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I did in my other post. I'm not niave enough to think you've ever encountered her book, but take a look here at the comments section over at amazon:

http://www.amazon.com/Louder-Than-Words-Mothers-Journey/dp/0525950117

Educate yourself just a tiny bit. Maybe you'll find the maturity enough to say something like, 'while we disagree about vaccines, she has tried to help her son'. Maybe, maybe not.

Carrying around a BT keyboard is hardly on the run now is it.

Your notion that bluetooth keyboards cannot be portable is rather quaint.

I have a friend with one (not sure if it's this exact one), he keeps it in his pocket.

If typing is at all important to you than even a cramped keyboard is a huge improvement over the tiny keys on mobile keyboards. You cannot say typing is so important that a virtual keyboard is a deal breaker and then turn around to insist the inflexible keypads, often without numbers, are any kind of substitute for a larger keyboard.

But it is the placing of the verbs that always seem to throw me. for example you would say in English "I am going to the store" but in many languages the verb comes LAST IIRC, so the sentence would be "I, to the store am going" which is not so hard on simple sentences but when you are trying to convert a complex English sentence in your head? NOT easy my friend.

I bet you started with something OTHER than English first yes? Everyone I've known that was great with languages usually got to English late. I think English (especially American English) is such a messed up hodge podge with no real rules that once learning it as a first language it really messes you up trying to pick up others. And one can usually pull some really bad English and still get their point across, but something like bad German? You sound like a total loonie.

But anyway if you have an x360 give it a shot. Windows 7 will actually run quite sweet on a P4 3GHz with 1.5GB or better, and WMC will plug right into most capture cards (especially the ATI TV Wonder, which is why I recommend them) and stream to the x360 very well. With the setup I described you can capture on the PC while you sleep or are at work like a DVR, stream it to your 360 like a media box, but unlike either of those you can save and burn your shows for later viewing.

When it comes to media it is one of my best selling combos, the only thing that sells faster are Nbox Media Players which if you have clueless family or relatives that aren't good with tech or kids are like a Godsend. These puppies will run off thumbstick, MMC, or USB HDD. Just load a cheap 250GB portadrive with cheap movies off of Amazon and hand them the remote. That's it. Low power, simple controls with nothing to screw up, just rip your movies on your PC and transfer them to your media tank. I love these suckers so much I got my dad one for Xmas. I just picked up some great classic westerns and loaded them up, and now whenever he can't find anything on TV he just flips the button and voila! Insta-movies. And if you have kids or family that has kids they will look at you like a God if you give them one loaded with some kid DVDs. You can even offer to rip their kids DVD collection for them as a nice gesture.

Anyway if you have a room you just want to have movies and music in (also plays MP3, WMA, JPG, and BMP) or relatives that you need to give a nice gift that won't break your wallet, give one a try. Folks around here just love them to death and I haven't had a single complaint yet. I even have the girls at the checkout stopping me asking "Hey, aren't you the guy that sells them TV Box things? If I bought one would you show me how to use it?" which of course takes a whole 15 minutes counting setup. Easy money my friend, they're happy, I'm happy, gotta love those win/wins!

My big question is what is the payout rules? Do they deposit the money in my checking account automatically? Or do you have to have a minimum sales amount before they'll cut a check?

Having sold some textbooks through Amazon Marketplace they automatically transfer your funds every 14 days, and you can also have your funds transferred as fast as once per day. Here is how Amazon describes it.

This app marketplace might be run differently, but this is probably a good guideline for how they will disburse funds.

We have drip pots at work that make coffee in bulk; and I can get french presses that make some 12-15 cups of coffee in 4 minutes. Trust me, sometimes you need the giant fucking french press; it's way bigger than a regular coffee pot, and sometimes I've seen people hit the coffee area and brew 4 pots at a time, rebrewing after under a minute because the herd just took away ALL four pots of coffee. In mugs.

Honestly, the 4 pots brewed at a time model is faster here than individual k-cups. Nobody has to fish around and examine individual cups for anything.

But they sell programmable Keureg machines for home use, for about $200. My parents got one. Compare to this or this but do you drink that much coffee in 20 minutes? How about this for home? (Apparently a "Cup" is now 4.5 ounces)

Amusingly, it takes longer to make a pot of coffee in the drip machine (about 2 minutes for it to fill water and heat it, then 5 more minutes to make the pot) than it does to make an 8 cup french press carafe. Keeping four of these carafes at work would work out pretty well for our extremely high volume coffee output, methinks.

