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Maybe in the future when they really start to overtake DVDs (on price too) I'll reconsider.

I think we're starting to get there. Call it a fluke but I recently found a certain 3 disc set on amazon cheaper on Blu-Ray than it is on DVD. Call me crazy, but this might be a sign of things to come.

The big reason I'd have wanted to rip was to keep a digital copy of my collection.

Free digital copies are also becoming common place now, as both of the above sets include a digital copy.

Maybe in the future when they really start to overtake DVDs (on price too) I'll reconsider.

I think we're starting to get there. Call it a fluke but I recently found a certain 3 disc set on amazon cheaper on Blu-Ray than it is on DVD. Call me crazy, but this might be a sign of things to come.

The big reason I'd have wanted to rip was to keep a digital copy of my collection.

Free digital copies are also becoming common place now, as both of the above sets include a digital copy.

You point out a huge problem: today we have little redundancy and almost no wiggle room for any sort of failure. JIT inventory means that if UPS or FedEx drivers go out on strike commerce shuts down, even the stores on Main Street. Factories operate on the thinnest of margins with no reserve capacity.

So what if Something Bad happens? In 1970 it would have mean almost nothing. Today, almost any major event is going to distrupt supply chains, inventory and commerce. The result if we are talking about paper towels isn't that bad, but how about food? In 1950 the US was probably immune to any sort of distruption affecting the food supply in cities. The stockpiles would last until things were pieced back together. By 1980 the stockpiles were less and the population greater. Now, if you prevent delivery trucks from reaching stores for two days you are going to have food riots in cities.

Read the book "The Coming Dark Age" by Roberto Vacca (Amazon). Old book, but probably more true today than ever before.

I stopped caring about blu-rays, they became too much hassle (and too expensive) for not enough of a quality boost.

I disagree. First of all, it can be as hassle-free as plugging one cable between a player and a screen. What's the big deal?

As for quality, try watching something like Planet Earth in full 1080p resolution. Many of the scenes are positively breathtaking in their detail and clarity. I happen to be watching on a bargain 72" TV. At this size, DVD's are very visibly inferior in resolution. I recently rewatched Terminator 2: Judgment Day on DVD and was struck by how noticeable the quality difference was. It really detracted from my enjoyment of the movie until I became caught up in the action enough to stop thinking about it.

I've sat beside people who simply can't tell the difference, however. I suspect these are the same people who stretch standard 4:3 aspect ratio programs across their wide-screen TV's and are oblivious to the distortion.

No... a cut of your tax dollars. Which is why the holy-rollers and "morally superior" freak out when the local library pays for a copy of Madonna's Sex book.

Mitochrondia merged with eukaryote cells about a billion years ago. This allowed eukaryotes to increase metabolic power an order of magnitude over bacteria and evolve locomotive animal life.

A mystery is why mitochondia kept enough DNA to code for about 10% of their proteins after all these eons. They get the other 90% of proteins from nuclear DNA of the host cells. Nick Lane suggests in his mitochondria book this DNA codes for the most essential emzymes such as those that break down free-radical waste which could quickly kill the mitchrondia.

if you order from an affiliate in your sate - it is the same as a brick and mortor store in the state - when you look at the affiliate. when you look at Amazon .. they are a supplier or the affiliate - and there for the fact that the Affiliate is purchacing it from Amazon for resell means

Affiliates are not buying from Amazon then selling to other buyers. When someone clicks on an affiliates link that link goes to Amazon. All the affiliate is doing is providing that link. Amazon itself takes the order and fulfills it. It then gives or credits money to the affiliate. Look at one of slashodt's affiliate links, for the book A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux 2nd ed." Down at the bottom of the review you'll see a link to Amazon with slashdot as part of the url:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/0137003889/ref=nosim/?tag=slashdot0c-20.

Falcon

> This regulation would hurt the small sustainable ranchers who are
> teetering on the edge of being able to compete, while benefiting
> the large-scale industry that you abhor.

So true! There's an unholy alliance between big business and big government; there's a list of examples in Timothy Carney's latest column. For more of the same, he's also the author of The Big Ripoff: How Big Business and Big Government Steal Your Money.

