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I guess we didn't take Tom Clancy seriously enough.

1) As others have noted, the Mini won't come ANYWHERE NEAR this much power in this kind of use. Figure on 20 watts, 30 at the utmost.

2) I have run tests with a Kill-a-Watt on various speedstep capable systems, in every case finding that when idle, whether it is running at max or min clock makes next to no difference at all! Linux will very effectively use C states and will be halted almost all the time in this kind of service.

Measure the power with a Kill-a-Watt

The published power specs are usually some absurdly borderline absolute maximum power supply capability and are not even close to the actual power consumption.

For example, the Mac Mini I had (Core Duo with Intel video, not the very latest one with Nvidia 9400M) was nowhere near 85 watts - it idled at just about 20 watts. With the Nvidia, I would estimate no more than 25, 30 at the utmost; almost sure it will be closer to 25. And it will be idling 99.9% of the time with this kind of use. An Aopen Mini will do just as well, and is dead easy to install linux on, and at least as well designed. I measured mine (Core Duo with Intel video) at 20 watts idle. They now make fanless industrial Minis that consume even less power. I've been running a Pentium M mini-ITX 24x7 since 2004 for this type of service; again, it draws 20 watts. All of these systems are ridiculously quiet, make very low waste heat, and take up very little space if the keyboard/mouse/monitor are not connected (you control them over ssh from your notebook or desktop, you turn them on and off with the power button, which invokes a graceful shutdown via ACPI).

If you can find a well used 13-14" Pentium M or Core Duo notebook (preferably Intel video which is low power) with a busted display, and are able to install linux using the DB-15 video connector or serial port, you can have a nice system for low bucks. Once again, I have measured these systems idling with the backlight off, and they are right around 20 watts. The half decent ones will run a long time 24x7 if they are not stressed, because the fan is barely ticking over.

I'm looking into some of the ARM stuff now. It will be substantially less power and still capable of all these kinds of tasks. I should have this one Mini-2440 in a couple of days. It will probably idle below 1 watt with the LCD backlight off.

"On the way out the door I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the U.S. Postal Service and drop the kids off at the public school."

I should have caught that as a problem too. Someday, public schools may be much more like public libraries open to anyone to use than day prisons for children of working parents, but until then, consider:

"Links about alternative peer-oriented education"
http://p2pfoundation.net/Category:Education

"The Underground History of American Education" by 1991 NYS Teacher of
the Year John Taylor Gatto
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm

"The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.newciv.org/whole/schoolteacher.txt

"State Controlled Consciousness" also by John Taylor Gatto
http://www.the-open-boat.com/Gatto.html

"The Big Crunch" by David Goodstein, Vice Provost, Caltech
http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html

"Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt
http://www.disciplined-minds.com/

"What Makes Mainstream Media Mainstream" by Noam Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/199710--.htm

"University Secrets:Your Guide to Surviving a College Education" by Robert D. Honigman
http://web.archive.org/web/20060707100524/www.universitysecrets.com/us.htm

"In Defense of Childhood: Protecting Kids' Inner Wildness " by Chris
Mercogliano, who spent thirty-five years teaching at the Albany Free School
http://www.chrismercogliano.com/childhood.htm

"Teach Your Own" by John Holt (and other books)
http://www.holtgws.com/

"The Teenage Liberation Handbook" by Grace Llewellyn (and other books)
http://gracellewellyn.com/

"The Emergence of Compulsory Schooling and ... Resistance" By Matt Hern
http://web.archive.org/web/20071014123355/http://www.social-ecology.org/article.php?story=20031028151034651

"Sustainable Education" by Jerry Mintz
http://www.greenmoneyjournal.com/article.mpl?articleid=195&newsletterid=1

"Federated Learning Communities"
http://www.ericdigests.org/2000-1/learning.html
http://www.mcli.dist.maricopa.edu/ilc/models.html

"The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them: An Introduction to
Life/Work Planning" by Richard N. Bolles (also writes "What Color is Your
Parachute")
http://www.amazon.com/Three-Boxes-Life-How-Them/dp/0913668583

