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Greg Bear wrote a book called Slant that I read in the late 90's, featuring a biologically driven computer that met the claims of this experiment. While the reality is far from "faster than silicon", sci-fi has the fantasy covered.

The Apple store works because Apple's customers are the kind of people that buy their computers from stores. Microsoft has those customers too, and they shop at Best Buy. If they can capture some of those customers, that's profit directly into their pockets.

You're right about that video; while it's cheesy and sophomoric, it does (accidentally) capture the distinction very well. Nobody walking down an aisle sees an iPod and wonders "what is that? let me take a look at the features." Everyone knows what an iPod is and, unless they're rich or Christmas shopping, they already know they're going to get one when they walk in the store and don't need any more convincing than the $100-budget artwork on the plain box. Apple doesn't need anything on their box except the size of the storage. Every music player is called the same name, and customers don't have to know the generation number or anything because they don't have a choice. Microsoft's offerings are more conventional: diverse and complicated.

Microsoft is clearly trying to recreate their consumer image to push ahead on this ridiculous trend of hip tech. They're going for sleek and simplified, which is obvious in Windows 7. Their packaging is getting simpler and more artistic. Some of their commercials play the quiet-and-confident keep-it-in-the-public-mind honestly-do-we-even-need-to-tell-you-what-our-product-is-because-everyone-already-knows-about-it game. Check out the amazon product description.. it goes on and on about the simplified interface and clean, innovative ways of interacting faster. I think the Microsoft store is just one arm of that movement. They've got a very modern, artwork-and-buzzword-oriented look with expensive displays and bold, clean colors. It's logical, I guess. But that game is just a huge popularity contest, and counting on fickle teens turning their attention your way is hardly a wise investment on Microsoft's part. Both companies are evil, but Apple is good at keeping its mouth shut and letting the public associate "Apple" with Apple products and not Apple the company. Microsoft's complex agreements with OEMs, retail, and enterprise customers, as well as their more diverse and wordy offerings and their arms in multiple fields (PC games, xbox subscriptions, office apps, software development, operating systems, etc, etc) make that impossible.

Their business side is still mostly consumer-garbage-free. Server is clean anyway.

It's not hugely surprising to me that there might be issues with a more complex grid, as with a more complex anything, even short of vulnerability to an EMP attack. If there are automated systems, that's automated systems that could fail, or could operate in unintended ways. There's just more stuff that has to go right; more control systems that must be robust under various conditions; more dynamical-system states that need to be understood and designed for.

What is surprising to me is that I can't actually find a decent, even-handed overview of smart grids. You can have your choice of breathless "smart grid is THE FUTURE" books and articles. One book goes so far as to title itself Perfect Power: How the Microgrid Revolution Will Unleash Cleaner, Greener, More Abundant Energy . Yes, that's right, the new grid will provide perfect power, which will solve all our problems. Does anyone seriously believe there aren't pros and cons that at least deserve some consideration and design?

Of course, there are some academics who've written detailed journal articles, usually on some sub-aspect. But our public discourse seems to, at the moment, consist of a bunch of "the smart grid is the messiah" people on the one hand, and now "omg what about terrorism" on the other hand.

Honestly, I would suggest the book, The Absolute Beginner's Guide to C. I've seen several non-programmers have great results with it, including one who had absolutely horrible English.

"Windows 3.11 was the first usable version of Windows"

I agree. The versions of Windows earlier than 3.1 were terrible. They had limited, buggy font support and often crashed. My experience with Windows 1.0 and 2.0 was that they were just toys. It was reported in the book Barbarians Led by Bill Gates that the early versions were made only to kill Go Corporation. To me they seemed at the time to be pointless products. It is a very unhappy realization that Microsoft wasted my time because it was trying to stop the success of another company.

That book was also very helpful because it explains why the Windows API is so disorganized.

I think it is not an answer to abusiveness that someone else is abusive, also.

It appears to me, and apparently to many people, that Microsoft deliberately releases unfinished software. It was reported that many people inside Microsoft were extremely opposed to releasing Microsoft Windows Vista when they did.

Wal-Mart has a laptop for $298.00 that would be acceptable for most people who check email and write letters. Three GB of memory, 15.4 inches, 160 GB Hard Drive, but I get the impression its just abusive advertising; apparently they won't have many. More and more, however, Apple's prices look huge.

I'm very interested in the sociology of business management. Once a company gets a negative reputation, it becomes difficult to hire the best people. That tends to push a company in the direction of further degradation.

Yeah, I remember when I first learned to use google. Listen, you're going to have to actually learn to read books to get the truth rather than from dipshits on the internet.

