PunditGuy — Home

Year: 2008

Stop Breathing

What is this? Global warming hysteria Monday or something? The Washington Post publishes a report suggesting that CO2 emissions must cease to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.

Using advanced computer models to factor in deep-sea warming and other aspects of the carbon cycle that naturally creates and removes carbon dioxide (CO2), the scientists, from countries including the United States, Canada and Germany, are delivering a simple message: The world must bring carbon emissions down to near zero to keep temperatures from rising further.

“The question is, what if we don’t want the Earth to warm anymore?” asked Carnegie Institution senior scientist Ken Caldeira, co-author of a paper published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters. “The answer implies a much more radical change to our energy system than people are thinking about.”

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Temper? What Temper?

The headlines are saying McCain flashed his temper. Hardly. It’s more like run-of-the-mill frustration with stupid questions from reporters at the New York Times.

Senator John McCain grew agitated Friday with a New York Times reporter who asked about his 2004 conversation with then-Democratic nominee John Kerry about McCain possibly running as Kerry’s vice presidential nominee.

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The Monster vs. Bambi

If Samantha Power worked for Hillary Clinton, she’d still have a job today, and Hillary would have no comment on Power’s “off the record” remarks. But no. Power works for Barack Obama, who still wants to try and be a nice guy. Nice guys get squashed in Hillary’s world. Power not only had to apologize for a “truth hurts” comment, she had to resign.

Better toughen up, Barack, or the monster will eat you alive.

Technorati Tags:
2008 Election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Politics

McCain Gets an Unexpected Endorsement

From Hillary Clinton.

“I think that since we now know Sen. (John) McCain will be the nominee for the Republican Party, national security will be front and center in this election. We all know that. And I think it’s imperative that each of us be able to demonstrate we can cross the commander-in-chief threshold,” the New York senator told reporters crowded into an infant’s bedroom-sized hotel conference room in Washington.

“I believe that I’ve done that. Certainly, Sen. McCain has done that and you’ll have to ask Sen. Obama with respect to his candidacy,” she said.

Calling McCain, the presumptive GOP nominee a good friend and a “distinguished man with a great history of service to our country,” Clinton said, “Both of us will be on that stage having crossed that threshold. That is a critical criterion for the next Democratic nominee to deal with.”

This whole “experience” thing is maddening to me. I just think it’s amazing that Hillary can claim with a straight face that she has anywhere near the experience of John McCain. She’s been a U.S. Senator for 7 years. Ok, maybe there’s some real time there. But, let’s look past that. She was the wife of a president for 8 years. The wife of a state governor for 12 years. An amateur trader/investor for 2 years. The wife of a state attorney general for 2 years. A lawyer for a few years.

Contrast this with John McCain. He’s been a U.S. Senator for 21 years. A U.S. Congressman for 4 years. A businessman for 2.5 years. He was in the U.S. Navy for 22 years, including 5.5 years as a POW.

Seems to me Hillary’s spent most of her life being a wife. And how successful has that been? Let’s ask Gennifer Flowers, Monica Lewinsky, or Marilyn Jo Jenkins. I’m sure they all have quite an opinion as to how great a wife Hillary has been.

If Obama has any brains at all, he’ll immediately pull a full court press on Hillary’s proclamation of equal experience with John McCain. It’s a farce.

MORE: Ann Coulter suggests Hillary would do better to stand by another man.

Technorati Tags:
2008 Election, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Experience, Monica Lewinsky, Gennifer Flowers, Marilyn Jo Jenkins

iPhone: Now Worth Every Penny

I’m browsing the sites live blogging the Apple iPhone SDK press conference and what do I see?

Wait for it.

Microsoft Exchange support for email. (Cue the Geek Cheer!)

“We have licensed the ActiveSync protocol to build directly into the iPhone,” Schiller says. That’s a huge request from their customers.

With ActiveSync, the iPhone talks directly to Exchange. So the iPhone will get push e-mail, push calendaring, push contacts, global access lists, and remote wipe, all while talking to Exchange. And it’s built into the existing applications — mail goes into the same Mail program, calendar into the same Calendar, and so on.

In all seriousness – this must have feature will soon be available for all of us iPhone users who worked in an environment that is heavily littered with Microsoft Enterprise applications. We’ve been limited to IMAP and POP up til now, and while these ‘work’, they’re not the real thing. Exchange support for the iPhone will be the killer app.

Technorati Tags:
Apple, iPhone, Microsoft Exchange, Mobile Computing, Mobie Email, Email

IED in Time Square

By now you’ve no doubt heard about the improvised explosive device that was detonated in front of the U.S. Armed Forces Recruiting Station in Time Square. The blast occurred at 3:43 AM, the one time of the night when the famed Time Square is virtually empty. Some throughout the blogosphere are claiming this was a coordinated protest over military recruitment. Still others are calling it a plot born from leftist groups like Code Pink. I’m not so sure. What seems clear though is that the bombers didn’t intend to kill anyone, according to an analysis of pictures taken at the scene.

Oh, and here’s a surprise – the moonbats think the whole thing was a right wing plot.

Technorati Tags:
Time Square, New York City, IED, U.S. Army

Apple Smack

Think Apple Computers and Adobe Systems are two peas in a pod? They’ve certainly made billions of dollars from one another, so it’s easy to assume all is well in Silicon Valley between the two behemoths. Leave it to Steve Jobs, though, to pull the pin on a stink bomb and throw it in Adobe’s general direction.

Adobe Systems Inc.’s popular media player for cellphones simply isn’t good enough for Apple Inc.’s iPhone, Apple Chief Executive Steve Jobs said Tuesday in the most substantive comments to date about why the iPhone can’t now be used to view a large percentage of videos on the Internet.

As Jobs put it Tuesday, Apple’s iPhone, with all its cutting-edge mobile Internet trickery, needs something much better than the current Flash player that Adobe makes for cellphones. The Flash Player option that fits the bill is made for devices like laptops that are larger than the iPhone; as a consequence, it performs too slowly on the iPhone, he said.

“There’s this missing product in the middle,” Jobs said.

An Adobe spokesman didn’t respond to a message seeking comment.

Steve Jobs sure knows how to win friends and influence people. Most people see him personally as a class “A” jerk, but marvel at his ability to create the most innovative products. Still, Steve knows how to get people motivated, and this public speech directed at Adobe might just be what it takes to create the software he desperately needs for the iPhone, and future Apple mobile computing products.

Technorati Tags:
Apple, iPhone, Steve Jobs, Adobe, Flash Player

Patrick Swayze has 5 Weeks To Live

The 55 year-old actor made famous in the movies “Dirty Dancing” and “Ghost” was diagnosed in late January with pancreatic cancer. It’s now spread to other organs.

For the past month, Patrick, 55, has been traveling to Stanford University’s prestigious cancer center in Palo Alto for radical chemotherapy, but his doctors are no longer optimistic that the treatments will be successful.

Patrick and his wife Lisa Niemi — who both have pilot’s licenses — have been flying their private Beechcraft plane into Palo Alto’s airport, minutes away from the Stanford Cancer Center, where the actor has received outpatient treatment.

He received three doses of chemotherapy and the tumor shrank, but less than his doctors had hoped for — and Patrick was told he should prepare for the end.

“He was told he could have two more treatments, but his cancer was not responding. In short – they held out little hope for a cure,” said an insider.

Technorati Tags:
Dirty Dancing, Patrick Swayze, Pancreatic Cancer