The Associated Press, perhaps realizing how overly canned tonight’s upcoming “debate” was going to be, released a post-debate story early.

It was picked up by ABC News, which ran it on its Web site.

It was seen by Certron at lemnisc8.com, who blogged it.

Soon after, it disappeared from the ABCNews.com site.

BUT… there’s always the Web-browser cache, and the article reappeared at furlinedteacup’s site.

Just to be sure, I grabbed the entire article, turned it into an image (large — 1024 x a lot); you can see it here or click the thumbnail below.

Even though the headline seems pre-debate, the article isn’t. Of note are phrases like “The 90-minute encounter was particularly crucial for Kerry…” and “The debates were staged under a rigid set of rules negotiated by the candidates’ representatives to limit spontaneity and opportunities for back-and-forth exchanges.” (Emphasis mine.)

* * *

Update: The story is back, this time on Yahoo News, but with some important changes. For example, the first version said the candidates “got their chance to face each other directly…” while this one says they “will get their chance to face each other directly.” And “The 90-minute encounter was particularly crucial for Kerry….” has been edited to “The 90-minute encounter will be particularly crucial for Kerry….” (Emphases mine.)

We also learn that the piece was penned by “Terence Hunt, AP White House Correspondent.”

* * *
‘Nother update: There are apparently other sources of, as Boing Boing put it, psychics writing about the debate. Over/Spun has a photo caption that reads “U.S. President George Bush shakes hands with Senator John Kerry at the start of their first presidential debate….”

(Again, click the thumbnail to view the whole thing.)

The following is a letter from Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi, who is in Iraq. She sent it to friends, but it quickly began to circulate.

It details how incredibly bad the situation really is there. Actually, “incredibly bad” doesn’t quite do it justice. Read the whole thing.

(Poynter Institute columnist Jim Romenesko got a letter from Fassihi that read “Hi, Yes, I am the author. The e-mail is authentic, my reaction is that I’m stunned at how this has rapidly become a global chain mail. I wrote it as a private e-mail to my friends as I often do about once a month, writing them about my impressions of Iraq, my personal opinons and my life here. and then it got forwarded around as you can see in a very unexpected way.”)

Here it is:

* * *

From: Farnaz Fassihi
Subject: From Baghdad

Being a foreign correspondent in Baghdad these days is like being under virtual house arrest. Forget about the reasons that lured me to this job: a chance to see the world, explore the exotic, meet new people in far away lands, discover their ways and tell stories that could make a difference.

Little by little, day-by-day, being based in Iraq has defied all those reasons. I am house bound. I leave when I have a very good reason to and a scheduled interview. I avoid going to people’s homes and never walk in the streets. I can’t go grocery shopping any more, can’t eat in restaurants, can’t strike a conversation with strangers, can’t look for stories, can’t drive in any thing but a full armored car, can’t go to scenes of breaking news stories, can’t be stuck in traffic, can’t speak English outside, can’t take a road trip, can’t say I’m an American, can’t linger at checkpoints, can’t be curious about what people are saying, doing, feeling. And can’t and can’t. There has been one too many close calls, including a car bomb so near our house that it blew out all the windows. So now my most pressing concern every day is not to write a kick-ass story but to stay alive and make sure our Iraqi employees stay alive. In Baghdad I am a security personnel first, a reporter second.

It’s hard to pinpoint when the ‘turning point’ exactly began. Was it April when the Fallujah fell out of the grasp of the Americans? Was it when Moqtada and Jish Mahdi declared war on the U.S. military? Was it when Sadr City, home to ten percent of Iraq’s population, became a nightly battlefield for the Americans? Or was it when the insurgency began spreading from isolated pockets in the Sunni triangle to include most of Iraq? Despite President Bush’s rosy assessments, Iraq remains a disaster. If under Saddam it was a ‘potential’ threat, under the Americans it has been transformed to ‘imminent and active threat,’ a foreign policy failure bound to haunt the United States for decades to come.

