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I was round at my brother's at the weekend and my niece was watching Mickey's Twice Upon a Christmas. I wondered when it came out and was surprised to find that the copyright notice on the box had no year. I guess Disney knows that copyright expiration is a thing of the past so they don't bother with dates any more.

I have had various mobile phones since about 1999 that have replaced my wristwatch alarm clock and PDA - the next model will probably replace the tv. However, I do have the more reliable http://www.amazon.co.uk/Doctor-Dalek-Talking-Alarm-Clock/dp/B000F44POS (sadly for all Dalek fans, apparently not currently available.) which wakes me up every morning at 6 am with threats of imminent extermination.
Even if the Nokia has run out of juice the Dalek does its job. Turns off after ten minutes or so ( at least I think it does, it must threaten the neighbours every morning when we are on holiday cos, I always forget to turn off the alarm!).
There is of course no real way to defeat the Daleks.
Apart from stairs.

Or read the book "Food of the gods" by Terrence McKenna.

Amazon UK has it, as does Amazon US.

Have you investigate net-top form-factor PCs at all? The Acer Aspire Revo has caught my eye recently and sounds promising and good enough to play High Definition media.

Not much storage, but external HDDs are cheap and plentiful and easy to hide away--alternative a NAS box could be nice in a cupboard somewhere!

In a more urbane society we would have the days or weeks between letters to contemplate the subject.

Here I will restrain myself to this, a point that atheists should be able to embrace by extrapolation:

Faith of a People in spiritual and religious inheritance within physical realm begets a language of Dominion.

This language is known not to be synonymous with the scripture or the rites of the People, as you can burn their scripture and ban their rites, then burn and ban the people, yet the language has not departed.

I propose that the empowerment of human preference to combine and divide with total consequence will be adjudged synonymous with Abomination by a majority of the current religious practitioners.

Fortunately for futurists, the Dalai Lama has already publicly said that this is what they have been waiting for:

"My confidence in venturing into science lies in my basic belief that as in science, so in Buddhism, understanding the nature of reality is pursued by means of critical investigation."

- The Universe In a Single Atom

Sometime within the last two years or so the Dalai Lama was quoted in a U.S. publication confirming that he would accept wetware implant modification if presented in a manner respectful to the continuing quest of humanity.

So there are people that have been preparing themselves for a couple thousand years to join a Mindful trans-humanist future.

Everyone downstream from Melchizedek, though, is in an entirely different boat.

For these people the practice of self-organization is a noun of Dominion.

The act of passing binding judgment is a verb of Dominion.

The conduct of each accepted member of the people constitutes an adjective of Dominion.

Now, via acknowledgment of the blood that binds my own presence here on earth to the keepers of these traditions, I also have to impose on those who do not respect that which is already present, or by advancement threaten to come into needless conflict with the keepers.

As a P.S.:
This is the message from fortune right now -
"In the future, you're going to get computers as prizes in breakfast cereals. You'll throw them out because your house will be littered with them."

This is a massive condemnation of the preparedness of humans to approach the horizon. I believe the good sir is right in his observation, and even own some of his books.

Gay, Straight, and the Reason Why: The Science of Sexual Orientation covers various physical and psychological differences between males and females. Pages 107 to 109 refer to the studies that may be of interest to you.

What I mean is, there's almost no expensive components in this phone. Heck, it doesn't even have a screen. All it needs is the simplest or the cheapest microprocessors that is capable of making a call. Yet, it still costs £60 to £80.

I suspect it's so expensive because it's probably produced in small quantities. On the other hand, older people might just want a simple phone and are prepared to pay a little extra. For most people it's not that much extra, and in the long run this might be a really cheap deal because the buyer probably won't need the newest model in a year or so.

My parents have a Sagem VS-1, which is much simpler than the standard phone nowadays, but still much more complex than this phone. I think there's a huge market for simple phones, even ones without a screen.

