David Patterson

David Patterson (of Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach) gave a lecture today at Microsoft about his ROC project.

Among other things, I learned two things:

...Peres's law

“If a problem has no solution, it may not be a problem, but a fact, not to be solved, but to be coped with over time”

    — Shimon Peres
 
...and that Bing is now a better search engine than Google.
 
For the last several months I was using Bing and Google more or less interchangeably, but Google was always an authoritative source. So when a few hours after the lecture I wanted to quote the Peres's law to a co-worker, I went to Google first. I typed in the following query: "unsolvable problems Shimon Peres facts cope". To my surprise, the quote was nowhere to be found:
 

 
I was really surprised, and tried Bing. Both of the top two results pointed to the quote.

Taliban, v2

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/how-the-cia-ran-a-secret-army-of-3000-assassins-2087039.html

Apparently CIA is financing an army in Afghanistan in exactly the same way they finances the anti-Soviet resistance which resulted in Osama Bin Ladin's movement. Smart people learn on other's mistakes. Dumb people learn on their own. And then there's a whole new level...

Republican Lobbyist Edwina Rogers Wraps Gifts in Money

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXj-oQm-NbE

I have no further comments... But there was one of note on Reddit: "The poor can dig the wrapper out of the trash later. This is called trickle down economics."

Court dismisses torture lawsuit because it "might expose state secrets"

"While the alleged abuses occurred during the Bush administration, the ruling added a chapter to the Obama administration’s aggressive national security policies.

Its counterterrorism programs have in some ways departed from the expectations of change fostered by President Obama’s campaign rhetoric, which was often sharply critical of former President George W. Bush’s approach.

Among other policies, the Obama national security team has also authorized the C.I.A. to try to kill a United States citizen suspected of terrorism ties, blocked efforts by detainees in Afghanistan to bring habeas corpus lawsuits challenging the basis for their imprisonment without trial, and continued the C.I.A.’s so-called extraordinary rendition program of prisoner transfers — though the administration has forbidden torture and says it seeks assurances from other countries that detainees will not be mistreated."
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/09/us/09secrets.html?_r=4&hp=&adxnnl=1&pagewanted=all&adxnnlx=1284220860-JSOfEHxr+sgBSLlDU9nJSA

It looks like I am voting for a third party candidate in the next election season...

120 miles per galon... absolutely unbelievable!

http://jalopnik.com/5628752/from-canada-to-mexico-on-one-tank-of-diesel

Governor of Arizona

...and here's the explanation of this phenomenon from Reddit...