General related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lies_My_Teacher_Told_Me

The Linksys NSLU2 is a home file server which uses USB disks and can be easily flashed with a couple different linux versions. I ran mine with 4 disks in RAID5 and SAMBA, but I'm pretty sure Apache was available as well. It's not very fast and I think the ethernet is 10 base, but it was really easy to set up and I found it reliable.
http://www.amazon.com/Linksys-Storage-Link-Drives-NSLU2/dp/B0001FSCZO/
http://www.nslu2-linux.org/

There's the Kindle DX, which sports native PDF support and a 9.7" screen, but I haven't tried it myself. There are also a number of 3rd party products, including iRex who makes some with larger screens, but they're pretty pricey. The Kindle DX might be worth a shot if you want to spend the $489 to try it out.. might want to double check the return policy first though.

There is an international version with 3g connectivity:
http://www.amazon.com/Wireless-Reading-Display-International-Generation/dp/B0015T963C

But believe me, I owned a kindle 2 roughly six months ago - there is no overlap with a netbook yet. Other than wikipedia (where the 6" screen sucked worse than an iPhone, now, I can't speak for the DX with a 9.7" screen size), you don't want to begin to browse with this, it is painful, even on wifi. The browser is primitive and nearly useless.

It can purchase and read books. That is it for the core competencies. I'm not saying this is bad, it's great if that is what you need it for. But don't buy it for the browser.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000426311 Not much there but there is an official mention of it unlike the article slashdot links to

The Real Reason for More Troops in Afghanistan

We can all look back at the wonderful decision that was made to send more troops to Korea. If we had not, we could have been bogged down in a quagmire there that would have required 50 plus years of American lives, involvement and money. What a wonderful decision it was to send more troops to Vietnam. If we had not, we could have lost over 58,000 soldier's lives; killed millions of Vietnamese soldiers and civilians and been forced to flee the country with our tails between our legs, deserting our allies to the horrors of communist retribution. Good thing our wonderful leaders had the wisdom and courage to send "more troops." Now we are forced with the same dilemma; send more troops or face military defeat.

The question is: why are we in Afghanistan in the first place? Now that time has erased the emotions of retaliation for the events of 9/11 and our country elected a new leader who campaigned on the principle of bringing an end to our involvement in these costly wars, why the call for more troops? Could it be we are again simply following the dictates of the power cabal as Major General Smedley Darlington Butler so eloquently outlined in his outstanding work, War is a Racket ?

Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of our quest for empire over the past six decades realizes that Obama's contemplation of whether to send additional troops to Afghanistan is simply those who control him providing Obama with the opportunity to look "presidential." The decision to send additional troops was reached prior to the situational comedy of General McChrystal's leaked "confidential report" to the Washington Post and Obama's National Security Advisor's public admonishment of McChrystal's failure to follow the chain of command. All of this is nothing but a well-rehearsed, though poorly camouflaged hoax. Additional troops will be sent to Afghanistan within a very short period of time and Obama really has no say in the matter. The question is: why?

Could it be the US-installed puppet government in Afghanistan has new suitors who represent a very real threat to the United State's control of Afghanistan and her abundant natural resources? Is the entry of Russia and Chinese influence into Afghanistan the real reason for the need for more troops? Russia reportedly made its entry back in 2007 with the reopening of its embassy in Kabul. The Russian Foreign Minister, Sergei Ivanov, met privately with President Karzai and offered military assistance through the Collective Security Treaty Organization. (CSTO) The CSTO is made up of Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan. Russia is the driving force in this organization, as one might understand, due to the economic and military weakness of the other members. There were meetings with CSTO delegation in Kabul and neither the US nor the UK were invited. Were the US/UK

MIPS rather than ARM, but these things are cheap and look pretty useful.

