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SEPTA Super Sneaky Strike

150px-SEPTA_text.svgBy: Billy BeerSlugger

It was great of SEPTA’s TWU 234 workers to strike yesterday leaving hundreds of thousands of Philadelphian’s not only without a ride to work, school, doctors appointments etc, but also without leaving them with the proper amount of time to plan for alternate transportation. They struck at 3am in the morning so that it wouldn’t be announced on the 10 or 11 o’clock news or splashed on the front page of news sites before Philadelphian’s went to bed.  Which if you’re really trying to piss people off you’re going to sneak attack strike. Not only that but Tuesday, the day the strike began was an Election day.

Not that I don’t give the TWU a little bit of credit for sticking through the Philadelphia end of the World Series but not to inform your ridership at least the night before is downright dastardly. These people have jobs, scholastic careers and other necessary staples of life to attend to that count on SEPTA to get there. I’d love to see the attendance numbers for the thousands of Philadelphia school aged children that need a bus, subway or trolley to get to school.  These kids probably love the SEPTA strike because it effectively gives them a get out of school free card today. It’s hard enough to get these kids to go to school as it is without having them walk 4 miles. Lost in the news coverage is the kids who take SEPTA to school and as I always say to my friend who bangs a married chick with kids, “Think about the children.”.

Anyway, I’m not completely against Union’s.  My mom was a 30+ year member of the Communications Workers of America, my uncle is a high ranking SEPTA union leader though not the Union that’s striking (as there are 3 unions that serve SEPTA).  However, this is really a case of a Union holding a city hostage.  When my mom’s union went to the picket line you could at least still make phone calls. It’s pretty customary as well for the people that are striking to show up to a picket line in protest but these lazy sons of bitches, for the most part, are home watching cartoons. Though I did see a story that there was a picket line in front of the Fern Rock station.  Obviously they wouldn’t picket anywhere in Center City for fear of being heckled and laughed at.

Per a Union worker in this article

“We’re damned if we do, and we’re damned if we don’t,” said Harris. “The riding public is not educated on what we’re fighting for. Why should we work under stressful conditions without getting paid for it?”

Well sir, you are getting paid, maybe just not as much as you’d like to.  As for the stress of a job, join the club.  Without marginalizing the efforts of the workers who really do make SEPTA run, what about those workers in the subways averaging $53,000 a year to take $2 and press a button.  I wouldn’t wish that kind of stress on anyone.

Governor Rendell said the five-year contract spurned by TWU leaders called for a $1,250 signing bonus upon ratification, a 2.5 percent raise the second year, and a 3 percent raise in each of the next three years.  It also called for an increase in pension payments to workers and no increase in their health-insurance contributions.

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The Hurt Locker

HLposterUSA2By: Billy BeerSlugger

The Hurt Locker is a movie that follows an elite group U.S army unit in the Iraq war in 2004. It is without a doubt one of the most kick ass movies I have seen this year. The premise of the movie is this; the Explosive Ordnance Disposal unit disarms bombs. However, this isn’t American soil and this task is made harder by the threat of insurgent snipers and remote detonation.

Jeremy Renner plays the lead and does a superb job pulling off the alpha male, adrenaline junkie leader of the unit, wearing a protective suit (and sometimes not) to diffuse bombs and IED’s.  Renner shares a kind of Lethal Weapon/buddy aspect to the movie with costar Anthony Mackie.

What is great about the movie is how believable it is.  That’s always the sign of a great movie, how you can kind of lose yourself in the characters and story.  The kind of story you rarely find in Hollywood these days and it’s not hard to see why it was an independent film. During it’s limited release the movie went on to the garner critical acclaim and several independent film awards including best picture, best actor, breakthrough actor, cinematography, screenplay and director.

Director Kathryn Bigelow also directed one of my favorite movies of the 1990’s, Point Break.  Barry Ackroyd (veteran of United 93) should be commended on shooting the movie in a very natural and raw way.  Word is that writer Mark Boal stayed with and went out on routine daily activities with a bomb squad in Iraq. Jeremy Renner trained with real EOD teams prior to shooting and the film was made in Jordan, mostly about 3 miles away from the Iraq border. It brings an authenticity not seen in other Iraq War movies.

Overall, this is just a really good movie.  We’re not really big on endorsing movies here on BeerSlugger.com but this anti-hollywood movie with no headline name and just flat out great acting, story, action and cinematography really blows our skirt up.

