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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.

Check on Amazon for a small solar panel with a car adapter on the end. Leave the solar planel on your dash during the day so it can trickle charge the battery.

Hell, I'll do the work for you:

http://www.amazon.com/Sunforce-50032-Solar-Battery-Charger/dp/B0006JO0X8/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1293506933&sr=8-3

If $70 is too much, they have smaller versions for $30-40. If that's not to your liking, and you have an outlet readily available near your vehicle at home, I'd suggest a battery tender mounted under the hood and a block heater in the engine, both strung together so you can use one extension cord to run them. They'll keep the engine warm *and* keep the battery charged. You can also find electrical blankets to wrap around the battery if you'd like to keep it warm as well.

It still seems like you're talking about a huge up-front cost (again, we're talking about people who don't have disposable cash reserves) versus a small, but recurring cost.
And if you've already got power generation (via solar or diesel/gas) then the bulb technology you choose isn't going to make a huge difference -- we're not talking about running a 24-hour greenhouse.

$$ for LED light(s) [1]
vs
0.0$/month for incandescent bulb(s) [2]
+ 10x the power (adding only a little $ per month)

No argument that LED is the technically superior solution (minus the mercury and other nasties), but it doesn't make economic sense.
Especially when you're asking people to spend several months salary just to buy a few bulbs which may pay for themselves in several years.

[1] Single LED bulb (60 watt equivalent) - $40
[2] 24 Pack of 60watt bulbs - $13

It still seems like you're talking about a huge up-front cost (again, we're talking about people who don't have disposable cash reserves) versus a small, but recurring cost.
And if you've already got power generation (via solar or diesel/gas) then the bulb technology you choose isn't going to make a huge difference -- we're not talking about running a 24-hour greenhouse.

$$ for LED light(s) [1]
vs
0.0$/month for incandescent bulb(s) [2]
+ 10x the power (adding only a little $ per month)

No argument that LED is the technically superior solution (minus the mercury and other nasties), but it doesn't make economic sense.
Especially when you're asking people to spend several months salary just to buy a few bulbs which may pay for themselves in several years.

[1] Single LED bulb (60 watt equivalent) - $40
[2] 24 Pack of 60watt bulbs - $13

In terms of producing your own methane, yes it is possible. Here are a few books which discuss doing just that: http://www.knowledgepublications.com/methane_uses_and_fuels.htm Methane most certainly does have it's place in the alternative energy arena. One aspect of methane that is not often discussed is that it is readily available in the form of methane hydrates: http://www.mbari.org/news/publications/ar/chapters/06_hydrates.pdf. At some point an enterprising individual will likely make billions mining the stuff. One book I highly recommend is "The Solar Hydrogen Civilization" http://www.amazon.com/Solar-Hydrogen-Civilization-Future-Economy/dp/0972837507. The answers to all our current energy problems are contained in this book using technology and infrastructure that exists today. Energy farming is something that must be done on a smaller more local scale i.e. wind farms in windy states, solar/hydrogen in the desert, kinetic energy near beaches, etc... Even ethanol has it's place. There are many myths about ethanol in this thread. While it is not the end all be all solution it does have it's place and has the capacity to make a small farmer a tidy profit while enriching farm lands and creating edible organic foods using permaculture farming. I high recommend David Blume's book, "Alcohol Can be a Gas!" http://www.amazon.com/Alcohol-Can-Be-Gas-Revolution/dp/0979043778 The final front that has it's merits it nuclear energy. However, using thorium instead which I am quite certain you will discover to be a superior and much more earth friendly fuel than uranium. Good luck with your methane farming should you decide to go for it. Many others have done it before quite successfully!

In terms of producing your own methane, yes it is possible. Here are a few books which discuss doing just that: http://www.knowledgepublications.com/methane_uses_and_fuels.htm Methane most certainly does have it's place in the alternative energy arena. One aspect of methane that is not often discussed is that it is readily available in the form of methane hydrates: http://www.mbari.org/news/publications/ar/chapters/06_hydrates.pdf. At some point an enterprising individual will likely make billions mining the stuff. One book I highly recommend is "The Solar Hydrogen Civilization" http://www.amazon.com/Solar-Hydrogen-Civilization-Future-Economy/dp/0972837507. The answers to all our current energy problems are contained in this book using technology and infrastructure that exists today. Energy farming is something that must be done on a smaller more local scale i.e. wind farms in windy states, solar/hydrogen in the desert, kinetic energy near beaches, etc... Even ethanol has it's place. There are many myths about ethanol in this thread. While it is not the end all be all solution it does have it's place and has the capacity to make a small farmer a tidy profit while enriching farm lands and creating edible organic foods using permaculture farming. I high recommend David Blume's book, "Alcohol Can be a Gas!" http://www.amazon.com/Alcohol-Can-Be-Gas-Revolution/dp/0979043778 The final front that has it's merits it nuclear energy. However, using thorium instead which I am quite certain you will discover to be a superior and much more earth friendly fuel than uranium. Good luck with your methane farming should you decide to go for it. Many others have done it before quite successfully!