The change of the user interface in Office 2007 is one huge hidden cost.

The simplest response to this may be to look at the sales charts at Amazon.com.

It's fair to assume that most of these users are on their own - no help desk to call for support. Their time. Their money.

1 Office Home & Student 918 Days In The Top 100
3 Office Home & Student Mac. 596 Days
9 Office Standard Full Version 903 Days
10 Office Small Business Upgrade 562 Days
16 Office Pro Full Version 481 Days
19 Office Small Business Full Version 387 Days
23 Office Pro Full Version 917 Days
24 Microsoft Office Mac Media Edition 230 Days

Software Best Sellers in Business & Office

So now can we get off this delusion that the owners of the pirate bay are heroes somehow out to protect our rights in the face of evil corporations?

The production costs for WALL-E: $180 million.

Double that for marketing and distribution.

The number of studios producing CGI feature animation at this level: 1.
The Amazon price for the three-disk Blu-Ray edition of WALL-E with BD Live and digital download copy: $24.99 Wall-E

That is - at least theoretically - 150 GB of content for about one half the cost of one month of broadband cable.

Pixar's return from the geek who links to Pirate Bay: $0

Hmm, I just found the following on Amazon's website.

LINK: http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=468512

(not sure how to make a pretty link on /.)

Items Shipped to New York State
Effective June 1, 2008, Amazon.com LLC will begin collecting sales tax on items shipped to destinations within the State of New York as New York has enacted a new law requiring out-of-state sellers to collect and remit sales tax based on advertising. Amazon has filed a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of this provision. However, as required by the law, we must still begin collecting New York sales tax beginning on that date.

Please note that if you place an order prior to June 1, 2008, your Order Total may not include an estimate of New York sales taxes, but those taxes may still be charged if your order is readied for shipment on or after that date.

So, they pay taxes to NY, but won't for North Carolina and Rhode Island? I haven't seen anywhere that they revoked New York webstore owners.

theory about 20 years ago. However that one suggested the reason for the mass extinctions was because the stars in the galactic plane are much closer together so the likely hood of being in close proximity to a supernova and all the incumbent radiation that entails is much higher.

Nerds are likely to recognize a similar scenario from Larry Niven's 1966 short story "At the Core" (now in his collection Crashlander ), where the stars packed together near the galactic core set off a chain reaction of supernovas that would send a deadly wave of radiation towards the outskirts of the galaxy, killing off all life. Depressing reading.

I'm wagering that designing a rover that you are certain is capable of running around Mars for 90 days would necessarily entail a degree of engineering that makes it at least theoretically capable of running around Mars for years.

I mean this in the politest way, but you're wrong. Read Steve Squyres's Roving Mars. He was the head of the entire project. It's amazing how many things almost didn't work (for example, they got one chance to test their chute - and it shredded to pieces. And it was like 30 days before launch). It's an amazing book.

On a personal note, Steve Squyres was my professor at Cornell, and he was one of the most amazing professors I ever had or ever would have after. I still remember the day he came off the plane from Pasadena and told us about the Rovers about a week before the press was told. He told us all that it was "off the record" and any reporters in the room (student paper, etc) had to treat it as so.

They do realize you can just buy a 2 person earbud right?

http://www.amazon.com/Macally-PodDuo-Headphone-Splitter-iPod/dp/B00065XSWG

Those are handy on a plane or on a long car drive.

The Axemaker's Gift. Is a rather fascinating book about how Human's turn every tool into a double edged sword. The axe for example allows for easy wood collection but also mass deforestation and erosion.

For those of us who watched 'The Lone Gunmen' live or on DVD, you may recall that the pilot episode has the government conspiring to fly a jet airliner in to the World Trade Center. One of the Lone Gunmen is on said plane while the other two are on a computer network trying to override the 'evil government agent's actions to remotely control the plane to crash in to the building. Whenever I watch this episode on DVD it is rather chill-instilling, so close to home (They don't crash, they *just* miss hitting the building).

