MAPS has a press release about this as well, located here. It sounds like there was more going on than mentioned in Experian's press release. MAPS says there were months of negotiations, that both sides made comprimises, and that Experian has made "several changes to ensure that only those who want to receive their email receive it, and to respond to concerns from those who don't."
While not getting everything it wanted, it seems MAPS did get something out of the deal, and Experian is playing at least a little bit nicer.
Well now, no one runs out and buys a $600 video card every six months. There won't even be games that support the card's new features available for months.
Nvidia started this six-month upgrade cycle, and it has done wonders for the video card market. There is strong competition and real innovation (Microsoft made me hate that word, but it's appropriate here) going on.
There was a bit of stagnation, with 3DFX ruling the market with it's voodoo cards right up until Voodoo 3. Voodoo 3 was a big disappointment, with no big performance improvements and no cool new features. That left the door open for Nvidia, who came in with the GeForce, and everybody else has been playing catch-up since. ATI and Matrox are doing some interesting stuff now, and Nvidia learned from 3DFX (whose core business Nvidia ended up buying at fire sale prices) that you can't rest on your laurels in this business.
So yeah, we get new cards every six months, but the end result is constant improvement in the video card market, and that is a good thing.
In addtion to the Windows, Office, and Exchange upgrades that Microsoft is trying to make mandatory, they have instituted a similar scheme covering a product over which they have much more control. By "expiring" MCSE certification for hundreds of thousands of users, they are trying to force people to upgrade to Windows 2000 or Windows XP certification. This provides instant revenue from people paying to take tests and buy test prep books, but it also dovetails nicely with the software upgrade scheme.
Forcing MCSE upgrades creates a pool of people qualified to support the new software that companies are forced to purchase. They actually have the leverage to force IT people to learn new software so companies will have people qualified to install and manage the new stuff, thereby removing one of the biggest roadblocks to constant upgrading.
I know there are some minor changes (Sorry Tom Bombadil), but I believe the movie follows the book's plot pretty closely.
Phantom Menace was a different deal. The trailer showed the fabulous visuals, but didn't clue you in to the fact that the plot sucked and the dialog was lame. With FOTR, we know the story is great. The trailer sure shows that the visuals are great, too.
A movie and a book aren't the same thing, and unfortunately, there are artistic and commercial trade offs in the translations. If you put in ever word in the 400 pages of FOTR, you'd have a really long movie that would not interest enough people to justify the expense involved in making it. I think the film makers have been making an excellent attempt to be as true to the book as they can.
I don't think it's possible to please all the fans of the books. Everyone has an image in their mind of what scenes should look like, and the movie can't match everyone's imagination. The Balrog is an excellent example. Fans can't even agree whether it has wings or not. If Tolkein's words don't make it clear enough, someone will always take exception to what's on the screen. I guess deviating from his words here and there doesn't help, but it's an unfortunate reality when you are dealing with the amount of money necessary to bring the world of Middle Earth to life.
It seems to me that the more outrageous and nonsensical EULA's become, the more the software-buying public will ignore them. Common sense tells us that Microsoft doesn't have the right to restrict the use of their products in this manner. So, since such provisions are obviously bullshit, it's not a great leap to conclude that the rest of the license is probably bullshit, too. When faced with increasing disrespect for EULA's, Microsoft then has whine to congress about 'piracy', and create the BSA to "educate" consumers that, in fact, up is down, wrong is right, and you can't really use FrontPage to make a website critical of Microsoft.
In the last chapter of Steven Levy's excellent book, Hackers, he talks about the first software to include a license with such disclaimers. I want to say it was Lotus 1-2-3, but since I don't have my copy here at work, I can't be sure. People were pretty outraged at the concept. Lotus justified it by saying they were concerned that someone would design a bridge with their software, it would collapse, and they would get sued. Levy summed up by saying that no bridge designed with Lotus software ever collapsed, but now just about every piece of software you can get, no matter how trivial its purpose, comes with disclaimers.
Well, if the government announced they were taking down some illegal websites that are funding terrorist activity, maybe that wouldn't be news for Your Rights Online. But the FBI shut down lots of websites (again, temporarily and incidental to searching for evidence), including one of the largest arabic news sites on the web. And they didn't say why, though the speculation is that at least one of the affected sites was somehow related to terrorism.
