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Mind giving a link/reference to that reading by Derren Brown? I think I'd enjoy reading more about it.

I haven't seen anything on line, but see his book Tricks of the Mind, "Cold Reading", page 320 and forward. It contains the full text of the reading. Fabulous book, BTW; I paid to have it shipped from England, and it was totally worth it.

I've seen a grand total of one Games for Windows branded game with other platforms - Football Manager 2008, which also has Mac support. TBH, it's more that PC games aren't generally multiple OS anyway, PC CD/DVD basically meant Windows anyway (with the odd exception), so arguably Microsoft's branding has just made it more accurate.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Hitch-Hikers-Guide-Galaxy-Primary/dp/0563477881

Because the third biggest party is a schizophrenic mess. If it was just the Liberal Party and followed the policy ideas laid out in the Orange Book, I would vote for them at every opportunity. As it stands the Liberal Democrats can't decide if they are truly Liberal or are actually Social Democrats (i.e. socialists). Depending on who's in charge and what's in the papers, the party seems to be trying to occupy the entire political spectrum. How can one be expected to vote for a party that's probably performed a policy volte-face during the walk to the polling station?

Frankly, all the major (and most of the minor) parties in the UK occupy the same ground. Those that don't tend to be extremists (e.g. the BNP) or one issue parties (e.g. UKIP). Some combination of the Tories and the Lib Dems would be the ideal solution: the low taxes and minimal market interference of the post-ERM Tories, combined with the social liberalism and non-parochial attitudes of the Liberals. A true alternative to the ultra-centralising, outright authoritarian "Labour" Party.

Zombie Lloyd George for PM!

It's happening all over - about 18 months ago a new music site called Sellaband opened its doors to unsigned Artists around the world. The object is to pre-sell copies of your next album at $10 (US) a piece. Once you hit $50000 you are put into a top studio with top producers and for each $10 Part a Believer purchases they get one copy of the 5000 Limited Edition versions of the album. Regular editions are also made available for the Artist to sell at gigs etc, and now Amazon.co.uk have signed up to sell them, and even pre-order 100 copies by buying 100 Parts once each Artist reaches $30000.

The Believers then get a share of the advertising revenues, and sales of the regular CD, plus anything they can make on selling any spare Limited Edition CDs, the Artist gets a third, Sellaband gets a third and the 5000 Believers share the last third. It's not going to make you a millionaire but its sort of fun!

So far there are over 6000 Artists registered, with 17 having made the $50000, last night Kaitee Page became the latest, and 7 of them now have their albums available from the Sellaband shop where you can purchase the CDs or download the tracks - the first three tracks are free and the others are all on 50c (US) each

It's happening all over - about 18 months ago a new music site called Sellaband opened its doors to unsigned Artists around the world. The object is to pre-sell copies of your next album at $10 (US) a piece. Once you hit $50000 you are put into a top studio with top producers and for each $10 Part a Believer purchases they get one copy of the 5000 Limited Edition versions of the album. Regular editions are also made available for the Artist to sell at gigs etc, and now Amazon.co.uk have signed up to sell them, and even pre-order 100 copies by buying 100 Parts once each Artist reaches $30000.

The Believers then get a share of the advertising revenues, and sales of the regular CD, plus anything they can make on selling any spare Limited Edition CDs, the Artist gets a third, Sellaband gets a third and the 5000 Believers share the last third. It's not going to make you a millionaire but its sort of fun!

So far there are over 6000 Artists registered, with 17 having made the $50000, last night Kaitee Page became the latest, and 7 of them now have their albums available from the Sellaband shop where you can purchase the CDs or download the tracks - the first three tracks are free and the others are all on 50c (US) each

I've got no electronic/IT background at all (I'm a lab tech), but even I could mess around with an arduino and get it to work. My GF is using one in an art project to have bag that analyses RFID tags from supermarket food and change the appearance of the bag depending on how ecologically you shopped.

