With the vertical launch point of gold last year as a reference, it is basically flat.

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The Bush Administration has a sluggish, low-key missile defense effort under way: a limited ground-based system deployed in Alaska and California, which won't be much of a deterrent in today's world, and a still underdeveloped sea-based system modeled on the U.S. Navy's Aegis vertical launch system.

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And who has time for a weekly exercise simulating launching a new product launch or selling to a particular vertical market?

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In October Bankoff repeated the trick in the videogame vertical, recruiting another AOL alum, Chris Grant, to launch Polygon.

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