I doesn’t hurt that there’s really no women in the movie.  Women, while I support serving their country in most capacities, are not meant to die on the front lines of battle which is why you won’t see one until Lost’s Evangeline Lilly shows up as the main characters wife. Ralph Fiennes and Guy Pearce (L.A. Confidential) also make cameos.

When it comes out on Netflix or whatever, take the 2 hours to watch this thrill ride.  Like my indie pick last year, The Wrestler, this movie could make waves come Oscar season.

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60 Minutes of Unchecked Facts

60minutes
It's more like 42 minutes and 18 minutes of commercials.

By: Billy BeerSlugger

I didn’t actually see this episode of the investigative news/magazine 60 Minutes since the Phillies were on but from what I and other people on the internet can tell you, their editor needs to do a little better in the fact checking department.

Their segment was on how illegal downloading was costing Hollywood 6 billion a year, which may or may not be that far off, however, the reasoning they give to support this claim is pretty much fabrication or conjecture which ever way you want to look at it.

First there is the claim that Organized Crime (the Mafia?) is making most of it’s money off of counterfeit movies.  Now I’m not going to dispute the fact that there are bootlegged movies out there but 60 Minutes is having me believe that Tony Soprano is behind all of this and not some dude with a DVD burner in his basement looking for some extra cash. I mean I could at least warm up to the idea if 60 Minutes gave me any proof. There was some talk about gangs of pirates using mafia style pickups but the focus quickly turned to illegal downloading.

Second, there is the segments claims by director Steven Soderbergh that piracy is costing the movie industry 6 billion a year.  Neglected is the fact that Hollywood continues to make more and more money each year. Another Soderbergh assertion is that fewer movies are being made and will continue to be made because of piracy.  Another assertion debunked given the statistics on movies 567 movies made in 2004 and 1038 in 2008, almost doubling inside of 4 years and still increasing.

I’ll give you that if movie tickets continue to go up every year then revenues should go up every year but you can’t really say that in this kind of economy.  Bottom line Hollywood made more money last year than the year before and the year before that.

The segment also delved into the role Bit torrent plays into illegal downloading and then cutting to a guy saying, “what we have done for 15 years is not put in any speed bumps, any technological blocks in the way of individuals so that the conclusion that the younger generation in particular draws is that if it’s so easy it cant be wrong.”

Well yes it is easy, people can choose to share anything they want on Bit torrent and if they choose to share or download things illegally it is on the government and the copyright holders to find a solution that does not intrude on the openness of the internet. The blocks and speed bumps the guy interviewed in 60 minutes is advocating sound a lot like bandwidth throttling and packet sniffing, things which go against the principles of net neutrality.

While there are millions of Bittorrent users out there, I only know about 3 people who could use Bittorrent effectively enough to download music, movies and the like. So if it’s so easy and so popular, why don’t I know more people that do it? Why can they use iPhones and computers but have no idea how to use Bittorrent even after I wrote an article on it?

I digress, the real focus here is on 60 Minutes and it’s one sided affair with File Sharing and the Motion Picture Industry.  There were a few facts thrown in about how the movie Wolverine was leaked and still did extremely well at the box office but overall there was not a peep from anyone on the opposing side of issue of illegal downloading.  Further, the “so called facts” that they gave didn’t coincide with any of the generally accepted statistics reported all over the internet.

I wonder how much money CBS makes off of Movie Advertisements a year?  Could this be yet another sacrifice of journalism for advertising dollars?  The whole thing to me seemed like a propaganda piece for the MPAA, chock full of bogus facts and subjective estimations.

Maybe more people would go to see movies if 90% of them were not lacking in substance, didn’t recycle old stories, didn’t remake old movies or have plots which are so horribly obvious as to the outcome that all you really needed to see was the previews.

What about the film-makers who are using file sharing technology to get their movies seen by the masses or the ones exploring new business models like some in the music business are. Let’s not talk to the copyright professionals or consumer advocates who render baseless most of the MPAA’s claims 60 Minutes. That wouldn’t be a balanced approach to the issue, would it?

P.S: Maybe if Steven Soderbergh didn’t put out pieces of crap like The Girlfriend Experience people wouldn’t walk out of the movie theater requesting their money back like me.

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The Android Army

android-logoBy: Billy BeerSlugger

People are pumped for the release of Google’s Android Operating System for mobile phones.  It’s inevitable that the number of phones supporting the OS will multiply a couple of times in the next couple of years.  There’s a lot of reasons why I believe Android will soon dominate the smart phone realm and most of my opinion is based on empirical evidence.