Iraqis like to call this mess ‘the situation.’ When asked ‘how are thing?’ they reply: ‘the situation is very bad.”

What they mean by situation is this: the Iraqi government doesn’t control most Iraqi cities, there are several car bombs going off each day around the country killing and injuring scores of innocent people, the country’s roads are becoming impassable and littered by hundreds of landmines and explosive devices aimed to kill American soldiers, there are assassinations, kidnappings and beheadings. The situation, basically, means a raging barbaric guerilla war. In four days, 110 people died and over 300 got injured in Baghdad alone. The numbers are so shocking that the ministry of health — which was attempting an exercise of public transparency by releasing the numbers — has now stopped disclosing them.

Insurgents now attack Americans 87 times a day.

A friend drove thru the Shiite slum of Sadr City yesterday. He said young men were openly placing improvised explosive devices into the ground. They melt a shallow hole into the asphalt, dig the explosive, cover it with dirt and put an old tire or plastic can over it to signal to the locals this is booby-trapped. He said on the main roads of Sadr City, there were a dozen landmines per every ten yards. His car snaked and swirled to avoid driving over them. Behind the walls sits an angry Iraqi ready to detonate them as soon as an American convoy gets near. This is in Shiite land, the population that was supposed to love America for liberating Iraq.

For journalists the significant turning point came with the wave of abduction and kidnappings. Only two weeks ago we felt safe around Baghdad because foreigners were being abducted on the roads and highways between towns. Then came a frantic phone call from a journalist female friend at 11 p.m. telling me two Italian women had been abducted from their homes in broad daylight. Then the two Americans, who got beheaded this week and the Brit, were abducted from their homes in a residential neighborhood. They were supplying the entire block with round the clock electricity from their generator to win friends. The abductors grabbed one of them at 6 a.m. when he came out to switch on the generator; his beheaded body was thrown back near the neighborhoods.

The insurgency, we are told, is rampant with no signs of calming down. If any thing, it is growing stronger, organized and more sophisticated every day. The various elements within it-baathists, criminals, nationalists and Al Qaeda-are cooperating and coordinating.

I went to an emergency meeting for foreign correspondents with the military and embassy to discuss the kidnappings. We were somberly told our fate would largely depend on where we were in the kidnapping chain once it was determined we were missing. Here is how it goes: criminal gangs grab you and sell you up to Baathists in Fallujah, who will in turn sell you to Al Qaeda. In turn, cash and weapons flow the other way from Al Qaeda to the Baathisst to the criminals. My friend Georges, the French journalist snatched on the road to Najaf, has been missing for a month with no word on release or whether he is still alive.

America’s last hope for a quick exit? The Iraqi police and National Guard units we are spending billions of dollars to train. The cops are being murdered by the dozens every day-over 700 to date — and the insurgents are infiltrating their ranks. The problem is so serious that the U.S. military has allocated $6 million dollars to buy out 30,000 cops they just trained to get rid of them quietly.

As for reconstruction: firstly it’s so unsafe for foreigners to operate that almost all projects have come to a halt. After two years, of the $18 billion Congress appropriated for Iraq reconstruction only about $1 billion or so has been spent and a chuck has now been reallocated for improving security, a sign of just how bad things are going here.

Oil dreams? Insurgents disrupt oil flow routinely as a result of sabotage and oil prices have hit record high of $49 a barrel. Who did this war exactly benefit? Was it worth it? Are we safer because Saddam is holed up and Al Qaeda is running around in Iraq?

Iraqis say that thanks to America they got freedom in exchange for insecurity. Guess what? They say they’d take security over freedom any day, even if it means having a dictator ruler.

I heard an educated Iraqi say today that if Saddam Hussein were allowed to run for elections he would get the majority of the vote. This is truly sad.

