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i'm skeptical about the spelling and grammar checker, but as for the pressure...

pens have already been developed which don't require noticeable pressure in the first place.

there are even some for children.

aren't they messy? not if you use cartridges. also, blue fountain pen ink is usually easily washable, unless you specifically get a variety which isn't.

won't the dumb kid lose his $20 fountain pen? well, i guess this might be a problem (although somehow we managed before), but i'm sure this accelerometer/vibrator pen would cost a lot more anyway.

the ergonomics are another advantage. making the pen easier to hold can only improve handwriting.

i'm skeptical about the spelling and grammar checker, but as for the pressure...

pens have already been developed which don't require noticeable pressure in the first place.

there are even some for children.

aren't they messy? not if you use cartridges. also, blue fountain pen ink is usually easily washable, unless you specifically get a variety which isn't.

won't the dumb kid lose his $20 fountain pen? well, i guess this might be a problem (although somehow we managed before), but i'm sure this accelerometer/vibrator pen would cost a lot more anyway.

the ergonomics are another advantage. making the pen easier to hold can only improve handwriting.

I have a pen which indicates when it is being used to write with poor penmanship or to write spelling and grammatical errors. It indicates this by not vibrating, flashing, or making any noise whatsoever. They're cheap as dirt, too -- less than 10 cents a pen. And I've never had one fail to indicate a problem, nor indicate a problem where none exists.

This is about the eBook edition. The Paperback is obviously still available and it would seem to me that the trademark is not applicable there.

The ebook edition of Spots the Space Marine: Defense of the Fiddler is also available on Amazon.

You're welcome. Thread over.

Even though he is a self-starter ...

Okay, awesome! What you should do is get him a raspberry pi then pick up an HDMI cable, a cheap keyboard and cheap mouse (both of which should be wired as it lags to offload wireless processing to the pi) from monoprice. Right now, B&H Video has a deal where you get 2 x 16GB cards for $15 if you add two of these to your cart with free shipping. Okay, I've actually already bought several sets of this stuff from these exact same suppliers and handed them off to a bunch of kids that are loving them right now. So that's all legit. You'll need to have a TV or monitor with an HDMI in and it helps if you have a cheap webcam (one of the tutorials I'm gonna mention uses it). You'll also need a second computer with a way to access SD flash cards (pick up a USB toaster for $5 if you don't have this)> Optional would be male-to-female wires like these with any breadboard so he can tinker with making his own stuff -- you'll probably have to drop more cash on more electronic devices to interface with it if you go this route though.

Next, you might consider this book but I prefer this one more. Okay then you send your kid here to get the hard float raspbian wheezy and you tell him how to figure out how to get it on the flash card to boot on the pi. There's a wiki for all this stuff. Then you send him here and make him do these tutorials. Then you make him read all the issues of the MagPi. And if he's smart enough, you buy him some more peripherals. There should be a lot more tutorials coming out for this device.

Once he has all that stuff, you go to the liquor store. Now, the liquor stores around my house sell a lot of types of vodkas and Absolut is great but I've found that Sobieski satiates me just as well. It's made from this Dankowski rye that makes great gimlets. Try to buy a case of handles and haggle him down to ~$13 a handle (that stuff is really cheap). Then you go to the store and you get some of that Real Lime lime juice. Not the key lime shit, the actual lime juice. You're gonna need a decent blender because this thing is gonna be working all summer long. Also, a bag of hazelnuts. Go home and fill a cup to the top with ice and put in about one finger of lime juice. Fill the rest with Sobieski. Blend that shit up, garnish with a couple crushed hazelnuts to really dry that shit out and kick back. Trust me, your kid is going to come and talk to you about python and apt-get and registers and you are not going to want to have to deal with that. So just get good and fucking faced in the sun all summer long. Your kid will thank you for staying out of his hair. A summer of riproarin' fall down drunk? You can thank me later.

Even though he is a self-starter ...

