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For those still unaware, "human trafficking" is basically a euphemism for slavery. See River of Innocents for a good primer. In the US alone, tens of thousands of kids are at high risk for being enslaved every year.

Powell wrote the currently discussed book. Loyd Blankenship wrote the H.M.

Powell has disowned the A.C (read the editorial review on Amazon's site - http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0962303208/)

Blankenship has not, as far as I'm am aware, ever recanted the Manifesto. Nor should he, it was not the same sort of document.

What's the situation now with non-Western scripts on the Kindle? I heard that when the device was launched, texts that contained foreign alphabets would just display gibberish instead, making people pissed off that they had wasted their money. I see from recent Amazon reviews that the device supports Spanish, so I assume Western European letters will show up correctly, but what's the situation with Cyrillic or CJK text within a publication?

I don't know if the old problem with the Kindle's lack of fonts or erroneous automatic conversion to Kindle format by the publishers, but for the Kindle to be a reliable device for a wide range of academics, it's not to have that internationalization.

For anyone who doesn't know, the author has since disowned the book. See his comment on Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0974458902

As Office Space so convincingly depicted it, loss of a precious stapler to another employee can have severe ramifications for the future of the business.

http://www.amazon.com/Anarch-Cookbook-Friendly-Masquerade-Sourcebook/dp/1565040481

The Anarch Cookbook: A Friendly Guide to Vampire Politics (Vampire The Masquerade Sourcebook) [Paperback]
Bill Bridges (Author), Kerry Thornley (Author)

The one review

The Anarch Cookbook is well written. It is indeed a manual for Anarch politics, warfare and their way of unlife. With descriptions on strategies for times of peace as well as melee and ranged combat tactics, weapon infos and bomb making. Notes on water cannons, bullet proof vests and shield parry. How to incite riots and revolts and how pacify them again. Useful for Anarchs and counter forces, like the Prince, the Primogen, the police and paramilitary units. It is a manual and for that it's good. On the other hand it lacks everything concerning their history and decision making processes within the movement, either in Camarillan cities, the Anarch Free State or in Sabbat strongholds.
The Cookbook only pictures the USA. The statement all, Anarchs left Europe in an Exodus-like migration, seems to be blown out of proportions. The movement began in the old world and nothing explains why all Anarchs should have left European cities only to live in the then Camarilla controlled American cities.
The book misses any comment on the unlifespan of Anarchs. I guess not all of them are neonates. Or is it their doom to die young - even in "peaceful" cities? Though many probably do, a number of Elders from the of the Inquisition might still exist.
To resume, it's not an encyclopaedia it's a cookbook.

$15 new or used from $2.32 potential for scoring points with goth chicks maybe.

The trend for electronics to decrease in price does not seem to have started yet for mobile. In a sense, we're still like those saps from the early 1980s who paid thousands (in 1980s dollars!) for desktops that even then were clunky.

Stigma? Please! Only a company which commits illegal acts would have a problem with this.

So.. How do you like working for Santa Inc.?
commits illegal acts is pretty much page unavoidable these days given the number of laws.

http://www.amazon.com/Three-Felonies-Day-Target-Innocent/dp/1594032556/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top/177-5432351-7342110

How does kinect make a revolutionary change in robotics.

Let me point you to this book. It describes what's known as disruptive technologies. Here's a significant quote:

Generally, disruptive innovations were technologically straightforward, consisting of off-the-shelf components put together in a product architecture that was often simpler than prior approaches. They offered less of what customers in established markets wanted and so could rarely be initially employed there. They offered a different package of attributes valued only in emerging markets remote from, and unimportant to, the mainstream

The Kinect seems to be a perfect example of a disruptive technology. It offers a simple and very cheap solution to issues that already had established solutions. Even if it weren't as powerful as existing sensors, the low price, simplicity of use and easy availability opens a wide variety of areas where previous solutions couldn't be used.Check out some of the other examples of disruptive technologies, and the way they redefined the market, and often ended up replacing the existing established solutions. I think the Kinect will get better and end up becoming the reigning technology except for very specialized niches. And as such, it is indeed revolutionary.

By the way, AWS is Amazon Web Services, and you can run a free mini-instance forever.

Are you sure? According to their Free Usage Tier page, you only get the free 750 hours of micro instance usage per month for the first 12 months --- after which you have to pay. Unless there's information elsewhere I don't know about?

