AMD64 and x86 most certainly are architectures. Have you heard the term "instruction set architecture", i.e., ISA? The underlying implementation you refer to is usually referred to as the "microarchitecture" to distinguish it from the ISA.

The term "architecture" is often tossed around to refer more broadly to the general organization of an implementation, but it's not wrong to use it in the more specific sense of ISA as well.

I know this thread is dead, but I can't help noting a couple of recent developments:

On the Yee story, CNN has managed to avoid the question of whether or not to disclose his party affiliation by not reporting on the story at all. Seriously. Check this. As of this writing the most recent story on him is from 2011.

In terms of more anecdotal evidence that I'm sure will be written off as confirmation bias, there's a new classic here from the Associated Press (via the Washington Post). An interesting summary article noting that Charlotte mayor Partick Cannon is just the latest of six mayors around the nation caught up in scandal. Most relevant to the thread here, none of them have their party affiliation mentioned. How many of those six do you think are Democrats?

True enough... while we are both obviously even-tempered and rational, many others are not ;-). My conservative parents often say things (or more often, forward me emails) that make me want to cringe. It's not a one-sided thing though; for every person that thinks Obama is a secretly Muslim Kenyan, there's probably someone out there that thinks GWB planned 9/11. Reminds me of a Winston Churchill quote: "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute discussion with the average voter."

I agree with you on the Pauls... sometimes I think they're the only sane ones out there, but then in other areas they really redefine crazy. I mean, just think if GWB suggested that he had the authority to unilaterally order the assasination of American citizens---but Obama does it, and Rand's the only one that makes fuss. But then I look at some of his other positions, like foreign policy, and I really wonder.

I didn't know that about M&M colorings... scary. On the other hand, the EPA hasn't done a lot to make people trust it lately, like this and this and this. I think the liberal vision would be fine if government could be trusted to always be efficient and impartial, and the conservative vision would be fine if business people, while seeking to maximize profit, agreed to always play by the rules when doing so. But obviously neither of those conditions is anywhere close to being true in reality.

I've enjoyed our conversation as well, thanks!

Though now that I think of it, in spite of some commonality on identifying what the current problems are, you run into problems when you start to talk about solutions. Take crony capitalism for instance. From the conservative side, this is a particularly strong argument for limited government. The less power and money government has, the less you have to gain by insinuating yourself with politicians. The liberal reaction is that, if there's a problem, it must be that we need more laws to address the problem, plus more bureaucracy to administer the new laws.

In reality, both these approaches have merit but are insufficient. The conservative argument is valid, but government will never be so limited that the opportunity for rent seeking is eliminated entirely. On the other hand, the liberal solution fails to recognize that the new laws and new bureaucracy will be developed by politicians who are already in the pockets of the crony capitalists, so they don't really solve the problem either.

I'd say it's tautological to claim that liberals want "Correctly Sized government"... conservatives want that too, they just disagree on the correct size.

I feel like you're arguing a fairly reasonable, seemingly moderate liberal position (presumably your own) against a totally extreme caricature of conservatism. I don't know of any conservatives that are in favor of unsafe food, or pollution, or consumer fraud, or not having highways or police, or anything like that. Most conservatives I know get particularly incensed about crony capitalism as well... that's a divide that's really "insiders vs. outsiders" not "liberal vs. conservative". You seem to be taking the position that, since conservatives generally want less government, they'd be happiest with zero government... but that's anarchy, and that's a totally different thing. And there are a few extremists that lean that way, but they're rare. It would be just as valid for me to say that, because liberals like government to do more, they'd be happiest if the government ran everything... but that's communism (or totalitarianism), and that's clearly not what you're supporting (though again, that's not to say there aren't some actual communists running around out there).

It's not surprising that you see conservatives as "foolish and simple", when you misunderstand what conservatism is really about. Although, depending on where you get your impression of conservatives from, the misunderstanding is not surprising. Far too many people (and in particular the media and the politicians) are so into this "us vs. them" partisanship that they can't see that there are reasonable positions on both sides, along with more commonality than they'd like to believe. Your crony capitalism is a good example... I can't think of anyone who's not either a politician or a crony (or maybe a wannabe crony) that's actually in favor of that.

No problem. Been there myself.

