Forgotten June.
Thursday, July 6th, 2006
Hello from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, which is where Sammy and her parents return like, well, I don’t know, like waterfowl of some sort, every year.
Because it’s July, that means that there was an entire June in there, brimming with events unblogged, after my Memorial Day trip to Ohio with my father and before this one.
So why is that exactly? Well, best as I can figure I get into a certain mode that says “I can’t spend time on recreational writing when I’m behind on my work writing,” and I was, much of June, having trouble writing a work proposal for a client I know will be high-maintenance and yet who doesn’t have enough money to do the job right. So…a sort of paralysis, until finally I send off something just to clear the decks.
And unfortunately, that means I lost the opportunity to pour lighted prose on the fires of new software, comings and goings in the land of the internet (Amanda Congdon leaves Rocketboom!), events in our neighborhood (they cut down the Bradford Pear trees at the intersection of Virginia and Highland!) and missed the chance to wish happy birthdays to my brother, my brother-in-law, my niece…heck, even a cousin or two.
So were I to maintain a strict chronological discipline, much would remain unblogged—the struggle to replace our defunct and spewing water heater with a fancy in-demand model, the art of traveling in an old Ford Explorer through seas of elevated gas prices, and of course all the sadness and criminality that emerges from the doings of the Bush administration in Washington.
But it’s July and we’ve found generous satellite/wifi sharers on the shores of Manistique Lake, and our days are filled with cottage-chores, miscellaneous chopping, sawing, and mowing, and summertime conviviality. We’ve got a lasagne to enjoy over by Curtis, and the sun stays up so very late at these latitudes.
So, with a smile, I guess it’s simply: forward.
Impeaches are in season.
Wednesday, May 31st, 2006
Ah, a breath of fresh air after driving through the state of my birth and the states immediately north and south thereof. Sam and I had a nice walk this morning through our neighborhood and down to the park, and we passed dozens of vehicles creatively registering their discontent with the current administration—and even one that said “God is not a Republican…or a Democrat.” Not only would a supreme being not by definition be on your side, I seriously doubt he or she is registered to vote, and if you’ve formed a comfortable fantasy that Jesus is cosmically tampering with Diebold voting machines to assure that the righteous triumph, perhaps you have a particularly warped view of how busy his calendar is.
As a designer, I thought this was a particularly nice piece of iconography. Yes, the phrase represented by the acronym starts with “Impeach the…” and ends with “..Already!” And speaking of peaches (I’m remembering a Robert Grossman comic drawn for New York Magazine in the impeachment season of 1974, but never mind), it’s good to see that even some Republicans might have enough issue with the attorney general that they’d go after him with the legislative branch’s supreme eject button. I’m gonna have to look up which other members of the executive are subject to impeachment…might be quite a party.
Nice to be home.
Shelter from the storms.
Friday, May 26th, 2006
I’ve been told that posting from a Panera Bread is What Folks Do These Days, and sure enough, here I am, sitting in a Panera in Dublin, Ohio, watching a fierce downpour outside.
It’s a rainstorm not unlike the one I drove through yesterday, heading down I-71 from Cleveland with my father, after accompanying him to his home town (located in extreme NE Ohio) for his annual Memorial Day visit. That thunderstorm, experienced at freeway speeds, was a lot scarier, accompanied by dramatic lightning and almost-cyclonic gusts of wind. All this was after a gloomy, sporadically rainy morning that gave way to a sunny afternoon that gave way to…well, rain like this.
I’m making this Panera my Friday outpost as Sammy drives up from Atlanta for a rendezvous, and from here, it’s, of course, on to Michigan. I’m sure Sam will have braved rainy freeways on her way up, and we’ll probably have further soakingness before the day’s travel is done, but I’m glad I spent some quality time with my father, and will have some quality time with Sammy’s parents (her mom’s birthday is on Monday) as well.
I’m using this morning and afternoon at the laptop as an opportunity to catch up on some reading, and I’m also finding myself, in extra browser tabs, googling people I’ve gone to high school with…an experience that’s sometimes painful when, as in one case, I find that a fairly sensible friend from those days has married someone who is a beyond-right-wing religious ACLU-hating nut case who has taken as his calling the perpetuation of his fanaticism while (as he says on his site) his wife works teaching handicapped kids to keep food on the table as he fights his Goliaths.
