Economist endorses Anybody But Bush

The Economist has endorsed John Kerry for president - they're not too happy about it and are basically casting a vote for ABB (Anbody But Bush):

Furthermore, as Mr Bush has often said, there is a need in life for accountability. He has refused to impose it himself, and so voters should, in our view, impose it on him, given a viable alternative. John Kerry, for all the doubts about him, would be in a better position to carry on with America's great tasks.

The people who run GeorgeWBush.org (which is an anti-Bush web site) have been getting the mail for GeorgeWBush.com. It's mostly internal campaign emails from people who thing that Bush should be president but can't type. And if you access the "internets" from outside the US, you probably cannot even access the president's Web site. Take that, ya lousy foreigners!

Missing Explosives

Educated Guesswork breaks down what those 377 tons of missing Iraqi explosives can do:

• 377 tons is about 5 pounds of high explosive for every single American soldier in Iraq.
• Your industry standard M18 Claymore (with a killing range of 50-100m) contains a pound and a half of C-4. A garden variety Improvised Explosive Device (enough to take out a HumVee) looks to be substantially less than a pound.
• 1 lb/IED, that's 2000 explosions a day for the next year

That's reassuring. But don't worry - it's all OK because it wasn't nucular!

X-Raying Cars

The Department of Homeland Security is testing the process of X-Raying cars for a ferry in Delaware. Autoblog makes the point that they would be better off X-Raying cargo containers coming into ports. Maybe - cars have a very defined shapes whereas the contents of shipping containers do not. But it seems like this would be more likely to be used for finding drugs and illegal immigration.

Prop 63 Cash Grab

California has yet another proposition this year - in this case, Prop 63 is to add a tax to take care of the mentally ill. The kicker is that this tax will only be paid by residents who earn more than $1 million. While this is likely to be popular with those who earn less than $1 million, it sets kind of a bad precident. Given that other propositions have limited how much of the tax revenue can be spent on things like Education, etc so everything else has to fight for the scraps, this is a way of doing an end run around all this. Jeff Nolan thinks that this is bad news but is voting for it anyway!

California is stuck in a time warp where we can continue to tax an increasingly smaller group of taxpayers for the greater bulk of state funding, and spend like a drunken sailor on shore leave. It's a slow train wreck and until the train fully derails and burns, the citizens of the State will not be forced to come to realize the full reality of how fucked up our fiscal structure is. We far outspend our revenues and borrow from the Street to make up for operational funding requirements, rather than cut spending. Every ballot features new bond measures, and now a voter inflicted tax on a group who can't muster opposition strength. It's cynical and disasterous at the same time. So I figure I should just vote for this measure and do what I can to speed up the train wreck.

Awesome!

REPORT: Hands-free cell phones aren't any safer.

A few years back, there was a big push to get everyone to use hands-free cellphones while driving (It's the next best thing to paying attention to the road!) as a safety measure. The report is in and apparently phone related accidents haven't gone down (to be completely fair, the number of idiots holding phones while they driver seems to be going up, not down from my personal experience). This seems kind of obvious - it's what your focusing on that makes the difference to how you drive. And talking / listening to someone on the phone is not like listening to the radio. Focus people!

Windows Ultimate Boot CD

Make a super Windows recovery CD -- make one now before the worst happens! Maybe if AOL made those annoying AOL 9.0 CDs double as system recovery CDs people wouldn't throw them out right away.

Apple Store Mini

My wife and I attended the opening of the Oakridge Mall Apple Store in San Jose yesterday. Ostensibly this was to get a free T-shirt (and it's very close to home) so why not. I've been to a bunch of Apple stores and there is one word to describe this one. Small. Not regular small. Really small. Most of the back of the store is taken up with the Genius Bar but the most noticible thing was what was missing. No cash register. Well there is one, it's just a kiosk built into the wall. Oddly the center of the room was completely empty so maybe they just did it for the opening.

UPDATE: Apparently Scoble was there but I guess I missed him.

Tim Bray on Firing the Boss

Tim Bray is voting for Kerry. Or rather he would if he were American. In his eyes, it's just firing th boss for doing a crappy job.

If you’re running a company and there’s a general perception that your CEO is an asshole, eventually it won’t matter that much whether he really is or isn’t; the perception will become an obstacle. And right now, the United States of America is facing that obstacle.

John Stewert on Crossfire

The Daily Show's John Stewart was recently on CNN Crossfire and the result was hi-larious. Stewart took the program to task for being a soapbox for extremist blowhards on the left and right to go at it (which, to be fair, it is) rather than having discussions on the important issues of the day. Tucker Carlson just wanted Stewart to make funny jokes and plug his book. The conversation took a nasty turn after this interchange:

STEWART: Now, this is theater. It's obvious. How old are you?
CARLSON: Thirty-five.
STEWART: And you wear a bow tie.

