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And in all cases for good photo prints, it's necessary to calibrate it...

Um, no- dye sub (wax) printers produce unbelievably fragile prints. You can scrape the wax right off the page with your fingernail, it creases easily, etc. Also, since it's a dye, and not a pigment, it fades within months.

They also suck up enormous amounts of energy and take a good 5-10 minutes (or longer) to warm up because it has to melt (and keep melted) all the damn wax and internal printer bits. Even with fairly sophisticated energy saving functions, the damn things still eat you out of house and home, and the melted wax has a smell that permeates the room. If you want to move the printer, you have to trigger a special cool-down mode and wait a good 30 minutes so that you don't spill wax inside the machine...

What are you talking about? I have none of those issues. Pictures from 5 years ago, not faded. It registers less than 1-3 watts in stand-by (but I unplug it anyway). When I start it up cold as in not plugged in, I could print in less than 30 seconds - now, I have no clue whether this is just waiting for the OS of the machine to start and selecting my picture or there is really some warm-up time. There is no wax coming off the page with a finger nail, I just scratched a picture - nothing, it is clear coated. There is no transit time, the little guy even has a handle to be portable! I never ever smelt wax from the thing.

You must be either talking about ancient machines or big ones which I'm unfamiliar with.

Mine is a previous generation of this Sony (otherwise mostly same):
http://www.amazon.com/Sony-DPP-FP97-Picture-3-5-Inch-Tilt-Adjustable/dp/B0022NHQBY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=office-products&qid=1259906998&sr=8-1

For 8x10 prints, there's Hi-Touch, which from their 4x6 printers I tried, were similiar to my experience on my Sony.

You can get pretty good price on replacement continuous ink systems, which are pretty cheap and easy these days.

http://www.amazon.com/Bulk-Continuous-Ink-System-CIS/dp/B002MGZUHS/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=office-products&qid=1259885902&sr=8-4

Note: I haven't used this particular one, so I can't vouch for it. But I have used others, which had a moderately easy setup and a ridiculously large amount of ink. And no, there was no messing about with messy refills and leaky tanks of ink.

http://www.amazon.com/Epson-Claria-Hi-def-cartridges-T078920/dp/B000I7VL08 Is the OEM ink from amazon for 50$.. If you don't require the HD Claria Ink then get some regular/cheap ink on ebay for 15-20$. Expect to pay more for anything at a local (Best Buy) type store..

Amazon beat you to the punch: Amazon search for "choose your own adventure"

In my experience, bugs are a bigger problem than documentation. All the computers in my household (mine, wife's, two young kids') run Linux. I'm the only one who's a Linux power user. My wife has only started using Linux this year. My kids have basically had no big problems with lack of documentation. E.g., my older daughter, who is really into art, was highly motivated to learn gimp. I handed her a book on gimp, but she never opened it. She just preferred to google for tutorials.

I'm not saying the documentation situation is heavenly, but the bigger problem is bugs. For instance, my wife is not able to get the Line In sound input to work with Audacity so that she can digitize her old Who and Dylan LPs. It's not a documentation problem. It used to work, but it just seems to be broken on the current version of Ubuntu. On my own linux box, the sound output level always goes to zero every time I log in. I raise it, and then 15 minutes later it lowers itself again. Yes, I've reported the bug. When I hit a web page with a java applet, firefox crashes. Again, it's a bug, not a documentation issue. All of my family's current usability problems have to do with bugs, not lack of documentation.

Yes, that's the image I'm talking about. I never suggested that it was unreasonable for an amateur to make a hypothesis. Certainly Leonardo had many insights that proved right over time.

But the history of reproduction is well studied and is written up nicely in popular style in this book. (You can even browse the book. The first few pages show and discuss a relevant Leonardo sketch.) Leonardo is credited with recognizing (as an adult) the connection between sex and reproduction and noting that the features of the child derive from both parents. That in itself was a significant leap for science at the time. Identifying the sperm and egg as carriers of sexual reproduction would have been groundbreaking. Interestingly, Leonardo sketch of copulation (found in the book above) shows no indication of sperm or egg.

I don't believe the specifics of plant reproduction were known in the mid-15th century either. Nehemiah Grew is generally recognized with identifying plant sexual organs Before that, horticulture proceeded through the selection of seed from plants with desired properties rather than through selective crossbreeding. So plant reproduction seems like an unlikely place for extrapolating the sexual carriers.

Examining the VM drawing, I'm guessing the "united sperm and ova" is the circle near the middle of the image with four spikes coming out of it and four smaller circles adjoining it. The circle to the left does indeed have a very sperm-like tail. But why would the artist hypothesize this specific shape for the sexual carrier? A flagellum isn't even a particularly useful means of propulsion at length scales that can be seen with the naked eye (which have higher Reynolds number, making fins a better choice).

