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For home audiophile headphones at an affordable price, I've been pretty happy with my AKG K701. Maybe it's just prejudice, but I'd much rather go with a company that has a reputation for doing one thing (decent headphones) and doing it well, as opposed to Sony whose headphone offerings include plenty of bottom-end Chinese-contracted crap.

The Sony MDR's are highly regarded in pro audio circles. I hate Sony-the-company with a vengeance, but I have a pair of ancient MDR-V900s that are incredible. I've used them for tracking, monitoring, live sound (where they really shine, because they lock out a LOT of external noise), and occasional mix reference. They were recommended to me by a person who tracks some of the biggest Belgian rock bands, and runs live sound at festivals of up to 60.000 people.

Downside: they fit so well around the ear that they aren't very comfortable for long periods of time (hot, sweaty ears), they are a professional, specialist tool. My day-to-day portable music headphones are Pioneer in-ears - where it doesn't really matter all that much because I want to *hear* what's going on around me when I'm hiking/jogging/commuting, so my audiophile experience is severely compromised anyway. When I'm really listening to music, I do it on speakers (Adam A5x).

For home audiophile headphones at an affordable price, I've been pretty happy with my AKG K701. Maybe it's just prejudice, but I'd much rather go with a company that has a reputation for doing one thing (decent headphones) and doing it well, as opposed to Sony whose headphone offerings include plenty of bottom-end Chinese-contracted crap.

However, while reference headphones are good for listening at home in a quiet environment, they aren't so good for walking around, when is when a lot of people consume their music these days. I couldn't walk down the street wearing my AKG K701 headphones, it would look bloody ridiculous, as they are very bulky, and besides they offer no protection against ambient noise. Beats may have comparatively bad sound quality, but they have a form factor that makes them fashionable when you are on the go, and they protect from ambient noise somewhat more. (You can also get those same mobile advantages with better sound quality with some cheaper entries in the AKG and Sennheiser catalogues.)

In fairness to 'Beats Audio', and the good 'Dr.' Dre, the 'Beats' brand is so shamelessly pimped that it even makes it onto products that aren't capable of artificially inflated bass. HP put out a 7 inch tablet allegedly with the sonic goodness of Beats, and something that size wouldn't know what 'bass' is, much less produce any, unless its battery exploded.

I like and started with a SMALL set of Wusthof Trident, and I've added a few that I liked, a 12" chefs knife, and a 7" Santuko (sp?).

I agree however, that it is best usually to buy separate, but a small set is good to start with, get a chefs knife, paring knife, etc.

I"m looking to maybe experiment with a nice longer carver like this: Granton Edge Carving knife, and possibly this nice Chinese vegetable cleaver.

You do often get what you pay for, these tools can last a lifetime, so buy quality..save and buy as you can.

I like my All clad stainless steel pans, I have a few great cast iron piecesâ¦and lately, my most used kitchen toy, is the Vitamix blender. Yes, a ton of money, but worth it I believe.

Just remember, you don't have to buy everything at once, save and get pieces as you can.

I figured out long ago, it was better to buy one pan that was $60 and keep it for life, rather than buy cheap pans that you threw out after a year or so and replaced. That and I don't worry about hot spots either.

As for brewing, cheap way to do brew kettles for 10 gallon all grain batches, get a grinder and cut the tops off of full sized kegs.

It helps if you can get your kegs to use from friends that have a "don't ask, don't tell" type attitude as to how they acquired them.

;)

I like and started with a SMALL set of Wusthof Trident, and I've added a few that I liked, a 12" chefs knife, and a 7" Santuko (sp?).

I agree however, that it is best usually to buy separate, but a small set is good to start with, get a chefs knife, paring knife, etc.

I"m looking to maybe experiment with a nice longer carver like this: Granton Edge Carving knife, and possibly this nice Chinese vegetable cleaver.

You do often get what you pay for, these tools can last a lifetime, so buy quality..save and buy as you can.

I like my All clad stainless steel pans, I have a few great cast iron piecesâ¦and lately, my most used kitchen toy, is the Vitamix blender. Yes, a ton of money, but worth it I believe.

Just remember, you don't have to buy everything at once, save and get pieces as you can.

I figured out long ago, it was better to buy one pan that was $60 and keep it for life, rather than buy cheap pans that you threw out after a year or so and replaced. That and I don't worry about hot spots either.

