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brendan › Likes
I miss House of Cosbys - http://video.google.com/videose...
Harold, Rachel Lea Fox, brendan and 2 other people liked this
The Hudsucker Proxy - http://www.netflix.com/Movie...
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brendan, April Buchheit, Joe "Brrzzzzzzt" Pierce and 3 other people liked this
GEARFUSE » Cupcakes for Zombies - http://www.gearfuse.com/cupcake...
gmarketer, Ryan Sholin, Alihan ÇETİN and 29 other people liked this
"Made using red velvet raspberry cake, french vanilla cream cheese frosting and a chocolate brain, baking extraordinaire Pamela created these awesome Brain Cupcakes, perfect for zombies who’ve gone vegetarian. The extra little splatter gives it that “just scooped out of the skull” look."
- April Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Those do look delicious.
- j1m
halloween party idea!!
- Susan Beebe
Brilliant! And sick! But brilliant!
- rowlikeagirl
Why is it that math programs for kids are so stoopid? No wonder we're innumerate!
brendan, Susan Beebe, Mary DeSive and 10 other people liked this
2+2=5...
- Randy Shapiro
What was the question? Could have been which answer is closest to the correct answer.
- Jim Bednarz
State tests are just like this too. Probably why they don't like people to see them.
- Aaron Fischer
Which version of Creepy Cowboy Math is this one?
- Garmon Estes
40 is the correct answer, the answer was recognised as 40, it is just the text of the answer screen that is wrong
- Richard Stacpoole
Close counts in horseshoes and hand grenades. Guess math is similar. <grin>
- Perry Lund
I'm a public school teacher, and from what I've seen, this is par for the course, even from major publishers. For an example of a really good math game, check out Timez Attack http://www.bigbrainz.com/Downloa...
- Joel Zehring
when i was a kid, we did all our puzzles on this thing called paper til our hands were too tired of holding this utensil writing device called the pencil. we couldn't confirm the right answer until it was graded or we had to manually looked it up. kids nowadays don't know how lucky they have it.
- sɹǝɥʇɐǝɟʞɔɐןq
Those programs are done by people who think they know what kids like. At the same time as they use ugly looking UI's...
- Mattias Davidsson
I'm guessing this was an estimate the answer problem. I'm trying to convince my colleagues that technology should not be used to replace one bad practice (like drill and kill on paper) with another bad practice (drill and kill on computers). Instead we need to transform teaching, so that we focus on using information not memorizing it. My Mom was a scientist she argued with my math and...
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- Kimberly Herbert
Algebra word problems probably are as difficult to grade as writing samples. Teachers should be rewarded when good and not when they're not. It's an area of American life which is too socialistic, IMO. Rote learning means the teacher has less "homework" to do. Advanced math teaches you more than just useless information. It forces you to think.
- heretic_twit
how sad this truly is!
- Susan Beebe
from BuddyFeed
Good opportunity for MATHCOUNTS (which does great work in the middle schools) to step in and create something infinitely better.
- LOHAD
Dark City Director's Cut - http://www.netflix.com/Movie...
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brendan, Steve and 3 other people and Paul Wilcox liked this
This one!
- Stephen Mack
6 Microsoft freebies I actually love to use - http://www.downloadsquad.com/2009...
Justin Wright, DesignsBy Eme, amygeek and 18 other people liked this
Decent list of apps from DownloadSquad
- Keith - @tsudo
from Bookmarklet
agree with windows 7 - much better than vista
- Ricardo Pietrobon
I completely agree Ricardo here's my take on Win7 http://su.pr/1B6bXY
- Keith - @tsudo
Thank you for this. I didn't know about http://skydrive.live.com/ before reading the article and was excited to realize that I already have an account. (I'm a big ranter and raver about having to create a zillion accounts.)
- Miss Elle
The iPhone UI Icon Set gives app developers a library of 120 icons for use in their Tab Bar - http://www.eddit.com/shop...
Tony Ruscoe, brendan, Taras Brizitsky and 17 other people liked this
i have a free set too. i'll try to find it and post a link.
- John Wang
here you go: http://glyphish.com
- John Wang
I also really like the Glyphish icons. Also check out his Kickstarter project he launched that was successful in getting to the goal needed to kick off the release of the vector files for the Glyphish icons. http://www.kickstarter.com/project... (And maybe of interest to you, Kevin, but the designer works for Google.)
- Dylan Bennett
Download Junkies, Update Your System With RadarSync - http://www.makeuseof.com/tag...
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Amin, Michael Fidler, The Real sofarsoShawn and 11 other people liked this
"So, your Start Menu is a mile long, your Add/Remove Programs control panel takes a week to load, and your spouse is getting more annoyed with each successive “new thing” that pops up in the System Tray. Admit it. You’re a download junkie. I know that I am, and that I like to keep everything up to date as much as possible. True geeks stay on the bleeding edge. That’s where this new tool, RadarSync, comes in."
- Kol Tregaskes
from Bookmarklet
I'm interested to see how it handles the Win 7 RC. Stay tooned!