Okay, awesome! What you should do is get him a raspberry pi then pick up an HDMI cable, a cheap keyboard and cheap mouse (both of which should be wired as it lags to offload wireless processing to the pi) from monoprice. Right now, B&H Video has a deal where you get 2 x 16GB cards for $15 if you add two of these to your cart with free shipping. Okay, I've actually already bought several sets of this stuff from these exact same suppliers and handed them off to a bunch of kids that are loving them right now. So that's all legit. You'll need to have a TV or monitor with an HDMI in and it helps if you have a cheap webcam (one of the tutorials I'm gonna mention uses it). You'll also need a second computer with a way to access SD flash cards (pick up a USB toaster for $5 if you don't have this)> Optional would be male-to-female wires like these with any breadboard so he can tinker with making his own stuff -- you'll probably have to drop more cash on more electronic devices to interface with it if you go this route though.

Next, you might consider this book but I prefer this one more. Okay then you send your kid here to get the hard float raspbian wheezy and you tell him how to figure out how to get it on the flash card to boot on the pi. There's a wiki for all this stuff. Then you send him here and make him do these tutorials. Then you make him read all the issues of the MagPi. And if he's smart enough, you buy him some more peripherals. There should be a lot more tutorials coming out for this device.

Once he has all that stuff, you go to the liquor store. Now, the liquor stores around my house sell a lot of types of vodkas and Absolut is great but I've found that Sobieski satiates me just as well. It's made from this Dankowski rye that makes great gimlets. Try to buy a case of handles and haggle him down to ~$13 a handle (that stuff is really cheap). Then you go to the store and you get some of that Real Lime lime juice. Not the key lime shit, the actual lime juice. You're gonna need a decent blender because this thing is gonna be working all summer long. Also, a bag of hazelnuts. Go home and fill a cup to the top with ice and put in about one finger of lime juice. Fill the rest with Sobieski. Blend that shit up, garnish with a couple crushed hazelnuts to really dry that shit out and kick back. Trust me, your kid is going to come and talk to you about python and apt-get and registers and you are not going to want to have to deal with that. So just get good and fucking faced in the sun all summer long. Your kid will thank you for staying out of his hair. A summer of riproarin' fall down drunk? You can thank me later.

Even though he is a self-starter ...

Okay, awesome! What you should do is get him a raspberry pi then pick up an HDMI cable, a cheap keyboard and cheap mouse (both of which should be wired as it lags to offload wireless processing to the pi) from monoprice. Right now, B&H Video has a deal where you get 2 x 16GB cards for $15 if you add two of these to your cart with free shipping. Okay, I've actually already bought several sets of this stuff from these exact same suppliers and handed them off to a bunch of kids that are loving them right now. So that's all legit. You'll need to have a TV or monitor with an HDMI in and it helps if you have a cheap webcam (one of the tutorials I'm gonna mention uses it). You'll also need a second computer with a way to access SD flash cards (pick up a USB toaster for $5 if you don't have this)> Optional would be male-to-female wires like these with any breadboard so he can tinker with making his own stuff -- you'll probably have to drop more cash on more electronic devices to interface with it if you go this route though.

Next, you might consider this book but I prefer this one more. Okay then you send your kid here to get the hard float raspbian wheezy and you tell him how to figure out how to get it on the flash card to boot on the pi. There's a wiki for all this stuff. Then you send him here and make him do these tutorials. Then you make him read all the issues of the MagPi. And if he's smart enough, you buy him some more peripherals. There should be a lot more tutorials coming out for this device.

Once he has all that stuff, you go to the liquor store. Now, the liquor stores around my house sell a lot of types of vodkas and Absolut is great but I've found that Sobieski satiates me just as well. It's made from this Dankowski rye that makes great gimlets. Try to buy a case of handles and haggle him down to ~$13 a handle (that stuff is really cheap). Then you go to the store and you get some of that Real Lime lime juice. Not the key lime shit, the actual lime juice. You're gonna need a decent blender because this thing is gonna be working all summer long. Also, a bag of hazelnuts. Go home and fill a cup to the top with ice and put in about one finger of lime juice. Fill the rest with Sobieski. Blend that shit up, garnish with a couple crushed hazelnuts to really dry that shit out and kick back. Trust me, your kid is going to come and talk to you about python and apt-get and registers and you are not going to want to have to deal with that. So just get good and fucking faced in the sun all summer long. Your kid will thank you for staying out of his hair. A summer of riproarin' fall down drunk? You can thank me later.