Then I went to see an Iraqi scholar this week to talk to him about elections here. He has been trying to educate the public on the importance of voting. He said, “President Bush wanted to turn Iraq into a democracy that would be an example for the Middle East. Forget about democracy, forget about being a model for the region, we have to salvage Iraq before all is lost.”

One could argue that Iraq is already lost beyond salvation. For those of us on the ground it’s hard to imagine what if any thing could salvage it from its violent downward spiral. The genie of terrorism, chaos and mayhem has been unleashed onto this country as a result of American mistakes and it can’t be put back into a bottle.

The Iraqi government is talking about having elections in three months while half of the country remains a ‘no go zone’-out of the hands of the government and the Americans and out of reach of journalists. In the other half, the disenchanted population is too terrified to show up at polling stations. The Sunnis have already said they’d boycott elections, leaving the stage open for polarized government of Kurds and Shiites that will not be deemed as legitimate and will most certainly lead to civil war.

I asked a 28-year-old engineer if he and his family would participate in the Iraqi elections since it was the first time Iraqis could to some degree elect a leadership. His response summed it all: “Go and vote and risk being blown into pieces or followed by the insurgents and murdered for cooperating with the Americans? For what? To practice democracy? Are you joking?”

-Farnaz

Evidently Roanoke’s flooding yesterday made the Today Show, although no one in the newsroom taped it. So those who wanted to see it but didn’t were out of luck.

Which got me thinking.

I’d love to see a network of TiVos — the digital video recorders that are getting so popular as a VCR replacement.

It would work like this: You miss an episode of your favorite show (or of a news show you hear about after the fact). You send your request to the network: “Did anyone record the season premiere of Joan of Arcadia?”

(More likely, you would scroll through your program guide to the show you missed, then choose a menu item on the screen marked “Try to Retrieve This Show from Other Viewers.”)

Your DVR — TiVo brand or otherwise — would then find people who did record it and pull the show down for you.

Of course, this would require more than just a standard DVR; you would need a high-speed Net connection as well, but it strikes me as a neat way to fill a need.

On his Daring Fireball site, John Gruber commented about another USA Today columnist, Kevin Maney, who had written about his (Maney’s) problems with viruses and such on Windows.

Maney had commented that “…for whatever reasons, Apple Computer’s Macintosh and Linux-based computers hardly get infected or invaded at all.”

Gruber jumped on that — specifically, the phrase “for whatever reasons.”

The reasons are arguable, he said, “But you can’t argue about the net effect: Windows users, especially with their home computers, are plagued by insidious malware; everyone else is not.”

But I think the reasons are fairly obvious, and important. The reason Windows PCs are “plagued by insidious malware” is simple: They make up 90-95 percent of the market. If you’re going to write a virus, or a trojan, or whatever, are you going to target three percent of the desktop computers out there?

Windows is attacked because it’s big. If everyone switched to Macs or Linux machines, those would be the target of these people.

Of course, that does make a good argument to switch to a machine with less market share. But the arguments to use the OS with the majority of market share are, for most people, more compelling. For now.

In other words, the argument “Switch to a Mac (or Linux box) because of viruses” really boils down to “Switch to the less popular system because it’s less popular.”

Which will work, as long as everyone else doesn’t do it.

I see that my column got picked up on the Mac Rumors site. Cool.

But please: If you’re going to go into a tizzy because the XServes from the article are now, in fact, available to you and me (the Little People), please don’t. At the time the VT supercomputer was built, they weren’t. People seem to be upset about that.

And “Little People,” by the way, is a reference to all of us — at least those of us who don’t work for a major university and who are building a supercomputer. It’s not a Mac-user put down. (It is, in fact, an old reference to Leona Helmsley, who famously said “Taxes are for the Little People.”)

I’m more convinced than ever that too many Mac users — unlike Windows or Linux users — are a bunch of putzes. (Chief among them are the writers and editors at Mac Daily News.)

Here’s why.

In my USA Today column of September 3, I wrote about the Virginia Tech supercomputer, which happens to be composed of high-end Macintosh computers linked together.