We have drip pots at work that make coffee in bulk; and I can get french presses that make some 12-15 cups of coffee in 4 minutes. Trust me, sometimes you need the giant fucking french press; it's way bigger than a regular coffee pot, and sometimes I've seen people hit the coffee area and brew 4 pots at a time, rebrewing after under a minute because the herd just took away ALL four pots of coffee. In mugs.

Honestly, the 4 pots brewed at a time model is faster here than individual k-cups. Nobody has to fish around and examine individual cups for anything.

But they sell programmable Keureg machines for home use, for about $200. My parents got one. Compare to this or this but do you drink that much coffee in 20 minutes? How about this for home? (Apparently a "Cup" is now 4.5 ounces)

Amusingly, it takes longer to make a pot of coffee in the drip machine (about 2 minutes for it to fill water and heat it, then 5 more minutes to make the pot) than it does to make an 8 cup french press carafe. Keeping four of these carafes at work would work out pretty well for our extremely high volume coffee output, methinks.

We have drip pots at work that make coffee in bulk; and I can get french presses that make some 12-15 cups of coffee in 4 minutes. Trust me, sometimes you need the giant fucking french press; it's way bigger than a regular coffee pot, and sometimes I've seen people hit the coffee area and brew 4 pots at a time, rebrewing after under a minute because the herd just took away ALL four pots of coffee. In mugs.

Honestly, the 4 pots brewed at a time model is faster here than individual k-cups. Nobody has to fish around and examine individual cups for anything.

But they sell programmable Keureg machines for home use, for about $200. My parents got one. Compare to this or this but do you drink that much coffee in 20 minutes? How about this for home? (Apparently a "Cup" is now 4.5 ounces)

Amusingly, it takes longer to make a pot of coffee in the drip machine (about 2 minutes for it to fill water and heat it, then 5 more minutes to make the pot) than it does to make an 8 cup french press carafe. Keeping four of these carafes at work would work out pretty well for our extremely high volume coffee output, methinks.

http://www.amazon.com/Nimby-Extraordinary-Cloud-Remarkable-Friend/dp/1595834281

The Inverted World, Christopher Priest, 1974.

I recall this idea from Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy beginning with Red Mars , but was it already a stock concept of science fiction before Robinson?

The terraforming idea in that trilogy that I think is even cooler is using a massive solar sail to block sunlight from hitting Venus until the atmosphere freezes, and then start work on the surface.

Photoshop's "lite edition" still has an MSRP of $99.99... Amazon sells it for $70 (not counting the $20 MIR ending today).

The news for the traditional developers is not good:

• Chopper 2 — iOS price: $4.99. Mac price: $4.99.
• Air Hockey — iOS price: $0.99. Mac price: $0.99.
• ReMovem — iOS price: $2.99. Mac price: $2.99.
• Compression — iOS price: $2.99. Mac price: $3.99.

These are all games and one did have a price difference between iOS and Mac, but it was a buck.

Compare that with Mac games listed on Amazon today. $38.99 $19.99 $27.54 $29.35 $54.99 $24.38. These are traditional PC prices.

As of tomorrow, games priced at $20-60 will be competing against games priced at 99 cents to $4.99. The most expensive iOS games are around ten bucks. In effect, game pricing will drop by 90-95% -- on average -- overnight.

Question: Why didn't you list out those titles that you found at $20-$55 like you did with the iPhone titles? Oh, I know, it's because they're so far from similar it would be embarrassing to reveal that the heart of your argument is on shaky ground at best.

I don't own a Mac. I don't own an iPhone. But I've seen people play games on both. From your suggestion of Amazon's bestselling Mac game titles let's look at the top page without duplicates: The Sims 3, Bejeweled 3, World of Warcraft, Civilization V, Nancy Drew, and Spore. With the exception of Bejeweled (and the other Pop Cap titles), I think you are comparing apples to oranges when you say that World of Warcraft is now going to have to compete with Air Hockey and that Blizzard should tuck its tail between its legs and run because the $40 price point versus $1 price point means they're going to die. And in the only applicable case (Pop Cap Games), they will be the ones moving their apps to the Mac Store. So they should be afraid of themselves?

