Because of course I said that Ubuntu is the epitome of supercomputer class Linux distributions.
Funny how I thought I said that Ubuntu/PS3 is a great entry level platform for parallel processing development. Of course the Anonymous liar Coward is correct.
No, that is not a problem. Linux, including Ubuntu, has been running on PS3 since the PS3 was released. Every Ubuntu since 6.10 has run on it. And current releases of other Linux (PPC) distros usually do install, especially the Yellow Dog that is the one officially supported by Sony. But the problem is that the Ubuntu team has too few developers, and new features in Ubuntu releases break the installation in ways that the small Cell/PPC team can't keep up with.
Also, there's nothing really "puny" about the Cell's PPC core, which is a 3.2GHz dual-hyperthread Power core.
The Cell/Linux platform has already got video drivers that offload graphics from the PPC to the DSPs the same way most distros run graphics on separate VGA chips. It's a little buggy, in beta, but that's why the project just needs more developers. Not more FUD.
I don't think you really know anything about how Linux actually runs on the Cell, on the PS3. I think you're just repeating the most whiny posts about it you've heard. Because the reality is very different from what you describe, even if it's still got problems. Problems that don't require waiting for more x86 HW revisions, but rather just a little more work on the Cell Linux that Ubuntu is releasing.
I'd be a lot more excited about these PPC lines if Ubuntu 8.04 would install and run properly on the PS3, whose PPC+6xDSP architecture would be a great entry level platform for coming up with parallel techniques for the bigger and more parallel PPC chips.
But these planes cost a lot to run and maintain. And to retrofit, even when we retrofit them into a shape that's been old for a decade already.
And they don't meet the current mission. We don't have a current mission that is equivalent to sending a small number of bombers behind Soviet radar.
We've got the benefits of the sunk R&D costs already, and these planes aren't the latest version. We're just throwing more money down their holes.
This isn't the time for some kneejerk reaction like "opponents of all things military". In fact that is the popular fallacy that people who defend all things military like to use. But proper logic for the argument is required as well as the proper military hardware for the mission. That kind of defense contractor marketing you just pushed doesn't cut either.
Because they cost a fortune to keep working. And now we're spending more fortunes retrofitting them. Which is only bringing them up to the 1990s, which was already a decade ago.
And then there's the fact that they don't do what we need. We need to spend the new money not on shoving their square pegs into today's round holes, but making new round pegs.
They're adequate at that job, for which they're retrofitted. For $2.2B each, we can make lots more littler planes that don't get shot down, which can deliver even more bombs even more precisely, to even more separate locations.
The B-2 is a white elephant that represents us throwing ever more money down a wasteful hole, just because there are powerful people in that hole with their hands out - primarily at Northrup Grumman.
The Stealth Bomber's mission is to deliver nuke bombs inside Soviet territory. It's not really that good at anything else. Though it does get used for other missions, since the US needs to justify spending $2.2 BILLION on each one.
Upgrading the B2 to the 1990s is just keeping a 1980s corporate welfare programme for another decade, even while letting it float a decade behind in technology. I guess someone's got to buy all those old Pentiums, or Intel might go out of business.
FWIW, there's no such FeatureList page, even at KN.o (that I can find), for kernel releases much prior to 2.2.26 . So we really do have to congratulate people for delivering this valuable service, so it becomes the default, rather than a mere fad that disappears.
Re:Good Featurelist
on
Linux 2.6.26 Out
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Er, that's why I was congratulating this featurelist. I'd like to see that kind of list in every release, and that link proves that it's possible. Great progress.
But a link in a Slashdot story to a KernelNewbies.org wiki page isn't the same as the actual kernel release announcement pointing to such a featurelist in the actual kernel package. Which would be the even better progress that I asked for. Which I think practically everyone would like to see happen.
I wish every kernel release announcement included a highlevel featurelist like that. Not just a ChangeLog, as each bug is fixed or small feature is added. But rather a fairly highlevel list of new and improved (and fixed) features like the one in this Slashdot story. Best if in the announcement itself, but at the very least always in the release package.
