Jake

The thing is, I'm not convinced that Duke was a troll. Maybe. I think it's just as possible that those are his actual opinions at this point in his life.

Reading the text of the law leads me to believe that any kind of service in which the provider knows about the client's sexuality can be denied. The only slight hole is that the law asks the organization to try to find someone without such religious convictions to provide the service if it doesn't cause "undue harm" to the provider.

It would be very interesting to see a team with healthy Rose and Melo on it. I think Melo throughout his career has not typically done a good job of making his teammates better, though he has started to develop in that regard. With an MVP-ish point guard on his team, that might affect both of their styles of play. A strong-headed coach like Thibs could command the respect of all actors as well. It is certainly an experiment worth doing and honestly we become at least a top 3 team in the East if you add Melo without gutting the entire roster (I'm talking this year, no Rose). If you can have a starting lineup of Rose-Butler-Melo-Taj-Noah at some point, that looks like a truly great team if you have absolutely anything behind those 5.

QUOTE (StrangeSox @ Feb 13, 2014 -> 08:24 AM) FWIW the AP Associated Press for Liberals style guide says that relevance should determine whether or not you include party affiliation. FTFY

QUOTE (The Ultimate Champion @ Feb 12, 2014 -> 10:18 PM) http://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2014/02/dodg...e-to-terms.html One of the recent defectors, a no-hit SS without speed. 23 & needs significant time in the minors. Scouts wonder if he can post a .220 BA or .300 OBP in MLB. Sounds a lot like a poor man's Leury to me. Not that we would want to but we could probably buy out Leury's 3 arb & 1-2 FA years for about half that amount. Sounds a lot like Jose Iglesias to me

Microsoft's stuff is probably sufficient, but is no longer best. Your best free option is Avast, though I admit they soured me when they made it a huge pain in the ass to cancel the auto-renewal for a free trial.

What we're seeing with Danksy is the other side of long term deals, which is that $15M is worth a very different amount of production by the end of the contract than it is when the deal is inked.

The IBTimes piece seems to be quoting an article from Hoops-Hype, which is affiliated with YardBarker. The author of the article is their lead editor but doesn't show much credentials-wise beyond being a "big Pacers fan."

Best comment from Deadspin re:Bynum jacking up shots

It's so strange since he was starting, playing the maximum doctors would allow, etc. What was there to b**** about? Why cost yourself so much money?

The best a third party can do at this point, and it is clearly something that happens, is make its voice loud enough that one or both parties start adopting key tenets of its platform. We see it with the Tea Party, we saw it the Progressive Party a century ago. Of course, the pipe dream of old is that third party would replace one of the two parties. Still a two party system, but a new party.

QUOTE (raBBit @ Feb 12, 2014 -> 12:24 PM) What did they do recently that has put them in such a negative light? I think they had a scandal of some sorts? They wrote an article that dealt with some transgender issues in a very clumsy way -- and obviously when I say clumsy, many others say it was abhorrent.

re: my issues sharing my Wi-Fi, a recent update to my wireless card's driver has taken care of things quite well. In other news, I've had several pleasant interactions with Lenovo's customer service recently. At one point, I had gone through a "buy computer, changed mind, buy another" and they dealt very well with the whole order cancellation, etc. process. Of course, this wasn't all that surprising since they were still in the business of getting my money at that point. My girlfriend's Lenovo laptop wouldn't boot up and was making a certain clicking noise, which I recognized to be HDD failure. We called, waited no time at all, and had a very friendly tech support rep. About 15 minutes later, we were in the car, heading to FedEx where they were paying to ship the unit to their nearest warehouse. We had it back with a new HDD less than two weeks later. On my new Lenovo desktop, I noticed my "a" key on the wireless keyboard had quit working. I went and reinstalled drivers, did all kinds of cleaning, taking off and reattaching the key...to no avail. Every other key worked. I spent about 5 minutes on the phone with tech support again and they had a replacement to me 3 days later, which comes with a return label with which I'll return the defective part free of cost (beyond the time it takes to drive to a FedEx location in the city that houses their international HQ). I've been using my BT keyboard that I usually use with my tablet in the meantime. We tend to only have anecdotes to evaluate different OEMs and we usually only hear the bad stories, so I thought I'd share.

