Posts by Alastair Thompson
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So what are the implications? I bet none of you know much about Nancy Pelosi, the loony tunes San Fran lib who would become speaker if the Dems win. Well, Osama, Al Zawaheri, Kim Jong Il, Armdinajad the head hackers in Iraq and various other assorted despots will be happy campers indeed if Nancy is the new Speaker. She sees terrorism as a law enforcement issue. Not much use if you become one of the people who have to jump 100 floors to your death (like the people in the top floors of the WTC on 9/11) in the next terrorist attack that she would make much easier for terrorists to successfully launch , if she got her way.
Nancy Pelosi is actually a bit soft she has indicated she doesn't want to impeach the shrub. Hopefully she will change her mind once her committees start using subpoena power to get some evidence on among other things how Bolton was spying illegally on his perceived opponents in the State Dept and how Dick Cheney lied to the 911 commission.
Welcome to Public Address System James....
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snap....
:)
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...wait there is more... from TPM
From the GOP handbook of Maryland politics:
(1) Recruit homeless men in Philadelphia;
(2) Bus them into Maryland;
(3) Arrange for the Republican governor's wife to greet them upon their arrival;
(4) Outfit them in hats and T-shirts for the governor's re-election campaign;
(5) Have them pass out flyers in heavily Democratic areas that erroneously identify the GOP candidates for governor and U.S. senator as "Democrats."The complete primer here.
Update: A first-hand account here.
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Pennsylvania Voter Smashes Touch-Screen Machine
2:45 PM ET, from the Morning Call of Allentown, Pa.:"A man entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said.
"Michael Young, 43, will be charged with felony criminal mischief and tampering with voting machines, according to Ronald Manescu, chief of investigations for Allentown police. Police gave no motive, but a source said Young, a registered Independent, believed Republicans had conspired to win the election by using electronic ballots."
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Hi Y'all
tis 4pm ET now.... so first results coming through around 1pm NZT.
on the first tuesday after the first monday thing... that means that if Monday is the 31st of October then the election is on November 8. I think. And then for once it will not be on Melbourne Cup Day.
and on the question of americans not voting. Depending on how you read things Bush has been great for democracy. Record turnouts in 2000 and 2004 elections. In 2004 - if you beleive the numbers (I am a bit skeptical) - turnout was close to 60% may have even been over. 122 million votes.
usually mid-term elections have a low turnout coz usually they don't matter much. This time coz the GOP holds the House the Senate and the WH - and have just abolished Habeas Corpus and Posse Comitas - they are very very very important. Turnout today is expected to be high.
Robyn, something very cool on youtube is HBO doco "Hacking Democracy" linked on Scoop FP....
al
al -
Hi David
*wave*
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Noizyboy,
Can you please explain the correct use of the reply function... it is still escaping me.
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Happy birthday Public Address System!
Thankyou most kindly for your kind words those of you that have been kind.
In reply I would have to say Publicaddress.net & No Right Turn rock and Mediawatch.co.nz rocked in the early days. Bruce Simpson's Aardvark was certainly a pioneer in many ways and did its bit to keep the interweb in NZ honest and one its toes. Aardvark was a blog long before blogs were invented and is still going strong.
More recently RNZ's entre into the interweb and DF's Kiwiblog have become something of a highlight.
And Sam Morgan's Trademe is undoubtedly extraordinary. (That said it would however have been nice if he had been a bit more of an interweb team player and used some of his voluminous traffic to assist other websites a smidgen. )
The most spectacular blooper in the early days would have to be Xtra's homepage search engine. The search engine on the homepage of most NZers for most of the 90s and through till mid 2001. See... NOT SHARP: "Scoop" = "Seborrhoeic Keratosis" - a search engine which could truly be relied on to consistently provide you with completely useless and irrelevant results .
Other contenders in the blooper stakes:
Eric Watson's Flying Pig was just that.
Eventures which someone mentioned wasn't so much a website as the great white hope of us information entrepreneurs. They raised $30 million in an IPO on the NZX to invest in NZ technology companies and opened up an office in the Viaduct Basin. However they could not find anyone worth investing in (Scoop asked and was turned down). Eventually Eventures returned all their cash to shareholders and shut up shop. Did Sam Morgan ask them for cash one wonders? Did they turn him down?
A BRIEF HISTORY OF SCOOP & NEWSROOM
For those unfamiliar with the Scoop/Newsroom history a bit of background. Tis a small small world.
As Don points out Scoop's ancestor was NewsRoom.co.nz. It was founded by Peter Fowler, Andrew McNaughton and myself in late 1996 early 1997. Andrew built & maintained the software. Peter and I stoked the content engine for a few months giving ourselves RSI before getting close to burnout and bringing in Ian Llewellyn � now at NZPA - to give us a hand. I then started exploring the Scoopish aspects of the interweb in flamboyant rhetoricaleditorials which back then I called rants but which looking back on now were really early blog posts.
In May 1999 it all fell apart and 3/4 of the NewsRoom team left and formed Scoop. We took the technology behind NewsRoom with us. Simon Collins wrote about it in a story for City Voice at the time Fallout among Idealists.
Short version we had some creative differences and went our separate ways. I wholeheartedly agree with Don that it is nice that we both survived in the end. Though it was very much touch and go at times.
Thanks to Archive.org you can have a wee look at some of this narrative in pictures.
NEWSROOM BEFORE SCHISM
Newsroom Circa. April 1997
Newsroom Circa. April 1999NEWSROOM AFTER SCHISM
Newsroom got back up with the assistance of Eric Watson's Glazier Systems, Actrix Networks and Catalyst IT
Newsroom Circa. October 1999
Eventually Glazier bowed out� and Newsroom went back to unix with Catalyst.
Newsroom Circa. June 2001
Newsroom Circa. Sept. 2002 (now locked off and subscriber only.)SCOOP
Scoop Nov. 1999 (Post Split)
Scoop May. 2000
Scoop December 2002 � After Our First Redesign. Our current lookis after our second redesign.
Alastair