That way most of us can decide whether to upgrade, or to wait (perhaps for the x.1 version, which is typically a higher quality bugfixed delivery). Since kernel upgrades require rebooting (and again to downgrade after test), knowing whether to ignore a release based on its highlevel upgraded features itemization is a very effective announcement feature, which makes all of us using the releases more productive.
No, it was simply illogical the way that you Republicans would claim that a post like that said that the Bush administration forced people to drive Hummers, when it said nothing of the sort. Exactly the way you Republicans have lied about everyhing to get away with beating this country into the ground.
Like how you Republicans spent these years driving Hummers around, with "God Bless Our Troops" bumper stickers slapped on the back, while your 9MPG burned up the oil fast enough to drive it to $150 a barrel, while keeping our troops stuck in Iraq for the privilege.
But at least you got that "ruthless and systematic" part right.
So Bush and his Republican Congress created environmental controls that didn't do the job, and were illegal anyway. So eventually the power industry would get them thrown out, and leave us with nothing.
Which is kinda like Bush overall. While in power he did little but stand in the way, and now all we can do is flush him down the toilet. Meanwhile, years are lost in which polluters get to squeeze some bucks out of our environment in exchange for damaging our health.
But the real rub is that 8B people living at an average resource consumption rate closer to Indians' rate than to Americans' rate is more sustainable than if the quantity of people grows slower, but the consumption rate increases more than enough to overcompensate for that.
I'm all for increasing everyone's standard of living. I am. I also know that if we don't increase the resource efficiency of that standard enough to compensate for the increased amount of the consumption that standard reflects, then we're becoming more unsustainable as a cost. And that the limits of paying those costs are catastrophic. And, like peak oil, food supply/demand crunches, water wars, other essential resources peaking (like the rare minerals' exhaustion projections recently discussed on Slashdot and elsewhere), that growth's catastrophic consequences are very likey within sight, within our lifetimes. Which is why we have to face the facts about them, because we're going to have to deal with them on our watch. Starting right now, if it's not already too late, which it probably isn't.
You asked a question. You got a pretty good answer. You rejected the answer. The only fact you cited in rejecting the answer is some irrelevancy about "junior senator". Now you're citing some open-ended "we can never know the truth, even when we have the facts" complaint.
All I can give you is the facts. If looking at an actual detailed list of actual Senate actions over several years doesn't show you what the material content of Obama's career consists of, then there's nothing that will. I've now repeated that simple fact about these facts a few times. Feel free to complain about them again, but I'm not going to waste any more time, because all I've got to offer is the facts, and a common sense perspective on them.
The control of political patronage by Obama or Durbin is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of Obama's legislative record.
I just posted hilights of Obama's Senate record. He's also got years of Illinois state assembly to judge from. There's many years, with many projects he's worked on. Even projects that didn't succeed show where his priorities are. That's a real track record. None of which can be described as "too good to be true".
Some people just aren't satisfied with the facts. Some people are so unsatisfiable with facts, that even the fact that they're discounting the fact is something to dismiss.
Er, "Junior Senator" means only that he was elected more recently than his state's other senator.
There's no reason to believe that Obama didn't do the work associated with those bills. I suppose if you're not interested in learning about what Obama has done, but only looking for reasons to believe he's done nothing, then nothing anyone says will convince you.
If these virtual worlds included tagging other users with different "reject" or "approve" ratings, we could make pivate notes of who we reject and approve association with. People could even tag themselves with these ratings, which we could accept or ignore at our own option. And if the world included a social network function, we could adopt our friends' (or, probably unwisely, strangers' or enemies') ratings. If we could attach simple logic to the social network's ratings implications, like "friend of my friend is my friend" or "enemy of my enemy is my friend", or "30:10:60% friend:enemy:unknown is my friend, unless my friend X is their enemy, in which case they're my enemy", we'd be able to use our real world social skills to screen access to virtual characters.
That system seems like a natural fit for Google's Orkut social network. With any luck, those tagging/rating/screening systems will be exposed in a standard protocol that will let us merge all our social networks in the separate sites into one big happy family (and mortal enemies, and true strangers), with all points between.
