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I don't know about you but I like these reviews:
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/product-reviews/B000I1X6PM
http://www.amazon.com/Diamond-Digital-Ethernet-Connection-meters/product-reviews/B003CT2A6I?pageNumber=2
http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-K2-Terminated-Speaker-Cable/dp/B000J36XR2

please read the Egyptian Sinuhe, a book by Mika Waltari. You'll love the book (everybody does) and you'll get the joke. http://www.amazon.com/Sinuhe-Egyptian-New-Portway-Reprints/dp/0855948450

The only "no" is in your utter immorality in defending jihadis and their ilk. Rather than counter the *facts* of multiple jihadi attacks worldwide (http://www.thereligionofpeace.com/index.html#Attacks) you instead try and deflect using the tactics of personal demonization (as witnessed from your first and continued statements), just as written in this book "Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans" http://www.amazon.com/Bullies-Culture-Intimidation-Silences-Americans/dp/1476709998.

I bet you are so indoctrinated you have no idea what the hate speech in the Qur'an actually says, or about the 270 million souls killed by jihadis over the last 1400 years (and continuing today), or the goal of Islamists to destroy all liberties and human rights the Free World hold dear. Instead in your upside-down world you think you are resisting intolerance but instead you are defending the barbaric intolerance of Islam and opposing those who are arguing for *protecting* the liberties the Free World has (which is under massive threat by Islamists, even if you too ignorant to notice the facts and trends).

The fact is, you can't actually actually contest the *facts*, instead you try and bypass them since actually using the Scientific Method to alter your incorrect worldview to a better approximation using the facts and links I've given would blow the worldview the propagandists have fed you and you now parrot like a good little apologist for evil.

You are smug in your unearned and assumed moral superiority but the reality is because you live a fact-free bubble of ideological nonsense you are aiding and abetting the evil jihadis with your attempted defense of them. Shame on you for supporting the evil totalitarian, theocratic, misogynistic, racist, supremacist political ideology called Islam (which, apart from some nonsense superstitions, is largely indistinguishable from the ideology of National Socialism if you look closely). Supporting such evil is immoral!

You are worse than insane - you are willfully ignorant of the growing threat to human rights and quality in the World (what part of the Qur'an do you think talks about equality? for women? and homosexuals? and non-Muslims? and Jews? and Christians? and Zoroastrians? and atheists?). Stop defending the evil that is political Islam, because it makes *you* evil !

It takes a certain amount of inputs to produce outputs. One of the inputs is capital (as in capital investment). Capital used to multiply the trade value of a resource (i.e., turning lumber into a table) is considered "productive", while capital used for other purposes is "consumptive". Theoretically, the more "productive" use of capital, the more robust the economy.

Sometimes it helps to remember that "Economics" and "Ecology" derived from the same root. The "Ecological balance of Economy" means that with right balance of inputs the individual economic crops grow, as analagous to having enough rain, soil and nutrients to grow the trees, which are turned into tables.... Debt is runoff; it falls on ground where nothing has been planted, and drains to other places where it may or may not be productive. Sovereign debt (public debt) diminishes the amount of inputs that can be use for economic crops, sometimes draining away to some other farmer's land.

You can only do two things with money: You can invest it or you can spend it. If you spend it, you provide jobs for the people who produce the things that you want. If you invest it, you are providing the reources to produce jobs and products that keep the economy moving. However, some investments are better than others, and if our debt gets invested in some other country, it diminishes what we can produce here. Since paying this debt depends on our economy being productive enough to provide for us and also provide a surplus, then very high sovereign debt, with interest driving the debt higher, may mean that the debt cannot be paid. You can ask the citizens of Iceland, Ireland and Cyprus if this has an effect on your daily life. Next time you will be able to ask the citizens of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and France.

Rogoff and Cameron's book may have lost some of the predictive value due to this Excel error, but the logic of the cause and effect still has some value.

Michael Lewis wrote two interesting books that clearly describe the ruinous power of high debt, whether private or public: "The Big Short" http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827 and, "Boomerang" http://www.amazon.com/Boomerang-Travels-New-Third-World/dp/0393343448/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366262251&sr=1-1&keywords=Boomerang . This is storytelling in the "New Journalism" style that is entertaining and informative at the same time. In "Boomerang" Lewis describes a meeting with Rogoff where he lays out the level of sovereign debt and asks about the consequences, and Rogoff replies, "I can't believe it is really this bad." See what happens when you don't leave your ivory tower?

