If they go to "Mac OS X 11.12" or whatever, will they finally abandon this stupidity that "X" is supposed to be pronounced "ten"? Think about it -- "Oh, I'm running OS ten eleven twelve." You really WILL sound like a 5 y.o.!
I admire your tenacity. I promise to think about your position if you'll do the reverse, how's that?
A couple of minor factual points -- Gore didn't seek Supreme Court, because he'd won in the FL SC. In fact, I'm pretty sure Bush was the first to court, federal, seeking an injunction to block recounts requested by Gore. It doesn't matter much who blinked first, except that it was interesting to see the party that frequently touts states' rights go directly to federal court. Ordinarily it should have been up to Florida to decide how its electoral votes would be awarded.
The Jan. 20 "deadline" was mythic. That's just the arbitrary day appointed for the swearing-in. It used to be in March. In the interim, the country was functioning fine under a lame duck President. The only thing really getting messed up was Pres. Bush's transition time.
The Court didn't have a problem with recounts per se; it objected to th emanner of the recounts, as in how many counties and whether all would be held to the same standard. Hence the equal protection question. Recounts are nothing new, and are provided for in FL and TX law among others. At the time people were asking Bush about the TX law and his suggestion that recounts were inherently unfair; he distanced himself from the law.
I expanded on the Nixon thing mostly because I was genuinely horrifed to see him exhumed as an "example" for Gore to follow. There has been an effort to rehabilitate him, but it's ironic to hold him up as a stalwart of the electoral process when it was his efforts to subvert it in 1972 that destroyed him. He was a bright guy who had some moral challenges.
"Political operatives" actually isn't a pejorative term here inside the Beltway. It just sounds like one. And probably should be one. Anyway, Nixon's chances in court were pretty shaky, because Kennedy would have counterstriked over irregularities in places Nixon had won, adn he'd have to sue in multiple states, he'd look like a sore loser, there was already a 100,000 popular vote gap and huge electoral gap (like 2:1) in Kennedy's favor, etc. Florida was a remarkable case in that the electoral and popular votes were both nearly equal, and Florida was the deciding state where it appeared Bush had won by only a lousy 300 votes. They don't get any closer than that.
I think Gore will probably get the nod in 2004, and not because the dems are thrilled with him. He DID get half of the country to vote for him last time. If he had not contested the 2000 election I think the Dems would have been plenty pissed with him for that. His biggest problem would be a strong Bush presidency. Bush's father managed to blow big popularity ratings over Desert Storm in just a couple of short years by failing to respond to the economy, and I'm already hearing people grumbling about the White House's failure to address domestic issues.
Oh, I mentioned the Jews-for-Buchanan phenomenon only because that was one of many things that failed the whiff test. Even Buchanan admitted it was unexplainable, to his credit. To a very high degree of confidence -- not enough to decide a election -- we can be sure this caused a problem. And those were the butterfly ballots that were not recounted, an which likely decided the elections regardless of chads elsewhere. These ballots were tougher to use, one FL newspaper even posted an interactive version showing the problem. Regardless of whether the ballot was easy or hard to mess up, it's a grave error if the ballot is designed so that the errors mostly go to one candidate's benefit. I was sorry to see a lot of elderly people written off as incompetent on stereotype alone.
Voters, not ballots, elect officials. (I know, duh.) Hence the intent standard, not a hole-punching test. There were even further problems, such as the hole-punching apparatus itself. Apparently with use the resilient material under the card would harden, making it more difficult to dislodge the chad (these were cheap imitations of the Votomatic -- they even located the Votomatic inventor to testify!). The material wore out at the top fastest, because the machines were used in every election big or small. Gore ended up on the harder part, with the expected result. After you pull the unmarked card out, it's pretty hard to figure out there's a problem.
