I am so disgusted with anti-war crowd. The crowd I read about from the past, and the crowds I hear about now both sicken me fully. Why doesn’t everyone worship vets, lionizing them to a point it encourages children from a young age to long for the war situation themselves? We can always have the hope to encourage youngsters to do the same. Ask any vet: years in war are character building. Where else can youngsters engage in enormously complex violent campaigns fighting other people whom they do not know personally, and know relatively little about? As Americans we should work hard to ensure that more generations are not denied the opportunity to fully pledge and sacrifice life, mind, limbs, spouse, and family life for this opportunity to build values considered important to society. Keep that in mind this veterans day.

Lets continue to teach our kids in public school how efficient, effective, and RIGHT we were in World War II. A big hoot to our boys who fought valiantly killing scores of nameless individuals in Europe by air. Air-to-ground fighting has to be the most manly gutsy way to confront an enemy. Well out of range of ground weapons, the brave warrior can lob a million dollars of bombs in a few seconds, teaching whoever happens to be in their path a lesson.

Also, thanks to our pals in Israel who always act with the interest of the entire world in mind. Why give those homeless jerks in Palestine that bathe in their own poverty any rest at all. All men, women, and children in those conditions should expect no different.

Posted by admin as Effyou at 6:07 AM MST

No Comments »

for our new President and Commander-in-Chief…

I expect no less than the following:
• Full health care should be guaranteed for all regardless of ability to pay.
• Every couple should be able to receive the full benefits of marriage, including the ability to call it marriage, regardless of the sex/gender composure of the couple.
• Begin the pursuit of the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons from the earth.
• No more spending resources on irrelevant cold war era systems, within the military or otherwise.
  
• Cut military spending by at least half.

• No more relying on our National Guard for overseas military deployments, except for training.
• Resolve the Mexican immigration crisis in a meaningful way.
• The funding primary education gets in each area must no longer be based on the value of their real estate.
• Spur growth and expansion of small businesses
  
• Housing and food should be guaranteed to all regardless of ability to pay, without having to accept anything from religious institutions.

• Equal pay for equal work should be guaranteed.
• It should be guaranteed that losing employment will not lead to personal and financial ruin.
  
• All able-bodied and competent adults who are not students should be guaranteed a living wage should they wish to work full time.

• He must renegotiate our relationship with Israel (military or otherwise) based on how they treat Palestinian refugees and those living in the territory of Palestine.
• distribution and use of low and moderate risk recreational drugs should be legalized
• high-risk drug trafficking should remain illegal and enforced as such, but addiction should be decriminalized
• gasoline and diesel must be taxed higher on the federal level: for revenue and to encourage alternatives
• begin a process to normalize relations with Iran and Cuba

I will blame the new president, if any of the following happens under his watch:

• if abortion becomes illegal or less accessible in any state or territory.

• if funding and success of the current university system deteriorates one little bit (its one thing that works fairly well right now)
• nothing significant is done to reduce greenhouse gases
• if there is a significant expansion of coal fired electric plants
• war breaks out involving Pakistan or the Middle-East
• relations do not improve with Russia (even if Putin is still there, and is unreasonable)
• if religion becomes any more involved with government (expansion of faith-based initiatives, etc)
  

Side-notes, Disclaimers, Explanations:
I know this wish-list is quite a handful, but they are all items known to be well within the federal power of the president. They are all pretty reasonable, and most would be able to be accomplished within the first term with proper attention. There are many complicated issues each of these items might bring up, and some of them entail thousands of details. That’s what a president does. I simply demand the end result described in each of these items.

Notice I did not say: every American is entitled to a house, or condo, or apartment, or even private living quarters. Boarding houses would be fine for that purpose. I did not say every American is entitled to plastic surgery and teeth whitening. I did not say every American is entitled to a cozy high-paying office job. I did not say that there should be no enforcement of immigration laws, nor that the act of unintentional wrongful immigration be criminalized. I did not say every American should be able to live anywhere they might fancy. I did not say everyone should be entitled to a car. Nor did I say that every American should be guaranteed access to mechanized transportation, mass or otherwise.

