Microsoft’s Ben Rudolph was at CES this week challenging all comers to take the “Smoked by a Windows Phone $100 challenge.” According to The Verge, Microsoft had 30 wins, 3 losses, and 1 draw.
I’ve been saying forever that Windows Phone 7 is way more innovative than anything coming out of Google. Why? Because Microsoft wasn’t trying to be the next Apple; they were trying to do something different from the ground up and they did. If you’ve used a Windows Phone 7 phone, you know how sweet it is, how fast it is, and how nicely designed it is.
If I ever had to switch from my iPhone to something else, it would be a WP7 device. No doubt about it.
Alabama and LSU met in basketball Wednesday night a mere 48 hours after the Crimson Tide’s 21-0 shutout in the BCS title game, so of course students in Tuscaloosa couldn’t resist reveling in the misery of Tigers fans.
One clever Alabama student poked fun at the LSU football team’s inability to cross midfield until the fourth quarter on Monday night by waving a homemade sign that read “Will LSU cross half court?” The entire Crimson Tide student section gave a mock cheer when Tigers point guard Anthony Hickey dribbled across the mid-court stripe for the first time 20 seconds into the game. And later the students stuck it to LSU once more by chanting “Just like Monday” when Alabama built a 21-point second half lead.
Remember half a decade ago, when the media was pushing story after story about “atrocities” and “torture” in Iraq? There were real acts of cowardly and dishonorable behavior by soldiers in some instances, and they were prosecuted for it. But do you remember the media analysis of why they were occuring? Somehow, it was a reflection on President George W. Bush and his administration that some admittedly terrible things happened in the war zone.
I’m wondering if we are going to hear the same thing about the Marine video? You know, that because of Obama’s prosecution of the war, and the strain that his Afghan surge has put on our soldiers, he bears partial responsibility for the conduct of these Marines.
When people like me ask for voter ID laws to be put in place to protect elections, there’s a reason. We not only have no such laws, we have a laughable system of verification. James O’Keefe proved it this week during the New Hampshire primary.
Would a dead person be allowed to vote? Not only is the answer yes, but then when the hidden camera operators offered to actually show ID, it was refused.
Now, if you’re of the mindset that this sort of thing doesn’t happen a lot, I’d probably be willing to concede the point because we don’t know either way. That being said, since we know it was this easy to do, and since one illegal or illegitimate vote cancels out (e.g.: disenfranchises) one legitimate vote, shouldn’t we be working extra hard to make sure the integrity of our elections is beyond reproach?
And the argument that it “doesn’t happen often” is irrelevant in this case, really, because we have proof that if the nice folks from Project Veritas had bad intentions, this could have easily turned into a case of voter fraud.
But it isn’t just New Hampshire that needs help, either. Check out what’s going on in Wisconsin, the state currently running an effort to recall its governor…
In the City of Milwaukee, Dist 1, a voter used only a magazine subscription invoice as proof of residence, then vouched for someone else’s residency.
1,021 Election Day Registration forms in City of Milwaukee had the proof of residency left blank.
In Greenfield, a voter used their Ohio driver’s license and a passport as proof that they lived in Wisconsin. That same person then corroborated for someone else with the same last name and at the same address, who also only a had passport.
A voter used a Traffic Citation from the State of Illinois to prove Wisconsin Residency.
Several citizens moved to Milwaukee County and registered to vote using out of state drivers licenses for proof of residency. There is nothing on the registration form to indicate the Poll Worker saw anything else to substantiate the residency requirements.
Three individuals used hotel receipts to substantiate their proof of residency. Two also provided out of state drivers licenses and a third person used their military identification card to register and vote.
A citizen registered once using their WI Drivers License then returned to the polling location some time later and registered a second time using a utility bill. In both cases, this person voted. It was not caught by the municipality during their review of forms to update the state Voter Registration System. However, we turned this information over to the Milwaukee County District Attorney office.
Numerous citizens completed their voter registration forms and there was no indication that the Poll Worker verified the eligibility or identity of the person registering to vote.
Numerous corroborators failed to list their address on the registration form as required.
