Francophonie, glocalisation, Québécois, télévision

Jeunes francophones au Canada

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En réponse à mon billet sur l’émission Les pieds dans la marge (de Radio-Canada), un lien sur l’émission VOLT de TFO-TVOntario. Cette émission ontarienne semble avoir été le lieu de rencontre du trio marginal de RadCan. Les deux émissions se ressemblent dans une certaine mesure mais Volt me fait l’effet d’une émission dirigée vers un public légèrement plus jeune et, surtout, [après avoir regardé On se French, mais est-ce qu’on se connaît?, il me semble clair que le public cible a le même âge que pour Les pieds dans la marge] spécifiquement franco-ontarien. Puisque les Québécois connaissent généralement très peu de choses des francophones canadiens hors-Québec, les liens entre les deux émissions sont plutôt intéressants.

Là où Volt a l’avantage, c’est que plusieurs portions de l’émission sont disponibles en balado-diffusion. Idéal pour un «Canadien errant mais non banni de ses foyers». Ça veut donc dire qu’il me sera possible de voir certains bouts de Volt depuis le Texas, à partir de la fin de l’année.

Si au moins Radio-Canada pouvait faire la même chose avec Les pieds dans la marge et Infoman, rendant ces émissions disponibles en-ligne. Et si Télé-Québec pouvait suivre la tendance en diffusant, en-ligne, des épisodes complets de Pure laine, Méchant contraste et les séries du Rebut Global. À tout bien penser, ce sont les seules émissions que je regarde, à l’occasion.

Dans une certaine mesure, la mission de TFO ressemble à celle de Télé-Québec. Dans les deux cas, l’aspect régionaliste et décentralisateur semble important. Pour le reste, il y a toute la portion éducative, la question de la diversité culturelle, etc. Historiquement, ces deux réseaux de télévision me semblent avoir été fondés dans des contextes socio-politiques assez semblables mais désormais distincts.

Évidemment, à moi qui ne regarde que très peu la télévision, il m’est facile de me méprendre sur le sens de certaines politiques de programmation.

happiness, language, personal, ramblings, relativism, writing

Writing Relativism

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As I’m still learning as much as I can about language ideology of North American English-speakers, I find public discussions of prescriptivism simply fascinating. Not that we don’t have the equivalent in French. We clearly do. But the connection between language prescriptions and cultural values seems clearer to me in North American English than in French.

And the following comment, made in a discussion of typographic and spelling variability, does make me think about my own relationship to relativism.

Language Log: Foolish hobgoblins

a mischievous reference to “the thin edge of the moral-relativist wedge”, alluding to the many people who believe that making linguistic choices is a moral issue, so that tolerating (or, worse, advocating) variability is moral relativism of the most deplorable sort.

Of course, the author favours this type of relativism in his blog post. But the notion is that some people (closeted prescriptivists) might object to the relativistic nature of somebody’s tolerance of variability.

Come to think of it, there is an obvious connection between linguistic relativity and a specific form of moral relativism. A friend of mine, clearly a relativist, was telling his son that a language form his son had used was not inherently wrong but that “we typically use another form.” Personally, I find such training quite useful but it does reveal a relativistic tendency which, apparently, makes some people cringe.

Of course, I don’t think of relativism as “anything goes” the way many people seem to define it. To me, relativism implies a relation with “context,” broadly defined. An action may have deep implications and those implications should be kept in mind in making decisions about the action.

Clearly, my own relativistic tendencies push me to relate relativism (and relativity, actually) to other dimensions of Life, The Universe, and Everything. To me, relativism isn’t an absolute value. But it can be pretty useful in daily life.

Relativism helps me remain happy.

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Enthusiasm and MS?

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Office 2007 is a bit unusual, for me. Been using it for a while (since it became available to Indiana University’s community) and have been enjoying some of the features. Still don’t really enjoy the “tape” interface in Word or PowerPoint but some things seem to have been planned pretty carefully.

For instance, I’m currently writing this in OneNote which seems greatly improved over OneNote 2003. Zoho Notebook seems simpler to use (and, obviously, will be available at no cost) but OneNote is sufficiently better from previous incarnations that it is conceivably a cool tool.

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Zoho Tools

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I might enjoy Zoho more than I thought I would. In a browser (like Firefox 2) with a “spell as you type” mode, it can be fairly useful.
However, the desktopization of Zoho Writer (a widget which allows users of Zoho Writer, Sheets, or Show to edit files offline) wasn’t working for me, just now. The other desktop widgets did work and the add-ins for Microsoft Excel and Word also seem to work. Strange there doesn’t seem to be a PowerPoint add-in, but maybe that’s coming.
At first glance, Zoho Writer seems more feature-rich than Google Docs. It also works in browsers to allow for opening online documents, which can be quite useful. But Google Docs has the advantage of Gmail integration…
Actually, I just received a Word document which was to be co-edited with members of a group I’m a member of and I decided to open it in Google Docs. And I then shared it through Google Docs. Maybe because I thought it would be easier for the “collaborators” to recognise what this was supposed to be. But I guess I should have used Zoho Writer.
Ah, well…

I’ve been using Zoho Show for lectures and it does work fairly well. I wish it worked a bit more like an outliner with different output options (screen display, outlined notes, etc.) but it works quite well as a PowerPoint replacement.
The advantage, for me, is that I can edit it on any computer and know that it’ll be available for classroom presentation. Perhaps a less important point but it also means that I only log in to my Zoho Show account, from the classroom computer.
An issue I had while presenting was that read-only presentations were too slow to go from one slide to another. Another issue I have is that Firefox isn’t keeping the classroom computer awake and the screen sometimes goes black if I spend too much time on the same slide (which might happen on occasion).
I just wish I could synchronise things with my Clié so that notes I take while reading some things can be transformed into lecture notes more easily.

All in all, Zoho’s online tools seem to be fairly well adapted to my workflow.

Digital Life, DRM, music, students

The Quest for Student Ears

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College students take to Ruckus | CNET News.com

(Also talks about other music-related services showed at the Digital Music Forum – East.)

Talked about Ruckus and music discovery on one of my other blogs. Still like part of the system as a way to explore musical diversity (especially if they get more diverse music).
The idea, here, is to hook students-as-music-consumers to a music delivery system. Not even sneaky. But a bit ill-advised, IMHO.

democracy, politics, U.S. politics

Closer to Fair Use Codification?

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Digital Fair Use bill introduced to US House (sans teeth)

If passed, the FAIR USE Act will amend the DMCA to codify recent exceptions granted to the anti-circumvention rules by the Register of Copyrights, which include some allowances for obsolete technologies and cell phone unlocking.

Doesn’t sound like a whole lot, especially since the bill specifically does not address some of the most controversial parts of the DMCA. But if codifying fair use is the goal (as fair use is not yet guaranteed, in the United States), maybe this bill can shake things up at least a bit.

It’s quite interesting to see how a large majority of citizens agree that things need to change yet a handful of corporate entities enforce the status quo without much apparent effort.

It’s also quite funny how many bills in the U.S. have acronyms designed to work as expressions. This one is:  Freedom And Innovation Revitalizing U.S. Entrepreneurship Act of 2007. Catchy!

A bilingual blog on disparate subjects. / Un blogue disparate bilingue.