We already have an endless stream of DRM-less music available at your local music store.
Not for long. And not because the recording industry hasn't tried
to
impose
DRM
on
CDs (there have been many other/. stories on such efforts, but I think I've placed enough references here).
--Mark
Re:Mandelbrodt (sic) is NOT the father of fractals
on
Technology Quarterly
·
· Score: 1
However, I doubt that the "under our noses" comment was meant in any mean-spirited way.
I was jokin' about that. I'm all but certain the author doesn't know any more about Julia than what Mandelbrot said in their interview, or what appears in the boilerplate bio blurbs of Mandelbrot.
Bonus tidbit: Mandelbrot's name means "almond bread" in German. I'm really not sure why I was insisting on inserting an extra "d" before the "t" in his name last night. I'd love to say I did it on purpose because a lower-case "d" is often used for the Hausdorff dimension, but I'd prefer not to lie.
--Mark
Mandelbrodt is NOT the father of fractals!
on
Technology Quarterly
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Benoit Mandelbrodt is NOT the father of fractals! Yes, he did coin the term, but his work built on the work of two men who have at least as much claim to the title of "father of fractals" as he does, and did their work before he did. As the article states, his work in the 1970s was based on the earlier work of Gaston Julia, a French-Algerian mathematician who described the fractal sets that now bear his name without the benefit of computers and won the Grand Prix de l'Academie des Sciences for his paper on the subject, entitled "Memoir sur l'iteration des fonctions rationnelles." Julia wrote that paper at age 25. Interesting side note on Julia: he lost his nose as a soldier in World War I and did mathematical research during an extended hospital stay due to that injury. He was eventually forced to wear a leather cover over the place where his nose had been, held in place with straps tied behind his head. Pictures of him are a bit strange because of that.
Mandelbrodt came along in the 1970s, rediscovered the works of Julia, which had been all but forgotten, and used computers to do things like determine which Julia sets are connected and measure the Hausdorff Dimension of some fractal sets. He also coined the term "fractal." Contrary to what the article says, Mandelbrodt did not invent the concept of non-integral dimensions... given that the measure used is called the Hausdorff Dimension, does anyone want to guess who invented it? The answer is
here.
Hausdorff, being a Jew, suffered and ultimately died during World War II. His work was deemed "Jewish" and "un-German" by the Nazis, and he lost his professor post at the University of Leipzig. In 1942, he, his wife, and his sister-in-law committed suicide when they couldn't escape being sent to a concentration camp.
Mandelbrodt did make significant contributions, especially to the visualization of fractals and the study of fractals and their properties on computers, but to call him the "father" is to ignore the contributions of the giants on whose shoulders he was standing (to borrow a famous phrase). Mandelbrodt is a good self-promoter, which should be obvious to anyone who RTFA. In the article, the familiarity of his work is compared to that of Newton and Einstein. While it never says his work is as important as the work of those two greats, it doesn't take a big mental leap to get to that idea. When Mandelbrodt discovered the set that now bears his name, he was smart enough not to give it that name himself. Instead he called it the "M set," leaving it to somebody else to add "andebrodt" to the name. Both of these things remind me of Hawking's A Brief History of Time, in which there are brief biographical blurbs of Newton, Einstein, and Hawking, in that order. I'd have loved to see Mandelbrodt and Hawking write a book together. It would be the battle royale for the title of biggest self-promoter in the sciences. I'm not saying they didn't make significant contributions (nor that Hawking's contributions aren't all the more amazing due to his debilitating disease), but this kind of self-promotion shouldn't be necessary. I wouldn't put Hawking or Mandelbrodt on my list of the top ten scientists and mathematicians of the 20th Century, but they would definitely make the list of the top ten best known.
A friend once told me a really nerdy joke that just came back to mind. He asked me if I knew which letter was most used in the English language. I told him I did-- it's "E." My friend said "that's correct, except in the work of Mandelbrodt, where the two most used are "I" and "M" (getting use from "me," "my," and "M," the name he gave the now-famous set).
I'm sad to report that I laughed as much at that one as I did at "assume a spherical cow." Damn, I'm nerdy.
I found the use of the phrase "under our noses" in the article a bit offensive, a slap in the face to Julia. Oops. Now I've done it too.:-b
I even repeated this one a few times: "FORTRAN is a dead language."
I don't even know how many new FORTRAN standards have come out since this one started. I just know I heard FORTRAN was a dead language in about 1987 or 1988 and it continues not to be, about 16 years later.
--Mark
My own experience with snotty (and clueless) VC
on
Bootstrapping Start-ups
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Heh. "Snotty VC" in the blurb reminded me of 1999, when I was employee #4 at a software startup. The company makes software for a specific type of business. Through tests we had done, we could prove that we were capable of increasing profits for companies in the target market by 25%-100%.
Unfortunately, as I said, it was 1999. Smart VCs like John Doerr had seen good business opportunities in companies like Yahoo!, Amazon, AOL, and others, and made huge wads of $$$ for their firms through shrewd investments. The clueless wannabe VCs apparently missed the point that-- internet or not-- the success of investors like Doerr was based on careful evaluation of business plans and business models. The Doerr wannabes apparently said to themselves "John Doerr made a lot investing in internet companies, so we have to do the same." I figure that's how multiple internet pet shops and ridiculous internet businesses got funded, with many even going to IPO without having anything resembling profit in the foreseeable future or even a decent roadmap to achieving profitability. In/. terms, many of these companies did indeed leave out step 4 before claiming that step 5 would be "Profit!"
Getting back to how this was relevant to my personal experience, the founders of the company (employees #1 and #2) would make their presentation to some VC, again, showing that the company's software could produce billions of dollars of value for companies in the target market, and the response was almost always the same: "OK, but what's your internet story?"
Most of them were really snotty, saying that "these days," anything that isn't internet-based doesn't have a chance, or something equally short-sighted and clueless. But they said it with such authority and such snottiness that it would make even the strong of stomach want to vomit.
At the time, I said "Let's just change the name of the company to 'e-(Real Name of Company)-dot-com'
and we'll be swimming in money!
After that, I became a big fan of
F**kedCompany, which now seems to include non-dot-coms a lot more than it used to. Back in the day, it was more focused on reporting disasters in dot-coms that probably never should have been funded. Every time I saw another online business with no clear sustainable revenue stream (the $$$ from idiot VCs desperate to pour money into anything dot-com doesn't count-- it has been proven not to have been sustainable) go down the toilet, with an amusing report on F**kedCompany, I would snicker and say to myself "Yeah, I've got your internet story RIGHT HERE!"
Oh sure... Diebold couldn't manage to apply the RPC patch to WinXP, but
did manage to apply an unauthorized patch to the voting machines used in the gubernatorial election in Georgia after the machines had been inspected by elections officials, and the election had a somewhat fishy outcome. Specifically, the candidate who won had been trailing significantly in ALL polls, including media-sponsored third party polls, Democratic AND Republican internal tracking polls, and even exit polls on the day of the election...
Diebold is capable of applying an unauthorized patch to a lot of machines in a very short time to permit political hanky-panky, but can't manage to apply the patch to prevent some security problems. Funny that.
Thank you for turning what would have been an otherwise informative and interesting post into a "fuck america, and fuck bush" post.
I'm all for your national pride, I'm just sick of getting this feeling from everyone that all the worlds problems are my fault because I'm from the US, and (of course) the US is (and always has been) completely evil and corrupt, and every one else had their heads screwed on straight and sees that evil Bush is out to colonize the world for it's oil so that we filthy rich and greedy Americans can drive our SUV's built by the starving children of some obscure third-world country. BULLSHIT!
Well, to start, I'm from the US too. And I think that if you take the time to talk to some people who have been in other countries over the last few years, you'll find that people around the world admired the US a lot and used to have a positive overall opinion of the US. And at the time of the September 11 attacks, there was great sympathy shown all over the world for Americans. A French newspaper declared "Today we are all Americans." Messages of sympathy and solidarity poured in to the US from all around the world. I saw it here in Brazil, where I found some of it frustrating because it started to look like major ass-kissing. You know... Brazil started to seem to me like that annoying little hanger-on who hangs around with-- and owes his survival to-- the school bully. It fit with the then-President (FHC)'s attitude, which I mentioned in my post. I just read an account of the experiences of Americans who were in England and say the British abandoned their "stiff upper lip" and showed a lot of emotion and sympathy, even walking up to Americans they hardly knew and embracing them. This was a unique opportunity for American diplomacy. A more agile and intelligent administration might have taken advantage of it. The Bushies not only wasted that goodwill, but managed to alienate a vast majority of the world's population (over 85% of us opposed his war, for example) and create new anti-American attitudes that help nobody.
