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Well there have been 2 official EVE books, EVE: Burning Life and EVE: The Empyrean Age, which admittedly I haven't read so I can't comet on their suitability for conversion to a movie. However there is the fan made Clear Skies, using a combination of footage from EVE mixed with footage shot using Garry's Mod (Source engine sandbox mod) for interior shots, which I think could very well be expanded to a feature length movie (hell Clear skies 1 and 2 together are 1.4 hours long) and seems to capture the universe fairly well.

Well there have been 2 official EVE books, EVE: Burning Life and EVE: The Empyrean Age, which admittedly I haven't read so I can't comet on their suitability for conversion to a movie. However there is the fan made Clear Skies, using a combination of footage from EVE mixed with footage shot using Garry's Mod (Source engine sandbox mod) for interior shots, which I think could very well be expanded to a feature length movie (hell Clear skies 1 and 2 together are 1.4 hours long) and seems to capture the universe fairly well.

I do like your attitude in this post a lot more, but the facts you cite are almost all wrong (you're right, my memory let me down and I got Emily Hobhouse's name wrong... to my shame).

Allow me then - to give my source: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Boer-War-Thomas-Pakenham/dp/0349104662

Written by an English historian, each page clearly showing it's genuine documented sources - it basically backs up everything I say. Rhodes may not have been a policy maker but make no mistake he had enormous power and influence - and Milner acted on his instructions -the documentation to that effect exists and can be verified.

>The first Boer war involved a few thousand Boers and about a thousand
>British soldiers, who being unprepared (untrained) for the conditions and
>terrain with which the Boers were perfectly familiar, was a predictable
>and one-sided affair. I think we have no disagreement here.

While not the description I would use, I cant' find factual fault with this assesment. Remember though - it was Britain who declared the first war.

>The second Boer war was not the same as the first. You fielded tens
>of thousands of troops, properly organised and equipped with proper
>artillery.

None of those troops had ever had military training of any kind. They were simply volunteers who answered the call. The proper artillery is true - though don't overestimate the amount, we had a total of 6 cannons for that army.

>When these failed, you turned to guerilla tactics, which the
>British countered by locking down supply lines and key infrastructure
>points and with a scorched earth policy.

They did fail - but only after Britain shipped in enough soldiers to outnumber us ten to one. That's a very key point. At every stage before that, we were winning.
It's known that we fielded child-soldiers in that war, of this I feel greatly ashamed -but in some mitigation - none of them were sent, they were mostly runaways, often orphans who insisted (and due to the lack of authority or discipline) could participate without any oversight to get rid of them. The only case where one of them was officially enlisted was one 13 year old boy (I'm sorry, I forgot his name) who went to Pretoria with his father. His father was enlisting and bringing a wagonload of farm produce to donate to the war effort. The boy was to drive the wagon home afterward. As it happened they bumped into Kruger - who heard them arguing. The boy was demanding to fight along, the father refusing.
Kruger is reported to have said: "Boy, right now there are three English soldiers for every one I got... will you shoot three Englishmen for me ?"
When the boy said yes - Kruger himself gave him special dispensation. Technically the law decreed that nobody under the age of 16 could serve.
It is not known what happened to him, and if he managed to keep his promise or even survived the war.

>Both of you fought with small
>mobile units, but that doesn't mean that they were on either side these
>undisciplined free-thinking hippies you try to paint them as.

The British never did small mobile units. Try reading up on the first, second and third wave. Their tactics was to basically send a giant line of soldiers from one side of the country swooping to the other trying to pin the boers down... the boers managed to actually get THROUGH those lines unseen repeatedly. Christiaan De Wet got his fame because all three waves were specifically intended to capture him - and he escaped every one of them.
To imagine that the boer soldiers were disciplined however is to show a complete lack of understanding of their culture. They didn't ever go through a bootcamp, schooling at that stage was limited to "can write your name". The average family would see their neighbours no more than once in three months. There was no social cohesion, and no structure. They had lived a life dependent on being able to

Ubuntu for Dummies?

Something is so very, very wrong with your reasoning. If NASA couldn't fix the problem we wouldn't just have a bit of space junk spewing out garbage transmissions, we'd have a bit NUCLEAR space junk spewing out garbage transmissions.