QUOTE (Middle Buffalo @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 11:30 PM) You answered my question. Thanks. Also, TV doesn't need to be powered on if you're using a box. Only the box would need to be on in that case. You can even send the power command in this case.

If you have a newish wireless card, you can use Connectify to broadcast your VPN signal. A lot less fuss than dealing with a router as well as something that requires less expertise.

QUOTE (lasttriptotulsa @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 02:17 PM) I've thought about a VPN router too, but am admittedly a little ignorant on the subject. Just curious, does anybody know the legality of it? Having a VPN is not illegal, but I'm almost certain you'd be violating the TOS w/MLB.tv, etc. by using one.

You can get a VPN-enabled router which will place you outside your current market. I'm not the expert on set-up and all that, though. I live outside Chicago market as it is.

I still remember Thibs saying he "loves" Melo, which is nice. A team with Rose-Melo-Noah is f***ing great. That's a big three. If that team had Taj, Mirotic, Shumpert, Felton? Not bad. If we could work out a deal that involves fewer players/picks going the other direction, imagine how nice it would be to have Jimmy/Snell/first round picks hanging around.

Since the trade is made for the purpose of next year rather than this year, Boozer makes sense as a pseudo-expiring contract. We could do a nearly-the-same deal in the offseason, in which case he is expiring. If NYK wants to trade for some other star to replace the presence of Melo, they'd need Boozer to do it.

QUOTE (scs787 @ Feb 11, 2014 -> 12:40 PM) Would all that work cap wise? I guess if the Bulls don't think they can get him in FA then I'd do it. Assuming Melo signs a Bird Exception deal that is gently backloaded, we'd have $73M committed to Melo, Rose, Noah, Taj, Felton, Dunleavy, and Shumpert (players listed from largest to smallest salary). It would be cutting it really close in terms of the tax and our ability to give MLE to Mirotic.

I'd do it. You're left with Rose, Melo, Noah, Taj, Mirotic coming back for next year along with Felton and Shumpert. You're giving up some serious value there but you're getting Melo without gutting your top talents. Now, NYK only does this if they think/know that Melo is going elsewhere.

QUOTE (RockRaines @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 12:38 PM) Of course he was rattled. They brought in a guy who most likely doesnt believe in the concept of being gay to discuss a football player coming out as gay. He's been a bit smoother today. There has been some good stuff from the NFL guys on ESPN today. They're awkward about it, a bit apprehensive...but they're being honest. When Antonio Pierce says he would be a little shy at first, he's not being a hatemonger. He's just trying to get used to things and I think a lot of people will be like that. They haven't had openly gay friends or even acquaintances and the idea of being in close quarters with a gay person will challenge them. They will have to learn why it is that it's ridiculous to think that being nude around a gay man is the worst thing in the world -- it makes a tiny bit of intuitive sense, but they'll have to hear people like Michael Sam say that "hey, I'm not a predator. I'm not in the locker room preying on you." People's insecurity will have to get checked before they can move on and I'm okay with that as long as they can continue doing things in good faith and recognize that this is a problem that is theirs, not his. I think the vast majority of people have been okay with the abstract idea of a gay football player but will now have to take it that extra step...this is different than the idea that I'm sure a minority have, which is having to accept Michael Sam before they've even come to terms with the idea of a gay football player.

QUOTE (KyYlE23 @ Feb 10, 2014 -> 07:20 AM) So, Herm Edwards had a great segment on ESPN about Sam I honestly think Herm was making a good-faith effort to discuss this, but he was clearly rattled by something--probably the fear of saying something inappropriate, whether intentional or not. I think he was trying to say that the only comparison we can make to this situation is to draftees who have character questions since they also cause teams worry for their effects on the locker room.

Players like Sam were always going to polarize in terms of draft projections since he really is a 3-4 LB. We drafted Cornelius Washington in the 6th last year and several mocks had him in the 2nd, most in the 3rd-4th.

I think he did the right thing. He didn't want to be outed. He didn't want rumors to affect his draft stock or standing in the locker room. He didn't want to be what is essentially a ticking time bomb in the locker room, where he'd risk calamity after letting it out in the middle of his career. Now he gets to say "Hey NFL, I'm Michael Sam and I'm gay. Take it or leave it."