I also see no need for these so-called 'web-services'. The entire timetable is already available in a handy 2048 page paperback format that easily fits into a medium-sized rucksack, is perfectly readable by most travellers under 30, and costs only 16 GBP! Buy it today and you'll get a whole month's use from it before it's out of date:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/GB-rail-timetable-summer-10/dp/0117063665

Bargain!

Of course he does. He's the moron who started this whole scare in the first place.

My current book is The Hockey Stick Illusion - Climategate and the corruption of science, thus proving beyond a shadow of doubt that you get off on buying alarmist books and I get off on buying sceptical books.

Not always. Pratchett's Going Postal didn't have much killing (unless you include the indirect deaths attributed to Moist von Lipwig's con artist antics that Mr Pump counts up)

And your argument conveniently fails (yet again) to produce any credible reason as to why scientists would fabricate results

Are you seriously suggesting that results are never fabricated? Or that it's not possible for Scientists to behave in a generally dishonest manner in order to advance their own agendas? Or that scientists do not have political opinions that are in direct conflict with the work they perform?

According to David Goodstein of Caltech, there are motivators for scientists to commit misconduct, which are briefly summarised here.

Career pressure

Science is still a very strongly career-driven discipline. Scientists depend on a good reputation to receive ongoing support and funding; and a good reputation relies largely on the publication of high-profile scientific papers. Hence, there is a strong imperative to "publish or perish". Clearly, this may motivate desperate (or fame-hungry) scientists to fabricate results.

To this category may also be added a paranoia that there are other scientists out there who are close to success in the same experiment, which puts extra pressure on being the first one. It is suggested as a cause of the fraud of Hwang Woo-Suk. A main source of detection comes when other research teams in fact fail or get different results.

Laziness

Even on the rare occasions when scientists do falsify data, they almost never do so with the active intent to introduce false information into the body of scientific knowledge. Rather, they intend to introduce a fact that they believe is true, without going to the trouble and difficulty of actually performing the experiments required.
Easiness of fabrication

In many scientific fields, results are often difficult to reproduce accurately, being obscured by noise, artifacts and other extraneous data. That means that even if a scientist does falsify data, they can expect to get away with it - or at least claim innocence if their results conflict with others in the same field. There are no "scientific police" which are trained to fight scientific crimes, all investigations are made by experts in science but amateurs in dealing with criminals. It is relatively easy to cheat. Finances

There is the additional incentive of money. If one has a promising proposal in an area in which federal or other grant money or funding is available, especially in a new technology in which there is no existing standard to compare it with, the submission of preliminary data cannot be confirmed until further research is done.

Ideology

While perhaps the least common incentive, it is still there. The classic example would be anti-abortionists claiming sonograms show the silent scream of an aborted fetus demonstrates the fetus is alive with feeling, while pro-abortionists would submit demographic studies showing that women who considered abortion but later decided against it are doomed to life of dependency on welfare, lower socioeconomic status, relationship abuse, child abuse, drug abuse, etc.

Scientists are Human and subject to all of the same frailties as the rest of us. If you want the political sphere, as Dwight said, "to be held captive" by them, then in my view that is a very naive viewpoint indeed. There are many cargo-cults in science. Its practitioners are no more suited to directing public policy than anyone else.

Every single licensed software DVD player on the planet requires a DVD region code to be set on the drive. This is hardly something unique to Windows 7, or even Windows.

Bullshit

Glad to see someone else mention this. Everyone knows about his work on fractal geometry, but few people realize that since the 1950s he was interested in the financial markets as well, being one of the first to apply computer technologies to market data. I highly recommend his very readable book, "The (Mis)Behavior of Markets".

I once had a copy of Geoffrey Trease's "The Black Banner Players" pass through my hands - one of the rarest books in the world

This book? The GBP 23.40 book, available at Amazon?

For such a rare book, it's surprisingly cheap.

> and iPad looks like Apple's attempt to do the same to netbooks.

Yeah, good luck with that. A netbook costs half what an iPad does and it's a real computer not a toy for people who never got past finger painting.

Well you could just read about it in the book than the NYT ripped-off for that article.

The Janus Face of Genius

All of them?