EMTEC Gdium Liberty 1000

• 900 MHz, 64 bits, Loongson 2F CPU by STMicroelectronics
• 512MB DDR2 RAM
• 16 GB G-Key removable storage. Up to 4 Hours of Battery Life.
• 10-inch LCD screen with 1024 x 600 resolution. Slim, soft-touch keyboard, multi-finger touchpad and lightweight at 2.6 lbs
• Linux Operating System with over 50 Open Source applications including Open Office, Evince, Firefox, Thunderbird, MSN and more

I would agree that this is pretty close to the truth: innocent rich people can provide a much better defense than innocent poor people who typically cut deals. Due to the volume pressures (mostly due to incredibly minor drug offenses clogging up the courts), judges typically apply a "trial tax" where if you don't plead out, you get hit with a stiffer sentence (for taking up more of his time and lowering his "clearance rate"). Poor people who have to rely on overworked public defenders (who are also part of the court system more than private lawyers and also feel the volume pressures) are less likely to want to chance it.

I would encourage you to read Courtroom 302 which is a look at a year in a Chicago Superior court. It's pretty disheartening. :(

FWIW, I'm currently reading "Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior" by Ori and Rom Brafman. It's a really excellent book, similar in topic, and well-researched, and enjoyable to read with interesting real-life anecdotes to exemplify the points they raise. It touches on many different influences that affect our decision making processes.

http://www.amazon.com/Sway-Irresistible-Pull-Irrational-Behavior/dp/0385530609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1256331144&sr=8-1

Isn't this the same old story we keep hearing? This F/OSS OS isn't ready for primetime, etc, no better than Win xxxx ... Seriously, can't we do better as a whole? So what if one "analyst" at a tech website says it sucks?

First impressions matter.

Android as the "fast booting" Linux mini-OS had little to offer when compared directly to Win 7 Starter Edition installed on a mediocre entry level netbook.
______

Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium Upgrade Family Pack (3-User) $150 I believe this is a first for Microsoft.

Upgrade from XP or Vista. 32 and 64 bit.

Even games that have accurate summarizations of history in their story rarely use it to much good effect beyond a sort of flavorful seasoning. It's not really playable history that makes you think about it, in the way good historical fiction helps you understand and imagine aspects of history. If anything, the use of history in educational games like Oregon Trail is the closest to that, and even there it's a little superficial. (The article does correctly point out that alternate history has been dealt with pretty well in games... but oddly, real history, not so much.)

We do, for whatever reason, have that more with current events to some extent. In the mid-1980s, Chris Crawford released the excellent Balance of Power, which attempted to use gameplay to interactively illustrate some aspects of the Cold War. More recently, there's been a flurry of interest in "newsgames" and "persuasive games", using games as a sort of editorial-cartoon-style take on smallish current issues, like tainted spinach outbreaks.

But where's playable history in any real fashion? It doesn't have to be pedantically boring, designed by Professors of Roman History to illustrate some sort of minutiae of interest to their field. Even semi-accurate, dramatized history of the History Channel variety would be interesting if it were playable in some significant sense, not just "you're playing an RTS that has Roman legions as units". Or something as good as the alternate-history games, but with actual history. Lack of interest? Too hard to figure out how to make it work? I mean this as a serious question, fwiw, not as berating game designers. It seems there's a lot of popular interest in at least some kinds of history, as evidenced by things like the History Channel, and yet in games we've gotten only really superficial elements. It may just be inherently impossible / really really hard, but somehow it seems to me that it ought to be doable.

You missed the point.
iTunes got reinstalled. Google Toolbar didn't. That's the real story here.

You make a good point. iTunes must have some utility that google toolbar didn't. Perhaps this utility is that it is the best-known interface between a computer and the number 1 best selling line of portable digital music plaayers in the world.

Followed shortly thereafter by a specialized add-on.

My kindle (K2) has been updated a few times already. See http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200324680 for more details. Also, it is hitting about 6 months since the release, so I would expect a big one soon.

I consider myself a B5 fan, but I had to look this up.

It's from a B5 book, not any of the episodes or movies. The reviews I can see do not make me want to read it.

