Lamenting Tenth Anniversary of Bush vs. Gore, CNN’s Toobin Mangles Media Recount Reality
November 30, 2010 No CommentFrom his perch at the liberal magazine The New Yorker on Tuesday, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin recycled his lament that the Bush-Gore 2000 chad fight should have lasted several more months. (Toobin's 2001 book Too Close to Call also carried Al Gore's water.) Toobin fights against the popular notion that liberals should get over 2000, for it revealed conservative judicial activism, most appalling to Toobin when “equal protection” is applied to white males, as if they're entitled to it. But Toobin simply gets it wrong in finding media recounts were not conclusive: Bush v. Gore would resonate, in any case, because the Court prevented Florida from determining, as best it could, whether Gore or Bush really won. (Recounts of the ballots by media organizations produced ambiguous results; they suggest that Gore would have won a full statewide recount and Bush would have won the limited recount initially sought by the Gore forces.) Wrong. As Brent Baker reminded readers in 2008 , both media recounts, including a statewide recount of undervotes, concluded the Court did not decide the election: read more
Continue reading …China Overtakes US as Most Attractive Country for Renewable Energy For First Time
November 30, 2010 No Comment
photo: Charles Henry / Creative Commons Steven Chu just said now is the US’ Sputnik moment for clean technology, and here’s some independent confirmation of that: Ernst & Young has just released a new Country Attractiveness Inde… Read the full story on TreeHugger
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So we were lucky enough to sit down with Sir Richard Branson at this morning’s launch of his iPad-only Project magazine , and just like the last time we hung out , our conversation was both entertaining and illuminating. The highlight? In addition to telling us that Project would eventually hit both Android tablets and other devices, Sir Richard was totally candid in saying that he had “no f**king idea why” Project was only on the iPad and not on the web — although he did say Project was “proper magazine” and not “just thrown together for the web.” (Ouch.) Sir Richard was also excited about the possibilities for advertising, saying that the new medium can “bring advertising alive.” We’ve definitely got our doubts about limiting content to one platform without any robust sharing options — and we obviously think it’s possible to do high-quality content on the web — but there’s no doubt that Sir Richard is an extremely charming pitchman, so make sure to check out the whole interview. The Engadget Interview: Sir Richard Branson on Project and the iPad originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:35:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
Continue reading …Canadian Government Partnered With Polluting Industry to Fight US Climate Action
November 30, 2010 No Comment
photo: Diane Worth / Creative Commons Considering the considerable official enthusiasm for the highly polluting and carbon intensive Alberta tar sands, this really isn’t so surprising: According to correspondence obtained by the Pembina Institute , the Canadian Government is “pursuing an orchestrated strategy to undermine US effort to combat climate change” and partnered with polluters to fight US effort to reduce emissions from high-carb… Read the full story on TreeHugger
Continue reading …Microsoft reiterates copy and paste is Windows Phone 7′s first update, ‘additional updates delivered in the future’
November 30, 2010 No Comment
Chris Walsh — one of the forces behind the ChevronWP7 app sideload hack for Windows Phone 7 — went on record earlier this week saying that the first platform update coming early next year would be “massive” with so many improvements and new features that “they could have called it Windows Phone 8.” That’s a pretty bold statement, and it’s been making the rounds so fiercely today that Microsoft felt the need to lay down the law with an official statement — albeit not a very strongly-worded one: “Microsoft is committed to delivering regular updates to the Windows Phone experience. Our first update will make copy & paste available in early 2011. In addition to this first update, all Windows Phone 7 users should expect to see additional updates delivered in the future as part of Microsoft’s ongoing update process.” So it sounds to us like priority one in Redmond is to get copy and paste up and running (which is basically the message they’ve been delivering for a while), though we should expect plenty more through future updates. When you figure in the size of the team Microsoft has built for engineering this platform — and the fact that they’ve now got the initial retail release out of the way — we’re hoping they’ve got nothing better to do than to churn on some of these pain points users have identified over the next few months. Should be a heck of a year coming up, eh? Microsoft reiterates copy and paste is Windows Phone 7′s first update, ‘additional updates delivered in the future’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 18:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink
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