Oh no! What a terrible thing! There's nothing like that in space at the moment, how could we possibly manage?

The Van Allen belts contain high enough concentrations of radiation that they make Chernobyl's fallout look like spilt milk. The sun regularly pumps out solar flares that would kill unshielded humans in seconds. Compared to that, I find it very very difficult to be at all concerned by a tiny spacecraft literally billions of kilometres away.

That is a very bad idea for two reasons (assuming you're referring to project Orion and not completely off your tree). 1. Nuclear bombs are very heavy and very destructive, not only do you have the cost of getting them up there but you also have the very real possibility of them being detonated at slightly the wrong angle or slightly the wrong distance vaporising the craft (we are talking about NUCLEAR fucking bombs people) or any of the myriad of other unpredicted problems you will encounter in deep space. 2. Once out in space, you do not need continual propulsion, deploying an explosive drive means sending up two propulsion systems rather then just putting more fuel into the first.

Oh dear, where do I start? Firstly, no, nuclear explosives (they're only bombs if you're dropping them on someone) are not necessarily "very heavy". They can be easily built small and light enough to fit into an artillery shell; if a serious Orion development programme was resumed, you'd be looking at 5-10 kg per charge, possibly less. In the Orion model, the pusher plate and damping structure are by far the most massive components. Secondly, nuclear explosions behave very differently in a vacuum than in air; most of the destructive power of a nuclear detonation on Earth is due to the way that the massive energy release affects the atmosphere. Thirdly, it's bloody hard to get a nuclear explosive to detonate. They can only detonate successfully if a very long and complex chain of events occur in precisely the right way. I think you overestimate the risk massively. Honestly, mining with conventional explosives is far more risky than propulsion using nuclear explosives will ever be. Finally, one of the biggest advantages of the proposed Orion propulsion system is that the mass efficiency is very high, meaning that it's possible to continue thrusting for a long period of time, so the whole point is that you want to use it "out in space."

I recommend reading 'Project Orion' by George Dyson if you want to know more about the practicalities of the Orion propulsion system.

Two massive hurdles prevent the use of nuclear reactors in space, weight and the ability to operate them safely from remote. First, nuclear reactors are very very heavy with all that radiation shielding.

Which you don't need in space; you design the reactor so the majority of the radiation produced is directed away from the spacecraft. Look up NASA's SP-100 design.

Secondly we can not guarantee that remote systems will operate, it's hard enough to keep a well maintained reactor on the ground operating without constant human intervention (which is why they have constant human intervention) let alone one that will be completely unmaintained and far far from any human help.

No, modern reactors run on almost completely automated systems, even down to choosing which rods should optimally be replaced next. Human intervention is only required when modifying output to match grid loads (and even then, that's largely automated too). Even if something goes wrong, modern reactor safety systems have so much redundancy and fail-safe assumptions

So let's go with a counter-example from recent experience...

"Only You" (re-recorded version) by The Flying Pickets, at Amazon UK:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Only-You-Re-recorded-Version/dp/B001LBT6S4/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1273254270&sr=1-2

This is geographically right next to where I live.. save for the north sea.

But I can't buy it.

We're sorry. We could not process your order because of geographical restrictions on the product which you were attempting to purchase. Please refer to the terms of use for this product to determine the geographical restrictions. We apologize for the inconvenience.

There's no Dutch Amazon, so that's out.
The Dutch 7digital doesn't have it (fwiw, neither does the American Amazon).
Granted - I haven't checked iTunes yet.. too bad I have to go through a specific piece of software to even find out.

But clearly it's not as simple as "music. You can even download, legally, for a small price, DRM free MP3s from iTunes, Amazon", as that only applies to those items actually for sale.

It -is- that simple with illegal downloads, on the other hand. No geographic restrictions, no having to set up any account, nothing.

I purchase my music, movies, etc wherever I can or typically just do without. But every once in a while, if a company decides to be boneheaded to the core, I have no qualms with downloading (heck, downloading (music/movies) is legal in NL anyway, so I shouldn't have any qualms regardless).

A simple external storage device for downloadable games would be the next real logical step for them.

The Wii already supports SD cards up to 32GB, you can store downloaded games there and launch them from there. What benefit would there be to such a device?