It's been a pretty publicly known for many, many years now that the US has tapped international telephone cables. Histories of submarine espionage like Blind Man's Bluff go into some detail. There was no uproar then about listening in on people's private calls -- and some of these lines had US traffic going through them. The American public is pretty forgiving as long as the administration claims that it's happening off of US soil and is for a good cause.

Sir, I am shocked and dismayed at your baldfaced self-promotion. Have you no shame, sir? Have you no tact? Is nothing in this world too sacred, too hallowed to be plastered with your wanton advertising? May the Lord have mercy upon your black, greed infested soul.

Hmmm, that's going to be harder for them to maintain, since both Barnes and Noble and Amazon have self publishing portals, (follow the links for how those work) and they account for a huge percentage of sales of both Print and ebooks in the US.

Sooner or later someone is bound to release something via those electronic self publish routes which rockets to the top of sales. Will they just pretend it didn't happen?

Or is it that ebook sales WITHOUT dead tree books would never amount to a best seller?
(TFA wanders around that particular point, as without numbers, it is impossible to tell whether ebooks simply follow print books in popularity.).

As good authors (Like Steven King) start releasing in ebook format first, using free-lance editor services, the print houses might not have their lock on the attention of the NYT.

Steven Kink kind of popularity will be hard to ignore even if it were self published.

The problem with the various bullet points is that any defense for Assange is also a defense for Dormscheit-Berg, and any attack on Dormscheit-Berg works just as well against Assange.

1) ... It was a matter of trust. Which Daniel Domscheit-Berg has violated and betrayed. The only way a leak operation like WikiLeaks can work right is if it's members see beyond their own issues. ...

"It was a matter of trust." Much like the same trust that *every* employer puts in their employees and that Wikileaks encourages those same employees to betray? Wikileaks is based on "if you're aware of corruption, let the world know." Dormscheit-Berg saw his organization corrupting, and he has departed and let the world know.

2) The irresponsibility of Daniel Domscheit-Berg ... is sad at best, and dangerous for people at worst. Specifically for the leakers. ... Having more than 1 organization right now isn't good timing. ...

I hope you got equally excited about all the people that Assange endangered when he refused to redact their namesin leaked documents. Many people in the arab world leaked information to the US military forces, and were then outed by Assange... should they be placed in harm's way simply because they leaked their information to the "wrong" entity?

3) If OpenLeaks had opened by itself without any connections to WikiLeaks, then maybe it would have been ok. But for it to open the way it did, I can't see it ever being as trustworthy or "open" as WikiLeaks.

Please help me understand. Do you want an "open" company for "leaks" to start by being secretive?

4) ... It is literally like walking into a crowded movie theater and screaming "Quick! Look over here! Don't pay attention to the movie you were all already enjoying! We've written a play for you all to watch instead!"

Assange's whole act is based on theatrics. It didn't used to be, but that's the only way to get attention. This is how the game is played - why criticize Dormscheit-Berg while ignoring Assange's use of the same techniques?

5) Rather than pushing forward and just shutting up for the good of the world ... Daniel Domscheit-Berg decided it was a better idea to gather as much media attention as possible, steal from and disrupt the image of WikiLeaks, while conveniently writing books that make him $, ...

You neglected to mention Assange's penchant for writing books too.

If this is really about exposing governments, WHY DO WE EVEN KNOW WHO JULIAN ASSANGE IS? Assange could have taken measures to feed his info to the papers & news networks while protecting his anonymity, but instead he's a household name. Think about that.

6) ... Assange's job was to draw the ire of the governments they were leaking about. He is the media spokesperson, and the figure head. ...

Don't you think it's a bit petty to complain that your guy's antics are getting less attention because of someone else's antics?

This has really gotten out of hand.

1) Of course WikiLeaks is pissed. They were the ones who took up the banner for having a reliable place to leak data. I am sure they had some sort of process to gauge people's reliability and willingness to be part of WikiLeaks before they "hired" anyone to be part of the organization. It was a matter of trust. Which Daniel Domscheit-Berg has violated and betrayed. The only way a leak operation like WikiLeaks can work right is if it's members see beyond their own issues. So he didn't like Julian Assange? Really? Huge news? What employee ever likes their boss?

2) The irresponsibility of Daniel Domscheit-Berg for trying to make a name off WikiLeaks and Assange is sad at best, and dangerous for people at worst. Specifically for the leakers. WikiLeaks is already a known, trusted organization for handling leaked information. The new OpenLeaks crap and Daniel Domscheit-Berg are only going to confuse this very NEW process (leaked information over the internet to a central source). Having more than 1 organization right now isn't good timing. It is only a publicity stunt that is meant to harm wikileaks credibility and to confuse their leakers into trying OpenLeaks.