I am an expat, and that is in part because I really don't like what the US government has become (I already wasn't wildly fond of it when I moved here, and it's gotten a lot worse in the last 3 1/2 years). But I am not in favor of anti-Americanism. In fact, I still consider myself some kind of American idealist. My teachers (and I include my family and friends here) did a really good job of convincing me of the value of what they told me were American ideals. They even did a reasonably good job of convincing me the US government actually upheld those ideals. As I got older, I started to discover that many facts just didn't seem to fit too well with the "US Government = Goodguy" model pounded into our heads in school, on TV, in books, and in films, nor with the "US Government Upholds American Ideals" model, also beaten into us constantly. And I was even able to notice that the discrepancy between the ideals and the actions of the US government was getting worse and worse, with more and more of those ideals being completely betrayed.
Now I see anti-American sentiment growing daily, and it saddens me. There is one positive thing that has happened because of the way Bush and his administration have wrecked the image of the US-- Brazilians have finally started to realize that Americans are not better than Brazilians, and that Brazilians can do anything anyone else can do. Lula also helps with that-- his pride and total confidence in Brazil are very important, especially after 8 years of FHC, who was nothing but a brown-noser who spent much of his time kissing the ass of the US and its government, and helping further the idea that the US and Americans were somehow better than Brazil and Brazilians.
I am glad to see Brazilians taking the attitude that Brazil can and should produce quality products capable of competing with those of any other nation. I am glad that when we talk about the Brazilian
Right there in the same league with Red Hat and Suse is Brasil's own home grown Linux, Conectiva. Not as well known in North America, yet it is perhaps the most popular Linux in the Southern Hemisphere of the Americas.
And let's not forget that two famous kernel hackers have worked at Conectiva.
Marcelo Tosatti, wunderkind maintainer of the 2.4 kernel,
left Conectiva (ref in Portuguese) in September of this year for Cyclades, a company that provides "Linux inside" hardware solutions. He says (in Portuguese)
here that it was an amicable split.
If you go and look at some of the discussion of the controversial change of VM in the 2.4 kernel, in addition to messages to and from Andrea Arcangeli from Suse (author of the new VM), you'll see a lot of messages involving a Conectiva employee: Rik van Riel, author of the old VM (the one replaced by the Arcangeli VM in the 2.4.10 kernel). He continued development of his VM, and it is still favored by Alan Cox and by Red Hat.
The President of Brazil, to whom the article refers as "Silva," but who is known to everyone here in Brazil by his nickname, "Lula," is one of the founders of the labor movement here. That's impressive because he did what he did when the government of Brazil was a US-supported military dictatorship (it finally fell in 1985). Lula went to prison for standing up to the military government, but did not give up on his dream. He continues to be a man of exceptional courage. He stood up to the Bushies at the FTAA (here it's called ALCA) negotiations, refusing to remove tariffs on American products in Brazil until the US does away with its tariffs and subsidies that affect the relative prices of American and non-American products. He also helped organize the countries of South America against Bush's plans to invade Iraq early this year and gave a speech at the UN in New York last month condemning Bush's policy.
During that same trip to New York, Lula showed an attitude his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, never had: pride in being Brazilian. Where FHC's attitude was basically "you Americans are so much smarter and better than us... please come here and make our country more like yours," Lula's is "if you bet against us, you'll lose." Lula wants to develop Brazil's technology and economy and create opportunity for the Brazilian people. He sees free (as in speech-- "livre" in Portuguese) software as a tool to help bring this about. He also values independence and freedom, and sees that being dependent on a monopolist like Microsoft limits options and is expensive.
Given that Lula has faced down a military dictatorship and George W Bush without flinching, he seems like just the man to take on MS.
So. Let's ask ourselves again. How did Bush "steal" the election? How did the Supremes "select" Bush? How was the Constituion thwarted? Just because the guy with the most votes lost does not mean that anything broke. The Consitution is not a democratic document.
First, you conveniently only reproduced the weird recount results that would have given "Bush wins." In true Fox News style, you left out the FACT that Gore would have won a total recount, regardless of the standard applied. Think about what that means. Even with the all the funny business pulled by Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris (see below), the intent of the Florida voters who were not wrongly denied their right to vote was that Gore should win. Only under bizarre partial recounts (that, ironically, the Democrats were requesting) would Bush have won. Read my whole post. Don't just stop at "Bush would have won the goofy partial recounts." The rest of my post shows that no matter what standard you apply, Gore would have won a complete recount.
The "funny business" I mentioned above includes the
effort by Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris to remove tens of thousands of voters who were NOT felons, but were members of Democrat-leaning demographic groups, from the rolls, resulting in a swing of some 30,000 votes to Bush. I hope I don't need to tell you that's significant in an election decided by hundreds of votes.
Add to that the
intimidation of minority (Democrat-leaning) voters by the State Police, again, under orders from Jeb Bush, plus the Diebold machines that SUBTRACTED over 16,000 votes from Gore when the votes from a specific county were added, confirmed by Diebold employees in the incriminating
Diebold memos, and you've got a very strong case for a stolen election. There is MUCH more to this than the fact that Gore won the national popular vote. He also won the Florida popular vote (even with the playing field slanted to help GWB by his brother the Governor and his campaign manager, who also happened to be Florida Secretary of State), but the Supreme Court stopped the recounts, giving as its reason that if the recounts were completed and the will of the voters determined,
Bush might not win. Scary, but true. Read the decision.
One more thing to consider: most people think Bush would have won a recount because virtually every news outlet printed the results I cited in my previous post, clearly showing that even the Bush-limited set of Florida voters elected Gore, but the correct counting of their votes was thwarted by the Supreme Court. And yet the myth of "liberal media" persists. Even the New York Times, the Right's favorite example of a "liberal" media outlet, ran the story with a headline saying Bush would have won. Why? I think the timing has a lot to do with it-- the results of the NORC survey came out in September of 2001...
Please point me to a link to one recount effort by the press that would have resulted in a Gore victory in Florida.
First, the "recount effort by the press" was actually a survey of the ballots by the "NORC" - the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, commissioned by several major media companies. The NORC checked and categorized all the ballots. Analysis and presentation of these results was left to the media companies that commissioned the survey. They dropped it like a hot potato in September of 2001. There were some headlines saying Bush would have won. Among the articles with the "Bush wins" headline, some included more detailed information, and it didn't really fit with the headlines. The "more detailed information" is really interesting, and you can see a summary of it
here, with some reproductions of articles about the results.
If all you remember are the headlines saying Bush would have won, the actual results may surprise you.
Let me be more specific.
If you follow the link, you'll see a graphical summary of the possible recount results, which depend on the standard applied to disputed ballots. It starts by repeating that the official certified result had Bush winning Florida by 537 votes (Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253). It then shows what would have happened in 5 different possible recount scenarios.
First, if Gore's request for recounts of four specific counties had been granted, he would have still lost, though by a smaller margin-- 225 votes (Bush 2,913,351; Gore 2,913,126).
The second scenario presented is the one that would have obtained if the Supreme Court had not stopped the partial recounts already underway in Florida. Again, Gore loses, by a margin very slightly smaller than the certified result-- 493 votes (Bush 2,916,559; Gore 2,916,066).
So far, two "Bush wins" results, both coming from what Democrats were seeking (Gore's request for a recount of 4 specific counties, plus completion of the partial recounts already in progress). Looks like Bush would win in any conceivable scenario, right? Let's continue.
One recount uses a loose standard for counting a disputed ballot: accepting any dimpled punch card or any mark on an optical scan ballot that indicated a candidate choice, whether it was Gore or Bush. The result? Gore won (there's one recount Gore would have won, responding to your request, but please keep reading), by a very narrow margin of 107 votes (Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588). But if that were the only Gore victory, one could argue that Gore only would have won with the loosest standards applied for acceptance of disputed ballots. Keep reading...
Given that very loose standard, one could fairly ask for a recount with a very rigid standard. For example, one could ask for a recount where only fully-punched ballot cards (no "hanging chads") and correctly marked optical scan ballots are accepted, again, independent of the candidate chosen. Who'd win that one? Bush? Nope. I'll give you one more guess...
'Dja get it right? Let's check. Here's the result of the recount using that very rigid standard: Gore by 115 (Gore 2,915,245; Bush 2,915,130).
There is one more reasonable standard that could be applied to a recount: one could simply let each county's own standard apply to disputed ballots from that county. Recounting under those conditions yielded President Gore too, by a margin of 171 votes (Gore 2,917,847; Bush 2,918,676).
