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Say you have friends over, and they didn't all happen to bring gaming laptops and copies of the same game. In this case, games that run on something connected to your TV are a better choice for multiplayer than most PC games because most PC games don't support multiple gamepads.

I have a device, made by Microsoft no less, that allows me to connect 4 wireless Xbox 360 controllers to my PC. It sells with 1 controller for $41 from Amazon, which is $2 more than the same controller sells for alone.

A good source of ways to handle unsolicited sales calls: Fun with Phone Solicitors: 50 Ways to Get Even.

Most of the time when I give out a phone number to a business it goes to a land line with a call screen-er attached. My friends get the cell phone number. http://www.amazon.com/PHONE-BUTLER-UNWANTED-TELEMARKETING-CALLS/dp/B0008GTP9S/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341941553&sr=8-1&keywords=phone+butler This device asks people the type in a number like an office extension. I wipes out nearly all automated calls, wrong numbers that don't speak English and midnight drunks. You might be able to program some smartphones to do this.

Not even close. Read this and get back to us:

I've been reading the book Debating Same-Sex Marriage (endorsed by both Rick Santorum and Dan Savage, who gave Santorum its... other... meaning). The pro-same-sex marriage advocate, John Corvino, in this case is in the minority--he doesn't necessarily believe polygamy should be allowed. He explains why in section 4 of his opening essay:

In other words, [the argument goes] the pro-gay position logically entails the pro-[polygamy/incest/bestiality] position. Why would anyone think this? The answer, I suspect, is that opponents misread the pro-gay position as claiming that "People should be able to marry anyone they love." ... But I know of no one in the marriage-equality movement who really accepts this premise, despite pithy bumper-sticker slogans suggesting otherwise. It's a straw man.

Does my position logically commit me to accepting polygamy as well? I don't think so. ... After examining most of the major arguments, we have yet to see any serious costs from extending marriage to same-sex couples. By contrast, we have thousands of years of human history demonstrating the typical costs of polygamy. Polygamy tends almost always to be polygyny, where one man has multiple wives. (By contrast, polyandry--one wife with multiple husbands--is quite rare.) The usual result is a sexist and classist society where high-status males acquire multiple wives while lower-status males become virtually unmarriageable. in that sense, examined from the social-policy point of view, polygamy actually undermines our "mutual-lifelong-caregiving" goal: if we want to ensure that as many people as possible form stable family units, we should be wary of allowing any one individual to take multiple spouses.

I've clipped some of his discussion for brevity, but his overarching point is that there is ample evidence (which he briefly presents) that allowing same-sex couples to marry is not harmful and is even beneficial, while there is also ample evidence that polygamy is harmful, so same-sex marriage should be allowed and polygamy shouldn't. It should be noted though that he also says,

I've expressed this point before, which usually elicits a "Gotcha!" response from my critics: "Ahah! So you're saying that if polygamy actually promoted individual well-being and community flourishing, you wouldn't oppose it?" Yes--that is precisely what I'm saying.

(I'm having trouble getting through Maggie Gallagher's half of the book, but so far their biggest disagreement is typified by the above. Corvino uses effects-based, what-will-this-do-to-society arguments, and Gallagher uses abstract definition-based arguments. I suspect Corvino won the debate, though again I haven't finished it yet.)

What content is it AOL has that people want to see?

Perhaps you have never head of Amazon EC2, and don't know that Amazon runs one of the largest cloud services in the world. Any time any website grows quickly, or comes under attack, needs to ramp up their compute power, or distribute their system there is a good chance they will contract with Amazon.

(Actually, I think I first ran across a good description of this case history here on /. a few years back. ;-)

Pragmatic Programming: An Introduction to Computer Science using Python http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Programming-Introduction-Pragmatic-Programmers/dp/1934356271/

Nope, 35$ to read their book. http://www.amazon.com/Dianetics-Modern-Science-Mental-Health-3/dp/1403155429 and of course if you actually join the church it costs thousands to hundreds of thousands to advance in it.

Why do all these programming books have to be so fat? The original Algol-60 report was 17 pages. "Pascal - User Manual and Report" was 283 pages. "The C Programming Language" ("K&R") is 274 pages. This thing is over 400 pages. Python isn't a big language.

One reason is because when someone's shopping for a "Programming for dummies" book, they try to get the best value by buying the biggest book. If Book A is twice as thick as Book B, then it must be twice as good, right?