This Book: GIMP 2.6 Cookbook. More to the point, it has interesting and useful artistic advice http://www.amazon.com/GIMP-cookbook-Juan-Manuel-Ferreyra/dp/1849512027 of course the gimp part is great. it shouldve been color printed though

Scope?

Yea, spotting scope; like this one.

You mean you would shoot at my RC airplane with a scoped rifle?

1) not all rifles are created equally - a 30-06 has a much greater range than, say, a 9mm carbine.

2) I never said I would shoot it with a rifle, anyway; you shouldn't assume so much - a shotgun would likely be plenty effective. And yes, if you trespass on my property with your little toy, I can and will blow that fucker to pieces. Then, I'd likely call the sheriff and have you arrested for trespassing and littering, among other potential charges.

Regardless, shooting a rifle at a high angle into the air is a remarkably reckless thing to do. That bullet will come down with lethal velocity at a random location, perhaps several miles away.

No shit? Well, thanks Captain Obvious, whatever would we do without you?

Perhaps you should give your idea more thought.

Perhaps you should give yours some thought, period, instead of assuming the worst of people you don't know.

the Chromebook has been Amazon's best selling laptop for a while now. That doesn't mean its outselling all Windows 8 PCs, but at least on Amazon its outselling any particular Windows 8 PC. Take that as you will, since the Apple TV is also on that page. http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics/zgbs/electronics/ref=zg_bs_electronics_home_all

Immediately, I thought of the science-fiction novel Attack from Atlantis, as the technology sounds very much like that used to create the super-strong bubbles described in the story.

The asians have been selling anti-radiation maternity cloths for years now. My wife purchased one herself. Surprisingly, they work...at blocking cell reception at least. I tested it out with two cell phones. Both had full bars. As soon as I covered one of the phones all the way around, the signal dropped. It was instant and the test could be repeated over and over again. So the clothes do was they're advertised to do. The question is, does it really impact the safety of fetal development? Doubt it. But there you go.

http://www.amazon.com/Radiation-Maternity-Preganat-Protection-Shielding/dp/B0053ZPB6U

Spots the Space Marine: Defense of the Fiddler is still listed on Amazon. What was the point of this, a free advertisement?

What's new about a wrist phone? Swatch had the Swatch Talk wrist phone in 1998. Samsung had one in 2001. If you want one right now, there are several on Amazon. They're cheap, too; well under $100 for an unlocked phone.

There's even a full Android device in a watch size announced. This thing can supposedly make phone calls, shoot video, browse the web, get your location, etc.

10 trips to the movies here or 2.4 tanks of gas in my little Ranger, but you are missing the point in that the failure rate on the $100 2TB has been crazy high so you will end up having to pay a LOT more if you don't want to play Russian roulette with your data.

The only 2TB drives I've seen with a very low failure rate has been the Samsung and the Toshiba, the Samsung will cost you $175 when you can find one and the Toshiba is $100 but you have to crack the external to get the drive out.

So honestly most of the 2TB drives you see out there at a decent price are the Seagates and frankly they are junk, youre more likely to have it die inside of 6 months as not.

10 trips to the movies here or 2.4 tanks of gas in my little Ranger, but you are missing the point in that the failure rate on the $100 2TB has been crazy high so you will end up having to pay a LOT more if you don't want to play Russian roulette with your data.

The only 2TB drives I've seen with a very low failure rate has been the Samsung and the Toshiba, the Samsung will cost you $175 when you can find one and the Toshiba is $100 but you have to crack the external to get the drive out.

So honestly most of the 2TB drives you see out there at a decent price are the Seagates and frankly they are junk, youre more likely to have it die inside of 6 months as not.

But the Ouya isn't trying to compete with PS and XBox. That's the point I'm trying to make. It's priced significantly lower than the *current* price for the nearly-decade-old XBox 360 and PS3.