As for brewing, cheap way to do brew kettles for 10 gallon all grain batches, get a grinder and cut the tops off of full sized kegs.

It helps if you can get your kegs to use from friends that have a "don't ask, don't tell" type attitude as to how they acquired them.

;)

The neuroscientists who have been studying his brain seem fairly convinced he's not making it up. Though calling him a "math genius" doesn't necessarily seem warranted (at least not yet... maybe it's a case where formal study will allow him to apply his abilities more specifically?), I don't think they would diagnose him with what they're calling acquired savant syndrome without some evidence.

Maybe read the book? Even the top negative review seems to give weight to his claim:

http://www.amazon.com/Struck-G...

1. "Occupy Everest"

Oh man...good one.

You should probably slog through this novel too - Flood, by Stephen Baxter, for a glimpse of at least one future.

Cost of BD-R media on Amazon

Verbatim Single Layer BD-R... Cost $0.92 per Disc
Verbatim BD-R Double Layer... Cost $2.57 per Disc.

Your BD-R prices are YEARS out of date!

No, BD-Rs will never cost 10 cents each. Even CD-Rs still cost 17 cents each!

Visual information controlling physical action without conscious thought. Think of it as a higher level of autonomous nervous system.

Peter Watts wrote a very depressing novel involving the idea which explores the possibility that consciousness is not necessary for intelligent life, and, indeed, may ultimately turn out to be an evolutionary dead end...

"Only 19 left in stock."

Or could it be because they are really popular. Care for a Moto G for even less?

How have your experiences with LSD affected your later work? (For those unaware, Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters went around turning people onto the substance, as documented in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test ). Many participants in the counterculture speak of having new spiritual perspectives after taking LSD, but has it given you any special insights into working with new computer technology?

Nexus 5 unlocked, $393

And the no-profit price is also the reason why Google actually only makes a few of them, officially to sell them to developers. "Only 19 left in stock."

you will spend $0 and while some of the VHS players you get won't be work well, you are bound to get a decent one. A VHS head cleaner tape is not a bad idea though. http://www.amazon.com/CleanDr-...

Don't Amazon Lockers require photo id?

No. I wish they had them where I live. Privacy, and no human interaction required.

4K just isn't here yet in monitors.

Uhhhh....really? Then please explain this:

http://www.amazon.com/s/field-...

I've only converted home tapes ;)

Homemade VHS quality is not great to begin with, I used a new (old but in the box) VCR and an EasyCap (a clone i think). It worked fine. There was no noticeable degradation of quality. The mpeg was about 20GB for a two hour tape. The software i used was Virtual VCR

To be honest, i think a lot of these best practices are voodoo (it entirely depends on how and when it was recorded), just to jack up the price. As for not wanting to risk a tape on an old player, just test it out on a junk tape first, if it works 10 times in a row, chances are it'll work the 11th time.

I've done some VCR conversion and the main problem with basic came-with-the-computer video cards is that they'll stop recording at the first big glitch in the analog video signal being fed to them, and most home recorded video tapes will have more than a few. Very frustrating if say, you have a bunch of mystery 6-hour tapes that you just want to dump onto your hard drive while at work, and then pan the resulting file for gold at your leisure.

I bought a converter like this one and it works great, converting the entire output to DV, glitches and all. Your PC will need DV / Firewire input to use it, and Firewire cards are available cheap. The added advantage is that they have unadvertised Macrovision bypass features (google the make/model and 'macrovision' for more info.)

.

Nexus 5 unlocked, $393

2 head VCRs are SP only. 4 head VCRs add two heads for EP. If all of your content is SP then a 2 head VCR should suffice. Depending upon the quality of the audio you want to present you might consider either stereo or Hi-Fi. Whatever VCR you choose should have manual tracking adjustment.

For capturing content on a Windows box I cannot recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 highly enough. That capture card should also be compatible with MythTV.

The output from my current consumer grade 4 head Panasonic Omnivision (mono audio) VCR was friggin amazing. My wife had a selection of out of print VHS tapes and I captured them with that card. She was missing one tape and while searching for it I found a three pack of DVDs, one of which matched what she was missing and two of which matched what she had. I had to look at the output frame by frame to see if there was any perceptible difference between the Hauppauge output and the DVD. There was none.

