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With the confirmation of Alito the O'Conner era has come to a conclusion. Her bizzare opinions will take decades to clear up but the work is in capable hands.
I look forward to reading some great words from Justice Scalia in other-than-dissenting opinions.
"Mike Holmgren professes that it takes three years to make a quarterback in the West Coast offense, and it takes five years for a West Coast quarterback to become a very good one."
"Even though the Seahawks haven't used their hammer on the field most of this season, they've used The Hammer in building toward a run at Super Bowl XL."
"Holmgren is no neophyte in preparing a team for the rigors of the Super Bowl week."
"Around Seattle, the symbol of the Seattle Seahawks' "12th Man" is like winter rain. It's everywhere. Every day. Over downtown office towers. Across the sides of buildings."
"This week we’ll look at the players who prevent Tatupu from having to be blocked by offensive linemen. Seattle has quietly assembled one of the league’s best defensive tackle rotations, and in the Seahawks’ 34-14 NFC Championship victory over the Carolina Panthers, all four tackles turned in excellent games."
"The Seahawks were fortunate to arrive in Detroit one day ahead of the Steelers. It gave them an extra few hours to get used to seeing so much black and gold in the Super Bowl city."
Photo Gallery of the season
"There are two backs with 13 years of NFL service making Super Bowl debuts this weekend. One of them is Pittsburgh's Jerome Bettis -- plan to read volumes about the guy in the days ahead. The other you probably don't know and wouldn't recognize without a name tag."
"The Seattle Seahawks are in the Super Bowl not because Shaun Alexander got better this season, but because their defense did. It not only led the league in sacks; it led the league in turnover, too, and notice the noun is singular."
"Nobody is in a better position today than Seattle running back Shaun Alexander. He was the league MVP. He set an NFL record for touchdowns. And he helped propel Seattle to its first-ever Super Bowl. It doesn't get much better than that, but it will for Alexander, because now comes his reward for a year's hard work. Shaun Alexander has been waiting for his payday. Now comes the next paycheck."
"It's going to be business as usual for the Seattle Seahawks this week. "We're going to try to stay as close to our practice schedule at home as possible," said Seahawks coach Mike Holmgren on Sunday, a few hours after the team arrived in the Detroit area to begin preparation for Super Bowl XL."
"Even before Super Bowl X-tra L-arge kicks off, the Seattle Seahawks coaching staff can be proclaimed, the Lords of the Rings."
"In the darkened meeting room, Mike Holmgren was doing what has always come naturally to him. He was teaching class. "
They didn't seem to care so much in 1993 when the Seahawks were 2-14.
Talk about a grab for the spotlight. Do they really want to take on Paul Allen on this? That seems a foolish quest.
P.S. I don't think A&M can get a trademark on the number 12.
P.P.S. The Seahawks retired the 12 jersey back in the 80's, long before A&M got their trademark and they have not tried enforcing it against Seattle in fifteen years. They are going to have a tough time winning this one. I know they expect the team to back down but they have underestimated the organization and the city on this count.
P.P.P.S. Mr. Gill, the 12th man of legend, couldn't have been the 12th man at all. As the story is told, he was called out of the stands when "reservers wore thin" meaning they had lots more than 11 players on the sidelines. Calling him the 47th Man just didn't have a ring to it. So the basis of the entire legend is faulty to begin with.
Walter is getting as much or more coverage of late than the stars on the team. Here is what one player on the Giants had to say about him.
I don't know what's more demoralizing -- being the guy getting ready to go up against Walter Jones, or being a tackle watching him on film and knowing you'll never be that good.
In a desperate attempt to prove they are not the company they once were, Intel throws good money after bad by promising to keep promoting the Itanic. Intel and HP have pledged another $10 billion over 5 years to boost the beleagured processor. Seriously, can't they read the writing on the wall? First Intel gets clobbered by AMD in the desktop retail sector. Second, Dell is seriously considering defecting and shipping AMD chips. Now, they want to keep boosting the Itanic. Acting as if you didn't just hit an iceberg is not going to stop you from sinking.
Think about it. The Itanium was supposed to be the successor to the Pentium. The problem was, it wasn't as fast as expected--especially at running x86 code--and it was really hard to write a compiler for. At one point Microsoft was shipping Itanium versions of its premier Windows XP operating system. Now, it has switched to the AMD64 platform. It still will ship Server for the Itanium, but has reduced the scope of support in that product down to three workloads. that doesn't sound like a healthy ecosystem to me.