All of that for same day registrations, 33% or more of which were invalid. Now here’s another astonishing factoid:
“We were told this is the first time anyone has done this kind of post-election analysis in the County,” Gamble told MacIver News. “it just floored me to discover they don’t conduct routine quality control checks like this after the election.”
It’s one thing to not do a check during the election, but to not check afterward either? In this country, you have to show a driver’s license to do pretty much anything, and yet we won’t even check the rolls to see who voted afterward?
Whether or not we have a huge widespread problem is open for debate, again, because we don’t have statistics on crime, but when 33% of same day voting registrants in one city (in this case Milwaukee) can register without meeting the standards required, are we really doing our process the best service possible by not making it more stringent and ensuring that it’s held to the highest standards for integrity?
My answer is no, and we need to shape up. It shouldn’t have to come to an election being lost due to voter fraud for us to realize that we have a problem that needs to be fixed.
That’s frightening. There are plenty more pics at the link above (love me? Sure you do). I prefer a girl with curves, but there’s nothing wrong with a “skinny” chick either. The stick figures, however, with the fake boobs and protruding ribs? Yeah, totally not into that, and that’s what we’re meant to believe is “the norm.”
President Obama has picked a strong advocate of immigration reform to head his Domestic Policy Council.
The White House announced Tuesday that Cecilia Muñoz, a former senior vice president of the National Council of La Raza, would replace Melody Barnes at the top of the council. White House press secretary Jay Carney announced the appointment during his press briefing.
Muñoz is now serving as the White House’s director of intergovernmental affairs and is in charge of outreach to state and local governments.
“The president has asked, she has accepted,” Carney said.
Not thrilled that he left the race, and even less thrilled that he is so solidly in the Romney camp, but that being said, he’s quite right here.
And the story he mentioned about Gingrich? Well hell, that’s really interesting. Gingrich worked in the same “industry” Romney did with Bain. Here’s the relevant part of the story:
Mitt Romney isn’t the only presidential candidate with leveraged buyouts on his resume.
Newt Gingrich has spent the past several days assailing Mitt Romney’s business background, suggesting that the former private equity executive “looted” companies and “left people unemployed.”
But here’s an interesting note Gingrich doesn’t mention: Upon leaving Congress in 1999, the former Speaker joined private equity firm Forstmann Little & Co. as a member of its advisory board.
It is unclear how long Gingrich served on the advisory board, or how much he was paid. The campaign has not yet responded to a request for comment.
And then Fortune does us a favor and reminds us of how Gingrich doesn’t love companies that do what Bain did…
During Saturday night’s GOP primary debate in New Hampshire, Gingrich said: “I’m not nearly as enamored of a Wall Street model where you can flip companies, you can go in and have leveraged buyouts, you can basically take out all the money, leaving behind the workers.”
The organization that puts on the Academy Awards has created a new rule aimed at narrowing awards eligibility next year to documentary films that are reviewed in The New York Times or the Los Angeles Times.
Why deputize newspaper film critics as arbiters of whether a movie qualifies for an Oscar?
It’s part of an effort to shrink the number of qualifying films and weed out movies designed primarily for TV. “The more the merrier” is not the attitude at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, where members of the documentary branch have become overrun by scores of documentaries that are truly destined only for TV.
“If a documentary film is aiming for a real theatrical release, a New York Times or an L.A. Times review is the ultimate goal,” says Rob Epstein (pictured above), head of the AMPAS documentary branch and a two-time Oscar winner for The Times of Harvey Milk (1984) and Common Threads: Stories from the Quilt (1989). “If the principle outlet for a film is television and it’s only [renting] a theater for Academy consideration, most likely this film is seeking to avoid a New York Times or L.A. Times theatrical review.”
So if you don’t get a review by two ideologically identical liberal newspapers, you don’t get nominated. Why not just add the Washington Post to get the full desired closed-door effect?
Yeah, that ought to go really well. I’m sure everyone will totally get a fair shake.
In the early days of social search on Google, the company used data from third-party service like Twitter, Facebook and others. Google let all of these deals expire in favor of fully concentrating on Google+. Google told Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan that it would would work with others if they were willing to give Google deep access to their data. The chance that Facebook, which already has a good relationship with Bing, would give Google full access to its data – and maybe even its users private data – isn’t highly unlikely.
