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Pattern-matching is highly discouraged nowadays (you'd never even have a chance of passing boards). Evidence-based medicine took off a long time ago, and generally involves generating a number of hypotheses and testing them to confirm one of them within the the threshold for treatment. The major differences from typical research are that alpha varies according to the treatment's number needed to harm, beta is much, much smaller for important diagnoses, and you only have a single data source to sample.

As for advancing systemic knowledge, most doctors do some research. It's actually rather unlikely for someone who hasn't done any to even get into medical school. From there, most do more in medical school, and most residency programs require still more. Practicing physicians frequently get case reports published, and a fair percentage stay in academic medicine. All physicians hone their skills, looking for ways to improve current treatment, and I doubt any would pass the opportunity to publish a practice-changing article if they develop a great method for something.

If you still feel that medicine doesn't use a scientific approach (e.g. theories, models, predictions), then I encourage you to read the sample chapter from this book. It's a good introduction to current evidence-based practice, geared toward medical students just starting the clinical years. Given, most physicians don't understand the statistics very well, but neither do most researchers (31% of articles in Nature reveal the author has a poor understanding of the underlying statistics by the way they discuss or present them, and 38% of papers contain an outright error). And, as you point out, doctors have to be adept at other things as well, human interaction foremost, so there's a bit of a "Jack of all Trades" syndrome going on.

I read this book probably a hundred times in junior high.

I have never, ever been disappointed by a Robin McKinley novel. She writes across a broad spectrum, from science fiction (Dragonhaven) to contemporary fantasy (the Kingdom of Damar books: The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown) to re-tellings of classic fairy tales (Spindle's End, Rose Daughter, The Outlaws of Sherwood, Deerskin, Beauty) to vampire fiction (Sunshine - trust me, it's definitely not your Twilight vampires here...)

Everything, and I mean everything I have read of hers has been riveting, well written and an instant favourite. There are not many other authors I can say that about (the only other two that come to mind are Sir Terry Pratchett and David R. Palmer). Some of her books are no longer in print (i.e.,the Damar books), but it is well worth finding a copy if you can.

Wait, looks like I spoke too soon: the Damar books may be back in print again! Excellent, time to get a less dog-eared copy!

I have never, ever been disappointed by a Robin McKinley novel. She writes across a broad spectrum, from science fiction (Dragonhaven) to contemporary fantasy (the Kingdom of Damar books: The Blue Sword and The Hero and the Crown) to re-tellings of classic fairy tales (Spindle's End, Rose Daughter, The Outlaws of Sherwood, Deerskin, Beauty) to vampire fiction (Sunshine - trust me, it's definitely not your Twilight vampires here...)

Everything, and I mean everything I have read of hers has been riveting, well written and an instant favourite. There are not many other authors I can say that about (the only other two that come to mind are Sir Terry Pratchett and David R. Palmer). Some of her books are no longer in print (i.e.,the Damar books), but it is well worth finding a copy if you can.

Wait, looks like I spoke too soon: the Damar books may be back in print again! Excellent, time to get a less dog-eared copy!

Read Emergence, if you can find a copy. A genius eleven year old girl and her pet macaw travel a post-apocalyptic America. The writing style is hard to get used to -- a lot like Heinlein's "The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" -- but after a few pages your brain starts filling in the missing words. (The in-story explanation is that it's her personal diary written in Pitman shorthand.)

Unfortunately, the sequel "Tracking" is only available as a bootleg right now, (check torrents). It was serialized in a now-unavailable sequence of Analog magazines. If you can find "Tracking", it's also worth reading.

Palmer seems to have done a lot of research for the books. He makes some mistakes regarding firearms that grated on me, but the rest seemed correct.

Threshold by Palmer is also well worth tracking down. It's classic high adventure with fantasy and sci-fi elements, a fast-moving plot (saving the universe, of course), humorous dialog and enjoyable characters. I actually enjoyed this one more than Emergence, although that could be because it's the first Palmer novel I came across, so I have re-read it more often than Emergence...regardless, I do re-read both of these stellar books about once every one to two years, and love them anew every time.

