Monthly Archives: May 2008

Politics

I've Just About Had it with Hillary.

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There are people who follow this stuff a lot closer than I do, but as far as I understand it, ALL democratic candidates agreed that Florida and Michigan’s delegates should not be counted because of what they did with their primary dates (moving them way up).

In addition, ALL candidates removed their names from the Michigan ballot in compliance with rules set forth by the Democratic party. Except for one. Hillary.

A proposed solution in Michigan to have their delegates seated at the convention would give Hillary 59 delegates, Barack 49 delegates, and the 29 super delegates would be able to vote for whoever they wanted. That sure sounds pretty fair to me. But not to Hillary.

I’m tired of her lies. I’m tired of her bending or breaking the rules, the truth and the numbers to try to make it look like she has the lead in popular votes, and I’m tired of her speeches which don’t seem uplifting or promising to me.

http://tinyurl.com/6p8jex

Microsoft, Technology

Did I Find What I was Looking For?

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Vista’s telling me that no items matched my search (when, in fact, there are actually items that match what I was searching for, but hey – whadaya gonna do).

Well if no items matched my search, why does Vista ask me if I found what I was looking for? Wouldn’t a better message be “Because Vista could not find any items matching your search, please choose from the following two options: (search within file contents and advanced, as shown below).

Search in file contents? Why the hell didn’t Vista do that when I clicked Start and then put my search string in the “Start Search” textbox on the start menu? I mean, what did Vista think I wanted to search? Just file names? How Windows 95-esque.

“Advanced” search? Why do I have to do an advanced search to find a simple file that is stored in plain ASCII text in a non-system folder?

I should add that it took Vista TWO MINUTES to complete the search where it didn’t even find what it should have found. I just got this brand new machine here at work on Friday. So the hard drive has very little spaced used on it in relation to its 150 GB size.

This is just an absolutely terrible implementation of [not] finding things on one’s computer. Rubbish. It’s like Microsoft made no progress at all on this in the past 10 years, and that’s a LONG time in the computer industry.

Microsoft, Technology

Question

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If I have a photo that is of higher resolution than my monitor, why is Vista too stupid to scale it down proportionally so I can see it as my desktop background without it being distorted?

Doesn’t it seem that something this trivial would have made it in to a product that took more than five years to create?

Politics

May 6th Primaries and the "News"

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I was interested in seeing what happened earlier today in the Democratic primaries with Obama and Clinton, and one thing that stood out, believe it or not, was the MEDIA. I probably could have gone to xyz.com to get results, and more than likely the updates would have been timely, but perhaps I’m a throw-back to “ancient” times – I watched the news. I mainly watched CNN, with occasional switches to the Fox News channel.

I won’t get in to all the cheap shots that Hannity took (that was the guy who was on when I got home from work around 7:00). 

At one point when I was watching CNN, Wolf Blitzer, who honestly is a guy I know very little about, really rubbed me the wrong way. He was talking to two Mayors from Indiana, and it was very close to the end of the coverage. CNN took a break or switched focus or something, and Wolf said “I want BOTH of you to stand by…”.

This is just another example of how the media in this country has devolved to a state where they feel that governmental agencies OWE them something. I get the feeling that some news teams have grown so arrogant and so cocky that in this case, Wolf Blitzer felt he had the right to tell two Mayors of one of the states of our union to wait for HIM. To be “on hold”, as it were.

Wow. I’m sure that dozens of other people have blogged or written about this, but I have a very scary thought.

How long have the news organizations been making their own news? Are we at the point where News Anchor A will purposely say something so shocking or controversial or biased that News Anchor B has no choice but to report on it? And if so, haven’t we lost the concept of reporting on what actually happens in favor of what news organizations’ SPIN is of what happens?

Gad zukes. What would the founders think of our country right now.

Apple, Microsoft, Technology

NBC's Shows on Zune

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I just read the article below, stating that Zune owners will be able to purchase NBC television shows for … wait for it … $1.99 per episode. Hmm. If I recall correctly, wasn’t that the same price they were on iTunes before Jeff Zucker decided to walk away?

If Microsoft is merely breaking even or taking a loss on these shows (to give NBC more money), I have to say that going from a business model that offers you tens of millions of customers to a business model that offers you (in comparison) closer to zero than tens of millions seems like a terrible decision to me. But I’ve blogged about Jeff Zucker’s terrible instincts and business sense before.

Zune is a device that hasn’t really made much of a (if any) dent in the iPod market. So to me this “partnership” between NBC and Microsoft is like the blind leading the blind.