WATCH THE RACE (Need to install Silverlight)

http://sports.espn.go.com/oly/summer08/swimming/news/story?id=3528865

This video shows a completely unprovoked assault by a NYPD police officer. He purposedly tried to walk into the biker’s path (evidenced by his accelerating pace) even though the biker swerved to avoid him. I really can’t fathom what goes through the mind of people like this. Despicable.

UPDATE: Fixed.

You have to:

1. Open the Start Menu
2. Find an empty area and right click
3. Click Properties
4. Click “Customize” next to “Start menu”
5. Click on the “Advanced” tab
6. Click “Clear list” near the bottom right

That’s a lot of steps to complete a simple task. What Microsoft really should have done in this case was just add a link at the bottom of the Recent Documents list, below a separator, labelled as “Clear List”. That way you can clear the list right then and there when you view the Recent Documents menu. Instead of having to click through 6 times through various windows and tabs. I suspect a lot of people don’t even know how to clear their Recent Documents list. They probably just right click and delete each doc listed one-by-one.

Also, for whatever reason, it takes forever to clear the list. Note that the Recent Documents list is just a list shortcuts to the documents. Yet on my PC, with a Q6600 quad-core, overclocked to 3.2 GHz CPU with 2 GB of RAM, the hourglass appears for about 3 seconds before the operation is completed. It’s surprising that such a simple task takes that long. Deleting a bunch of shortcuts is not a resource-intensive operation. It should be instantaneous. I really don’t understand why there’s such a noticeable lag when clearing the Recent Documents list.

I don’t know how it is in Vista, but this is one obvious example of poor user experience design in Windows XP.

UPDATE: Well, I’m disappointed Federer lost, but give Nadal credit - he played a great match. Both played unbelievably well. That was probably one of the best matches I’ve ever watched (if not THE best). That was seriously incredible tennis. These guys are untouchable.

I think this is pretty much a battle of wills. Both obviously have the talent but I think Federer can only lose if he chokes. If he succumbs to the pressure and loses focus, the match can easily run away. But if he stays focused and raises his game to meet Nadal’s challenge, he’ll be fine. If you watch Federer consistently, you can see that whenever he’s in trouble, or he’s facing a challenge, he has the ability to raise his level of play just enough to squash you. With less talented opponents, he obviously doesn’t even need to play his best to absolutely destroy them.

Well then, one could ask why he couldn’t do that in Paris? Nadal is just too good on clay. He’s stays very far back and has great athletic ability, which goes a long way on clay, which is a much slower surface with more uniform bounces. I know Federer’s very fit but I think he needs to get physically stronger so he wack the ball harder and put a bit more spin on it like Nadal. Look at Nadal, what about him sets him apart from Federer on clay?

Anyway, I’m with Luke Jensen on this one - Federer in 3.

UPDATE: I think I know why. I bet NBC is going to air the tape of the semis when they start airing Wimbledon at 12pm. That’s why ESPN2 isn’t airing the live semi matches.

See my post about NBC’s awful coverage of the French Open semi’s. It was really bad. I hope they don’t pump their broadcast full of commercials. Since it’s a tape, they can put in as many commercials as they want.

UPDATE: Well, NBC did a decent job this time around. Even though it was a tape, they showed commercials pretty much on a normal basis. Didn’t feel like it was excessive and the commercial lengths were normal as well. Basically it felt the same as a live broadcast. Federer v. Nadal III this Sunday!