Second Killer Application

To facilitate the adoption of a technology you must have a “killer application’. A use for the technology embraced by the public or business. Sometimes a technology that rose with one “killer application” will give rise to a new and different “killer application”. Graphics Processing Unit chips (GPUs) is an example.

One entertainment industry makes more money than Hollywood. But it is not likely to come to mind if you are over 40 years of age. The video game industry is the big money maker in the entertainment industry. This was the “killer application” for GPU chips. GPU chips are microprocessors on a discrete chip optimized for video rendering. The video card in your PC, Laptop, Gameboy, PS2, and others all have GPU chips which your video card is built around.

Why do you need both a Central Processing Unit (CPU) and a GPU in a computer? The answer is architecture. Over the years the video demands became increasingly intensive. The CPU was unable to keep up performing a combined function. The big players in the video card industry, NVIDIA and ATI, decided they needed their own discrete processing on their video cards to keep up with demands.

Animation takes a lot of processing power to render. A brief few seconds scene in “Star Wars: Attack of the Clones” might take 72 hours using a server farm. A server farm is acres of PCs linked together to perform a specific task. The new “killer application” for The GPU is using them to render animation instead of the CPUs. The GPU is designed for animation and can render faster than the CPU. Major animation studios are revamping their server farms focused on a GPU architecture. The 200 pound guerilla had been Intel. It is the market leader in CPUs. Intel is actively trying to stay in the game by modifying its CPU architecture.

With GPUs, the first “killer application” was video games. The new “killer application” is unloading processing demands from the CPU to the GPU’s unused processing cycles. The first adopter of this strategy is the big animation studios. Next will likely be applications on you PC, such as PhotoShop and Flash.

Adding UpThere are some things that just do not seem viable to me. They are like someone insisting that the equation “1 + 2 + 3 = 2”. Every time I question the result they point to the answer is “2” on the far side of the equal sign. They get exasperated and ridicule my questioning what they would have me believe is the obvious result.

In my Euclidean view some things do not align. The Kennedy assassination is one such case. The numbers in the equation are Lee Harvey Oswald, the grassy knoll, Jack Ruby, the first group of examining physicians for the autopsy of the President, and the Warren Commission. The offered answer is a single individual and no conspiracy. Forget the answer and look at the discreet numbers in the equation.

The suggested assassin gets killed before any real questioning

The killer of the supposed assassin dies very quickly of cancer

The original examining physicians involved in the autopsy are transferred or clam up. The evidence of photos and artifacts disappear or are substituted (this is still whispered today).

The Warren Commission put the stamp of secrecy on the whole affair and said the facts could not be released until some distant period in the future.

I think it may have been a coup d'état within America. The main players were the military, Hoover of the FBI, certain congressional factions and the CIA. Organized crime was the tool. They set the stage for the installation of someone more inline with the traditional view of things. What would tip all these players to align? Kennedy was about to do something that they could not in their philosophy ever allow. I have narrowed it down to two circumstances. The first might have been some sort of accommodation with the Soviet Union. The other circumstance I will hold for awhile.

We are celebrating the moon landing. Again I am struck with the numbers.

The Soviet Union was ahead of America in space technology and were years away from a moon landing.

From a purely military point of view, the moon was too good a strategic weapons platform to ever abandon. Especially with the Soviet Union hot on the heels with their own moon landing.

There are seeming inconsistencies in the moon landing photos.

I conclude either we never landed on the moon and faked the whole thing or we landed and discovered something so devastating we decided not to stay. We know from cultural anthropology, that contacts between different civilizations, has dramatic results. The most advanced completely eclipses the latter. One of the Astronauts is recorded as saying there was something/someone already on the moon.

The other circumstance that might precipitate a coup d'état in America would be Kennedy about to announce to the world “we are not alone”. The secrecy level might have been so high that only the President could declassify the revelation. Now remember who was in line to become President after Johnson, Bobby Kennedy.

Forward Looking Action

In the 1980s I was appalled at the commercials on television by our local electric utility company. The bombardment of advertisements encouraged energy conservation so the utility would not have to build additional capacity. This made absolutely no sense to me. The forecast for electric use going forward was a sharp increase. But following their strategy you would have demand and not enough supply. I think the real goal of the utility was to siphoned revenue that should have been used for construction to meet demand and use it for increases to investor dividends. At that time the electric utility was still regulated. The government should have mandated increased capacity. We were paying for it already supposedly in our authorized rate increases.

