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Arithmetic is not algebra. Arithmetic is "What's 10% of $24.45?" Algebra would be "On a given day i, John sells n_i apples to Peter at x_i dollars each, and this price includes sales tax which is a constant proportion 0p1. Let x_1= .. x_2= ... ... What is the tax on the apples sold on days 1 to 12 inclusive?"

The difference is 24.45 . 10/100 versus p\sum_{i=1}^{12} n_ix_i. Granted, there isn't much difference there really, but come on, there is a time and a place for everything, calculators included.

That's not algebra. Now that's algebra!

How to Lie with Statistics by Darrell Huff. Recommended reading.

Amazon begs to differ. Clearly the list price is $59.99, currently marked down to $49.99.

Muddy waters are a better way to control information than to remove the water altogether. You can't prevent leaks, so the best bet is to deliberately leak false info so that the average seeker can be controlled or disgusted into forgetting all about it.

The tactic is simple; Leak false but exciting/tantalizing info, (the Fake Moon Landing, for instance), let it brew and then categorically demonstrate how and why it is broken in public forum. This makes everybody feel stupid and turns popular opinion against not just the concept of a Fake Moon Landing, but against the entire idea of anti-establishment thinking, aka, "conspiracies". The Fake Moon Landing thing was promoted over television and denounced over television, clearly aiming the attack on Joe Average. A very effective campaign, by all indicators.

Here's another neat example. . .

The National Enquirer has been for many years, particularly during periods of high public interest in the UFO phenomenon, the only paper with national distribution which was willing to run reports from serious UFO researchers. It would, for a percentage of the time, run excellent and editorially exacting stories on UFOs, while the rest of the time press nonsense stories. While groups like APRO were wary of accepting support from the National Enquirer, the opportunity and sometimes significant research money offered by the Enquirer was hard to turn down, and there was always the argument that "Any publicity is good publicity." However, Richard Dolan observes. . .

"What makes this more interesting is that the Enquirer publisher, Gene Pope, had been a CIA agent during the early 1950's. What he did there remains classified, except that he was involved in the Agency's Psychological Warfare Unit. Hansen's research suggested that the CIA helped to fund the Enquirer when Pope took it over, most likely to provide sensationalistic coverage to certain stories as needed - a kind of 'inoculation,' just as a doctor gives a touch of disease to the patient to stimulate a reaction from the immune system. Even soberly researched UFO stories would be discredited within the confines of a tabloid dedicated to horoscopes and celebrity gossip."

-FL

This is somewhat true; the term for ultra Orthodox Jewish men is "sit and learn," and chiefly the Talmud. Rebecca Goldstein's novel The Mind-Body Problem discusses this phenomenon extensively.

It's not quite true to say that the average woman has more education, since most of their businesses are of the small, shop-keeper / mender / teacher types (and teacher doesn't mean "M.A. and in public schools." It means "high school education then teaching at the Yeshiva"); it would be more accurate to say that many women in that culture have a larger direct financial impact on the world.

This is a must read for anyone interested in Commodore and its products, a great historical account how among other things the C64 came to be.

http://www.amazon.com/Edge-Spectacular-Rise-Fall-Commodore/dp/0973864907

Was Inside Commodore DOS: The Complete Guide to the 1541 Disk Operating System the book you were thinking of?

That book along with the VIC-20 and C-64 operating system manuals and "Mapping the Commodore 64" and "VIC-20 and C-64 Toolkit: BASIC" from Compute Books comprised much of my programming reading when I was a teen. I also absorbed the manuals that came with the Apple // as well.

...I'd imagine basic rules of economics and capitalism are at work here, i.e.

If these things really cost so much less, someone would produce them and sell them for less. While you can get a netbook for a few hundred dollars, keep in mind that it is using largely shared/similar hardware and is not required to be ultra small to the extent that is can be worn. The degree of precision engineering to make a high quality hearing aid is understandably not insignificant.

You could walk around with a netbook, a microphone, and a pair of headphones if you like :)

It seems there are indeed less expensive models out there that might do the job -- I'd check out http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18519576 and http://www.amazon.com/MDHearingAid-Acoustitone-PRO-Hearing-Aid/dp/B002RH4SN4

Good luck :)

Does this answer your question?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?ie=UTF8&docId=1000301301

But what's wrong with giving people options?

See the book "The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less" by Barry Schwartz (Author)

PARC invented the laser printer, this single invention, it's been said made Xerox more money than they ever spent setting up and running PARC.

A good read if you want to know just how many revolutionary things were invented at PARC

If a person really wanted to move sensitive information across a border, carrying it would be totally silly in 99% or more of all situations. SSH does not show up on any xray machine, metal detector, or other scanner designed to electronically search a person and their stuff. The only time carrying the data over a border would be reasonable, would be if it is being retrieved from a country that has no internet access or where SSHing would arouse suspicion.

What if you're looking to push a lot of data over the border in a short timespan? For example, I could load up say 16 16G MicroSD cards giving me a total capacity of 256G, take a drive across my nearest national border (about 2 hours away) and have pushed a lot more data than any ISP would. Sure, the latency sucks, but the bandwidth is quite large (approx. 582 Mbits/sec).