Transcript
MP3
Video
UPDATE: Stewart responds on the daily show.

Imperfect Surveys and Focus Groups

Raymond Chen has an excellent article on the various way that people distort surveys done for product focus groups. People often say what they think the interviewer wants to hear or the perspecitive that they like to think they have rather than the truth. There is another aspect of systematic bias that can occur in this type of situation - bias from the people operating the survey. This is a lot easier to occur (intentionally or otherwise) in the form of biased questions, samples and environment. This is also very prevalant in political polling - it's always struck me as odd that there is such a thing as a republican pollster. In the current presidential campaign, all these factors come into play. In particular, the likely voters that everyone is trying to measure. Problem #1 - if you didn't vote in the last election (say if you couldn't vote because you weren't 18 yet) then your not a likely voter. Problem #2 - only have a cell phone or maybe you don't want to hear from telemarketers and don't pick up the phone at night? Then you won't be called and your not part of the poll. As you might gather, this tends to skew polls to older voters. Of course these people know the polls are intrinsically biased, they just don't care - polls are just another form of PR at this point. If you tell enough people that candidate X will win, then people who are for candidate Y won't bother to vote. The Democratic primaries were a good example of how divorced from reality polls can be.

Blogs are catching on!

This may come as a suprise but this blogs thing is catching on. Blogs was a category on Jeopardy last week. And Steven Levy has a report on the Web 2.0 conference (I'm generally skeptical of anything with a version # in it that isn't software...) - the next big thing is RSS! The power of the "internets".

Scoble: I'm a failure

Scoble claims he is a lousy evangelist because he can't convince 4 of his collegues to buy table PCs:

I'm a failure as a Tablet PC evangelist. Bill Gates, you should just fire me now and make me go to work for Donald Trump or something. Here's why I'm a failure. Four friends have not taken my advice to buy a Tablet PC. Lenn Pryor. Jeff Sandquist. Dave Winer. Buzz Bruggeman.

Ouch! 4 people may not be enough of a trend to commit sepaku over! And Scoble, remember what happened to Bradford on the Apprentice!

Mr President ... your pants are on fire

BUSH: Non-homeland, non-defense discretionary spending was raising at 15 percent a year when I got into office. And today it's less than 1 percent, because we're working together to try to bring this deficit under control.

I guess he ain't working quite hard enough. The chart above and the data below are from the Congressional Budget Office. (Thanks to Marginal Revolution):

• Nixon/Ford: 6.8% per year
• Carter: 2.0% per year
• Reagan: -1.3% per year
• Bush 1: 4.0% per year
• Clinton: 2.5% per year
• Bush Jr: 8.2% per year

The most amazing thing about the presidential election is that Bush is still in it at all. People are going to get the government they deserve if they vote for a second Bush administration.
FactCheck.org on Debate lies galore.
Lots of charts indicating how bad Government spending is under Bush from the Congressional Budget Office

Presidential Debate II - On the meaning of "facile"

I watched most of this and listened to it a bit in the car. Here is the transcript - I thought I heard Bush say the following but I had to double check:

BUSH: It also means that we can target things easier and move more quickly, which means we need to be lighter and quicker and more facile and highly trained.

Hmmm - from dictionary.com:

fac·ile (adj.):

1. Done or achieved with little effort or difficulty; easy. See Synonyms at easy.
2. Working, acting, or speaking with effortless ease and fluency.
3. Arrived at without due care, effort, or examination; superficial: proposed a facile solution to a complex problem.
4. Readily manifested, together with an aura of insincerity and lack of depth: a facile slogan devised by politicians.

Personally I don't think his plans can get much more facile but Bush may suprise you! From my perspective, the two best questions were the following:

FOWLER: President Bush, 45 days after 9/11, Congress passed the Patriot Act, which takes away checks on law enforcement and weakens American citizens' rights and freedoms, especially Fourth Amendment rights.
With expansions to the Patriot Act and Patriot Act II, my question to you is, why are my rights being watered down and my citizens' around me? And what are the specific justifications for these reforms?
BUSH: I appreciate that.
I really don't think your rights are being watered down. As a matter of fact, I wouldn't support it if I thought that.

And later:

GRABEL: President Bush, during the last four years, you have made thousands of decisions that have affected millions of lives. Please give three instances in which you came to realize you had made a wrong decision, and what you did to correct it. Thank you.
BUSH: ...That's really what you're -- when they ask about the mistakes, that's what they're talking about. They're trying to say, Did you make a mistake going into Iraq? And the answer is, Absolutely not. It was the right decision...

