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The one I have is this one but that is only the first volume (there are 4) and my biggest beef is that it is paper back and not very durable. It seems that there are a number various translations of varying quality and embellishment and as I don't have a copy of the original and would not be able to read it anyway I can't really compare the various translations to the original. At the time when I got my set it was the only one I could find as Amazon didn't exist and you had to buy stuff from the store. It has been a long while since I last read it (probably close to 15 years) but I don't remember it being overly racist.

Beware the twin evils of the electronic entertainment industry and dairy industry consortiums....

I see you've read this: http://www.amazon.com/Milk-Sulphate-Starvation-Martin-Millar/dp/1593762275

Book by Rick Maurer "Why Don't You Want What I Want" - I found this book immensely helpfull. Check it out on amazon

I think this is a phenomenon we see again and again in the modern world; We deprive a natural system of natural random shocks it had in its ancestral environment and it does not build the strength it needs to sustain heavier shocks when they come. Plenty of literature on this- consider the Hygiene Hypothesis, Financial Fragility, The body's need for exercise, Forest Fire Management (killing small fires make the biggest fires bigger), Epidemiology, etc. Every psychological conflict is swept under the carpet under the pretense of etiquette, morality and so-called civilized behaviour. We need some conflict! We need some Volatility and Randomness in Life!

I think there is a very important insight here, made by Nassim Taleb amongst others. Its easier to manage the Fragility (or Anti-Fragility) then it is to predict specific time and place of blowup events. There is something terribly wrong with the way we approach sciences in the domains of Complex Systems as if its Particle Physics. Its time for a new scientific revolution - where we move from Know What to .

In his fictional book "Daemon" , Daniel Suarez showed lots of ways that Internet connected devices can whack people. Many of them are not that far fetched.

GP should read this.
Given funding, there could be a small, self-sustaining, base on Mars within 5 years.

As far as being stuck in the solar system, "we" are, but our grandchildren may not be with some technology advancement.

Using current ion drives it would take 14,417 years to reach Alpha Centauri, not 100,000.

Using what scientists have designed, but not gotten funded, it would be possible to reach that system in less than 40 years. In under 50 years there would be a data stream from another solar system. If there was a verified habitable planet, it would still require a generation ship to get there.

I seriously doubt something larger than the volume of a skyscraper for a single unmanned mission would get funded. Once we can use robotic construction and resource gathering, it's not unreasonable to think that this class of probe could be sent. If Phobos has useful material, we're already partway there.

Always nice to see the price gouging by third party sellers on Amazon: Amazon price $249 - Temporarily out of stock. 45 other sellers available starting at $322.62 + $6.37 shipping. Awesome.

And their list of "Most Wished For" laptops is even better, including two G4 iBooks.

that is some twisted perspective considering 6 of the top 10 are windows lol.

I think he meant that this would be news if there were more Chrome-books on that list than Apple Macs since Apple is a smaller competitor to beat when it comes to laptop sales than the 800 pound gorilla that is Windows Laptops. Chrome-books displacing Windows laptops on the top 10 most sold list would be the next hurdle. Personally, I'll be impressed one of these Chrome-books managed to stays on that list on for any length of time, not that I'm especially impressed by that list, the one for music players still has third place on the Amazon list and it is discontinued.

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Sellers-Electronics-Hard-Drive-Based/zgbs/electronics/15752041

I can see the Irony you refer to and its a good point. But unfortunately the situation is not so simple because technology is frequently far easier to use for destruction then creation. Certain systems have fragilities which could be lethal under errors; For example, regardless of the intention of the implementation of biotechnology - Ecologies can exhibit unexpected response to randomness. Bringing fragility into the picture as some very Clever People have Noted would force us to review our risk management system completely.

Centralize technological decision making and each Human Error will be magnified (as with financial network that is centralized and is fragile to the collapse of one or two big institutions). Decentralize technological decision making and you have the danger of agents acting for their own benefit to burden society with the Risks of their enterprises (as with people administering antibiotics too quickly - something that statistically benefits them and endangers the population). If there was ever a time to start bringing the concepts of Antifragility and Subsidiarity Principle into socioeconomic, techno/scientific and political discourse.... its Now.

You can still buy them, here's a link to one on Amazon. I just got myself a slightly broken one off ebay for £100 + £10 p+p, (all that was wrong with it was a broken keyboard, and one of the touchpad buttons doesn't work), even replacing the touchpad, keyboard and battery will cost less than a refurb would've from Amazon and I can probably live with the touchpad as it is anyway.