Seriously... and that's the 4gb model ... half the storage capacity of a Ouya, without the USB Stick expandability. Maybe being in a different market will relegate it to the "checkout line of best buy," but I kinda doubt it.

BTW, I have checked out the specs, and Ouya is roughly on par with the "base" level Wii U, while being 1/3 the price.

Come on Amazon, how can a Free ebook be "Out of stock, many which are even "Out of Copyright":?

Man evolved *and* there was an Adam: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0097454KQ

I recently read When God Talks Back by T.M. Luhrmann, and she talks about this. She's a (non-religious) anthropologist who spend several years attending and participating in charismatic evangelical churches to try to understand what makes these sorts of religious people tick, and it's fascinating. While some of them are legitimately crazy, she concludes that most of them are not--they are ordinary thoughtful people who do question and examine their faith, and conclude that it holds up.

I highly recommend it.

I have a Kindle Touch and have bought a few books from Amazon. Once downloaded I copy them to my PC and strip the DRM out of it with some freeware apps, then convert them to ePub. That way, if Amazon ever decide that I'm no longer eligible to give them my money (as they have with others) I lose nothing, and can use them on any eReader in the future. I'm happy to root my phone, I can do it with the Kindle if need be.

To answer your question, thought, yes you mostly can. You can lend your purchased books to other Kindle users. Here are the details.

As one of the Disruptive Technology posters applications highlighted in Innovators Dilemma this is pretty ironic.

This then suggests a simple fix for global warming - we just need to move Earth into a slightly higher orbit.

Larry Niven already proposed this four decades ago in his novel Ringworld , where the alien race the Puppeteers had moved their planets away from their sun to cool them. This was long before fears of global warming, but Niven felt that technological advancement would inevitably lead to problems with waste heat.

Why pay that much? They sell it by the kilo for $30.

http://www.amazon.com/Caffeine-Powder-Pharma-freshness-Powder/dp/B006IFGRLW/ref=pd_sbs_misc_8

10X as much for only 50% more...

I know this is somewhat off-topic, but I was a big supporter of the whole micro-finance thing at one time myself. Sounds like a great idea and all, right? But then I saw former micro-financier Hugh Sinclair's BookTv segment and read his book and it opened my eyes to how much of this micro-finance fad has become a feeding ground for scammers, con men, and other vultures in the countries they're ostensibly supposed to be helping--and how much corruption there is in many of these "charitable" non-profits and financiers that sell the idea of micro-finance to well-meaning supporters.

Again, I know it's not directly related to the hack. But every time micro-finance comes up, I like to point out this info--since the vast majority of people still think of the subject in very naive and rosy terms, oblivious to the deep corruption that has become so pervasive in its execution.

In Planet of Slums, Mike Davis analyzes this at length: that in most of the world, the rich live in urban centers, and the poor have great difficulty affording housing in urban centers. The trouble is, of course, the urban centers are where all the jobs are. So, there are all sorts of messy, quasi-legal and illegal housing arrangements. It's quite common for people to have to pay rent to sleep on sidewalks, for example.

It's relatively recently that housing patterns in the US have started shifting to match those of the rest of the world.

Of course, many forms of work can be performed from anywhere, provided there's access to high-bandwidth communication, which would significantly ease the burden on many people to find affordable housing. But that rather brings us back to the problem illustrated in the original article.

NASA uses Micrium's OS ( U/COS ) on the Mars curiosity rover.

( NetBurners use the same OS )

Here's the book on it... same one I use.

Note how compact an OS can be if all the "consumer fluff" is not included and the OS simply concentrates on the task to do and what resources it has to allocate.

It'll be interesting to see how addictive this technology becomes, especially as many people already can't be separated from their smartphones. One of the more thought-provoking things in Vinge's novel Marooned in Realtime (about the pace of technology accelerating towards a singularity) is that human beings from later in the 21st century feel disoriented and sluggish when disconnected from wearable technology that provides them 24/7 with sources of information.

