NBC Olympics Coverage Not Very Diversified

The other night, I put on the Olympics so my daughter could watch the gymnastics competition. I’m not a big fan of gymanstics in the first place, but the problem is compounded by NBC’s continuing use of John Tesh as an annoucer. But that was made even worse by some script writer at NBC who could have used a dictionary.

Tesh is reading a pre-written monologue introducing the American women’s team and the script emphasizes the fact that there are many different ethnic/cultural groups represented on the American team. So John Tesh informs us without missing a beat that the American team is very “diversified.”

What does that mean? That they’ve spread their investments across stocks, bonds and commodities to reduce the risk of their financial position?

The only interesting parts were when John Tesh would make some statement that he obviously thought provided a profound insight to the competition only to be corrected by one of the two people doing color commentary with him.

GM Prevails in Derrick Thomas Lawsuit

Four years ago I wrote about my incredulity and Derrick Thomas’ family suing General Motors. Thomas was an NFL player who died when he rolled his automobile. Thomas was driving way too fast for conditions and not wearing his seatbelt. He was thrown from his vehicle and sustained injuries that killed him 16 days after the accident. His mother sued General Motors arguing that the company hadn’t done enough to make the vehicle safe in rollover, even though the only person in the car wearing a seatbelt walked away from the accident unharmed (a third person who was unbelted died at the scene).

A jury this week rejected the lawsuit, voting 10-2 not to award Thomas’ family any damages.

Well, there are still at least 10 sane people left in lawsuit happy America.

Source:

GM Wins In Derrick Thomas Wrongful Death Trial. The KansasCityChannel.Com, August 18, 2004.

Real Campaign Backfires

CNET notes that a web site setup to complain about Apple’s iTunes service has backfired somewhat with people using the site to flame Real.

Well, duh. Real has treated its customers like crap for years, so it’s hardly surprising that few people exactly want to rally around it. Real’s major complaint against Apple is that Apple doesn’t license its FairPlay DRM scheme to other companies. This means that only Apple can sell DRMed songs that are playable on the iPod.

I don’t see anything wrong with that at all (although I personally hate DRM schemes and wouldn’t buy any iTunes music). It’s certainly not anywhere as evil as fooling your customers into buying software they don’t want, which Real did for far too long.

Real went ahead and cracked FairPlay and is, at least for now, selling songs that work on the iPod — as long as you’re using a Windows machine.

Presumably, Real won’t mind if some enterprising person hacks their songs to allow them to be stripped of DRM entirely — it clearly limits competition, after all, if I can’t play the songs on my non-DRM MP3 player.

Source:

Real gets flamed over iPod campaign. Jo Best, CNet.Com, August 18, 2004.