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Get yourself a kill a watt meter and find out. My Athlon64 computer with 7200 RPM 500 GB hard drive idles at 40 W. The TV, when off, still pulls 5 W! Now I just plug everything but the computer to a common surge protector and flip it's switch when I'm not watching TV or playing console games

Read a 613 page book before trying to write portable C.

I'll just go by experience, thank you. (I write portable C for a living)

C was designed with platform Independence in mind. 90% of the C code is portable across platforms.

Perhaps if the C code in question was carefully written for portability.

If that's not done, even porting a C program from one UNIX to another can be challenging - different system header files, different endianness, etc.

Read a 613 page book before trying to write portable C.

Thank you for injecting a bit of scientific realism into a discussion that has so far consisted of opinion and anecdote.

Whenever I read studies like these my first question is whether the samples involved are comparable. What kinds of kids were taking the MMPI in 1938? What kinds of kids take them today? Might the differences in the samples be sufficient to account for the observed differences in scores? If there are differences, are they controlled for in the study design? I visited Dr. Twenge's website and didn't see any obvious links to the study in question so we can begin to evaluate its scientific validity. I did skim one study comparing student responses from the "Measuring the Future" surveys in 1975 and 2006, which claims to show that "there has been a small increase in positive self-views across the generations, but that this has not been accompanied by an increase in general self-competence." Yet I saw no sophisticated multivariate analysis that might tell us whether these were "real" changes in attitudes, what other variables were correlated with those attitudes, or how changes in those other variables might affect the observed change in attitudes.

For those interested in methodlogical problems in the social sciences, there's no better place to start than with Donald Campbell and Julian Stanley's Experimental and Quasi-Experimental Designs for Research . For a highly-readable introduction to what they call "threats to validity" in social scientific research, Campbell's "Reforms as Experiments" [pdf] is a good place to start.

People who eat meat at fast food joints are consuming (albeit in small portions) sterilized faeces and ground up other humans.

citation needed!

Sir —

With respect, the publicly available documentation of my assertion is extensive.

Government statistics, e.g.:
* The USDA in a 1996 study found that at meat processing plants, "78.6 percent of the ground beef contained microbes ... spread primarily by fecal material."

Articles, e.g.:
* Fast Food Nation (book review)

Documentaries, e.g.:
* Food, Inc.

Websites, e.g.: SustainableTable.org: Slaughterhouses and Processing

Books, e.g.: Slaughterhouse: The Shocking Story of Greed, Neglect, and Inhumane Treatment Inside the U.S. Meat Industry (Hardcover)

Google "slaughterhouse fecal matter", and related terms.

I'm surprised anyone would ask for a citation for this; I assumed it would be common knowledge.

WRONG!!! Get with the times! http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Network-ready-Player-WDBAAN0000NBK-NESN/dp/B002KKFP9Y

How about a miniseries based on Hyperion

I was recently reflecting on Simmons' Hyperion myself, as I read it several times in my teens. I know there's long been talk of making a film or television adaptation of it, but I now see a number of obstacles to trying to bring this book to a more mainstream audience. One is that it's just a bit too nerdy. I mean, one of the major structural points of the book is the life of the early Romantic poet John Keats, and people want explosions instead of sensitive young men who write verse. Also, the subplot of the cruciform or the Jewish man drawn to sacrifice his daughter might offend religious sensibilities.

Hyperion is a decent work of science-fiction (though I think of it more as a young-adult choice than a universal classic), but it might just not be right for Hollywood.

As the current owner of one of the last HD CRTs to come off the line (the glorious Sony 36XS955) I can confirm a couple of these statements, but would like to refute a couple as well (or at least put them in perspective).

the last CRT HDTV I worked with weighed in at 200 lbs.

YES! In my case, it is extremely heavy (about 230 lbs.), and Sony's marketing department clearly had their hands over too much of the design, because there are practically no hard angled surfaces to wrap your hands around when lifting it. So it might take three people to lift it, but only two are going to actually be holding on to the thing.

most CRT HDTV's max out at 1080i

I can also confirm that my own set maxes out at 1080i (it handles up to 720 in progressive). But the beautiful thing about not having a locked-in native resolution is that standard-definition (of which there is still plenty of) looks great on it.

