In my comments, Mark Beaty suggests that Tyler Hamilton will be the successor to Lance Armstrong. I don’t think so – cyclists peak in their late 20’s and their early 30’s are a fight against the inevitable decay. Tyler will be 33 during the next Tour de France and the clock is running fast. I just don’t think that he has time to become Lance’s successor.

Last week, the Bottom Line, seemed to be facing certain death. Proving that it’s never over until it’s over, Sirius Satellite Radio has agreed to become an investor in the club. The agreement gives the Bottom Line 4 weeks to negotiate a new lease with New York University.

As a long suffering Broncos fan, there is nothing better than a good thumping of the Raiders. The Broncos started with a dream 1st quarter – three offensive series yielding three touchdowns and three defensive series yielding only seven yards. And it was downhill from there in route to a 31-10 victory.

But I can’t get too excited yet. Yes the Broncos are 3-0, but all three victories have been over seriously flawed teams. And the Broncos seem a bit too enamored with Plummer’s running ability – a mobile quarterback is a great thing to keep in your hip pocket, but constant use is an invitation to injury.

You never want to look past your next opponent, but the Chiefs game is in two weeks. A win at Kansas City would put the Broncos in control of the AFC West. Unfortunately, it’s at the same time as the Giants game. Hmm, it may be time to find a sports bar.

If you’ve got a Mac, then iTunes is a great way to buy music. But my problem is that it’s just too much – it’s an embarrassment of riches. If you know what or who you’re looking for, then you can get right down to business. But if you’re just browsing through the stacks, then where do you start? And now that Folk Music has come to the iTunes Music Store, my problem has gotten that much worse.

I used to rely upon the Folk Music Mailing List to bring new music to my attention. But either my tastes have become jaded, or the recommendations have become stale; because it just doesn’t work for me anymore.

It seems to me that someone needs to underwrite bandwidth for some music driven blogs. Someplace where we can feel the excitement of new music again now that radio has become corporate mush. Someplace that would provide music samples along side reviews.

Big news on the Hibernate front. The Hibernate project joins the JBoss umbrella and Gavin King becomes an employee of the JBoss Group working on Hibernate and JBoss/Hibernate integration. Nothing is better than getting paid to do something that you would do anyway, so congrats to Gavin King.

The WUSA folded on Monday. With the Women’s World Cup scheduled to start this weekend, the only surprise was the timing. The writing was already on the wall as the three year old professional women’s united soccer association was aired on the PAX cable station with insufficient corporate sponsership. But I have to wonder what this portends for MLS.

The WUSA had an attractive product with top notch talent playing an attractive style of soccer. But the league needed television to build an audience and provide a advertising platform for corporate sponsership and all it came up with was PAX. Soccer just isn’t a good match for US viewing tastes. It doesn’t have predictable stoppage time. It’s low scoring, and the goal scoring tends to develop and occur very quickly. This is all great when you’re watching the game in person. But not quite what a football, baseball and basketball trained TV audience is prepared for.

I think that the US soccer audience cannot be built by TV. It needs to become an live event with TV supplying overflow capacity for those unable to attent in person. The MLS focus on soccer only stadiums is a big step in the right direction. I just don’t know if they got started soon enough.

With only 16 games in the regular season, every NFL game is important. But I think the key to a successful season is to play up to your level, not down to your opponents. And that means your team needs to beat the teams they’re supposed to beat and win their division games at home. The Broncos were supposed to beat the Bengals and did. And beating the Chargers on the road gets the season off to a good start. But the season really starts with Monday night’s home game against Oakland.

Knock on wood, but it looks like Clinton Portis will be healthy for this game. After many years riding John Elway’s arm, the Bronco’s have become a running team. It’s a nice feeling – odd, but nice. It may be more fun to watch a passing team, but running teams feel more in control. It was great that Elway had all those 4th quarter comebacks. But it’s even better when you don’t have to come back at all.

It’s going to be my first game of the season. After the Giants, Jets, Patriots and Bills games are broadcast, there’s not much air time left for left coast teams. But if the Broncos win this game, I may have to follow the rest of the season at a sports bar.

The Bottom Line … has fallen into a deep financial hole and is facing eviction from the West Fourth Street corner it has occupied for nearly 30 years.

I’ve only been to a handful of shows at the Bottom Line, but along with Makor (now affiliated with the 92 Street Y), it was one of my favorite venues. I love small, cozy venues where you can make a connection between performer and audience.

And the Bottom Line has been a special place for folk music. Most folkies are never going to headline at an arena, much less a stadium. So the Bottom Line was pretty close to the apex of the pyramid. It will be a shame to see it go.

By the way, I now live in the hinterlands of southwestern Connecticut. But I loved the short time that I lived in Manhattan. One of the wonders of Manhattan is the small intimate places that manage to exist in a big brash city. To me, these places are what make Manhattan a great place to live rather than an extravaganza to visit.

Maybe this is going to be a turning point for politics and technology. This weekend, an inquiry was made on the cms mailing list:

we need to set up a website for our candidate with a CMS that will be used by a variety of staffers to upload content that will then be approved by a small set of senior people. We’re under terrific time pressure to get this thing up and running …

Now, I don’t really expect a more personal channel to the candidate. It is clear that content will be vetted by senior advisors before going live. But I think that many candidates just don’t have a good handle on technology. And first hand knowledge can only help.

Jeremy Bowers is thinking about improving RSS Bandwidth Efficiency with mirroring and rsync; but I think the status quo has more life in it than Jeremy thinks [via Ted Leung].

When popular sites need mirrors, we’ll just add them. NewsGator uses permanent redirects to customize the NewsGator Tips feed. It would be just as easy to use permanent redirects for mirroring.

And http may be expensive in bandwidth, but it’s easy to come by. When push comes to shove, I suspect that it will be easier to find hosts supporting http compression than anonymous rsync.

No, I think that http has staked out a prime location in the land of Good Enough. And it’s not going anywhere.