Chad Harris

Jeff--

Duh edu is a great institution and I owe everything to it.

If you're the same Jeff that had a problem with the WMP icon but changed to
a new very 007esque, Jennifer Garneresque email address there I wasn't
paying attention to that awful icon until you got me focused on it, so I
decided I had to change it and did change it and then for some reason I have
no good explanation for WMP would not open. I went to the WMP folder and
tried every way to run the executable to open it, and no go. I rebooted and
then it opened again.

You know this undead stuff reminds me of all the airhead stuff I'm seeing on
TV by people like Wolf the Reindeerhead Blitzer lol in his Sitchiation
Room --on Comet and Cupid and Rudolph too with this "winning" and "not
winning" stuff in Iraq.

I'd like to force every talking head and news anchor to read Frank Rich's
column in this morning's New York Times every day for a month so the duh
oriented public gets it. Talk about ll undead.

We're not 'not winning' in Iraq --we have unwon or done lost our ass and a
lot of people tragically. The Iraq Study Group shows me that Yes, Virginia
the Swing Justice Sandy Day O'Conner was on the bench while she was terribly
delusional.

The Iraq Study group visited Iraq once. Only one member dared venture out of
the Green Zone--Chuck Robb. Bush was so afraid to go, that he had a meeting
in the Four Seasons at Aman. Brave stuff there.

This should be read non-stop on all TV stations US and abroad until it sinks
in. It beautifully captures what's going on. Talk about undead.



Sunday, December 10, 2006
New York Times

FRANK RICH: The Sunshine Boys Can't Save Iraq


IN America we like quick fixes, closure and an uplifting show. Such were the
high hopes for the Iraq Study Group, and on one of the three it delivered.


The report of the 10 Washington elders was rolled out like a heartwarming
Hollywood holiday release. There was a feel-good title, "The Way Forward,"
unfortunately chosen as well by Ford Motor to promote its last-ditch plan to
stave off bankruptcy. There was a months-long buildup, with titillating
sneak previews to whip up anticipation. There was the gala publicity tour on
opening day, starting with a President Bush cameo timed for morning
television and building to a "Sunshine Boys" curtain call by James Baker and
Lee Hamilton on "Larry King Live."


The wizard behind it all was the public relations giant Edelman, which has
lately been recruited by Wal-Mart to put down the populist insurgency
threatening its bottom line. Edelman's vice chairman is Michael Deaver, the
imagineer extraordinaire of the Reagan presidency, and "The Way Forward" had
a nostalgic dash of that old Morning-in-America vibe. In The Washington
Post, David Broder gushingly quoted one member of the group, Alan Simpson,
musing that "immigration, Social Security and all those other things that
have been hung up for so long" might benefit from similar ex-officio
bipartisanship. Only in Washington could an unelected panel of retirees pass
for public-policy Viagra.


Mr. Simpson notwithstanding, the former senator who most comes to mind is
Daniel Patrick Moynihan of New York. In the early 1990's he famously coined
the phrase "defining deviancy down" to describe the erosion of civic
standards for what constitutes criminal behavior. In 2006, our governmental
ailment is defining reality down. "The Way Forward" is its apotheosis.

This syndrome begins at the top, with the president, who has cut and run
from reality in Iraq for nearly four years. His case is extreme but hardly
unique. Take Robert Gates, the next defense secretary, who was hailed as a
paragon of realism by Washington last week simply for agreeing with his
Senate questioners that we're "not winning" in Iraq. While that may be a
step closer to candor than Mr. Bush's "absolutely, we're winning" of late
October, it's hardly the whole truth and nothing but. The actual reality is
that we have lost in Iraq.


That's what Donald Rumsfeld at long last acknowledged, between the lines, as
he fled the Pentagon to make way for Mr. Gates. The most revealing passage
in his parting memo listing possible options for the war was his suggestion
that public expectations for success be downsized so we would "therefore not
'lose.' " By putting the word lose in quotes, Mr. Rumsfeld revealed his
hand: the administration must not utter that L word even though lose is
exactly what we've done. The illusion of not losing must be preserved no
matter what the price in blood.