I'm pretty happy with my getup, even though it's quite ancient now in device years:

Viewsonic G-Tablet running Vegan-Tab (2.3 Gingerbread-based). It has a micro-SD slot in addition to 16GB of internal memory. It has a full-size USB port. I use it with one of these cheap USB keyboard cases to get physical buttons:
http://www.amazon.com/Synthetic-Leather-Keyboard-Stylus-Black/dp/B004JQN670/ref=sr_1_2
I always win at SketchIt / Pictionary with this. Also, I can use it as an extended battery pack to charge my cell phone.

Yes, the TFT screen is crap, but it doesn't really bother me anymore, the keyboard case really helps keep it propped up at the right angle.
I tried the TeamDRH (DirtyResetHole) 4.1 ROM at some point, and while it was awesome, the G-Tablet didn't really have enough RAM (512MB) to multitask well with Android 4.1. But all the apps work fine and fast under Vegan-Tab.

I think the front-facing camera has an LED that turns on when it's active. But there's always masking tape if you want a physical enable/disable button. For the other wireless functions, I'm happy enough with the PowerControl widget to enable / disable various wifi / phone radio features.

Stereo mics are overrated. Professional studios use one mic per audio source, and mix sources into multiple channels later. Get dedicated recording devices (several tablets recording a single channel each to mix later, if you must). If you're filming VR gonzo porn or something, then you minus while spring for some device that can record in binocular 3D vision with stereo audio to give you the full immersion. For anything less, just deal with having one camera and one mic :P

The ViewSonic G-Tablet has an HDMI-out converter dongle, but I haven't bought it. The 10" screen is big enough to enjoy Netflix while I'm sitting on the John.

Finally, I use the LED "flashlight" on my phone (an HTC myTouch 4G Slide running CyanogenMOD 9.1 / Android 4.1-based). I don't really see the need to have one on my Tablet as well. I also have one of these cheap keychain LEDs which actually works pretty nicely and doesn't die like the plastic variety:
http://www.amazon.com/Streamlight-73001-Miniature-Keychain-Flashlight/dp/B0011UIPIW/ref=sr_1_1

I'm a bit pissed that both Vegan-Tab and CyanogenMOD 9.1 don't have the loopback module compiled in, so I could run the "Linux Installer" and chroot into a full Debian distro from Android. This would give me enough options to make me happy using a tablet for "real" work. It was great on my older myTouch 3G Slide running CyanogenMOD 7.1, which did have the loopback device in the kernel.

Finally, for mapping, the Google Maps caching is good enough. We just came back from a drive through the Western US, and we simply mapped from town to town., and did the "Download to SD" thing for a few of the national parks that we knew we'd be spending a lot of time wandering around in. Not perfect (particularly since you can't really swap between map types while disconnected... hopefully Google will fix this sometime). But it was good enough. I remember driving across the country 10 years ago with a full US Garmin Street Maps on a laptop. It was cool, but not that cool compared to the awesome array of data that's available now. Back in the PalmOS days, I also would load tons of street vectors from the Mapopolis service, but that was a pain since you had to download county by county. I think at this point, the easiest thing to do would be to just pester Google to add a few more offline features and call it a day... or just spend 5 minutes preloading the details of your trip.

So call me a luddite, maybe... but I'm pretty happy with my "old" tech ;)

I'm pretty happy with my getup, even though it's quite ancient now in device years:

Viewsonic G-Tablet running Vegan-Tab (2.3 Gingerbread-based). It has a micro-SD slot in addition to 16GB of internal memory. It has a full-size USB port. I use it with one of these cheap USB keyboard cases to get physical buttons:
http://www.amazon.com/Synthetic-Leather-Keyboard-Stylus-Black/dp/B004JQN670/ref=sr_1_2
I always win at SketchIt / Pictionary with this. Also, I can use it as an extended battery pack to charge my cell phone.

Yes, the TFT screen is crap, but it doesn't really bother me anymore, the keyboard case really helps keep it propped up at the right angle.
I tried the TeamDRH (DirtyResetHole) 4.1 ROM at some point, and while it was awesome, the G-Tablet didn't really have enough RAM (512MB) to multitask well with Android 4.1. But all the apps work fine and fast under Vegan-Tab.

