1/24    Regarding the charisma post below, Al Gore is very articulate but
        somehow I don't find him very charismatic at all. I don't think he's
        dumb (certainly smarter than GWB) but he's just soooo boring and
        not very charming. On the other hand, Clint Eastwood is very
        inarticulate but very charismatic. So I don't think charisma has
        anything to do with public speaking or such. It's much deeper than
        that I think.
        \_ Al Gore's speaking skills aren't really that great; he turns people
           off with his artificial manner. He talks kind of slow, and has this
           smugness that is just annoying. Clinton is a lot better speaker.
           It's related to one's attitude and self-confidence. Clinton and
           Clint Eastwood both have a relaxed self-assuredness, and can
           speak naturally. Al Gore has gotten a bit better over the years,
           but he's notorious for having that stiff and "uncomfortable in his
           own skin" kind of impression in public.
        \_ Al Gore is no smarter than Bush.  Other than personal animosity
           what evidence do you have for this?  Both are/were poor public
           speakers in 2000, when we last saw them together.  Neither was
           particularly articulate.  And Gore, despite being a silver spoon
           baby just like Bush, couldn't graduate from a decent white boy
           school, where as Bush did.  Gore didn't attend MIT.  He flunked
           out of the same easy-to-graduate-no-fails-out-of-here-sons-of-
           rich-white-boys-all-go-on-to-be-senators-from-here white boy
           schools.  Gore = zero charisma idiot.  Bush = charisma+++ silver
           spooner.  At least be honest about who your heroes are.  Clinton
           was smarter than both and super driven in a way neither is but
           is either incredibly arrogant or incredibly stupid given that he
           was on top of the world and threw it away.
           \_ Al Gore had higher SAT scores:
              http://www.insidepolitics.org/heard/heard32300.html
              \_ I think that actually summarized my objection with Bush.
                 I don't speak English and I got 1140 on my SAT.  And
                 obviously Bush couldn't get into Harvard with that
                 kind of score by itself.
                 \_ i don't speak english either, but i do type it. and
                    yes, that's why he went to yale.
           \_ Charisma is subjective.  Some people find Bush to be
              personally loathsome in his demeanor. I would rate Gore as
              zero charisma and Bush as Charisma---.  Of course, you could
              say that I just think this for political reasons.  But
              consider that this whole discussion started with the subject
              of movie stars' charisma.  Name one movie star who, in addition
              to their adoring fans does not have haters.  It's always
              subjective. Or maybe it's a vector, and the direction is
              subjective.  After all, you and I appear to agree on the
              *magnitude* of both Bush's and Gore's charisma vectors, just
              not the direction.
           \_ While Gore is not my hero he did write an article about the
              Internet for the September 1991 issue of Scientific American.
              I have much more faith in Gore's intellectual credentials
              than those of Bush.  !-op
              \_ ditto. i think bush may be better than gore at interpersonal
                 relations, but his (low) intelligence is a big detractor.
                 as mentioned previously, no one likes a dummy, except for
                 other dummies who don't realize he's a dummy.
                 \_ Remember, Bush didn't win the 2000 election; Gore lost
                    it.  The American people are not fond of watching an
                    intellectual tear some average schmoe apart on TV, and
                    that's what it looked like.  That really tipped the scale.
                    The dumbest thing alg0r did was listen to his campaign
                    managers.  He should have hired Bill's.
                    \_ indeed. too many dummies in america. but i for one
                       welcome our new dummy overlords.

1/24    Attention conspiracy theorists!!! Are you aware that Kerry was a
        member of Skull and Bones secret society at Yale, Just like Bush Jr.
        and Bush Sr.?  What does it all mean?
        \_ depends on what it is. when i was kid, my friends and i thought
           the kool-aid man was pretty cool. what does that mean?
           \_ I guess I was trying to make an obtuse point: the tin foil
              hat crowd is severely divided.  The clinton-hating tin foil hat
              crowd will never admit that Bush is part of the Evil Skull
              Conspiracy and the Bush-hating tin foil hat crowd will never
              admit that Kerry is part of the Conspiracy.  Both of these
              groups are strongly represented on the motd. Personally, I don't
              think the secret societies amount to jack, and was hoping to
              draw out the tin foil hat people, but now you've burst the
              bubble.
              \_ No.  Correction: it isn't that we won't admit Bush is part of
                 S&B.  That would be stupid since it's a simple matter of fact.
                 It is that we don't care that either Bush (or Kerry either)
                 was a member of the Spanking "May I Please Have Another!"
                 Society.  What people did in college just isn't all that
                 damned important.  If you're trying to draw out the tinfoil
                 people you need to start with something they believe in, not
                 what you *think* they believe in.  There was no bubble to
                 burst, young troll.
        \_ Well there's something about Yale anyway. Dean went there too.
           And Clinton. Damn east coasters always giving west coast the shaft.
           \_ Yeah, imagine going to the best school you can get into in your
              geographic area instead of going 3000 miles away to a lesser
              school with higher entry standards.  How stupid of them to all
              go to Yale, Harvard & Princeton.
              \_ Funny you should phrase it that way, since Bush came from
                 Texas and UT Austin is easier to get into but provides a
                 far better and more rigorous education than Yale.
                 Don't believe me? Go look up the requirments for any given
                 major at Yale and at UT, and look at the silibi of the major
                 courses.
                 \_ yeah, keep thinking that.
                 \_ Let's start with the value of a Cal education.  Go look up
                    "silibi" and come back to tell us how smart you are.
        \_ Well Clinton, as governor, was involved in the narcotics
           trafficking at Mena during the Bush#1 presidency.  Bush, as former
           director of CIA, should never have been President; there should
           be a law prohibiting such an andvancement .  Supposedly the Clintons
           and Bushes have been good friends since the '80s.  - freeper
           \_ What is so special about being the head of a particular agency
              that should disqualify someone from the other Office?  I don't
              recall seeing that line in the Constitution.  Maybe we should
              ban anyone who has had military service, too?  Or who was an
              executive at a multinational company?  Or who ever tipped below
              15%?  Or who ever cut in line at the super market?