That's probably wrong actually. You see, the report first said that the child was playing with a black Wii controller that resembled a gun. The guys at Kotaku saw this as suspicios and went to see if one could actually purchase such a thing and this is the only one they came up with that seems to match. Thing is, unless the father went to a lot of trouble to specifically buy a hard-to-find type of controller, it's unlikely this is what was used.
There are a variety of peripherals which would seem to be potential candidates, But I'd guess it to be more likely it was on of these with a little creativity from the parents.

Realistic looking light guns used to be quite common, like this one http://www.amazon.de/gp/customer-media/product-gallery/B00008P02A/ref=cm_ciu_pdp_images_0?ie=UTF8&index=0

To convince you otherwise, check out Science journal writer and dietary research analyst Gary Taubes' epic treatise Good Calories, Bad Calories , which examines the ~150 year history of dietary research on obesity, and concludes that the type of food may be the primary factor.

He also examines this notion that you can simply reduce the number of calories, and see long-term weight loss. Not only does reducing calories prove nearly impossible in the long-term, simple calorie reduction does not improve heart disease risk factors, which is the primary purpose of reducing obesity. I would be curious what exactly you cut out of your diet, and what your lipid profile looks like (e.g. triglycerides, number of HDL, size of VLDL). Skinny does not automatically mean healthy.

You are spending way too much time trying to convince yourself of things that aren't true.

A common thing for people who don't want to admit they were ripped off.

Any user flagged as a "hostile life form" is punished by the website playing Mr. Shatner's version of "Mr. Tambourine Man" the next time they access the site.

I prefer Anyone Can Build a Tub-Style Mechanical Chicken Plucker.

Actually, it looks like the moron parents bought this and painted it black themselves.

Sorry, but I refuse to play video games with a controller that looks like the most popular "personal massager" of all time.

I see "look and feel" lawsuit from Hitachi coming.

I'd provide a citation but I remember reading that off the back of a Topps Galaxy Star Wars card when I was a kid.

I read the basic outline of this story in Pollock's Skywalking: The Life and Films of George Lucas . The accident clearly had an effect on his life -- he was in the hospital for months with a collapsed lung -- and at the time he was a D student, he was about to fail out of senior year and not get a diploma. He was passed out of high school mainly because his teachers took pity on him after the accident. If you ever watch his American Graffiti the Milner character is based on Lucas at that stage of his life.

From there it goes on that he went to community college, fell in love with avant garde films (people like Brakhage and Jonas Mekas, really oddball stuff for the guy who invented the scifi blockbuster), got his GPA up, and was accepted to USC. (Fight on cinema alums!)

There tends to be a lot of "drift" in terms of what George specifically claims he intended from time to time, though. I'd never heard that he developed the ideas about "the force" while in the hospital, for instance, though GL often tends to align history with the point he's trying to make that day. Skywalking in particular is quite clear from interviews that Lucas wanted to use literal classical music for the score of Star Wars, a la 2001, and John Williams had to talk him out of it, whereas later Lucas denied the whole business. His account of Spielberg's initial response to the Star Wars rough cut also tends to be at variance with how Spielberg remembers things (Spielberg wwas either supportive or skeptical, depending on who you ask), as is the record w/r/t Marcia, his ex-wife's contributions: she edited (and won an Oscar) for Star Wars. A complicated man.

Yowza, that would be a royal pain to get results.

Two ways to go.

1. Wide format scanner. These are usually at more specialized digitization shops. Find someone who scans blueprints in your area. http://www.amazon.com/Designjet-Large-format-Scanning-Software-Intergrate/dp/B000E8Z0XU
Only you can judge if the documents will be okay through the feeder. The feeders aren't hard on documents. I'd give your best one a shot. Naturally, you want to be there. So, not every service provider will be okay with that.

2. You most certainly can use a flatbed scanner. The key will be stitching software and memory/cpu resources and refining the scan/stitch method. Make them big-ish files, maybe 300ppi. After 300ppi, any information is useless for a 1:1 reproduction.

Lastly, overlaying geocoordinates info won't quite work as elegantly as you think. Ignore my doubts and go for it. I think the end result would be more art than science if done well. If done well, there will probably be a couple of false starts.

I'd suggest appealing to Google or the brothers that did tapestries for the Met. What are these maps of? Is there a society for the place that they cover where you could appeal for funds under the pretense that you publicly release the maps?

Assuming all those avenues are exhausted, let's look at some cheap and dirty DIY methods. I'm assuming you've got a MP digital camera. There are sub $100 ten megapixel cameras out there but don't get anything with a fancy digital zoom. Next you'll need mosaicking software or if you're into software, you can try your own implementation of the KLT algorithm.

First off, practice all of this on layed out newspapers while developing your preferred methodology.

Your cheapest and most haphazard option is going to be lay the maps flat on the floor and cut a length of string with a washer on it (two to three feet?). Try to use brightly diffused lighting so that is normalized in the mosaics with no shots of your shadow over the maps. Now this is backbreaking but hold the camera flat over the map with the string extended in front of it so you can keep the distance to the map consistent. Don't angle the camer as this will slightly distort that tile and hinder the mosaicking. Put plastic bags on your feet if you need to walk on the maps. Take a picture, move a few feet in a grid style, take another picture. Rinse, wash, repeat until you have images covering all of the map. Collect the images and put them on the computer and verify the mosiacking works before preparing the map for storage forever.