I think the front-facing camera has an LED that turns on when it's active. But there's always masking tape if you want a physical enable/disable button. For the other wireless functions, I'm happy enough with the PowerControl widget to enable / disable various wifi / phone radio features.

Stereo mics are overrated. Professional studios use one mic per audio source, and mix sources into multiple channels later. Get dedicated recording devices (several tablets recording a single channel each to mix later, if you must). If you're filming VR gonzo porn or something, then you minus while spring for some device that can record in binocular 3D vision with stereo audio to give you the full immersion. For anything less, just deal with having one camera and one mic :P

The ViewSonic G-Tablet has an HDMI-out converter dongle, but I haven't bought it. The 10" screen is big enough to enjoy Netflix while I'm sitting on the John.

Finally, I use the LED "flashlight" on my phone (an HTC myTouch 4G Slide running CyanogenMOD 9.1 / Android 4.1-based). I don't really see the need to have one on my Tablet as well. I also have one of these cheap keychain LEDs which actually works pretty nicely and doesn't die like the plastic variety:
http://www.amazon.com/Streamlight-73001-Miniature-Keychain-Flashlight/dp/B0011UIPIW/ref=sr_1_1

I'm a bit pissed that both Vegan-Tab and CyanogenMOD 9.1 don't have the loopback module compiled in, so I could run the "Linux Installer" and chroot into a full Debian distro from Android. This would give me enough options to make me happy using a tablet for "real" work. It was great on my older myTouch 3G Slide running CyanogenMOD 7.1, which did have the loopback device in the kernel.

Finally, for mapping, the Google Maps caching is good enough. We just came back from a drive through the Western US, and we simply mapped from town to town., and did the "Download to SD" thing for a few of the national parks that we knew we'd be spending a lot of time wandering around in. Not perfect (particularly since you can't really swap between map types while disconnected... hopefully Google will fix this sometime). But it was good enough. I remember driving across the country 10 years ago with a full US Garmin Street Maps on a laptop. It was cool, but not that cool compared to the awesome array of data that's available now. Back in the PalmOS days, I also would load tons of street vectors from the Mapopolis service, but that was a pain since you had to download county by county. I think at this point, the easiest thing to do would be to just pester Google to add a few more offline features and call it a day... or just spend 5 minutes preloading the details of your trip.

So call me a luddite, maybe... but I'm pretty happy with my "old" tech ;)

but had the keyboard dangling off the screen. They were fairly close to the same size and weight at the end of the day, and the tablets turned out to be quite a bit better for the couch-web.

The 7" models, yes but an eepc 900 had a closely matched screen and keyboard. The keyboard was just smaller.
(and harder to type on)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B00191PKJK?in=2&is=l&ref_=aw_d_iv_pc
I have an eepc 900 as well as an 1005ha (10.1" screen). The 1005ha is huge compared to the 900. I can hold the 900 in one hand and type with the other. Not happening with the 1005ha.
http://www.slashgear.com/asus-eee-pc-1005ha-m-1005ha-h-announced-1543954/

Here's the exact model that I'm using. It was a Leviton dimmer, not Lutron.
It works great. No flickering and dims down to a very low level.
Leviton 6613-PLI SureSlide
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000U3FW5K/ref=oh_details_o04_s00_i00

So many variables though. I have one of those cheap Android HDMI computers on my TV. When connected via 802.11G streams were somewhat intermittent, even with line of site to the AP. When I switched over to a wired connection all the stuttering stopped, and even web content like Ustream improved.

I suspect a poorly designed antenna in the Android device, but it could just as easily been bad drivers, interference from neighbors, or another device using bandwidth on the wireless channel. Some other big differences: wireless networks are 1/2 duplex, while wired Ethernet is full duplex, Ethernet (through switches) is basically a dedicated channel between devices, and overall more bandwidth available.

So many variables though. I have one of those cheap Android HDMI computers on my TV. When connected via 802.11G streams were somewhat intermittent, even with line of site to the AP. When I switched over to a wired connection all the stuttering stopped, and even web content like Ustream improved.

I suspect a poorly designed antenna in the Android device, but it could just as easily been bad drivers, interference from neighbors, or another device using bandwidth on the wireless channel. Some other big differences: wireless networks are 1/2 duplex, while wired Ethernet is full duplex, Ethernet (through switches) is basically a dedicated channel between devices, and overall more bandwidth available.