Or read the book "Food of the gods" by Terrence McKenna.

Amazon UK has it, as does Amazon US.

Amazon, actually. D.light is one of the smaller manufacturers in terms of the size of their systems. The larger systems on the market are a bit harder to find in the developed world.

This stuff represents one of the smartest applications of solar power- too expensive to justify at power-plant scales, yet the infrastructure-free nature of panels makes them ideal for distributed generation where the grid doesn't reach.

The problem is that there is no proof that what is in that paper can be made to hold for modern hard disk technology with vastly increased densities (SSDs and "secret" block remapping are another matter of course)..

Absolutely, hence my original caveat about modern denser drives (also discussed in Gutmann's epilogue).

The point about going to the moon is that it is that we know about it - it's "just" expensive. Recovering data on modern disks after zeroing is either currently so hard to do as to be impractical for more than a few bytes or someone is doing a fantastic job of keeping it quiet.

The former is another way of saying it's really expensive, no? I mean, you're basically reading bits one at a time off the platter; that's going to be incredibly painstaking and labor-intensive, hence pretty darned expensive--not something that you'd do for typical deleted files, but might be worth it if you think you have a disk that used to carry a billion dollar corporate trade secret or the plans to a massive terrorist attack or something like that.

Thus my comparison to the Mossad piecing together cross-shredded documents; it's something laborious (and therefore expensive) enough that it's not commercially viable, but that's different from saying it is--or was, on older, sparser drives--completely impossible.

Indeed, "Magnetic imaging on a spin-stand", Mayergoyz et al, Journal of Applied Physics, Volume 87, issue 9 includes small examples of imaging overwritten tracks (albeit with some misrepresentations), which are expanded upon in the authors' book "Spin-Stand Microscopy of Hard Disk Data"* Given that there exists limited success in a relatively unfunded academic paper, it'd be rash to believe that the approach is impossible for a well-funded determined attacker.

* http://www.amazon.com/Spin-stand-Microscopy-Elsevier-Electromagnetism-ebook/dp/B000VHVGV4

Until we are in a situation where we have one or more resources under significant and consistent pressure over a long period of time that eats up more and more of our collective time and energies trying to manage and maximize, then this mathusian doomsday scenario hasn't even left the drawing board - let alone the hanger.

Oil and

Fresh Water

Quit watching so much Star Trek. Reality can be a cast iron bitch at times.

I'd start doodling if I were you. If your talents don't run that way, try some reading.

The article author is also behind The Practice of System and Network Administration, truly an excellent text into the practicalities of work in IT.

Trigonometric functions especially are always treated as little boxes that magically calculate what you need.

Amen to that — and the sad bit is that the truth is both simpler and more beautiful than SOH CAH TOA ever was. The chapter in Euler's "pre-calculus" textbook Introductio in analysin infinitorum* that introduces the trigonometric functions is entitled "On Transcendental Quantities Which Arise from the Circle." Small wonder sines and cosines "often arise in applications." Mutatis mutandis for Bessel functions, say, or spherical harmonics. Speaking of Bessel, while he never got around to a university education, he was the first person to calculate the distance to a star with reasonable accuracy — and it sure wasn't "easy"!

Seriously, though, if I catch your meaning correctly, I wholeheartedly agree — for math majors, at least, mathematics should be very far removed from mindless calculation — a large part of mathematical research involves trying to understand calculations well enough to know when they're unnecessary — or if they're even possible. After all, many of the things we'd really like to calculate are, in some sense at least, "incalculable."

As an aside, if you like calculus: try solving the differential equation

x'' = cx

for a few "natural" values of the parameter c and initial values x(0) and x'(0), say

c = -1, x(0) = 1, x'(0) = 0

or perhaps

c = -1, x(0) = 0, x'(0) = 1.

Practically speaking, a course in "mental arithmetic" seems like it'd be far more useful — for future mathematicians as much as everyone else — than a semester spent memorizing antiderivatives of inverse hyperbolic functions and Stewert-esque "strategies" for trigonometric integrals**, with little or no time spent on why they work — which actually is both interesting and instructive. When it comes down to it, it's more a matter of accident than design — students whose primary focus is science or engineering really do "just need the damn formulas," assuming they're unwilling to wait until grad school for a first course in, say, electromagnetism, so they have time to learn enough linear algebra and differential topology to prove the general Stokes' theorem beforehand.

As for "abstract algebra," it's interesting to note that authors — van der Waerden, say, or Artin, or Mac Lane — who actually studied with Noether and Hilbert never seemed to use the phrase: for the first few decades, it was "modern" algebra, then simply "algebra." Perhaps this is because it's essentially the same subject we all studied in high school.

