Category: Legacy

Posted on by lhl
  • U.S. Prison at Guantanamo Takes on Permanent Air

    “We will be here as long as we need to be here to exploit intelligence. The terrorists have a 30-year head start on us,” Brig. Gen. Jim Payne, deputy commander of the prisoner operation, said on Wednesday.

  • Most suspected terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay won’t face trial: Rumsfeld – heard this on NPR, thought it was worth finding a source

    Most suspected terrorists at a US prison camp in Cuba could expect to be held for the duration of the global war on terrorism rather than face trial, US Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said on Wednesday.

    No reports on when or how the ‘global war on terrorism’ will end

  • A Buzzflash Interview: Paul Krugman, New York Times Columnist and Author of “The Great Unraveling: Losing Our Way in the New Century” – great interview with insight on a number of issues. One example:

    But there’s a definite tilt in the way these things are covered and perceived. I think the average voter in California is feeling outraged about the state’s $38 billion deficit, and then you stop and think for a second. You say, wait a second .- first of all, it’s not $38 billion. It turns out that was a two-year number, and this year they’ve closed the books. And it’s only $8 billion for next year. And, anyway, that number should be as abstract and remote from the ordinary residents of California as the national budget deficit is from the ordinary American.

    But there’s a machine that keeps on beating it out, saying Davis is bad; Davis is irresponsible; the deficit .- he lied to us. And the press picks it up, and, in turn, it makes its way to the public. So you have a situation in which mainstream publications continue to report and hammer on Davis’ $38 billion deficit, which isn’t even remotely true, while Bush, for the most part, gets a free pass on the $500 billion deficit which is absolutely real.

  • NYTimes: Exploiting the Atrocity – 9/12/2003 editorial

    The press has become a lot less shy about pointing out the administration’s exploitation of 9/11, partly because that exploitation has become so crushingly obvious. As The Washington Post pointed out yesterday, in the past six weeks President Bush has invoked 9/11 not just to defend Iraq policy and argue for oil drilling in the Arctic, but in response to questions about tax cuts, unemployment, budget deficits and even campaign finance. Meanwhile, the crudity of the administration’s recent propaganda efforts, from dressing the president up in a flight suit to orchestrating the ludicrously glamorized TV movie about Mr. Bush on 9/11, have set even supporters’ teeth on edge.

Posted on by lhl
Posted on by lhl

Valve lets off steam over NVIDIA performance …and offers a new graphics benchmark – very interesting, ATI appears to kick NV3x ass in DX9 performance

See also: Gabe Newell Interview @ Gamers Depo

The next generation will basically bring the pixel and vertex shader flexibility to geometry, we’ll have many more passes per scene, and each pass will be doing more interesting stuff. We’ll be doing lots of image post-processing, we probably will do deferred rendering to some degree, and we’ll be doing tone mapping. Motion blur and depth of field will be used by lots of applications. Real-time radiosity may or may not be happening in this time frame. If we’re right about this, then Source should be a very good engine for taking advantage of these functions.

Posted on by lhl

What is $87 Billion Worth?

This $87 billion request is in addition to $79B already approved by Congress. This morning I was listening to Paul Wolfowitz being interviewed on NPR chiding the American public about needing to be committed and following through. You have to wonder about the thought process that allows someone to be able to say this with a straight face after having spent the previous year trying to convince everyone that a war in Iraq would be quick, painless, and cheap.

And of course, looking at these numbers again brings to mind the classic Eisenhower quote:

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired, signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. The world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its labourers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.