That's Australia. We've established in other articles and discussions that the content cartels gouge the piss out of those down under, and it isn't limited to Steam.

That may be so, but he was comparing an Australian store with Steam, so I don't know what your point is.

In the US, prices on Steam are unbeatable. There is nothing quite like getting a classic for $5 that you can't find in stores for less than $19.99 (and that's if you can even find it to begin with).

Really? I've gotten many classics for cheap from eBay. Plus if you really want a classic, you could always pirate it or try other distributors like Good Old Games.

I recently got Borderlands 2 for $29.99 - that is simply not possible right now otherwise.

Right now Amazon has it for $36.99. Steam has it for $59.99. I notice they are selling a "Season Pass" for $29.99, but that's just downloadable (extra) content, for which you'll need to buy the original game first.

Steam is convenient, but mostly they have games at high prices that they get people to buy by putting them on sale. Steam users love their sales.

Connectivity is great but I want automation. I want to be able to wake up to a couple perfectly fried eggs and some bacon next to buttered toast. Thanks science.

You mean something like this? Now these aren't fried eggs but likely poached. I'm sure there are other machines out there that would do it or you could just set a timer on the power cord.

But as with all "automatic" devices like your morning coffee, you still have to make it the night before or in the case of capsules, press a button (make sure the capsule is filled right, make sure theirs water and a cup waiting, etc). What I really want is full automation. Pod/capsule coffee machines have just about reached that. These things save time in the morning but not really any thing else as the time is still used setting it up the night before.

Amazon has multiple data-centers.

There is no one place where any specific service is hosted.
For more then one of their offerings to be down from inside, and not from the outside, it might have been something like internal routers or switch gear, or perhaps an internal route advertising accident.

So I live in Overland Park, a suburb of Kansas City. Google fiber is not in offered in Overland Park yet, but because it is close by and spreading I checked out the prices and signed up for email notification when their service becomes available in my area.

The prices. Holy cow. It's free. A one time $300.00 installation fee but then it is free. So I was wondering for months how is that possible? Is Google taking a massive loss? Did Google invent a new technology which allows them to undercut their competitors?

Then on a drive across town to the local Fablab I was listening to the local public radio station which just happened to be interviewing Susan Crawford, author of the recently published book Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age. As the summary at Amazon states:

This important book by leading telecommunications policy expert Susan Crawford explores why Americans are now paying much more but getting much less when it comes to high-speed Internet access.

Well as you might guess from the subtitle of the book, what she finds out when she explores is that internet and cable service in the U.S. are regional monopolies. Even when multiple internet and cable service providers operate in the same city they divide up the city into regions of monopolistic coverage and only overlap on small percentages of territory.

So Google offers such spectacularly low prices by undercutting monopolists, having enough clout to overcome barriers to entry which block startups, and Moore's law has reduced the cost of providing internet service to something pretty close to free. The inflated prices for internet broadband service which we have paid in the U.S. have not followed Moore's law because service provider are monopolies. Now with the disruption of that monopoly in one regional market prices are back on track with Moore's law there.

Amazon Appstore for Android debuted in the United States, and a United States address was required to buy apps. It added five countries in Europe at the end of August of last year, and Japan appears to have since been added to the list of supported countries. When will China be added?

even if Obama wanted to, he's going to save his political capital for those fights which advance his own goals

Obama got twice as much money as Romney in the last election from Verizon. And that was just one cellular carrier.

You all think the law as it stands was not very much supported and driven by Democrats? Well enjoy laying in the bed you all voted for. I'm not going to sign the petition because I figure America should get what it asked for, full bore. Enjoy the next four years rubes! That should give you just enough time to truly understand the term Liberal Fascism.

Take two of these and call me in the morning.

http://www.amazon.com/Thermodynamics-Dummies-Mike-Pauken/dp/1118002911

I am replying to my own post with a correction.

I said, based on some recollection, I think from the book, Are Universes Thicker Than Blackberries", that Martin Gardner was a self-professed liberal Christian. But I can't find the reference, so I figure I am wrong on that. My understanding is that he was brought up in a somewhat fundamentalist Methodist home. Perhaps he did have a liberal Christian phase, but I have no evidence for it.