I'm thinking of trying to use an arduino and my home music/movie server PC to make a cheap version of Philips 'Wake up light'. I was thinking of using it to control a stepper motor hooked up to a dimmer switch, but maybe someone here (with real electronics knowledge) can hint at a better way to do this?

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Giza-Death-Star-Destroyed-Trilogy/dp/1931882479/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203241405&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Giza-Death-Star-Paleophysics-Military/dp/0932813380/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203241405&sr=1-3

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Giza-Death-Star-Destroyed-Trilogy/dp/1931882479/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203241405&sr=1-2 http://www.amazon.co.uk/Giza-Death-Star-Paleophysics-Military/dp/0932813380/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1203241405&sr=1-3

Can't see it - digital picture frame: £130 ($260) (btw. that's cheap - the ones in stores are double that.. I saw one for over £500 just the other day).
Normal picture frame: £5 ($10)

Cost of devloping photo from a camera? About £2.50 a memory stick in lots of stores. You can do it at the same place you buy a cheap frame from.

In addition the 'digital' frame uses power, can fail (especially if it gets dropped), is only viewable from certain angles, etc.

There's a reason you rarely see them in stores except novelty shops and amazon. They're the classic example of a solution begging for an actual problem.

Can't see it - digital picture frame: £130 ($260) (btw. that's cheap - the ones in stores are double that.. I saw one for over £500 just the other day).
Normal picture frame: £5 ($10)

Cost of devloping photo from a camera? About £2.50 a memory stick in lots of stores. You can do it at the same place you buy a cheap frame from.

In addition the 'digital' frame uses power, can fail (especially if it gets dropped), is only viewable from certain angles, etc.

There's a reason you rarely see them in stores except novelty shops and amazon. They're the classic example of a solution begging for an actual problem.

Devolution's dictionary meaning is essentially the de-centralisation of government. What happened in Scotland in the 90's was more political manouvering than giving Scotland a voice. Scotland had far fewer seats in parliament than England, unsurprising given that Scotland has around 10% of the population of England. The north of England is in a similar situation to, with London having a large population and all government - it is also heavily out of touch with the opinion of the rest of the country.

At the time of Tony Blair's election, the Scottish National Party was gaining a lot of ground in Scotland on two platforms - a vote on independence and a proprortional representation system if we stayed in the union. Labour picked up on this and decided to offer a devolved Scottish government.

The Scottish parliament was re-opened and in an attempted show of reconciliation the Stone of Destiny was returned to Edinburgh. This has grown into an ongoing farce, with a new parliament building being built (even though the original is still there) at a ridiculous cost and the only real power is the ability to vary income tax by 1% of what Westminster sets as well as control over health, education, law and agriculture all of which were already administered differently from England.

There is an excellent history of the time of union written by an American author Arthur Herman.

You're all wrong, the only two joysticks that could ever come close to perfect were the Competition Pro 5000 or the Konix Speedking.

The first was built like a brick shithouse : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Competition-Pro-5000-Joystick-PC/dp/B000J5U09W

And the second fit so perfectly in your hand :
http://www.consoledatabase.com/accessories/pc/konixspeedking/index.html

While I agree with some of the other posters when they tell you to hire a professional I would also like to recommend this book. Unlike many books which show you how to be oh so trendy the focus here is how to maximise usability, readability etx. through the application of fundamental principles.

Interestingly, the pure capitalist solution means that you actually pay more for your own health care. Here in the UK, the spend per person per year is substantially less than in the US because the corporate profits, overhead of running the insurance schemes, and the fragmented nature of the different companies all cost extra. On top of that, because every company wants to insure the low illness, high profit individuals, they try to marginalise the less profitable people who actually do get sick with higher premiums.

More details here

Another good feature is that the sockets are 'shuttered' so it's rather difficult for anybody let alone a child to poke something in the socket and get a shock; this means the sockets are safe anywhere even with kids and animals. If they're directly on the floor (eg: in an office) they usually get covered with a metal dust cover when not in use. If they're outside all that's needed is a light cover against direct rain/water contact.

