GPGPU:
This is cool! About 7 years ago after seeing what the original 3dFx Voodoo card could do, I was inspired to think about what would be possible in gaming as GPUs offloaded more and more work from the main processor. I was focused more on what to do with those free cycles on the CPU, but more recently have been wondering how GPUs could be harnessed for something other than direct to screen output, like various forms of image processing, compression, etc. GPGPU.org is focused on this topic, with a pointer to an article I intend to read.

“This article by Michael Macedonia in IEEE Computer magazine discusses current trends in general purpose computation on GPUs. Excerpt: ‘The Siggraph/Eurographics Graphics Hardware 2003 workshop, held in San Diego, will likely be remembered as a turning point in modern computing. In one of those rare moments when a new paradigm visibly begins changing general-purpose computing’s course, what has traditionally been a graphics-centric workshop shifted its attention to the nongraphics applications of the graphics processing unit.'”

My computer suffered a major trauma yesterday. For some reason, the NTFS filesystem on my main drive became corrupted. After a chkdisk I learned that lots of important files for booting up the computer where no longer where they needed to be. Replacing some of them brought further enlightenment, even more had gone missing.

I installed a new copy of Win2k along side the old one to try and recover from backup. I will warn you right now Win2k (and probably XP) will nuke your user profiles and your application directories if you do a side-by-side install. The setup gives you some warning that installing a new OS on a partition will have this effect, but implied that picking a new directory for the system root would avoid said fate.

At least I had a recent backup. I would just have to kiss a day’s worth of work re-organizing and supplimenting my digital music collection goodbye. The backup sort of worked, but in the process of trying to restore the old OS I seem to have hosed both the old and new OSs.

So, at 1:30am, I started another OS install, this time cafefully renaming the “Documents and Settings” and “Program Files” folders for safe keeping.

There is a big of happy luck to all this. Most of my days work, stuff that hadn’t been backed up, was in the directory of files recovered from the filesystem corruption, safely out of harms way when the Win2k setup helpfully deleted my files.

Now I’m just out a bunch of time, though slightly less than if I had to reconstruct all my work, and my disk is the most horribly fragmented I’ve ever seen it. The MFT, rather than existing in two or three large chunks, is sprayed across the partition in a fine mist.

I’m know I’m late to the party posting on this now, but its been sticking in my craw ever since Thanksgiving dinner and I have to get it out.

George Bush’s trip to Iraq for thanksgiving dinner with US troops sickens me on so many levels.

1. Foolish Risk. Sure, they went to a lot of trouble keeping the trip secret, even keeping secrets from secret service agents according to one front pagelead I read(Because, appearantly, our Secret Service can’t be expected to protect our President? Yay!). But once that big-ass plane with the seal of the President of the United States of America on the side touched down, you can be pretty sure his cover was blown. Why wouldn’t the few hours he spent on the ground be enough time to set up to strike the plane on take-off? Nothing happened, but it seems like a big risk to take.

2. Cynical. Did you know that Hillary Clinton was also in Iraq at about the same time? I didn’t until just recently, which would seem to be part of the point of the Bush trip. Not only does George Bush take an unnecessary risk to score a photo-op, but appearantly its a stunt designed to head off a critic. What stupid stunt will he pull next?

3. Lame. If he were just about anyone else, I would think its at least a good thing that Bush see something of the mess he’s created, but Bush has built a reputation for surrounding himself with people who hold rose colored glasses to his face whenever he bothers opening his beady little eyes, and besides that, what is he going to see in a few hour visit, mostly spent stuffing his face and posing for the cameras?

Why Google Will Never Partner with Microsoft – News on Google – Microdoc News

This is just wacky:

There is a growing number of people who purchase or acquire Lindows, Red Hat, Debian, Slackware, Ximian and more, because they do not like the Microsoft domination. These people are the primary users of Google — the heavy hitters that make Google money.

Yahoo! News – Defying Bush, Senate Votes to Make Iraq Pay Back Loan
I tend to agree with the administration that making a significant amount of our aid to Iraq in the form of loans is a bad thing. It makes it look like we have roughed them up, and are now shaking them down. Not the sort of thing that is going to help our efforts in Iraq or elsewhere.

It bothers me though that most of the coverage of the loan clause ignores an important condition, namely that the loans will become grants if 90% of foreign debt against Iraq is forgiven. Perhaps this is unlikely, but it is, in general, a good thing to try to make happen. Ignoring the fact that compliance would make Iraq’s debtors into joint benefactors in its reconstruction, forgiving the debt is the right thing to do. These countries, and their various private lenders, were lending money to Sadam’s regime. Sadam’s regime is gone now, why should the Iraqi people, whom it exploited, be expected to pay its debts? And even if they should, why should they be paying it back at rates that were no doubt negotiated under duress during the decade Iraq was under UN sanctions when lenders in countries like France (to mention only one) did deals under very lopsided conditions.

Their amendment approved shortly after Vice President Dick Cheney (news – web sites) failed to bring wavering senators in line through a round of phone calls would require half of the $20.3 billion in reconstruction aid to be a loan to Iraq, unless the administration persuaded other countries to forgive 90 percent of Iraq’s existing debt.

If the $150 to $200 billion in foreign debt is forgiven which appears highly unlikely the full $20 billion in aid would be given to Iraq…

Think Different, my ass
I just loaded up iTunes so I could, at long last, check out the Apple Music Store from my Macless household.

No Husker Du, no Black Flag, no Dead Kennedy’s, no Pogues, nor many newer bands, like Death Cab for Cutey or the Libertines.

Disappointing, though not suprising.