Here's how I see it: gaming on Mac has always been sort of unsupported. It's gotten a lot better recently but not all publishers see a value to it. Now, with this Mac Store, you're going to see the same publishers sell at their price point but gaming could explode on the Mac given this opportunity to transcend iOS and target OSX as well. I don't think that the applications and games that exist in the iPhone sphere are going to do much to the revenues of desktop counterparts because they're simply beefier applications. Furthermore, if they do modify those price points to compete, I'm of the opinion that the Steam Effect will take place and instead of selling 10k copies at $20 they're going to sell 100k copies at $4. The bottom line is that this software store will do little to traditional Mac sales and instead expand the subscriptions of the mobile games a bit.

Your friends are also going to have to figure out how the input on a mac with a single mouse is going to handle those times when they were sensing two or more touch points on the device screen. So even if you're right, Armageddon is not tomorrow.

Apple wins. Many of their very loyal developers will lose.

The Rapture is upon us, repent now before it is too late. Steve Jobs is a ruthless and uncaring god! Seriously man, you're blowing this up into something it's not.

Eugenics is absurd in its assertion that selective breeding can "improve" people when there is no scientific way to determine which genes are "better" than others, or which genes belong to a "race" or "breed" - categories that are more cultural than biological in humans.

The pre-WW2 eugenics movement had very little to do with genetic science and a lot to do with encouraging the "fit" to reproduce more, or preventing the "unfit" from reproducing so much...as determined by powerful people who assume the right to decide who the "fit" and "unfit" are, of course.

I highly recommend Edwin Black's The War Against the Weak for a detailed look at the sordid history of eugenics. It's one of those ideas that sounds good in theory, but in practice is doomed by corruption to cause suffering.

Floyd are whores, Gilmour is a whore - Waters is out whoring his whore ass doing the Wall again and again, which he retained the rights to in his lawsuit over the Floyd name.


Do you guys KNOW how many greatest hit records there are of Floyd that ALREADY break their shit up?

http://www.amazon.com/Echoes-Best-Pink-Floyd/dp/B00005QDW5

There's one for you. There are PLENTY of others.

And only Dark Side and Animals and the Wall can be considered concept albums. EVERYTHING pre-DSOM (and that is a LOT) going back to Saucerful of Secrets are just a collection of individual songs ANYHOW.

Really - nothing to see here. Just a bunch of grey old sods selling out what they already sold out for more pension money. And maybe a new 458 Italia for Mason. this one in yellow, perhaps....

Good artists still do albums, Tale of God's Will a requiem for Katrina by Terence Blanchard is a great example I picked up this year =)

Well there are other artists that release some very long tracks work on a variable price model. Digging in Amazon for artists I know release long long songs, I came up with several off the top of my (somewhat dated) head that deal with this via mix and match approach with variable pricing on long works, and some still restricted to album only sales. I used Amazon because they let you sort by song length.

For instance, Mike Oldfield charges 99 cents on Amazon for anything up to 10 minutes then seems to switch to 3 or 4 bucks for 20 minute songs, or Album only.

Ferry Corsten releases many 10 minute songs for 99 cents.

Tangerine Dream, another band doing long songs release some tracks of 27 minutes for 99 cents, others for 3 bucks, and others Album only, and almost everything under 10 minutes for 99.

So it seems that some music resellers manage to deal with variable pricing on long songs, and still retain the option of Album Only for those that they really feel must be released this way.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Well there are other artists that release some very long tracks work on a variable price model. Digging in Amazon for artists I know release long long songs, I came up with several off the top of my (somewhat dated) head that deal with this via mix and match approach with variable pricing on long works, and some still restricted to album only sales. I used Amazon because they let you sort by song length.

For instance, Mike Oldfield charges 99 cents on Amazon for anything up to 10 minutes then seems to switch to 3 or 4 bucks for 20 minute songs, or Album only.

Ferry Corsten releases many 10 minute songs for 99 cents.

Tangerine Dream, another band doing long songs release some tracks of 27 minutes for 99 cents, others for 3 bucks, and others Album only, and almost everything under 10 minutes for 99.