It's ironic that Gore would have won under the most reasonable standards (intent, perfectly marked/punched ballot, or each county's standards apply to its votes), but would have lost under the weird partial recounts Democrats wanted.
It's also ironic that when the facts showed that Gore would have won the most reasonable possible recounts, the "liberal" media (including the New York Times, a favorite whipping boy of the American Right) presented these data with headlines statin
I dunno if you fell for a troll, but if you (sic) something you should really make sure that it is misspelled first.:)
The "sic" is an old habit from other threaded discussions. By writing "sic" there, I'm saying that the hyphen between "male" and "Lara" is not mine (it was already like that in the previous post), but I take responsibility for any errors in the spelling, grammar, or content of my part of the post.
Two people have asked why it "pains me" to say that Spielberg, though massively overrated, is a better director than Lucas. Both mention Eps I & II. OK, but then I'd like to know why it is that when people talk about Spielberg, nobody talks about 1941, which was worse than Episode I. The reason it "pains me" to say Spielberg is better than Lucas is because Lucas directed one of my favorite movies ever (the original Star Wars).
Also, as I mentioned, I feel Spielberg is wildly overrated, and I don't want to help continue the myth that he's one of the great directors of our time. I won't say he's a bad director, but he is considered one of the all-time greats by many people, and I just don't see it (Don't even get me started about Tom Hanks!).
As the question of whether Lucas was the main creative force behind Indiana Jones, he was credited as the writer of the story for each of the
three
IJ
movies, and as a creator of characters in the third. The credits of the third movie (see last link) treat creation of the characters and the story writing Lucas did as separate things. While other writers were involved in the writing of the screenplays, the stories are credited to Lucas (with Philip Kaufman in Raiders and with Menno Meyjes in Last Crusade... and no, it didn't escape me that the worst of the three movies is the one where nobody cowrote the story with Lucas... I don't think he's perfect as a director or as a writer, but I think he is the key "idea man" behind the greatness of both the original SW series and the IJ series).
Just as I've been accused of being a "fanboy" and defending Lucas because of my emotional attachment to the original Star Wars, I will ask if those who have developed a lower opinion of Lucas because of Eps I & II (I will mention that I see a huge difference between them-- I haven't been able to bring myself to watch Ep I again since the first time in May of 1999, and I've watched Ep II a few times) might not be unfairly denying his previous accomplishments, like the good work he did on the first three SW films and the IJ films (even if he wants to keep fiddling with the SW movies). Yeah, Ep I is crap and Ep II is flawed. Does that mean we have to retroactively deduct "points" from Lucas for the things he did in the creation and production of two outstanding trilogies of films?
So now Anakin is a Christ-figure? Terrific. Waytago George. You're freakin' Steinbeck now.
Uhhh... "now?" In Episode I, Anakin is seen as the fulfillment of a prophecy of one who will "bring balance to the Force" (forgive me if I have gotten the quote wrong; I only watched Episode I once and don't intend to watch it again...), and we learn that Anakin is the result of a virgin birth, having been created somehow by the Force (technically, the chlamydians or whatever they're called). It seems to me that as soon as we started to get to know Anakin, he was already a "Christ Figure."
Stevie, not wanting to kill his own tech, never released his male-Lara Croft movies on DVD, and got his good pal Georgie to keep his space opera off as well.
Setting aside the lameness of trying to look cool by calling Spielberg "Stevie" and referring to the Indiana Jones movies as "male-Lara (sic) Croft movies," there's still a big hole in this theory: the Indiana Jones movies were a joint project between Lucas and Spielberg, and were more Lucas's than they were Spielberg's.
All three films were written by Lucas (and others, but not Spielberg) and directed by Spielberg, with Lucas as executive producer and as an uncredited editor. If you consider the original Star Wars trilogy to be Lucas's, it's not that hard to consider the Indiana Jones series his too, since 2/3 of the original Star Wars trilogy had non-Lucas directors. As with the Star Wars movies, Lucas was the main creative force behind the Indiana Jones movies. He just used a director for the Indiana Jones movies who is more famous than Kershner and Marquand and, much as it pains me to say it, is a better director than Lucas (but is still highly overrated).
Maybe you noticed that Lucasfilm's logo appears at the beginning of the movies, but Amblin Entertainments's does not (nor does that of Dreamworks SKG). That's because the Indiana Jones movies were Lucasfilm productions and Spielberg was only involved as the director. That's why George Lucas had the rights to make The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (released on VHS as The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones) without Spielberg. It's also why Lucasfilm made a deal with Disney to develop the "Indiana Jones Adventure" attraction (and "Star Tours--" I believe it was a single deal for developing attractions based on both the Star Wars movies and the Indiana Jones movies) without Spielberg being involved.
Anyway, getting back to the point, it seems to me the decision about the release of the Indiana Jones movies would be at least as much Lucas's as Spielberg's, and probably a lot more. So that kinda blows away the theory that Spielberg was holding off the release of "his" Indiana Jones movies on DVD because of a large investment in a rival compact videodisc standard.
Besides the funny business that went on before the election (ordered by Jeb Bush) to remove tens of thousands of Democratic voters from the lists of registered Florida voters [...]
You mean the order to actually enforce the law purging convicted felons from the list of eligible voters? Are you saying crooks tend to be Democrats? B-)
No, I'm referring to the non-felon citizens, mostly African-American, who were WRONGLY removed from the voter rolls. Did you read Chapter 1 of Palast's book? It's available free
here. He proves (presents evidence-- he doesn't just allege things, like Limbaugh and the folks at the Washington Times do) that Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris (Chairperson of the George W Bush campaign in Florida, in addition to her official title as Florida Secretary of State) were responsible for this, with the help of a shady company. 80% of registered voters who were not unfairly purged from the rolls voted in the 2000 presidential election, so a good 40,000 Florida voters were wrongly denied their right to vote. The people removed from the list would be expected, using their demographic data and statistics on voting tendencies of different demographic segments, to be about 90% Democratic voters (one of the real "red lights" that indicates Governor Jeb Bush and Secretary Harris were acting as Republican activists, not as Florida state officials). That would be some 36,000 Democratic voters and some 4,000 non-Democratic voters improperly denied their right to vote in that election. That's at least a net loss of 32,000 Gore votes to Bush. Rounding down to be safe, let's call it 30,000.
Do I need to remind you that 30,000 more legitimate Democratic voters participating in the election could drastically change the result of an election whose official certified result had a difference of 537 votes between the top two candidates?
As to the few non-felon Democrats (AND Republicans) who got zapped by accident because they happened to have the same name as a felon, they had plenty of time to correct the error.
Few? Which election were you watching? Palast PROVES (again, he doesn't just allege things, as you claim that Dems do more election cheating, but fail to cite a single case or shred of evidence-- Palast has AND PRESENTS evidence for his very serious claims) in his book that the Democrats lost at least 30,000 net potential Gore votes due to Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris's funny business. Again, in an election decided by hundreds of votes, that's a really, really big deal. As for your assertion that they "had plenty of time" to correct the problem, you are ignoring the fact that they didn't find out until they were wrongly turned away at the polls on election day.
You correctly note that the Dems are basically supporting efforts for things like auditability in electronic voting because the Republicans have a distinct advantage in connections to the e-voting companies. But you neglect to mention that the Republicans are NOT supporting those efforts. So can you now admit that while the Democrats are right for the wrong reason, they're right on this one and the Republicans are wrong?
Ugh! It leaves a horrible taste in my mouth to say the Dems are right on an issue, but I guess that puts them up 1-0 on the Republicans.
Re: Katherine Harris, chairperson of the George W Bush 2000 presidential campaign in Florida, making decisions about the recounts in her capacity as Secretary of State
It's enough to make one wonder why the verb
"recuse" even exists...
The recount was not conducted by the major media outlets; it was done by the "NORC," the National Opinion Reseach Center of the University of Chicago. It was sponsored by some major media companies (including, among others, the NYT, the Washington Post, CNN, and the AP).
Ya wanna say the NORC is liberal-leaning?
After the 2000 election several liberal-leaning news organizations went to Floriduh and recounted every vote. They used the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore. Guess what? In every recount they did Bush still won.
You can keep telling yourself over and over that Gore won in Floriduh, but you're only kidding yourself. Don't let little things like the facts get in your way.
Oh, you say you didn't hear about the recounts? Of course not; all you listen to and read is biased toward your point of view. It was not widely reported unless you listen to talk radio or watch Fox News. But, you'd never do that, would you?