In some ways, it is not amazing that Intel would try to jumpstart this dying beast. It needs something to counter the AMD assault on its home territory and iniatives like VIIV (which no one can pronounce let alone explain) are insufficient. It needs something else. I don't think the Itanium is it though. It is just too different and not sufficiently better for most systems to need it. I predict that the x86 will continue to move upstream and Risc/Epic chips will become less and less useful. Another $10 billion is another $10 billion lost.
-Godshatter
I would also like to send out a huge congratulations to Robin Houlbjerg on the staff of the SeaGals for her part in the Seahawks Super Bowl run. I've known Robin since junior high school and am very excited for the opportunity she has to travel to Detroit next week.
P.S. No, I haven't asked for a single ticket or any other favors, especially regarding the SeaGals as the Spousal Unit is half Italian and I value my life.
Anybody can go to the Seattle P-U or The Slimes sports pages to get the local view of the Boys in Blue, or as ElegantDistractions likes to call them, the Maul Rats.
On the other hand, it's not espcially easy to find articles on the Seahawks in the national press, in spite of that Super Bowl thingie you may have heard about. Nevertheless, I've tracked down some good pieces.
Let's start with a pretty good article on Holmgren.
USA Today has provided the most coverage so far, more than even the NFL itself, with writings on Jerramy Stevens, Big Walt, and Matt Hasselbeck. They also have two write-ups on the defense here and here.
The numbers geeks at Football Outsiders gave Lofa a nice review prior to the Panthers game.
Somebody even wrote about the owner and his contributions to the team, besides the fat wallet.
Dr. Cheeks explains the silliness around the fight for the underdog position. Best line:
You also have to think that other NFL teams' marketing departments curse when they see the flag raised in Seattle before every game -- "#@$%, why didn't we think of that?!"
Team updates can be found on an irregular basis at Fox Sports.
TMQ provides a nice review of the Panthers game in his unique style, saying "Finally someone had a game plan for Steve Smith!"
Finally, here is a video trying to explain why the Seahawks are the underdogs in the Big Fight.
I am normally diametrically opposed to everything Sheets Byrd has to say but I find myself agreeing with him for once. Apparently he got an earful from his constituents because he has come out 1) for Alito and 2) against the Democratic tactics.
Here are some choice quotes:
http://bench.nationalreview.com/archives/088390.asp
All of these issues should be debated but the battle line should not be drawn on the Judiciary. It should be debated by the peoples' representatives right here in the legislative branch. However, too many Americans apparently believe that if they cannot get Congress to address an issue then they must take it to the Court. As the saying goes: "if you can't change the law, change the judge."
This kind of thinking represents a gross misinterpretation of the separation of powers. It is the role of the Congress, the role of the legislative branch to make and change the laws. Supreme Court justices exist to interpret laws and be sure that they square with the Constitution and with law.
-Godshatter
The idea that Iraq didn't have WMD before the war has been pretty much accepted as fact. Is it though? Saddam's #2 air force official says it isn't:
The man who served as the no. 2 official in Saddam Hussein's air force says Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria before the war by loading the weapons into civilian aircraft in which the passenger seats were removed.
-Godshatter
You have a classic style, but you're up-to-date with the latest technology. You're ambitious, competitive, and you love to win. Performance, precision, and prestige - you're one of the elite,and you know it.
Take the Which Sports Car Are You? quiz.
This is insane. Mexican TROOPS armed with machine guns trapse over our border to deliver drugs, and the Border Patrol is afraid of causing an 'incident' by defending our country.
"It's been so bred into everyone not to start an international incident with Mexico that it's been going on for years," Doyal said.
Put the US Military on the border. Build a wall. Why the hell should we be afraid of offending Mexico? It by God should be the other way around.
Thanks to Michele Malkin, who has much, much more on these not-infrequent incursions.
This just in:
His Panthers have been plagued by injuries the last two seasons, but they've still been a very dangerous team. Carolina has a talented young nucleus with stars like Julius Peppers, Steve Smith and Jake Delhomme. And no coach in the NFL is going to out-gameplan Fox. (emphasis added)
Well, not again at least.
Had to double-check this morning to make sure it really happened yesterday.
My predicted final score, which I bravely forgot to post, was 35-19 in favor of Seattle. I'm sure I have a brain recording somewhere to prove it, but there would be far too much other stuff to sort through to find it.
