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The BBFC got much more relaxed in recent years

Man, I wish I had an affiliate programme built into that link...

They may elect to tax physical items (books, hardware,etc) at a later date.

Come on, is this 2002 or 1992? Seriously, the other part of the news (i.e. taxing online transactions for online goods) is totally valid, because it's not being done yet, AFAIK.

There is a concept of EU's taxation area, which includes pretty much the whole EU with a couple of exceptions (like Jersey). Since something like 1993 there has been the EU "Single Market", and most physical goods imported from elsewhere have been subject to VAT. If I order something from for example the US or Australia or Japan I have to pay VAT if the package gets caught in the customs. If I order something from the UK or France or Germany, who cares, it's from the taxation area, and taxes are assumed to have already been paid. Many European online vendors have VAT already included in their prices, and for example Amazon.co.uk charges the VAT based on the destination country.

At least some Canadian online vendors go around VAT by sending their shipments to the customer from some country in the EU. The package isn't subject to VAT if it's sent from France or Belgium. I don't know the legality of this, but the concept sounds somewhat dubious, despite allowing cheaper prices for the customer.

At least in Finland the key is to order less in one package, because our customs don't bother to charge less than 10 euros. I have something like 90 DVD titles (some of them being 5-6 disc boxes), with almost all of them being ordered from the net, and only 15 of them originate from the EU taxation area. I haven't paid VAT (22% in Finland) or customs (3.5%) for a single one of the imported ones, because I order only one or two discs at a time.

More information about VAT is available at European Union's VAT info page.

but then you probably wouldn't want to bother as the TV series is absoloutely dreadful, the original Radio4 series is the definitive guide in my opoinion, the books are also worth reading, play spot the inconsistencies.

and dont just grab the MP3s, go forth and purchase one of the cassete or CD box sets

the Salmon of Doubt
Hitchhiker's Guide Trology

but then you probably wouldn't want to bother as the TV series is absoloutely dreadful, the original Radio4 series is the definitive guide in my opoinion, the books are also worth reading, play spot the inconsistencies.

and dont just grab the MP3s, go forth and purchase one of the cassete or CD box sets

the Salmon of Doubt
Hitchhiker's Guide Trology

Somebody please explain to me why it is all over the news now ??

Somebody please explain to me why it is all over the news now ??

I don't know .. there are always people that are prepared to pay for things which they find useful.

A case in point; I've written a few mods to popular applications, and even a few programs of my own. Recently I started linking to an Amazon wishlist on a few of the project pages.

To my complete amazement within a week some I'd received one hardbacked book, and one DVD!

(Now if only I could find a decent company who did 'wishlists' and had a nice range of stock to choose from - then I wouldn't have to use amazon).

I guess after making the first post with a link to one of my projects it would be bad to link to my wishlist here, wouldn't it ..? ;)

Amazon Pebble in the sky has it on limited avalibilaty

Well, I've recently bought a copy of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House. This is original book of the brilliant film, a film which for me is probably the best horror ever made.

Has he lost his mind, I hear Slashdotters say? No, I haven't. I'm not talking about the recent effects-driven dross, I'm talking about one of the edgiest, psychological non-gore horrors that have been filmed.

Sadly, my new book's cover is splattered with "Now a major motion picture!"-type idiocy all over it, and the 'major' picture they refer to is the recent poor quality remake. I have the actors from this 1999 abomination all across the top, whereas I'd prefer to simply erase all knowledge of the film's existence from my memory.

Now, I definitely would have paid extra for an older copy of the book which had a non-film based cover. Sadly, one wasn't available in a reasonable amount of time and so I've ended up with the new cover.

Just one personal example as to why people are sometimes willing to pay for more for older copies.

Cheers,
Ian

Yeah the second seasons out on dvd IN THE UK. I wound up getting all my farscape dvds from the other side of the pond. Not only is is cheaper than the use versions, but they come in these cool 2 dvd boxes. I just got my first 5 eps of season three two weeks ago. Only thing to be wary of is you need a dvd player that is region free and a way to convert PAL to NTSC.