The downside? The plugs are big and ugly!

We CAN make poverty history. We just have to be willing to pay the price and suffer for no other reason than it is the right thing to do

Without poor people you do not have a working class, without a working class that is willing to accept low wages, inflation degrades peoples' wealth until a new group of poor people appears that is willing to work for the wages that customers/employers are willing to pay. For example, suppose everybody with a net worth of less than $10,000 suddenly got cryogenically frozen. Burgers would need to be fried by people who have over $10,000 who would naturally expect a higher salary. Higher salaries means the food becomes more expensive so that the people with over $10,000 suddenly can't afford any food any more, and only rich people with $20,000 can afford burgers.

Believe it or not there is a We CAN make poverty history. We just have to be willing to pay the price and suffer for no other reason than it is the right thing to doIncorrect.

Without poor people you do not have a working class, without a working class that is willing to accept low wages, inflation degrades peoples' wealth until a new group of poor people appears that is willing to work for the wages that customers/employers are willing to pay. For example, suppose everybody with a net worth of less than $10,000 suddenly got cryogenically frozen. Burgers would need to be fried by people who have over $10,000 who would naturally expect a higher salary. Higher salaries means the food becomes more expensive so that the people with over $10,000 suddenly can't afford any food any more, and only rich people with $20,000 can afford burgers.

Capitalism relies on a "poor" working class who can't afford anything, otherwise productivity decreases (supply of goods decreases causing inflation) and cost of food increases (goods becoming more expensive - the very definition of inflation)">Natural Rate of Unemployment. And if the unemployed are "removed" from society, work patterns will adjust until a new group of people become naturally unemployed according to this rate.

For instance, from the book Black Hole Tariffs and Endogenous Policy theory:

Wealth comes from two sources: production and predation This book advances the notion that the unbridled pursuit of p[rivate individual gain does not maximise society's wealth because of the negative externality of redistributive activity The powerless politician effect suggests... policies are determined by rational self-interested behaviour of all the players in the system. Not even the politicians are in charge because their vote-maximising actions are determined by the technology of collecting funds from special interests and distributing those funds to garner votes from general interests Part 1 is about how lobbies and political parties interact to redistribute income through tariffs and trade restrictions

First, the most likely sources of this sort of catastrophe are created by humans or preventable by our actions. If we spend our effort trying to allow the elite to escape the planet instead of trying to save the rest of humanity, what does that say about the people we are?

First, if it was about "allowing the elite to escape" then I'd agree with you. However, for me anyway, it is more a case of ensuring that at least someone will survive somewhere, rather than helping anyone escape to a nicer place because we have made a mess here. Colonizing a new planet is unlikely to be a picnic. It will probably be a very hard life for several generations.

Second, if we assume that we can and do figure out solutions for all the things that could wipe us out, or at least put us back in the stone age, like global warming, influenza epidemics, meteorite strikes, 3rd world war etc ... I still don't see it is an either or choice. Yes, we should work on reducing our effect on the climate, learn how to control the spread of disease, track and divert near earth asteroids and reduce the level of tension and aggression between our countries. But to to survive, we would have to solve all of them, every time. Miss one, and we loose .. game over.

So doesn't it make sense to spend just a little of that money and resources on making sure that there would be at least one small colony of humans who could start the process of rebuilding things if it all went pear shaped.

Are we so vain as to think that our first purpose is to keep some slim vestige of humanity in existance?

Yes. It's kind of built in to our genes. Have you read The selfish gene by Richard Dawkins ?

Sorry, but you fail. I don't give a crap about Japan; I want to continue buying and watching UK movies and TV shows.

And what makes you think that region codes disappear after a year? [citation needed]

I read this in a few places last year - but I can't find references now. So I'll withdraw that assertion until I can prove it. I too like to watch UK content, and so far BBC discs I've seen (though not wanted to watch) seem to be region free.

