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The book Pushing Gravity: New Perspectives on Le Sage's Theory of Gravitation consists of a number of speculative papers on the underlying cause of gravity, but in a "pushing" mode that lends itself to theorizing gravity particles (gravitons, although in a more 'concrete' sense than many theorists espouse). The papers are pretty fascinating, all arriving at near-Newtonian/Einsteinian equations, but predicting certain testable aberrations (e.g. changes with distance that might suit the rotation rates of galaxies without having to postulate large amounts of dark matter in the arms).

The proposed mechanisms by the various authors vary, but a couple of general points of agreement emerge:

• gravitons push
• gravitons must be absorbed to do work*

One topic that gets discussed is that there may come a density and thickness of matter which absorbs practically all incoming gravitons.

This may put a limit on how dense a star can get, as regardless of how much matter is in the star, there will come a point where the innards get more and more shielded from graviton interaction.

Wouldn't be exactly like the gravastar, but one could imagine that the densest part of such a star wouldn't be in the center; it would be between a high-pressure, graviton-shielded inside, and a high-density, graviton-compacted outside.

It's an interesting possibility, anyhow :)

(*They do get into interesting questions like "where does the energy from the gravitons go?", and a couple tackle the question, "How do gravitons get regenerated?" - with the presumption that gravity isn't "running down" in the universe)

Or Ogg, for that matter!

I realize this is slightly off-topic, but stay with me.

I agree, WOT has fallen considerably in my mind as of late; especially book 10. I've been getting the feeling with the later WOT books that the story is moving sideways, instead of forwards. He's introducing so many new things that the story has come to a standstill. Book 10 can be explained in about a paragraph, really only two things happened. Its getting to the point that I'm not going to rush out and buy book 11 in fancy hardcover when it comes out.

Admittedly though, I feel the same about the Sword of Truth series, but in its case, I haven't lost interest in the story. Its a bit cheesy, but full of violence, torture, sex, magic, epic wars and struggles; in short, a good-ole fashioned fantasty romp. I felt Pillars of Creation was a bit of a unwanted diversion, but Naked Empire has restored my faith in a series I almost feel guilty for loving.

However, that's not why I write. I simply have to bring this next series to everyone's attention. The Malazan Book of the Fallen series and another link when the first one is /.'ed, by Steven Erikson (book 1: Gardens of the Moon). Its intelligent, well-writen, compelling. He builds a world with great characters and I cannot get enough of it. There are four books out now and a fifth due in late spring. I read somewhere that his series has not been picked up by any US publisher. Well its everywhere in Canada, and shipping is cheap.

Song of Ice and Fire is incredible (Btw, check out the free except to book 4)and I give Geore R.R. Martin all my respect, but in my world, Song of Ice and Fire and the Malazan series stand together on the podium.

If you love fantasy, get Gardens of the Moon; its that simple.

Pest

The reviewer says: "I still have to recommend The Unix System Administration Handbook first, however."

I disagree. I have the "purple" book, otherwise known as the third edition, and I bought it after reading on /. about how great this book is.

It's not. It's about as informative as reading any number of equally expensive, weighty, yet shitty books put out by SAMS or QUE. Honestly, it was the biggest dissapointment, and I would never recommend it to anyone. In the three years since I purchased it, I have consulted it maybe ten times.

The coverage of Linux, FreeBSD and Solaris is shallow and nothing is ever explored in any real depth. Mostly, it is full of anecdotal stories that leave you feeling like you just stepped into an introductory unix seminar hosted by hoary old geeks.

IMO, The Unix System Administration Handbook is highly overrated.

Instead, I would suggest that anyone interested in reading an excellent, informative and useful UNIX book pick up a copy of this book. I've been using linux for about 5 years now, and this book is part of my coursework at college, and i've learned more about unix from this one book than all the crappy SAMS and QUE tomes combined.

Well worth the money.

Bzzzt. No, you're wrong, but thanks for playing. All books do NOT belong to the public once they are published. They still belong to the author, who has licensed limited rights to the publisher in exchange for publishing, distribution, promotion, etc. Copyright laws say that the work will eventually pass into the public domain, but according to, let's say the Berne Convention, that time is author's life plus 50. (Leaving the United States' Incarcerate Mickey Mouse Forever Act out of the discussion for now.)