And as is the case with electronic music, most of the time the input REALLY sucks...

Try some Shpongle. Tales of the Inexpressible is a good album to start with, stand-out tracks include "Dorset Perception," "Star-Shpongled Banner" and "Around the World in a Tea Daze." Lots of Floyd influence in their stuff. Just be sure to get a decent bitrate, don't even bother with the stuff on youtube -- way too low bitrate to get a full appreciation. Maybe streaming from last.fm or pandora, or you can get full bitrate copies via piratebay and if you like it, buy it from their website http://www.twistedrecords.co.uk/ (don't bother with the streaming samples there, only 64kbps and too short anyway).

I want an electronic compression detector that will severely reduce the volume of all compressed audio. I would hook that to my tv speakers so that I don't get blasted out of the room every time commercials come on.

Like this Terk VR-1?

i have heard that the moto f3 has a cult following of bare-bones phone users. probably can find it cheaper than on amazon, but here it is with a decent write-up.

the eInk screen makes it kind of sexy and 300 hours of standby time is pretty nice for people who don't use it much.

I think the economist you are thinking of is Joseph Stiglitz, right? Author of Globalization and its Discontents

Why would you tease Denon about their connection products? The reviews I've found show it has sooooooo many off-label uses, it must be worth every penny
http://www.amazon.com/review/product/B000I1X6PM/ref=cm_cr_pr_link_1

Actually, there is a rulebook for erotic fantasy role playing in dnd: http://www.amazon.com/Book-Erotic-Fantasy-Gwendolyn-Kestrel/dp/1588463990 There's just about a rulebook for everything! ($$$)

Of course you can; it's the republican way. there are no systems (except Big Government), everything else is the market, and the Market is Good. Also, people deserve to be punished for the "mistakes" of their parents (such as them not being millionaires), so that rules out aid/affordable loans to children/students. It's all very biblical, if you think about it. Anyway, without seeming like an advertiser too much, might I draw this book to your attention? It's mostly relevant, though it slightly emphasizes the banking industry's side of the story over the education industry's, and I found it a fairly interesting hypothesis. (even though it sort of ignores the question why there is so much worry over bad education per se.)

A Warp Core? Do you mean a matter antimatter reactor? Warp cores are fictional devices from the star trek universe [...]

That is known to everyone here:

Warp core is the common designation for the main energy reactor powering the propulsion system on warp-capable starships. (link

Furthermore there are other barriers to populating the solar system, such as that none of the other planets are habitable, and they are unlikely to be able to be made habitable except within domes, underground tunnels and the like.

With enough energy you can make them habitable, even using today's technology. We can't drop TBMs on Mars or Moon primarily because we have no power for them. Otherwise we'd have built a Gateway satellite not waiting for Heechee to do the work for us.

That's just completely, utterly, false. Why don't you also claim you need to buy the official WotC dice? It's about as true as the rest you're saying.

As a group, the only WotC products you need are the original 3 core books, same as with 3E. You'd think this would be obvious from the fact that thousands were playing the game before all the other products you mention were even released.

Yes, if you specifically want to play a class from PHB2, then you need PHB2, duh. If you specifically wanted to play a warlock in 3E, you needed Complete Arcane. This is no different.

There's no reason to buy the "Power" books, unless you'd like more options for your characters. Same as with the "Complete" books in 3.5, and the spatbooks in 3.0. And Complete Martial is not at all a Paladin Supplement. It doesn't have any significant content for paladins, and it's explicitly not marketed as a paladin supplement.

As to the official mini's: these are not at all required, and I've never before heard anyone claim that they were. The same is true for a D&D Insider subscription. That's basically a subscription to Dungeon and Dragon magazines plus some online tools. Do you feel Dungeon and Dragon magazines were required to play 3E? I should hope not.

And what's that nonsense about 4E being a complete surprise? WotC announced 4E 10 months in advance. They even published preview books! And anyone paying attention had noticed that Wizards had been experimenting with radically new mechanics for D&D for at least a year before that, so it was only an open secret that WotC was working on a new edition.