About Face 2.0 - Essentials of Interaction Design is one of the best books I've read on user behaviour and expectations, and how that is applied to GUIs. In terms of how test and design GUIs, paper prototyping is a great way to get your test users to interact with a design without having to code it first. If you're looking for a book to read on it, check out this one.

About Face 2.0 - Essentials of Interaction Design is one of the best books I've read on user behaviour and expectations, and how that is applied to GUIs. In terms of how test and design GUIs, paper prototyping is a great way to get your test users to interact with a design without having to code it first. If you're looking for a book to read on it, check out this one.

It doesn't really cover web stuff if that's what you're after, but the most of the principles are largely the same. Having said that, I still refer back to this book from time-to-time even though I've worked exclusively with Web applications for the last three years.

It's incredible how many people start wading into all kinds of issues with the intent of improving safety without the first notion of what risk really is and how we humans evaluate and cope with it.

Anybody who's work may impact public safety should be forced at gunpoint to at least read Risk by John Adams. It has much to say about the effects of public safety initiatives and their unintended consequences.

For instance, after the introduction of compulsory seatbelt legislation in the UK, the number of motorists who were killed or seriously injured decreased somewhat. Unfortunately more cyclists and pedestrians were killed or seriousy injured in collisions with motor vehicles, such that the overall number of road deaths increased. Adams attributes the increase to drivers' assessment of their own level of risk being reduced, hence they tended to drive more quickly and in a more dangerous fashion, until their personal risk threshold was restored.

"...The vehicle is aimed at improving driving safety by getting India's masses off their motorbikes and into cars..."

In light of what I said previously, look out for a rise in the overall number of people KSI on India's roads...

T&K.

And it is here that I should point out that Bell was Scottish (born in my own fair City of Edinburgh) which makes him European (tho' arguably not at the time!). That's the trouble with everything that's got a modicum of thought/intelligence behind it - Americans' always think that they invented everything when it's clear to all those who looked, that the Scots invented the modern world. Telephone, Television, Penicillin and all the rest of it.

Try peeing higher than that :p

(Now I grant you you may have been referring to Grey, but I'm ignoring that due to the context of your Wikipedia quote).

buy it now! you can preorder it on amazon.co.uk! YES! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Take-2-Duke-Nukem-Forever/dp/B00005NCEZ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1198148048&sr=8-1 best £25 i EVER spent

Disclaimer: my employer sells a solution[1] for the email retention market.

As the summary says, a lot of this stuff isn't going to sink in until Directors of limited companies (corporations in the US) are doing the walk of shame because they failed to pay proper attention to IT security. (I consider mail retention to be part of the infosec remit of almost all organisations except those TLAs with very special needs.) Security in general is treated given lipservice, but the best you can hope for really is that officers have had some legal advice that they're personally liable for related issues (eg: if it turns out the marketing dept have been faking customer satisfaction numbers, and the firm's about to collapse in a wave of customer rebellion, and the officers don't know that - tough! You should have known! People invested in the company on the understanding that it was known! You know the score... "...and may god have mercy on your trust fund. Take him down!"

It's interesting that the UK government has suddenly started reporting losses of personal data of the sort that have obviously been going on for years - ten or fifteen years, ever since ubiquitous high-capacity storage such as CDR, outsourcing of IT and administrative functions to companies with no direct interest in maintaining control of data, cheap wide-area networking and the mirage of a working database nation came to pass. (I was just getting into professional IT back in the mid-90s, when the trade press were full of vendors touting datacubes, object-orientated databases, OLAP and datawarehouses and the like. The theory was that by aggregating data from masses of sources, slicing it and dicing it, The Business would gain amazing new insights into customer behaviour. The national security-industrial complex also bought the whole story hook line and sinker, with results we are now starting to see - billions wasted on white elephant systems that suck garbage in and spit garbage out, have enormous opportunity costs and never deliver the promised benefits.

