@Robert: Good interview and getting the air cleared. @Kevin: Comments like yours are why I want to be able to "like" individual comments. :-) Too funny. - Joanmarie
I think this is the origin of story!! March 26 was when I added the bot to my gTalk..!! - Jigar Mehta
I like having each service as an individual contact. Much easier. Can we see the same for Pownce? - Chris Nixon
Well, IMified has taken bot to a next level.. I even created a customized option to check my google calendar appointments for today (a quick schedule for today) by interacting with bot! Not sure, if they have one for Pownce.. - Jigar Mehta via bTT
Fantastic list, Bwana, and the "Technical Support" gave me the idea for the Question Room: http://friendfeed.com/rooms/qu... With the knowledgeable group here, we can probably answer questions faster than a Google. If we could get some people involved, there's not a question that couldn't be answered! - Vince DeGeorge
But doesn't that create the wrong incentives? ;) (edit: I'm just kidding, in case the ;) didn't make that clear -- I have a lot of sympathy for their situation. People don't understand how difficult it can be to operate these large scale services) - Paul Buchheit
It's like giving your kid $50 for bringing home all F's. I just don't get it. - Bwana McCall
Actually, I think my earlier comment misses the mark so I am deleting it. What I really want to say: 1) There used to be a culture here in the Valley where you didn't mock someone else's outage or even call attention to it. Because they happen to everyone. *Everyone.* 2) I admire all of these armchair fauxcoders who think they have it all figured out and that somehow the Twitter engineers just smoke blunts and play GTA 4 all day 3) Twitter is changing the way we all communicate and doing so with... - Sacca
... some tools that were never intended to be used this way or at this scale. Clearly what they have built is pretty fascinating to a large number of people because it is growing not like a weed, but like that plant in Little Shop of Horrors (though, I have yet to see Twitter eat anyone) 4) Even if I were to agree with you that somehow Twitter engineers were due some blame for "failing" (fucking absurd notion) these are the guys who are busting their asses trying to fix it all so that each of you... - Sacca
Bah. Deleting my comments since they seem silly without the contents of Sacca's. - Kevin Fox
Good Christ people, aim your vitriol at something worthy of it, like the Bush Administration for bringing torture and shame to our country. - Jason Shellen
... and the millions more like you that I expect to join in the next three months, can continue to use, exploit, grow, and improve what is quickly becoming the largest and most open device and network agnostic communications platform we have seen created in the last 10 years. - Sacca
And to be clear, the Twitter engineers either smoke blunts *or* play GTA 4 all day. Never both. At least not on Fridays. - Sacca
I don't have the means to send something like that over there. I don't really even use Twitter but as a fellow start up person I send my moral support to the Twitter folks. We all need it sometimes. - Geoff Longman
Bwana, you are the same one who wrote the $50 for all F's comment, sounds like hating to me. Also, there has been plenty of focus on the negative things that have been happening at Twitter over the past 3 or 4 days to realize that you are not the only one. - Jason Shellen
I'm not blaming anyone and agree that things are supposed to go wrong...but count me out on the pity party. I don't feel bad for the group that has $15M+ to fix a scaling problem and figure out a business model. 99 out of 100 startups should be so lucky. Send the pizza and masseuses to some startup that deserves some love but ain't getting it. - Jonathan
Jason, well it's the truth. Doesn't mean I'm hating Twitter. I expressed I don't understand rewarding in this situation. And if you follow me, you know that I am on Twitter's side and am making efforts to help the situation. If something is bad, I say it's bad. If it's good, I say it's good. In this case, we have both. That's just me. Sorry if it's coming across as hating Twitter, because it's just the opposite. No one wants to hear the truth. - Bwana McCall