All in all, your post is nothing more than a troll.

That's just completely, utterly, false. Why don't you also claim you need to buy the official WotC dice? It's about as true as the rest you're saying.

As a group, the only WotC products you need are the original 3 core books, same as with 3E. You'd think this would be obvious from the fact that thousands were playing the game before all the other products you mention were even released.

Yes, if you specifically want to play a class from PHB2, then you need PHB2, duh. If you specifically wanted to play a warlock in 3E, you needed Complete Arcane. This is no different.

There's no reason to buy the "Power" books, unless you'd like more options for your characters. Same as with the "Complete" books in 3.5, and the spatbooks in 3.0. And Complete Martial is not at all a Paladin Supplement. It doesn't have any significant content for paladins, and it's explicitly not marketed as a paladin supplement.

As to the official mini's: these are not at all required, and I've never before heard anyone claim that they were. The same is true for a D&D Insider subscription. That's basically a subscription to Dungeon and Dragon magazines plus some online tools. Do you feel Dungeon and Dragon magazines were required to play 3E? I should hope not.

And what's that nonsense about 4E being a complete surprise? WotC announced 4E 10 months in advance. They even published preview books! And anyone paying attention had noticed that Wizards had been experimenting with radically new mechanics for D&D for at least a year before that, so it was only an open secret that WotC was working on a new edition.

All in all, your post is nothing more than a troll.

That's just completely, utterly, false. Why don't you also claim you need to buy the official WotC dice? It's about as true as the rest you're saying.

As a group, the only WotC products you need are the original 3 core books, same as with 3E. You'd think this would be obvious from the fact that thousands were playing the game before all the other products you mention were even released.

Yes, if you specifically want to play a class from PHB2, then you need PHB2, duh. If you specifically wanted to play a warlock in 3E, you needed Complete Arcane. This is no different.

There's no reason to buy the "Power" books, unless you'd like more options for your characters. Same as with the "Complete" books in 3.5, and the spatbooks in 3.0. And Complete Martial is not at all a Paladin Supplement. It doesn't have any significant content for paladins, and it's explicitly not marketed as a paladin supplement.

As to the official mini's: these are not at all required, and I've never before heard anyone claim that they were. The same is true for a D&D Insider subscription. That's basically a subscription to Dungeon and Dragon magazines plus some online tools. Do you feel Dungeon and Dragon magazines were required to play 3E? I should hope not.

And what's that nonsense about 4E being a complete surprise? WotC announced 4E 10 months in advance. They even published preview books! And anyone paying attention had noticed that Wizards had been experimenting with radically new mechanics for D&D for at least a year before that, so it was only an open secret that WotC was working on a new edition.

All in all, your post is nothing more than a troll.

That's almost as good as the Bladestar, available now for only $24.95 Yes, an indoor helicopter with radio control and collision avoidance for $24.95. WowWee manages to produce incredible capabilities at very low price points.

The MIT thing is neat, but it's mostly possible because IMU units and laser scanners are finally small enough for this.

The time-of-flight laser scanner thing has been frustrating. That's what you want in a robot; they're just too expensive for volume or hobbyist use. 3D LIDAR scanners have been around since the 1980s. For a long time, the SICK LMS devices, which worked well but were both bulky and expensive, ($9000), dominated the field. The DARPA Grand Challenge resulted in the Velodyne scanner, which was 3D (the SICK units are line scanners), but that cost $50,000 - $100,000.

There's no fundamental reason why the things should cost that much, except that they are produced in small volumes. Back in 2004, I dragged a venture capitalist down to Advanced Scientific Concepts, which has a $100,000 flash laser rangefinder with a custom imaging chip. That thing should cost under $1000 in quantity, and eventually it should cost like a webcam. But ASC was selling only to the military, and they weren't thinking in terms of a volume product. It was too early, though; no volume market was on the horizon.