Introduced by Sen. John McCain in May 2005, and cosponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy. Barack Obama added three amendments to this bill.
While the bill was never voted on in the Senate, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Acts of 2006 and 2007, respectively, drew heavily upon the wording of this bill.
The Lugar-Obama Cooperative Threat Reduction.
Introduced by Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Dick Lugar and Sen. Tom Coburn.
First introduced in November 2005 and enacted in 2007, this bill expanded upon the successful Nunn-Lugar threat reduction, which helped secure weapons of mass destruction and related infrastructure in former Soviet Union states.
Lugar-Obama expanded this nonproliferation program to conventional weapons -- including shoulder-fired rockets and land mines. When the bill received $48 million in funding, Obama said, "This funding will further strengthen our ability to detect and intercept illegal shipments of weapons and materials of mass destruction, enhancing efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism."
Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006
This act of Congress, introduced by Senators Obama and Coburn, required the full disclosure of all entities or organizations receiving federal funds in FY2007.
Despite a "secret hold" on this bill by Senators Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd, the act passed into law and was signed by President Bush. The act had 43 cosponsors, including John McCain.
The act created this Web site, which provides citizens with valuable information about government-funded programs.
Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act
This law helped specify US policy toward the Congo, and states that the US should work with other donor nations to increase international contributions to the African nation.
The bill marked the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor. Following this legislation's passage, Obama toured Africa, traveling to South Africa, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Chad. He spoke forcefully against ethnic rivalries and political corruption in Kenya.
Honest Leadership and Open Government Act
In the first month of the 110th Congress, Obama worked with Sen. Russ Feingold to pass this law, which amends and strengthens the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.
Specificially, the changes made by Obama and Feingold requires public disclosure of lobbying activity and funding, places more restrictions on gifts for members of Congress and their staff, and provides for mandatory disclosure of earmarks in expenditure bills.
The House passed the bill, 411-8, on July 31. The Senate approved it, 83-14, on Aug. 2. At the time, Obama called it "the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate."
Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act
Following the Republican-sponsored voter intimidation tactics seen in mostly black counties in Maryland during the 2006 midterm elections, Obama worked with Sen. Chuck Schumer to introduce this bill.
The bill has been referred to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Obama said of the bill, "This legislation would ensure that for the first time, these incidents are fully investigated and that those found guilty are punished."
I'm voting for Obama. McCain is incredibly awful, and Obama overall looks pretty good - based on his past actions, and his public understanding of some of the solutions we need.
But I'm not that enthusiastic anymore. This FISA surrender is a terrible blow to his credibility in every way. On an essential issue about the Constitution, fighting Bush, keeping his word, leading, privacy, the rule of law. If Obama had done this one right, he'd have proved he can lead us out of the deep mess we're in. Instead, he looks like he's part of the problem - and certainly not part of the solution.
McCain, of course, is also completely in love with the new FISA that spits in the Constitution's eye. And McCain is salivating for so much more of Bush/Cheney's tyrannical powers. And he and his lobbyist advisors are even more clueless than the first round of corporate overlords under Bush/Cheney that they'll waste even more of America as they slice away for their cronies the power and money their offices will give them.
So McCain is unacceptable. I'm enthusiastic about him losing. And voting is not optional: it's an obligation to make a choice, some choice, after learning what the candidates are likely to do once elected. So the choice between McCain and Obama is clearly Obama, who must then get my vote. But I don't have to be happy about it. I don't have to send Obama money. I don't have to sign petitions demanding fair treatment by the media. I don't have to go to Obama rallies or other PR stunts.
If Obama's candidacy were to actually look like it might fail, and McCain might win, then I would send Obama money and do more legwork to get him elected. Because the choice is indeed that important. But I don't have to be happy about it. How can I remain inspired, hopeful, when Obama has raised my expectations, and then smashed them? I've got a sense of proportion, so I know FISA isn't the only issue (though it's important), and that McCain is worse on FISA and everything else. But there were a few hopeful months when Obama was doing FISA different, and now I'm back to the usual disgusted trip to the voting booth.