3) If OpenLeaks had opened by itself without any connections to WikiLeaks, then maybe it would have been ok. But for it to open the way it did, I can't see it ever being as trustworthy or "open" as WikiLeaks.

4) Those claiming that it is all theatrics are right, on the part of OpenLeaks and Daniel Domscheit-Berg making a scene merely for the sake of attracting attention away from WikiLeaks. It is literally like walking into a crowded movie theater and screaming "Quick! Look over here! Don't pay attention to the movie you were all already enjoying! We've written a play for you all to watch instead!"

5) Rather than pushing forward and just shutting up for the good of the world (or rather, the good of the people of the world who live under governments that use secrecy and shady deals to accomplish their goals) Daniel Domscheit-Berg decided it was a better idea to gather as much media attention as possible, steal from and disrupt the image of WikiLeaks, while conveniently writing books that make him $, which I'm sure won't be funneled into helping people expose leaks and rather funneled into his own pocket. If that doesn't make people realize he is a douche, I don't know what will

6) People who claim, such as Daniel, that Assange's ego blah blah blah are bad are missing the point. Assange's job was to draw the ire of the governments they were leaking about. He is the media spokesperson, and the figure head. Regardless if he started WikiLeaks or not, that was his role and he has played everyone like a fiddle when it comes to this. Granted his liberties and freedom are on trial right now in Europe, but he had to of known that might be the repercussions.

Do you really think you'll still be in a cancer-prone human body for most of the span until the 400th birthday you hope for. I'm not as optimistic about the Singularity as Ray Kurzweil and similar futurists (though Kurzweil's The Singularity is Near is thought-provoking), but surely sometime within the next century or so we will have moved beyond biology. So, you only need miracle cures that get you that far.

You mean, like one of these?

Day Trader Speculators: PANIC!

Average person on the street: Well great, guess we'll be seeing $5/gal gas shortly. Thank you Wikileaks, you could have at least waited until winter was over so I could actually afford to heat my house.

You ain't seen the 1/4 of it. There's a book - I haven't had the chance to read all of it - but just what to expect (real pain and serious problems plus a worsening of the infrastructure decay problems) when gasoline reaches $6 a gallon is interesting; you can guess what will initially happen when the first three words of this book's title comes true: $20 Per Gallon: How the Inevitable Rise in the Price of Gasoline Will Change Our Lives for the Better

Currency is IOU notes that devalue over time.

Absolutely. This is the one thing that "goldies" never seem to get right. Money is all about you owing me and vice versa. Moreover, all money in existence is ultimately a debt of the government, which is why the current political obsession with austerity is so ridiculous. Government debt is simply the mirror image of private wealth.

FIAT currency tends to be *backed* by something, like an economy, like USA or European Union or even China.

More concretely, modern fiat money is backed by the power of taxation. A large part of the value of money comes from ultimately circular reasoning, i.e. you can pay your groceries at the shop using money, because the shop needs to pay its employees with that money, because those employees can use that money to pay for groceries. However, underlying this circularity is the fact that the state has a monopoly power to force a debt on you: the tax debt. A random stranger on the street cannot force you into debt, but the state can. By doing so, it creates scarcity and demand for the state-issued money, and this is where the value of modern money ultimately comes from.

This is one of the key insights of Modern Monetary Theory, which was greatly influenced by the Functional Finance of Abba Lerner, and is developed by people like Randall Wray and Bill Mitchell.

I'd destroy my hard drive too if I got word the government was coming. They don't need to know that I donated to wikileaks and other projects.

Truly sir your tinfoil is 20 mil.

I don't think the feds care much either about donation to Wikileaks or your desire to use your kitteh to login to your computer.

In case no one gets it, this post as well as the "The only winning move is not to play" quotation comes from the old Matthew Broderick film War Games . I'm going to the trouble of explaining that because I've been around on Slashdot for almost a decade, but I still think War Games is before my time, so I can't imagine what the youngsters make of these posts.

"You and I didn't play the same Civ 5. That game has everything I liked about Civ 4 and more. In other words, a worthy sequel."