I still think that providing them with a keg wasn't a good idea. At least a massage is supposed to make you MORE productive. - Ontario Emperor
@Sacca you had me up until "the largest and most open device and network agnostic communications platform we have seen created in the last 10 years." Great line for VCs, but users just want the stuff to work. I don't care about marketing/business speak and hype, and don't use a product because it's "innovative" or "the future". Just fill a need expertly. - Jason Kaneshiro
@jason But what makes Twitter "work"? What makes it so worthwhile to all of us? Because it is wide open and does not preordain any specific use case. Last time Biz mentioned a public number he noted that, when compared to Twitter's web traffic, 23x more comes through the Twitter API. That is f'ing bananas. - Sacca
@Sacca I think you're missing my point. I don't use Twitter because it's "open," has impressive stats, or is innovative. I used it because it was easy and fun. But it worth diminishes substantially each time it goes down - all reasons are forgotten when I can't access it - I hope the engineers can solve their uptime issues becauseFriendFeed proves itself a more than ample replacement. That may sound harsh, but that's the SV startup world for ya - a new service is always right around the corner. - Jason Kaneshiro
@Jason I think you, and others, use it expressly because its open and innovative and the impressive stats are proof of that. Do I think users care about definitions of openness and network agnosticism? No. But, they clearly appreciate the breadth of clients and sites that connect to Twitter, and the relentlessly intriguing uses of Twitter that emerge every day. Do we all wish it would be up more? Sure. That said, I think it is pretty lame to go back and expand your prior comments without calling that out. - Sacca
Now that Twitter is down, again, does that mean I can show up at their offices expecting an empty massage chair? - Jonathan
@Sacca re "There used to be a culture here in the Valley where you didn't mock someone else's outage or even call attention to it. Because they happen to everyone. *Everyone.*" While that may be admirable from a technical basis, it's not admirable from a business basis. Not the mocking part, but from a business perspective, things are supposed to run. Twitter knows this. Repeated outages can't be excused because they happen to everyone. Repeated outages are a failure that must be corrected - I think we all agree there. - Ontario Emperor
@OE, I don't think anyone's arguing that the outages don't need to be fixed. I think people are arguing with the "these outages need to be fixed. You have thirty seconds. Go." attitude that I've seen distressingly often this week. - Chris Anthony
Chris, my personal beef, which wasn't really addressed until this week, was that Twitter was slow in communicating. There was at least one instance in which one weekend comment elicited two comments from Twitter, one occurring several hours later, the other occurring several days later. This week they are doing MUCH better in communicating to their users more rapidly. (Not that I'd buy them a keg of beer in gratitude; I want them to be sharp!) - Ontario Emperor
Same with me Ontario. I was very encouraged to see the communication. I'm willing to put up with a LOT if you communicate with me. I'm still with Dreamhost. Nuff said. :) - Bwana McCall
@Sacca, well, I think it's *extremely* lame that Twitter is down so often I forget why I even used it. I think we can all agree on that. - Jason Kaneshiro
@Chris they've had well more than thirty freaking seconds. These outages have been constant for *months*. In the past week alone, it's been four times. *any* other service - even ones I pay for - I expect much more and practically any other service, I would have closed my account already. If my cable TV or broad band went out four times in a week I would have canceled. I feel I've given Twitter the benefit of the doubt and ample time to get their act together for *months*. - Jason Kaneshiro
Oh, and if anyone is thinking - "Twitter is free, so stop complaining" - FriendFeed is free, and it doesn't go down as often! - Jason Kaneshiro
I think it's great that you did that. Ya'll are getting hammered, and there's work to do on your end, but keep truckin'. - Clay Newton
