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Not that expensive if you prioritise accurate time over jewellery:
http://www.amazon.com/Casio-Waveceptor-Atomic-Watch-WVA109HDA-2BV/dp/B0013M6C60/ref=pd_sbs_watch_3

Admittedly I went for a more expensive model in the range with a far more elegant dial:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/WAVE-CEPTOR-TITANIUM-SOLAR-100M/dp/B0006FL86Y/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=watch&qid=1258970541&sr=8-5

However, the strap is still cheap and tacky and nasty and as jewellery the watch just doesn't cut it.

Technology inside is nice though, and for jewellery I have the elegant Swiss mechanical watch that gains seconds a day...

The Spore debacle has shown, that the times of companies dominating their clients is over. The Internet killed it, by freeing us.

Spore continues to rank second only to The Sims in sales of "Life-simulation games." PC Games-Simulation-Life

Which doesn't help if the game you want to play allows the user to select only one of these 127 gamepads. Too many major label PC games are developed under the assumption of a separate computer for each player on a LAN or on the Internet, and families have a harder time affording four gaming PCs than one console, one TV, and three spare gamepads.

Yeah, but you said "indie developers who want to develop a local multiplayer game are screwed". They're not, users just have to buy the gamepads, just like with a console (none of my consoles came with more than one gamepad).

I checked Best Buy, and a lot of the PCs for sale there didn't even have a graphics card; instead, the demo unit had the monitor plugged into a VGA port connected to integrated graphics.

VGA to TV Converter: $0.99.
(this is assuming you have a SDTV; if you can afford a HDTV, you probably can afford a non-integrated graphics card as well)

What emulators, and what games in those emulators?

Usually N64 or Genesis games I can't find on auction sites, like Conker's Bad Fur Day (I live in Portugal, and many sellers don't send the items here). As for emulators, I use Project64 for N64 games, and Fusion for Genesis.

In another 50 years, $15 watches will be virtually indestructible and require no maintenance, at least if Casio has anything to say about it:

http://www.amazon.com/Casio-G-Shock-Solar-Atomic-GW500AJP-1AV/dp/B000FF5DDY

(I dislike their styling, but a watch that doesn't need new batteries, is durable and sets itself is available for $80 today)

While not an especially great book, I got something of a picture of Eastern Congo from reading Tim Butcher's Blood River earlier this year. Though strangely little talked about, the entire region seems truly hell on earth, beyond any of the war zone or famished village you see on television. What I found interesting was that the materials from this region are transported in the backs of trucks to South Africa and only then processes, and the people mining these substances and transporting the excavated material get paid almost nothing for what is in later stages a treasure (and are frequently robbed on the way with it.)

Jared Diamond goes on at some length about the Greenland Vikings:
http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Succeed/dp/0670033375
Summary:
If you live in Greenland like you're still in Europe, and pay no attention to the successful Inuit, then
your policies have all the likelihood of success of [no, _______ wasn't mentioned].

I stopped through it, and so have millions of others. And for less than $20. Screw vaccines. http://www.amazon.com/Easy-Way-Stop-Smoking-Non-Smokers/dp/1402718616/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258756811&sr=8-1 Best approach I've ever seen to deconstructing smoking addiction.

That, and the Kill-o-Watt meters are only about $20, and they do a pretty good job of telling you how much power something is sucking.

Yeah, I damn near stopped reading at that point too. Only sheer morbid curiosity kept me ging. FFS, less than THREE YEARS AGO Steve Jobs tried to pull that same crap with the iPhone. He said "Web apps only!" and "No SDK needed!" and developers around the world screamed, Apple relented, and now they make eleventy-billion dollars per second from the App Store. I am really REALLY surprised that Google is doing something this stupid. The fact that many people do MOST of their work on the web doesn't mean they can get by with doing ALL their work on the web. The non-web part is really important. It's like saying "Most people breathe 24 hours a day, so we think this new room which has air for 23 hours per day should be fine." Who the hell does Google think will buy this? There is NO teenager who lives ONLY on Facebook and MySpace. EVERYONE needs local apps. Seniors are always mentioned but evidently there aren't enough to keep a product afloat. Think there's a big market for a computer that is WORTHLESS without a Web connection? Ask the makers of WebTV,, the i-Opener, the Audrey, or the Mivo.

