For reasons I won't go into, I needed to install Word 2000 (part of Office 2000 SR-1) under Windows 7 (x64). It installed, and Word launched - but there were no icons & it hung.
I found a solution in a PC World Forum (http://forums.pcworld.com/index.php?/topic/73733-microsoft-word-2000-in-windows-7/page__gopid__381736&#entry381736): one person got it to work by uninstalling Windows Live Add-in 1.3 and Office Live Connector.
I didn't have Office Live Connector, but I did have Windows Live Add-in. I uninstalled the latter, which I don't need, and Word began to work.
Next I'll see if I can re-install Office 2010 (minus Live)and get the two to live together.
Tuesday, July 20, 2010
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Worst Committee in the Congress? House Natural Resources Committee
I've watched a lot of C-SPAN in the past two years, which means a LOT of Congressional hearings, and the quality of our representatives leaves a lot to be desired.
But never have I seen such uniform incompetence as was on display May 26, 2010 when Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall testified to the House Natural Resources Committee about the audit of MMS (Minerals Management Service).
Unlike Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General for TARP, who relishes finding problems, Ms. Kendall seemed determined to minimize their findings. As did all the members of the committee, Republican and Democrat, asking if the problems were really much worse than in other agencies, if the issues of fraternization were not common in other agencies, if proposed changes to ethics rules would be unfair in being limited to MMS, etc., etc.
Worse, when the committee members weren't subtly defending MMS, their questions were uniformly unthoughtful and poorly phrased (to be kind). Half the time, quite frankly, I couldn't figure out what they were asking and I suspect that they didn't know either.
Again, poor questions and demagoguery are not uncommon in Congressional hearings. But there are usually at least a few competent committee members. Not here.
I suggest that the House dissolve this particular committee and find some people with an interest in and real knowledge of the issues.
But never have I seen such uniform incompetence as was on display May 26, 2010 when Acting Inspector General Mary Kendall testified to the House Natural Resources Committee about the audit of MMS (Minerals Management Service).
Unlike Neil Barofsky, the Inspector General for TARP, who relishes finding problems, Ms. Kendall seemed determined to minimize their findings. As did all the members of the committee, Republican and Democrat, asking if the problems were really much worse than in other agencies, if the issues of fraternization were not common in other agencies, if proposed changes to ethics rules would be unfair in being limited to MMS, etc., etc.
Worse, when the committee members weren't subtly defending MMS, their questions were uniformly unthoughtful and poorly phrased (to be kind). Half the time, quite frankly, I couldn't figure out what they were asking and I suspect that they didn't know either.
Again, poor questions and demagoguery are not uncommon in Congressional hearings. But there are usually at least a few competent committee members. Not here.
I suggest that the House dissolve this particular committee and find some people with an interest in and real knowledge of the issues.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Congressional Hearings on Gulf Oil Spill & Market Crash
Sigh. Believe me, I hold no brief for BP (or any of its associates) or for the automated trading systems which buy/sell in nanoseconds.
But one must give the panelists in both hearings (on the Gulf Oil Spill and the market crash) for their patience when dealing with committee members whose general & specific ignorance was on high display.
This is not to excuse the Republican committee members who used their time to opine (Bachus) on how technology really hasn't changed anything important (hard to believe he was the chair of this committee for years; the man is an idiot), to explain that regulation is never the solution, and to harp on how Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac have destroyed the economy.
Are Democrats simply too dumb to use committee questions in their campaigns? I can't believe the average citizen, even in a red district/state, wants to elect somebody who believes that business as usual is good enough.
But one must give the panelists in both hearings (on the Gulf Oil Spill and the market crash) for their patience when dealing with committee members whose general & specific ignorance was on high display.
This is not to excuse the Republican committee members who used their time to opine (Bachus) on how technology really hasn't changed anything important (hard to believe he was the chair of this committee for years; the man is an idiot), to explain that regulation is never the solution, and to harp on how Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac have destroyed the economy.
Are Democrats simply too dumb to use committee questions in their campaigns? I can't believe the average citizen, even in a red district/state, wants to elect somebody who believes that business as usual is good enough.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
Lehman Failure - Spencer Bachus & Fuld agree: it's the Fed's fault
Well, if proof were needed that Republicans have decided the financial crisis was the fault of the government and not of Wall Street, Bachus's questioning of the April 20, 2010 panel (with Fuld, former CEO of Lehman) during the hearing should put any such doubt away.
Fuld's testimony was, in effect, that neither he nor Lehman did anything wrong. The regulators said they did nothing wrong. So they didn't. And if the Fed had opened up its window to them, or backed Barclay to let it buy Lehman, or .... well, you get the idea.