With an external harddrive/network adapter combination device (wired network should have been standard to start), they could then run a HUGE marketing campaign to get people to start buying the games online instead of in the stores. It would increase margins across the board for everyone. Additionally, to get past the typical nervous online consumers issue (meaning people not liking using credit cards online), they could sell a package from a game at a store like GameStop with a serial number to allow them to download the game to their Wii.

Do you mean something like the Wii points card?

The important thing they must do though is to lock the store to a user instead of a console. This way if a device breaks down, the consumer would be able to transfer their purchases to the new unit.

Apparently Nintendo have the ability to do this, but they won't do it unless you register the Wii.

• CoD Modern Warfare 2
• God of War 3
• Final Fantasy XIII
• Uncharted 2
• Gears of War 3

History shows you have a chance of being correct but I still want to check. Take God of War II for example. The game itself sells for £9.47 and it would be in a "better" system (emulation in PC hardware which is questionable if it's better - not to mention the legal part of this). The safer way to prove your point of a better system would be running GoW2 through the GoW:Collection which is, as of now, sold for £17.91 which breaks point of price and timeframe.

Time will tell.

• CoD Modern Warfare 2
• God of War 3
• Final Fantasy XIII
• Uncharted 2
• Gears of War 3

History shows you have a chance of being correct but I still want to check. Take God of War II for example. The game itself sells for £9.47 and it would be in a "better" system (emulation in PC hardware which is questionable if it's better - not to mention the legal part of this). The safer way to prove your point of a better system would be running GoW2 through the GoW:Collection which is, as of now, sold for £17.91 which breaks point of price and timeframe.

Time will tell.

Amazon have the complete set for £16

The Remus stuff in Xen is very cool. A couple of days ago there were some posts about HP's NonStop stuff as an example of something you could do with Itanium but not with commodity x86 crap. Remus means that you can. It builds on top of the live migration in Xen to keep two virtual machines exactly in sync.

Computers are deterministic, so in theory you ought to be able to just start two VMs at the same time, give them the same input, and then see no difference between their state later on. It turns out that there are a few issues with this. The most obvious is ensuring that they really do get the same input. This means that they must handle the same interrupts, get the same packets from the network, and so on. Anything that is used as a source of entropy (e.g. the CPU's time stamp counter, jitter on interrupts, and so on) must be mirrored between the two VMs exactly. This was already possible with Marathon Technology's proprietary hypervisor on x86, but is now possible with Xen.

As with the live migration, you can kill one of the VMs (and the physical machine it's running on) and not even drop network connections. This leads to some very shiny demos.

Oh, and I should probably end this post with a gratuitous plug for my Xen internals book

http://www.amazon.com/Adesso-WIRELESS-SLIMTOUCH-TOUCHPAD-WKB-4000US/dp/B00083Y0YG

Done! What's next?

FWIW, I have 2 of these, the one used further out is about 25 feet. Works great. Looks like it's the same thing, but mine are: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Keysonic-ACK-540RF-Wireless-Keyboard-Touchpad/dp/B002WB1JYQ

Same thing with World War II, the entire war was caused because Hitler wanted to kill all the Jews and that was the only reason for the war, right?

The BBC's website was recommended by loads of my teachers for revision (although, since it's 8 years since I was doing GCSE revision there are probably more options now). Here's the Road to World War 2.
"In January 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany and immediately began to challenge the Treaty of Versailles and adapt an aggressive foreign policy, which led to war. Some historians argue that Britain and France were to blame for the Second World War because they did not stand up to Hitler."

I don't remember the name of any textbooks we used, unfortunately. This review of one sounds about right: "What makes this book fantastic, however, is its enormous use of sources. Each page has, on average, 5 or more sources, both primary and secondary and when coupled with a good teacher, this book will teach students to evaluate and use sources." -- we spent loads of time analysing sources for bias and reliability etc. (e.g. see here). Since that was examined, it was best for the teacher to always provide material as a primary/secondary source if practical.

At £211.49 for 128GB ( http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kingston-Technology-128GB-SSDNow-Desktop/dp/B002BH3UDY/ ), vs £34.32 for a 160GB HD ( http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/160GB-Seagate-ST9160314AS-Momentus-25-HDD-SATA-3Gb-s-5400rpm-8Mb-Cache ), I don't think I'll quite be making the jump yet. Maybe when prices aren't almost an order of magnitude different...

