Applied Indifference

Saw an interesting t-shirt today. I was in the record store, and a group of attractive young ladies was browsing in one of the aisles. One of them was wearing a t-shirt that had printed upon it:

I thought to myself, “well, then why is he still your boyfriend?” It seems to me an unhealthy sentiment to hold, even in jest. Perhaps I’m too old to understand “the new irony”, but given how many girls I’ve known that are in, and have stayed in bad relationships, I’m not certain that it’s ironic at all.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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Nicolai Ouroussoff (writing for The New York Times) has an opinion about the newest proposal for the replacements for the World Trade Center.

It, in a word he was too gracious to use, sucks.

I’m not certain what some of the metaphors he uses are intended to do (they appear to be backhanded slurs at the US as a fading empire, but I’m not entirely certain how to interpret them. I’ll let them stand on their own) - but his main point, that the redesign of the so-called “Freedom Tower” is an exercise in capitulation is perfectly on target.

Making a building that is stated to be virtually bomb-proof is one of two things. It is either admitting that you expect it to be bombed, and are afraid of that possibility, or that you WANT it to be bombed so you can say “I told you we’d piss them off if we rebuilt it!”

I think I much prefer the Trump solution. Rebuild the towers pretty much exactly as they were, at least aesthetically. And none of this 20-story bomb-proofing shit either. Pataki needs to take his head out of his ass and realize that the message he sends to the Islamist Jihadi world wide by insisting on this crap is “You win - we are perpetually afraid of your superior culture.”

There should be but one message that the new WTC sends to the Jihadi: “Fuck you. We will continue to dominate because you are a culture stuck in the 13th century. If you destroy it, we will rebuild it. If you strike us again, we will smite you and crush you as the sand of the earth.”

Anything less is surrender.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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In another astonishing decision, SCOTUS has basically gutted both the “Fair Use” clause of the Copyright Act, and the Betamax decision.

To wit: it is now determined that the makers of products that CAN be used for the illegal transfer of intellectual or artistic property can be held liable for infringement if they didn’t do enough to prevent their programs from being used for such infringing activites.

This is bad in so many ways I don’t know where to begin.

First, your iPod is now in trouble. The record companies allege that you do NOT have an affirmative right under the Copyright Act to transfer compact discs that you own to another medium for your own personal use. Expect them to sue Apple to make it so that iTunes can no longer “rip” CDs for copying onto the iPod.

Your grokster/Kazaa/BitTorrent is in trouble too. The various entertainment industries allege that the primary purpose of those programs is the promotion of piracy. So much for that.

And since the ISPs tend to have deep pockets, they are gonna get busted for not taking steps to block these protocols. Hell, they may even be the primary consirator here, by making so much bandwidth available so cheaply to so many!

Then there’s the wonderful “Law of Unintended Consequences”. It won’t be difficult to get those state court decisions barring lawsuits for vicarious liability against gun manufacturers tossed. And all kinds of new vicarious liabilities will be invented to transfer more wealth from producers to lawyers.

I no longer recognize my country, thanks to this Supreme Court and its recent decisions.

I don’t own my house, I don’t own my music, and soon, I won’t own my gun.

And most important, I won’t own me.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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You are not protected by a restraining order. So says the illustrious SCOTUS in Castle Rock, Colo. v. Gonzales

So, if the police aren’t obligated under law to enforce a restraining order against a man who threatened to (and ultimately did) kill his children, then why are they obligated to make sure everyone is safely belted into their car?

Oh yeah, they aren’t.

If this decision doesn’t enforce the idea that you are primarily responsible for your own safety, nothing will. I’m just disgusted that it had to come to this — three young girls slaughtered in cold blood — for anyone to consider it. I just wish there was some way to assuage the pain that their mother feels.

Maybe now there will be less hostility towards citizens that choose to take up arms in self-defense, perhaps even an acceptance of armed personal security for cases (like this one) where it is warranted.

But I won’t hold my breath.

Note: I updated this post on 10/28/05 to reflect the loss of the source article, and point directly to the relevant case. -b

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Karl Rove calls it like he sees it and says “Liberals saw the savagery of the 9/11 attacks and wanted to prepare indictments and offer therapy and understanding for our attackers.”

And the Democrats go mad with moonbat indignation.

Didn’t John Kerry and Al Gore spend an awful lot of time trying to convince us that they weren’t liberal?

I mean, it’s not like Rove went whole hog and said “Some Democrats”, which would have been just as true.

I mean, even on the afternoon of September 11, 2001, there were the predictable far-left whackjobs lining up to say that America had brought 9/11 on itself and didn’t dare respond, because it was all our fault.

Not only should Rove not apologize, he should continue to say the same thing every day. And name names this time.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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Supreme Court to homeowners: Drop Dead!

I speak, of course, of the disgusting decision in Kelo v. City of New London. At issue was the City of New London condemning privately owned homes so they could sell the property to Pfizer to build a new plant. The city alleges that since the new facility will bring more tax revenue to them, and will create jobs and “boost the local economy” (where have we heard that before -ahem-Atlantic City-ahem-), and therefore was justified under the Constitution as “for the public use”.

