Things Smackie Thinks You Need to Know...

[vansmack]

Originally posted by Charlie Nakatestes,Japanese Golfer:
  Was he smoking a cigarette? If not, it probably wasn't him.
 

No - we're a non-smoking campus.   Have been for years.  It's fairly aggressively enforced too.  
 
 He's here supporting Kucinich and the adminstration is a little worried about what he might say (there's a lot of press here).  I'm in my "student attire" to attend the event on behalf of the administration.  Ahh, the baby face...

[ratioci nation]

Originally posted by vansmack:
  No - we're a non-smoking campus.   Have been for years.  It's fairly aggressively enforced too.  
 
 He's here supporting Kucinich and the adminstration is a little worried about what he might say (there's a lot of press here).  I'm in my "student attire" to attend the event on behalf of the administration.  Ahh, the baby face...

so it took having a baby face to officially become the man?   :p

[vansmack]

Tech Prediction #2:
 
 2008 will not be the year that the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray Debate gets solved, however, HD-DVD will take a substantial lead because it's way below Blu-ray in cost to consumer.  Will it be insurmountable?  Not as long as the Playstation 3 is going to continue to reduce its price.  
 
 I'm waiting for one/two triggers to happen to get me to buy an HD-DVD player:
 
 (1) If Blockbuster waivers from it's Blu-Ray in stores only policy, I'm all over an HD-DVD player (you can already get HD-DVD from thier online stores).
 
 (2) If any of the "Blu-Ray only" movie studios switch to the "we'll offer both" formats camp.  Right now, Warner's switch has kept Blu-Ray solidly in the mix.  
 
 And one trigger point that would make me wait on both for a while - if Blu-Ray decides to lower the hardware costs to that of HD-DVD, then all bets are off, but waiting until after the holidays to do this I think might be the start of HD-DVD dominance.

[vansmack]

Originally posted by vansmack:
  He's here supporting Kucinich and the adminstration is a little worried about what he might say (there's a lot of press here).

Here's the text of his speech if anybody cares:
 
  http://www.counterpunch.com/penn12072007.html
 
 He's a little off base on foreign policy but our students ate it up.  There was a college Republican protest that was a little humorous before it got a little agressive - I'm sure it will be on youtube soon.

[ggw]

Sean Penn lost every shred of cred when he threatened to move to France if Bush won the election, and then totally backtracked when Bush actually won.

[vansmack]

Originally posted by vansmack:
   There was a college Republican protest that was a little humorous before it got a little agressive - I'm sure it will be on youtube soon.

Yep, this is my life...
 
 College Republican Version
 
 Neutral Observer

[vansmack]

Denver, Colorado is the most Dangerously Drunk city in America.  I'll be there this weekend - wish me luck.  DC is the 12th most dangerous drunk city, by the way.  And Durham, NC is shockingly the safest drunk city - I never would have picked a college town to be the safest.

[HoyaSaxa03]

Originally posted by vansmack:
  Tech Prediction #2

where do you see digital music/media over the next 10 years?  i feel like in the next decade we'll be accessing all of our media (music/tv/movies/etc) on giant servers (kind of like rhapsody or napster right now) rather than actually owning physical or digital copies of DVDs, CDs, MP3s, etc ... it would track with exponentially increasing broadband speeds, decrease in price for data storage, the demise of the PC, etc
 
 in such a scenario, all the money you invested in purchasing and owning your MP3s (or DVDs) would essentially be wasted, right?

[Venerable Bede]

Originally posted by vansmack:
  Tech Prediction #2:
 
 2008 will not be the year that the HD-DVD vs. Blu-Ray Debate gets solved, however, HD-DVD will take a substantial lead because it's way below Blu-ray in cost to consumer.  Will it be insurmountable?  Not as long as the Playstation 3 is going to continue to reduce its price.  
 
 I'm waiting for one/two triggers to happen to get me to buy an HD-DVD player:
 
 (1) If Blockbuster waivers from it's Blu-Ray in stores only policy, I'm all over an HD-DVD player (you can already get HD-DVD from thier online stores).
 
 (2) If any of the "Blu-Ray only" movie studios switch to the "we'll offer both" formats camp.  Right now, Warner's switch has kept Blu-Ray solidly in the mix.  
 
 And one trigger point that would make me wait on both for a while - if Blu-Ray decides to lower the hardware costs to that of HD-DVD, then all bets are off, but waiting until after the holidays to do this I think might be the start of HD-DVD dominance.

blue-ray player drops below  $300.

[vansmack]

Originally posted by Hoya Paranoia:
  where do you see digital music/media over the next 10 years?  i feel like in the next decade we'll be accessing all of our media (music/tv/movies/etc) on giant servers...
 
 in such a scenario, all the money you invested in purchasing and owning your MP3s (or DVDs) would essentially be wasted, right?

