Even if all of the numbers thrown around in the post are valid, would you have said that a president that received a majority of the vote should not win?
So, by your reasoning, do you believe that Al Gore should've won in 2000?
Instead, you nominated another rich, pre-manufactured, pompous character that non-Democrats just didn't want to deal with.
People see what they want to believe.
Rich? It's hard to get richer than Bush.
Pre-manufactured? A coddled Yale C student with an alcohol problem is "born again" and is told by God that he should "run for president"??? Everyone agrees that Karl Rove "made" Bush the candidate he is.
Popmpous? Bush brags that he makes decision from his "gut" and doesn't care what other think. If that's not pomposity, it's certainly arrogance.
So, the RNC nominated another rich, pre-manufactured, arrogant character than non-Republicans just didn't want to deal with.
And 48% of the country said "no thanks."
The only thing the DNC has learned is that they need to "disguise" their candiates as good as Rove has disguised a rich neer-do-well as a Texas cowboy with a bible in his back pocket.
If this doesn't show liberal media bias, I don't know what does.. FNC and NBC did call it for Bush so maybe they have the least bias. Does anyone see any reason why CNN/ABC/CBS would call PA, NH, and WI in favor of Kerry but refrain from calling Ohio?
The reason is pretty simple, and it's not a sign of any bias
First, none of the states were "called." They were "projected." All the networks were very careful to remind viewers that they were making a best guess. But to get to the heart of your question:
None of the states were projected when "all the votes" were in, but rather when the exit polling was "verified" by a statistical margin in the actual vote.
So, for states that exit-polled Kerry, and were leaning Kerry (your examples were all states Kerry was likely to win), the exit polls were in line with the returns coming in, and hence, a porjection could be made. In fact, you might notice that many Bush projections were also made early (without many returns in) in states like KY, IN and TN. Why? For the exact reasons above that led to PA, NH and WI being called early.
But, for the swing states, the burden of proof was higher. Not only would the exit polls have to statisitcally fall in line with the returns, but they would have to do so by a much closer margin. These states were supposed to be close, and thus the networks wanted more correlation.
And here's why Ohio wasn't called: all the exit polls showed a Kerry win by a couple of percentage points. When the returns started coming in, not only were they not in Kerry's favor by a subtantial statistical margin, but they were coming in against the polls. And so everyone was a bit confused. The result was to wait (and wait) to see if the returns would "fall into line." But they never did.
At some point, every network had to decide that the exit polls were flat wrong and what to do about it. NBC and FOX decided that things were looking statistically too good for Bush, so made the projection. The other networks decided to be more cautious.
In short: no media bias is evident, nor necessary (as all swing state projections were made after polls had closed in all the other swing states).
Interestingly, that's already possible since Powerpoint as "export as JPEG" capabilities. But, given that Keynote has Powerpoint import, a more direct way of uploading presentations into the iPod may be possible.
On a related note: given the biz world's newfound fear of "portable" hard drives as a conduit for corporate crime, I would really feel for the poor suit who ended up stuck in the lobby trying to convince security that their Powerpoint presentations were in their iPod.:-)
There is no iPhoto for Windows, hence Apple had to embed photo management into iTunes to support the dual-platform iPod.
If Apple is indeed developing iPhoto for Windows -- which would take some time -- then it wouldn't make sense for Apple to wait and push the delivery of the new iPod past this Christmas season (esp. if they could simply hack iTunes to handle basic photo management).
to the ripoff were so overwhelming, that its amazing they managed to scam so many news organizations. From almost identical function key hints in the title bar, to similar boot strings to the ridiculous idea of someone "getting tired of carrying two laptops" and writing CherryOS as a work-around, can anyone, really, truly be surprised?
People keep making more because the "optimal" UI metaphor for RSS is still being determined. The authors in the article have products that run the gamut from three panel email-like (NetNewsWire, Pulp) to iChat-like (NewsFire), to Finder-like (Shrook). And recently, authors such as myself (ahem, plug follows) have been working on ticker-like RSS/Atom readers such as Tickershock and Stickler (a competitor -- equal time rules in effect).
And with Apple getting in the mix with their browser-style Safari RSS, we'll just have to see what pans out of the mix.
When you say the government financed it, who do you think really paid? Ever hear of taxes?