OK.. I'll start by saying that maybe it is you who need to broaden your horizons a bit and get your news from sources other than Fox News (whose Chairman and CEO was the media director for the George HW Bush campaign in 1988 and the creator and executive producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show) and heavily Republican-leaning talk radio. You yourself state that johnkerry.com isn't exactly un-biased (sic). Do you think Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are? I am not a Democrat, so that's not why I'm saying this. I'm saying it because the very facts you sarcastically say we shouldn't let get in our way don't support your position.
Take a peek at
this. It's a presentation of the results of the recount. It starts by repeating that Bush won the official certified result
by 537 votes (Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253). It then shows what would have happened in 5 different possible recount scenarios.
First, if Gore's request for recounts of four specific counties had been granted, he would have still lost, though by a smaller margin-- 225 votes (Bush 2,913,351; Gore 2,913,126).
The second scenario presented is if the Supreme Court had not stopped the partial recounts already underway in Florida. Again, Gore loses, by a margin very slightly smaller than the certified result-- 493 votes (Bush 2,916,559; Gore 2,916,066).
So far, two "Bush wins" results, both coming from what Democrats were seeking (Gore's request for a recount of 4 specific counties, plus completion of the partial recounts already in progress). Looks like Bush would win in any conceivable scenario, right? Let's continue.
First, they could have used "the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" (as you put it), but they didn't. They did do one recount using a similar but fair standard, accepting any dimpled punch card or any mark on an optical scan ballot that indicated a candidate choice, whether it was Gore or Bush. The result? Gore won (so much for "In every recount they did Bush still won), by a very narrow margin of 107 votes (Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588). But if that were the only Gore victory, your argument, while wrong on some details, would still have a foundation of truth. Let's continue.
Given that very loose standard, one could fairly ask for a recount with a very rigid standard. For example, one could ask for a recount where only fully-punched ballot cards and correctly marked optical scan ballots are accepted, again, independent of the candidate chosen. Who'd win that one? Bush? Nope. I'll give you one more guess...
'Dja get it right? Let's check. Here's the result of the recount using that very rigid standard: Gore by 115 (Gore 2,915,245; Bush 2,915,130).
Hmmm... looks like your "recounting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" has been debunked by those inconvenient facts you mentioned, as has "In every recount they did Bush still won."
There is one more reasonable standard that could be applied to a recount: one could simply let each county's own standard apply to disputed ballots from that county. Recounting under those conditions yielded President Gore too, by a margin of 171 votes (Gore 2
After the 2000 election several liberal-leaning news organizations went to Floriduh and recounted every vote. They used the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore. Guess what? In every recount they did Bush still won.
You can keep telling yourself over and over that Gore won in Floriduh, but you're only kidding yourself. Don't let little things like the facts get in your way.
Oh, you say you didn't hear about the recounts? Of course not; all you listen to and read is biased toward your point of view. It was not widely reported unless you listen to talk radio or watch Fox News. But, you'd never do that, would you?
OK.. I'll start by saying that maybe it is you who need to broaden your horizons a bit and get your news from sources other than Fox News (whose Chairman and CEO was the media director for the George HW Bush campaign in 1988 and the creator and executive producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show) and heavily Republican-leaning talk radio. You yourself state that johnkerry.com isn't exactly un-biased (sic). Do you think Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are? I am not a Democrat, so that's not why I'm saying this. I'm saying it because the very facts you sarcastically say we shouldn't let get in our way don't support your position.
Take a peek at this. It's a presentation of the results of the recount. It starts by repeating that Bush won the official certified result
by 537 votes (Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253). It then shows what would have happened in 5 different possible recount scenarios.
First, if Gore's request for recounts of four specific counties had been granted, he would have still lost, though by a smaller margin-- 225 votes (Bush 2,913,351; Gore 2,913,126).
The second scenario presented is if the Supreme Court had not stopped the partial recounts already underway in Florida. Again, Gore loses, by a margin very slightly smaller than the certified result-- 493 votes (Bush 2,916,559; Gore 2,916,066).
So far, two "Bush wins" results, both coming from what Democrats were seeking (Gore's request for a recount of 4 specific counties, plus completion of the partial recounts already in progress). Looks like Bush would win in any conceivable scenario, right? Let's continue.
First, they could have used "the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" (as you put it), but they didn't. They did do one recount using a similar but fair standard, accepting any dimpled punch card or any mark on an optical scan ballot that indicated a candidate choice, whether it was Gore or Bush. The result? Gore won (so much for "In every recount they did Bush still won), by a very narrow margin of 107 votes (Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588). But if that were the only Gore victory, your argument, while wrong on some details, would still have a foundation of truth. Let's continue.
Given that very loose standard, one could fairly ask for a recount with a very rigid standard. For example, one could ask for a recount where only fully-punched ballot cards and correctly marked optical scan ballots are accepted, again, independent of the candidate chosen. Who'd win that one? Bush? Nope. I'll give you one more guess...
'Dja get it right? Let's check. Here's the result of the recount using that very rigid standard: Gore by 115 (Gore 2,915,245; Bush 2,915,130).
Hmmm... looks like your "recounting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" has been debunked by those inconvenient facts you mentioned, as has "In every recount they did Bush still won."
There is one more reasonable standard that could be applied to a recount: one could simply let each county's own standard apply to disputed ballots from that county. Recounting under those conditions yielded President Gore too, by a margin of 171 votes (Gore 2,917,847; Bush 2,918,676).
It's ironic that Gor
Uhhhh... I'm guessing you get your news from a "fair and unbiased" source like Roger Ailes, Media Director for George HW Bush's campaigns and creator and producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show.
There are some FACTS that get in the way of your straight-from-the-GOP arguments. I figure it's probably a lost cause to try to convince you, but here they are...
(First, for the record, I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and am horrified at the increasing narrowness of the American political "spectrum" after having lived for 3 years in a thriving Democracy (Brazil), where there are more parties than anyone can name, and virtually all points of view are represented, with no one or two or even three parties able to dominate)
That said, on to the uncomfortable facts...
Yes, there was some serious rigging in the 2000 Florida election, but it looks like most of it was done by the Republicans. Besides the funny business that went on before the election (ordered by Jeb Bush) to remove tens of thousands of Democratic voters from the lists of registered Florida voters, and besides the numerous African-American (likely Democratic) Florida voters who were
denied their right to vote, there is the matter of the
leaked Diebold memos, which show that there was some election night
hanky-panky with the 2000 Florida presidential vote totals (made possible by Diebold, a company whose top man has declared that it is his mission to
deliver Ohio's electoral votes to George W Bush). Best of all, Diebold does not deny that these things happened; it is trying to use the DMCA to shut down any site hosting copies of the incriminating memos, alleging that these company memos are copyrighted material. IANAL, but that looks to me like a direct admission of ownership and verification of the authenticity of those shocking memos. If I had a site hosting those memos and I were to get a
Cease and Desist from Diebold, I'd simply tell them "no way" and hope hope hope to get the chance to discuss the contents of those memos in front of a judge.
Bad as all this is, as they say on infomercials, "that's not all!" Recounts were stopped because the Supreme Court, loaded 6-3 with Republicans, including one major political activist (Scalia) and his apprentice (Thomas) basically said that if the recounts weren't stopped,
George W Bush might not be President. Worse, they basically recognized the ridiculousness of their own arguments and said that this case could never be used as a precedent for a future case. Funny that... (in a distinctly non-humorous way, of course)
I'm guessing Ann Coulter didn't mention these things. I wouldn't be surprised if the presenters at Fox News forgot to mention them either...
Don't even get me started about the fact that exit polls unanimously showed Gore winning Florida... or on the recent election in Georgia, where every poll (exit polls, third-party pre-election polls, Democratic AND Republican internal tracking polls) showed the Democrat winning handily, but the Republican ended up winning with relative ease. Small but possibly important detail: an
unverified patch was applied to the Diebold (that name again!) voting machines after they'd been certified by Georgia election officials.
What? Brit Hume didn't mention that? Color me shocked!
As for your comments about people engaged in shady activity loudly bla
Haw haw...
Sorry, but there's a throwaway line in the article that just made me laugh:
China--potentially a huge market for Microsoft, once the problem of software piracy is solved--
Riiiiiiiight. And when, exactly will "the problem of software piracy" be solved? And how?
I haven't seen anything reported on Slashdot or anywhere else that would "solve the problem of software piracy" and make China a huge market for Microsoft at the same time...
IMPORTANT: as the article states, people who eat red meat already get creatine from that source. Creatine supplementation is most interesting for people who exercise regularly and don't eat red meat.
It's interesting that the sub-headline of the article says "The dietary supplement creatine - known to improve athletic performance..."