The Mac community got itself into a tizzy — not unlike the temper tantrum of a two year old — for the following unforgiveable sins:

1. Even though it was a column about a supercomputer, I failed to play up the role of the Macintoshes to their satisfaction.

2. I said the computers used at VT were not available to the general public — the “Little People” as I called us. At the time it was built, they weren’t. Today they are.

3. I said the computers were running at 2.3 GHz. They actually run at 2.5 GHz.

CORRECTION: I was right in the first place. The Macs do, in fact, run at 2.3 GHz. The Mac Daily News people were — shockingly — wrong.

For those unpardonable sins, the Mac users screamed, stomped their feed, and sent me letters full of curses. (No, I’m not exaggerating.) They wrote to my boss and my editor (who found the whole thing funny).

How pathetic.

Now the new information:

There were a few mature letters in the bunch, but many of them suggested that users of any operating system would be just as vehement as the Mac people.

Oh yeah?

Last week I wrote about Linux, the open-source operating system that’s an alternative to Windows. In it I discussed what I thought were Linux’s weak spots and explained that I didn’t use it.

The reaction from Linux users? Friendliness, thanks, and polite suggestions — e.g., “Nice piece. I found that such-and-such works really well, so you may want to check that out next time you try Linux.”

Some of them disagreed with some of my points, but, unlike Mac users, they didn’t send me lines of curses and screaming, incoherant diatribes.

What a difference.

All of which firmed my belief that the Mac may be a great computer, but it’s primarily for children.

Not only can Bic pens open Kryponite bike locks, they can also open Stack-On Products gun cabinets.

I had a savings account at Wachovia Bank here in Roanoke. Wachovia is one of the larger banks and it’s close to my office, and I needed a place to keep my money until my wife and I could both go in to open a joint checking account.

The Wachovia people were incredibly friendly and helpful — at least when I was opening my account.

But then I decided to close it. Wachovia charges $20 a month if you go below the minimum balance in a savings account, and I needed access to the money. (Most of our money is still in another bank at this point.)

So it seemed the only reasonable thing to do was close the account and then reopen it later when my wife was in town and we could move all our money there.

And then Gary White, a Wachovia “financial specialist,” told me there was a $25 fee for closing an account. “You’re kidding,” I said. “I’m going to reopen it in a few weeks.”

“There’s nothing I can do,” he said, “It’s not my policy.” And then he said those words only spoken by the incompetent: “That’s what the computer says.”

Ah. I asked about the manager; he gave me her card. “But there’s nothing she can do, either,” he said.

See, at Wachovia, the computer tells them what to do and they can’t override it. (Yes, Gary White told me that Wachovia doesn’t even allow its branch manager to override the computer.)

So that made me wonder: Beyond the basic skills of reading and writing, what does it take to be a Wachovia manager? Apparently not much if the computer tells you what to do.

And then I thought about McDonald’s, and how the fry vats beep when the fries are done. Same idea.

Sure, I think charging people $25 to close an account is nonsense. (Gary White said, “We’re no different than anyone else,” although I don’t know many other places that fine you for not doing business with them.)

But what’s really annoying is realizing I was doing business with a bank that has so little trust in its employees that it instructs them “Do what the computer says. Do not think.”

That doesn’t speak well of Wachovia’s HR department, or its corporate policies. (Or maybe it’s simply interested in corporate customers, not individuals.)

Or, perhaps, Wachovia is training people for a career manning the fry vats at McDonald’s.

Beep.

One of the tenets of a good ad is that you should look at the people in the ad — the actors, models, whatever — and think, “I want to be like them.” That’s one reason they’re almost all good looking. (Another tack is to show people “just like you.”)

That said, after the spate of e-mail I received from Mac users about my column on the Virginia Tech supercomputer, I would never want to be associated with the Macintosh community.