A Daewoo 5700 from World Gift Center and a Amazon account UK style gets me up to the date Farscape in the US. It takes about 9 days from ship to show via mail.

Jesus Cloned! Now that would make a truely interesting news story!

Jesus Cloned! Now that would make a truely interesting news story!

amazon.co.uk plainly state that it does not work on PCs.

I think that a number of posters are right - most parents are far too overprotective, at most ages. This is a great improvement on a leash as it allows children to have that experience of exploration without parental direction, yet still gives the parent reassurance.

And, just like a leash, it's inappropriate in most cases involving an older child.

Cheers,
Martin
(Father to Morgan, six months)

US Amazon promises June 26 (Win9x/NT/2000/Me/Linux).

I would recommend that you begin with "Database Systems" by Connolly and Begg. Read it cover to cover, then read it again. When you're done reading it the second time, skip through to the end of each section and do all the exercises without rereading any of the text. Once you can answer a majority of the questions correctly, then begin to consider designing database layouts. Before you look the book up on fatbrain or amazon, be warned that it is not light reading. It's 1,200+ pages, but is well worth it.

I agree with all the points in the parent post - "knowing" SQL (or indeed, any other programming language) is to software engineering as bricklaying is to civil engineering. SQL is like playing the piano, easy to learn, hard to master. I have personally experienced large scale projects that have literally cost millions of dollars to re-work after someone who "knew SQL" had made a mess of the database. Probably the most laughable was a billing system that updated customers balances in-place (in the same table that stored the customer's name and address!) rather than recording transactions and calculating balances with a roll-up. The front-end software the same team had written was flawed and recording the wrong numbers (in some cases, they had bound the columns to the wrong fields, in others they had added where they meant to subtract, etc), and since no raw data history was recorded anywhere (another bit of bad design was automating dumping the audit logs whenever that disk looked like it was getting full), all that money had simply... disappeared.

The book I recommend is this one. Ignore the reviewer, who has missed the point: good database design is difficult, and this book is for people who can handle the (math) theory behind it.

Excellent book by a former member. I thought Hubbard was just a crook but he wasn't - he was actually barking mad schizoid and should have been put in a psychiatric hospital. The CofF is a godless religion.

The earth will change if we do anything or not. In fact what most enviromentalists want is for it to stay exactly the same and never change, or so it seems. They don't want species to die, yet they do on their own even when we leave them totally alone, the want the climate to stay the same, yet that changes to if we were using our cars and factories or not.

You are correct. Geological changes take place on timescales in which a thousand years is insignificant. Don't forget that maybe 30 or 40 years ago, the thing that had environmentalists worried was global cooling - the risk of a new Ice Age. I remember reading somewhere that 2001 was the warmest year since 1653 (or thereabouts) which begs the question, exactly who or what was emitting CO2 at present day levels back then?

For more of this sort of common sense, see this book in which the author systematically demolishes most of the non-scientific arguments of the "green" lobby.

These days, Greenpeace aren't a charity or a lobby in any meaningful sense of the word. They are in the entertainment business for Western teenagers, and they have to keep their name in the news to keep the donations rolling in. Cynical? Perhaps. But their dodgy science has done a lot of harm to the idea that anyone with something to say on the environment doesn't have a radical left-wing axe to grind.

The DVD *was* available, and may be again as the video is being (re-?)released and available from Amazon (DVD/VHS) and also Blackstar.

The DVD *was* available, and may be again as the video is being (re-?)released and available from Amazon (DVD/VHS) and also Blackstar.

The DVD *was* available, and may be again as the video is being (re-?)released and available from Amazon (DVD/VHS) and also Blackstar.

TV series top my wish lists:

I'm sure you're aware the first season of the Simpsons is now available on DVD, with the second season due in May.