It takes a certain amount of inputs to produce outputs. One of the inputs is capital (as in capital investment). Capital used to multiply the trade value of a resource (i.e., turning lumber into a table) is considered "productive", while capital used for other purposes is "consumptive". Theoretically, the more "productive" use of capital, the more robust the economy.

Sometimes it helps to remember that "Economics" and "Ecology" derived from the same root. The "Ecological balance of Economy" means that with right balance of inputs the individual economic crops grow, as analagous to having enough rain, soil and nutrients to grow the trees, which are turned into tables.... Debt is runoff; it falls on ground where nothing has been planted, and drains to other places where it may or may not be productive. Sovereign debt (public debt) diminishes the amount of inputs that can be use for economic crops, sometimes draining away to some other farmer's land.

You can only do two things with money: You can invest it or you can spend it. If you spend it, you provide jobs for the people who produce the things that you want. If you invest it, you are providing the reources to produce jobs and products that keep the economy moving. However, some investments are better than others, and if our debt gets invested in some other country, it diminishes what we can produce here. Since paying this debt depends on our economy being productive enough to provide for us and also provide a surplus, then very high sovereign debt, with interest driving the debt higher, may mean that the debt cannot be paid. You can ask the citizens of Iceland, Ireland and Cyprus if this has an effect on your daily life. Next time you will be able to ask the citizens of Greece, Italy, Portugal, Spain and France.

Rogoff and Cameron's book may have lost some of the predictive value due to this Excel error, but the logic of the cause and effect still has some value.

Michael Lewis wrote two interesting books that clearly describe the ruinous power of high debt, whether private or public: "The Big Short" http://www.amazon.com/Big-Short-Inside-Doomsday-Machine/dp/0393338827 and, "Boomerang" http://www.amazon.com/Boomerang-Travels-New-Third-World/dp/0393343448/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1366262251&sr=1-1&keywords=Boomerang . This is storytelling in the "New Journalism" style that is entertaining and informative at the same time. In "Boomerang" Lewis describes a meeting with Rogoff where he lays out the level of sovereign debt and asks about the consequences, and Rogoff replies, "I can't believe it is really this bad." See what happens when you don't leave your ivory tower?

It's call the Shock Doctrine.

There's even a book about it (called the Shock Doctrine):
http://www.amazon.com/The-Shock-Doctrine-Disaster-Capitalism/dp/0312427999

From the Editorial Review:
Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine advances a truly unnerving argument: historically, while people were reeling from natural disasters, wars and economic upheavals, savvy politicians and industry leaders nefariously implemented policies that would never have passed during less muddled times. As Klein demonstrates, this reprehensible game of bait-and-switch isn't just some relic from the bad old days. It's alive and well in contemporary society, and coming soon to a disaster area near you.

This is why we have the Department of Homeland Security and the Patriot Act.

What's the best way to make sure your "digital inheritance" gets passed down?

Put it on physical media and give it to them. Or remove the DRM (if any) and put it on a disc and give it to them. Or (if you're okay with it) move it to a third party pay system like Google Drive where you can make it readable to them. Keep in mind that in doing so you will almost certainly be violating the usage agreement you clicked on with the distributors your got that music from -- in some cases you are violating it two or three different ways in that scenario.

This story wasn't true but you'd essentially be facing the same obstacles.

Based on principle that I don't want to get into, I refuse to purchase anything from Apple. So I don't have to deal with that problem. I do make purchase on Amazon, however, whenever a Big Bach box of 100 Bach songs goes on sale for $1. So what I do is I download them all in mp3 and put them out on a redundant SAN in my house. I do this with all books, music and movies -- if I buy the CD or DVD I rip them out to this. If I get a DRM'd ebook, I free it with calibre and put it out there. Pretty sure I'm violating a ton of shit doing this but ... meh:

2.2 Restrictions. You must comply with all applicable copyright and other laws in your use of the Music Content. Except as set forth in Section 2.1 above, you may not redistribute, transmit, assign, sell, broadcast, rent, share, lend, modify, adapt, edit, license or otherwise transfer or use the Music Content.

Every five years or so I upgrade the drives to medium quality drives that are larger for more storage. So this machine running as an internal server to my home is unencrypted and I can access it with my PS3, Xbox or computer. I will simply hand over that machine and drives to my offspring in my final will and testament.

You should honestly still be asking about MMORPG accounts, apps and games that you paid for ... I'm sad that I cannot give my children my old Lucas arts games. The media is archaic and my "license" with the company is meaningless more and more each day as Disney dismantles and guts LucasArts. I wrote a journal entry about this in 2006 and it was on the front page but that discussion seems to have been lost to the ages. I'm certainly not the first person to puzzle over this quandary and it will only snowball further and further.