It's like taking out the trash, instead of going to the video store. Gotta do it, not going to get any dirtier than I must, won't be getting much laughs out of the trip, but I'm holding my nose.
The growth rate might be slowing, but from a very high rate established in the 20th Century. We're already at at least 6.7B people, and on target for 7B by 2013. And 8b BY 2028.
We're already seeing resource crunches in essential resources, like food, water, energy, pollution absorption, and just conflict resolution that are just going to get multiplied by the increased demands of each person who comes online in our increasingly interdependent world, even as population continues to grow very fast.
Even if we enraged practically the entire nation of Canada and absorbed it for its square mileage, we'd still have a global population exceeding our ability to service it, and eating our natural resources so quickly that we're in the "Age of Limits".
No, I'm the type of guy who will live forever if possible, because I'm prepared as far in advance for the unprecedented challenges. You're the type of guy who doesn't wear underwear to Mars, and gets freezedried along the way.
Let's say we can live for 400, 600, 1000 years. How will we cope with all those centuries of memories? Even people nearing a century often (usually?) can't cope with that much info about themselves. Their personalities are often severly constrained, or at least exclude quite a bit of who they were 3/4 of a century ago. Is perhaps some of that limitation not merely "hardware", which your research targets, but also our "software", the way we integrate experiences into our personality and worldview?
Across 1000 years, a lot of those experiences are going to conflict, made as they are out of the human condition. How do we keep our minds together as well as your medicine proposes to maintain our bodies?
Myself, I drink to forget. Maintaining a window of clarity here towards the end, at the expense of a murky past I can't recall, is my own contribution to your grand project. Here's mud in yer eye!
Slashdot Mirror
Because of course I said that Ubuntu is the epitome of supercomputer class Linux distributions.
Funny how I thought I said that Ubuntu/PS3 is a great entry level platform for parallel processing development. Of course the Anonymous liar Coward is correct.
No, that is not a problem. Linux, including Ubuntu, has been running on PS3 since the PS3 was released. Every Ubuntu since 6.10 has run on it. And current releases of other Linux (PPC) distros usually do install, especially the Yellow Dog that is the one officially supported by Sony. But the problem is that the Ubuntu team has too few developers, and new features in Ubuntu releases break the installation in ways that the small Cell/PPC team can't keep up with.
Also, there's nothing really "puny" about the Cell's PPC core, which is a 3.2GHz dual-hyperthread Power core.
The Cell/Linux platform has already got video drivers that offload graphics from the PPC to the DSPs the same way most distros run graphics on separate VGA chips. It's a little buggy, in beta, but that's why the project just needs more developers. Not more FUD.
I don't think you really know anything about how Linux actually runs on the Cell, on the PS3. I think you're just repeating the most whiny posts about it you've heard. Because the reality is very different from what you describe, even if it's still got problems. Problems that don't require waiting for more x86 HW revisions, but rather just a little more work on the Cell Linux that Ubuntu is releasing.
I'd be a lot more excited about these PPC lines if Ubuntu 8.04 would install and run properly on the PS3, whose PPC+6xDSP architecture would be a great entry level platform for coming up with parallel techniques for the bigger and more parallel PPC chips.
But these planes cost a lot to run and maintain. And to retrofit, even when we retrofit them into a shape that's been old for a decade already.
And they don't meet the current mission. We don't have a current mission that is equivalent to sending a small number of bombers behind Soviet radar.
We've got the benefits of the sunk R&D costs already, and these planes aren't the latest version. We're just throwing more money down their holes.
This isn't the time for some kneejerk reaction like "opponents of all things military". In fact that is the popular fallacy that people who defend all things military like to use. But proper logic for the argument is required as well as the proper military hardware for the mission. That kind of defense contractor marketing you just pushed doesn't cut either.
Because they cost a fortune to keep working. And now we're spending more fortunes retrofitting them. Which is only bringing them up to the 1990s, which was already a decade ago.
And then there's the fact that they don't do what we need. We need to spend the new money not on shoving their square pegs into today's round holes, but making new round pegs.
They're adequate at that job, for which they're retrofitted. For $2.2B each, we can make lots more littler planes that don't get shot down, which can deliver even more bombs even more precisely, to even more separate locations.