The main reason Android will soon outnumber the precious IPhone is it’s open source operating system.  I am a huge supporter of Open Source software as are millions of other people on the Interweb.  Apple’s IPhone platform is closed.

It makes me think back to the 80’s when Apple dominated PC sales only then to be supplanted by IBM’s PC which was an open platform.  You see on IBM’s PC you could run pretty much whatever OS you wanted, Windows, DOS, Unix etc, and by extension all of the applications that were available to those Operating Systems. On a Mac you could only run their proprietary Operating System and thus were limited to the applications developed by Apple and the companies they licensed.

It’s not exactly the same situation here with Android vs. iPhone but it is still a case of Open Source vs. Closed. In effect it is kind of the reverse of the 80’s situation for Apple where in the 80’s it was multiple hardware manufacturers making computers which were open ended and enabling Microsoft Windows to crush the OS competition. Now it is multiple hardware manufacturers making  computers (phones) which will run an Open Source Operating System.

Even with the millions of iPhone users with their phones attached to their hands at all times playing Rock Band or drinking a fake pint of Carling from their phone at a bar, I’m not sure the reputation and brand loyalty to Apple can beat (sales-wise) Google’s first foray into Operating Systems.

Though all of this doesn’t mean that the iPhone will just fade away in the near future it certainly does not bode well for it given Android addresses some of iPhone’s weaknesses.

1) Lack of background-processing capability: The iPhone can’t run multiple 3rd party apps at the same time which could be a draw for the multi-tasking individual or business-person.

2) Carrier Exclusivity in the United States: The iPhone is only available on AT&T which could push some people to grab an Android if they are locked into another carrier. Verizon is the largest mobile network and does not carry the iPhone due to the deal between Apple and AT&T.

3) The App Store: What is viewed by many as one of the iPhone’s greatest strengths is something that in my mind is holding it back.  Yes anyone can make an iPhone app and there’s almost 100,000 of them right now. However, an iPhone app must be developed on a Mac leaving Windows and Linux developers to either buy a Mac or not develop iPhone App’s.  A slight gain in Mac sales for a huge sacrifice in the developer community.  The approval process has been loudly criticized as vague when an App is declined and the guidelines for developing are just as opaque.

Not only is the Android OS invading smart phones, you will see it on e-book readers such as Barnes and Noble’s “Nook” and Netbooks (cheap laptops used for internet access, emailing etc.).  With Android popping up in so many places and with phones and other devices having more of the capabilities of our laptops, seemingly merging, Google’s OS could take a bite out of Microsoft’s market share without even challenging for dominance on the PC.  If Google dominates smart phones and smart phones continue on a path of greater functionality and computing power, you may see the first true OS war between Google and Microsoft.

Google still has to get by Apple, Research In Motion, Palm, Symbian and Microsoft though.  The Android OS still has some catch up to do to the iPhone, mainly because of the differences in hardware it will be installed on but I wouldn’t bet against Google, they have the money to throw at it and innovation is the culture in Mountain, View California.

Not that there will be a clear cut winner in the smart phone market any time soon considering iPhone is the current leader at 25%.  We’ll just have to wait and see what the future holds.

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Chelsea Handler in Playboy

By: Billy BeerSlugger

I like Chelsea Handler.  I’ll sometimes catch the Soup and her Show with side show act Chuey before I go to bed.  Even though it’s not exactly improv as you can tell the topics and jokes for the topics are preconceived, she seems to have a realness about her. I guess as real as you can get when you have your own show about celebrity gossip.

Anyway, I’m a fan of naked chicks and there’s something about seeing a Hollywood chick naked that is better than just going on the internet and finding random naked chicks that aren’t famous for just taking their clothes off.  Maybe it’s because they’re in movies or TV shows or whatever but I like to get to know my naked celebrities a little bit before I put them in the spank bank.