A better method would be similar but to construct a large wooden rectangular box with plexiglass as a top so that you can fit this structure over the largest of the maps. Then cut holes in the plexiglass so that you can set your camera at a plane level to the surface of the map into the plexiglass. You might want to put an adapter on your camer that allows the lens and flash to be free of obstruction. You could make the tiles more uniform and save your back some work but you need to build and buy the materials for the structure. I think this is more time consuming but your best bet and will allow you to gather more images with less distortion.

Above all, remember to save the original images! It's probable that later better algorithms will be developed to normalize the images, remove distortions, light problems, shadows and increase clarity on your overlapping sections. If you do the plexiglass route, you could manufacture it so that every bit of the map is photographed three or four times.

Not professional, not flawless but cheap and dirty. Hope this helps.

As for the geocoding, what are the maps of? You should actually check out the feature extraction of the KLT algorithm and consider using that methodology for syncing these up with maps. That will require human intervention though to identify the features, I'm sure.

From the Amazon.site:

Changing an Amazon Fulfilled Order Before It Ships

Most orders you place on Amazon.com enter the shipping process very quickly so we can get your items to you as soon as possible. Orders already in the shipping process cannot be modified.

You can update your unshipped orders by visiting the Order section in Your Account and then clicking the Change button next to each item you wish to modify (billing address, shipping address, payment method, gift options, etc.).

To edit an order from the Order Summary in Your Account:

1. Click the Your Account link at the top of any Amazon.com page or visit it directly at www.amazon.com/your-account.
2. Visit the Order Summary for the order you wish to change. Note: Orders that have entered the shipping process cannot be modified.
3. Follow the on-screen instructions to update the desired information. Reviewing and Changing Orders

______

I was searching for Tom Clancy's HAWX on Amazon and scrolled down to the used section to check prices but misclicked and hit one click order. Now I can't cancel it because it won't show up in recent orders. What do I do now?

The payment did not clear yet.
Wait for the payment to clear and it will show up in your recent purchases where you can cancel the order. I accidentally selected "one click order" on Amazon and now can't cancel? [Yahoo Answers]

A good, but old, book that gives an idea of the reality of Microsoft is Barbarians Led by Bill Gates. (August 15, 1998)

The book was written by Jennifer Edstrom, the daughter of Pam Edstrom, manager of Microsoft's P.R. agency, Waggener Edstrom, and a former Microsoft manager. The Amazon.com review says the book "... presents a harsher and messier history, sharply questioning Microsoft's ethics and corporate wisdom..."

The book seems authoritative; the authors certainly had inside access to the facts. It's certainly unusual that the daughter of one of the heads of Microsoft's P.R. agency would write a book discussing Microsoft's abusiveness in detail.

No, what was being sold in 1985 was the full Windows package. It was not a stripped down crippled version. So, the fair comparison would be with Windows 7 Ultimate at almost $300. That while everyone else in the industry has had dramatic price drops.

Then, if there is possible resource contention, rather than pass laws about IDs, it would seem that the most essential thing to do is to help everyone to use their imagination as "The Ultimate Resource"
http://www.juliansimon.com/writings/Ultimate_Resource/
to address any potential scarcity problems and create material abundance for all. People have already been doing that for hundreds of years, for example, Benjamin Franklin who made the pot bellied stove and bifocals and refused to patent any of that.

By the way, fossil fuels are not cheap overall, they are just profitable to a few.
http://www.energyandcapital.com/articles/oil-gas-crude/461
"According to a 2000 study for the Department of Energy, there is a significant cost attached to the mere fact of our dependence. Supply disruptions, price hikes, and loss of wealth suffered through the oil market upheavals have cost the U.S. economy around $7 trillion (1998 dollars) over the 30 years from 1970 to 2000. ...
Milton Copulus, the head of the National Defense Council Foundation, has a different view. And as the former principal energy analyst for the Heritage Foundation, a 12-year member of the National Petroleum Council, a Reagan White House alum, and an advisor to half a dozen U.S. Energy Secretaries, various Secretaries of Defense, and two directors of the CIA, he knows his stuff. After taking into account the direct and indirect costs of oil, the economic costs of oil supply disruption, and military expenditures, he estimates the true cost of oil at a stunning $480 a barrel."

Coal has huge costs in environmental damage and health costs (from mercury pollution and other things). It actually takes more electricity to make gasoline from crude oil that in would take to make an electrical vehicle go the same distance a regular car goes on one gallon.
http://www.evnut.com/gasoline_oil.htm

It's been known since the 1980s that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels (or nuclear) when you account for external costs and risks:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brittle_Power
"Brittle Power: Energy Strategy for National Security is a 1982 book by Amory B. Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins, prepared originally as a Pentagon study, and re-released in 2001 following the September 11 attacks. The book argues that U.S. domestic energy infrastructure is very vulnerable to disruption, by accident or malice, often even more so than imported oil. According to the authors, a resilient energy system is feasible, costs less, works better, is favoured in the market, but is rejected by U.S. policy.[1] In the preface to the 2001 edition, Lovins explains that these themes are still very current. [2]"

Anyway, please name ten jobs you do not think could *not* be fairly easily automated over the next twenty years as robotics and AI continue to advance (at least to the point where one human can do the work of ten now)?

