Slashdot Mirror

basically... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1AZQ4UV06BPYP/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B004DGJR1U&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=1036592&store=apparel
every... http://www.amazon.com/review/R4Q3F1BHEF0SY/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00BW6KCTU&nodeID=541966&store=pc
single... http://www.amazon.com/review/R29XIUFKFQU7GU/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0056CDWO8&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
product... http://www.amazon.com/review/R3I4QW83V6IDOF/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1426303947&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
has... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DWPSCYNW2H5Z/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B008GVM9K4&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
reviews... http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MLO42ERB2S0U/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B002MSN3QQ&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
that... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1B7351D396PEW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B000UZQK8Q&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
are... http://www.amazon.com/review/RRMNZB68Q2IZE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0032BWTSU&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
suspect... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1L2F14KVVLR4E/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B004JO1YQC&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=

(You really *HAVE* to read the last one!)

basically... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1AZQ4UV06BPYP/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B004DGJR1U&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=1036592&store=apparel
every... http://www.amazon.com/review/R4Q3F1BHEF0SY/ref=cm_cr_dp_title?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B00BW6KCTU&nodeID=541966&store=pc
single... http://www.amazon.com/review/R29XIUFKFQU7GU/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0056CDWO8&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
product... http://www.amazon.com/review/R3I4QW83V6IDOF/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=1426303947&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
has... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1DWPSCYNW2H5Z/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B008GVM9K4&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
reviews... http://www.amazon.com/review/R3MLO42ERB2S0U/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B002MSN3QQ&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
that... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1B7351D396PEW/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B000UZQK8Q&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
are... http://www.amazon.com/review/RRMNZB68Q2IZE/ref=cm_cr_pr_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B0032BWTSU&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=
suspect... http://www.amazon.com/review/R1L2F14KVVLR4E/ref=cm_cr_rdp_perm?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B004JO1YQC&linkCode=&nodeID=&tag=

(You really *HAVE* to read the last one!)

Off the top of my head, the sort of thing you don't get with Oracle:
select * from table limit 10 offset 20;
source code
free

I recently benchmarked postgres 9.2.4 on a Dell PowerEdge at Rackspace with a four disk raid 10, a two disk raid 1 for the WAL logs, and 48GB of RAM. It's good up to around 14000 transactions per second until you exceed what fits into RAM. Then it drops off to around 2000. That was the select benchmark with no writes involved.

grahamsaa, if you really want to know what postgres can do, I suggest you install it and run some benchmarks to find out for yourself. You can find all the info you need to do this in Postgresql 9.0 High Performance It won't cost you anything to do this and if you decide it can't handle your workload, then you can always go purchase Oracle.

The real hypocricy is US looking down on China for this, while being the biggest contributor to that pollution.

I like the idea Ross Jackson has suggested in Occupy World Street that we should measure country's pollution not by the amount directly produced, but by the amount coused by *consumption*. I.e. if you live in US and have a phone made in Chine, the pollution caused by manufacturing that phone should count against US, not China.

My ZAGGkeys FLEX keyboard works fine with my Nexus 7 tablet. I've used it to post to Slashdot (make sure to turn off "mobile version") and forums.nesdev.com, for example. Or if you have an Android device and a USB OTG cable, you can use any existing USB keyboard.

My ZAGGkeys FLEX keyboard works fine with my Nexus 7 tablet. I've used it to post to Slashdot (make sure to turn off "mobile version") and forums.nesdev.com, for example. Or if you have an Android device and a USB OTG cable, you can use any existing USB keyboard.

Sigh, let old Hairy enlighten you because you be buying some BULLSHIT friend.

First of all the Jag is NOT an Octocore, not unless you consider a P4 with HT to be a dual core because that is ALL the Jag is, its a quad with hardware HT baked in. Also its NOT a gaming chip, look up "AMD Bobcat" and you'll see its a NETBOOK chip design primarily for streaming media NOT gaming. I have an E350 Bobcat in my netbook and its nice, but even a first gen Athlon64 X2 will curbstomp it. Both MSFT and Sony are looking at all that netflix money and the Jag (Aka Bobcat 3.0) sucks a lot less power than a full chip...but its also a LOT weaker. Look up the Bobcat benches, you'll see that graphics wise its better than Intel but CPU wise a 1.1GHz Celeron dual will beat it.

Second dude? You be talking to somebody who makes his living doing this and its NOT the case that gets Wifey poo on board, its the controller. I have YET to see a woman do anything but smile like you just gave her a box of chocolates when i slap one of these babies in her hand...why? Because most women can text their asses off and that remote fits their smaller hands sooooo good. You slap that bad boy in her hand and pop up her FB and watch how quickly she is ignoring your ass to play her match 3 games. Then when you show her how easy it is to rip all those kid's movies so no more little Billy crying that his Barney got scratched and won't play, and even let her rip her movies and have them all sorted by rating,even password protected if she wants? Cha ching! Dude seriously, easy fucking sale,REAL easy sale.