The B-2 is a white elephant that represents us throwing ever more money down a wasteful hole, just because there are powerful people in that hole with their hands out - primarily at Northrup Grumman.
The Stealth Bomber's mission is to deliver nuke bombs inside Soviet territory. It's not really that good at anything else. Though it does get used for other missions, since the US needs to justify spending $2.2 BILLION on each one.
Upgrading the B2 to the 1990s is just keeping a 1980s corporate welfare programme for another decade, even while letting it float a decade behind in technology. I guess someone's got to buy all those old Pentiums, or Intel might go out of business.
Thanks. But the TrollMods still hate me for telling the truth about Republicans:
Moderation 0
50% Insightful
50% Flamebait
Probably my fault for not being more clear.
FWIW, there's no such FeatureList page, even at KN.o (that I can find), for kernel releases much prior to 2.2.26 . So we really do have to congratulate people for delivering this valuable service, so it becomes the default, rather than a mere fad that disappears.
Er, that's why I was congratulating this featurelist. I'd like to see that kind of list in every release, and that link proves that it's possible. Great progress.
But a link in a Slashdot story to a KernelNewbies.org wiki page isn't the same as the actual kernel release announcement pointing to such a featurelist in the actual kernel package. Which would be the even better progress that I asked for. Which I think practically everyone would like to see happen.
I wish every kernel release announcement included a highlevel featurelist like that. Not just a ChangeLog, as each bug is fixed or small feature is added. But rather a fairly highlevel list of new and improved (and fixed) features like the one in this Slashdot story. Best if in the announcement itself, but at the very least always in the release package.
That way most of us can decide whether to upgrade, or to wait (perhaps for the x.1 version, which is typically a higher quality bugfixed delivery). Since kernel upgrades require rebooting (and again to downgrade after test), knowing whether to ignore a release based on its highlevel upgraded features itemization is a very effective announcement feature, which makes all of us using the releases more productive.
No, it was simply illogical the way that you Republicans would claim that a post like that said that the Bush administration forced people to drive Hummers, when it said nothing of the sort. Exactly the way you Republicans have lied about everyhing to get away with beating this country into the ground.
Like how you Republicans spent these years driving Hummers around, with "God Bless Our Troops" bumper stickers slapped on the back, while your 9MPG burned up the oil fast enough to drive it to $150 a barrel, while keeping our troops stuck in Iraq for the privilege.
But at least you got that "ruthless and systematic" part right.
So Bush and his Republican Congress created environmental controls that didn't do the job, and were illegal anyway. So eventually the power industry would get them thrown out, and leave us with nothing.
Which is kinda like Bush overall. While in power he did little but stand in the way, and now all we can do is flush him down the toilet. Meanwhile, years are lost in which polluters get to squeeze some bucks out of our environment in exchange for damaging our health.
And Bush gets to breathe free in Crawford, Texas.
But the real rub is that 8B people living at an average resource consumption rate closer to Indians' rate than to Americans' rate is more sustainable than if the quantity of people grows slower, but the consumption rate increases more than enough to overcompensate for that.
I'm all for increasing everyone's standard of living. I am. I also know that if we don't increase the resource efficiency of that standard enough to compensate for the increased amount of the consumption that standard reflects, then we're becoming more unsustainable as a cost. And that the limits of paying those costs are catastrophic. And, like peak oil, food supply/demand crunches, water wars, other essential resources peaking (like the rare minerals' exhaustion projections recently discussed on Slashdot and elsewhere), that growth's catastrophic consequences are very likey within sight, within our lifetimes. Which is why we have to face the facts about them, because we're going to have to deal with them on our watch. Starting right now, if it's not already too late, which it probably isn't.
You asked a question. You got a pretty good answer. You rejected the answer. The only fact you cited in rejecting the answer is some irrelevancy about "junior senator". Now you're citing some open-ended "we can never know the truth, even when we have the facts" complaint.