Please understand that there were certainly a number of polite, well-written notes. But they were by far the minority. What I thought was particularly funny were the large number of messages saying exactly the same thing, sending me the same pro-Mac quote, and then calling me a “lemming” for being a PC user.

As the saying goes, “Pot. Kettle. Black.”

Here’s a sample of the kind of mail I got for not playing up the Mac’s role enough:

From “Nick” from Albany, NY, (macattack15@spymac.com):

douche.

From “gabeharville” with a subject of “you suck, you fuckin little bitchfag”:

FUCK YOU, FUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK…

And so on, for several more lines.

From “rp” (finalcutpro78@yahoo.com):

Wake up an [sic] smell the roses asshole. PC’s [sic] are far behind Macs. Get you [sic] fucking shit straight you fucking geek.

And so on.

What’s sad is that I don’t hate Macs. I hate OS9, which I’m stuck on at work. But even if I did, guess what? I’m allowed. I’m allowed to hate what I want to, and so are you. I’m allowed to think that orange is a nicer color than green (or vice versa), and no amount of telling me how wrong I am or how pretty green is will change my mind.

That said, I think OSX is a beautiful thing (although possibly coming too late to save the Mac, considering that there are, I hear, now more Linux users than Mac users). I think it’s a great OS on a great piece of hardware, and I’m heartened to see so much software coming out for it.

In fact, my column wasn’t about Macs, it was about the VT supercomputer. I wasn’t writing a piece on how it’s Mac based, either — just on the overall picture of how cool it is. I’m sure there will be plenty of stories covering the Macintosh end of things; mine wasn’t one.

I’ve finally set up a filter to separate mail from screaming Mac lovers so I can go through it at my leisure. I’ll continue to post the more interesting ones.

From a USA Today article on possible election outcomes, including an Electoral College tie:

Republicans and Democrats are enlisting litigators, running training sessions, researching state laws and organizing SWAT teams of lawyers to respond to any problems on Election Day. Targeted are 28,000 precincts in 17 states that are expected to be close.

I can’t help but be impressed with the smart, well-thought-out, good journalism of the folks over at Mac Daily News, who wrote (here) an angry, rambling diatribe — in this case about my USA Today column on Virginia Tech’s Mac-based supercomputer.

You can almost picture the (unnamed) writer, sitting in his Steve Jobs-postered room in his Mom’s house, pounding out manifestos and sermons to whomever will listen.

My guess is that the Mac Daily News folks are constantly on the prowl not only for anti-Mac stories or opinions, but also for anything that isn’t pro-Mac enough for their tastes.

Then the conspiracy is yet again revealed! Anyone who is not pro-Mac enough is clearly on the Microsoft payroll! Any error — no matter how minor or arguable — is evidence of the ‘conspirator’s’ guilt!

Even better, these MDN writers are then blessed with powers of clairvoyance: They can read the minds of every writer and reporter! They can see not only their (now) blatant biases, but the reasons behind them!

Perish the thought that MDN would take the time to write or ask; they already know it’s all part of the Great Anti-Mac Conspiracy — a conspiracy to destroy the Mac and to denegrate what is unarguably the greatest operating system ever made!

Dare to disagree with MDN? Then why do you hate America so much? (You moron.)

Before you shoot off a nasty note about my article on the VT supercomputer, read my entry on that very subject!

The Mac users are revolting!

It’s been a while since I was able to hit a topic that generated a bunch of mail the way my column on the Virginia Tech supercomputer did.

All the mail is coming from people with mac.com e-mail addresses. I guess someone there posted a link to it and said, “Write to this guy.” I feel like a Congressman getting a ton of mail from a write-in campaign where everyone has the same return address.

If you’re about to write to me to complain, read this first. It may save you some time.

All these letters say variations of the same thing:
1. The Mac is wonderful.
2. You hate Macs so I hate you.
3. You didn’t give the Mac enough credit in your column.
4. The 2.3 GHz PowerPC 970 processor is, in fact, available to the public; you’re an idiot for not researching its availability.
5. OSX is not Unix, it’s based on Unix, you moron.
Yada, yada, yada.