Anywhoodle, I’m sure they had to makeup and photoshop Chelsea a lot because shes been going to the dark side over the last couple of years. I can see her being a Joan Rivers type in 15 years or so.

original

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Windows 7, Bill Gates Out-Foxes Fox

windows_7_leakBy: Billy BeerSlugger

I’m a PC. Since 1992 and for the foreseeable future I’m sticking with Microsoft through thick and thin.  I wasn’t happy with Vista and didn’t particularly care for Windows XP after Windows 2000. Vista for the most part was riddled with problems and even though the majority of them were fixed in successive Service Packs, the negative press and word of mouth killed it’s ability to be a successful operating system in the mainstream consciousness.  Windows XP was shinier and had a updated graphical interface as opposed to Windows 2000 but also came at the expense of lag. Loading Windows Explorer was considerably slower as well as a host of other things I didn’t find satisfying on a supposed new operating system.

While Windows 7 is essentially a “refined” progression of Vista, it has given my laptop life it did not have in the Vista era.  “Aero” effects that I could run while decreasing my system stability in Vista seem to be of no consequence in 7.  Searching for a file takes seconds not minutes and overall my laptop is more responsive and “feels” better with faster page load times using the interweb and downloading files.  If you’re on a computer as much as i am, multitasking resource consuming applications this is a very good thing!

Overall, I haven’t been this excited about an operating system since Windows 95. It’s really that much of a step in the right direction though not without it’s flaws (as any OS has).  Maybe I’m a little biased given my history of working on PC’s since birth essentially, working on DOS then Windows 3.1 and so on. Or maybe it is my trip to the Microsoft’s campus in 1997 while my father’s company was subcontracted to help fix their help desk and I was able to experience a T1 line well before anyone except large companies had access to anything but dial up internet.  Either way, if you’re running XP or Vista you will be more than pleased if you upgrade given you have the recommended hardware.

But now to the reason why I’m writing this post.  Microsoft has pulled out of an advertising campaign that would have consumed all of the commercials and Windows 7 being worked into the plot of an episode of The Family Guy much like Bud Lite Golden Wheat bought all the commercials on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live.  Microsoft pulled out of the deal citing the episode’s “content was not a fit with the Windows brand.” .   Well I had been following this “breaking news” since it’s announcement and subsequently found it funny that Microsoft would pull out of the on the premises that The Family Guy‘s content was not a fit.  Have they seen an episode of that show?

However, then I thought about it.  Microsoft was in a win-win situation the whole time. Best case they get all the advertising on a show that appeals to the coveted 18 to 40+ market that they want to get the word out to and spend a lot of money doing it.  Second best case scenario, they leak the information on the web about Microsoft buying the entire advertising budget for an episode of Family Guy, wait for the eventual backlash from Microsoft haters and determine whether or not this is a great idea.  Apparently they decided to bail on actually buying the advertising time and but still take the internet buzz about the Microsoft/Family Guy union.  Another in a long line of shrewd Microsoft moves.

Check out the docudrama The Pirates of Silicon Valley for more Apple/Microsoft Steve Jobs/Bill Gates info in it’s infancy up to about 1999. Great stuff if you’re a geek like me.

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SEPTA STRIKE!

By: Billy BeerSlugger

After reading my colleague Robby Ripchord’s article today I thought I would touch on SEPTA as well.  SEPTA Transportation Workers Union 324 voted unanimously to authorize a strike.  So now the riders of busses, trolleys and subways in Philadelphia are now subject to service interruptions should the Union decide to send it’s 5,000 plus workers to the picket line.

Coincidentally, (obviously not coincidental)  this strike threat is at the exact time that the World Series would be going on.  When tens of thousands of drunken people will come from all parts of the city and surrounding area to descend upon the South Philadelphia Sports Complexes.  Afterward these people will want a ride home.  If they can’t get home I can’t even imagine the carnage this city will endure as people flip over cars, light fires, climb slicked up lightpolls and generally destroy everything in sight.  One thing you don’t want to give a drunken Philadelphia sports fan, win or lose, is a reason to get completely angry and break shit.  And that’s if people can even get to the game. If people can;t get to the game there may be even more hell to pay.

SEPTA’s union does not want to increase their health care contributions from 1 to 4% and also are balking about a “wage freeze”. Which is a better term than “massive layoff”.  However, I doubt the TWU  will get much sympathy from the Philadelphia public on this when everyone else, including city employees are facing the same thing.

The union has been working without a contract since March which definitely gets good faith points when the negotiating begins.  The bad thing is that threatening a strike during a World Series is in effect extortion, definite buku negative good faith points.  As if you couldn’t decide to strike before or after the Phils are in the Series.  This is what they call a little bit of leverage.