Having worked with professional graphics quite a bit I have to say that "color management" is 95% bullshit. It is not possible to make a reflective printout the "same" as a light-emitting screen, anybody claiming this is lying.

There's a difference between actual matching and what human brains think are matching. Something like ColorSync or Epson's software do the latter pretty well - people are generally happy with their output.

I just happened to try for about 4 hours the other day to get GIMP to output to my new Brother HL-4040CDN color laser printer and did not have any success. I installed all the color profiles in GIMP, got some print-preview variation, but the output was bizzarely blue-green.

Without asking for the impossible, a stab at acceptable would be welcome.

Makes me think of proof glass or wardable paint from http://www.amazon.com/Sunshine-Robin-McKinley/dp/0425191788 I guess truth really is at least as strange as fiction.

Wow, that's nice to have the dials to manipulate 3D objects. Is there anything like that which someone can buy today?

Yeah, here.

There's already a very good book along those lines (affiliate link to "On Food And Cooking").

Hi-hats or any other cymbal, bells, glockenspiels, etc., all sound like shit in anything below 256. I can't describe the distortion other than to say it sounds hissy. Go ahead, listen to ANY Police tunes in low bitrate. I defy you to not cringe at how MP3 ruins Stuart Copeland's percussion.

Yep. Whenever I get a chance (sadly, not very often), I put on In a Silent Way in a dark room to chill. I tried the mp3 from a DVD player, an iPod, and a Sansa Clip - all were missing the brilliant cymbal dynamics. Put the CD in the (el cheapo) DVD player, and the magic was back.

I bet you're right, "Message in a Bottle" wouldn't stand up either.

Granted, I have decent speakers and I wouldn't care in a car.

And we're old guys who know what CD's sound like.

Here's one!

Pretty OT here but with people making Xenu gags because of the name its worth point out that Xenophon's Conversations with Socrates is one of the few sources for views of the great Greek philosopher and orator.

CoS are of course a shill, its not even a very clever shill, their "e-meters" are almost as dumb as the bullet proof pants that the Mormons try and pedal.

Why should any religion get tax status? They aren't a charity, the money is primarily there to support their own organisation. They are selling a product called "salvation" and people are paying money in the belief they are getting something back.

Socrates wasn't the biggest fan of religion either... question everything.

Wasn't the book titled "Infinte in all directions" not "ingnorant in all dimensions"?

1956 is a tad late for the start of the Naval Reactors program. USS Nautilus was authorized for build in 1951, Keel laid in 1952, and christened, launched and commissioned in 1954. 17 Jan 1955 it went out for its first sea trials marking the first time a ship propulsion came from nuclear power. In fact since General Atomics was founded as a division of General Dynamics (whose Electric Boat Division built Nautilus) 6 months after the first time Nautilus went out to sea the first time, its hard to say he was at GA when it all started.

...If this were true, you would be able to make a logical argument for it....

I have given you a few pieces of EVIDENCE of why I believe in the message of the Bible and in Jesus Christ. There are others who have written thick books on the subject. Here is one of the better ones:

http://www.amazon.com/Evidence-That-Demands-Verdict-Historical/dp/0840743785

As I said before, the Bible is like a deposition taken from eyewitnesses. The fact that these eyewitnesses lived almost 2000 years ago is immaterial. In all your replies, you have stated that you do not believe these witnesses, mainly because you do not believe in anything your senses cannot tell you.

Do you believe that Constantine, Aristotle or any other ancient figure of whom we have historical records lived? Do you believe that these records are substantially accurate? What evidence from history do you accept and what do you reject and on what basis? Was Martin Luther a real person in history or fabrication of the church?

Historical evidence is different from scientific evidence. Most evidence entered into courts of law is historical. There are documents, depositions and live witnesses of what they have seen or heard. All of these things are presumed to be truthful unless someone who opposes their statements shows otherwise.

