August 2008
18 posts
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“Things get confusing, however, when looking at the electoral college. We project Obama to earn slightly more electoral votes on average. However, we also project John McCain to win the election slightly more often. What accounts for the discrepancy? Obama’s wins tend to be larger, and McCain’s tend to be smaller. If Obama wins this election by between 7 or 10 points, there are very few high-EV states that he won’t be able to put into play; even something like Texas is probably winnable. If McCain were to win by that margin, on the other hand, he would still almost certainly lose New York, he would almost certainly lose Illinois, and he would almost certainly lose California. Those states represent 107 electoral votes that are essentially off-limits to McCain, even on his very best days.”
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FiveThirtyEight.com: Electoral Projections Done Right
I love FiveThirtyEight — it’s amazingly thorough, thoughtful, and nerdy.
“Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said in an interview Wednesday that he was uncertain how many houses he and his wife, Cindy, own. “I think — I’ll have my staff get to you,” McCain told Politico in Las Cruces, N.M. “It’s condominiums where — I’ll have them get to you.”
—McCain unsure how many houses he owns - Jonathan Martin and Mike Allen - Politico.com
“IE’s shortcomings won’t hold back the Internet for much longer, however, because Mozilla plans to drag IE into the next generation of open web technologies without Microsoft’s help. One of the first steps towards achieving this goal is a new experimental plugin that adapts Mozilla’s implementation of the HTML5 Canvas element so that it can be used in Internet Explorer.”
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Mozilla drags IE into the future with Canvas element plugin
As a general technique, it’s probably a dead end. But interesting nonetheless…
“This brushfire is not politics, though the IOC has acted as if it is. The age suspicion is a field of play issue. Any violation of the age requirements is an act of cheating, an issue that the IOC has always cared deeply about, particularly when it comes to doping. “[Age] is a bigger problem than doping,” Bela Karolyi said. “I think it’s more cheating than doping. To look in the eye of everybody and to show up with a team underage? My god, it’s not good.”
—IOC refuses to doubt China’s kid gymnasts - Selena Roberts - SI.com
“…we can pretty much sum up our impressions with this: the AIRAVE makes an unquestionable, unmistakable difference in call quality and reception in homes that currently have subpar or altogether poor Sprint service. To be honest, the calls were as clear as we had ever heard from a cellphone…”
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Sprint AIRAVE review - Engadget Mobile
(AT&T, it’s your turn!)
“
Q: How much does it cost to add Second Line service?
A: Second Line service is available for one low monthly fee based on the subscriber’s level of Digital Phone service.
” —I hate to be snarky about affiliates of my former employer, but this is a hilariously useless response to a pretty basic question.
Time Warner Cable - How much does it cost to add Second Line service?
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“It’s not easy to make the infamous Willie Horton ad from the 1988 presidential campaign seem benign. But suggesting that Barack Obama is the Antichrist might just do it.”
—An Antichrist Obama in McCain Ad? - TIME
“The battle for the home has started. After 9 months of testing a femtocell built by Samsung, Sprint has decided the technology and service are ready for nationwide prime time. Sprint is going to start selling its Airave femtocell nationally starting Aug. 17 at a price of $99.99 for the Samsung device plus $4.99 a month for the service. Sprint is the first U.S. carrier to use femtocells.”
—Sprint Rolls Out Femtocell
“Recently, we reconstructed a perfect copy of Apple I BASIC, the first piece of software Apple ever sold - in 1976. Now it is time to make something useful out of it. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could use Apple I BASIC to replace, say, Perl?”
—pagetable.com » Blog Archive » Apple I BASIC as a Mac OS X Scripting Language