I have read books. I only have a fraction of the books and magazines I've bought but I still have 100 plus books and hundreds more magazines. These books and magazines range from culture to economics to science and technology. I bought Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" which I gave to my younger sister as well as "Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution" which is on my bookshelf right behind me. I subscribe to "Reason" magazine and regularly read the "Economist". Besides reading I've also learned from my family. One of my sister's a Certified Public Accountant who runs her own accounting business. Her husband is a Certified Financial Planner who has run his run business as well as worked as a daytrader.

My family started in the low income bracket, my dad retired as an enlisted airman in the US Air Force. And while my mom raised 3 children she worked her way through a technical school to become a lab tech in a hospital. All three of us children worked our way at least partially through college. My older sister's now a nurse. And not only does my younger sister run her own business she's also a property owner. Among others she owns the apartment building I live in. Now I haven't gotten a Bachelor's degree never mind the PhD I wanted. But that was because of an accident I had while in college. Due to an injury and disability I survived my college degree plans were put on hold. And now I don't know when, or if, I'll be able to start taking classes again. I am hoping though that I can get back to college where I plan to study international business and economics.

On the surface he of course does not support these things but his progeny tell a completely different story.

Yea and all Germans were responsible for Hitler.

I suppose you've never heard of Glass-Steagall?

I know about the Glass-Steagall Act, which created the FDIC and some banking regulations.

Your knowledge of history is extremely superficial. It's what comes from learning everything from wikipedia and google searches.

Your knowledge of me is what is extremely superficial. And on that note I'm ending this.

Falcon

Yeah, I remember when I first learned to use google. Listen, you're going to have to actually learn to read books to get the truth rather than from dipshits on the internet.

I have read books. I only have a fraction of the books and magazines I've bought but I still have 100 plus books and hundreds more magazines. These books and magazines range from culture to economics to science and technology. I bought Adam Smith's "An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations" which I gave to my younger sister as well as "Natural Capitalism: Creating the Next Industrial Revolution" which is on my bookshelf right behind me. I subscribe to "Reason" magazine and regularly read the "Economist". Besides reading I've also learned from my family. One of my sister's a Certified Public Accountant who runs her own accounting business. Her husband is a Certified Financial Planner who has run his run business as well as worked as a daytrader.

My family started in the low income bracket, my dad retired as an enlisted airman in the US Air Force. And while my mom raised 3 children she worked her way through a technical school to become a lab tech in a hospital. All three of us children worked our way at least partially through college. My older sister's now a nurse. And not only does my younger sister run her own business she's also a property owner. Among others she owns the apartment building I live in. Now I haven't gotten a Bachelor's degree never mind the PhD I wanted. But that was because of an accident I had while in college. Due to an injury and disability I survived my college degree plans were put on hold. And now I don't know when, or if, I'll be able to start taking classes again. I am hoping though that I can get back to college where I plan to study international business and economics.

On the surface he of course does not support these things but his progeny tell a completely different story.

Yea and all Germans were responsible for Hitler.

I suppose you've never heard of Glass-Steagall?

I know about the Glass-Steagall Act, which created the FDIC and some banking regulations.

Your knowledge of history is extremely superficial. It's what comes from learning everything from wikipedia and google searches.

Your knowledge of me is what is extremely superficial. And on that note I'm ending this.

Falcon

Actually, the Monster Cable would be much more.

And the Denon cable makes that look cheap: Denon AK-DL1

Its not clear to me if you're asking how to vet an idea or how to get it commercialized. The former is my guess, but if you're interested in commercialization, I suggest this book:
http://www.amazon.com/Commercializing-New-Technologies-Getting-Market/dp/0875847609/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248437892&sr=8-1

As for vetting, if its an actual invention, then you're talking patent and you can't really discuss it with anyone publicly, requiring the aforementioned NDA at the least. If its an idea that might not be patentable, I have used my wife and trusted colleagues as sounding boards. A trusted colleague is someone with personal moral standards beyond reproach and who I want to have involved with the development of the idea.

Actually, the Monster Cable would be much more.

Part of the problem is that there are actually few books today that are worth much.

This is not a problem of old==good and new==bad. Start from the assumption that 95% of everything is crap. 95% of the books that were written 400 years ago were crap. However, only the good ones have survived. This gives the impression that older stuff is better, but this is a mistaken impression.

On the other hand, much of the good and valuable stuff from the past is very hard to get ahold of. There are people that would really love to have a copy of Addington's guide to illustrating flaked stone artifacts, but they are difficult to find, as the book has been out of print for years (and is not into the public domain to boot), and those of us that own copies of the book are not likely to give them up. If Amazon wants to get the rights to the book and print off copies on demand, I would be happy to pay them for the service. As I see it, Amazon is attempting to fill a niche. Sure, they make money off of it, but I don't see it as a simple marketing ploy designed to capitalize off of nostalgia for the past.

Other companies have been in the facsimile/reprint business for a while. The best known (at least in the U.S.) is probably Dover Press, but there are others. What makes it interesting is that this is Amazon doing the publishing, meaning that there will be an order of magnitude more titles available than what places like Dover can manage.