Third if BPM crashed? 5 will get you 10 it was NOT the fault of BPM but of Win 8, which is why i don't give my customers that POS. do you have ANY idea how many times I've been paid to do the "refresh my PC" bit until folks get fed up and have me install Win 7? Too damned many times. I am thoroughly convinced there is a serious corruption bug in win 8 and that refresh was put in there because they couldn't fix the bullshit before Ballmer shit it out. Now this is just a guess, not gonna fiddle with that hunk of feces long enough to do an in depth troubleshooting on it but if I had to guess its all that mobile and tweeting twits for shits that is causing the problems as I have noticed those that let me toss metro for something like Start 8 seem to have less issues, still not as stable as Win 7 which knock on wood has been the most solid OS I've ever seen. Try start 8 with the Auntie and see if that helps but you may have to get her Win 7 for best results.

Finally what answer should you give? Do you want to be gangfucked without lube? Buy the console. If you want to 1.- Have total control over your hardware, 2.- Have insanely low prices thanks to competition, 3.- have the choice to have as little or as much DRM as you please, 4.- have a system that will outlast ANY console when it comes to useful life, like how my 7 year old former gaming PC is now my GF's surfing and music box?5.- Want to have MP that lasts more than a few months? Then buy the PC, it'll pay for itself in less than a year with all the money you save.

Just look at the humble bundles, steam has constant sales such as L4D 2 right now is a whole $5, and that isn't even counting the literally thousands of FTP games. I have been selling HTPCs left and right and NOT ONE has wanted to go back to console, NOT ONE. The games are cheaper, the systems can do more (no shitty 500GB HDD that you can't change without paying out the ass thanks to DRM, you can pick up a couple of TB for less than $85 if you watch the sales) so you can have it play games AND be a Music Jukebox AND a Video tank AND even an office box if the one in the den is tied up AND an entertainment center...the options are frankly unlimited man, its just a better deal all around. hell want a controller? You can use anything from an Atari 260

I guess I'm going to have to keep posting this every couple of months until you brilliant urbanists catch up with the early nineteenth century on the economics of cities.

There's a book - a dry book, I'll grant, but a damned fine one - called Nature's Metropolis: Chicago and the Great West. Its author, William Cronon, talks in an early chapter about the work of Johann Heinrich von Thünen. von Thünen recognized that cities function as concentrators of wealth that is fundamentally generated in their hinterlands, allowing specialists to turn the productive capacity of the land - food, energy, and raw materials - into everything from laws to technology. The wealth of a city is directly dependent on the productivity of its economic watershed. Chicago became an economic powerhouse because it was able to tap its hinterland more productively than other places - the prairie made building railroads less difficult and hence less expensive, while the availability of cheap water transport that allowed inexpensive trade via the Erie Canal allowed Chicago to tap into the markets of New York (and New York to tap into the productivity of the American Midwest - no small contribution to its rise as the preeminent city of the East Coast). Rail allowed transport of good across the gentle hill separating the Great Lakes and the Mississippi near Chicago. And so forth

In short, your cities depend on cheap West Virginia coal and Pennsylvania gas to power and heat themselves, dams in the Sierras to have enough water to drink, and farmers everywhere to be able to feed and clothe yourselves. Those roads you build at taxpayer expense in rural areas are convenient for the locals, it's true, but it's the city that primarily enjoys the benefit of decreased transport costs for its raw materials. It's hardly unusual for poor people to object to high taxes, especially when they understand that even taxes that are nominally spent on them - for roads, e.g. - will really end up in the pockets of a city guy who's friends with the politicians spending the money.

When I search for samsung galaxy s4 on amazon I get 3 offers:
$613.49
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-I9505-white-16GB/dp/B00BTCE734/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

$605
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i337-GALAXY-Phone-16GB/dp/B00CRO6QFA/ref=sr_1_2?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-2&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

$619
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i337-GALAXY-Phone-16GB/dp/B00CRNTDII/ref=sr_1_3?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

Full price on T-mobile with no contract is $650, same for Google Play.

I mean, there's some dumbass trying to sell one for $1300, but that's just wishful thinking, not a market price. $650 is the standard price, anything below is a discount, anything above is scalping.

When I search for samsung galaxy s4 on amazon I get 3 offers:
$613.49
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-I9505-white-16GB/dp/B00BTCE734/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

$605
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i337-GALAXY-Phone-16GB/dp/B00CRO6QFA/ref=sr_1_2?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-2&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

$619
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i337-GALAXY-Phone-16GB/dp/B00CRNTDII/ref=sr_1_3?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

Full price on T-mobile with no contract is $650, same for Google Play.