There must be means by which incentive to work hard and earn more money (greater productivity) occurs. There must be means by which deadbeats (those who are able bodied but refuse to be employed) are punished. Employee pay should still be based on the current market system, with a few extra safeguards. Employers should not be penalized for hiring employees by carrying the burden of being expected to fund their health care.

Competent entrepreneurs should have access to credit; the ability to take risk, with the security they won’t be completely ruined personally should their plan fail. This will encourage a continuous spurt of small businesses, increasing revenue and productivity, and generating wealth.

The financial markets should continue to operate and be regulated as they currently are with two important exceptions: transparency, and speculation. Financial products should be regulated based on their functionality instead of their name: for example credit-default swaps should be regulated as insurance, and so on. And there should be regulation that ensures product description and marketing do not obscure their actual nature: like equity products that are backed by many prime mortgages and then “poisoned” with a handful of sub-prime. There should be a percentage tax on financial product speculation: i.e. options, short selling, etc. This speculation tax should NOT include taxing of the purchase of commodity futures contracts, but it should tax options contracts of commodity futures contracts. A speculation tax set and rules should be such that it would provide some extra for income to offset what has been/will be lost by the capital gains tax cut, without stifling a reasonable free market.

Capital gains tax should continue to be low as it is, perhaps with a progressive system that lowers the rate if the owner of capital is an individual (not a corporation) and is not a millionaire. Estate tax should be permanently eliminated for estates valued below a certain amount, I am thinking around 5 million dollars, and taxed at the same progressive rate as capital gains after that amount is reached for each individual receiving property or money from an estate. That means each individual benefiting from an estate could pay a different amount. And like I said, the rate of capital gains tax should be based on an individuals wealth (income averaged over last 5 years, net worth), meaning, it should be near negligible for the poor, intermediate for the in between, and higher (but not penalizing) to the wealthy. Estate tax elimination should not apply to corporations receiving benefit.

Universal marriage rights includes a number of simple things currently denied by the system. The ability to call any union between two people marriage. The ability to receive full benefits of marriage should be available to all unions without having to be registered formally as “married”; and members of a union should not have to claim to be married to be valid, (that is a couple should be able to term their long-term relationship by any name, or none at all in legal records), yet still receive the benefits. That means there should be a formal process available, and a union should be able to be formally recorded under any term desired by the couple, but a formal process should not required to receive the benefits and protections. This includes the ability for either couple to file for divorce and custody protection in the case of a break up. This includes the protection of hospital consultation rights without formal documents should a member of the couple become unable to communicate. It also includes access to any and all inheritance laws applicable to married couples upon death of either member. When this happens, it will finally be fully legal to be LGBT like in other modern countries.

Immigration is vital and important to the well being and vitality of America and its economy. It should not be shut off simply out of fear, hate, loathing, protectionism, etc. This only exasperbates problems abroad and at home. Immigration of individuals from less-developed countries to more-developed countries is vital component to ultimately solving the population problem. While immigrants tend to have more children then their counterparts in their homeland, the 2nd generation of immigrants have about the same birthrate as the rest of America (which is slightly less than the replacement rate, excluding 1st generation immigrants and Mormons). Immigrants are an important because they have the potential to bring expertise and wealth generating ability with them, no matter what their country of origin.

As a nation we have a complete and justifiable right to control immigration as we sit fit. We should not be compelled merely because of geography to accept a flow of immigrants without regard to their ability to integrate. Without the ability to integrate, it makes conditions worse for the immigrants themselves and to our society.

Resolving the Mexican immigration crisis means settling on an acceptable flow of immigrants, ensuring they can be integrated into society. It is a problem when our society does not get to choose where our immigrants come from. The policy should be such that it can be enforced humanely, and the policy should be competently enforced. Shortly put: this enforcement should be as tough as it needs to be, but no tougher.

