Technically Incorrect

Many a college student adorns his dorm room wall with a picture, often large, of ESPN sideline reporter Erin Andrews.

It is not for me to declare that hers is the apogee of beauty. But the enthusiasm with which her image is often greeted by young men parallels that of the image of a carrot to a starving giraffe.

So perhaps one shouldn't fall to the rear and bump one's inverted baseball cap on the sidewalk to discover that some mischievous little miscreant filmed Andrews in a somewhat disrobed state through the peephole of her hotel room.

Given that this was a particularly sleazy, immature, and cowardly act, might I conjecture that the perpetrator was an extremely sad specimen of college student? Perhaps.

However, the aftermath has proved to be rather less comely than its subject.

Erin Andrews at work.

(Credit: CC JMRosenfeld/Flickr)

The video was initially uploaded to the French site DailyMotion.fr. Naturally, it then wandered across the internet like a rodent in search of camembert.

But according to security site Sophos.com, hackers have decided that the efforts of ESPN's lawyers to make the video disappear, coupled with the enthusiasm of many bepimpled youths to see the apparently grainy footage, make for the perfect opportunity to spread a dirty little computer disease.

While the identity of the cameraman and initial uploader remain a mystery, hackers have set up Web pages purporting to house the precious footage of Andrews in the flesh. One pretends to be a CNN page.

In any case, once you begin to click on the alleged video, your laptop becomes Troy to Greeks bearing unpleasant gifts. The malware floods into your machine, whether it's a Mac or a PC.

While we can be grateful to Sophos for pointing out these distressing facts, there is perhaps one even more distressing fact coming out of the company's work.

Sophos's Graham Cluley, who posted the warning about the Andrews malware, says he had never, before Sunday, heard of Andrews.

Graham, we need to talk.

I am perplexed why an allegedly 60-year-old person would want to become the Largest Fontina at Yahoo.

But perhaps Carol Bartz has already hiked the whole of the Na Pali Coast in Kauai, perhaps she has done all the clothes shopping in Tokyo she ever wanted to do and perhaps she simply has no desire to experience flying cars or climbing Kilimanjaro.

So if she's looking for a vast Yahoo success to help clear her sinuses before she begins to issue severe orders, she should cast a happy eye at Yahoo Sports. They say imitation is a heartfelt form of flattery. In which case, the folks at ESPN pine in pain for Yahoo Sports.

When the, um, Worldwide Leader in Sports announced it was going to 'simplify' its web site, who might have guessed that this was code for 'Yahooify'?

So we thought Yahoo was in a Cover-2, but really they were cornerback blitzing.

(Credit: CC E-Strategyblog.com)

If you remember the old ESPN site, it looked as if it had been created by someone whose primary recreation was recreational drugs. A veritable cokefest of commercialization clashed with bits of news that craved to be heard over the desperate visual and aural pinball.

Now, if you wander onto espn.com, you would be absolved from thinking that Yahoo had broken into your bookmarks.

The clarity of the layout suggests "Ah, yes" rather than "Boo-Yah". Even the type that delivers the latest news in the top right-hand corner bears a remarkable resemblance to Yahoo blue.

It's almost as if someone went into rehab and came out realizing that they were not worshiped by all the members of their target sex after all. It's as if ESPN was the Tyson who suddenly realized that Buster Douglas had knocked him to the Twilight Zone several hours ago.

It's as if the somewhat self-satisfied Mike Martz had suddenly bumped into the here's-how-it-really-is Carol Bartz.

Who would choose to be in NBC's PR Department this week?

I couldn't possibly accuse any of them of taking steroids, but could you blame them if they slipped something a little special into their noon smoothie just to deal with another sleepless night?

Many critics have been kvetching about technological fakery during the opening ceremony, when fireworked footprints were CGI'd for home consumption.

I'm not sure how the CGI increased our excitement.

However, the description from NBC's Matt Lauer was definitely breathtaking: "You're looking at a cinematic device employed by Zhang Yimou here. This is actually almost animation."

Actually, it was animation, wasn't it? It was literally an artist's impression, except this one wasn't trying to sell you a timeshare.

NBC's Bob Costas, who is very clever, must have spent many moments composing his CGI voiceover: "We said earlier that aspects of this opening ceremony are almost like cinema in real time. Well this is quite literally cinematic."

Would you have preferred: "Here's some animation to give you a more vivid sense of what they're seeing out there"? I think I might have.

Just to be clear, this is not CGI.

(Credit: CC Sister 72)

All this reminded me of the 1992 Barcelona Olympics when the wondrous opening ceremony had, as one of its moments of high drama, an archer shooting a flaming arrow to light the Olympic flame.

Please don't tell anyone else, but he missed. The Spaniards had allowed for this possibility by rigging the flame's dish with so much gas that the arrow had to only pass somewhere near it for the flame to light up.

NBC has also suffered some slings and arrows by keeping the word "live" on the screen even on the feeds to the West Coast. Twice an hour, they remind you briefly that the pictures you're watching are, well, not literally live. In fact, they're not live at all.

Their defense is that this is no different from American Idol, which Westies also see on tape delay, with the occasional reminder that this is the case.

Please forgive me, but American Idol is to live Olympics what America's Top Model is to live NASCAR.