The REAL irony of this is that this episode aired 6 months BEFORE 9/11. So, should the TSA / NSA / FBI / Secret Service / Homeland Security / NTSB or some 'Men in Black' group go and arrest and detain the writers and producers (perhaps even the evil actors?) of this episode for doing something that *clearly* influenced the terrorists to do the deed for real?

The thought police are here...think happy thoughts...think happy thoughts!

I've got Dell hardware from the 90s working fine.

The first tyme I used one Dell, a brand new one with XP, it froze while booting up. The only thing I could do to get it working was to push in the power button until it powered down then reboot.

What's your point?

You bad mouthed Macs so I listed all the problems with Windows PCs I've had. That's my point!

Oh, and get this: I get the latest version of my OS of choice too!

I have the lated updated version of one of my OSes of choice, 10.5.7. And I plan to install another choice for an OS, Ubuntu Studio 9.04. I've been waiting for a book about it to come out, I see Amazon is now carrying "Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Handbook" which I'll check later today to see if local book stores have it so I can check it out. I'd rather get one about 9.04 like "A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux" but it's not out yet.

There's nothing special about mac hardware. It doesn't last long. Apple is an OEM. Maybe quality was better back in the day

My Mac lasted more than twice as long without problems as 2 of my Windows PCs and one and a half tymes as long as a Linux PC.

Maybe quality was better back in the day, but brown iPhones, aluminum macs (seriously? it's not even thick!)

Either you're trolling or you're ignoring I said. I wouldn't get an iPhone. And my MacBook Pro is less than 2 years old. As for Macs being thin, I'd rather that than carrying a ton around, though I admit I might get a pro Mac laptop if Apple made one like a Panasonic Toughbook. And as for easy breakage, I had a Gateway laptop that I was carrying in a bag when I slipped on ice getting out of my car. It was less than 3' off the ground yet the LCD cracked. I called tech support and they said they didn't cover that. So I asked how much it would cost to repair and they couldn't even tell me, they just said between $300 and $1200. Twelve hundred dollars? That's half what I paid for it. After having it less than 3 months it became useless.

Foxconn motherboards (*shudder*)

I don't know who makes Mac logic boards but Foxconn makes motherboards for PCs. I've been thinking about getting a new mobo for my Linux PC, but I don't know what I'll get. I know it depends on what CPU I'd get but I'm not sure which one I'll get either. I know I'd like the mobo to have both USB2 and Firewire 800 and the CPU be good to use in a server, development platform, and graphics editing.

and all the issues with magsafe make me stamp a big "DONOTWANT" over apple parts.

I have not had a problem with the magsafe.

Falcon

I've got Dell hardware from the 90s working fine.

The first tyme I used one Dell, a brand new one with XP, it froze while booting up. The only thing I could do to get it working was to push in the power button until it powered down then reboot.

What's your point?

You bad mouthed Macs so I listed all the problems with Windows PCs I've had. That's my point!

Oh, and get this: I get the latest version of my OS of choice too!

I have the lated updated version of one of my OSes of choice, 10.5.7. And I plan to install another choice for an OS, Ubuntu Studio 9.04. I've been waiting for a book about it to come out, I see Amazon is now carrying "Ubuntu 9.04 Desktop Handbook" which I'll check later today to see if local book stores have it so I can check it out. I'd rather get one about 9.04 like "A Practical Guide to Ubuntu Linux" but it's not out yet.

There's nothing special about mac hardware. It doesn't last long. Apple is an OEM. Maybe quality was better back in the day

My Mac lasted more than twice as long without problems as 2 of my Windows PCs and one and a half tymes as long as a Linux PC.

Maybe quality was better back in the day, but brown iPhones, aluminum macs (seriously? it's not even thick!)

Either you're trolling or you're ignoring I said. I wouldn't get an iPhone. And my MacBook Pro is less than 2 years old. As for Macs being thin, I'd rather that than carrying a ton around, though I admit I might get a pro Mac laptop if Apple made one like a Panasonic Toughbook. And as for easy breakage, I had a Gateway laptop that I was carrying in a bag when I slipped on ice getting out of my car. It was less than 3' off the ground yet the LCD cracked. I called tech support and they said they didn't cover that. So I asked how much it would cost to repair and they couldn't even tell me, they just said between $300 and $1200. Twelve hundred dollars? That's half what I paid for it. After having it less than 3 months it became useless.