cheap LCD's are still much sharper

Sure, LCDs offer a sharper image. Which is great the 0.01% of the time you've got the video paused. The sharpness argument starts to fade when you're comparing moving images. Or interpolated images! If your LCD is 1080p, that means for most HD broadcasts, you have to de-interlace. De-interlacing is like black magic. It's very hard to get right. And because LCDs are so sharp, you really notice when the interpolation is poor. By design, my CRT will never have this problem.

suffer from standard CRT picture drift off of the screen

The geometry will change over the years. That's why any HD CRT worth its salt will come with an extended calibration menu. On the flip side, I don't have to worry about burn-in, or narrow viewing angles inverting the screen, or having a washed-out picture if the sun is shining strongly. The whites are white and the blacks are (truly) black. And I've got a TV that will potentially last for more than a decade with no more service required than a light dusting every year or so.

But knowing I won't have to jump back on the consumer merry-go-round in five years to shell out another grand for a replacement screen with all the capabilities of my current set is priceless.

If you can handle the size and weight and don't need 1080 progressive, CRTs are still the best bang for the buck. Perhaps in ten or fifteen years, once OLED screens have been perfected and the price has tapered off... maybe then I'll go get another TV.

The biggest problem with HD CRTs (after the size & weight) seems to be finding the darned things. Usually the only time you'll see an owner parting with one is because they're moving and don't have enough room for it in their new place.

Sorry, stores need crypto signatures or you get browser warnings. Does anybody turn over their banking info without seeing the SSL indications from their browser?

I don't think most people understand what SSL stands for, or the little lock they see now and then. The store will only warn about signatures if there is an encrypted connection and a problem with the certificate. If the connection is not encrypted you can be sure there is no warning.

And as mentioned, anyone can purchase a certificate. The Cert is really only useful as a trust mechanism if you really check what it contains, and most people rarely bother (especially if they don't get a warning). If you have the a shop on https://amazon.web-stores.com/ it will look like https://web-stores.amazon.com/ to 95% of users.

Actually, they have been breeding in both Jordan and Turkey and have made inroads into Egypt as well. The difference is the leaders there recognize it for what it is and are not afraid to use force against the poison within when it wells up. I know there were suicide bombings inside Jordan but I don't know about the others. Their leaders are effective because they don't bend over backward to cater to every demand of the extremists, to the extent that it happens in the even more liberal western nations.

So you're saying that the attempted train bombings and the relentless push for the imposition of Sharia law in England; and the murder of journalists and film makers in the Netherlands; and the public call for death of novelists who remain in hiding in order to stay alive - all this is the price of trying to work with others?

I'll recommend the same book to you, written by a formerly Muslim woman who grew up inside Islam and knows what it is really like in these countries. The most amazing thing about this woman is the optimism and positive emotion that comes through in her writing after everything she was subjected to. She lives in the west now since escaping so maybe you'll chalk this up to mere "western media" as well. <shrug>

Trade sanctions against Saudi Arabia? Do you have any idea what you're talking about? The men who did that were almost exclusively educated, priviledged young men from Saudi Arabia.

And I suppose the call for the death of Salman Rushdie, the film producers and cartoonists in the Netherlands, Ayaan Hirsi Al (a woman who had the independence of thought to dare leaving Islam), etc etc etc... all had to do with legitimate protest of trade sanctions or some such?!

You really need to read up a bit on who these people are. Listen to the ravings of their religious leaders on YouTube, listen to what they are preaching throughout much of Europe but especially in the Netherlands where their numbers are growing rapidly and where Sharia law is taking root. You really have no idea what these guys are about.

Compare the Danish cartoon incident

to, say, the Piss Christ

Read an insider's view of what's going on.

The information is out there and it's overwhelming. Research it a little and educate yourself. Don't take my word for it.

You're correct. If they evolve, they HAVE genetic material; it's a bit of a tautology.

It might be noted that, before the 1950s, biologists generally argued that DNA couldn't be our "genetic material", because it's structurally too simple. The most widely suggested storage for this sort of information was proteins, because they are the most complex chemical structures in our bodies.

This hypothesis turned out to be wrong. But there's still an old hypothesis that in the early stages 4 billion years ago or so, the early "living" things on our planet were mostly based on proteins. It's hard to come up with good tests of this, though, because RNA and DNA don't fossilize well, and we have no samples of them older than 100 million years or so.

In any case, this story is really just about finding some evidence supporting the protein-based inheritance conjecture. It's apparently valid to some degree in our modern world. It might be more widepread than just prions, but we don't know.