I did not say Israel should not defend itself against terrorism. It must begin to treat the people under its control with dignity and equality. It is not doing that right now.

Ahem, the office of the President can work out the details of implementation. If he needs any further explanation, assistance, or advice he knows where to reach me. Thank you.

Posted by admin as Required at 8:10 AM MST

No Comments »

A commentary blog has been launched by ReTran USA called Jacked. It brings to light previously unknown, unpublished, obscure, or otherwise extraordinary artwork and seeks to provide a forum for meaningful commentary. Response to the new blog has exceeded all expectations as the moderator has already had his “inbox filled with submissions from readers”. We are pleased at the Business 2.0 division to give a plug for Jacked. We pledge our full solidarity and wish to give a little teaser of what can be found there. For brevity there also exists a quick listing of the Jacked images.

The first submission is regarding the exceptional heroic epic American patriotic image of George Washington praying at Valley Forge. With a first submission like this we are in for a treat as the years pass on.

internal links:
Jacked Extraordinary Image Commentary at ReTran USA
url:http://retran.com/jacked

Listing of Jacked Images:
url:http://retran.com/jacked.htm

Posted by admin as Required at 4:24 AM MST

No Comments »

Drudge Report recently displayed a headline indicating that it ranked above many prominent news sites in “market share”. It cited a weekly report from a company called Hitwise. From what I reckon this rank might be misleading.

I wish to make an informal refutation of the implied analysis that the recent Hitwise rank of new sites indicates that the Drudge site is more popular and/or important than The New York Times, Fox News, People Magazine, Yahoo! Weather, and others. Hitwise is a web statistic tracking company owned by Experian, one of the big-three credit reporting agencies. Hitwise obtains the raw information to compile web traffic statistics directly from ISPs.

The basis for my refutation of the implied analysis is quite simple. Anyone familiar with the drudge-report might as easily point this out. Drudge’s page instructs your browser to refresh once every three minutes, thus inflating the hit counts. Drudge presumably does this to keep you “up to date” but as I will argue below, this is a very outdated method. What might motivate drudge to continue to use it? Read on.

The Drudge Report, a hand-edited collection of news headlines, is unique among websites today. It has a very anachronistic look-and-feel: it consists of a single page, the home page, with few internal links of its own. Technically speaking the site is constructed completely of plain HTML except for the advertisements (a prominent ad is always placed on the top). This format was extremely popular in the mid 1990s when the web was brand new. The original NerdWorld [screenshot], and the original Yahoo Directory [screenshot], quickly come to mind. The site could very well be maintained by someone (perhaps drudge himself) hand editing a notepad file.

That’s fine in and of itself, that’s how the web has always been intended from the start. Scientists, laypeople, etc can make basic HTML to distribute information easily to potentially anyone. Yet also from the beginning of the web there were more complex features, extensibility, for more “advanced” things. It is these “advanced” features that rapidly changed over 10 years, over and over, wandering to and fro. This includes popularity of forcing users to use java implementations, all sorts of ebmedded objects such as various competing media players, and the short-lived dream of microsoft’s OCX objects. Also, the popularity of using many proprietary features has risen and waned along with the popularity of the sponsoring browser (a battle within the browser wars). One of these were the use of META tags to do all sorts of things that are standard now done with Javascript. And also there were many competing methods to do the same thing in Javascript. I have casually observed that since around 2004 there have not been any significant “feature battles” within the (still ongoing) browser wars as the standards have been settled upon. To say it briefly, the consensus is: flash for games/video/animation/fancyshit (as opposed to slow-bloated Java or insecure OCX); and AJAX for most everything else (includes Javascript, CSS, and XML, but more broad explanation is beyond the scope here).

