A Little Bit Of Everything: October 2008

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

Obama's prime-time ad skips over budget realities

Oct 29, 9:18 PM (ET)

By CALVIN WOODWARD

WASHINGTON (AP) - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was less than upfront in his half-hour commercial Wednesday night about the costs of his programs and the crushing budget pressures he would face in office.

Obama's assertion that "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond" the expense of his promises is accepted only by his partisans. His vow to save money by "eliminating programs that don't work" masks his failure throughout the campaign to specify what those programs are - beyond the withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

A sampling of what voters heard in the ad, and what he didn't tell them:

THE SPIN: "That's why my health care plan includes improving information technology, requires coverage for preventive care and pre-existing conditions and lowers health care costs for the typical family by $2,500 a year."

THE FACTS: His plan does not lower premiums by $2,500, or any set amount. Obama hopes that by spending $50 billion over five years on electronic medical records and by improving access to proven disease management programs, among other steps, consumers will end up saving money. He uses an optimistic analysis to suggest cost reductions in national health care spending could amount to the equivalent of $2,500 for a family of four. Many economists are skeptical those savings can be achieved, but even if they are, it's not a certainty that every dollar would be passed on to consumers in the form of lower premiums.

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THE SPIN: "I also believe every American has a right to affordable health care."

THE FACTS: That belief should not be confused with a guarantee of health coverage for all. He makes no such promise. Obama hinted as much in the ad when he said about the problem of the uninsured: "I want to start doing something about it." He would mandate coverage for children but not adults. His program is aimed at making insurance more affordable by offering the choice of government-subsidized coverage similar to that in a plan for federal employees and other steps, including requiring larger employers to share costs of insuring workers.

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THE SPIN: "I've offered spending cuts above and beyond their cost."

THE FACTS: Independent analysts say both Obama and Republican John McCain would deepen the deficit. The nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget estimates Obama's policy proposals would add a net $428 billion to the deficit over four years - and that analysis accepts the savings he claims from spending cuts. The nonpartisan Tax Policy Center, whose other findings have been quoted approvingly by the Obama campaign, says: "Both John McCain and Barack Obama have proposed tax plans that would substantially increase the national debt over the next 10 years." The analysis goes on to say: "Neither candidate's plan would significantly increase economic growth unless offset by spending cuts or tax increases that the campaigns have not specified."

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THE SPIN: "Here's what I'll do. Cut taxes for every working family making less than $200,000 a year. Give businesses a tax credit for every new employee that they hire right here in the U.S. over the next two years and eliminate tax breaks for companies that ship jobs overseas. Help homeowners who are making a good faith effort to pay their mortgages, by freezing foreclosures for 90 days. And just like after 9-11, we'll provide low-cost loans to help small businesses pay their workers and keep their doors open. "

THE FACTS: His proposals - the tax cuts, the low-cost loans, the $15 billion a year he promises for alternative energy, and more - cost money, and the country could be facing a record $1 trillion deficit next year. Indeed, Obama recently acknowledged - although not in his commercial - that: "The next president will have to scale back his agenda and some of his proposals."

Monday, October 20, 2008

Flash's quirky 'two-second' bug still requires manual uninstall

Flash's quirky 'two-second' bug still requires manual uninstall
By Scott M. Fulton, III, BetaNews
October 20, 2008, 4:27 PM

How many times, the old Ronco TV spokesperson used to ask, has this happened to you? You're playing a Flash video in Firefox for Windows, and for a moment, you think it's actually going to start up.

You see the first two seconds of video, and you may even hear a little sound. And then nothing. You know the control still works because you see it's still pre-loading and caching content, but it just won't play.

BetaNews has noticed Flash's tendency to adopt this bizarre state for over two years; and with the latest refresh to Flash Player 10, we noticed it again. The cause, experts have said, is a set of System Registry settings that aren't in sync with one another, but what it is that got them "out of sync" is a mystery. And despite countless suggestions, we've discovered that few Registry tweaks seem to work for longer than the duration of the session; once we reboot, we're in trouble again.

If you find yourself in the same boat, then our recommendation for now is to use this uninstallation utility from Adobe, which is a command line tool that works specifically for Flash. This was released for other purposes, but we often find it necessary to uninstall and re-install Flash, and this seems to be the fastest way to go about it for now. Use the utility as directed, uninstall Flash, and then go back and reinstall it again.

This should result in a fully-working Flash, at least for the time being. We've seen some other suggestions, including this from Ars Technica which actually involves the use of the game music composition app Garage Band. Since that game does indeed use Flash, the fact that the game did lead to a solution for one user suggests that it's capable of tweaking that mystery set of Registry entries.