Thanks for the reading tip. Like many other people trained in computer science I also belive that combined with Darwinian ideas it will radically change our understanding of biology and ultimately ourselves.

You may enjoy this book: Darwin among the machines, by George Dyson:

"Just as the exchange of coded molecular instructions brought life as we know it to the early earths primordial soup, and as language and mind combined to form the culture in which we live, so, in the digital universe, are computer programs and worldwide networks combining to produce an evolutionary theater in which the distinctions between nature and technology are increasingly obscured."

When I want to burn a day away I'll still dust it off and pray the scratches haven't accumulated too much (I later bought both it and the expansion, and can't find anywhere to buy a new copy.)

I recently bought this (UK). Weirdly I can't seem to find that re-release on amazon.com, but there is a SMAC + Expansion here for a bit more.

I don't understand your hint. I don't know how things work in your area, but round here when cops kill or frame someone it is hushed up by cops and all the evidence is 'lost'. If there is enough of a fuss made, an investigation is held by cops and the results are heavily censored as they are 'not in the public interest'.

So yeah, if a cop tasers an innocent minor and gets found out, that cop will get suspended on full pay for a few years while an investigation chugs along, then when the fuss has died down and the not guilty verdict brought in he will be reinstated and get the promotions he missed out on while suspended.

Worst case, they'll give him the opportunity to resign on full pension and land a lucrative book deal, but yeah, they reserve that for the truly corrupt and incompetent.

A great book for beginners is Turn Left at Orion, by Guy Consolmagno
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Turn-Left-Orion-Hundred-Telescope/dp/0521781906

This?

A little look at the user reviews in Amazon for the PC version (here) and by contrast the XBox version (here) is quite enlightening.

Basically if you've played Online FPSs in the PC in the last 10 years (with large matches, low lag, effective banning of cheaters and user maps and mods) this game will seem mediocre to you at best: people complain of lag (due to no dedicate servers), unpunished cheating (like aimbots) and pestering behaviour (teenagers playing music in voice), no user extendability (as per choice of the maker: no user mods or maps, only paid for - DLC - extensions) and second-hand market killing measures (online activation mandatory on the PC).

This means that this game should be really be seen as two separate games "Modern Warfare 2 XBox" and "Modern Warfare 2 PC" with the first being quite successful (thanks in in no small part to hype and slick marketing) for the target platform and audience and versus the competition in that platform (console games tend to be simpler and played by a younger audience) and the second being very mediocre from the point of view of that target audience and versus the competition in that platform.

It's thus not surprising that you have two almost completely opposite sets of reviews, since the game really has two faces ...

A little look at the user reviews in Amazon for the PC version (here) and by contrast the XBox version (here) is quite enlightening.

Basically if you've played Online FPSs in the PC in the last 10 years (with large matches, low lag, effective banning of cheaters and user maps and mods) this game will seem mediocre to you at best: people complain of lag (due to no dedicate servers), unpunished cheating (like aimbots) and pestering behaviour (teenagers playing music in voice), no user extendability (as per choice of the maker: no user mods or maps, only paid for - DLC - extensions) and second-hand market killing measures (online activation mandatory on the PC).

This means that this game should be really be seen as two separate games "Modern Warfare 2 XBox" and "Modern Warfare 2 PC" with the first being quite successful (thanks in in no small part to hype and slick marketing) for the target platform and audience and versus the competition in that platform (console games tend to be simpler and played by a younger audience) and the second being very mediocre from the point of view of that target audience and versus the competition in that platform.

It's thus not surprising that you have two almost completely opposite sets of reviews, since the game really has two faces ...

I do apologise for this reply avid slashdot readers but this person is just so rude.

Premium?

Yes. Look it up in the dictionary. Specifically, where it says "a sum added to an ordinary price or charge."

Thank you for the definition , oh look at that it also says
quoted from http://www.thefreedictionary.com/premium

"An unusual or high value" for example ":Employers put a premium on honesty and hard work."

who would have thought that Premium could have a meaning not related to money? That must have been the message I was trying to convey.

To me anything that keeps me healthy and assures me that the plane I am flying in will not drop out of the sky can not have a value put on it.

yes , If you read though it again I appear to be saying that not everything should carry a value.

Actually, it, like every physical object in the world and some that aren't, can, in fact, have a value put on it.