Jason, I don't think you can truthfully talk about these outages being "constant for months" unless you're willing to count every time you've received a "there is something technically wrong" message. Most people talking about this are talking about the last few weeks; the outages before that were isolated incidents. Either way, you're overreacting and dogpiling, and it doesn't become /anyone/ to do either. - Chris Anthony
@ Chris Consider me an example of a once passionate Twitter user, greatly disappointed to see a really interesting service go down the tubes. The overreaction cuts both ways - I promoted the service on its way up, and will be more than passoinate to point out their failings on their way down. - Jason Kaneshiro
Jason, I'll gladly consider you that way. I don't agree that Twitter is going down the tubes, but you're entitled to your opinion. I do, however, think that you would do well to consider whether your frustration and upset at their failings is coloring your commentary, and whether you want it to be. - Chris Anthony
"I admire all of these armchair fauxcoders who think they have it all figured out and that somehow the Twitter engineers just smoke blunts and play GTA 4 all day" -- LOL. No, clearly they also make time for free pizza and massages. [rimshot] I kid, I kid! Plus, faux is not the easiest language to debug. Though I am looking forward to faux.NET and Faux on Rails. - Karim
Wait! Twitter was back up? I keep missing it. - Harvey Simmons
Yes, Twitter was up for a bit, but I couldn't use it because it was too slow. - Morton Fox
This is getting past ridiculous; we wouldn't have sat still for such an appalling record of availability by another service. So, Dave, how about that distributed Twitter architecture you proposed, was there any interest to help set it up? - Asteris Masouras
Asteris -- yes there was interest, but generally the people with the products are scared of pissing Twitter off. This I don't understand -- I think the Twitter folk would welcome a bit of redundancy. Everything they've said publicly and done with the Twitter API indicates that they believe federation is in their future, but mostly the tech industry is scared. Where are the swashbucklers? Where's the adventure in venture capital? :-) - Dave Winer
I'll believe that Twitter Inc. hearts federation when I see them take definite steps in that direction. If Microsoft & Yahoo are anything to go by, corps that live & die by the mass adoption of their services are anything but cool with federating & open standards. Only their users can keep them on the straight & narrow, or provide scaffolding for alternatives. As to your quasi-rhetorical questions about the guts of the industry, I wonder too :-) - Asteris Masouras
Nope; I check if they are actively commenting and post interesting information. Also I look at their linkedin/facebook/twitter/blog to see what they are like. I also almost never subscribe to private users. - Benjamin Golub
I check to see if they are interesting and go from there. Nobody really follows me, though. I stalk everyone else. - Rahsheen Porter
I try to. But I REALLY wish for a page that shows who follows you but you aren't following, and vica-versa. - Matt Harwood
I do because I'm lacking friends and content. I'm also not sure how to find others with similar interests. - Vaughn via Alert Thingy
I spent about 3 hours the other day going through everyone who had subscribed to me and adding them. It's vastly improved the FriendFeed experience for me. So many great posts from everywhere. I wish there was a way to automate this. I prefer to cast a wider net and then use the hide feature to refine my FriendFeed experience. - Thomas Hawk
No, im being selective to those who I know at first, may open up later - Jeremiah Owyang
Yes, I do. I haven't yet run into a Friendfeed equivalent to the Twitter spammer yet so for now, everyone is welcome. - Morton Fox
I follow most -- but I check to see what services they are sharing and whether or not their content might interest me. And of course that they speak English. - Shey
I employ the shoot first ask questions later strategy - add 'em all now and unsub if its not a good fit - Marco
Nope, I checked their content and if I'm not interested I don't add them - Alejandro S.