Moreover, both homology and category theory both arose from concerns largely inspired by mathematical physics. The former, rather transparently; as for the latter, think about Courant's proof of the original "natural transformation" for a bit. This is my vote for the most beautiful theorem in all of mathematics. This paper of Mac Lane's is also interesting and instructive.

Cheers,
Jason

* I don't read Latin either — an English translation is available, and worth every penny. Recall that Euler knew a few things about trigonometric functions.

Trigonometric functions especially are always treated as little boxes that magically calculate what you need.

Amen to that — and the sad bit is that the truth is both simpler and more beautiful than SOH CAH TOA ever was. The chapter in Euler's "pre-calculus" textbook Introductio in analysin infinitorum* that introduces the trigonometric functions is entitled "On Transcendental Quantities Which Arise from the Circle." Small wonder sines and cosines "often arise in applications." Mutatis mutandis for Bessel functions, say, or spherical harmonics. Speaking of Bessel, while he never got around to a university education, he was the first person to calculate the distance to a star with reasonable accuracy — and it sure wasn't "easy"!

Seriously, though, if I catch your meaning correctly, I wholeheartedly agree — for math majors, at least, mathematics should be very far removed from mindless calculation — a large part of mathematical research involves trying to understand calculations well enough to know when they're unnecessary — or if they're even possible. After all, many of the things we'd really like to calculate are, in some sense at least, "incalculable."

As an aside, if you like calculus: try solving the differential equation

x'' = cx

for a few "natural" values of the parameter c and initial values x(0) and x'(0), say

c = -1, x(0) = 1, x'(0) = 0

or perhaps

c = -1, x(0) = 0, x'(0) = 1.

Practically speaking, a course in "mental arithmetic" seems like it'd be far more useful — for future mathematicians as much as everyone else — than a semester spent memorizing antiderivatives of inverse hyperbolic functions and Stewert-esque "strategies" for trigonometric integrals**, with little or no time spent on why they work — which actually is both interesting and instructive. When it comes down to it, it's more a matter of accident than design — students whose primary focus is science or engineering really do "just need the damn formulas," assuming they're unwilling to wait until grad school for a first course in, say, electromagnetism, so they have time to learn enough linear algebra and differential topology to prove the general Stokes' theorem beforehand.

As for "abstract algebra," it's interesting to note that authors — van der Waerden, say, or Artin, or Mac Lane — who actually studied with Noether and Hilbert never seemed to use the phrase: for the first few decades, it was "modern" algebra, then simply "algebra." Perhaps this is because it's essentially the same subject we all studied in high school.

Moreover, both homology and category theory both arose from concerns largely inspired by mathematical physics. The former, rather transparently; as for the latter, think about Courant's proof of the original "natural transformation" for a bit. This is my vote for the most beautiful theorem in all of mathematics. This paper of Mac Lane's is also interesting and instructive.

Cheers,
Jason

* I don't read Latin either — an English translation is available, and worth every penny. Recall that Euler knew a few things about trigonometric functions.

Some of the following are shown "standing up" (as tower cases) but all of them are designed as "desktop style" cases, which you seem to be calling "a horizontal case."

Don't use a power supply that's included with a case unless it's a Silverstone, Antec, or (possibly rebranded) FSP. Anything else is guaranteed to be crap. Crap PSU's can cause all kinds of subtle problems including data corruption and random crashes. No need to go overboard on the wattage though. Figure out how many watts you machine will draw and buy 25% more.

$101 Antec Minuet 350 http://www.amazon.com/Slimline-Micro-Pc-Case-350PS/dp/B0012QLUAK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293035737&sr=8-1

$114 Antec NSK2480 http://www.amazon.com/Antec-NSK2480-Desktop-case-380W/dp/B000T4MRF8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1293035814&sr=1-1

$113 NSK 1480 http://www.amazon.com/NSK1480-Microatx-Mini-Desktop-Case/dp/B0012QP6QY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1293035882&sr=1-1

$40 HEC 7106BB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121010

Some of the following are shown "standing up" (as tower cases) but all of them are designed as "desktop style" cases, which you seem to be calling "a horizontal case."

Don't use a power supply that's included with a case unless it's a Silverstone, Antec, or (possibly rebranded) FSP. Anything else is guaranteed to be crap. Crap PSU's can cause all kinds of subtle problems including data corruption and random crashes. No need to go overboard on the wattage though. Figure out how many watts you machine will draw and buy 25% more.