Plus, many languages have a rich set of libraries and frameworks that are a large part of the strength of the language, so are also covered in the same book (things like MVC concepts, Android scripting, Django, Google App engine, etc). K&R didn't try to describe the Motif libraries or how to program a GUI application.

I almost used the example of Google's Go language - it's relatively new and doesn't have nearly as many libraries behind it as a more mature language like Python, yet A Thorough Introduction To The Go Programming Language is over 600 pages long. Can I claim that's the exception that proves the rule? (a saying that has never made sense to me).

The 2.25 million people that died in the Korean War, and the ~ 2 million people that died in the Vietnam War would beg to differ.

Too true.

But compared to 73 million in eight years (averaging over nine million per year for about half a generation) some people believe that's a substantial improvement.

Yes, I get the impression that most of the commentators on this topic don't have a sense of proportion about the scale of destructiveness of the two world wars (which can reasonably be argued to be a single war with a 20 year time-out—so you should really add in the casualties of World War I). They also don't seem to understand that the destructiveness of war with conventional weapons has increased geometrically (if that's the right word) as the industrialized nation-states of the world grew in power. In the future, historians will look back at the first half of the 20th Century and shudder.

We are both too far from that time of war, and too close to it. The younger generations are ignorant of what happened because they don't much care about history. If they think about them at all, the young think that the World Wars are indeed "ancient history", and do not concern themselves with just how disastrous the scale of destruction was. (I'm willing to bet that many people, when pressed about how many people were killed in World War II, will say "Uh...6 million?".) On the other hand, those of us who do take an interest in history have not yet had time to see the full impact of the wars, and measure them dispassionately. I happen to believe that the World Wars put an end to what has sometimes been called "Western Civilization", or what might be called the European-model nation-states. This is very clear in Europe now: borders are dissolving, nationalism has evaporated, and national currencies abandoned. These aren't necessarily all bad changes, but they are very significant indeed. I do not see the ultimate outcome, but I don't think it's going to be all good either. As usual, the U.S. lags a few decades behind Europe in catching up with developments.

These views aren't original to me, any more than the view of nuclear weapons as an anti-war measure are unique to Kenneth Waltz. I first encountered both views—that nuclear weapons tend to prevent wars between states that do possess them, and that the nation-state model has become obsolete—in the writings of the Israeli historian Martin van Creveld. Take a look at his paper Through A Glass Darkly" for a quick summary of van Creveld's views. His book, Nuclear Proliferation and the Future of Conflict addresses the issue under discussion in a more comprehensive way.

I would have thought that the deterrent effect of nuclear weapons on aggression is fairly obvious. After three wars in a few decades, India and Pakistan have not had a single war ever since both sides came into possession of nuclear weapons. How many nuclear powers has the United States attacked? Indeed, it looks as though the U.S. attack on Iraq taught the Iranians much about the importance of nuclear weapons. (A lesson that Israel was quick to grasp, and grasped much sooner.)

I think that nuclear weapons don't deter war because they are so very destructive, but because they are so obviously and so quickly destructive. Both world wars were the result of miscalculation. Had the opposing sides known the true cost of these wars, they would have done anything they could to avoid them. This was especially true of World War I. It was supposed to be "over by Christmas"; the old in-and-out of traditional European wars that is ended by some border readjustments and modest reparation payments. Instead, the European powers experienced destruction and economic ruin on an unpr

match up with Ron Paul's notion of Internet Freedom (probably not well at all!) or Richard Stallman's definition of free software (probably talking about something completely different)?

Agreed.

http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Xbox-Wireless-Controller-Windows/dp/B004QRKWKQ/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1341597176&sr=8-1&keywords=xbox+360+controller+for+pc

The price is a tad steep. I think I paid $30 for a like-new condition used one some 4 years ago (with the dongle of course). I'll never buy one of those garbage big-box store pieces of junk again. I think there are decent controllers out there, but to get one approaching the quality of the 360 controller, you have to spend almost twice as much. Plus, this one works in linux with minimal fuss.

From my understanding it is possible to have a device that supports the American GPS as well as the Russian GLONASS system and the planned European Galileo system. I have done some checking and it appears that there are some consumer level devices available that are capable of receiving and processing both GPS and GLONASS signals for faster and more reliable location lock. I would imagine that adding support for Galileo would be simpler as those frequencies are much closer to those used by the US GPS (so much so that if one were to try to jam Galileo they would also jam GPS) than those of the Russian GLONASS system. Personally I would love a device that could incorporate all 3 and be able to a track large numbers of satellites from each as most devices I see that support GPS and GLONASS don't mention how many more satellites they can lock on to or use lots of marketing speak to obfuscate the facts.