That line of thinking is a bit naive. Your taxes also paid for our defense spending on tactical aircraft. Why don't you "reclaim" what's yours and demand that you should have one for yourself? Those Stop signs that your tax dollars paid for look pretty cool. Maybe you should just take one -- since, you know it's yours -- after all, your tax dollars paid for it.
Please.
Your taxes go to fund the government, which is collectively owned by the people. No one, or group has claim on the property of the people -- including the Internet.
Secondly, building another internet could be as easy as everyone using WiFi and laying cables to their neighbors.
WiFi is regulated by the FCC, and "laying cables" is subject to right-of-way laws. It may not appeal to you, but you simply cannot create your own Internet, "free" of government control.
Uh, it was the government that financed the creation of (and thus "built") the first one. How are "we" going to afford to build one of our own? PayPal donations?
The Internet may have felt "free" but the infrastructure has always been owned by the government and private sectors.
Depresingly, this has been a long time coming. I remember when I was in college in 1987 a CS professor was amazed at how year after year, fewer U.S. students were graduating in the field. What he couldn't understand is how a field that was obviously important to all industry - and becoming more important day after day - was not attractive to the average US student. So even back then, way pre-bubble, interest in CS was waning.
IMHO, the problem is threefold:
1) Math and "computers" are still seen as an interest of the socially inept (like Chess club and D&D). In our increasingly consumer driven, image conscience MTV culture, the average American student doesn't want to be associated with such things.
2) This push for profits in the corporate sector has almost killed R&D in theoretical sciences and engineering. The days of "pure" research labs such as Bell Labs died in the late eighties and early ninties because the suits only understood investment in research that led to products and services. I used to work during the summer at AT&T Bell Labs and Bellcore, and the attitude back then certainly does not exist in their moden day incarnations today (Lucent and Telcordia). Even though I'm not fan of Microsoft, I have to admit that their notion of R&D is closest to the days where scientists could research for the sake of doing research.
In other words, why study CS if you're only going to be able to find a job doing web design?
3) The rapid growth tech industry is racing towards to what all markets eventually succumb: commoditization. Assembly line programming is seen (once again by the corporate sector, invented by IBM and heralded by many as dogma) as the cheapest way to get to market. Too many companies believe that software design is about the perfect design document via UML. Once you have that (they believe), you can hire a gaggle of marginally skilled programmers for implementation. What happened to the days where a couple of geniuses could write killer apps? When will we see another Thompson and Ritchie write UNIX ? These guys did this while working for corporate interests! Sadly, today's tech companies aren't interested in people like them.
What these companies forget is this: programming is creative expression, and creativity needs to be cultured and encouraged to grow. Hire a few smart people, let them dream and you will eventually have a great product -- and hundreds of cool worthless demos:-)
Companies like Google seem to get this. We need more Googles in the world.
So, is the problem fixable? In my opinion: no, it's too late. But the open source movement shows that creative coding has evolved from a solo exercise to a shared endeavor. And maybe that's not so bad an ending.
Google probably doesn't think it's worth competiting with Spotlight, given it will be bundled with Tiger and accessible system-wide (argubably more convenient than Google's Desktop web-enabled UI).
And if you're looking for targeted desktop context and keyword analysis (as opposed to simple key matching in all files) OS X users can always use theConcept (disclaimer: my company).
But beyond the typos, their "Client Showcase" features a testimonial from "Secnet Q&A Services" which Google doesn't have any information on (hmm, a Q&A company without a web presence?).
My guess either an out-and-out scam, or a an attempt to pawn off a modified copy of PearPC in an attempt to generate some $ and scram. Ballsy.
Google is clearly aiming to be the information center for the connected/wired world, which makes perfect sense: after realizing that Google's value is its sheer amount of content, any service that brings people to that content is going to be pursued.
I bet, eBay and Amazon, with similar giant demographic and e-commerce content won't be too far behind (e.g. the "price check" feature is tailor made for Amazon).
Using PearPC to "run" OS X on an modded X-Box is not groundbreaking, headline worthy or "news for nerds," -- it's just sensationalist BS to drive traffic and push ads.
theConcept is a client-based clustering/thematic search engine that works with Google, Wiki, DMOZ and other search engines (it data mines result and analyzes most significant keywords from the source pages). If you have OS X, you can check it out for free.
The common thread to the Semantic Web is that there's lots of information out there--financial information, weather information, corporate information--on databases, spreadsheets, and websites that you can read but you can't manipulate. The key thing is that this data exists, but the computers don't know what it is and how it interrelates. You can't write programs to use it.
