I never thought I'd see it in my lifetime...

...and I'm glad to have been proven wrong. Obama is now the first Black Presidential nominee, as he's secured the delegates necessary to clinch the nomination from the Democratic Party. Clinton's essentially been a shining star, and done the best thing for the party and will be easing to the left in order to keep the Democrats from tearing at each other's throats.

GOP...look out. I'm foretelling that McCain will not be able to stand up to the wave that Obama is riding in...and given McCain's close relationship with Bush, Americans do not want to elect a Bush II candidate. Dubya has done more to turn Americans off of 'compassionate conservatism' than any U.S. President before. Perhaps it was necessary, else how could we have arrived here. This must feel like what my parents felt when JFK was elected. Let's hope that it doesn't the same way.

Also in the news...several white papers describing how to implement a stable and clean manner of nuclear fission was discovered in Dubya's desk today, strategically hidden under a hardbound copy Scott McClellan's White House expose. When asked about it and the incontrovertible truth it contained, he said, 'How did that get there? That's not mine!'

The Tesla motor company received anonymous donations today, enabling them to flood the market with affordable and spirited electric cars, thus severing American dependency on the petroleum teat.

Chevron recorded record losses, while public education spending increased and state and national ledgers finally edged back into the black.

Recent non-partisan surveys revealed that Americans feel pretty good about the changes and are happy that we're moving away from a government that thrives on stagnant fear, to one that thrives on optimism and moving forward.

All silliness aside, you know what's so compelling about Obama, and what's going to put him in office? Our votes of course, but the fact that he genuinely resonates with people. I think some older, perhaps more Conservative-oriented people don't get this. It's like a dog whistle, some people hear it, and others can't. Excellent comparison, Howard.
Totally unrelated, and for a certain reader, who recently exclaimed 'I like reading your blogs on gaming', here's some fabulous coverage of one the newly released COD 4 PC multiplayer maps...'Creek':

My hard drive just crapped out on me last night, and I spent a few hours getting a new drive installed and configured, so haven't been able to check this out yet, but will soon. This time around, I'm going to be running a dual-boot machine (Windows XP Pro SP3 and Ubuntu's Linux). Gaming and iTunes will be relegated to the XP partition, while all the evil dastardly deeds will be executed from the Ubuntu environment.

Interested in doing it to your XP machine? Did you know that you can install Ubuntu directly onto a machine running XP? Yup. Check it out here. The Ubuntu install comes with OpenOffice.org apps, which are fully compatible with Windows and Adobe formats. the best thing: it's free and constantly updated by the Ubuntu user community.

Things are looking good, my friends.

I don't know if I'll make use of it all, but I want it

AMD will be coming out with a new, completely redesigned multi-core processor , which will compete with Intel's dual multi-core processor model. It's going to be sick I tell you...sick!

AMD lost some of their momentum in the chip market because Intel came out with their design first, but AMD apparently wanted to re-engineer the processor in order to differentiate themselves from Intel's 2-chip model.

Put simply, there are actually 4 distinct cores in the AMD Agena (branded now as "Barcelona" for servers, and "Phenom" for desktops) 10h architecture. Intel's "quad-core" product is actually 2 dual-core processors, which basically exhibit the same performance of their earlier chips.

AMD's are redesigned from the ground up. According to an article on Informationweek.com, each core's clock cycles operate independently in order to maximize instruction processing within each core. Previous AMD and Intel dual-core architecture had each core maxing out for all tasks, which could cause some systems to hang should some intensive calculations be required. From the looks of it, Barcelona and Phenom change all this, as the 10h architecture looks to optimize power usage, which should also help keep the temperature down. I'd imagine these systems are going to run a little hot.

Why do you care? Well if you just use your computer to rip music, burn CDs, send email, and update spreadsheets, probably nothing. You won't need to upgrade anytime soon.

For those that are drooling for DirectX 10 games like Crysis and Bioshock, this news coupled with the upcoming release of the nVidia 8800 Ultra Superclocked PCI-E video card should make your implants shudder and quiver with cybernetic ecstasy. Barcelona is supposed to be available this summer, with Phenom will following shortly after.

Haven't seen the Bioshock footage? Check some out...

IGN has an excellent collection of additional Bioshock media. I recommend the Developer Commentary. It's a bit long, but contains great highlights without spoiling anything.

If a picture paints a thousand words...

...then these images and clear prose should explain why the underpinnings of an operating system matter.

Basically, the author depicts what happens during system calls that occur when a web server serves up a single page of html with a single picture. Because a system call involves accessing memory, the more complex the call process (which is determined by the operating system), the more points of memory can potentially fall prey to a persistent and proficient hacker's probe.

If you're good at patching your Windows system with updates, and if you read what the security fixes entailed, you might remember the "...could allow remote code execution..." updates, which usually had some relationship to system calls.

It's interesting to look at the more simplified Linux arrangement, then the tangled ball of yarn we call Windows and consider what's happening on your 2000, XP, or newer and more bloat-ier Vista box as you surf the Internets.