Monitors are shrinking vertically BECAUSE they make so many of these panels for TVs. Economies of scale mean it's cheaper to use them in monitors as well, rather than making specialised panels.

Display marketing is a non-stop parade of exaggerations, but outright lying about the resolution of the panel in the specifications? No.

It's not misleading; it's the headline's purpose to get straight to the author's point, and the point is that the unintended consequence of our domestic policies has been to enable authoritarian regimes to enforce policies of their own.

To further refine your point: At the core of this lies the implication that, because of such policies, there is very little to separate us from authoritarian regimes. It's a quantum distance, to be sure, in the sense that although it's very small it would require something fundamental to change. But the distance between where we are today and a digital version of the Alien and Sedition Acts is short enough to make many people uncomfortable.

One point that irks me, though, is the contention that we're only now seeing this link. That, frankly, is bullshit.

The head of GCHQ (Britain's SigInt agency) under Tony Blair wrote an entire book on the topic last year. I myself wrote a series of three columns on the topic, all of them dealing with the diminishing gap between authoritarian policies and those of more democratic nations. Forgive me while I quote at some length...

Nokia-Siemens, defending its role in the creation of a centralised mobile telecommunications network, stated recently that:

In most countries around the world, including all EU member states and the U.S., telecommunications networks are legally required to have the capability for Lawful Intercept and this is also the case in Iran. Lawful Intercept is specified in standards defined by ETSI (European Telecommunications Standards Institute) and the 3GPP (3rd Generation Partnership Project).

Yes, decentralised communications come at a cost. They make surveillance efforts of all kinds more difficult. The two competing questions we need to ask ourselves are:

1. How far are we willing to compromise ourselves in the pursuit of state security?
2. How much are we willing to compromise state surveillance capability in order to protect our own freedom to communicate?

These are knotty issues with complex and often subtle ramifications on society. They demand a level of public engagement on the principle - and more importantly, the practice - of free speech that we haven't seen since the Red Scare of the 1950s.

Technology feels like magic to most of us. We don't - and don't want to - to know how our communications come about. We just want them to happen.

But in order for them to happen, we must inform - and arm - ourselves with the knowledge, understanding, law and policies that make it possible. Facile observations like Manjoo's do little if anything to support such an effort.

The Revolution will indeed be digitised, but only if we want it enough.

Sometimes reality is stranger than fiction: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gillette-Fusion-Manual-Razor-Replacement/dp/B000GE5712

At least in Europe, it's way more usual in south countries, like Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy, etc, especially related to religious themes.

Your Mother's Tongue is a very good book about profanity across European languages.

No they mean this: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Galaxy-Device-Cortex-Android/dp/B0042D75TU/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=computers&qid=1284729976&sr=8-10

If you are the CEO of a company and there is an inner circle of influential employees driving your business and you do not know about them you are not doing your job as CEO.

It is completely reasonable and often a good idea to have an inner circle of high-ability influential employees to drive your business (see, for example, Good to Great, J Collins). It is entirely incompetent of the CEO to not know who they are and not to be using them to build a successful enterprise.

For real food geeks the bible is http://www.amazon.co.uk/McGee-Food-Cooking-Encyclopedia-Kitchen/dp/0340831499/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1283989944&sr=8-1 And they will have their eye on htttp://modernistcuisine.com/

I enjoyed this on the subject: Where Wizards Stay Up Late

let me know when the knetbooks get touch screens and kill the trackpad (usb mice reduce portability). Until then, I'll be over at the tablets, drooling in anticipation. :)

How about now?

I wouldn't at all be surprised if image stabilization becomes cheap enough to put in hand-helds.

Er, it's already in handhelds- even relatively inexpensive ones like this circa-2009 Canon I bought as a present a while back.

In Northern Ireland a language was invented by a group seeking seperateness from the rest of the island.
Ulster Scots
Of course hard working academics had to be found to investigate the language.

cliques is the captcha

c) The student has either an XBox 360 or a PS3.

c) The student has either an XBox 360 or a PS3.

Using JavaScript and HTML for the UIs of real applications remains fundamentally flawed.