Well, I had a debate with Markey on here about this very topic a couple years ago where I predicted that as soon as Apple bought into that model it would come true, at least for Music.  The rest is already happening: DirecTV is currently rolling out it's own version of OnDemand and is using IP instead their satellites.  All of this is basically being done to catch up with South Korea - where nearly all TV is delivered over IP.  The limitation in American is bandwidth with the new HD programming - they don't have that problem in Korea where nearly every residential connection is Fiber, and at a much cheaper rate than America.
 
 With that, I will reveal my Tech Prediction #3:
 
 This is the year that a broadcast network will run a TV program on the internet at the same time as an Over-the-Air broadcast - and just maybe one genius network will run an episode on-line before it airs over-the-air.  And a really smart network would run an HD episode (sponsored by some HD TV maker) because most people can see HD quality on their computer monitors - just not on their TVs.
 
 So yes Hoya, IP TV is the future - but how far in the future is up to the IP industry, and they've throttled every attempt to expand for the past 10 years.

[HoyaSaxa03]

Originally posted by vansmack:
 So yes Hoya, IP TV is the future - but how far in the future is up to the IP industry, and they've throttled every attempt to expand for the past 10 years.

maybe i'm crazy, but i think it'll be more dramatic than just IP TV or ondemand movies ... more of a tectonic shift of how we purchase/consume media, "owning" nothing and streaming everything from some giant central server ... but i don't really keep up regularly with tech news, is that realistic?
 
 it may be hard to make the move from physical media to digital media, but i think it would be even harder psychologically to make the leap from owning digital media to streaming it

[vansmack]

The technology is already there, but the platforms are not - if that makes any sense.  
 
 The problem with the all IP delivery model is that somebody still has to pay for it - and that doesn't exist yet.  So there's no way the networks are going to give up that revenue model until there's a new revenue model.
 
 Look at Apple's TV show sales.  They were decent last year, but are going to get killed this year because the networks have figured out their own revenue generating model.  Who's going to pay when it's free online and all I have to do is sit through 3-4 15 second commercials?
 
 The engineers are still consistently ahead of the business models - that's what killed Napster (perhaps twice) and that's what is the major impediment to the license structure you propose.

[vansmack]

Do you think the Orange Bowl knew this in advance?
 
 Uniwatch is reporting...
 
 Missouri is hinting that they may wear solid gold in the Cotton Bowl (as reported by Drew Wagner). â?¦
 
 Either way, Venerable and I think this will not help with New Years Morning hangovers....

[ratioci nation]

Originally posted by vansmack:
  Do you think the Orange Bowl knew this in advance?
 
 Uniwatch is reporting...
 
 Missouri is hinting that they may wear solid gold in the Cotton Bowl (as reported by Drew Wagner). â?¦
 
 Either way, Venerable and I think this will not help with New Years Morning hangovers....

fairly certain that won't happen

[vansmack]

It's been quite a while since I created a new Smackie Corollary, but after a few Irish Coffees on Friday, we started working on a new one.  
 
 It's quite clear that the Cougar phenomenon has taken on a life of its own, and young guys seem to be working just as hard as the Cougars these days to get their Cougar stripes.  But before guys start bragging that shaggin any divorcee is a stripe earner, and Cougars braggin on "The Real Housewives of Orange County" that any younger man qualifies as a Cougar, I've taken it up myslef to create a new Smackie Corollary on Cougars.  
 
 The problem really stems from a loosely worded definition that limits cougars to 30-50 years olds, which really isn't right.  Nor does it take into account the age of the male compared to the Cougar.
 
 Half the Cougars age, plus no more than +10 years qualifies as a Cougar Encounter (always round down).
  </font>

• <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">35 year old Cougar = any male under 27 can qualify as a cougar encounter.</font></li>
• <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">40 year old cougar= any male under 30 can qualify as a cougar encounter.</font></li>
• <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">50 year old cougar= any male under 35 can qualify as a cougar encounter.</font></li>

<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">
 I'm not quite happy with this as it pertains to women under 35 at the moment, so maybe we need a Cougar-in-Training rule for 30-35 year old Cougars:
 
 When dealing with a Cougar in Training, Half the Cougars age, plus no more than +7 years qualifies as a cougar encounter.
  </font>

• <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">30/31 year old Cougar = any male under 22 can qualify as a Cougar encounter.</font></li>
• <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">32/33 year old Cougar = any male under 23 can qualify as a Cougar encounter.</font></li>
• <font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">34 year old Cougar = any male under 24 can qualify as a Cougar encounter.</font></li>

<font size="2" face="Arial, Veranda">
 This is one is still open for negotiation.  I'm really looking at pivotal factors at the moment (like the Cougar must be a divorcee or have children, maybe there must be some form of botox or plastics work involved).  I'm open to all suggestions....