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I could not agree more with you. You can learn from disasters, but there is no such technology that can prevent disasters completely.

What you can do, is trying to reduce complexity from technology that is potentially dangerous. This and trying to get more direct information instead of indirect information (e.g. being able to actually see the water in the TMI case would have prevented that the incident went into out of control). Complexity, dependencies, and indirections greatly increases the likelihood to make wrong decisions. Combine this with time pressure (e.g. if you cannot fix the problem in TMI within a couple of hours, the incident becomes a disaster) and you have a recipe for normal accidents. BTW: I highly recommend this book, which also analyses the TMI case.

One of the most serious problems is that often times redundant systems are maintained simultaneously. It is highly likely that the same mistake will be repeated by the same person on all of the redundant components. Also, the same faulty batch of replacement parts could be used for all redundant components as well.

I could not agree more with you. You can learn from disasters, but there is no such technology that can prevent disasters completely.

What you can do, is trying to reduce complexity from technology that is potentially dangerous. This and trying to get more direct information instead of indirect information (e.g. being able to actually see the water in the TMI case would have prevented that the incident went into out of control). Complexity, dependencies, and indirections greatly increases the likelihood to make wrong decisions. Combine this with time pressure (e.g. if you cannot fix the problem in TMI within a couple of hours, the incident becomes a disaster) and you have a recipe for normal accidents. BTW: I highly recommend this book, which also analyses the TMI case.

Not as expensive as one would think:

http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MSMT16G-Memory-Stick-Mark2/dp/B0013AX2HO

And that was just Google's first result. Less than $80. The Go still has me facepalming.

Just a heads-up: The PS3 is far from the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market. The base 80GB model costs $400 and the step up 160GB model goes for $500, while there are multiple players available for $200 with the average cost for Sony and Panasonic players appearing to hover in the $300 range. The PS3 is available for as low as $300 with the use of various coupons or promotions that show up on common deal forums, but it's still at least $100 more than a dedicated player.

You can debate about the relative merits of some of the "generic" brands in that list, but Sharp and Samsung are certainly reputable electronics manufacturers. I won't dispute your other points; the HD-DVD players were in most respects superior to BluRay players at the time. Now that things have caught up and the prices have dropped substantially, though, I'm as glad as you are that the format with superior capacity will win in the end.

Just a heads-up: The PS3 is far from the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market. The base 80GB model costs $400 and the step up 160GB model goes for $500, while there are multiple players available for $200 with the average cost for Sony and Panasonic players appearing to hover in the $300 range. The PS3 is available for as low as $300 with the use of various coupons or promotions that show up on common deal forums, but it's still at least $100 more than a dedicated player.

You can debate about the relative merits of some of the "generic" brands in that list, but Sharp and Samsung are certainly reputable electronics manufacturers. I won't dispute your other points; the HD-DVD players were in most respects superior to BluRay players at the time. Now that things have caught up and the prices have dropped substantially, though, I'm as glad as you are that the format with superior capacity will win in the end.

Just a heads-up: The PS3 is far from the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market. The base 80GB model costs $400 and the step up 160GB model goes for $500, while there are multiple players available for $200 with the average cost for Sony and Panasonic players appearing to hover in the $300 range. The PS3 is available for as low as $300 with the use of various coupons or promotions that show up on common deal forums, but it's still at least $100 more than a dedicated player.

You can debate about the relative merits of some of the "generic" brands in that list, but Sharp and Samsung are certainly reputable electronics manufacturers. I won't dispute your other points; the HD-DVD players were in most respects superior to BluRay players at the time. Now that things have caught up and the prices have dropped substantially, though, I'm as glad as you are that the format with superior capacity will win in the end.

Just a heads-up: The PS3 is far from the cheapest Blu-Ray player on the market. The base 80GB model costs $400 and the step up 160GB model goes for $500, while there are multiple players available for $200 with the average cost for Sony and Panasonic players appearing to hover in the $300 range. The PS3 is available for as low as $300 with the use of various coupons or promotions that show up on common deal forums, but it's still at least $100 more than a dedicated player.

You can debate about the relative merits of some of the "generic" brands in that list, but Sharp and Samsung are certainly reputable electronics manufacturers. I won't dispute your other points; the HD-DVD players were in most respects superior to BluRay players at the time. Now that things have caught up and the prices have dropped substantially, though, I'm as glad as you are that the format with superior capacity will win in the end.