Yeah, no one would seriously implement an application with the UI written with HTML, CSS and Javascript... like Firefox itself...

But in all seriousness, would you care to elaborate why Javascript (for the pedants out there, yes, I really mean ECMAScript) is so bad? I think in itself it's a fine language in itself, especially given its original purpose. Sure, it's dynamically and weakly typed, but as long as you're aware of it and its implications it's not really an issue. And being a prototype-based language is a plus in my opinion, class-based OOP wouldn't really offer any advantages in web programming, and you can emulate it if you're so inclined. Having first-class functions and closures is great, and makes up for many of the shortcomings IMHO.

No, the issues with Javascript aren't really issues of the language itself:

• Books/websites about it are in many cases outdated and/or simply wrong. As a simple example, quoting from here: If you assign values to variables that have not yet been declared, the variables will automatically be declared. (that is, omitting the var keyword) ...sure. Although you end up creating, or worse, overwriting, a global variable. But hey, same difference, right? If you really want to know the language, and not just learn some web 2.0 tricks du jour, get this book. You won't regret it.
• DOM implementations have some huge differencies. But DOM is not part of the ECMA spec, and I guess although MS has improved their CSS support, they don't want to make my job too easy. Although it's unlikely you'll notice the differences if you use one of the available frameworks (just do yourself a favor and don't use prototype.js).
• It can be used to do horrible things. And I'm not just talking about malware, Javascript is probably one of the most abused languages, in the sense what kind of websites have been created with it. Thankfully web developers seem lately to be getting the point that "even though you can, doesn't mean you should".

But again, none of those are issues with Javascript, the language, so I'd very much like for you to enlighten me.

I suspect this actually has a lot to do with other kinds of parents. Yes, some of them being the stereotypical "bad" parent, but also including plenty of "pushy" middle-class parents.

I think a lot of parents have problems with the idea that their kids might not actually be as bright or as successful as they themselves have been. Broadly speaking, we tend to be optimists when it comes to our children and to assume that they'll exceed our own achievements. Of course, this doesn't always happen. I'm sure we all know of cases of intelligent, successful parents with at least one child who is either stupid or so badly behaved that he or she is incapable of learning properly.

So when such a child (particularly an only-child, from my experience) starts to fall behind at school, the parents start to cast around for a reason that doesn't involve the kid not being particularly clever. A medical diagnosis is one of the best ways to achieve this, at least in terms of having some way of explaining to friends why little Johnny just came home with D grades again. ADHD is certainly one of the most common, though dyslexia gives it a good run for its money. That isn't to say that neither condition is real (because both are), but it is to say that both conditions are rarer than records indicate.

I remember when I was doing my undergraduate studies, I spent the holidays doing tech-support and admin work in a local doctors' surgery (boring, but fairly well paid as student jobs go). You may have heard of the abbreviations that used to appear on doctors' notes in the UK in the days before the data protection act; abbreviations that conveyed the kind of message that was useful to a doctor meeting the patient for the first time, but too unflattering to state outright. These were real enough and there was one of these that was used to convey "this kid is basically a bit dim, but I've made up some fictitious syndrome to satisfy the parents". I can't for the life of me remember what the abbreviation was - I want to say NSS (non-specific stupidity), but I suspect that's my memory being coloured by this book. Obviously, this was back in the days when most of the population had never used the internet; you wouldn't get away with it these days due to the proliferation of behavioural disorder related websites.

Right, if we're talking about Mr. Bean dolls or Cabbage Patch Kids, let them charge whatever the market will bear.

But the Internet is not simply an amusement. It's basic infrastructure. Like roads and ports. With better and faster Internet access:

1) More people could telecommute easier. Complete virtual offices.
2) Less new roads needed.
3) People can do jobs in rural communities, lessening urban overcrowding
4) Less oil needs to be imported from unstable countries
etc.

The current system of the Internet is like if American Airlines owned its own airports, and then if you were going to fly to Disneyland, AA would request a cut of the profits from Disney!