Foxconn motherboards (*shudder*)

I don't know who makes Mac logic boards but Foxconn makes motherboards for PCs. I've been thinking about getting a new mobo for my Linux PC, but I don't know what I'll get. I know it depends on what CPU I'd get but I'm not sure which one I'll get either. I know I'd like the mobo to have both USB2 and Firewire 800 and the CPU be good to use in a server, development platform, and graphics editing.

and all the issues with magsafe make me stamp a big "DONOTWANT" over apple parts.

I have not had a problem with the magsafe.

Falcon

I forgot to mention that there is a book called "Postcards from Mars" that has some wonderful color images (true, approximate, and false color) from the rovers. It is a bit dated in that it doesn't include some of the newer places visited, but still a very nice coffee-table book.

http://www.amazon.com/Postcards-Mars-First-Photographer-Planet/dp/0525949852/

Sadly, the cameras are so dusty now that they cannot take very good panoramas anymore. However, I was wondering if they couldn't clean up the images because the dust fuzz should mostly be the same for any given sun angle. In other words, subtract out the known noise pattern. It would probably have to be done by an amateur because NASA doesn't have a lot of spare funds for that kind of activity. Panoramas involve dozens if not hundreds of smaller images. An amateur cleaned up some of the earlier Soviet Venus lander images, and did a bang-up job. He even made some discoveries of unknown detail partially hidden by haze.
     

http://www.amazon.com/Buddha-Figurine-Statue-Heart-Sutra/dp/B000SE1OTY

YOU MEAN 'LAUGHING BUDDHA'

"It's terribly hard to read through something you don't agree with, isn't it? I wonder what else you're missing out on through not being able to stomach contrary opinions to your own. Your certainty and faith in the `consensus view' is truly frightening."

Harsh words from someone who's politics forces them to swallow a "scientific" report that references an expert astrologer - Perhaps you should check your horoscope to find out "what else I'm missing out on".

I can only assume you are suffering from what is known as the Dunning-Kruger effect

I think you might be a little disconnected from the realities of the lower class and their access to video cameras.

I immediately found a crappy one for $12. It would certainly be good enough for this.
I found another one that's even crappier but will still let you upload short videos to YouTube for only $4.
Either will let you participate in the "national discussion". It's a matter of style I guess.

When even disabling text comments on a YouTube video sparks talk of social injustice, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find it.

I think you might be a little disconnected from the realities of the lower class and their access to video cameras.

I immediately found a crappy one for $12. It would certainly be good enough for this.
I found another one that's even crappier but will still let you upload short videos to YouTube for only $4.
Either will let you participate in the "national discussion". It's a matter of style I guess.

When even disabling text comments on a YouTube video sparks talk of social injustice, we are really scraping the bottom of the barrel trying to find it.

Speaking of innovative body construction and drive train technology, here is car which is constructed almost entirely of injection molded parts, and whose biomass powered drive train qualifies it as a zero emissions vehicle.

On top of that, it has that elusive quality that makes a car a hit: style. Within the target market segment, its appeal is undeniable. Best of all, it's not a concept car. You can buy it today.

I felt this way too. I work from home where I am a 1/4 owner of a company and I am the sole tech/developer. Sometimes I feel overwhelmed at the sheer volume of work that has to be done. But I have found the following helps:

1. Stick to a schedule. Wake up at the same time, eat breakfast, have workout sessions and breaks planned. Have a list of things to do on your break (walk to the park down the road, play some basketball, etc). Trust me, structure helps, and will stop you from wasting time surfing the web or lounging around.

2. Have weights in your house. I use kettlebells and dumbbells and I have a small bunch. Walmart had a dumbbell weight set for like $30! You can pick up used kettlebells at Play it Again Sports. In addition to using them to workout, use them when you take a break. Get up off your arse, go, and pick a light weight. Do 3 or 5 sets of 20 (light weight). Feel the blood rush to your muscles. Feel your brain releasing positive chemicals into your body. You will get a natural high. Its important to release from work. Work will come up while you are working out. Use the energy in the lifting to push the negativity away. By the time you are done, and go back to the PC, you will see you problems in a different light and get several "ah ha!" moments. Trust me this works INCREDIBLY. You need an active body to carry an active mind. If one is out of sync, the other is. This is sooo important!!

