inkbluesky

3 stones wallpaper 

Beware the most dangerous shover in America to be released,  Girl in prison for shove to get released early

HOUSTON — Shaquanda Cotton, the black teenager in the small east Texas town of Paris whose prison sentence of up to 7 years for shoving a teacher’s aide sparked nationwide controversy, will be released Saturday morning, prison officials confirmed on Friday.

M’s Cotton was all of fifteen years old and could have been in prison until she was 21 for shoving a teacher.

Since she has been in prison, Shaquanda Cotton said that she had grown despondent surrounded by other youths who were hardened criminals, and that she had tried to commit suicide. Her sentence, which ultimately was up to the discretion of prison officials, had twice been extended, first because she would not admit her guilt as required by prison regulations and then because she was found with “contraband” in her cell—an extra pair of socks.

Her ordeal reads more like something that would happen in some auhtoritatarian banana republic then one of the fifty states. Then to catch her with “contraband socks”, shoving, then socks - oh the horrors. If they made a movie with a scene like that everyone would just mark it up as Hollywood fiction.

hand stand 

Push Comes to Shove for Control of Web Video

Inevitably, the control-hungry media giants have asked themselves these questions: Why should we let savvy intermediaries like Google or Apple hog the relationships with consumers or advertisers? And why should we allow them to create valuable new businesses in the process? NBC Universal and the News Corporation spent months trying to recruit other players like Viacom and Walt Disney to fight back, but they have set out alone, leaving an open invitation for others to join their merry band. They’ve agreed to pool all their video content on the Web to create what is effectively a syndication service that will distribute it to other established Web sites and through a new online site they plan to unveil this summer.

Neither the company’s name nor its management team is in place — details, shmetails — and clearly this gambit faces big hurdles when you consider both the track record of media joint ventures and big media companies’ ability to create breakout Internet plays.

This reminded me of an article I read about five years ago that said that internet media only had so much appeal, after all who really wants to watch a three inch square video. Apparently millions of people. There are probably other reasons, but it seems that part of the appeal is the viral quality of the whole concept ( whether a multi-billion dollar company like Google can be actually viral is another question). The sites like YouTube are themselves mash-ups of media and unlike TV you get to see how many people liked what you just watched ( the wisdom of crowds element) and what they had to say.  There is the feeling, real or not that you’re participating in something rather then just being a viewer. Whether big traditional media companies can produce the intangibles that can draw in that mindset is debatable. I don’t think Viacom/Disney have all their ducks in a row for two reasons: they’re not sure what they want to accomplish and deep down they think the net is the bargain basement of media. Not a good combination. The fans of net media are probably not going to suffer much if the big stuffed shirts blow it, unless they own some stock in these lumbering giants that are trying to play catch-up.