But I did find this from an online interview:

My wife Charlotte and I were a mixed marriage, by the way. She was Jewish, but we were both philosophical theists. When we got married, I wanted to affiliate with a reformed synagogue, but Charlotte refused because she had no beliefs in traditionalJudaism, any more than I have in Christianity. She countered by saying that we could join a Methodist Church, since my background was Methodist. I refused. So we didn’t go to any church, but we profess a kind of philosophical theism which enables me to admire many religious writers like Chesterton.

So Gardner was a philosophical theist, had no beliefs in Christianity.

If this question is selected to be sent, could our slashdot overlords please change "liberal Christian" to "philosophical theist"?

Thanks.

I've read several of your books, used to have a subscription to "Skeptical Inquirer", and generally support your activities and those of other skeptics. (I sometimes point out that the emperor has no clothes on this very site :-)

Your books, and transcripts and stories of skeptic investigations, hold a generally belittling attitude towards the people you're investigating. Not at all the dispassionate, "here's the evidence, here's our conclusions" type of prose that is customary in scientific literature.

Regarding this tone of voice, what advice can you give to someone who does public writing? Has this attitude helped your cause, or served to impede it? If you were given the chance to start over, would you take the same attitude?

Basically, is "snark" a good writing style?

Nota Bene: For those who think this is a troll (it's not), I grabbed "Flim Flam" by James Randy off of my bookshelf (the first of his books I could find). Opening at random and starting from chapter 6 (Erich von Daniken &c) reads sentences/fragments such as: "The only facts in his four books [named] that I depend on are the page numbers", "perpetrated ... a literary diddle of enormous scope", [Chapter 8] "Along with Freudian psychiatry, this madness has persisted to the present day".

I found the book informative and interesting, but the tone, sometimes nuanced and sometimes explicit, fairly screams "prejudice!" to the reader. To my mind, the style detracts from the credibility.

Online, tone of voice is everything. We have an opportunity to find out whether snark writing is more effective than dispassionate, and perhaps that will inform online writing.

Related: Richard Preston also wrote the non-fiction book The Hot Zone, where he discusses Ebola, Marburg, and other hot viruses in detail (and it's perhaps the first mass media coverage they received), as well as how the CDC operates to identify, contain, and otherwise deal with hot viruses.

The Cobra Event was OKi for fiction, but rather meh compared to works by Follett or Crichton (RIP), that may be shakier on the science but way more entertaining. However, in my opinion, Preston's non-fiction, documentary accounts in The Hot Zone and in The Demon in the Freezer are way, way, way scarier. Highly recommended.

Trivia: Richard Preston is the only civilian, non-physician/doctor of any kind, who's been recognized for his work by the Centers of Disease Control.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hot-Zone-Terrifying-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z/177-7970503-1396814
http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Freezer-True-Story/dp/0345466632/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y/177-7970503-1396814

Cheers!

Related: Richard Preston also wrote the non-fiction book The Hot Zone, where he discusses Ebola, Marburg, and other hot viruses in detail (and it's perhaps the first mass media coverage they received), as well as how the CDC operates to identify, contain, and otherwise deal with hot viruses.

The Cobra Event was OKi for fiction, but rather meh compared to works by Follett or Crichton (RIP), that may be shakier on the science but way more entertaining. However, in my opinion, Preston's non-fiction, documentary accounts in The Hot Zone and in The Demon in the Freezer are way, way, way scarier. Highly recommended.

Trivia: Richard Preston is the only civilian, non-physician/doctor of any kind, who's been recognized for his work by the Centers of Disease Control.

http://www.amazon.com/The-Hot-Zone-Terrifying-Story/dp/0385495226/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_z/177-7970503-1396814
http://www.amazon.com/The-Demon-Freezer-True-Story/dp/0345466632/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y/177-7970503-1396814

Cheers!