3. Never work more than 90 minutes without taking a break. I am serious. Unless you want to crash on your couch at the end of your day in fetal position, unable to move, you need to do this.

4. Replenish your energy stores. This goes back to taking breaks, but is much more greater than that. Humans have infinite amounts of energy, we will really do, but we need to replenish it. When you work, you burn all that energy. You must walk away from the computer and do something fulfilling that give you energy. Do you have a non-work related hobby... Yoga, Meditation, Gardening? These things will replenish your energy.

5. Don't over utilize or under utilize yourself. Everyone knows the dangers of overworking, but not under working. Under working can lead exactly to a feeling of dis-attachment. You need to have a middle ground, so you always stay actively engaged.

6. Organize your tasks. You do not have to get fancy! Just write them down in notepad, and put them in blocks of time. Say, Tuesday, these tasks will get done. Wednesday, these tasks, etc.

7. Create a nice happy environment. You must be happy and engaged to work. So have your favorite TV show reruns playing in the background, or put on some music. Open the windows. Relax. Look at each task on your notepad doc and as you complete each one, cross it out, take a break, then come back and look at your notepad doc again. Realize you just completed something, took a renewing break, and now your happy and ready to tackle the next one.

6. You need to stay fully engaged in your work. To do so, take the suggestions above. I just picked up the book The Power of Full Engagement after a friend recommended it to me because I was having similar problems. http://www.amazon.com/Power-Full-Engagement-Managing-Performance/dp/0743226747. This book is worth it, trust me. The key to success in business or life is not time management, but energy management.
You are actively engaged if you are high energy positive

HIGH ENERGY POSITIVE Invigorated Confident Challenged Joyful Connected.

LOW ENERGY POSITIVE Relaxed Mellow Peaceful Tranquil Serene

HIGH ENERGY NEGATIVE Angry Fearful Anxious Defensive Resentful

LOW ENERGY NEGATIVE Depressed Exhausted Burned Out Hopeless Defeated

Sounds a lot like the tech in Vernor Vinge's Rainbow's End. Once again, the prescience of SF...

Well, of course. They sell everything.

Well, of course. They sell everything.

I run into that sometimes. It's called "burnout". It's common, and it doesn't mean you're a bad developer. I deal with it by going and working on something fun and interesting, but still working. Secretly write a game or something, ideally in another language.

Richard Feynmann went and did creative things from time to time, and got some of his best ideas during his goof-off time. It's actually why people in academia have sabbaticals. Give yourself a sabbatical, some time to do whatever you want. Once I wrote a bootable CD-ROM that would play a Star Wars movie on a text display. I had to learn some assembly in the process, and learned all about boot sectors and boot loaders and memory models and things in the process.

You might feel like you can't take that time, your employer won't let you. That may be true, but it may not be. Lots of employees pretend to accomplish things and don't really. Most developers are really only truly productive a handful of hours per week anyway. If you think about it, you can still hold down your job without doing that much great work. may as well do the bare minimum, then really do what you want with the rest of your time. Hopefully that'll recharge your batteries and soon you'll be able to come back full force and hit your to do items with passion.

Picasso said, inspiration will find us, but it has to find us working.

So if what Conroy has announced here goes ahead, a whole pile of product pages at Amazon (among others) are going to have to go on the blacklist. (Leisure Suit Larry is among the games banned in Australia.

The problem is that many of the proposed filtering solutions work by routing traffic to IP addresses that host prohibited pages to a proxy server. As we saw with the Internet Watch/BT/Wikipedia debacle, this approach is likely to cause problems with high traffic sites (and may well overload the proxy server).

Danny.

When was the last time someone actually went out specifically to buy a copy?

Today:

The most popular items in Microsoft Windows. Updated hourly.