Hand me the large polo mallet of common sense, please. I guess it’s one pathetic way of dealing with a midlife crisis—report to your wife that Jesus wants you to have her become the breadwinner while you fight for prayer everywhere, abortion nowhere, and apocalypse soon.
Is the Columbus I’ve come back to visit now more predominantly filled with beyond-right-wing religious ACLU-hating nut cases? Yeah, I think so. Does that make my complex, diverse, flawed, intelligent, contentious southern city intown neighborhood feel just a little bit more like a haven, a shelter, a place to keep from drowning in intolerance?
Yes. For now, for sure.
Mega, giga, tera-driven.
Thursday, May 18th, 2006
I bought a 20MB (megabyte!) drive on October 23, 1985 for $1,942.50. That may well have represented the peak of my desperation to shell out for “the right tool for the right job”—my humble Mac Plus was starved for storage, I was filling up floppies as if they were going out of style, which, I guess, they were. 20MB represented an endless horizon of elbow room. Now it’s not fit to hang off of my keychain.
But that was, of course, not the end of my Quest for Storage. It’s almost too painful to do the math, but, all right, my outlay has plummeted from $97.12 per megabyte to $0.00061130581 per megabyte (the most recent half-terabyte drive stores 476,815.36 megabytes.)
| 1993-09-08 | 1GB drive | $923.00 |
| 1994-11-22 | 1.2GB Fujitsu drive | $680.00 |
| 1995-12-23 | 1GB drive (JPB) | $295.74 |
| 1998-01-10 | Fujitsu 9GB SCSI drive | $961.93 |
| 1999-01-16 | IBM 9GB drive | $533.93 |
| 2000-05-14 | Maxtor 61.4GB drive | $275.10 |
| 2000-10-04 | 10GB drive | $94.34 |
| 2001-05-10 | Maxtor 80GB drive | $220.25 |
| 2001-05-10 | IBM 20GB drive for laptop | $125.25 |
| 2003-04-04 | 120GB drive | $190.79 |
| 2004-03-18 | SATA 233GB drive | $207.98 |
| 2005-02-15 | USB2 300GB drive | $233.19 |
| 2006-04-04 | SATA 500GB drive | $291.48 |
Heck, they’re almost paying me to buy the drives now. And my G5 certainly appreciates the real estate…it creates files willy-nilly and fills up space as if it only cost six hundredths of a cent for a megabyte of storage.
Way beyond ‘we’re eating more beets’
Thursday, May 11th, 2006
On the morning after the death of longtime Timesman Abe Rosenthal—USA Today—the anti-Times, the newspaper-in-a-TV-box, the ‘McPaper’ parodied and mocked routinely by real journalists, broke news about a wanton usurping of our civil rights in the name of post-9-11 security.
NSA has massive database of Americans’ phone calls
The National Security Agency has been secretly collecting the phone call records of tens of millions of Americans, using data provided by AT&T, Verizon and BellSouth, people with direct knowledge of the arrangement told USA TODAY.
Kudos to journalist Leslie Cauley and her paper. This is a big, scary story that needs to be explored in greater depth. This is a story the Times didn’t have (in fact, their front page was about as soft today as you’d expect USA Today’s to be.)
So…will the Times pick up the baton?
Na pograniczu kiczu i absolutnego piekna.
Sunday, May 7th, 2006
Well, according to the New York Times (quoting an American Apparel PR person), it’s a Polish expression that roughly means “On the brink of kitsch and absolute beauty.”
Which, on a rainy rainy Atlanta Sunday morning, is about right. It’s certainly better than any number of Banacek old Polish sayings, and contains a lot more nuanced wisdom than I ever learned from my Polish grandparents.
U-turn in Jackson.
Friday, May 5th, 2006
From Engadget comes word of two incidents in the last two weeks where British drivers have trusted their GPS driving instructions over their own eyes, and have attempted to pilot their vehicles across river bridges that exist in the database but not in real life. Doesn’t work well, as you might expect.
Sammy and I tend to leave the “Turn right in 200 yards!” instructions off on our GPS and use it in conjunction with our brains, eyes, and a well-thumbed Rand McNally Road Atlas…but one time driving a straight stretch of road east of Jackson, Michigan when we did have the turn-by-turn activated, we received insane instructions to make a U-turn mid-freeway…and, being stubborn and unwilling to turn south to go north, we did not comply.