We all do boneheaded stuff some days, and I find it gets harder to pay attention the more elections I participate in (I'm 35). You know, it's like an ATM, you think you know what you're doing until whoops! I've had to help people with the ATM every once in a while, but didn't think that because they were a little confused that they didn't deserve their money... Florida designed another dumb ballot for the primary, you have to see it, but the design had be wondering for a minute.
I'm sure I've sparked a burning interest in voting technology; if you'd like to see more look at the RISKS Digest of the usenet group. I subscribe and read a lot of good stuff there on privacy and security risks of all sorts.
An ICBM -- engineer? My best friend is an aero/astro engineer pretty suspicious of the incredible challenges in an ABM program, never mind the political problems and the Maginot Line effect of guarding against high-tech attacks when tinpot dictators will use low-tech. Oh well. My only major peeve is the way, I think, they've misrepresented the tests. I read a lot, yet when I heard about the latest intercept test I just thought, wow, well I guess I underestimated them. I later learned from Doonesbury about the GPS telemetry broadcast by the projectile and was a lot less impressed. Next time I hope they send up the Mylar balloons that are the death knell for an orbital intercept approach. (When they can blow up the rockets on ascent with lasers or whatever, I'll be very impressed, but argue it still doesn't protect us from the bomb-laden freight container.)
Obviously I could run on forever about this stuff -- and I enjoy talking about it! Lawyers like words. I wrote a long paper on redistricting, another hairy problem where how those little lines are drawn can decide who gets elected, or cause problems like two incumbents running against each other. One U.S. Rep had to move to a new house to get back in his district, only to lose. Oops.
...the British have TWICE attacked the United States for no good reason and lost. OK, it's been a few years, but do we KNOW this guy wasn't OSS? The British have been known to carry grudges.
Seriously, I would not argue that Britain is totally dependent on the U.S., and certainly not control by our military policy (they can defend themselves against, um, the French?). It just looks that way because they're the only ones (the gov't anyway) who agree with the U.S. half the time on international issues.
I'd be awfully surprised if there were such a treaty -- here's a reference that there's not There's still a pretty big difference in each's concept of justice, and they were bitter enemies until a few minutes ago.
There's no problem with deceptive law enforcement so long as it is not entrapment or go so far as to violate the constitution. For many types of crime it is the only practical way to get a collar. It depend son the circumstances. One of my favorites were a bunch of guys who owed child support; the cops had arrest warrants and called them all to tell them they'd won the lottery and all they had to do was claim the prize. It was a slaughter....
Interestingly, some countries are unwilling to extradite to the U.S., Russia, or other countries that practice capital punishment. This is a background issue re 9/11 prosecutions.
I kind of miss the graphite-on-paper method I used long ago, where the greatest risks were that the point might snap (easy to reboot) or the dog might eat the media.
Thanks! This reminds me of a very old Benny Hill routine: "No, officer, I did not kill my wife. She just felll on the knife. 12 times. Backwards." That is, just how much circumlocution will we tolerate.
For the record (one exempt from RIAA) it is nice looking book, and Australia has one.
Golly, you remember this stuff better than I do. Yep, 95 theses. I think the application of these arguments to computer science is self-evident. (Hmm, who's the Pope of CS? Christ?).
We should probably drop this line of metaphor before we get sent to Hell. (Again?)
You obviously have not been to Redmond in a while; no self-respecting engineer would have a location like "cublicle 35A." After the Enlightenment of 1996, Joe Blow would have a designation such as "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero-One."
If anyone doubts (!)/. has its own spin on Microsoft, refer to the slash icon accompanying its stories. I'm sure they realize everyone is just kidding around.
How many Microsoft employees do you think belong to or lurk/.?
(When I did visit the "campus" a while ago, the private offices [with doors!] looked pretty comfy, though there was bit of a stale smell in the air.)
I'm not saying you're wrong. But they'd increase the page hits a lot more by drifting into sex topics... maybe. It'd be nice if little incremental stories like this were posted without opportunity for comment.