Software Best Sellers

24. Windows XP Home SP2 1056 Days In The Top 100.

the few people people that have legal copies have them because they were bundled with the computer they bought

In other words as close to 100% of the home and SOHO markets for the last twenty-five years as makes no difference.

sThe geek really, really, needs to spend less time looking in the mirror.

When was the last time someone actually went out specifically to buy a copy?

Today:

The most popular items in Microsoft Windows. Updated hourly.

Software Best Sellers

24. Windows XP Home SP2 1056 Days In The Top 100.

the few people people that have legal copies have them because they were bundled with the computer they bought

In other words as close to 100% of the home and SOHO markets for the last twenty-five years as makes no difference.

sThe geek really, really, needs to spend less time looking in the mirror.

He does have a case for prior art. Besides, there's a precedent for suing Deities

I tend to appreciate the books that say more in less space. The best Linux resource I've found in the last times is "Ubuntu Linux Toolbox: 1000+ Commands for Ubuntu and Debian Power Users" http://www.amazon.com/Ubuntu-Linux-Toolbox-Commands-Debian/dp/0470082933/ref=cm_cr-mr-title : Just 360 pages, command line oriented, almost nothing of those GUI admin tools that get reinvented every 6 months.

I sympathize with the author on the decision on what to include in the book... no doubt he cut a fair number of things but still ended up with a prodigious book. Reminds me of the "Java in a Nutshell" books - the last one I bought was almost square.

These days I'm finding more value in books like Rich Bowen's The Definitive Guide to Apache mod_rewrite. These smaller more focused books go digging deep into parts of various utilities that don't Google answers as easily. I can find 100 tutorials on installing Apache, but not so many on using RewriteMap. And they seem to have a longer shelf life; that mod_rewrite book is a couple years old but still very relevant and useful.

> The more I learn about the subject, the more convinced I am that
> the ancients were not the unsophisticated primitives that
> we often imagine them to be.

G. K. Chesterton's The Everlasting Man has some thoughts along the same lines. From this page:

It may be that in certain savage tribes the chief is called the Old Man and nobody is allowed to touch his spear or sit on his seat. It may be that in those cases he is surrounded with superstitious and traditional terrors; and it may be that in those cases, for all I know, he is despotic and tyrannical. But there is not a grain of evidence that primitive government was despotic and tyrannical.

Ghost writing? That's like doing a milli vanilli in my book ;).

As for the many-internal-source manual in your example, they can just have the corp as the author[1], which would not be misrepresentation. Many manuals do not have a person's name on them as author.

In many cases only a few authors/compilers would be doing much of the work - they'll talk to the internal sources and write stuff down.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=Inc.%20Cisco%20Systems

They only output so much gas because they're not eating what they naturally would.

Best thing that could ever be said. I'd mod you up, but I don't have mod points, and I couldn't have supported you with research.

  Read Fast Food Nation or watch Super Size Me

Both are good looks into how beef and other animals are used in the fast food industry and how the meat industry has changed over the last 150 years. You want to know what your cows are really eating? Here's a hint: it's not grass-fed in most cases. Your ruminants (multi-stomached) are actually having foods that have been laced with the blood of their previously fallen in order to have them grow faster and get onto your plate quicker. If that's something an herbivore would normally do, then I look forward to some cannibalistic times ahead.

I'm not the world's best example of a vegetarian, that's for sure, but I do know what's going on.

As to why Brittan wanted to fight for Poland, beats me.

In his book The Origins of the Second World War historian A.J.P. Taylor argued that the British didn't particularly want to fight for Poland; or, at least, their leaders didn't. But they were painted into a corner by decisions they'd made in response to earlier crises.

British Prime Minister Chamberlain believed that he had "appeased" Hitler at the Munich Conference by giving him part of Czechoslovakia, but Hitler went on to then conquer the rest of that country anyway. This left Chamberlain convinced that appeasement had been a failure and a hard line was needed against Germany to prevent further aggression.

As part of that new hard line, the British issued a guarantee of Poland's independence. This treaty set forth that any aggressive act against Poland by any power would trigger a declaration of war on that power by Great Britain.