I mean, there's some dumbass trying to sell one for $1300, but that's just wishful thinking, not a market price. $650 is the standard price, anything below is a discount, anything above is scalping.

When I search for samsung galaxy s4 on amazon I get 3 offers:
$613.49
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-I9505-white-16GB/dp/B00BTCE734/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-1&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

$605
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i337-GALAXY-Phone-16GB/dp/B00CRO6QFA/ref=sr_1_2?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-2&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

$619
http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-i337-GALAXY-Phone-16GB/dp/B00CRNTDII/ref=sr_1_3?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1373549604&sr=1-3&keywords=samsung+galaxy+s4

Full price on T-mobile with no contract is $650, same for Google Play.

I mean, there's some dumbass trying to sell one for $1300, but that's just wishful thinking, not a market price. $650 is the standard price, anything below is a discount, anything above is scalping.

Samsung S4, unlocked price: $699..

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Galaxy-S4-White-AT/dp/B00CDZU40Q%3FSubscriptionId%3DAKIAILSHYYTFIVPWUY6Q%26tag%3Dduckduckgo-z-20%26linkCode%3Dxm2%26camp%3D2025%26creative%3D165953%26creativeASIN%3DB00CDZU40Q

Apple iPhone 5, unlocked price: $649.

http://store.apple.com/us/buy/home/shop_iphone/family/iphone5

What in the world are you smoking, and why aren't you sharing? Also, do you understand that the Nexus phones are sold without profit, and even support costs built in? Google themselves have said that multiple times. It's the cost of hardware, and that is it. Have a think about it. Why would someone essentially do what an a "dump" of the Nexus hardware?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

here

Wait, also here

And yet I know of originally self-published authors who conveyed that into breaking into the Dead Tree Edition market. And others, who remain mostly self-published, have networked and promoted their works on social media and make a respectable income doing so. . .

The key, of course, is a campaign of marketing and establishing (or leveraging) a community. . .

And yet I know of originally self-published authors who conveyed that into breaking into the Dead Tree Edition market. And others, who remain mostly self-published, have networked and promoted their works on social media and make a respectable income doing so. . .

The key, of course, is a campaign of marketing and establishing (or leveraging) a community. . .

Apparently you're very ignorant of the prominence this book has. It is considered one of the greatest sci-fi/fantasy books of all time.

NPR (National Public Radio) has it on their top 100 list of all time at 3rd. : http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/139085843/your-picks-top-100-science-fiction-fantasy-books

Same at Amazon : http://www.amazon.com/Best-Science-Fiction-Novels-Time/lm/RIBUB5MTVYA03

Tied for 2nd for sci-fi at Wired: http://www.wired.com/geekdad/2012/12/and-the-winner-is-readers-choice-for-top-10-science-fiction-novel/

Pick a list for sci-fi/fantasy and you will find it no lower than 5 or so all-time.

Any real sc-ifi enthusiast that has ventured beyond the "quality" offered by Hollywood there is absolutely no denying Ender's Game is not just mainstream, but in fact among the elite. The sci-fi public very much loves Ender's Game. Chik-Fil-A ranks ~10th among the fast food public behind fine establishments like Dunkin Donuts and Pizza Hut. And yet the very act of attempting a boycott of Chik-Fil-A to punish them for the same political position was a spectacular backfire, generating record sales.

In cases like this it appears to me to be less about defending the political position of the boycott target, and more about defending the right of a business owner, or business itself, to HAVE a political position and the right to defend it. No one likes having other people's position forcibly shoved down their throat. It's good to know that when they see it happening to others they demonstrate their distaste.

You could point to exactly the same effect in the protests levied against JC Penny's for hiring Ellen DeGeneres (a married gay woman) as a spokesperson. (http://jezebel.com/5909347/homophobic-protest--from-one-million-moms-actually-boosting-jc-penney-sales)

Up until late 19th century, the age of sexual/marriage majority matched being a biological adult.

The idea that marriage is now much later than it used to be is a common misconception, at least for Europe and the US. Really, the outlier in (relatively) recent history was the post-WWII era, when age of first marriage dropped sharply from the levels of the late 19th and early 20th century. In 1890, average age of first marriage for women in the US was 23.5, and 26.5 for men. http://www.census.gov/hhes/socdemo/marriage/data/acs/ElliottetalPAA2012figs.pdf In the late 18th century, average age was 20-22 for women, ~26 for men. http://www.amazon.com/Marriage-England-1500-1800-Abridged-footnotes/dp/0061319791/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1327690657&sr=8-3

> The only concern is that for C#, you'll most likely want to stick to Microsoft ecosystem (Visual Studio is a great development environment, but you'll have to deploy to Asure, whereas you have more choices with Java, including Amazon and Google Linux clouds).

