Pointer

Various factors (including being considerably impressed with the thoughtfulness of the analysis) compel me to pass a pointer to this post on the present and near future of the US educational system by lullabypit.

Intel goes out on a (rotten?) limb in efforts to catch AMD

One of the reasons behind AMD's recent successes (read: taking away market share from Intel) in the server arena is its adoption of the HyperTransport high-speed interface for communication between multiple processors.  It is now reported that Intel, in an effort to reverse the loss of market share, plans to implement a similar feature on their own processors.

However, in what I personally consider a very ill-advised move, instead of adopting the tried, proven, and currently industry-standard¹ HyperTransport interface, Intel is inventing its own, which it calls CSI, for Common System Interface.  Intel makes quite a few showy-sounding statements about what CSI will do, but so far appears oddly silent on what it will do that HyperTransport doesn't -- apart, that is, from being a new, untested, untried, and undoubtedly initially buggy interface.

AMD, meanwhile, plans to move next year to HyperTransport 3.0, which will allow 41.6GB/s bandwidth, interconnects between up to 16 processors, and allows interconnects across multiple boards and even multiple chassis.

I don't know about you, but it sounds to me as though Intel's new Great White Hope is obsolete before it even gets off the drawing board.

[1]  HyperTransport, which grew out of technology developed by Digital Equipment Corporation for the late lamended Alpha processor, is an open standard maintained by the HyperTransport Consortium.  It is currently used by AMD, Apple, Cisco, IBM and Microsoft, among others.

Let's get something clear, shall we?

I have at times in the past been guilty of lumping the Republican Party and neoconservatives together in one bucket.  To anyone who has watched this BBC documentary on the rise of the neoconservatives and of the current spate of Islamic terrorism (warning: 500MB video download), the error of this overgeneralization should be immediately apparent.

So let's get this clear, once and for all:  The neo-conservative movement are not Rpuublicans.  They are merely using the Republican party apparatus for their own ends.  Neither are they in fact truly religious; rather, they are using the large (and largely credulous) self-professed fundamentalist Christian segment of the population, again for their own ends.  Nor are they actually in any respect conservative; they are merely assuming the mantle of conservativism for its perceived aura of respectability.

What they ARE, quite plainly and simply, is neo-fascists.