All you have ever shown is that you do not believe the evidence as presented, because it does not seem logical to you or someone else. By definition, that which is supernatural is not logical. It is not logical for someone to rise from the dead, but that doesn't prove it didn't happen. As the opposing party, if this were a court of law, you would have to show why the evidence given by witnesses is false or inaccurate. Simply stating that it is illogical or unscientific won't cut it.

You have elevated logic and science as the sole criteria of whether something historical is true or false.

(...You've told me several times, and quite clearly, that God does not work within the realm of the scientific method...)
You make it seem as if the scientific method and logic are the only ways we can arrive at truth. If we had a means of traveling back in time, then this might be a good way to go. As it is, we have to rely on witnesses and their testimony. Simon Greenleaf was one of many, who did examine the historical evidence of the testimony by the standards that a court of law would apply. He did not use the scientific method or your kind of logic.

(....but this is why faith is needed...)
Yes, reasonable faith is needed to believe that the witnesses are reliable and truthful. It is not however a leap in the dark.

(...Why is a living sacrifice reasonable, and why would a loving god demand one?...)
To answer that question one would first have to define or find out what Paul means with that statement. To do that, you'd have to read at least the book of Romans. To me it means that I am to sacrifice my selfishness on the altar of God's love in the service to my fellow man.

(...Simply claiming something is not enough to show that it is true...)
As I said before, witnesses in court are assumed to be truthful. It is up to the opposition, such as you, to bring forth evidence of why the witness testimony is false or inaccurate. Other than stating that the testimony is illogical, (to you) you have not come up with any evidence why it is false. You know about the idea that an accused is innocent until proven guilty?

(....They have done so through their own reason...)
You consistently elevate human reason and logic as the final arbiter and determiner of truth. There are plenty of things in this universe that are beyond human reasoning and understanding.

(...Crick and Watson, and many others...)
There are many scientists such as Pascal, Faraday, Newton and others who laid the foundations of our modern science who were devoted Christians. Christianity is not only for the intellectually

For more info, read Irwin Schiff's "The Biggest Con"

http://www.amazon.com/Biggest-Con-How-Government-Fleecing/dp/0930374010

We are going to give away technical knowledge with military and commercial value to China without them having to spend the high costs of research or espionage. Has anyone read, "The Asian Mind Game" by Chin Ning Chu? http://www.amazon.com/Asian-Mind-Game-Chin-ning-Chu/dp/0892563524 This, and many similar books show the strategies that China and Japan have been using to create dominant positions internationally. China will never be a "full participant" but will always be glad to accept any knowledge we can give them.

I then read more than 200 reply posts about changing font size in Word, Safari, and Firefox along with non-specific posts telling the poster to go out and "buy something," but not saying what. Unbelievable.

Here's my best shot at answering the question as asked:

Research the Hanns*G 28" monitor for about $336. (with 3-yr warranty)

If you set the monitor at 1280*1024, the "stretchiness" of characters at 28" may give you the visual result you sought when requesting 1366*768.

Source: http://www.amazon.com/Hanns-G-HG281DPB-Widescreen-LCD-Monitor/dp/B000TJV9KW/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1258467065&sr=8-1

Good luck

...Faith is belief without reason...

Before I get into this, I would like to thank you for always being polite and spending an awful lot of time on this. I wish I could meet you personally sometime, but I guess that's not likely.

Maybe, instead of this public forum, you would like to send your reply to:

reasons@fhrsporthorses.com

I think in your definition of faith you have hit the crux of the matter. You see, biblical faith is NOT unreasonable. It is based on good historical evidence that would hold up in any law court. Faith and trust are like two sides of the same coin.

The apostle Paul makes an appeal to reason:

Rom 12:1 I beseech you therefore, brothers, by the mercies of God to present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, pleasing to God, which is your REASONABLE service.
Rom 12:2 And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to prove by you what is that good and pleasing and perfect will of God.

The prophet Isaiah, speaking for God writes:

Isaiah 1:18 Come now, and let us REASON together, says Jehovah; though your sins are as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be like wool.