You obviously don't hang around the Civ community at all.

http://www.amazon.com/Sid-Meiers-Civilization-V-Pc/dp/B0038TT8QM/

The US estimate for flu deaths is between 30k and 60k per year, depending on how the statistics are calculated (whether you include pneumonia caused by flu, for instance). Source. Traffic fatalities in 2009 are approximately 33k. Source.

US flu percentage: (60k/300M) = 0.02%. World flu percentage: (500k/7B) = 0.007%. So the US sees three times as many deaths by flu than in the rest of the world (not quite accurate, for a few reasons, but close enough), as you said, probably due to better health care leading to longer lives and more elderly dieing of the flu.

US car percentage: (30k/300M) = 0.01%. World car percentage: (1.2M/7B) = 0.017%. So you're half as likely to die of a car accident in the US than in the rest of the world (same caveat as above), again, likely due to all the safety measures in place, and in spite of the additional miles per person due to the sparse population.

All that said, flu deaths aren't a lot more common in the US (as an example of a civilized country, traffic-wise and healthcare-wise, and representative of the majority of slashdot users), they are merely as common as car fatalities. Even more so than on a global scale.

Could this post be translated into English understandable by people over 40?

I can't believe I just asked that! But I don't know how to congugate "to retweet" nor how to parse "X followers tweet read."

This might help, gramps.

A capacitive stylus is more like writing with a crayon than a pencil. If you look at these, you'll quickly notice that they're not much more precise than your finger (unless you have really fat hands).

God, it would be so nice if some company would just go ahead and make one to buy!

I wonder if one could find a stylus on Amazon?

God, it would be so nice if some company would just go ahead and make one to buy!

I wonder if one could find a stylus on Amazon?

God, it would be so nice if some company would just go ahead and make one to buy!

I wonder if one could find a stylus on Amazon?

God, it would be so nice if some company would just go ahead and make one to buy!

I wonder if one could find a stylus on Amazon?

God, it would be so nice if some company would just go ahead and make one to buy!

I wonder if one could find a stylus on Amazon?

God, it would be so nice if some company would just go ahead and make one to buy!

I wonder if one could find a stylus on Amazon?

God, it would be so nice if some company would just go ahead and make one to buy!

I wonder if one could find a stylus on Amazon?

God, it would be so nice if some company would just go ahead and make one to buy!

I wonder if one could find a stylus on Amazon?

Also, will it have video-out capability yet? Or possibly video-in so I can use it to pretend I have a portable DVD player?

Get yourself Air Video, better than a video-in cable. It's one of those apps I can't live without.

Hopefully they will add AirPlay support once iOS 4.3 is out and allow for over the air video out, too. In the meantime, you can get video out cables that plug in the one port. Why get more ports when one port can do it all? :P

It's called an "order of magnitude calculation". Here's a useful book to help you get the hang of 'em:

http://www.amazon.com/Consider-Spherical-Cow-Environmental-Problem/dp/093570258X/

I could be wrong about the fall speed of an airplane, but not by more than a factor of 2. There could be updrafts, but on a global scale there are as many updrafts as downdrafts, so they tend to cancel out unless the airplane gets *astonishingly* lucky. And so on. Read the book: it'll change your life.

Disney extended the copyright term because they wanted to not lose copyright on their characters. It was originally something like 14 years. This is stupid; and doubly so since Disney still puts out cool shit. It's time Beauty and the Beast goes into the public domain, while people still pay every 10 years for a Disney official collector's edition from the vault. People still pay for 1984 when you can read it for free.

Making stuff available for free is not equal to making it copyright free. 1984 makes money, true, but you cant go out grab a copy of the book and upload it to Amazon and sell it because it still belongs to the original author, it's not public domain even if the author allows you to read it for free.

As for the game above, it's plain plagiarism. Sure, plagiarism itself is not really legal, but its widely hated and it's the reason why most slashdot readers automatically default to bash the clone maker.

We're allowed to perform Shakespeare and The Crucible and other old plays freely; we're not allowed to perform Beauty and the Beast (yes, this is a play, Disney owns it) without paying a lot of money. Pink Floyd's songs should be folk songs by now, covered by lots of cover bands.

You are in your full right to adapt the original Beauty and The Beast into a play, if you so wish. You can adapt that one word by word, or you can do like Disney and twist it in an original way, but you can't plagiarize theirs. I find it also interesting how you keep insisting on 14 year old works be set on public domain while claiming that Shakespeare and other classics are free for you to play with. France, for instance, in the 18th and 19th century, gave copyrights to the author for his entire lifetime, with works (at one point in that period, at least) becoming public domain only 5 years after the death of the author. Another window was 10 years from the works creation or for the duration of the author's life, whatever was longer.