Theres a book I think you should read its called

Priceless: On Knowing the Price of Everything and the Value of Nothing.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Priceless-Knowing-Price-Everything-Nothing/dp/1565849817

If you haven't read it yet, then you might like read Peter Hessler's "River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze". It makes particular sense to those of us who've had the privilege to live in China, and for you, having taught there, will probably really resonate.

Well, relational databases were *supposed* to be built on set theory. But they ended up including NULLs, which aren't compatible with sets. Try reading "Database in Depth" by C. J. Date for some amusingly acerbic and useful analysis of relational theory:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Database-Depth-Relational-Theory-Practitioners/dp/0596100124

He worked with E. Codd on the original relational model.

I agree. The Darwin Awards are just not funny. Laughing when somebody slips on a banana skin loses it's edge when they slide to their death if you ask me.

That said I have long enjoyed laughing at heroic failures of the kind listed in this book and its sequel. Some of them are listed here.
e.g.

The least successful animal rescue
The [UK] firemens strike of 1978 made possible one of the great animal rescue attempts of all time. Valiantly, the British Army had taken over emergency fire fighting and on 14 January they were called out by an elderly lady to retrieve her cat which had become trapped up a tree. They arrived quickly and soon discharged their duty. So grateful was the lady that she invited them all for tea (and Sherry?). Driving off later, with fond farewells completed, they ran over the cat and killed it.

I recall a great one about an escaped lion being beaten up by an old lady and having to be treated for shock (I guess Dreamworks based the Madagascar scene on it) and also the least successful attempt to light a fire in which the guy burns down the house and his car and garden.

Except that's dealer price not consumer price (from your link!), Amazon are making a loss of 11p on each sale. They confirmed it on the forums

I mean, the iPod touch is $199

With no camera and no GSM/UMTS radio.

and you can get a cheap throw away phone for $20

TracFone and Virgin Mobile phones are subsidized and provider-locked in the hope that you'll buy more minutes.

Yeah, $20 is too low - but you can get them around $30, retail.

Samsung classic at 19.89 British pounds

19.89 British pounds = 32.058702 U.S. dollars

Nokia 1208 at 22.50 British pounds (look through to the "Used & New", cheapest new).

22.50 British pounds = 36.2655 U.S. dollars

Eivind.

I mean, the iPod touch is $199

With no camera and no GSM/UMTS radio.

and you can get a cheap throw away phone for $20

TracFone and Virgin Mobile phones are subsidized and provider-locked in the hope that you'll buy more minutes.

Yeah, $20 is too low - but you can get them around $30, retail.

Samsung classic at 19.89 British pounds

19.89 British pounds = 32.058702 U.S. dollars

Nokia 1208 at 22.50 British pounds (look through to the "Used & New", cheapest new).

22.50 British pounds = 36.2655 U.S. dollars

Eivind.

Well yes they do do things differently, but KVM does it better and simpler by just running on Linux as the base system hypervisor. From a maintenance point of view things get far simpler, as the OP said.

This is quite a misleading assertion. I wrote a book about the Xen internals, so I'm somewhat biased, but you make it sound like KVM is a much simpler approach than Xen. There are a few issues with this.

Xen is a hypervisor. It runs in privileged mode (ring 0 on x86) and is very small. Linux is a kernel ('supervisor') that runs in privileged mode and is massively more complicated than Xen. The confusion comes from the fact that Xen delegates a lot of things to the domain 0 guest. Rather than supporting device drivers itself, the Xen hypervisor allows a guest to connect directly to the hardware and export virtual devices to other guests. If your hardware supports something like Intel's VT-d then you can put each device driver in a different privileged guest kernel and have them completely isolated form each other and from unprivileged guests. With KVM, all of the device drivers run with kernel privileges.

Xen also delegates the management code to a guest. This is usually the same domain 0 guest that runs the device drivers, but it doesn't have to be (it does initially for bootstrapping, but not necessarily after that).

It's also worth noting that Xen does not require Linux. You can use Xen as a hypervisor with NetBSD or Solaris as the domain 0 guest. Solaris has some nice features for offline crash debugging (it dumps the crash data into the swap partition and read them back on reboot into a core file) which have been ported to work with Xen. You can also use ZFS ZVOLs with Xen on a Solaris dom0, so you can create new VMs trivially just by cloning an existing volume and starting a new VM instance connected to it.

