Is it odd for a shoe store to advertise a “Holiday Blowout”?
Does anyone else find it odd that a shoe store would advertise a “Holiday Blowout”?
Shoebuy.com – Email Exclusive HOLIDAY BLOWOUT SALE: 20% OFF EVERYTHING!
November 29, 2005
November 24, 2005
NFL To Move All 32 Teams To Los Angeles
Now we’re talking!
NEW YORK – National Football League commissioner Paul Tagliabue announced Tuesday that, after over a decade without a football team, Los Angeles would become the home of all 32 NFL franchises by 2010.
November 20, 2005
Copy Protection Still a Work in Progress – Yahoo! News
Copy Protection Still a Work in Progress – Yahoo! News
BOSTON – It’s been the better part of a decade since “Napster and other free song-sharing services began scaring the daylights of the music industry. And still recording companies can’t find an effective anti-piracy technology to save their hides.
The fact that so-called digital rights management might always be a doomed experiment became painfully clear with the fiasco that erupted after Sony BMG Music Entertainment added a technology known as XCP to more than 50 popular CDs.”
The RIAA and member companies need to wake up to why piracy exists – they overcharge – and to the new realities of the 21st century – they can’t stop copying and alternative distribution networks. They need to embrace these facts and their new role before it is too late.
Here are three things I think the music industry can do to survive:
- Emphasize music rental. Support and foster rental services like Yahoo! Music Unlimited, Rhapsody, and the new Napster. Make your full catalogs available. Market these to parents and universities.
- Don’t put additional hurdles on music portability. Why should rental services have extra charges to put the music on portable devices. Why else would the iPod be so popular than for listeners to take music with them? I’m eyeing that Creative Zen, but won’t pay extra to take my music with me. If anything, hide the portable service charges in the regular cost.
- Use the Internet to your advantage. Encourage indie bands to post music to your web sites, give them customized URLS, let listeners rate the music, and get the good stuff quickly added to the rental services.
Continuing to surreptitiously place anti-piracy software on computers (spyware) will only lower sales and encourage more piracy. I don’t trust CDs from Sony any longer. Case in point, I was in Tower records yesterday and considered buying a CD until I noticed it was a Sony disc. I put it down; that’s a lost sale. Can I trust the other major labels? Possibly not.
The same goes for the MPAA, television, and other media. You can’t fight the digital revolution; you’ll lose.
November 18, 2005
Police break up shadow puppet theatre – Entry for November 17, 2005
Last night, we were walking home from dinner in downtown. Like normal, we were being silly. This time, we were making shadow puppets against the wall of the civic center at the end of a T-intersection – the lighting was perfectly situated. Well, actually, my wife was making a ‘puppy dog’ and I was barely making a crocodile.
After a couple minutes, we were interrupted by a spotlight from across the street.
We hadn’t realized, but the perfectly situated lighting was from the headlamps of a police car which had been stopped at the intersection. The police man had been watching us the whole time. And then he turned on the spotlight.
My first thought, having lived in places where cops aren’t so friendly (Glendale), was “Uh-oh, what do they think we’re doing? Tagging? Ha!”
Then, from the police car across the street came a voice asking “What are you doing?” The spotlight turned off, and the engine roared as he turned along side us. And a smiling face asked “Making hand puppets, eh!?”  Â
All I could muster was “Uh, yah.” My wife was a little more articulate with “a puppy dog.”
And with that, he sped off make to his presence known to others. It took us a while to realize he’d been amused by our little shadow puppet theatre and had probably used the spotlight to be helpful and make more contrast. When he realized he’d both startled us and washed out all hints of a shadow, he drove up to let us know we weren’t in trouble.
What’s up with cops trying to startle me !? Jeez!
November 10, 2005
Pat Robertson Warns Pa. Town of Disaster – Yahoo! News
VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. – Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson warned residents of a rural Pennsylvania town Thursday that disaster may strike there because they “voted God out of your city” by ousting school board members who favored teaching intelligent design.
Pat Robertson Warns Pa. Town of Disaster – Yahoo! News
Why don’t we use the correct term – creationism – for what has Pat so irritated? Creationism has no place in a science classroom. Creationism is a religious belief. If you want it in a classroom, put it in a debate, current events, or American government class where it belongs in a relevant discussion about the politics of education.
I also find Pat’s assertion that a natural disaster will strike Dover and God will abandon them inappropriate. He’s not a man of God, he’s a leech on the backside of humanity. His extremism and fear mongering are on the same level as the jihadist imams declaring that non-believers will feel Allah’s wrath. Why is this guy still given headlines? Oh, yeah, right we eat up his controversial commentary.
NFL, Coliseum reach preliminary agreement on return to LA – NFL – Yahoo! Sports
LOS ANGELES (AP) — The NFL and city officials have reached a preliminary agreement on terms to bring a team back to the Los Angeles Coliseum.
NFL, Coliseum reach preliminary agreement on return to LA – NFL – Yahoo! Sports
I think the key point made in the article is that the NFL will be paying for the stadium renovations. State and city officials better not have promised something that would displace USC or to provide too much in infrastructure improvements.
“Tentative plans call for the NFL to finance construction of a $500 million stadium inside the Coliseum, home to the Rams from 1946-79 and the Raiders from 1982-94.”
I’m fairly certain an existing team will make the move to L.A., of which only three teams are likely to make the move: Oakland Raiders; San Diego Chargers; New Orleans Saints. Most of the others have newer stadiums or one under construction.
November 9, 2005
Eagles Place Owens on Suspended List – Yahoo! News
Eagles Place Owens on Suspended List – Yahoo! News
The Eagles should trade Owens to a lower tier team for a seventh round draft pick. That’d be the most fitting way to send him a message. I hear San Francisco needs a wide receiver.