Today the major international car manufacturers are rushing to market electrical vehicles. There is a problem with this offering in America. The national electric forecast for America is “not enough electricity to meet demand”. They anticipate rolling “brown outs” will become common place. Now add electric cars in the mix and things only get worst.

The electric utilities can hardly wait for this scenario. They will lobby for rate increases to build increased capacity to meet demand. The residential rates will dramatically increase. At the same time they will lobby that electric vehicles must only get their power from authorized arrangements. You will not be able to charge your car off your home power supply. The utilities will charge a premium for the power you use to charge your electric vehicle at these special arrangements. This will negate any personal savings over petroleum. The only saving grace is the supposedly better environmental impact.

If I can see this coming, why not our governments Local, State, and Federal? The optimal answer, like healthcare, is to remove it from the private sector. This includes both the electric generation and distribution. Only government can make the long term investment based on a larger good. You can bet this is what the economies of Asia and South America plan to do.

I keep going back to the fact that our plunging situation in this country is due to our system of government. It fails in adequately allocating resources for the national good over individual and parochial initiatives. This failure did not just start. It has been going on for nearly a century. It has taken this length of time for enough critical piece parts to fail and cause attention.

A case in point is the military round table held earlier this week. The Pentagon is now publicly stating the ordinary soldier needs to speak the language and understand the customs of the nation he is combating. They were specifically referencing challenges in Iraq and Afghanistan. The answer is obvious. Public education with a foreign language and cultural focus. Try getting a doubling of the national education budget. It would be easier getting a new sports stadium in every major city.
The problem is system of government. The nation has out grown the American form of democracy.

Holy dualism

To most Americans, especially Conservatives, my stating “democracy” is flawed as a system of government is heresy. But the evidence can be clearly seen if you open your shut eyes.

The concept of democracy as a form of government is based on having a large enough base of people voting for what is best. But the question becomes best for whom? A simple experiment can demonstrate the fallacy of that tenet. If you corral a bunch of teenagers and ask them which would they prefer, skipping English class the rest of the month or going, the answer is a foregone conclusion. The majority will consistently vote to skip class. Your rebuttal might be that the voting populous is more mature than a bunch of teenagers. Actually, pollsters will tell you that they are not.

The second tenet of democracy is that people will subjugate desires if they are not really in their best interest. The English class attendance demonstrates that is not true.

The third tenet is that elections in a democracy will attract a board cross section of participation. The conservatives represent just 17% of the electorate in America. Yet they have dominated the political agenda in America for nearly two decades. Why? It is because of apathy by many voters. In fact election participation has been steadily dropping until the last presidential election.

The forth tenet is that in a democracy the voters ultimately set the rules. But we have seen throughout the world democratically elected leaders, that once in office, change the rules to create an enduring mandate to rule as they see fit. Remember the gerrymandering in Texas that made the national news? The elected leaders first action is often to skew the judiciary. Do you remember the judge firing a couple of years ago by the Justice Department?

The fifth tenet is that the people will make certain in a democracy only the best candidates reach the ballet. That is not necessarily true with a vetting process dominated by political parties, special interests and money. There was an article in the newspaper today lambasting McCain’s vice presidential running mate choice. The article blamed the vetting process. McCain’s first and second choice could not be successful in getting through the vetting process, Lieberman and Ridge.

The sixth tenet is that an elected official can make dramatic change. The American system of government is geared to prevent that from happening. The current iteration of government is designed to be a roadblock to change. Political negotiation dilutes any major change.

The seventh tenet is that the voters are astute and fully involved in their government’s actions. If it were so, less people would subscribe to the slant of Fox news.

Why have we not changed if democracy has failed as a system of government? The answer is religion. The unwavering faith in the holy dualism of democracy and capitalism.

Reorder society

There is a curious situation that is occurring. It could be a harbinger of social change.

The new movie, Transporters, has become an instant run away success. This is despite universal rejection by critics. It is not the only movie, device or service that has proved the critics wrong. The movies and these devices are designed with the under 25 years of old in mind.

The critics are most all over 30 years of age, and in some cases considerably older. They are products of the social aura of the 1980s and earlier. If we define “conservative” as purely the preservation of culture, there may be trouble on the horizon. There seems to be a decided schism in the cultural perspective of the under 25 with that of the over 30 years of age. It could pose a major problem for the GOP in the longer term. Their conservative base venerates a culture formalized by the 1950s and that culture may be on the verge of evaporating as a force in society. But the change crosses party lines and eventually might fundamentally reorder society.