I strongly wish Palmer had continued with his writing, as he truly has the bard's gift of storytelling.

- Hugo nominated.
- One of the best female protagonists since Podkayne Fries (the plot follows a precocious 11-year-old orphan girl, living in a post-apocalyptic United States).
- A talking, possibly psychic, parrot companion.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergence_(novel)

It's been out of print for quite some time, but still seems to be available at a somewhat reasonable price from the usual online booksellers. A better bet might be through your local library, particularly if you have access to a wider lending network.

Excellent book. Well worth tracking down.

Also Threshold by the same author. Although be warned: even though the end of the book is very well set up for a riveting sequel, said sequel was never written and probably never will be as far as I can tell...but regardless, it is a most fascinating book in and of itself, and well worth the read!

+1 (unless you are female, because he is sexist as hell)

Funny, you seem to have misspelled accurate. To my experience he was a bit too blunt in his portrayal, but very accurate in what a woman is attracted to. What you label sexism are largely uncomfortable truths. Women are attracted to status and willing to trade up when they think they see a better deal. Women do prefer a dominate male and will purposely set up shit tests to elicit proof that the man they are with is one.

If there is a flaw in the series it comes from Conrad's inability to see he was using game on the women he encountered. Of course Conrad's character was largely self-deceived through out the books, just witness the joke of him introducing capitalism everywhere he went while being convinced he was implementing communism... That was a typical trope of science fiction produced from that time period though and intended for humor, so who knows?

To bring this back on topic one of his better stand alone books was Copernick's Rebellion. I really would have preferred seeing more of that universe than the Boy and His Tank series which devolved quite rapidly IMHO after the first book in the series.

Wrong, wrong wrong! I cut back on starchy carbs, INCREASED my fat intake and lost 35 lbs in about six months without increasing excercise. http://www.amazon.com/Good-Calories-Bad-Challenging-Conventional/dp/1400040787

Cherryh, Heinlein, Niven, Clarke, Asimov, and I would even say van Vogt listed above.... These are notnot "forgotten" series and authors to anyone who knows jack about sci-fi. (Not to be too critical, as all of the choices listed are good - but the OP was asking for stuff that could be forgotten.)

So I'll make one push that isn't all that great sci-fi, but is a nostalgia kick for me, Thomas Ryan's http://www.amazon.com/Adolescence-P-1-Thomas-J-Ryan/dp/0671559702"The Adolescence of P-1.". Viruses, IBM mainframes, and a cloud system that has taken over the universe of computers with 5 GB acquired, all from 1985.

I only include this because Lumley takes more of a scientific explanation of the Wamphyr and not a supernatural one. Alien race of vampires infecting our world through a "wormhole" under a old soviet science base being fought off by a hitech squad of vamp hunters led by a guy capable of mathmatic teleportation. Sounds sci-fi enough to me! The first 8 or so books of the Necroscope line are one of my all time favorite series, but they don't seem to get much publicity in this day of "sparkly vamps". http://www.brianlumley.com/necroscope/ http://www.amazon.com/Necroscope-Brian-Lumley/dp/0812521374/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331128761&sr=8-1 I also thought that new comers to the series would think the first book was a 6th sense ripoff and be turned off, but it was actually around long before that movie.

Maybe you should get some newer stock then. They still make Jolt http://www.amazon.com/Jolt-COLA-LONGNECK-making-12-Ounce/dp/B001IW05IQ/ref=sr_1_3?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1331118624&sr=1-3

In the USA, yes. But not everyone in the world (or even on slashdot) is from your funny little country. (For references to that, see the primaries last night).