My take on that:
"60 jobs that will rock the future... (not)"
http://listcultures.org/pipermail/p2presearch_listcultures.org/2009-August/004216.html

So, as I see it, the urgent need is to rethink the basis of our economy before then.

There is room for quadrillions of people in the solar system if we build space habitats, so IMHO talk of birth control based on resource constraints is premature. :-)
"The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps"
http://www.amazon.com/Millennial-Project-Colonizi

That video was made in what, 1985? And Windows sold for $99 according to the ad.

Today, Windows 7 (NOT AN UPGRADE) goes for $178.54 on Amazon and lists for $199. According to the Minneapolis Fed, $99 in 1985 is worth $200.21 in 2010 - in other Words, inflation adjusted, Microsoft hasn't raised the price of Windows. And if you include all of the programs that are included with Windows 7 that you would normally have had to have purchased separately back in '85 (compression, file management, image viewers, etc, etc...) Windows has gone down dramatically. Now, they've been labeled a monopoly in court, but they're pricing isn't that of a monopolist. Actually, they've given the consumer a really nice value.

Now, cue the MS haters who are going to accuse me of being an "apologist" and for being a "revisionist". Whatever. I just think it's an interesting micro economic case study.

BTW, get a life.

I would not recommend buying a Mac - I bought one because that is the only way to develop for the iPhone/iPod Touch (still haven't gotten around too it). It is true Mac offers little options.

Limiting choices is something Apple does on purpose and for a reason:
http://www.colbertnation.com/the-colbert-report-videos/265499/march-04-2010/barry-schwartz
or
http://www.amazon.com/Paradox-Choice-Why-More-Less/dp/0060005688

In fact, it's almost what the OP sounds like he wants, but then again, he could be buying any prebuilt. I always thought the CPU market was getting too complicated for the layperson, coming from a time when you could just look at a Pentium and judge it based on MHz.

Beyond RAM, very few people actually upgrade their computers, they'll just buy a new one every 4-5 years. If I had to upgrade beyond RAM/HARD_DRIVE, I usually don't myself -- whatever still fits in the old socket isn't a big enough bump anyway, replacing the motherboard can give a good speed increase but that means getting the ram to match it, as well as a CPU, and you're well on your way to a new computer. Gamers might opt for a new video card, but few people beyond that segment actually push theirs.

And for many people, the savings just don't equate to the time spent on all this crap. And often, if you're already a computer oriented person, what you learn is relevant in only such a short frame of time, it's not even much of an educational lesson.

Grow food on your balcony.

The same way Amazon does, I imagine - by doing exactly what you describe. The good news here is that, if you target a few of the bigger players (Ubuntu, Fedora, Debian, OpenSUSE), you probably nail about 90% of the target Linux desktop audience out there. Sure, it won't be comprehensive, but it should still be good enough for most circumstances. The goal would be to pick common enough distributions where the cost and time spent on testing, debugging, and packaging isn't greater than the potential rewards you would receive by releasing and supporting the game for each distribution.

...such as the Fed's action to purposely burst the stock bubble of the late 1920's through deflation.

They did no such thing. As a matter of fact, they thought the market would just run its course. Unfortunately, we were on the gold standard and since there's only so much gold in the world and our economy was growing like gang busters, it had a deflationary effect.

See here Lords of Finance. The best frickin book I've ever read about the lead up to the Depression, the Depression, and the aftermath.

The Fed did make some mistakes but that was because they were new at it and we were beholden to the Gold Standard. If we, and the rest of the industrialized World weren't beholden to the Gold standard, the depression would not have happened. There would have been a steep recession but not the world wide chaos that ensued.

The article relies on research done in the book. I didn't link to the book directly because I don't like giving Amazon traffic. And B&N was too hard to find.

If you have not done so, a must read is Negroponte's book "Being Digital", it's amazing how far in the future he can look, one of the best books talking about digital technology I've read, still, 15 years later: http://www.amazon.com/Being-Digital-Nicholas-Negroponte/dp/0679762906

You've watched too much CSI, bud.

High res images at a couple of hundred metres (high enough to read the peaks on your house key) between the time it takes you to take your keys from your pocket and put the key in the lock is well into the realm of serious photographic equipment and prowess (insuring your camera and lens for more than your car).

Maybe hundreds of meters is a bit too much, but ridiculous magnification isn't that expensive. $600 for a decent DSLR. $80 for a manual 800mm lens, that an APS sensor will bring to the equivalent of 1200mm.

Granted, that's a horrible lens. It's fully manual, has about 3 pieces of glass in it, is f/11 and gets horrible chromatic aberration just to start with. But if you want to make photos of things that are really far, it works perfectly fine so long you don't care about the quality and have plenty light.