Something that we have known, and which was summarized well by Douglas Hofstadter in "Gödel, Escher, Bach", is that our DNA doesn't actually contain a definition of the mapping of DNA to amino acids. That is done by the proteins that "transcribe" RNA strings into the amino-acid strings for the proteins. It would be possible, by doing a bit of swapping around of the active parts of those RNA-reading proteins, to use a different DNA -> amino acid mapping, and a few variants of this mapping are known in nature. The real complexity comes about from the fact that our DNA contains genes that produce the proteins that do this transcription. But without the already-existing transcription proteins in a cell, there would be no way to discover the mapping that we actually use, because the information isn't actually in the DNA. It's "distributed" between the DNA and the already-existing proteins in the cell.

Of course, such multi-factorial causation chains (with feedback) are far too complex for most of the media, even the scientific media. So we pretend that our DNA contains all the information needed to produce us. The biochemists have known for some time that this isn't really true, but they don't make a point of it, because it "would just confuse" most of the reading public.

OTOH, Hofstadter has had pretty good sales of his book. Any nerds or geeks here who haven't read it should do so. It'll teach you a lot of fun stuff about the extreme complexity of the universe we evolved in.

(Religious people who don't believe in evolution shouldn't bother. The book isn't really about evolution per se, but it'll still get you seriously upset or confused about the nature of the universe. ;-)

In all seriousness, I took a great statistics course in grad school from the author of this book. The book covers much about statistics that is relevant to computer scientists & engineers, namely statistically valid benchmarking and performance measurement.

I'm pretty sure Jerry Doyle is well aware of the situation. Just read his book, "Have You Seen My Country Lately?: America's Wake-Up Call".

My g/f swears by the latter, and while it took a bit of convincing for me to get her to try the former she's been very happy with it.

Shouldn't you be satisfying her rather than a toy? Buy this book and download this mp3 (though the one with the same name here is much better, scroll down a bit to find it).

All above links are NSFW.

The only statistics book you'll even need

I think an "infotainment" system for the car is fine for passengers, but if it tempts drivers to take their eyes off the road, it should be accompanied by a collision avoidance system that counteracts the increased distractability factor.

"Eyes off the road" like this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B0014BYKVO/ref=dp_otherviews_1?ie=UTF8&s=automotive&img=1

I think an in-car cocktail bar should have priority over a "collision avoidance system": http://www.spiegel.de/fotostrecke/fotostrecke-41146.html

I'm concerned that dorky drivers might come to *rely* on their collision avoidance system:

"It's OK, I can twitter now, I don't need to keep my eyes on the road . . . I got me a collision avoidance system!

You linked a 24" TV.

I picked a number that I figured would probably be too high; my argument works even if that is the case. Here is a 32" from Viewsonic, for $570, so indeed, too high:

http://www.amazon.com/Viewsonic-N3235W-Widescreen-1080P-Hdtv/dp/B002J1I1EK/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=sporting-goods&qid=1263008265&sr=1-6

http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-Blu-Ray-Remote-Controller-AK59-00070D/dp/B0028SSRGG

Oh, there was plenty of nomadism and cave-dwelling activity in North America. British Columbia, the northwest and the islands there are all the exception. The extremely rich fisheries, abundant lumber, otter and beaver, and decent climate all led to an amazing abundance of resources for the natives there. In fact, they had so much they were also one of the most violent native cultures in the Americas. They didn't have anything better to do with their time since nature had provided so much.

Good book on the area, and about a specific tree also, which makes it more interesting.

Yes, it's probably "illegal" in the strictest definition

It's illegal in any definition.

"immoral" you can argue. "illegal" is quite settled already.

but they are also preserving old stuff that just isn't sold any more

Except once this is released, it *will* be sold again. So there goes that argument out the window. Not to mention a ton of those ROMs are already sold in packages like this: http://www.amazon.com/Capcom-Classics-Collection-Xbox/dp/B0009UUQG4/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1262896587&sr=8-1

There are communities that are good about this. For example, MST3K "distributors" generally pull the episode out of circulation as soon as it's available on DVD. Ditto with the anime/manga communities. ROMs? Nope.

Err, no. Been watching Moonraker too many times lately?

Most of the original shuttle designs involved two-stage launchers where the first stage flew back to the launch site with wings. They did carry the second stage piggyback, for the most part, but they still flew like rockets the whole way up (vertical launch off a pad, rocket powered, etc). There have been a couple of "back-of-747" style proposals, but none were actually built.