More reasonably, I suspect that modern knowledge of the appearance of sperm was combined with Leonardo's acknowledged insight into reproduction, resulting in a misinterpreted geometric doodle.

Read the book.

After all, being truly machiavellian is an art rarely practiced outside of government.

Definitely not true. In fact, there's a pretty good book (as well as quite a few imitators) on the very subject of how Machiavelli is incredibly useful for understanding modern business.

The Victorian Internet: The Remarkable Story of the Telegraph and the Nineteenth Century's On-Line Pioneers

7 isn't a valid replacement for any letter in its written word form.

Like a chinger would know.

http://www.windows-hq.com/wp-content/uploads/windows7logo.jpg

http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00004WZW8.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg

The full link to the book is here:

http://www.amazon.com/Phantoms-Brain-Probing-Mysteries-Human/dp/0688172172/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259799787&sr=8-1

First, it isn't clear how Al Gore would instantly become a billionaire if cap and trade becomes law. Second, you really think one man is more influential than several, already, multi-billion dollar industries?

It's quite clear how he would become a multibillionaire. He started a company that does nothing but buy and sell carbon credits. He'd be the founder and owner of the biggest company on the carbon credit version of Wall Street. I also never said he was more influential than multi-billion dollar industries. However he is one of the most influential people in the world in terms of environmental policy.

While this may be true, they already are the completely dominant force in commerce and so they'll make even more money if they don't have to retool anything.

Incorrect. The cost of doing business in the developed world is more expensive than in the undeveloped world. The western factories are steadily losing ground to the Daewoos and Tatas of the world. Their profits (adjusted for inflation) are shrinking. They have a few choices: compete from a position that is inferior in the long term, level the playing field by getting rid of wealth destroying laws like western income taxes and minimum wages (which the economically ignorant would never let happen), or use the fear of the scientifically ignorant to pressure the developing nations to level the playing field the other way. These are the same mega-corps that promote ideas like mandatory worker health benefits, minimum wage, and complicated tax accounting rules. Sure it costs them money, but it costs their small scale competitors a greater amount (in relative terms), so they win. If the American corporations didn't want greater regulation and global environmental treaties, why did they give record amounts of money to the Obama campaign? It certainly wasn't because he wanted to make the US a capitalist country again.

What? Are you counting yourself and all the other posters on slashdot?

No I'm counting world renowned scientists:
Astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas
Statistician Stephen McIntyre
Professor Habibullo Abdussamatov
Geologist Astrid Lyså
Prof. Roy Spencer, NASA scientist
Professor Richard Lindzen of MIT
a few dozen here...including an IPCC member.
and these 32 000 guys.
That should be enough people to show there is no "consensus" on global warming.

What cooling? The temperatures may be slightly cooler than the absolute peak, but to say there is a cooling trend is simply not true.

The "trend", as you call it, is a decade long...so far, and it's projected to last another few decades. How long was the warming that proceeded it? Twenty five years? I find it interesting that you quote a man (James Hansen of GISS) who was forced to retract falsified evidence that had claimed that the 2000s were the hottest decade in recorded history. And whose revised (i.e. more truthful) report showed that the world has cooled since the 1940s, while at the same time CO2 production skyrocketed. Additionally, wasn't he implicated in the CRU data manipulation? Yeah, he was. He's a trustwo

"Except that science only requires observation as a postulate and no other 'leaps of faith'. That is the difference between science and religion. "

Not quite. Religion - the practical, mystical, experiential psychological kind, as practiced by, say, Quakers, Sufis, Pentecostals, Buddhists, and Catholic monks - also only requires observation.

The word 'religion' is often blurred, you see, between two very different concepts: spirituality, and authority. In each religion, the mystics are the experimentalists; the theologians are the theorists. Often the two camps do not agree.

I think what would be a more coherent argument would be to say that BOTH the physical and the spiritual/metaphysical worlds can be investigated using EITHER direct personal observation, or inferred third-party observation based on trusted authorities, and that both ways of observation and both fields of enquiry are ech useful and problematic in their separate ways.

If you're trying to argue that the metaphysical world simply does not exist and therefore any writing which refers to it is a priori false, that's factually incorrect. Stuff which does not play by the current laws of physics is out there and it does pop up and go 'hi' every now and then.

http://www.amazon.com/Extraordinary-Knowing-Science-Skepticism-Inexplicable/dp/0553382233/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259722267&sr=8-1

Which is cool really, because the world would be a very boring and frightening place if it were exactly as the current dogma of science (to be distinguished from the methods of science) tell us it is: mostly empty, devoid of intelligent life for thousands of years, limited to lightspeed, and ending in personal extinction.

Fortunately it's not like that. But coming to terms with this knowledge will be a challenge for both science and religion together.

