Overnight Open Thread
Open | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 10:59:17 pm PST
No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session.
— Mark Twain
'They Didn't Spare Women or Children'
World | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 6:30:20 pm PST
The murderers who staged the Mumbai attacks were ruthless: Scene of Unimaginable Carnage Inside Taj Majal Hotel.
The scene Saturday night inside the Taj Majal hotel was one of unimaginable carnage in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist onslaught across Mumbai.
Two Indian commandos told FOX News that 150 bodies still were inside the hotel, and dead victims were found all over the hotel, on all five floors.
The terrorists used incendiary bombs, or grenades thrown on gas or fuel canisters, indicating they had access to the Taj hotel in advance, though the Taj Majal hotel denies any staffers were involved. ...
The siege was particularly troubling because “they didn’t spare women or children.”
UPDATE at 11/29/08 6:32:35 pm:
And there was slaughter at the Chabad House.
Finally, the Pressing Issue of Tubers
Video | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 6:07:24 pm PST
The headline says it all: USDA Official Takes Courageous Stand Against Interstate Countercyclical Potato Pricing.
And Now, the Greatest Man That Ever Lived
Video | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 5:32:39 pm PST
Tech Note: Live Comments, 2
Science | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 2:58:09 pm PST
I had to take down the front page live comment updates for a couple of days to figure out why MySQL was deadlocking. We all know how painful that can be.
Turns out that MyISAM tables suffer from an obscure problem related to concurrent reads and writes, that’s exacerbated when the SELECT query uses a GROUP BY clause. The comments at LGF need to be stored in MyISAM tables in order to allow the use of FULLTEXT indexing, which greatly helps with searching. But the Ajax DB query that periodically checked for new comments in each front page thread was causing that deadlock condition.
The solution was to use a separate table in InnoDB format (which doesn’t have the concurrent deadlocking problem) that is updated every time a comment is posted, with just the info needed to display the live comments on the front page. This ends up being much faster as well, which is a good thing since the code runs in every logged-in browser, every 15 seconds. It’s been running for over an hour with no sign of deadlocking, so I’m prepared to pronounce the bug dead.
If that made no sense to you, worry not. Hey, look! An open thread!
Saturday Afternoon Open
Open | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 2:30:51 pm PST
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.
— P.J. O’Rourke
Rather Defensive
US News | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 11:46:57 am PST
As we’ve written previously, the mainstream media seem to be slowly but surely re-legitimizing the “Rathergate” documents, casting doubt on whether they really were fraudulent. Matthew Hoy points out the latest example, a column at the Miami Herald by Edward Wasserman: Dan Rather’s defenders.
Video: Mumbai Police Cleaning Up
Video | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 11:10:48 am PST
Here’s a Reuters video clip on the aftermath of the Mumbai terror attacks.
Mumbai Terrorism Updates
World | Sat, Nov 29, 2008 at 8:41:38 am PST
The terrorist attack in Mumbai is finally over.
Indian commandos killed the last remaining gunmen holed up at a luxury Mumbai hotel Saturday, ending a 60-hour rampage that killed 195 people in India’s financial capital, as authorities shifted their focus to who was behind the attacks.
A previously unknown Muslim group claimed responsibility for the attack, which killed 18 foreigners including six Americans. Indian officials said the sole surviving gunman was from Pakistan and pointed a finger of blame at their neighbor. Islamabad denied involvement and promised to help in the investigation. A team of FBI agents was on its way to India to lend assistance.
Some 295 people also were wounded in the violence that started when at least a dozen heavily armed assailants attacked 10 sites across Mumbai on Wednesday night. At least 20 soldiers and police were among the dead.
Orange flames and black smoke engulfed the landmark 565-room Taj Mahal hotel after dawn Saturday as Indian forces ended the siege there in a hail of gunfire, just hours after elite commandos stormed a Jewish center and found nine hostages dead.
With the high level of training, preparation, and coordination these terrorists showed, it’s pretty clear that this was more than just a local battle. It was a strike at the heart of India’s financial sector, it was targeted primarily against Westerners and Jews, and it was a message to the incoming Obama administration that the global jihad is alive and well.