I'm not sure what KVM support is like on non-x86 platforms, but Xen also works on ARM, PowerPC and IA64. I was at the XenSummit in 2007 and Samsung had a nice demo of Xen on an ARM-based handheld booting two operating systems and switching between them so you could completely sandbox untrusted code. They tweaked the driver model slightly so some devices (notably the screen and stylus) were assigned exclusively to one VM at a time, rather than being multiplexed like the network and storage devices. There's also been a lot of work done on migrating between virtualized and emulated environments with Xen, which is great for debugging. I'm not sure if this has hit the main tree yet, but it's pretty neat being able to move a guest into QEMU and step instructions, revert to an earlier snapshot, and then move it back into a VM once you've fixed a bug.

KVM seems like a continuation of the Linux philosophy: do everything, but don't do anything well.

Have you actually been able to save and locate receipts and warranty papers for some random device you bought 2 years ago? I can't find a receipt after 2 months. After 1 year the thermal receipts really begin to deteriorate

Simple solution: buy a cheap home file and use it, and photocopy or scan thermal receipts whilst they're still readable.

At the research group I worked for almost 6 years we were more or less required to read these books by Ad Lagendijk. His style is quite authoritive: you must do this, you must never do that, etc. I didn't read the book because of that. All of the things that are in the book I learned during the years I worked there. It's a pity that the tone of the book is a bit over the top because his tips are very good.

The more appropriate question is "How do you win, but still lose?"

You just Lost The Game

I remember reading Mindhunter a while ago, and there was one particular story in there about a serial killer or rapist (can't remember which offhand) who claimed in his prison interview that, if he got out again, the police would never, ever catch him again. John Douglas (the FBI profiler) sat back, and took him up on the intellectual challenge, and went through his profile of the guy. He figured out that his crimes were deeply related to his father, who died many years ago. Douglas asked what would happen if he posted FBI agents around the prisoner's father's gravestone on his birthday, anniversary of his death, Christmas etc. The guy just grinned, and said, "You've got me."

Great book that, enjoyable read.

Also, consider visiting Avebury and Stonehenge (In that order). Very atmospheric and arguably the oldest computing devices in the world.

For extra geek fun, read up on relevant archaeoastronomy first e.g. Gerald Hawkins so that you know what the scientific function of the sites was and can put it all into context.

Not that expensive if you prioritise accurate time over jewellery:
http://www.amazon.com/Casio-Waveceptor-Atomic-Watch-WVA109HDA-2BV/dp/B0013M6C60/ref=pd_sbs_watch_3

Admittedly I went for a more expensive model in the range with a far more elegant dial:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WAVE-CEPTOR-TITANIUM-SOLAR-100M/dp/B0006FL86Y/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=watch&qid=1258970541&sr=8-5

However, the strap is still cheap and tacky and nasty and as jewellery the watch just doesn't cut it.

Technology inside is nice though, and for jewellery I have the elegant Swiss mechanical watch that gains seconds a day...

With games running 50 or more GBP for some titles, and given the current monetary exchange rates, the 75 he spent couldn't have bought more than one new-release game, perhaps two if the titles were heavily discounted as loss-leaders or in a discounted 'collection'.

I often wonder what monkeys at these companies do the price conversions from USD to Euros/GBP/AUSD, etc. It almost seems like they take the US price, add a random 9, 4 or 7 to the number after the demarcation point, and just change the symbol next to the amount and call it a day.

For instance, the current conversion rate of GBP to USD as per Google, is 1.6568 USD per 1 GBP. At this current rate, Modern Warfare 2, for example, which is averaging a price of 49.99 GBP, costs $82.82 (82.823432) USD before VAT and any other local taxes are applied. I don't blame people in those countries for getting pissed off and pirating games when there is that much of a discrepancy between prices, especially when those copies are manufactured locally (as UK, French, Italian, Spanish, and German copies of major titles usually are), and not imported.

Amazon.co.uk has Modern Warfare 2 at an apparent 42% discount right now, free shipping within the UK only, 32.00 GBP: Modern Warfare 2

You are quite right but I feel the need to point out you don't need a gym or expensive equipment to get fit. There are some good books on fitness like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Solitary-Fitness-Charles-Bronson/dp/1844543099/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257753677&sr=8-1 and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-British-Army-Fitness-Guide/dp/085265118X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257753739&sr=8-3 as well as countless good dvd's. The real costs are the time and effort.