"A number stored on a collection of flipflops is physically represented by their states, but its identity is not physically encoded anywhere. There is no physical connection that makes a flipflop state map to the logical value of zero or one; these are arbitrary, assigned by us for the purpose of computation. Likewise, there is no physical reason to group a collection of bits into a number, no physical reason to interpret them as a 1, 2, or 4 byte integer, no physical reason to interpret them in LSB or MSB format."

That's a good argument, but I don't agree that it's correct. In fact I think a little thought can serve to invalidate it.

If you look at a single instant in a running computation - a snapshot in time of a single register, say - yes, you couldn't determine from that what voltage level indicates '1' and what indicates '0', which ordering LSB/MSB is correct, etc.

However. That's an illusion, because we're dealing with systems embedded in space-time which are processes, not just disconnected snapshots of state. When you look at the changing state of a physically-realised computer over time, you will notice converging patterns of behaviour, and it's that *behaviour* which gives the semantics for the physical representation of numbers.

For instance: a 01 bit and a 10 bit that enter a black box device which emits a 11 bit... after a while, and in context, it would appear sensible that that device is a binary adder. (It could also be a logical 'or', so there's certainly ambiguity here... but if you had more bits and you saw over time that 001 000 == 001, 001 001 == 010, etc... then you would be able to generate from those observations the semantics / truth table of binary addition.

More obviously, if you have, say, a voltage pattern arbitrarily represented as '0101' in a aparticular register and it was always correlated with, say, a motor moving five inches... you now have a direct physical *semantic* definition of number, with no human observer or mind required. In this instance, '0101' in this place literally does MEAN 'move five inches' because there is a causal relationship between the one and the other.

I don't know if philosophers agree with this definition of 'meaning' but it works perfectly well for me. Meaning or semantics is a causal relationship between one entity and another, regardless of any outside entity's ideas about symbol mapping. Meaning is connection, nothing more or less.

That's how debugging programs works, anyway. The programmer's hardest job is clearing their mind of invalid symbol/meaning associations and working out what the *computer* really 'thinks'... in other words, what one entity is *really* causing to happen in another entity. A philosopher or deconstructionist literary theorist might think they can stare at that '0101' and say 'I hereby deem you to mean VANILLA SUNDAE'... but that's not a 'real' meaning because it's not a causal relationship obeyed by physical reality.

OTOH, if a programmer writes in BASIC 'A$="VANILLA SUNDAE" then now they have established a legitimate meaning relationship between "A$" and the string "VANILLA SUNDAE"... because they've create a real, actually-existing, causal relationship.

And that's all we need to create 'meaning' out of 'purely mechanical' components, I think.

However, I believe there's something else going on with the mind/brain connection than with the computer/software connection, because of 150 years worth of evidence about psi and altered states of cognition, where information is being transferred without regard to the normal laws of physics. See http://www.amazon.com/Irreducible-Mind-hard-find-contemporary/dp/0742547922 for the gory details and more footnotes than you can poke with a sharp stick. But I think the general idea of 'meaning is connection' is well established.

Logically (most) lawyers don't like to repersent rapists (for example) but they will when paid..

Uh, you do understand the difference in law between somebody who "everybody knows" has committed rape (or some other crime) and somebody whose criminality has actually been established at trial? This distinction is not academic to a lot of people. And even people who are convicted or confessed criminals have the right to representation when being sentenced.

Lawyers are known to be friendly to whoever is paying them..

And this is not a sign of their moral degeneracy. No ethical professional accepts a job and then undercuts the client's goals by substituting their own. This is particularly important when you're providing legal representation to the client, because not doing your best to advocate their cause not only deprives them of a fundamental right, but undercuts the rule of law.

Right now, I'm reading this biography of one well-known lawyer: Abraham Lincoln. (More or less on the top of my list of great Americans.) The school textbook tagline "Honest Abe" actually reflects the reputation he had for extremely strong ethics — a reputation that he used to devastating effect in jury trials. In particular he was known for turning down lucrative cases when he believed the client had a poor chance of winning.

Obviously Lincoln was a lot more ethical than most 21st century attorneys. But even so, he had no qualms about which legal rights he was willing to defend. He was even known to offer his services to both sides in some big cases!