But, hey, it's not like rehashing the same arguments for 1001th time is a statistically significant increase from 1000, right?
Can we start a long-overdue thread on "which OS, on which platform, is best?"
...that MS is more and more treated like some political institution rather than a company? E.g., the U.S. v. MS posed the two almost as equivalent entities. I can't imagine all this chatter about "leaked" memos from IBM or Adobe or Apple. Bill Gates is the potentate, MS the Empire, and so on -- at least as this is made out. Maybe Linus Torvald is Martin Luther?
Everyone just has so much great stuff to say so fast without proofing./. format doesn't encourage reflection or delay; what's said late might as well never have been said at all. It won't be read or moderated.
However, the original post was submitted without deadline pressure AND was approved by a/. editor (are they real? or some kind of bot?). There are a mere handful of articles each day. Shockingly, the verb-impaired submitter evidently does professional writing for the "gray lady" NYT! He didn't even spell his own name right!:P
Shame, shame! (Hey! There no verb! I good/.r, yes.)
I admit, my usual error in haste is to substitute similar words for what I intend. Leads to misunderstandings.
We have Netflix as well, $20/3 discs, and have been happy with it. No late fees, and never the god-awful feeling of returning a movie you never got around to watching. Now that they've opened a nearby fulfillment ctr (there used to be used one, in CA) we get 2-3 day turnaround. Their customer service has been fine, nice considering they're the only game in town, really. Once they get established... watch out.
One advantage of Netflix over on-demand is that you can watch more than once. With kids, this comes up a lot, and they are heavy consumers of videos if you multiply out multiple viewings. Also the DVD's occcasional offer extra stuff worth watching, maybe not all at once.
They appear to have dropped the 2-disc plan mentioned elsewhere. Oh well.
I would expect on-demand to extinguish transitional by-mail eventually, but won't hold my breath.
If they're spamming, as alleged elsewhere here, I'll send them a complaint emphasizing that I am a subscriber and that's not kosher. I won't give them word-of-mouth if they're using strongarm.
I believe the NYT uses the demo info to change what banner ads and such the user sees, so it is individualized. Whatever is "against the nature of the Web," the alternative is content that must always be paid for and would really mess up the nice interlinked nature of the Web. At the least, we'll all be spending a lot of time summarizing what was said elsewhere, or violating copyright. I'm skeptical that the free reg. model will make it in the long term, anyway; hopefully we'll see something like an online public library at some point, but that's beyond the power of any one private organizaton, and will be a huge leap from the traditional brick limited-access libraries that don't threaten newspaper revenue.
NYT does offer a nice daily email with headlines, links, and, of course, a couple of text ads -- to registered folks. It is a pain to have to log in all the time, but that's a general problem with logins.
I have never never never in 6+ years received a spam from NYT. Nor have they leaked my address to others (I use a special email address for them alone, as I own a domain).
I suppose this could go on forever (and will, because the "whiners" are not going to do the favor of conceding). I think, though, you are too smug about the results of the election. It was a shaky thing by any fair analysis, and a 5-4 vote of the Court along its standard ideological divide is not a resounding statement of justice over politics. Their ultimate ruling cutting off further proceedings was based on the lack of time. Read the dissents. Yes, this was a legal victory, but in the sense that the Supreme Court can't be wrong because they're the court of last resort. Who could ever rule their decision illegal (that is, contrary to the law)? The only difference with the National Guard example is that their action could be ruled illegal -- bu the Supreme Court. And there's always the chance it wouldn't; the SC has made its share of bad decisions later overruled, but all "legal."
As for time pressure, well the Court both created it (by staying the recounts pending its decision) and invented it. There was no deadline looming.