The author may choose to make his/her works available under certain circumstances earlier. For instance, I am published under copyright by a major publisher, and I self-publish under Creative Commons, which is a GNU GPL-ish flavour of copyright. And I while I would not want to deny people access to my work, I do have the right to maintain control over what people do with my work once they access it. For instance, you do not have the right to take my Creative Commons work and sell it commercially; you may take it, modify it, use it non-commercially, etc. (The CC licenses have a fair amount of flexibility and granularity.)

In the case of Amazon, technically, the Search In a Book could be argued as part of "fair use." The possibility for it to be misused exists, but the permitted uses far exceed the potential for misuse. The argument that says cookbooks and reference books will suffer through this technology may be true, but no truer than today, when someone sits down in a Barnes & Noble, takes a recipe book from the shelf, and copies down a recipe.

Ultimately, however, the choice as to whether to be included or not should be the author's, without coercion from the publisher. Some authors will be sufficiently enlightened to know that they stand a greater chance of being found this way and opt-in; others will choose to opt-out. It can be done with a choice of IN/OUT at the time a book contract is signed.

1. After a search, it gives you a list of "Customers who bought this also bought:". For instance, see this.

2. They have the concept of "Listmania" which allows every user to create a list of their own recommended products. If your search aligns with their list, Amazon will suggest that you look at it. Search for something you want and keep an eye open for the listmania section.

Doesn't this meet your criteria for "I'd like to find other thinks I might also be interested in.". And on top of that, I suppose the "browse" option is too complicated?

This new feature of searching the full text only allows you to find related items in a different way. If you have a better idea on how to search their site that they don't provide, send them a suggestion. It is in their best interest to let you find things you want.

Will this put US online sellers at a disadvantage to, say, Canadian ones for importing? For example an amazon.com order plus the taxes verses an amazon.ca order with shipping and the exchange rate differences?

[...] as are old CD's by rush(if you can find the damn things)

Not true! Rush's entire back catalog has been re-mastered and released from $12-13 each. You can get them for $10 each at the HMV in downtown Toronto.

What you're experiencing is a cost premium for albums that aren't being produced anymore. But they often get released again, especially around the time an artist is being promoted for a new album like Rush is/was for Vapour Trails.

Being a Canadian citizen, who tends to engage in political discussion, this is not all that surprising.

After reading a couple of your other comments, I've come to the understanding that a police officer threatened you with arrest. Well, I know the reasons the cop cited for having you arrested were all bullshit though. They're valid laws, just not likely in the context of the situation you were in.

I imagine this is more a case of a police officer being an asshole, power tripping, and just bluffing. (essentially what most cops I deal with are like)

I've had numerous run-ins with police officers who cite all kinds of random garbage just to justify their argument.

But, there would be no chance in hell that cop would actually arrest you for discussing private vs socialized health care debates. He'd find some sort of other random bullshit by-law to fine you with, but very unlikely to arrest you. Unless you were causing some sort of scene on private property and you were asked to leave.

But just for those Canadians here who might be reading this, and even disagreeing with my comments, here's just something to look at:

CBC documentary on Jaggi Singh who was kidnapped multiple times by RCMP officers who were informed by CSIS.

Covert Entry: Spies, Lies and Crimes Inside Canada's Secret Service

Bill C-36 is essentially Canada's "USAPATRIOT act".

And just as a final note, I don't trust cops in Canada or in America. Plus I'm not trying to make this into a Canada vs. America pissing contest of who has more/less rights. I equally dislike all nation states. :-)

Definately offtopic, but I recall watching a Daily Show with John Stewart which had on the author of Blinded by the Right, in which he claims that he was a part of the "vast right wing conspiracy" that was out to get Bill Clinton. I haven't read the book, but the author was an interesting guest to listen to, and does truly seem to be a Republican insider who was involved in trying to bring Bill Clinton down.

ill be nice (just this once) and save you from a lengthy littigation try This and This first. you might also want to try reading This site as well

ill be nice (just this once) and save you from a lengthy littigation try This and This first. you might also want to try reading This site as well

