Domain: amazon.com
Stories and comments across the archive that link to amazon.com.
Comments · 40,271
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Re:OLED screen?
Small ones are all over the place. Most of the desktop sized digital photo frames I saw last I was in Japan are OLED.
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Re:Just as long as it's truly Bluetooth compatible
you need to use the BlueSoleil [bluesoleil.com] stack, which is $$$ and can be quirky
#1 - I got a BlueSoleil stack with my first Bluetooth adapter at no additional cost.
#2 - My second adapter is a cheapo USB adapter that uses the default Windows stack. It works just fine with my Wii Remotes.
In my experience, spending too much on a Bluetooth adapters is usually the root of the problem. If you have XP, I can recommend the adapter in this package. It's cheap and works really well with Wii Remotes.
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Re:Speed is not all
I fail to see how lazy eval. or lazy casting or similar things could help us to have more error-prone, robust, easy to debug and reliable code.
Potentially useless, but canonical example of quicksort:
qsort [] = []
qsort (x:xs) = qsort (filter (< x) xs) ++ [x] ++ qsort (filter (>= x) xs)
Want to select k-best elements? Just do take k (quicksort input). Laziness reduces O(N.log N) to just O(N) *and* you don't have to construct a heap. More to see here and here.
I prefer to be in control of things, even if that means a small speed penalty.
Well, it is Lisp, for one, that gives you the ultimate control of things.
:-)Runtime code juggling might a nightmare to debug in production environment
Lua people had this to say to that: "If you don't want to do it, just don't do it." Nobody is forcing you to abuse the Turing-completeness of C++ templates, either.
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The solution to your dilemma.
Carry one and only one of these: http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-SD-M3203B3-32MB-Card-e310/dp/B00006HXGY
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Re:Digital Retro?
There is also this product that uses much newer technology than parent's link http://www.amazon.com/Polaroid-Instant-Mobile-Printer-%2528CZA%252d10011B%2529/dp/B001GTV0G2/ref=sr_1_6?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1243365725&sr=1-6 It was designed but what remains of the old Polaroid R&D group. More info at http://www.zink.com/how-ZINK-works
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Re:Digital Retro?
Oops that was meant to be this product.
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Re:Digital Retro?
That product was already brought out by Polaroid last year.
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Re:get rid of shitty teachers
Is it the teachers that are shitty, or is it an educational system that demands teachers teach a certain way?
It's definitely the system. The 40's and 50's brought massive application of B.F. Skinner's methods to the public education system. The less said about the 60's, the better. The 70's gave us the "gift" of "Mastery Learning", which focuses on by-the-numbers learning instead of independent thinking. The 80's continued this disturbing trend with "Results-Based Education" (later renamed to "Outcome-Based Education" to avoid criticism. Ah, semantics.). And the 90's through the millennium saw the application of principles such as "No Child Left Behind", social promotion, curve-based grading, and other bullshit methods for accepting failure and passing it as achievement.
And now, we have an education system that is thoroughly and completely fucked.
American teens' test scores are consistently around the 25th place compared to the rest of the world. (And this is considering the fact that the vast majority of public education is geared towards "teaching to the test", with special prep courses and example tests given out. Even when we cheat, we're still losing. Badly.)
I count myself lucky to have gotten a European education - and a first-hand look at the difference between that and American public education system. Having seen the system from the outside and from within, I can safely say that unless we drop the liberal (not Liberal as in political party, but liberal in the socioeconomic sense, settle down) bullshit of OBE, NCLB, SCANS, and all the other mediocrity-promoting crap, we'll soon be left in the dust.
Of course, this will never happen as long as the teachers' unions are in power, and as long as the politicians can sell the same bullshit to the public year after year.
No, I don't have a solution. And I'm not qualified to offer one, either. Just throwing my opinion out there; mod it as you wish.
P.S. Check out Charlotte Iserbyt's excellent "The Deliberate Dumbing Down Of America" (all over Amazon and a free download at http://www.deliberatedumbingdown.com/ (6 MB PDF, about 520 pages).
P.P.S. By the way, Akido37, your local professor isn't the only one who's gotten in trouble for teaching "to the brain" instead of "to the test". There are at least 20 (that I've come across personally) well-documented cases around the country. -
Re:They're called digital cameras
Welcome to the world of 8 years ago!
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Re:Digital Retro?
If I were Polaroid, I'd make a system for printing Digital Photos to REAL photo paper, and not using crappy Inkjet or Color Laser, for the home market.
You mean like this product that's been around for years?