Mail retention's the same story. How many sysadmins would demur when a senior VP pops up in the helldesk room on a Friday night & orders someone to stay late doing 12x overwrite pass disk reformatting on all the mail servers? The same number who care what happens to the disk in that old mail server that got skipped last month when the shiny new quad-core Exchange box arrived - just over none at all. (Yeah yeah, everyone here takes a hammer to the platters before releasing them... ever tried buying a dozen cheap second-hand SCSI drives from a redundant-kit-recovery operation? Give it a go one day, and try practicing your Coroner's ToolKit skills on 'em (or just pop open hexedit at take a peak at /dev/sdc1 or whatever.) It's quite an education, I recommend it to all conscientious sys-admins...

[1] hey I'm not saying if it's a box, software, a service, or a combination of all three. Do your own damn market research! ;p

You want http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0563477024/ or http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0563504196/.

You want http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0563477024/ or http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0563504196/.

Thanks - looks really interesting! Here's another book I'm looking forward to reading.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00005NCEZ/ref%3Dpd_sim_vg_dp_1/202-0904844-5000669

I remember reading a SF book about this not so long ago...Greg Egan - Quarantine The book was written 13 years ago, in 1995. You can find it here : http://www.amazon.co.uk/Quarantine-Greg-Egan/dp/0061054232/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195873578&sr=8-1.

I know the US is a big (the biggest?) and important market, but with Zune sales it's a different story in the UK. When I looked just now, the first Zune appears in 61st position, with iPods of all kinds dominating the top ten. Of course, the position changes all the time but I've been looking at this every time I see a story on Zune's top spot on Amazon US and the highest position I've seen for Zune is 35th.

The rest of us just want to pay a fair price, which basically means premium price for new/popular stuff, and a lot less for everything else. You know, how the market works.

I'm sorry, was that your argument? Dear me, it appears to have died in a heap. Wow, Led Zeppelin for a fiver a pop. Boy am I angry that I got mine for seven quid a pop. Oh look, are those albums from less than a year ago? My god, I think they are!

And before you say: no, allofmp3's prices were not fair prices. Not in the slightest.

Another candidate in stock: Gigabyte GA-X38T-DQ6

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gigabyte-GA-X38T-DQ6-Motherboard-Definition-8-channel/dp/B000XQ5HF4

Is this one compatible?

Can't believe no one has mentioned these books yet. Engineering Mathematics by K. A. Stroud was the book that got me through my maths course for my (Electronics & Computing) degree. It's probably got more of a UK bias, seeing as there are hardly any reviews on amazon.com, but more on amazon.co.uk. Links here:

http://www.amazon.com/Engineering-Mathematics-K-Stroud/dp/0831133279/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-7700355-0295828?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192519415&sr=8-1

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Engineering-Mathematics-6th-K-Stroud/dp/1403942463/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/026-6301190-6658802?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1192519745&sr=8-1

It's also worth getting his second book, Further Engineering Mathematics.

It's so Popular Mechanics. Another resonant oscillating generator.

This is an old idea, but the usual form is a free-piston engine. Popular Mechanics was hot about that one back in 2004. For something that will light two LEDs, that thing looks big and expensive. Note the machined aluminum frame. For comparison, here's a toy wind generator kit ("convert a plastic bottle to a wind generator!").

Notice how the guy with the vibrating ribbon generator demonstrates it in front of an electric fan. On high. That's probably because it only works in a strong wind. People generally don't live where winds are regularly that high. Wind speed in Port-au-Prince has been between 9 and 12MPH all day, so something that cuts in around 9MPH is needed for use in Haiti.

The classic cheapie generator is taking an oil drum, cutting it in half, and using that as a Savonius rotor. Then you get an alternator from a car, and there's your actual generator. The axle sticks up into the air, where the halves of the oil drum collect the wind and turn the alternator. Here's a smaller version.

The article dwells on marriage with robots, which I can't see happening anytime soon; but robots as a replacement for human prostitutes? Absolutely.