All the equipment you really need is some dumbbells, a mat, and a pair of trainers. If you already have a soft carpet you can skip the mat.

You are quite right but I feel the need to point out you don't need a gym or expensive equipment to get fit. There are some good books on fitness like http://www.amazon.co.uk/Solitary-Fitness-Charles-Bronson/dp/1844543099/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257753677&sr=8-1 and http://www.amazon.co.uk/Official-British-Army-Fitness-Guide/dp/085265118X/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1257753739&sr=8-3 as well as countless good dvd's. The real costs are the time and effort.

All the equipment you really need is some dumbbells, a mat, and a pair of trainers. If you already have a soft carpet you can skip the mat.

It's not even a specifically American problem. Simply put, our so-called heroic leaders have no idea what to do with their power, a bit of a problem since we have no intention of doing anything to help.

To quote (as I often do) Voltaire's Bastards:

Jefferson put it that men by their constitution were naturally divided into two parts -- those who fear and distrust the people versus those who identify with the people and have confidence in them. Our civilization has increasingly put those who fear and distrust in power over us. Those who have confidence have always argued that consciousness is the key to improvements in the human condition. But power structures have always treated consciousness in the citizenry as a danger which must first be lulled, then channelled towards the inoffensive through the mechanisms of language, mythology and structure.

We are profoundly conformist and authoritarian, the biggest cowards in history. We wait for a disaster so we can fix it, rather than taking preventative measures, all the while hoping someone else will do it for us.

I'd probably be quite happy to tell him that... the record company not so much.

I wonder how much per cd he actually gets? 5% max?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/search/ref=pd_lpo_ix_dp_am_us_uk_en_vnv.020faith.020power.020and.020glory_gl_music?keywords=vnv%20faith%20power%20and%20glory&tag=lpo_ixdpamusukenvnv.020faith.020power.020and.020glorygl_music-21&index=blended

I can buy the newest album digital download for £6.99

Lets say I paid that for all 7 albums = £48.93
Or I could just land £100 + ticket price for the t-shirts, gig etc

I know which I'd rather have, and I bet the venue money goes through fewer hands.

It's not on my package either but it does say "Use of this product is subject to acceptance of the software license agreement included in this package."

Yes, but the "license agreement included in the package" seems to be a generic one including clauses covering several types of license - the packaging gives no indication that the "upgrade" clause applies. Now, IANAL, so maybe they could still enforce this - but they'd be inviting class actions, complaints to trading standards authorities and much negative publicity for failing to describe their product correctly.

As for any indications as to it being an upgrade at the store, the disks were behind a locked case and there was a sign on the case saying it was an upgrade for Leopard.

YMMV - where I bought it (a fairly upmarket UK department store) there was no indication whatsoever. On Amazon UK the information is there, but only if you link to "More system requirements" - they could probably enforce that, but it would be a PR disaster.

Hence my supposition that this is all a fig leaf against people complaining that 10.6 broke their old version of iLife - if Apple really wanted 10.4 users to pay more for 10.6, surely they'd put an "Upgrade from 10.5" sticker on the box and remove the uncertainty?

Imagine if people could afford to live where they want to, get their kids the best education possible, and spend the time they wanted to with family and friends.

Some of us have already done this on our own.

Now that I don't live in London I've taken a hit on my salary and the types of work I can do. However, moving to the countryside has allowed me to spend that time with my kids instead. Today we went for a walk in the forest for a few hours and it was wonderful. We've been really lucky, we mandated a broadband connection as part of the move and the world has moved to make this a lifeline for banking, auctions, work, groceries, ... we rarely need to actually go anywhere to do things. That's quite a change from the trudge my parents had to do when I was a kid in the countryside.

I believe people have been doing this for centuries.[citation needed]

...it's not universally popular it appears

...maybe not even economic

...but they do a TV show on it

At the end of the day I feel fortunate that we can finance living in the country on a programmer's salary. Just like with having kids, I'd say my basic advice is to lower your expectations of what you'll have in life and you'll be fine.