"Religions all require you to believe in things that cannot be proven"

Not really, at least not in the mystical faiths. Mysticism is all about personal experience and has a lot in common with psi investigation. Some scientists arbitrarily declare these fields to be off-limits on the circular grounds that "science has proven that non-physical reality does not exist, therefore only insane people have these kinds of experiences", but that isn't actually correct. There's at least 150 years worth of evidence for the existence of the spiritual which does not require blind faith.

http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind-hard-find-contemporary/dp/0742547922/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259721768&sr=8-1

"But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion."

Or any sufficiently compelling cause, such as Communism, Fascism, Free Market Economics, or Manifest National Destiny. All of which accomplished a lot of good for some people while also shafting others who got in their way.

Good people doing evil things in the name of a good cause is a fact of human life, not just religion.

The thing about the Wild West, is it was never wild. That was a myth told to, I suppose in a way, romanticize cow boys and some of the crooks of that time.

From the book Frontier Violence: Another Look, author W. Eugene Hollon, provides us with these facts:
* In Abilene, Ellsworth, Wichita, Dodge City, and Caldwell, for the years from 1870 to 1885, there were only 45 total homicides. This equates to a rate of approximately 1 murder per 100,000 residents per year.
* In Abilene, supposedly one of the wildest of the cow towns, not a single person was killed in 1869 or 1870.

We have much higher levels of homicide now compaired to the Wild West although I'm glad to see that violent crime is at an all time low, that is a great thing.

As for the criminal on Gangland, yeah he has a point, however if you are truly carrying concealed, then no one should see even so much as the outline of your piece even under a jacket, otherwise it isn't considered concealed, and you can lose your CCW over that. I have an FN-9 with a short grip that is invisible on me, that said I also opt to carry pepper spray at times when I don't think a gun is needed.

So I think we are going to have to respectfully agree to disagree. The Boy Scout in me wants to be prepared for the worse case scenario, be it from a robber, or my gov (I pray not), or even straight up rioting/looters (I live in an area that in the last 4 years I've lost power for over 3 weeks on one time, 2 weeks another time due to hurricanes), and both my wife and I have the common sense not to shoot at each other in pitch of night without having the unknown shadow declare itself, and both of us have put in the time training ourselves how to handle them properly. I'm sure an accident could happen, just like I'm sure I could accidentally wipe out drive on a production server with a mistaken command, but I'm professional enough to know to take slow calculated steps when I'm dealing with things in my life that could potentially cause me problems. I realize not everyone may be this way, which is where your side of the argument makes more sense.

You might want to consider HeroScape. It is similar in nature and available from WalMart, Toys'R'Us, and Amazon. I've been looking into using it for our D&D campaign.

I thought one of the points of patent law was to create a library of knowledge. The idea is that if an inventor has to keep the invention secret or obscured in order to make money on it, the knowledge could be lost. Patents give temporary protection to the inventor (or their supreme corporate overlord).

If mathematics were patentable, then eventually the knowledge is available to all and the mathematician (or their supreme corporate overlord) gets rights for some certain period of time.

This doesn't seem to be that much of a problem, or does it?

If the point of patent law is to create a library of knowledge, then for software patents it is an epic fail. A proper library of knowledge might be gleaned from the ACM journals or from other publications that deal with software development theories, but the USPTO is not, nor has it ever been a depository of knowledge of computational sciences.

More specifically, a software developer can create in one day dozens of different algorithms and even have them implemented.

More to the point, the largest problem that the USPTO faces is dealing with prior art and the fact that such prior art is not contained within the repository of the library of previously filed software patents. It is unfortunate that a large number of the software patent that have been filed and even accepted by the USPTO have precedence in books like The Art of Computer Programming

For myself, if something I patented could be found in that book series, I would be supremely embarrassed... yet I've found stuff that has been patented which is in those books... and the patent was filed well after the publication of that volume. Nothing against Kunth either, as he is acting here more as a historian and for me does a much better job of establishing a proper library of knowledge about this particular subject than can ever possibly be done by an organization like the USPTO.

Did nobody read Nicholas Negroponte's Being Digital ? I think I re-read his book once every two years just to remind myself why this computing stuff is not intuitive and to remember that I have developed a skill set that does not relate to any reality other than that of the computer.

I don't want to take anything away from physicians. They're smart people and every one I have been to recently is capable of dealing with a personal computer. Some have dedicated touchscreen systems to help to record patient information and to write prescriptions. Others use computers to reduce the need for office staff to push paperwork. Still others have gone "paperless," and are trying to keep all records electronically so that they don't have to have a room just for patient records.

I also don't want to take anything away from hospital administrators who have to handle the tremendous losses of an emergency room with 9 to 12% of cases coming in with no insurance and no ability to pay for necessary treatment, combined with a mandate that they take all comers, regardless of whether or not the hospital will wind up picking up the tab. They're trying to reduce the steps necessary to manage a pretty large organization that must be large in order to be able to stay afloat.