Very good book on the subject: http://www.amazon.com/Space-Shuttle-National-Transportation-Missions/dp/0963397451

I don't see how Dick's estate can claim anything here. The word "android" was created in the 1700s. The word "nexus" was created in the 1600s. Although the referenced story creates an interesting nexus between the two words, I don't see how that connection can be significant enough to create some type of claim on the combination of the two words, even if they were used together. Perhaps LG should have to pay Patrick Skene Catling for using his intellectual property when they named their product "Chocolate Touch".

If anything, the opposite of your claim is true - people tend to have a knee jerk tendency to accept the "wisdom" of "ancient culture", while rejecting "western science" as commercialized or "closed minded".

Have you read "The Demon Haunted World" by the late great Carl Sagan? He expounds on this subject at some length. I highly recommend it.

I actually have the cheap as shit Nyko remote I'm using with my Harmony. Just had to train it off the remote's buttons, and it's all good.

I suggest you get some books that make math more interesting.

For any software developer, the math in the "Aha!" books is appropriate. I was able to understand this math in high school, so I'm sure hard-core math nerds will sneer that this is too easy, but I stand by the claim that these books are worth your time.

Aha!: A Two Volume Collection on Google Books

Aha! Insight on Amazon

Aha! Gotcha! on Amazon

From my own personal experience, I have never needed calculus or differential equations or any of that advanced sort of math in my whole career. I'm now doing somewhat advanced DSP work, and even there I haven't needed advanced math. (I don't entirely understand how the FFT works; I just know how to use its properties to get the result I need. Other people wrote C versions of the FFT for me; I haven't needed to write it.)

The math that has been useful to me is basic logic stuff, to know how to write conditions for if statements and the like; O(n) estimations, to help you choose the best algorithm to solve your problem; and basic probability stuff, to help me understand how caches work and such. So the first class sounds better to me than the second.

I'll recommend one more book to you. It's a sort of encyclopedia of algorithms... it will expand your mind with possibilities (if you don't even know something exists, you won't be able to use it to solve your problems). It's engagingly written, with "war stories" that make it more lively.

The Algorithm Design Manual on Google Books

The Algorithm Design Manual on Amazon

The author's web page for the book

steveha

I suggest you get some books that make math more interesting.

For any software developer, the math in the "Aha!" books is appropriate. I was able to understand this math in high school, so I'm sure hard-core math nerds will sneer that this is too easy, but I stand by the claim that these books are worth your time.

Aha!: A Two Volume Collection on Google Books

Aha! Insight on Amazon

Aha! Gotcha! on Amazon

From my own personal experience, I have never needed calculus or differential equations or any of that advanced sort of math in my whole career. I'm now doing somewhat advanced DSP work, and even there I haven't needed advanced math. (I don't entirely understand how the FFT works; I just know how to use its properties to get the result I need. Other people wrote C versions of the FFT for me; I haven't needed to write it.)

The math that has been useful to me is basic logic stuff, to know how to write conditions for if statements and the like; O(n) estimations, to help you choose the best algorithm to solve your problem; and basic probability stuff, to help me understand how caches work and such. So the first class sounds better to me than the second.

I'll recommend one more book to you. It's a sort of encyclopedia of algorithms... it will expand your mind with possibilities (if you don't even know something exists, you won't be able to use it to solve your problems). It's engagingly written, with "war stories" that make it more lively.

The Algorithm Design Manual on Google Books

The Algorithm Design Manual on Amazon

The author's web page for the book

steveha

I suggest you get some books that make math more interesting.

For any software developer, the math in the "Aha!" books is appropriate. I was able to understand this math in high school, so I'm sure hard-core math nerds will sneer that this is too easy, but I stand by the claim that these books are worth your time.

Aha!: A Two Volume Collection on Google Books

Aha! Insight on Amazon

Aha! Gotcha! on Amazon

From my own personal experience, I have never needed calculus or differential equations or any of that advanced sort of math in my whole career. I'm now doing somewhat advanced DSP work, and even there I haven't needed advanced math. (I don't entirely understand how the FFT works; I just know how to use its properties to get the result I need. Other people wrote C versions of the FFT for me; I haven't needed to write it.)