All I can give you is the facts. If looking at an actual detailed list of actual Senate actions over several years doesn't show you what the material content of Obama's career consists of, then there's nothing that will. I've now repeated that simple fact about these facts a few times. Feel free to complain about them again, but I'm not going to waste any more time, because all I've got to offer is the facts, and a common sense perspective on them.
The control of political patronage by Obama or Durbin is entirely irrelevant to the discussion of Obama's legislative record.
I just posted hilights of Obama's Senate record. He's also got years of Illinois state assembly to judge from. There's many years, with many projects he's worked on. Even projects that didn't succeed show where his priorities are. That's a real track record. None of which can be described as "too good to be true".
Some people just aren't satisfied with the facts. Some people are so unsatisfiable with facts, that even the fact that they're discounting the fact is something to dismiss.
Er, "Junior Senator" means only that he was elected more recently than his state's other senator.
There's no reason to believe that Obama didn't do the work associated with those bills. I suppose if you're not interested in learning about what Obama has done, but only looking for reasons to believe he's done nothing, then nothing anyone says will convince you.
If these virtual worlds included tagging other users with different "reject" or "approve" ratings, we could make pivate notes of who we reject and approve association with. People could even tag themselves with these ratings, which we could accept or ignore at our own option. And if the world included a social network function, we could adopt our friends' (or, probably unwisely, strangers' or enemies') ratings. If we could attach simple logic to the social network's ratings implications, like "friend of my friend is my friend" or "enemy of my enemy is my friend", or "30:10:60% friend:enemy:unknown is my friend, unless my friend X is their enemy, in which case they're my enemy", we'd be able to use our real world social skills to screen access to virtual characters.
That system seems like a natural fit for Google's Orkut social network. With any luck, those tagging/rating/screening systems will be exposed in a standard protocol that will let us merge all our social networks in the separate sites into one big happy family (and mortal enemies, and true strangers), with all points between.
Moderation -1
100% Flamebait
TrollMods can't handle the truth about either candidate, or the truth about their obligation to vote.
Here are just a few highlights from Barack Obama's career as a US Senator: specific pieces of legislation, what they meant and how they were passed.
The Secure America and Orderly Immigration Act
Introduced by Sen. John McCain in May 2005, and cosponsored by Sen. Edward Kennedy. Barack Obama added three amendments to this bill.
While the bill was never voted on in the Senate, the Comprehensive Immigration Reform Acts of 2006 and 2007, respectively, drew heavily upon the wording of this bill.
The Lugar-Obama Cooperative Threat Reduction.
Introduced by Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. Dick Lugar and Sen. Tom Coburn.
First introduced in November 2005 and enacted in 2007, this bill expanded upon the successful Nunn-Lugar threat reduction, which helped secure weapons of mass destruction and related infrastructure in former Soviet Union states.
Lugar-Obama expanded this nonproliferation program to conventional weapons -- including shoulder-fired rockets and land mines. When the bill received $48 million in funding, Obama said, "This funding will further strengthen our ability to detect and intercept illegal shipments of weapons and materials of mass destruction, enhancing efforts to prevent nuclear terrorism."
Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act of 2006
This act of Congress, introduced by Senators Obama and Coburn, required the full disclosure of all entities or organizations receiving federal funds in FY2007.
Despite a "secret hold" on this bill by Senators Ted Stevens and Robert Byrd, the act passed into law and was signed by President Bush. The act had 43 cosponsors, including John McCain.
The act created this Web site, which provides citizens with valuable information about government-funded programs.
Democratic Republic of the Congo Relief, Security, and Democracy Promotion Act
This law helped specify US policy toward the Congo, and states that the US should work with other donor nations to increase international contributions to the African nation.
The bill marked the first federal legislation to be enacted with Obama as its primary sponsor. Following this legislation's passage, Obama toured Africa, traveling to South Africa, Kenya, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Chad. He spoke forcefully against ethnic rivalries and political corruption in Kenya.
Honest Leadership and Open Government Act
In the first month of the 110th Congress, Obama worked with Sen. Russ Feingold to pass this law, which amends and strengthens the Lobbying Disclosure Act of 1995.
Specificially, the changes made by Obama and Feingold requires public disclosure of lobbying activity and funding, places more restrictions on gifts for members of Congress and their staff, and provides for mandatory disclosure of earmarks in expenditure bills.