Even with normal recordings from home there can be issues with the picture quality. If you have problems with the video becoming lighter and darker that my not be a copy protection issue (obviously as you are working with home movies). Consider purchasing a Digital video stabilizer. The guys at the electronics repair shop nearby recommend ones by MCM Electronics to help mitigate transfer issues.

Tossing your MPEG-2 output from the Hauppauge through the NLE of your choice might help with noise reduction (I use NeatVideo> and color skew. YMMV.

2 head VCRs are SP only. 4 head VCRs add two heads for EP. If all of your content is SP then a 2 head VCR should suffice. Depending upon the quality of the audio you want to present you might consider either stereo or Hi-Fi. Whatever VCR you choose should have manual tracking adjustment.

For capturing content on a Windows box I cannot recommend the Hauppauge WinTV-HVR-2250 highly enough. That capture card should also be compatible with MythTV.

The output from my current consumer grade 4 head Panasonic Omnivision (mono audio) VCR was friggin amazing. My wife had a selection of out of print VHS tapes and I captured them with that card. She was missing one tape and while searching for it I found a three pack of DVDs, one of which matched what she was missing and two of which matched what she had. I had to look at the output frame by frame to see if there was any perceptible difference between the Hauppauge output and the DVD. There was none.

Even with normal recordings from home there can be issues with the picture quality. If you have problems with the video becoming lighter and darker that my not be a copy protection issue (obviously as you are working with home movies). Consider purchasing a Digital video stabilizer. The guys at the electronics repair shop nearby recommend ones by MCM Electronics to help mitigate transfer issues.

Tossing your MPEG-2 output from the Hauppauge through the NLE of your choice might help with noise reduction (I use NeatVideo> and color skew. YMMV.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ... "Toshiba DVR620 DVD/VHS Recorder" Highly recommend it. Read reviews and follow fellow buyers recommendations and its fantastic. Non-tech users can be taught to use it as well.

The timing of this Slashdot article, and your post, is almost uncanny. Why?

I began reading Steve Jobs, the biography written by Walter Isaacson, earlier this week. I haven't finished it yet, but I just got to the part where Steve went off and created NeXT, which leads me to two points (one for you, and one for the overall irony of the Slashdot article / NYT article).

For you: the aforementioned book repeatedly, and very sternly, drives home the point that Steve was absolutely narcissistic and unscrupulous. It does not "dance around" this point -- in fact, it gets driven into your face more and more regularly as the book progresses forward. This is because Steve's personality, which is repeatedly labelled "mercurial" (with Jobs even making a tongue-in-cheek joke about it during the NeXT launch), apparently grew more and more volatile over time. The most common trend repeated was how he'd refer to something as "total shit" one day, and then the following day would say it was "the best idea ever". I won't go into the details of why (read the book if you want some insight, and no I'm not a shill), but Steve possessed what the book (and others) called a "reality distortion field" -- where his passion and intensity as a person drove people to near insanity (and to tears many times over, including John Sculley on multiple occasions), but also drove innovation, all while (in his own mind) convincing himself he could mould everything to his desire (and in some cases, yes, believed the literal law did not apply to him). The book repeats this mantra of operation over and over, rather than just mentioning it once in passing -- because it's a personality trait of Jobs that impacted (let's face it) the entire world, to some degree.

For others: there is hilarity and thick irony in Jobs threatening to sue a company over "poaching employees from Apple", because he did exactly that when he started NeXT. Referring to his aforementioned biography, specifically chapter 18 ("NeXT: Prometheus Unbound"), this chapter brings to light when Jobs was ousted from Apple, more or less as retaliation, Jobs took with him 5 employees from Apple (Bud Tribble, Rich Page, George Crow, Susan Barnes, and Dan'l Lewin) who he repeatedly (and in writing nonetheless, when he submit his own resignation and gave it to Mike Markkula dated September 17th, 1985) labelled as "low-key people" (meaning unimportant) except all had been with Apple for a very long time and were critical (Markkula was quoted as saying "top executives"). But Jobs never saw it as poaching/stealing because these employees were "already disgruntled" -- in effect he talked them into "seeing the light of leaving Apple", and therefore in his mind they chose to leave on their own recognizance. Apple sued Jobs as a result (and other reasons), quoting the lawsuit: "Jobs ... (c) secretly lured away key employees of Apple". And that's just the NeXT aspect; there's the whole Macintosh vs. Lisa ordeal as well, which one might refer to as an "internal poaching" of sorts.