Maybe you should get some newer stock then. They still make Jolt

http://www.amazon.com/Jolt-COLA-LONGNECK-making-12-Ounce/dp/B001IW05IQ/ref=sr_1_3?s=grocery&ie=UTF8&qid=1331118624&sr=1-3

Came here to post about it. Great series. Hard to describe in a sentence.

I started with the "Saga of the Exiles" ( The Many Colored Land, The Golden Torc, The Nonborn King, The Adversary) which were written earlier and seem rather well researched and planned. There's even a separate reference book for them called the Pliocene Companion: http://www.amazon.com/Pliocene-Companion-Julian-May/dp/0345322908

The Galactic Milieu (Intervention, Jack the Bodiless, Diamond Mask, Magnificat) books do not give me the same sense of scale and "realness". Then again perhaps it's because I was younger and less jaded when I read the earlier books ;). Still, I wasn't impressed by the "ending" book (Magnificat).

Note: all the books mentioned are in the same "series", and set in the same universe.

The Saga of the Exiles involves a bunch of humans from a somewhat utopian high tech future (which has different aliens with mind powers, faster than light travel, humans developing mind powers, etc) who are exiled 6 million years back in the past. To their surprise they encounter aliens too...

The Galactic Milieu series is about events leading up to and after The Intervention (by the aliens), and the rise of humans especially the Remillard clan, due to their talents and exceptional mind powers.

L. Ron Hubbard is actually quite a good and unique science fiction writer. "The Invaders' Plan" was a humorous and strange - but engaging - work. http://www.amazon.com/Invaders-Plan-Mission-Earth/dp/1592120229/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1331087999&sr=1-2

John Sladek wrote a hilarious parody of Asimov's take on robots. Tik-Tok is a menial servant bot who is driven to psychosis as he passes from one owner to another and all are venal or neurotic. Tik-Tok eventually winds up a genocidal misanthrope who learned all too well from humanity. He basically becomes a robot version of Alex from Clockwork Orange. He is just as sardonic and devastingly original in his revenge on humanity.

http://www.amazon.com/Tik-Tok-John-Sladek/dp/0575072350

Six volumes of collected stories and poetry by Roger Zelazny.
You are bound to bump into something you haven't read before OR find a new facet to the things you've read already as each story is followed by a section explaining the references he used.
As for actual "new" stuff by Zelazny, there's this.
And you may find this amusing as well.

Six volumes of collected stories and poetry by Roger Zelazny.
You are bound to bump into something you haven't read before OR find a new facet to the things you've read already as each story is followed by a section explaining the references he used.
As for actual "new" stuff by Zelazny, there's this.
And you may find this amusing as well.

Certainly not forgotten, but currently underrepresented in print and best-of lists.

There have been some ginormous (non-Ellison) anthologies at my local library recently that look like they have been compiled by real scifi scholars. This one, for instance:

http://www.amazon.com/Space-Opera-Renaissance-Kathryn-Cramer/dp/0765306182/ref=cm_lmf_img_13

Sorted from cheapest, restricting results to books rated 4 stars or higher

http://www.amazon.com/Dragonworld-Byron-Preiss/dp/0671039075
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_the_Silent_Planet

I have not done the calculations but I think deflecting a big asteroid is difficult considering energies required to change its trajectory. Hell, it takes a lot to simply move a spacecraft from one orbital plane to another. I know it's all great in the movies (and references to Bruce Willis) but almost all who have an opinion of asteroid deflection don't seem to be knowledgable of astrodynamics (Fundamentals of Astrodynamics (Bate, Mueller, White), http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Astrodynamics-Dover-Aeronautical-Engineering/dp/0486600610/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1331078557&sr=8-1

http://www.bufferbloat.net/

Just a note on running the cerowrt distribution (where the bufferbloat research is implemented) - you need to run a wndr-3700v2 (I've been consistently successful getting v2 refurbished units) but now that the wndr-3700v3 is out, that doesn't work with cerowrt - you'll need the wndr-3800 if you're buying new (I haven't seen 3800's available as refurb yet).