As someone else pointed out elsewhere, if this was an ISP that hosted CNN online, you can bet they would have found some less disruptive method of gathering evidence. Obviously, CNN is large enough to have redundant systems and would not be brought down by the search of one ISP, I'm just trying to make a point. This raid violated the free speech rights of many web sites, including that of Al-Jazeera.
This incident brings up some interesting questions. How big and important does a news site have to be before the FBI will respect its right to free speech? Is it okay to trample on the free speech rights of any website hosted by an ISP that also hosts a suspicious one? Does the fact that the Al-Jazeera site is a major source of news for people in Quatar and other middle eastern countries, and not people in the US, mean that it shouldn't enjoy the same kinds of constitutional protections?
These questions don't come up when talking about the Hindu Unity incident.
From the article:
The FBI declined to specify the target of the search warrant, which is under seal in a federal court, except to say in a statement that the search was ``one aspect of a more than two-year investigation that is ongoing.''
The warrant is sealed. That means that law enforcement has demonstrated a compelling reason for portions of it to remain secret. This could mean that the identity of an informant could be compromised, targets of an imminent raid could be alerted, or whatever. They are supposed to release as much of the warrant as possible, but it may be that the ISP was only shown that the FBI could search their premises for any computer data. The crime under investigation doesn't even have to be named. In a situation with a sealed warrant, you just have to trust that the FBI is right.
It would be a lot easier to trust the FBI if it weren't for stuff like the Steve Jackson raid, mentioned in an earlier post, which had a similiarly sealed warrant.
The Hindu Unity website incident is a very different situation. The site had some strong anti-Muslim views, particularly towards Muslims in India. Stuff that could be interpereted as a call for violence against Muslims in India (the current home page has a cartoon of Muslims stabbing to death a Hindu mother). And people complained to the ISP, who told the organization to take their business elsewhere. Here is an article.
The case of the ISP in Texas involves the government shutting down, albeit temporarily and as an incidental consequence of searching for evidence, lots of websites without explanation, only a sealed warrant. This includes one of the most prominent sites news of the middle east that is not controlled by a government of the region.
People get up in arms about controversial websites, like porn sites, hate sites, spammer sites, radical anti-abortion sites, etc, all the time. And sometimes, complaints to the ISP are effective in forcing the site to move to an ISP that is less concerned about complaints from the public. That isn't really news.
The government shutting down 500 mostly arab-related websites without explanation should be considered more newsworthy.
Weird. Do real world economic class/social issues translate to the virtual world? I can't help but think that all he's going to find out is that the people who spend the most time playing have the richest characters, though. The Everquest market shouldn't really follow normal economic rules, because it is a constructed economic model, created to maximize game enjoyment, not reality.
Well, after thinking about it for a second, I feel stupid. I guess the point of Google caching itself would be so you can see the special Korean holiday logo days after it has gone away?
Replying to your sig as well. Do you mean the Korean theme in the Google masthead? If you hover your cursor over it, you will see "Happy Korean Liberation Day". That theme appeared a couple days ago on the anniversary of Japan's surrender at the end of WW II, which also marked the end of Japan's occupation of Korea. It is a holiday in Korea. If you click on the masthead, it goes to the results of a search on Korean holidays.
The article mentions that as of August 2, there was no site for armani.com. That is because Mr. Mani only wanted to have an easy-to-remember email address, which he has had since the late '80's. He has never made a website with that domain name because he doesn't want a bunch of traffic meant for the "real" armani website.
I know Windows best feature is it's supposed ease of use, but I have bought several $50+ books. Some of the more esoteric marketing gimmicks, excuse me, features, are poorly implemented and poorly documented. Books are really the only way around that.
He isn't talking about the content available on the web. Basic economic laws don't apply because you can't pay more and have a faster, more reliable internet connection. You sort of can with Cable or DSL, or even with T-1 or better connections. Even still, there can be a lot of bottlenecks between a particular site and your home or work computer. Your ISP has no control over most of these bottlenecks. That is by design, but it means you can't pay your ISP more and be guaranteed quicker access, because the ISP only can control things up to a certain point.
It is incredibly dangerous to see this as a problem, because the solution is to have a monolithic network that is controlled by a small number of companies. It might be difficult to create, but if the right 4 or 5 companies decided to get together and wall of their parts of the internet, it could happen. These companies would have to beef up infrastructure, to make it worthwhile for everyone to be on their network. Then they could cut off everything on their network to the outside. To get most content, you would have to be with on of the big 4 or 5. You would be left with a few large corporations having absolute control over what would be left of the internet.