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_ss_sc_0_7?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=dash+cam&sprefix=dashcam

Seriously, Dash Cams are the best defense against scam artists.

Or to prove that you weren't the culprit. Have a look at these videos, taken from my own dashcam in San Jose, CA:

The Youtube page says you're using a dod-tec GS600 dashcam -- are you happy with it? The Amazon page for the camera has mostly 1 star ratings.

I'm looking for a good, relatively inexpensive dash-cam. Something small that I can "set-and-forget" - mount it on the windshield, run 12V power to it and be reasonably confident that it's going to record everything without me needing to check on it or replace SD cards.

I think he wishes he had the choice to do that. But he doesn't, because that choice was taken from him by government do-gooders and the Federal electron police.

Sorry, could you clarify what, exactly he can't buy? Or did you mean these instead?

The "ban" doesn't work quite like most people think it does. We can still get crappy old low-efficiency lights, manufacturers just need to make them 30% less inefficient - Which they've known how to do for decades (just make them more insulating so they lose less energy as heat)... But, that costs a bit more (perhaps a buck each rather than a dozen for $1.99). So, everyone hating on the CFLs and now LEDs can still choose to "vote with their wallets".

The fellow to whom I responded, however (along with one amusing AC troll that replied to me), won't bother letting facts get in the way of their ranting. The Man stole their 100W bulbs, Nevar forgit!

I think he wishes he had the choice to do that. But he doesn't, because that choice was taken from him by government do-gooders and the Federal electron police.

Sorry, could you clarify what, exactly he can't buy? Or did you mean these instead?

The "ban" doesn't work quite like most people think it does. We can still get crappy old low-efficiency lights, manufacturers just need to make them 30% less inefficient - Which they've known how to do for decades (just make them more insulating so they lose less energy as heat)... But, that costs a bit more (perhaps a buck each rather than a dozen for $1.99). So, everyone hating on the CFLs and now LEDs can still choose to "vote with their wallets".

The fellow to whom I responded, however (along with one amusing AC troll that replied to me), won't bother letting facts get in the way of their ranting. The Man stole their 100W bulbs, Nevar forgit!

Read Jack Copeland's book and I think you'll see that some quite remarkable math and perseverance was involved in exploiting the German telex operator's slip up. (Copeland's book is terrific).

Once this starts hitting gun owners, we'll hear screams for stronger privacy legislation.

Dear Mr. Savage: As an AR-15 owner, you need the best magazines and ammo! Stainless steel 30 round magazines for your assault rifle! Great deals on bulk ammo! This is the good stuff, military grade Federal XM855 Green Tip Steel Penetrator! Made in USA! 500 rounds per box! Check out our ammo can bundles! Order today! And don't forget your AR-15 cleaning kit. (Expect delays due to high order volume).

(There's been a big increase in assault rifle sales since the last school massacre. Hence the ordering delays.)

Then you should have asked old Hairy as you just didn't know what to look for. If you were my customer I'd ask "What do you want it to do?" and could easily tailor a quiet or even completely noise free system to your requirements. If all you are wanting is a standard noise free HTPC that does 1080P I'd recommend this E350 kit as it has but a single tiny fan on the CPU and is quiet as a churchmouse, and is quite easy to customize to what you want it to do. I'd put a 2GB or 4GB stick along with a 1TB HDD and then its up to you whether you want BD or DVD.

Having built several of these systems I can tell you that it blows a WD Live away, as long as you use fast memory (I recommend the 1333 over the 1066) you can play quite a few games on it, I've personally run L4D, Portal 1 & 2 and Torchlight 1 & 2 on one, and if you want even more power and the ability to play the latest games frankly it isn't hard to slap a Zalman silent on an Athlon or Phenom X4, you simply can't use the mini VCR case due to the size of the heatsink. I've found most of my customers don't really care about the mini VCR case when they see they can have something like this that looks quite stylish sitting next to the TV table, but again if you want to do heavy gaming one will have to put up with a fan or spend more on silent coolers, its all a trade off.

But at the end of the day you really need to look at how long the unit will last, I have a couple of customers that have first gen Athlon X2s I built HTPCs around and they are still happy more than 6 years later, all I did was up the storage when they started running low and as drive prices dropped. and unlike the consoles or smart TVs they can still surf the latest websites, use the latest software, watch flash no problem, its really not hard to build a quiet HTPC with just a little thought beforehand.