I seem to recall seeing in the 1990s reports of studies showing that creatine did indeed improve athletic performance. My own experience was different.
In the mid-1990s, I was basically following the recommendations of the US government: loads of carbohydrates, reasonable quantities of protein, and very, very little fat. I avoided red meat and ate a lot more chicken and turkey breast meat.
I would go to the gym twice per week and train with high intensity. I discovered that even with the massive quantities of food I was eating and the decent amount of sleep I was getting (being a grad student at the time, I had a very flexible schedule... as a result, it was almost always possible to correct any sleep deficit with a nap), my body simply could not recuperate in less time.
The personal trainers at the gym had, I'm sure, the best intentions when they designed workout programs for me, but the problem is that the programs they designed would have been good for two types of person: the genetically gifted and users of 'roids (I don't think it's a coincidence that many personal trainers fit into one of these two categories). For a normal human being, it just isn't possible for the body to recover from three days of exercise in one day (they typically designed programs of the type "three days of training and one day of rest").
Anyway, since I wasn't eating red meat, I thought I could benefit from creatine supplementation. What did I find? Well, I can summarize it like this: if creatine were as effective as a bodybuilding supplement as it is as a laxative, I would be as big now as the next Governor of California.
In my experience, creatine just made my poop (much) softer and gave it a funny color. No, I don't make a habit of checking out the contents of the toilet, but the color was so weird it caught my eye and I started paying attention.
I know this is disgusting, but I am simply telling a true story.
I eventually quit creatine and designed a workout program based on the book "Brawn," i.e., on lots of squats as the main exercise and on increasing the weight lifted each time at the gym, and focused on building strength, not size. I got a lot stronger, and I gained a significant amount of muscle weight.
In my experience, a good workout program that did not force overtraining (unlike most that personal trainers at gyms will create for you) and done with sufficient intensity (gawd how my thighs used to burn toward the end of a set of 20 squats with a bar 1.5 times the weight of my body) had a much greater effect on my strength than my use or non-use of creatine did.
In 2000, I came to the conclusion that it was kind of stupid for me to put so much effort into fighting nature. If my body were meant to be larger and more muscular, it would be that way naturally, without me having to destroy it every 3 or 4 days. I haven't done any weightlifting in years, and I haven't even thought about wasting money on creatine in several years.
FWIW, I don't remember feeling smarter during my experimentation with creatine. My immediate guess is that creatine is as effective as a "smart drug" as it is as a bodybuilding supplement, i.e., not very.
Slashdot Mirror
Not for long. And not because the recording industry hasn't tried to impose DRM on CDs (there have been many other
--Mark
Bonus tidbit: Mandelbrot's name means "almond bread" in German.
I'm really not sure why I was insisting on inserting an extra "d" before the "t" in his name last night. I'd love to say I did it on purpose because a lower-case "d" is often used for the Hausdorff dimension, but I'd prefer not to lie.
--Mark
Benoit Mandelbrodt is NOT the father of fractals! Yes, he did coin the term, but his work built on the work of two men who have at least as much claim to the title of "father of fractals" as he does, and did their work before he did. As the article states, his work in the 1970s was based on the earlier work of Gaston Julia, a French-Algerian mathematician who described the fractal sets that now bear his name without the benefit of computers and won the Grand Prix de l'Academie des Sciences for his paper on the subject, entitled "Memoir sur l'iteration des fonctions rationnelles." Julia wrote that paper at age 25. Interesting side note on Julia: he lost his nose as a soldier in World War I and did mathematical research during an extended hospital stay due to that injury. He was eventually forced to wear a leather cover over the place where his nose had been, held in place with straps tied behind his head. Pictures of him are a bit strange because of that. :-b
Mandelbrodt came along in the 1970s, rediscovered the works of Julia, which had been all but forgotten, and used computers to do things like determine which Julia sets are connected and measure the Hausdorff Dimension of some fractal sets. He also coined the term "fractal." Contrary to what the article says, Mandelbrodt did not invent the concept of non-integral dimensions... given that the measure used is called the Hausdorff Dimension, does anyone want to guess who invented it? The answer is here.
Hausdorff, being a Jew, suffered and ultimately died during World War II. His work was deemed "Jewish" and "un-German" by the Nazis, and he lost his professor post at the University of Leipzig. In 1942, he, his wife, and his sister-in-law committed suicide when they couldn't escape being sent to a concentration camp.
Mandelbrodt did make significant contributions, especially to the visualization of fractals and the study of fractals and their properties on computers, but to call him the "father" is to ignore the contributions of the giants on whose shoulders he was standing (to borrow a famous phrase). Mandelbrodt is a good self-promoter, which should be obvious to anyone who RTFA. In the article, the familiarity of his work is compared to that of Newton and Einstein. While it never says his work is as important as the work of those two greats, it doesn't take a big mental leap to get to that idea. When Mandelbrodt discovered the set that now bears his name, he was smart enough not to give it that name himself. Instead he called it the "M set," leaving it to somebody else to add "andebrodt" to the name. Both of these things remind me of Hawking's A Brief History of Time, in which there are brief biographical blurbs of Newton, Einstein, and Hawking, in that order. I'd have loved to see Mandelbrodt and Hawking write a book together. It would be the battle royale for the title of biggest self-promoter in the sciences. I'm not saying they didn't make significant contributions (nor that Hawking's contributions aren't all the more amazing due to his debilitating disease), but this kind of self-promotion shouldn't be necessary. I wouldn't put Hawking or Mandelbrodt on my list of the top ten scientists and mathematicians of the 20th Century, but they would definitely make the list of the top ten best known.
A friend once told me a really nerdy joke that just came back to mind. He asked me if I knew which letter was most used in the English language. I told him I did-- it's "E." My friend said "that's correct, except in the work of Mandelbrodt, where the two most used are "I" and "M" (getting use from "me," "my," and "M," the name he gave the now-famous set).
I'm sad to report that I laughed as much at that one as I did at "assume a spherical cow." Damn, I'm nerdy.
I found the use of the phrase "under our noses" in the article a bit offensive, a slap in the face to Julia. Oops. Now I've done it too.
--Mark
So then... if I've understood correctly, the SCO site hasn't been "h4x0red," it's been "h04xored..."
--Mark
__:-b
I even repeated this one a few times: "FORTRAN is a dead language."
I don't even know how many new FORTRAN standards have come out since this one started. I just know I heard FORTRAN was a dead language in about 1987 or 1988 and it continues not to be, about 16 years later.
--Mark
Heh. "Snotty VC" in the blurb reminded me of 1999, when I was employee #4 at a software startup. The company makes software for a specific type of business. Through tests we had done, we could prove that we were capable of increasing profits for companies in the target market by 25%-100%. /. terms, many of these companies did indeed leave out step 4 before claiming that step 5 would be "Profit!"
Unfortunately, as I said, it was 1999. Smart VCs like John Doerr had seen good business opportunities in companies like Yahoo!, Amazon, AOL, and others, and made huge wads of $$$ for their firms through shrewd investments. The clueless wannabe VCs apparently missed the point that-- internet or not-- the success of investors like Doerr was based on careful evaluation of business plans and business models. The Doerr wannabes apparently said to themselves "John Doerr made a lot investing in internet companies, so we have to do the same." I figure that's how multiple internet pet shops and ridiculous internet businesses got funded, with many even going to IPO without having anything resembling profit in the foreseeable future or even a decent roadmap to achieving profitability. In
Getting back to how this was relevant to my personal experience, the founders of the company (employees #1 and #2) would make their presentation to some VC, again, showing that the company's software could produce billions of dollars of value for companies in the target market, and the response was almost always the same: "OK, but what's your internet story?"
Most of them were really snotty, saying that "these days," anything that isn't internet-based doesn't have a chance, or something equally short-sighted and clueless. But they said it with such authority and such snottiness that it would make even the strong of stomach want to vomit.
At the time, I said "Let's just change the name of the company to 'e-(Real Name of Company)-dot-com' and we'll be swimming in money!
After that, I became a big fan of F**kedCompany, which now seems to include non-dot-coms a lot more than it used to. Back in the day, it was more focused on reporting disasters in dot-coms that probably never should have been funded. Every time I saw another online business with no clear sustainable revenue stream (the $$$ from idiot VCs desperate to pour money into anything dot-com doesn't count-- it has been proven not to have been sustainable) go down the toilet, with an amusing report on F**kedCompany, I would snicker and say to myself "Yeah, I've got your internet story RIGHT HERE!"