I'm not, as I stressed at the outset, and again, and again, obsessed with Gore not winning. I was not even a particularly strong supporter, although I did vote for him, and I totally agree he botched the election -- he should have beat Bush easily but didn't even carry his home state. It is a dodge to pretend that every critic of the election is a secret or open Gore supporter grasping at straws. There were numerous significant problems with the election, and I'm frankly astonished that anyone would claim otherwise. Worse yet is the argument, "Look, it's over, get over it." The Nixon supporters "whined" for years about the 1960 election, and the supposed Nixon stoicism about putting the country first is a debunked myth. Instead, he had political operatives make the charges, such that if he did not prevail he looked noble (despite the "suspicious" election) for a later attempt.
It would be nice to believe that one could just look at ballots to determine voter intent. If there were any lessons of Florida, it was that it ain't true. If the sudden surge in Buchanan support in a Jewish community were not enough, the whole mess of hanging/pregnant whatever chads proves the point.
I would be perfectly happy with a well-conducted reevaluation of the election leading to a Bush victory, and would be happier if the vote margin had been large enough to raise these questions. But it was close and did raise these questions, and even those happy with the result should sharply criticize it. But that appears not to be happening.
President Bush did not, incidentally, push for the bill financing updating voting equipment and that like, and could hardly trumpet its passage without admitted the election was screwed up, which he hasn't. You heard about the bill because the press reported it. I don't respect the man on his own merits, but do understand his unwillingness to criticize the election that put him in office. Thus the conflict of interest -- the ones with the power to change things are unlikely to attack the system that brought them to power, as with campaign finance.
The financing bill won't do the trick, anyway. Elections are much more complex, and our mechanisms for auditing them immature. Florida 2000 was not an isolated incident, just one where several improbable events coverged. It highlighted what happens often, in circumstances where the error doesn't (we think) make a difference.
I'm really joking when I play with the "Bush stole the election" thing. The problem is larger and more permanent, and I think it's unfortunate we tend to take sides on the question according to who we think should have won. I'm very interested in elections and would be upset either way, at the least because I know this kind of thing can turn around and bite you next time.
Reassuring pilot -- but suuuuure, what's he going to say? We think we'll be OK but my co-pilot just wet himself and passed out?:)
Apparently the military spends a couple million US$'s a year repairing storm damages. They may push their luck a little more. And I linked a story elsewhere in this thread about a BA pilot getting burned in the cockpit by lightning.
The problem, among other, is that top-tier papers are expensive to produce. These folks have their own staff around the country and abroad, have specialists in many fields, the most sought-after columnists, etc. etc. I notice immediately in other papers that I'm mostly reading AP and Reuters, and they do a good job but don't break as much news.
Even if they make a larger fraction of their money off ads, most won't be profitable without subscriptions as well. And, of course, NYT isn't even asking for subscriptions, yet.
The paper NYT is quite expensive to subscribe to. The WP, which is local to me, just raised its newsstand price from 25 to 35 cents, a big jump %-wise that suggests they really do need that money (why endanger circulation?).
Most on point, NYT Digital has been losing money and laying off as they decide their next move in a declining advertising market. I've read similar stories elsewhere. The future is bleak -- look what happened to banner advertising
All the demographic info does is allow anonymous targeted marketing, which advertisers will pay more. So by signing up you indirectly increase their revenue.
Yeah, there are better ways to handle the log-ins, but I have the feeling the next step will be worse -- more intrusive ads or, most likely, paid-only access. I value being able to compare what different news sources are saying, but would hate to have to pay for each and every one.
Slashdot Mirror
You're giving statistics a bad (worse) name. Get your HomerStats straight, that was 14%.
"Internet. They have that on computers now?" -- HS
"Is the poop deck really what I think it is?" -- HS
Er, yeah, I think that's implied. And it's not "would actually" but "could possibly."
If they go to "Mac OS X 11.12" or whatever, will they finally abandon this stupidity that "X" is supposed to be pronounced "ten"? Think about it -- "Oh, I'm running OS ten eleven twelve." You really WILL sound like a 5 y.o.!
Ha! Apple ][+
TRS-80 before that, but I don't like to talk about it.
