Howzbout A Silent Open Thread?
For everyone who isn't already used to that music following them around...
--
“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
- Macallan's blog
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Mr. Cohen has no idea what an actual political prisoner is, although pariah isn’t too far off the mark.
--"That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am!"- Dr. Seuss
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)They want to recreate that? Are they under the impression they can rewrite the ending?
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )but it sure seems to me like there are a number of people out there who truly are starved for attention
--"That Sam-I-am! That Sam-I-am! I do not like that Sam-I-am!"- Dr. Seuss
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| parent )I like the ones who don't advocate for us to start wars to make them feel better more, tho.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )I presume you've seen the videos.
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| parent )Officially it's China 51, US 36.
Unofficially, the following Chinese gold medals don't count coz they're from bobo sports:
Badminton -3
Canoe Kayak -1
Shooting -5
Table Tennis -4
So now they've got 38. Take away the 3 Women gymnastics gold medals coz they cheated and you're left w. 35.
Unfortunately the US's 2 bobo gold medals from shooting also don't count by this metric, so it's still China 35, US 34.
Well, we're going to have to take away one of China's martial arts golds b/c they ran some sort of forced labor camp for some of their Kung Fu exhibitioners.
Voila! A tie! Go USA!!
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)That was quite a game. As was the men's water polo gold round.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent ). . .China got eight golds in weightlifting, and Russia, Turkey, Bulgaria, and Greece combined for zero. I'm betting that China doesn't come close to that number next time.
To China's credit, they got zero golds from the ultimate cheesesports--synchronized swimming and rhythmic gymnastics, though they did get a silver and a bronze.
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| parent )I know it doesn't have anything to do with the Chinese, but that doesn't make BMX any less of a true global sport.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )To China's credit, they got zero golds from the ultimate cheesesports
I believe I already covered the issue of Bobo golds, Scott.
No one gets credit for winning or failing to win them. They're bobo b/c they're irrelevant.
Sometimes your China-sympathizing disturbs me.
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| parent )Here, you'll need this for your sprained tongue. ]:-)
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| parent )Most of those Jamaican Golds should be American Golds since most of those Jamaican Gold Medalists trained at American colleges and universities.
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| parent )their shoes were made in China!
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| parent )- Login or register to post comments
| parent )John McCain on the economy:
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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)Until their eyes bleed. It's rather astonishing. He's asked a simple question requesting a comparison between himself and Romney regarding ability to handle economic issues.
He then proceeds to ignore the question and Romney, cite his military service, cite his support for the war in Iraq, pimp his time as a POW, and then declare that he really really liked Ronald Reagan. Which is exactly like an economic plan for America.
It's rare to see someone be this craven and this dimwitted at the same time. Tho' I'm guessing the Senior Senator will offer up plenty more opportunities in the months to come.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )It was a primary debate after all and outside of a bidding war on tax cuts, what else have they got to offer on the subject? They are all pretty much a one trick pony when it comes to economics. Aiming to match self interest with bribery, without the need for any of the time consuming investment in serious thought about policy and making government work that Democrats are so enamored with.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )And that clip is a *perfect* illustration of just exactly how hopeless he is.
But you guys had to go and nominate Obama.
Hillary Clinton would have wiped the floor with McCain.
Obama, on the other hand, will lose to him, as surely as night follows day.
Feh. Feh. Feh.
--God help the while, a bad world I say.
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| parent )What're your terms?
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )Chuck Todd was talking numbers today about the Veep choice and Hillary not being on the ticket. Her problem? Recent polling shows a solid 49 percent of the electorate who do not want to see her in the White House. Ever. That's a pretty serious disadvantage in a presidential race.
But if nothing else, we agree about McCain.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )However, it would have been bright for Obama's people to go through the motions of vetting her for VP consideration before settling on Biden--why give her die-hards a "you're disrespecting her!" rallying point by not doing so? It's not like Obama's hurting for campaign cash.
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| parent )Tho' they spent some time today saying of course they considered her, she was among the first people Obama talked to, etc. But yes, a more official vetting, even one like the fake kind McCain is giving Powell, would have been helpful.
I've heard, and believe, that they have numbers that show the Clinton voters will come home before the election. That may account for some of their actions.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )hardly a natural or likely Hillary constituency by any means, but one that perhaps speaks of the darker motive we are not supposed to mention. McCain need do very little to capture that constituency but show up, while Obama can do very little but compensate in other areas, for the same underlying reason.