The oldest profession is driven by one of humanity's most basic problems (there just aren't enough sexy people to go round) but has lots of downsides (disease, wasted lives, etc). Sex robots seem like a great solution -- provided they are realistic enough to keep the customer satisfied.

So, naturally, we need a X-prize for this problem: a competition for a sex robot that can pass a sexual Turing test. The original Turing Test was for a machine able to hold a conversation indistinguishable from human conversation. We clearly need a sexual Turing test, for a machine able to generate a sexual experience indistinguishable from sex with a human.

I suggest we need two categories:
1) one for "fully autonomous" sex robots, driven by their own AI
2) the other category for "puppet robots" controlled remotely by human operators who would move the robot's limbs, speak through its mouth, etc.

Obviously to start with, robots in the puppet category could be much more realistic than those in the autonomous category. The job of being an operator would be very similar to the job of working on a sex chat line.

But even robots in the autonomous category might be reasonably convincing, even using current technology as used in Aibo or toys such as the "Fur Real Friends Butterscotch Pony".http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000F475PY/reamonsit-21/

Butterscotch is a soft pony toy costing $299 which responds if you stroke it etc. It's not a huge leap from this sort of reaction to the sort of response one would need for a sex robot. Just read the blurb for Butterscotch and replace in your mind the word "pony" with "girl" or "boy"...

With realistic animation, movement and sounds, this incredibly lifelike pony is a very special, once-in-a-lifetime friend. This adorable pony ...really 'comes alive' as she moves and responds to your loving care! Touch or talk to your pony and her head moves! As you continue to interact with her, watch her ears wiggle and her eyes blink! Be sure to take extra-special care of your pony. Feed her the carrot and groom her with her brush. Watch her swish her tail back and forth! She even whinnies and snorts, and will sniff your hand! Sit on your pony for a pretend ride...!

The sex robot is with us already; just currently disguised as a horse...

Can you believe it? This book is available to uy in the UK through Amazons UK site (amazon.co.uk)! Does this mean Amazon are sponsoring terrorism? heh ;)

i don't think it's very clear that it's banned if amazon.co.uk has it, under apparently several names.

would kind of suck to buy one for easy and fun home chemistry experiments and get thrown to jail and amazon getting away with it.

http://amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss_w_h_/026-8018305-4217266?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=anarchist+cookbook&Go.x=0&Go.y=0&Go=Go

Well we all know that sedition and terrorism go together. We should also apply the appropriate measures to counter it: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Fahrenheit-451-Ray-Bradbury/dp/0007181701/ref=sr_1_1/203-0373786-0805564?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191844055&sr=1-1

Amazon UK don't seem to have that in stock. They do, however, have the Anarchist's Cookbook.

This means Amazon is a terrorist organization! See Amazon.co.uk: The Anarchist Cookbook (Paperback).

Er..

I think your analogy is not the correct one. The correct one is the Crown from "The Queen of Angels". http://www.amazon.co.uk/Queen-Angels-Greg-Bear/dp/1857989430/ref=sr_1_12/203-4872377-1187120?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1191823245&sr=1-12

It is a very small and short step from the feeling of divine touch to the feeling of divine retribution. IMHO just thinking what can be done with it, the device should be banned under the penalty of death through its application in "retribution mode".

There is enough trouble as it is with various religious nutheads around the world. Imagine how much trouble there will be if they are armed with a direct brain inducer so they can improve their ability to condition the sect members. Further to this, having a device like this available will enable any nuthead with any belief system to found a successful sect.

In regard to your point about not knowing how to fix a car or cook food I found this fantastic book the other day. It teaches you everything a Real Man TM should know, from lighting a fire with 2 sticks to fixing a toilet to catching a fish with a piece of string. Its not only funny but educational too! http://www.amazon.co.uk/Man-Skills-Nick-Harper/dp/1843172305

So, it wasn't a desperate attempt at PC, but a desperate attempt at humor.

The book accompanies the BBC mini-series, which is highly recommended.