What you would essentially have is a small number of failure points (the theoretical internet corporations). They would be much more susceptible to censorship, governmental regulation, and corporate interference.
Why are 2 year old books getting reviewed? How useful are "beginners" guides, or at least beginners to Linux, when they are out of date. If I were to start using Linux today, I'd go out and get the latest version, and I'd want a book that covered it.
By all means, seeing reviews of "classic" books, like O'Reilly's Essential System Administration or something would be valuable, but introductory books that are not current are not so valuable. It's not the first review for an older book that I've seen on/., and the comment is always, "a little out of date, but still some good information." How about reviewing books that aren't out of date?
I shouldn't really bitch, however, because I'm not spending my time reading and reviewing the latest releases in the computer section of the bookstore.
I had a chance to see the first one a couple months ago, and I was really surprised. I'd forgotten what a truly great action movie it was. Despite the fact that the action doesn't really let up, it never gets too much, as in a Indy wannabe like The Mummy Returns. The second and third were not as great overall, but both had some fun and exciting parts.
I remember an interview with George Lucas, when he was making the Young Indian Jones TV series. He said that people were accusing him of milking the franchise for money. He said if he wanted to do that, he'd just make another sequel. Maybe Phantom Menace didn't do so well at the box office?
In 1998, 3 years ago, Barney lost a similar suit against the Famous Chicken, or San Diego Chicken, whatever it's called. The Chicken had this skit in its act where it would beat up a purple dinosaur that looked a lot like Barney, and Barney wanted it stopped. The Barney guys lost that case 3 years ago. It seems to me that pursueing similar cases after the loss is criminal.
I know that, back in the 80's, Nintendo was sued by Universal Pictures for using the word "Kong" in Donkey Kong. They also sued Coleco, for the ColecoVision version. Nintendo won that case, saying that not only did Universal no longer own the copyright to King Kong, it knew that it didn't because of a previous failed lawsuit. Then Nintendo countersued, and got big damages. It seems that this case is very similar.
While Eckert-Mauchly did sell quite a few of the UNIVAC's, they sold many of them early on with contracts that fixed the price. Many sold for as little as $200,000, while the costs of development were into the millions. When Eckert and Mauchly sold out to Remington Rand, they were paid $100,000 for their remaining share of the company. Much of this went to cover their outstanding debts. I guess they didn't technically go out of business, but they never made much money, and they were facing bankruptcy when they did finally sell. This according the the book ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tradgedies of the World's First Computer by Scott McCartney.
Hmm... I only own one VHS copy of SWTPM, and already they are coming out with the DVD? How can George Lucas make any money if fanboys like me only end up buying 2 copies of his movies?
Without seeing either movie, I will throw out my opinion, for what it's worth. It seems the stories of both movies owe quite a bit to Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs. But the world of professional animation is a small one, and I'm sure that some of the Disney animators had seen Nadia, whether they admit it or not. Maybe some of the similarities are a tribute to the anime.
It doesn't seem to me that there is enough in common between the two, that didn't already come from Verne and Burroughs, as to make this cause for outrage.
You know, invention is really a continuum. Babbage's Difference Engine could really be considered the first computer. When Eckert and Mauchly made ENIAC, there were plenty of mechanical computing machines in academic and commercial use. There were even some electrical/mechanical computing machines. Eckert and Mauchly's big innovation was creating a completely electrical computing machine, which greatly increased speed. Stored program computing was another innovation. Where on the continuum do you declare "this is the first computer." When it became electrical? When it became programmable? When programs could be stored? To argue that the Manchester Mark I got left out because it was made in Manchester probably not accurate. It gets ignored because there was a lot of new developments in this field at the time, and having a stored program feature isn't distinctive enough for a place in history. In truth, not many people know the names Eckert and Mauchly, though maybe people have heard of ENIAC or UNIVAC.
According to the book ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, the election thing was a bit of a publicity stunt. They had a deal with NBC news to predict the election outcome. UNIVAC did say the Eisenhower would win in a landslide, but all polls said that it would be a close race. So NBC wouldn't announce the computer's prediction, and made the programmers go back and fudge the numbers to make the results more in line with the polls. When Ike did win in a landslide, NBC admitted to the viewers what they did, and that the computer had been right.