But I'm looking at this Harvard study in the same way that I've been looking at the Women's breast exam and mammography study as well as the recent pap smear study where statistics are being slightly misused. And the end result of this study will be used to invalidate the Administration's claims that computerization will result in a savings, just as the last two studies have been used to claim that any health insurance reform that passes the House and Senate will be used to limit care. Never mind that it's false.

The administration's computerization proposal is all about patient care and not administration. The Harvard study covered computerization of administrative tasks. Will there be a savings? That is yet to be seen.

A computer application needs to be easy to use. It needs to be so analogous to the types of everyday tasks that the nurses, doctors and support staff does that they can readily understand and work with it. That's Negroponte's point. Furthermore, any application (and user interface) written to streamline patient care needs to actually make things easier to provide patient care than the methods currently being used. If this is not the case, it will take a long time for any savings to be seen because adoption will be very slow.

If you are a programmer and you are working on something like this, you need to spend a day with a nurse. You need to spend a day with a doctor. You need to observe their procedures and really understand them, which means they need to explain things that they did to you. And that's a problem because no nurse or doctor really has time in their day "for this nonsense." So, what's probably needed here is a programmer who actually studied medicine, which is probably a seriously small subset of all programmers out there.

I work in television. And I remember when the first computerized video editors came out that changed the editing paradigm for us. they were pretty slow. It took a long time to load material into them and then the end result had such low resolution that you could not determined whether or not the camera's focus was properly pulled. You had to take the end result and go into a very expensive suite and reassemble everything with a computer list created for that purpose. Of course personal computers got faster. And their capabilities got better. And compression of pictures got a lot better. Today, there are a number of video editing tools out there that enable us to do our jobs very well and everyone understands the worth of loading material into the systems. Additionally, there are different editing systems available that use different paradigms for e

A reinterpretation of D&D 3.0/3.5 - I don't recall if it is the exact same OGL that D20 originally used. But it is a mostly open-gaming license. The Pathfinder Bestiary is currently #4 (bestseller) in Roleplaying Games on Amazon (#4,490 in Books). The Core Rulebook was in the Top 5 for quite a while as well - but Paizo underestimated demand and it sold out the first print run in August within the first couple weeks.

It's why I stopped playing D20 games. After 4.0 came out with NO open content, I turned and never looked back.

Well, that's certainly stupid.

What exactly do you mean by open content? If you mean you're pissed because they didn't allow people to republish WotC's rules and content verbatim, then I suppose that's a legitimate concern.

But they certainly have opened 4.0 up, and there are plenty of 3rd party products available for it.

I'm curious, which games do you play, since having an open system is so important? Off the top of my head, the only non-d20 game I can think of which has a semi-open license allowing 3rd parties to publish content is Savage Worlds. And their license, while free, is relatively restrictive in that you must specifically get permission from them.

If you want to sell your work, you must contact us at PEGShane@gmail.com with your plan and some samples of your work. We'll work with each company on a case-by-case basis. Once we grant your company the license, you can make whatever you want without submitting it for further approval, as long as you follow the guidelines below.

Be aware that we're looking for HIGH production values--meaning great art, trade dress, and professional layout--as much as we are great content.

I think BESM had some kind of license, but that game is long defunct. All the other stuff I can think of (True 20, Mutants & Masterminds, Pathfinder, SpyCraft) are d20-based.

So I can only think of one current, non-d20 RPG with an open license. You've stated that you play RPGs (plural) and that you no longer play d20-based games. You also implied that you only play games with open content, whatever twisted definition you might have for that term. So what are the other games you play?

Uhh, Doesn't the Wii have an online marketplace where you can get those games from systems past and play them on your new Wii under emulation?

I'm sure they aren't making these two items just to look pretty on a shelf.

Uhh, Doesn't the Wii have an online marketplace where you can get those games from systems past and play them on your new Wii under emulation?

I'm sure they aren't making these two items just to look pretty on a shelf.

And so what we find when we look carefully is that the gang organization looks a whole lot like a typical corporate structure, a lot like McDonald's in some sense. And so just like McDonald's, it turns out there's a handful of guys at the top who are very successful who run the gang, who are bringing home, you know, mid to high six-figure salaries, but the 90 percent of the guys who are working in the gang are the young kids who are selling drugs on the street corner that it turns out they're getting paid roughly minimum wage for standing on the street corner and selling the drugs. -- Steven Levitt, NPR Interview

I think EVE Online bears this out, how a loosely coupled group of independent yet incentivised players can collectively make a place for themselves in a larger social space. Those larger groups then snap at each other for domination, and it's all the same "game" be it in virtual worlds, social worlds, or economic worlds.