At least from the Amazon reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Rikomagic-Generation-Android-Google-Player/dp/B0091UHMHO

* Not happy at all with the product and returning it back to HongKong is not worth the time and effort.
* The only form of support you cant turn to is the forum community, trust me they are frustrated.
* The only way to turn it on again is by unplugging the usb power cord and connect it again, or turn off/on the tv.
*Had to return it because it stopped working after two attempts. I think this is a nice concept but the hardware needs to mature a bit.

>>Corn for ethanol is grown continuously, which means not only do they not let fields lie fallow, but they actually don't even practice crop rotation!

That's not true. During the ethanol price spike around 2008, farmers grew two back to back crops of corn to meet demand and take advantage of the high prices, but that was not normal practice, and they resumed their rotations afterwards.

>>Nobody is starving because we make corn into fuel.

Tell that to the people in Mexico that rioted over the sharp spike in tortilla prices due to corn ethanol a few years back.

If you're interested in an unbiased study on the subject, I highly recommend this book:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Economics-Food-Feeding-Fueling/dp/0137006101/

>Yep - this is right up there with the MTBE debacle in CA about 10 years ago.

Wasn't just California. It was a nationwide cockup.

Ethanol has replaced MTBE since it is the only readily available fuel additive that can replace MTBE. There's federal laws that put a minimum consumption of ethanol on the books, but depending on what the price of corn and gas is, it is sometimes economically feasible to use more ethanol than the legislated minimum.

That said, Ethanol is a major driver to food prices - most all the growth in corn consumption since 2007 has been due to increasing ethanol use in the US. This puts upwards pressure on the price of corn, and leads to food price shocks.

This book digs into the issue in great detail:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Economics-Food-Feeding-Fueling/dp/0137006101/

a former HR / Pepsico honcho, now a proff at some biz-school,
Michael Feiner wrote on this ( & lots else ) years ago...

it'd save alot of our lives from political damage...

http://www.amazon.com/The-Feiner-Points-Leadership-Perform/dp/0446695750/

Seriously, many of us in this discussion would sleep better & go further
if we understood the principles he gives us, better...

Cheers

I wore out a couple mouse skates on that damn comic... EXCELLENT... plus I now have over 99% of a 12" x 12" sheet of etched Teflon in my misc. supplies store.
I thought my friends would tease me but they let it slide...

I posted a review of my own book on Amazon.

For reference, I quote it here in case this causes it to get removed there:

Having heard that authors frequently review their own books, I thought I'd give it a try. This is, without a doubt, the best book on portable shell scripting I have ever written. Sadly, it is also the worst book on portable shell scripting I have ever written.

What I can tell you is this:
* Before I started writing this book, I thought I was fairly expert in portable shell scripting.
* I learned a lot more writing this book than I knew before I started writing it.
* This book has ended up being one of my key desk references, which is pretty funny, because you'd think I'd know this stuff by now.

I'm not totally happy with everything about this book. I'm giving it five stars anyway because I can't name anything I think is better for the purpose right now... But I wouldn't mind revising and expanding for a second edition.

Don't let the "beginning" throw you off; this book was a real eye-opener for me, and I'd been writing shell scripts for somewhere between fifteen and twenty years, including production software. On the other hand, if you've got a bit of programming experience, I like to imagine that you really could have this as your first introduction to the shell, and probably do just fine.

It's also considered the most helpful review at the moment. (FWIW, I still use the book as a reference, and apparently so do some of my coworkers.)

Another problem is Amazon's unwillingness to address "fraudulent" reviews that attempt to grant 5-star reviews to books. A good example is Jean Auel's disaster. Lots of reviews from "Amazon Verified Purchased" for which this was their first-ever (and only) review with zero mention of plot points or characters, just glowing short reviews.

Hmm, it appears Amazon finally cleaned that up - a couple of months that book had an astonishing number of 5-star reviews, given it may qualify as the worst book ever published. Initial reviews were all five-star, with quite clear evidence the reviewer had not read the book. Here's an example.

I suspect Amazon purged all comments & forum posts relating to a pretty good analyis of their rating system - it appeared that Amazon was weighting 4 & 5 star votes more than 1 & 2 star votes. I can't find reference to that now, though.