I keep all my media files on a shared server. Everyone in my family knows the password.

For all my accounts, I use passwords with the same 6 character prefix, and varying suffixes. The suffixes are listed on an appendix to my will. They are also on an XD card that I keep in this keychain fob in my pocket.

But I only record the suffixes because both my wife and daughter (age 14) know the prefix. So if the prefix were 7xU32w, then the list might say "correct horse battery staple", but the real password would be "7xU32wcorrect horse battery staple". If anyone outside my family saw the password list, it would be worthless to them because they don't know the prefix, nor do they even know that there is a prefix.

Heh. That is most certainly not the product most people would go for. And honestly, I'd just as soon go with Professional or Express & use Mercurial to make up the difference.

Ultimate has features you only need if you are in a huge corporation/project setting

A more normal user might go for this ($500)
http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Visual-Studio-Pro-2012/dp/B008RW3XIO/ref=sr_1_1?s=software&ie=UTF8&qid=1366038707&sr=1-1&keywords=Visual+Studio+2012

Which, I admit, is a bit high for most, but if you don't need a lot of the code sharing or installer building tools, (and why should you, there's Mercurial for the former, and the latter isn't so hard to roll your own), you can always go for the Express edition, which is free/

I'm going to add a couple of articles I liked for your consideration. The articles and some of the technology are old, but the ideas are probably still sound.

http://highscalability.com/amazon-architecture

http://highscalability.com/scaling-twitter-making-twitter-10000-percent-faster

http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1142065

http://www.webperformancematters.com/journal/2007/8/21/asynchronous-architectures-4.html

I'd be curious to see responses to these since these articles are old. I haven't been to these websites in a while, so maybe they have some other interesting and more up to date articles.

As for PostgreSQL, I'd recommend this book. The first few chapters apply to any database. The next relate to PostgreSQL specifically. If you're a code head (like me), this book may be better suited for the DBA, but we don't know your specific needs.

You need glasses or an education then. Look at the benchmark site. It even says "Last Price Change: $45.31 USD (2013-02-07)", you dumb fucking piece of shit.

I provided the EXACT models. Are you too lazy to go check prices on Amazon or Newegg? Ever heard of Google? I assure you that the prices are quite real and you're just pissed off because I exposed your for the clueless idiot that you are.

Intel Celeron G1610 Ivy Bridge 2.6GHz, Dual core w/heatsink & fan - $50 on Amazon
Intel Celeron G1610 Ivy Bridge 2.6GHz, Dual core w/heatsink & fan - $50 on Newegg
Intel Desktop Board Classic Series MicroATX DDR3 1333 LGA 1155 Motherboard - $48
Intel DH61BF Desktop Motherboard - Intel H61 Express Chipset - Socket H2 LGA-1155 - $50 on Newegg

Now don't you feel like a fucking moron? You should, because you are. You aren't qualified to be a PC tech or system builder because you are uninformed and wrong most of the time.

You need glasses or an education then. Look at the benchmark site. It even says "Last Price Change: $45.31 USD (2013-02-07)", you dumb fucking piece of shit.

I provided the EXACT models. Are you too lazy to go check prices on Amazon or Newegg? Ever heard of Google? I assure you that the prices are quite real and you're just pissed off because I exposed your for the clueless idiot that you are.

Intel Celeron G1610 Ivy Bridge 2.6GHz, Dual core w/heatsink & fan - $50 on Amazon
Intel Celeron G1610 Ivy Bridge 2.6GHz, Dual core w/heatsink & fan - $50 on Newegg
Intel Desktop Board Classic Series MicroATX DDR3 1333 LGA 1155 Motherboard - $48
Intel DH61BF Desktop Motherboard - Intel H61 Express Chipset - Socket H2 LGA-1155 - $50 on Newegg

Now don't you feel like a fucking moron? You should, because you are. You aren't qualified to be a PC tech or system builder because you are uninformed and wrong most of the time.

The caterpillar phone you're referring to is probably the rebranded Sonim (http;//www.sonimtech.com/). In the meantime they've also released the B10, which is a ruggedized Android phone.

Just like CAT, JCB had a rebranded Sonim, and now also offer an Android phone, but that thing (like the CAT), is stuck at Android 2.3, with no support by Cyanogen Mod.