I guess the good thing is that the regional rail is on a separate union(s) so that obviously still operates and people can get in and out of the city that way to partake in the Phillies Fever and also work. However, there is no regional rail stop in South Philly and unless you’re driving, taking a cab or have a bike, you’re hoofing it from City Hall to 1 Citizens Bank Way.

SEPTA and it’s Union do not see eye to eye on things and that’s fine, but strike after the Phils win the series or there may not be transit lines left to drive subways through if the drunken masses can’t get to or out of South Philly.  I’ll personally start whacking away at the Girard Ave exit on the Market-Fankford line.  They should have used some of that 1.31 million from the economic stimulus to redo that piece of shit anyway.  Consider it free labor.

Overall, while hundreds of thousands of people are out of work, TWU 234 says lets strike for better benefits and wages. Seems logical to me. Tell you what, lets have them strike and then fill most of their mindless jobs like the Subway Cashiers with people who do actually want to work.  I mean besides the people who actually fix busses, trolleys, trains and other technical things how hard could the rest of the jobs really fucking be?  Drive a bus, subway train or trolley? I mean as long as you don’t hit anyone or anything and make pickups at all the stops along the route then you’re golden baby.

Good article here.

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SEPTA Cashiers

SEPTA TrainBy: Robby Ripchord

We here at BeerSlugger.com apologize for the lack of posts lately.  You see the Phillies are in the midst of a World Series defense and we have been drinking heavily, waking up late and generally calling out of work for no good reason.

That being said, I was out last Wednesday for the Phillies NLCS clincher against the Dodgers. Eventually a group of friends and I made our way to Center City to celebrate with the masses, bag o’ beers in tow. That’s not what this article is about though.

As I awoke in a strange place, multi-colored polka-dot sheets, a room filled with women’s clothing, I realized i was not at my house. A quick survey of the situation placed me in Manayunk. Great, I don’t live in Manayunk and i obviously did not drive there. So here I am forced to take two different forms of SEPTA transportation back to my domicile.

I have a over-priced crappy omelet at the Manayunk Diner which is situated close to the train station and make my way up the rotting concrete and steel stairs.  Before I left I had picked up the latest copy of Philadelphia Weekly and read a great article about SEPTA attendants while I sprawled out like a homeless man on the train station bench.

I always wondered what the SEPTA cashiers in the Subways actually did since, as the article points out and I realized from personal experience, that:

  1. They cannot give change.
  2. Most do not sell tokens, at least not all day.

Effectively their job is to take two dollars per rider and press a button.  Occasionally they are supposed to help elderly and handicapped individuals get onto platforms and trains.

What I didn’t know is that these same people I see napping inside their booth’s or just plain not there at all are paid $55,000 a year on average.  All of the 346 full time cashiers on the Broad Street and Market-Frankford Lines are from the medically disqualified pool.  So really if you get hurt/sick on or off the job then you get a cushy job collecting dollar bills and pressing a button for $55,000 a year.

Which would be fine with me except that much of the SEPTA budget is funded by Federal, State and local subsidy’s. So taxpayers are mostly paying for these people to sit on their brains all day.  Further, every year or two SEPTA threatens to strike wanting better pay and better benefits.  Which is exactly the beauty of unionized labor and government jobs, there’s always a few people that get to sit around and do absolutely nothing to collect a sizable paycheck, have little to no work stress besides showing up and even that is debatable.

Sometimes I’ll be on the Subway and there won’t even be a person in the booth to take my $2. Further they don’t have token machines at every stop.  So what is a person to do when a train is coming? Not only is SEPTA losing money by overpaying a person who effectively does the job of George Jetson but it’s also losing money from people who want to pay their fare but have to hop over the turnstile instead.

God forbid we upgrade our outdated token system with a card system like New York or Washington D.C.! Technology which has been employed in these cities since at least 1995. But that’s neither here nor there.  Your suggestions and good ideas will be promptly ignored by the SEPTA officials that are taking your tax money to run their Transit Authority.

PS: Thanks to the nice lady who gave me a quarter to take the Market Frankford line home Thursday.  I had exact change for two tokens ($2.90) and put a dollar bill and my change into the token machine only to find out that nickels and dimes were not accepted. Then i tried to get my money back and it only gave me the change and not the dollar.  So I was left ten cents short of the requisite for a single trip and 25 cents short of the requisite $2.90 for two tokens.  Good people are hard to come by in a Subway and BeerSlugger.com salutes you anonymous subway lady.  Had it not been for you I would have had to walk my hungover ass home.