Slashdot Mirror
MAPS has a press release about this as well, located here. It sounds like there was more going on than mentioned in Experian's press release. MAPS says there were months of negotiations, that both sides made comprimises, and that Experian has made "several changes to ensure that only those who want to receive their email receive it, and to respond to concerns from those who don't."
While not getting everything it wanted, it seems MAPS did get something out of the deal, and Experian is playing at least a little bit nicer.
Well now, no one runs out and buys a $600 video card every six months. There won't even be games that support the card's new features available for months.
Nvidia started this six-month upgrade cycle, and it has done wonders for the video card market. There is strong competition and real innovation (Microsoft made me hate that word, but it's appropriate here) going on.
There was a bit of stagnation, with 3DFX ruling the market with it's voodoo cards right up until Voodoo 3. Voodoo 3 was a big disappointment, with no big performance improvements and no cool new features. That left the door open for Nvidia, who came in with the GeForce, and everybody else has been playing catch-up since. ATI and Matrox are doing some interesting stuff now, and Nvidia learned from 3DFX (whose core business Nvidia ended up buying at fire sale prices) that you can't rest on your laurels in this business.
So yeah, we get new cards every six months, but the end result is constant improvement in the video card market, and that is a good thing.
In addtion to the Windows, Office, and Exchange upgrades that Microsoft is trying to make mandatory, they have instituted a similar scheme covering a product over which they have much more control. By "expiring" MCSE certification for hundreds of thousands of users, they are trying to force people to upgrade to Windows 2000 or Windows XP certification. This provides instant revenue from people paying to take tests and buy test prep books, but it also dovetails nicely with the software upgrade scheme.
Forcing MCSE upgrades creates a pool of people qualified to support the new software that companies are forced to purchase. They actually have the leverage to force IT people to learn new software so companies will have people qualified to install and manage the new stuff, thereby removing one of the biggest roadblocks to constant upgrading.
I know there are some minor changes (Sorry Tom Bombadil), but I believe the movie follows the book's plot pretty closely.
Phantom Menace was a different deal. The trailer showed the fabulous visuals, but didn't clue you in to the fact that the plot sucked and the dialog was lame. With FOTR, we know the story is great. The trailer sure shows that the visuals are great, too.
A movie and a book aren't the same thing, and unfortunately, there are artistic and commercial trade offs in the translations. If you put in ever word in the 400 pages of FOTR, you'd have a really long movie that would not interest enough people to justify the expense involved in making it. I think the film makers have been making an excellent attempt to be as true to the book as they can.
I don't think it's possible to please all the fans of the books. Everyone has an image in their mind of what scenes should look like, and the movie can't match everyone's imagination. The Balrog is an excellent example. Fans can't even agree whether it has wings or not. If Tolkein's words don't make it clear enough, someone will always take exception to what's on the screen. I guess deviating from his words here and there doesn't help, but it's an unfortunate reality when you are dealing with the amount of money necessary to bring the world of Middle Earth to life.
It seems to me that the more outrageous and nonsensical EULA's become, the more the software-buying public will ignore them. Common sense tells us that Microsoft doesn't have the right to restrict the use of their products in this manner. So, since such provisions are obviously bullshit, it's not a great leap to conclude that the rest of the license is probably bullshit, too. When faced with increasing disrespect for EULA's, Microsoft then has whine to congress about 'piracy', and create the BSA to "educate" consumers that, in fact, up is down, wrong is right, and you can't really use FrontPage to make a website critical of Microsoft.
In the last chapter of Steven Levy's excellent book, Hackers, he talks about the first software to include a license with such disclaimers. I want to say it was Lotus 1-2-3, but since I don't have my copy here at work, I can't be sure. People were pretty outraged at the concept. Lotus justified it by saying they were concerned that someone would design a bridge with their software, it would collapse, and they would get sued. Levy summed up by saying that no bridge designed with Lotus software ever collapsed, but now just about every piece of software you can get, no matter how trivial its purpose, comes with disclaimers.
Well, if the government announced they were taking down some illegal websites that are funding terrorist activity, maybe that wouldn't be news for Your Rights Online. But the FBI shut down lots of websites (again, temporarily and incidental to searching for evidence), including one of the largest arabic news sites on the web. And they didn't say why, though the speculation is that at least one of the affected sites was somehow related to terrorism.
As someone else pointed out elsewhere, if this was an ISP that hosted CNN online, you can bet they would have found some less disruptive method of gathering evidence. Obviously, CNN is large enough to have redundant systems and would not be brought down by the search of one ISP, I'm just trying to make a point. This raid violated the free speech rights of many web sites, including that of Al-Jazeera.
