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http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/us/politics/20budget.html?_r=2 Is this a partisan move, or one towards better transparency? Personally I opt for the latter, and am glad to see these sorts of things exposed.

I don't expect Democrats to be any less partisan about investigations than the Republicans were when investigating Clinton. It's just in this case I think the investigation is a little more warranted.

I apologize. Perhaps that was stated poorly. But I suggest you refer to my original response for the intent. The core hypothesis of the Singularity is that in the future some sort of superhuman intelligence will be created and this will radically alter human society in ways we can't presently predict. Bottom line: at some point in the future, humans as we know them will become obsolete, replaced by technologically augmented humans, strong AI, or both, and that this will completely reshape the way society operates. I think there's little reason to assume this won't happen at some point in the future, short of the extinction of mankind. Kurzweil is something of a Johnny-Come-Lately to the whole Singularity concept, and has chosen to brand ideas his ideas with this label. He was making absurd predictions about the future long before he was marketing them as "Singularity". Just check out his book The Age of Spiritual Machines. You get similar predictions without the "Singularity" moniker. Saying the Singularity is wrong because you feel Kurzweil is wrong is a bit of a strawman. The concept was around long before Kurzweil. I suggest you read Vernor Vinge's writing on the matter and see if you still disagree: http://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html

Well that remark was specifically in regard to the "accountable" issue... ...and it didn't stop. Congress has modified FISA in ways that I do not think are compatible with the Fourth Amendment. The problem is without judicial oversight we don't know who the government is spying on or why, unless someone happens to find out which is what occurred in the case of Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation Inc. v. Bush. I guess you're content with a wrist-slap over this matter. I'm still extremely angry about that, about massive amounts of data being funneled from various telco providers directly into the NSA, and about Congress granting the telcos retroactive immunity for that. Someone needs to be held accountable. I hope that case goes to the Supreme Court.

For some reason I am reminded of Except this isn't funny... it's just dumb. I don't know about "racist", or really care for that matter.

If you believe that, then shouldn't you be concerned when a president signs an order explicitly circumventing a check by the judicial branch, namely the issuing of warrants as per the Fourth Amendment? That's great, except in the case of the warrentless spying program it never happened, and no one was ever held accountable. That contradicts your earlier statements. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged No doubt, with Bush I have eight years of pent up frustration. With Obama I have... less than a month? And it's not like I haven't been critical of Obama: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=37889 http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/showthread.php?t=38651

Or yours! I have no idea what you're talking about but it isn't relevant to this thread. No, to reiterate: I care passionately by torture as evidenced by the numerous threads I've started on the matter. You got the response you got because your argument was a red herring. If you want a real response out of me, start a new thread and give it context. Perhaps in the future I should just point out your argument is a red herring and refuse to dignify it with a response. Now, can we get back to the subject at hand?

For the record, I abhor torture. However, I also abhor red herrings. Please don't interpret my attempts to steer you back on topic as a tacit condoning of torture.

I don't know enough to answer that question. I can only point out that the scale and complexity of the economy has increased vastly since then, and can only in turn ask if an economy as large and complex as ours could safely operate entirely on emergent market forces. It's really a question of whether an intelligent agent can do a better job than the emergent forces, and my personal feeling about that question is yes, I would pick an intelligent agent over the emergent forces. People make mistakes and those mistakes will lead to economic downturns. With a purely emergent system I don't see how you prevent manipulations for personal gain which have an adverse effect on the entire system. Here you have intelligent agents acting in their own self-interest and only emergent forces to keep them in check. How does a "free market" prevent irresponsible investment? Models inherently can't predict every variable. That's what makes them models. However, you don't need to predict every variable to have reliable predictions. You end up with estimates based on averages with certain windows of uncertainty. Clearly we're encountering a case where the models failed miserably. However, Greenspan's take on the whole thing in 20/20 hindsight leaves me with a feeling that, if anything, he underregulated due largely in part to drinking Milton Friedman's free market kool aid. In my undereducated layman's opinion, the solution is more regulation and greater control by our central banking system, and my guess is we'd be worse off abandoning a central banking system. I think it'd be interesting to see a poll of economists and their views on eliminating the Federal Reserve.

Yes, because among other things it provides a transparent reporting mechanism for where the money is going which is easily and publicly accessible. Or at least, that's what Obama's video claims they are going to create. The site just launched so we'll see where it goes. Maybe you're right and it will add no value or transparency. Or maybe Obama will live up to what he announced and we can see exactly how much money was spent and where. I didn't know any of those things (well, I know Puerto Rico isn't a state), but you do, which is an indicator to me that there's a decent degree of transparency in place Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged If any of that was directed at me I'm not trying to derail my own thread. However, the two bills are comparable in that they represent absurdly huge spending bills. And one hugely notable difference is: this spending bill has a web site which aims to account for where the money is being spent. Where is the web site for the Office of Financial Stability created by the bailout bill? I can't find it.