So, it seems that David Gelerter was blown up by the Unabomber, survived and wrote a book about the experience. In a cavalier attempt to "Take the Internet Seriously" I dredged up two reviews from Amazon's customer comments which show opposing valances of political opinion regarding the book's content. I thought it might help to explain the kind of filters Mr. Gelerter views the world through and thus help one decide whether his little treatise on the Internet is worth anything.

Review Number One. . .

"Drawing Life" is by David Gelernter, a computer science professor who survived one of Ted Kaczynski's mail bombs.

The book is about a well educated, intelligent man who has descended into a fear of the future and a hatred of the society that nurtured him, who dreams of a glorious American past that never really existed, who has written a venomous yet pedestrian political tract that would never have been printed without the author's notoriety, and who has come to the conclusion that sometimes people must be deliberately killed to remake society.

This book is also about the Unabomber.

Gelernter has endured an awful lot, and for this one is prepared to grant him slack. If he's cranky, he's certainly earned the right to be this way.

Yet, I've come away disappointed, not just with "Drawing Life," but with Gelernter himself. He is a profoundly bitter man who believes modern society has been ruined not just by the Unabomber but by the likes of unwed mothers, liberals, lawyers, feminists, intellectuals, working mothers, left-wing journalists, Hillary Clinton, and the usual gang of suspects straight from Rush Limbaugh's enemies list.

Tiresome and unoriginal. Not worth reading.

And David, enough with the kvetching already!

Review Number Two. . .

One of the most powerfully written and elegantly thought out books I have ever read. Should be mandatory reading for every American. I used to think only Vietnam veterans had this kind of sane view of the world after adversity. I was wrong. Buy it, read it, pass it along.

Right. So Gelernter is passing judgment on the great social commons known as the Internet, is he?

I'll pass, thanks.

-FL

A book (or software program) that covers proper finger positioning and drills you in them is the only you'll learn to properly touch type. I learned from this book on a manual typewriter when I was a teenager and never regretted it. You may not want this specific book--it talks more about running an actual typewriter, a machine you'll likely never use, than you'll ever want to know--but something along those lines is what you want.

Several years ago I misused my hands to the point that it was painful to type for any period of time. I switched to dvorak to ease things on me. And although it was a relief, it was mostly due to slowing down and being careful in my movements. It became specially a problem when having to move back to someone else's computer to help. So dvorak helped a bit but it was clear there were other issues.

So still with my problem, I spent time researching and found the very good Cornell Ergonomics site http://ergo.human.cornell.edu/

The two biggest problems I had were my pinky and thumb hurting from trying to use them. In the end, instead of stretching them out like some typists recommend (they seem to forget that stressing weak muscles regularly can cause issues), I adjusted and moved my arm (big strong mucles there) with my hand so my finger would hit the key, avoided twisting my wrist, or used another finger while those two fingers recuperated. Checked my posture frequently and looked at hand strengthening exercises.

This book was actually also a great resource: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1572240393/qid=1055745052/sr=8-1/ref=sr_8_1/002-9180898-5704857?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

I know this is probably no quite what you asked but if you feel awkward about your typing technique it's definitely worth identifying potential problems and solving them before they become a bigger problem.

In any case if you are at the point of discomfort you should definitely see a doctor.

Also slow down, there's rarely any reason to type so fast that you strain your hands to the point of discomfort/pain/awkwardness. And listen to your body, with the need for deadlines, busy life, etc, we often ignore the little signs of warnings of "don't keep doing that". If you can learn to listen to the signs early you can make adjustments sooner.

Alice really needs a decent annotated edition to explain the obvious cultural and scientific references

I searched in vain for a reference to The Annotated Alice in your post but didn't find one. Pardon me if I just overlooked it. Anyway, here's a link: http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Alice-Definitive-Lewis-Carroll/dp/0393048470/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1267996987&sr=8-1

You sure are naive. It is not unusual for agencies to put a dollar value on human life to figure stuff out. The book "Flying Blind, Fly Safe" http://www.amazon.com/Flying-Blind-Fly-Safe-Schiavo/dp/038079330X mentions that there is a dollar value on human life in the FAA. The loss of life and dollar value determines when the FAA steps in and when the economic cost to the industry versus the economic loss of human life is not worth the effort of say forcing some type of safety change/inspection. I guarantee they are not the only agency that does it.

If you really think people don't put a cost on human life (particularly companies selling products that may hurt people) then you certainly aren't familiar with the greed of men. I would bet that tobacco companies computed some type of financial model from lawsuits resulting from the deaths/illnesses of consumers and decided that economically rather than trying to find ways to make their products not kill you, it is better to keep selling and fight the lawsuits....

Oh welcome to earth :)

Why do people write like this?

"Words that write themselves for you."

I would suggest you start with George Orwell's "Politics and the English Language" and graduate to Victor Klemperer's "The Language of the Third Reich".