Anyway, I guess my point (back to you) is: if there's a book to read about Jobs that was balanced (as balanced as it can get, I supposed), it'd be the one I've mentioned. So far I've found it an intriguing, fascinating, uncomfortable, and bizarre read, which I think sums up Steve pretty well. And that's coming from someone who's somewhat biased: I'm an old Apple II nut and a huge fan of Wozniak (personally and professionally), but as a kid with an Apple II had no idea what was going on within Apple (as a company); I had no idea it was so chaotic.

Food for thought.

By quoting Kubrick's film (Heywood Floyd travels in a Pan-Am spaceflight in 2001: A Space Odyssey ), the summary suggests that Boeing is preparing to send commercial travellers to space stations or the moon. In that case, unveiling a concept would just be meaningless fluff PR, like those architecture firms that show off plans for mile-high arcologies but have no initiative to actually build them. For the time being, the only prospects for human commercial spaceflight is sending people up to enjoy a few minutes of weightlessness, not even real orbit.

For better privacy there is a search engine app, Search GUI. http://www.searchgui.com/ The mobile app links are: iPhone/iPad: https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap... Android: https://play.google.com/store/... Amazon Fire: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ... Search engines like Search GUI can get a fair chance to compete with Google. Search GUI does not track any user information at all. The mobile apps don't even have ads. Has an interface built specifically for touch and mobiles/tablets.

There are altenate search engines built specifically for mobile. One example is: Search GUI: http://www.searchgui.com/ The mobile apps for Search GUI: https://itunes.apple.com/us/ap... https://play.google.com/store/... http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ... Search GUI also have better privacy in that they don't track any user information unlike Google/Microsoft.

C++: The only language where exception handling interacts with the rest of the system in such a non-trivial way that you need an entire book to explain it correctly.

... one issue based bullshit is not going to stop this. We had SOPA and CISPA and they are preparing CISPA round 3.

The internet is something 'everyone can agree on' but unfortunately most people trying to 'protect the internet' are too historically and politically illiterate to really do so. None of you who are hardcore capitalists are "protectors" of the internet, in fact why SOPA and TPP are trying to lock it down is BECAUSE they fear the masses rising up against corporate (capitalist) powers. That's why we got governments and corporations going gangusters on surveillance worldwide.

If you doubt this check the spyfiles

https://wikileaks.org/the-spyf...

Corporate power is global, and resistance to it cannot be restricted by national boundaries. Corporations have no regard for nation-states. They assert their power to exploit the land and the people everywhere. They play worker off of worker and nation off of nation. They control the political elites in Ottawa as they do in London, Paris and Washington.

Consider the G20 Protests in Toronto

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/...

This is just more part and parcel of state suppression of dissent against corporate interests. They're worried that the more people are going to wake up and corporate centers like the US and canada may be among those who also awaken. See this vid with Zbigniew Brzezinski, former United States National Security Advisor.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Look at the following graphs:

http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...
http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesa...

And then...

WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap
http://www.businessinsider.com...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Free markets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...

"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society.

In the tradition of Christopher Lasch’s The Culture of Narcissism and Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death, Pulitzer Prize-winner Chris Hedges navigates this culture—attending WWF contests, the Adult Video News Awards in Las Vegas, and Ivy League graduation ceremonies—to expose an age of terrifying decline and heightened self-delusion."

And how do they propose determining the price for a projector, when a single unit can readily have a screen size ranging from 30 inches to 300 inches?

Easy: they charge the maximum the device is capable of (in this case, 300 inches).

Well, I don't know about you, but I didn't buy a projector because it could project a maximum size of 300 inches... I bought it because it was far cheaper than practically every other remotely comparable large-form-factor television, even when projecting at "only" 80 inches, as I am. Thus, when the price of the hardware is factored into the equation, the amount of dough that you can expect to squeeze out of your viewing audience is dramatically impacted.

Which is to say: if Dreamworks actually goes down this path, then they had better find a way to convince every other studio to follow them... otherwise, I'll just stop watching Dreamworks films entirely in favor of their competition. (Pixar puts out some pretty darned good stuff, after all.)

And how do they propose determining the price for a projector, when a single unit can readily have a screen size ranging from 30 inches to 300 inches?

Easy: they charge the maximum the device is capable of (in this case, 300 inches).

And how do they propose determining the price for a projector, when a single unit can readily have a screen size ranging from 30 inches to 300 inches?

At least the bad parts that lead to massive injustices in those cultures, yeah.