Thanks! I read that and wondered if I was somehow ... incomplete ... and I don't even have a Dell.
I have to go make some transistors now.
Gee, I guess deadpan slips by some people a little too easily? I thought I put in enough hints. Read it again, slower....
I admire your tenacity. I promise to think about your position if you'll do the reverse, how's that?
A couple of minor factual points -- Gore didn't seek Supreme Court, because he'd won in the FL SC. In fact, I'm pretty sure Bush was the first to court, federal, seeking an injunction to block recounts requested by Gore. It doesn't matter much who blinked first, except that it was interesting to see the party that frequently touts states' rights go directly to federal court. Ordinarily it should have been up to Florida to decide how its electoral votes would be awarded.
The Jan. 20 "deadline" was mythic. That's just the arbitrary day appointed for the swearing-in. It used to be in March. In the interim, the country was functioning fine under a lame duck President. The only thing really getting messed up was Pres. Bush's transition time.
The Court didn't have a problem with recounts per se; it objected to th emanner of the recounts, as in how many counties and whether all would be held to the same standard. Hence the equal protection question. Recounts are nothing new, and are provided for in FL and TX law among others. At the time people were asking Bush about the TX law and his suggestion that recounts were inherently unfair; he distanced himself from the law.
I expanded on the Nixon thing mostly because I was genuinely horrifed to see him exhumed as an "example" for Gore to follow. There has been an effort to rehabilitate him, but it's ironic to hold him up as a stalwart of the electoral process when it was his efforts to subvert it in 1972 that destroyed him. He was a bright guy who had some moral challenges.
"Political operatives" actually isn't a pejorative term here inside the Beltway. It just sounds like one. And probably should be one. Anyway, Nixon's chances in court were pretty shaky, because Kennedy would have counterstriked over irregularities in places Nixon had won, adn he'd have to sue in multiple states, he'd look like a sore loser, there was already a 100,000 popular vote gap and huge electoral gap (like 2:1) in Kennedy's favor, etc. Florida was a remarkable case in that the electoral and popular votes were both nearly equal, and Florida was the deciding state where it appeared Bush had won by only a lousy 300 votes. They don't get any closer than that.
I think Gore will probably get the nod in 2004, and not because the dems are thrilled with him. He DID get half of the country to vote for him last time. If he had not contested the 2000 election I think the Dems would have been plenty pissed with him for that. His biggest problem would be a strong Bush presidency. Bush's father managed to blow big popularity ratings over Desert Storm in just a couple of short years by failing to respond to the economy, and I'm already hearing people grumbling about the White House's failure to address domestic issues.
Oh, I mentioned the Jews-for-Buchanan phenomenon only because that was one of many things that failed the whiff test. Even Buchanan admitted it was unexplainable, to his credit. To a very high degree of confidence -- not enough to decide a election -- we can be sure this caused a problem. And those were the butterfly ballots that were not recounted, an which likely decided the elections regardless of chads elsewhere. These ballots were tougher to use, one FL newspaper even posted an interactive version showing the problem. Regardless of whether the ballot was easy or hard to mess up, it's a grave error if the ballot is designed so that the errors mostly go to one candidate's benefit. I was sorry to see a lot of elderly people written off as incompetent on stereotype alone.
Voters, not ballots, elect officials. (I know, duh.) Hence the intent standard, not a hole-punching test. There were even further problems, such as the hole-punching apparatus itself. Apparently with use the resilient material under the card would harden, making it more difficult to dislodge the chad (these were cheap imitations of the Votomatic -- they even located the Votomatic inventor to testify!). The material wore out at the top fastest, because the machines were used in every election big or small. Gore ended up on the harder part, with the expected result. After you pull the unmarked card out, it's pretty hard to figure out there's a problem.