Many of the classics you enjoy today were inherited by the world only after it's creator died, and citing them in a copyright conversation will very likely end in very unproductive results (unless your goals are to have Disney works be their property until the company itself dies.)

14 years is nothing, and so are 30 years as far as copyright works is concerned.

http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/health/autism/autism-information.shtml
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/cancerMain.shtml
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2010/07/22/pregnant-women-advised-to-get-more-vitamin-d.aspx
http://www.iodine4health.com/

Both are involved with immune function in different ways. Adequate vitamin D is needed to make the brain's master antioxidant, glutathione. Adequate iodine helps excrete heavy metals. Both are involved with zapping cancer cells (it's said the average adult gets one cancer cell a day, but a good immune system deals with it). Vitamin D is essential to preventing pregnancy complications, including C-sections.

The US RDA for iodine may be way too low, especially considering how much bromine and fluorine kids are exposed to. The vitamin D RDA is also too low, even with being recently revised upward.

Eating fruits and vegetables also helps preventing lots of disease and is essential to good health.
    http://www.drfuhrman.com/library/foodpyramid.aspx
    http://www.diseaseproof.com/archives/diet-myths-the-food-pyramid-of-the-insane.html

One can tease out a lot of the individual nutritional and environmental causes in some cases of autism:
    "Autism Research: Breakthrough Discovery on the Causes of Autism"
    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-mark-hyman/autism-research-discovery_b_794967.html

Let's get that all right before arguing too much over other stuff and what the true risk/reward assessment is for otherwise healthy kids and vaccines. A focus on magic bullets may be leading us to miss the big picture here about optimal health, which is earned by eating right and a lot of good lifestyle choices.

If pediatricians educated parents more about nutrition, we'd probably have a lot healthier population, even without vaccines.
"Disease-Proof Your Child: Feeding Kids Right"
http://www.amazon.com/Disease-Proof-Your-Child-Feeding-Right/dp/0312338058
"A groundbreaking book that explains the connection between nutrition and disease prevention-showing parents how to keep their children healthy by feeding them right. Bombarded by the media with stories about childhood obesity and dangerous hormones, pesticides and additives in foods, and told that allergies, asthma, and ear infections are on the rise, parents have never been more concerned about what to feed children. In this invaluable resource, featuring easy-to prepare, tasty recipes, Dr. Joel Fuhrman explains how cutting edge nutritional science can be brought to the family table with amazing results. "

See also for how to break out of the junk food pleasure trap:
    http://drfuhrman.com/library/article16.aspx

Disney extended the copyright term because they wanted to not lose copyright on their characters. It was originally something like 14 years. This is stupid; and doubly so since Disney still puts out cool shit. It's time Beauty and the Beast goes into the public domain, while people still pay every 10 years for a Disney official collector's edition from the vault. People still pay for 1984 when you can read it for free.

Disney's core business should be Disney Land (because hey, Cinderella is authentic Disney, and the props there are pure Disney, even if someone else is ripping them off) and Pixar; sales of old films should count on the value of authentic Disney collector's edition reprints in Blu-Ray/HDDVD/BetaMax/DVD/whatever and the fact that the new printing is copyrighted even though the old one isn't. If you copy the latest digital remaster, you deserve to get owned; if you're selling copies of the 15 year old version, that's fine. Disney still owns the master films and master tracks as a trade secret, too.

Tetris is quite old, and old things become part of our culture. The reason patent and copyright law used to release shit to public domain after 14 years--and trademark law still caveats a "Genericized Trademark" if your trademark falls into common use (i.e. Bandaid, Photoshop--Adobe HATES when people call shit "Photoshopping" because they'll lose their trademark--etc)--is to protect our culture from this sort of death-grip. We're allowed to perform Shakespeare and The Crucible and other old plays freely; we're not allowed to perform Beauty and the Beast (yes, this is a play, Disney owns it) without paying a lot of money. Pink Floyd's songs should be folk songs by now, covered by lots of cover bands.

Tablet - Archos 101

Phone - Fascinate? Incredible? Evo? Epic? Droid X?

I think the iPod Touch is in a space all by itself, I really dont think apple has a competitor there. Amazing device, great price. Not that I think the Archos tablet is as good as an iPad, although I would argue that I prefer several Android phones over the iPhone.