Err what? You can deploy to hundreds of hosting providers... including AWS.

http://aws.amazon.com/windows/

No apology needed; thanks for the thought though. Glad if you found some of the stuff I wrote interesting or useful. Probably you finding anything I wrote interesting is explained by the psychedelics? :-)

Yeah, it's hard to know where to start sometimes, especially with complex interwoven stuff like this:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3862853&cid=44084615

Sometimes the best way to start is just to stop. :-)

I just came off a ten day water-only fast I started the evening after visiting someone I know who is in a hospice with an inoperable brain tumor. I've been meaning to get back to fasting for a while to reset my taste buds, and that (along with some other things) was enough to get me over some threshold. Now I've moved onto vegetable juices, and this afternoon had a bit of shitake mushroom and kale soup with wakame and some brown rice miso. Most of the fast fit over weekends or holidays. I would have fasted longer, but had to get back to various obligations that require moving around more (which is not that compatible with fasting, when your body tries to conserve energy so every movement feels harder). I've done one longer fast before about three years ago (31 days) which I had built up to after five or six other much shorter fasts. I got interested in fasting mainly from reading "The Pleasure Trap" book. I actually found Fuhrman's nutrition (and fasting) stuff while already fasting. But, there are many reasons why water-only fasting is not right for everyone. And ultimately the biggest benefits come from eating well, so fasting by itself may not help much unless it is part of a general shift.

I might continue some juice "fasting" or "feasting" for a time, but it is a totally different thing from water-only fasting.

In water-only fasting, the body switches into fat-burning ketogenic mode and does more garbage collection like of pre-cancerous stuff it is suggested. Basically, water-only fasting boosts the immune system in otherwise healthy people, which can help destroy pre-cancerous cells, plus the body is selectively breaking down problematical tissues it is claimed, and also cancer cells run off of sugar but when your body goes ketonic, normal cells go into self-protective mode and generally burn fat, but cancer cells don't and so still need sugar and so starve. Spending some time in the sun helps too, giving vitamin D to help the immune system do its job. Lots to learn, the most important thing is to break a long fast slowly on simple water-heavy foods like vegetable juice or part of an orange:
http://www.marksdailyapple.com/fasting-cancer/
http://www.soilandhealth.org/02/0201hyglibcat/020127shelton.III/020127.toc.htm
http://www.amazon.com/Fasting-Eating-Health-Medical-Conquering/dp/031218719X
http://www.quickfasting.com/

Fasting is not something someone on any kind of prescription medication should do without coordinating it with their doctors, as medication needs will likely change, or the medication dose may need to be tapered off beforehand. Dr. Joel Fuhrman knows a lot about that sort of thing, and his group does phone consultations. The True North Health Center in CA is another great place (the authors of the Pleasure Trap help run it).
http://www.healthpromoting.com/

Anyway, it's a fine balance of psychology to navigate health and our society and possible addictions. Our lower level drives (as in the Pleasure Trap) to seek pleasure, avoid pain, and minimize energy use, are generally directing us to healthy ways to be (at least in a pre-historic world). But the newer part of our brain has helped make

Ball points just don't work for me, gel pens are barely tolerable, felt tips and markers are okay, but the only writing tools which I really enjoy and am pleased to use are fountain pens (preferrably with italic nibs).

My fountain pen has a Comic Sans nib.

Perhaps you should patent such an exotic thing. The fairly mundane italic nib is quite well known to afficionados of fountain pen nibs.

See Twilight of the Elites:

http://www.amazon.com/Twilight-Elites-America-Meritocracy-ebook/dp/B006OI2BMC/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&sr=8-1&qid=1373382255

Anti-reflection coatings by themselves are nothing new. AR coatings that are scratch-resistant might be more tricky. But I would be really impressed if they can make it anti-reflective even when covered with fingerprints.

AR coatings are based on thin layers with thicknesses tuned and accurate to 20 nm or less and well defined refractive indices, matched to the refractive index of the air on one side and the glass on the other side. It's hard if not impossible to make a coating that keeps working even with an undefined number of micrometers of skin grease on top.

My glasses (eyewear) have a very nice AR coating, but fingerprints turn it into a colorful reflector.

It probably doesn't matter so much. Almost everyone seems to insist on putting a screen protector on which mucks the whole thing up anyway.

(the only useful thing i've seen a screen protector do is hold the fragments together when it cracks, but that's like wrapping yourself in bandages all day so your guts don't fall out in the unlikely event that you get hit by a car)

Actually, if you get right kind of screen protector, it does much more than that.

Every touch device I have, this is the first thing I put on. It's great: no more annoying reflections and a greatly reduced quota of smudgy fingerprints. You still get some (it's not chicken-wing-sauce proof, that's for sure), but it is a vast improvement over the typically glossy, shiny, have-to-wipe-them-down-after-every-single-use bare screens. The protection from accidental screen scratches is simply a side benefit.