In his novel Marooned in Realtime , which deals with a technological Singularity, Vernor Vinge muses that a civilization might choose to retreat into a virtual reality buried deep below a planet's surface instead of expanding outward.

What if it turns out to be, rather, The Orchid Cage by Herbert W. Franke?

Extinction is such a pressing danger only for biological entities. If humans transcend biology, then they can take a much greater battering and expansion into space is no longer an inevitable development for the human race. In his novel Marooned in Realtime , which deals with a technological Singularity, Vernor Vinge muses that a civilization might choose to retreat into a virtual reality buried deep below a planet's surface instead of expanding outward. Sure, then one would have to worry about the death of the sun, engulfing the planet in its red giant phase, but that's billions of years from now. And even if a civilzation wants to expand into space, that's much easier done after transcending biology than as a biological race that has to manage fragile ecosystems.

http://www.amazon.com/Light-Lumen-Replacement-G7-Power/dp/B0064AE2K4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365796844&sr=8-1&keywords=g7+led+bulb

The G7.

There are two reasons.

1: This bulb is set at 3000 kelvin.

It looks NORMAL like a regular LED bulb. I'm sorry but LED bulbs set at 2900k look either Pink or Orange to me and most the people i know. I'm sure that real incandescent bulbs are 2900 kelvin and the rest of the LED companies are trying to mimic them but it doesn't look right in LED.

2: This bulb is 900 lumens.

I know 850 lumens is supposed to replace a 60 watt bulb. But it doesn't for me. It seems dim. At 900 lumens, it seems a little brighter than a 60 watt bulb and I actually like that. I suspect 870 or 880 lumens would be the correct value for a perfect swap.

Downsides: I've never had it happen to me, but I've read that some G7's buzz.

I have approximately 12 brands of LED bulbs going in my house, including phillips. I use the phillips 75 watt in a fixture with a lamp shade. I have a 9 year old "40 watt" bulb which is really more like 20 watt on the porch-- it's always on.

I also find pretty good light (and they fit in cieling fans better) from the lights with the squashed disks. They do give light over a large area. The top is about 1/2" think and about 2" around. They also give a little more lumens than similarly rated bulbs. I have three of those.

I have some multiple fixture floor lamps that all the other random bulbs go into.

At this point, other than the "globe" fixtures in the bathroom, new bulbs going foward will all be G7's until I hear of something better.

I do also have some of the new 3500 kelvin CFL bulbs from Home Depot. I really like the light. It's "superwhite" but not "blue". But like all CFL's they seem to take 60 seconds to achieve full brightness.

I have an old random 75w CFL in my utility room.

I only have three incandescent bulbs left in the house at this point. Two globes in the bathroom and one standard 60w in the attic.

The USSR was, for lack of more appropriate descriptor, the swinging dick of technology and science

Not quite. The Soviets pwned the rest of the world from the beginning of the Space Race through the mid/late '60s. But after that, the US threw more and more money at it until it won hands down. Viz. the Apollo program and space shuttle program, which the USSR couldn't match. (The Buran and exploding rockets don't count.)

Elsewhere, the Soviets stayed strong competitors to the West in science and technology up into the '70s but then they ran into an area of tech that they just couldn't compete in: computers. The Soviet economy had prioritized guns over butter for decades, so computing research went into big iron and military needs. Once the Western free markets began to realize economies in scale on microcomputers, the Soviets had no mechanism to match it and they were left in the dust. There's a lot of great anecdotes about this in the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Dead Hand.

If it is a wormhole (or by using a "warp" drive) then the scenario I described may not work for producing a paradox. However, if you have two separate wormholes, one connecting points A and B and another connecting points C and D and you position them such that they are far enough from each other, not to affect each other's regions of spacetime but close enough that you can travel between A and C and between B and D at slower-than-light speeds then you can still violate causality and create paradoxes. There is a short description of that here: http://www.physicsguy.com/ftl/html/FTL_part4.html#sec:stmanipulation and there is a more detailed discussion in Everett's book Time Travel and Warp Drives: A Scientific Guide to Shortcuts through Time and Space (this covers both warp drives and wormholes, as well as other topics related to FTL and causality).

We need to stop pushing programming as something that can be taught in 24 hours and start valuing coders the way foreign language translators and interpreters are valued: precious assets of high quality that could cost you a lot if they do a poor quality job.