This incident brings up some interesting questions. How big and important does a news site have to be before the FBI will respect its right to free speech? Is it okay to trample on the free speech rights of any website hosted by an ISP that also hosts a suspicious one? Does the fact that the Al-Jazeera site is a major source of news for people in Quatar and other middle eastern countries, and not people in the US, mean that it shouldn't enjoy the same kinds of constitutional protections?
These questions don't come up when talking about the Hindu Unity incident.
Or perhaps the ISP just doesn't know.
From the article:
The FBI declined to specify the target of the search warrant, which is under seal in a federal court, except to say in a statement that the search was ``one aspect of a more than two-year investigation that is ongoing.''
The warrant is sealed. That means that law enforcement has demonstrated a compelling reason for portions of it to remain secret. This could mean that the identity of an informant could be compromised, targets of an imminent raid could be alerted, or whatever. They are supposed to release as much of the warrant as possible, but it may be that the ISP was only shown that the FBI could search their premises for any computer data. The crime under investigation doesn't even have to be named. In a situation with a sealed warrant, you just have to trust that the FBI is right.
It would be a lot easier to trust the FBI if it weren't for stuff like the Steve Jackson raid, mentioned in an earlier post, which had a similiarly sealed warrant.
The Hindu Unity website incident is a very different situation. The site had some strong anti-Muslim views, particularly towards Muslims in India. Stuff that could be interpereted as a call for violence against Muslims in India (the current home page has a cartoon of Muslims stabbing to death a Hindu mother). And people complained to the ISP, who told the organization to take their business elsewhere. Here is an article.
The case of the ISP in Texas involves the government shutting down, albeit temporarily and as an incidental consequence of searching for evidence, lots of websites without explanation, only a sealed warrant. This includes one of the most prominent sites news of the middle east that is not controlled by a government of the region.
People get up in arms about controversial websites, like porn sites, hate sites, spammer sites, radical anti-abortion sites, etc, all the time. And sometimes, complaints to the ISP are effective in forcing the site to move to an ISP that is less concerned about complaints from the public. That isn't really news.
The government shutting down 500 mostly arab-related websites without explanation should be considered more newsworthy.
Weird. Do real world economic class/social issues translate to the virtual world? I can't help but think that all he's going to find out is that the people who spend the most time playing have the richest characters, though. The Everquest market shouldn't really follow normal economic rules, because it is a constructed economic model, created to maximize game enjoyment, not reality.
Well, after thinking about it for a second, I feel stupid. I guess the point of Google caching itself would be so you can see the special Korean holiday logo days after it has gone away?
Replying to your sig as well. Do you mean the Korean theme in the Google masthead? If you hover your cursor over it, you will see "Happy Korean Liberation Day". That theme appeared a couple days ago on the anniversary of Japan's surrender at the end of WW II, which also marked the end of Japan's occupation of Korea. It is a holiday in Korea. If you click on the masthead, it goes to the results of a search on Korean holidays.
The article mentions that as of August 2, there was no site for armani.com. That is because Mr. Mani only wanted to have an easy-to-remember email address, which he has had since the late '80's. He has never made a website with that domain name because he doesn't want a bunch of traffic meant for the "real" armani website.
I know Windows best feature is it's supposed ease of use, but I have bought several $50+ books. Some of the more esoteric marketing gimmicks, excuse me, features, are poorly implemented and poorly documented. Books are really the only way around that.
He isn't talking about the content available on the web. Basic economic laws don't apply because you can't pay more and have a faster, more reliable internet connection. You sort of can with Cable or DSL, or even with T-1 or better connections. Even still, there can be a lot of bottlenecks between a particular site and your home or work computer. Your ISP has no control over most of these bottlenecks. That is by design, but it means you can't pay your ISP more and be guaranteed quicker access, because the ISP only can control things up to a certain point.
It is incredibly dangerous to see this as a problem, because the solution is to have a monolithic network that is controlled by a small number of companies. It might be difficult to create, but if the right 4 or 5 companies decided to get together and wall of their parts of the internet, it could happen. These companies would have to beef up infrastructure, to make it worthwhile for everyone to be on their network. Then they could cut off everything on their network to the outside. To get most content, you would have to be with on of the big 4 or 5. You would be left with a few large corporations having absolute control over what would be left of the internet.