Interesting thought, which has probably occurred to other people, of course.
I suppose the reason why we have not seen large-scale attacks on routers so far, (and maybe there are some out there already, undetected) is that it has just been easier to infect PCs and use them in botnets, with the tools widely available.
Would probably take a little more time and ingenuity to setup a net of zombie routers, with the need to tailor the worm or whatever a little to each model/software stack.
However, once it was in place, can you imagine the disruption? Most SOHO & home users don't know anything about their ISP modem/routers at all, and use them by default as their firewall. Imagine that *gone* tomorrow. An ISP trying to roll-out large-scale firmware updates via a non-tech-savy audience sounds like a recipe for disaster. (Although I suppose many of the later models support remote update...).
Since many users have no choice in their selection of ISP device, it is surely the responsibility of the ISP to make them secure...yeah, like it's their responsibility to get us all IPv6-compatible stuff too...don't hold your breath.

In the meantime, roll your own firewall box everyone, and while you're at it, do one for your friends and relations. It's cheap and fairly easy.
Here's a good place to start.
http://www.amazon.com/Building-Firewalls-OpenBSD-PF-2nd/dp/8391665119 (You don't have to use BSD, of course, most any flavour of *x will do)
Or just download a distro where pretty much all the work has been done for you.
http://www.techradar.com/news/software/applications/7-of-the-best-linux-firewalls-697177

Of course, sitting smug and secure behind your shiny new firewall box will not help if you cannot access the net except via your compromised POS router. If you can, buy a decent one to substitute for the ISP-supplied crap.

See Cyber War: The Next Threat to National Security and What to Do About It [Paperback] Richard A. Clarke (Author), Robert Knake (Author)

If you really want to get some clarity on who and what Atari was, at least up until 1984... then you really need to check this out: http://www.amazon.com/Atari-Inc-Mr-Curt-Vendel/dp/0985597402

1. Quote Martin Luther King as saying disidents should be proud to go to jail.

Not everyone is heralded like Mandella with a large base of supporters and international attention. Most are swallowed up by the penal system never to be heard from again. Only their family remembers. Look what happened to John Kiriakou who blew the whistle on illegal torture. He's gone away for 30 months. http://dissenter.firedoglake.com/2013/01/28/convicted-cia-whistleblower-john-kiriakou-confronts-government-talking-points-on-nbcs-today-show/


Whistleblower John Kiriakou said "I am proud that I stood up to our government. I am not a criminal. I am a whistleblower. Torture is illegal and it’s officially abandoned in our country and I’m proud to have had a role in that." Sounds a bit like Patrick Henry's "Liberty or Death". A hero right? And yet...

Don't expect the media to save you. NBC's Savannah Guthrie began her interview of him: "Some people say you betrayed your former colleagues in order to raise your media profile in order to sell books and get a consulting business going." Are *you* going to be holding a candlelight vigil for a cad of a man who betrayed his country to sell books?

Don't expect the judge to save you: The US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema said on Friday that Kiriakou had damaged the CIA. She called the sentence, the result of a plea arrangement with prosecutors, "way too light". Before issuing the sentence, the judge asked Kiriakou if he had anything to say. When he declined, she said: ''Perhaps you have already spoken too much.''
This book tells how once you're jailed the public think you deserve it and quickly forget about you. http://books.google.com/books?id=Tu5RB6YHf10C&pg=PP1&lpg=PP1&ots=51Ya4U8XFt&dq=lynch+in+the+name+of+justice (Go to page 43 of this Google Books preview).


2. Swartz broke the law and should do the time.

These posts are usually accompanied by an anal exploration of the relevant statute by watched too many courtroom dramas and thinks they are real life, but was there ever an Episode of Law & Order when McCoy said "Let's fuck this college kid over! I want a promotion! "

People who post these overlook the whole point that these are unfair laws. Volokh showed how unfair they are when he wrote a TOS that could be used to send anyone to jail named "Ralph".
http://www.japantimes.co.jp/text/eo20120803gw.html
http://www.amazon.com/Arrest-Proof-Yourself-Ex-Cop-Reveals-Arrested/dp/1556526377
http://www.volokh.com/posts/1227896387.shtml

I mean, c'mon

http://xkcd.com/413/

Yes, I feel bad that I have a set of Lego Mindstorms and an Arduino in my basement that I haven't done anything with yet.