Can you ever!

(in the voices of all Simpsons characters singing about the Monorail): Amazon, Amazooooooon, Amazoooooooooooooooooon!

Ama... Doh!

If you are interested in a decent (IMO) book about this, give "Amped: A Novel" a read. It is written by Daniel H. Wilson, author of "Robopocalypse: A Novel". "Amped: A Novel" revolves around people who have implants in their brains to cure neurological disorders, at least originally. Amplified intelligence occurs as a side effect, creating a schism between "amps" and "reggies", or regular people. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ensues.

If you are interested in a decent (IMO) book about this, give "Amped: A Novel" a read. It is written by Daniel H. Wilson, author of "Robopocalypse: A Novel". "Amped: A Novel" revolves around people who have implants in their brains to cure neurological disorders, at least originally. Amplified intelligence occurs as a side effect, creating a schism between "amps" and "reggies", or regular people. Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt ensues.

I live in New Hampshire, so our heat waves are shorter and less intense. That said it can get hot and has been into the mid 90's a few times this summer. I like to cool off in a 10'x30" Easy Set Pool setup inside a screen shelter.

I live in New Hampshire, so our heat waves are shorter and less intense. That said it can get hot and has been into the mid 90's a few times this summer. I like to cool off in a 10'x30" Easy Set Pool setup inside a screen shelter.

Read The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss. You may not end up wanting to do everything he suggests, but at least it will help you break that mindset where you think working for other people is the only option in life.

There you go. $27, free shipping, spits out NMEA over a virtual serial port.

http://www.amazon.com/English-Grammar-Dummies-Geraldine-Woods/dp/0470546646

There you go. $12.16, free shipping if you buy something else at the same time, and it might help you understand comments in simple English.

With an EBS backed root volume, take a snapshot, make volumes as needed and attach volume to a new instance. Or, make an AMI of the configured instance and make your instances from that new AMI.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2181849/ec2-instance-cloning
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?messageID=47881&

Well, lets go look

Pricing is per instance-hour consumed for each instance, from the time an instance is launched until it is terminated. Each partial instance-hour consumed will be billed as a full hour.

Man, that was hard.

http://www.amazon.com/GlobalSat-BU-353-USB-GPS-Receiver/dp/B000PKX2KA/

There you go. $27, free shipping, spits out NMEA over a virtual serial port.

As long as google doesn't completely fall apart for one week every year, they're pretty much got amazon cornered.

Not so sure about that. Now that Google has made massive changes to their policies, I think at this point Amazon clearly has them beat.

As for earbuds falling out, you can make your own custom earbuds. As for the pain after freezing skin: it comes back to normal if you use it regularly. It took me 6 months for the pain to go away each time I froze my toes. But for an ear, which you don't touch often, I don't know. You should try massaging it when your hands are not on the keyboard... C;-)

Yeah, Amazon does...and they'll let you download the "howto" for their cloud as free ebooks, too.

And don't forget, this is the second time in two weeks this happened at this data center. Bezos is going to have some heads on Monday. Funny though, Google learned this less long ago. Forget the $10M of UPC's. Strap an emergency exit light lead acid cell to each server/switch (DC->DC, nice). If you loose power, server is good for 10-20min while the building cuts over. Otherwise 1s or 10min outage does not matter. You're still performing a cold startup on a massive system. Good luck with that. Oh yeah, and they're still not out of the woods yet. http://status.aws.amazon.com/rss/ec2-us-east-1.rss

"You have exceptionally low standards."

No, I don't.

I have standards tied to reality and I know Amazon offers[1] "a Monthly Uptime Percentage [...] of at least 99.9% during any monthly billing cycle". On top of that, I know what the value of an SLA exactly is.