The British thought this would deter Hitler from moving on Poland, but it didn't; and the British were then confronted with the fact that if they ignored or disavowed the guarantee, the reliability of all their other treaty obligations would be called into question. So the British ended up in a war they didn't want on behalf of a country they could do nothing to protect.

The Germans had their own scientists (including the brilliant Werner Heisenberg) working on an atomic-energy project. They never developed an actual bomb, though historians are split as to whether that was because of lack of resources, mismanagement/wasting time and effort on research dead-ends, or active sabotage by the German scientists involved.

Thomas Powers' book Heisenberg's War is a fascinating history of the German atomic project.

Vinge is a damn genius. If you haven't read it yet, check out Rainbow's End. For my book tastes, personally, it was a bit on the touchy-feely side (but I really don't like character development at all - I'm in the very small minority), but the science and concepts are really second to none.

How soon until we see these augmented reality games embedded in our contact lenses and we wear "smart" clothing on a regular basis? I'm just waiting for the self-driving cars!

1. Sea Lion can never work. The assests needed to launch it are on the order of those needed for Olympic, which only the US after 4 years of war was able to collect in one place for an invasion.

2. IF the UK falls (Halifax and Butler are the best way for this to happen). All of the bomber projects prior to the B-36 are shelved, and we go for mass production of B-36s.

Sometime around '47, the Nazi Napkin-waffe is still unable to get jets flying fast enough due to lacking the raw materials, or the industrial integration, and the US launches an attack using 2000+ B-36s (some with atomic payloads, others with conventional, others with Electronic and Optical recon loadouts, some Tankers, and some as GB-36s - the Goblin carriers), that destroys Germany in one swift stroke.

Or one could just read Stuart Slade's The Big One http://www.amazon.com/Big-One-Stuart-Slade/dp/1430304952

I have my copy signed.

Succeed as an artist?

Mmmm, the book still sells.

http://www.amazon.com/Mein-Kampf-Adolf-Hitler/dp/0395925037/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245859744&sr=8-1

The development of stealth technology is one of those secretive fields that has an instant fascination. I quite enjoyed reading Ben Rich's autobiography. Also Hitler's plan to atom bomb New York and The Real Heroes of Telemark were both quite interesting, casting two sides of the same global battle from very different perspectives. German scientists were some of the best in the world (not that they are so bad today..). Sometimes I think that the world got lucky - a few small changes in history, and things could easily have gone the other way.

If you read The Economist, you may have noticed a recent review of the book "Nudge".

I have more than a sneaking suspicion the original poster (and TFA) have been reading this as well.

Suffice it to say that the shallow commentary here pales in comparison to the jaunt through behavioural economics that the book provides. If you can get past it's focus on public policy and just absorb all the core information, the book provides good advice than you'd ever think existed on the art of defaults.

I'm currently sitting here listening to an mp3 of the Symphony of the Seas, from the old album Hooked on Classics, along with mental flashbacks of the scene where the Jolly Roger was raised during Pirates of the Carribean.

In other words:

You are wholly a product of a pop culture in which strong copyright is the norm.

--- and how typically geek it is that your fantasies of piracy come second-hand from a Disney theme park ride.

Symphony Of The Seas 89 cents.

Hooked on Classics was a series of record albums first introduced in 1981, toward the end of the disco era's peak in popularity.
Louis Clark, former arranger for Electric Light Orchestra, conducted the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra playing a collection of very recognizable extracts from classical music pieces played over a continuous beat (sometimes an overtly disco fast beat, sometimes a slower and more subtle rhythm) which linked the segments together. This is called the Symphonic Rock or Orchestrated Rock genre, like London Symphony Orchestra did in their Classic Rock series but with less electronic effects. Hooked on Classics

There was an interesting article on Planet Gore discussing the replacement of chlorofluorocarbons with hydrofluorocarbons and the unintended consequences thereof. Basically the HFCs have less effect on the ozone but are a more potent greenhouse gas. Never a dull moment!

Planet Gore has a lot of good stuff about various green quandries, including a fair number of posts by Chris Horner (author of Red Hot Lies).

There is a difference in price on equipment, obviously, but the "huge difference" in price on media exists only in your head.