--Mark
Oh sure... Diebold couldn't manage to apply the RPC patch to WinXP, but did manage to apply an unauthorized patch to the voting machines used in the gubernatorial election in Georgia after the machines had been inspected by elections officials, and the election had a somewhat fishy outcome. Specifically, the candidate who won had been trailing significantly in ALL polls, including media-sponsored third party polls, Democratic AND Republican internal tracking polls, and even exit polls on the day of the election...
Diebold is capable of applying an unauthorized patch to a lot of machines in a very short time to permit political hanky-panky, but can't manage to apply the patch to prevent some security problems. Funny that.
--Mark
Well, to start, I'm from the US too. And I think that if you take the time to talk to some people who have been in other countries over the last few years, you'll find that people around the world admired the US a lot and used to have a positive overall opinion of the US. And at the time of the September 11 attacks, there was great sympathy shown all over the world for Americans. A French newspaper declared "Today we are all Americans." Messages of sympathy and solidarity poured in to the US from all around the world. I saw it here in Brazil, where I found some of it frustrating because it started to look like major ass-kissing. You know... Brazil started to seem to me like that annoying little hanger-on who hangs around with-- and owes his survival to-- the school bully. It fit with the then-President (FHC)'s attitude, which I mentioned in my post. I just read an account of the experiences of Americans who were in England and say the British abandoned their "stiff upper lip" and showed a lot of emotion and sympathy, even walking up to Americans they hardly knew and embracing them. This was a unique opportunity for American diplomacy. A more agile and intelligent administration might have taken advantage of it. The Bushies not only wasted that goodwill, but managed to alienate a vast majority of the world's population (over 85% of us opposed his war, for example) and create new anti-American attitudes that help nobody.
I am an expat, and that is in part because I really don't like what the US government has become (I already wasn't wildly fond of it when I moved here, and it's gotten a lot worse in the last 3 1/2 years). But I am not in favor of anti-Americanism. In fact, I still consider myself some kind of American idealist. My teachers (and I include my family and friends here) did a really good job of convincing me of the value of what they told me were American ideals. They even did a reasonably good job of convincing me the US government actually upheld those ideals. As I got older, I started to discover that many facts just didn't seem to fit too well with the "US Government = Goodguy" model pounded into our heads in school, on TV, in books, and in films, nor with the "US Government Upholds American Ideals" model, also beaten into us constantly. And I was even able to notice that the discrepancy between the ideals and the actions of the US government was getting worse and worse, with more and more of those ideals being completely betrayed.
Now I see anti-American sentiment growing daily, and it saddens me. There is one positive thing that has happened because of the way Bush and his administration have wrecked the image of the US-- Brazilians have finally started to realize that Americans are not better than Brazilians, and that Brazilians can do anything anyone else can do. Lula also helps with that-- his pride and total confidence in Brazil are very important, especially after 8 years of FHC, who was nothing but a brown-noser who spent much of his time kissing the ass of the US and its government, and helping further the idea that the US and Americans were somehow better than Brazil and Brazilians.
I am glad to see Brazilians taking the attitude that Brazil can and should produce quality products capable of competing with those of any other nation. I am glad that when we talk about the Brazilian
Marcelo Tosatti, wunderkind maintainer of the 2.4 kernel, left Conectiva (ref in Portuguese) in September of this year for Cyclades, a company that provides "Linux inside" hardware solutions. He says (in Portuguese) here that it was an amicable split.
If you go and look at some of the discussion of the controversial change of VM in the 2.4 kernel, in addition to messages to and from Andrea Arcangeli from Suse (author of the new VM), you'll see a lot of messages involving a Conectiva employee: Rik van Riel, author of the old VM (the one replaced by the Arcangeli VM in the 2.4.10 kernel). He continued development of his VM, and it is still favored by Alan Cox and by Red Hat.
The President of Brazil, to whom the article refers as "Silva," but who is known to everyone here in Brazil by his nickname, "Lula," is one of the founders of the labor movement here. That's impressive because he did what he did when the government of Brazil was a US-supported military dictatorship (it finally fell in 1985). Lula went to prison for standing up to the military government, but did not give up on his dream. He continues to be a man of exceptional courage. He stood up to the Bushies at the FTAA (here it's called ALCA) negotiations, refusing to remove tariffs on American products in Brazil until the US does away with its tariffs and subsidies that affect the relative prices of American and non-American products. He also helped organize the countries of South America against Bush's plans to invade Iraq early this year and gave a speech at the UN in New York last month condemning Bush's policy.
During that same trip to New York, Lula showed an attitude his predecessor, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, never had: pride in being Brazilian. Where FHC's attitude was basically "you Americans are so much smarter and better than us... please come here and make our country more like yours," Lula's is "if you bet against us, you'll lose." Lula wants to develop Brazil's technology and economy and create opportunity for the Brazilian people. He sees free (as in speech-- "livre" in Portuguese) software as a tool to help bring this about. He also values independence and freedom, and sees that being dependent on a monopolist like Microsoft limits options and is expensive.
Given that Lula has faced down a military dictatorship and George W Bush without flinching, he seems like just the man to take on MS.
--Mark
The "funny business" I mentioned above includes the effort by Jeb Bush and Catherine Harris to remove tens of thousands of voters who were NOT felons, but were members of Democrat-leaning demographic groups, from the rolls, resulting in a swing of some 30,000 votes to Bush. I hope I don't need to tell you that's significant in an election decided by hundreds of votes. Add to that the intimidation of minority (Democrat-leaning) voters by the State Police, again, under orders from Jeb Bush, plus the Diebold machines that SUBTRACTED over 16,000 votes from Gore when the votes from a specific county were added, confirmed by Diebold employees in the incriminating Diebold memos, and you've got a very strong case for a stolen election. There is MUCH more to this than the fact that Gore won the national popular vote. He also won the Florida popular vote (even with the playing field slanted to help GWB by his brother the Governor and his campaign manager, who also happened to be Florida Secretary of State), but the Supreme Court stopped the recounts, giving as its reason that if the recounts were completed and the will of the voters determined, Bush might not win. Scary, but true. Read the decision.
One more thing to consider: most people think Bush would have won a recount because virtually every news outlet printed the results I cited in my previous post, clearly showing that even the Bush-limited set of Florida voters elected Gore, but the correct counting of their votes was thwarted by the Supreme Court. And yet the myth of "liberal media" persists. Even the New York Times, the Right's favorite example of a "liberal" media outlet, ran the story with a headline saying Bush would have won. Why? I think the timing has a lot to do with it-- the results of the NORC survey came out in September of 2001...
--Mark
First, the "recount effort by the press" was actually a survey of the ballots by the "NORC" - the National Opinion Research Center of the University of Chicago, commissioned by several major media companies. The NORC checked and categorized all the ballots. Analysis and presentation of these results was left to the media companies that commissioned the survey. They dropped it like a hot potato in September of 2001. There were some headlines saying Bush would have won. Among the articles with the "Bush wins" headline, some included more detailed information, and it didn't really fit with the headlines. The "more detailed information" is really interesting, and you can see a summary of it here, with some reproductions of articles about the results.
If all you remember are the headlines saying Bush would have won, the actual results may surprise you. Let me be more specific.
If you follow the link, you'll see a graphical summary of the possible recount results, which depend on the standard applied to disputed ballots. It starts by repeating that the official certified result had Bush winning Florida by 537 votes (Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253). It then shows what would have happened in 5 different possible recount scenarios.
First, if Gore's request for recounts of four specific counties had been granted, he would have still lost, though by a smaller margin-- 225 votes (Bush 2,913,351; Gore 2,913,126).
The second scenario presented is the one that would have obtained if the Supreme Court had not stopped the partial recounts already underway in Florida. Again, Gore loses, by a margin very slightly smaller than the certified result-- 493 votes (Bush 2,916,559; Gore 2,916,066).
So far, two "Bush wins" results, both coming from what Democrats were seeking (Gore's request for a recount of 4 specific counties, plus completion of the partial recounts already in progress). Looks like Bush would win in any conceivable scenario, right? Let's continue.
One recount uses a loose standard for counting a disputed ballot: accepting any dimpled punch card or any mark on an optical scan ballot that indicated a candidate choice, whether it was Gore or Bush. The result? Gore won (there's one recount Gore would have won, responding to your request, but please keep reading), by a very narrow margin of 107 votes (Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588). But if that were the only Gore victory, one could argue that Gore only would have won with the loosest standards applied for acceptance of disputed ballots. Keep reading...
Given that very loose standard, one could fairly ask for a recount with a very rigid standard. For example, one could ask for a recount where only fully-punched ballot cards (no "hanging chads") and correctly marked optical scan ballots are accepted, again, independent of the candidate chosen. Who'd win that one? Bush? Nope. I'll give you one more guess...