We all do boneheaded stuff some days, and I find it gets harder to pay attention the more elections I participate in (I'm 35). You know, it's like an ATM, you think you know what you're doing until whoops! I've had to help people with the ATM every once in a while, but didn't think that because they were a little confused that they didn't deserve their money... Florida designed another dumb ballot for the primary, you have to see it, but the design had be wondering for a minute.
I'm sure I've sparked a burning interest in voting technology; if you'd like to see more look at the RISKS Digest of the usenet group. I subscribe and read a lot of good stuff there on privacy and security risks of all sorts.
An ICBM -- engineer? My best friend is an aero/astro engineer pretty suspicious of the incredible challenges in an ABM program, never mind the political problems and the Maginot Line effect of guarding against high-tech attacks when tinpot dictators will use low-tech. Oh well. My only major peeve is the way, I think, they've misrepresented the tests. I read a lot, yet when I heard about the latest intercept test I just thought, wow, well I guess I underestimated them. I later learned from Doonesbury about the GPS telemetry broadcast by the projectile and was a lot less impressed. Next time I hope they send up the Mylar balloons that are the death knell for an orbital intercept approach. (When they can blow up the rockets on ascent with lasers or whatever, I'll be very impressed, but argue it still doesn't protect us from the bomb-laden freight container.)
Obviously I could run on forever about this stuff -- and I enjoy talking about it! Lawyers like words. I wrote a long paper on redistricting, another hairy problem where how those little lines are drawn can decide who gets elected, or cause problems like two incumbents running against each other. One U.S. Rep had to move to a new house to get back in his district, only to lose. Oops.
...the British have TWICE attacked the United States for no good reason and lost. OK, it's been a few years, but do we KNOW this guy wasn't OSS? The British have been known to carry grudges.
Seriously, I would not argue that Britain is totally dependent on the U.S., and certainly not control by our military policy (they can defend themselves against, um, the French?). It just looks that way because they're the only ones (the gov't anyway) who agree with the U.S. half the time on international issues.
I'd be awfully surprised if there were such a treaty -- here's a reference that there's not There's still a pretty big difference in each's concept of justice, and they were bitter enemies until a few minutes ago.
There's no problem with deceptive law enforcement so long as it is not entrapment or go so far as to violate the constitution. For many types of crime it is the only practical way to get a collar. It depend son the circumstances. One of my favorites were a bunch of guys who owed child support; the cops had arrest warrants and called them all to tell them they'd won the lottery and all they had to do was claim the prize. It was a slaughter....
Interestingly, some countries are unwilling to extradite to the U.S., Russia, or other countries that practice capital punishment. This is a background issue re 9/11 prosecutions.
I kind of miss the graphite-on-paper method I used long ago, where the greatest risks were that the point might snap (easy to reboot) or the dog might eat the media.
Thanks! This reminds me of a very old Benny Hill routine: "No, officer, I did not kill my wife. She just felll on the knife. 12 times. Backwards." That is, just how much circumlocution will we tolerate.
For the record (one exempt from RIAA) it is nice looking book, and Australia has one.
I have always heard of but never seen a fabled gov't-mandated language called Ada. I don't think I've ever heard anything nice about it though.
Golly, you remember this stuff better than I do. Yep, 95 theses. I think the application of these arguments to computer science is self-evident. (Hmm, who's the Pope of CS? Christ?).
We should probably drop this line of metaphor before we get sent to Hell. (Again?)
Clever! Thanks for the insight. I guess they decided it best to make the concession rather than lose subscribers altogether.
You obviously have not been to Redmond in a while; no self-respecting engineer would have a location like "cublicle 35A." After the Enlightenment of 1996, Joe Blow would have a designation such as "Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct to Unimatrix Zero-One."
/. has its own spin on Microsoft, refer to the slash icon accompanying its stories. I'm sure they realize everyone is just kidding around.
/.?
If anyone doubts (!)
How many Microsoft employees do you think belong to or lurk
(When I did visit the "campus" a while ago, the private offices [with doors!] looked pretty comfy, though there was bit of a stale smell in the air.)
