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While I think there's a certain degree of that going on, I'd blame bureaucracy and ineptitude for the majority of it.

Considering they have nukes, that would f*cking blow

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/08/18/musharraf.address/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Why should you care? Pakistan is not only a nuclear power, but the 6th most populous country in the world. Musharraf has also been something of a crony to Bush, receiving billions of dollars in U.S. aid in exchange for being an "ally" in the war on terror. Musharraf was effectively forced out of office amid a faltering economy, a growing Taliban insurgency, and political pressure from Pakistan's coalition government, who united under the common cause of kicking his ass out of office. Does he deserve it? Hard to say... the situation in Pakistan seems eerily similar to the one in the US with failing economy and low approval rates for the government. However, the Pakistani National Assembly apparently has the balls to do what the US Congress could not: impeach the president. It will be interesting to see if this gives a boost to the National Assembly's approval ratings. If so, perhaps Congress could learn a lesson from Pakistan...

What if the money goes into the enormous accounting black hole known as the Department of Defense? The DoD still can't account for over $1 trillion dollars worth of spending, and remains the only federal department exempt from auditing.

Would a term and a third as Senator be good? Or is being President more of a two terms as Senator deal? What experience would you like him to have which you think would better qualify him as President? When it comes right down to it, I don't think being a Senator is exactly the greatest background for a President. I'd rather see someone who has experience in an executive role, such as a state Governor or corporate CEO. Anyone who doesn't have any experience in such a role is going to have a lot to learn about being the executive for an entire country. However, in this case we have two Senators on our hands. In my opinion McCain really hasn't done anything which would make him more experienced in this capacity.

Penrose focuses on consciousness as behaving algorithmically, then attempts to formulate mathematical proofs where the behavior of a person is given formal mathematical properties. To put it in Kantian terms, when arguing against materialists Penrose is unable to separate the phenomena from the noumena. To Penrose, there's nothing emergent about consciousness at all, and it's inseparable from whatever mathematical activities go on to facilitate it. To frame it in the modern verbage of the philosophy mind, Penrose likens materialism to reductive eliminativism, that is that mind is matter and the two are inseparable. Functionalists would argue that mind is a symbolic (noumenological) system which is independent of its underlying substrate. It doesn't matter if that substrate is a wet lump of fat or a silicon chip with electrons whizzing through it. So long as it pushes symbols around in the right way the system is conscious. All that said, conscious entities aren't formal logic systems and aren't constrained in the way formal logic systems are. Your brain can quite happily perform any number of logical fallacies, generate conclusions from nowhere, create conclusions which don't follow from their premises, and make untold numbers of mistakes. This is where Penrose's arguments tend to fail. He ignores that consciousness, as an emergent, symbolic system isn't bound by the formal logic whatever system that's driving it is bound to. I suppose Penrose would fancy himself a monist, but he's not. He's a dualist is sheep's clothing.

This whole election really feels like a battle between the old conservative guard and a younger generation energized around a candidate they feel they can relate to. I've been watching the AMC series Mad Men lately and can't help but feel the parallels to the 1960 race between Nixon and Kennedy. Especially Obama running what many might consider a largely substance-free campaign and Nixon being a grumbling troll. That worked out for Kennedy in the end... barely... Remember: a rural Republican is a rural Democrat with a bigger penis. Durrrr?

Yes. Why couldn't it? Why not? What makes the watery lump of fat in your head "special" in a way silicon chips can't be?

What you're describing sounds something like a cloud computing installation, such as Amazon's EC2. You'll still need a full-time maintenance staff, just to handle system failures. This is especially true if you have large numbers of computers. If you have thousands of computers, you'll see multiple hardware and software failures daily which need to be addressed.

Simulated humans could do all those things. If the AI in question were a simulated human, or similar to one, then yes.

Anyone seen a copy of the debate online? I've been looking but can't find one. If not, I guess I'll watch the highlight reel on the Daily Show...

When Obama has something on the caliber of the Keating Five scandal and a divorce under his belt, then he'll be ready to lead

D is conceptually awesome (a "fixed" C++) but unfortunately the compilers are a bit weak (namely DigitalMars). While C++ is vastly more complex than D it also has untold man-years of research behind its compilers which D simply doesn't have. There's also the problem of not having one definitive standard library. There are two: Tango and Phobos. Which should you use? Hard to say...

Don't you think the two are not only related, but interdependent? I'm not sure why price drops due to decreased demand is a cause to ignore the effect that speculation had on the market.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/08/14/clinton/index.html?eref=rss_topstories Well, so ends all that silly speculation about a Clinton uprising. The Obama campaign is totally okay with it. Awesome!

Looks like Obama's critics are doing much worse than just claiming he "doesn't look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills." Retroactive correctness! Wait, that's not the phrase I'm looking for... "revisionist history"?

Daniel Dennett described experiments where researchers attached a grid of tactile stimulators to people's backs, controlled by cameras. Over time their brain came to make an association between the tactile stimulation and their environment, effectively becoming able to see. New research suggests the tongue may be a better surface to stimulate: http://abcnews.go.com/Primetime/Story?id=2401551&page=1

Well, at the very least, Obama is at the center of the discussion...

I signed up, but I'm one of those people who likes to get information pumped directly to me

This is a fairly frequent experience in OOP, and among other things has lead to "design patterns" for building object oriented systems. While there are some design patterns I find helpful, many seem to work around the absence of language features, and those I find rather annoying. That said I find myself refactoring quite often, especially when building systems from the ground-up without using frameworks. This involves changing my test cases for my APIs to use the new interface I have in mind, then changing the existant interface so the test cases pass again. It's just one of those things you have to do when building object oriented systems. That said, you might find functional languages nice. They probably do a much better job of allowing you to break down problems in the ways you're familiar with. I've noticed Python has grown in popularity in the scientific computing community, and that's rather nice to see.

Bookmarking works really nicely with a plug-in like del.icio.us bookmarks or Google Bookmarks which lets you tag your bookmarks topically.

Did I quote Moveon.org? Wait, no, I quoted a senior Bush Administration official on the matter. What is this, you're trying to discredit my view because you think it has an association with some group that doesn't enter into the discussion? Maybe you should stop taking your talking points from Michael Savage, ParanoiA. I mean, that makes about as much sense as you lumping me in with Moveon.org.

It's unfortunate their emphasis is on Ogg Theora. While I was a huge support of Ogg/Xiphorous in the past, Dirac is simply better technology, more mature (particularly the Schrodinger implementation), and practically on par with H.264.

Let's see... number of terrorist attacks successfully orchestrated against the United States by Iranians? What was that? Oh, zero? They can't... again, the whole fingers in everyone's pie thing. Wow, I love how you give Saudi Arabia a blank check for their past because they're more corrupt than Iran. Yes, a corrupt monarchy with their fingers in everyone's pie. Do you get the point yet? Uhh? Wahhabists? Militant Islam? Terrorists who carried out a little suicide attack called 9/11 in the name of their religion? Are you even paying attention at all? Oh yeah... OSAMA BIN F******* LADEN? Hello, corruption? You think a government which is able to work out deals with other nations simply due to pulling strings both economic and political means it's better somehow? SOME PEOPLE SAY... yeah, nice Fox News defense of your points. Hearsay isn't exactly evidence. QED. You've certainly done a rather lousy job of defending your position. Perhaps you'd care to do some more research about the country before opining, hmmm? Certainly not to my satisfaction... try citing some sources and doing some research.

This election has been dragging on for the past 4 years I can't wait until it's over with