See: "Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling" by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.amazon.com/Dumbing-Down-Curriculum-Compulsory-Schooling/dp/0865714487

The primary reason school was created was to dumb people down as a form of social control to create factory workers (and soldiers) for a 19th century factory-based economy, according to NYS Teacher of the Year John Taylor Gatto.
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
"""
As soon as you break free of the orbit of received wisdom you have little trouble figuring out why, in the nature of things, government schools and those private schools which imitate the government model have to make most children dumb, allowing only a few to escape the trap. The problem stems from the structure of our economy and social organization. When you start with such pyramid-shaped givens and then ask yourself what kind of schooling they would require to maintain themselves, any mystery dissipates--these things are inhuman conspiracies all right, but not conspiracies of people against people, although circumstances make them appear so. School is a conflict pitting the needs of social machinery against the needs of the human spirit. It is a war of mechanism against flesh and blood, self-maintaining social mechanisms that only require human architects to get launched.
"""

Or:
"The 7-Lesson Schoolteacher"
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt
"""
Look again at the seven lessons of schoolteaching: confusion, class assignment, dulled responses, emotional and intellectual dependency, conditional self-esteem, surveillance -- all of these things are good training for permanent underclasses, people derived forever of finding the center of their own special genius. And in later years it became the training shaken loose from even its own original logic -- to regulate the poor; since the 1920s the growth of the school bureaucracy and the less visible growth of a horde of industries that profit from schooling just exactly as it is, has enlarged this institution's original grasp to where it began to seize the sons and daughters of the middle classes.
"""

So, that's why pouring more money into schools does not work, because they just do this dumbing down process better. Oh, you may get kids stuffed with more facts, you may get kids with better grades, you may get kids who are better are regurgitating state doctrine, but you won't get good human beings who can have a happy whole life. A whole person comes from an engagement with the whole of life, not from doing paperwork all day in a minimum security day-prison from ages four to eighteen. The entire system must be changed from assumptions through practices, and school is so resistant to fundamental change that the best approach is probably just to shut it down entirely and start over in new ways using the same resources in entirely different ways.

For example, the central pillar of most schooling, grading, is harmful to children and communities in all sorts of ways:
"From Degrading to De-Grading"
http://www.alfiekohn.org/teaching/fdtd-g.htm
"""
1. Grades tend to reduce students' interest in the learning itself. ...
2. Grades tend to reduce students' preference for challenging tasks. ...
3. Grades tend to reduce the quality of students' thinking. ...
4. Grades aren't valid, reliable, or objective. ...
5. Grades distort the curriculum. ...
6. Grades waste a lot of time that could be spent on learning. ...
7. Grades encourage cheating. ...
8. Grades spoil teachers' relationships

Here the link http://www.amazon.com/Apple-Power-Adapter-iPod-iPhone/dp/B001GQ3DP6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1267920282&sr=8-1 I invite you to read the reviews, for me it was no trouble this little guys being fake, I use them to power up a couple of old pda that now act just as fancy clocks and rss readers.

I had just read about this possibility today in this book, a fascinating compendium of mini-essays by leading thinkers about scientific or social developments that may be around the corner. Existing tests for biological organisms are geared towards a working asssumption that life forms will be part of the basic, familiar biological tree that we are based on. A "shadow biosphere" was discussed as something that could potentially be an alternative hierarchy of life, so unfamiliar that we haven't understood how to look for it even though it could be relatively populous in certain niche areas of the earth.

Finding an alternative pathway to the evolution of complex life forms could affect our perception of how common life is in the universe and could be a stunning treasure trove of discovery and insight for biologists.

because I could walk around holding the courier with one hand and writing stuff/accessing it with another

There is a design that works great for that.

It's called a clipboard. And it's only one page, not two. Can you imagine how hard that would really be to work, flopping all around as you attempt to hold it in one hand?

even if I'm wearing gloves?

Even when your wearing this?

Or if you have gloves you really love already, why not use one of these?

Of course it would be a shame to fall back to a stylus because then five potential contact points become one ham-fisted stick.

because I could walk around holding the courier with one hand and writing stuff/accessing it with another

There is a design that works great for that.

It's called a clipboard. And it's only one page, not two. Can you imagine how hard that would really be to work, flopping all around as you attempt to hold it in one hand?

even if I'm wearing gloves?

Even when your wearing this?

Or if you have gloves you really love already, why not use one of these?

Of course it would be a shame to fall back to a stylus because then five potential contact points become one ham-fisted stick.

Except that the problem is not solved if (and I say if, since it is controversial) violent games contribute to broader social violence and dysfunction.

We do know for sure that spending too much time indoors leads to vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight that leads to grumpy people with lots of health problems. Of course, reading anything too much indoors (even sacred texts) can do that too. So, if you are an indoor gamer or a reader of any sort, please at least get vitamin D from supplements of some sort:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

There is also the bigger issue that advertising creates demand for these violent products. And like cigarettes, violent games and toys are often targeted to very young children in various ways (Joe Camel, etc.). As talked about here:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X
their is an unhealthy alliance between toy makers, fast food makers, video game makers, media makers, and licensed product makers to bombard young boys 24X7 with violence-related images to sell product. So, for example, a ten year old boy gets a Star Wars "Happy" meal at McDonalds, watches Star Wars cartoons at home, sleeps under Star Wars blankets, buys Star Wars lightsabers, plays Star Wars video games, sees Star Wars related commercials at random times even when watching other things on TV, has Star Wars pictures on their school notebook covers, and so on. This is 24X7 infiltration of the kid's mind with the implicit suggestion that violence and wars are the best way to solve conflicts, and that there are clearly defined good guys (us) and clearly defined bad guys (by whatever means, color, shape, speech, dress, etc.), and that military robots are a good idea (rather than using technology to bring abundance to all). Rather than define the Emperor as a mentally ill and financially obese person needing help, he is just "evil" and only killing him is the solution. And kids get locked in a cycle of endless tightly scripted play at home, at school, outdoors -- anywhere, where there is only one solution to a conflict -- killing. There are a lot of other reasons kids are hurting, but this continual onslaught by for-profit companies 24X7 just adds to it.