The PC isn't dead, it's just mature

I'm not so sure. I agree with the basic assumption, that the PC isn't dead, but I don't think it follows that it's "just mature". Four years ago I did the majority of my personal web browsing on my laptop. Now, I do very little (maybe 10% to 20%) on said laptop. I just bought a new phone last January (Droid Razr Maxx HD) and it's largely replaced both my laptop and my 7" tablet. It's big enough that I just don't miss the tablet, it's mobile enough to be with me everywhere. Battery life is beyond excellent (2 or 3 days is typical with this phone, but VERY rare for a smart phone and blows away my tablet) and the browsing experience is excellent.

In short, the only time I care about the laptop is when I'm going to do "content creation" (typing !@# in) and even that is starting to fade thanks to my folding bluetooth keyboard. The Razr Maxx has an HDMI port that I haven't even begun to experiment with yet... what if there was a laptop shell (keyboard and screen) that I could plug my phone into?

Amazon has the DVDs for sale sometimes, but they are region 2, so you'll need to use a multi-region player or rip them.

http://www.amazon.com/Blakes-Season-Region-Michael-Keating/dp/B0023SR1TU/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1365593115&sr=8-2&keywords=blakes+7&tag=amazond20-20

So yes, it's voluntary for the person collecting and uploading this data, just as it was a voluntary decision on Google's part. It is however not at all voluntary for the people who own the AP's whose data are being collected.

Sure, it's voluntary. Don't want people to know your MAC address/SSID for some obscure reason? There are other options: http://www.amazon.com/TP-Link-TL-R860-Cable-Router-Office/dp/B003CFATSS/

Want to see Harlan Ellison's original concept? Never made it to video, but you can get a graphic novel version. There was also a novel that is long out of physical print; however, Amazon is offering a Kindle edition.

Tinfoil does not set off metal detectors.

Yes, I have first-hand knowledge of this.

Where did you get the tin foil? This is the closest I can find, but at 0.008" thick, it's more than ten times thicker than standard aluminum foil.

In other words even forgetting disease and subtle losses it is obvious that the use of drugs is far more dangerous that riding motorcycles.

Drugs? There are a lot of different drugs, my friend, many of which are not dangerous in the least. In fact, a great deal of the "carnage" is a direct result of prohibition. And, just as with alcohol, there will always be a minority of people who get into trouble with substances. The vast majority of people use drugs and alcohol, as the commercials put it, responsibly.

The sad fact is, that there is an incredible amount of ignorance around drugs, even among users. Of course, this is no accident. We've all been spoon-fed disinformation since childhood. But don't take my word for it. There is a lot of good information available for those who are actually interested in hearing it. Let me recommend a very well researched and inexpensive book. It certainly opened my eyes on a number of points.

http://www.amazon.com/Saying-Yes-Jacob-Sullum/dp/1585423181

That's nonsense. It's just Flash. Linux has no more trouble with it than any other platform. That includes all of the usual complaints about performance and crashing.

Nope, here is the service:
http://www.amazon.com/Instant-Video/

And here is the message I got when I tried to access it in the latest Chrome on Kubuntu:

If you're using the Chrome browser with Linux, you must disable PPAPI to continue using Amazon Instant Video. You can also use a different Web browser, like Firefox. hundreds of other compatible devices.

Amazon's streaming service is flaky with linux. The issue is DRM which for some reson is not supported in the linux version of the flash player.

Amazon video works fine under Ubuntu. Use Firefox, not Chrome.
From the FAQ

Why can't I watch videos on my Chrome browser in Linux?
The Flash Player Plugin in Chrome removed support for Digital Rights Management (DRM) in Linux as part of the upgrade from 11.3 to 11.4. This upgrade was bundled with the latest Chrome 22 update for Linux. If you applied the Chrome update, you are no longer able to watch DRM-protected content, such as movies and TV episodes. Trailers are unaffected as they do not use DRM. To get around this issue, you can use a different browser, such as Firefox. For information on Chrome and the Flash Player plug-in, see: https://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=108086.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?ie=UTF8&nodeId=3757

The range of price and quality hardware in the PC market is amazing and does not support your "race to the bottom" hypothesis.

Its not my hypothesis, its the biasing way of saying most consumers would prefer a significantly cheaper product that can still do the job, and that this hurts the options for people buying expensive computers.
I think the evidence of the "race to the bottom" is the amazon top sellers:
http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Computers-Accessories-Laptop/zgbs/pc/565108
No windows PCs over 600 dollar on the first page right next to Macbooks for about double the price.

Yes the amazon results are not unbiased but just because companies are selling Ultrabooks it does mean they are being bought buy the general population and are reaching MacBook sales numbers. There are some Lenovos and ASUSs on the next page that reach 1000 but the average person appears to be happy with a 400 to 600 dollar laptop.