You are making a big mistake, if you are truly of the opinion that Christian faith is a leap in the dark. Tolkien, CS Lewis, Simon Greenleaf and Lee Strobel are a few of the people I have mentioned who have researched the Christian gospel. They all, as well as myself, have come to the conclusion that a Christian need not leave his brains at the church door, before entering.

Now, let me get into a few additional points of your post.

(..Argument from Authority..)
Do you really think that it is wrong to depend on and consult an authority, a source that is more knowledgeable about a given subject? The people of Jesus day recognized that he had authority, unlike their religious leaders. The people that heard him recognized this:

Mat 7:28 And it happened, when Jesus had ended these sayings, that the people were astonished at His doctrine.
Mat 7:29 For He taught them as one having authority, and not as the scribes.

Scientists quote each other all the time. Because Jesus was God, as well as human, he could not consult a higher authority because there is none. By his resurrection he showed that he had authority even over death itself. It is interesting that the narrative first includes women in the resurrection account, by which Christianity either stands or falls. The testimony of a woman in those days and that culture was worthless. If the accounts of the resurrection were a fabrication, the fabricators most certainly would not have included the testimony of women as a cornerstone of their story. It is therefore REASONABLE to conclude that their story has merit and should be looked at more closely. There are entire books written on that one subject. Here is a good one that costs only eight dollars. It is titled: "Who Moved the Stone?"

http://www.amazon.com/Who-Moved-Stone-Frank-Morison/dp/0310295610

(... but hold a few irrational beliefs...)
The belief that Christian faith is a leap in the dark and therefore irrational, is irrational itself. Other than the power of suggestion and the placebo effect, I agree with you on homeopathy. The placebo effect is well established in medical science. The power of faith is greater than we generally give it credit for. An event in Jesus ministry illustrates this:

Mar 5:34 And He said to her, Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace, and be whole from your plague.

Get your Bible out and read the whole passage so you can get the context of this.

(....millions of people believed that the Earth was flat...)
Other than a few sailors, this belief did not materially affect most people. This is not true of millions of Christians, who were deeply changed by Jesus Christ and his message. I am inc

And really if you are excluding software maintenance from the field of computer science, you pretty much have to exclude every other software technique. Techniques for writing maintainable code go hand in hand with every other development technique.

I don't see the problem here. Software development is not computer science. Software development is to computer science as engineering is to physics. This is computer science. This is not.

And really if you are excluding software maintenance from the field of computer science, you pretty much have to exclude every other software technique. Techniques for writing maintainable code go hand in hand with every other development technique.

I don't see the problem here. Software development is not computer science. Software development is to computer science as engineering is to physics. This is computer science. This is not.

Several years ago MS released a separate, non-production implementation of the CLR under a permissive Shared Source license. That was the "Rotor" project headed by David Stutz. IIRC the license was pretty reasonably - the gist of it was that you may not copy code verbatim into your own competing project, but if you carry away some useful ideas that appear in a similar form they won't sic David Boies on you. I heard the Mono folks were sort of paranoid about it, though - they didn't want anyone who had studied that code developing for their project.

For issues dealing with the existing code, I would recommend: Working Effectively With Legacy Code, by Michael Feathers.

The only story here is that people are selling small works instead of big ones. And that fits the overall model we've seen in the last 15 years online. Buy a single instead of a CD. Buy a single key to replace one on a broken laptop keyboard (instead of a replacement.)

Well, now they're selling individual lesson plans, instead of an entire book of them.

Proof of these lesson plans available as books: http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Science-Success-Lesson-Grades/dp/1933531355/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258372050&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=science+lesson+plans&x=0&y=0

And these are only ones new enough to be on Amazon. I'm not in my office and don't feel like tunneling there to search WorldCat, but publishing lesson plans isn't new at all, and quite arguably is part of the scholarship of teaching.

The only story here is that people are selling small works instead of big ones. And that fits the overall model we've seen in the last 15 years online. Buy a single instead of a CD. Buy a single key to replace one on a broken laptop keyboard (instead of a replacement.)