So it seems that some music resellers manage to deal with variable pricing on long songs, and still retain the option of Album Only for those that they really feel must be released this way.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

Well there are other artists that release some very long tracks work on a variable price model. Digging in Amazon for artists I know release long long songs, I came up with several off the top of my (somewhat dated) head that deal with this via mix and match approach with variable pricing on long works, and some still restricted to album only sales. I used Amazon because they let you sort by song length.

For instance, Mike Oldfield charges 99 cents on Amazon for anything up to 10 minutes then seems to switch to 3 or 4 bucks for 20 minute songs, or Album only.

Ferry Corsten releases many 10 minute songs for 99 cents.

Tangerine Dream, another band doing long songs release some tracks of 27 minutes for 99 cents, others for 3 bucks, and others Album only, and almost everything under 10 minutes for 99.

So it seems that some music resellers manage to deal with variable pricing on long songs, and still retain the option of Album Only for those that they really feel must be released this way.

It doesn't have to be all or nothing.

I must agree with the GP that if you don't understand something as fundamental as the bid-ask spread, your personal opinion on HFTs (or any other "classes" of traders) just isn't very useful or valid. To put it as a car analogy, it's akin to arguing with your car mechanic, "I don't know what an interference engine is, but I just don't see the value in a timing belt."

You can read the book Trading and Exchanges if you really want to get into gritty details. Otherwise, if there's ever a term you don't understand I suggest searching for it on investopedia.com. Both of those are very good resources for learning more about the markets.

It's absolutely real. Check out the Amazon page for some thoroughly entertaining reviews.

I got interested so I did a bit more searching after my last post. I didn't find one with outstanding reviews and some didn't have USB 2.0 but here's a couple that are in-stock that you could look into.

http://www.amazon.com/Memorex-TRAVELSYNC-USB-UFD-READER-32028501/dp/B000BZ4TY2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294097574&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Sima-USB-101-Digital-Transfer-System/dp/B000F9LRYY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1294097546&sr=8-1

The second device appears to run Linux FWIW (Beowulf cluster etc)

I wouldn't be surprised if Android could be a USB host either with the right software but it just not be possible

I got interested so I did a bit more searching after my last post. I didn't find one with outstanding reviews and some didn't have USB 2.0 but here's a couple that are in-stock that you could look into.

http://www.amazon.com/Memorex-TRAVELSYNC-USB-UFD-READER-32028501/dp/B000BZ4TY2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1294097574&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/Sima-USB-101-Digital-Transfer-System/dp/B000F9LRYY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1294097546&sr=8-1

The second device appears to run Linux FWIW (Beowulf cluster etc)

I wouldn't be surprised if Android could be a USB host either with the right software but it just not be possible

As others have pointed out, your question's premise is inherently flawed because you are begging the question. Any proposed answer could be considered a self-fulfilling prophecy. Here's a more logical way to think about how to get to a cost-effective test suite.

Creating an automated test suite after-the-fact is difficult for a number of reasons, primarily because a well tuned and effective test suite requires constant feedback to determine what works and what doesn't. You can't get that unless you have adopted a "pay as you go" model where your test feedback influences your codebase and vice versa.

By Michael Feathers' definition, a legacy codebase is one without a test suite. I highly recommend you take a look at his book on the topic. http://www.amazon.com/Working-Effectively-Legacy-Michael-Feathers/dp/0131177052/

If you're interested in the most effective way to maintain your legacy code base, you'll build in the appropriate level of testing (including supporting code, infrastructure, etc.) and force yourself to refactor the parts of it that need to be refactored to support testablity. It will drive out the tests for you that do provide value, and steer you away from lines of thought that do not help you catch regressions or drive refactoring. It gets you to "pay as you go." Not only will this provide you the best argument for management to give you time to write tests, it is the most professionally responsible one as well.

Speaking of professionalism, have a look at Bob Martin's arguments for software craftsmanship and the ethical responsibility software developers have to produce quality work. This might help form your opinion on when and why software quality is important to professional responsibility. There are more to ethics than just the bottom line.

6700 SEK is lowest:
http://www.prisjakt.nu/produkt.php?p=630392

This one is unlocked and with no subscription in the US?
http://www.amazon.com/Apple-iPhone-Black-Smartphone-16GB/dp/B0041E16RC
734.99 U.S. dollars = 4 920.76457 Swedish kronor
4 921 * 1.25 = 6 151.25

So at least there's not much of a "foreigner premium" on the device.