Yes, the negative reviews are still coming in thick and fast for Sim City 5 at Amazon. Mostly problems with the server still. I can't imagine how broken the game/DRM must be for them not to have fixed that yet.

Yet another funny one from 1980: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Government_(Yes_Minister)

I feel part of what is happening at the big picture level is that examples like Debian and Wikipedia and Linux and GNU are reminding us that people can govern themselves in various ways. Example:
http://linux.slashdot.org/story/08/04/14/1349202/study-reports-on-debian-governance-social-organization

We are also seeing how people can improve things by participating in a "gift economy" related to those sorts of projects and others. Government making free stuff for everyone (like public domain code from NASA or your local government staffers) is a potential big win for society, where a relatively small investment can yield big dividends by avoiding using "artificial scarcity" as a business model for important software tools or data sets.

As Lawrence Lessig writes in Code 2.0, behavior can be shaped through norms, rules, prices, and architecture. Government bureaucracies can affect all of those, but so can individuals, civic groups, and businesses. Maybe the internet is letting some of the lines blur a bit more these days?

We're also seeing that exchanging emails and IMs and twitters can replace some of the movement of monetary currency to signal "demand".

The internet has also made a lot of alternatives, if not easier, than at least "discoverable":
"The Dictionary of Alternatives: Utopianism and Organization"
http://books.google.com/books?id=IKZVKMPEQCEC
"This dictionary provides ammunition for those who disagree with the early twentieth-first century orthodoxy that 'There is no alternative to free market liberalism and managerialism'. Using hundreds of entries and cross-references, it proves that there are many alternatives to the way that we currently organize ourselves. These alternatives could be expressed as fictional utopias, they could be excavated from the past, or they could be described in terms of the contemporary politics of anti-corporate protest, environmentalism, feminism and localism. Part reference work, part source book, and part polemic, this dictionary provides a rich understanding of the ways in which fiction, history and today's politics provide different ways of thinking about how we can and should organize for the coming century."

A Knight News Challenge on Open Government is just ending ($5 million to be given out). My wife and I put together one of the 828 entries (did not make the final cut though):
https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/submission/civic-sensemaking-by-working-with-stories-using-rakontu/

There are many other interesting suggestions there:
https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/applause-feedback/

The O'Reilly book on open government is online, and I put up a link to it as an "inspiration" part of that challenge:
https://www.newschallenge.org/open/open-government/inspiration/o-reilly-releases-open-government-book-for-free/

Anyway, as you imply, we have yet to see how all these visions of "open government" play out.

An indirectly related book:
http://www.amazon.com/Policy-Paradox-Political-Decision-Making/dp/0393976254
"Unlike most texts, which treat policy analysis and policy making as different enterprises, Policy Paradox demonstrates that "you can't take politics out of analysis." Through a uniquely rich

Since the entire universe rotates (if galaxies rotate and super clusters do [as Our sun rotates around the center of the galaxy] then its logical that the whole freaking universe does) its at the center of the universe. Although I'd rather lob Pigs.

Nope. No evidence that the universe rotates. First, there is no evidence of it rotating and people have been looking. Just read a book that talked about it.

Second, I think there is some relativity stuff going on too. For the universe to rotate, there must be something outside the universe for the universe to rotate in relation to.

you would have to expect there are vacuum cleaners that already exist that run without electricity

It's kind of pedantic, but there are "carpet sweepers" that are not powered by electricity that many people use to pick up crumbs and for light cleaning.

He wrote an entire book about that incident. It is called ,"Your Movie Sucks." Most of the book is actually reviews of other really bad movies he wrote, but the Rob Schneider scenario was clearly the best part.

It's a great read, and a great introduction to Ebert if you would like to know more about him.

http://www.amazon.com/Your-Movie-Sucks-Roger-Ebert/dp/0740763660/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1365120593&sr=8-1&keywords=your+movie+sucks

>Everything that you do, every day is against the law. All the time.

>All it needs is a motivated prosecutor or enforcement agent, to activate your infraction.

Not everything, but yeah. A US Attorney can make your life a living nightmare if they get a bug up their ass about you. It's happening to a friend of mine. He owns land, and leases it out to farmers. Farmers grew pot on it without his knowledge. Now US Attorney Wagner is trying to take his land, and, you know, why not? All his other assets too. And all his family's assets. Just because he wants to make an example out of them.