- caj needs a haircut
I'll give it a go later. I've gone from FileHippo's Updater (which misses a lot but includes betas) to Update Notifier (which picks up a lot more but not sure about betas) in the last few weeks.
- Kol Tregaskes
So far nothing odd except it doesn't see my Trend Micro Internet Security suite apps. I thought I'd try Trend Micro out when I built the systems but even Windows doesn't "see" it. Weird. Will probably install and replace with some free AV/firewall apps.
- caj needs a haircut
Thanks for the info, Alan.
- Kol Tregaskes
AVG and Lavasoft Ad-aware think its a trojan. It makes them very angry.
- The Amber
Also, it pulled bad drivers for me using an Acer Aspire (not the One) and Windows 7.
- The Amber
yikes - anyone else have anything like that happening?
- Marco(aureliusmaximus)
I like this. I am hook on it now.
- Russellreno
DearIE6 - So Long - http://dearie6.com/
Craig Deakin, Numan Çebi, Nolan Alston and 29 other people liked this
"So what's this all about? Well we think IE6 has run its course, so do many others as you can see. This is a place for you to say your parting words to IE6, and bid it goodbye."
- Jonathan Kong
ditto. asap
- Tom Parish
totally agree... they still run IE 6 at the local library!!
- Jay
MUST. DESTROY. IE6
- Mo Kargas
I still have IE6 @ work. :(
- Amani
Whenever I get quoted about security issues, I hammer this point home.
- Ⓒⓗⓡⓘⓢ Ⓟⓘⓡⓘⓛⓛⓞ
This situation is like it was with Netscape 4.x years back. It was hopefully outdated and never updated (I guess they were coding Javagator), while Mozilla couldn't get their act together for what, 5-6 years? Actually it is one of the reasons why IE6 got so strong share and we are in this situation now.
- Jemm
YouTube - Pet Penguin - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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brendan, Derek Collison and Tudor Bosman liked this
EveryBlock is a new way to keep track of what’s happening on your block, in your neighborhood and all over your city - http://www.everyblock.com/
Wes, Jeremy Dunck, Morton Fox and 9 other people liked this
what EveryBlock does really well is provide a user-friendly, easy-to-digest interface for exploring public records: every building permit, restaurant inspection, police call, zoning agenda item and more. You can hone searches from a one- to eight-block radius around a particular address. And you can set daily/weekly email alerts, as well
- Cee Bee
from Bookmarklet
this is real cool. totally allows you to specify an area near you and give you an RSS feed concerning that area
- Cee Bee
+1 - I use this all the time, and get weekly update emails. Limited to a few cities, though.
- Paul Whitaker
Interesting I guess if your city is on top of things. The City of LA is not on top of things and most of that stuff is only available by going downtown. Other than that we have ZIMAS which gives me info, but it's never current.
- Anika
bookmarked
- TrafficBug
Lock Picking (THIS IS INSANE!!) - http://www.metacafe.com/watch...
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Paul Grav, James, netrider11 and 52 other people liked this
that's just cool man!
- frank barry
Now what am I going to do with all those bic pens?
- Troy Forster
from twhirl
So that's why lock-picking tools are illegal.
- wrecks
This guy picks 7 locks in just under 2 minutes!
- Joe Bland
Heheh, and after picking the locks he's faced with a very large hound looking him straight in the eyes and a terrier jumping for his b$lls... Somehow I think the locks are the least of his worries.
- Henk de Kruyff
from twhirl
Lock picking tools are illegal?? What about crowbars and bolt cutters?
- Paul Grav
All burglary tools are illegal. If they think you are carrying crowbars and bolt cutters to break in somewhere, they can arrest you. Of course, there are legitimate purposes for those tools, too. Lock picks are just for picking locks, so you better have a really good reason for carrying them if caught (e.g., you are a locksmith).
- Brian Hawthorne
I always wanted a set of those tools when I was a kid watching private eyes breaking into bad guys' houses. :)
- Steve Lowe
Carrying bolt cutters is a little more obvious than these few tools. He should throw in a third minute showing the liquid nitrogen trick and the bic-pen bike lock trick.
- Indio Apache
from twhirl
Wow, this makes picking a lock look far too easy... He even picked a combination lock?!?!?!
- JR
Just confirms... locks are for honest people. :-(
- TranceMist
this is really pretty appalling to watch. i assume standard dial combo locks are harder to pick. as for the tools, meh. making them illegal is hardly sufficient to protecting users w/ these types of locks.
- MikeAmundsen
Why aren't guns illegal then? It's absurd that lock-picking tools are illegal. Mere possession shouldn't prove you're ready to break the law.
- thepete
The combination lock was the easiest. Under one second. The last one required three tools and was a little more fiddly than the rest, which were all done in a couple seconds. Scary. In other words, you can't really put your trust in locks. Makes you wonder what kind of locks you _can_ trust, if any.
- Rick Cogley
@Rick: first lock was a keyed 'door'-style lock, not a combination lock.
- MikeAmundsen
How FriendFeed uses MySQL to store schema-less data - http://bret.appspot.com/entry...