Well, now they're selling individual lesson plans, instead of an entire book of them.

Proof of these lesson plans available as books: http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Science-Success-Lesson-Grades/dp/1933531355/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1258372050&sr=8-1
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=science+lesson+plans&x=0&y=0

And these are only ones new enough to be on Amazon. I'm not in my office and don't feel like tunneling there to search WorldCat, but publishing lesson plans isn't new at all, and quite arguably is part of the scholarship of teaching.

"The mathematics of it actually aren't all that hard."

Sure, SR is simple given the postulates. But it's the postulates which most people who have problems with relativity object to, because C as a hard limit for *all* information communication is a very big and counterintuitive statement.

It's also, unfortunately, a factually incorrect statement. Not even counting the ether drift observations of Miller and the sidereal correlations of Townsend Brown, if you've investigated psychic phenomena or UFOs at all (both of which do have documentary evidence, albeit anecdotal since living phenomena don't always lend themselves to exact replication), you'll find that there does exist communication which disregards light cones; therefore the postulates of special relativity don't quite describe the actual world we live in. There are exceptions. And not just in a high-gravity environment as GR allows for.

Like most artifacts of science, SR/GR is a simplified model of a much more complex reality, an approximation which works well under limited circumstances. Unfortunately some proponents of a 'scientific worldview' limit their universe absolutely to what the current mathematical models derive, and then remove from consideration all evidence which runs counter to the models on the grounds that it is a priori 'irrational'. That is not exactly logical.

I'm not saying that either psychic or religious experience are 100% reproducible. That's part of what makes them interesting. But there do exist a class of genuine phenomena which religion (generally the mystical, experiential, hands-on variety) is the best way of understanding; practicing religions have had thousands of years of dealing with this stuff while science is very new to the game.

If you're interested in broadening your worldview, Elizabeth Lloyd Meyer's Extraordinary Knowing is the best introductory book I've read about psi from a scientific perspective.

Yes, but is it the "three moon wolf" shirt our editors allude to?

(I've never seen one, but it's got to be three times as sweet as a three wolf moon shirt and I'd bet it would get me more chicks at the SF/Fantasy con.)

Lives improved????

I don't know what kind of lies they're teaching you, but that is just flat out wrong in every way.

Repressions and famines occurring in the Soviet Union under the regimes of Lenin and Stalin described in the Black Book of Communism include:

        * the executions of tens of thousands of hostages and prisoners, and the murder of hundreds of thousands of rebellious workers and peasants from 1918 to 1922 (See also: Red Terror)
        * the Russian famine of 1921, which caused the death of 5 million people
        * the extermination and deportation of the Don Cossacks in 1920
        * the murder of tens of thousands in concentration camps in the period between 1918 and 1930
        * the Great Purge which killed almost 690,000 people
        * the deportation of 2 million so-called "kulaks" from 1930 to 1932
        * the deaths of 4 million Ukrainians (Holodomor) and 2 million others during the famine of 1932 and 1933
        * the deportations of Poles, Ukrainians, Moldavians and people from the Baltic Republics from 1939 to 1941 and from 1944 to 1945
        * the deportation of the Volga Germans in 1941
        * the deportation of the Crimean Tatars in 1943
        * the deportation of the Chechens in 1944
        * the deportation of the Ingush in 1944.(p. 9-10) (See also: Population transfer in the Soviet Union)

The Black Book of Communism

You're quite right - Apple is at the top of the proprietary heap.

If iPhone isn't a purposeful implementation of The Innovator's Solution's* description of the proprietary to commodity process I don't know what is. I mean, the authors even have a section on Blackberry and describe how to better it ala iPhone.

Once a reasonable competitor emerges (is it Droid?) Apple will loosen its grip, but until then it commands higher profit by staying as controlling as possible.

* I know, the apostrophe should be after the hyperlink, but slashdot's anti-goat display makes it too confusing.