1/24    Kerry 3 points over Bush in Newsweek poll:
        http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/040124/nysa010a_1.html
        \_ Yep.  Go vote for Kerry and make him your guy and then we'll drag
           him around for 6 months and see where he polls.

1/25    DK says WMD stuff went to Syria:
        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/01/25/wirq25.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/01/25/ixnewstop.html

*/*     Inactive threads purged based on long term inactivity, not content.

1/25    friendster is backed by Kleiner Perkins & Co. How can they not afford
        to upgrade their server to something decent? With $10 million is seems
        like throwing hardware+bandwidth at the problem should solve the
        problem.
        \_ Knowing inside dope, it comes down to the fact that they have
           hardly any employees and thus can never keep up with their
           spiraling system load.  It seems logical that they should hire
           more people but of course, hiring people takes time and its
           hard to get that time set aside when you're putting out fires.
           \_ I wonder how much money they made selling my email address to the
              spammers.
              \_ what part of kleiner perkins do you not understand?
                 \_ Don't worry, only the paranoid soda geeks believe the
                    friendster as Spam meme.
        \_ http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/entry/3341461825857782

1/25    When I use my digital camera, there is an obvious difference in photo
        quality depending on the resolution chosen, as would be expected.
        However, changing the compression changes the quality very little,
        but the size in kB a lot.  In fact, a picture taken at medium
        resolution with superfine compression uses 50% more memory, but is
        clearly lower quality compared with a high resolution picture taken
        with normal compression.  So I wonder what compression other sodans
        use on their digital camera.  The imagine quality between normal
        and fine compression seems to be very little, but it's more than 2x
        more kB.
        \_ Just get a big card and take the largest photos your camera can.
           If you throw away detail in the camera, you can never get it back;
           and you won't know what photos you need the detail in until you
           look at the results.  Reducing resolution or increasing compression
           both lose details, in different ways.  512MB flash cards cost $100.
             -tom
           \_ This is a good answer.  --digital camera guy
        \_ my experience shows that the exact opposite is true:
           if space is an issue, I go lower res but keep high quality jpeg.
        \_ I use the finest JPEG quality in case I have to reprocess the
           image later.  I agree that there is diminishing returns as you go to
           higher quality, but you don't want to throw away quality you can
           never get back.  Doing image retouhing or editing on heavily
           compressed photos can be bad because of artifacts and recompression.
            \_ To clarify this: JPEG compression throws away features of the
               image you can't see.  For example, if your picture is dark, you
               won't be able to see the details clearly; JPEG recognizes that
               and throws the details away to save space.  That's fine, until
               you try to lighten the image in Photoshop so you can see it
               better.

               This is the same reason you can get scanners with 48-bit color,
               even though the human eye can't perceive more than 24-bit:
               because the editing you do on the scanned image might bring
               out things that weren't visible in the original.
               \_ more like no output devices can support more than 24-bit...
                  our eyes have incredible dynamic range (high noon to
                  starlight).  [formatted]
                  \_ I seem to recall the human eye has a dynamic range of
                     around 10^5, not all at once, as the following poster
                     noted.
                     \_ the problem is, RGB is linear, but the response of
                        our eyes is not.  Much of that 24 bits is wasted
                        in areas our eyes can't distinguish, and there
                        isn't enough concentration in the areas where our
                        eyes perform well.  -tom
                   \_ That's true: the eye can distinguish a good deal more
                     than 256 shades of grey total, by adapting to different
                     brightness conditions.  However, you can only see 40 to
                     50 shades *at a time*, so that's all you would ever need
                     in a single image.
            \_ Sorry for my ignorance, but what do you mean by reprocessing?
               \_ He probably meant post-processing like via Photoshop.
            \_ Ditto what this guy/gal is saying. I would go one step further
               and take photo's in your camera's raw setting (if it has it).
               From the raw formet you can make high-quality tiff's or any
               level of compression of jpeg you want. You will need to do
               some photoshop stuff to make them look nicer, though.
        \_ So what is the least compression, superfine?
           \_ yes.  Superfine, fine, and then normal.