[1] http://aws.amazon.com/s3-sla/

shit for some unknown reason i removed the book id here are the correct link, that fail is on me ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Clandestine-Psychedelic-Amphetamine-Manufacture/dp/155950174X
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-LSD-Manufacture-Uncle-Fester/dp/0970148577
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Death-Second-Edition-Fester/dp/0970148534
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Workshop-Explosives-Second-Edition/dp/0970148542

shit for some unknown reason i removed the book id here are the correct link, that fail is on me ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Clandestine-Psychedelic-Amphetamine-Manufacture/dp/155950174X
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-LSD-Manufacture-Uncle-Fester/dp/0970148577
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Death-Second-Edition-Fester/dp/0970148534
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Workshop-Explosives-Second-Edition/dp/0970148542

shit for some unknown reason i removed the book id here are the correct link, that fail is on me ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Clandestine-Psychedelic-Amphetamine-Manufacture/dp/155950174X
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-LSD-Manufacture-Uncle-Fester/dp/0970148577
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Death-Second-Edition-Fester/dp/0970148534
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Workshop-Explosives-Second-Edition/dp/0970148542

shit for some unknown reason i removed the book id here are the correct link, that fail is on me ;)
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Clandestine-Psychedelic-Amphetamine-Manufacture/dp/155950174X
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-LSD-Manufacture-Uncle-Fester/dp/0970148577
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Death-Second-Edition-Fester/dp/0970148534
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Workshop-Explosives-Second-Edition/dp/0970148542

In the US you can publish how-to books about manufacturing drugs, killing people, and explosive without any problems !
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Clandestine-Psychedelic-Amphetamine-Manufacture
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-LSD-Manufacture-Uncle-Fester
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Workshop-Explosives-Second-Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Death-Second-Edition-Fester

Yeah I like uncle fester writing style !

In the US you can publish how-to books about manufacturing drugs, killing people, and explosive without any problems !
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Clandestine-Psychedelic-Amphetamine-Manufacture
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-LSD-Manufacture-Uncle-Fester
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Workshop-Explosives-Second-Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Death-Second-Edition-Fester

Yeah I like uncle fester writing style !

In the US you can publish how-to books about manufacturing drugs, killing people, and explosive without any problems !
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Clandestine-Psychedelic-Amphetamine-Manufacture
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-LSD-Manufacture-Uncle-Fester
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Workshop-Explosives-Second-Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Death-Second-Edition-Fester

Yeah I like uncle fester writing style !

In the US you can publish how-to books about manufacturing drugs, killing people, and explosive without any problems !
http://www.amazon.com/Techniques-Clandestine-Psychedelic-Amphetamine-Manufacture
http://www.amazon.com/Practical-LSD-Manufacture-Uncle-Fester
http://www.amazon.com/Home-Workshop-Explosives-Second-Edition
http://www.amazon.com/Silent-Death-Second-Edition-Fester

Yeah I like uncle fester writing style !

If it hasn't been mentioned yet, you'll want a second, deep-cycle battery rigged up in parallel with your regular one, but that cuts the connection when the ignition is off such that you can use the deep-cycle for accessories until it's dead, while not killing the ignition battery.

I've seen the circuit in a few different books; you might want to hunt down a copy of O'Reilly's "Car PC Hacks" or 50 Awesome Auto Projects for the Evil Genius, as I'd imagine they would go into it.

So ... how is the jquery version superior in any way to the plain vanilla javascript version?

It's shorter, both in original code size and in the number of documentation pages required to understand it.

Sorry, there is absolutely no reason to use that poorly-written pile of garbage.

I disagree. So do most of the posters in the thread you referenced.

As for a reference, you might start with JavaScript: The Good Parts.

Thanks. I assume you mean this one. I'll check it out.

Seeing that this book was written over 50 years ago, it's not clear that Wall Street customers were better off in the "good old days" when their brokers asked about their wife and kids by name.

It's a good point. Coincidentally, I am reading The Code Book, by Simon Singh where the history of cryptography is exposed. I am now in the section about Enigma and I've discovered a few things I never knew, like the fact the Poles were successful in deciphering Enigma thanks to leaked information from a German informer who exchange data with a French spy ("Rex").
Great book for those interested in history and cryptography.

Anyways, back on topic, Alan Turing had a part to you're right that the credit falls on many unnamed persons. History needs figurehead I suppose.