It closely parallels the WRT-54G and then WRT-54GL situation (without Netgear having learned from the headaches Linksys caused us with that one). The wndr-3[7,8]00 does appear to be the heir apparent to the 54G series, though. I'm happy I bought mine.

http://www.bufferbloat.net/

Just a note on running the cerowrt distribution (where the bufferbloat research is implemented) - you need to run a wndr-3700v2 (I've been consistently successful getting v2 refurbished units) but now that the wndr-3700v3 is out, that doesn't work with cerowrt - you'll need the wndr-3800 if you're buying new (I haven't seen 3800's available as refurb yet).

It closely parallels the WRT-54G and then WRT-54GL situation (without Netgear having learned from the headaches Linksys caused us with that one). The wndr-3[7,8]00 does appear to be the heir apparent to the 54G series, though. I'm happy I bought mine.

Fuck that fucking fuck of a cable! Check out this cunt!

http://www.amazon.com/AudioQuest-Carbon-12-0M-White-Jacket/dp/B003CSU8EK/ref=pd_sim_sbs_e_1

It has bi-directional Ethernet! No more having to sit there passively reading Slashdot, unable to post responses. Not only can I download opinions - I can upload mine!

Cunting fuck! This is the dawning of web 4.0!

Oh, you mean this one?

http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM

The reviews are amazing.

As a DSP guy, you're probably one of the few that would really, truly appreciate this book.

https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/help?topicId=A25WS075EUM6NF

It is easier for a child when something is made to look easy, and the results are made to look fascinating. The environment and the mentor are paramount. But this has become harder recently because everything has advanced so much since the Nintendo Entertainment System days. Also it doesn't help that platforms like the iPhone are hard to develop for (the closed garden hurdles, so to speak).

Games used to be a good genre but now kids are playing MW3 and GW3 so it's increasingly harder to convince them they can build something similar. Games are still a good place to start, but only if you have the right tools to do it.

Web programming is good because HTML and CSS is rather straightforward, and kids will be able to edit and publish their own web site. They can get into javascript and server admin stuff too. The reward for having the site will be the biggest hurdle, since most online presence missions are done better piggy-backing on facebook or word press.

Graphics programming is good because it has to do with math, and math is something kids are already force-fed at school. If you can demonstrate how math is used to build real things, and by learning graphics programming that the child can get straight As by way of beating the curve, kids are often all for it. Great place to start:
http://processing.org/
And John Maeda of course:
http://www.amazon.com/Design-Numbers-John-Maeda/dp/0262632446/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1331043844&sr=8-5

Finally, incentivising a child's behavior is not that difficult. Make them do their homework before they play. Make them program before they do their homework. Reward them for everything you make them do. Being a smart parent is the best ingredient for a child's intelligence by a mile.

The article does not mention a digital source sweeping from 5Hz to 20Khz on a typical consumer grade CD player. I've looked at a few sweeps. Forget the lack of ultrasonic material recorded above 20Khz. The real aliasing between the sample rate and sampled music is the biggest reason for dirty sound in samples with higher frequency content. Only a higher Sample Rate will fix that. The Denon technical audio CD is a good source to test this yourself. It is digitaly mastered from a digital source for all test signals without any analog resampling. Good luck finding one. They are getting rare and fetch high prices.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliasing
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-Audio-Technical-Various-Artists/dp/B0000034ME

I read old school paper books and I read using the Kindle or Nook apps. IMHO, there are advantages and disadvantages to both; therefore, choices are *GOOD*. People, like the author of TFA, saying that one format is inherently better than the other are sensationalist.

