HELLO SLASHDOT THIS IS A PENCIL.

I'm sure it has something to do with demographics -- Universal probably figures if they can sell out theatres even in smaller towns like ours (Providence), Hartford, etc., then the movie is going to do well. Of *course* they can sell out preview screenings in L.A. and N.Y., but everyone's been there & done that. Given the extensive questionnaire one has to fill out at these screenings, I'm sure they consider the smaller towns to contain more "typical" movie-goers who are less entertainment-saturated than people in those two large cities, and therefore more indicative of the general public's behavior come opening weekend.

It's ironic in a very unfunny way that the soldiers who are risking their lives in Iraq to supposedly bring the gift of American values to the oppressed Iraqis are going to come home to find their veteran's benefits cut and the very civil liberties that they are supposed to be promoting stolen from them by the Bush administration. I appreciate that when Shrub visits a service base to give a speech the men and women there want to show their patriotism and loyalty by cheering, saluting, etc., but surely they can see the contradictions between what the President and his cronies say and do? Makes me wonder how most of them feel about him privately.

True, true. Downloading meaningful video streams to a cell phone with GSM or even GPRS is not going to be feasible any time soon because of bandwidth restrictions. (Although we have chalkers here, and that WiFi SD card...)

But convergence is here already, even if it's not realtime convergence. C'mon over to my house, and I'll show you how I do it on my TMobile PocketPC phone.

1) Record films/shows to PC with WinTV and SnapStream. (Alternately, download saved shows from TiVo with WinTV and WinDVR.)

2) Use SnapStream's Pocket PC converter or Windows Media Encoder to munge down the size of the file.

3a) Enable SnapStream server. Leave house.

4a) Dial into ISP from PocketPC Phone, connect to SnapStream server, and stream video files (takes a long-ass time).

OR

3b) Save shrunken .WMV files to phone's SD expansion card.

4b) Leave house.

5) Watch whatever the hell you want wherever the hell you want to in Media Player. Yesterday, rather than leafing through germ-laden back issues of Good Housekeeping as I whiled away an hour in the doctor's waiting room, I watched "The Sopranos", while at the same time waiting on hold with the veteranarian's office.

Oh, and then at the vet's office, I read an eBook.