For girls, it is even worse: :-(
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

Though some of that is also from environmental toxins (estrogen mimics) and poor nutrition heavy on fats connected especially to fast foods; see:
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

So, while it is easy to blame the parents for not regulating everything a child engages in, clearly the job of parenting has become much harder over the last few decades in this regard (even since the "family values" Reagan Administration gave this alliance their blessing), and parents are not getting much help in general. It takes a village to raise a child.

Everyone acts so concerned about physical predation by strangers on a child (which very rarely happens even if it is a tragedy when it does). But people in the USA just accept mental predation on young children as a given in our society through the logic of profit-making and an unregulated "free market". But the fact is, any marketplace is a social construction:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Venezuela has decided to change the nature of that social construction. I don't agree w

Except that the problem is not solved if (and I say if, since it is controversial) violent games contribute to broader social violence and dysfunction.

We do know for sure that spending too much time indoors leads to vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight that leads to grumpy people with lots of health problems. Of course, reading anything too much indoors (even sacred texts) can do that too. So, if you are an indoor gamer or a reader of any sort, please at least get vitamin D from supplements of some sort:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

There is also the bigger issue that advertising creates demand for these violent products. And like cigarettes, violent games and toys are often targeted to very young children in various ways (Joe Camel, etc.). As talked about here:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X
their is an unhealthy alliance between toy makers, fast food makers, video game makers, media makers, and licensed product makers to bombard young boys 24X7 with violence-related images to sell product. So, for example, a ten year old boy gets a Star Wars "Happy" meal at McDonalds, watches Star Wars cartoons at home, sleeps under Star Wars blankets, buys Star Wars lightsabers, plays Star Wars video games, sees Star Wars related commercials at random times even when watching other things on TV, has Star Wars pictures on their school notebook covers, and so on. This is 24X7 infiltration of the kid's mind with the implicit suggestion that violence and wars are the best way to solve conflicts, and that there are clearly defined good guys (us) and clearly defined bad guys (by whatever means, color, shape, speech, dress, etc.), and that military robots are a good idea (rather than using technology to bring abundance to all). Rather than define the Emperor as a mentally ill and financially obese person needing help, he is just "evil" and only killing him is the solution. And kids get locked in a cycle of endless tightly scripted play at home, at school, outdoors -- anywhere, where there is only one solution to a conflict -- killing. There are a lot of other reasons kids are hurting, but this continual onslaught by for-profit companies 24X7 just adds to it.

For girls, it is even worse: :-(
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

Though some of that is also from environmental toxins (estrogen mimics) and poor nutrition heavy on fats connected especially to fast foods; see:
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

So, while it is easy to blame the parents for not regulating everything a child engages in, clearly the job of parenting has become much harder over the last few decades in this regard (even since the "family values" Reagan Administration gave this alliance their blessing), and parents are not getting much help in general. It takes a village to raise a child.

Everyone acts so concerned about physical predation by strangers on a child (which very rarely happens even if it is a tragedy when it does). But people in the USA just accept mental predation on young children as a given in our society through the logic of profit-making and an unregulated "free market". But the fact is, any marketplace is a social construction:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Venezuela has decided to change the nature of that social construction. I don't agree w

Except that the problem is not solved if (and I say if, since it is controversial) violent games contribute to broader social violence and dysfunction.

We do know for sure that spending too much time indoors leads to vitamin D deficiency from lack of sunlight that leads to grumpy people with lots of health problems. Of course, reading anything too much indoors (even sacred texts) can do that too. So, if you are an indoor gamer or a reader of any sort, please at least get vitamin D from supplements of some sort:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/treatment.shtml

There is also the bigger issue that advertising creates demand for these violent products. And like cigarettes, violent games and toys are often targeted to very young children in various ways (Joe Camel, etc.). As talked about here:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X
their is an unhealthy alliance between toy makers, fast food makers, video game makers, media makers, and licensed product makers to bombard young boys 24X7 with violence-related images to sell product. So, for example, a ten year old boy gets a Star Wars "Happy" meal at McDonalds, watches Star Wars cartoons at home, sleeps under Star Wars blankets, buys Star Wars lightsabers, plays Star Wars video games, sees Star Wars related commercials at random times even when watching other things on TV, has Star Wars pictures on their school notebook covers, and so on. This is 24X7 infiltration of the kid's mind with the implicit suggestion that violence and wars are the best way to solve conflicts, and that there are clearly defined good guys (us) and clearly defined bad guys (by whatever means, color, shape, speech, dress, etc.), and that military robots are a good idea (rather than using technology to bring abundance to all). Rather than define the Emperor as a mentally ill and financially obese person needing help, he is just "evil" and only killing him is the solution. And kids get locked in a cycle of endless tightly scripted play at home, at school, outdoors -- anywhere, where there is only one solution to a conflict -- killing. There are a lot of other reasons kids are hurting, but this continual onslaught by for-profit companies 24X7 just adds to it.