Really?

I don't have a problem with torrenting stuff, but come on. It's not like 99.9% of the stuff out there can't be found with a minimum amount of effort.

Where were you seeing ebooks being sold for more than the regular book? I've seen many accusations of that on Amazon and here, and every single time they were simply unsupported assertions or misunderstandings.

EVERY single time I've seen this complaint on Amazon, it has been because someone was comparing the current ebook price to the price of the PRE-ORDER of the paperback, which is silly.

This happens on occasion... for example "Game of Thrones" is currently (at least for me) $6.81 for paperback, $9.99 for Kindle, $11.00 for paperback (probably trade paperback), etc.
http://www.amazon.com/Game-Thrones-Song-Fire-Book/dp/0553386794

It's not as common now, but ebook pricing used to be much wonkier. In the past, publishers would release an ebook for a dollar or two less than the hardcover price. Later, when the paperback was released at half the price of the hardcover, they often didn't bother changing the ebook price and you'd see ebooks priced much higher than the paperback as a result.

Publishers have mostly accepted that ebooks are now a market that they need to participate in, so they're a lot better about adjusting the prices when a newer, cheaper dead tree version is released. Occasionally it still happens, but it's about as common as seeing the hardcover priced lower than the paperback (which does happen, despite the ridiculousness of it).

Here's an anecdotal story. I've been wanting to buy the CD version of the Transformers (2007) Score for years now. I check off and on for for years and the price fluctuates but never to a reasonable level. I even wrote Amazon once, but nothing.

I once heard the price is partially based on how much others are selling it for and I've heard of spirals where Amazon bases it on Place A which bases their price on Place B which bases their price on Amazon and the price spiral upwards into the thousands of dollars for even things like obscure books. Who knows if it's true, but it's an interesting story.

Yes, I could buy the MP3s for less, but I like having the physical media that I can rip that hasn't been compressed with a lossy algorithm. One day I'll probably buy the MP3s. Besides, it's harder to accuse me of pirating if I can produce the physical products.

Today's price for Transformers? Here you go. As of this writing, it was $59.99.

Oh... and say what you will about the movie (which did suck), but the second Transformers has a really good score.

Was he right or wrong? I really can't say, and it's a question I've struggled with

He was wrong because he assumed powers he did not have, taking away the 'consent of the governed' from his Presidency, thereby rendering it illegitimate.

Those mods giving you 'Troll' points, clearly haven't read The Real Lincoln and probably are defending the folklore version of Lincoln they were taught to revere in government schools. Because, hey, the socialist loyalty pledge they were forced to recite thousands of times says 'indivisible' and 'God', so it must be true.

It is an essay by Paul Graham, not a book: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

Sorry, the full title is "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" not "addiction".

From there: "What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors. Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are. And the scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating. ...
    Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. ...
    But if I'm right about the acceleration of addictiveness, then this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants to get things done. We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to."

There is an argument I've seen elewhere that it is good to get hooked on "healthy" addictions while you are younger -- for example, the joy of helping others, or the splendor of walking in nature, or some challenging "hard fun" productive enterprise like metal working or playing the piano, and so on.

One of the values of conventional religion is it may steer us away from some self-destructive behaviors including addiction -- especially by peer pressure. One example of a such a long lived population:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church
"The church is also known for its emphasis on diet and health, ..."

On "The Pleasure Trap":
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.healthpromoting.com/the-pleasure-trap
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines/dp/1570671974

On "Supernormal Stimuli":
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/B0057DC3VY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

Thanks for asking and looking into this.

It is an essay by Paul Graham, not a book: http://www.paulgraham.com/addiction.html

Sorry, the full title is "The Acceleration of Addictiveness" not "addiction".

From there: "What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors. Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are. And the scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating. ...
    Already someone trying to live well would seem eccentrically abstemious in most of the US. That phenomenon is only going to become more pronounced. You can probably take it as a rule of thumb from now on that if people don't think you're weird, you're living badly. ...
    But if I'm right about the acceleration of addictiveness, then this kind of lonely squirming to avoid it will increasingly be the fate of anyone who wants to get things done. We'll increasingly be defined by what we say no to."

There is an argument I've seen elewhere that it is good to get hooked on "healthy" addictions while you are younger -- for example, the joy of helping others, or the splendor of walking in nature, or some challenging "hard fun" productive enterprise like metal working or playing the piano, and so on.

One of the values of conventional religion is it may steer us away from some self-destructive behaviors including addiction -- especially by peer pressure. One example of a such a long lived population:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seventh-day_Adventist_Church
"The church is also known for its emphasis on diet and health, ..."