The math that has been useful to me is basic logic stuff, to know how to write conditions for if statements and the like; O(n) estimations, to help you choose the best algorithm to solve your problem; and basic probability stuff, to help me understand how caches work and such. So the first class sounds better to me than the second.

I'll recommend one more book to you. It's a sort of encyclopedia of algorithms... it will expand your mind with possibilities (if you don't even know something exists, you won't be able to use it to solve your problems). It's engagingly written, with "war stories" that make it more lively.

The Algorithm Design Manual on Google Books

The Algorithm Design Manual on Amazon

The author's web page for the book

steveha

In the current market, hardware-only e-book makers like this have no chance at all. Amazon has their e-book library, B&N has one, Sony has one... the proliferation of e-libraries isn't a problem in itself, except each is tied to the same brand of hardware, and nothing else. With iTunes and iPhone apps, Apple has pushed media lock-in further than I ever thought would be successful. I congratulate their shareholders, but I still think it's a terrible idea. It's like we're reverting from the era of the Internet back to proprietary BBS's like GENie Online and (old) AOL, where everything was bundled together and walled up.

It is no news that the greatest computer scientists and programmers are/were mathematicians.

I caution you that there are many other science professions which require math to varying degrees. The above statement could also be true of phycisists, chemists and maybe even biologists. The vectors, proof and algorithms that math provides a foundation to (or is) can be compared to the statistics that a biologist relies on or more generally processing empirical data in any science. We teach our kids basic math so they understand home loans and taxation later in life. Similarly, your best x in any science related field will likely have strong math skills to take what gets thrown at them.

I have two choices: 'Discreet structures with graph theory' (discrete math; proofs, sets, algorithms and graphs) on one side, and 'Selected math chapters' (math analysis; vectors, euclidean space, differentials) on the other. I'm scared of the second one because it's said to be harder. But contrary to my own opinion, one assistant told me that it would be more useful for a programmer compared to the first subject. Then again, he's not a programmer.

But he's definitely correct. The second is going to give you practical skills in programming -- a wide array of practical skills. The first is most likely going to give you some automata theory for computers but unless you're going into theoretical research, the second is the obvious answer. Graphics and games are all vectors, the web is becoming even more so with new browser rendering technologies. Rendering is all euclidean space transposed onto a two dimensional plane (screen) using points (pixels). Differentials are huge in the vision and image processing world and again, in graphics. This is your obvious selection although I challenge you to take both. Also, look for courses on classes that blur the lines between stats/math and computer science. Like courses on error correcting codes or computer language design and theory.

I don't know about you but I would rather take a seriously difficult course and learn a lot with a grade of C+ than take a seriously easy course and learn little with a grade of A+.

Unfortunately, math doesn't return my love, and prefers me to struggle with it.

As a brief aside, it's entirely possible you simply were never exposed to fun math or been exposed to a really influential teacher. It will not give you the joy that primary school math league gave me nor will it be a perfect substitute but Martin Gardner has some really fun math. While this won't get you excited about graph theory and linear equations, it might spark something in you to devour math regardless of how dry it is. Talking about quadratic sieves in regards to finding primes is really boring stuff when it's a paper full of symbols. But if you know what kind of power this holds in regards to cryptography, one can get really zealous about it. Remember to help your kids with this should you decide to procreate.

Also if you haven't read Godel, Escher, Bach, it might be time. Copies of those sell for cheap used online.

In real terms, that involves raising the level of education and the quality of life in all parts of the globe to the point where there are no large groups of people who are still so poor that they have nothing to lose, or so ignorant that they have nothing to believe in beyond what their local preacher tells them.

It's hard to square this advice with the fact that most terrorists are college-educated. Bin laden was an engineer from a wealth family, Mohamed Atta had a PHD in urban engineering, KSM has a degree in mechanical engineering, Ayman al-Zawahiri was a surgeon from a wealthy family, Abdulmutallab was a mechanical engineer from a very wealthy family. The Israelis have had the same experience with the PLO & Hamas -- the more educated and affluent tend to be over-represented, especially engineers and doctors (this was discussed on /. a little while ago). When in the Global Attitudes Project, respondents who were more educated or higher income were more likely to say that suicide bombings carried out against Westerners were justified.

