May 15, 2003
Stick a stake in the Lakers
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Here in Northern California, we watched the lunar eclipse usher in a new era as we drank a toast to the demise of the most arrogant team in professional sports. And most pampered. As the ESPN sportscasters summed up the loss during a too-lengthy obituary tonight: "You half expected David Stern to run onto the court and say, 'Wait a minute! Best of nine!' "
The false dynasty is no more.
ed cone said:
i'm with you until the "false dynasty" thing. three in a row is pretty dynastic.
Kynn Bartlett said:
Thank goodness it's over.
You think it's bad in northern California -- try being in southern Cal and not enjoying the Lakers.
--Kynn
JD said:
First two championships were legit. With the third, they used sixth and seventh players -- the referees -- in Game 6 of the western conference finals. Legitimately, their two-term reign as champs should have ended right there.
I suppose if they celebrated their victory with style and grace and even a hint of humility, we non-Laker fans could have overlooked that egregious miscarriage of sports justice. But Shaq, Rick Fox and Kobe don't know a thing about class.
On wireless and convergence
Rafat Ali of PaidContent.org has some good new postings about the TV Meets the Web Seminar and the IFRA online trends conference in Amsterdam, where the emphasis was on wireless.
Showdown at the FCC
On PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer today: The Federal Communications Commission is scheduled to vote early next month on whether to allow companies to own more media outlets in a single market to expand into more media markets. The proposed changes would mark the most significant revision to media ownership regulations in a generation.
Blair may cash in on Times scandal
More on the Jason Blair reporting scandal at the NY Times:
NY Times: Editor of Times Tells Staff He Accepts Blame for Fraud. The Times' town-hall style meeting was closed to news coverage. As a result, Jacques Steinberg, The Times's media writer, was not allowed to attend it.
Newsday: Trying Times For Executive Editor. Times insiders say the Jayson Blair case is galvanizing opposition to Howell Raines.
Reuters: NY Times Editors Meet with Angry Staff Over Scandal. Howell Raines, who was asked if he considering resigning, says he plans to stay on, and publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. says he wouldn't accept his resignation.
Raines admits, "I was guilty of a failure of vigilance." Still, Blair's actions were so beyond the pale for a journalist that I have a hard time siding with those who want to lay the blame at Raines' feet.
Thanks to IWantMedia for the pointers.
Meantime, here's the latest:
Reuters: Jayson Blair, who resigned as a national reporter for the New York Times amid charges he plagiarized and falsified stories, is taking steps to cash in on the scandal, the Daily News reported on Thursday.Blair may not miss his Times paycheck for long after hiring literary agency David Vigliano Associates to explore book and TV deals, according to the newspaper.
I hope Blair's efforts to profit off his heinous behavior crash and burn (even though I have high regard for David Vigliano, who was the agent for my novel).
Jason, take some time off, travel, see the world, get your head together. But a tell-all of your lies and deceit isn't worthy even of the Fox network.
Watching rental films on the PC
NY Times Circuits columnist David Pogue sizes up the two online movie-rental services: Movielink and CinemaNow. His bottom line:
There's a key difference between the movie-download sites and the music-download sites, however: the music sites show a glimmer of promise.How CinemaNow stays in business is a marvel. The site is so marred by typos and poor programming, it could have been a high school sophomore's first Web design project. After you provide your credit-card information during the registration process, you're asked for it again on the next screen, and yet again each time you buy a movie. It's like a hovering Blockbuster employee who follows you around the store, asking every 30 seconds: "And you're sure you can pay for this, right?" ...
It boggles the mind that these services don't exploit the potential of the Internet. Any number of improvements could make them more attractive than other video outlets. Online movie stores could offer tens of thousands of movies, dwarfing the selection of video stores. Digital rentals could last two weeks, not 24 hours, without costing the companies a penny more. And there should be a choice of download speeds; people willing to wait longer for superior quality should be allowed to. It is executives, not technology, who keep these services from greater success.
Saving Private Lynch story 'flawed'
Private Jessica Lynch became an icon of the war, and the story of her capture by the Iraqis and her rescue by US special forces became one of the great patriotic moments of the conflict.But her story is one of the most stunning pieces of news management ever conceived. ...
Witnesses told us that the special forces knew that the Iraqi military had fled a day before they swooped on the hospital. ...
"It was like a Hollywood film. They cried 'go, go, go', with guns and blanks without bullets, blanks and the sound of explosions. They made a show for the American attack on the hospital - action movies like Sylvester Stallone or Jackie Chan." ...
Thanks to Hylton for the pointer.
Meantime, comes this book news:
The Iraqi lawyer who provided maps to lead Marines in their rescue of Private Jessica Lynch Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief's RESCUE IN NASIRIYA: The Untold Story of American P.O.W. Jessica Lynch's Harrowing Ordeal and the Iraqi Who Risked Everything to Save Her, to David Hirshey at Harper, in a significant deal for nearly $500,000.
Game over for mod chips?
MIT's Technology Review: As an underground culture in game machine-tweaking hardware runs afoul of federal law, copyright protection is clashing with user innovation.
Citizen-reporters in South Korea
USA Today has picked up on the story about citizen reporters writing for a South Korean news publication.
Will gaming drive the move to DRM computing?
Wired News: Got Game? Might Need a New PC.
The article doesn't mention this, but the natural desire to play the latest and greatest computer games and dabble in other cutting-edge multimedia forms will be a big motivation for users who otherwise wouldn't buy the coming breed of computers with increased digital rights management restrictions. It's likely that the marketplace will continue to offer essentially three choices: the near-universal Windows platform with Palladium, the limited-DRM Mac, or DRM-free Linux.