On the other hand, driving in the UK is filled with those byzantine turn-south-to-go-north realities, so maybe your average UK driver is open to those computer commands. Me, I kind of prefer the approach of “here’s where you are with great precision on the planet earth…now you figure out what you want to do.”
The Engadget folks mention these incidents while reporting on the large (in this case, huge) new dash-mounted displays that seem destined to serve as yet another distraction layer for drivers who already have too much on their plate.
Without boot.
Monday, May 1st, 2006
Hello in the waning minutes of May first. Happy Mayday, happy Reboot day (caution, annoying music), it seems as well.
Apparently there’s some sort of generalized agreement among, well, some web designers to have their act together enough to redesign their site each and every May first, while displaying as much tasty goodness and usefulness in as standards-compliant and, like, y’know, good a way as possible.
And, well, clearly I didn’t get the meme. Or the memo. But hey, there’s always next year…and there may well be some cause to substantially tighten up the sites I do have…I guess we’ll see about that. I’d like Positively Atlanta Georgia to be an even more comfortable home for you to visit and browse. I would, for example, like to make the photos section more enticing (hmm, maybe fresh content would help?) and make the Media Rare section read more like what it is…a series of columns ripped from alt/weeklies I wrote for here and in Ohio.
I’d like this to be more than a place where I grumpily diss those who use adverbs improperly.
I’d like whirled peas, too, but…well.
Until then, let me point you in this and this direction…just two of the rebooted sites who have me thinking about elaborate css and ajax and things above the fold and grids and all else in the land of web design, about a million miles away from sticky border tape, bloody x-actos, fragrant late-night waxers, and fragile handfuls of IBM Composer type rammed into clay-coated paper.
Not prop-icious.
Monday, April 24th, 2006
Okay, I typed it in, and here’s what came up, without links because I just don’t want to encourage this behavior: Daal-icious!, Apple-icious, The Market’s Gone Google-icious, Riddle-Icious Books, Scandal-icious Apparel, Jewlicious » Herzl-icious, Dill-icious Cheese Spread, Sequel-icious, People-icious, ya.flickr.icious, Bubbly-icious, Scrumdilly-icious, dexy-licious, Fiddle-icious, Pound iddly iddly icious, Bubble-icious.
No, wait, that’s just the first page.
Sandal-icious, Anderson Cooper is Kerfuffle-icious, MacGyver-icious Speakers, Mall-icious, meatballicious, Bagel-Icious, turtle-icious, six babble-icious years, Devil-icious Halloween, Folly-icious, Turcaret-icious, Maple-icious, nipple-icious, Simp-didily-icious!, Gloopee-icious, Nancy O’Dell-icious, Halo-icious!, Fertile-icious, pUrpLe|iciOus, Chill-icious Frozen Yogurt, ogle-icious, salty-icious, Chocol-icious Bread Pudding Muffins, Kiwi Melon-icious…oh, I can’t go on.
Please, please, think before you suffix.
Hed to come.
Monday, April 24th, 2006
As part of a flurry of library-book-reading after my finishing Arthur Gelb’s massive “City Room” memoir (a Christmas gift from a couple of years ago), I checked out the huge collection of New York Times front page reproductions called “Page One”—significant front pages from 1900 through 2000.
I think they were inspired by The Onion’s seminal “Our Dumb Century” or maybe it’s the other way around, but no matter.
Paging through, I was struck by how many words…especially headline words…have fallen out of use, just so much abandoned lead on a forgotten composing room floor.
“Parley” for one. And “Bloc”, “Strife”, “Truculent”, “Convoked”, “Pomp”, “Supercilious”, “Waylay”, “Spur”, “Stevedore”, “Hot-Rod”, and of course, “H-Bomb.”
I’m not sure that the all-parsing Google News page would know what to make of some of those…let alone those who parse their news from online aggregations and feeds.
You’ll also find an affirmation of the Times’ remarkably unchanging style in the abundant sprinkings of the passive voice: “Might Is Stressed”, “Rancor Continues”, “Democrats Concerned”, “Resistance Is Noted”, “Trial Data Given”, “Tactics Are Watched”, “U.S. Ties Hinted”, “Firm Grip Mapped”, and “Peace Is Sought.”