Not that anyone will still be reading this discussion. Especially this far down the page...

But I actually looked up the book:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Time-Eat-Dog-Sustainable-Living/dp/0500287902/

They've chosen an inflammatory title, alright, but it seems the book's about a lot more than pets, and it doesn't look if they really advocate killing the family pooch for a meal.

It looks as if the whole book is about calculating the overall cost of various things in terms of resource usage using a standard unit of hectares/year. Supposedly there are interesting surprises in there. One review mentions that they say that a fully occupied plane is more efficient per passenger mile than cycling (taking into account the food to fuel the rider, and the hot shower to wash of their sweat).

It looks like they've misjudged their publicity drive though. The pet owners are clearly not impressed!

If you have a multiregion DVD player, you can always buy the DVDs, or the books if you don't.

• Manufacturer
• WP
• Dated comparison
• Amazon UK

Another history of the 2007-08 crisis from a credible source. (Not that Krugman's not credible, to a first-level approximation.)

Good points...
 
I've had a G1 since they became available in the UK last November.
 
It's been a bittersweet experience, but I try to remember I'm judging three entities as one thing - Google, T-Mobile, and HTC.
 
Android seems a good, solid mobile OS - even if it doesn't have the interface aesthetics of the iPhone [ Big G : are talented graphic designers _that_ expensive? ]. T-Mobile 3G is mostly good, but can be patchy. In central London, though? Irritating.
 
HTC seems to be the weakest link... The hardware does feel cheap. A bit snapped off long ago - the silly USB cover panel. As others have mentioned, the lack of headphone jack is annoying. Sure, you can get an adapter for a few bucks on EBay. I'm on my fifth now... they just fall apart. If you want one that lets you charge USB and listen to music, you need a larger one. An extra chunky appendage on an already chunky handset that would send shudders of revulsion through Cupertino.
 
The battery life limits the usefulness of the device. Reading books on the web [O'R Safari mobile - great] and listening to music in the background, I can expect three to four hours. I haven't compared that to the stamina of the iPhone. Perhaps it's par for the course. I've taken to carrying one of these around with me.
 
The slide out keyboard is useful if I have a SSH session with ConnectBot, and also email, but for simpler text input (search, etc), I like the new on-screen keyboard. Pinpoint accuracy not needed... prod in roughly the same area as your letter, and it will offer word suggestions that are quite accurate after a few letters. The slide-out keyboard can be annoying. In some light conditions, the key background illumination is so bright that you can't actually see the keycaps. Crazy stuff.
 
The default music player looks like someone hacked it together over a weekend. Laughable compared to iTunes. Thankfully, Spotify mobile was launched last Monday. It's fantastic.... very slick. Who can resist carrying 5 million tracks around? :-) And of course, it just carries on playing in the background should you want to spend time in the browser (which the iPhone version can't). It's early days for mobile music streaming, of course, but the offline playlists work like a charm if you don't have signal or want to save the battery.
 
I hope the above doesn't sound too negative... I really am confident in the Android platform. I'm looking forward to the handsets due to emerge next year... perhaps I'll be offered an upgrade. At that point, my G1 is granted admittance to my dusty smartphone museum, to join the Nokia Communicator 9000, 9200, Palm Treo 600 & 650, and the Blackberry. Oh well, at least they're getting smaller....

It's £9.99 in the UK, which would buy you about 1 new album per month (which you get to keep).

You must be paying a bit more than me then!

Last purchase 1.38 (for a double album):
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Retrospektiw-i-2/dp/B001LV2U7I/ref=sr_shvl_album_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1252665125&sr=301-4

(anon because still in the closet about French prog rock)

You'd be surprised about how little of Xen actually is hardware specific, by the way. If you take a look in the IA64 and PowerPC trees, you'll see that the majority of the code is the same. Not many people use Xen on non-x86 platforms though.

One thing I forgot to mention as an advantage of doing it in userspace is that it's generally considered a bad idea to do anything with floating point in the kernel (it's an extra set of registers to save and load when calling to and from the kernel). This isn't a huge problem, because the fastest mixing algorithms use fixed-point.

[1] Obligatory plug for my book if you'd like to know more.

I don't have any references to research to hand, but Chapter 13 of the Longman Student Grammar of Spoken and Written English describes some of the differences and discusses why they might occur.