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Politics : Sioux Nation -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: altair19 who wrote (79907)	9/22/2006 10:02:05 PM
From: Wharf Rat	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361251

Nothing additional. Can't speak for the rest of your life. I do, but atoning is not til next week.

To: altair19 who wrote (79907)	9/25/2006 9:54:36 PM
From: stockman_scott	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 361251

Party time! ____________________________________________________________ BY DREW SHARP DETROIT FREE PRESS COLUMNIST September 25, 2006 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- It had been so long. The Tigers had forgotten the taste of that interesting union of champagne and sweat. Their fans had forgotten the joy of watching a locker-room celebration. So as grown men frolicked like little boys in a damp and delirious clubhouse, and as the FSN cameras beamed it all back to Detroit, Mike Ilitch and Jim Leyland ducked inside the manager's office with a bottle of Taittinger. Two men known more for the force of their actions than for the volume of their words succumbed to the magnitude of this occasion. Tom Hanks was wrong. There is crying in baseball. Getting the team of his childhood to the playoffs for the first time in 19 years hit closer to Ilitch's heart than any of his three Stanley Cups. Getting the team of his dreams to the playoffs after a six-year absence from the major leagues left Leyland too emotional to speak. The Tigers emphatically earned their place in the American League playoffs Sunday afternoon with an 11-4 victory over Kansas City. The Tigers still might win the Central Division -- they lead the Twins by 1 1/2 games with six left in the season, all at Comerica Park -- but there's no way that celebration could match Sunday's spontaneous, cathartic release. Detroit officially waved good-bye to nearly two decades of ineptitude on the field and irrelevance to a generation of fans. The impact of this day proved more personal than anyone could imagine. Leyland, now 61 and in his first year as Tigers manager, could barely convey his appreciation without choking up. "I can't tell you how happy I am," he said. "This was a dream for me to manage the Tigers someday. It took me a long time and to be involved with this I'm very thankful to God for all the blessings and the opportunity to manage this team and return to this organization." He excused himself. Sensitivity contradicts the gruff persona he ably has cultivated throughout his long career, but it's that genuine connection to his emotions that resonated with this team mixed with young players and veterans. Ilitch, now 77, sat alone in the manager's office, his Tigers jacket drenched from flying bubbly and an unopened bottle of champagne at his feet. And he just stared into space, framing a mental picture of the long, grueling road of 14 years of ownership with hardly a crumb of gratification. "This one is harder to comprehend," he said. "This is my sport. This is what I dreamed of as a kid when I went to Tiger Stadium and when I played minor-league ball with them." He obviously appreciates the championship excellence of his Red Wings, but he told me "this is more special because it gets me right in the gut." "Deep down," he said, "I'm a baseball guy." Pudge Rodriguez, the catcher whom many thought Ilitch foolishly pursued in 2004, briefly left the revelry in the clubhouse to thank Ilitch for "keeping his promise." "He told me when he signed me that he was going to bring the right people in to make this happen," Rodriguez said. "And I never doubted his word. I just wanted to thank him for bringing me here." Todd Jones, the big closer, interrupted a briefing Ilitch later had with reporters. "Come here and give me a hug," Jones said, practically swallowing Ilitch in his grasp, thanking him for bringing him "back home" this season. The emotions were sincere and etched all over Ilitch's face. "It's true," he said. "This really is more personal. You have no idea what this means for me to give winning baseball back to the great people of Detroit. They really deserve this." On the ride to Kauffman Stadium, Ilitch had an interesting conversation with his limousine driver. The man grew up in Kansas City, and Ilitch asked him if the city had difficulty convincing its kids to stay in the area. The driver told Ilitch that they didn't leave Kansas City because it had sports teams. "That got me thinking," Ilitch said. "It reminded me that sports teams do have an impact and an effect on a city. And it made me feel even better because I know that it picks up our community and does wonders for everybody's confidence." In the ninth inning, when rookie Andrew Miller got two strikes with two outs on Kansas City's Angel Sanchez, Ilitch stood in his suite and pressed his hands against the glass. And when Sanchez whiffed, closing the door on history, Ilitch wrapped his arms around president and general manager Dave Dombrowski, the man he tapped five years ago for a reclamation project that even Ilitch conceded was rife with doubts. The vindication felt as sweet as the champagne cascading from his brow. Ilitch has been unfairly branded as more of a hockey patron than a baseball man, the Wings commanding the brunt of his emotional and financial commitment. He now has witnessed an urban renewal more spiritual, the reconstruction of a passion for baseball that was long dormant. Ronald Reagan was in the final stages of his presidency when the Tigers last tasted the playoffs. Since 1987, of the continuous 13 AL franchises, only the Tigers and Royals had failed to make the playoffs. In 2003, the Tigers lost 119 games, barely avoiding the modern record. "I wasn't here three years ago," centerfielder Curtis Granderson said, "so I could understand why we got some guys here who were just ready to bust." Leyland still isn't a fan of the champagne ritual. He said the stuff burned his eyes and tasted like crap, but he certainly would find a way to tolerate a few more bubbly baths as Detroiters happily embrace October baseball again -- at long last. Copyright © 2006 Detroit Free Press Inc.