So here:
I don’t hate Macs. I hate OS9, which I’m stuck on at work. But even if I did, guess what? I’m allowed. I’m allowed to hate what I want to, and so are you. I’m allowed to think that orange is a nicer color than green (or vice versa), and no amount of telling me how wrong I am or how pretty green is will change my mind.

That said, I think OSX is a beautiful thing (although possibly coming too late to save the Mac, considering that there are, I hear, now more Linux users than Mac users). I think it’s a great OS on a great piece of hardware, and I’m heartened to see so much software coming out for it.

My column wasn’t about Macs, it was about the VT supercomputer. I wasn’t writing a piece on how it’s Mac based, either — just on the overall picture of how cool it is. I’m sure there will be plenty of stories covering the Macintosh end of things; mine wasn’t one.

I did, in fact, check on the availability of the PowerPC 970, and was told that it is not available to the public. Maybe that was dated, maybe it was wrong, but seeing as this was one sentence in the article, I felt — and feel — that I did the checking I needed to.

If you want to quibble about whether or when it made its way into XServe machines anyone can buy, go ahead. It’s not crucial to the column.

OSX is, the writers are correct in saying, based on Unix, but not actually Unix. Me, I think that’s splitting hairs but there you go.

Anyway, if you’re thinking of writing, please feel free. But leave out the nastiness. It’s childish.

I’m always surprised that people who send impolite e-mails (like David Gregory , who gave his message a subject of “Nice Hack Job in USA Today”) really expect me to read them, or to even give them the time of day. Why would I?

Another example is the mature and articulate Alberto Russell (a3russell@scu.edu) who starts his letter “Just wanted to let you know that you are full of complete bull shit and apparent [sic] hold utter contempt for Apple without any apparent excuse.”

I don’t know what the rest said. That’s why I have a Delete key.

People who have valid points to make can make them without resorting to attacks. When the nastiness starts, it’s hard to take the writer — or his point — seriously.

* * *

Follow up:

“Nick” (macattack15@spymac.com) from Albany, NY, writes simply, “douche”. What a well-thought out argument! How intelligent you must be! How proud you would make your mama! [laugh]

Mac users, rally ’round Nick!

* * *

On the other end of the intelligence spectrum is Nathan Finch, who took the time to explain things rather than — like so many Mac users seem to have — simply blathering. He writes:

Current configurations of the x-serve (what is currently used in the VA supercomputer) are only available to the public with 2GHz G5 chips (single or dual). The desktop model (few regular users would purchase an x-serve for an individual-use computer) which is what was originally used when the speed test was done is currently available in a dual 2.5 G5 chip model (as well as 1.8 and 2GHz models). So, what you wrote is correct, but a person at home can purchase a more powerful desktop machine than what is being used at VA.

Since a faster, more powerful, retail, non-server version of the G5 computer is available to anyone with the $$ that may be why folks are upset about the 2.3 unavailability comment–just that there’s better out there for the public.

I also recall in articles I read (but can’t cite) that one criteria VA was looking for was the best performance for $$ and it turned out to be the Macintosh implementation of the PPC970 chip was best (but I may be misremembering as reading that was a while ago).

* * *
Yep, mac.com is a community I sure wish I was a part of. Here’s what I get from Gabe Harville:

From: gabeharville
Subject: you suck, you fuckin little bitchfag.
Date: Sun, 5 Sep 2004 22:47:29 -1000
X-Mailer: Apple Mail (2.619)

FUCK YOU, FUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOUFUCK YOU

* * *

The quality of the Mac user community continues to display itself. Now comes “rp” (finalcutpro78@yahoo.com) who writes the following bit of quality prose:

Wake up an [sic] smell the roses asshole. PC’s [sic] are far behind Macs. Get you fucking shit straight you [sic] fucking geek.