This even extended to an institution that he opposed from an early age, and that he's best known for bringing to an end: slavery. At the time, Illinois had a lot of commerce with neighboring slave states. Slavery was illegal in Illinois, and any slaveholder who brought a slave into the state effectively freed them. But this did not apply to slaves "in transit", which led to some skirting of the law by bringing in slaves for temporary work. Naturally this led to litigation over the freedom of these slaves, and Lincoln represented clients on both sides of the issue, despite his own well-known opposition to slavery-friendly laws.

...seven years ago; JNLP-enabled launcher and code and whatnot are here.

It was a great exercise, and among other things it taught me that just because I had skimmed through Game Programming Gems I didn't really know how to code up a game.

So the argument seems sound although the example is wrong.

It is a very interesting point. Depending on what you mean by "the argument", it's not sound. Popular culture is way behind the science on this.

Check out Pinker's "The Language Instinct": http://www.amazon.com/Language-Instinct-Steven-Pinker/dp/0060976519. Whether or not you accept his whole thesis, it's undeniable that the "Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis" is dead and has been for 75 years.

I find this long-lived and pervasive myth totally fascinating... It's a nexus of so many cultural issues; like BEV, native-only laws, exoticism, Esperanto, and the very notion of "improving" human language.

Just because you don't know absolutely everything about the brain, doesn't mean you can not distinguish its hardware from its software.

No, it wouldn't mean that. I didn't make that inference. However, it is nonetheless true that we have little idea what the "software" of the brain comprises. If we did have such an idea, we'd certainly have done a better job by now of codifying it into computers.

The line most definitely exists, as should be obvious to anyone from the fact that we think faster than the brain can physically change.

I'm not sure what you mean mean by "thinking faster than the brain can change." Do you have a source that clarifies this point? I was under the impression that our thinking is actually pretty slow, thus our difficulty in swatting flies, among other tasks.

"Where" you draw it is also pretty obvious if you have ever written a program. The only unknown, quite separate from the "where", is finding out how the hardware and the software work.

I program for a living, have degrees in CS and philosophy, yet I don't see this as obvious at all. I also don't see the "where" and "how" questions being all that separate. If we could successfully identify the "software", then we could codify it into an algorithm, even if we didn't know exactly how it did its job. There are certain neural circuits that we have isolated in crabs and such that we know work, but not exactly how. I'd hardly call them "software" though.

Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence is a very good book on the subject.

I'm going to have to apologize as I'm not going to invest enough time in a random internet discussion to read a book. But any points of his you want to bring up here I'll listen to.

"'Discourse at this level can't possibly accomplish anything beyond giving people some simulation of justification for what they wanted to believe in the first place.' This is, needless to say, not a problem limited to philosophy."

Or perhaps this is a problem limited to philosophy? Perhaps this non-linear and recursive characteristic defines philosophy? The difference between science and philosophy is that science is ineluctably rooted in physical reality, in the natural world. Indeed the original name for science was natural philosophy.

On the other hand philosophy - or its varied analogues of religion, politics and economics - is rooted in extremely shallow real world soil. Every word that has ever been spoken on these topics has been thrashed and pounded, mashed and strained through some pedagogue's fevered ontological imagination.

Ohm's law is demonstrable to a freshman in the first week of school (high school or college) with 19th century instruments. The basis of the argument here is that absolutely no concepts of philosophy can be conveyed so directly. Doesn't this say more about philosophy than it does about communication?

Much of science is immediately graspable and usable with a brief explanation from a good teacher. It is the aggregate that is a challenge to fathom - the aggregate and the startling quantum and relativistic foundations underneath it all. These are true mysteries.

Even kindergarten philosophy presents challenges, however, because the systems being modeled - us and a putative deity - are inherently complex. Rather than suggesting that we need to spend more time wrestling with these ponderous issues, how about simply spending our time more productively by engaging with more tractable material?

I was a philosophy minor and even I find these arguments to be silly. Most of the upper-level philosophical arguments I've seen against "bias" were usually written by scholars who just didn't realize their OWN bias. There is no such thing as an "unbiased" argument or perspective--even in hard science (much less something as "soft" as politics). In history, we used to call the pursuit of objectivity "the noble dream" (after Peter Novick's excellent critique That Noble Dream).

As for the "one way hash" argument: while it's certainly true that laymen can be duped by impressive credentials (pretty much anyone can be duped under the right circumstances, layman or not), the whole argument reeks of a peculiar variety of arrogant elitism (really more a kind of paternalism) which has plagued academia in general and philosophy in particular for a very long time. In the field of philosophy, this whole argument reminds me of one of the great masters himself, Plato. Plato argued in the Republic (through Socrates) that only philosophers were suited to be rulers. This was, of course, a very convenient argument for Plato and his fellow academy members. And it was also evidence that his own arrogance had clouded his vision of his OWN biases (though he could still clearly enunciate in great detail the biases of the tyrant, democrat, oligarch, and monarch).