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Re: Ethanol is just stupid
I've heard these arguments for most of my life, and from my experience, it's always been BS and unsupportable by facts. All you're selling is fear. The difference in efficiency between government and business is minimal--they operate in much the same manner. The difference is that businesses have to pay dividends to shareholders; governments must make a positive difference for their people.
I have never seen business make a drastic change for the better for an entire population. I _have_ seen governments do so, repeatedly. To better understand the situation, I recommend reading this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1576754634/ Flame away conservatives! -
Gusher Of LiesThe article mentions the book "Gusher of Lies" by Robery Bryce. I've read it and I think it is very interesting and informative.
The subject of ethanol is covered at length. The author describes it as a complete scam on the American people.
http://www.amazon.com/Gusher-Lies-Dangerous-Delusions-Independence/dp/1586483218
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Misconceptions about the DPRK
North Korea doesn't have a "government" as we think of a government. It's a totalitarian regime controlled entirely by Kim Jong Il. Anything you've heard about them having elections, having choice, etc., are all lies. The people in the country are all under the thumb of communist party.
If you want a semi-entertaining (if not scary) look inside North Korea, check this video series out
Also, this book gives some pretty frightening details:
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Re:Have tried it, and it is awesome. ND Aero Eng
Mod parent up. The designers in my club swear by that book. Definitely seek the advice of the local hobby shops (after all, you need the right off the shelf components from them).
For more info on programming flight control systems and simulations, see Flight Stability and Automatic Control, by Robert Nelson. http://www.amazon.com/Flight-Stability-Automatic-Control-Robert/dp/0070462739 -
Re:Nuclear weapons can't destroy the planet
+5 Insightful. Don't get it? Read Ishmael...
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Re:MOD DOWN, FLAMEBAIT!
I am not and have never been a citizen of the Ottoman Empire
You would have to be at least 91 years old today to have been one.
So, why should I have to endure HATE PROPAGANDA and walk around with a target painted on my back because I am Turkish (happy now, you finally got one thing right)?
Because you are Turkish. You just glossed over the link I posted, but it's a real thing. The empire that once ruled over the land where you were born tried to impose its ways over other lands, during a period of over 500 years. People hate empires, even if those empires only exist in their minds
the HATE MOVIE I am talking about does not take place in the Ottoman Empire.
What you call a "hate" movie is what other people would call a "controversial" film, which is what its author specializes in. BTW, he won an Oscar for that what you call a "hate" movie.
Anyhow, your reaction seems typical of your region/religion. You cannot accept criticism. You jump to conclusions about anyone who says anything that could be remotely interpreted as critical to your views.
There are many films about harsh conditions on people who are prisoners in jails in the USA, yet no one calls them "hate" films. These films were not made to make anyone hate the USA, or do you think Clint Eastwood hates America?
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Re:but is there any dinosaur dna in there?
While Crichton's Jurassic Park did indeed have scientists cloning dinosaurs from blood sucked up by mosquitos now trapped in amber, supplementing the missing portions with amphibian DNA, I've seen that possibility more or less debunked since the novel was published. Much more promising seems the idea of using soft tissues that are by some great luck preserved inside fossils, of which a couple of cases have been publicized in recent years.
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Re:Home econ even...
How to Boil Water might be an equivalent. It's a goos primer on food prep, but it's also got great recipes in it. I got it as a going-away-to-college gift.
It's amazing, though, how many people don't even know how to do things for themselves. I spent the first three years of college in what was essentially a University-funded co-op house, part of the time as kitchen manager, and it shocked me to see how many people couldn't make food. I don't mean they were bad cooks, but that they didn't know how to do basic things like cook pasta or brown meat, and didn't want to learn (naturally, they all picked shifts as lunch cooks...)
There's going to be a lot of dead weight in my generation, it seems... -
Re:can you shut it off?
As far as AI goes, the validity of computers as life forms has been successfully argued up the wazoo, but I will always stubbornly believe that computers will never have true individual consciousness as biological organisms do.
Maybe if you'd had some better reading material than "is Data human?" you'd believe that computers will eventually host full-blown consciousnesses.
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Re:can you shut it off?
As far as AI goes, the validity of computers as life forms has been successfully argued up the wazoo, but I will always stubbornly believe that computers will never have true individual consciousness as biological organisms do.
Maybe if you'd had some better reading material than "is Data human?" you'd believe that computers will eventually host full-blown consciousnesses.
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Re:can you shut it off?
As far as AI goes, the validity of computers as life forms has been successfully argued up the wazoo, but I will always stubbornly believe that computers will never have true individual consciousness as biological organisms do.
Maybe if you'd had some better reading material than "is Data human?" you'd believe that computers will eventually host full-blown consciousnesses.