Jimminy, CoG of FF, payel rakshit, Francesco M. and 206 other people liked this
This is a technical overview of the new backend system we launched a couple of days ago.
- Bret Taylor
First question, why MySQL instead of a straight key/value/attribute store, like a bdb? (Amazon's SimpleDB works along similar principles, btw.)
- DeWitt Clinton
Cool stuff Bret. Love to see this kind of stuff. Would love that chat about the Ajax side of things ;)
- Dion Almaer
DeWitt: Historical reasons; we have some operational experience maintaining MySQL servers, and MySQL is very popular so there's a lot of support available.
- Tudor Bosman
Oh right, none of you are ex-Amazon. (Any Amazonian reading this will understand...)
- DeWitt Clinton
How small do you keep the shards? Can you keep the entire index tables in RAM? Are you backed with SSD?
- DeWitt Clinton
Not all of it is RAM. We use normal hard drives for this system, and we have enough RAM such that the working set fits in memory. Most of the oldest stuff on FriendFeed is not accessed frequently, and that data is not typically resident in memory.
- Bret Taylor
Thanks Bret, nice post.
- Ömer Faruk Kurt
So for something like 'user_id_index.get_all' you'd trust that InnoDB has that user in RAM, and that you have only a small set of active users at any given time (for web requests). Same for the relevant entities you'd "join" against. Makes sense. (Sorry, having a hard time typing coherently tonight.)
- DeWitt Clinton
Yah, those indexes are typically in RAM. Our indexes contain a timestamp as well (since they are ordered reverse chronologically), so the oldest entries referenced by that index would likely not be in RAM depending on how many pages back they are on most feeds.
- Bret Taylor
BTW, did you guys look at any other serialization mechanism other than pickle? Any pros/cons for cpickle?
- Arvind Sundararajan
cPickle is the same format as pickle, just implemented in C instead of Python. We use cPickle. marshal is faster, but according to docs may change from version to version of Python, so we didn't want to use it in our DB.
- Bret Taylor
@Bret "250 million entries", is it possible to give the size of the DB? and what is your opinion about when will you need to change this system again or is it strong enough for years Meybe you will only need hardware instead of structure changes?
- Ömer Faruk Kurt
Ömer: I don't have an exact number off the top of my head, but a lot of data is the indexes themselves, so adding indexes is almost as significant as adding entries.
- Bret Taylor
This sounds exceptionally similar to how the AppEngine datastore does things, except that it's MySQL and not BigTable.
- Alex Power
Aren't commercial RDBMSes (like Oracle, MSSQL) designed to support the sorts of things you're looking for, like online reindexing and joining across shards? Why not use them? Lack of experience? NIH? Too expensive?
- Gabe
"We like MySQL for storage, just not RDBMS usage patterns" Excellent post Bret, thanks for sharing!
- Mahesh CR
Gabe: "designed to support" and actually working are two different things. I think that is why companies like ours generally don't use commercial software and choose to use open source software. If it doesn't work, we can fix it. In my experience, most of those features don't work at the scale consumer web sites need, and it certainly wasn't worth the cost and time to find out from our perspective.
- Bret Taylor
Non-RDBMS-patterns may work when there is no great needs for processing the actual data (like reports etc). In LOB-apps this would be a big no-no, but in large-scale services like FF alternative methods are almost necessary...
- Jemm
Thanks for the writeup! Is there a reason you don't declare the added_id as an UNSIGNED INT?
- Roger
Roger: no, no reason.
- Bret Taylor
@Bret, this is a pretty cool write u!. Might I suggest as a subject for future write ups, how the realtime update system works (e.g. how it knows what updates it needs to push), and perhaps how the feed fetching system works and how these might inter-relate?
- Ray Cromwell
Ray: good ideas. We will do more of these. We want to in theory - they just take a bit of time to write up, and we like writing code more than blog posts :)
- Bret Taylor
Bret, do you really think that guys like Oracle and MS create features for enterprise-level databases that don't work or scale to meet the needs of those who buy them? Of course you may be right, but the TPC tests generally get results in the hundreds and thousands of transactions per second. In reality, though, what can you really fix if something doesn't work? Are you going to debug MySQL if it starts corrupting data or optimize it if it's too slow?
- Gabe
Gabe: yes, we have already debugged MySQL when it has crashed. It would have been impossible without the debug symbols and source code.
- Bret Taylor
Gabe: I've been doing a fair amount of tracing through MySQL core dumps over the past week, and just having the ability to look at the code, plus the size of the community working with the same code base and debugging problems, seems to make it worth the cost at this point. We haven't changed any of the MySQL code yet, but Google and others certainly have.
- Jim Norris
This is the best thing I read today.
- pastas9
I'm skeptical of Oracle and other commercial pre-packaged systems because the companies are focused on extracting revenue via software sales and their products are highly optimized for a certain problem domain that doesn't really fit our experience very well.
- Jim Norris
So I guess the downside is that if you change your indexes you need to change the code, too. How do you manage the table creation, code migration and data sharding all at once?