RF IR extenders are a godsend for this sort of thing. I recently purchased a "Next Generation Remote Control Extender" that I HIGHLY recommend. I've got my HTPC in the basement and can use the remote control from my bedroom on the second floor without issue.
http://www.amazon.com/Next-Generation-Remote-Control-Extender/dp/B000C1Z0HA

Basicly it comes with a very small rechargeable battery that can be put in either an AAA or AA sleeve (The sleeve houses an RF transmitter) . You put this battery & sleeve into the remote control's battery holder and it senses the IR LEDs load on the battery. Turns that data into RF and sends it to a base station placed where your video source is, the base station then sends out the original IR signal. Replaces the 'wife/gf remote' w/a more submissive model ;-) (Un)fortunately it doesn't have all the features of the wife/gf, so you should keep at least one of them around as well if those features are important to you (I often question if the tinkering & effort to keep 'em functioning properly is worth it).

This technology as a whole sounds like it is past it 's use by date, a USB thumb drive will last a very long time when you only write to it once and a 4gb drive is already way less than half the price http://www.amazon.com/SanDisk-Cruzer-SDCZ6-4096-A11-Retail-Package/dp/B000EWHEM6 and the writing technology is available pretty much every where. Unless they can seriously ramp up the storage capacity than this start up is likely to last a whole lot less than the thousand years they claim their media can last.

Fowler's Modern English Usage, p480. Bryson's Dictionary of Troublesome Words (see excerpt). FWIW the first is a British source and the second says that it's a British rule, so if they have Safeways somewhere else I may owe you an apology.

The concept you're referring to is an interesting possibility, but isn't biblical either.

Hell as separation from God is a modern attempt to re-explain hell-theology in a way that is more acceptable to the more rational kind of society we live in now. It's a possibility if ethereal hell is in fact a "real" place, but it doesn't look like hell itself is anywhere near a scriptural certainty.

If you're interested in exploring biblical theology in greater depth, this book is a decent place to start.

Don't learn OpenGL, learn graphics and software engineering first. Assuming you want to learn OpenGL for games, I would recommend David Eberly's 3D Game Engine Design . It is extremely comprehensive and presents an incredibly well-designed engine, WildMagic (which has inspired many other engines, like jMonkey), for which you are given the full source on CD. If you're not looking for games, then you probably don't need to know the latest OpenGL stuff, because scientific visualization usually doesn't require it. And if you DO need the latest stuff from OpenGL, you're probably not actually doing graphics and you probably shouldn't use OpenGL, but CUDA or some other platform (CUDA = awesome).

In any case, you need to know that OpenGL is just a specification, so you rely on other multiplatform libraries like GLUT, GLFW or SDL. I would personally recommend SDL, since it is awesome. GLFW is nice, easier to use than SDL, but harder to tweak the small things for performance. GLUT development died many years ago, so don't use it.

I've never read that one. However, I found Singularity by Bill DeSmedt to be quite good. Sci-Fi thriller centering around the theory that the Tunguska event was caused by a micro-black hole.

You can get the Nokia N900 from amazon or from Nokia's online shop. Unlike the Droid, or any other phone out there it comes with Linux and thus offers the most open system to twiddle around with. Imho such a push for FOSS in the cell phone market needs to be supported and encouraged. There is nobody else out there going this route. You can write apps in any language you want, Python, Perl, Java, C, - hell, you could even install Dosbox and write batch files!

Droid may be based on some open source code, but it doesn't even come close in terms of openness and freedom; most of the more useful apps are Google's own apps (Gmail, Gmaps, webkit based browser etc.), which, admittedly, are definitely high-quality apps, but they are NOT open source and together with Android 2.0 (which is also mostly not open source) would quite probably be used for data-mining, whether anonymously or not, we have no way to know, but rest assured that any Android phone will be uniquely and easily identifiable on demand (especially when locked in to using a specific SIM card from a specific provider).

Yep, there have been a number of biologists studying great whites for a few decades near the Farallon Islands off the coast of San Francisco. There's even a book, The Devil's Teeth, detailing a shark season with the biologists.