I'm not saying you're wrong. But they'd increase the page hits a lot more by drifting into sex topics ... maybe. It'd be nice if little incremental stories like this were posted without opportunity for comment.
But, hey, it's not like rehashing the same arguments for 1001th time is a statistically significant increase from 1000, right?
Can we start a long-overdue thread on "which OS, on which platform, is best?"
...that MS is more and more treated like some political institution rather than a company? E.g., the U.S. v. MS posed the two almost as equivalent entities. I can't imagine all this chatter about "leaked" memos from IBM or Adobe or Apple. Bill Gates is the potentate, MS the Empire, and so on -- at least as this is made out. Maybe Linus Torvald is Martin Luther?
The paradigm is unique to the industry I think.
Everyone just has so much great stuff to say so fast without proofing. /. format doesn't encourage reflection or delay; what's said late might as well never have been said at all. It won't be read or moderated.
/. editor (are they real? or some kind of bot?). There are a mere handful of articles each day. Shockingly, the verb-impaired submitter evidently does professional writing for the "gray lady" NYT! He didn't even spell his own name right! :P
/.r, yes.)
However, the original post was submitted without deadline pressure AND was approved by a
Shame, shame! (Hey! There no verb! I good
I admit, my usual error in haste is to substitute similar words for what I intend. Leads to misunderstandings.
Oh -- interesting article though!
It's OK here, a few minutes later.
I imagine they have a sturdy server setup, for when NEWS breaks!
We have Netflix as well, $20/3 discs, and have been happy with it. No late fees, and never the god-awful feeling of returning a movie you never got around to watching. Now that they've opened a nearby fulfillment ctr (there used to be used one, in CA) we get 2-3 day turnaround. Their customer service has been fine, nice considering they're the only game in town, really. Once they get established ... watch out.
One advantage of Netflix over on-demand is that you can watch more than once. With kids, this comes up a lot, and they are heavy consumers of videos if you multiply out multiple viewings. Also the DVD's occcasional offer extra stuff worth watching, maybe not all at once.
They appear to have dropped the 2-disc plan mentioned elsewhere. Oh well.
I would expect on-demand to extinguish transitional by-mail eventually, but won't hold my breath.
If they're spamming, as alleged elsewhere here, I'll send them a complaint emphasizing that I am a subscriber and that's not kosher. I won't give them word-of-mouth if they're using strongarm.
Yes, I'm sure there are engineering solutions but, sheesh, why bother? Everyone's gonna be laughing at you for your dumb house-plane.
Put your money into a good lightly-used missile silo. Now THAT'S American -- just let those commies try to take you out.
I believe the NYT uses the demo info to change what banner ads and such the user sees, so it is individualized. Whatever is "against the nature of the Web," the alternative is content that must always be paid for and would really mess up the nice interlinked nature of the Web. At the least, we'll all be spending a lot of time summarizing what was said elsewhere, or violating copyright. I'm skeptical that the free reg. model will make it in the long term, anyway; hopefully we'll see something like an online public library at some point, but that's beyond the power of any one private organizaton, and will be a huge leap from the traditional brick limited-access libraries that don't threaten newspaper revenue.
NYT does offer a nice daily email with headlines, links, and, of course, a couple of text ads -- to registered folks. It is a pain to have to log in all the time, but that's a general problem with logins.
I have never never never in 6+ years received a spam from NYT. Nor have they leaked my address to others (I use a special email address for them alone, as I own a domain).
I suppose this could go on forever (and will, because the "whiners" are not going to do the favor of conceding). I think, though, you are too smug about the results of the election. It was a shaky thing by any fair analysis, and a 5-4 vote of the Court along its standard ideological divide is not a resounding statement of justice over politics. Their ultimate ruling cutting off further proceedings was based on the lack of time. Read the dissents. Yes, this was a legal victory, but in the sense that the Supreme Court can't be wrong because they're the court of last resort. Who could ever rule their decision illegal (that is, contrary to the law)? The only difference with the National Guard example is that their action could be ruled illegal -- bu the Supreme Court. And there's always the chance it wouldn't; the SC has made its share of bad decisions later overruled, but all "legal."