IMHO, the problem with the Semantic Web is the same problem that evolved the Web from a linked knowledge store to a commercial-driven directory.
Yes, it would be nice if all data were tagged and understandable, but let's be honest: the commercialization (and its result: exploitation by marketers) of the web would certainly spill into the Semantic Web, and so Berners-Lee's vision would be once again ruined by 1) incorrect/misleading tagging, 2) competing standards and 3) out and out fraud.
I assume what Berners-Lee really wants is for a machine to truly understand that, using his example: something is a calendar, and that you are interetsed in it, and that you should add the event to your schedule and then book a flight for it.
But the chances are -- one day -- machines will be able to understand how data is typed by understanding the context around it (just as a human would go through the aforementioned process manually).
Obviously, this type of reading "comprehension" is a long ways off, but the "search engine wars" are resulting in a lot of mind power thrown at the problem of understand context. And I'm guessing it'll be a reality before anything as pure as the vision for the Semantic Web is realized.
(and to throw in a plug for my own copmaniy's attempt at understanding web context: theConcept).
If you've got a Mac, try running theConcept -- it does clustering via keyword extraction and does auto-citations via search engine data mining on the client side (as opposed to a web-based solution like Vivisimo).
Your mistake is in thinking that the original film is "grainy low res." Remember, film is analog not digital. Even 35mm film (I believe SW was filmed in 70mm) can be resolved to something like 5000 dpi.
Lucas did an insane scan of insanely detailed film -- and then this guy mentioned in the article cleaned it up.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if all of the numbers thrown around in the post are valid, would you have said that a president that received a majority of the vote should not win?
So, by your reasoning, do you believe that Al Gore should've won in 2000?
Instead, you nominated another rich, pre-manufactured, pompous character that non-Democrats just didn't want to deal with.
People see what they want to believe.
Rich? It's hard to get richer than Bush.
Pre-manufactured? A coddled Yale C student with an alcohol problem is "born again" and is told by God that he should "run for president"??? Everyone agrees that Karl Rove "made" Bush the candidate he is.
Popmpous? Bush brags that he makes decision from his "gut" and doesn't care what other think. If that's not pomposity, it's certainly arrogance.
So, the RNC nominated another rich, pre-manufactured, arrogant character than non-Republicans just didn't want to deal with.
And 48% of the country said "no thanks."
The only thing the DNC has learned is that they need to "disguise" their candiates as good as Rove has disguised a rich neer-do-well as a Texas cowboy with a bible in his back pocket.
And that's the real lesson here.
If this doesn't show liberal media bias, I don't know what does.. FNC and NBC did call it for Bush so maybe they have the least bias. Does anyone see any reason why CNN/ABC/CBS would call PA, NH, and WI in favor of Kerry but refrain from calling Ohio?
The reason is pretty simple, and it's not a sign of any bias
First, none of the states were "called." They were "projected." All the networks were very careful to remind viewers that they were making a best guess. But to get to the heart of your question:
None of the states were projected when "all the votes" were in, but rather when the exit polling was "verified" by a statistical margin in the actual vote.
So, for states that exit-polled Kerry, and were leaning Kerry (your examples were all states Kerry was likely to win), the exit polls were in line with the returns coming in, and hence, a porjection could be made. In fact, you might notice that many Bush projections were also made early (without many returns in) in states like KY, IN and TN. Why? For the exact reasons above that led to PA, NH and WI being called early.
But, for the swing states, the burden of proof was higher. Not only would the exit polls have to statisitcally fall in line with the returns, but they would have to do so by a much closer margin. These states were supposed to be close, and thus the networks wanted more correlation.
And here's why Ohio wasn't called: all the exit polls showed a Kerry win by a couple of percentage points. When the returns started coming in, not only were they not in Kerry's favor by a subtantial statistical margin, but they were coming in against the polls. And so everyone was a bit confused. The result was to wait (and wait) to see if the returns would "fall into line." But they never did.
At some point, every network had to decide that the exit polls were flat wrong and what to do about it. NBC and FOX decided that things were looking statistically too good for Bush, so made the projection. The other networks decided to be more cautious.
In short: no media bias is evident, nor necessary (as all swing state projections were made after polls had closed in all the other swing states).