$101 Antec Minuet 350 http://www.amazon.com/Slimline-Micro-Pc-Case-350PS/dp/B0012QLUAK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293035737&sr=8-1

$114 Antec NSK2480 http://www.amazon.com/Antec-NSK2480-Desktop-case-380W/dp/B000T4MRF8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1293035814&sr=1-1

$113 NSK 1480 http://www.amazon.com/NSK1480-Microatx-Mini-Desktop-Case/dp/B0012QP6QY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1293035882&sr=1-1

$40 HEC 7106BB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121010

Some of the following are shown "standing up" (as tower cases) but all of them are designed as "desktop style" cases, which you seem to be calling "a horizontal case."

Don't use a power supply that's included with a case unless it's a Silverstone, Antec, or (possibly rebranded) FSP. Anything else is guaranteed to be crap. Crap PSU's can cause all kinds of subtle problems including data corruption and random crashes. No need to go overboard on the wattage though. Figure out how many watts you machine will draw and buy 25% more.

$101 Antec Minuet 350 http://www.amazon.com/Slimline-Micro-Pc-Case-350PS/dp/B0012QLUAK/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1293035737&sr=8-1

$114 Antec NSK2480 http://www.amazon.com/Antec-NSK2480-Desktop-case-380W/dp/B000T4MRF8/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1293035814&sr=1-1

$113 NSK 1480 http://www.amazon.com/NSK1480-Microatx-Mini-Desktop-Case/dp/B0012QP6QY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1293035882&sr=1-1

$40 HEC 7106BB http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811121010

WPA2 with AES usually has an AES encryption engine built into hardware. Its so much faster that way.

I'm not absolutely positive that there are no software drivers to do the encrypting, but every reference I've seen says its done in hardware.

Nobody writes drivers for those older cards.

  For 8-15 bucks you can swap those wifi cards out of most lap tops. They are simple drop in replacements in most cases. Drivers freely found on the web.

Even 802.11N cards can be had for about $25.

Too bad all of the "anti-government" Tea Party wusses don't have the balls to actually fight government corruption. Perhaps one day they will step outside of the propaganda they swallow up willingly (even pay for) and actually do some good for the common man. But until the cycle of corporate-generated propaganda is broken, there will have to be Nazi-style crackdowns for there to be a chance of the US populace putting down the remote and going outside.

While they are raking in record profits and bonuses as the rest of the nation sinks further into poverty, they aren't going to willingly give up the police state that allows their quarterly reports to look so good.

Google Japanese Soroban. Also try some better written algebra books instead of the mind-crippling shit that passes as "enhanced" these days. You will be able to tackle any math if your understanding of algebra is firm.

Google Japanese Soroban. Also try some better written algebra books instead of the mind-crippling shit that passes as "enhanced" these days. You will be able to tackle any math if your understanding of algebra is firm.

Google Japanese Soroban. Also try some better written algebra books instead of the mind-crippling shit that passes as "enhanced" these days. You will be able to tackle any math if your understanding of algebra is firm.

This book is on my things-to-tell-my-employer-to-buy-me list.

Re your sig: cannot recommend this enough. That's the first one of the trilogy. If you like hard distant future transhumanist sci-fi, give it a shot.

This is who you are all clamoring to have deciding if the internet is being used "fairly" or not. Mark Lloyd the White House appointed FCC Diversity Czar: He would love to bring back the fairness doctrine and insert central planning into the marketplace to decide what people should be allowed to say on the air and what consumers should be allowed to hear. He will say that he looks to improve "localism" and promote diversitywhich will unsurprisingly silent voices he disagrees with and promote like minded thinkers. Since he doesn't like the fair competition in a free marketplace he believes in total Government control of the market. Which has proved disastrous over and over again in history. The free market has created the most fair distribution of wealth and highest standard of living of any economic system in the history of man. Not a theory... not some idea an elitist intellectual cooked up to better control us sheep but a practical and natural allocation of resources based on individual rights, product/labor value, and supply/demand. Below are his opinion about the American idea of freedom of speech and ultimately individual rights... These are the type of people you are trusting with your information with the first step being labeled "Network Neutrality". "In Venezuela, with Chavez, is really an incredible revolution - a democratic revolution. To begin to put in place things that are going to have an impact on the people of Venezuela. The property owners and the folks who then controlled the media in Venezuela rebelled - worked, frankly, with folks here in the U.S. government - worked to oust him. But he came back with another revolution, and then Chavez began to take very seriously the media in his country. And we've had complaints about this ever since." - Mark Lloyd "It should be clear by now that my focus here is not freedom of speech or the press. This freedom is all too often an exaggeration. At the very least, blind references to freedom of speech or the press serve as a distraction from the critical examination of other communications policies." - Mark Lloyd "The other part of our proposal that gets the 'dittoheads' upset is our suggestion that the commercial radio station owners either play by the rules or pay. In other words, if they don't want to be subject to local criticism of how they are meeting their license obligations, they should pay to support public broadcasters who will operate on behalf of the local community." - Mark Lloyd "This... there's nothing more difficult than this. Because we have really, truly good white people in important positions. And the fact of the matter is that there are a limited number of those positions. And unless we are conscious of the need to have more people of color, gays, other people in those positions we will not change the problem. We're in a position where you have to say who is going to step down so someone else can have power." - Mark Lloyd Read more: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/m/mark_lloyd.html#ixzz18j9oIxxw "[T]he purpose of free speech is warped to protect global corporations and block rules that would promote democratic governance." - Mark Lloyd at the FCC.from his book http://www.amazon.com/Prologue-Farce-Communication-Democracy-America/dp/0252073428 Here he is praising Chavez's crackdown on the media during a speech at a media reform seminar: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9ffAP5ixhg "President Obama's diversity czar at the Federal Communications Commission has spoken publicly of getting white media executives to "step down" in favor of minorities, prescribed policies to make liberal talk radio more successful, and described Hugo Chavez's rise to power in Venezuela 'an incredible revolution.'" - Washington Times

