Fun With Headlines

The City Council is threatening to pass a "veto override" later this week to enact the plan, regardless of Daley's thoughts on the subject as a pro-union Democrat.

Now, The Wall Street Journal reports the following about this City Council.

It turns out that the wage bill's chief sponsor, Alderman Joe Moore, shops at suburban big-box retail stores, for the usual reason. His campaign committee has purchased $30,589 worth of supplies at big-box retailers outside the city, according to disclosure forms. Alderman Moore isn't alone out there with a cart among the high stacks. A review of Illinois State Board of Elections disclosure forms finds that the 35 aldermen who voted to stick it to the "big box" retailers have spent $114,000 patronizing these non-Chicago stores.

I know it is really tough to soften the image of a giant retailer that doesn't really pay all that well and has a propensity to hire illegal immigrants via a subcontractor to clean their stores while driving the proverbial "mom and pops" right out of business (allegedly?), but this City Council might have done it.

The City Council is threatening to pass a "veto override" later this week to enact the plan, regardless of Daley's thoughts on the subject as a pro-union Democrat.

Now, The Wall Street Journal reports the following about this City Council.

It turns out that the wage bill's chief sponsor, Alderman Joe Moore, shops at suburban big-box retail stores, for the usual reason. His campaign committee has purchased $30,589 worth of supplies at big-box retailers outside the city, according to disclosure forms. Alderman Moore isn't alone out there with a cart among the high stacks. A review of Illinois State Board of Elections disclosure forms finds that the 35 aldermen who voted to stick it to the "big box" retailers have spent $114,000 patronizing these non-Chicago stores.

I know it is really tough to soften the https://www.jasminlive.mobi image of a giant retailer that doesn't really pay all that well and has a propensity to hire illegal immigrants via a subcontractor to clean their stores while driving the proverbial "mom and pops" right out of business (allegedly?), but this City Council might have done it.

What will you be doing today in honor of this day of infamy?

I will honor this day by not participating in what the news hopes to be a ratings bonanza.

I won't watch programming with music chosen to put me back on that horrible day.

I won't watch newscasters with their specially-chosen muted outfits and makeup.

I won't watch clips of death and destruction chosen for air to try and shock me into watching through multiple commercial breaks.

I won't listen to Republicans use the images and sentiments to try to gain support.

I won't listen to Democrats use the Chaturbate images to help them sway voters to their side for the mid-term elections.

I won't engage in any debates about whether or not we are safer today than we were then.

I won't entertain any thoughts or debate on Ground Zero.

It isn't that this day isn't important, because it certainly is.

So why will I be avoiding all these things?

Because nothing about today seems pure, except what is in my own head. I lived through it, and I can remember enough of the details that I can internally participate in whatever way that my head seems fit. I don't need anyone to tell me otherwise, because every piece of information being broadcasted at this point is pushed through a very thick filter.

I don't know about the rest of you, but my own filter is good enough for me.

I have an old phone with my Verizon service. I have been to the Verizon store no less than five times looking to replace my phone with a newer, fancier model, and still I walk around with my phone with its dying structure, and dwindling battery. I just don't know what phone to get. I like some of the PDA phones, but they have an additional monthly data charge, and they aren't nearly as compact as my current phone. Plus, I really don't know if I would use all those fancy features that these PDA phones offer.

Now, it is breaking that Apple has a big announcement in about five days, and then this morning, these patent photos were released.

The first jasmine live photo shows a rough mock-up of the various kinds of virtual controls that this device could contain in its Graphical User Interface (GUI.) What that means is that it has various configurations of touch-screen type buttons depending on what functionality you might be using.

Are you drooling yet?

The only questions left to answer are what kind of battery life this device will have, and how much it will cost. This certainly could beat the functionality of every phone, PDA, and MP3 player on the market. It also goes to show how silly all the "iPod Killer" devices are. We should have guessed that the company most likely to kill the iPod would be Apple with a newer device.

For the first time, ESPN put together their best version of the full assault. They had Miami vs. Florida State on ESPN, ESPN2, and their new online TV channel ESPN 360. All the stations had slightly different coverage, so that ESPN could provide some sort of ultimate fan experience.

What they ended up doing was over-covering a snooze fest as Florida State defeats Miami 13-10. And it serves ESPN right that they ended up with such a boring game.

Why am I so vindictive toward the "Worldwide Leader" right now?

ESPN 360, the new online sports video channel, is not available to me as a customer of Adelphia/Time Warner cable here in the Cleveland area. If you go to ESPN's FAQ to find out why, you would think that it is the fault of my cable company. They say that my cable company doesn't offer ESPN 360.

What they should say is that my cable company wouldn't pay a service fee for the rights to carry ESPN 360 over the Internet. That might sound funny to some of you. How can something not be available on the Internet? Back in the AOL dial-up days there were differences between the offerings of Internet, but in the broadband world, the Internet normally looks the same whether it is coming via DSL or Cable modem. Not so with ESPN's new 360 video offering.

This is a relatively bold and new business model in the Internet world, even if it has always been the norm since the beginning of Cable TV. Each cable service provider would have to pay for the right to have MTV, ESPN, TNT, WGN, and whatever other channels they wanted on their service. Then the cable company would make that part of a package, or leave a channel out on an island waiting to see if anyone wanted to pay extra for the right to view those channels.

In the Internet, it has never worked that way. It has pretty much always been, one person making their own Internet content decisions. The Internet Service Provider would never make any content decisions on behalf of the consumer, including the blocking of services. And this openness and freeness is how the Internet is usually thought of.

With ESPN's new plan, they are throwing a lot of those things into question. Instead of allowing me to subscribe to 360 as an individual, they have decided to try to charge my ISP. I understand the business reasons that ESPN is trying this. They want to be compensated for their online video. They want to make sure their bills are paid to cover the cost of the service. They don't want to take a chance that they won't be able to recoup their expenses with advertising alone. They want to make sure they have as much adoption of their service as possible, and making it APPEAR free to Internet users is a good way to do that.

But none of this works for me. I am a member of ESPN's Insider so that I get their stupid magazine and extra access to Insider articles. And even I can't watch ESPN 360 by logging in. That is not the way to treat your most loyal customers, I don't think.

But beyond that, this could end up being very harmful to the Internet as a whole, and this is why I applaud Adelphia/Time Warner for not paying ESPN's 360 ransom. If other companies try to adopt this kind of business model, then it thrusts the ISP's into more of a decision-making role as the service provider. The only decisions I want my ISP to make is on how much total bandwidth is provided to me. If I want to load up on Skype, iTunes, BitTorrent and other services and it is within the parameters of my own bandwidth usage, I want to be able to do that.

And while ESPN's 360 is just one small thing, if it catches on, it could throw the whole culture of the Internet and how services are served to individuals on the Internet into chaos.