And five Supreme Court justices agreed with them!

Welcome to the Third World. You don’t own your house, you don’t own your dog, you don’t own yourself, and you may not even own your beer.

This may well be the most disgusting decision this court has ever issued.

The potential for abuse here is obscene. Don’t build or buy a home anywhere that someone might find commercial value in, your ass will be on the street in no time. In fact, the value of any such property has just been diminished by virtue of this decision.

The absolute worst part of this decision, however, is that it is now settled that any government power not explicitly forbidden in the Constitution is assumed to be granted to the government.

Good-bye, tenth Amendment. It was nice knowing ya.

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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There has been much written about Moore’s Law, and how it’s demise is just around the corner.

Of course, for the past 20 years, it has failed to fail. Circuit density has indeed continued to double every 18 months or so. It has always been regarded that physics would lead to the ultimate demise of Moore’s Law, as quantum effects began to infect circuit designs. Indeed, as we approach the 65 nm feature size, quantum effects are being observed. Chip designers, however, think they’ve got the quantum effects licked.

I have an alternate theory for what’s going to stop Moore’s law. Economics.

You’re no doubt laughing right now. Go ahead, get it out of your system. I’ll wait.

OK, better now?

As I was saying: economics will be the undoing of Moore’s law. It now costs so much to build a new plant to do production at the next feature size (node), that it becomes more and more difficult for the plants to pay for themselves. We’ve got the twin bugbears of power consumption and heat dissipation as well, and the costs for dealing with them.

I suspect that research will continue, and there will be niche products at ever smaller nodes (so Moore’s law won’t actually be dead), but mass-produced products are going to have to find more innovative ways to squeeze more performance out of chips rather than relying on the “shrink and ramp up the clock” method that has been going on for 30 years.

We’ve already seen the beginning - dual-core CPUs from AMD and Intel, Sony’s Cell architecture, the multi-core chip for the XBox360.

I suspect that with technologies like PCI-Express and HyperTransport that distributing computing over multiple packages will come back in to vogue, allowing for the distribution of power consumption (the new PentiumD 840 draws up to 125A on it’s 1.45v main power line), and heat dissipation (that chip can dissipate well over 100W at full operating load).

Intel has already demoed a CPU built on the 65 nm node, and heat concentration is even more problematic than at the 90 nm node. They had to go to 90 because clock speeds couldn’t go higher at 130. But it seems that the point of diminishing returns has been hit.

I suspect that if there are major performance gains to be had, they lie in either new semiconductor technologies (Bipolar hit the wall a long time ago, maybe CMOS time is nearly up), new design strategies, or even new materials.

Tags: Computers by Brian Corbino
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My calendar says it’s June. My thermometer says it’s April. Last week, the thermometer thought it was August.

Of course, this MUST be the fault of those evil capitalist bastards in the U.S. If only George Bush had forced the Senate to ratify Kyoto, the weather would be perfect every day.

Not.

Tags: Randomness by Brian Corbino
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Single-payer health care has been a big part of the leftists agenda in the United States for quite some time. Their claims of equal access to quality care have always been dismissed as bunk by those of us that know better. Of course, the Canadian public health system is held out as the shining example of how to run a public health care system.

Canada’s supreme court doesn’t agree however.

If we put a system like this in place, where will the Canadians go for their health-care needs?

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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InstaPunk has written an excellent essay on the conceptual absurdity of slavery reparations.

He’s not the only one. One of the finest economic minds of our era, Walter E. Williams has spoken and written of it as well.

Instapunk gets a commenter seeking to correct the basis for determining the amount of reparation paid, and that’s what I’d like to comment on. Dr. Williams and Instapunk have both stated that even after having suffered the indignities of slavery, segregation and racism, that American blacks are better off than their African counterparts. The commenter — and indeed, the entire reparations activist movement — argue instead that the basis should be the benefit that society has derived from the labor of slaves.

Which makes things terribly complex. Logistically, it’s a nightmare.

Because it can be safely argued that every man, woman, and child on Earth has benefitted in some manner from the labor of American slaves.

Consider: the argument goes that America would not have grown as rapidly, nor become as wealthy had it not been for the sweat of the slaves, who were denied the fruits of their own labors. This is undoubtedly true. However, the slave owners and businesses that profited direcly from slave labor are not the only beneficiaries. Modern American blacks enjoy a higher standard of living than their forbears, so they have benefitted from that labor. Should they, then, be forced to make reparations?

Let’s see who else benefitted directly from slave labor and the descendants of slaves. We can start with the entirety of Europe. The United States would not have been able to fight World War II without the contributions of the Black Americans to the war effort. Should we then send a bill for reparations to France and England?

I would argue that reparations have already been paid for the abhorrent practice that was slavery in the United States. More than 600,000 people died fighting the war that ultimately ended the practice in the United States.

Can we call the debt paid? In blood?

Tags: Politics by Brian Corbino
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