Ben Goldacre, an MD from UK, has been at the detecting pseudoscience game for a while now. I have just started reading his book, Bad Science: Quacks, Hacks, and Big Pharma Flacks. I find it refreshingly topical and well-focused on the problem: evidence-based decision making.

Similar to Goldacre's findings, my experience has been that evidence, which has been produced by some test, requires the nature of that test to be disclosed. Following the model of the scientific process, evidence requires the following before it is complete: a testable idea, a test (or series of). To facilitate TFA's issue of replication, it is often nice to include the test setup, the procedure for executing the test, results of running the test given some inputs, etc.

--I apologize for any weirdness. I have been trying to edit this but apparently copy/paste is broken for my mode of /. viewing and Mac OS X 10.6.5 Safari 5.0.3.

On Liberty was an enormously influential work; the ideas presented in the book have remained the basis of much liberal political thought ever since

I think democrats in the US should be proud to call themselves liberals and should stop hiding from a word that is truly to be admired and should stop letting it be re-defined by the forces of evil.

And the final word from Mr. Mill that is as true today as it was then.

I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. -- John Stuart Mill

You'd then make a mint off of recommending the right combination of contract clauses.

There is already boilerplate out there. You can buy a book like http://www.amazon.com/Practical-Software-Licensing-Licensees-Licensors/dp/1604420901/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293905895&sr=8-1 and run with it. It comes with forms you can use. In fact, this is what most lawyers do, even at the biggest law firms in the world. They go with language that has been litigated in court already, and change a bit to glue the clauses together. This is not really as easy as it sounds. Just like how an engineer can design a bridge, but modifications likely need to be made based on the soil, perhaps the saline content in the air, etc. Hell, if you're a programmer, you already know that programming once and deploying across Windows, OSX, and Linux is not even that easy. Want Python and curses? Well, give up your aspirations with Windows! When I was in undergrad in 2002, it was well known that Java's goal of cross-platformality (??) exceeded its reach. Why would the law be any different?

But good cut and paste cannot happen. There is too much interplay between language, structure, and clauses. You can make a decent contract, but you'd still need someone to look over the combination of clauses you made. It might be cheaper, but I just don't think you can have a "click the exes in the HTML form and get a great contract spat out."

If I were a business owner, I wouldn't risk a $30K contract if I could pay someone $1-2K to draft a K for me (I could). You won't find a big law firm that is that cheap. I had a software licenses professor in law school, and he told us point blank that there are probably only five or six software licenses lawyers in the US that are really any good (they all work for big shops and firms like Fish & Richardson and probably Knobbe). I'm inclined to agree that there are very few, but "five or six" is probably off by an order of magnitude. My experience working for a federal judge supports the assertion that most lawyers are not all that good at what they do. But then, most lawyers are inexpensive.

This is my just my opinion, though. And I don't expect to end up practicing software license law for a living, so I'm not trying to protect my livelihood here. I'm expressing my legitimate concern that such a goal is untenable. Get a form book like the one above if you want to save money. There are other books that take you line by line and explain how to change text.

But keep in mind that if you screw up you have no one to sue for malpractice!

Actually, I take everything above back after reading a bit more about your situation. You could do it if there were no negotiation between the two parties, but you just gave a client a contract and said, "Take it or leave it." Alternatively, next time, don't use a lawyer. Have the contract be a "work for hire" and keep the copyright for the contract yourself. Then just change it to fit your needs.

But yeah, again, no one to sue for malpractice if you do that and something screws up.

Though I do think it's highly informative, it's unfortunately quite unabashed and unvarnished in it's portrayal of the brutalities perpetrated by the conquistadors and colonists... it's more fit for the college reader, IMHO.

However, an insightful, but pleasant read that I think all high-schoolers should read is James Loewen's "Lies My Teacher told Me" . It talks about why, for example, the Indians had some power and representation in the early days of the USA, while after a while they lost it (hint: economics and trade).

Check out the amazon listing. Apparently, they changed some of the look and feel under pressure from rolex.

Amazon is probably trying to avoid ****-storms like the one that occured last month, when a pedophilia how-to book was removed following a petition drive and boycott threats.