So did Bachus question Fuld's denial of all responsibility? No he questioned a regulator from another government agency, not the Fed or the Sec, to elicit agreement that the Fed, in spite of protestations by Geithner, as former head of the New York Fed, and Bernanke, that it did have the authority to regulate Lehman, to stop its doing bad things and didn't do it.
I simply do not understand how the media let Republicans get away with their continuing defense of the very companies responsible for the financial meltdown.
Also clear from Republican declamations throughout this day's hearings is their belief, in spite of the meltdown following Lehman's collapse, that a "bailout" fund isn't necessary to assist in the orderly shutdown of failed institutions because the market should just let them fail. The market just let Lehman fail - and that caused the world's financial system to go into freefall.
The media, in their continued obeisance to Republican talking points, allow Republicans to characterize a fund to be funded by the financial institutions themselves as a government guarantee or taxpayer-funded bailout when its sole purpose is not to save an institution but to shut it down, fire its management, zero out its creditors, and use the money from the fund to help in the unwinding of positions.
But, of course, that would require the media to do their job, to do actual research. And that, of course, would be too much work. Indeed, since the SEC suit against Goldman Sachs was announced last week, our esteemed members of the press have wallowed, even gloried, in their inability to explain something very simple. Goldman sold a package of securities without telling the potential buyers a very critical piece of information: that the securities had been selected by a hedge fund which expected them to fail.
Fuld's testimony was, in effect, that neither he nor Lehman did anything wrong. The regulators said they did nothing wrong. So they didn't. And if the Fed had opened up its window to them, or backed Barclay to let it buy Lehman, or .... well, you get the idea.
So did Bachus question Fuld's denial of all responsibility? No he questioned a regulator from another government agency, not the Fed or the Sec, to elicit agreement that the Fed, in spite of protestations by Geithner, as former head of the New York Fed, and Bernanke, that it did have the authority to regulate Lehman, to stop its doing bad things and didn't do it.
I simply do not understand how the media let Republicans get away with their continuing defense of the very companies responsible for the financial meltdown.
Also clear from Republican declamations throughout this day's hearings is their belief, in spite of the meltdown following Lehman's collapse, that a "bailout" fund isn't necessary to assist in the orderly shutdown of failed institutions because the market should just let them fail. The market just let Lehman fail - and that caused the world's financial system to go into freefall.
The media, in their continued obeisance to Republican talking points, allow Republicans to characterize a fund to be funded by the financial institutions themselves as a government guarantee or taxpayer-funded bailout when its sole purpose is not to save an institution but to shut it down, fire its management, zero out its creditors, and use the money from the fund to help in the unwinding of positions.
But, of course, that would require the media to do their job, to do actual research. And that, of course, would be too much work. Indeed, since the SEC suit against Goldman Sachs was announced last week, our esteemed members of the press have wallowed, even gloried, in their inability to explain something very simple. Goldman sold a package of securities without telling the potential buyers a very critical piece of information: that the securities had been selected by a hedge fund which expected them to fail.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
April !, 2010: Topeka'd
This is why I love Google, excuse me, Topeka - and why the company is not Microsoft. The former has always demonstrated a sense of humor; the latter, never.
Google changes it's name
Google changes it's name
Saturday, January 9, 2010
BBC News & The Christmas "Bomber"
Cheers to BBC Reporter Mark Marvel (sp?) on the Sat. Jan. 9, 2010 3PM PST broadcast for his rational analysis of the media hysteria surrounding this failed attack.
If only there were somebody, anybody, in the U.S. media capable of doing something more than repeating shrill right wingers ad nauseum. Campbell Brown may take the cake for cable hysteria, but if so, only by a bit.
If only there were somebody, anybody, in the U.S. media capable of doing something more than repeating shrill right wingers ad nauseum. Campbell Brown may take the cake for cable hysteria, but if so, only by a bit.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Jon Stewart Skewers CNN - Fact Checking? (Oct. 12, 2009)
Jon Stewart skewered CNN Oct. 12, 2009 (rebroadcast Oct. 22, 2009) although, to be fair, he could have done the same to MSNBC, FOX, or, quite frankly, every news organization on TV. Perhaps the best, and most illustrative, clip comes near the end (around the 8 min. mark), when a CNN anchor asks the reporter if there is any way to check the numbers. The reporter's obvious surprise at even being asked such a question tells it all. Reporting has sunk so low that, today, it doesn't even occur to anchors or reporters that when someone they are interviewing throws out a statistic or says "the American people know" that, just maybe, they should check the facts.