I have found that most (but not all) of my reading for pleasure tends to be in real, paper books, since I typically read for fun at home. Consequently, having physical books in a bookshelf at home is adequate for those volumes. Furthermore, some of the books I read for pleasure don't lend themselves well to the eBook format. For example, my wife bought "Planet Earth's Greatest Motorcycle Adventure Tours" for me for Christmas. It's physically a rather large book, and filled with beautiful photographs from trips the author (Collette Coleman) had taken. I can't imagine trying to read that on my smartphone -- the text would be fine, but the photography would be completely wasted on that form factor.

On the other hand, most of my reading for information tends to be eBooks. It's handy to have a reference with you any time you have your phone/tablet/Ebook-reader-of-choice with you, and this type of writing lends itself well to the eBook format. In other words, for informative books, portability trumps form factor.

Ultimately, you pick the right tool for the job. I wouldn't buy a coffee table book in an electronic format, but there are some definite advantages to eBooks. IMHO, anyone writing off electronic media simply because it isn't bound in paper is simply limiting their options unnecessarily.

All overage prices should be required to be stated in GB, not kb and billed in increments that are the size of a packet with the total rounded up to the nearest cent. $0.02 per kilobyte is $20971.52 per GB. When a single file can be 5GB, that's insanity.

Anything over 100x wholesale should be illegal. Amazon charges $0.12 per gigabyte at their most expensive tier. If that was law, you wouldn't legally be able to charge over $12 per GB overage. I consider that fee to be reasonable.

When I was writing my own book on the Titanic and the Californian (the infamous ship that saw the Titanic and her distress rockets and did practically nothing to offer assistance), I came across a report written in 1961 by Captain Quick of the UK Board of Trade technical department. It mentioned the possibility that super-refraction had existed that night and had allowed the two ships to see each other "over the horizon" due to the bending of light rays caused by warmer areas of air mixing with colder areas. I mention this in my book, but I don't go into it in any great depth, as I feel that you don't need to invoke super refraction to explain what was seen and done that night. Simple analysis of witnesses reports and an appreciation for the current affecting ship's navigation will suffice. Incidentally, my book (quick plug) is here and my own Titanic pages are here

but it's interesting that every major company that's making living room entertainment devices are really going out of their way to avoid using a keyboard and mouse. They must have some research backing up their decision.

I don't know about that, PS2's/PS3's/Wii's/Xboxes all have USB ports for a reason. IMHO Sony is the most keyboard friendly, having games that support them. In fact any game that uses the PS3's standard OSK widget also sutomatically supports keyboard input to that widget. Nice for naming items in Oblivion/Skyrim.

I had a separate keyboard and mouse attached to my PS2 for those games that used them, but always wanted to try one of these with EQOA and FFXI

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-NetPlay-Controller-Sony-Playstation-2/dp/B00006SKJ4

And of course both the 360 and PS3 have "chatpads" that hook up their respective controllers.

I'm not certain that there would be a significant performance increase from such a low-end processor. The VIA C7-D 1.8 only scores 333 on Passmark, which puts it in the range of an early-model Pentium 4 or Athlon XP from circa 2002.

http://www.cpubenchmark.net/cpu.php?cpu=VIA+C7-D+1800MHz

It's also a 32-bit processor, so you're going to be capped at 3GB of RAM.

As an alternative, you can easily find used 4-5 year old Core2 Duo systems for $100-$200. They're 64-bit and will score 1300 or higher on Passmark.

http://www.amazon.com/Dell-755-Performance-Intregrated-Professional/dp/B004HPMH9Q/ref=sr_1_4?s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1330885080&sr=1-4

The USSR didn't write textbooks. They found the best existing textbook, if necessary translated it into Russian, and then published it for all of their schools to use.

For example, this book was first published in the US in 1958. It was then published in Russian in 1962.

See: "Mistakes Were Made (But Not by Me): Why We Justify Foolish Beliefs, Bad Decisions, and Hurtful Acts"
http://www.amazon.com/Mistakes-Were-Made-But-Not/dp/0151010986
"Renowned social psychologists Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson take a compelling look into how the brain is wired for self-justification. When we make mistakes, we must calm the cognitive dissonance that jars our feelings of self-worth. And so we create fictions that absolve us of responsibility, restoring our belief that we are smart, moral, and right -- a belief that often keeps us on a course that is dumb, immoral, and wrong."