Interestingly, that's already possible since Powerpoint as "export as JPEG" capabilities. But, given that Keynote has Powerpoint import, a more direct way of uploading presentations into the iPod may be possible.
:-)
On a related note: given the biz world's newfound fear of "portable" hard drives as a conduit for corporate crime, I would really feel for the poor suit who ended up stuck in the lobby trying to convince security that their Powerpoint presentations were in their iPod.
iTunes instead of iPhoto
There is no iPhoto for Windows, hence Apple had to embed photo management into iTunes to support the dual-platform iPod.
If Apple is indeed developing iPhoto for Windows -- which would take some time -- then it wouldn't make sense for Apple to wait and push the delivery of the new iPod past this Christmas season (esp. if they could simply hack iTunes to handle basic photo management).
Just FYI, Tickershock can launch your browser too. NewsTicker for $5 is OK, but you have to pay for it in CPU time. To each their own.
Tickershock fits the bill.
LOL -- hilarious, thanks ;-)
Yeah, yeah, I post-incremented "i"...I guess it shows you how hard it is to even fake using that stupid variable name. :-)
for(long SPIRO_MULTIMAX_3000 = 0; SPIRO_MULTIMAX_3000 < 256; i++) {
- ...
}C'mon now, doesn't everybody?
to the ripoff were so overwhelming, that its amazing they managed to scam so many news organizations. From almost identical function key hints in the title bar, to similar boot strings to the ridiculous idea of someone "getting tired of carrying two laptops" and writing CherryOS as a work-around, can anyone, really, truly be surprised?
People keep making more because the "optimal" UI metaphor for RSS is still being determined. The authors in the article have products that run the gamut from three panel email-like (NetNewsWire, Pulp) to iChat-like (NewsFire), to Finder-like (Shrook). And recently, authors such as myself (ahem, plug follows) have been working on ticker-like RSS/Atom readers such as Tickershock and Stickler (a competitor -- equal time rules in effect).
And with Apple getting in the mix with their browser-style Safari RSS, we'll just have to see what pans out of the mix.
When you say the government financed it, who do you think really paid? Ever hear of taxes?
That line of thinking is a bit naive. Your taxes also paid for our defense spending on tactical aircraft. Why don't you "reclaim" what's yours and demand that you should have one for yourself? Those Stop signs that your tax dollars paid for look pretty cool. Maybe you should just take one -- since, you know it's yours -- after all, your tax dollars paid for it.
Please.
Your taxes go to fund the government, which is collectively owned by the people. No one, or group has claim on the property of the people -- including the Internet.
Secondly, building another internet could be as easy as everyone using WiFi and laying cables to their neighbors.
WiFi is regulated by the FCC, and "laying cables" is subject to right-of-way laws. It may not appeal to you, but you simply cannot create your own Internet, "free" of government control.
Uh, it was the government that financed the creation of (and thus "built") the first one. How are "we" going to afford to build one of our own? PayPal donations?
The Internet may have felt "free" but the infrastructure has always been owned by the government and private sectors.
Depresingly, this has been a long time coming. I remember when I was in college in 1987 a CS professor was amazed at how year after year, fewer U.S. students were graduating in the field. What he couldn't understand is how a field that was obviously important to all industry - and becoming more important day after day - was not attractive to the average US student. So even back then, way pre-bubble, interest in CS was waning.
:-)
IMHO, the problem is threefold:
1) Math and "computers" are still seen as an interest of the socially inept (like Chess club and D&D). In our increasingly consumer driven, image conscience MTV culture, the average American student doesn't want to be associated with such things.
2) This push for profits in the corporate sector has almost killed R&D in theoretical sciences and engineering. The days of "pure" research labs such as Bell Labs died in the late eighties and early ninties because the suits only understood investment in research that led to products and services. I used to work during the summer at AT&T Bell Labs and Bellcore, and the attitude back then certainly does not exist in their moden day incarnations today (Lucent and Telcordia). Even though I'm not fan of Microsoft, I have to admit that their notion of R&D is closest to the days where scientists could research for the sake of doing research.
In other words, why study CS if you're only going to be able to find a job doing web design?
