The United States is virtually certain to elect someone besides a Caucasian male this November.
I find several of Palin’s positions to be alarming, but I am glad to see even our conservative party show signs of unconventional thinking.
The election is underway!
I have not watched a moment of the convention this week, but after reading the transcript of Al Gore’s speech last night, I was reminded that it is still worth getting involved in politics. I will not pick a favorite site, but I urge everyone to take a few minutes to read the transcript or watch a video.
I only wish Gore would have shown the depth and passion of the last few years in the 2000 election.
I would love to see a Gore vs Bloomberg contest, or even a Gore and Bloomberg ticket, but I suppose at least one side of the current 2008 lineup will not leave us in fiscal and cultural ruin. I am no longer excited, but remain hopeful that we as a country will begin to acknowledge the pain and sacrifice necessary to live responsibly as world citizens.
It is worth paying attention all the time.
Obama made his pick today in DE Senator Joe Biden. The author of the RAVE act will now have a shot at the white house, and could leave open a reliable Senate seat in the small state.
Biden has been voting a lot better lately about issues important to those of us with more computers than girlfriends, but I do not feel he is the best choice to get through November or beyond the election.
Depending on who McCain fires back with, this race may shockingly get competitive. With national polls showing voters view McCain’s adopted supply-side platform as “better for economy”, anything could happen this fall. As always, I am in shock in my own little bubble-world.
I had a great conversation with friends at a dinner last night regarding the “rewriting” of history, especially on the Internet. Our discussion centered on a mailing list’s responses to an “altered” history of early networking protocols courtesy of the NSF.
Understandibly, many of the simultanious pioneers of the intertubes felt slighted, and are each setting the record straight based on their own observations. Who is right? Probably all of them! The distributed computing wonder that is bringing this post to you has so many origins and developed so rapidy that it would be almost impossible to create a linear timeline of the progress.
Slashdot linked to a fascinating blog post this morning that shows a much clearer and widespread rewriting of history, relating to the age of some Chinese gymnists in the Olympic Games. Take a minute to follow the instructions at http://strydehax.blogspot.com before a small part of net (and meat) history vanishes forever. It will be interesting to see if there is a reaction to institutional cheating in sport made possible by digital whitewashing.
In the age of such rapid development, consumption, and replacement of information, we need to start thinking more seriously about how we can create and archive the data and records that have become so important to our society.
UPDATE 8/22/08: NBC just reported that the IOC is looking into the issue. Nice work Strydehax!
There are finally the dawn of confirmation of service interruptions on Slashdot (link) and MacRumors (link). Here at IvoryTerminal, a hotbed of iPhones, we have two votes blaming AT&T and one blaming Apple for poor iPhone performance.
Personally, since Thursday, my data connections have not been working. My phone shows full 3G service, and my phone indicates it is moving data, but pages will not load, IMAP commands will not be sent to my server, and I receive both timeouts and a variety of non-response errors coming up in bubbles on my device.
Obviously, there is a fairly serious problem with data delivery in my local stomping grounds. I believe this has to do with the number of iPhones being sold and activated every day, saturating the towers that are not being fortified at the same rate. I would guess that we will soon being hearing about limitations of streaming audio applications like Pandora and AOL Radio.
It is hard to believe that a single device can be responsible for bringing a network its knees, but there are several supporting factors. The most obvious being the new AT&T network. Like any other large and complicated implementation of hardware and software, there is no way to account for every variable in models or tests. The original iPhone made waves last year when it came to light that iPhone users were using data at a much higher rate than groups of their smartphone peers. With the 3G iPhone and the price subsidy, the volume of activations is huge, and the applications give each phone the ability to use much more data than before.
In the near future, AT&T will be introducing a 3G Blackberry, which will almost certainly be the AT&T competitor for the iPhone in volume and bandwidth usage. It will be interesting to see the effect on the network when this device and others are added to the mix.
At this time, the best we can hope for is a firmware update if the iPhone is to blame, or an AT&T tower buildout, which is no sure thing and certain to take longer. In the mean time, switching to EDGE seems to work…
About a year ago, I bought an Intel Mac Mini as a file/media server for my home. Soon after it was up and running, I realized it was more than enough computer to satisfy many of my daily needs. I have faster computers around for more specialized tasks, but the combination of size, power consumption, and reliability turned the little guy into my primary home computer.
