How Many More Before It Sinks In?

We are not wanted in Iraq. At least half of us (and I think it's more than that) don't want our own troops in Iraq.

Two new polls clearly point out, again, that the Iraqis don't want us there any longer (not that they really ever wanted us there in the first place but that's another topic).

The State Department asked the Washington Post to conduct a poll of Iraqis and that poll found that "a strong majority" want us to withdrawal immediately. Yes, the words "Washington Post" were in there which seems to be interpreted by die-hard righties as "comments from Satan" but if that's the case why would the State Department go to them?

The Associated Press then announced the results of a Maryland University poll that found 6 out of 10 Iraqis approve of violence against U.S. forces and more than that want the troops out of there now.

So my question is, just how bad does it have to get over there before we all get the point and leave? A majority of Americans now want our troops out of there within a year and that was as of a couple of months ago.

Again, we're not wanted there. We don't want to be there. We should not be there.

Multi-core Path Continues as Does Common Sense

Been swamped lately with work so I've been a bit more scarce that I would have liked. However, I couldn't help notice the news yesterday regarding Intel's announcement that it has already built a prototype 80-core processor that it promised to carry through to production within 5 years.

This again goes very much along with earlier comments I made regarding the extremely fast evolution of this area of processor design. That's 16 cores per year on average. Now all that has to happen is for some of those cores to become dedicated to specific tasks, like graphics and sound, and we're right on course to replace add-in cards as originally discussed. I continue to still find the possibility of this both intriguing and contrary to past common sense.

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Speaking of common sense, I'm glad to see another news item regarding the new intelligence report from the administration that clearly states that the war in Iraq is fueling terrorism and not reducing it. It took this administration all these years and, so far, nearly 3,000 dead soldiers to come to the same realization that at least half the country already knew back before President Bush and group drug the country into this war.

The report also concludes that it's essential that we win this battle so that the terrorists leave the front feeling that they've lost and abandon the battle. Talk about a no-win situation to futility. Send more troops to fight a battle and as the other side grows continue to send more troops to keep them from winning so that you can send yet more troops to keep the new recruits from winning all in the hopes that one day the other side will just get tired of the whole process and move on to other things; perhaps focusing their attention on The World Cup. Yeah, okay. In all of recorded history how often has that happened? Peace comes when the perceived oppressor takes the high ground and the first step and removes itself from the forefront of the battle.

If that region prefers to live in poverty and oppression but without the heavy hand of the United States there, so be it. Let us go back to paying attention to things like March Madness.

Again, I simply want to know why it is that this administration continues to find support in this country when it continually finds itself coming to conclusions that we average folks understood as obvious years before?

More Push Towards Multicore Evolution

Just a quick note today. I've been reading several articles the last couple of weeks about how AMD plans to use ATI and in all of them they keep pointing to how Intel has failed to fully bring video and the CPU together.

AMD keeps telling people that their plan is to integrate these two elements into one chip. It would seem to me that if you have an AMD processor with an ATI X1950 series integrated into it that you wouldn't need a stand-alone video card.

AMD also has a pretty strong background in audio having built their own audio engine (Interwave) a number of years back.

The more I think about the evidence and the way it's lining up the more I'm convinced that our future has no add-on cards in it and that's good for everyone except the add-on card manufacturers.