1. Simulation with more advanced physics/numerics/whatever, smaller grids/timesteps/whatever, better AI/ML integration, more data throughput
2. Primarily data movement. "Benchmarking" machines have impressive flops numbers but are generally terrible for getting any real work done because their networks/memory systems/storage systems are weak.

Yep. Most people don't know about the semantic advantages Fortran has over C or that its syntax allows for compact expression of complex calculations. C is no more a Fortran replacement than Fortran is a C replacement.

This.

Sure, warming might help Canadians save a bit on their heating bills but the soil at least in most of southern Canada is terrible for agriculture. It's a rocky landscape mostly undisturbed by glacial activity. I would like to know how much Canadian land would be viable for agriculture given various warming scenarios. I have a feeling it won't make up for the midwest U.S. breadbasket.

SLS (0.97pl?? kernel) -> Slackware (wow, packages!) -> RedHat (wow, dependencies!) -> Debian (wow, apt!)

I probably still have the fullscreen Linux 95 gif somewhere.

And for the record:

twm -> fvwm -> GNOME (very briefly) -> KDE

As do I. Frankly, your dismissal of the power of the executive makes me seriously question exactly what you do in this field. Obama has made a huge difference in important areas. Transportation is one of them. With an obstructionist Congress there's not much he can accomplish in the legislative arena but he can very well influence the way existing law is carried out.

No, I'm not delusional. I've seen and experienced the difference Obama has made. Personally.

I fundamentally disagree with your analysis. It displays a lack of understanding of political power and Obama is neither a Marxist or a Socialist. But that's not what I want to address today. What we need to address is this:

You're kidding, right?

One pushed through a big health care reform which will cover millions of uninsured people while the other is moving as far away from his (mostly identical) program as possible.

One believes that progressive taxation is essential to prosperity. The other has done everything he can to make the tax system regressive.

One believes we need to regulate the financial sector to ensure stability. The other has pledged to tear down what little regulation we have.

One has invested in renewable energy and the other says he will fund "traditional" energy sources and dismantle decades of environmental law.

One may agree or disagree with the candidates on these points but one cannot honestly say there is no difference between them.

Oh please. The man sexually assaulted multiple women. He does not deserve asylum.

He also leaked private diplomatic documents. He should expect to get arrested. All honorable practitioners of civil disobedience expect to be arrested and spend time in jail.

Assange is a narcissistic attention-grabber with serious sexual predator characteristics, nothing more.

I'm getting an ASUS UX32VD. 10GB RAM and 256GB SSD should blow the Air out of the water.

Actually, Target will. You can go back without a receipt and get a replacement. No store credit, no cash, just a one-for-one replacement, which is what the GP wanted.

You don't seem to understand the tremendous power the executive has. The president doesn't just sign laws, he gets to execute them. Thus, the Executive Branch. That means he gets to decide how they are implemented (laws are intentially left vague), gets to decide how many resources are dedicated to implementing them, sets general policy, etc. An examination of the history of, say, transportation in this country would be most enlightening, I think. The Executive branch has wide-reaching powers. That's why it matters.

No. Those dollars are used to hire contractors, etc., all from your "free market," which is just "the market." There is no separation between government spending and any other spending. It all goes to the same places.

Are you noticing any of the chipset framerate issues with Sandy Bridge? I'm looking to build an HTPC out of them but it sounds like waiting for Ivy Bridge might be a better idea given the chipset issues.

You're not the only one. Transportation is often a larger part of a family's budget than housing. This is because we've built our transportation system almost exclusively on roads and our metropolitan areas almost exclusively around sprawl. It's no wonder people are driving further than ever to get to work and paying more for their car than their house.

This is flamebait but I'm compelled to respond.

Because racism is not "thoughts." I find it helpful to distinguish bigotry from racism. I consider bigotry to be in the realm of individual thoughts. Racism is about power. Racism is more about social constructions than individual thoughts and actions. For example, Jim Crow laws are racist.

Racism is indeed the cause of your observations. Education disparity is a gigantic problem in this country. It's difficult to overcome because we have several centuries of public policy in place that closed educational opportunities to people of color. We've eliminated most of the official policies but we have hundreds of years of effects of those policies to undo. Simply fixing the law isn't enough. We've set an entire class of people on a certain track for hundreds of years and it will take active undoing of that to set them on a different track.

When you don't have access to basic education, you don't have access to higher education. If you get rid of the legal barriers now you have to deal with all sorts of cultural issues such as teachers not understanding your background and experience as a person of color, lack of teachers who have shared that experience and so on. This is very complicated stuff, not easily changed by simply repealing some laws. Maybe you'll dismiss it as "touchy-feely" nonsense but I assure you that every person of color I've engaged around this stuff tells me it's real, whether they are Black, Hispanic, Asian, Native American or whatever.

Drug and alcohol abuse follows. When you have little hope to get a job because demonstrated bias in employment still exists, what motivates you to even try? That's not an excuse, it's simply reality. Some blame it on "inferior culture" or similar nonsense but imagine growing up and seeing your grandfather, your mother, you father, your brother and your sister treated like dirt. I don't know about you, but that would get to me.

I will honestly say I struggle with the single mother family statistics. My wife and I talk about this from time to time, trying to figure out where that comes from. I don't know. But when I see a strong trend in a group, I tend to think that there is something deeper driving that trend than simply a culture of irresponsibility. We have to ask ourselves why we observe what we do, not simply blame people for the observation.

There's that bigotry thing. Start passing laws motivated by an attitude like that and it becomes racism. No people is "broken" and the poor and opporessed can rarely help themselves.

Actually, a lot (maybe most) hardware is not a commodity. We still build a lot of hardware here in the U.S. All kinds of embedded gadgets get designed here and a good number of them are manufactured here. They are quite profitable. A lot of supercomputing hardware is still built here and almost all of it is designed here.

While I agree that software is important (and lucrative) we can't just give up on building hardware. At the very least, doing so has a bunch of national security implications.