When he almost laments that "a democracy can't make ethics and political philosophy the exclusive province of cloistered academics," Sanchez seems to critique democracy in the same way that Plato does. But anyone who has ever been a part of an academic department can damn well tell you that the politics among scholars is every bit as silly and immature as the politics of the rest of the world (perhaps more so). Sanchez's hidden assumption that cloistered academics would naturally make the better leaders or judges in arguments is as ultimately deluded as Plato's contention that only philosophers are suited to be kings.

> But the brain as forged by millions of years of evolution is very different than computational algorithms engineered in 100 or so years by humans.
> We should learn much more neuroscience before we starting where, if anywhere, can we find the dividing line between the brain's "hardware" and "software".

Just because you don't know absolutely everything about the brain, doesn't mean you can not distinguish its hardware from its software. The line most definitely exists, as should be obvious to anyone from the fact that we think faster than the brain can physically change. "Where" you draw it is also pretty obvious if you have ever written a program. The only unknown, quite separate from the "where", is finding out how the hardware and the software work. Jeff Hawkins' On Intelligence is a very good book on the subject.

It takes only a single counterexample to shed doubt on a standing theory and suggest new research is needed. Read the introductory chapter of Phantoms in the Brain for more discussion of the usefulness of single, exceptional cases (and the rest of the book -- it's an interesting read!).

I meant that religious people have a problem identifying mind and brain, and I meant to say that those two are pretty much identical.

Ok, that's very different to what you wrote. I still don't think that's a specifically religious issue, though -- most notions of free-will seem to depend on some separation of mind and brain, and although I'm blowed if I can see how it could work, free-will is hardly an exclusively religious issue.

Functionalism is central to contemporary philosophy of mind among analytic philosophers.

But surely analytic philosophy has been in retreat since Popper?

Most anthologies on philosophy of mind, such as this one, are certainly concerned about the relationship between mind and brain.

Quite. Which is why I was surprised you didn't mention it, but only addressed "brain"!

I meant that religious people have a problem identifying mind and brain, and I meant to say that those two are pretty much identical.

The Churchlands espouse eliminativism, which is basically arguing for this identification. Most other philosophers in the subject argue against it. Most scientists studying the brain try to stay away from philosophy.

Wikipedia has done a fine job of listing authors seminal in functionalism. Functionalism is central to contemporary philosophy of mind among analytic philosophers. Doing a complete survey of academic philosophers to somehow prove this would be difficult. But I'd be interested in hearing what topics are more central to modern analytic philosophy of mind. I'm not so clear on continental philosophers, but both the article and the one it's replying to are of the analytic tradition.

Most anthologies on philosophy of mind, such as this one, are certainly concerned about the relationship between mind and brain. Looking at the table of contents of the previous anthology provides a glimpse at people who make their careers discussing such things. Of course, these are largely seminal authors, the people working in the field is much larger.

How the fuck is someone with (only) an MCSE supposed to manage a Unix system?

Easy.

Holy crap- you are, what we in the biz call, an over-reacting parent. Calm down and take it easy before you destroy your daughter's life.

I have mod points and am forfeiting the right to moderate this story by posting this. I second this sentiment (although I, myself, would try to not be quite so harsh in the delivery). Here are two links I think you should read, and a book I think you should buy (I bought a copy myself and gave several extra copies to friends with kids):

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/2008/04/06/why-i-let-my-9-year-old-ride-the-subway-alone/

http://freerangekids.wordpress.com/

http://www.amazon.com/Free-Range-Kids-Children-Freedom-Without/dp/0470471948

I also recommend watching the video in the Amazon link.

Cheers,
Alex

How is Apple supporting in-game transactions for Apps any different than Amazon allowing you to buy books for a Kindle

Amazon is licensed as a money transfer agent in states that require it. So Amazon is, in fact, regulated by banking authorities.

Google is not a hardware company.

Neither is Amazon and you'll get my Kindle when you pry it from my cold, dead hands...

Seriously, I don't care who sells them so long as they offer the content I want and the cost is right.

Can't you get a "Netbook" for less than a Kindle and read whatever you want on it (and then some) DRM free?

