Things Smackie Thinks You Need to Know...

What the hell are the Dodgers thinking?

Dodgers Sign Andruw Jones: 2 Years, $36 Million

A five-time All-Star, Jones will receive a $12.2 million signing bonus, of which $5.1 million is payable next year, $2.1 million in 2009 and $5 million in 2010. He well get salaries of $9 million next year and $15 million in 2009, and also will receive a no-trade clause.

Jones' $18.1 million average salary trails only those of the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez ($27.5 million), Boston's Manny Ramirez ($20 million), the Yankees' Derek Jeter ($18.9 million), and the Cubs' Carlos Zambrano ($18.3 million).

Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
1. SID FUCKING BREAM WAS OUT BY A FUCKING MILE. OUTOUTOUT. i call this play 'when barry bonds threw sid bream out at the plate and the stupid ass ump called him safe'

i didn't realize that barry bonds could throw someone out at home plate.

he was playing shallow, and this is sid bream we're talking about
OUT OUT OUT BY A FUCKING MILE

Originally posted by god's shoeshine:
he was playing shallow, and this is sid bream we're talking about
OUT OUT OUT BY A FUCKING MILE

ok, calm down. . here, will this help?

<img src="http://www.fansedge.com/Images/Product/33-54/33-54379-P.jpg" alt=" - " />

sorry, 14 year old shoeshine was inconsolable for about 5 years. then i stopped watching baseball

Guillen, Gibbons get 15-day suspensions

I wish this would be all it tkaes to explain Jose Guillen's rage, but alas, I think there is more…couldn't have happened to a nicer guy.

Is it just a coincidence that CompUSA and Tower Records shared building space in the mall next to my work?

I think not. I'm looking forward to the after Christmas free for all…

I was going to make my 5 Tech predictions for 2008, but as I was putting them together Venerable sent me an email laying out one of them. So instead, I'll release them individually:

#1 - 2008 will be the year that internet access at your seat will finally be available on airplanes, starting with longer flights and working its way to the commuter flights (which is backwards, but at least its coming).

Sean Penn just walked by my office, but that's not the thing Smackie wants you to know about.

The part I want you to know about is the fact that I somehow managed to not make a Jeff Spicoli joke. And some say I was never going to grow up….

Was he smoking a cigarette? If not, it probably wasn't him.

Originally posted by vansmack:
Sean Penn just walked by my office, but that's not the thing Smackie wants you to know about.

The part I want you to know about is the fact that I somehow managed to not make a Jeff Spicoli joke. And some say I was never going to grow up….

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…

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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?

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.

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.