Yes, because I'm lazy, and spammers haven't ben an issue yet. - Jason Kaneshiro
I have been adding every single "Friend of" user that appears on the feed. If I later find their updates non worthy I just "hide" them. - Gadiel Rivera
not really- but I did follow yo :)- - Peter Dawson
I usually do, but sometimes miss the emails. I also employ Marco's shoot first ask questions later system. :) - felix
As long as I see a similarity of interests, I follow...That has mostly been the case so far. Once FriendFeed branches out past the early adoptors that'll probably change. - Chris Rossini
Usually, but I'm in the "lacking any friends" camp. There will probably be a time I need to dial the noise down. - Derek Dysart
If someone thinks I'm important enough to subscribe to, I like to return the favor. :) - Shawn Farner via twhirl
I don't follow a whole bunch of people (yet) and I don't have a lot of followers either. But I do check out who they are before I add them. - Rosana Kooymans
if someone follows me then i'd follow them. just to see who's crazy enough to follow me, lol - Outsanity
No. It's not that some people are streaming bad stuff or anything. I'm not just interested in some of what they care about. - Hutch Carpenter
I try to. I'm very happy with the quality of people here and I've yet to be disappointed. - Vince DeGeorge
Wow; and it looks like commenting on this entry has caused a flood of subscribers coming my way! - Benjamin Golub
I follow almost everyone who follows me. Eventually, I'm sure we'll get the people who are using FriendFeed for s/p/a/m/ marketing, and the folks who are using it to connect with special-interest groups I'm not a part of, as we've seen on Twitter. But for now, as far as I know, I follow everyone who follows me -- so long as most of their posts are in English. - Mitch Wagner
I follow similar rules on FriendFeed and Twitter. If you haven't generated any content, or if your content solely consists of links and sales pitches, I usually won't follow you. - Ontario Emperor
Mostly. I'll do a quick check to see if what's been posted is of interest but I usually do. I figure you can always unsubscribe later. - Kevin Cearns
Not everyone. If they have similar interests and I find their blog or web presence to be compelling then I'll follow. I just follow too many people as it is. - James via Alert Thingy
@Benjamin Yep, this post made look and realize that I was not yet subscribed to you though I seem to see you all the time on common shared items. Glad you reciprocated. - Vince DeGeorge
No. I check if they are interesting and not post to much photos first... - Svartling
I'm more selective on FF than on Twitter - Sarah Perez
i try follow everyone that follows me, no real reason not to? - Chris Jones via twhirl
I always give it a try, and remove my subscription if it gets too noisy - julian_marain
I follow everybody that follows me and more. - possible248
nope. i look at their last 10-15 comments and make sure they are interested in the same things I am. plus i also look at how many followers they have. if they have more then 500 or so then i am pretty confident that i won't subscribe. - Chris Harris
ree with or has had nothing interesting to say for a long time. Sad but true. - Brent Newhall via twhirl
I am following every interesting person that follow me ... I try to avoid those with a enormous amount of people followed ... they seems to be a lot of spamming account. Same thing with twitter. - Christian Farley
I would love to see the insurance claim on that one. - Kevin D. White
It had to have been a coordinated publicity stunt to promote the Indy LEGO video game. Notice no traffic, cleared streets, no onlookers, they had to have had a permit for filming. Still, very cool. - Nathaniel Payne
"Mr. Hauser uncovered the means to answer these questions definitively. On this page in 1993, he stated that "No matter what the tax rates have been, in postwar America tax revenues have remained at about 19.5% of GDP." What a pity that his discovery has not been more widely disseminated." - Paul Buchheit
James Mirrlees, a left-wing economist who won the 96 Nobel prize for economics, calculated that the optimal tax rate for everyone was about 20 percent. This came as a surprise to him - he really expected progressive taxation to be the fairest solution. - Thomas Brox Røst
"Raising taxes encourages taxpayers to shift, hide and underreport income. . . . Higher taxes reduce the incentives to work, produce, invest and save, thereby dampening overall economic activity and job creation." Unfortunately the working poor do not ever have an opportunity to shift, hide and underreport income - Shakeel Mahate
Hauser's insight is really under appreciated. I remember arguing about it in some of my upper level Econ classes. The lesson is that have money are very good at keeping it. There really is almost no such thing as a progressive tax system. - Kevin D. White