What's more, I recently bought the first seasons of Futurama and Family Guy, in London - Region 2 only.

Why were they released in Region 2 first, when they're far more known & popular in Region 1? Who knows. Still looking for The Young Ones though.

TV series top my wish lists:

I'm sure you're aware the first season of the Simpsons is now available on DVD, with the second season due in May.

What's more, I recently bought the first seasons of Futurama and Family Guy, in London - Region 2 only.

Why were they released in Region 2 first, when they're far more known & popular in Region 1? Who knows. Still looking for The Young Ones though.

> python even has gui bindings for windows

I'm not sure about native Win32 GUI stuff, but Ruby certainly has some pretty decent OLE support.

There's also support for native DLL API calls, and a free downloadable book (Programming Ruby).

The syntax is nice and clean and the object model is lovely. The C API is rather good too; C/ObjC/C++ extensions often end up looking rather like Ruby.

You can grab Win32 binaries from http://www.pragmaticprogrammer.com/, which includes a nice selection of bundled modules.

If you think about it, the romans had everything they needed to build steam locomotives. They had advanced road building, knowledge of steam dynamics, the ability to forge pressure vessels and an unrivaled industrial base. What they lacked was vision and the will to do anything that might seem impractical.

There is a fascinating account of this sort of thing in Against The Gods. The problem was mainly cultural; ancient societies believed that the future was under the control of the gods, therefore there was little an individual could practically do to offset risk for their enterprise. If a merchant lost a single shipment, for example, that could be enough to ruin him, so risks taken were very small, and therefore progress was slow. No one would dare to invest in risky business ventures.

Along came barbarian Europeans, interested in probability theory and statistical analysis of historical data as a means to cheat at cards. From that, we got insurance, actuarial tables, financial derivatives, venture capital and a whole range of other mathematical constructs.

Even if the ancient Romans had had the math, they wouldn't have done much with it until their culture could have accepted the notion of risk in the modern sense. And the Greeks wouldn't either, for different cultural reasons; for them theoretical research was a pastime for the nobles, but practical research was frowned upon as being only fit for slaves, who didn't have the education to make anything of it.

If these two ancient cultures had been a little more pragmatic, the world would be radically different today.

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

> Why do you never see any Sci-fi shows about what the near future could really be like

Because most producers, and indeed, most writers are just too unimaginative to work realism into a series like this.

Just look at Star Trek; the aliens are all humans with ridged heads and various stereotypes, the society is dull and boring, and the people act completely unlike real people.

Sure, you can throw in (Sociopathic|Pychopathic|Weird) (Killer|Assimilator) aliens in and have a few dodgy unrealistic unconvincing space battles (when was the last time you saw an "antimatter" powered ship in Star Trek explode and light up half of space and literally melt the hulls of anything nearby? Hell, when was the last time you saw a quantum-photon-xeon-pentium torpedo that did anything but dent a ship?), and have some sickening ultra-transparent "morality" tales, but at the end of the day it's so phoney that there's not a chance in hell anyone's going to go away from watching it thinking they've really seen what the future might be like, or some idea that could make them think for more than 5 seconds.

There are all sorts of issues that would make for great stuff in sci-fi, but because they require skill and imagination (not to mention a few ounces of clue) they're avoided.

Thankfully, we still have some decent quality writers in other areas of media..

[waits to be bitchslapped for dissing Star Trek.. I do like it really, honest]

What I want to know is why we haven't seen Family Guy on DVD here in the U.S.? The U.K. has a Season 1 DVD, as well as a Futurama DVD. They even have an announcement for the Simpsons, Season 2 DVD.

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in a region-free DVD player.

What I want to know is why we haven't seen Family Guy on DVD here in the U.S.? The U.K. has a Season 1 DVD, as well as a Futurama DVD. They even have an announcement for the Simpsons, Season 2 DVD.

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in a region-free DVD player.

