{"id":503,"date":"2004-06-14T20:28:28","date_gmt":"2004-06-14T20:28:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=503"},"modified":"2004-06-14T20:28:28","modified_gmt":"2004-06-14T20:28:28","slug":"way_down_in_dix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=503","title":{"rendered":"Way Down In Dixie"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>RealNetworks and Starz are launching a <a href=\"http:\/\/slashdot.org\/article.pl?sid=04\/06\/14\/1635212&#038;mode=nested&#038;tid=188&#038;tid=97\">movie downloading service<\/a> for people with broadband internet access.  I think it&#8217;s great that more media distribution is being done over the Web, but I&#8217;m not sure people will pay to watch movies on their computer screens.  It&#8217;s not like music, where you can play it and then walk away.  You&#8217;re chained to a desk and sitting in a position that doesn&#8217;t lend itself to extended inactivity.  I&#8217;d prefer to be able to kick back and watch a film on my 31&#8243; JVC with surround sound than on my 19&#8243; monitor.  And it&#8217;s even less ideal on a notebook computer.  But maybe I&#8217;ll give it a try to see what the selection is like and how they handle technical issues like image resolution.  I have a feeling it&#8217;s something crappy like 640&#215;480, but maybe I&#8217;ll be pleasantly surprised.<br \/>\nBob Herbert wrote <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2004\/06\/11\/opinion\/11HERB.html?n=Top%2fOpinion%2fEditorials%20and%20Op%2dEd%2fOp%2dEd%2fColumnists%2fBob%20Herbert\">this NYT editorial about recent Medicaid cuts in Mississippi<\/a> (registration req&#8217;d).  No, &#8220;cuts&#8221; is being charitable.  More like &#8220;gutting.&#8221;  Almost 65,000 elderly and people with disabilities could lose their health care.  People with Alzheimer&#8217;s and CP and quadriplegia.  And what&#8217;s Governor Haley Barbour&#8217;s rationale for these draconian measures?  He says that taxpayers in Mississippi shouldn&#8217;t have to &#8220;pay for free health care for people who can work and take care of themselves and just choose not to.&#8221;<br \/>\nI give you the bold new future of compassionate conservatism, ladies and gentlemen, where even those on their deathbeds will be expected to get off their lazy asses and flip a burger or two.  Of course, it must be stated that Mississippi expanded Medicaid eligibility in the booming 90&#8217;s and now lacks the will to raise revenues to keep those benefits intact.  It still amazes me how we treat health care like a commodity in this country.  It&#8217;s not something you can give and take away like a child&#8217;s toy.  Idiots.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>RealNetworks and Starz are launching a movie downloading service for people with broadband internet access. I think it&#8217;s great that more media distribution is being done over the Web, but I&#8217;m not sure people will pay to watch movies on their computer screens. It&#8217;s not like music, where you can play it and then walk <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=503' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-503","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-87","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=503"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}