Mr Hauser supports progressive taxation, when it's done with a large up-front deduction, see: http://www.hoover.org/publicat.... Unfortunately it seems unlikely the tax code will ever be overhauled as he suggests given the number of accountants, lobbyists, lawyers, etc. who will be out of work. - Sanjeev Singh
@Kevin: True. Besides, income is not wealth; wealth is assets. If your goal is to redistribute assets (which can be a good thing) from the rich to the not-so-rich you won't get to them through their paychecks. - Thomas Brox Røst
@Sanjeev: Yeah, you really don't want roaming gangs of accountants, lobbyists and lawyers with too much time on their hands. Many of the former Eastern bloc economies managed to successfully reform their tax codes but this was mostly done at a time when their societies were in turmoil anyway. - Thomas Brox Røst
Would be interesting to see whether this holds true for other countries as well. - Ole Begemann
My first thought was that the data is plotted in fairly misleading way. Squishing the revenue down at the bottom makes it look as flat as possible on first glance, but it actually varies by about 20% around the mean, which is a pretty big deal when you are talking about the entire US budget. Combine that with the fact that they left out the rates on everyone else besides the top earners over the same time period, and this becomes a weak argument. - Elio Abbondanzieri
What is misleading about this is that it plots the (a) top (b) individual tax bracket against (c) total federal revenue. Exactly who thinks those two lines ought to correlate on a graph like this? Oh, right, no one. - Daniel Dulitz
Daniel, I think the point of the article is that lots of people (mistakenly) believe there should be a correlation - that taxing people with higher incomes at a higher rate ought to translate to statistically higher federal revenues. - Sanjeev Singh
I'm not convinced there wouldn't be a correlation if everything else (corporate and payroll tax rates, tax loopholes, income distribution, etc.) were held constant. - Jim Norris
I agree with Daniel. This is a dishonest, ideologically-driven article that assumes that there are no taxes other than the highest rate of income tax. I wonder if it includes taxes like Social Security, which have gone up and aren't included in the rate. You could easily restate the "law" as "tax cuts are a fraud, since they will be compensated for by other tax increases", with just as much evidence as for this article. - Alex Power
I agree with Dulitz and Alex. This graph is basically meaningless. In a progressive tax system, the total revenue from taxes is a function of several tax rates across all income brackets, as well as the number of wage earners in each bracket. Just plotting total revenue based only on the top income tax rate, ignoring all other factors that go into it, is plain dishonest. Ideologically-driven? You expected otherwise from a WSJ editorial? - Mark Stahl
the thesis about business evading overly taxing regime is good... until there is place to escape taxes. what if there will be no place to go? escapism is not endless. - silpol
I don't understand the point of taxing poor people - its not like their taxes are contributing much to the bottom line anyway. - Bruce Williams
what a remarkable finding. time to check wikipedia and see how real it is. - Bruce Williams
wikipedia doesn't add much, other than to verify the facts stated in the chart. I do think that folks are reading too much into the top line of the chart - the interesting point being made is that despite a number of different tax regimes over time, the bottom line has held steady. That's interesting, and potentially useful. - Bruce Williams
@jim: maybe, "everything else" like corporate payroll taxes, tax loopholes, income distribution, etc fail to hold constant just enough as to compensate for higher or lower taxation level. probably, this is not a coincidence :) - 9000
the more interesting test for be to see if other countries also exhibit the same revenue raising potential despite tax regimes, but deliver a better quality of life to its citizens - wouldn't that be a damning indictment of the American fear of publicly funded health care? and other **communiest** thinking :-) - ben rogers via twhirl
Hmm... this article doesn't mention any difference in the ratio of "rich" taxpayers to "non-rich" which I figure must enter into the equation, as well as the degree of income gap; both of these have risen over the past decades. I hope Hauser's analysis accommodates these important factors. - Mark Arend
"The move will create a red carpet ushering in Hotmail's 9 million members to these various sites, where they can log on to retrieve and send email--and hopefully do some shopping while they're there. Microsoft expects that Hotmail will generate more traffic at those popular sites, and that the traffic, in turn, will generate more advertising revenue.