Turns out you seem to be right. The Adrenaline pack that includes Amped and Halo seems to be a Candian offer only. Tough, now you can go over to Amazon.com and buy an Adrenaline pack, but it doesn't include the same package as my Xbox did. It comes with 2 sports games and Halo, and costs much more. And I just realized it has been discontinued. But the Amped+Halo version is still sold on Amazon.ca, so it's still possible to import it from Canada. (now, when is the last time someone imported video games from Canada ;) Or if you feel like going on a field trip, the get your ass north of the border and go to a Canadian Walmart. :)

Actually, Mike, such a mechanism was proposed by George Lewis LeSage in 1784. The theory keeps on getting shot down, then revitalised in periodic cycles. There are those who have derived Newton's equations from this sort of paradigm, and there are those who have indicated that if gravitons (assuming such a particle is involved) go at the speed of light, there might be problems with orbits.

I prefer to wait and see on the subject. I'm just waiting for the book Pushing Gravity: New Perspectives on Le Sage's Theory of Gravitation to arrive for yet more "light reading" :)

Side thought: I think I got my don't-close-the-door-on-them attitude to these various theories from being a good debugger. If reality is anything close to the way debugging operates, the same symptom can have multiple causes, but any instance really has one cause...

...and it's hardly ever what any of your initial guesses were, regardless of how sensible they seemed. ;)

BTW, if anyone knows of any decent, modern bands in the spirit of great 60's and 70's rock, I'd be damn grateful. Major label or indie, I don't care.

The Tea Party has been compared to Led Zeppelin in a way... Problem is: They are not available in the US, but you should be able to get it either from Amazon.ca or HMV.ca (which is Amazon these days anyways).

"Tangents" might be a good start as it is a nice crossover what they did, all of their albums sound different, personal favourite is The Edges of Twillight and their latest release The Interzone Mantras followed by Transmission.

The Tryptich CD is IMO (and many agree) too "mainstream", still solid but just too 'sweet" though "The Messenger" definetly has something.

BTW, if anyone knows of any decent, modern bands in the spirit of great 60's and 70's rock, I'd be damn grateful. Major label or indie, I don't care.

The Tea Party has been compared to Led Zeppelin in a way... Problem is: They are not available in the US, but you should be able to get it either from Amazon.ca or HMV.ca (which is Amazon these days anyways).

"Tangents" might be a good start as it is a nice crossover what they did, all of their albums sound different, personal favourite is The Edges of Twillight and their latest release The Interzone Mantras followed by Transmission.

The Tryptich CD is IMO (and many agree) too "mainstream", still solid but just too 'sweet" though "The Messenger" definetly has something.

BTW, if anyone knows of any decent, modern bands in the spirit of great 60's and 70's rock, I'd be damn grateful. Major label or indie, I don't care.

The Tea Party has been compared to Led Zeppelin in a way... Problem is: They are not available in the US, but you should be able to get it either from Amazon.ca or HMV.ca (which is Amazon these days anyways).

"Tangents" might be a good start as it is a nice crossover what they did, all of their albums sound different, personal favourite is The Edges of Twillight and their latest release The Interzone Mantras followed by Transmission.

The Tryptich CD is IMO (and many agree) too "mainstream", still solid but just too 'sweet" though "The Messenger" definetly has something.

BTW, if anyone knows of any decent, modern bands in the spirit of great 60's and 70's rock, I'd be damn grateful. Major label or indie, I don't care.

The Tea Party has been compared to Led Zeppelin in a way... Problem is: They are not available in the US, but you should be able to get it either from Amazon.ca or HMV.ca (which is Amazon these days anyways).

"Tangents" might be a good start as it is a nice crossover what they did, all of their albums sound different, personal favourite is The Edges of Twillight and their latest release The Interzone Mantras followed by Transmission.