What you would essentially have is a small number of failure points (the theoretical internet corporations). They would be much more susceptible to censorship, governmental regulation, and corporate interference.
Why are 2 year old books getting reviewed? How useful are "beginners" guides, or at least beginners to Linux, when they are out of date. If I were to start using Linux today, I'd go out and get the latest version, and I'd want a book that covered it.
/., and the comment is always, "a little out of date, but still some good information." How about reviewing books that aren't out of date?
By all means, seeing reviews of "classic" books, like O'Reilly's Essential System Administration or something would be valuable, but introductory books that are not current are not so valuable. It's not the first review for an older book that I've seen on
I shouldn't really bitch, however, because I'm not spending my time reading and reviewing the latest releases in the computer section of the bookstore.
I had a chance to see the first one a couple months ago, and I was really surprised. I'd forgotten what a truly great action movie it was. Despite the fact that the action doesn't really let up, it never gets too much, as in a Indy wannabe like The Mummy Returns. The second and third were not as great overall, but both had some fun and exciting parts.
I remember an interview with George Lucas, when he was making the Young Indian Jones TV series. He said that people were accusing him of milking the franchise for money. He said if he wanted to do that, he'd just make another sequel. Maybe Phantom Menace didn't do so well at the box office?
In 1998, 3 years ago, Barney lost a similar suit against the Famous Chicken, or San Diego Chicken, whatever it's called. The Chicken had this skit in its act where it would beat up a purple dinosaur that looked a lot like Barney, and Barney wanted it stopped. The Barney guys lost that case 3 years ago. It seems to me that pursueing similar cases after the loss is criminal.
I know that, back in the 80's, Nintendo was sued by Universal Pictures for using the word "Kong" in Donkey Kong. They also sued Coleco, for the ColecoVision version. Nintendo won that case, saying that not only did Universal no longer own the copyright to King Kong, it knew that it didn't because of a previous failed lawsuit. Then Nintendo countersued, and got big damages. It seems that this case is very similar.
While Eckert-Mauchly did sell quite a few of the UNIVAC's, they sold many of them early on with contracts that fixed the price. Many sold for as little as $200,000, while the costs of development were into the millions. When Eckert and Mauchly sold out to Remington Rand, they were paid $100,000 for their remaining share of the company. Much of this went to cover their outstanding debts. I guess they didn't technically go out of business, but they never made much money, and they were facing bankruptcy when they did finally sell. This according the the book ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tradgedies of the World's First Computer by Scott McCartney.
Hmm... I only own one VHS copy of SWTPM, and already they are coming out with the DVD? How can George Lucas make any money if fanboys like me only end up buying 2 copies of his movies?
Without seeing either movie, I will throw out my opinion, for what it's worth. It seems the stories of both movies owe quite a bit to Jules Verne and Edgar Rice Burroughs. But the world of professional animation is a small one, and I'm sure that some of the Disney animators had seen Nadia, whether they admit it or not. Maybe some of the similarities are a tribute to the anime.
It doesn't seem to me that there is enough in common between the two, that didn't already come from Verne and Burroughs, as to make this cause for outrage.
You know, invention is really a continuum. Babbage's Difference Engine could really be considered the first computer. When Eckert and Mauchly made ENIAC, there were plenty of mechanical computing machines in academic and commercial use. There were even some electrical/mechanical computing machines. Eckert and Mauchly's big innovation was creating a completely electrical computing machine, which greatly increased speed. Stored program computing was another innovation. Where on the continuum do you declare "this is the first computer." When it became electrical? When it became programmable? When programs could be stored? To argue that the Manchester Mark I got left out because it was made in Manchester probably not accurate. It gets ignored because there was a lot of new developments in this field at the time, and having a stored program feature isn't distinctive enough for a place in history. In truth, not many people know the names Eckert and Mauchly, though maybe people have heard of ENIAC or UNIVAC.
According to the book ENIAC: The Triumphs and Tragedies of the World's First Computer, the election thing was a bit of a publicity stunt. They had a deal with NBC news to predict the election outcome. UNIVAC did say the Eisenhower would win in a landslide, but all polls said that it would be a close race. So NBC wouldn't announce the computer's prediction, and made the programmers go back and fudge the numbers to make the results more in line with the polls. When Ike did win in a landslide, NBC admitted to the viewers what they did, and that the computer had been right.
And it never actually worked. And it wasn't electric, it was electrical/mechanical.