That passivity reminds me: my fellow Ohio University Post alums chuckle over the Nelsonville, Ohio paper’s simple one-column headlines to this day: “Meat Burned” (A tragic pot-roast incident on page one!) and “Snake on Square” (reptiles on the loose in downtown!). What was that paper’s name? Um, sorry, don’t remember.
Petulance among the rose petals.
Tuesday, April 18th, 2006
With little other comment, the New York Times quotes our decider-in-chief:
“I’m the decider, and I decide what’s best,” Mr. Bush said in the Rose Garden. “And what’s best is for Don Rumsfeld to remain as the secretary of defense.”
Does he even have a vague idea of his job description? Does he even have a vague idea of “what’s best”?
Seven times seven years.
Tuesday, April 11th, 2006
At three past midnight early this morning, our kitchen was filled with revelers singing ‘Happy Birthday,’ and we did not pay royalties to the songwriters.
And I was the sing-ee, which was quite a delight…perhaps a bit more because, well, the chorus included dear friends, friends of friends, and, well, miscellaneous NCTA National Show attendees. Why? Well, Rebecca said with the conference in our town (as opposed to hers) it was high time for a party, and who were we to disagree?
Yes, we had conventioneers over for Sammy’s delectable chili, yummy, spinach casserole, killer brownies, and our well-fortified bar. They left satisfied…and I think they liked the food too.
They also seemed to enjoy being out of the hubbub of the convention center and various hotels downtown. Did they get a taste of the real Atlanta here? Well, no, but they got a real taste of..uh..our world.
And, despite the singing, the party had nothing to do with my birthday (our friend Rebecca was, in fact, the person of honor), and that was kind of a treat too.
Nice way to segue into a fine, fine April 11th.
Ketchup.
Saturday, March 18th, 2006
After a week where, thanks to me sticking my nose where arguably it shouldn’t have been, I have had the delight and pleasure of reading a big ol’ pile of thoughtful, intelligent and clever comments from dear friends and strangers alike…I guess that’s how this web-dude-thing is supposed to work. Special thanks to the nn.c readers who took the time to drop by (this site sits a mere ../ away on the same server as Nancy’s) and to leave some of the intelligence and wit that regularly fortifies her pages. Thanks.
* * * * *
And so on to the weekend, and a collection of linkage, just to catch up. First, let’s stay on the grammar beat…if you think I’m singleminded about correct usage, how about folks who created an entire site to literally discuss the misuse of the term “literally.” It’s the work of two Atlantans who have my deepest respect. Nearly literally. One reason for florescence of this misuse is certainly clear to me, and it goes back to the adverbs the kids use these days. There’s something in the modern, lightly ironic conversational cadence that seems to require a ‘da-DUM!’ moment—often filled with a momentary pause and then a percussive “Seriously!”at the end for the greatest possible impact. The second cousin to that of course, is “Literally!” What they mean, of course, in olden times would have been expressed as “I kid you not!” (or my dear friend Deb’s somehow unique use of “I’m not kidding!” in…well, you’d have to hear it for yourself.)
* * * * *
Google Video is becoming more enticing to me, despite interface issues…but that’s the thing about Googleproduct. You return the next day, and maybe they’ve moved a dropdown here, or javascripted up the menu at the top so it’s much slicker, or made any number of tiny ameliorations. I stumbled upon their collection of National Archives stuff and said to myself, “well, this is nice,” and got all nostalgic for the days when instructional films had titles in bold letters lit with apparent shafts of light, and soundtracks that sound as if the orchestra was hand-cranked, and recorded through a corrugated aluminum tube.
* * * * *
Someone has assembled a collection of fiftysomething magazine covers with Steve Jobs (over the years) pictured. Why? There must have been some empty spot on the internet that needed filling. Now, we can relax. The carefully-groomed his Steveship does provide reassurance that there are ways to lose your hair and grow older in public that aren’t completely embarrassing. Oh, and this cover here, of the very first MacWorld? I have that one, and amazingly, it’s in decent shape.
* * * * *
One of the reasons I struggle over doing design these days for local television news is that the concept of ‘Breaking News’ has long ago lost all meaning, and we do live in a world where local stations (and CNN, Fox, and MSNBC) cry wolf (without the Blitzer) in-freaking-cessantly. Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette covers three news directors in deep rationalization mode, and the result is just sad. Meanwhile, former NBC correspondent David Hazinski calls, not too seriously, for using those little TV ratings things in the upper left hand corner for labeling local news for what it is. By the way, this Breaking News graphic, found on the always-interesting Lost Remote site? I think I did that years ago for WFTV…uh, here? [Update: fixed and apologized for, hey, no big deal.]
