Brian Gongol
If we want to win the war of ideas with groups like Al Qaeda, American websites need to be better about designing for access via mobile phones. While many Americans have high-speed access and big monitors, the developing world uses mobile phones to surf the Web. That doesn't mean we have to uglify our sites...but Internet developers ought to put some thought into tools like stylesheets that respect mobile tools. If we're going to share our views on things like freedom and liberty, we need to use the Internet in ways that our intended audience will be able to receive them.
The Sinclair-Mediacom dispute just doesn't mean as much today as it might've 20 years ago. Consumers have more channel choices, more alternatives to local cable monopolies, and more media options (like TV series on DVD) than ever before. The real loss is to the parties who can't reach agreements.
While it's true that college football coaches are paid in large part according to what the market demands, that's no excuse for taking those salaries out of their larger context. It may be true that the market has pushed the price for a coach up to $4 million a year, but it's not right to take that number out of the bigger context of what, for instance, $4 million is worth in the larger context. For instance, the US gave $5 million for earthquake relief to Indonesia in 2006. That is to say, the amount that coaches get paid shouldn't just be compared with how much other coaches are paid -- it should also be compared with what else can be bought with that money.
Keywords in this show:
Al Qaeda •
coaches' salaries •
consumer choice •
disaster relief •
earthquakes •
freedom •
liberty •
markets •
Mediacom •
mobile Internet access •
Sinclair Broadcasting •
sports •
terrorism •
web design