I would submit that how forcefully she and Bill campaign for Obama will have a far greater effect and may even help assuage reservations in those constituencies in which he trails, than would have any provisional vetting.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )either he picks a very conservative VP to appeal to the base and drives Clinton supporters and independents to Obama, or he picks a moderate that splits his own base and doesn't do much as far as getting independents. Everyone keep talking about how the Ds are divided, but I think they're underestimating how split the R base is.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )It will be Mitt. The fundies will be upset about the Mormonism, but far less upset than they would be with a choice candidate since they aren't entirely sure that McCain himself is fully on board, given his previous insistence on the 'life of the mother' exception. Mitt has the economic chops (for a Republican) that McCain lacks and as the primaries proved he's malleable enough to conform to whatever McCain positions he will be required to adopt as VP.
Lieberman would be a Godsend for Democrats almost as good as getting Cheney to sign on for an extended tour or Phil Gramm getting promoted from the ranks of now 'unofficial' campaign adviser. Pawlenty, Jindal and Palin are all nobodies with insufficient heft to help McCain carry the campaign load. Which leaves the newly hitched (convenient) Charlie Crist as the only remaining candidate who could reasonably be listed as a possible. Though I suspect the voters would prefer the less heard about Florida the better this go around.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )but so will Obama.
Enjoy.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )I honestly doubt she'd be doing any better than Obama. Lots of baggage + skeletons in the closet. This hasn't been much of a feeding frenzy. Yet.
But good for you coming out w. some strong prognostications.
On one probable future we have making fun of you to look forward to. That kind of thing makes life more fun.
In that spirit, I claim Obama couldn't lose unless he grew 3 sizable purple horns.
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| parent )OK, fine by me. Time to trot out all the wonderful things Biden said about Obama back then. Example:
What does Biden think happened between the Dem primary and today that suddenly makes Obama ready for prime time? Was throwing a free beer/rock concert in Germany "on-the-job training"?
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )Harley had it right.
Course that makes McCain clip talking pts. for toddlers.
... it's partly McC's primary performance that has me quasi-supporting smearing him. he's earned it.
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| parent )Again. The fact that a former primary rival...
Oh, forget it. And by the way, comparing a typically dim-witted (and pompous) statement by the Senior Senator regarding the economy to the Biden critique?
Uhm. That's not apples and oranges. That apples and eight track tapes.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )and I thought you wanted a new kind of politics? What are you doing indulging in the old kind of politics?
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )You are the master of the site, and surely can do a search better than anyone else. Try to find a single comment where I've praised John McCain or said he would be a good president and you'll come up empty.
My comment above was in response to someone dredging up remarks about Romney from the primary (at least I thought that's what I heard through the %^&*ing Bach that keeps playing in this diary); my point was that that can easily be done by anyone for any candidate that ran in the primary. Get with the program, man, and cool down the guns.
Where did I remotely say I was for or supported "a new kind of politics", whatever the hell that is supposed to mean? I bought two pallets of microwave popcorn at Sam's Club specifically for spectating during the next three months, which I'll get right back to once this Olympics nonsense diversion is finished. And you will, too.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )even though I was thinking of replacing it with Gregorian chants.
I don't need to find entries praising McCain when I know of so many attacking Obama, especially when he says something that doesn't fit the "new politics" (which apparently is a synonym for losing without a fight).
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Because what you've been able to come up with so far have all been duds.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )at the VP debate, especially if Mitt gets chosen.
Beating Hillary for the nomination made Obama a serious political player. Securing the republican nomination by default because you were the least worst candidate everybody could agree on, not so much.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )maybe even more so than the Obama/McCain ones.
I think both parties ended up with people they're surprised that they chose. Whether McCain's pseudo-liberal leanings ultimately help him succeed where the rest of the field may have floundered won't be clear till November. But anyone saying McCain is the "least worst" the Repubs can come up with without acknowledging something similar on the Dem side risks the Republican C-team beating the Democrats' supposed best, which could be pretty embarrassing.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )If McCain wins this one it will be despite his policy prescriptions not because of them.
Everything would seem to hinge on the older white male constituency that I fully expect would have offered Hillary the same low level of support they are giving Obama. It remains to be seen if Obama can compensate for this loss with gains in other constituencies.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )I would never vote for the guy, but Romney took his old man's money and made a TON more. Bain & Co. is a big deal. The fact that McCain dismisses Romney's accomplishments so easily is a good indication Angry John really doesn't know too much about economics.
Not sure why I have a soft spot for my former Governor, but at least Romney earned his $500 loafers and many houses. McCain had to marry into his wealth.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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| parent )The comedian famous for talking about nothing is going to pitch Vista for Microsoft.