Notes from the grammar desk.
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
I came across some guy‘s blog entry and, well, I stepped in it when I attempted to correct his grammar. Yeah, it’s one of my pet peeves—saying something is going “slow” rather than “slowly.”
So, in short, he really (really!) took offense. He wrote:
I don’t expect someone who works in television to understand aesthetics – even someone who purports to work in “design�? – so I won’t even begin to lecture you on the nuisances of postmodern/poststructuralist linguistic theory specific to your trite comment on my blog today – I’m fairly certain you wouldn’t understand. I won’t even attempt to explain to you why your archaic notions of grammar are laughable – suffice to say, adverbs (slowly) are slack, boring, ugly and ineffective compared to definitive verb progressives (slow). This is not up for grammar debate, it is a matter of personal aesthetic steeped in research and education.
But, hey, I really appreciate that you took the time to stop by and leave a disparaging remark. It’s nice to know that there is at least one person out there in the world who doesn’t have anything better going on in his life than to be slight or catty for the sake of being such. From one human being to another, man, that was a real hurtful thing to do. (yes – “real�? hurtful – not “really�? hurtful) Perhaps in the future you might think twice before 1) commenting about something you know absolutely nothing about & 2) being rude without warrant. I mean, what good does it do? Do you get a laugh out of being mean? Does it make you feel better about yourself? I feel sorry for you. Hopefully someday you’ll learn that there are better ways to feel good about yourself than trying to put other people down.
Yow. Here’s what I wrote back:
Wow…I didn’t intend to leave a disparaging remark…or if it came off that way, I apologize. I just corrected your grammar mistake.
It’s simple and unambiguous–the correct usage is “slowly”. There’s no such thing as a correct use of “slow” in that context. It’s “a matter of personal aesthetic steeped in research and education”? Um, no. It’s a red mark on the paper. An error. A mistake.
And yeah, “real” hurtful is, again, incorrect grammar.
I can hurl AP, NYT and countless stylebooks at you in support of that…but this seems like something you’re sensitive about and again, I’m sorry. I come from a life experience where corrections are a good thing, not a bad thing. I signed my name…I didn’t leave anonymous snark, I was trying to help.
If you think you’re being a literary pioneer or pushing the language into some sort of a new, better world by dropping perfectly good adverbs—I sincerely hope you don’t succeed. I’m all for language as an evolving thing–I’m just not so happy with a regression…and to me, that sort of usage is a regression.
You can dismiss me as “archaic” (gee, thanks…having a bad week?), but I think an open-eyed examination of good writing out there (start with a little Strunk and White—a festival of good design in its present incarnation!) might re-introduce you to the joy of correctly-used adverbs.
I apologize for the offense, but if you’re planning on writing for a living, I hope you take good usage seriously.
Seriously!
With best wishes, even from a TV guy.
jcburns
[update: oh, there’s more. See the comments, below.]
Here’s where it gets complicated.
Wednesday, March 15th, 2006
This is effectively the other shoe, the impact of the iTunes ‘Music’ Store as a vehicle for distributing what once was simply broadcast content. Disney(ABC), known for being, well, cheap in their dealings with creatives, has taken what may well be an available loophole in determining compensation to writers for downloaded episodes (versus those bits you buy at Target on a silver DVD platter). A letter to Writers Guild members from their leadership says:
We are writing to confirm what you have undoubtedly already heard: Last week, the Walt Disney Company informed our Guilds (along with SAG and the DGA) that they intend to pay residuals for Apple iPod downloads at an inappropriate, discounted rate.
Needless to say, this unilateral decision by Disney was met with disappointment and righteous indignation by virtually the entire talent community. All the Guilds, jointly and individually, issued public statements asserting their anger and warning of the likely consequences.
To put a fine point on what this means, Disney is claiming that Apple is not the distributor of our content, but merely a “retailer” or “exhibitor.” Disney claims that they are the distributor and, as a result, they assert that they can use a lower formula created for Beta and VHS tapes. Disney and the other companies have refused for years to adjust this outdated formula for the DVD market and now they are trying to do the same thing with the next generation of technology. On each $1.99 download, Disney will receive $1.40 but pay us on only 20% of that amount, or 28 cents. Accordingly, our residual will be less than half a cent per download. On Monday we received the first check for an episode of LOST, which was downloaded nearly half a million times. The amount of the check was $3,688.59. Had Disney paid under the correct formula, the check would have been over $14,000.