The Iraq Study Group takes a similarly disingenuous tack. Its account of how
the country Mr. Bush called a "grave and gathering danger" in September 2002
has devolved into a "grave and deteriorating" catastrophe today is unsparing
and accurate. But everyone except the president knew this already, and that
patina of realism evaporates once the report moves from diagnosis to
prescription.


Its recommendations are bogus because the few that have any teeth are
completely unattainable. Of course, it would be fantastic if additional
Iraqi troops would stand up en masse after an infusion of new American
military advisers. And if reconciliation among the country's warring
ethnicities could be mandated on a tight schedule. And if the Bush White
House could be persuaded to persuade Iran and Syria to "influence events"
for America's benefit. It would also be nice if we could all break the bank
in Vegas.


The group's coulda-woulda recommendations are either nonstarters,
equivocations (it endorses withdrawal of combat troops by 2008 but is averse
to timelines) or contradictions of its own findings of fact. To take just
one example: Even if we could wave a magic wand and quickly create thousands
more military advisers (and Arabic-speaking ones at that), there's no reason
to believe they could build a crack Iraqi army and police force where all
those who came before have failed. As the report points out, the loyalties
and capabilities of the existing units are suspect as it is.


By prescribing such placebos, the Iraq Study Group isn't plotting a way
forward but delaying the recognition of our defeat. Its real aim is to enact
a charade of progress to pacify the public while Washington waits, no doubt
in vain, for Mr. Bush to return to the real world. The tip-off to the
cynical game can be found in a single sentence: "We agree with the goal of
U.S. policy in Iraq, as stated by the president: 'an Iraq that can govern
itself, sustain itself, and defend itself.' " This studious group knows that
even that modest goal, a radical devaluation of the administration's
ambition to spread democracy throughout the Middle East, has long been
proven a mirage. The Iraqi government's ability to defend anything is so
inoperative that the group's members visited the country but once, with just
one (Chuck Robb) daring to leave the Green Zone. The Bush-Maliki rendezvous
10 days ago was at the Four Seasons hotel in Amman.

The only recommendations that might alter that reality, however
evanescently, come not from "The Way Forward" but from its critics on the
right who want significantly more troops and no withdrawal timetables
whatsoever. But a Pentagon review leaked to The Washington Post three weeks
ago estimates that a true counterinsurgency campaign would "require several
hundred thousand additional U.S. and Iraqi soldiers as well as heavily armed
Iraqi police," not the 20,000 or so envisioned as a short-term booster shot
by John McCain.


Since these troops don't exist and there is no public support in either
America or Iraq for mobilizing them, the president can't satisfy the hawks
even if he chooses to do so. Since he's also dead set against a prompt
withdrawal, we already know what his policy will be, no matter how many
"reviews" he conducts. He will stay the course, with various fake-outs along
the way to keep us from thinking we've "lost," until the whole mess is
deposited in the lap of the next president.


But as Chuck Hagel said last week, "The impending disaster in Iraq is
unwinding at a rate that we can't quite calibrate." It is yet another, even
more reckless flight from reality to suppose that the world will stand still
while we dally. The Iraq Study Group's insistence on dragging out its
deliberations until after Election Day for the sake of domestic politics
mocked and undermined the urgency of its own mission. Meanwhile the violence
metastasized. Eleven more of our soldiers were killed on the day the group
finally put on its show. The antagonists in Iraq are not about to take a
recess while we celebrate Christmas. The mass exodus of Iraqis, some 100,000
per month, was labeled "the fastest-growing refugee crisis in the world" by
Refugees International last week and might soon rival Darfur's.