An electronic alarm which when triggered plays an "amazingly realistic" barking dog sound
http://www.amazon.co.uk/X10-DK10U-Barking-DM10E-External/dp/B000KB2DFO

I was actually considering it.

I have always built gaming desktops in the past, but I don't even have a desk at the moment. I sit on the sofa and either use my PS3 or netbook depending on what I want to do. So a nice big laptop could be good for gaming on the sofa - either that or a desktop + wireless mouse and keyboard hooked up to the TV, but I like the idea of the system being easily portable.

I also doubt I'd want to play many of the latest games when it comes to PC gaming - I'm happy with my PS3 for the latest stuff. When I play a game on PC I spend ages fiddling around with graphics settings, but on the PS3 I just play and don't spend my time overanalysing the graphics. Any PC I get would be more likely used for playing older stuff that isn't available on PS3 (ie Counter-Strike Source) and emulators.

I've been considering this system for the last couple of days - the graphics card is pretty decent for if I do decide to play some modern games, and the 17" form factor should hopefully give it some space to not strangle itself with overheating..

I have decided to avoid Intel for another couple of years or so after it turned out the rumours of their illegal anti-competitive practices were actually true. That really limits my choice in laptops at the moment

Trance is super popular in Europe, have to check there:
http://www.juno.co.uk/trance-music/this-week/all/
http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Dpopular&field-keywords=trance&x=0&y=0

DJs have to buy it somewhere too:
https://www.beatport.com/en-US/html/content/genre/detail/7/trance

I don't know where you go to buy trance videos though. You can do that?

We can expect the first biological package to hit Kilimanjaro soon... right after Iapetus turns black and Hyperion disappears.

(Hint for the terminally unhip.)

Ummm...looks like M$ is trying to destroy/extend/embrace/lockin the ebook market...good luck with that.
Myself, I enjoy reading books on my Nintendo DS ;-)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/100-Classic-Book-Collection-Nintendo/dp/B001LK6XKE

Currently reading "The Rights of Man" by Thomas Paine. Highly recommended.
Sadly, I think most of these rights are now extinct...perhaps another revolution is required? :-)

Yep, use the stylus on the touch screen to turn the pages...:-)

Actually, I use this quite often on my Nintendo DS with a cartridge (yes, I BOUGHT it! ;-))
called, strangely enough: "100 Classic Book Collection":

http://www.amazon.co.uk/100-Classic-Book-Collection-Nintendo/dp/B001LK6XKE

Quite good, contains all the usual classics, great to read while on a train/plane, etc.
(Currently reading "The Rights of Man" by Thomas Paine...although I think most of these rights are now extinct...sigh...guess we need another revolution! ;-))

Yep, use the stylus to turn the page, etc. :-) Sounds like M$ is trying to play catchup/destroy/embrace/extend/lockin the ebook market...

Well if you want a digital stick & buttons like an arcade machine of yore any wired PS3 peripheral will do as it has a USB connector and presents itself as a joystick e.g. I bought one of these the other day and it has a great feel. The only weirdness is that the buttons come up in an unexpected order, so you need to be able to reprogram your emulator to recognise that - MAME certainly supports that though.

If only we could have the moving sidewalks (pavements) as described in the The City And The Stars by Charles C Clarke where the edges of the moving pavement are slower than the centre and to take junctions you just step across the moving sidewalk where it splits in two. Folks transiting through keep to the high speed middle

That is startling!

:-)

Having read through the original article, all of its comments, the linked article on TRIM and performance degradation and the score-over-3 comments herein, I'm surprised that nobody has pointed to this:

http://www.osxbook.com/software/hfsdebug/fragmentation.html

The description of the mechanisms HFS+ uses to avoid fragmentation are reminiscent of TRIM's operation from the drive's perspective and the garbage collection scheme used in Samsung's ARM controller, assuming bit-tech.net's description of these is accurate. It therefore comes as little surprise to read anecdotes from numerous users with both factory and third party ("fast" / "non-Apple firmware") SSDs where little performance drop is seen in OS X, along with a series of tests showing similar results and importantly, so far, no anecdotes or test results showing the opposite.