We take this action by Disney as a call to arms. Disney purports to be a leader in technological media advances. We support those advances but not without fair compensation for the hardworking men and women who write, perform, direct, and otherwise create the very content that makes their new revenue streams possible. Rest assured, our Guilds will take all affirmative legal action within our power to see that this inequity is resolved to our benefit.
Hmpf! Took me a couple of times to go through it, but what they’re asking for is (correct me if I’m wrong) that instead of a half-cent per download from Disney’s $1.49 share of the $1.99…they want 1.8977441 cents. Or, calculated slightly differently (assume they want a full five times as much), up to four cents. Yee gads, that seems fair to me! Heck, give the creatives five cents of each one!
I would love to see a detailed look how the whole $1.99 pie gets divvied up (including what chunks the directors and actors get)…the outcome I certainly don’t want is that Disney and others take the easy way out and force up the price of individual episodes (I have the same concern in the face of greedy record companies hankering to break up the 99 cent US price point at the ITMS.) These downloads must remain at the “sure, why not” pricing threshold or this clever experiment will evaporate…or go somewhere else.
I’m really amazed how much money the media companies are willing to walk away from in a bid to install a model of entertainment “borrowing” that basically removes the idea that you can “buy” a thing and watch it or read it or listen to it wherever and whenever you want. That draconian approach is, I suppose, the perfect partner to a paranoid government and other rights-deprivations that are becoming part of our daily life.
But that’s just my five cents’ worth.
Turtle races.
Friday, March 10th, 2006
I casually mentioned in my last entry that Apple had begun selling episodes of The Daily Show (and The Colbert Report) on the iTunes Store (I tend to drop the ‘Music’ from its name these days) using a ‘multipass’ idea that is like (actual, magazine) subscriptions…you get the current episode and 15 more for $9.99.
No, please, allow me to do the math: 62.4375 cents per episode. And by the way, these downloaded shows look just fine on plain old standard-definition NTSC television, playing off of our Mac Mini—or our video iPod if we’re on the road.
My casualness was slightly misplaced. This is a big deal.
Ashlee Vance in The Register channels Don McLean and declares it “The day the bundled cable died.” In a short piece loaded with quotables, she adds:
We’ll all look back on this deal as the day that TV delivery changed in earnest.
Apple has managed to repeat its tradition not of discovering something new but of doing something obvious first.
Plenty of MP3s players existed before the iPod. Apple just made the obvious better design and the obvious better store and backed it up with the obvious better marketing. That’s not to say this is easy. It’s just obvious.
Similarly, pushing TV via the internet isn’t a new idea. Doing it well is an obvious path to a promising business.
Apple receives great praise for moving at a turtle’s pace when the rest of the industry moves at a crippled turtle’s pace.
I guess we’ll take our turtles where we can get them. She mentions CBS’s attempts at selling temporary “looks” at shows through Google. Can’t take ’em with you, can’t play ’em easily on the mini, can’t play them a month from now…I’m not interested.
It’s worth making the point directly: it’s not that folks want to keep every episode of the Daily Show forever and ever…it’s that they want complete freedom when and where they can play what they’ve paid for. There is an important distinction in there.
This marks a changepoint and a step in the right direction. And for us, it’s not the magic of Apple…we’ll pay these kinds of prices to whoever will let us download (not stream) the episodes and keep them around and play them on portable devices (well, one device in particular).
As we walked the other day, I ran the numbers with Sammy, and there’s a lot of television we could buy at these prices if you take the just-under-$50 we pay Comcast right now for analog cable.
So now when Scripps does a deal with Apple (no, hasn’t happened quite yet) and suddenly there’s a lot of Food Network available a la carte, we’ll be asking…why do we have cable, again? We get better weather from the internet, we get better news from the internet, and when breaking news happens these days we’re no longer guaranteed that CNN will be all over it (in fact, it’s more likely we’ll see more if we subscribe to their ‘Pipeline’ service).
And I sure would never like to (even indirectly) pay for Home Shopping or Fox News again.