That’s Not “My World”
For the time being then, Google’s interpretation of what “your world” looks like will remain very limited – maybe even to the point where those personal results you do see aren’t even that useful because almost all your real friends are on Facebook and Twitter instead of Google+.
I could see integrating everything in and doing this, but that’s not what they’re doing. Instead they’re turning their social results into a promotional tool for Google+ (if you have a + account, something most people I know do not).
Had they integrated Facebook and Twitter (and actually they allowed Twitter to disappear out of results) and +, then the “your world” moniker would be way more accurate. With just integration with Google+, you’ll understand if I (and most people who aren’t fellating everything that comes out of Mountain View) am wholly underwhelmed.
Last year one of the greatest logical inconsistencies of reflexive bike lane hatred, often said within the same breath, was that a) bike lanes are unnecessary because no one rides in them and b) bike lanes are too dangerous for pedestrians to cross because they’re filled with riders. As has been pointed out by far smarter people than I, both things can not be true.
In this new year I’ve noticed a new and equally inconsistent piece of logic. It goes something like this:
Now that he mentions it, that’s totally the way it’s being reported. It doesn’t slow traffic, but it makes traffic slow and no one uses them anyway, but they’re crowded with riders and dangerous.
How can people harbor that many contradictions about one subject?
Intel’s Mooley Eden was the key speaker at today’s Intel CES 2012 press conference. During the press conference, Intel focused squarely on their ultrabooks and the developments that they were bringing to the marketplace as well as the innovations their partners were bringing as well. Mooley went through a few demos and one of them was a demo of Intel Ivy Bridge’s graphical capabilities. The game that Intel had decided to demo was a commonplace racing game by Codemasters called F1 2011. This game is without a doubt a very graphically intensive game and while Intel wished to display the graphical capabilities of their Sandy Bridge based Ultrabooks, they also displayed a gross distrust of their own demo.
Mooley got behind one of the Ultrabooks and set himself up behind a racing wheel. Upon doing so the demonstration appeared to hesitate and you could, for a split second, see that this was not actually the game itself but rather the game recorded on a different system which was then saved as a video file and played through VLC.
Now before you go ahead and tell me it was part of the plan, it’s clearly not. Intel swears they were just doing this for expediency sake. If that’s the case, then why did he have a wheel in front of him and why was he pretending to play it?
No, Intel, you’ve simply been caught lying. AMD must have them crapping their pants if they’re out there faking demos.
[F]or all the sound and fury — and beating drums in Zuccotti Park — almost everything that people presume about inequality in America is wrong.
For example, nearly all reporting on income inequality in America has suggested that the incomes of the rich have been rising, while incomes for the rest of us have been stagnant or even declining. But that may represent a significant misreading of the data.
Most studies of inequality, including the recent widely reported study by the Congressional Budget Office, rely on IRS-reported taxable income. But, as studies by the Cato Institute’s Alan Reynolds and others show, reports of skyrocketing incomes among the top 1 percent of earners may be distorted by changes in the tax code that have resulted in more wealth being reported as taxable income. These tax changes caused businesses to switch from filing under the corporate tax system to filing as individuals, and executives to switch from accepting stock options taxed as capital gains to nonqualified stock options taxed as salaries. Simultaneously, the reductions in income-tax rates in 1986 caused much previously unreported income to show up on tax returns.
At the same time, incomes among lower- and middle-income workers have been shifting from cash wages to non-cash benefits such as health insurance and pensions. These non-cash benefits frequently do not show up as taxable income even though they have value to the worker. In fact, a recent study by Mark Warshawsky of the Social Security Advisory Board suggests that nearly all of the recent increase in earnings inequality “can be explained by the rapid increase in the cost of health insurance employee benefits, and that therefore [there] has not been as significant increase, if any, in inequality of compensation.”
Similarly, many studies looking at low-income Americans fail to account for non-cash social-welfare benefits such as food stamps, housing subsidies, and Medicaid. Fully accounting for all of these factors suggests that the gap between rich and poor may not be nearly as large as thought, and that inequality may not be growing at all.
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