The potential for so many new eyeballs on the site poses a major threat to MSN.com's main rival, online giant America Online. AOL recently announced that it will offer its 10 million members access to their email without logging on to the ISP's network. It also is about to acquire CompuServe, which earlier this week launched a Web-only service, dubbed "C."" - Paul Buchheit
Old speculation is useful because it can remind us of how silly most current speculation is. - Paul Buchheit
By the way, I think Gmail is the fastest growing email service ever. (Hotmail took almost 5 years to reach 100 million users, though to be fair there weren't as many people on the internet back then: http://www.microsoft.com/press...) More importantly, Gmail has most of the "good" users. - Paul Buchheit
Hotmail taught me what a lousy email system looked like. I got my Gmail beta invite and never looked back. - Russellreno
iirc HotMail worked rather well when it ran on UNIX before Microsoft bought it. - TranceMist
GMail will be amazing once it gets out of beta. :-) - Louis Gray
@Louis lol - man - most of Google will be amazing once it gets out of beta! - felix
I have a hotmail/msn email account from back when you couldn't use MSN messenger without one. I haven't checked the inbox in years, I'm sure there's important mail there somewhere, I just don't think it's important enough to go through the hotmail experience. Shudder. - Matt Harwood
you are all reminding me that i haven't checked my damn hotmail account in weeks! - leigh himel
Wow, I love the 10+ year retention level on CNET. It will be so weird 40 years from now when our grandchildren will say, "What do you mean there are no web pages before 1995?" - Mike Reynolds
@Matt: Bet you're missing out on an email that if you click it, Bill Gates will send you a million dollars. - Chris Reed
I haven't checked my Hotmail in a while either. - Morton Fox
@Chris: He can keep his blood money ;-) Plus $1mil isn't as much as it used to be in Sterling ;-) - Matt Harwood
Hotmail ? whats that ?? does any1 use hotmail anymore ?? - Peter Dawson
@Peter - Hey, I use Hotmail! (for my MS Messenger login...) - Vince DeGeorge
The Claritas early adopter demographic group analysis is interesting: http://weblogs.hitwise.com/lee.... Apparently if you have a Hummer parked in your semicircular driveway, you are more likely to use Yahoo or Hotmail. - Karim
@Mike: or perhaps, what's wrong with the CNET archive, it stops at 1995 - j1m
@mike - Just think. Some of today's most prolific blog writers were in middle school :) - Charlie Anzman
I love seeing interviews with actual regular people. (I doubt that Americans are any more stupid than anyone else though -- this is just how people are) - Paul Buchheit
This helps me understand WV much better. I'm sure he had interviews with people who had rational positions though -- too bad he left those out. - Adam Thorsen
COFFEEHOUSE WOMAN: I just don't believe coffee should be black. INTERVIEWER: What about your coffee? WOMAN: My coffee -- this is a latte, it's not black. INTERVIEWER: Well, Obama is half black. He's like your latte. WOMAN: My coffee is not *Muslim.* INTERVIEWER: Those are Arabica beans. You're drinking a Muslim, half-black beverage. WOMAN: I... I'm drinking... [woman vomits explosively] - Karim
I had to stop watching it after the second people. I know people are like this but it's too painful to watch. - Brandon Titus
*big sigh* hard to credibly go tell the rest of the world what's right when stuff like this exists on your own turf. - Dan Hsiao
*sigh* indeed. Years ago when I lived in New Jersey, a colleague of mine justified going to war with Iraq with the eventual statement "Because the world owes us." *sigh*. I wonder how many of the voters in West Virginia feel that way. After all, we're only seeing a few people. I'd hate to walk away from this with a misapprehension of West Virginia. - Robert Konigsberg
Some ? oh ok .will grant that ! I was veering towards most ... - viki saigal
I applaud the American people for seriously considering a black president. Try that in Austria - he wouldn't get even 10% of the votes. Then again, Austria has no long history of black people. If Hillary would drop out of the race which she won't be able to win anyway, she could work in these states _with_ Obama to overcome these prejudgments. This would do this country more favor than anything else she can do right now. - sebmos
@ana: i was being sarcastic. to be explicit—the U.S. has a tendency to go and tell everyone else what is "right", but there are plenty of problems at home that, as you mentioned, really make one wonder why we think we're so qualified to do so. - Dan Hsiao
It is ironic that the Clintons made $105M in recent years, but HRC appeals to poor white people. Would it be more accurate to say that HRC appeals to white racists? - Mike Reynolds
Unbelievable. The white people in that town sounded completely retarded. The black people there sounded smart and socially aware. The thing with me is that I wasn't race-aware before I came to the States. I didn't know the difference between black and white (and I'm white). The US, the supposed "seat of freedom", taught me what racism meant. - Raoul Pop