GP wagnerrp should read Lt Col Grossman's book on this exact subject.

http://www.amazon.com/Killing-Psychological-Cost-Learning-Society/dp/0316330116

The amount of training that it takes to turn a civilian into someone capable of killing is immense (beyond the capabilities of shipping companies) and only a tiny percentage of the population is capable of making that shift even with the training. Nonlethal weapons that target the pirates' boat rather than the pirates is preferable for many other reasons, but this is the biggest one.

Since last week there is some more concrete evidence that scientist willingly manipulated data and discredited scientists who stood up against the forced consensus. But the feeling that there has been widespread manipulation of this global warming topic by enviromental agency's, lobbyists and governments has been around for years.

For me the book State of Fear by Michael Crighton got me thinking: http://www.amazon.com/State-Fear-Michael-Crichton/dp/0061782661/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1259584573&sr=8-1
Disclamer: the story of the book is pretty sucky for Crighton standards, but the message 'Think for your fucking self and look at the actual data without parroting every guy with a labcoat' is a message that is true for any subject!

I've lived (not backpacked, lived) in South America for about two and a half years - the slums on the outskirts of Buenos Aires for two years, a couple of months in Lima and three months in a nice spot in Santiago.

The IT issues have been covered well enough. Here are a few additional ideas:

- Ditch the nice, expensive backpack and luggage. Go to the Army surplus store and buy your luggage there. Or something like this for walking around and day to day use. Avoid military emblems, but definitely go for that "beat to hell" look. Big expensive North Face bags draw the eyes of thieves. Dusty old rucksacks don't. The same goes for looking like a walking, talking North Face commercial with your clothing.
- Learn the language. Spanish and Portuguese are the obvious two. Know the basics, and be sure you can ask directions.
- Check visa requirements for each country and register with the State Department to receive travel and security updates on each country. These are immensely useful for avoiding difficult situations.
- Understand what the embassy can do for you. If you get arrested, mugged, or run into most problems overseas, the answer is "not much".
- Be VERY careful with taxis. "Express" kidnappings are quite common through most of South America - haggle for taxis and always, always use a service if you can, just to be on the safe side. Most major shopping centers and many big commercial bus stops have their own services. They cost about double what others charge, but it's worth it to avoid getting robbed.
- Ignore touts and always make your lodging arrangements in advance.
- Keep your eyes open and, if you can, travel in a group.

Have a lot of fun and do me a favor - walk down 9 de Julio while eating a good Havana alfajor ;-)

Elastic wave equations can be transformed into Maxwell's electromagnetic field equations and viceversa, see for example W. Chew's textbook for a demonstration. Funny, isn't it ?!?

Actually, I've never flown a plane, but I did have to take ground school as a class. My exact degree was "aviation management" which dealt with airline operations, airport management, and air traffic control. The thing that pissed me off about the AC's comment above was that we still had to learn about fuel consumption and drag coefficients, and so do pilots.

And yes, I own This Watch, although it's mostly because I like the way it looks. The slide rule itself is too small to be practical.

Quantum computers with Optronic pathways are now possible, I wonder how much longer it will be before Asimov's fiction becomes reality... When the day comes (and it's not to far away) that we can no longer claim to be the most intelligent thing we are aware of will we chose to be slave, master or form a symbiosis?

Your musings sound not so much like Asimov's fiction, but futurist Ray Kurzweil's predictions in books like The Singularity is Near . One of Kurzweil's observations is that as soon as we can create a machine equivalent to a human brain, we can create a machine more powerful than a human brain.

> Here's my unsolicited advice: buy an unlocked GSM phone from overseas.

There is no need to do that. Many unlocked Nokia phones can be bought locally, in the US for far cheaper. I bought a Nokia 5800 Navigation Edition from Amazon for $200 (after $50 rebate). http://www.amazon.com/Nokia-Navigation-Unlocked-Navigation-included-U-S/dp/B002R0DWYW?tag=slickdeals AFAIK, it would be very difficult to find this phone anywhere near this price overseas. I occasionally see Dell offer similar deals on unlocked Nokia phones.

Have you tried buying it? I know it's a new concept, only been around a few thousand years, and it'll totally fuck up your reputation as a leech on society, but otherwise it seems to work pretty well.

Why do so many people here have the impression society owes them other people's work for free?

HAHA! You refuse to buy from Amazon but patronize a bigger big box retailer.

I don't 'refuse' to buy from Amazon at all.

Why then did you say this:
"I buy books from Barnes and Nobles, not Amazon, because I like to support brick and mortar book stores. I buy both online and in the store."

I am afraid that if Amazon keeps growing, local bookstores will cease to exist.

As others have already said Amazon has affiliate stores. With Amazon it is possible for a small local bookstore to sell books on Amazon. It's also possible for local bookstores to have a cafe, no law says only B&N or Borders can have cafes. Many people, including me, go to B&N for the cafe. If there were a locally owned bookstore with a cafe I'd go there. I don't buy books or magazines every tyme I go to the cafe but it does increase the likelihood I will buy from them.