As you said, the largest difference is in the player, but you're trying to tell me it wouldn't be expensive to replace a moderate collection of DVD's with BD's? And there was huge difference in price until the last few months, and even now: http://www.amazon.com/Gran-Torino-Widescreen-Clint-Eastwood/dp/B001KVZ6F2 That looks like a $9 difference, which is far from small. Is 1/3 more not a large difference where you come from?

Good lenses are becoming a lost art these days. When autofocus SLRs came out, Canon had a f1.0 50mm lens, some insane telephoto lenses, and many other items. Nikon had a 2000mm zoom lens. Lens quality was also better, because with digital cameras, the camera can recognize a lens, then apply corrections for lens imperfections to the data before it gets dropped into the memory card. This is impossible with film, so the image had to be perfect the first time.

Actually, I don't think most of those are an example of a real problem:

1. The f/1.0 lenses are simply not as important anymore, because quality at higher ISO sensitivities has gone up. If you used that f/1.0 lens with ISO 100 color film, you can probably get better results today by using f/2.0 at ISO 400 on a DSLR (more depth of field!). If you were using that f/1.0 with ISO 400 color film, then you could use an f/1.4 lens at ISO 800 on digital.
2. I think digital correction of lens imperfections is a perfectly fine idea. All lenses are tradeoffs between lots of factors. If by correcting curvilinear distortion digitally you can improve some other parameter of the lens, then that's a very good idea. (And the parameter improved could be price or size, for all I care). In fact, I recently bought a Panasonic DMC-G1, whose kit lens was designed with rather severe barrel distortion at the widest zoom setting, and digital correction thereof. I did so in full knowledge, and I'm not complaining; the lens is pretty sharp, small and light.
3. Which lens do you refer to by the "2000mm zoom"? Is it the 1200-1700mm f/5.6-8 zoom, or is it the 2000mm f/11 reflex? That kind of lens have always been built-to-order products that hardly anybody has ever seen, much less taken photos with, so for nearly everybody that has ever lived, the difference is zero. Which mega-exotic lenses are offered is really a function of demand by a very few users, but also the potential for substituting other products; for example, an APS-C sensor camera attached to a 600mm f/4 on a 2x teleconverter will produce the same angle of view as a 1800mm lens on a 35mm camera, and be a lot cheaper than asking Nikon to custom-make a lens for you. Though lens manufacturers still build some pretty exotic stuff, just not the same as before. Think of Sigma's 200-500mm f/2.8 Not nearly as long as those Nikons, but it's f/2.8.

Go to your local library and find a copy of the annotated version of Jane Austen's Pride And Prejudice. It's this one but you're not allowed to buy it from Amazon. You have to go to libraries and find it.
Because that way you'll be going out and talking to people and hanging out in libraries and there are lots of interesting people there.
Pride & Prejudice is the uber-chick-lit book, the best of them all. It's intellectual and it's completely apropos to this discussion.
First off, if you're walking around working your way through P&P, people are going to notice, and they're going to form some prejudices about what sort of person you are. It's the exact opposite image of an O'Reilly book.
Second off, you have something to talk about: the uber-chic-lit book.
Thirdly, the book itself is talking about people and their styles of interaction as related to their personal code of morality. Mr. Darcy is a stereotypical libertarian geek: he decides what is Right, and sticks with it no matter what, even when events and evidence indicate his original choice was wrong, and he has to learn why that's a bad idea. Jane is a stereotypical girl: she tries to like everyone and make excuses for anything bad anyone does and ignore evidence that people are cruel and selfish. Elizabeth is somewhere between the two, Jane Austen's version of the nearly ideal woman, and learns how to deal with people, and her own prejudices and impulsiveness, as the book progresses.
It's one of the best novels ever written, and if you read it and understand it -- which is why I recommend the annotated version, because the remarks on particularly tricky bits of verbal code are pretty essential to understanding the flow of Austen's program -- you'll have a better understanding of people in general.
And, again, you'll impress the people you want to impress far more for being in the process of reading, or having read, P&P, than the latest Linux TCP/IP Stack Code And Documentation book.