Everybody needs to go read The Myth of Male Power . Like, right now. SOOOOOOOOO relevant to this article.

As individual users move towards OO, small businesses move towards OO. As OO gets more common, more people feel like OO is an acceptable option. You see where I'm going with this.

Nowhere fast.

If your employer is part of Microsoft's Home Use Program then your personal copy of MS Office Professional is a $9.95 download for Windows or the Mac.

[U.S. - The price will be about the same, localized for just anywhere eles in the world. DVD media is available]

Microsoft Office Professional Academic is $80 direct from Microsoft with student ID.

There are better deals to be had through your school.

MS Office Home & Student - for Windows & the Mac - remain comfortably in the top five or top ten software bestsellers at Amazon.com. It's unlikely you'll find a PC game other than Scrabble or Oregon Trail in the top one hundred.

Retail sales of MS Office are the tail the wags the dog.

Getting Started with Open Office .org 3: OpenOffice.org 3.0 by the OO.org team is #67,694 in books at Amazon.com.

Amazon.com stocks 742 books on Microsoft Office 2010 products alone.

49 books on OpenOffice.org, all versions, all topics.

Doesn't mean we can't improve. Social skills are a learned thing, I don't think they come naturally. Perhaps a little easier for some folks, but it can be done. There's always hope! I'm walking proof.

I highly recommend Dale Carnegie's How To Win Friends and Influence People: http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/1439167346/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1292807944&sr=8-1

That's what I said.

but if you don't have studio (or some other well-heeled backer) money behind you it's a serious investment for an individual or two to make.

But it does not have to be a serious financial investment. The "EOS 5D Mark II can record up to 4GB per clip or record up to a maximum continuous video capture time of 29 minutes and 59 seconds, whichever comes first. This means you can get about 12 minutes HD video or 24 minutes of SD video on a 4GB memory card." Amazon lists the price at $2700. I don't recall what camera it is but there used to be an ad on TV for a digital camera, the camera was used to make the ad. While software can be expensive relatively, it doesn't have to be. Amazon lists Final Cut Studio, Apple's video editing suite, for just over $800. For free there's CinePaint which is open source. It started out as FilmGIMP when the author added 16 bit colour depths but the developers of GIMP did not accept it. A number of movies were made that used CinePaint. That about page lists some, such as the "Harry Potter" movies, Sean Connery's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", and Tom Cruise's "Last Samurai".

I haven't done it yet but I want to start a business as a photographer and I may do some videography as well.

Falcon

That's what I said.

but if you don't have studio (or some other well-heeled backer) money behind you it's a serious investment for an individual or two to make.

But it does not have to be a serious financial investment. The "EOS 5D Mark II can record up to 4GB per clip or record up to a maximum continuous video capture time of 29 minutes and 59 seconds, whichever comes first. This means you can get about 12 minutes HD video or 24 minutes of SD video on a 4GB memory card." Amazon lists the price at $2700. I don't recall what camera it is but there used to be an ad on TV for a digital camera, the camera was used to make the ad. While software can be expensive relatively, it doesn't have to be. Amazon lists Final Cut Studio, Apple's video editing suite, for just over $800. For free there's CinePaint which is open source. It started out as FilmGIMP when the author added 16 bit colour depths but the developers of GIMP did not accept it. A number of movies were made that used CinePaint. That about page lists some, such as the "Harry Potter" movies, Sean Connery's "League of Extraordinary Gentlemen", and Tom Cruise's "Last Samurai".

I haven't done it yet but I want to start a business as a photographer and I may do some videography as well.

Falcon

"We look forward to continuing to serve our AWS customers and are excited about several new things we have coming your way in the next few months."

Well, I'm looking forward to you confirming the deletion of my account I requested a week ago. And that 2nd part sounds like a threat.

Reason. Linux users refuse to pay for their software so it's not worth targeting it as a platform.