JigJag

You can sort through the 100's of responses and attempt to summarize, or you can just buy this e-book from GigaOm. I'm not affiliated with the author, but I do like GigaOm, and their Cord Cutter series has been really good

Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable
Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable (link with referral code if so inclined)

To answer the question, the best way to watch TV is AT&T's U-Verse: nice responsive UI, good channel selection, whole home DVR. But if you want the best bang for the buck, here's what I did:

- Roku with Netflix. Added Amazon for one-off purchases. Also have a Hulu Plus subscription, but haven't found it useful yet.
- Antenna for over the air -- better HD than cable and quite a few channels. Surprisingly, this little antennae worked really well for me:

Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna
Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna (link with referral code if so inclined)

You can sort through the 100's of responses and attempt to summarize, or you can just buy this e-book from GigaOm. I'm not affiliated with the author, but I do like GigaOm, and their Cord Cutter series has been really good

Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable
Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable (link with referral code if so inclined)

To answer the question, the best way to watch TV is AT&T's U-Verse: nice responsive UI, good channel selection, whole home DVR. But if you want the best bang for the buck, here's what I did:

- Roku with Netflix. Added Amazon for one-off purchases. Also have a Hulu Plus subscription, but haven't found it useful yet.
- Antenna for over the air -- better HD than cable and quite a few channels. Surprisingly, this little antennae worked really well for me:

Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna
Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna (link with referral code if so inclined)

You can sort through the 100's of responses and attempt to summarize, or you can just buy this e-book from GigaOm. I'm not affiliated with the author, but I do like GigaOm, and their Cord Cutter series has been really good

Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable
Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable (link with referral code if so inclined)

To answer the question, the best way to watch TV is AT&T's U-Verse: nice responsive UI, good channel selection, whole home DVR. But if you want the best bang for the buck, here's what I did:

- Roku with Netflix. Added Amazon for one-off purchases. Also have a Hulu Plus subscription, but haven't found it useful yet.
- Antenna for over the air -- better HD than cable and quite a few channels. Surprisingly, this little antennae worked really well for me:

Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna
Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna (link with referral code if so inclined)

You can sort through the 100's of responses and attempt to summarize, or you can just buy this e-book from GigaOm. I'm not affiliated with the author, but I do like GigaOm, and their Cord Cutter series has been really good

Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable
Cut the Cord: All You Need to Know to Drop Cable (link with referral code if so inclined)

To answer the question, the best way to watch TV is AT&T's U-Verse: nice responsive UI, good channel selection, whole home DVR. But if you want the best bang for the buck, here's what I did:

- Roku with Netflix. Added Amazon for one-off purchases. Also have a Hulu Plus subscription, but haven't found it useful yet.
- Antenna for over the air -- better HD than cable and quite a few channels. Surprisingly, this little antennae worked really well for me:

Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna
Paper Thin Leaf Indoor HDTV Antenna (link with referral code if so inclined)

Preventing a theocracy from getting a nuclear reaction is inarguably a good thing.

This is rubbish. You are using a premise as its own justification. Israel is not in danger from an Iranian nuclear attack.

QED. I can just as justifiably say that Israel is not in danger from an Iranian nuclear attack until Iran feels like it has plausible deniability. After all, if Stuxnet and other acts of industrial sabotage (presuming, for the moment, almost certainly rightly that Israel and the US were behind it) are acts of war, then what do you call Iran funding and providing weapons and training for Hezbollah, who has probably killed more Israeli soldiers than any other armed militant group in the Middle East in the last 20 years?

And if Iran can wave "plausible deniability" around its proxy war with Israel through Hezbollah, what happens when Hezbollah smuggles and detonates an atomic weapon in northern Israel that was given to them by "an Act of Allah" in the next blowup over the Lebanese/Israeli border? Do they need "undeniable" proof that Iran was behind it before nuking Tehran in retaliation? Should they nuke Beirut and presumably a lot of moderate Sunni and Christian Lebanese that had nothing to do with Hezbollah? Or should they assume, like you seem to be, that if Iran has obtained the Bomb in the Middle East and Israel is struck by one, that Iran has "committed suicide"?

Such an attack would be complete suicide for Iran. At best, Iran wants to play the game of using the Bomb as a political weapon as does everyone else. It isn't e very credible game, given the force asymmetry between them and Israel. Israelis know Iran is not a substantial threat, as some of their intelligence officials have pointed out. The question is, why are Israel and the US conducting open hostilities against Iran, including operations by US Special Forces on Iranian territory and support of terrorist attacks in Iran by Mujahedin e Khalq as well as Flame, Stuxnet, etc.?

See above. Maybe, just maybe, delaying the Iranian nuclear weapons program through sabotage is preferable to hoping and praying that they don't slip a weapon to Hezbollah or another proxy group to use.

In the past one could have speculated that they help maintain the illusion of great instability in the Middle East, which helps justify huge financial support of the US and international arms industry (where Israel is an important player, BTW) as well as high petroleum spot market prices (the traditional reason to ensure that there is always conflict somewhere vaguely near our political allies' oil fields, but not too near). Oddly, though, oil prices have fallen in the recent past, presumably due to unusually weak demand (in spite of that all-time favorite: "The Summer Driving Season"). Military spending has not diminished, however, and in the US Republican politicians are constantly trying to take military spending "off the table" when budget cutting activities heat up.