On "The Pleasure Trap":
http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx
http://www.healthpromoting.com/the-pleasure-trap
http://www.amazon.com/The-Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines/dp/1570671974

On "Supernormal Stimuli":
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/B0057DC3VY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernormal_stimulus

Thanks for asking and looking into this.

Private companies have set up their own spying operations. Bloomberg Financial is spying on Goldman Sachs. and Murdoch is running saboteur operations against his competitors. And these same people keep calling to tougher measures against hackers.It is as if the entire international power structure walked out of a Vladimir Voinovich novel. Sigh.

If you don't think the Israeli model would cost more, then you don't understand the Israeli model.

A number of articles have examined the issue:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aFyfihM1e3G4&refer=politics
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/07/would_you_pay_25_for_71_seconds_of_scrutiny_in_an_airport
http://forward.com/articles/122781/israel-s-airport-security-object-of-envy-is-hard/
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2012/11/20/counterproductive_airport_security_does_tsa_cause_more_deaths_than_it_prevents.html
http://roomfordebate.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/30/aviation-security-and-the-israeli-model/#more-27215

This book looks at the entire cost-benefit equation:
http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/0199795762

I have to admit; I got my initial impressions of my government from my Grandparents more from my Parents.

They lived thru a lot in the 30's and then the War; the government actually helped people that needed help, back then.

The Government back then put people under surveillance, but not everything they said or read or wrote.

I too, was extremely ignorant of a great deal of what happened in the LBJ/Nixon/Ford/Carter/Reagan years.

I'm totally amazed that I look back on Clinton as the best Pres so far, lol. I Did Not vote for him. :facepalm:

W. was Cheney/Rumsfeld's sockpuppet; You don't think He decided to land on an aircraft carrier at sea, do you? :)

Read about those guys' involvement in the Nixon era stuff, and the Regan/Iceland BS, Arsenals of Folly is a great book on some of that:
http://www.amazon.com/Arsenals-Folly-Making-Nuclear-Vintage/dp/0375713948

Hey, I'd rather have the Prez decorating some Chunky Ho's dress than Wiping Ass with the Constitution.

Maybe it's just me...

I love my pfsense Alix router. It will solve all your router problems. You can also do IP power management, but the devices are expensive: http://www.amazon.com/Managed-Designed-Manufactured-Synaccess-Networks/dp/B0039OZKPE

I was 27. There's this book but the summations in the reviews are pretty correct. And then there's ttp:slashslash(your city here).backpage.com/FemaleEscorts/ They want your business.

Discorporation talks about the related, but distinct notion of simply keeping a severed head /alive/, in a manner now wholly reminiscent of Futurama.

Anyway, if you're interested: If We Can Keep a Severed Head Alive...Discorporation and U.S. Patent 4,666,425

I mean common who isn't interested in keeping both halves consistent. Though I guess it would finally be possible for a man to be trapped in a hot female body. And we can all guess how that would go.

Yes, we certainly can. Lots of hot sex in this story. I think Heinlein was more than a little interested in being a hot chick and getting spanked and fucked.

http://www.amazon.com/I-Will-Fear-No-Evil/dp/0441359175

Personally, I think that a smartwatch should be designed as a "dumb" terminal to a smartphone, although maybe with an interactive display so that you could move between pages of notifications/time/calendar from different apps.

You mean like this?

The problem with this type of innovation is that it's a shot in the dark.

We haven't the first clue for the most effective way to teach people. We study things in HS because the subjects are "classics", not because they are useful (Geometry versus Probability, for instance). The "walk around lecturing in front of passive students" model doesn't fit with the need to be rambunctious. The fixed, level-based scale of achievement: "all children should be at this level of achievement at this age, else they are disabled" doesn't take into account variations in maturity or birth date. (Be born a day earlier, get put into a class where you're competing with class mates a year older.)

For reference, check out redirect. The author carefully details a large number of education techniques and social services which have no scientific basis whatsoever. Predictably, when actually studied, many of these ideas do more damage than good; for instance, regarding teen pregnancy, government teaching initiatives tend to increase the teen pregnancy rate.

There's simply no evidence that a) this system works to the degree of accuracy needed, b) doesn't have a high false-positive rate due to unforseen factors such as drapes waving in the background, c) can be used to any good effect (double-blind studies anyone?) as a teaching aid.

Our track record for using technology to help education is not good.

It makes for a good story, though. "We don't know the best way to teach, but here's something that should work!"

Here's another thought problem for you. Recall the 2009 Star Trek movie which shows a young Spock standing in a pit while a computer presents audio and video lessons. (I don't think the pit model works, but a student in front of a screen seems natural enough.)

Assume that you have control over this content, and can do double-blind studies of minor changes. Each video is a computer program, so any small piece can be redone without retaping the entire lesson. The program allows student interaction.

What features would your ideal teaching machine have, what sorts of things would you teach, what sorts of experiments could you do to home in on the optimum teaching method?