And if your book is entitled something about rape and is in the erotica section, chances are that it's promoting rape even if fictionally.
The word rape can connote more than just non consensual sexual intercourse, context is important, censoring because "chances are" is, in my opinion, a dangerous path.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/search/ref=sr_nr_n_13?rh=n%3A283155%2Ck%3Arape%2Cn%3A!1000%2Cn%3A301889&bbn=1000&keywords=rape&ie=UTF8&qid=1293740087&rnid=1000
Virgin Army Boy Deflowered
Male Rape: Breaking the Silence on the Last Taboo
Jolly Rogering (Sequel to Four on the Floor)
This seach on Amazon seems to indicate it is not censoring. Maybe they didn't like his books.... - I'm in Australia, maybe the censoring is location specific.

"Censorship for the public good" always remind me of Joes Garage by Frank Zappa.

Look, I'm not going to say that it didn't suck and I never got to see the follow-ups on this, I appreciate you digging them up.

Depending upon where he lived folks cutting between houses to get to a bus stop isn't unreasonable. I live in the area and while not familiar with that specific neighborhood I am familiar with how homes are built around here in swaths and it doesn't surprise me that someone was cutting through the yard like that - there was probably even a worn path! Figuring out where they were actually walking should have been easy, they probably did it every single morning along with other children.

In the end justice was served, the guy was acquitted as he should have been. Frankly it should never have gotten to court and some prude woman shouldn't have called a cop, if her husband had had a clue he would have stopped her. I agree that they likely trumped up things to get into the home - honestly I wonder why they felt a need to search in the first place. I believe that they should be punished however as someone who has caught a cop dead to rights LYING in court I know better. Cops LIE and I've caught them at it twice inside of a courthouse, they really don't like it. If you've got the misconception that I lead the police cheer squad then you've never seen me post before :-)

As I said the truth is in-between. The woman did indeed see him, probably spotlighted by the dark outside and the bright inside. She was an idiot for making a big deal out of it and he wasn't too bright for having an uncovered window. Not too bright but not doing something criminally wrong - there's a difference.

In the end the guy got screwed and hopefully the police ended up looking damned foolish. Sadly the end result wasn't publicized nearly as much as the initial arrest. Case in point, I believe the arrest made Slashdot, the clearing of this guy did not! I think that sucks.

As for Thin Blue Line. http://www.amazon.com/Thin-Police-Sheriff-Decal-Sticker/dp/B003GD4FP4 This is a sticker that is displayed by family and by officers on their cars. It tells police officers that the person in the car is a "member of the club". I'm actually pretty surprised to find it available on Amazon as that wasn't the case when I first learned about it and explains the explosion of the damned things I see EVERYWHERE. As explained to me by a police officer's wife - if she is pulled over and can somehow let the officer know that she really is a member of the "club" she will likely be let go. Considering it worked twice for speeding tickets I'm aware of I believe her. She would simply keep her husband's business card with her license so that the officer would see it. It helped that she knew many of the people her officer worked with too and they recognized her car. I went ballistic when she told me about it and every time I see one of these - at least a few times a day when I drive - it irritates me. When she got her's she had to get it via her husband from work, looks like they have gotten more popular. Gee, wonder why? Between seeing police officers lie in court, fabricate evidence, lie to me on the street, not know the law, joke about targeting specific groups of people for fun, and this kind of crap I think it's safe to say that I am quite wary of anything having to do with the police. My respect for them is badly tarnished.

P.S. Having to SHOW an officer how to lift a print off of my car after it had been broken into was also award winning! Grrr....

I don't know, what do you think? Let's look at the link from the OP that lists the government usage of AWS.

Do you think the government's recovery.org website is putting innocent people in jeopardy? Or perhaps the Open Energy Information Initiative (from the DOE)? Or are you thinking of the Department of Agriculture's website? Do you consider NASA's website to be harmful, since it contains the word 'jet propulsion' which sounds kind of like a weapon?

People are getting too steamed up about the Wikileaks thing and need to chill. As far as we can tell, no one's died because of them, the US government really hasn't been hurt. On the flip side, nothing shocking has been revealed (and if you're thinking of replying to this post saying, "the US spied and pressured!" save your fingers, oh naive one). To an observer of international politics they are like candy, and I'm looking forward to the bank releases (which may actually be damaging), but so far it's just entertainment.

Relax, world.