Sounds like a perfect match.
link
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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)-George.
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| parent )Can people please make a concerted effort to avoid presenting or citing material from obviously biased sources?
And no, "to show what they're talking about" is not a good reason to quote from a partisan site. We can find that stuff ourselves if we want it.
Some limited exceptions are available on a first-come, first-served basis for productive fisking purposes only.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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)anyone can use any source they want to support an argument. If you don't agree call them out in the comments.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )for is an informal agreement to strive for better practices.
Would you personally cite sources with an established bias to support your argument? If not, do you think there are other users who need to engage in such tactics because they are somehow unable to argue using neutral sources like you can? If not, where is the harm in my suggestion?
Just a little extra effort would make a big difference in terms of the usefulness of the site IMHO.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )is for everyone to be either entirely objective, or to match their subjectivity to yours. Sources are sources, everyone makes their own judgment as to how biased or objective they are. I think what you're asking for is a better (or at least different) class of human beings.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )If I write a diary and am looking for a quick quote to support my argument that McCain questioned Obama's patriotism, I could link a rant from a partisan blog or I could link the actual news article.
Even if I agree with the dKos diary I can recognize that it's not objective.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )I know what you mean and in my occasional objective moments I try to do the same, avoiding citing Hewitt, Patterico et al (though I admit I'm obsessed with the words of Mary Catherine Ham). Most hard-right blogs are just as unreadable as MyDD, DU or Kos.
It's easy to find someone somewhere saying anything you like and supporting any point you care to make, but the fact that someone else said the same thing is meaningless, and implies a lack of any objective sourcing for the point you are trying to make, IMO.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )...er, words. To be bipartisan about it, Kirsten Powers is also endowed with nice points...of view.
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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| parent ):)
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )1) I don't think there are many sources which everyone would agree are without tilt; reality has, as has been noted elsewhere, a strong liberal bias.
2) Yes.
3) Enforcement.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )I'm not looking for some sort of formalized list of approved sources, with any outside quotes deleted by moderators.
I'm looking for individuals to take a few extra minutes to support their arguments with evidence from neutral* sources. It's self-enforcing.
*If in doubt, ask yourself whether you could imagine the same source making a good-faith case for the opposite point of view.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )Ars Technica reports
Mozilla is leveraging an impressive new optimization technique to bring a big performance boost to the Firefox JavaScript engine. The code was merged today (but is not yet ready to be enabled by default in the nightly builds) and is planned for inclusion in Firefox 3.1, the next incremental update of the open-source web browser.
....
They are "getting ready to take JavaScript performance into the next tier" with a radically innovative optimization tactic called tracing that has already produced performance improvements ranging between 20 and 40 times faster in some cases. They believe that this is just the beginning of what can be accomplished with tracing, and they expect to be able to achieve even better speed as the work continues.
The theories behind tracing optimization were pioneered by Dr. Michael Franz and Dr. Andreas Gal, research scientists at the University of California, Irvine. The tracing mechanism records the path of execution at runtime and generates compiled code that can be used next time that a particular path is reached. This makes it possible to flatten out loops and nested method calls into a linear stream of instructions that is more conducive to conventional optimization techniques. Tracing optimization is particularly effective in dynamic languages and also has a very light memory footprint relative to alternative approaches.
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)and implement it without any security considerations whatsoever.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )the source is available for all to see -- that's the point.
Also, the mozilla guys didn't invent trace-tree-based optimization. This guy did as his thesis:
http://andreasgal.com/
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| parent )force of habit. I've seen them do it to too many products and technologies, I always figure it's the safe thing to assume about MS.
What they will really do in this case is to make their own version with some hooks into IE that is just slightly different enough from everyone else's that it will eliminate the possibility that it will ever be standardized.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )which turns it into Java classes. The Tracemonkey compiler is open source, but JavaScript itself badly hobbled by MSFT, who refuse to implement commonsense standards and APIs.
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| parent )You mentioned the TraceMonkey article, Hank said "Expect MS to reverse engineer it," and I said that doesn't make sense. That was separate from the ECMA politics and GWT threads...
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| parent )but Visual Studio C and C++ has always supported tracing. If MSFT would get with the plan, I could avoid installing the Sun Java plug-in everywhere. MSFT won't support any standard but its own, and it's entirely reasonable to presume MSFT does a TraceMonkey build every night, to keep track of what's going on and improve their own JIT.