Reason: Ports are years late and often cost more than the original launch price while the Windows version is already in the bargain bin. A rational being will realize that the 30£ = ~$47 vs 5$ will very soon pay for a Windows license, hell even a dedicated Windows PC if you game a little. I'd love to buy more Linux versions, but not at such a craptastic value.

Have you done the same research to see where the money for Fox News comes from and who is associated?

Progressives damning themselves in their own words on video completely changes their recorded images and words depending on who paid for the camera? Does Fox have secret reality-altering tech in their cameras?

Interesting set of physical laws operating there in your universe.

Here in *this* continuum, recordings of the same event from the same location and time by two cameras funded by different groups come out being pretty much identical.

I think you suffer from the behavioral phenomenon of projecting upon others what you despise in yourself, which seems to be a common affliction among Progressives.

The good news is this affliction is curable with education and an open mind. You can start with these;

The 5,000 Year Leap: http://www.amazon.com/Five-Thousand-Year-Leap-Anniversary/dp/0981559662/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292541691&sr=1-1

George Washington's Sacred Fire: http://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-Sacred-Peter-Lillback/dp/0978605268/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292542011&sr=1-4

Liberty and Tyranny: http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Tyranny-Conservative-Mark-Levin/dp/B004E3XD4E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292542306&sr=1-1

Strat

Have you done the same research to see where the money for Fox News comes from and who is associated?

Progressives damning themselves in their own words on video completely changes their recorded images and words depending on who paid for the camera? Does Fox have secret reality-altering tech in their cameras?

Interesting set of physical laws operating there in your universe.

Here in *this* continuum, recordings of the same event from the same location and time by two cameras funded by different groups come out being pretty much identical.

I think you suffer from the behavioral phenomenon of projecting upon others what you despise in yourself, which seems to be a common affliction among Progressives.

The good news is this affliction is curable with education and an open mind. You can start with these;

The 5,000 Year Leap: http://www.amazon.com/Five-Thousand-Year-Leap-Anniversary/dp/0981559662/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292541691&sr=1-1

George Washington's Sacred Fire: http://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-Sacred-Peter-Lillback/dp/0978605268/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292542011&sr=1-4

Liberty and Tyranny: http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Tyranny-Conservative-Mark-Levin/dp/B004E3XD4E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292542306&sr=1-1

Strat

Have you done the same research to see where the money for Fox News comes from and who is associated?

Progressives damning themselves in their own words on video completely changes their recorded images and words depending on who paid for the camera? Does Fox have secret reality-altering tech in their cameras?

Interesting set of physical laws operating there in your universe.

Here in *this* continuum, recordings of the same event from the same location and time by two cameras funded by different groups come out being pretty much identical.

I think you suffer from the behavioral phenomenon of projecting upon others what you despise in yourself, which seems to be a common affliction among Progressives.

The good news is this affliction is curable with education and an open mind. You can start with these;

The 5,000 Year Leap: http://www.amazon.com/Five-Thousand-Year-Leap-Anniversary/dp/0981559662/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292541691&sr=1-1

George Washington's Sacred Fire: http://www.amazon.com/George-Washingtons-Sacred-Peter-Lillback/dp/0978605268/ref=sr_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292542011&sr=1-4

Liberty and Tyranny: http://www.amazon.com/Liberty-Tyranny-Conservative-Mark-Levin/dp/B004E3XD4E/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1292542306&sr=1-1

Strat

> If you are a logical positivist what we can access through science is the highest form of truth.

IMHO, remove the words "through science", and you would be more accurate. i.e. Science is NOT the highest form of truth, far from it. But it works pretty dam good considering the circumstances and limitations of human understanding.

The original way you wrote it "what we can access through science is the highest form of truth", if you will pardon the pun, is not exactly true, as any good Mystic would argue and I apologize I can't do a better job of that but the fallacy is not understanding that Consciousness creates Matter (experience), not the other way around. e.g. It is possible to KNOW things are true, but be completely UNABLE to prove them, via experienced or not. i.e. Ask any mother if she loves her new-born child, a newly married couple if they love each other, "I exist" (Descartes’ "I think therefore I am" is completely backwards), etc. What kind of "experiment" would you even do for "proof" ??

There are 2 types of truth: absolute, relative.

  Of the first kind there are only a handful: You exist ("always have/will"), The Void of Nothingness, Infinite Love, etc., but I digress as this is not a discussion on meta-physics, nor how time-space is only a subset of Consciousness.