My partner has ordered a few facsimile reprints of 17th century theological and philosophical works from Kessinger Publishing, works she wasn't able to get anywhere else. They're just poor facsimiles, almost photocopies, of old works, but even then manage to work in a little incompetence. Their printing of Sir Kenelm Digby's Of Bodies and of Man's Soul to Discover the Immortality of Reasonable Souls has on its cover (and as the title on the Amazon page!) one of the best editorial screw-ups ever.

After umpteen failed attempts at cleaning cable messes at home and in conference rooms at work, I've decided the most important thing is to get everything possible up off the floor and hidden under tabletops. The equally important thing is to find a solution that allows changes without huge amounts of effort.

The solution that works best for me (couldn't be happier) is to hang a narrow wire shelf under the back of my desktop or conference room table, then use tie-wraps or velcro to attach all the ugly up and out of sight.

I'm talking about a rubberized wire grid like dish drying racks. Kinda like this rack at Amazon .

In the San Francisco bay area I buy 'em at Daiso (http://www.daiso-sangyo.co.jp/english/storeinfo/usa.html) very cheaply (under a couple bucks IIRC). (Daiso is also a fantastically cheap source for velcro cable wraps, split platic flex-tubing, etc. by the way. A real find.)

I hang them just using large cup hooks, oriented parallel to the tabletop but offset an inch or two to make wiring easy. Any sort of standoff would work - epoxy some cable-wraps if you can't use screws. The goal is to hang it where it isn't visible but isn't in the way of anyone sitting at the table/desk (knee-knockers aren't a valid solution). You also need to ensure that any knockouts, cable raceways, and access holes have easy access to the grid.

Once you've got the grid in place, just velcro or tie-wrap all your cables, outlet strips, small devices, etc. to intersections in the grid. You want to hide all the gathered-up cable slack in individual bunches tie-wrapped under the table (which is why you should attach an outlet strip or two to the grid itself). Adjust the cable-slack bundles so that you have just the right length for neatness but with enough slack to not be annoying if you need to move something slightly.

Try to gather like cables together, and then enclose them in as few "wire looms" as is reasonable (e.g. Monster Cable's slightly expensive product). If I've got, say, 5 USB devices attached to a hub that's on the grid under the table, I'll use a small diameter wire loom to keep all the cables together for most of the run, then split them out individually to each device (with just the right length extending for each one). Try to avoid running power cables in the same loom as signal cables.

This has proven to be far and away the tidiest, most flexible, and easiest cable management system to modify I've found for general cable management in human workspace areas (versus datacenters). It's very straightforward to change things when you add, change, or delete a device or three. Before this system I used to spend hours trying to route everything neatly only to be brought to tears a few weeks (or even hours) later when I want to make just one small change. The only thing that's a pain at all is removing a cable from a loom as required, but that's really not all that much of a headache either.

After umpteen failed attempts at cleaning cable messes at home and in conference rooms at work, I've decided the most important thing is to get everything possible up off the floor and hidden under tabletops. The equally important thing is to find a solution that allows changes without huge amounts of effort.

The solution that works best for me (couldn't be happier) is to hang a narrow wire shelf under the back of my desktop or conference room table, then use tie-wraps or velcro to attach all the ugly up and out of sight.

I'm talking about a rubberized wire grid like dish drying racks. Kinda like this rack at Amazon .

In the San Francisco bay area I buy 'em at Daiso (http://www.daiso-sangyo.co.jp/english/storeinfo/usa.html) very cheaply (under a couple bucks IIRC). (Daiso is also a fantastically cheap source for velcro cable wraps, split platic flex-tubing, etc. by the way. A real find.)

I hang them just using large cup hooks, oriented parallel to the tabletop but offset an inch or two to make wiring easy. Any sort of standoff would work - epoxy some cable-wraps if you can't use screws. The goal is to hang it where it isn't visible but isn't in the way of anyone sitting at the table/desk (knee-knockers aren't a valid solution). You also need to ensure that any knockouts, cable raceways, and access holes have easy access to the grid.

Once you've got the grid in place, just velcro or tie-wrap all your cables, outlet strips, small devices, etc. to intersections in the grid. You want to hide all the gathered-up cable slack in individual bunches tie-wrapped under the table (which is why you should attach an outlet strip or two to the grid itself). Adjust the cable-slack bundles so that you have just the right length for neatness but with enough slack to not be annoying if you need to move something slightly.

Try to gather like cables together, and then enclose them in as few "wire looms" as is reasonable (e.g. Monster Cable's slightly expensive product). If I've got, say, 5 USB devices attached to a hub that's on the grid under the table, I'll use a small diameter wire loom to keep all the cables together for most of the run, then split them out individually to each device (with just the right length extending for each one). Try to avoid running power cables in the same loom as signal cables.