However, only crazy people think B&N is bigger than Amazon.

Amazon is bigger than B&N, whereas B&N market capitalization is $1.38 Billion Amazon's is $58.03.

'Different stores'? Well, I have...some Barnes and Noble, I have some Borders

Admittedly a big metro area, where I live we have more than just B&N and Borders. Yesterday on my way to a medical appointment, riding my bike, I stopped at a bookstore not owned by either chain. I have been to other locally owned bookstores as well. Also not all B&Ns and Borders carry the same books. When looking for a specific book I can go to one B&N and if they don't have it they can call other local stores to see if they have them. That is handy when it is something I want that day.

there's a single Book-a-Million

I haven't seen one of those around here though there was one where I used to live.

I think I've explained this clearly enough. You just read right past the part of my post where I explained I'm choosing to shop, physically, at B&N vs. some locally-owned new book store because Barnes and Nobles actually exists and the other does not.

In your original post I replied to you say nothing what so ever about there being no locally owned bookstores. It wasn't until I asked why you weren't buying from them until you said there were none. Now what's the possibility you would have said that if I had not asked?

And yes, if you live in Orlando Florida you there might, in fact, be an actual local bookstore you can buy books at.

I used to but obviously not now. And it wasn't always a big city. At one tyme a major employer in the area was McCoy Air Force Base, which closed in 1975. Even after Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom opened Orlando took years before it became a "big city".

I live in a county with an population 1/100th of that. The whole county.

That population figure you gave for Orlando is the greater Orlando area not specifically the city itself, the city's population itself is 230,514. The Greater Orlando area is made up of 4 counties.

I must say you didn't read about Orlando that well, just well enough to get the greater area's population.

Falcon

anyone interested in this distinction might appreciate the model described in finite and infinite games by james p. carse. it's a kind of convolution of the tao te ching, distilled down to:

A finite game is played for the purpose of winning. An infinite game is played for the purpose of continuing the play.

carse might say that performance-orientated people (paul) are occupied with the resulting claim - title, status, accomplishment, authority, etc - that they can make looking back on the win. those that are mastery-oriented (matt) are more concerned with developing ability to continue the play into the ("horizonal" - always in the advancing distance) future.

Surprise causes finite play to end; it is the reason for infinite play to continue.

and

To be serious is to press for a specified conclusion. To be playful is to allow for possibility, whatever the cost to oneself.

and

Because infinite players prepare themselves to be surprised by the future, they play in complete openness. It is not an openness as in candor, but an openness as in vulnerability. It is not a matter of exposing one's unchanging identity, the true self that has always been, but a way of exposing one's ceaseless growth, the dynamic self that is yet to be. The infinite player does not expect to only be amused by surprise, but to be transformed by it, for surprise does not alter some abstract past, but [by discovery of what actually happened,] one's own personal past.

(i wonder whether those interested in this kind of topic would more tend towards the mastery/infinite-play perspective?)

anyway, one of the most illuminating books i have read, along with the tao te ching (and, the one other on my paltry list, the politics of experience by r. d. laing).

ken

I much prefer a link to the book on amazon than a write up about how it exists there. Given that the book is "In Stock" for $15, I'm guessing this isn't the one remaining copy for sale :)

The manual is of some historic value as a relic of the 1950s, when we were actually trying to murder Castro with exploding cigars, but John Mulholland's actual manuals seem of little practical use, even then. Oh, I suppose there's some value in learning how to drop Roofies in your date's drink while lighting her cigarette, but the techniques developed by Mulholland wouldn't have passed muster at "The Man from Uncle." It was more "Get Smart" stuff.

Review here...

So, it's not all that.

There's a Kindel version so, I guess there will be a torrent?

It's really come to this? How about the dolphin immediately e-mails the child a John Taylor Gatto book?

If there's no reasonable answer, and Oracle refuses to spin it off, it clearly shows monopolistic intent, and the EU is rightfully worried.

Just because 59 Senators got off their asses doesn't mean that Oracle should get to buy all the marbles. Spin off MySQL and profit from it, Larry, or watch as your investment dwindles and you contribute to local unemployment, just because you believe everyone else must fail.