Drudge uses an outdated method to update information to a user’s browser screen. The proper way would involve AJAX dynamically changing the visible text. This updated text could be obtained by a now-standard AJAX process, safely in the background of a users computer. This does not require refresh and information is updated as often as the website owner likes. Even in real time: like Google’s implementation of live streaming quotes in its finance section, or its email service Gmail. But Drudge uses a brute forced refresh of the page. This exactly mimics a user pressing “refresh” button, except its done without the user’s permission. That means when you visit the drudge-report site, as you are reading through the headlines your reading experience will be disrupted multiple times by an automatic refresh. This is done once every three minutes. If you keep the screen open for a moment more than three minutes, it will register with your ISP that you have visited the page 2 times. That’s two hits, where for normal websites (including all the ones that rank below and above drudge), it would only register as one hit. The potential cumulative effect this would have on hit statistics is not hard to see. Website tracking services, internal or external, could not tell the difference between a user initiated website visit and an automatic brute-forced browser refresh merely by compiling hit counts of URLs.

It has probably served drudge well over the years to keep this old fashioned refresh method on his site. He could afford AJAX reprogramming of his site. Its standard stuff now: most very smalltime business sites implement some AJAX.

There is no indication in the Hitwise report (including their background statement or any other place on the web where I’ve done my due diligence) that suggests they take brute-force refresh on drudge’s site into account with their site popularity ratings! (Hitwise uses the term “market share” instead of popularity). If it seems ridiculous that drudge outranks The New York Times and Yahoo, that’s because it is. Yahoo! web pages are the 2nd most popular set on the internet, for god’s sake. Would advertisers relying on such ranking data be well advised to take that into consideration? Hitwise’s opacity on the matter of how/if it takes drudge’s outdated browser-refresh method into account are bound to make it less relevant among serious web stat analysis makers.

However odd the drudge report is, it has somehow managed to remain very important. If you want to keep up on what headlines drudge is currently cutting & pasting there are alternatives to using his site directly. Blipnews.com describes itself as the Drudge Report news aggregator. One might forgive blipnews for spamming the comments sections of news sites linked from drudge only because it displays the headlines in a mildly more thoughtful format than Drudge itself. Another aggregator of the aggregator is found on DrudgeReportArchives.com. Besides having daily snapshots of past Drudge Reports, it has a feature which lists current and past compilations of drudge headlines in a format that is as nice to look at and work with as an Excel spreadsheet. Perhaps out of habit I use the official Drudge site, but only with the NoScript firefox-addon to keep drudge from refreshing my browser. (not because I am attempting to make hit stats fair, but because it’s damn annoying)

External Information:
US Ranking of News Sites from Hitwise for week ending October 25, 2008 (see source below)
1. Yahoo News
2. CNN.com
3. MSNBC
4. The Weather Channel
5. Google News
6. Drudge Report
7. The New York Times
8. Fox News
9. People Magazine
10. Yahoo! Weather

External Links:
Drudge Report (C) 2009
url:http://www.drudgereport.com

Drudge Report Archives (C) 2008
url:http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/dsp/links_recap.htm

Blipnews.com
url:http://blipnews.com

Hitwise News and Media Category Weekly Report (for the week ending October 25, 2008)
http://www.drudgereport.com/hit3.pdf
(available on ReTran USA for now because the drudge site uses a strange embedding method for the PDF doc that raises security flags on many browsers)
url:http://www.retran.com/wtf/hit3.pdf

Drudge Report snapshot containing the “Hitwise Shock” headline via DrudgeReportArchives
url:http://www.drudgereportarchives.com/data/2008/10/31/20081031_153241.htm

Hitwise a subsidiary of Experian(tm)
url:http://www.hitwise.com

to see how similar Drudge is to ancient web formats:
Nerd World (1998 version via archive.org)
screenshot:http://retran.com/wtf/nerdworld97.jpg
url:http://web.archive.org/web/19971210162538/http://www.nerdworld.com/

Yahoo! (1996 version via archive.org)
screenshot:http://retran.com/wtf/yahoo96.jpg
url:http://web.archive.org/web/19961017235908/http://www2.yahoo.com/

[ps: why is drudge copyrighted for year that has not happened yet?]

Posted by admin as Required at 8:09 PM MST

3 Comments »