Another problem is Amazon's unwillingness to address "fraudulent" reviews that attempt to grant 5-star reviews to books. A good example is Jean Auel's disaster. Lots of reviews from "Amazon Verified Purchased" for which this was their first-ever (and only) review with zero mention of plot points or characters, just glowing short reviews.

Hmm, it appears Amazon finally cleaned that up - a couple of months that book had an astonishing number of 5-star reviews, given it may qualify as the worst book ever published. Initial reviews were all five-star, with quite clear evidence the reviewer had not read the book. Here's an example.

I suspect Amazon purged all comments & forum posts relating to a pretty good analyis of their rating system - it appeared that Amazon was weighting 4 & 5 star votes more than 1 & 2 star votes. I can't find reference to that now, though.

This here is probably a very good example for what you're talking about:

http://www.amazon.com/Annihilation-Love-Conquers-Series-ebook/product-reviews/B004Q3RT74/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R6BB3TX29C5N5

And, for the love of god, don't buy this book.

http://www.amazon.com/Inc-Yourself-10th-Inc-Corporation/dp/156414741X Possibly useful.

They artificially manipulate their currency and sell goods at below market value which hinders the world's economy. I wonde how safe this train really is!

Manipulating currency is not the problem, it is when USA and other countries sold to China (it was not stolen) the industrial capability to build things. See "Winner Take All" by Richard Elkus http://www.amazon.com/Winner-Take-All-Competitiveness-Nations/dp/B002KAOSPG

Anyway, argue what everyone is doing on this forum, China is building HSR instead PPT like rest of us.

The nuttier religions may be about to crack. In the US, the number of people reporting "no religion" has doubled in the past decade. There are now more than twice as many atheists and agnostics (4%) in the US as Jews (1.7%). "Unaffiliated" is at 16.1%. Islam only has 0.6% market share in the US, and Mormonism is at 1.7%. Total US "Christian" is at 78%, but that's self-reported. The number of people who say they go to church is about twice the number churches report showing up.

Some religions need a high level of coercion to maintain market share. For most of the period since the decline of the Roman Empire, Catholicism was the worst offender. It took several wars in Europe to overthrow that tyranny. Today, militant Islam (and its mirror image, ultra-orthodox Judaism) struggle to keep their members in line and coerce their children into their grip.

That isn't about religion. It's about power. Political power. The religions that fear "blasphemy", demand obedience, and want theocracy are political organizations. They should be treated as such. They have no moral right to demand that they not be criticized. Indeed, citizens have a duty to point out their failings and fight their excesses.

So keep that "blasphemy" going out. Religious leaders, not their followers, should be afraid. (And up the production value; "Innocence of Muslims" was ineptly executed. Read "Florence of Arabia" for what's needed.)

History I believe furnishes no example of a priest-ridden people maintaining a free civil government. This marks the lowest grade of ignorance, of which their political as well as religious leaders will always avail themselves for their own purpose. - Jefferson

Pardon me for assuming many have read Affluenza: The All-Consuming Epidemic

Its a good read. I don't require anyone to agree with it. But I think its a good point of view, very good, enough so to base my attitude as to whether this journal was doing the right thing, or just taking advantage of bloody murder to push a sensationalist agenda for their own ends.

These guys are definately not saints in my books. But I could be wrong, plenty people have thought they were doing gods work, or whatever.

I think people just have lost touch, acting in neajerk reaction to baseless fears with disregard for the harm it may do to your country, and by its very nature fellow man is bad.

Did not one of these guys care or think what kind of christmas present they were giving to the people who were LAWFULLY owning their guns and being good citizens by any standards.

Semantic and Conceptual Development: An Ontological Perspective, 1979, Harvard University Press.

Frank C. Keil's web page

This paper has an excerpt of his earlier work: look for Figures 1 and 2, the predicability tree and ontological tree.

Glad to see more independent verification of Keil's work!8-))

Avatar is basically impossible to buy,

Say what?

If you'll read Amazon's comments at http://status.aws.amazon.com/, you'll see that the problem was located and later resolved at Amazon. Netflix wasn't the only service affected.

The reviews for this at Amazon say don't waste your money. The few good reviews seem to be from people who have not put it together yet.

I bought myself one of these recently. They turned out to be much more awesome than I expected.

"That the public doesn't turn out to protest every horrible bill that way."