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Re:can you shut it off?
As far as AI goes, the validity of computers as life forms has been successfully argued up the wazoo, but I will always stubbornly believe that computers will never have true individual consciousness as biological organisms do.
Maybe if you'd had some better reading material than "is Data human?" you'd believe that computers will eventually host full-blown consciousnesses.
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Re:can you shut it off?
a dog has just as high level of consciousness as a person
Dogs are widely believed to have the emotional maturity of a 2 year old human(or a 3 year old depending on the source). You can look into a dog's eyes and know how they're feeling.
Cats are a little different, only extreme feelings can be seen in their eyes. But their body language is always a reliable indicator of how they feel.
As far as AI goes, the validity of computers as life forms has been successfully argued up the wazoo, but I will always stubbornly believe that computers will never have true individual consciousness as biological organisms do. -
Re:Hubble
Have you got any evidence for your statement that the corrective optics only recover a fraction of the light gathering capacity.
I remember reading it in a book around 10 years ago. I can't seem to find it on my bookshelf anymore. I think it might have been this one.
And what is this about getting a 'visible light replacement space telescope'? Since when has anyone planned a replacement visible light space telescope?
ATLAS, the Advanced Technology Large-Aperture Space Telescope.
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Re:Not exactly new...
The universe is a computational system as the Alpha Wolf himself proved in A New Kind of Science
Do you get paid by Wolfram to laud him on Internet fora or something? Though the man himself thought he was squarely establishing himself as one of the greats with that book, it was received by the community as lacking any real original insight and being mostly un-peer-reviewed hype. There was plenty of news about him and the book here on Slashdot at the time.
If anyone is really considering reading A New Kind of Science , I'd suggest taking a look first at the Amazon reviews first to get an idea of how worthwhile an enterprise it is.
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TuneCore is a great company
We used TuneCore to distribute the album that I engineered and produced, it worked out really well. I'm just waiting for TuneCore to get their widget back up and running and their service will be perfect. Amazon previously used a different on-demand CD manufacturing service which would have left us with almost nothing in the way of royalties and looked like questionable quality, plus we wanted to press Vinyl so we handled all the physical stuff ourselves. I can confirm that both TuneCore and Amazon's CD services (at least as of two months ago) were doing burned CDRs with dye-sub printed surfaces. For about $1,000 you can actually press CDs instead of burn them, so if you can sell any kind of quantity it is totally worth it.
Still, the Amazon Advantage (advantage.amazon.com) program let us get our vinyl onto their site without any issues. We only did a limited run of promo CDs (mixonic) and have pretty much skipped the CD - digital satisfies most people and Vinyl is great for collectors who want the physical item, artwork, etc. Vinyl was pressed locally, which was extremely price-competitive even compared to eastern-european pressing plants.
Full disclosure and shameless plug: http://www.jackwithoneeye.com/ and Vinyl link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001PQN7VM
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CSS for formatting is a lot more difficult
to learn. A LOT more difficult.
For you perhaps but not for everyone. Look at slashdot's code, there are no tables. A List Apart has some good tutorials on how to use CSS for layouts. As does Zen Garden. Eric Meyer has some good books on it.
Falcon
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A Real Cloud OS
The only operating system needed for navigating the clouds is piloted by bears that care
... a lot. -
Re:My Kingdom for a Datagrid Element!
I'm with you on the WTF about the "tables everywhere" rant. Just because eldavojohn is stuck in 1996 doesn't mean everyone else is. Some of us read and understood Chapter 10, "Floating and Positioning," of Eric Meyer's Cascading Style Sheets, The Definitive Guide .
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MythTV backend?It might be just powerful enough to run a mythtv backend. It would take some experimentation, but it might just work. Just combine the "wall wart" with:
- A NAS device or file server to store recordings
- A network tuner like the HD HomeRun
There is something very pleasing and unix-like about this sort of setup. Instead of having a large, noisy computer that contains all sort of components do perform this task and many others, we have a few components that do one thing well, and we just connect those components together. I hope in the future we have more devices that allow this sort of "tinkering by combination."
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Re:i doubt itWhen receiving stolen property, the law looks at what a "reasonable" person would believe. A reasonable person would believe that someone selling on CL/eBay a Samsung 55" 1080p 120Hz LED TV complete with packaging, receipt for warranty purposes for say $2,500 (from an selling prize at Amazon of $3,199) was getting a good, but legitimate deal.
A reasonable person, in the eyes of the law, would not believe if I came up to them at an outdoor cafe and said "Want a 55" LED TV for $300? Meet me in the parking lot in 5 minutes" that they were buying anything other than illegally obtained or acquired property.