When robots at the Roomba level get laser rangefinding and a decent IMU, they'll be able to navigate without getting lost or stuck. An automatic vacuum with enough smarts to do the job right could take over much commercial floor care.

http://www.amazon.com/Elephants-Dance-Inside-Historic-Turnaround/product-reviews/B00009NDAF/ref=cm_cr_dp_hist_2?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&filterBy=addTwoStar

Many like these:

"It is strangely ironic that, after doing his best to suppress all negative communication within IBM, it should be the reader feedback on amazon.com that alerts Gerstner to what the world at large really thinks of him. Ever since 1994 the newsreading public has been conned into a set of beliefs about IBM and Gerstner, simply through IBM's vice-like control of all media that wanted a share of IBM's ad spending. It is bizarre that he expects us to read through a critical employee e-mail on pages 81-82 of his book, when he admits that he couldn't even spare the time to reply to it himself.

Gerstner was the IBM CEO with a worse revenue record than John Akers, the man he replaced. The only way Gerstner could find to grow revenue was by buying firms like Lotus. He turned what was a fantastic company to work for into a an ordinary one. He writes in the book that he transformed the company into a firm where the most able got the most rewards. In fact he converted it into a firm where the most aggressive individuals, like Gerstner, win through. He destroyed IBM's employee benefits schemes across the world, claiming they were unaffordable at the time of IBM's darkest hour. Perhaps they were at that time, but Gerstner's greatest sin was that he never returned any of the benefits to the employees when business improved, except through a silly bonus scheme that in my experience never motivated anyone. The result is that IBM has become a company that people still want to have on their CV, but those who join in mid-career almost never stay more than two years.

Gerstner groped around and never really found the right idea for growing revenue. His shift to services meant that he took his eye off all the products in the IBM catalogue, and IBM architectures have become an irrelevance in a world now dominated by Windows, TCP/IP, Linux, Solaris and Oracle. He used the AS/400 as a cash cow when a very aggressive pricing scheme could have seen the system create the market that Windows NT instead built. Gerstner has said the Internet saved IBM, but frankly it did a lot more for rivals like Microsoft and Sun.

There's a part of me that makes me think this book is one huge, ironic joke -- the guy only pretends to be unaware of the impact of his decisions on others. He boasts about a turnaround that never was and advocates management behaviour that no-one should accept.

That would be fine if it were confined to the pages of this book. But unfortunately the impact of Gerstner is written large across the lives of many, many individuals who crossed his path, both inside and outside IBM. The blight cast over their lives means that, when they get the chance, they usually don't recommend IBM products. Gerstner just doesn't understand that.

These pages on amazon ought to be required reading for anyone foolish enough to think they want a career in IBM. "

I mainly agree with you. Just a few quick points.

1. Funding issues will, for evolutionary reasons (i.e. whether a scientific career 'lives' or 'dies') have a profound effect on prevailing attitudes in the mainstream of various areas of the sciences (i.e. if your research group generally turns out pro-drug papers in journals, you are more likely to get pharmaceutical sponsorship than if you don't.)

2. The 'no scientific evidence' argument appears many times in an attempt to discredit an unpopular idea. The problem is that you have to show that the idea that you are against would reasonably imply the existence of the scientific evidence that hasn't been observed. (This bit of the logic is regularly lacking when 'scientists' dismiss ideas on the account of 'no scientific evidence'.)

3. Statistics. There is a very good book: http://www.amazon.com/Common-Errors-Statistics-Avoid-Them/dp/0471460680 and the first two sentences of the first chapter spell it out: no matter how precise the 'maths' is, it is an error to rely solely on statistics. From a pure maths perspective, bear in mind that a random number chosen from the reals in the interval [0,1], with equal probability for each number, has 0% chance of being a real number that will ever be explicitly picked out in any scientific document, past present or future. (This is a trivial application of measure theory.)

4. The 'evolution theory' bit on the end heavily oversimplifies things. (If you assume that (a) does not happen, it does not follow, even from evolution theory, that (b) will necessarily happen: there are other possibilities).

