Not bad for an unknown blogger!

I hope that Apple will fix this problem very quickly. I prefer iTunes to the other online music stores I’ve tried, but if I have to spend hours tweaking my computer just to get iTunes to work, when there are other options available, then I will be taking my business elsewhere.

Thank you for your time.
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It gets worse. I can’t roll back to iTunes 4.6 either. It won’t install under SP2. I expect software to be buggy, but SP2 has been around long enough that Apple should have made 4.7 work with it before they released it for Windows.

And I really do like iTunes. I like the store and I like the player. I used it a lot. Fortunately, I still have a copy of Quintessential Player on my system (I gave up on Winamp a long time ago).

Want to leave iTunes feedback for Apple?

So far, WordPress’ comment moderating with the spam words sent all 25-30 messages to me for moderation. This is fine, except that I could see myself moderating 50+ comments a day soon enough.

Requiring all comments to be moderated, or auto-deleting comments that fit a spam profile, wasn’t an option. I’ve seen too many false positives in my email spam catcher to understand that.

I came across this piece of advice; basically, if you rename your comments posting file and modify the code that calls it, you can thwart the auto-spammers. It won’t prevent someone from coming along and manually spamming your site, but since I’ve implemented this change, the spamming has stopped.

It isn’t perfect according to the comments in the WordPress support post, but at least for now it has worked for me. We’ll see how long it takes.

For the rest of us, we should see how this political blog works out. Her very first comment is taking her to task on a vote.

I say terrific. Anything that works to keep our troops out of harm’s way is okay by me. What interests me, though, is what the Defense Department official said about the aerostat system: “We wouldn’t have gotten the funding if it wasn’t successful.”

If only that were true. One needs only look at the Missile Defense System to know that the Military gets the toys it wants, whether they work.

California becomes one of 17 states requiring a paper trail, but is too late for this election, which, at least for the president, may be one of the closest we’ve seen, although probably not in California. Nevada, one of the toss-up states in this election, is the only state that will be requiring them in 2004.

Returning California’s primary election to June is a good move. The argument for an earlier primary stems from a desire to be “influential” during the primary elections.

Who says California isn’t influential? If you believe that money in politics buys influence, then California is one of the most influential states in any presidential election. Just because we can’t cast our votes early enough to be in the TV news doesn’t mean we don’t help pick a candidate.

Candidates need money. The candidate with the most money will not always win, but in a presidential election, a candidate needs enough money to build a staff that can get his name out there and convince voters that he is a serious enough candidate to win. Kerry needed California to run his campaign. Dean’s campaign would have been another Kucinich (read: voice crying in the wilderness) without California. Candidates will always pay attention to California, and will always visit California, no matter when we hold our primary.

It’s tempting to say that California can console itself that it holds supreme influence during the general election because it has so many electoral votes, but as we saw in the last election, and as we are seeing in this one, California’s influence has been minimized by a whole sea of red states just west of the Mississippi, anchored by Texas. (It is safe to say that California is vital to a Democratic win, but of marginal interest to Republicans, at least for now.)

The most influential states in this election will be smaller states with more divided populations. Nevada may decide this election, and Californians can influence what happens in Nevada just by driving two or three hours and spending an afternoon going door-to-door.

His reason is straightforward:

…it’s lousy public policy for the electorate to continually lock in long-term funding for pet projects via constitutional amendments or (as in this case) bond measures. This is one of the reasons California’s finances are in such bad shape: we’ve spent the last couple of decades allocating about 80% of state spending via constitutional amendment — and then griping loudly when the legislature and the governor don’t have the maneuvering room to fix things during economic downturns.

I strongly support the concept of stem cell research; I think such research is vital to improving the quality of human health in the years ahead. However, I agree with Kevin. The funding mechanism does not touch General Fund dollars, but it does increase state debt at a time when we are already issuing bonds to cover our general expenses.

When I was approached about this initiative when they were gathering signatures, my initial response was to sign. Unfortunately for the signature gatherer, I won’t sign an initiative petition until I’ve read a little about the policy. I stood there and read his materials and felt the pit in my stomach grow. I wanted to support stem cell research, but I feel that this should be a legislative decision, especially if the state is to issue debt to cover it. I did not sign the petition.

I also felt that there were likely some private interests who stood to benefit from this measure. Not all of that research money will be spent at the University of California, that’s almost certain.

The pit in my stomach is getting larger. If Proposition 71 fails, the religious right will use its failure to set back stem cell research a decade or more. They will argue that the Proposition was a mandate on the public support for the concept of stem cell research (that is, ironically, how supporters are trying to sell the initiative). In reality, if Proposition 71 fails, it could just as likely be because of voters who don’t want the state taking on more debt (although in the grand scheme of things the amount of debt is relatively small).

I will probably vote for Proposition 71, although grudgingly. I can’t stand the thought of the religious right grabbing a victory out of this one.

First, there is the controversy over how pollsters are building their samples. Most polls are relatively small — under a thousand people — so a random sample just won’t do. There is too much noise. To get a “representative” sample, pollsters have to make sure they are calling in all of the relevant voting blocks. Unfortunately, some are oversampling Republicans.

Second, and related to the first because Republicans vote more than Democrats, is the fact that most polls we hear about are of “likely voters.” That term is open to interpretation but is usually based on a voter’s history. Did they vote in the last presidential election? Do they habitually vote? In a normal election (read: in the past), these numbers would be fine. However, this election has seen an incredible amount of voter registration activity from both parties. These new voters aren’t being counted.

Finally, there are the younger voters who use the cell phone as their primary, and often only, phone. Pollsters aren’t calling these people because, as I understand it, they usually can’t.

I have to wonder if, at the end of the day, the pollsters will be redeemed. I realize this is a pessimistic view, and as a supporter of the underdog, I should be more optimistic, even if it raises my blood pressure. However, the pollsters pick “likely voters” (and an oversampling of Republicans) because they do vote. People who are not “likely voters” are just as likely to skip this election as not. New voters are likely to split the vote amongst themselves in a manner similar to the sample of likely voters. If they don’t, for example if new voters turn out in greater numbers for Kerry or if Kerry wins in states where the polls say “Bush” but where there was significant Democratic registration activity, then we will know for certain that the registrations were a success.

But what about the young person factor? Again, there is an assumption, which may be false, that the young person’s vote will follow the polling of likely voters closely enough that it won’t cause skewing in the polls. Among progressives though, there is a growing hope that younger voters tend to be more progressive and concerned about war and in particular about the draft (all politics is not only local, it’s personal). I hope that is true, but the same attitude that may make young people seem more progressive may also be the one that keeps them from the polls, namely, cynicism.

I remain somewhat pessimistic (which is what happens to cynicism when you’re over 30). When Dean was bursting onto the scene and the media was going ga ga over how his use of the internet was turning thousands on to politics, I remember saying “I just don’t think it will last.” He had too much momentum, too quickly, and just like the dot.com boom, the value of his support was grossly overstated. Sure, Dean brought thousands into politics, and his campaign turned a footnote into a major contender, but it wasn’t enough to turn the tide. Only time will tell whether the Dean supporters will be motivated to remain involved in politics, or whether they will return to their cynical selves, the kind of people who don’t vote because it just doesn’t seem to matter.

For Kerry’s sake, I hope I’m wrong. I hope the newly registered turn up at the polls; certainly plenty of organizations are getting out the vote on November 2nd, but we have to remember it works both ways. For every Hybrid carrying granny to the polling place there will be an SUV carry grandpa.