- Nick Lothian
Nick: It is actually not bad: make the tables, update the code, start writing to the indexes for new entities, then run the "Cleaner" to fill in the indexes for the older entities. When the cleaner is done, you can start using the indexes for features.
- Bret Taylor
The most important decision about your design- and why not going with databases RDBMS etc. to manage the indices - is that your users don't really look up the old stuff, so keeping the old entries in RAM/live indices isn't worth the time hit it would take to do huge indexes on long tables. This seems like a "running index"- that is, it's populated by the application in many places at one time, instead of in one place, that the DB then optimizes over the entire history.
- anna sauce
Reminds me of some multi-user java apps back 10 years or so ago that had to manage simultaneous users on live systems. great post, Bret, and fun to see what's working behind the scenes.
- anna sauce
"if you change your indexes you need to change the code" is not a problem unique to this system. You always have to update your code along with your schema. You have to write code to read from the tables even if you use a typical RDBMS, and you can't do that without an index, so this staged process exists in some form no matter what your storage scheme looks like.
- Bret Taylor
Bret, it sounds like MySQL crashes a lot. Are you assuming that commercial products will crash just as often and the vendors won't debug it?
- Gabe
Gabe: Every piece of software crashes, whether it is written by Oracle or by open source developers. The difference with open source is that we are not dependent on someone else to diagnose and fix the problems. This is not a unique sentiment. Google, Yahoo, Facebook, FriendFeed, Twitter, et al, have all chosen open source infrastructure for this and a variety of other compelling reasons we have already discussed.
- Bret Taylor
Brett, I agree that not being dependent on somebody else is great. In fact, the product I work on is probably 99% open source or developed in-house. I even replaced a relational DB with a pickled Python object store a year or two ago. However, I'm also not considering writing my own transaction protocol, indexing, and query engine because the open source DB I use doesn't support...
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- Gabe
Re: "change your indexes you need to change the code" - yes, conventionally you need to change your code if you change your tables. But you do get some opportunities for runtime optimisations by changing your indexes (although in practice this can have availability costs as you note)
- Nick Lothian
OK I'm going to put this out there: sounds like you're re-inventing the wheel.
- anna sauce
Being able to open something up to understand, diagnose, and fix things yourself is underrated.
- Amit Patel
DeWitt, part of the reason we didn't use a simpler store is that we're using mysql replication. We'd have to replace that too. Probably not hard, but it's working well for us. Also sometimes you do want transactions for performance within a single DB (each xsaction is a single log write, vs multiple little writes).
- Private Sanjeev
re: SSDs and mysql. I can't speak for all SSDs, but the Intel X25-M gets internally fragmented very quickly, reducing write performance by 10-20x. Things that do large sequential writes like bigtable or lucene are a better fit.
- Private Sanjeev
Part of the purpose behind traditional schema driven designs is to 'protect' the data from the programmers and the applications - which is not insane given the level of commitment people have in some kinds of organization. One of the statements that the FF people are making here is that they have trust in themselves and each other and they care about what they are doing.
- Robin Barooah
You guys rock so hard it HURTS! THANK YOU, FRIENDFEED!
- Josh Haley
Just logged in... this sounds really cool.... hmmm :)
- Susan Beebe
great post -- liked the discussion in the comments too! some people thinking relational databases can do everything; other people not understanding rationale behind key/value store; other people mad you've reinvented it using MySQL... :-D favorite comment from guy who is having a heart attack because anyone might think it's a good idea: "it is like using a database to solve the problem...
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- Karim
what is the correct name for this? "schema-less data?" "entity attribute/value (EAV) store?" "key/value store?" personally, i like "property bag" :-D also, have you considered Amazon SimpleDB, or Microsoft SQL Data Services for hosted services, since they are based on similar ideas, just not on MySQL?
- Karim
Sanjeev, I heard rumors about the X25-M performance running down after fragmentation, but last I heard was Intel was unable to replicate & "looking into it." 10-20x should not be hard to spot. :-) Are you in touch with Intel...? Also, have you seen similar problems on SSDs with Samsung controllers? (I went with the Corsair...)
- Karim
Karim, it may not get as bad with other SSDs, but they start off with much higher write latency for small random writes than the X25-M.
- Private Sanjeev
The Samsung, you mean? All I was trying to do was *not* get the JMicron controller and *afford* it :-D
- Karim
but why are the ssIDs varchars, is the question (from @eonarts comment)
- anna sauce
anna: what are ssIDs? If you mean the UUIDs, they are just 16 byte binary strings.
- Bret Taylor
Just look how many comments on this begin with someone's name. "anna:" "Karim," "Sanjeev,". Somehow there needs to be a reply-to-comment mechanism. Fortunately FriendFeed uses json blobs in their database so this won't require a painful schema change ;-)
- Kevin
Bret: you're right, I re-read the post and couldn't find evidence of the Primary Key Erin mentions in her comment, as varchar. Am I missing it?