As for time pressure, well the Court both created it (by staying the recounts pending its decision) and invented it. There was no deadline looming.
I'm not, as I stressed at the outset, and again, and again, obsessed with Gore not winning. I was not even a particularly strong supporter, although I did vote for him, and I totally agree he botched the election -- he should have beat Bush easily but didn't even carry his home state. It is a dodge to pretend that every critic of the election is a secret or open Gore supporter grasping at straws. There were numerous significant problems with the election, and I'm frankly astonished that anyone would claim otherwise. Worse yet is the argument, "Look, it's over, get over it." The Nixon supporters "whined" for years about the 1960 election, and the supposed Nixon stoicism about putting the country first is a debunked myth. Instead, he had political operatives make the charges, such that if he did not prevail he looked noble (despite the "suspicious" election) for a later attempt.
It would be nice to believe that one could just look at ballots to determine voter intent. If there were any lessons of Florida, it was that it ain't true. If the sudden surge in Buchanan support in a Jewish community were not enough, the whole mess of hanging/pregnant whatever chads proves the point.
I would be perfectly happy with a well-conducted reevaluation of the election leading to a Bush victory, and would be happier if the vote margin had been large enough to raise these questions. But it was close and did raise these questions, and even those happy with the result should sharply criticize it. But that appears not to be happening.
President Bush did not, incidentally, push for the bill financing updating voting equipment and that like, and could hardly trumpet its passage without admitted the election was screwed up, which he hasn't. You heard about the bill because the press reported it. I don't respect the man on his own merits, but do understand his unwillingness to criticize the election that put him in office. Thus the conflict of interest -- the ones with the power to change things are unlikely to attack the system that brought them to power, as with campaign finance.
The financing bill won't do the trick, anyway. Elections are much more complex, and our mechanisms for auditing them immature. Florida 2000 was not an isolated incident, just one where several improbable events coverged. It highlighted what happens often, in circumstances where the error doesn't (we think) make a difference.
I'm really joking when I play with the "Bush stole the election" thing. The problem is larger and more permanent, and I think it's unfortunate we tend to take sides on the question according to who we think should have won. I'm very interested in elections and would be upset either way, at the least because I know this kind of thing can turn around and bite you next time.
Reassuring pilot -- but suuuuure, what's he going to say? We think we'll be OK but my co-pilot just wet himself and passed out? :)
Apparently the military spends a couple million US$'s a year repairing storm damages. They may push their luck a little more. And I linked a story elsewhere in this thread about a BA pilot getting burned in the cockpit by lightning.
The problem, among other, is that top-tier papers are expensive to produce. These folks have their own staff around the country and abroad, have specialists in many fields, the most sought-after columnists, etc. etc. I notice immediately in other papers that I'm mostly reading AP and Reuters, and they do a good job but don't break as much news.
Even if they make a larger fraction of their money off ads, most won't be profitable without subscriptions as well. And, of course, NYT isn't even asking for subscriptions, yet.
The paper NYT is quite expensive to subscribe to. The WP, which is local to me, just raised its newsstand price from 25 to 35 cents, a big jump %-wise that suggests they really do need that money (why endanger circulation?).
Most on point, NYT Digital has been losing money and laying off as they decide their next move in a declining advertising market. I've read similar stories elsewhere. The future is bleak -- look what happened to banner advertising
All the demographic info does is allow anonymous targeted marketing, which advertisers will pay more. So by signing up you indirectly increase their revenue.
Yeah, there are better ways to handle the log-ins, but I have the feeling the next step will be worse -- more intrusive ads or, most likely, paid-only access. I value being able to compare what different news sources are saying, but would hate to have to pay for each and every one.