THE Iraq-Vietnam parallels at this juncture are striking. In January 1968,
L.B.J. replaced his arrogant failed defense secretary, Robert McNamara, with
a practiced Washington hand, Clark Clifford. The war's violence boiled over
soon after (Tet), prompting a downturn in American public opinion. Allies in
our coalition of the willing - Thailand, the Philippines, Australia - had
balked at tossing in new troops. Clifford commissioned a re-evaluation of
American policy that churned up such ideas as a troop pullback, increased
training of South Vietnamese forces and a warning to the South Vietnamese
government that American assistance would depend on its performance. In
March, a bipartisan group of wise men (from Dean Acheson to Omar Bradley)
was summoned to the White House, where it seconded the notion of
disengagement.


But there the stories of Vietnam and Iraq diverge. Those wise men, unlike
the Iraq Study Group, were clear in their verdict. And that Texan president,
unlike ours, paid more than lip service to changing course. He abruptly
announced he would abjure re-election, restrict American bombing and
entertain the idea of peace talks. But as Stanley Karnow recounts in
"Vietnam: A History," it was already too late, after some 20,000 casualties
and three years of all-out war, for an easy escape: "The frustrating talks
were to drag on for another five years. More Americans would be killed in
Vietnam than had died there previously. And the United States itself would
be torn apart by the worst internal upheavals in a century."

The lesson in that is clear and sobering: As bad as things may seem now,
they can yet become worse, and not just in Iraq. The longer we pretend that
we have not lost there, the more we risk losing other wars we still may
salvage, starting with Afghanistan.


The members of the Iraq Study Group are all good Americans of proven service
to their country. But to the extent that their report forestalls reality and
promotes pipe dreams of one last chance for success in this fiasco, it will
be remembered as just one more delusional milestone in the tragedy of our
age.