Not sure there is a solid one. There are multiple factors at work, which interact with each other and all have gray areas. Time commitment often comes up, but some people play Bejeweled for absurdly compulsive amounts of time per week. Time commitment per session might be one, though perhaps perceived time commitment per session is a better one. Some might just be cultural factors--- "hardcore games" tend to have all sorts of non-gameplay related markers like fantasy or shooter themes that mark them as targeted to specific groups. When you change those, as with Spore, you get a different audience, even when you still have a really long game typical in many ways of the "hardcore" category.

On the whole I think it's basically incoherent as a solid distinction, though it comes up often enough that there must be something to it. The first research I know of trying to pin it down better is Jesper Juul's new book on the subject, which among other things tries to sift some data from a bunch of interviews with self-described "casual" and "hardcore" gamers about what traits each of them thinks the two labels implies. It might be interesting to have a richer vocabulary to talk about it, though, since it's clearly more than a single hardcore---casual axis.

I heard the same thing in an interview with Michael Lewis, who wrote Liar's Poker, about Wall Street CEOs in the 80s and 90s. The big bombshell that he dropped was that some CEOs were making bonuses upwards of one million dollars. He said that after he wrote that book, he would get letters from Ohio University students asking how they could get jobs like that.

Amazon has done some interesting research and development lately. In particular, look at Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform, as well as Amazon's statistically improbable phrases (SIP) algorithm. I have a fetish for natural language parsing, so SIP is particularly interesting to me. These are innovations.

Amazon has done some interesting research and development lately. In particular, look at Amazon's EC2 cloud computing platform, as well as Amazon's statistically improbable phrases (SIP) algorithm. I have a fetish for natural language parsing, so SIP is particularly interesting to me. These are innovations.

I had that problem with Freenet back in about 2001 or so.

I have no idea how much content on the network then actually was child pornography, but nearly all the main search/index pages had links claiming to be child porn.

And I was paying for bandwidth to host a node.

After a while I thought 'you know, I really do not need to be facilitating the distribution of this stuff. Whether it is or is not child porn I don't know and I'm not going to click to find out, but it's claiming to be, and that's way too squicky for me. I have free choice to support this or not. I'm freely choosing to out.' And never looked back.

If the search pages had been a little more discreet I'd never have known or cared, I guess. But they weren't, they were in my face every time I logged in, so.... it was an ethical decision on my part.

These days, I really don't care that much about anonymity. I think it was reading Starhawk's 'Webs of Power' who pointed out that even if you're protesting the government, you need to be mil-sec NSA level secure if you want to go the secure route, and if you do that you'll be playing right in the big boys' sandpit using the rules of their game, while the other option is to be completely open, democratic and transparent and use secrecy against them. Pick one or the other, and the open route is generally safer.

In protesting the whole point is to facilitate *democratic* change - so if you have to be blac-bloc secret to 'lead a movement', you have a big danger of doing what the Bolsheviks did and creating a glorious people's revolutionary vanguard which learns the habit of secrecy and control and never gives it up once it gains power. You don't actually change anything by doing that, you just change the labels on the prisons. As Lenin did.

Plus, the end-game of a movement is to change hearts and minds. There's no point in seizing power unless you can convince your peers to join your cause - and if you can do that, you won't *need* to hide anything. Yes, you'll probably get stepped on, but you'll get stepped on harder if you try to play security games.

Just like sometimes in a bad neighbourhood you're safer if you don't have a gun - then every side knows you're a non-combatant.

http://www.amazon.com/Webs-Power-Starhawk/dp/1897408137/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255641610&sr=8-4

On topic: In the US, PSN has started to accept competition on its own Store (sounds weird, but apparently Sony likes competition) from Amazon, where you essentially buy a redeem-key.

How is that different from the product keys Amazon has been selling for Xbox Live Arcade games for ages? Like this one for example: http://www.amazon.com/Braid-Online-Game-Code-Xbox-360/dp/B001LRQ8HU/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1255635380&sr=8-1

Sounds to me it's just one more area where Sony is following instead of leading.

