Category: Uncategorized

Very funny.

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See, when a real newspaper (or station) like CNN or the New York Times or The Washington Post do a story, they fact check. Facts are these really difficult things to get for many bloggers because they have an agenda. Always. Like me. This whole post has an agenda behind it. I’m sick of hearing that “this election wasn’t fair” or “Bush stole the election… again!” You know why? Because I read more than the circle-jerk of blogs that always agree with me or on which I comment.

Take for instance this story from the Post (reprinted on the Seattle Times website) about the allegations of vote theft, hacked votes and phantom voters.

One by one, it pops the balloon of conspiracy surrounding the vote. It also raises an interesting point; if any of these theories were true, why isn’t their candidate saying anything? You would think that John Kerry, of all people, would see the benefit of pointing out that over 1000% of the people registered in one Ohio country voted for Bush.

But he’s not. Why? Because someone looked at why the numbers were that off.

The Ohio vote-fraud theory appears to stem from the curious ways of the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections. During even-numbered years, the county’s canvassing board posts vote totals that include the results from congressional districts outside the county that spill over Cuyahoga’s borders. The quirk made it look as if the county had 90,000 more votes than voters.

That’s all it took? Christ, with a truth threshold that low, maybe it’s time to start looking for Han Solo’s name in a vote register somewhere.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, vote discrepancies are common in elections, especially national elections. Why? Because voters are stupid. They mangle ballots, they mark things twice. Not to mention that at a macro level, counting that many things accurately is pretty damn hard. An operation at that level will have a tolerance. Elections are no different. Statistically, the “anomalies” in this election are within the “anomalies” in other elections.

In other words, move on, nothing to see here.

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This book sounds like a great reference for movies, movies that don’t suck. Glad to see that Ronin made the list; I love that movie.

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Submission, by Theo Van Gogh

Theo Van Gogh (who was related to the artist of the same name) was brutally murdered on the streets of Amsterdam by an Islamic fascist for daring to make an eleven-minute film about the oppression of women in Muslim society….

Go. See it now. Now. Right here. It’s eleven minutes. Eleven minutes that illustrate what a life is worth to some people.

[via Michael J. Totten]

Dan Gilmor, author, Journalist (that with a capital J, mind you), and Blogger (also with a capital) has a problem. Actually he has many problems, but this particular one is a commenter he’s acquired in recent months, a troll. Granted, a troll of the worst kind, but a troll none-the-less.

The troll has become somewhat of a problem for Dan because, as trolls are known to do, this one has mired up many a comments section of Dan’s less-than-technology angled posts. See, Dan likes to trade his popularity for the Left, spinning any incident of marginal importance as the Tea Party du jour. His troll enjoys spewing idiocy for the Right. To me, this seems like a pretty fair balance in the Commons that Dan has so dilligently put forth as the New Media. You know, the one where everyone has a voice.

Oh, unless you disagree with Dan. Then he’ll threaten you with a new *shiver* Comments Policy. That’s right, if Dan doesn’t get his way, he’s taking his ball and going home, closing comments on any future political posts. Of course, a troll is better than that and will comment of political stories in the comments of other posts, so the likely outcome would be no comments anywhere on Dan’s website.

Pity, he almost got it.

The original poster on this kuro5hin article starts out trying to cast doubt on the Ohio numbers from the election. Fine, nothing new there. But, someone who actually knows how to crunch numbers pipes in in the comments section with some pretty interesting numbers and, well, basically says “I don’t see anomolies, but if you do, refute this data”.

This is why numbers, and not emotions, matter in elections. Because when you get down to it, you can spin “voter attitudes” and “I remember 2000, and this year was different”, but if you can’t quantify it, it doesn’t count.

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So, apparently if you own a NBA team, you no longer get to have an opinion. Mark Cuban, owner of the Mavricks, Benefactor, and blogger, has been fined by the NBA for this entry in his personnal blog. (He has held back on directly commenting, and just announced the fine.)

He also asked what the blogoshpere (I hate that term) thinks of this.

I think it’s bullshit. My company is ISO certified. If a member company got fined every time a they complained about some aspect of the ISO board, ISO would be richer than the United States. How does an orginization think it’s going to grow or address issues that members have with it when they won’t even let you voice your opinion? Is the NBA that scared of what one owner thinks that they have to try and silence him through fines (which, by they way NBA, if you havne’t noticed, it’s not working).

Does it affect how I interact with the league? Not really. I gave up on the league a long time ago. Hell, I live in Detroit and I didn’t even watch the playoffs. The league is more interested in making superstars. It’s better business. It’s easier to polarize the league and concentrate on three or four uberteams than it is trying to make a wholly competitive league (look at baseball for the eventual outcome of this). I find it amusing to watch Cuban go at it with people who still don’t get it, and never will. Sorry you’re out some cash Mark; but if your opinion is worth every dime, if to no one else but yourself, than that’s good enough for me.

From El Reg:

Trippi isn’t the only one to blame. All the blogging believers are at fault.

Even if Jesus set up a blogging cafe in the center of Rockport, Texas and extolled the virtues of a woman’s right to choose while snapping pictures of gay weddings with his Nokia, it would have made no difference to this election. All of the bloggers would have told themselves about the miracle, while Bobby and Bobby Sue went right along with their business.

The longer the Democrats pretend that their vacuum of righteousness is actually reaching the public at large, helped by NPR, the more trouble they will be in. Be it an internet wasteland like New Mexico or fat pipe rich Connecticut, it doesn’t matter. George W. Bush kicked your blogging ass.

’nuff said.

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Alice and Bill have an article today about some of the upcoming supercomputers.

But the big news is IBM’s prototype Blue Gene/L, being developed for the Livermore Labs. It currently runs at 70.72 teraflops –but they’re still tweaking it. When the final version is finished, it should hit 360 teraflops without breaking a sweat.

The current record? Two years ago, 35.86 teraflops. The newest computer, IBM’s Blue Gene, potentially could increase the record by a factor of 10. What are they going to use this for, you might ask. Well, at least they’re doing the right thing. Blue Gene would (finally) be powerful enough to do protein folding, something which is currently being done through distributed computing (and a very worthwhile cause, I might add). Protein folding could lead to huge advances in the understands and eventual treatment of Alzheimer’s, Mad Cow (BSE), CJD, ALS, Huntington’s, and Parkinson’s disease.

Computer science (the real science part) is finally producing machines that can do things not just that humans cannot do, but doing things we never thought we’d desire to do. Sure, playing chess against a machine is a novel activity, but divining intelligence from such an encounter is another thing altogether. When we do reach the computing power of a human brain, what then? It’s not like we’ll stop development of computers; we’ll obviously surpass that level quickly. And that’s a big deal. For the first time in history, mankind will have access to answers from an intelligence more powerful than himself (faith-based Q&A aside).

How does that molecule act when we drop in, say, this new chemical? Does the reaction differ in someone who is taking drug A? The computer will tell you, accurately and relatively quickly. Whole buildings will be devoted to simulating individuals many times over, simply to test reactions to, well, anything we can imagine.

It’s a very exciting, and scary, time.