Also:
http://www.lucifereffect.com/

Considering all that, it's amazing there are still so many "good cops" out there trying to do a great job.

Too bad the socio-economic system they are charged with upholding is increasingly so broken in so many ways...
http://www.forbes.com/sites/erikkain/2011/11/19/police-response-to-occupy-wall-street-is-absurd/
http://www.whywork.org/rethinking/whywork/abolition.html

Or for an additional $100 you could get a notebook with a Sandy Bridge based Pentium dual-core 2.2GHz, 4GB RAM and 500GB hard drive.

http://www.amazon.com/Lenovo-43349EU-15-6-Inch-Laptop-Textured/dp/B006M9ZVXY/ref=sr_1_2?m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&s=pc&ie=UTF8&qid=1330868304&sr=1-2

That way there are no extra costs or hardware necessities. I hardly think $400 is "high cost" as the GP stated, unless he's destitute or something..

Check out the book "How to Lie with Maps"
It's pretty fun. That said, most of the most interesting visualization work I've seen tends to be roll-your-own using Processing/JAVA, etc. I haven't heard of any of this software before... and no mention of R?

• this is something new, so by definition this cannot have anything to share with ham radio.
• TFA talks about angular momentum of the EM field. This has nothing to do with polarization, but with another property of the EM field. Since they are emitting waves with an angular momentum, they cannot be plane wave (it can be shown, see for example here for details) that plane waves have the angular momentum of the field equal to zero).
• From the paper it is unclear how do they realize a field with an angular moment different from zero, I guess they used a technique similar to those described in this paper.

Citation, please.

Nothing to Envy

I would also strongly recommend Nothing to Envy. It's a quick read and gives some pretty chilling insights into how the North Korean regime operates. It is not a pretty picture; think 1984 and you won't be far off.

Brings to mind the Ben Bova novel where skyscrapers were actually huge rocket boosters. At the slightest hint of an earthquake they flew out into the ocean for a safe splashdown.

My thinking is that if win8 takes off, then people will buy win8 tablets. They will demand more horsepower and someone somewhere will supply it.

But to get a really good battery life, which is really desirable in a tablet, you can't go for too much power. I can't imagine a tablet with quad core x64 CPUs lasting very long.

I'm torn between a blue tooth keyboard. Addd one and your got an underpowered laptop, but still lighter than lugging around a laptop all day.

I've actually seen roll-up blue tooth keyboards (actually, wow 30 bucks ?) ... I just don't find myself needing a separate keyboard with my tablet just yet.

Although, I'm suddenly tempted.

Of course I could be wrong, and just sticking up for my expensive toy.

Amen brother. I find the entire form factor to be the most exciting thing in computers in several decades. There may have been instances of tablets, but they were expensive and specialized.

I don't care which tablet you're talking about, it really does represent the first significant change in how I interact with a computer since my TRS-80 color computer. It's always been a keyboard on a flat surface.

No matter what people say, wi-fi in your lazy boy is much cooler with a tablet than a laptop.

At this point, the best way to keep their credibility from further deteriorating is to provide good reports on what is going on. E.g., not like PSN, more like Amazon. Currently that Azure dashboard doesn't even load for me... has it been slashdotted or something?

As an aside: whenever a cloud system goes down, people come out to rag on the reliability of the cloud. While I'm also annoyed by the marketing guys throwing around "just put it in the cloud!!" as much as anyone else, and agree some applications make no sense living in the cloud, I'd also like to point out that for some people, doing the admin work in-house results in the same amount or more headaches.

I am not a lawyer, but IMHO no private entity that is not a creditor is "required by law" to accept dollars as payment, either physically as actual notes or as the unit of a promissory note (check). It would be business suicide for a US store to _not_ accept them, but there's plenty of precedent for businesses not accepting physical notes, and pure barter is still quite legal.