To: altair19 who wrote (79907)	9/27/2006 7:22:05 PM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361251

The key decision that earned Bill Gates his $53 billion ______________________________________________________________ Posted Sep 22nd 2006 7:15PM by Peter Cohan* As Michael Fowlkes notes in his post this morning, Bill Gates topped Forbes' rich list yet again, with a net worth of $53 billion. I trace the reason why Gates is the world's richest person back to a decision he made at the dawn of the PC age to exploit International Business Machines Corp.'s (NYSE: IBM) confirmation bias. What is confirmation bias and what does it have to do with Bill Gates? Confirmation bias is a decision-maker's tendency to lap up information that reinforces the decision-makers' beliefs about the world and to ignore information at odds with them. So what exactly was IBM's confirmation bias? Based on decades of dominance of every business computing technology wave -- including desk calculators, mainframes, and data storage -- IBM believed that its entry into the PC market would confer instant legitimacy on the market. Moreover, IBM believed that its track record of marketing excellence would lead it to prevail over any competitors who might seek to challenge it. In 1980, when IBM decided to enter the PC business, it wanted in fast. So instead of building a closed system for which IBM would supply all the hardware, software, and peripherals; IBM decided to build an open one which would encourage many other companies to develop software, displays, printers, and other parts. IBM's search for suppliers took it to Seattle in search of an operating system for its PC. There IBM met with Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT), which had developed BASIC programming software for a small computer called the Altair. Unfortunately, Gates had no operating system available off the shelf for IBM. But Gates perceived a huge opportunity from the IBM PC. So he searched around and discovered an operating system, called Quick and Dirty Operating System (QDOS) from Seattle Computer Products -- which he licensed for $50,000. (In so doing, Gates neglected to mention the IBM licensing deal to Seattle Computer Products.) Gates sold IBM the rights to the OS for use on IBM PCs for a pittance. IBM, assuming that no PC-clone market would emerge, granted Gates the license for the OS on clones -- e.g., computers built by companies other than IBM that used the IBM PC standard. IBM had convinced itself that Gates was naïve about the emergence of PC clones. If Gates was right, IBM reasoned, then IBM was no longer the marketing powerhouse it believed itself to be. History shows that IBM was initially correct about its decision. Between 1981 when it introduced its first PC and 1983, IBM's market share climbed to 42%. But by setting the standard in this rapidly growing market, IBM attracted competitors like Compaq -- whose low-priced portable clones enabled it in 1982 to reach $100 million in sales during its first year, making it the fastest growing company in US history. Dell Inc. (NASDAQ: DELL) entered the market in 1984 and Hewlett Packard Company (NASDAQ: HPQ) shifted from a proprietary architecture to IBM's standard. By 1985, IBM's share had fallen to 37% and four years later IBM controlled a mere 16.9% of the PC market. Finally in 2005 IBM sold its money losing PC business to Lenovo Group Ltd (OTC: LNVGY). How exactly did Gates exploit IBM's confirmation bias? Decision makers drop market signals into one of three mental buckets: * Opportunity -- a new source of growth to be exploited; * Threat -- a competitive initiative aimed at reducing a company's revenues and profits; or * Noise -- any other event which decision-makers do not consider when allocating resources. While Gates and IBM agreed that the PC OS represented a big opportunity, they categorized the clone OS differently. IBM thought the clone OS market was noise -- and therefore not worth its decision-makers' attention -- while Gates saw it as a bigger opportunity than the PC OS. To admit that the clone OS market was valuable would be at odds with IBM's perception of itself as the ever-dominant company in the computing market. This led IBM to cede a very valuable asset to Microsoft -- giving Gates a lead which Microsoft preserved for decades -- and that keeps him at the top of the Forbes rich list a quarter century after his brilliant exploitation of IBM's confirmation bias. *Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, and a Professor of Management at Babson College. He has no financial interest in the securities of Dell, IBM, Hewlett Packard, Lenovo, or Microsoft. petercohan.com

To: altair19 who wrote (79907)	9/29/2006 5:57:55 AM
From: stockman_scott	Respond to of 361251

Why home field is overrated freep.com <<...home-field advantage is overrated in playoff baseball. You can't incorporate the World Series into the equation because home field there is determined by the All-Star Game winner. But in the division and league championship series since 2000, the team with the home-field edge has only won 50% of the series (18-18). That's the worst home playoff winning percentage in any of the four big professional sports during that period. It's not even close. "That stat shouldn't be a surprise," said Craig Monroe, "because that's the beauty of this game. It doesn't matter where you play. It doesn't matter what your record might be. You've got to execute every night. If not, this game will get you."...>>