while relaxing.