You can get Freedom on Blu-Ray at Amazon for 94.99$

Related to your point:
"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force That Undermines Health & Happiness"
http://www.amazon.com/Pleasure-Trap-Mastering-Undermines-Happiness/dp/1570671508
"Learn how to escape the dietary pleasure trap!"
http://www.healthpromoting.com/Articles/articles/PleasureTrap.htm
"""
From the perspective of our natural history, a daily life with such dietary choices is extraordinary. For hundreds of thousands of years, our ancient ancestors scratched and scraped, struggling against the harsh forces of nature in order to get enough food to survive. Even today, in undeveloped countries, significant food shortages are still a great concern, with millions dying each year from starvation. Yet, in a mere blink of history's eye--in just a few decades--industrialized societies have arisen from environments of scarcity and have transformed themselves into societies of unprecedented abundance. The most striking feature of that abundance is a virtually unlimited supply of food.
An abundance of food, by itself, is not a cause of health problems. But modern technology has done more than to simply make food perpetually abundant. Food also has been made artificially tastier. Food is often more stimulating than ever before--as the particular chemicals in foods that cause pleasure reactions have been isolated--and artificially concentrated. These chemicals include fats (including oils), refined carbohydrates (such as refined sugar and flour), and salt. Meats were once consumed mostly in the form of wild game--typically about 15% fat. Today's meat is a much different product. Chemically and hormonally engineered, it can be as high as 50% fat or more. Ice cream is an extraordinary invention for intensifying taste pleasure--an artificial concoction of pure fat and refined sugar. Once an expensive delicacy, it is now a daily ritual for many people. French fries and potato chips, laden with artificially-concentrated fats, are currently the most commonly consumed "vegetable" in our society. These artificial products, and others like them, form the core of the American diet. Our teenage population, for example, consumes 25% of their calories in the form of soda pop!
Most of our citizenry can't imagine how it could be any other way. To remove (or dramatically reduce) such products from America's daily diet seems intolerable--even absurd. Most people believe that if they were to do so, they would enjoy their food--and their lives--much less. Indeed, most people believe that they literally would suffer if they consumed a health-promoting diet devoid of such indulgences. But, it is here that their perception is greatly in error. The reality is that humans are well designed to fully enjoy the subtler tastes of whole natural foods, but are poorly equipped to realize this fact. And like a frog sitting in dangerously hot water, most people are being slowly destroyed by the limitations of their awareness.
"""

Personally, I feel many hunter/gatherers twenty thousand years ago may have lived longer and better than some people say they did (even as things got worse with rising population, competition, and agriculture). It really depends on where exactly they lived in what time period and what the local climate was like. There are places and times where six foot and taller skeletons were common, like on the shores of inland places that had big lakes.

From:
http://www.primitivism.com/original-affluent.htm
"Hunter-gatherers consume less energy per capita per year than any other group of human beings. Yet when you come to examine it the original affluent society was none other than the hunter's - in which all the people's material wants were easily sat

So how long until some clown patents getting muddy?

They'll be selling us carefully crafted biologically active dirt before too long.

This reminds me of when somebody discovered that a lot of the extra mobility you find in elderly Japanese people compared to Americans could be attributed to their frequent walks outside on uneven surfaces. Being the silly fools that we are, American medicine's answer wasn't the obvious "take walks outside."

No. Somebody invented a stupid mat with fake plastic cobblestones on top of it. Now old people get to walk back and forth on a 3 foot mat in the comfort of their own homes instead of - you know - taking a damn walk.

Are Americans so useless that given the news that taking walks is good for us we would prefer to walk back and forth on this abomination? It's probably so that they can more comfortably eat Cheesy Blasters and watch reality TV while they get their "exercise."

Reality. Who needs it?

If you live in the Seattle area: Amazon Fresh

Take a read through Thomas Kuhn's Structure Of Scientific Revolutions Quite a fascinating book describing scientific paradigms and revolutions in thought.

This process is science at its best. Problem doesn't fit solution, so find new problem without bending and complicating either... It's happened before, and will happen again (until we know everything, in which case what's the point?)...

What? Walmart: $14.49 Amazon: $14.50

The cited prices applied at the book's release. They've gone up in the intervening month.

Last Wednesday, Wal-Mart dropped the price of the oven to $17, from $28, as part of its "Black Friday" deals. Later the same day, Amazon cut its price, which had also been $28, to $18.

Well, color me confused, I see it as $18 on both Walmart's and Amazon's site.

It began last month with what appeared to be a public-relations-oriented competition on book prices, with both companies (along with Target, based in Minneapolis) dropping prices on books like "Under the Dome," by Stephen King, to below $9.

What? Walmart: $14.49 Amazon: $14.50

Don't get me wrong, this is great news for consumers but I think you're just seeing preperation for a Black Friday feeding frenzy and not actual 'price wars.'

'I applaud Wal-Mart. It's about time multichannel retailers stood up and refused to let their business go away.'

Wal-Mart stays away from heavily populated areas and makes most of its bank from the heartland anyway. I actually see this as Wal-Mart trying to steal a piece of the online pie if it isn't just a little bit of good ole capitalistic competition. If you think Wal-Mart's been losing business, their stock sure isn't showing it.

Last Wednesday, Wal-Mart dropped the price of the oven to $17, from $28, as part of its "Black Friday" deals. Later the same day, Amazon cut its price, which had also been $28, to $18.