'Dja get it right? Let's check. Here's the result of the recount using that very rigid standard: Gore by 115 (Gore 2,915,245; Bush 2,915,130).
There is one more reasonable standard that could be applied to a recount: one could simply let each county's own standard apply to disputed ballots from that county. Recounting under those conditions yielded President Gore too, by a margin of 171 votes (Gore 2,917,847; Bush 2,918,676).
It's ironic that Gore would have won under the most reasonable standards (intent, perfectly marked/punched ballot, or each county's standards apply to its votes), but would have lost under the weird partial recounts Democrats wanted.
It's also ironic that when the facts showed that Gore would have won the most reasonable possible recounts, the "liberal" media (including the New York Times, a favorite whipping boy of the American Right) presented these data with headlines statin
The "sic" is an old habit from other threaded discussions. By writing "sic" there, I'm saying that the hyphen between "male" and "Lara" is not mine (it was already like that in the previous post), but I take responsibility for any errors in the spelling, grammar, or content of my part of the post.
--Mark
Two people have asked why it "pains me" to say that Spielberg, though massively overrated, is a better director than Lucas. Both mention Eps I & II. OK, but then I'd like to know why it is that when people talk about Spielberg, nobody talks about 1941, which was worse than Episode I. The reason it "pains me" to say Spielberg is better than Lucas is because Lucas directed one of my favorite movies ever (the original Star Wars).
Also, as I mentioned, I feel Spielberg is wildly overrated, and I don't want to help continue the myth that he's one of the great directors of our time. I won't say he's a bad director, but he is considered one of the all-time greats by many people, and I just don't see it (Don't even get me started about Tom Hanks!).
As the question of whether Lucas was the main creative force behind Indiana Jones, he was credited as the writer of the story for each of the three IJ movies, and as a creator of characters in the third. The credits of the third movie (see last link) treat creation of the characters and the story writing Lucas did as separate things. While other writers were involved in the writing of the screenplays, the stories are credited to Lucas (with Philip Kaufman in Raiders and with Menno Meyjes in Last Crusade... and no, it didn't escape me that the worst of the three movies is the one where nobody cowrote the story with Lucas... I don't think he's perfect as a director or as a writer, but I think he is the key "idea man" behind the greatness of both the original SW series and the IJ series).
Just as I've been accused of being a "fanboy" and defending Lucas because of my emotional attachment to the original Star Wars, I will ask if those who have developed a lower opinion of Lucas because of Eps I & II (I will mention that I see a huge difference between them-- I haven't been able to bring myself to watch Ep I again since the first time in May of 1999, and I've watched Ep II a few times) might not be unfairly denying his previous accomplishments, like the good work he did on the first three SW films and the IJ films (even if he wants to keep fiddling with the SW movies). Yeah, Ep I is crap and Ep II is flawed. Does that mean we have to retroactively deduct "points" from Lucas for the things he did in the creation and production of two outstanding trilogies of films?
--Mark
--Mark
Setting aside the lameness of trying to look cool by calling Spielberg "Stevie" and referring to the Indiana Jones movies as "male-Lara (sic) Croft movies," there's still a big hole in this theory: the Indiana Jones movies were a joint project between Lucas and Spielberg, and were more Lucas's than they were Spielberg's.
All three films were written by Lucas (and others, but not Spielberg) and directed by Spielberg, with Lucas as executive producer and as an uncredited editor. If you consider the original Star Wars trilogy to be Lucas's, it's not that hard to consider the Indiana Jones series his too, since 2/3 of the original Star Wars trilogy had non-Lucas directors. As with the Star Wars movies, Lucas was the main creative force behind the Indiana Jones movies. He just used a director for the Indiana Jones movies who is more famous than Kershner and Marquand and, much as it pains me to say it, is a better director than Lucas (but is still highly overrated).
Maybe you noticed that Lucasfilm's logo appears at the beginning of the movies, but Amblin Entertainments's does not (nor does that of Dreamworks SKG). That's because the Indiana Jones movies were Lucasfilm productions and Spielberg was only involved as the director. That's why George Lucas had the rights to make The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles (released on VHS as The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones) without Spielberg. It's also why Lucasfilm made a deal with Disney to develop the "Indiana Jones Adventure" attraction (and "Star Tours--" I believe it was a single deal for developing attractions based on both the Star Wars movies and the Indiana Jones movies) without Spielberg being involved.
Anyway, getting back to the point, it seems to me the decision about the release of the Indiana Jones movies would be at least as much Lucas's as Spielberg's, and probably a lot more. So that kinda blows away the theory that Spielberg was holding off the release of "his" Indiana Jones movies on DVD because of a large investment in a rival compact videodisc standard.
Did I just fall for a troll? I hope not.
--Mark
Do I need to remind you that 30,000 more legitimate Democratic voters participating in the election could drastically change the result of an election whose official certified result had a difference of 537 votes between the top two candidates?
Few? Which election were you watching? Palast PROVES (again, he doesn't just allege things, as you claim that Dems do more election cheating, but fail to cite a single case or shred of evidence-- Palast has AND PRESENTS evidence for his very serious claims) in his book that the Democrats lost at least 30,000 net potential Gore votes due to Jeb Bush and Katherine Harris's funny business. Again, in an election decided by hundreds of votes, that's a really, really big deal. As for your assertion that they "had plenty of time" to correct the problem, you are ignoring the fact that they didn't find out until they were wrongly turned away at the polls on election day.
You correctly note that the Dems are basically supporting efforts for things like auditability in electronic voting because the Republicans have a distinct advantage in connections to the e-voting companies. But you neglect to mention that the Republicans are NOT supporting those efforts. So can you now admit that while the Democrats are right for the wrong reason, they're right on this one and the Republicans are wrong?
Ugh! It leaves a horrible taste in my mouth to say the Dems are right on an issue, but I guess that puts them up 1-0 on the Republicans.
--Mark
Re: Katherine Harris, chairperson of the George W Bush 2000 presidential campaign in Florida, making decisions about the recounts in her capacity as Secretary of State
It's enough to make one wonder why the verb "recuse" even exists...
--Mark
The recount was not conducted by the major media outlets; it was done by the "NORC," the National Opinion Reseach Center of the University of Chicago. It was sponsored by some major media companies (including, among others, the NYT, the Washington Post, CNN, and the AP).
Ya wanna say the NORC is liberal-leaning?
--Mark
OK.. I'll start by saying that maybe it is you who need to broaden your horizons a bit and get your news from sources other than Fox News (whose Chairman and CEO was the media director for the George HW Bush campaign in 1988 and the creator and executive producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show) and heavily Republican-leaning talk radio. You yourself state that johnkerry.com isn't exactly un-biased (sic). Do you think Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are? I am not a Democrat, so that's not why I'm saying this. I'm saying it because the very facts you sarcastically say we shouldn't let get in our way don't support your position.
Take a peek at this. It's a presentation of the results of the recount. It starts by repeating that Bush won the official certified result by 537 votes (Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253). It then shows what would have happened in 5 different possible recount scenarios.
First, if Gore's request for recounts of four specific counties had been granted, he would have still lost, though by a smaller margin-- 225 votes (Bush 2,913,351; Gore 2,913,126).
The second scenario presented is if the Supreme Court had not stopped the partial recounts already underway in Florida. Again, Gore loses, by a margin very slightly smaller than the certified result-- 493 votes (Bush 2,916,559; Gore 2,916,066).
So far, two "Bush wins" results, both coming from what Democrats were seeking (Gore's request for a recount of 4 specific counties, plus completion of the partial recounts already in progress). Looks like Bush would win in any conceivable scenario, right? Let's continue.
First, they could have used "the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" (as you put it), but they didn't. They did do one recount using a similar but fair standard, accepting any dimpled punch card or any mark on an optical scan ballot that indicated a candidate choice, whether it was Gore or Bush. The result? Gore won (so much for "In every recount they did Bush still won), by a very narrow margin of 107 votes (Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588). But if that were the only Gore victory, your argument, while wrong on some details, would still have a foundation of truth. Let's continue.
Given that very loose standard, one could fairly ask for a recount with a very rigid standard. For example, one could ask for a recount where only fully-punched ballot cards and correctly marked optical scan ballots are accepted, again, independent of the candidate chosen. Who'd win that one? Bush? Nope. I'll give you one more guess...
'Dja get it right? Let's check. Here's the result of the recount using that very rigid standard: Gore by 115 (Gore 2,915,245; Bush 2,915,130).
Hmmm... looks like your "recounting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" has been debunked by those inconvenient facts you mentioned, as has "In every recount they did Bush still won."