The Tryptich CD is IMO (and many agree) too "mainstream", still solid but just too 'sweet" though "The Messenger" definetly has something.

your absolutley right we should collect DNA from every single person, only the crimnals have something to fear,

i didnt RTFA but i guess he murdered something, good!! glad we caught this sicko criminal, i say enfroce the death penalty for thoes that break our crimes.

speaking of wich.. did you just join /. or did not you read (or have been reading) the stories about creedy corrupt politicans taking money from the **AA's that want to make P2P federal crimes.. ya.. these ppl i trust

wake up and smell the roses
please.. Think before your post

your a fool

your a fool to belive that M$ is just sitting back and waiting 2-3 years to release IE 7, right now they have an update ready to go for IE 6.5, and should some "new technologies" come out before the next OS, rest assured that M$ will release a patch with most of the other stuff they were plannig on releasing anywayse.

this is a simple tactic to lull other development teams in a sence of security. please next time think before you post

I am a CS student and for my math courses everyone prefers latex over mathml and xml documents . If some one doesnt know what latex is you can send them a nicely generated pdf , dvi , or even html document . Latex is a very powerfull type setting language and is the type setting language of choice for most math people I meet. I use LaTeX alot because I have a disability where it is very hard for me to write so I actually take my notes in LaTeX . When you get rite down to it , LaTeX isnt that hard to learn anyways , spend an afternoon with one of the good LaTeX books. I recomend LaTeX: A Document Preparation System</a>[amazon.com]

I just ordered it from amazon.ca

Compared to Toronto, a.k.a. The Megacity?

> the Sierra Club referred to these things as "Cuisinarts of the air"

ah, that convenient misquote from the Cato Institute, who are not known for their accuracy and impartiality. The Sierra Club denies ever saying it.

> But what types of birds are killed in cities ... ?

cars, buildings and cats claim all types, from songbirds to raptors. Wherever birds are, they are part of the local ecosystem.

> I'm ... suggesting that the best solution for energy generation is one that maximizes return.

Return of what? Smog? If it's return on investment you are after, WindShare is offering its members very good returns.

> ... at least some folks are saying that the ecological drawbacks to mass-scale wind-power right now are large

Let me tell you about one of the power stations running in my province, Ontario. Nanticoke, on Lake Erie, is the largest coal burning plant in North America, and one of the single biggest polluters. It's kept running for two reasons:

1. the promised nuclear reactors refits are running years late and billions over budget. Nanticoke is tiding them over, while New York State is lodging a formal pollution complaint about Ontario's coal plants.
2. the US's power infrastructure is in such chaos due to overconsumption and underinvestment that Nanticoke sells a lot of its power south. Most of its smog goes south, so I suppose that's only fair.

The last two points are from memory, from reading Power: Journeys across an energy nation, by Gordon Laird (ISBN: 0140290036). My numbers may be slightly off.

The negative environmental impact of wind energy is nothing compared to that of traditional non-renewable energy methods. Wind is "What You See Is All You Get" -- no smog, no radiation, no weird stuff.

It's been said, but why not say it with an example.

The rental industry is dying because they're greedy bastards.

Unless you're fast on the trigger a new release costs $7.80 to rent.

Yet I can buy the thing for $15.99.

Or I can get it from Pay Per View for $3.99.

I can't think of a lot of reasons to rent at most stores anymore. Fortunately, one very smart local store only charges $1 per day to rent movies, and, of course, they're doing better than ever.

Martin Gardner edited this collection of essays which contains essays from a number of scientific bright lights. Big names include Einstein, Steven jay Gould, Sagan, Darwin. But some of the authors I hadn't heard of, like Lewis Thomas, were the real revelation for me. This collection of essays led me to purchase longer works by a number of the authors.

The collection is a bit dated, originally published in 1984, but really quite accesible. There is also a bio of each author preceding their essay.

However another book by Gardner on pseudoscience Did Adam and Eve Have Navels? was a real dissapointment. I'd have to say he is a much better editor than author.

Possessing Genius.

They have a book that's a collection of papers. I found that out while looking at the book that the reviewer was talking about on amazon.ca.

For a long time, at least according to my local bookseller, the second book in the great "Gateway" series, "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon," was out-of-print.

It took me over a year to track down a copy (in the pre-Internet world I was living). I could never figure out why all the other ones were still be printed when the second one wasn't. Curiouser and curiouser.