This has proven to be far and away the tidiest, most flexible, and easiest cable management system to modify I've found for general cable management in human workspace areas (versus datacenters). It's very straightforward to change things when you add, change, or delete a device or three. Before this system I used to spend hours trying to route everything neatly only to be brought to tears a few weeks (or even hours) later when I want to make just one small change. The only thing that's a pain at all is removing a cable from a loom as required, but that's really not all that much of a headache either.

Actually aside from magic (and Blizzard emphasizes it more much), swords, and orcs, Blizzard's Warcraft setting has very little in common with Tolkein's writings. Unless you want to attribute everything remotely fantasy related, then Warcraft really is it's own story with it's own flavor.

Just as a measuring, aside from even what's been put out for the games, the Fictional Literature section of Amazon returns 21 novels for the search criteria "warcraft blizzard":

http://www.amazon.com/s/qid=1248298579/ref=sr_nr_n_3?ie=UTF8&rs=1000&keywords=warcraft%20blizzard&bbn=1000&rnid=1000&rh=n%3A!1000%2Ci%3Astripbooks%2Ck%3Awarcraft%20blizzard%2Cn%3A17

There's a lot of material out there.

(I should probably keep this in a text file on my desktop, it's a "batch of advice" which I frequently have to re-write, and it doesn't change much)

I mentioned the term "modern C++" above, though really it's better to call it "sane C++". By this I mean C++ that won't drive you nuts trying to figure out what went wrong, when something inevitably *will* go wrong. Practices that make programs more safe, and introspective.

If you already know C++ (the foundations, I mean), it'll be easier to shift to STL-dependent C++. If you're completely new to C++, these resources will still be very important, but you'll need to learn the lower-level stuff in parallel, so you can understand how STL containers/templates are built from the inside (which is important when you need to choose which ones to use).

A website that should very often sit in the background while you're coding/learning: C++ FAQ Lite. Following these rules will make it much easier to design and maintain your programs.
Another very useful website: cplusplus.com. It's a huge reference site, with a lot of examples.

The books I'd recommend:
Accelerated C++ -- higher-level to lower-level approach.
C++ Coding Standards -- similar to the C++ FAQ Lite in the nature of the advice, but covers more ground and is probably better organized.
C++ Common Knowledge -- This is for a few months down the line, delves into some nuances.

Software:
Windows: Visual Studio C++ Express -- You can force it to stick to ANSI C++. It's still the best IDE for C++ on windows (IMO).
Linux/Mac: Eclipse, probably Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers. Remember though that you can tweak Eclipse into just about anything.

If you're writing end-user applications, keep in mind two frameworks: Qt and wxWidgets.

Quick note about Boost: If you can create a structure using some combination of STL components, do that before resorting to Boost. Boost is highly abstracted, and you should only use the parts which would otherwise be extremely complicated to create from scratch (like regexp).

(I should probably keep this in a text file on my desktop, it's a "batch of advice" which I frequently have to re-write, and it doesn't change much)

I mentioned the term "modern C++" above, though really it's better to call it "sane C++". By this I mean C++ that won't drive you nuts trying to figure out what went wrong, when something inevitably *will* go wrong. Practices that make programs more safe, and introspective.

If you already know C++ (the foundations, I mean), it'll be easier to shift to STL-dependent C++. If you're completely new to C++, these resources will still be very important, but you'll need to learn the lower-level stuff in parallel, so you can understand how STL containers/templates are built from the inside (which is important when you need to choose which ones to use).

A website that should very often sit in the background while you're coding/learning: C++ FAQ Lite. Following these rules will make it much easier to design and maintain your programs.
Another very useful website: cplusplus.com. It's a huge reference site, with a lot of examples.

The books I'd recommend:
Accelerated C++ -- higher-level to lower-level approach.
C++ Coding Standards -- similar to the C++ FAQ Lite in the nature of the advice, but covers more ground and is probably better organized.
C++ Common Knowledge -- This is for a few months down the line, delves into some nuances.

Software:
Windows: Visual Studio C++ Express -- You can force it to stick to ANSI C++. It's still the best IDE for C++ on windows (IMO).
Linux/Mac: Eclipse, probably Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers. Remember though that you can tweak Eclipse into just about anything.

If you're writing end-user applications, keep in mind two frameworks: Qt and wxWidgets.

Quick note about Boost: If you can create a structure using some combination of STL components, do that before resorting to Boost. Boost is highly abstracted, and you should only use the parts which would otherwise be extremely complicated to create from scratch (like regexp).

(I should probably keep this in a text file on my desktop, it's a "batch of advice" which I frequently have to re-write, and it doesn't change much)

I mentioned the term "modern C++" above, though really it's better to call it "sane C++". By this I mean C++ that won't drive you nuts trying to figure out what went wrong, when something inevitably *will* go wrong. Practices that make programs more safe, and introspective.