This is a dangerous an naive point of view. I think everyone would benefit from watching this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PYmi0DLzBdQ

There's been an ongoing effort to manufacture consent and manage public perception so that people are pitted against one another and don't grasp what their real interests are. Not only that all private media is complicit in shaping the publics view of the world and most privately owned media is totally right wing / pro capitalism / imperalism / establishment while playing the ignorant public about their true political stance.

http://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Economy-Media/dp/0375714499/

Yet, when I go shopping for a solar panel, all I get is the same old crap, and it's still crazy expensive.

If you can do the installation yourself, you can get panels for under $2 a watt now. That gives you a payback period, even in the Northern US, of a mere two to three years.

Yes, if you want to go totally off-grid, you need some way to store the power, which gets into the mess of batteries and charge controllers and inverters. But... Just don't do that! You can go with a grid-tie setup, where you just need the panels and the inverter; you can get small-scale plug-and-play inverters (1KW) for around $350, or a whole-house scale 10KW units for $1300.

Get a decent mechanical keyboard if you want to go for the record - probably a Filco Majestouch 2 with Cherry MX Blue switches, although you could also go for a Topre Realforce if you wanted something a bit quieter and lighter.

Get a decent mechanical keyboard if you want to go for the record - probably a Filco Majestouch 2 with Cherry MX Blue switches, although you could also go for a Topre Realforce if you wanted something a bit quieter and lighter.

The Lego store has bins of loose bricks that they sell by weight. You can also buy generic kits like this: http://www.amazon.com/LEGO-Ultimate-Building-Set-Pieces/dp/B000NO9GT4/ref=sr_1_1?s=toys-and-games&ie=UTF8&qid=1356303783&sr=1-1
TFA is complaining about a problem that doesn't exist.

Some time back I was sent on 'manager training' to learn how to have difficult conversations. I was expecting it to be a load of crap, but was surprised to actually learn quite a lot from it. I recommend reading the book it was based on: Crucial Conversations - Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High .

Yeah I still have no idea how to do logging well.

But what I like to do when performance is not an issue is to log everything (DEBUG etc) into a context ring buffer. Then normally only log messages above the configured log threshold will appear in the logs (e.g. INFO, NOTICE, WARNING). The DEBUG stuff won't appear. BUT if a log message above a log the context threshold occurs (e.g. ERROR, CRIT) the contents of the context buffer is logged followed by the actual triggering log. This way I don't have to turn debugging on. It can always be on BUT I don't have my logs full of the debug level logs unless "stuff happens".

This context logging stuff is bad for performance, but so far it's not a problem for the stuff I do (and can be turned off). It does make it easier to figure out what happened while creating less DEBUG noise.

As part of my log messages I also have hashes and dots, e.g.:
DEBUG = one hash = #........
INFO = ##......
NOTICE = ###.....

This way I can easily "grep" log files for logs above a particular threshold. If you're Google or Facebook scale you'll have to do things a bit differently because there'll be zillions of logs, you can't have half a million machines send logs to one log server ;). So you'd need a way to summarize logs.

It might also be nice if the CS lecturers spend some time discussing the merits of different exception handling approaches in various scenarios. Instead of just stuff like this: http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/compsci105s2c/lectures/adriana/Lecture06.pdf

Doesn't need to be as detailed and extensive as this: http://www.amazon.com/Advances-Exception-Handling-Techniques-Computer/dp/3540419527

Just some basics that might open up student eyes to how things work in the real world and more importantly how things could fail, and how one might deal with them.

FWIW I didn't do CS. I did EE. So maybe this stuff is actually covered in some CS courses. I doubt it was covered in my colleagues CS courses though ;).

Amen. Read Voltaire's Bastards. I read it when it came out in the 90's, and over time I have become increasingly convinced of its accuracy. In essence, MBA's and their simplistic ideologies are driving our civilization into the ground.

Computer hobbyists in the '80s complained that IBM and Microsoft had taken over "their" world. Car enthusiasts in the '20s probably complained about Ford and GM. When an industry becomes mature there are relatively few market leaders, practically by definition, and those leaders generally don't innovate more than they have to. Why? Network effects is one reason. Economies of scale is another. There's the good ol' monopolistic practices of the robber barons. And a couple gentlemen on Mad. Avenue explained another reason: our brains only have room for two or three entrants for most market categories that we don't happen to be fanatical or professionally involved with.

As Scott McNealy would have said, "Get over it."