Here's a more informed set of comments on what's going on with the TraceMonkey JIT
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| parent )which many IDEs like VS employ, and trace-based SSA compilation, which is the technology behind TraceMonkey. See the Hotpath VM paper:
http://www.usenix.org/events/vee06/full_papers/p144-gal.pdf
I don't understand why you want MS to provide a decent JVM on their own. Sun and IBM both provide pretty fast implementations, plus then Sun code is even open source now.
also:
Sure. I would too, if I were working on a JS implementation. No reverse engineering required, either -- just reading the source code and the research paper. Isn't that part of the point of free information and open technology?
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| parent )A profiler does exactly what I describe, identifying frequently-traversed code for optimization.
In a long-lived application, everyone instruments their code and does statically in compilation and linking what TraceMonkey is doing dynamically.
It doesn't matter. JavaScript is a crappy language. I hate it. Terrible scoping. Pathetic typing. I write Java and C++, tearing out JavaScript, reducing its role to a simple MVC View where possible. But JavaScript is the web, so we must all put up with what the browsers give us.
I don't care if MSFT develops a better JavaScript JIT. MSFT is busily destroying itself, the sooner it loses relevance the better. ASP and .NET are crude, stupid and insecure frameworks, J# is a tacit admission they're losing the battle for hearts and minds. Thank God for MSFT, they keep me in business killing their brain dead applications.
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| parent )Tracing for debugging, tracing for profiling, tracing for hotspot, tracing for hotpath.
I don't mind JS; it's just Scheme with curly braces. It can't have pathetic typing when it's an untyped language. Anyway, why do you think it has terrible scoping?
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| parent )I worked with another Scheme variant, a hideous little language called Monk, SeeBeyond's old language, which is still around.
Any language can be written badly, especially languages which are specifically designed to make such things hard. I'm no language or technology zealot, I despair of such people. Here's my complaint with JavaScript, and maybe it's just my few arc-seconds of perspective from a frog in the well: I meet up with so much bad and often terribly insecure JavaScript.
When I give my clients a scope of work document, they scream bloody murder, trying to save these horrible systems. The client's coders are smiling grimly in agreement, they know how this code base got so bad, all those last-minute rush-rush patches finally stacked up and the whole wretched thing fell over like the Tower of Babel. The JavaScript coders are clever people, they tried to tell management this stuff needed a rewrite, they didn't need a high-priced consultant to tell them.
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| parent )you've been doing this long enough. A consultant is hired so they can tell management the exact same thing the staff has been telling them, but because they pay so much money for a consultant they figure he must know what he's talking about.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )MSFT has stood in the way of any meaningful improvements to JavaScript since Day 1.
This tracing step might tempt me to get back into Google Web Toolkit again. My first forays into GWT were interesting, but I hated tweaking that messy JavaScript. JavaScript is the bane of my existence: idiots trying to do things on the client which belong inside the server, where things can be secured. If JavaScript execution speed improves, I might go back to GWT as a Facade.
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| parent )is that they never had a decent, scalable and secure security model, ever. There were plenty of examples to learn from, IBM had MVS and VM on hardware little more advanced than a hand calculator is today, and of course there's the simple, elegant and fast UNIX model. Even Netware had a better security model 20 years ago. MS security is one bolted on fix after another. But the entire goal of MS is to make computers easy to use for everyone, even the mildly retarded. So that's what we get, an OS for the mildly retarded.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )And never reined in its developers. They never made things easy for either the developer or the user.
Had they presented a Thou Shalt Use This API interface as Apple did, they could have cleaned up Windows behind the scenes, modularized it, secured it, performance tuned it. They could and should have gone to a Unix-type file system, presuming any machine could be pressed into service as a server.
But such a scheme would have allowed Windows to be emulated. They sought to preserve their dominance through bluff and complexity. And it worked, for a while. Now they are paying the price for that complexity: Vista can't be given away. Apple made several mis-steps along the way, too, tearing up the pea patch for their developers. But Apple knew it had to start over with a secure kernel, so they went to BSD as a foundation for OSX.
It's impossible to secure an OS when your apps make use of raw OS services. MSFT thought they could stave off the inevitable by securing Vista against existing schemes of attack, but it ended up looking like those Maya temples: huge stone edifices with tiny little rooms resembling crypts more than living spaces.
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| parent )Ridge....
I might not agree with everything Biden has done. I remember when Bush was getting and the US by proxy beat up in Davos a few years ago.. With some of the what people on the right call hate America first crowd.. He called them out on it..