Pittsburg will be a different set of problems. I don't know if the Seahawks can win it and so I will try to just be happy they are in the Big Game.
UPDATE: At least I'm not the only one.
This one got left in the dustbin of unpublished posts. Sorry for the delay.
Interview of Gary Sinise, one of the (very few) classy men in Hollywood.
I've been an AMD fan since the introduction of the Athlon. I always expected them to be a far distant competitor to Intel. They still are, but they are closing the gap quickly. Intel lost 11% retail market share from 4th quarter last year to 4th quarter this year. You can guess who gained that market share. Wow.
20:13
I've been pretty happy with my Tivo boxes over the past few years. Tonight, however, the Humax box barfed and what an ordeal it was.
The Humax version has a DVD burner built in, but mostly it gets used to play DVDs. I slipped a disc into the drive but it never loaded, I couldn't get it to eject or the remote to respond in any way. Then the machine rebooted. And rebooted. And rebooted some more. Unplug, let it rest for a few minutes, plug back in. Reboots again. Arg.
Found the Humax support number. You have to call the box maker for support on anything besides signging up for service. After navigating the phone menu, getting the typical "please wait" message, they have a very annoying practice of actually ringing once, then going back into the hold queue! So, you think a person will answer only to get the music again. Eventually my call went into Perdition never to return.
20:26
Call back, same routine, only this time a couple of times when the phone rings somebody is talking on the other end for a word or two before tossing me back in the pool. Interesting, the "please wait" messages are not coming around every 30 seconds. I might have found another black hole in their system. Hanging up.
20:31
Call number 3. I'm starting to memorize the menu sequence. Got through pretty quickly and complained about getting dropped twice.
So it turns out there is a paper-clip hole that will release the drive tray, but you have to get the cover flap out of the way to find it. A bit tricky to do but finally the system is getting back on its feet. Hope I haven't missed recording anything.
Yahoo just missed revenue targets and is down 11% as I write this. While we don't know for sure why yet, it means that advertising at Yahoo didn't grow like they expected. It could be that Google is just so powerful that they took all of Yahoo's customers. It could also mean that the online advertising binge is just about over. As I wrote previously, I think search is really a commodity game where name brand means more than product quality and advertisers can get the same value out of a smaller search engine as a large one. If true, it should be fun to watch Google's high-flying stock come back to realiy. Already today it is down 3.5% ($16).
-Godshatter
I'm not the only one who thinks Google could be having a hard time maintaining their huge stock price. Henry Blodget enumerates his bear case for the company.
-Godshatter
The company is hot. It's stock closed yesterday at 466.25. It has gone up $50 or 10% so far this year. That's in like 2 weeks! Google has all of the technophiles loving it and nearly all technology companies fearing it. At any time you can find dozens or perhaps hundreds of bloggers pontificating about when it will render the work of desktop computing irrelvant. It is coming out with a new operating system any day now--or so I'm told.
The ABM (anybody but Microsoft) crowd is fully in Google's court. It is the latest company to be given mantle as the Microsoft Slayer. If I were Google, I'm not sure I'd want that title. I mean, consider some of the others who have had that title: IBM, Sun, Oracle, Netscape, Novell, Linux, Corel, Apple, Pointcast, the list could go on. The track record of Microsoft Slayers is short on wins. If they were in the NFL, they would be the Houston Texans (2-14 this season).
Is Google any better or stronger than these others? To listen to the mainstream press tell it, yes. Then again, they told the same story about the companies above and countless others. Google is like the stronger companies in the list. It has a good product and solid earnings. It isn't the next pets.com. The trouble is that it has really only one profitable product: search. That's a great product but I'm not convinced it is very sticky. Not long ago I tried to MSN Search. At first, it couldn't compete with Google and I ended up using Google a lot. Lately, however, it has gotten much better. I have fully switched and almost never go to google.com anymore. I changed my search toolbar to MSN and never looked back. It was painless. I still find everything I'm looking for.
So what? Everyone besides me is still using Google. True. However, my experience says that Google doesn't deserve the high margins it is getting. It says that it is really in the commodities business. When I switch from Windows to Linux, I feel it. When I switch from a BMW to a Daewoo, I feel it. When I switch from Charmin to Cottonelle, I don't. Google is much closer to the third than the first two. It is easily replaceable. I suspect that if I switched to Yahoo, I'd get the same results I got with MSN.