A book that does a great job discussing the topic of dehumanization.

Read George Lakoff - Don't think of an elephant and you may understand how this works.

Read George Lakoff - Don't think of an elephant about the strict father principle, and you may begin to understand how this works...

I bought a Kindle Paperwhite not too long ago and while I am happy with the technology and have become a voracious reader for the first time in years, the platform obviously is ultimately meant to allow Amazon to sell you e-books to read on it, sell advertising to third parties, and gather data on what you are reading and how both for itself and for third parties.

However, while they can probably depend on a majority of their customers to be sheep, they make it surprisingly easy to avoid all that. The Kindle is jailbreakable, so if you get the slightly cheaper version that shows advertising, you can disable that. You are not dependent on Amazon, but can put content from anywhere on it (such as pirate ebook sites). Keeping the Kindle in Airplane mode all the time means it can't communicate over wifi on how you are using the device, and you don't lose anything really if you are getting your ebooks from places other than Amazon, because the built-in web browser is crap for anything anyway.

So perhaps Amazon is growing into an all-consuming monster of Big Data and advertising, but I hope they continue to make it easy for us nerds to opt out.

I highly recommend reading Flash Boys , mentioned in the Slashdot summary here. While advocates of HFT have always claimed that it provides liquidity, and it did fulfill that role usefully for a long time, we've passed a point where the gains of liquidity are overcome by the overall detriment to the economy: transactions that would have occurred anyway are penalized with what is essentially an extra tax because they came a few seconds later, and people with arcane and specialized equipment jumped the gun.

lol. He spent the last several years of his life working on that. Notable quote from a book he edited, (paraphrase) "the only way to be sure there are no bugs in a program is to never find any, no matter how much time you spend testing."

You didn't understand what Dijkstra means by "Good programming." He meant zero defect. He also created a system for teaching how to do it.

I was interested in the prequels and seeing the Republic in its former glory, but more SW movies feels like a comic movie sequel where they wheel out another villain.

Timothy Zahn's Thrawn trilogy starting with Heir to the Empire , the first major post-Return of the Jedi book in the Extended Universe, was "wheeling out another villain". However, it was believable in the context of the overthrow of the Empire, since history has often shown generals refusing to accept the downfall of their employer and fighting on for the old cause.

I'm not worried about wheeling out another villain per se, but rather it being done clumsily and with an eye mainly to tie-in marketing.

Read this book Sudo Mastery And wean your new hire on to the access he or she needs while weaning yourself off. The information in this book also comes in handy when it comes to pointing fingers when something administrative goes very wrong. It's only 144 pages, but worth every page.

This is assuming you run *nix based systems, you did not specify your infrastructure.

There is an excellent book about this: http://www.amazon.com/Salt-Sug...

The modern processed food industry, OK the American processed food industry, works hard to make processed foods appetizing by tweaking formulations and experimenting with salt/sugar/fat ratios.

I think the book does a balanced job of presenting the info without blaming the industry (too much). They do make the point the food industry targets convenience and cost, which consumers respond to. It isn't all the food companies fault that their customer base is kinda lazy.

The food industry has tried a few times to make their stuff healthier by reducing additive amounts, trying new tech - one very interesting thing for example is trying to use a different salt crystal, one ground into a different shape that absorbs quicker. It gives the same "pop" with less, due to its different shape. That's pretty cool!

This is a nice book

http://www.amazon.com/The-Engi...

Children are growing up with tablets now. By the time they get to school they will have become so used to simplistic touchscreen interfaces that teachers might find it challenging to turn their minds to the internals of the computers they use. Philip J. Guo's The Two Cultures of Computing essay (posted to Reddit under the amusing title "How Ya Gonna Get 'Em Down on UNIX After They've Seen Spotify?") is obviously the result of clumsy and unprepared teachers, but even better-trained educators might face the same challenge.

I wonder if teaching CS basics might not be better with pen-and-paper exercises in the beginning, where students are less likely to compare what they are doing to the interfaces they are used to. I loved working with Friedman's The Little Schemer , which I discovered well into adulthood, that teaches one the Lisp philosophy of recursion without every needing to sit in front of a computer. Perhaps children would like such an approach as well, and then by the time you present them with e.g. an actual command line they've already internalized that kind of thinking.

I mean, really, can they make it so delicious that you WANT to eat it? I seriously doubt it.