For a long time, at least according to my local bookseller, the second book in the great "Gateway" series, "Beyond the Blue Event Horizon," was out-of-print.

It took me over a year to track down a copy (in the pre-Internet world I was living). I could never figure out why all the other ones were still be printed when the second one wasn't. Curiouser and curiouser.

Plus, females get fingerbanged by Hollywood. The only thing they're good for, it appears, is to be rescued. I don't know about you, but female empowerment is sexy :)

This post IS on topic ! It has to do with how people can't get chemicals because of dangers they might cause.

I agree that apps make the difference. Neal Stephenson goes into this in In the Beginning There Was the Command Line.

I've gone looking for a good tool for things and found the beginnings of programs or compatability problems (I've had vendors say "You're glibc version might be the source of the problem but we only support RedHat version X, sorry.") and so on. I started thinking about how great it would be to have a tool XYZ but I don't have the time to work on it myself. Software companies that want to release comercial programs have troubles too. Here are a few of the fears/issues.

The market isn't mature yet (ie not enough linux users who will buy the app) so they might not turn a profit. Of course people are saying if we had app XYZ then we would have users.

ID had a ton of support work from Quake 3 for linux in a shrinkwrapped box. If I recall they said they won't release a game like that untill there is a standard set of requirements across distros to match the game to.

Support of software is hard to begin with but under linux when customers are running who knows how many distros and how many version of whatever library, libc and so on it becomes a nightmare.

Sometimes management thinks that if it runs on linux it's free. That's not to say people won't pay for linux apps but it can be tough convincing someone we need to spend money. I've heard "Isn't there something free for linux?"

One more issue is getting the program running on the user's machine. Sure a lot of us are used to compiling software but sometimes companies don't want to give away the source. So they distribute binaries. Well to keep library problems down they can be statically linked, the files get bigger.

It seems like minor details but the details take up a lot of time.

Will this be Matrix 1.5 like X-men?

Just when you thought they couldn't squeeze more oney out of a francise they replace the natural number version system with a real number system.

There are four books (in order) Gardens of the Moon, Deadhouse Gates, Memories of Ice, and House of Chains. The books are an epic work, like Jordan and Martin, and share a grittiness with Glen Cook, who wrote a series about a group of mercenaries in a fantasy world. Unlike Jordan, the author appears to have a firm grasp on ending a series, and wants to limit the series to ten books.

Like George R. R. Martin, but unlike Jordan, there are no heroes, just people trying to make their way in an immoral and uncaring world. The first two books do a pretty good job of standing alone (you could almost read them interchangeably), but optimally, they should be read in order.

The plots in the books are extremely complex. I believe it isn't until Book 3 that readers won't get a solid idea of what the over arching plot of the series is going to be. Because of this, it can be hard going through the first book because a reader is thrown in to the world cold, into the middle of a largish battle, and the reader is forced to sink or swim with little explanation. Once you get to the second and third books, I felt I had a very good handle of what was going on around me, and surprises abound. Like George R R Martin, Erikson will kill characters that the reader empathizes with, to great effect.

I enjoy this series greatly, and I don't think that there is much better than this in terms of epic fantasy.

While it is certainly true that we have many things left to figure out, I think you are really overstating the idea that there is a lot of "problems" with quantum theory.

Quantum electrodynamics, which describes the interactions between light and matter, is extremely well understood. By this I mean, the coorespondence between experimental measurements and theoretical calculations differ by no more than one part in ten to the twelve (or is it 18?). The differences are at the level of our ability to measure and our ability to calculate the model, thus there are (as yet) no points that we can point to and claim "this model doesn't seem to work here".

Granted, quantum electrodynamics (QED) isn't EVERYTHING, as it does not model gravity or the nuclear processes, but it does model all of chemist and electronics and material science and everything based on those fields - basically everything that we use.

If QED "explains" all of chemistry so darn well, why do we still study chemistry (and all those other fields)? QED "explains" chemistry to the same extent that the rule book "explains" chess. Understanding the rules of chess does not help much in explaining how to defeat the "Smith Left Side Queen Gambit" for example. It all depends on what you mean by "explains". QED can predict every interaction between the different atoms in a computer chip, but you need higher level models to do anything practically useful like figure out how to program you game of tetris.