I get the idea of free cell connection to download books (and I have yet to hold a Kindle myself and give it a go), but Amazon's deal seems over priced in my opinion.

I've also read a review on Amazon from someone complaining about books they bought that they couldn't access anymore after moving to Kindle 2.

How is your experience with Kindle so far?

...try Stephane Faroult's The Art of SQL. I've read both that and his "Refactoring SQL Applications"; I think I got a little more out of the former.

But anyhow, in both books he has a distinct and lively writing style and includes lots of anecdotes. His style kind of reminds me of Betrand Meyer... for those who have read Meyer's 1000 page tome "Object Oriented Software Construction".

While I got quite some milage out of my copy of Python in a Nutshell back in the day, online documentation has much improved and I feel just as comfortable hitting a few keys to get the reference material I want as flipping through pages. O'Reilly Nutshell guides seem to me consigned to that most infamous category of tech reading printed material: the bathroom book.

Basically what the 'Quants' have done is borrowed some terms from matematics and reapplyed it to the financial world. It's validity being lent a quasi-autthority, as it's based on mathematic tools used in physics, and what could be more scientific than that.

Trouble is, the financial world can't be modeled or predicted the same way the phisical world can. It works more like the utterances of a shaman. If the shaman predicts the stock is going to go up, and people believe him, and buy, then the stock does indeed go up. If people lose faith in the shamans utterances, then in olden days he would be flung into a volcano, or in our culture, he resigns and joins an international think thank. So what Paul Wilmott really means is how to restore investors faith in the high priests of finance, the Quants.

Of course the trick is in not actually predicting anything. That's where the Black-Scholes model comes in. By slicing and dicing the base equity into packages (I hereby name quantums), it becomes impossible to actually value or quantify the real and actual value of your particular pile of quantums. The only thing you get to rely on is 'a standard normal cumulative distribution function', which no-one really understands, or the word of the Quant. And if you complain you lost money, the Quant replies, you didn't read the numbers properly. You might as well slaughter a chicken and try and read the entrails.

IF anyone wants an inside look at the world of the Quants and dicing-and-slicing, then check out Liars Porker, by Michael Lewis

Lastly, some time ago someone did a test. They created two sets of investors and compared results over a period. One was a respected finance house, the other was a monkey, the monkey won :]

While I admittedly have never applied for a job in Japan, I find it very hard to believe that employers would base their hiring decisions on the attendance policy of the school, rather than technical drilling of the applicant. I realize that it's a very difficult thing to cite, but do you have any sort of evidence to back that up?

If you're really interested in the subject, I recommend this book:

The Japanese Mind

I've been living in Japan for over 7 years now, and this book has been really useful in helping me understand some of the weird behaviour that I have to deal with on a daily basis. It's a collection of articles written by Japanese students on several topics related to Japanese culture.

My university has been very successful using VHDL in our intro embedded programs. Check out this book on VHDL programming: http://www.amazon.com/VHDL-Digital-Design-Frank-Vahid/dp/0470052635

Using the term 'ranma' as an example (the famous anime character)

I typed into google.com:

ranma

and got about 4,180,000 results.

Next, I typed:

ranma -blogger.com -blogspot.com -livejournal.com -typepad.com

and got about 3,590,000 results.

Not much difference but an improvemt when you filter out the blogsites that appeared on the first page of google with the term 'blog'.

To avoid this, just search for your search terms on the top 3 sites by way of google.

Wikipedia for info on just about anything -- meaning it is clogged with LOTS of popular entertainment information like Ranma 1/2.

'ranma wikipedia'

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranma_½
(Sorry, the link above is broken because it has a 'funny' character in it -- use the google search query above to get to it instead)

IMDB if there is audiovisual works out there containing the stuff you are searching for.

'ranma imdb'

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096686/

Amazon if you want to buy stuff containing the search terms you want.

'ranma amazon'

http://www.amazon.com/Ranma-Digital-Complete-First-Season/dp/B00005QCW0

If you don't want to buy anything but just want the information, type this into google using Ranma as an example:

ranma -https

returned about 3,870,000 results

This filters out all pages containing secure URLs from which to buy stuff in privacy. Unfortunately, there are some links out there that use https to keep their discussions private or are talking about the https protocol itself and get filtered out as 'colateral damage'. Also, there are bound to be a tiny few sites that unknowingly (or maliciously) have 'buy it now' links on unsecured http URLs so make sure the connection is secure (and you trust the seller) before you type in your credit card number or other sensitive information.

ranma -.com -https

returns about 1,050,000 results.