The absence of claims of degrading SSDs under OS X is a surprise and suggests that there really is a performance advantage with SSDs and HFS+ where TRIM is not in use. Adopting TRIM support might improve matters further, of course.

The bit-tech.net tests did still have numerous annoying omissions; this doesn't invalidate them but it does leave questions hanging. It would have been worthwhile partitioning most of the factory drive for NTFS and re-testing under Boot Camp. It would have been even more worthwhile getting one of the SSDs which showed the worst non-TRIM "dirty" performance under Windows and testing that under Mac OS X; if this wasn't possible on the Air hardware for some reason, they could've done it on the Macbook Pro they used as an HDD baseline in the first series of tests.

BTW, Singh's OS X Internals is a great book if you want to learn more about the innermost parts of the OS.

I don't quite agree with your ranting against CS. For starters, I don't really see you mentioning the fact that CS typically has different tracks.

At my university we had two main tracks, applied computer science and theoretical computer science, with the first being further sub-dived in "computer systems" and "software engineering" and the theoretical track being sub-dived in "algorithmic" and "foundational computer science".

In the bachelor part of the education (3 years), you get a mix of subjects from all tracks. The computer systems track will give you courses like computer architecture ,which allows you to read this particular nice book: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Approach-4th/dp/0123704901 and where you write your own CPU emulator. It will also give you the subject operating systems, which gives you time to read this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Operating-System-Concepts-Abraham-Silberschatz/dp/0470233990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278151357&sr=8-1 or this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Operating-Systems-International-Version/dp/0138134596/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278151357&sr=8-3 and typically gives you assignments where you write some kernel module like an IO scheduler or memory manager.

The software engineering track will give you subjects about requirements engineering, software engineering (obviously) and teach you diverse stuff like UML diagrams, development cycles, design patterns, etc.

The algorithms track on its turn invited me to look at a diverse range of algorithms (obviously again), but also to datastructures (how does something like a hashmap works internally, what kinds of trees do we have, what variations on linked lists are there, etc).

The foundational track then let me look at stuff like turing machines, grammars, finite state machines, theory of computation etc. This is the stuff few 'programmers' would study by themselves if not told they should.

Finally, knowledge of several tracks was combined for the subject compiler construction, where you had to write in C a Pascal to MIPS compiler. For this course you needed to have (C) programming skills, enough skills to understand a language you might not know yet (Pascal), understand how a machine works at the low level (registers, assembly, etc) and have some idea about context free grammars.

Now all of this is in the bachelor, meaning all the subjects are basically introductions to their respective fields. You're not a scientist yet if you have completed them. In the Master phase, you choose a specific track to specialize in but you can still take subjects from the other tracks if you want. In my case I choose the computer systems track and learned some additional stuff about grids, parallel computing, software architecture, etc. Now the thing is, you can't really say that CS educates you to become a scientist or not or that CS skills have no practical value if you don't take into consideration the track chosen by the student. Obviously an applied computer science track has more practical value for the average company than the theoretical track, but it depends on what you want to do really.

Most of all I don't agree with your point that CS somehow tried to cram knowledge in the heads of dumb students. Far from it... the way I experienced CS was a period of my life where I was simply allotted time and opportunity to directly dedicate on bettering myself. Classes weren't there to teach me stuff, but to *support* me in learning. Basically what the CS program does is compiling a lis

I don't quite agree with your ranting against CS. For starters, I don't really see you mentioning the fact that CS typically has different tracks.

At my university we had two main tracks, applied computer science and theoretical computer science, with the first being further sub-dived in "computer systems" and "software engineering" and the theoretical track being sub-dived in "algorithmic" and "foundational computer science".

In the bachelor part of the education (3 years), you get a mix of subjects from all tracks. The computer systems track will give you courses like computer architecture ,which allows you to read this particular nice book: http://www.amazon.com/Computer-Architecture-Quantitative-Approach-4th/dp/0123704901 and where you write your own CPU emulator. It will also give you the subject operating systems, which gives you time to read this book http://www.amazon.co.uk/Operating-System-Concepts-Abraham-Silberschatz/dp/0470233990/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278151357&sr=8-1 or this one http://www.amazon.co.uk/Modern-Operating-Systems-International-Version/dp/0138134596/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1278151357&sr=8-3 and typically gives you assignments where you write some kernel module like an IO scheduler or memory manager.