I used to eat this type of candy when I was a kid. The wrapper was not so delicious, but it was mildly sweet and added a slight "gummy" candy experience when you got saliva over it, so most kids actually WANTED to eat it (not that it was the most sanitary thing to do).

FWIW, it was not unlike the edible rice paper that many folks use to keep macaroons from sticking to a baking sheet or that cake decorators use in conjunction with printers for edible paper...

Of course rice paper isn't remotely water proof, but now days industrial food chemistry technology is much more advanced and capable of simulating many tasty treats, so at least the taste aspect is certainly within the realm of possibility...

No prob. Post again if you need any help. I get e-mails for replies. If you can't find your old cube, I recommend this one: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...

I'm a mild enthusiast myself (fastest is about a minute). I keep one at my desk. I'm a big fan of the stickerless design and it's very slick out of the box. A little silicone oil lubricant (RC shock oil, 30wt) will make it REAL fast.

Because wanting equal opportunity for the only jobs worth a damn is somehow wanting an advantage?

No. That isn't what I was saying and you damned well know it.

Wanting only the positives, while ignoring or rejecting the negatives, is not "seeking equality". It is looking for advantage. If you want equality, you have to accept the negatives along with that better paycheck.

I highly recommend the book "Men On Strike" by Helen Smith, PhD. (Available from Amazon, ironically enough.) It is full of insights regarding why the modern "feminism" movement has been failing. Hint, sisters: it ain't all their fault.

"FTFY. If you're making this about (R) vs (D), you're part of the problem."

If you're making this about your libertarian or other capitalist fantasies you are part of the problem.

War is a racket

http://www.amazon.com/War-Rack...

WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap

http://www.businessinsider.com...

On elites

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Free markets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...

"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society."

"FTFY. If you're making this about (R) vs (D), you're part of the problem."

If you're making this about your libertarian or other capitalist fantasies you are part of the problem.

War is a racket

http://www.amazon.com/War-Rack...

WIKILEAKS: U.S. Fought To Lower Minimum Wage In Haiti So Hanes And Levis Would Stay Cheap

http://www.businessinsider.com...

On elites

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Free markets?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

http://www.amazon.com/Empire-I...

"We now live in two Americas. One—now the minority—functions in a print-based, literate world that can cope with complexity and can separate illusion from truth. The other—the majority—is retreating from a reality-based world into one of false certainty and magic. To this majority—which crosses social class lines, though the poor are overwhelmingly affected—presidential debate and political rhetoric is pitched at a sixth-grade reading level. In this “other America,” serious film and theater, as well as newspapers and books, are being pushed to the margins of society."

I'm afraid I don't see how 3D printing brings any benefit here - a laser cutter or CNC machine fed with durable, stabilized sheets of plastic would be faster and produce *far* more durable pages.

Of course you're right. Etching by laser on solid sheets of plastic or slow-corrosion metal is the thing. Just desperately trying to come up with ways in which 3D printing might be useful to salvage the time I've spent reading about it. Never mind all the time others have spent trying to make it work.

If you want to place a barrier between knowledge levels, call them 'magnification-stops' in your approach where certain technology and knowledge obtained by the years like 1700, 1800, 1900, 1950, 2000 is encoded with successive difficulty --- then if history is any clue you're best bet is to change medium and method at each stop.

Optics for example. The advancement from a lens allowing the eye to discern Mars clearly to one able to construct a great microscope may be an accident of local geology, quartz and silica, or a single individual's experiments in glass manufacture. There could even be an alternate history where mercury in spinning dishes is optics. You have a clean progression to 100x magnification with a single stage, then it takes compound lenses and take it to 1000x You can push it a little further by using filters to reduce the color component, but you hit the wall of visible light.

Now to break that Reading Rainbow 800-1000x barrier we're in the realm of coherent photons using lasers to 'read' (project and reflect through optics) or scatter (holography). And further on into using streams of electrons where the only usable means optick is electromagnetism shaped by precisely wound coils and some gruesome electronics.

Could there be a single object that is an Easy Reader through all possible optical resolutions, but also incorporates successive levels, the greatest of which is only readable with electrons? That is a challenge but do-able since you can read through things with electrons. The visible stages act as protection for this fragile inner layer.

Perhaps for the intermediate stages requiring laser technology the colorful yet color-challenged field of 2 dimensional holography might offer a solution... something that resembles Asimov's Prime Radiant without the computey stuff, where a coherent beam of laser light will scatter off of foil and project material onto the wall, and precise movement of the object or the beam will 'scroll'.