    Of the latter, Mathematics (and Science) fall into because they are based upon assumptions. e.g. 1+1=2 "simply" because that is how you have _defined_ it either implicitly, or explicitly. This universe is simply based on "Local Laws", the same do not hold in others. Read Tom Campbell's "My Big TOE" for more details. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0972509461/

But yeah, logical positivist, is a pretty good model. I am not sure why wikipedia says "A 1929 pamphlet written by Neurath, Hahn, and Rudolf Carnap summarized the doctrines of the Vienna Circle at that time. The doctrines included the opposition to all metaphysics" as I don't see any contradiction between the two, as logical positivist is dam good starting point an unifying the masculine "Reasoning" and feminine "Gnosis."

> But how would the two theories be contradictory if they both explain everything?

Depending on how you define "everything". It would probably be labled a paradox. i.e. One truth does not negate another truth. The hard part is trying to figure out how the hell to have a super-set theory that can explain both, ala GUT (Grand Unification Theory) for GR (General Relatively) and QM (Quantum Mechanics).

Cheers

When was the last time Nozick had anything printed of his besides his Anarchy, State and Utopia? Do you even know who Nozick is, or do you get your libertarian views secondhand? Because that is what this survey is indicting you for, a lack of engaging with the source material, of understanding the nature of what is going on, not from any particular ideological viewpoint but understanding that is based on the bare facts. Foxnews gets the facts wrong, over and over again, Reason, The National Review and other libertarian and conservative news organizations don't have this problem, only Fox, that is what this study is getting at, comprehende?

The last thing humanity needs is a bunch of angsty teenagers throwing a fit because their favorite website has to change providers. WikiLeaks violated their contract with Amazon. It is a BUSINESS matter. Get the fuck over it, pick up your toys and go to school.

I disagree. I don't think Wikileaks violated their contract. Amazon's response is here: http://aws.amazon.com/message/65348/ . Their arguments are

a) Wikileaks doesn't control the rights to the content. This is an interesting assertion. Wikileaks has as much control over the rights of the content as the New York Times did when it published the Pentagon Papers, i.e. they were publishing classified documents that were illegally obtained by a third party. However, the US Government couldn't stop the Times from publishing. This would lead to pretty strong case that they *do* have some control as to the rights of the content. The US Government certainly doesn't have a copyright over the diplomatic cables (they being produced by government officers or employees as part of their official duties are not eligible for copyright), and since Wikileaks was never under any agreement with the US Government regarding access to the cables, there is nothing stopping them from publishing, just like there was nothing stopping the Times from publishing. Yes, it was a crime for the documents to be exposed, but once exposed, there is nothing illegal about holding or distributing the documents. The documents are now public domain. To get technical, Amazon requires that you own or control all of the rights to the content you host. If they are arguing that Wikileaks doesn't own or control the content, it can only be because the content is public domain. Therefore, all public domain documents should be disallowed on Amazon AWS systems.

b) Wikileaks release of the documents could hurt people, because it is not possible for WIkileaks to have redacted the documents in such a way as to put people in jeopardy. They cite as evidence that some human rights organizations asked for Wikileaks to exercise caution in their releases. They ignore the fact that those same organizations also asked Wikileaks to continue doing what they are doing, regarding the documents. In neither of those cases are any actual specific cases where someone has been put in jeopardy cited. In fact, no cases have been reported where someone has been put in danger because of Wikileaks releases (excepting, of course, the death threats Julian Assange has received...). They are also making some pretty large leaps to say that people are being put in danger (remember, Wikileaks was booted because of the diplomatic cables, not the Afghanistan documents, which, by the way, are what those human rights organizations were referring to...Amazon is in fact using evidence from a completely separate situation and trying to pass it off as relevant...). The documents are government cables, meaning information like names and actions had to have been pretty well known to have made it as far as the people sending the cables. If they weren't known, then diplomats had to be in direct communication with the human rights activists, which leads to questions about whether they were activists or government operatives. Not that that changes much regarding whether they should be protected, but if they were operatives, it would seem that the government officials should have been protecting them even within the cables, so redaction shouldn't be that big of an issue.

Also if any content that could put people at risk should be banned, then do they ban chemistry books that explain explosives, or Dianetics (it's available on Amazon.com...)? Hell, Amazon.com sells "The Anarchist Cookbook" for goodness' sake! Search for it on Amazon and you get pages of books with bomb instructions, improvised weapon instructions, techniques to cause havoc, etc...

I simply can't take Amazon's argument seriously when it is so flimsy, if not downright fraudulent, and

Netflix's streaming video already runs on Linux. What OS do you think nearly all those set top players are using

Men in Black: How the Supreme Court Is Destroying America. Go read it.

http://www.amazon.com/Men-Black-Supreme-Destroying-America/dp/0895260506

"The Judicial Power" of Article III flows from English Commonlaw which already gave the high courts the right to strike down laws or edicts for a variety of reasons (including, as I read it, simply for being logically contradictory). Marbury vs Madison simply formally brings that forward into U.S. law.

A History of the Supreme Court get's into it a bit early on: See Dr. Bonham for more.