@Raoul: I agree. I was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the US when I was 10. One of my first experiences with discrimination was when my 4th grade teacher (white, male) told me to go back where I came from. - April Buchheit
@Raoul: judging by your name, I take it you're Romanian, which means you must have observed at least some form of discrimination (and hate) against the Roma people (aka gypsies); or am I wrong? - Tudor Bosman
Yeah, the tags were the first thing that sprung in my eye. It's not just Americans, though. It's most people of most nations who have - shall we say: a limited horizon. I'll leave it at that. - Alex von Halem
I just hope that not all americans are like this...amen - Varun Mahajan
in response to Varun ... no not all Americans are ... trust me .. it's just that the real stupid ones get the most airtime .. unforutnately - JohnBfromMemphis via twhirl
Varun, not even close to all Americans. Remember, normal is "boring"... the media looks to sensationalize. We have our fair share of idiots, but what country doesn't? - Vince DeGeorge
"Remember, normal is 'boring'... the media looks to sensationalize." I wanted to follow up on this and contacted the creator of the video, Matthew Palevsky of The Real News. He says: "On version of the video that we have posted at www.therealnews.com, I left out only five of the total conducted interviews. Two of these were interviews with black, Obama supporting men who largely repeated what Stanley and Brenda had said, but in garbled sentences and with less authority. One of the other interviews was with a woman who was so overtly racist that my senior editor felt was heavy handed and unnecessary to include. The remaining two interviews were with Clinton supporters who had very little of anything to say and couldn't provide a decent reason why they were voting for Clinton--not even the de facto nod to her wealth of experience." - Philipp Lenssen
Remember, racism is not inherent, it is a learned behavior. Obama as President would most definitely not change a racist no more than Clinton as President would change a sexist. That said, he would be a beacon of hope for black people the world over (although the same might be said for Clinton giving hope to women in the same way). This era -- the past few centuries -- is jut not a particularly good time to be black, but some of us like it anyways. :) - David Adewumi
I think the one important thing that might have been overlooked by the sensationalism of this video (and perhaps I'm being overly glass 1/2 full) is that yes, these very conservative West Virginians are allowing race to color their opinion of who should be president (unsurprising), but we shouldn't forget that these selfsame conservative West Virginians are also willing to accept the possibility of a woman president (very surprising). To me, this actually a hint of progress - Jini
I agree with @Raoul some of those people were unbelievably racist. The President does indeed have to been born in the US and not naturalised (it came up in my citiznsip exam yesterday) yet they couldn't process that Obama was as American as they were. The country was founded by the Pilgrim Fathers who fled to America to gain religious freedom and people have a problem with him being black and muslim? It beggars belief and is very un-American compared to what the Constitution actually stands for - freedom of speecha nd freedom of religion. - Sally Church via Alert Thingy
This is more then just painful to watch. Its sad and disheartening. - Greg
@Sally, as a first generation American, I'll tell you from my personal experiences, many people would consider me fully American (black, un-accented English, albeit a funny last name) but not my parents, who are naturalized citizens, and speak accented English. The country was also founded by gold-seekers in Virginia who did not mix well with the natives. There are two distinct founding ideologies in the United States, and both are alive and kicking to this day. - David Adewumi
"St
The diff between you and andy is that I smile when he disagrees with someone in these discussions and I cringe when you disagree
Tone is really important. Something obama is a master at and mccain and gw bush are not
Fred" - Fred Wilson
"I am not advocating turn the other cheek. I am all for finding bin laden and taking him out
But what did iraq do to us to deserve the whomping we've delivered to them?
Who is the schoolyard bully in that story?
Fred" - Fred Wilson
I would think twitter users are collectively responsible - Michael VanDervort
Didn't we see something else like this recently, and it was pointed out that this doesn't even count tweets that originate from clients other than the twitter.com website? So the traffic is probably even larger than this shows. - Alan Cheslow
This is a great confirmation that some good publicity from the media can raise the awareness and adoption of these social tools.
I need this for the enterprise!! - Lyndon Washington
I'm sure it doesn't tell the whole story, but it's interesting directional info nonetheless. - Logical Extremes