This search terms filters out over 3 million sites that are most likely trying to sell you something. All thats left behind are basically .net, .org, and international sites where the information you want is presented to you 'for informational purposes' and not to make a sale from you.

Exactly! The situation in the economy, AIG, failing companies, the layoffs, outsourcing etc. is caused mostly if not entirely by corporate psychopaths which have a natural tendency to angle themselves into leadership position (they are very charismatic and manipulative) from which they can achieve the greatest benefit FOR THEMSELVES at the expense of others. Their total lack of "conscience" makes it so that any damage from their actions for them is unimportant. Even if it affects hundreds of millions of people. Even if the profit is tiny.

Check out Snakes in suits

In case you have not been suspecting something already, that is.

It's "science fiction", not "predictions of the future". These are creative and imaginative writers. They aren't trying to predict what is going to happen in the future.

Come on, it's obvious to even casual readers of science fiction that SF authors enjoy dabbling in futurism. One example is the afterword of Larry Niven's short story collection Flatlander , about a future so full of organ transplanting that even minor crimes get the death penalty so that your organs can be distributed to a greedy public. Though forty years ago harvesting organs from prisoners was a pretty out there concept, Niven points to contemporary China and says "I told you this could happen."

Aside from the moral issue of literally stealing the life's savings of millions of chinese peasants? I mean, I know non-white people aren't important, but even that seems a little harsh. That funding from china comes from their trade surplus, which means they have been lending us their savings.

As for what would happen to us, well... http://www.amazon.com/Liberation-Adventures-Collapse-United-America/dp/0765320460

Sounds extremely false in many places. Either they still need to learn to play these instruments or the design is not good at all.
 
The instrument's sound resembles slightly a cornetto (also a revived instrument). Here you can listen to it played perfectly: "Le Concert Brisé - Musique Transalpine".

What would be the source code of an API? It's clearly not about the source code of the implementation. And aren't the APIs already open? Being accessible is the whole point of an API, I thought. So say again, what are they considering doing? TFA and its source are quite unclear about that, but it seems to be only about some kind of official approval by Amazon that "yes, you can use our API which is already open, which of course you're already doing".

i forget the guy's name, but he was a behavioral economist, and he was attempting to explain the recent economic meltdown in the terms of his profession, and why the whole notion of rational actors in a rational marketplace is a crock

Pretty sure you're talking about Dan Ariely's book Predictably Irrational. It's an educational read -- I highly recommend it.

Yeah, why you do that I will stick with paying for my subscriptions to The Economist and foriegn affairs.

Yeah, why you do that I will stick with paying for my subscriptions to The Economist and foriegn affairs.

Actually, it's more like $40, but the point is taken. Netflix should be open to silver members, not just gold. Still, I gladly pay the $40 each year for Live. Live is still by far the best and most consistent online service out there for gaming (for the console anyway). PSN and Nintendo Online, by contrast, are all over the map.

I agree it seems pretty sketchy, but then why is one of Amazon's Eee pages linking to it?

(Or at least trying to: at time of writing, the text link labeled "www.ItsBetterwithWindows.com" is a link to "file:///C:/DOCUME%7E1/jross/LOCALS%7E1/Temp/Temporary%20Directory%202%20for%201000HE%20Black%20New.zip/1000HE%20Black%20New/www.itsbetterwithwindows.com". That seems massively unprofessional for Amazon, not sure what is going on there. The image link is correct.)

I'm so sick of going to garage sales and seeing good equipment, such as printers and scanners, that won't connect to any computer that I own.

What do you mean? Serial Adapter Parallel Adapter

I have a drawer full of PS/2 keyboards.

Only my Mac machines don't work with these, and as far as I know, Macs never used them. Even new "USB" keyboards typically come with a little PS2 adapter. Even if they don't, you can get a little converter - just like with the parallel and serial ports.

There's no reason to saddle new machines with old, slow ports when the new, faster ports can accept adapters.

Nah. Bing and Bob have to be separate products. Microsoft needs to promote them together with a road show.

The bigger, more serious, question remains: "You are in space! Why are you watching DVDs?"

Maybe they just got the DVD set for Cosmos?
Where else are you going to see cool stuff like that?