This being Slashdot, I have to suggest that at some point the Thing will might digital, where we apply leverage to Hamming and Huffman for encoding and error correction... BUT now the content is sub-coded in a series of arbitrary choices that represent our evolution of information technology... and not necessarily anyone else's. To one familiar with the optick perusal of language-symbols, going digital, which we've done gradually -- to those who have only our Prime Radiant as a guide -- it would be a wall of incomprehensibility that would take time to crack.

I just had this idea that at some low resolution text might offer a delicious recipe for Taco Sauce, and a tiny dollop of this concoction makes its way into a tiny space between the letters... completely obliterating the 13th century.

Completely losing the 13th century has happened before. The circumstances surrounding its disappearance (but not its present whereabouts) can be seen here in the brief clip from the 1975 movie "R

I'm not missing that point at all. The use cases for Firewire and USB overlapped heavily and USB was both cheaper (it's backers charged more to license and the tech was more costly too) and could be used with more devices that people actually had. Firewire was arguably better for a lot of purposes but USB was good enough for most of those purposes.

No again, FireWire was never intended to connect any and all peripherals. USB was limited to very low bandwidth connections until USB 2. Even after USB2 came out that did not change the original purpose of FireWire. USB2 became an alternative for occasional transfers; however, if you were transferring video, it sucked.

Thunderbolt probably has a better shot than Firewire did to stand apart but so far where Thunderbolt and USB overlap, USB is winning easily. Kind of a pity since Thunderbolt is the design I actually prefer for a lot of uses. I like the connector better too.

The very large disconnect that seem to be experiencing is that this is some sort of contest where one technology must lose and the other must win. Both exist for different purposes and they overlap. Intel supports both. Apple supports both (and still supports older FireWire devices).

Users don't care. In fact most of them have never even heard of PCIe. Only engineers give a shit about that. Nobody is asking the question "how can I bridge PCIe"? They are asking how they can connect their hard drive or their monitor or their printer. Users only care that it works, not how efficiently. You are 100% correct that Thunderbolt is a better technical solution but it is not a better economic solution. Better economic solutions will beat better technical solutions in 10 out of 10 cases.

I'm not explaining to users; I'm trying to explain it to you. For a consumer I would say that TB provides them the ability to handle all of their bandwidth in one cable (like as a laptop dock).

No, not USB pass through. USB driven monitors. Does not even require a separate power cable and works fine with USB 2.0. There are other versions besides. They aren't widely used but with USB 3.1 I fully expect to see more devices like it.

Again, no one I know has one so not everyone has a USB monitor. Your claim is anecdotal.

I'm not missing the point at all. They won't know and won't care that USB is a sub-optimal choice. Yes, USB is inferior for that purpose but if it gets their work done with a minimum of fuss no one will care. The pros will use specialty gear because they know and have a reason to care. Most others won't. Bear in mind that I run a company that makes specialty wire cables/harnesses so I deal with pros and engineers on this stuff daily.

You just contradicted yourself. First you said they don't care. And then you said that they will use specialty gear because they care.

You can't figure that out? I do have one computer with Thunderbolt but the port sits unused because I have nothing that needs it. My monitor is driven by HDMI and I'd have to get an adapter to use the Thunderbolt port. None of my storage, printers, mice, keyboards, or ethernet needs Thunderbolt. I would have to spend money to integrate Thunderbolt to get right back to exactly where I am right now without it.

What kind of faulty logic is this? You chose not to use the TB port and not to spend any money to use it. By that logic if you don't buy any USB3 devices, it's costing you more money than USB2.

Furthermore the chipsets and other gear necessary to run Thunderbolt are more expensive than those for USB.

Which you haven't bought yet so logically it isn't costing you more money yet.

(Have you priced Thunderbolt adapters and cable

I cannot claim to be much of a Star Wars fanatic and haven't read a Star Wars book in years, but I remember reading Timothy Zahn's Heir to the Empire along with the rest of the Thrawn Trilogy as a child and wishing that someday that would be adapted for the big screen as future episodes of the film series. Judging from its critical acclaim, I imagine many had the same wish. Strange that Disney would leave that all behind when its storywriting work was already done for it.

Perhaps not enough opportunities for tie-in marketing in existing plot material?