Wow, that's quite an overreaction. I posted the links not as a counterexample to prove a point, but as a pointer to the previous example and discussion (respectively) of the general topic, which was likely the context for the original comment above about how "we're back to posting party affiliations".

If you'd actually bothered to read the comment thread at the second link, you'd find a much longer discussion with multiple examples (both pro and con), as well as instructions on how to find more examples via google.

I have no intention of regenerating that discussion here. I was merely trying to be helpful by providing you with some context that you apparently were lacking.

Obviously you missed this, and in particular this. The issue is not that the party affiliation was identified, it's the apparent inconsistency of doing so, particularly when that inconsistency seems to have a partisan bias.

That was pretty blathery, not to mention one-sided. There's a lot I could disagree with, but the thing that sticks out the most is that you've provided no evidence that liberals hate big government. It's true that liberals hate some things that government does, like being the aggressor in a foreign war, or acting corruptly, but the general response from liberals is simply to make noise to try and get the government to stop doing things. But in general liberals see the government as a force for good, so more of it tends to be better, as long as the "right people" (i.e., other liberals) are in charge to prevent it from doing the things they don't like.

In contrast, conservatives have a principled opposition to big government, in that they recognize that government will never completely stop doing bad things, and is in a uniquely coercive position to maximize the impact of those bad things (like putting you in jail if it doesn't like you), and thus the best way to limit the damage it does is to limit its size.

Of course, the actions of politicians who claim the labels of "liberal" and "conservative" don't necessarily correlate with these positions, and the attitudes of individuals who label themselves as such (like yourself) may also differ. However, I believe these philosophical attitudes toward the size of government are much more in line with most people's views, as well as the common understanding of the terms, than the ones you put forth.

Umm, this is Slashdot, not a court case...

How is that false? We have two examples right here (the LA Times article and the CBS article), and at this point, no counterexamples. I already explained how to find more examples via google. I'm not saying that proves it's true, but at least I have evidence. You're just making a totally unjustified assertion.

Ugh, "claim we" should be "claim. We". Conservatives are in too much of a hurry to proofread carefully...

As I mentioned above: The claim isn't that, if a Democrat gets into trouble, no one reports on their party affiliation. The claim is that, if you ever read an article in which party affiliation is not mentioned, the odds are very high that the person is a Democrat. So collecting examples where Democrats are identified doesn't even counter the claim.

Apparently you got a slightly different top seven articles than I did... I got the Fox, CBS, and Mercury News ones, with the same result. The other two I got that didn't mention it until the end were from local stations (KGO and nbcbayarea.com, whatever that is).

Also, you and others are misunderstanding the causality here. The claim isn't that, if a Democrat gets into trouble, no one reports on their party affiliation. The claim is that, if you ever read an article in which party affiliation is not mentioned, the odds are very high that the person is a Democrat. So collecting examples where Democrats are identified doesn't even counter the claim we have existence proofs right here with the LA Times and CBS that it does happen. What's really needed is a broad sampling of articles in which party affiliation is not mentioned, then determining what the actual affiliations are in those cases.

Anyway, I don't think either one of us is going to do a scientifically valid study here. If you google "name that party" you can find a lot of other examples, pointed out by conservatives, of Democratic party affiliation not being mentioned, so the LA Times and CBS articles are not isolated examples. You're correct that that's not a scientific study either, and very susceptible to confirmation bias. It's worth noting that you never hear the same complaint from Democrats though.

I'm certainly willing to say that it's suspicious but unproven. Unlike you, I am not willing to call anyone a liar over it. You seem to be evidence in favor of Krauthammer's statement: "Conservatives think liberals are dumb, liberals think conservatives are evil." But maybe that's just confirmation bias on my part... :)

Try again. The summary says nothing about party affiliation. The linked article in the LA Times says nothing about party affiliation. I looked at the top seven articles from a google search on "senator yee", and none mention his affiliation in the headline, while only three mention it within the first two paragraphs. Three others mention it near the bottom of the article (interestingly, all in the form of a transition sentence like "Yee's arrest would make him the third Democratic state senator fighting charges this year", leading into a discussion of other Democrats in trouble), and one (from CBS, not the LA Times one again) doesn't mention it at all.

Show me a similar sampling of articles on a Republican corruption case where the party affiliation is not mentioned at or near the top of the article in anything approaching half the examples, and then we can talk.

Again, you throw around the term "lie" pretty loosely. Ahem indeed.