Bush repeatedly signed orders to circumvent the checks and balances provided by FISA and by extension the Fourth Amendment, and he has been found guilty of doing so. Don't you think this warrants criminal charges against him, now that he's not a sitting president? We have Scott McClellan claiming that Bush personally confided in him that he was the one who authorized the leak of Valerie Plame's name, in which case, yes, it is a big conspiracy which goes all the way to the top... if you believe Scott McClellan. Is he right? Well that's what we need a trial to determine. Shouldn't we have a trial? Shouldn't Scott McClellan testify under oath? Do you seriously think we should just ignore all of this and pretend it never happened? Do you really think none of this warrants further investigation or criminal proceedings? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Are you trying to excuse Bush from violating the Constitution? You really seem to like the Constitution ParanoiA, so I think you'd be pretty concerned about a president repeatedly writing orders to violate checks and balances as fundamental as those in the Fourth Amendment. Personally I like having a judge write a warrant before the government spies on me or takes my things, and I'm really glad the founding fathers stuck that into the Constitution. Yes, torture is very bad, but if a President explicitly orders the violation of the Constitution we have a very serious problem on our hands, and one I don't think should simply be ignored. That sets a very, very bad precedent.

You are aware a federal judge has already ruled Bush committed a felony, right? I think you missed that in my first post. To reiterate: Bush committed a felony Perhaps your group may be more aptly described as being in a cave on Mars with your eyes shut, your fingers in your ears, and your head buried in the sand? Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged Frankly I don't care what their motivations are if the ends are justice being served. Bush decided the Constitution (specifically the Fourth Amendment) was inconvenient in waging his war on terror so he personally and repeatedly signed off on ignoring it. If the President isn't bound by the Constitution, why exactly is it we have a Constitution anyway? If it takes some "petty, partisan revenge" to ensure that the President can't violate the Constitution and get away with it, then I am all for petty, partisan revenge. And even so, zuh? What's your evidence it's just "petty, partisan revenge" anyway? You don't think any member of Congress interested in prosecuting Bush wants to do so because, say, they think the Constitution is a good thing and stuff?

There's no precise points... it's a continuum. However, a fetus/baby, in the womb, is unconscious and more to the point has never been conscious. If something isn't conscious and has never been conscious, why does it deserve more rights than something that has? Why does an undifferentiated cell mass have more rights than, say, an adult pig?

That's the primary way public key crypto is applied today (and for the past few decades), aside from using it for message signing. Pubkey algorithms are generally much slower than private key streaming ciphers. So pubkey crypto is only used to exchange a shared private secret, namely the key to be used for the streaming cipher.

Obama claims they'll replace the estimates with the actual spending figures when it is spent. That's pretty sweet. Is there a similar web site for the $700b bailout where I can see exactly how much money the "Office of Financial Stability" has given out, and to whom? If not, it might explain why it took so long to catch this.

Both of these assumptions are verifiable, they just require time for the associated technologies to advance.

Hmm, I think this matter deserves its own thread. "The very word secrecy is repugnant in a free and open society" -- John F. Kennedy

While some members of this forum insist an investigation of the Bush administration is little more than petty, partistan revenge, 71% of Americans wish to see Bush investigated. 41% want a criminal investigation, while 30% want investigation by an independent panel. Just to toss some more statistics at you, 63% want an investigation into Bush's illegal wiretapping, and 62% want an investigation into the use of torture. As you may have guessed, or read from my previous posts, I count myself among those who wish to see Bush investigated for wiretapping, torture, and I would like to see him criminally investigated. My belief is that Bush has violated the Fourth Amendment, wiretapping US citizens without a warrant. This view has been upheld by a federal judge who has ruled Bush committed a felony. Then there's the small matter of Scott McClellan's claims that Bush admitted to outing an undercover CIA operative, an act of treason. What do you think? Should the Bush Administration be investigated for the multitude of crimes they've been accused of? Is it important that presidents be held to the rule of law? Or should we just put the whole mess behind us and pretend it never happened? Are attempts at investigating Bush merely a petty act of partisan revenge, or are they an essential function of a democratic society, ensuring its leaders are held accountable for their crimes?

Many open source zealots have noted this site is running Drupal, an open source CMS That's pretty sweet

There are already many, many designs. About 10 years ago I remember some teenage girl won a science fair for desiging a pubkey crypto system. Her algorithm was much slower and more memory intensive than RSA. My argument is not that quantum techniques will not be applied to cracking cryptography. I expect in the future we'll have general purpose quantum computers which we can target using something similar to SIMD instructions to perform massively parallel computations. The problem is that I sincerely doubt there will be a general purpose make-quantum-break-crypto computer. How would you use quantum computers to attack elliptic curve cryptography, for example?

And what do you think of Greenspan's assertion that relying on free market principles (something as simple as companies acting in the best interests of their shareholders) was the central catalyst of this disaster?

http://www.recovery.gov/ More of Obama's fresh approach to transparency. You think any spending bill more than say, $10 billion would come with a web site. Glad to see this stuff. (and for those of you who weren't aware, Obama signed the stimulus bill into law yesterday)

Short answer: yes, even though his politics aren't as close to mine as some of the other candidates.

No, I'd like a moderate party to marginalize them. Right now they retain influence because they dominate the power structure of the extant Republican party.

Except it's Congress's duty to investigate, not Obama's. In this case the administration is obstructing the investigation.