There is one more reasonable standard that could be applied to a recount: one could simply let each county's own standard apply to disputed ballots from that county. Recounting under those conditions yielded President Gore too, by a margin of 171 votes (Gore 2
OK.. I'll start by saying that maybe it is you who need to broaden your horizons a bit and get your news from sources other than Fox News (whose Chairman and CEO was the media director for the George HW Bush campaign in 1988 and the creator and executive producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show) and heavily Republican-leaning talk radio. You yourself state that johnkerry.com isn't exactly un-biased (sic). Do you think Rush Limbaugh and Fox News are? I am not a Democrat, so that's not why I'm saying this. I'm saying it because the very facts you sarcastically say we shouldn't let get in our way don't support your position.
Take a peek at this. It's a presentation of the results of the recount. It starts by repeating that Bush won the official certified result by 537 votes (Bush 2,912,790; Gore 2,912,253). It then shows what would have happened in 5 different possible recount scenarios.
First, if Gore's request for recounts of four specific counties had been granted, he would have still lost, though by a smaller margin-- 225 votes (Bush 2,913,351; Gore 2,913,126).
The second scenario presented is if the Supreme Court had not stopped the partial recounts already underway in Florida. Again, Gore loses, by a margin very slightly smaller than the certified result-- 493 votes (Bush 2,916,559; Gore 2,916,066).
So far, two "Bush wins" results, both coming from what Democrats were seeking (Gore's request for a recount of 4 specific counties, plus completion of the partial recounts already in progress). Looks like Bush would win in any conceivable scenario, right? Let's continue.
First, they could have used "the most liberal methods they could, counting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" (as you put it), but they didn't. They did do one recount using a similar but fair standard, accepting any dimpled punch card or any mark on an optical scan ballot that indicated a candidate choice, whether it was Gore or Bush. The result? Gore won (so much for "In every recount they did Bush still won), by a very narrow margin of 107 votes (Gore 2,924,695; Bush 2,924,588). But if that were the only Gore victory, your argument, while wrong on some details, would still have a foundation of truth. Let's continue.
Given that very loose standard, one could fairly ask for a recount with a very rigid standard. For example, one could ask for a recount where only fully-punched ballot cards and correctly marked optical scan ballots are accepted, again, independent of the candidate chosen. Who'd win that one? Bush? Nope. I'll give you one more guess...
'Dja get it right? Let's check. Here's the result of the recount using that very rigid standard: Gore by 115 (Gore 2,915,245; Bush 2,915,130).
Hmmm... looks like your "recounting anything that even remotely looked like a vote for Gore" has been debunked by those inconvenient facts you mentioned, as has "In every recount they did Bush still won."
There is one more reasonable standard that could be applied to a recount: one could simply let each county's own standard apply to disputed ballots from that county. Recounting under those conditions yielded President Gore too, by a margin of 171 votes (Gore 2,917,847; Bush 2,918,676).
It's ironic that Gor
Katherine Harris was the CHAIRPERSON of the George W. Bush election campaign in Florida.
Uhhhh... I'm guessing you get your news from a "fair and unbiased" source like Roger Ailes, Media Director for George HW Bush's campaigns and creator and producer of Rush Limbaugh's TV show.
There are some FACTS that get in the way of your straight-from-the-GOP arguments. I figure it's probably a lost cause to try to convince you, but here they are...
(First, for the record, I am neither a Democrat nor a Republican, and am horrified at the increasing narrowness of the American political "spectrum" after having lived for 3 years in a thriving Democracy (Brazil), where there are more parties than anyone can name, and virtually all points of view are represented, with no one or two or even three parties able to dominate)
That said, on to the uncomfortable facts...
Yes, there was some serious rigging in the 2000 Florida election, but it looks like most of it was done by the Republicans. Besides the funny business that went on before the election (ordered by Jeb Bush) to remove tens of thousands of Democratic voters from the lists of registered Florida voters, and besides the numerous African-American (likely Democratic) Florida voters who were denied their right to vote, there is the matter of the leaked Diebold memos, which show that there was some election night hanky-panky with the 2000 Florida presidential vote totals (made possible by Diebold, a company whose top man has declared that it is his mission to deliver Ohio's electoral votes to George W Bush). Best of all, Diebold does not deny that these things happened; it is trying to use the DMCA to shut down any site hosting copies of the incriminating memos, alleging that these company memos are copyrighted material. IANAL, but that looks to me like a direct admission of ownership and verification of the authenticity of those shocking memos. If I had a site hosting those memos and I were to get a Cease and Desist from Diebold, I'd simply tell them "no way" and hope hope hope to get the chance to discuss the contents of those memos in front of a judge.
Bad as all this is, as they say on infomercials, "that's not all!" Recounts were stopped because the Supreme Court, loaded 6-3 with Republicans, including one major political activist (Scalia) and his apprentice (Thomas) basically said that if the recounts weren't stopped, George W Bush might not be President. Worse, they basically recognized the ridiculousness of their own arguments and said that this case could never be used as a precedent for a future case. Funny that... (in a distinctly non-humorous way, of course)
I'm guessing Ann Coulter didn't mention these things. I wouldn't be surprised if the presenters at Fox News forgot to mention them either...
Don't even get me started about the fact that exit polls unanimously showed Gore winning Florida... or on the recent election in Georgia, where every poll (exit polls, third-party pre-election polls, Democratic AND Republican internal tracking polls) showed the Democrat winning handily, but the Republican ended up winning with relative ease. Small but possibly important detail: an unverified patch was applied to the Diebold (that name again!) voting machines after they'd been certified by Georgia election officials.
What? Brit Hume didn't mention that? Color me shocked!
As for your comments about people engaged in shady activity loudly bla
"Whose computer do you want to invade today?"
--Mark
I haven't seen anything reported on Slashdot or anywhere else that would "solve the problem of software piracy" and make China a huge market for Microsoft at the same time...
--Mark
IMPORTANT: as the article states, people who eat red meat already get creatine from that source. Creatine supplementation is most interesting for people who exercise regularly and don't eat red meat.
It's interesting that the sub-headline of the article says "The dietary supplement creatine - known to improve athletic performance..."
I seem to recall seeing in the 1990s reports of studies showing that creatine did indeed improve athletic performance. My own experience was different.
In the mid-1990s, I was basically following the recommendations of the US government: loads of carbohydrates, reasonable quantities of protein, and very, very little fat. I avoided red meat and ate a lot more chicken and turkey breast meat.
I would go to the gym twice per week and train with high intensity. I discovered that even with the massive quantities of food I was eating and the decent amount of sleep I was getting (being a grad student at the time, I had a very flexible schedule... as a result, it was almost always possible to correct any sleep deficit with a nap), my body simply could not recuperate in less time.
The personal trainers at the gym had, I'm sure, the best intentions when they designed workout programs for me, but the problem is that the programs they designed would have been good for two types of person: the genetically gifted and users of 'roids (I don't think it's a coincidence that many personal trainers fit into one of these two categories). For a normal human being, it just isn't possible for the body to recover from three days of exercise in one day (they typically designed programs of the type "three days of training and one day of rest").
Anyway, since I wasn't eating red meat, I thought I could benefit from creatine supplementation. What did I find? Well, I can summarize it like this: if creatine were as effective as a bodybuilding supplement as it is as a laxative, I would be as big now as the next Governor of California.
In my experience, creatine just made my poop (much) softer and gave it a funny color. No, I don't make a habit of checking out the contents of the toilet, but the color was so weird it caught my eye and I started paying attention. I know this is disgusting, but I am simply telling a true story.
I eventually quit creatine and designed a workout program based on the book "Brawn," i.e., on lots of squats as the main exercise and on increasing the weight lifted each time at the gym, and focused on building strength, not size. I got a lot stronger, and I gained a significant amount of muscle weight.
In my experience, a good workout program that did not force overtraining (unlike most that personal trainers at gyms will create for you) and done with sufficient intensity (gawd how my thighs used to burn toward the end of a set of 20 squats with a bar 1.5 times the weight of my body) had a much greater effect on my strength than my use or non-use of creatine did.
In 2000, I came to the conclusion that it was kind of stupid for me to put so much effort into fighting nature. If my body were meant to be larger and more muscular, it would be that way naturally, without me having to destroy it every 3 or 4 days. I haven't done any weightlifting in years, and I haven't even thought about wasting money on creatine in several years.
FWIW, I don't remember feeling smarter during my experimentation with creatine. My immediate guess is that creatine is as effective as a "smart drug" as it is as a bodybuilding supplement, i.e., not very.
YMMV.
--Mark