I was tired of the idea of looking through all these articles just to figure out who the 18 people they got to write articles were voting for. If you have the time, feel free to check out their reasoning behind their picks. If you want a quick overview, I’ve done the work for you.

• Peter Brimelow – Chuck Baldwin, and barring that option, Bob Barr
• Reid Buckley – McCain, to get to Palin
• John Patrick Diggins – Neither, prefers Obama
• Rod Dreher – Neither, but wants McCain to lose
• Francis Fukuyama – Obama, announces it very first sentence
• Kara Hopkins – McCain, because she’s scared of a democratic congress
• Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn – Obama, liked him since 2004
• Leonard Liggio – Bob Barr
• Daniel McCarthy – Ron Paul for president and Barry Goldwater Jr. VP
• Scott McConnell – Obama
• Declan McCullagh – Neither (direct “not voting” statement)
• Robert A. Pape – Obama, strongly
• Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. – Neither, suggests we exercise our right to not bote
• Gerald J. Russello – Neither, might do write ins if he even votes
• Steve Sailer – writing in Ward Connerly
• John Schwenkler – Bob Barr
• Joseph Sobran – Chuck Baldwin
• Peter Wood – McCain, reluctantly

I have been using this little link blog thing recently, and one of my big issues is that the tag field has autocomplete on, thus it tries to load previously used lists of tags (and it will be a rare day that a set of 5+ tags applies to more than one link that I log). I looked into the idea of turning off autocomplete, and interestingly while I’ve found the answer it’s apparently a much hated non-standard feature. Our own Grey posted an explanation for its existence in 2005

Normally yes, and thankfully they’re fairly easy to override, but there’s some history here. Basically, it was some backroom blackmail. The big banks and such threatened to not support Moz/FF on purpose unless we all drank their Koolaid and gave them the autocomplete attribute. It soothed their lawyerbots enough, and it’s still fairly easy to override. It’s a case of waving the dead chicken.

Whatever. I’ll be patching my install of Scuttle to fix this soon, but it does worry me that some people have completely eliminated the feature instead of using a lovely bookmarklet.

I don’t understand why we need to “revolutionize” the way EVERY SINGLE THING works. Look at Mark Shuttleworth’s coverage of a recent Gnome usability hackfest in which no actual hacking was done.

There’s a revolution coming as we throw out the old “files and folders” metaphor and leap to something new, and it would be phenomenal if free software were leading the way.

Yeah man! I guess that whole, “make the ‘virtual’ desktop more like the ‘real’ desktop” thing is a joke. Unless your main switch is to limit it to 2 levels deep, call the first level a “Drawer” then the second a “Folder” and underneath only files, but I somehow doubt that. I don’t have a problem with a tag based filesystem, I’ve written about it before (as we’re getting closer with punakea, tag(1), and the fabled WinFS), but the solution isn’t to have just one or just the other, it’s to have both. Gmail gets this right: you can label (tag) e-mails in your Inbox or All Mail folder, but they’re not throwing out the idea of a folder entirely, they’re tagged and yet still also in a folder.

Sure, one could easily state that the “All Mail” folder is totally throwing away folders, but it’s not, it’s a folder for Mail. Even on your desktop mail client, while it’s all in one folder it’s still limited to the mail client, not strewn about on your file system in the “mega folder” known as the hard disk.

The benefit to this mixed technique is really applicable for things where tags are used as genres, especially if you are able to use tag+othertag to get items that are in multiple genres.

But I’m insane

John McCain repeated that old overhead projector lie that was disproven after the previous debate. Obama said nothing.

John McCain said he didn’t vote with Bush, and Obama agreed, stating that it was admirable John didn’t vote with Bush on torture (which is correct, McCain said in the republican debates he was against torture). McCain however later flip flopped and Obama didn’t mention that.

McCain started blathering on about ACORN, and Obama didn’t mention John McCain spoke at ACORN’s keynote 2 years ago.

I started writing this about 40 minutes into the debate and apparently (according to Grey) I missed something else that I would have written about, so I’ve hit the record button on the DVR so I can edit this post later. I will say this: Dear Barack Obama, if your opponent is lying repeatedly, and you have proof, feel free to call them out on it.

Tomorrow is Apple’s big announcement where they release the cure for cancer, er, a new display or something. And all the internets are abuzz with rumors. Apple Insider is running this story of rumors about a new MacBook. If you notice, the photos are signed by <3 jr who is a known and proven liar. My proof? Well, first there’s this “leaked 4g iPod Nano” post over at Engadget. The problem is that JR stole the photo from the real source who sent his original un-watermarked photo to Gizmodo. He also sent Engadget another FAKE iPod Nano photo in which the nano isn’t even real, it’s a pure Photoshop production, and a poor one at that. Any photo with JR’s watermark on it is immediately suspect as either stolen or fake.

Now you know, and knowing is half the battle.

Update: The phot was real, I was wrong about that. Given JR’s record, I don’t believe he took the photo, so I stand by my statement that he’s an unreliable source. Stealing photos from others doesn’t make you a source.