Actually people have died. In Afghanistan a villager named as providing some information to International forces was killed by the Taliban.

Which is why the famed underground comic R. Crumb ("Fritz the Cat") chose to create an illustrated Book of Genesis:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027

Still available on Amazon. For now at least

Which is why the famed underground comic R. Crumb ("Fritz the Cat") chose to create an illustrated Book of Genesis:

http://www.amazon.com/Book-Genesis-Illustrated-R-Crumb/dp/0393061027

Still available on Amazon. For now at least

Well, assuming you left the Kindle in it's cardboard box it came in, it would burn at 451 degreesF http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fahrenheit_451 :)

Are we to also assume that all self-help books that help rape victims * will be pulled because it has the word "rape" in the title?

* Just an example not an endorsement.

I don't know, what do you think? Let's look at the link from the OP that lists the government usage of AWS.

Do you think the government's recovery.org website is putting innocent people in jeopardy? Or perhaps the Open Energy Information Initiative (from the DOE)? Or are you thinking of the Department of Agriculture's website? Do you consider NASA's website to be harmful, since it contains the word 'jet propulsion' which sounds kind of like a weapon?

People are getting too steamed up about the Wikileaks thing and need to chill. As far as we can tell, no one's died because of them, the US government really hasn't been hurt. On the flip side, nothing shocking has been revealed (and if you're thinking of replying to this post saying, "the US spied and pressured!" save your fingers, oh naive one). To an observer of international politics they are like candy, and I'm looking forward to the bank releases (which may actually be damaging), but so far it's just entertainment.

Relax, world.

AWS does not pre-screen its customers, but it does have terms of service that must be followed. WikiLeaks was not following them. There were several parts they were violating. For example, our terms of service state that “you represent and warrant that you own or otherwise control all of the rights to the content that use of the content you supply does not violate this policy and will not cause injury to any person or entity.” It’s clear that WikiLeaks doesn’t own or otherwise control all the rights to this classified content. Further, it is not credible that the extraordinary volume of 250,000 classified documents that WikiLeaks is publishing could have been carefully redacted in such a way as to ensure that they weren’t putting innocent people in jeopardy.

Judge for yourself what is true, but be not hasty in judgement.

I have given this a lot of thought over the years (I'm not in a position to actually test the hypotheses, so I don't have empirical evidence to support my position) and I understand where you are coming from. (There was a /. post a long time ago about this book and I think it's a really interesting approach.)

That said, I think in general it would fail miserably. There are a bunch of drawbacks. First, if you write in assembly you are basically completely tied to a particular platform. If you use a higher-level language -- even just bumping it up to C -- then the students have the freedom to use "whatever" they want. Your lab computers have Linux and they have Windows? No good if you teach assembly. Your lab has Windows and they have OS X? No good. Your lab has recent Apples and they have an old G5? No good. Want to allow them to work on their choice of platform? Have fun grading. Logistically, this is very difficult. (C isn't perfect in this regard -- but it is pretty darn close compared to assembly if you stay away from C99-specific features.)

The second problem is more pedagogical. If the students aren't actually interested in learning, they aren't going to learn. And I think it'd be much easier to get most of them interested if they can actually program something that is useful and/or cool. You can spout off all you want about how "why we're doing all this will make sense in a year or two" and it won't help. Programs that are one of those two things are usually at least mildly complex, and thus the low-levelness of asm would be a true hindrance in achieving that goal.

Personally, I think you'd have far more success (in terms of both students continuing through the curriculum and in terms of understanding of the material) if you approached the material you suggest in the opposite order: start out with a language that is actually reasonable to use for creating neat stuff, show them how to create neat stuff, then gradually unroll the layers.

You mean something more like the Asus EEE Keyboard PC? (though it does kind of blow through your price point)

I never said it was easier. The logical path does not always work best with humans. Generally speaking, humans are emotional beings and need to connect with something before they invest or connect with it.

Even the Head First books get you up and running in Chapter 1/Day 1. If Chapter 1 were a quick review of Algebra, followed by Chapter 2 a quick review of Discrete Mathematics, followed by Chapter 3 a quick review of Logic, followed by Chapter 4 Proper Object Oriented Design, followed by Chapter 5 Design Patterns most kids would drop the course somewhere between Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.