If you want a book that will simultaneously enlighten and enrage you, I highly recommend Harvey Silverglate's "Three Felonies a Day". In it, he talks about how DAs and other prosecutors will laugh and joke about all the different ways they can throw completely innocent people into prison, and runs through hundreds of case studies showing how they abuse their power in conjunction with ambiguous laws to throw people into jail who had no idea they were committing a crime, and even the prosecutors didn't try to argue had a mens rea.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594035229

What needs to be done:
1) Decriminalize a lot of things. Aaron's Law (which is the polar opposite of the law in TFA) would be a good step in this direction - make violations of EULAs civil, not criminal, cases. And do this for a whole set of things. (In the book, one artist was thrown in jail because his scientist friend bought some stuff for him - got sent to jail because arguably the wrong name was on the application).
2) Require a mens rea ("guilty mind") to go to jail for most things. Right now, many statues operate on strict liability that really should require intent to commit a crime instead.
3) Eliminate or clarify ambiguous laws. While it sounds nice to be able to make something nice and vague, in reality it means that US Attorneys can warp or twist the wording to bring a life-ending case against a person or business they don't like.
4) Eliminate prosecutoral bribery. A defense attorney would get disbarred if he offered a witness a million bucks to tell a certain story in court, but prosecutors can and do do this all the time. They approach some underling in a business, arrest them, threaten them with a life in prison for having the gall to work for Enron as a middle manager... but then offer to let them off if they only tell a certain story in court against the Big Fish they're trying to land. It shouldn't be constitutional, but SCOTUS ruled it is, because it would otherwise destroy the "justice" system as it stands right now.

Micro-DVI to DVI adaptor, Part Number: MB204G. http://www.amazon.com/Apple-MB204G-Micro-DVI-Video-Adapter/dp/B0012RAI84

It was only available on first gen MacBook Air.

Here, this page might help you in the future and you can see the insanity of having X standards.

  * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_video_connectors

Did you just read a book on how to make arguments from fallacy or something? Your arguments are not very good, but sure are fallacy.

1. The justice system is based on the principle that a person is innocent until proven guilty. You can speculate all you like about what people think, but your speculation is as useful as a "poopy flavored lolly pop" (quoting Pattrick O'Hoolihan).

2. Your speculation for the reason for a trial is idiotic. You are entitled to a trial with a jury of your peers by Constitutional Law. Your speculation is worth as much as you speculating what someone thinks.

Plea bargaining is a double edged sword. Since it is often used to deprive people of their constitutional rights, questioning it's legality is valid and prudent.

It's always easy to sit on the sidelines and tell people how the game should be played. What happens if they decide you should be playing? Here is a good read for you.

http://www.amazon.com/Betrayal-Administration-Undermined-American-Security/dp/0895261960/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1365094897&sr=1-2&keywords=betrayal+clinton

Why are we not seeing more 10K drives?

Only reason I can think of is direct competition with top-shelf scsi hardware. a 900G 10K SCSI is about $500 bucks. I sure would be tempted to RAID twice as many 10K SATA for half that price if I could get the same RPM.

Nor any mention of Outlaws!
That game was like "The Good, the Bad and the Ugly" turned into a video game.

Compared to a $250 Samsung Chromebook ? You think that's only $150 in hardware?

This, here, is why Athiests [sic] are the least liked segment of America. You seem incapable of discussing your lack of faith without insulting those of us with faith in the Divine. You tell us that belief in God (or Gods) is foolishness.

So it is worse to call somebody a fool than to threaten them with eternal damnation, or torture in hell? Or reincarnation as a dog? Most religions I know of do not speak to kindly of non-believers. And some even follow that up with actions.

I am not a fool, nor do I insult you for your lack of faith.

Just as me, you _think_ you're not a fool (Please keep reading to the last paragraph - more explanation there). And I am sorry if you feel insulted, but I *really* can't take the belief in god any more serious than the belief in gnomes.

I look at the complex interplay of the physical laws of our universe and the infinitismal chance that they would all align with the requisite exactitude to create the necessary conditions for the devlopment of intelligent life and see that as evidence of some Divinity which has, at the very least, set this all in motion.

Elementary probability theory: the change of something happening is always 1 after it happened. The chance of my mom meeting my dad is 1, because if they hadn't, I wouldn't be here to calculate the chance. The chance of having rolled any series of dice is 1, but the chance of rolling the same series again is 1/6 * 1/6 etc.

If that makes me a fool, then a good number of humanities best and brightest are also fools.