- anna sauce
schema changes aren't painful, and I have a question for more current DB/programmatic people (than me): why is this called schema-less? There is a schema, it's just that the database application isn't being used to index, Bret's crew are doing it manually. Blobs in columns doesn't mean it's schema-free, that's been going on for 15 years. I think it's just that he's cracking the indexing methodology and offroading. I'd like to hear from some PostGres people on this- Disqus is on PostGres aren't they?
- anna sauce
Anna: that person is talking about the URL index. What we are doing is correct for this application; we want the index to be in that order on disk, not in a different order.
- Bret Taylor
Bret: ah, ok
- anna sauce
I just remembered that one of my client's DBs is actually Btrieve, which is nothing more than a way of storing binary blobs with certain byte ranges indexed. (They are still using a DOS app from the '80s, with the Btrieve running on a Novell server.) The only real difference is that they have fixed-length keys and records, while the MySQL data is variable-length.
- Gabe
Bret: Thanks a lot for the informative post! Any thoughts on MySQL vs Postgres? We found tables crashed with too many simultaneous writers in MySQL, but your post says it "doesn't corrupt data", so I guess you haven't had such issues.
- Ruchira S. Datta
Bret: Do you apply the same approach to perform searches on your stored text data? (i.e. inside the data storing the BLOB)
- Roger
Bret, do you care to explain briefly how you approach the following/follower aspect without JOINs? I loved the article, keep reading it every once in a while...
- Jorge Escobar
Latest Release of Mozilla’s Ubiquity Is Slicker and Faster. Extension of the Year? - http://thenextweb.com/2008...
Jesper Kjær Hansen, Phil Glockner, Adarsh and 23 other people liked this
It keeps popping up when it likes though! (It did it while writing this)
- Matt Frog
really? I honestly haven't had that problem once
- Zee.
Well I set the shortcut to shift+space, as others are taken by Launchbar etc. Maybe I type shift+space a lot by accident and never realised ;)
- Matt Frog
Rudely forgot to mention, great write up Zee! :)
- Matt Frog
lol, it isn't really all that great to be honest - but thanks all the same :)
- Zee.
bump due to duplicate
- Zee.
The recent integration with Feedly makes Feedl/Ubiiquity the extension combo of the year.
- Robert Clockedile
from twhirl
Mozilla announced integration with FF 3.3
- Russellreno
feedscrub :: keep your feeds squeaky clean! - http://www.feedscrub.com/#
Kol Tregaskes, Daniel W. Crompton, Jemm and 8 other people liked this
@climenole, I've been building a non-spam Bayesian filter for mail to separate the wheat from the chaff, it is certainly applicable to any message based information streams.
- Daniel W. Crompton
I have tried FeedScrub and I only wish they allowed me to specify the keywords to block. I dont trust an automated filter even though it may be heuristic. To answer Claude, use SuggestRSS.
- TrafficBug
Barack and Michelle Obama do WHAT together? - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Robert Felty, Ryan Kaisoglus, brendan and 3 other people liked this
"Physically bonded."
- Kevin Fox
"fisting"?? Is she thinking of some other definition than what I am thinking of?
- Robert Felty
SpeedyVista.com - Windows Vista Tweaks and Services - http://www.speedyvista.com/
Kol Tregaskes, brendan, ناصـــــــر and 5 other people liked this
I am all about tweaking today. You may have heard of this before but I have seen people who don't.
- Stephen
from Bookmarklet
Best Vista tweak ever....boot up XP
- Anthony
I wounder if they will make a Speedy7.com.
- Stephen
Anthony - better Tweak still, boot up linux... lol
- Ian May
Seriously, I am running a Vista box here, and I've had less issues with it, than XP.
- Ian May
Some people get lucky.
- Stephen
brendan, Anne Bouey, April Buchheit and Dan Hsiao liked this
FeedMyTorrents.com - Your source for automatic downloading - http://feedmytorrents.com/
Morton Fox, brendan, Sarah Perez and 7 other people liked this
Beetlejuice - http://www.netflix.com/Movie...
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brendan, Lee Wilson, Ryan Sholin and April Buchheit liked this
Let me google that for you - http://letmegooglethatforyou.com/
Noah F, Tim Ostler, Chip Ramsey and 20 other people liked this
That is brilliant. I need this at least a dozen times a day.
- James Schipper
Priceless.
- Stowe Boyd
greaaat!
- ali
I wish I had this years ago.
- Robert Scoble
I loved it!
- Steve Garfield
from twhirl
holiness. top five, this will save me so much time.
- Joshua Kahn
from twhirl
Good question. - http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_dai...
Ruchira S. Datta, Keith Pelczarski, brendan and Jérôme liked this
7 super apps to get the perfect domain name - http://www.friedbeef.com/7-creat...
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Cibeles, SnakeDoc, Keith - @tsudo and 9 other people liked this
Daily Kos: Prop 8: The legal challenges are beginning - http://www.dailykos.com/story...
Tanath, David HC Soul, brendan and 2 other people liked this
Interesting...
- Kevin Fox
from Bookmarklet
At least lawyers will have a job to do in this otherwise tanking economy.