The software engineering track will give you subjects about requirements engineering, software engineering (obviously) and teach you diverse stuff like UML diagrams, development cycles, design patterns, etc.

The algorithms track on its turn invited me to look at a diverse range of algorithms (obviously again), but also to datastructures (how does something like a hashmap works internally, what kinds of trees do we have, what variations on linked lists are there, etc).

The foundational track then let me look at stuff like turing machines, grammars, finite state machines, theory of computation etc. This is the stuff few 'programmers' would study by themselves if not told they should.

Finally, knowledge of several tracks was combined for the subject compiler construction, where you had to write in C a Pascal to MIPS compiler. For this course you needed to have (C) programming skills, enough skills to understand a language you might not know yet (Pascal), understand how a machine works at the low level (registers, assembly, etc) and have some idea about context free grammars.

Now all of this is in the bachelor, meaning all the subjects are basically introductions to their respective fields. You're not a scientist yet if you have completed them. In the Master phase, you choose a specific track to specialize in but you can still take subjects from the other tracks if you want. In my case I choose the computer systems track and learned some additional stuff about grids, parallel computing, software architecture, etc. Now the thing is, you can't really say that CS educates you to become a scientist or not or that CS skills have no practical value if you don't take into consideration the track chosen by the student. Obviously an applied computer science track has more practical value for the average company than the theoretical track, but it depends on what you want to do really.

Most of all I don't agree with your point that CS somehow tried to cram knowledge in the heads of dumb students. Far from it... the way I experienced CS was a period of my life where I was simply allotted time and opportunity to directly dedicate on bettering myself. Classes weren't there to teach me stuff, but to *support* me in learning. Basically what the CS program does is compiling a lis

Could you post links to your books please?

I guess it's not technically spam if you ask (please feel free to mod this off-topic though - the 'no karma bonus' checkbox seems to have gone, or I'd use that)...

The first one was The Definitive Guide to the Xen Hypervisor. This was a lot of fun to write - I knew absolutely nothing about Xen when I started (and I was doing it as a procrastination activity to avoid writing my thesis). The publisher sent me to Cambridge for a bit to talk to the XenSource guys and to the XenSummit in upstate New York (I got a nice holiday in NYC too, as it turned out to be cheaper to put me in a hotel in Manhattan for a few days than to fly me back the day after the conference ended).

The second was Cocoa Programming Developer's Handbook. A couple of open source projects I work on are Clang and GNUstep, so I know the Cocoa APIs inside out (literally - I've spent almost as much time reimplementing them as using them). I found that really useful when writing it, because I knew the sort of trades involved in implementing a lot of the classes and how that should affect how they are used.

There's also a LiveLessons (video instruction) series accompanying this book. That was a lot less fun. I am really rubbish at talking into a microphone (I don't like telephones or videoconferencing either) and it was a lot of time with me spent recording 'and if you look at uh, that thing, wait, what was I talking about?' then deleting it and recording it again.

The most recent one is not out yet. It's the Objective-C Phrasebook, which was also fun to write. It's the shortest of the three, and will fit in a pocket. The Phrasebook series is intended for experienced programmers moving to a new language / framework. For this one, I was very lucky to get Fred Keifer (the GNUstep AppKit maintainer) to do a technical review - he's both very knowledgable and amazingly pedantic, which is the perfect combination for a technical reviewer. The draft incorporating his comments is much better than the first one. I'm really looking forward to seeing that one published.

I also write regularly on InformIT. I think a couple of my articles there have been Slashdot'd, and OSNews picks them up periodically. I tend to write about whatever technology I've been playing with the most recently on there. I find the best way of testing whether you really understand something is to see if you can explain it to someone else. If I can't explain something clearly in an article, it tells me which bits I don't understand properly.