If programming were a high school graduation requirement or tested on the ACT it could be structured differently like Physics or Chemistry. Unfortunately the USA does not seem to care about computer programming and the course is generally treated as an elective and if you are lucky, really lucky, the computer teacher will inspire you and teach you programming. Hopefully, they will start with Alice move to Java and then onto LeJos on a Lego NXT brick. Then in semester #2 move on to html, php, databases, and operating system basics.

Why not just use a server? Amazon EC2 will rent you a "micro instance" Win2003/2008 server for 3 cents/hour ($21.60/month) or an Ubuntu server for 2 cents/hour ($14.40/month) plus a few bucks for storage.

http://aws.amazon.com/ec2/pricing/

Just don't do anything I/O or bandwidth intensive since you also pay for I/O and bandwidth.

I learned to program pretty much with Applesoft BASIC and a Franklin Ace 1000 manual

Now I'm teaching my mom (!) to program in Python using the Hello World book.

Honestly, I wish Python were around when I was learning. Trying to squeeze a new instruction between line 11 and line 12 kinda sucked sometimes. (Then again, I wish a lot of things were around...)

I assure you that the few strokes the Chinese have to learn also create a simple context - very often, a graph is a word. As a native English speaker, I found it quite easy to learn to associate Chinese graphs with their meaning -- it's not nearly as difficult as it looks. It's considerably more difficult to learn to speak the language(s), but reading isn't too bad at all.

Unfortunately a great deal of research disagrees with you. The Chinese writing system arguably holds Chinese children back from becoming literate as quickly as in countries that use a relatively phonemic alphabet, by several years. See John Defrancis' The Chinese Languages: Fact and Fantasy (University of Hawaii Press, 1984) which chronicles the desire of both Chinese and foreign scholars to transition the Chinese language to an alphabetic script, a task that failed because of the crushing weight of tradition.

Just because you don't know about it, doesn't mean they don't exist. http://www.amazon.com/Asus-T91MT-PU17-BK-8-9-Inch-Netbook-Computer/dp/B002UAR8SK

with regard to the right wing ('fair and balanced') reporting of the health care debate. Is it really that strange to see another multi-billion dollar industry (substituting telecoms for health insurers/pharma corps) following the same pattern, with the right wing political/media apparatus peppering it's coverage with inaccuracies, slants and whiffs of 'big government' conspiracies?

Much of the language used to shape that debate was actually formed by PR agencies hired by large health insurers as revealed by Wendell Potter (former VP and head of corporate communications for large health insurers CIGNA and Humana) in his book Deadly Spin: An Insurance Company Insider Speaks Out on How Corporate PR Is Killing Health Care and Deceiving Americans (Nov 2010) . Publicly funded health care was to be branded as "socialism" and a government intrusion. Here is an interview with Mr. Potter.
Republican talking points followed this pattern and then Fox reporters/anchors were ordered to use the same language in their reporting by Fox's managing editor, Bill Sammons.

from Leaked email: Fox boss caught slanting news reporting (Dec 9, 2010):

As far back as March 2009, Fox personalities had sporadically referred to the "government option."

Two months prior to Sammon's 2009 memo, Republican pollster Frank Luntz appeared on Sean Hannity's August 18 Fox News program. Luntz scolded Hannity for referring to the "public option" and encouraged Hannity to use "government option" instead.

Luntz argued that "if you call it a 'public option,' the American people are split," but that "if you call it the 'government option,' the public is overwhelmingly against it." Luntz explained that the program would be "sponsored by the government" and falsely claimed that it would also be "paid for by the government."

"You know what," Hannity replied, "it's a great point, and from now on, I'm going to call it the government option."

The internet was started in spite of the military, not because of it. The myth that the internet was the result of research initiated by request of the Pentagon is getting old. The military jumped in only after it was shown that computer networks were possible. Arpanet was the result of military funding, yes. But inter-connected data networks were the result of model train geeks at MIT. Read Steven Levy's Hackers.

Most of the time, market capitalization is a good approximation for value.
Source: http://www.amazon.com/Valuation-Measuring-Managing-Companies-Finance/dp/0470424656/ref=dp_ob_title_bk chapters 15 through 18.

In the end, it was (as is often the case) really bad management that killed Commodore.

In the end, it was (as is often the case) really bad management that killed Commodore.