Note that I said creditor - the rule of 'all DEBTS public and private' comes in to play when there's a debt owed. Attempting to buy something does not create a debt, so that rule does not apply. Eating in a restaurant that collects payment after the meal DOES create a debt, therefore they must accept currency as payment.

This article has a good discussion.

This guy gets it close, but confuses creditor with seller.

Samsung (the handset manufacturer) sells an unlocked version of my phone on amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Unlocked-Smartphone-Internal-Touchscreen/dp/B004QTBQ2C/ref=sr_1_1?s=wireless&ie=UTF8&qid=1330470133&sr=1-1 It's more expensive when you don't buy the carrier subsidy, but finding legitimate unlocked phones is easy to do. T-Mobile actually offers a set of contracts ("value" or "bring your own phone" plans) that do not come with subsidized phones, but that are cheaper by the month to compensate. Unlocked phones are a reality, whether you like it or not.

Except that the Moon has a lot of valuable material and close proximity to the most valuable real estate in the Solar System. Also, without an atmosphere, a smaller gravity well, and that close proximity, it's a lot easier to move materials to Earth and Earth orbit from the Moon than anywhere other than near Earth asteroids.

You'd think that, but you'd be wrong. To make a round trip to the Moon, you need to burn fuel to get there, burn fuel to slow down and land, burn fuel to launch back. You don't need to burn fuel to land on Earth, because you can use atmospheric drag to slow down.

Mars has an atmosphere, where the moon does not. So you don't have to bring fuel to land: you can just aerobrake. And as with all rocket voyages, this has exponential leverage: when you launch less fuel, you don't have to launch the fuel to launch the fuel to launch the fuel to ....

If you get extra clever, you can make rocket fuel out of Mars's atmosphere, saving even more fuel, with even stronger exponential leverage. You can't do that on the Moon, unless you use a rocket whose exhaust is sand. (Seriously, it's been considered.)

From a fuel and energy perspective, because Mars has an atmosphere, it's *closer* to the Earth than the moon. Robert Zubrin said it best: "even if the Moon had tanks full of rocket fuel sitting on the surface waiting for us, it wouldn't be worth it to land and pick them up."

The Moon is boring, and the Moon is a trap.

http://www.amazon.com/Case-Mars-Plan-Settle-Planet/dp/145160811X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1330464576&sr=8-1

If you need "a physical element to playing the game" there's already a physical board game with birds and a catapult and plastic wood you make structures out of.

http://aws.amazon.com/govcloud-us/

AWS GovCloud (US)

AWS GovCloud is an AWS Region designed to allow US government agencies and contractors to move more sensitive workloads into the cloud by addressing their specific regulatory and compliance requirements. Previously, government agencies with data subject to compliance regulations such as the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), which governs how organizations manage and store defense-related data, were unable to process and store data in the cloud that the federal government mandated be accessible only by US persons. Because AWS GovCloud is physically and logically accessible by US persons only, government agencies can now manage more heavily regulated data in AWS while remaining compliant with strict federal requirements. The new Region offers the same high level of security as other AWS Regions and supports existing AWS security controls and certifications such as FISMA, SAS-70, ISO 27001, FIPS 140-2 compliant end points, and PCI DSS Level 1. AWS also provides an environment that enables agencies to comply with HIPAA regulations.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) provides agencies and businesses with an infrastructure web services platform in the cloud. With AWS you can requisition compute, storage, and other services–gaining access to a suite of secure, scalable, and flexible IT infrastructure services as your agency or business demands them. With AWS, you pay only for what you use, making AWS the most cost-effective way to deliver your applications.

You could hack something together with Amazon Cloud Drive... https://www.amazon.com/clouddrive/learnmore 35GB puts you at $50/year Might be against their TOS though....