He is serious and IMHO was the only one on the short list that had that first quality of VP. Ready to be president if need be..
Politically he is a safe choice and helps with at least Marginally with undecideds. Working class Catholic takes the train home everyday from Washington... He understands the process and has Classified Knowledge of Foreign policy going back many many years... He does not reinforce the change candidate meme.. Still I think all those people are on board... Obama wins all Categories and experience is the one issue that has not seemed to move even after his successful trip abroad... He is much more Hawkish than some would admit and falls into a classic Liberal of the Truman FDR type... The Democratic Party will not have that much trouble with their base...
Interesting thing is that Ridge is the best strategic choice but one that will not motivate the GOP base...Of course McCain will have to make the bet that in the end the prolife vote will hold their nose and vote for him anyway...
--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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)and allows McCain to pick anybody he wants. If he chooses a woman, this election is all over. The Russian invasion of Georgia stampeded Obama's people into this choice, and it reveals great weakness. Biden never shuts up. His nickname here in DC is 'Bigfoot'--because it's always in his mouth. Senators make bad enough presidential candidates as it is, but AFAIK two senators running together have never won a presidential election.
Really bad choice. Let's see if McCain can equal it. My guess is he may.
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| parent )Just saying.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )'I don't know how to Google'?
LBJ was a representative, not a senator.
EDIT: Nope, my mistake. And a stupid one, since I was old enough at the time to remember properly. I owe you a humble apology.
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| parent )to edit in such a manner, rather than just replacing the information.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )Not to have responded in such a nasty manner. But I was 'positive' I was right.
And as Ambrose Bierce says, being 'positive' means 'being wrong at the top of your voice.'
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| parent )My particular skill involves mocking math mistakes in others... while making trivial errors myself. I've seen other people step in it trying to correct grammar.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )accepted, in the gracious spirit offered.
--It's impossible to debate if people simply hold beliefs that have no grounding in reality.
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| parent )As well...from 1949 to 1960.
According to a quick wiki: including six years as United States Senate Majority Leader, two as Senate Minority Leader and two as Senate Majority Whip.
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| parent )Locking down the PUMA vote and 50c will get you a coffee. IMHO/YVMV
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )I guess Tomsyl will be choking on his popcorn. I'm surprised, I didn't think the Progressives would accept Biden so readily.
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| parent )Which reminds me of a story about why the veep choice actually could turn out to be important . . .
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )Liberals have internalized conservative criticism to such a degree that they have nothing but praise when their candidates act like this. It's like watching an abused dog lick its master's hand.
--The other day I heard that ignorance and apathy are sweeping the country. I didn't know that, but I don't really care.
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| parent )Biden has his strengths and weaknesses just like anyone else. What the Kossacks and most Democrats understand however, is that beating McCain is the important thing.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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| parent )I mean their were many philosphically that I would rather have been chosen. Still they all had electoral weakness... Come on now IMHO the stable is pretty bare on what I would consider a good president.... Full Stop....
--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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| parent )http://brown.senate.gov/senator/biography/
http://reed.senate.gov/newsroom/details.cfm?id=261860
http://www.governor.ks.gov/
It seemed that Reed was not interested...
That Brown did not have enough foreign policy chops...
The same with Sebelius along with to much change....
--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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| parent )One that got away?
Do you think Dodd would have been in the running if not for his Countrywide problems?
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )There are huge problems with picking a VP from another party, I'm guessing if McCain picked Lieberman there's be big problems with the Republicans also. Now if Hagel was willing to switch parties, maybe, but I doubt that would happen.
As for Dodd, who knows. He seems to be like Biden, only less so.
Now if you want interesting, I've read rumors that McCain is thinking of picking Meg Whitman. Now that's risky.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Thx.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )Would have been my pick...smart, well traveled, he even speaks Arabic, but still accessible to people..a rancher, plain spoken.
Plus he's from the West. Hello! There are people out here...
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| parent )and I would think he'd help add some libertarian heft to the "change" theme of the campaign.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )Plain spoken etc... In the end I think he picked someone he was very comfortable with in the thought of making hard choices... ( I can't fault that logic. If I were president I would want people around me that I was comfortable with tough choices.) Yes their are people in Kansas also... Glad to see you back... Athenas... :) thought you left for greener pastures....
--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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| parent )Just peace and quiet mostly.
I guess it's a good thing he wasn't picked..I rather like having him out here running one of the reddest of red states. He also put the lie to the "liberals as effetes". Which is a very tiresome meme I have to tell you.