Stewart Skewers CNN
Stewart Skewers CNN
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Best and Worst Questioners in Congress
When one watches House and Senate hearings, one soon notices several different methods of questioning:
1. The question that is a statement worded so that the person being questioned will/can answer only one way. These are generally self-motivated statements that are either thinly disguised praise of the policy or issue in question or even less thinly disguised disgust with the witness.
2. Written
I think everyone I've watched has, at some time or another, read prepared questions. But even here, there are differences. In some cases, Jim Bunning and Richard Shelby come to mind, they seem not to have read the questions beforehand and more than occasionally, don't seem to understand what they are reading.
3. Extemporaneous
The most engaged and brightest people in Congress usually ask questions without notes that demonstrate both their understanding of the issue at hand and their attention to the matters under discussion... which is not to say that a lot of dumb questions don't also get asked.
Best questioner: Dingell in the House. Whether he reads prepared questions or asks them off the cuff, they are almost always short, direct, and to the point. Most hearings could be cut in half if other members followed his lead.
Worst questioner: Emmanuel Cleaver, without question. Mr. Cleaver is one of those who rarely reads prepared questions but ought to because he hems and haws and doesn't seem to know when he starts a question, even if he has been present through most of the hearing, where he wants to go with it. Watching and listening to him is painful. He actually makes George W. Bush look good.
Alan Grayson comes in a close second. On the House banking committee he routinely embarrasses himself. Grayson thinks he knows how to read income statements and balance sheets. He doesn't. And the poor witnesses, usually financial experts of one sort or another, are faced with the unenviable task of trying to answer a question so stupid it is meaningless without telling a member of Congress that he is a blithering idiot.
1. The question that is a statement worded so that the person being questioned will/can answer only one way. These are generally self-motivated statements that are either thinly disguised praise of the policy or issue in question or even less thinly disguised disgust with the witness.
2. Written
I think everyone I've watched has, at some time or another, read prepared questions. But even here, there are differences. In some cases, Jim Bunning and Richard Shelby come to mind, they seem not to have read the questions beforehand and more than occasionally, don't seem to understand what they are reading.
3. Extemporaneous
The most engaged and brightest people in Congress usually ask questions without notes that demonstrate both their understanding of the issue at hand and their attention to the matters under discussion... which is not to say that a lot of dumb questions don't also get asked.
Best questioner: Dingell in the House. Whether he reads prepared questions or asks them off the cuff, they are almost always short, direct, and to the point. Most hearings could be cut in half if other members followed his lead.
Worst questioner: Emmanuel Cleaver, without question. Mr. Cleaver is one of those who rarely reads prepared questions but ought to because he hems and haws and doesn't seem to know when he starts a question, even if he has been present through most of the hearing, where he wants to go with it. Watching and listening to him is painful. He actually makes George W. Bush look good.
Alan Grayson comes in a close second. On the House banking committee he routinely embarrasses himself. Grayson thinks he knows how to read income statements and balance sheets. He doesn't. And the poor witnesses, usually financial experts of one sort or another, are faced with the unenviable task of trying to answer a question so stupid it is meaningless without telling a member of Congress that he is a blithering idiot.
Best Chairman in Congress? Barney Frank
I've been watching House and Senate hearings on C-SPAN almost incessantly this past year and while I've probably not seen every hearing, I think I've seen enough to be confident that Barney Frank is, hands down, the best Chair in either House. He may also be the smartest (intellectually and politically) politician in Congress.
Although Frank can be darn difficult at times to understand, he knows his subject, he knows the parliamentary rules, he knows the people on his committee, both Republican and Democrat. There is a limit to his patience with Republican shenanigans, and he has both a sharp tongue and a sharp wit.
Although I don't always agree with him, it is clear to me that often, when he veers rightward, he does so because he knows just how far the Dems can go and still get something passed.
I'm also coming to appreciate Stupak, who chairs a sub-committee for both the way he manages the committee and for the clarity and relative succinctness both of his opening statements and questions.
Although Frank can be darn difficult at times to understand, he knows his subject, he knows the parliamentary rules, he knows the people on his committee, both Republican and Democrat. There is a limit to his patience with Republican shenanigans, and he has both a sharp tongue and a sharp wit.
Although I don't always agree with him, it is clear to me that often, when he veers rightward, he does so because he knows just how far the Dems can go and still get something passed.
I'm also coming to appreciate Stupak, who chairs a sub-committee for both the way he manages the committee and for the clarity and relative succinctness both of his opening statements and questions.
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Denmark - Not Socialism, Civilization
On Oprah's Oct. 21, 2009, she visits Denmark, Dubai, Rio, and Istanbul. In talking to two Danish women, Oprah commented that although Denmark is a democratic country, it is also socialized. The women responded that they didn't think of it as being socialism but civilization - that taking care of the old and the sick is what it means to be civilized. I like that.
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