Looking at a chemistry experiment that you do not understand the results of does not mean that QED is necessarily wrong (or even very likely that QED is wrong). It is more like looking at a high level chess game and not understanding why one player makes one particular move. Maybe when the queen was moved one space to the left when you thought it would be moved two places it means that you don't understand the rules, but more likely it means you don't understand the player's strategy. Jumping to the conclusion that you need to modify your theoretical chess rulebook to include a rule like "queens must move two places when the chess player has eaten tuna for lunch" is probably a bit premature.

A very fun read is Feynman's QED (or in Canada)which gives a very accessible, but not dumbed-down, explanation of QED.

It did go into production, they just didn't finish filming it.

It is unfinished, but it was released on video. If you have read the Dirk Gently novels, you will see more than a couple of plot similarities.

Perhaps this is a potential alternative...?

Although I don't know what duties and such might be...

The Canadian and the UK books are from Doubleday UK while the US one is from HarperCollins.

Was the book Japan: Profile of a Nation? It is indeed published by Kodansha and appears to be close to what you described.

From the description on Amazon, it also appears to be a condensed version of their large encyclopedia: Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, which is an order of magnitude more expensive.

Was the book Japan: Profile of a Nation? It is indeed published by Kodansha and appears to be close to what you described.

From the description on Amazon, it also appears to be a condensed version of their large encyclopedia: Japan: An Illustrated Encyclopedia, which is an order of magnitude more expensive.

Not to necessarily defend von Braun, but I suspect that few of the people who employed him were stupid. Odious genocidal maniacs, but not so stupid as to fall for any of those hoary old tricks.

I am going to repeat my main point. Von Braun was prepared to risk his life to make a point. And the point he risked it to make was that he thought the Nazis were wasting money, not that they were wasting lives.

You suggest that most senior Nazis weren't stupid? Did you check out the link to the brief biography of Rudolph Hess? Clearly nutty as a fruit-cake.

Jacob Bronowski describes how one of the senior Nazis, Goebbels or Himmler IIRC, wanted to take Heisenberg away from atomic research to try to prove, once and for all, that the stars are made of ice.

Look at the German research into atomic weapons. It was a complete failure, but no one was shot, or thrown in prison. In his book "Surely you are joking Mr Feynman" Richard Feynman describes how he supervised a team of young Army enlisted guys, who were chosen right out of basic training because they had scientific ability. These guys were human calculators, and ran punched cards through big mechanical calculators, to perform the very labourious calculations necessary to determine the amount of Fissile material needed to make a bomb. Heisenberg's group did the same calculation, but their answer was wildly off. They thought a bomb would require hundreds of kilograms of U235, not a kilogram or two.

The suggestion has been made that Heisenberg, or someone in his group, purposely fouled up the calculation.

If Leo Szilard hadn't escaped from Germany one step ahead of the Nazis do you think that he would have refused to work on German weapons research? Szilard circulated petition to Truman among the other scientists pleading with him forgo dropping the bomb on a Japanese city before it had been demonstrated to the Japanese high command.

Szilard gave up Physics after the war. He wrote some science fiction. This collection includes the short story "My Trial as a War Criminal", which I will strongly recommend...

Yeah its a special order item from Amazon too, though they do stock the original book and the sequals The Root of All Evil and Evil Geniuses in a Nutshell.

In fact I used ISBN.nu to do Internet-wide search of online book stores, and they only list the Amazon special order as far as availability. Even Amazon Canada (User Friendly being a Canadian strip) doesn't have it in their database.

Actually, we're all *already* frozen. The reason that the world's OSes seem more bug-and-sploit-ridden,ungainly and defective with every major new release (witness, for instance, XP and the 2.4.[0-7] kernels) is a direct effect of Jory.

It has an interesting style and brings up questions about the nature of destiny and time, but I found it a bit unsatisfying. There were a number of fairly standard plot devices, although given a bit of a twist by the idea that the characters knew that they were somehow destined to come together.

All in all I would rate it about 6/10.