CH


"Jeff" <dontshred@duh.edu> wrote in message
news:OC%23pOPJHHHA.1064@TK2MSFTNGP04.phx.gbl...
> lol
> well
> I use one "undead" service,
> messenger- and that's it-no "Undead" search for me.
> It's not "LIVE'; so it's gotta be UNDEAD
> Windows "Undead" Messenger
> ROFLMAO
>
> Jeff
>
> "Chad Harris" <msftneedstogetoutvistainfo.net> wrote in message
> news:uXmFFJJHHHA.1816@TK2MSFTNGP06.phx.gbl...
>> December 9, 2006
>> New York Times
>> Biz Section Above Da Fold
>>
>> Looking for a Gambit to Win at Google's Game
>> By SAUL HANSELL
>>
>> There is a lot about the way Microsoft has run its Internet business that
>> Steve Berkowitz wants to change. But he is finding that redirecting such
>> a behemoth is slow going.
>>
>> "I'm used to being in companies where I am in a rowboat and I stick an
>> oar in the water to change direction," said Mr. Berkowitz, who ran the
>> Ask Jeeves search engine until Microsoft hired him away in April to run
>> its online services unit. "Now I'm in a cruise ship and I have to call
>> down, 'Hello, engine room!' " he adds with an echo in his voice.
>> "Sometimes the connections to the engine room aren't there."
>>
>> The pressure is on for Mr. Berkowitz to gain control of Microsoft's
>> online unit, which by most measures has drifted dangerously off course.
>> Over the last year, its online properties have lost users in the United
>> States. The billions of dollars the company has spent building its own
>> search engine have yet to pay off. And amid a booming Internet market,
>> Microsoft's online unit is losing money.
>>
>> Google, meanwhile, is growing, prospering, and moving increasingly onto
>> Microsoft's turf.
>>
>> Microsoft lost its way, Mr. Berkowitz says, because it became too
>> enamored with software wizardry, like its new three-dimensional map
>> service, and failed to make a search engine people liked to use.
>>
>> "A lot of decisions were driven by technology; they were not driven by
>> the consumer," he said. "It isn't always the best technology that wins.
>> It is the best experience."
>>
>> It is no small task to run an Internet operation that can move as fast,
>> be as popular and make as much money as Google. (That explains why Yahoo
>> announced this week that its chief operating officer was leaving, and why
>> the chief executive of AOL was fired last month.)
>>
>> But Mr. Berkowitz's job is made far more complicated because Microsoft is
>> also counting on its Internet operations to breathe new life into its
>> gargantuan but aging Windows and Office franchises.
>>
>> In a strategy developed largely by Ray Ozzie, who has succeeded Bill
>> Gates as the company's chief software architect, Microsoft is trying to
>> create online services that are the equivalent of an operating system - a
>> platform that other companies can use to develop their own Web sites
>> using Microsoft's powerful data centers. It wants to sell advertising
>> that will appear on these independent Web sites and in Microsoft's own
>> software and video games, as well as its own Web site. And it wants to
>> use its online services to freshen up its own software.
>>
>> This thinking led Microsoft to create a new brand, Office Live, to
>> incorporate the online extensions of Word, Excel and other business
>> services. And it repackaged its e-mail, instant message, blogging and Web
>> search services under the brand Windows Live, supplanting the venerable
>> if musty MSN.
>>
>> "There are a billion Internet users in the world, and a lot of those PC
>> users are running Windows," explained Kevin R. Johnson, who oversees the
>> 20,000-employee division responsible for the Windows operating system as
>> well as the online unit.
>>
>> Once traditional software is complemented by services delivered online,
>> he said, "it's a pretty logical thing that people would say, Hey, I've
>> got Windows and here's a set of Windows Live things that extend those
>> services."
>>
>> Yet what seems logical at Microsoft seems like a marketing gaffe to most
>> of the advertising and search industry.
>>
>> Kevin Lee, the chairman of Did-It, a search marketing agency, said
>> neither MSN nor Windows Live would appeal to consumers in a market where
>> Google has become a synonym for Web search. "People don't see Microsoft
>> as the place you search," Mr. Lee said. "MSN is not a verb, and neither
>> is Windows Live."
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz does not defend the brand choice he inherited.
>>
>> "I don't know if Live is the right name," he said, saying he had not
>> decided what to do about it. But before he gets around to deciding
>> whether to change the brand, he wants to make Microsoft's search engine
>> itself more appealing to consumers.
>>
>> What he did decide was to keep the MSN name afloat, too, as it is well
>> known and its various services have 430 million users around the world.
>> He promoted Joanne K. Bradford, Microsoft's head of advertising sales, to
>> oversee and revive the MSN portal.
>>
>> "I have all these users who come to MSN and a very small subset of them
>> use our search," he said. "My No. 1 strategy is to keep these people from
>> leaking."
>>
>> So for now, Mr. Berkowitz has decreed that Microsoft will promote at
>> least two Internet services. MSN, in Mr. Berkowitz's conception, is a
>> conventional portal with links to programming on various topics that
>> competes with Yahoo and AOL. Windows Live, which uses the Live.com site,
>> is meant to look much like Google, a spare-looking page that can be