Frankly, I never am able to figure out why such things occur until well after the fact when the other shoe drops and it becomes clear who is making the big bucks out of the deal. Make no mistake, though. This is about money, one way or the other. The "Israel is in mortal danger from the crazy mullahs" scam is pure horse shit. I guess we'll have to wait for Steve Coll to quietly write a book 10 years from now with the details.

Keep blaming the Republicans - obviously the Democrats and Obama will come and change US policies! Oh wait. I said this in another comment, and I'll say it here - the Iranian theocracy WANTS to be in conflict with the US. They just don't want to turn it into a hot war if at all possible. They can only get away with oppressing their own people and politically cracking down on them if they have someone external to blame it on. If t

http://www.amazon.com/Channel-Master-CM-7000PAL-Digital-Recorder/product-reviews/B0033TJPJW and http://reviews.cnet.com/digital-video-recorders-dvrs/channel-master-cm-7000pal/4505-6474_7-34142156.html describe an over-the-air DVR with no ongoing fees. If you have decent digital reception, you can get your locals that way, and distribute that signal over CAT-5 or coax to the other sets in the household.

Preventing a theocracy from getting a nuclear reaction is inarguably a good thing.

This is rubbish. You are using a premise as its own justification. Israel is not in danger from an Iranian nuclear attack. Such an attack would be complete suicide for Iran. At best, Iran wants to play the game of using the Bomb as a political weapon as does everyone else. It isn't e very credible game, given the force asymmetry between them and Israel. Israelis know Iran is not a substantial threat, as some of their intelligence officials have pointed out. The question is, why are Israel and the US conducting open hostilities against Iran, including operations by US Special Forces on Iranian territory and support of terrorist attacks in Iran by Mujahedin e Khalq as well as Flame, Stuxnet, etc.?

In the past one could have speculated that they help maintain the illusion of great instability in the Middle East, which helps justify huge financial support of the US and international arms industry (where Israel is an important player, BTW) as well as high petroleum spot market prices (the traditional reason to ensure that there is always conflict somewhere vaguely near our political allies' oil fields, but not too near). Oddly, though, oil prices have fallen in the recent past, presumably due to unusually weak demand (in spite of that all-time favorite: "The Summer Driving Season"). Military spending has not diminished, however, and in the US Republican politicians are constantly trying to take military spending "off the table" when budget cutting activities heat up.

Frankly, I never am able to figure out why such things occur until well after the fact when the other shoe drops and it becomes clear who is making the big bucks out of the deal. Make no mistake, though. This is about money, one way or the other. The "Israel is in mortal danger from the crazy mullahs" scam is pure horse shit. I guess we'll have to wait for Steve Coll to quietly write a book 10 years from now with the details.

I've found the Tivo Slide works pretty well for controlling it since it supports Bluetooth. The only downside is to get it to work well in Windows, you really need to buy Intelliremote by Melloware to map the keys to functions.

The expansion of the universe is backed up by several lines of evidence, not just red shift, so even if Arp is right, it still has to be reconciled with the rest of the theory and evidence. Bear in mind, he has no explanation for why quasars might be ejected from galaxies, or have an "intrinsic red shift" associated with them; it's pure conjecture.

What are the observations and what is their interpretation?

I suggest you read a book. A good one to start with might be How Old Is the Universe? by David Weintraub. It was just published in 2010 so the science is up to date.

From the introduction (n.b. the following is not intended as an "appeal to authority," that is to say, "this is true because the book says so," but just to give an idea of the strength of the claim):

"Ask any astronomer why she believes the universe is 13.7 billion years old, and she will tell you that she does not believe that the universe is 13.7 billion years; she knows that it is 13.7 billion years old—give or take a hundred million years. Why are astronomers so confident? It turns out that their certainty is not hubris. They know that this number is the only valid answer to the question of the age of the universe because it emerges from a meticulous interpretation of all the data—from rocks, stars, galaxies, the whole universe—that humanity has painstakingly gathered over the centuries. It is the only answer that is consistent with the laws of physics as we know them and with the firm logic of mathematics and justified by the collective labors of astronomers, as well as of chemists, mathematicians, geologists, and physicists. The answer rests, in fact, on very solid foundations."