Even more bizarrely, most terrorists come from the wealthier nations in the area, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, despite the fact that they enjoy a much higher per-capita GDP, standard of living and education systems than places like Somalia, Sudan or Indonesia. The better their lives, the more they seem to gravitate towards violent extremism. There are a number of plausible explanations for this, my favorite is that military/political influence is luxury good and those that are in abject poverty are effectively apolitical since they have no labor to spare from making ends meet. There is also the point that since terrorist networks are fragile they must only recruit the most competent and self-sufficient.

None of this is to say that we shouldn't promote education and economic growth as worth goals, but the idea that terrorism is born from a lack of opportunity is plainly in conflict with the facts. Terrorists tend to be educated (quite often Western-educated which not a good mark on our schools) and more wealthy than then unwashed, apolitical, masses in the third world.

See, e.g:

http://www.amazon.com/What-Makes-Terrorist-Economics-Terrorism/dp/0691134383
http://www.krueger.princeton.edu/terrorism2.pdf (PDF)

...but the Kindle is a hardware platform.

...except when it's not.

Here is a thermal imager for $2,000.

Thermal cameras used by the cops still cost quite a bit. We had one in the Heat & Mass lab in college and you had to give up your drivers license and student ID to borrow it out, and you couldn't even leave the building.

The cheap devices on Amazon just look like non-contact temp sensors with some fancy electronics. If someone was trying to snoop around my house with one of the devices you linked to they'd probably be close enough to hit with a baseball bat.

This is the cheapest I could find however something like this is probably required to do what you're afraid of.

Still a valid question, but the 'cheap technology' isn't quite there yet.

Thermal cameras used by the cops still cost quite a bit. We had one in the Heat & Mass lab in college and you had to give up your drivers license and student ID to borrow it out, and you couldn't even leave the building.

The cheap devices on Amazon just look like non-contact temp sensors with some fancy electronics. If someone was trying to snoop around my house with one of the devices you linked to they'd probably be close enough to hit with a baseball bat.

This is the cheapest I could find however something like this is probably required to do what you're afraid of.

Still a valid question, but the 'cheap technology' isn't quite there yet.

Don't think so. But maybe the Earth will be like Mars once we have completed our "pollute-everything-you-can" task.

Or Mars will become more like the Earth once terraforming is initiated, even if it's just local changes under domes instead of the complete transformation of the planet portrayed in science-fiction like Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars . Now we can present to environmentalist-minding people a conundrum: what's better, an arid lifeless planet, or a planet that's polluted but life-sustaining?

industrial coffee maker (can make enough coffee, continuously, for at least 20 people) - $242.07
http://www.amazon.com/VPR-Commercial-12-Cup-Pour-Over-Warmers/dp/B000BN7W84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704523&sr=8-1

cheap coffee (weeks supply for 20 people) - $14.50
http://www.amazon.com/Folgers-Ground-Regular-PAG20015-Category/dp/B00006IDJO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704605&sr=1-2

coffee filters (months supply for 20 people) - $5.23
http://www.amazon.com/BUNN-BCF250-Commercial-Coffee-Filters/dp/B0006VNO7Y/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704669&sr=1-12

so for about 250 initially and a monthly recurring cost of about 50 bucks. hmmm, 20 sleepy employees who are sluggish and inattentive for several hours a day (lets say 2 hours, or 1/4 of their shift). now, per employee that's a monthly cost of $2.50 to not diminish that 1/4 of their shift.

how little would you have to be paying your employees to not think that's a good idea? pennies a day???

furthermore, this isn't much of a cost cutting measure. even if I have 10,000 people working for me, I'm only paying $2500 a month to give them coffee (excluding the cost of the machines, which last a decade) or $30,000 per year, which is nothing for a 10,000 employee company.

industrial coffee maker (can make enough coffee, continuously, for at least 20 people) - $242.07
http://www.amazon.com/VPR-Commercial-12-Cup-Pour-Over-Warmers/dp/B000BN7W84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704523&sr=8-1

cheap coffee (weeks supply for 20 people) - $14.50
http://www.amazon.com/Folgers-Ground-Regular-PAG20015-Category/dp/B00006IDJO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704605&sr=1-2

coffee filters (months supply for 20 people) - $5.23
http://www.amazon.com/BUNN-BCF250-Commercial-Coffee-Filters/dp/B0006VNO7Y/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704669&sr=1-12

so for about 250 initially and a monthly recurring cost of about 50 bucks. hmmm, 20 sleepy employees who are sluggish and inattentive for several hours a day (lets say 2 hours, or 1/4 of their shift). now, per employee that's a monthly cost of $2.50 to not diminish that 1/4 of their shift.