If you already know C++ (the foundations, I mean), it'll be easier to shift to STL-dependent C++. If you're completely new to C++, these resources will still be very important, but you'll need to learn the lower-level stuff in parallel, so you can understand how STL containers/templates are built from the inside (which is important when you need to choose which ones to use).

A website that should very often sit in the background while you're coding/learning: C++ FAQ Lite. Following these rules will make it much easier to design and maintain your programs.
Another very useful website: cplusplus.com. It's a huge reference site, with a lot of examples.

The books I'd recommend:
Accelerated C++ -- higher-level to lower-level approach.
C++ Coding Standards -- similar to the C++ FAQ Lite in the nature of the advice, but covers more ground and is probably better organized.
C++ Common Knowledge -- This is for a few months down the line, delves into some nuances.

Software:
Windows: Visual Studio C++ Express -- You can force it to stick to ANSI C++. It's still the best IDE for C++ on windows (IMO).
Linux/Mac: Eclipse, probably Eclipse IDE for C/C++ Developers. Remember though that you can tweak Eclipse into just about anything.

If you're writing end-user applications, keep in mind two frameworks: Qt and wxWidgets.

Quick note about Boost: If you can create a structure using some combination of STL components, do that before resorting to Boost. Boost is highly abstracted, and you should only use the parts which would otherwise be extremely complicated to create from scratch (like regexp).

• How a $7 billion nonprofit is run
• "Is the Mayo Clinic a non profit org., or do you have to have insurance to go?"
• Wiki

http://www.amazon.com/Manga-Guide-Statistics-Shin-Takahashi/dp/1593271891

I hate math, always did. I was good at it but just could not stand it. As such I skipped out on about anything math related beyond algebra (college level). Didn't impede my programming ability at all.

Still there are times where I like to learn how stuff works and honestly this series of books, Manga Guide to ......, has given me a quick leg up on a few subjects I would never have gained from traditional text books.

...check out John Keegan's Face of Battle. It covers the battle of Agincourt and several other major battles - Waterloo and the Somme. This book really gives you a feel for the human element in these battles.

As an additional stamp of approval, it's also on both the Army and USMC reading lists.

I'm not sure we understand yet what the new music business models are, at least not well enough to start applying them to other fields. We have a few examples of things that seem to work, and some blog-based argumentation about why they work, and how those can be generalized. Is saying "let's do that, but for blogs now" really anything more than a really hand-wavy argument that we do New Economy Stuff? Blogs are already pretty much by definition participating in some variety of new-ish economic model. What specifically are they taking from the music business? Just selling shirts directly to consumers is not it; websites have done that forever.

Presumably it means something like, "from observing this experimental phase in the music industry, we've learned some important general lessons about economic activity in the early 21st century, and useful things to do and avoid". But what are those lessons? And are they anything not super-generic, like "sell shirts and stuff"?

Even if Techdirt hasn't given that explanation, I'm curious if anyone knows of a good one. The only book-length discussion of recent music-industry developments (that isn't already dated) that I know of is Ripped: How the Wired Generation Revolutionized Music (came out about 2 months ago), which is a reasonable historical summary of the past 10 years, with a bit of analysis. It's not exactly a distillation of lessons suitable for universal application, though; more of a history just collecting the facts about what's gone on, mixed in with a little bit of breathless tech-hype (as the title suggests; it's got good content beyond that, though, fortunately). Anyone know of any other informative/insightful books (or articles) in this area?

I liked this book too, though when I bought it it was almost $80 and it tends toward the very minute and technical, and doesn't have as much operational or programming-type stuff I wanted. Digital Apollo isn't as specific about the whole technical process, but it has a lot of interesting discussion about the astronauts and how they related to the computer, how initially they rejected the idea of the thing, etc... Also cheaper and more readable for a layman.

Two words: Traveler's checks.

I worked with a guy who hid his money exactly that way during a divorce. They're tagged in your name, but they don't show up against your SSAN. You just need a secure lock box somewhere, and you don't collect interest. Afterward, you just spend them or redeposit them over a period of time.

Other methods are available

Though not primarily about the code or machine structure, the recently published book "Digital Apollo: Human and Machine in Spaceflight" by David A. Mindell (Amazon) has lots of interesting insights into the design decisions and tradeoffs that led to the Apollo software being discussed here.

In particular, it explores debates that might now seem quaint as to whether computers could be programmed to make the decisions necessary to reliably fly and land a spacecraft, and especially, what the right tradeoffs are between direct human control, fully automatic operation, and intermediate modes in which the computers provide the human with higher level abstractions than the raw hardware. Ultimately, for the moon landings, it seems to be this intermediate design point that proved compelling: when Armstrong "overrode" the automatic guidance to choose a landing spot, he was not directly controlling each thruster or the main descent rocket; rather, he was instructing a program to reposition the craft, change speeds, etc., and the computer adjusted the various thrusters and engines appropriately.