Well, color me confused, I see it as $18 on both Walmart's and Amazon's site.

It began last month with what appeared to be a public-relations-oriented competition on book prices, with both companies (along with Target, based in Minneapolis) dropping prices on books like "Under the Dome," by Stephen King, to below $9.

What? Walmart: $14.49 Amazon: $14.50

Don't get me wrong, this is great news for consumers but I think you're just seeing preperation for a Black Friday feeding frenzy and not actual 'price wars.'

'I applaud Wal-Mart. It's about time multichannel retailers stood up and refused to let their business go away.'

Wal-Mart stays away from heavily populated areas and makes most of its bank from the heartland anyway. I actually see this as Wal-Mart trying to steal a piece of the online pie if it isn't just a little bit of good ole capitalistic competition. If you think Wal-Mart's been losing business, their stock sure isn't showing it.

The thing to remember is that although their language and culture are similar to ours, there are lots of little differences that will trip you up. Do your research. It's getting a little dated now, but there was a wonderful documentary series on English life a few years back that will really help you get a feel for the place.

And don't forget that you'll need to install the Region 2 distro of your OS, or your laptop won't work over there. To play it safe you might also want to pack a PAL-to-NTSC converter for the display.

Take your laptop. Make sure your hotel has WiFi. Use the WiFi without changing the settings and without fear; the US uses a couple of extra radio frequencies that the UK doesn't, but since all the access points / routers will be British, your laptop will only lock on to the British frequencies, so it isn't a real issue. You absolutely will not get hassle for this.

Forget internet kiosks. They're as crappy in the UK as they are everywhere else in the world. Even being quaintly retro-fitted into a traditional red phone box with an innovative stainless steel vandal-proof trackball doesn't detract from the universal crappiness of internet kiosks in general. If you absolutely must, use a proper Internet cafe, but even so you'll be better off with your own laptop and free WiFi at a normal cafe. Lots and lots of cafes offer free WiFi. You can also get pay-for WiFi at many pubs, and those which are part of the British Telecom BT Openzone network will allow you to carry over WiFi credit from pub to another pub.

Take only one British plug adaptor (you can buy them at the airport) but take a multi-way gang lead. That way you can plug multiple American electronic devices into one British socket. Hotels the world over have a shortage of sockets, this is no different in the UK, so make the most of one socket rather than buying converters for several.

Make sure your cell phone is compatible with GSM/3G/UTMS and that your cellular provider is aware that you are travelling to the UK.

The British Museum is pretty good, albiet small, and offers a lot which American museums don't. Bear in mind that the Rosetta Stone is not as large as you might imagine. The Science Museum covers pretty much the same things as other science museums in other capital cities around the world, it's good but not particularly different from what you have back in the US, unless you desperately, desperately want to see a working version of Babbage's 250-year-old mechanical computer. If you want a second museum day, consider the Victoria and Albert museum which has lots of steampunk and design things.

If you have only one day out of London, visit Bletchley Park, the WWII codebreaking base with lots of old computers. You can catch a train from Euston station, takes about 45 mins. If you have a second day out, visit Oxford, the quaint picturesque university city with Cotswold stone buildings and lots of really distinctive museums. You can catch a train from Paddington station, takes about an hour. Neither Bletchley nor Oxford train station are in the middle of where you want to be (it's difficult to plan infrastructure in towns built a thousand years ago), so expect some walking.

Absolutely do not hire a car. Firstly, the steering wheel and handbrake will be on the wrong side of the car, secondly it's expensive, thirdly the roads are significantly more crowded and more wiggly than you are used to, and fourthly we have lots and lots of roundabouts which are entirely different to four-way stops in ways which you can probably not even imagine.

Taxis are expensive. Use the plentiful and frequent underground (subway train) service, buy an all-day or all-week pass. This pass will also cover you for the busses.

Get the London Popout Map. This covers the main pedestrian areas, underground map and bus routes in a very compact form, slips easily into a small pocket and uses a very geeky, very neat origami folding method which means you can quickly and discretely open it in a confined space, without looking like a potential mugging victim.

Get an Underground Overground tube map. You can buy these from dispensers on the underground platforms. They show the actual physical route and actual physical distances the tube trains take; the traditional symbolic map doesn't demonstrate the real distances between stops. You

Flash Forward here we come!

This Logitech mouse combines the best of both worlds (2D touch-sensitive scrolling but with actual buttons for tactile feedback). It's been around for half a decade (since 2004).

http://www.amazon.com/Logitech-Cordless-Optical-Notebook-Mouse/dp/B0002SAF3M

I'm sure they've released better models since then, but that is one I've actually used.

It would have made more sense for the article to compare the Magic Mouse against against the Logitech mouse since it actually exists, instead of Microsoft's prototypes.