how little would you have to be paying your employees to not think that's a good idea? pennies a day???

furthermore, this isn't much of a cost cutting measure. even if I have 10,000 people working for me, I'm only paying $2500 a month to give them coffee (excluding the cost of the machines, which last a decade) or $30,000 per year, which is nothing for a 10,000 employee company.

industrial coffee maker (can make enough coffee, continuously, for at least 20 people) - $242.07
http://www.amazon.com/VPR-Commercial-12-Cup-Pour-Over-Warmers/dp/B000BN7W84/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704523&sr=8-1

cheap coffee (weeks supply for 20 people) - $14.50
http://www.amazon.com/Folgers-Ground-Regular-PAG20015-Category/dp/B00006IDJO/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704605&sr=1-2

coffee filters (months supply for 20 people) - $5.23
http://www.amazon.com/BUNN-BCF250-Commercial-Coffee-Filters/dp/B0006VNO7Y/ref=sr_1_12?ie=UTF8&s=home-garden&qid=1262704669&sr=1-12

so for about 250 initially and a monthly recurring cost of about 50 bucks. hmmm, 20 sleepy employees who are sluggish and inattentive for several hours a day (lets say 2 hours, or 1/4 of their shift). now, per employee that's a monthly cost of $2.50 to not diminish that 1/4 of their shift.

how little would you have to be paying your employees to not think that's a good idea? pennies a day???

furthermore, this isn't much of a cost cutting measure. even if I have 10,000 people working for me, I'm only paying $2500 a month to give them coffee (excluding the cost of the machines, which last a decade) or $30,000 per year, which is nothing for a 10,000 employee company.

Have you ever read Gina Ogden's book (Women Who Love Sex)?

There's a great chapter in there about women who "think off" (that is, mentally initiate their own orgasm).

I believe in the male's case it is referred to as premature ejaculation or something similar? Hell, if they can't find their own G-spots they can just think themselves off......

The book you're referring to is 2x Nobel Laureate Linus Pauling's Cancer and Vitamin C. I believe Pauling called for either intravenous infusions of sodium ascorbate, or oral consumption of ascorbic acid.

Little followup research has been done, because there's no money in a simple vitamin that has no patent protection.

a lot of people out [there] have agendas

The Medical Industry has an agenda too: charge insurance for as much as they can get away with.

My grandmother developed multiple myeloma, which is a type of bone cancer. Her Mayo Clinic, Scottsdale doctors told her in December 2004 that, without treatment, she'd have 6 months to live. Her treatment consisted of some pills and a weekly injection to boost her red blood cell counts. After 6 months of treatment, they did another bone biopsy, and found that the cancer had advanced and that there wasn't much else they could do. She started hospice care on a Saturday, and died a week later.

I later learned that they were billing Medicare $1000 for each injection.

Basically, they subjected my grandmother to the most expensive treatment plan they could devise and handed her off to hospice when they couldn't justify it anymore.

If your doctor recommends getting an angiogram, coronary bypass surgery, balloon angioplasty, or taking cholesterol-lowering drugs your best course of action may be to run out the door. For most people these procedures/treatments are not effective and are completely unnecessary. The most popular medical procedures are the most profitable for the health care industry but are often the least effective. Hundreds of thousands of people each year are deceived in undergoing expensive medical treatments that do no good and may even do a great deal of harm. Highly effective procedures that are low-risk and inexpensive are ignored or even ridiculed. Recommending expensive, high-risk procedures over the cheaper, more effective ones amounts to nothing more than fraud. If you had the choice of going through a risky $20,000 surgical procedure or simply taking a daily vitamin supplement which one would you choose? Most patients aren't given the choice.

These facts, and more, led Charles T. McGee, M.D. to write this hard hitting, expose of the health care system. In it you will learn which procedures and treatments to avoid and which ones offer the most hope. If you are concerned about heart disease, and everyone should be, you need to read this book!

-Heart Frauds: Uncovering the Biggest Health Scam in History (emphasis added)

This was my grandmother's experience, but with cancer instead of heart disease.

Computers don't emit "smartness radiation."

Computers in the class room have been around at least 25 years. There was an Apple ][ in every classroom when I was a kid. We used it to die of dysentery on the Oregon Trail. Did we learn anything about history? No. We learned to that all that settlers needed was a 99 rounds of ammunition.