There's also a quite good discussion of the famous 1202 errors that almost caused an abort, and of how they related to what was then the very novel and robust architecture of the software created by MIT and the Instrumentation Lab. The book also provides lots of interesting information about scheduling issues (nobody noticed until relatively late in the game that software would be important or difficult), some about hardware architecture (the so-called "ropes" that carried the code in a form that we would think of as ROM today). Overall, a good book for those interested in details.

It's a [...] Ebook. Why the hell do you need javascript?

It because there are no other ebook readers for iPhone, especially ones with stores that could sell his book.

Seriously, please don't write any more single-use ebook readers! I guarantee they won't be as good as Stanza or the Kindle App, and I don't want to have my library spread across 100 little wonky apps. This is a solved problem. Quit reinventing the solution. Please?

It's a market thing. You aren't 'storing' you are selling high and buying low. This is a valid and established tactic in the power generation game. Go get educated : http://www.amazon.com/Market-Operations-Electric-Power-Systems/dp/0471443379

But the wind doesn't care when the price is high, and doesn't always cooperate when the price is low...

~Sticky

"Inflammable" means "likely to burst into flame". Because this confused the illiterate

Confused the illiterate? Literally one meaning of the prefix "in-" is not as in "insane", not sane. Or "inseparable", not separable. Following the rule "inflammable" would mean "not flammable", so "flammable" is the better word for easy to burn. What is confusing is changing the rules.

But then again, English is a Crazy Language. In what other language does feet smell and noses run. Or look at the plural of tooth, "teeth". Why isn't the plural of "booth" "beeth"?

Falcon

> if you're approached about investing in this project
> you might want to keep your wallet in your pocket.

Unless your name is Uncle Sam, in which case you raise taxes (or print money, which is the same thing) and hey presto, up go the turbines. For more I refer you to Chris Horner's excellent work Red Hot Lies.

This might be slightly off topic, but for anyone interested in a good travel guide, I used the above mentioned guide on my last trip to Hawaii (honeymoon): http://www.amazon.com/National-Geographic-Traveler-Hawaii-3rd/dp/1426203888/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1248122652&sr=8-1.

I found it to be much more useful than the standard Frommer's guide. It pointed us to lots of natural wonders (i.e. not tourist traps) and even suggested some good restaurants off the beaten path. What I liked most about the book is that it gave you a numbered guide of important things to see in each location, like having a personal tour guide (in many cases the guide pointed out things I would have easily missed). I think something like The Geek Atlas is a novel idea and would be interested to read its contents and visit the sites mentioned therein, but being an engineer who is constantly surrounded by science and technology, the things I want to see/experience while on vacation rarely have to do with those subjects. For me, vacation is a time to do something different, something out of the ordinary, something that is not part of my daily life. I'll take watching the sunrise over the top of a volcano over visiting the Hague at least 9 times out of 10...

One: The title is a borderline lie. Yes, you can buy 12x 1TB drives for about a grand. But if I'm going to build an array and bench mark it and constantly compare it to buying a Core i7-975 Extreme, the drives alone don't do me any good! (And I love how you continually reiterate with statements like "The Idea: Massive Hard Drive Storage Within a $1,000 Budget")

Two: Said controller does not exist. They listed the controller as ARC-1680ix-20. Areca makes no such controller. They make an 8, 12, 16, 24 but no 20 unless they've got some advanced product unlisted anywhere.

Three: Said controller is going to easily run you another grand. And I'm certain most controllers that accomplish what you're asking are pretty damned expensive and they will have a bigger impact than the drives on your results.

Four: You don't compare this hardware setup with any other setup. Build the "Uber RAID Array" you claim. Uber compared to what, precisely? How does a cheap Adaptac compare? Are you sure there's not a better controller for less money?

All you showed was that we increase our throughput and reduce our access times with RAID 0 & 5 compared to a single drive. So? Isn't that what's supposed to happen? Oh, and you split it across seven pages like Tom's Hardware loves to do. And I can't click print to read the article uninterrupted anymore without logging in. And those Kontera ads that pop up whenever I accidentally cross them with my mouse to click your next page links, god I love those with all my heart.

So feel free to correct me but we are left with a marketing advertisement for an Areca product that doesn't even exist and a notice that storage just keeps getting cheaper. Did I miss anything?

Add to that, if I my memory doesn't fail that they published the RAID 5 wasn't safe to run with 1TB disks... crap.

For the ads... I see no ads. The old "Proxomitron" takes care of everything

I have actually counted ballots and tampering with them is not at all hard. The fact is that I live in a country that wouldn't stand for this. If there was a government behind it though, fraud is quite easy.

No.

Yes.

Large scale manipulation of paper-based elections is not only possible, it happens.

