The Daily Iowan:
UI electronic market beats polls

Researchers in the UI Tippie College of Business announced on Thursday they have determined that since the market’s founding in 1988, it has been more useful than polls for those attempting to predict which presidential hopefuls will succeed in their White House bids.

Joyce Berg, a UI associate professor of accounting and the market’s director, said there are several reasons the market’s results are on average 74 percent closer to actual presidential-nomination contests and general-election results than are opinion polls.“

The Iowa Electronic Markets have a good track record going, and if you google this business, you’ll see that for yourself. I’m posting this because, every time I have mentioned this tool to people, they have no clue what I’m babbling about. So, I’m trying to spread the word. I do wish that the researchers could add some kind of RSS feed to this site to make it a little more accessible.

At the link below, you can see the prices at which the futures are trading. This gives you the investors’ views of the probability that a presidential candidate will win.
2008 Presidential Nomination Markets

As of 2/14/08, here are the last prices:

• McCain’s was 0.933
• Huckabee’s was 0.009
• Obama’s was 0.680
• Clinton’s was 0.310

So, as far I as can gather, the investors are now projecting that McCain and Obama will win. Let’s see whether they are correct in the long run.

For more info, see Slate.com’s guide to political markets.

-MC Spanky McGee

Gizmodo:
Sandwich phone
If you liked the burger phone from Juno but don’t want to be seen as the type of person who just buys something because it was featured in a trendy movie

Sogoodblog.com
In-n-out
Dear In-N-Out, Please Keep Going

I agree with Sogood.com… Let’s get In-n-out to the Midwest and beyond…

Endgadget.com
Walmart kicks HD DVD to curb
Wal-Mart to officially discontinue HD DVD sales by June

Lifehacker.com
The battle for RAM continues
Reclaim Memory by Mastering Windows’ Task Manager

I was in a restaurant around dinner time when I saw a news flash that interrupted the basketball game that informed me that OJ Simpson’s girlfriend, Christie Prody, had been admitted to a Florida hospital for a head injury. I am pretty sure that the thoughts that popped into my head are the same as many others… here we go again. OJ Simpson has gone from being the lovable actor and NFL sports hero to this ball of hot mess that finds trouble at every turn ever since he was on trial for the murders of his wife Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman.

The details of this most recent debacle range from OJ claiming she had been on a drinking binge and she fell at a gas station and that is how she sustained those injuries. The National Inquirer broke this story and claims to have evidence that the injuries are consistent to that of a beating and are far more severe than injuries she could have sustained from the fall alone. OJ of course denies this and is upset by their claims. They point out that OJ’s attorney Yale Galanter has publicly denied these allegations just as he denied that OJ was writing a “what if I killed her” book that he actually did help write.

Now I do not necessarily care about this story yet and most people will not either. However that being said, I find it extremely fishy that:

a) there was a police report filed for a slip and fall at a gas station
b) that they then went and found OJ to question him about it even though he was not there
c) that she may have had bruises and marks on her legs, face, arms, and butt
d) that OJ Simpson’s lawyer has officially denied OJ’s involvement

I can’t think of one other instance where “some guy’s” girlfriend slips and busts her ass and it stops national television programming. I would have to assume that the network(s) either got their story WAY wrong and ran with it, or they thought there may be something to this. Is that why quite a few people stopped their Valentine’s Day dinners to read the news flash? Regardless, many in America are looking for a reason to get at this guy even though he was not criminally convicted of the crimes against his former wife and her friend. Is the media just connecting dots that don’t exist? Is OJ’s name so “hot” that anything he - or anyone connected to him has a boo-boo that it makes national BREAKING NEWS?

Chris Rock said it best about OJ years ago in his “Bigger and Blacker” HBO special:

“That shit wasn’t about race… that shit was about fame. If O.J. wasn’t famous he’d be in jail right now. If O.J. drove a bus, he wouldn’t even be O.J. He’d be Orenthal the bus driving murderer.”

The last few days for Illinois Senator, and presidential hopeful, Barack Obama have been overwhelmingly positive. He just recently won three states to pass Hillary Clinton in delegate count in the Democratic nominee race primaries. He had a higher winning percentage than Kanye West at the Grammy Awards where he beat former Presidents Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter as well as Maya Angelou and M*A*S*H star actor Alan Alda for Obama’s second Grammy award. He won his first in 2005 in the spoken word category for his reading of his own book “Dreams Of My Father” and the recent award is for another book of his, “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” in the same spoken word category.  The tribute song and music video by will.i.am and 40+ celebrities for his “Yes We Can” speech is getting millions of hits (including being a favorite here at SoupyTrumpet.com).  It has also inspired numerous “Yes We Can” parody videos including “I Like Turtles” and “No You Can’t” (a John McCain slam) as well as many others .

As if all of this is not enough, Obama has had at least one more honor bestowed him.  In his father’s homeland of Kenya, there is a beer called Senator Keg Lager that has been consumed at an alarming rate in celebration of Obama’s recent victories.  During all of this alcohol consumption, “having a Senator” has been informally renamed to “having an Obama“.  Now Barack Obama joins Samuel L. Jackson as men that sort of have beers named after them.

Now you can say “I’ll have a Sam Jackson” OR “I’ll have an Obama“.

I recently started having issues with sound on flash multimedia files on the internet while using one of my pc systems. I had just recently updated my Adobe Flash Player 9 files and assumed that was part of, if not all of the problem. I was also able to pinpoint MY problem to Firefox and not Internet Explorer 7.

I turned to Google and found that this problem is relatively widespread and found some possible solutions for the problem. I was able to fix my particular situation in the matter of a few minutes. There is a thread on Adobe.com in their forum that offers four possible solutions from user beezlebob666. The first involves replacing the Wavemapper driver that may have been lost or damaged in the installation or upgrade of the flash files. I checked to make sure mine was there and it was, had it not been there (and this was the problem), this particular fix takes only seconds. I would recommend backing up your registry before making any changes to it.

The second solution actually fixed my problem. Somehow I had damaged flash content on my system and this solution suggested downloading the CCleaner program (it is free) and removing cached flash content. I already had the program and all I did was set it (by checking boxes) to only scan for flash files and then deleting them once they were found. I restarted firefox and now I can hear my YouTube Viral Videos again.

The third fix is to replace your possibly missing or outdated codec. The easiest way to describe a codec is like this: your audio and video files are shrunk down to be sent quickly across the internet and you need the files to be un-shrunk to view or listen to them. To do this, you have to have a matching compressor and de-compressor. This fix is getting you the tool you need to de-compress these files. They suggest downloading and installing the K-Lite codec pack that too is free and simple to install.

The final fix is to essentially give up and revert back to the then Macromedia Flash Player 7 until you are able to figure out a way to make the latest flash player work for you. Some sites will not work for you as they require the use of the latest flash player, but then again some will and you may be willing to gain some working sites rather than none. Be sure to turn off automatic updating as this player will continually try to get the latest player.