>> customized with modules from various services and news feeds.
>>
>> Reflecting the many conflicting strategies, Microsoft's Internet unit has
>> been slowed by the same sort of organizational drag that caused the
>> latest upgrade of Windows to fall years behind schedule. And of course,
>> the competitive pace of the Internet is far faster than that of operating
>> systems.
>>
>> "Microsoft has a really slow cycle speed," said Rishad Tobaccowala, chief
>> executive of Denuo, a consulting arm of the Publicis Groupe, while its
>> archrival Google moves much more quickly.
>>
>> At the same time, Microsoft has had duplicated and overlapping products,
>> like multiple ways to share photos, listen to music or search computer
>> files, as well as multiple toolbars for Internet browsers.
>>
>> "We have three different toolbars that approximately do the same thing,"
>> said Gary Flake, the head of Live Labs, Microsoft's Internet research
>> unit. "If I have a hard time articulating to a friend of mine which one
>> they should be using, imagine the typical user."
>>
>> Even as the company's leaders tried to rally a charge against Google, the
>> staff was hampered by conflicting priorities and overlapping
>> organizations, employees said. Moreover, last summer, when Microsoft's
>> stock fell after it disclosed a sharp increase in research spending,
>> directions changed again.
>>
>> "They had a lot of new initiatives, and people ran fast out of the gate,"
>> said Niall Kennedy, an expert on Internet publishing who joined Microsoft
>> last spring but quickly became disillusioned and quit in August. After
>> the stock fell, he said, "I wasn't able to hire anybody for my group."
>>
>> Mr. Kennedy says this culture is inhospitable for talented engineers.
>>
>> "Microsoft is no longer the primary place for technical talent," he said.
>> "If there is a superstar, Google will be on their minds." (Indeed, Google
>> has set up shop in Kirkland, Wash., six miles from Microsoft's
>> headquarters in Redmond, specifically to welcome Microsoft refugees.)
>>
>> Certainly, Microsoft does have some online strengths. Its e-mail service,
>> built on its Hotmail acquisition, is a strong No. 2 to Yahoo. Its
>> instant-messaging service, while well behind AOL and Yahoo in the United
>> States, leads in many countries in Europe and Asia. And its blog service,
>> born as MSN Spaces and now known as Windows Live Spaces, is growing
>> rapidly.
>>
>> Still, the average MSN and Windows Live user in the United States spends
>> less time on Microsoft's sites now compared with a year ago, according to
>> comScore MediaMetrix, even as Yahoo and Google increase the engagement of
>> their users.
>>
>> One reason Microsoft's use is flat is that it is receiving less promotion
>> from its Internet Explorer browser and from Windows. In recent years,
>> computer makers have started changing the default settings on their
>> browsers to point to Google and Yahoo (which pay big sums for the
>> traffic) instead of MSN. All the Internet companies, meanwhile, are
>> promoting toolbars and other software that help attract traffic.
>>
>> Now Microsoft is introducing its much anticipated Windows Vista, but
>> under pressure from antitrust regulators, especially in Europe, Vista
>> will hardly promote Windows Live at all. The new version of Internet
>> Explorer, for example, offers users a long list of search engines, with
>> Windows Live listed alphabetically between Lycos and Yahoo.
>>
>> So with a confused brand and little help from Microsoft's core business,
>> the biggest challenge for Mr. Berkowitz is to make a search engine that
>> people will choose over Google and Yahoo.
>>
>> Four years ago, Microsoft embarked on what it called Project Underdog,
>> building its own search engine from scratch. It thought it could match
>> Google in the relevancy of search results - the crucial measure of a
>> search engine - in two years.
>>
>> So far, all this work has not impressed either consumers or search
>> experts. Danny Sullivan, a longtime search expert who writes the blog
>> SearchEngineLand, said that in relevancy of results, Microsoft ranks
>> behind Google, Yahoo and Ask, in that order, although the gap has
>> narrowed some.
>>
>> "They have gone from a laughable search engine to a credible search
>> engine," Mr. Sullivan said. "It is not embarrassing anymore, but they are
>> still a little behind."
>>
>> And a test of consumers, by Enquiro, a search engine marketing firm,
>> found that even people who said they preferred to use Microsoft's search
>> engine actually found what they were looking for faster when they used
>> Google.
>>
>> Mr. Berkowitz acknowledges that "what Google does better than anyone is
>> getting the basics right." But he says this advantage will not last.
>>
>> "Now more and more people are getting the basics right. What Google has
>> forgotten is how to take it to the next level of differentiation."
>>
>> This differentiation, he said, is less about extraneous services like the
>> 3-D maps and more about changes to the way basic search results are
>> presented. This strategy helped him build a small but loyal audience at
>> Ask Jeeves, where he introduced several features like the ability to see
>> a preview of Web pages found by the search engine.
>>
>> "You don't win in the first 90 percent; it just gets you in the game," he
>> said. "What matters to people is emotional attachment. And I think that's
>> the last 10 percent."
>>
>>
>>
>>
>