(I will refrain from calling it "fraud", so that I can point out Florida 2000 for those old enough to remember).

What is actually really worrisome about this, is your attitude

And if there is large-scale tampering going on by government agents, how likely is it that they are caught out by representatives from other political parties manning the polling stations? Especially if someone suspects tampering and demands a recount.

Well, perhaps in some countries it would, but in light of Florida 2000, apparently not in the USA.

The problem with not upgrading is that something else may use the browser, and an old Microsoft browser will be buggy, probably.

Google: Don't do evil.
Microsoft: Evil for profit.

Google: It's finished, but we call it beta.
Microsoft: It's beta, but we call it finished. (All of our customers are part of our beta test team.)

"Internet Explorer 8 will no longer replace the default browser when a user selects the 'Use express settings' option during installation. ... 'We heard a lot of feedback from a lot of different people and groups and decided to make the user choice of the default browser even more explicit,' notes Microsoft in a blog post."

Translation: "We do as much evil as we can. But we are afraid of another anti-trust investigation."

All my opinion, but I'm not the only one.

Would people pay for a custom Warcraft controller? What would it look like and how could it be better? I don't know, but that doesn't mean it couldn't be better than a mouse & keyboard.

Yes. Yes they would. Sadly, it's not exacally what you're suggesting. However, maybe this is?

Interestingly, amazon web services now has a import/export service, where they will accept your USB drive via courier and import it into their "Simple Storage Service" aka S3.

      http://aws.amazon.com/importexport/

--jeffk++

I understand that you are referring to an atomic bomb....but in reality the nuclear rocket can easily be stopped, restarted, throttled, and is self moderating (To the End of the Solar System: The Story of the Nuclear Rocket). It is very unlikely that the nuclear rocket would face this failure mode.

As an aside the specific impulse of the nuclear rockets designed and tested in the 50's and 60's achieved well over 800 s. This is nearly twice that of the ~450 s that is the theoretical maximum of the H2 and O2 solid rocket designs.

In fairness the reliability of the reactor core of the nuclear rocket achieved in the 50s and 60s was not outstanding, but they made incredible progress. Also the nuclear rocket was typically only considered for missions that started in Low Earth Orbit is. As a shuttle from LEO to the moon and mars and such.

I think Amazon did the right thing and according to their official response:

Amazon Kindle Customer Service says:
"These books were added to our catalog using our self-service platform by a third-party who did not have the rights to the books. When we were notified of this by the rights holder, we removed the illegal copies from our systems and from customers' devices, and refunded customers. We are changing our systems so that in the future, books will not be removed from customers' devices in these circumstances."

I copied the work of Shakespeare out of order in such a way as to make the juxtaposed dialog between plays humorous in a way Shakespeare did not intend them to be, that's a new copyrightable work.

It might be copyrightable, but if you want the masses to buy it, you'll need to add more awesome.

Except it's NOT in the license. Quoted here in case it mysteriously changes:

Use of Digital Content. Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200144530&#content

The irony of this is almost too thick to cut through. This is absolutely unacceptable, and Amazon must recant this position. Once books are legitimately purchased, it is decidedly wrong and completely unethical to even have the power to perform an action such as this. This cannot be tolerated.

Please flood the Kindle product page with negative reviews so that prospective buyers can be aware of this jaw dropping breach of trust and display of power:
http://www.amazon.com/Kindle-Amazons-Wireless-Reading-Generation/dp/B00154JDAI/

While I have long taken a stance against DRM, this is horrifying and cannot and should not be tolerated by anybody, out of principle if nothing else. I sincerely hope this results in a class-action lawsuit.

You bought and paid for something.

You keep using that word, I do not think it means what you think it means.
The word you are looking for is LICENSED.

Though Amazon's terms of use are kind of ambiguous (suprised?)

Use of Digital Content:
  Upon your payment of the applicable fees set by Amazon, Amazon grants you the non-exclusive right to keep a permanent copy of the applicable Digital Content and to view, use, and display such Digital Content an unlimited number of times, solely on the Device or as authorized by Amazon as part of the Service and solely for your personal, non-commercial use. Digital Content will be deemed licensed to you by Amazon under this Agreement unless otherwise expressly provided by Amazon.

Amazon deleted it because the seller didn't have rights to the book. It's not censorship or thought suppression.

Here is a *legal* copy: http://www.amazon.com/Nineteen-Eighty-Four/dp/B002A9JO9W/ref=sr_oe_2_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247861828&sr=1-2

It's not any different than if I took a public-domain work and tried to sell a Kindle version on Amazon. Once it was discovered, Amazon should refund the end customers (which it has done in this case) and then take up action against me.

hands.

The answer is a shopping cart

Yea, like someone's going to get that shopping cart on a bus with it full of groceries.

There's also carsharing.

Carsharing is not that widely available or known about. I like the idea myself, for those who don't need or want vehicles much carsharing is terrific, but I am not willing to get rid of my car.