Could you post links to your books please?

I guess it's not technically spam if you ask (please feel free to mod this off-topic though - the 'no karma bonus' checkbox seems to have gone, or I'd use that)...

The first one was The Definitive Guide to the Xen Hypervisor. This was a lot of fun to write - I knew absolutely nothing about Xen when I started (and I was doing it as a procrastination activity to avoid writing my thesis). The publisher sent me to Cambridge for a bit to talk to the XenSource guys and to the XenSummit in upstate New York (I got a nice holiday in NYC too, as it turned out to be cheaper to put me in a hotel in Manhattan for a few days than to fly me back the day after the conference ended).

The second was Cocoa Programming Developer's Handbook. A couple of open source projects I work on are Clang and GNUstep, so I know the Cocoa APIs inside out (literally - I've spent almost as much time reimplementing them as using them). I found that really useful when writing it, because I knew the sort of trades involved in implementing a lot of the classes and how that should affect how they are used.

There's also a LiveLessons (video instruction) series accompanying this book. That was a lot less fun. I am really rubbish at talking into a microphone (I don't like telephones or videoconferencing either) and it was a lot of time with me spent recording 'and if you look at uh, that thing, wait, what was I talking about?' then deleting it and recording it again.

The most recent one is not out yet. It's the Objective-C Phrasebook, which was also fun to write. It's the shortest of the three, and will fit in a pocket. The Phrasebook series is intended for experienced programmers moving to a new language / framework. For this one, I was very lucky to get Fred Keifer (the GNUstep AppKit maintainer) to do a technical review - he's both very knowledgable and amazingly pedantic, which is the perfect combination for a technical reviewer. The draft incorporating his comments is much better than the first one. I'm really looking forward to seeing that one published.

I also write regularly on InformIT. I think a couple of my articles there have been Slashdot'd, and OSNews picks them up periodically. I tend to write about whatever technology I've been playing with the most recently on there. I find the best way of testing whether you really understand something is to see if you can explain it to someone else. If I can't explain something clearly in an article, it tells me which bits I don't understand properly.

Citation for AT&T mobile phone service being unavailable for most of the world outside the U.S.A.? It would be easier for you to just refute me, if I were wrong. As for Android phones selling well, Amazon.co.uk has the HTC Desire as their #1 (iPhone 3GS #18), Amazon.de has the Samsung Galaxy S as #2, HTC Desire as #7, iPhone nowhere on the list, Amazon.fr has HTC Tattoo #2, iPhone #5, Samsung Galaxy Spica #8, HTC Desire #9. Note that this is for all mobile phones, not only smartphones. Of course, Amazon is probably not the place most people go when shopping for phones, but they are among the few sites that publish best seller lists.

I noticed the Sony Ericsson X10 Mini (followed by the Desire) was the top selling phone at one Norwegian phone carrier, but that one doesn't have the iPhone (although several carriers do have them). Telia.se lists two android phones among their 10 "popular products" (the iPhone 3GS higher on the list).

Only the most delusional Apple fanboys believe Android isn't popular, or that AT&T has anything to do with Apple's sales worldwide.

In other news, Paul McCartney and Will Smith receive a surprising sales boost to their back catalogue.

In other news, Paul McCartney and Will Smith receive a surprising sales boost to their back catalogue.

Admittedly I don't buy many soundtrack CDs but this really isn't the case for standard music albums. Yes, there are cases in point for the quality of remixes and the fact that they're remixed at a louder volume on rereleases, but usually the tracks are the same except for some additional ones tacked on to the end.

As for your other comment, I picked an album at random to compare prices on Amazon:

Blue Oyster Cult "Spectres"

It was the second album I tried admittedly as the first one I tried was The Beatles "Abbey Road" but you cannot download that from Amazon.

However, for the BOC album, I can buy the CD for £4.93 or each of the 14 tracks at about £0.89, with no sign of any "whole album" discount - clearly, in that instance, the CD is much cheaper.

I just finished reading A History of England. If there is really anything which stands out in its history, it is the fact that English rule did not really have much power until the 19th century.