Well, if Star Trek: The Next Generation was any indication of such issues being relevant in our world, you might want to look at some of these upcoming games and toys coming out that you play using brain waves... such as Mattel's upcoming MindFlex toy and the Emotiv Epoc headset controller for PC gaming applications.

As for addictive properties, there still needs to be some sort of "reward" system to act as feedback, like a strategic TENS unit shock into certain areas of the body that would be desirable, such as what you keep hearing stories about regarding lab animals becoming "wired" and externally controlled.

The "addiction" of games like WoW is a bit different and tends to be based almost entirely on participating as part of a "group", not unlike the awkward life of school children jockeying for recognition. If you have to question this from an ethics standpoint, then just about any situation where you are forced to compete against others to gain something would need to be questioned as well.

Which brings us to an interesting question... is the desire to live the product of addiction?

Are there specific elements of the design that can be pulled out, distilled, and used at will to give a game drug-like properties? Is it wrong to do so?

Might as well be asking:

Are there specific compounds in cigarettes that can be used to make them addictive? Is it wrong to do so?

The fact of the matter is that cigarette companies (and computer game companies) have no one to answer to but their customers and share holders, and both will be happiest when they produce the most addictive product possible. 'Right' or 'wrong' is irrelevant to them, only 'legal' and 'illegal,' so if we want to prevent the creation of addictive games, our only recourse is legislation.

Further reading: Supercapitalism by Robert Reich

One of the things I have done to describe things in the past where a consensus had not been reached is tell clients something was a "common practice". I think any practice has to spend time in the common practice area before it can become a best practice, and I would be explicit with my clients if something did not match best practices. I have also many times told clients that there is more than one "school of thought" when it came to something with contradictory common practices.

Sources of best practices that I have used beyond my personal experience:

• Companies such as Cisco, Altiris and Microsoft typically produce whitepapers and publish other work that describe best practices.
• Any number of forum sites also produce best practices.
• I read books that cover best practices, and study for new skills (presently getting ready to take my CISSP which is all about best practices)
• I read trade journals, attend user groups and hear what the vendor has to say
• I spend time on forum sites
• I continue my education taking classes at night.
• The best resource of all without question have been the people that were senior to me that were willing to let me ask 101 questions on "why" they did something. Learning to listen when someone describes why something was or wasn't done a certain way and to look past the immediate technical solution I thought was best was the most important thing I ever developed.

One of the things I have done to describe things in the past where a consensus had not been reached is tell clients something was a "common practice". I think any practice has to spend time in the common practice area before it can become a best practice, and I would be explicit with my clients if something did not match best practices. I have also many times told clients that there is more than one "school of thought" when it came to something with contradictory common practices.

Sources of best practices that I have used beyond my personal experience:

• Companies such as Cisco, Altiris and Microsoft typically produce whitepapers and publish other work that describe best practices.
• Any number of forum sites also produce best practices.
• I read books that cover best practices, and study for new skills (presently getting ready to take my CISSP which is all about best practices)
• I read trade journals, attend user groups and hear what the vendor has to say
• I spend time on forum sites
• I continue my education taking classes at night.
• The best resource of all without question have been the people that were senior to me that were willing to let me ask 101 questions on "why" they did something. Learning to listen when someone describes why something was or wasn't done a certain way and to look past the immediate technical solution I thought was best was the most important thing I ever developed.

If you have XP, I can recommend the adapter in this package. It's cheap and works really well with Wii Remotes.

From the reviews, it looks like the bundled software is useless and badly supported. I'd rather not give money to a company trying to make money that way. Now HERE is a cheap Bluetooth dongle that works with Wiimotes. Though it doesn't come with any software or driver stack and I've only used it with Linux.

There is also The Visualization Handbook which covers all the different classifications of data and the appropriate techniques to visualise. Lots of theory and algorithms under the hood.

the average slashdotter is pretty gullible when it comes to machiavellian politics.

Here is some recommended reading for Slashdotters who have not read The Prince or any other works of Machiavelli.

Actually, they were a large part of the Jewish experience and desires in America.

Seriously, check out Up Up and Oy Vey or many of the other similar books that discuss who the creators of comics really were. Many of the early comic creators were Jews taking their ideals from Jewish mythology (Superman = The Golem, Hebrew name meaning the voice of God, influence from Samson, fighting the Nazis etc).

Ben Fry's Visualizing Data using the Processing environment seems like it's addressing a similar topic... wonder if Vaingast didn't know about it or if he found something unsuitable about it...