As another reply, by "Alex Belits" points out, aspects of what you outline, like hoarding, would be considered dysfunctional in other paradigms. A study of other cultures, like some Native American tribes, shows that a "Tribal Chief" was selected and replaced at will by the people. They were picked from their lifelong behavior in the tribe, often to serve as more a spiritual leader than a dictator. Example from recent Iroquois history:
http://www.peace4turtleisland.org/pages/tributetoshenandoah.htm
"This article was written by Kanatiiosh as a tribute to Chief Leon Shenandoah who held the Onondaga title of Tadodaho and was truly a good man who lived his life according to the original instructions given by the Creator."
A book of his wisdom that I have enjoyed reading:
http://www.amazon.com/Become-Human-Being-Tadodaho-Shenandoah/dp/1571743413

What you write towards the end reminds me of this:
"No contest: the case against competition"
http://www.share-international.org/archives/cooperation/co_nocontest.htm
"""
We need competition in order to survive."
"Life is boring without competition."
"It is competition that gives us meaning in life."
These words written by American college students capture a sentiment that runs through the heart of the USA and appears to be spreading throughout the world. To these students, competition is not simply something one does, it is the very essence of existence. When asked to imagine a world without competition, they can foresee only rising prices, declining productivity and a general collapse of the moral order. Some truly believe we would cease to exist were it not for competition.
Alfie Kohn, author of No contest: the case against competition, disagrees completely. He argues that competition is essentially detrimental to every important aspect of human experience; our relationships, self-esteem, enjoyment of leisure, and even productivity would all be improved if we were to break out of the pattern of relentless competition. Far from being idealistic speculation, his position is anchored in hundreds of research studies and careful analysis of the primary domains of competitive interaction. For those who see themselves assisting in a transition to a less competitive world, Kohn's book will be an invaluable resource.
"""

Part of this issue is what we mean by "health", whether for an individual, a family, a community, a society, a biosphere, or a noosphere.

Again, from Alfie Kohn's work:
"No Contest: The Case Against Competition" By Alfie Kohn
http://books.google.com/books?id=bLudHIk3gsMC
"""
If competitiveness is inherently compensatory, if it is an effort to prove oneself and stave off feelings of worthlessness, it follows that the healthier the individual (in the sense of having a more solid, unconditional sense of self-esteem), the less need there is to compete. The implication, we might say, is that the real alternative to being number one is not being number two but being psychologically free enough to dispense with rankings altogether. Interestingly, two sports psychologists have found a number of excellent athletes with "immense character strengths who don't make it in sports. They seem to be so well put together emotionally that there is no neurotic tie to sport." Since recreation almost always involves competition in our culture, those who are healthy enough not to need to compete may simply end up turning down those activities. ... Each culture provides its own mechanisms for dealing with self-doubt. ... Low self-esteem, then, i

This guy reminds me of the Heat Miser. Maybe he's just grumpy because Santa never gave him the toy he wanted.

We should get together and send him a Hannah Montana Holiday Singing Doll. That'll cheer him up.

So are you suggesting that Monsanto and other big business interests outright bribe certain justices? Well now, I'm interested in what evidence you have to support this theory, because we have here the makings of one of the biggest scandals we've ever seen.

I can't speak for this case but one week before issuing a ruling in Eldred v Ashcroft, Thomas accepted a seven figure deal with HarperCollins to publish his memoirs. HarperCollins is owned by News Corp which submitted an Amicus Curie brief in that very case. Oddly enough, Thomas ruled in News Corp's favor.

Most of the other justices have their memoirs published by independent academic institutions such as Harvard University Press but Thomas saw fit to sign a deal with a huge corporation just days before issuing a landmark ruling in their favor. Perhaps Thomas did it because HarperCollins was offering an order of magnitude more than his colleagues were getting for their memoirs, but that just screams of corruption to me.

This happened almost seven years ago. It seems the articles have faded from the internet. All I can find on it now is this Slashdot thread. I read the article it references back in 2003 and another one from Fox (yes Fox!) which said basically the same thing. Even though that thread was written in 2003 it is worth noting Thomas's memoirs were in fact published by Harper in 2007.