There’s only 30 companies in the DJIA, and AIG is not one of them. That’s not stopping the AP from using the headline AIG is biggest decliner on DJIA and yet at the time of publication, October 10, AIG had not been part of the DJIA for 22 days. I didn’t pay them a cent to point out their ignorance.

Instead of publishing a retraction, just change your whole post and don’t acknowledge your mistake!

Original post content:

If you thought that whole spiel Walmart gave about ditching DRM sounded too good to be true, you’d be right this time around. The world’s largest retailer has decided to maintain its digital rights management servers for the present time “based on feedback from [its] customers.” No joke—that’s what they said. Who exactly are these customers? Do you know anybody in your life who’s ever told you “I really hate being able to play the music I downloaded on multiple platforms?”

Oh man! Walmart is re-enabling DRM and not gonna do DRM free sales? That’s weird… Let’s read the quote.

From: Walmart Digital Music
Date: October 9, 2008 11:03:39 PM CDT
Subject: UPDATE: Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases

NOTE: This is a follow-up to our email titled “Important Information About Your Digital Music Purchases” from 9/26/08.

Based on feedback from our customers, we have decided to maintain our digital rights management (DRM) servers for the present time. What this means to you is that our existing service continues and there is no action required on your part. Our customer service team will continue to assist with DRM issues for protected windows media audio (WMA) files purchased from Walmart.com.

While our customer support team is available to assist you with any issues, we continue to recommend that you back up your songs by burning them to a recordable audio CD. By backing up your songs, you insure access to them from any personal computer at any time in the future.

We appreciate your support and patience as we work to provide the best service possible to you. As we move forward with our 100% MP3 store, we’ll continue to update you with key decisions regarding our service and your account via email.

Thank you for using Walmart MP3 Music Downloads.

The Walmart Digital Music Team

Erm, “as we move forward with our 100% MP3 store”? That sounds … A LOT DIFFERENT THAN GOING DRM ONLY! Too bad I actually read the message (and so did the commenters who called her out on this, they have not yet been deleted). I contacted Editorial Director Brian Lam about this via e-mail:

Hello Brian,

You might want to reconsider having Elaine Chow on staff. There’s a story she posted where all the commenters have corrected her, and did so with a simple cursory glance at the story, which she somehow missed.

Here’s the link:

http://gizmodo.com/5061491/walmart-changes-mind-on-drm-keeps-servers-running

And here’s what she said (not including the press release):

> If you thought that whole spiel Walmart gave about ditching DRM sounded too good to be true, you’d be right this time around. The world’s largest retailer has decided to maintain its digital rights management servers for the present time “based on feedback from [its] customers.” No joke—that’s what they said. Who exactly are these customers? Do you know anybody in your life who’s ever told you “I really hate being able to play the music I downloaded on multiple platforms?”

Yes, that’s right, she totally misread the article. Wal-Mart is leaving the DRM servers up for customers who PREVIOUSLY bought DRM’d songs. It sounds like I can answer her second question, yes, I know someone who’s told me “I really hate being able to play the music I downloaded.”, as she’s apparently quite upset that in addition to removing DRM from future song sales, Wal-Mart will be leaving their servers up so that customers can play music they previously purchased. Quite a long paragraph stating “I do not have the ability to comprehend what I read.”

As a long-time reader and RSS subscriber, I hope I don’t have to see such poor journalism in the future.

Thanks,
Tom

I wasn’t lying, I subscribe to their feed, and I was disappointed. I have not received a response. However, I continually checked to see if Gizmodo acknowledged their mistake, and they didn’t, just edited it to say something completely different:

When Walmart made a special effort to remind us why DRM’d music should always be avoided by shutting down their authentication servers, the response must have been deafening. The world’s largest retailer has decided to maintain its digital rights management servers for the present time “based on feedback from [its] customers,” otherwise known as “the interminable wrath of the internet.” I’m guessing a flood of emails with compelling arguments like “don’t destroy my legally purchased music” and “I hate you” had something to do with the decision.

Dear Gawker Media,

Stop sucking.

- MBILF

Someone pointed out to us Drudge Report was running a poll about the debate. So we checked it out!

Wow, looks like McCain’s doing well. Let’s click through to the results page!

What’s this? Obama has the lead? McCain’s behind? It’s almost like Drudge Report’s results are different. Imagine that!

I was going to make this a few years ago when I used windows, because I think MemoServ is cool. I looked around the net and can’t find anything like it, all the memoserv scripts are just stupid popups (right click menus for those non scripters out there). So here’s my quick Skitch of a MemoServ Mail Client that I’d love to see. Note that while the own arrow for a view is real (perhaps a [-] would have been better), the arrow showing indentation shouldn’t show up in the final product.

And of course, I didn’t draw any menus, if you’re actually working on one I’m sure you could figure out what they should be. I’d love to see your work.

And thus, this is fitting:

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early