He goes on to not answer her queston (giving no examples in which he was wrong), basically saying that he hasn't made any mistakes. One characteristic of all idiots, is that they cannot admit when they are wrong.
And yes, by Bush's definition of the 900,000 small business owners (who would pay more taxes as a result of Kerry's proposed tax plan - the real number is actually more like 450,000), Bush does own a Lumber company.

Creed: Can't sue a band for sucking

Yet another landmark decision in American Jurisprudence from Creed v. Fans:

Creed's attorneys filed for a motion to dismiss the class-action suit on July 8, which a judge is expected to rule on in September. "The motion basically argues that you can't bring a lawsuit against a band for sucking," said Daniel J. Voelker, attorney for the disgruntled fans, "that this is a subjective issue."

Tim Bray in "TV Trouble"

Tim Bray is having TV troubles - wherein Tim learns that life on the cutting edge of television technology ain't all it's cracked up to be:

I’ve never had a TV show me a crash-dump before. Anyhow, more phone time, but basically reboot and reset and cycle the power enough times and that does it.

That ain't good!

What's next after the X Prize?

Now that Dick Ruttan and his team (his sideburns!) have won the Ansari X-Prize its worth looking at where things will go from here. Hopefully this is just the beginning and some day, we'll all be able to fly in a Wile-E-Coyote designed rocket plane into space! John Robb has a pretty good handle on these things (he was a military figher pilot if I recall correctly) and outlines a timeline for what should happen (and what the Y and Z prize should be).

Do Terror Alerts work?

I think we all know that they don't work but Bruce Schneier delves into why they don't. Poking holes in "Lousy Security Theatre" is a bit of a theme for Scheier but his words ring very true:

And the alerts don't result in a more vigilant America. It's one thing to issue a hurricane warning, and advise people to board up their windows and remain in the basement. Hurricanes are short-term events, and it's obvious when the danger is imminent and when it's over. People can do useful things in response to a hurricane warning; then there is a discrete period when their lives are markedly different, and they feel there was utility in the higher alert mode, even if nothing came of it.

Schneier points out that Israel (which has terrorist attacks weekly if not daily) doesn't use a warning system because they don't work. The current system ("Something might happen somewhere so go about your business") smacks of bureacratic CYA. When there is a terrorist attack, the administration will be able to say - "Ah, it was Code Orange! The system works!"

Fancy Email Buttons

If you want an image for your email address (die! spammers die!) here is a site that will generate one for you:

Ferrari 430

The new Ferrari's are out and, as usual, I want one! Channel 4 in the UK has a review of the new Ferrari 430. This is the replacement for the 360 Modena and it's quite an improvement. Besided the usual improvements in power and torqe, it has features like F1 launch control and an electronic differential. Cars typically have a fixed differential that has to work in all kinds of corners - in the last decade, electronic differentials have become common in Formula 1 to allow the driver to adjust dynamically as the car is moving and to use different settings for different corners on the track.

Derek is mad at NPR

Derek is mad at NPR for (essentially) firing Bob Edwards and he's not going to take it any more. He's withholding his membership out of spite. I also wasn't happy that they got rid of Edwards (and then tried to spin it as a happy retirement) - but they're not exactly CBS or Newsweek at this point so I'll continue to give them money.

Dear Mr President ... Your Economic plan sucks!

200 Economics and Buisiness School professors have gotten together to write an open letter to President Bush on what a lousy job he has done on the economy and how his economic policies are terrible. And the retort from the right wing blogosphere on this? That the only reputable people on the list are from Harvard Business School which is (clearly!) liberally biased. Riiiight. First, if it's true, does it really matter who is saying it? Is that really the best counter argument you can come up with? Second, if you look at the list, there are people from Stanford and the MIT Sloan School which are apparently second rate schools (and liberal to boot I bet!). It's really kind of interesting how people reflexively associate human attributes to organizations - I've met some pretty right wing people to come out of Harvard come to think of it. OTOH, if you've even visited a University your already a liberal elite (aka a reader!) so shut your pie hole!

The Poor Man on Bush's shoddy attendance record. He has taken more vacation than any president in history...

GMail has RSS!

I can't seem to get it to work yet but GMail is now offering an RSS (well ATOM) feed of the new items in your inbox. There currently seems to be something wierd about the authenticaton system - I think the session based GMail authentication system is interfering with the HTTP authentication system they are apparently using and it won't accept my username / password. This seems to be the first widespread example of an RSS feed that uses HTTP authentication and SSL to personalize it. UPDATE: The ATOM button described in the article is now gone, but my RSS reader was still attached to the feed URL which is https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom and is now authenticating with HTTP Authentication. Yay! If anything will push people to use desktop aggregators, this will.