- Victor Ganata
The constitution of California is supposed to protect the minorities against tyranny of the majority, not allow the majority to strip away rights they already have... unfortunately we'll be back in to fights, and there will be loud screams, about activist judges (from people that do not understand laws any more than they understand fairness and equality) if the judges act in in deciding that (wonders upon wonders) the majority of the people that voted do have to adhere to the law of the land.
- David HC Soul
Starring the always-feisty Dennis Herrera
- j1m
"If the voters approved an initiative that took the right to free speech away from women, but not from men, everyone would agree that such a measure conflicts with the basic ideals of equality enshrined in our constitution"
- j1m
Frankly, I'd rather get the insanely stupid "50% to amend the constitution" rule fixed before anything else.
- Adam Lasnik
CNN now has 220 electoral votes for Obama. California is 55. That gives Obama 275 which means he wins and no other states matter. Obama has now officially won.
Anthony K. Valley ©, CJ Kloote, Nick Humphries and 11 other people liked this
CNN has just announced that he's officially President!
- Robert Scoble
Woo-hoo!
- Richard Walker
Yeeehaw
- Rasmus Lauridsen
Celebration!
- Robert Scoble
America is a new country today, despair ends, freedom rings in.
- imran
Hooray!
- Jerry Chacon
this is so great! I am so glad I stayed up watching CNN...going to bed now, happy (5 am here in Berlin)
- Gaby K. Slezák
Good night.
- Raymond Marr aka Knatchwa
297-139 now! :-P
- Matthew Horton
Good night America - and a very happy new day and age
- Gaby K. Slezák
Yaaaaaaaaaaayyyy!!!
- Sarah Perez
Sounds familiar. We were locked in, Robert.
- Louis Gray
New York Times also called it
- Stephen Foskett
Obama has 220 electoral votes. California closes NOW. 55 Votes gives Obama 275. President Time!!!
Steven Perez, Morton Fox, brendan and 9 other people liked this
CNN CALLS IT! THEY ALL CALL IT!
- Louis Gray
FOX NEWS is In. NBC is In. MSNBC is In. CBS is in.
- Louis Gray
MSNBC also called it
- Ken Sheppardson
Wheee
- Justin Yost
From CNN: Breaking News: Barack Obama Elected President
- Stephen Foskett
It's over.
- Robert Scoble
Barack Obama is President of the United States of America. Wow.
- Elisa Camahort Page
Congratulations!
- Vlado Handziski
Yay! Just saw BBC's predication and it's all O-bam-a!!!
- Morton Swimmer
You Stole Our Obama Sign - Featured Picture on BuzzFeed - http://www.buzzfeed.com/scott...
Farahnaz, Mathew A. Koeneker, Erik S and 104 other people liked this
"An Obama supporter does the math for whoever keeps stealing their political signs."
- Jason Toney
from Bookmarklet
Ha! That's awesome!
- Aaron Krug
I love it!
- David Price
dope. I like the eyesore approach. You steal my sign = Opportunity to illustrate my logic and skeelz. That's frankly what I'd do.
- Marko Bon
win win
- Melissa
Keeps stealing? They stole more then one sign? I couldn't find anything about their being repetitive thefts of their signage. Either way, it's sad that people have resorted to stealing political signs in this campaign. In the absence of real political discourse, I guess the only thing left to do is commit petty theft.
- Jason Shultz
Shows how desperate the McCain supporters are.
- Jeff P. Henderson
LOL
- Shawn Farner
An excellent deterrent to prevent Obama-dislikers from stealing signs, but what if an Obama supporter steals the sign so the supporter can have his own sign for free? The campaign gets more money, which is the thief's intention, but the money does not come out of the thief's pocket.
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
That is a great pic!
- Kipp Bodnar
wait... you have to buy those signs? i'm pretty sure up here they put them on your lawn for free... lol
- Joshua Schnell
I'm so amused at how popular this post is.
- Jason Toney
JT: FF is clearly crowded with Obama supporters. :)
- Melissa
Oh this is pristine comedy. Pristine.
- Cheryl
You are correct Joshua, let's hope the political parties in Canada don't figure this one out.
- Kenton
*steals the entire lot*
- Mo Kargas
[love]
- Carmen wBabby
I would go without the eyesore ... now it just looks tacky. Now they are just asking for more attention. I don't put political signs on my car simply because I don't want any problems. I don't think a sign is going to change anyone's mind... Major props to the design team for all the awesome looking collateral they created, though.
- Brandon
This is hilarious
- Nicholas Kreidberg
I've been tempted to throw Obama stickers over the McCain signs here in Florida, but passed. I just flip them off instead.
- ::Kristen::
Must be nice to be on the left, where the worst that happens is the sign gets stolen. In Democrat neighborhoods in Oregon, McCain signs get firebombed. http://twurl.cc/5wk
- Rob Sterling
I need to do that when I replace my stolen sign. Glad I took a picture, 'cause it's lasting longer.