3) The rapid growth tech industry is racing towards to what all markets eventually succumb: commoditization. Assembly line programming is seen (once again by the corporate sector, invented by IBM and heralded by many as dogma) as the cheapest way to get to market. Too many companies believe that software design is about the perfect design document via UML. Once you have that (they believe), you can hire a gaggle of marginally skilled programmers for implementation. What happened to the days where a couple of geniuses could write killer apps? When will we see another Thompson and Ritchie write UNIX ? These guys did this while working for corporate interests! Sadly, today's tech companies aren't interested in people like them.
What these companies forget is this: programming is creative expression, and creativity needs to be cultured and encouraged to grow. Hire a few smart people, let them dream and you will eventually have a great product -- and hundreds of cool worthless demos
Companies like Google seem to get this. We need more Googles in the world.
So, is the problem fixable? In my opinion: no, it's too late. But the open source movement shows that creative coding has evolved from a solo exercise to a shared endeavor. And maybe that's not so bad an ending.
Google probably doesn't think it's worth competiting with Spotlight, given it will be bundled with Tiger and accessible system-wide (argubably more convenient than Google's Desktop web-enabled UI).
And if you're looking for targeted desktop context and keyword analysis (as opposed to simple key matching in all files) OS X users can always use theConcept (disclaimer: my company).
Hmm, their main page states, under "Screenshots":
Desctop & Task Manager
and under "What can CherryOS do?":
Skin enadled GUI
But beyond the typos, their "Client Showcase" features a testimonial from "Secnet Q&A Services" which Google doesn't have any information on (hmm, a Q&A company without a web presence?).
My guess either an out-and-out scam, or a an attempt to pawn off a modified copy of PearPC in an attempt to generate some $ and scram. Ballsy.
Google is clearly aiming to be the information center for the connected/wired world, which makes perfect sense: after realizing that Google's value is its sheer amount of content, any service that brings people to that content is going to be pursued.
I bet, eBay and Amazon, with similar giant demographic and e-commerce content won't be too far behind (e.g. the "price check" feature is tailor made for Amazon).
Using PearPC to "run" OS X on an modded X-Box is not groundbreaking, headline worthy or "news for nerds," -- it's just sensationalist BS to drive traffic and push ads.
theConcept is a client-based clustering/thematic search engine that works with Google, Wiki, DMOZ and other search engines (it data mines result and analyzes most significant keywords from the source pages). If you have OS X, you can check it out for free.
</shameless plug>
FYI, he's issued his rebuttal here: Point-by-Point Response to Matzan's Op-Ed
The common thread to the Semantic Web is that there's lots of information out there--financial information, weather information, corporate information--on databases, spreadsheets, and websites that you can read but you can't manipulate. The key thing is that this data exists, but the computers don't know what it is and how it interrelates. You can't write programs to use it.
IMHO, the problem with the Semantic Web is the same problem that evolved the Web from a linked knowledge store to a commercial-driven directory.
Yes, it would be nice if all data were tagged and understandable, but let's be honest: the commercialization (and its result: exploitation by marketers) of the web would certainly spill into the Semantic Web, and so Berners-Lee's vision would be once again ruined by 1) incorrect/misleading tagging, 2) competing standards and 3) out and out fraud.
I assume what Berners-Lee really wants is for a machine to truly understand that, using his example: something is a calendar, and that you are interetsed in it, and that you should add the event to your schedule and then book a flight for it.
But the chances are -- one day -- machines will be able to understand how data is typed by understanding the context around it (just as a human would go through the aforementioned process manually).
Obviously, this type of reading "comprehension" is a long ways off, but the "search engine wars" are resulting in a lot of mind power thrown at the problem of understand context. And I'm guessing it'll be a reality before anything as pure as the vision for the Semantic Web is realized.
(and to throw in a plug for my own copmaniy's attempt at understanding web context: theConcept).
If you've got a Mac, try running theConcept -- it does clustering via keyword extraction and does auto-citations via search engine data mining on the client side (as opposed to a web-based solution like Vivisimo).
Disclaimer: Yes, I'm the developer.
Uh, no.
The original print is analog film, which can be a resolved to about 5000dpi -- many more pixels per frame than required for High Def.
The problem is that the scan is filled with huge artifacts (scratches dirt and dust), and this guy has cleaned up the digital scan to deal with that.
Your mistake is in thinking that the original film is "grainy low res." Remember, film is analog not digital. Even 35mm film (I believe SW was filmed in 70mm) can be resolved to something like 5000 dpi.
Lucas did an insane scan of insanely detailed film -- and then this guy mentioned in the article cleaned it up.