Or get a good 5.1 headphone system:
http://www.amazon.com/Zalman-ZM-RS6F-surround-sound-headphones/dp/B0001OYMFO

Though you might still need a subwoofer hooked up for that to sound right. But since that's less for the ears and more for feeling, that should work just fine.

I'm forced to listen to a narrow selection of that music every time somebody at work decides to have the 'Classic Rawck' station playing on the radio on his workbench.

I bought 5 Pink Floyd CDs yesterday morning at a garage sale.

The 'old stuff' isn't a be-all and end-all. My favorite album right now is David Bowie's new album that he released this spring.

My father's favorite music is the stuff that was popular a few years before he started listening to music: the big band stuff like Benny Goodman and Artie Shaw. I like that music, too. But it's not a be-all and end-all.

What Phillip Glass and John Cage and those folks are doing actually eclipses all the popular crap. I'd certain rather listen to a recording of an orchestra playing a Charles Ives work than any of the pop musick.

Or Terry Riley's The Harp of New Albion which I can barely listen to at the moment, because my Klipsch speakers aren't hooked up, and so many of the subharmonics of the detuned piano are missing when it's played on low quality equipment.

Check out Phillip Glass' 'Dracula' in the Piano arrangement. There's a CD release.

. After all, it's in many businesses interests to have accurate information

agreed.

and in individual consumer's interests to correct their own info.

Maybe, maybe not. Depends on their goals. Being obscured would suit some (many?) people just fine. It depends what value people assign to different things.

Libertarian theory says that the free market should have a lot of incentive to correct for bad info.

In a free market environment without corporations (government-granted exemptions from liability) and courts that respected property rights this might very well be true. Are you willing to allow that theory to be tested?

and the invisible hand crew will be saying that the market will correct eventually, and stop trying to hurry it along

I can't name a single libertarian who thinks that the government-corporate collusion that's going on to invade the privacy of US residents (and others) is likely to subside voluntarily. Ask Joseph Nacchio how well it works out if you put the interests of your customers over those of the State. And before you say, "but he did something wrong," realize that the entire purpose of PRISM and its ilk is to make a retrospectable list of crimes and prohibition violations that every American commits. You too.

"The invisible hand" is Smith's market-god but Austrian price-information theory and its compliment, game theory, do provide a testable framework for information dispersal in free markets. That requires investigation of mid-to-late 20th century scholarship, though, not ideas that came two centuries before. And also markets that aren't artificially manipulated, for best effect, though the theory does work when such intrusions are counted as costs and losses.

I got a head start on the summer, so I've been writing CoffeeScript that runs on Node.js since May.

I avoid online training in lieu of curling up on the couch with a good paper book.
For Node.js, I chose Smashing Node.js
For CoffeeScript, I chose The Little Book on CoffeeScript
I recommend both of these excellent books to anyone interested in CoffeeScript and/or Node.js

Since finishing the books, I've been writing code, uploading it to GitHub, and having a great time with both the new language and the new platform.

I got a head start on the summer, so I've been writing CoffeeScript that runs on Node.js since May.

I avoid online training in lieu of curling up on the couch with a good paper book.
For Node.js, I chose Smashing Node.js
For CoffeeScript, I chose The Little Book on CoffeeScript
I recommend both of these excellent books to anyone interested in CoffeeScript and/or Node.js

Since finishing the books, I've been writing code, uploading it to GitHub, and having a great time with both the new language and the new platform.

The more recent version is, um, foreshadowing:

http://www.amazon.com/Linux-System-Administration-Handbook-Edition/dp/0131480057

foreshadowing?

What's really eerie is the coffin marked 'more' right above her name.

With that sort of background you're probably going to have a big bag of experience to draw from, and selectively emphasize on a resume. You're probably going to want to think about where you want to take your career, what industry, what general type of job, and highlight those aspects of your experience. For example, trying to move into civil aviation to continue as a pilot would mean stressing the actual aviation aspects of the job - aircraft qualifications, flight planning, flight time, instrument qualifications, etc. If you wanted to move back towards engineering, you've probably conducted various types of technical and safety inspections, perhaps some logistics work, maybe even preformed troubleshooting that could be emphasized. If you've ever made any recommendations for equipment modification that were accepted, that would be gravy. You've probably had various forms of ongoing technical education yourself, or acting as in instructor. Another track might be management. I'm sure you can see where this is going. Rendering things in terms that civilians understand will also be helpful. I recall seeing this book out there before. Not sure if it would be helpful or not to you. I would expect that your service's transition program has similar resources available.

If you haven't had your hand involved in the actual technical aspects of electrical engineering for 12 years or so... that's a long time. If you think you might want to go that way you might want to see about getting ahold of some free vendor tools and play around to see if that still interests you. Some of the FPGA manufacturers have made them available over time.