- Erica Mauter
Rob - you forgot about the dude that got shot for wearing an Obama shirt. :P :D
- iTad
hell yes! A slightly tidier version of this needs to go in my mom's front yard. They (whoever "they" are) stole her sign, too.
- Kamilah Reed (K. Gill)
They had to buy the sign? I thought they gave them away for people to put up.
- Victor Ryden 美久太阿
The only problem? Obama campaign takes a loss on every sign they sell. Thief still wins.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Loved it, until I read Mark's comment.
- Toby Graham
Classic! Of course, the net signage is now bigger. Thus the total cost per square inch has been reduced. Plus it's getting page views here, so it must also be getting some extra eyeballs in the 3D world.
- Mike Reynolds
@Tad: The guy who got "shot" for wearing an Obama shirt was in Great Britain, not America, and he got "shot" with a BB gun. So I don't think that counts.
- Rob Sterling
I had my Obama sign replaced by a McCain sign. I should have done something similar... Maybe i will now ;)
- Ari Milner
Rob, n=1 on that McCain sign. It's odious, but its hardly a trend. As for the guy shot in Britan, yeah, it was a "bb gun" but it was still a violent assault, and a lot of bb guns are powerful enough to be lethal. Yes though, n=1 and it was in Britan.
- Erik S
Obama Is Right: McCain Was Wrong - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Tom Stocky, Daniel Hartmann, Thaths and 41 other people liked this
It is so much more effective with the clips... Wouldn't it be great if they allowed multimedia in the debates?
- Clare Dibble
This is how every debatable issue should be remixed. Without memory, and thankfully we have written media and "now" internet to help us out in this domain, humans would be reduced to ad swallowing, nay-saying consumers with an attention span of an earthworm.
- Nenad Nikolic
from twhirl
This shows how McCain was wrong, but doesn't show how Obama is right. The same thing could be done that shows how Obama was wrong about the surge and the connections between Iraq and Afghanistan. This is just as useless as any other debate fallacy, because it's completely one sided. Except it does it with multimedia. To that end, stop patting yourselves on the back. You look stupid.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
Mark: Everyone makes mistakes, but McCain refuses to acknowledge his mistakes. He has bought so much of his own "maverick" PR that he lives in his own fantasy world, where everything can be referenced to war and where its OK for an air-head like Sarah Palin to be one step away from leading our nation. McCain is dangerous and he simply should not be allowed to assume the leadership of this country by repeating one lie or half-truth after another.
- Rob McNair-Huff
Republicans always do that. When you say their guy fucked up, they accuse your guy of doing the same thing. It's totally predictable. They must teach it in the first day of Republican Orientation.
- Dave Winer
As does Obama. Has he yet said he was wrong about the surge? The same things can all be said about Obama, and a simple YouTube video could prove that, too, but my guess it'd be called "swiftboating," which is apparently the defense you use when you're a Democrat and a video shows your candidate in a bad light.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
See what I mean? :-)
- Dave Winer
lol
- Cee Bee
@Mark: Because the surge was a bandaid that didn't get us much closer to getting out. Obama has said the surge has succeeded beyond our wildest dreams. It doesn't mean the surge was the right thing to do. The bailout might be successful in many ways, but it still doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.
- AJ Kohn
@Mark - okay...why don't you make a video then instead of huffing and puffing? If you only 'talk the talk' but can't 'walk the walk', well, then, I'm afraid you are the one who looks stupid.
- Steve
mark...of course obama said he was wrong. he said, 'the surge exceeded beyond my expectations.' remember mccain said that like 4 times during the debate and obama said, 'yep, i said it.'
- Anika
dave, the thing is that most of us have been raised knowing that two wrongs don't a make a right. many hardcore GOP partisans clearly weren't.
- Anika
Note that the surge, as successful as it's been, has still not won us the war.
- Victor Ganata
Believe it or not, I'd be willing to vote Republican if they just ran better candidates. In this case the ticket is not only not strong (McCain), it is extremely weak (Palin), and they are running against a competent and smart ticket in Obama/Biden. But what frustrates me is Republicans who keep defending a weak ticket simply because of party affiliation. Republicans *should* be pissed as hell right now; but rather than lashing out at their opponents, they should fix the problem with their own candidates.
- DeWitt Clinton
I agree DeWitt. Ironically, I would have considered McCain in 2000, but this isn't the same guy. I thought Kerry was weak too. Leagues better than Bush, but still weak. But Obama? The first time I have been excited... maybe ever. :)
- Dion Almaer
DeWitt, totally agree. I have voted Republican, but always in lesser-of-two-evils mode. Obama is the first Presidential vote that I make in my life without such a reservation.
- Dave Winer
@Steve: re-read my original comment and try that accusation again. I said "his is just as useless as any other debate fallacy, because it's completely one sided." Look, it's not like I ask you folks to read an entire Federalist paper or something long and complicated. Just a couple sentences to read before you try to argue with me.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
@faboo: Saying it succeeded beyond his wildest expectations and admitting he was wrong are not the same thing.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
@AJ: If you don't understand why the surge was the right thing to do (and should have been done from the beginning, as McCain wanted), then your understanding of foreign policy and conflict strategy is far too limited to participate in this debate.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
@Mark: *chuckle* So are you going to explain why the surge was the right thing to do or simply insult me? I mean ... really, this is your debate tactic? Also, that's not even the argument! You've missed it entirely. The argument was about not admitting error as a proxy to one-sided political dialog - of which I provided a cogent answer and analogy. You chose to argue the point of the actual surge instead. That's another topic.