I paired the Mini with a WUXGA monitor, and as always, wished for more desktop space. With integrated graphics, and no opportunities for conventional hardware expansion, I looked at the other choices for OSX machines. The other desktop models did not match my needs and price range. I had a low-end Powermac G5 a few years ago, and the cost of entry was $1500. Today, the cheapest Mac Pro is $2300, and frankly much more than I was willing to pay for a general task machine. I view the imac as an overpriced under-specced machine, coupled to either a sub-standard display, or one that is too pricey to eliminate at every upgrade. The 24” WUXGA model also would not match my current panels. I have two very nice 23” cinema displays, and want to keep them in use as much as possible until the next generation of panels and resolution independent OS’s make 200dpi+ a reality.
I began looking at unconventional options to satisfy my want for more desk space. My first was the Matrox DualHead2Go Digital Edition (~$225 new, I paid $180 used, link). I bought the Matrox after reading glowing reviews, and was expecting a happy experience. Unfortunately, the 2xWUXGA resolution was too high was the unit to output the conventional 60hz frame rate, and was reduced to 58hz. With digital panels, this leads to an unacceptable fuzzy resolution. Curious if the resolution issue was limited to my mini and not the Matrox, I hooked up the unit to machines with more powerful video cards in Windows and OSX flavors. The unacceptable output continued. Currently, I am using this unit to power two SXGA monitors. It works perfectly, but the two monitors are not enough desktop space for me to use in a primary fashion.
My next purchase was the Tritton Technologies See2 Xtreme (~$95 new, link), which uses a USB 2.0 connection to output to a video card. There are many other USB options, but none of them advertise resolutions higher than 1600*1200, which would not work with my monitor. I bought the See2 Xtreme without finding a user review, and was disappointed when I received the box and discovered that it did not support WUXGA or OSX. Thinking I read the manufacturer specs incorrectly or received an inferior specced sub-model, I logged onto their web site and was relieved to find WUXGA and OSX support. Clearly, this company is improving their product fast enough to make their packaging too conservative, always a good sign. The OSX driver was an online download and an easy install. After installation I hooked up the second display and saw black. It turns out the unit defaults to XGA resolution, which cannot be output on my panel. I hooked up a smaller panel, got the display working, and changed the resolution to 1920*1200. The display immediately looked beautiful. I thought I had found perfect success, until I moved a program window onto the second panel. The display output is very sharp, however the frame rate must be somewhere between 1-15 fps depending on what is displayed. Video is a joke, and even movement of the mouse is stuttered. I reduced the colors for the panel in OSX hoping to clear things up, and it became better, but far from acceptable. I have yet to try the mature Windows driver, but I am hoping it provides a much better experience, which will give me the hope that the OSX driver will improve.
At this time, I still consider a 2*WUXGA output from a Mini an unfinished quest. These workarounds feel more like hardware hacks than finished options, and each choice has obvious flaws. However, the See2 Xtreme is clearly farther along than the DualHead2Go. I have both panels running at this time, but only use the secondary one for largely stationary program windows and browser pages. It is fantastic for things like stock charts. In the mean time, I will keep looking and update as the Tritton OSX drivers are improved.
Funnyordie.com released a response to McCain’s negative “Celebrity” ad ( link ) on Tuesday. I found the original ad very odd, and will be anxious to see reactions after everyone gives it a second look based on the reply.
I find it fascinating that a spoof could contain such a powerful message about the often abstract focus of campaign advertisements. This has been picked up by the blogging arms of the WSJ and other sources, and I am thinking it will get its first of 900 replays on CNN around lunchtime tomorrow. This may be an excuse to visit the sushi bar in town with news on at lunch.
It is refreshing to see such an obvious slight handled in a playful and relevant manner, a first in the 2008 campaign.
GM posted a quarterly loss of about 2.5x their current market cap today.
They are also slowing down leasing because the residual values of their SUVs are too low. To me, this seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy, erasing consumer confidence in the retail purchase price of these vehicles.
The banking world is going wild today, and this is going to give me a great case study to write about for school.. If you are interested in volitility, I would give this one a watch this afternoon.