But, you say, Google has more eyeballs than MSN and Yahoo. They can therefore charge more for their advertising. If Google were a magazine, they would be right. Google, however, has changed the rules of advertising and rendered the supposition incorrect. When I buy an ad in a magazine or on TV, I pay a fixed price for it to appear and get a non-fixed response. An add on the Superbowl gets more people watching it than an add on The View. The Superbowl can thus charge more than The View for the same ad. I'm paying for placement and getting whatever eyeballs happen to be looking at that placement. Take the Superbowl again as an example. Ads this year will cost $2.4 million for a 30-second spot. If I pay for an ad, I spend $2.4 million whether the viewership is 50 million or 5 million. When I pay for an ad on Google, I pay not for the timeslot, but for the click.
Why does that matter? Because a click coming from MSN search is just as good as a click coming from Google. I don't get more clicks for my money at Google. In fact, because there is more competition for each ad word, I probably get fewer clicks per dollar. As an advertiser, if I'm buying 1,000 clicks, I don't care if Google has more customers than Yahoo. 1,000 clicks is 1,000 clicks.
To reiterate, this means that Google is in the commodity business and just doesn't know it yet. Microsoft and Yahoo could conceivably just keep the price per click down and customers will come their way. It makes good business sense. Some customers like FTD (the flower company) are already starting to balk at Google's prices. What effect would it have if lots of customers left? Google's earnings would lower which, with a P/E ratio of 105, would cause the stock to drop like a rock. That has other repercussions and a downware spiral would begin.
What do you think? Am I missing some critical fact which renders my analysis void?
-Godshatter
A few articles of late have me thinking about the future of Apple. All may not be well in the land of the iPod.
First up we have an author on ZDNet explaining why subscription music is making him dump his iPod. The iPod may have like 84% of the market right now, but it doesn't offer subscriptions and if those take off, the iPod may lose its luster.
Second, we have one of my favorite authors, Clayton Christensen, author of the Innovator's Dilemma (if you work in technology and haven't read it, you need to) discussing why the monopoly Apple has on music might be fleeting.
Third, an article in the mainstream press questioning whether the press is treating Apple too favorably.
What does all this mean? Presently, not a whole lot. It does, however, mean the future could look mighty interesting for the little company on Infinity Loop.
-Godshatter
Yes, I'm thrilled by the Seahawks win but I'm also very happy with the result of the AFC game today. Can we please stop hearing about New England now? Please?
The Director's Immutable Driving Law: the later a person starts driving the worse of a driver they are.
In this vast world of ours there might exist some exceptions to the law but I've yet to encounter one personally. Note, for example, people who immigrate from a non-driving environment. So much is, pardon the pun, foriegn to them: traffic laws, driving courtesies, the sheer speed and volume of other cars.
A child growing up with these things doesn't even consider them.
My father was a navigator, first on the B-17 later on the B-29. He was a pilot with a multi-engine rating. Learning to drive from him, I've come to learn, was a far different experience than most kids get.
First of all, he taught us to be pilots that (hopefully) never leave the ground. As pilots, our first responsibility was for the safety of the passengers. No excuses. I don't know what role the driver is given in other families but there does seem to be a serious lack of instruction regarding responsibility.
Second, every good pilot keeps their heads on swivels and their eyes moving. Scan the instrument panel constantly. Anticipate the other vehicles' moves. Plan for evasive actions in every situation. This is how the first rule is ensured. It is impossible to drive with your headlights off at night if you do this because when you scan your instruments it will be obvious.
It soon becomes obvious which drivers will make dangerous moves so they can be avoided.
I wish driving was taught more like piloting but then teaching and learning are quite separate activities.
Navigation and route planning was another thing that Dad taught by example, but that's for another entry.
New research into the destructive effects of sleep loss:
As the pace of life quickens and it becomes harder to balance home and work, many people meet their obligations by getting less sleep.But sleep deprivation impairs spatial learning - including remembering how to get to a new destination. And now scientists are beginning to understand how that happens: Learning spatial tasks increases the production of new cells in an area of the brain involved with spatial memory called the hippocampus. Sleep plays a part in helping those new brain cells survive.
A team of researchers from the University of California and Stanford University found that sleep-restricted rats had a harder time remembering a path through a maze compared to their rested counterparts. And unlike the rats that got enough sleep, the sleep-restricted rats showed reduced survival rate of new hippocampus cells.
Sleep deprivation: it really is just for dummies.