The House passed the bill, 411-8, on July 31. The Senate approved it, 83-14, on Aug. 2. At the time, Obama called it "the most sweeping ethics reform since Watergate."
Deceptive Practices and Voter Intimidation Prevention Act
Following the Republican-sponsored voter intimidation tactics seen in mostly black counties in Maryland during the 2006 midterm elections, Obama worked with Sen. Chuck Schumer to introduce this bill.
The bill has been referred to the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary. Obama said of the bill, "This legislation would ensure that for the first time, these incidents are fully investigated and that those found guilty are punished."
I'm voting for Obama. McCain is incredibly awful, and Obama overall looks pretty good - based on his past actions, and his public understanding of some of the solutions we need.
But I'm not that enthusiastic anymore. This FISA surrender is a terrible blow to his credibility in every way. On an essential issue about the Constitution, fighting Bush, keeping his word, leading, privacy, the rule of law. If Obama had done this one right, he'd have proved he can lead us out of the deep mess we're in. Instead, he looks like he's part of the problem - and certainly not part of the solution.
McCain, of course, is also completely in love with the new FISA that spits in the Constitution's eye. And McCain is salivating for so much more of Bush/Cheney's tyrannical powers. And he and his lobbyist advisors are even more clueless than the first round of corporate overlords under Bush/Cheney that they'll waste even more of America as they slice away for their cronies the power and money their offices will give them.
So McCain is unacceptable. I'm enthusiastic about him losing. And voting is not optional: it's an obligation to make a choice, some choice, after learning what the candidates are likely to do once elected. So the choice between McCain and Obama is clearly Obama, who must then get my vote. But I don't have to be happy about it. I don't have to send Obama money. I don't have to sign petitions demanding fair treatment by the media. I don't have to go to Obama rallies or other PR stunts.
If Obama's candidacy were to actually look like it might fail, and McCain might win, then I would send Obama money and do more legwork to get him elected. Because the choice is indeed that important. But I don't have to be happy about it. How can I remain inspired, hopeful, when Obama has raised my expectations, and then smashed them? I've got a sense of proportion, so I know FISA isn't the only issue (though it's important), and that McCain is worse on FISA and everything else. But there were a few hopeful months when Obama was doing FISA different, and now I'm back to the usual disgusted trip to the voting booth.
It's like taking out the trash, instead of going to the video store. Gotta do it, not going to get any dirtier than I must, won't be getting much laughs out of the trip, but I'm holding my nose.
The growth rate might be slowing, but from a very high rate established in the 20th Century. We're already at at least 6.7B people, and on target for 7B by 2013. And 8b BY 2028.
We're already seeing resource crunches in essential resources, like food, water, energy, pollution absorption, and just conflict resolution that are just going to get multiplied by the increased demands of each person who comes online in our increasingly interdependent world, even as population continues to grow very fast.
Even if we enraged practically the entire nation of Canada and absorbed it for its square mileage, we'd still have a global population exceeding our ability to service it, and eating our natural resources so quickly that we're in the "Age of Limits".
The mind, not the brain. How do our personalities scale to that much memory forming it?
No, I'm the type of guy who will live forever if possible, because I'm prepared as far in advance for the unprecedented challenges. You're the type of guy who doesn't wear underwear to Mars, and gets freezedried along the way.
Let's say we can live for 400, 600, 1000 years. How will we cope with all those centuries of memories? Even people nearing a century often (usually?) can't cope with that much info about themselves. Their personalities are often severly constrained, or at least exclude quite a bit of who they were 3/4 of a century ago. Is perhaps some of that limitation not merely "hardware", which your research targets, but also our "software", the way we integrate experiences into our personality and worldview?
Across 1000 years, a lot of those experiences are going to conflict, made as they are out of the human condition. How do we keep our minds together as well as your medicine proposes to maintain our bodies?
Myself, I drink to forget. Maintaining a window of clarity here towards the end, at the expense of a murky past I can't recall, is my own contribution to your grand project. Here's mud in yer eye!