The reason why so much of sport still gets more than tolerable ratings is precisely because it is live. You get involved in it because it is happening right now. And love 'em or love 'em less, the folks at Fox try to make live baseball as live as it could possibly be, even identifying fans, managers and reluctant spouses engaged in the most spontaneous behaviors.

If you followed NBC's impeccable commercial logic, then surely Costas' favorite event, the World Series, should be on tape delay on the West Coast. Same goes for the Superbowl.

And if you think there's some jolly jingoism going on here, well, if I remember correctly, ABC and ESPN televised America's most popular international event, the World Cup, live. As in, you know, the thing you're seeing on screen is happening right now in some other country.

I know of no other country that would delay a sporting event that is happening live in the hope of expected commercial gain.

To me this is as odd as the fact that love seats are always so incredibly uncomfortable.

Still, NBCOlympics.com continues to be a source of utter Future World uplift. And that is why I must go. Argentina's finest field hockeyists are playing Great Britain online.

When I say online, I mean it's almost as if they were literally right there on my laptop. You know, cinematically speaking.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

Those nice people at ESPN reported this week that Mark Cuban, who I am told, was given a lot of money by Yahoo for some gizmoid or other, is one of the finalists in the bidding to buy baseball's most charming, unlucky, losersome team, the Chicago Cubs.

There will be those on the waggy side of humorous who will claim that he is the perfect person to own the Cubs as his Dallas Mavericks team is one of the most charming, unlucky, losersome teams in the NBA.

(My prejudices. One, I have Golden State Warriors hats and shirts and have still not ceased to giggle at the thought of my lowly Warriors embarrassing the favored Mavericks in the playoffs in 2007. Two, I have publicly declared my admiration for Mr. Cuban's commitment to the televised jig.)

However, if there was anyone who was chemically and congenitally capable of taking Major League Baseball out to the 21st century ballgame, it is surely Mr. Cuban.

As an NBA owner, he is reputed to treat his players and staff extremely well. Despite those who believe him to be more mercurial than Courtney Love, he has shown Colin Powell-like loyalty to coaches.

And he has raised topics, such as the NBA's, um, mercurial refereeing standards, when others didn't have the courage.

Of course, his biggest obstacle may lie in persuading 75% of the strangely crustacean-like men who are MLB owners to accept him as one of their number.

Which would be a little like a Yale secret society accepting Fitty Cent.

First, though, Mr. Cuban must persuade the Tribune Group to sell. And at the moment he is said to be the highest bidder at $1.3billion.

I'm trying to imagine Mr. Cuban's interview with the Tribunal.

(Credit: CC Mil8)

Somewhere, deep in my sporting areas, I am thinking the newspaper group knows that it should sell to someone who will grab Chicago's imagination, stroke it in the palm of his hand, and then ask it what it wants for Christmas.

Which is why they should only ask Mr. Cuban one question:

What will you do about Steve Bartman?

For those of you unfamiliar with Mr. Bartman's plight of fancy, he is blamed for costing Chicago a place in the 2003 World Series. His sin was that, with the natural reactions of a human resources consultant, he attempted to save a flying ball from his seat in the stands, when it was thought that the Chicago left fielder, Moises Alou, would catch it. Fans claimed this, and not the players' mistakes, cost Chicago the game and the series. He has been a vilified figure in Chicago ever since.

Unlike the other bidders, who would probably offer the confused look of moneyfolk, I imagine that Mr. Cuban might give two possible answers to the Bartman question:

1. "I would go to Mr. Bartman's house, knock on his door and ask him to come with me. I would put him in the back of my limousine, give him some brand new Dallas Mavericks gear to wear- I'm big on marketing, you see- and make sure that he is taken to the very fine and efficient O'Hare airport of Chicago. I would ensure his plane was not delayed. And I would send him to the Canary Islands to live out the rest of his days. They say his curse has passed, my friends. But with curses, as with relief pitchers, you can never be too safe."

2. "I would make him a Senior Vice-President of the Chicago Cubs. One thing I have learned in my long life, gentlemen, is that you have to stand up to adversity, not hobble away from it on your artificial hips. Progress is inevitable and cures all ills. Soon YouTube will be little more than a pictogram in the history of art. Please remember that I was the one who said that the NBA's manager of officials wouldn't be able to manage a Dairy Queen. And then I went out and proved that I could. So by making Mr. Bartman a Senior Vice-President I would be declaring that the past is there not to frighten us, but to strengthen us and to make the glory that will be ours all the more sweet. Two things you need to remember, gentlemen. One, the Red Sox finally got Bill Buckner back to Fenway and they haven't stopped winning. And two, Steve Bartman used to be a part-time coach for a 13-year-olds' baseball team in Niles, Illinois. That team, and I wish I'd owned them then, but I will buy them now and make them a Cubs Little League farm team, was called the Renegades."

Management is all about the decisions you make, the attitude you take, and the good fortune you fake.

And one decision Mr. Cuban has made is not to be neutral.

That is why I am convinced his choice of response to this one question would tell the Tribune Tribunal everything it needs to know about his qualifications as a potential owner of the team that the American Association of Psychiatrists has always longed to sponsor, but never had the wherewithal. (Please, just imagine Wrigley being renamed Freud Field.)

I, for one, wish Mr. Cuban the very best of luck. He is one of the finest ambassadors for the tech world's humanity.

And it is unquestionably time that some relatively alive human being showed baseball that sitting on your old-world assets is not what the future should look like.