Pug

Charles Stross' science-ficiton book 'Accelerando' has this interesting twist about the singularity: it posits that the first artificial intelligences that grow out of the singularity won't be benevolent unuversity lab creations, or extensions of human minds, but corporate tools taking over corporations... with interesting consequences. Like you say, they already have way more rights than we puny humans do...

Under other provisions of copyright law, importing a copy of a protected work amounts to an infringement of the copyright if the copy was made abroad and brought back into the U.S. without permission.

Emphasis mine. What is "permission?"

So what I'm asking is whether or not Wal-Mart signs agreements with Vietnamese companies that say they can bring them into the United States and did CostCo, like, drop the ball on that one? Did they smuggle them in their coat over to the US? I assume they passed customs from both countries, what level is this illegal on?

How on Earth would this deal go down any differently for Timex watches made in China sold in CostCo? Are you telling me that CostCo was making money by purchasing Omega watches at MSRP in Switzerland and then reselling them below MSRP in the United States? I'm not an economist but something sounds really strange in that case. This is what the SCOTUS Blog said:

The case involved a company, Omega S.A., that makes watches in Switzerland and sells them around the world through authorized distributors and retailers. Costco, a membership warehouse club that sells brand-name merchandise to members at prices lower than its competitors, had bought Omega's Seamaster watch abroad and re-sold it in the U.S. Costco's price was $1,299, about a third less than Omega's suggested retail price of $1,999.

Does anyone else think this sounds like Omega struck a deal selling thousands of watches to CostCo only to find out that when people saw them for $1300 they perceived a devaluation of the one they bought at the mall for two large? I mean, it sounds like Omega is trying to force CostCo to maintain a minimum profit margin. That's not capitalism. It's becoming more and more clear that copyright and capitalism are mutually exclusive concepts. And I'm guessing that this is some bizarre abuse of copyright that any foreign manufacturer could hold over the largest retailer/reseller's head. Evidently it happens on a smaller basis with Omega.

Salting addresses some attacks, but as CPU time becomes cheaper, it becomes increasingly feasible to brute-force even salted hashes. To address this issue, you need key strengthening as well.

Or, better yet, just use the system designed to store passwords: bcrypt.

*sigh* Then again, I'm confident that we'll see incompetent web application developers using unsalted MD5 for decades to come. People don't learn from others' mistakes it seems.

What's changed is that a generation of consultants have grown fat on telling senior management what they want to hear - that we have changed, and that they can get the same productivity by squeezing us into smaller boxes. And if productivity drops, heck, bring in a new bunch of consultants to sell you Six-Sigma.

I'd be working right now, but there are three conversations going on within earshot, only one of which is work related.

When some of my readers began checking their Kindle archives for books of mine they’d purchased on Amazon, they found them missing from their archives. [emphasis added]

Can someone clarify what "Kindle archives" means in this context? Because I can't find one word in the article that says the book was deleted from any customer's local storage.

Accessing Your Kindle Library through Archived Items

All Kindle content, including books and Kindle active content, that you've purchased from the Kindle Store is stored in your Kindle library on Amazon.com. Any content not already listed on your Kindle's home screen is available through Archived Items on your device.

With wireless turned on, press the Menu button and then select "View Archived Items" to access your entire Kindle library.

Seems like it's the off-device storage plan... and that they've preemptively disclaimed this event:
Exceptions

There are rare circumstances in which content may not remain available for re-download. For instance, if the publisher who originally made the content available to us for sale on the Kindle Store did not have the right to do so or is sued for defamation in connection with the content, we may be obligated to stop making it available for re-downloading from your library. Any copies you already have on your Kindle devices will not be affected.

And that last bolded bit makes me you're totally right and this headline is, as is too often the case, totally misleading.

Seriously, we slashdotters will have to revolt against our overlords if they keep misleading us ;-(

I finally found out what I wanted : The way they talk about their "archive" : http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=hp_rel_topic?ie=UTF8&nodeId=200386160 The important quote is that "There are rare circumstances in which content may not remain available for re-download. For instance, if the publisher who originally made the content available to us for sale on the Kindle Store did not have the right to do so or is sued for defamation in connection with the content, we may be obligated to stop making it available for re-downloading from your library. Any copies you already have on your Kindle devices will not be affected." They are following THAT line here, except that the "rare circumstances" stated in the paragraph is about "lawyering" whereas here it is company policy" that is used. Last, their terms of use DON'T seem to mention the "Library", so may NOT be legally bound to offer that "service" or to have any constraints on such "service" ...

Someone tell Amazon that they missed a book. It should be removed immediately (You know, to be fair and all...)

and i'd like to be able to carry several books around for the weight of one.

Well, Amazon does still sell backpacks and energy pills! ;}

and i'd like to be able to carry several books around for the weight of one.

Well, Amazon does still sell backpacks and energy pills! ;}