Falcon

try to go grocery shopping with nothing but your hands.

The answer is a shopping cart. There's also carsharing.

Since public transit costs more than gas on most trips, you will be losing money and at the same time inconveniencing yourself.

Gas is only a small part of the cost of driving. There's also depreciation, interest on the loan, insurance, maintenance, registration, parking, and so on.

Why has Sun Microsystems not done particularly well in the last few years? Why are they finding it necessary to sell themselves to Oracle? My theory is that the highly reliable hardware Sun Microsystems sells is no longer popular because it is far cheaper to use consumer-grade hardware with software that is fault-tolerant. The excellent 2008 book Planet Google describes Google's experiences on page 54: "For about $278,000 in 2003, [Google] could assemble a rack with 176 microprocessors, 176 gigabytes of memory, and 7 terabytes of disk space. This compared favorably to a $758,000 server sold by the manufacturer of a well-known brand, which had only eight multiprocessors, one-third the memory, and about the same amount of disk space."

Why would Oracle buy Sun? Possibly because there are difficulties in making Oracle database products work with the new fault-tolerant technology. For example, fault-tolerant technology may require performing all database modifications on 4 computers at the same time, and Oracle may not want to sell 4 licenses for one application at the same price as the 1 license used with the more expensive high-reliability equipment.

What are your ideas about the sale of Sun, and Oracle's interest? There are many people with far more knowledge about this than I have.

I doubt it. It's hard for me to believe that the publisher never played a scenario similar to yours in their minds.

I don't find it difficult to believe at all. The human capacity for self deception is astonishing, and corporations have a tendency to view themselves and their products in a more than slightly optimistic light.

I don't agree with your argument that people will be less likely to buy a game due to the fact that they can't resell it. I think resell value is far down on the priority list when buyers make decisions on purchasing games. I don't have any numbers to back that up, but how often do you hear someone say "This game is great, but I'm not going to buy it because I won't be able to sell it when I get bored with it?" I think you are making a big assumption by asserting that there is the net gain is negligible (not to mention you provide nothing but speculation).

Really? I see people comment all the time about how they're turned off of digital purchases because they can't resell them.

Examples:
Warhammer DoW II Review
Left 4 Dead Review

Obviously not everyone is going to sit down and do a cost/benefit analysis over the price of a game, but subconsciously everyone makes some sort of value judgement on whether or not a product is worth the asking price when they purchase it, and for a lot of people resale value is an issue that gets considered.

And yes, I am speculating here. But so is everyone else. We don't need to have corporate sales records in front of us to discuss our opinions.

I may be in the minority here, but I really don't mind if digital distribution takes over retail. Developers will be less dependent on publishers, and hence more free to make the games they want. Decreased distribution costs will allow companies to sell their games cheaper while still maintaining a good profit margin.

I don't disagree here. I think that eventually all game distribution will be digital. I just don't think that developers will get the volume of sales they're expecting at the prices they want to charge.

I doubt it. It's hard for me to believe that the publisher never played a scenario similar to yours in their minds.

I don't find it difficult to believe at all. The human capacity for self deception is astonishing, and corporations have a tendency to view themselves and their products in a more than slightly optimistic light.

I don't agree with your argument that people will be less likely to buy a game due to the fact that they can't resell it. I think resell value is far down on the priority list when buyers make decisions on purchasing games. I don't have any numbers to back that up, but how often do you hear someone say "This game is great, but I'm not going to buy it because I won't be able to sell it when I get bored with it?" I think you are making a big assumption by asserting that there is the net gain is negligible (not to mention you provide nothing but speculation).

Really? I see people comment all the time about how they're turned off of digital purchases because they can't resell them.

Examples:
Warhammer DoW II Review
Left 4 Dead Review

Obviously not everyone is going to sit down and do a cost/benefit analysis over the price of a game, but subconsciously everyone makes some sort of value judgement on whether or not a product is worth the asking price when they purchase it, and for a lot of people resale value is an issue that gets considered.

And yes, I am speculating here. But so is everyone else. We don't need to have corporate sales records in front of us to discuss our opinions.

I may be in the minority here, but I really don't mind if digital distribution takes over retail. Developers will be less dependent on publishers, and hence more free to make the games they want. Decreased distribution costs will allow companies to sell their games cheaper while still maintaining a good profit margin.

I don't disagree here. I think that eventually all game distribution will be digital. I just don't think that developers will get the volume of sales they're expecting at the prices they want to charge.

Good luck with that: PRODUCT ALERT: "The Lord of the Rings (Extended Editions)" is scheduled to be released on Blu-ray in 2011 or 2012. from http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0026L7H20 So until then, I dont know how else you would get a source for the extended cuts in HD. Sorry.

Or maybe the beginnings of the mysterious, living island in this 2002 bestseller?

It's God!