What I want to know is why we haven't seen Family Guy on DVD here in the U.S.? The U.K. has a Season 1 DVD, as well as a Futurama DVD. They even have an announcement for the Simpsons, Season 2 DVD.

Looks like I'm going to have to invest in a region-free DVD player.

Was just checking out the link to Futurama Season 1 DVD, which is great if you live on that side of the Atlantic. Problem is, I can't seem to find it on the US version of Amazon. I wonder of they decided that the US audiance wouldn't want it. Course, for those of you in the UK, you might be able to fetch a few pounds by auctioning off a set or two to us underpriviliged Americans. I know I'd love to get a hold of this.

The DVD is available at amazon.co.uk:

Futurama Season 1 DVD

Utopia = a vision of a perfect society

Dystopia = a vision of a society gone perfectly wrong

Yes, dystopia is a real word.

No, Aldous Huxley NEVER intended Brave New World to be a vision of what the future ought to be.

See this review at Amazon.com

The big Sell Outs:

Amazon.com (book) (tape)

Amazon.co.uk(book)

I'm a bit miffed that something as interesting to many /. readers isn't news but Stephenson is. Ok, it's subjective, the choices, but they did run articles earlier about the works possibly being recovered from his Adams' computer and eventually seeing print. Seemed natural to run the article, but I wonder if /. has an exclusive contract with fatbrain and won't run articles without links to them, so once fatbrain confirms they'll have the books then /. will run the story? That would certainly be a sell out.

That there is actually cover art and a look at Harmony Books bears this up, it's coming out, one year after his death.

Ok, seeing the answers to this message, maybe I didn't make my message clear enough. Paul Kennedy, in his book Rise and Fall of Great Powers, states that technology is determinant in the rise and, well, the fall of civilizations. Civilizations with higher technology normally overcome those with a lower technology, and any technological superiority is key in obtaining and maintaining superiority.

But technology is like water, you can't keep it in your hands. And besides, it works both ways: anybody can use it to its own profit.

Well if you're geek enough (or your local TV repair shop is willing to do it for you) then you can always remove the tuner board from your TV, making it incapable of receiving terrestrial signals. Thus - no need to pay for a TV licence, assuming that the licence doesn't cover radio (which I don't think it does).

I'm sure I remember reading about a guy who'd done this (he was like you - he only wanted Sky), got prosecuted by the "TV Van" people, but won the case in court, so a precedent has already been set. Or maybe I've just been drinking too much coffee today :)

So if you're so pissed off with paying for a licence, do something about it!

Personally I'll gladly pay for my licence as long as the BBC continue producing amazing programmes such as The Blue Planet, I mean, do you know another TV station that gives you programmes of this quality, sans adverts, for the small amount of £100?

Oh, and at the risk of sounding like an advert it's now available on DVD here or here (not a plug for Amazon, just a link for details). I'd HIGHLY recommend that EVERYBODY with a DVD player check this out, it's AMAZING, some of the best nature photography I've ever seen. Region-free too so you US people won't miss out :)

Not being able to play Region 1 DVDs deprives us of thousands of movies -- some of which will never be R2 released!

I certainly hope that BBC will not release a R1 version of this or of any other of their brilliant series like Black Adder and Fawlty Towers until the region coding gets abolished.

Not being able to play Region 1 DVDs deprives us of thousands of movies -- some of which will never be R2 released!

I certainly hope that BBC will not release a R1 version of this or of any other of their brilliant series like Black Adder and Fawlty Towers until the region coding gets abolished.

The wouldn't call it 'Eden' if they read This Other Eden by Ben Elton.

In that story, playing around 2080, a Bill-Gates
alike power-hungry super rich advertising genius
manages to sell comfortable family sized 'bio-domes' to half the world's population
to survive the upcoming ecological disaster that will make the earth unable to sustain life.

Released in Novemember. I got it for Christmas but haven't had time to read it.

Got lots of pictures, but plenty of text too.

Eden by Tim Smit on Amazon UK