For girls, it is even worse: :-(
http://www.amazon.com/So-Sexy-Soon-Sexualized-Childhood/dp/0345505077

Though some of that is also from environmental toxins (estrogen mimics) and poor nutrition heavy on fats connected especially to fast foods; see:
http://www.amazon.com/Supernormal-Stimuli-Overran-Evolutionary-Purpose/dp/039306848X

So, while it is easy to blame the parents for not regulating everything a child engages in, clearly the job of parenting has become much harder over the last few decades in this regard (even since the "family values" Reagan Administration gave this alliance their blessing), and parents are not getting much help in general. It takes a village to raise a child.

Everyone acts so concerned about physical predation by strangers on a child (which very rarely happens even if it is a tragedy when it does). But people in the USA just accept mental predation on young children as a given in our society through the logic of profit-making and an unregulated "free market". But the fact is, any marketplace is a social construction:
"The Mythology of Wealth"
http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/?q=node/402
Venezuela has decided to change the nature of that social construction. I don't agree w

But everybody can afford a NAS today.
http://www.amazon.com/D-Link-Network-Attached-Enclosure-DNS-323/dp/B000GK8LVE
Here is one for only $175 from Amazon just add drives.
If you are Mac shop just pick up an Airport and add a USB drive and you have a NAS.
And if you do have a spare machine that can load up with drives you have the option of running say.
FreeNAS or OpenFiler. Now that FreeNAS has ZFS support I have to say that I find it a very interesting option. If you need a Heavy duty NAS with LOTS of drive space this one could be very interesting.
Combine this one of AMDs new 890GX based motherboards and then pick the CPU that has the power you need.
For example this Motherboard http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813128435
Has 6 6Gb Sata ports 2 3Gb sata ports and one ATA connector for you Optical drive if you need it.
It also has two USB 3.0 port for external drives.
A total of 3 firewire ports and 12 USB 2 ports as well.
The mother board and CPU will run you less than $300. The most expensive part would be the power supply, case, and filling it with drives.

At this point in time I would say that everybody can afford a NAS of some kind. And frankly if you are willing to roll your own you can build some monsters for pretty cheap.

And that argument essentially is made here, which discusses what to do about an unhealthy alliance between toymakers and children's media makers (and food companies), that started with the media deregulation during the "family values" Reagan Administration:
"The War Play Dilemma: What Every Parent And Teacher Needs to Know"
http://www.amazon.com/War-Play-Dilemma-Childhood-Education/dp/080774638X

Some comments on that book in my review of it here:
http://www.pdfernhout.net/the-war-play-dilemma.html
"A few key ideas from the book:
The deregulation of children's media during the early 1980s (Reagan administration) led to an alliance of media companies and toy companies and other companies (like food companies); the result of this is an immersion for many children in an interlinked experience of seeing media about violence, purchasing related action figures and toys and video games, and having these items promoted every place they go (whether to buy fast-food or just in other kid's homes). This is a big change from the media environment from the 1960s and 1970s that many of today's parents grew up in.
The authors point out that the behaviors promoted by this alliance tend to be very sex-role stereotypical, as in boys need to be fighters and girls need to be princesses. For many children, the authors suggest they can get locked into a pattern of endless cycling through stereotyped behaviors. While it is true that knights and princesses have long been important parts of many children's play (so this is not intended to dismiss that), what has changed for some children is the tone and extremeness of those experience because of the high degree of continual interrelated media/toy/game/food saturation. Rather than children being able to express themselves building on those knight/princess themes in their own unique ways, because of the integrated marketing, for many children there becomes only one way to be a knight or a princess (as defined by some media and accompanying purchased toys to be used in only very precise and narrow ways). The book focuses mainly on the boy part of this equation. One of the authors has writings on the female stereotyping aspect of media and other issues, described here:
http://www.dianeelevin.com/writing.html
The "dilemma" is about a fundamental conflict parents face when dealing with war play. On the one hand, most parents want children to grow and develop by working through developmental issues (like learning to deal with conflict, learning self-control, and learning respect for themselves and others through play, including play involving conflicts as hands-on-learning). On the other hand, most parents want to convey social values related to their beliefs about violence and war as ways to solve social conflicts. The authors clearly do not say all war play is bad, and they also point out that even a cracker can be turned into a gun with one bite. The authors say there are no easy general answers to this dilemma in all situations, but provide a range of options. ...
So, whether you are a dove or a hawk, a progressive or a conservative, I would hope there is at least some common ground on concern about excessive (and often dysfunctional) war-themed play being promoted by an alliance of media companies, toy companies, game companies, and food companies for their mutual profit. Still, this is just one more set of difficult issues to navigate while parenting. Some families do better on some issues, some do better on others. Again, as Diane E. Levin and Nancy Carlsson-Paige say in "The War Play Dilemma", there are no easy answers for every situation or every family -- otherwise it would not be such a "dilemma". "

Of course, then a deeper issu