Some industries may value the combination of your experience more than others. Aerospace, for example.

Once you have a direction, and maybe a backup direction / plan, you will probably want to start making contacts well before your exit date. You might also want to do what you can to get some money saved up as a cushion. Keep in mind the big internet recruiting sites appropriate for the industry you want to pursue, such as Monster and Dice.

As I noted, just my thoughts. Nothing authoritative here. Good luck to you, and thanks for answering the call.

If they're a digital camera, they can already see outside of the visible spectrum. In fact, it's a bit of a weakness.

Take any digital camera. The one on your phone will suffice. Point a TV remote at it while you watch the live preview. Press a button on the remote. See that white dot? It's infrared. Notice that it blots out any other color within the "dot". Also notice that it has a bit of a "bloom" or "flare" to it. This can be used to your advantage.

Buy some of these. Then, buy one of these (your choice, but don't get too attached to the team logo or catchy saying on it). Drill holes in the frame, fasten the LED's into it, wire it up (bonus points if you attach it to your car's 12VDC system and give it an inline dashboard switch), install it on your vehicle, and you have a mostly-invisible-to-digital-camera-sensors license plate.

The trick is that you must get high intensity LED's that "blind" the sensor. License plates are highly reflective, and with that kind of extra light source right next to it, yours will be nearly unreadable to a camera. High contrast only survives a massive light bloom if the low-reflectivity portion of the field is larger or more prominent than the high-reflectivity portion. The more LED's you can pack around that license plate the better. In fact, you might be able to make a mesh of them that overlays the license plate (depending on local laws) that can further blot out the plate's visibility to cameras. To an officer making a traffic stop, it's perfectly visible and readable, and nothing is obstructing his ability to read your plate. To the dash-cam in his patrol car, it's a white license-plate-sized blob. The same goes for automated cameras. This is legal in most US states, since the legal requirement is usually that the officer can read it, not that a camera can.

For the morbidly-curious, here's a book that might give you somewhat of an idea of what USED to be involved with interfacing a microcontroller with a network over Ethernet pre-Wiznet w5100, and give the benefit of context to understand why that module (and its descendants) have been so wildly popular among embedded developers working with 8-bit microcontrollers.

http://www.amazon.com/Networking-Internetworking-Microcontrollers-Fred-Eady/dp/0750676981/ref=wl_it_dp_o_pC_S_nC?ie=UTF8&colid=75OKCKDXZ6YI&coliid=I2PABIRD1YO96X

The Microchip ENC28J60 falls somewhere between the older chips written about in that book and a "plug & play" module like the W5100. With the older chips, you were lucky to hack together your own personal networking protocol that (barely) managed to coexist on the same wire as NETBIOS, TCP/IP, and IPX/SPX. The ENC28J60 does for networking kind of what the ATI Rage Theater chipset did for MPEG-2 video compression... it accelerates and automates some of the grunt work of interacting with signals on the cable so you can pay attention to bigger details, like your actual protocol. I've never personally used it, but from what I've read, ENC28J60 TCP/IP is "do-able, but with a few cautions and limits". By comparison, the W5100 is pure black magic... to your embedded app, it turns the Internet and/or your local LAN into a big virtual serial cable.

When the w5100 came out ~5-6 years ago, embedded developers were LITERALLY dancing in the streets, because it was dirt cheap and "just worked". Security wasn't even a CONSIDERATION until 2-3 years later, when the consequences of exposing the serial ports of devices with no security besides physical access to the port started to really sink in... and the devices themselves had almost no serial-port security, because pre-Wiznet, an ethernet-serial adapter cost somewhere between $250 and $400... at RESELLER prices. Pre-w5100, serial ports just plain didn't get exposed to the internet, because the adapters to do it were too expensive to even contemplate.

Read up, bro. "Inalienable" rights are dumb because people use them wrong, or make wrong decisions. The future is coercive paternalism, making the correct decisions for people who are too dumb to know right from wrong. The Enlightenment is on the way out. John Stuart Mill is yesterday's news. "We turn to a better approach, which is simply to save people from themselves by making certain courses of action illegal."

That's not exactly how it started. But it is a sham, fraud, joke, etc. However it's a cult with a lot of money and a VERY vindictive streak.

If anyone is interested, I recommend the following two books I read recently: Beyond Belief or Going Clear

Both are excellent insights into this cult. Going Clear is more or less a history and documentary, and Beyond belief is from the perspective of a lifelong member who managed to escape.

Hey Jeff, I couldn't find any download links on that website of yours. Here are some proper links:

https://kickass.to/beyond-belief-my-secret-life-inside-scientology-2013-t7082844.html

https://kickass.to/going-clear-lawrence-wright-epub-mobi-voldizard-t7037202.html