Computers in the classroom are just the latest incarnation of the whiz-bang technology that would magically make improve education and test scores, without requiring any more work on the child's, parent's, or teacher's part. Just like television, movies, and filmstrips were hailed as an educator's silver bullet generations before. (Stoll wrote about this 14 years ago, and it stills holds true.)

Anyone that has attended class in any "e-learning" classroom, can attest that of the regular occurrences of projectors that don't work. Video and audio links that fail. Overly sensitive microphones and the like. The amount of time wasted trying to just set things up before instruction can begin is non-trivial, and easily can accumulate to entire missed days of instruction. No thank you.

Watching passively, and just clicking "next" is not education. The reason why it's used for occupational training, is that because no one wants to acutally teach, nor learn. It's indemnification.

If you really want to improve education, how about removing the distractions, and actually teaching out of the book?

Here is an interview of Prof. Stanley Fish, author of There's No Such Thing As Free Speech: And It's a Good Thing, Too . I hope this brings something new to the discussion here.

Hello everyone,
I need a little help from the slashdot community. I am interested in reading some of this author's works, but they don't seem to be available for the Kindle yet. Please take a few moments out of your day to help me by clicking on the link on each of this author's books that indicates a desire to have the book available on the kindle. Here is a link to his author page on Amazon to get you started.
Thanks a lot for your assistance. I look forward to reading these books on my Kindle very soon now.

As others have pointed out, the anti-netbook push is a desperate attempt by manufacturers to prevent the computer industry from migrating to $199 laptops. The EeePC was originally announced as a $199 laptop. Massive efforts have been expended to stop that trend, by both Microsoft and Intel. Microsoft, of course, frantically announced a life extension for Windows XP, with CPU speed and screen size restrictions designed to cripple "netbooks". Intel actually has a screen size restriction for Atom-based netbooks. (For a CPU manufacturer, that's sheer arrogance.) The netbook manufacturers were pressured to move away from Linux. (The first generation of netbooks ware all Linux-based.)

It's been successful. Since 2007, the price point for netbooks has moved up, not down. Try searching on Amazon. (Hint: search "netbook computers -case -cover -sleeve -stickers -skins -adapter -keyboard -screen -charger -drive -speaker -phone -accessory -komputerbay -battery -cable -mouse", then use the "Sort by lowest price" option. Amazon doesn't make it easy to find the cheapest product.) The cheapest is a Visual Land 7" laptop at $149. EeePC units now start at $249. The cheapest new newbook on Google Shopping (which seems to be mostly a rehash of Amazon) is $229. The cheapest netbook at WalMart is $278.

The 3rd generation of Atom processor is about what it's always been about-- lower power. Processor is ~10% faster clock/clock, but this time the graphics is integrated on the same silicon chip. AKA much lower power-- we're talking 12 hours on a 6cell battery instead of 5-6 with the GMA950 graphics chips that were on a 90nm process.

AMD does not have an Atom killer in the works. They would have announced it to keep shareholders happy.
The ARM chips are SLOW for a desktop environment. Sure, they can accelerate 1080p video (so can my GMA500 in my netbook), but if Gnome is running at 8fps (yes, I saw it) then the processor is ... not fast enough. The Atoms are much faster than ARM's offerings, and Windows 7 is faster and more resource friendly than Linux.

Windows 7 is the "netbook friendly" Windows version after Vista, so I'm not sure why you say Microsoft has not been netbook friendly. Just don't get one with Windows 7 Starter.

I'm sorry but your post just sounds like the typical "rah-rah-Linux Microsoft Sucks" post without the facts to back it up, just ranting.

It seems that netbooks in the 7-9" range have started to disappear, instead they've grown slightly (both in size and specs) to essentially have become 10" cheap laptops. I know many people that use them as machines to take while traveling (especially internationally) and even more people that use them as their primary portable (typically with a larger laptop or desktop relegated to, well, the desk). $300 for a small, durable laptop with more than enough performance to do word-processing, web browsing and watch movies on, most which get 5+ hours of battery life (depending on usage) is still an amazing deal.

A good indication of their continuing success is the fact that 10" netbooks still account for 4 out of 5 of the top sellers in the computers and accessories categories on Amazon.

...Muscle of Love

And for a detailed debunking of Gould's quackery and hogwash, see Arthur Jensen's The g factor. Which was written by someone who is actually an expert in that field, rather than a hack with a political ax to grind.