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Shameless Hucksterism (CPS.mrcoward.com)

May 15, 2009
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I was just reading an article speculating that the era of everything being free on the ‘net might be ending. Record companies can’t make a living because everyone is downloading for free. Television networks are trying to figure out how to make money from free tv on the ‘net. Why have cable for tv when you can get tv from your net connection? Newspapers are folding because everyone (including them) posts their content for free.  Why subscribe to the NY Times when you can read it for free on the ‘net? Travel agents? Booking trips is freebie online. Etc. Etc. But. Nobody’s making money, and sooner rather than later says this article, things will have to change. YouTube loses millions of dollars a month. Facebook? Ditto. MySpace. Please. And don’t even start about Twitter. They all lose millions of dollars monthly. Ads don’t even come close to paying for the costs of these sites. The only sites that make money are the ones that charge for something. Not necessarily everything. They give content away, but charge for the premium stuff. Like the Wall Street Journal or CraigsList. Yeah, that’s me, like the Wall Street Journal. Anyway, all the lessons and

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Random Featured Post

“How cute. Like hobos…” (Also: Hank Williams.)

Wednesday. Vocabulary Pretest. Talk of facades and irony. Both figure large in The Outsiders. More on that later. Today I have more insight from my friendly class. We’re reading chapter 4 (the death of Bob, Dally helping with the getaway, jumping the train out of town), and we get to where Dally is telling Pony and Johnny to “hop the 3:15 freight to Windrixville.” We pause and talk about how it’s only been less than 36 hours (book time) since the beginning. They find it hard to believe until we start to do the timeline. Figure that Pony gets out of the movie in the late afternoon, and gets jumped and saved. Pony and Johnny and Dally go to the Nightly Double the next night, and it’s now 3:15am that same night. Then I make sure they know that a freight is a train. And one girl says, “How cute. Like hobos…” Hobos maybe. Cute? [Audio clip: view full post to listen] Why Don’t You Love Me Like You Used to Do? When the boys run to find Dally at Buck Merrill’s house, Pony offers a brief description of Buck that ends with, “…he was out of it. He dug [...]

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Mr. Coward has been teaching on the beautiful central coast of California since 1989.

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