- AJ Kohn
Defenders of the Iraq War are unable to explain why it has made sense for Americans to dump several trillions of dollars down the drain in Iraq with the effect of installing a Muslim fundamentalist regime in that nation that is closely allied with Iran. This is the stupidest foreign policy blunder in American history. The "surge" is neither here nor there in making this disaster go...
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- Sean McBride
The surge is a tactic, not a strategy, no matter what McCain says. And while it has decreased violence, that doesn't mean we've succeeded. We're still no closer to winning the war. If we can't withdraw those troops without the whole place caving in, then ultimately we've failed.
- Victor Ganata
Victor -- McCain has made it clear that he doesn't understand the distinctions between tactics and strategy.
- Sean McBride
Could everyone please make an effort to stay respectful and kind? When that doesn't happen people start calling for an end to all political discussion, which would be bad. When that happens the mainstream media get to frame every issue.
- Bruce Lewis
@Victor: I've gone ahead and set your comments to hidden from here on out, since you can't be bothered to look up the difference between strategy and tactic. @AJ: My prior statement stands. Again, I'm tired of folks who don't understand their world speaking as if they were experts on everything. Maybe i'll see you both in November when I unblock everyone.
- Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins
@Mark: (If you see this) I'm sorry you don't wish to have a real debate. Done appropriately, it is the way we gain better understanding of topics and of each other. I'll take up the strategy v tactic though. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki... Now, in my mind the surge (adding more troops on the ground) was a means to an end (pacifying insurgents/security) to achieve the objective (Iraqi autonomy). Perhaps you see it differently?
- AJ Kohn
I've been involved in several discussions and "debates" with Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins now in which he has made statements which are factually false, and then quickly retreated when the factual errors were pointed out to him. He is aligned with a group of neoconservatives and religious fundamentalists in the room Conservative Oasis in which this kind of behavior is the norm -- they can't defend their ideas in fair, open and democratic debate. They always retreat after two or three exchanges.
- Sean McBride
You can never get promoters of the "surge" to talk about the costs and benefits of the Iraq War policy as a whole -- their minds go into lockdown mode the instant the issue is raised. They are unable to think strategically. Bush 43 and the neocons are spending trillions of dollars to secure Iran's control over Iraq. Massive fail. They have essentially wasted American resources and lives to promote Muslim fundamentalism in the Middle East.
- Sean McBride
Mark - I'm with just about everyone else here. I need facts, or at least some modicum of explanation as to your logic, rather than repeated sound bites. In that regard, please hide all of my comments as well. No need to unblock in November, but I will leave that up to you.
- JCunwired
If you can't effectively defend your beliefs in fair and open debate, and subject them to fact checking, reality checking and rigorous logical analysis, there is a good possibility that your beliefs are wrong. Fair and open debate is the heart and soul of any healthy and functioning democracy. True believers who can't handle debates usually are strongly attracted to authoritarian and totalitarian political systems.
- Sean McBride
"Debate" by blocking: Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins, Jay Tannenbaum, Akiva Moskovitz, Soulhuntre, Mark Tefft -- sorry if I left anyone out. One issue seems to unite them: an emotional commitment to neoconservative military aggression in the Mideast. They stand to the right of even the Bush 43 administration. Neoconservatism is more a religious cult than a rational political philosophy.
- Sean McBride
I try not to box people into labels. I can only say that, in this instance, Mark chose to insult and then not engage in debate. I'm sure it's difficult for many conservatives on FF who get called names by other 'left' leaning folks. I make an effort not to do that. I would think it would be a nice change to find true debate instead. So, running away from it seems odd.
- AJ Kohn
I've seen Hopkins do this three or four times now, and his political allies in Conservative Oasis do the same thing many times as well, so I have drawn the logical and reasonable conclusion -- they hold emotional beliefs that they can't defend against exercises in reality-checking. This is the same political group that promised us that the Iraq War would be a cakewalk and cost Americans...
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- Sean McBride
Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins is a *self-admitted* shit-stirrer (see http://rizzn.com/blog...) with a pathological habit of saying stupid things he can't defend. Take a block from him as a high compliment.
- Karim
Being a contrarian is fine, but you've got to be a smart contrarian. If you keep losing chess games after three or four moves, and then out of frustration send the chess pieces flying and refuse to play any more games, you aren't much of a player, contrarian or otherwise.
- Sean McBride
hear hear karim
- Cee Bee
Sarah Palin & Tina Fey with Split Screen Comparison - http://www.youtube.com/watch...
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Paul Buchheit, Rachel Lea Fox, Jeff Eddings and 4 other people liked this
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