You could also say LTCM blew up because some guys from Goldman downloaded their tradebook, called their buddies, and everybody traded against it until the fund imploded. See this book.

Or you could say that by using Black-Scholes on historical data that one is incorporating the possibility of a given position being attacked. You'd be wrong if you did, though, because Black-Scholes assumes a Wiener process, which is in turn based on the normal distribution. This means it ab-initio excludes runaway processes like the market turning on you.

The problem is that most models extrapolate future price as a function of current price and history, when in reality prices are a function of current price and expected future price in the market. Expected future price is difficult for academics to get a handle on, so instead they make models on tractable subjects that have nothing to do with reality... then everybody acts surprised when reality doesn't behave according to the model.

When you take economics classes, you hear that if you behave well, in the next life you'll become a physicist, but if you behave badly, you'll be reborn a sociologist. Problem is, markets _are_ a sociological construct. But I guess I should be a little more to the point: All of this game theory crap, along with CAPM, APT, GARCH, DDM, etc is just a bunch of ivory tower bullshit.

Since I have not needed one, I have not shopped.

However, 30 seconds of Google and I found 2 serial and 1 parallel in a single PCIe card: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B001TH78QC

Amazon also has them in ExpressCard formats. Need me to do any other shopping for you? :)

What's wrong with having a VGA output? Many older projectors and monitors, which are still perfectly functional and don't need to be replaced, use VGA. Why force people to buy a new monitor and a new projector just because they got a new laptop/PC?

Let me introduce you to a new concept - an adapter cable. They cost 20 or 30 bucks at most, and are available for older display technologies and with either male or female style vga/dvi/whatever connectors.

This comment, ladies and gentlemen, is from the same person who had this to say about the Obama Joker posters being censored :

Studies show the media is neither liberal nor conservative. While reporters are often more liberal than their readership, editors and owners are more conservative. What the media actually is, is pro-owning class, and lazy. When you claim the media is 'liberal' you do two things: you demonstrate that you do not understand what the word 'liberal' means, and that you subscribe to a simplistic view of the world where everything is black and white. Please try to grow up and see that things are more nuanced, the world is not black and white, there are no pure 'good guys' or 'bad guys,' and not everyone who disagrees with you is a monster, a fascist, a Nazi, or insane.

So outright removal ("censorship") of material critical of Obama provokes nothing but a comment that such censorship does not indicate bias, yet material critical of Glenn Beck, now that *needs* defending.

Hypocrite.

This book, by Glenn, seems strangely appropriate. I've enjoyed it.

I recall Jerry Falwell has a similar case and lost. When you make a living condemning HALF THE WORLD you ought to expect this sort of thing. Beck's opinions are usually heavily slanted towards big business and he frequently denigrates anybody who would try to slow down the economy with harmful regulation (sic).

His book makes me laugh, as I feel that the title implies that it's a Howto guide for people to interact with him.

Agreed. CS PhD here.

I have been reading the "Power Presenter" ( http://www.amazon.com/Power-Presenter-Technique-Strategy-Americas/dp/0470376481 ) to improve my presentation skills.

I was surprised in the wrong way when preparing y first demonstration course during my PhD years in the UK. It seems everyone uses overhead slides for *all* lectures (every single day).

Having studied my undergraduate courses in a public university in Mexico, I was raised by chalkboard and (if you were lucky to get the room) whiteboard lectures.

Whiteboard in my opinion encourages the interaction between student and teacher. Of course I do remember a teacher whose "teaching" consisted in turning the back to the students and write in the blackboard whatever chunk of text he had prepared the night before (or maybe 5 years ago).

Another issue that saddened me from the UK was the lack of communication between the teacher and the students. I remember becoming good friend with several of my teachers during undergrad. In the UK, as each class has more than 50 students, the teacher only goes to the classroom, talks his slides and gets out of the room. If there are any assignments they are usually explained in the last slide.

But I guess that different types of education are suitable for different types of people.

You might be interested in reading:

Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design

to appreciate how intractable the origin-of-life problem really is.