I totally agree! There a lot people a lot smarter and better than me that are fools. That is because a certain level of foolishness is needed to operate properly, to motivate yourself and others, etc. The Dutch writer Matthijs van Boxsel turned the need for foolishness (or as he calls it, stupidity) into a lifelong study. An English translation of his magnum opus is available on Amazon.

Old News: Environmental Case for Nuclear Power: Economic, Medical, and Political Considerations

IANAL, but I just skimmed through the iTunes Store Terms and Conditions, searching for the word "license", and I can't find a single instance of the word being used in relation to music files. It's only used in relation to content that publishers (or reviewers) post to the iTunes Store (i.e. you grant them a license to post your review or publish your music), as well as in relation to apps both for Mac and iOS (which work in the manner you were talking about, but that was never in question).

Similarly, Amazon's Conditions of Use don't mention a license in relation to anything other than Amazon Services, and I think I'm justified in saying that downloading an mp3 file is not considered part of their Amazon Services, since their services are all continual, ongoing services with cloud-based or web-based components, rather than one-time transactions.

So, if the two biggest digital music sellers aren't distributing their files under license, who exactly are you talking about that's doing it? Or am I just looking in the wrong legal documents (which is, admittedly, quite possible)?

Personally, I think a fair price for mp3's is under 10 cents these days.

Emphasised that for you. Why would you accuse him of a "sense of entitlement" or demand any other explanation for his thoughts? Do you think that every item that is being sold, is sold at a fair price? If you have ever seen the price of an item and thought "that's more expensive that it should be" (which, if I understand correctly, is one of the basis of capitalism, "vote with your wallet" and the like), you should ask your question to yourself first.

• In the even of a Dreen invasion, contact Customer Service immediately.

If you're really interested in Atari history, there's a new book on the subject. It's written by the guys who made the flashback 2, the good one that actually reimplements an atari, instead of emulating. They came into possession of a large number of Atari business documents and put their research into a book. It's the most comprehensive and accurate history of Atari that is likely to exist.

I've been buying the model B from Adafruit for a while now. Check your facts, seriously.

Indeed. You have been able to buy a Raspberry Pi from Amazon for months.

... On the other hand, I imagine a few level-headed and empowered naysayers could have done a lot of good at Enron and Bear Stearns. ...

This point is actually brought up quite directly in Susan Cain's book titled "Quiet". It's not so much about "naysayers" (because both introverts and extroverts can be such), but is about the fact that introverted folks tend to put more effort into thinking about the (both positive and negative) effects of something, compared to extroverts who tend to dive in head-first and hope for the best. There were a good number of introverted folks giving Enron (and others) level-headed advice, with all the warning signs provided -- all of which was ignored (by extroverts who controlled things); both Enron and Bear Stearns were both mentioned.

The reason I mention her book is because it sheds an enormous amount of light on the exact attitude, thought process, personality type, and even lifestyle, that the United States (and to some degree Canada as well) has come to expect from its citizens ("workers") -- it's expected that everyone be extroverted and that nobody ever question anything. All our systems (social, economical, educational, governmental, you name it) are designed solely to support the extroverted attitude and thought process -- especially from the moment we enter kindergarten. Introversion isn't awarded in any way, it's shunned. Once this evidence is presented to you (with hundreds and hundreds of facts to back it up), it really changes how you view American life/society/etc.. It's actually amazingly depressing, because it proves that everything, right dow to our very core, is money-driven rather than neutral/balanced or even improvement-driven.

Captcha: remorse.

Anyone that is seriously bothered by the idea of being monitored should read Surveillance Countermeasures. It's an older book that deals more so with real-world surveillance but over all it's a good read and might just save your life.

Amazon Glacier has really changed my backup strategy since this time last year - I now push all my own, generated content (ie: pictures, documents, things I could never get back if I lost everything) up to Glacier using the free Windows client, Fast Glacier. In February I was charged $0.13 by Amazon for storing ~8Gb of data. I tend to push new content up as and when I create it (for example, after I process holiday snaps, or get back from a day out).

Day to day file changes are now handled by Windows 8's File History feature where my changes are pushed to a small NAS (Dlink DNS-320) in my shed (technically off site?) over a Homeplug AV ethernet link. For added security I use the legacy Windows Backup application (still present in Windows 8) to create ~ monthly snapshots of the system which I store on a 320Gb external HDD. This drive is one of two which go back and forth between my parents house each time I got and visit. These disks are encrypted using Microsoft Bitlocker drive encryption.

I should get around to properly encrypting my NAS in the shed, I've been looking at encfs.