I did get my EeePC interfaced with this though, via the USB control dongle:
http://www.amazon.com/OWI-OWI-535-Robotic-Arm-Edge/dp/B0017OFRCY

There are some really good examples of using an Arduino to interface to sensors and actuators in this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Making-Things-Talk-Practical-Connecting/dp/B008SLH2DQ

Hitler engaged in a decades long persecution of Jews, and the purpose of the concentration camps was to provide a "final solution" by exterminating them. Over 7 million were killed.

You're seriously mistaken and duped. Not even close to that number of Jews died and relatively few we're purposefully killed. Most died of typoid and other diseases. Yes, Just like the USA's eugenics programme , there was a systematic campaign to remove the handicapped from the population, except that the Germans quietly killed about 70,000, whereas the US simply "forced the procreation switch off". Similarly, yes, there was human experimentation and death, but you have no idea how many your "7 million" people are! Do you realise that to achieve that number of killings in 3 years, they would have had to kill at least 6392 Jews on every single day?? What factories and how many does one need to do that? Have you seen the little mattress delousing chambers in Auschwitz that have been turned into gas-chambers after the war? Even if they were actually gas chambers, how many people do you thing could have been systematically killed in a facility like that, including processing the bodies afterwards? So use your brains for a change and stop believing the "winners'" propaganda machine and their movie factories.

Apart from Hitler, the Britons hated the Jews almost just as much and maybe not entirely without reason.

And then you seem to think the Americans were different, don't you? Is that why they took over 700 Nazi's quietly from Germany, helped them to change their names (Operation Paperclip and here), got them to start a new iteration of MindKontrolle and MK Ultra and are still protection them? Given even half an opportunity, the US people would do exactly the same as what the demonised European dictators did (Milgram Experiments) as proven by the list of sneaky and secret experiments the US government performed on their own people (Unethical Human Experimentation)

Roosevelt allowed the internment of Japanese Americans after the US was sneak-attacked by their home country without provocation. He and his military commanders felt that Japanese Americans with easy access to the cost might assist the Japanese government with an invasion, so they moved them away from the coast. The

Roosevelt was a cunning conniving bastard and traitor to the US people. He had full knowledge of the impending Pearl Harbour attack, moved all the new ships out of the harbour and let the old one's be destroyed, in order to sway the public opinion from being opposed to the war to one of being pro-war. He probably also instructed MacArthur to ensure half the US airforce would be destroyed as well a few hours later. Here is a well referenced historic timeline of the events. They had implement the plan they had hatched (scans of original Mc Collum memo

I hope that brings some enlightenment to thy senses.

One of the concepts that interested me in Larry Niven's classic science-fiction work Ringworld is a civilization having to move its planet out from its sun in order to avoid perishing in their waste heat. I haven't seen that possibility explored so much in the years since. With studies like this, along with Kurzweil-ish woo-woo of extrapolating growth, can we talk an amusing guess at how long until heat waste renders the Earth, or at least certain parts of it uninhabitable?

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

Uh, China cannot just print money since they don't own anything like the petrodollar. The Chinese Gov printing money would just transfer wealth from those holding net positive amounts of Chinese currency to the printers. In effect a tax but one that reduces faith in the currency. They'd be just like Zimbabwe: http://www.amazon.com/Zimbabwe-Trillion-Banknote-Uncirculated-Sequential/dp/B003XPJOZQ (FWIW it might be fun to use these like "casino chips" when gambling amongst friends)

In contrast when the US prints money (aka issues trillion dollar loans to itself from thin air) the rest of the world becomes relatively poorer because they happen to hold trillions of US dollars AND they also trade stuff like oil, CPUs, orange juice, wheat that are priced in US dollars.

When the US prints money the world doesn't laugh because we live in the USA's Zimbabwe.

The US people's problem is the US Mugabe (US Gov) isn't giving the US people a good cut of the printed money.