I prefer a heavyweight decrapifier.

It is also used as a form of protective custody and to implement a suicide watch.

You can order Suicide Resistant fixtures right from Amazon.

Cool, eh?

What kind of iOS n00b are you? The iPod glove has been around 4 evah

...don't believe in the theory of evolution at least in principle?

Pretty much everyone believes in evolution in general, but plenty of people believe the view of evolution taught in public schools tends to be oversimplistic. One one hand, you do have theists who believe that "irreducible complexity" necessitates a helping hand at stages instead of the blind process typically presented as Darwin's breakthrough discovery. Behe's Darwin's Black Box . Now, one can fairly view that as dressed-up Creationism, but it is written by an actual biochemist. Then there's the completely non-theistic views that oppose the simplistic account, such as Gould's punctuated equilibria.

The challenge in discussing evolution in public schools is presenting evolution as an uncertain field in a way that drives inquiry, contributing to a healthy development of scientific thinking among the populace, as opposed to closing minds which ID and Creationism advocates usually seek. It's a hard balance to get right.

20 cents for one radish seed?

That's what genetic engineering is about. Patent the seeds then charge every farmer to use seeds. If farmers don't use your seeds, or saves seeds, then they get sued.

Fact is is that there is not a shortage of food. The problem is what is done with it as well as distribution. In the US more corn is grown to feed cattle, who naturally eat grass not corn, than what people eat. Other animals raised for food require more land for growing their own feedstock. Then there are problems with food distribution and storage. Food grains rotting due to poor storage in Punjab. Empty stomachs, rotting food stocks. Enough: Why the World's Poorest Starve in an Age of Plenty.

Falcon

The Golden Book of Chemistry Experiments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Book_of_Chemistry_Experiments , an amazing book now considered dangerous. The book was apparently removed from most public libraries. I think you can find a pdf via the wiki p links though - it is an amazing book.

Check out Illustrated Guide to Home Chemistry Experiments. Also check out Theo Gray's Mad Science: Experiments You Can Do At Home - But Probably Shouldn't.

While unfortunately I didn't have this book as a kid, I had some others that were similarly "dangerous", along with a chemistry set with most of the necessary chemicals. I made gunpowder once to prove to myself I could do it.

In high school chemistry the teacher would let some of us do our own experiments in the lab, before school, during lunch, and afterwards. To see if it was there a friend and I went to the library and looked in an encyclopaedia for the nitroglycerin entry and from there we thought we could make some. And we did. When we did we'd fill those small paint jars modelers use, then we'd go out into some woods and throw them around. We only did it a couple of tymes before stopping. The first tyme it was a kick, the second tyme though was "We already did this".

Falcon

Contemporary chemistry sets might not encourage you to kill insects or blow stuff up, but chemistry sets are still around. I just went to Amazon and did a search for "chemistry set" and the very first one (the Thames & Kosmos beginner set) even guides kids through working with electricity. Indeed, in general this set doesn't look any more tame than what I had growing up in the 1980s.

If chemistry sets today are less popular, blame parents. But parents who are clued-up and want to introduce their children to the scientific process still have the possibility of buying these sets.

Hiroshi Yamamoto covers this exact topic in one of the short stories in The Songs of Ibis. The angle there is the introduction of the first past-the-uncanny-valley android robot for nursing the elderly. Yamamoto takes on many of the particular challenges of working with the elderly (and with an aging population). The stories generally have a lovely classic sci-fi feel, using fiction to simultaneously explore new worlds and topical subject matter. It's also pretty darn near Clarke's definition of 'hard' sci-fi (and comp-sci-fi!) while remaining thoroughly enjoyable.

Did you know you can pretty much just buy books on any subject?

Antarctica is the new frontier. Get moving.

Back in the 1990s, there certainly seemed to be an expectation that Antarctica would open up Real Soon Now. Kim Stanley Robinson, for example, wrote a novel predicting great polemics over resource rights and environmental impact; the continent would be sort of a prelude to his imagined colonization of Mars.

Over a decade later, nothing has really changed down there. The exploitation of Antarctica is like workable fusion power or the Singularity: always years away.

I am not sure this would be much faster than a good shovel while also costing much more (to buy and use) while at the same time risking icing the driveway. Also, using a shovel will give you a little extra exercise. With one of these I can do a good sized driveway in fifteen minutes with <40 cm snow, about half an hour with <60 cm snow.