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| parent )Schweitzer is great. Schweitzer would make a great Presidential candidate. I hope he decides to put his hat in the ring in 2012 or 2016.
--But she's a queen, and such are queens
that your laughter is sucked in their brains. -D. Bowie
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| parent )"Let me tell you first what I won't do. I won't hand over my energy policy to my vice president, without knowing necessarily what he's doing. I wont have my vice president engineering my foreign policy for me. The buck will stop with me, because I will be the president. My vice president, also by the way my vice president also will be a member of the executive branch, he won't be one of these 4th branches of government where he thinks he's above the law. But here's what I do want from my vice president, I want somebody who has integrity, who's in politics for the right reasons, I want somebody who is independent. Somebody who is able to say to me, 'you know what, Mr. President, I think you're wrong on this and here's why' and will give me (applause) who will help me think through major issues and consult with me, would be a key advisor. I want somebody who is capable of being president and who I would trust to be president. That's the first criteria for vice president. And the final thing is I want a [vice] president who shares with me a passion to make the lives of the American people better than they are right now. I want someone who is not in it just because they want to have their name up in lights or end up being president. I want somebody who is mad right now, that people are losing their jobs. And is mad right now that people have seen their incomes decline, and want to rebuild the middle class in this country. That's the kind of person that I want; somebody who in their gut knows where they came from and believes that we have to grow this country from the bottom up."
--Ask courageous questions. Do not be satisfied with superficial answers. Be open to wonder and at the same time subject all claims to knowledge, without exception, to intense skeptical scrutiny. Be aware of human fallibility. Cherish your species and your
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| parent )Several posters on this forum though have noted their disappointment.
Ideologically, Biden is essentially Hillary Clinton, which is why I'm surprised that Harley is fine with the choice.
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| parent )The Veep isn't there to set policy, he's there to kick ass for the nominee at the top of the ticket, and appeal to voting blocs that the nominee may have trouble with. The former is far more viable than the latter. He's also there to do no harm.
Check out Biden's favorables. Trust me. He ain't anything like Hillary Clinton.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )MSE, please put in a paragraph about taekwondo -- what an absolute trainwreck of an Olympics that sport has endured.
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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). . .partly because I've been busy, partly because those wacky Jamaicans keep doing cool stuff that fits into the theme for the article. The foibles of various Olympic sports will be a good theme for Part Four.
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| parent )I haven't seen anything in the news about boxing. Have I just missed a decent amount of news coverage or has there not been much?
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| parent )with respect to questionable decisions, and a DQ for biting... just your typical Olympics for boxing =)
--Come, my friends. 'Tis not too late to seek a newer world -- Tennyson
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| parent )Me: We! -- Ali
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). . .dKos and HuffPost, breaks out some popcorn, and waits for the temper tantrums*
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| parent )for McCain's pick, up next.
From the current slate: Multiple Mitt, The Minnesota bridge man, the original color code DHS guy and abortion rights supporter Tom Ridge, or my outside favorite Honest Joe hisself or his erstwhile partner and potentially our 1st "50yr old single man" VP candidate, Lindsey Graham.
Lot's of fun to be had with each and every one.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )would be hilarious, but not for the reasons you think. Laughing at the Repub slate when your guy picked Joe Biden is - words fail me. Anyway, certainly funnier than Biden thinks he is.
--In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
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| parent )and he doesn't need to rely on talking points unlike the Repub VP slate, because he is an experienced legislater who knows his stuff. Multiple Mitt would be chewed up and spat out with ease.
"A noun, a verb and 9/11" - best line of the campaign so far, I'm sure they can work something suitable up for Mitt or whomever gets the slot. No point McCain picking any of the weaker unknown candidates, unless it's for the entertainment value of seing Biden cream them on live TV. Honest Joe would be my favorite prospect.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )Are you sure you want to risk bringing that subject up given the disputed provenance of St John the POW's cross in the dirt story? or Cindy's fib about Mothera Terasa's involvement in the couples adoption saga? Biden paid his pennance, McCain hasn't but he could yet be made to.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )I meant plugilist.
But sure plagiarist works, but isn't nearly as funny. Why would I care if bringing it up draws attention to crossinthedirtgate?
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )Hair plugs, Botox?
Sure, that stuff rocks with the base. Which just goes to prove once again that conservatives don't do comedy.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )Not getting it, just isn't the same as not funny.
--“I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views.”
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| parent )just not intentionally.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )So this one will have to do...
The one I was looking for...
~At times like these I am reminded of the immortal words of Socrates when he said...."I drank what?"
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)