Reminds me of my Human Factors class, we read the book Set Phasers on Stun, which included horror stories about human design disasters.

My computer connects to my HD Television, but I don't have 4 controllers. I could get some though.

Any hierarchical form of government has these problems. What we need is democracy, not more management buzzwords. The problem is that in hierarchy, people have power over each other, thus don't trust each other, and this inhibits free flow of information and makes all sorts of games possible.

I recommend a good book http://www.amazon.com/Maverick-Success-Behind-Unusual-Workplace/dp/0446670553/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255506737&sr=8-1 which explains this by nice example.

Does it come on a live CD?

How much will it cost the Windows PC user to run it?

For someone with a CD burner in their computer the cost to download and burn a linux CD is anywhere from 30 cents to 2 dollars.

If you don't want to download and burn it, you can get a linux CD for anywhere from free to 13 bucks

Free https://shipit.ubuntu.com/
$3.80 http://www.osdisc.com/
$5.99 http://shop.cheapbytes.com/
$6.05 http://www.linuxcd.org/
$6.30 http://linboo.com/
$13.00 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/3937514775

Sounds like somebody has been reading Outliers

about the nature of computation and lightspeed and the like as explored in the wonderful novel A Fire Upon The Deep (Zones of Thought)

in which the universe has depth and the depth determines how fast things can go including neural tissue, computation, and intergalactic travel. I have long suspected that Earth is towards the shallow end ...

[...] its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time to kill his grandfather.

Well, then I recommend you read Rant by Chuck Palahniuk.

Because of the computing power to generate the higher level data products, some data systems are serving level 1 data (calibrated data), not the raw sensor recordings (level 0).

Knowledge of the sensor's characteristics are thus encoded into the products being served, and this, from an Information Science standpoint, you could characterize the higher level data products as "Information", not "Data". ... see, I *did* actually read the first chapter of Donald Case's book. (although, I proved that by criticizing it when I met him at the ASIS&T annual meeting a few years back, and he said he had just sent the second edition to press, and could've used the comments a little earlier)

I'm wondering if this is a viable concern.

From the Kindle web site.

Battery Life: Read on a single charge for up to 4 days with wireless on. Turn wireless off and read for up to two weeks. Battery life will vary based on wireless usage, such as shopping the Kindle Store and downloading content. In low-coverage areas or in EDGE/GPRS-only coverage, wireless usage will consume battery power more quickly

Does one need more than 4 day to 2 weeks between chargings?

• A portable game engine for classic first person shooters such as DOOM, Heretic and Hexen. Lets you enjoy the original games using modern technology, including high-resolution OpenGL graphics, 3D models, and dynamic lighting effects.

I would think it should run thru Wine if it wont run natively. Hexen should be pretty cheap these days, and the expansion.

I've used it under windows, its damn cool.

• A portable game engine for classic first person shooters such as DOOM, Heretic and Hexen. Lets you enjoy the original games using modern technology, including high-resolution OpenGL graphics, 3D models, and dynamic lighting effects.

I would think it should run thru Wine if it wont run natively. Hexen should be pretty cheap these days, and the expansion.

I've used it under windows, its damn cool.

The Power of Persuasion - How we are bought and sold. http://www.amazon.com/Power-Persuasion-Were-Bought-Sold/dp/0471763179/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1255289450&sr=8-1

Full of links to studies showing that advertisements work, how and why. They work on everyone, but more on those that think themselves immune to advertisements. As we can easily imagine, advertisements work much better on kids.

Anyway, why do you think companies spend so much on advertisements if they are not convinced advertisements work? Even if sufficient studies were not available in academia, wouldn't they themselves conduct such studies to convince themselves before spending billions of dollars? Of course, results of such studies will not be available for us to study.

You can yourself conduct some (less rigorous) studies. I have found that junk food works well for such studies. Choose a junk food that your wife likes, not immensely but reasonably well, but for some reason she has not eaten it for a while. Casually mention it in conversation. Wait for results.