A reasonable person selling his Nokia 1100 (currently settling in the market for around $70) would assume that if they got, say an offer of $150, that the buyer might be an aficionado of old school cellular technology.
A reasonable person selling his Nokia 1100 would not "ask no questions" about a bidding war on their phone which saw it run into the five digit territory. A reasonable person would also have doubts about such money, and the motivations of a buyer. Whilst under no obligation to investigate either, a reasonable person, in the eyes of the law, would have "concerns" about whether the payment they were about to receive was the proceeds of a crime, or similar.
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Re:You left off the second half of that.
Of course, they could shift the story again to a different JC or some other future timeline insinuating itself with a wholly unrelated character but the same basic predicament, but that's not what we're talking about here.
You know why the writers picked the name John Connor - look at the initials and his messianic role in the story.
Michael Moorcock wrote a book Behold the Man where the protagonist went back in time and met another JC. Turned out JC was an imbecile - literally a very low IQ - with no chance of fulfilling his destiny. So the protagonist took his name and played his role for the sake of humanity/history/etc.
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For more info...
I recommend Wired for War. http://www.amazon.com/Wired-War-Robotics-Revolution-Conflict/dp/1594201986/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1242847860&sr=8-1 Btw...the company that makes the Roomba is also the same company that makes the PackBot and other robots deployed in combat zones. Same company http://store.irobot.com/home/index.jsp Different url... http://www.irobot.com/sp.cfm?pageid=109
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Re:Illegal
As P. W. Singer noted in Wired for War, there are instances where a computer running, for instance, a missile defense system can launch in the precious seconds it would take a human to be aware of incoming danger. Admittedly this is defensive rather than offensive action, but it could end up being lethal, justified action if it takes out the source of the attack.
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I'm sorry, but...
...every professional game designer could have told you this in five minutes. Of course they are going to game the system.
I think it's even mentioned in the book by Jesse Schell. -
Re:Perhaps
You need to read the last gospel
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Re:The Law of Unintended Consequences
First, there are car seats that are narrow.
Second, you are right, not all families will fit into a sedan. But according to the US census, the average US family size is 3.14 people. Having more kids is a choice that comes with an economic impact. -
Re:Oh well...
Yep the dvd+rw.
'DVD+RW supports random write access, which means that data can be added and removed without erasing the whole disc and starting over (up to about 1000 times)'
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD%2BRWhttp://www.amazon.com/Memorex-4x-DVD-25-Pack-Spindle/dp/B0000A98AC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=electronics
About 78 cents per 4.5 gig (and I wasnt even really trying to find a deal). Tell me where you can get a 4 gig flash drive for that?
Look before you leap... Just because your 'favorite' tech is being disparaged does not mean it is the 'best' at everything. DVD at this point in time has flash beat on price by about 15x. DVD even beats it on speed in many cases. USB/SD flash drives are pretty good these days as writing a DVD can be a pain. But that is a software interface issue. Flash drives are also pretty freeking portable which is why they are cool and why I use them over DVD.
Personally I buy the flash drives for rewritable stuff and the cheaper DVD-R for bulk backup.
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Re:News headlines
That's nothing. Just in the last week we had a book reviewed on Slashdot with a spelling mistake in the title.
In the title of the book.
And it was published that way!
(And it wasn't deliberate like War of the Wordls.)
((UPDATE: Looks like Amazon has changed their page for the book.))
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Re:News headlines
That's nothing. Just in the last week we had a book reviewed on Slashdot with a spelling mistake in the title.
In the title of the book.
And it was published that way!
(And it wasn't deliberate like War of the Wordls.)
((UPDATE: Looks like Amazon has changed their page for the book.))
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Re:summarizing the article for you...
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Re:Close door
Get yourself a set of these
They're headphones designed for drummers and will cancel out almost ALL noise in your office except for some music if you want it.
You might look like a dork, but you will have your sanity. -
Same album repeatedly
I spent a good year of college programming only listening to X-Cops: You Have The Right To Remain Silent and Bloody Kisses.
Maybe it just replaced distracting noises with familiarity instead? -
Same album repeatedly
I spent a good year of college programming only listening to X-Cops: You Have The Right To Remain Silent and Bloody Kisses.
Maybe it just replaced distracting noises with familiarity instead? -
Re:Call it a "hunch"...
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Re:Cannibalism still occurs in "modern" times.
A few years ago I read Flyboys which has a lot of information about Japanese cannibalism during WW2. The Japanese government abandoned soldiers, without supplies, on islands all over the Pacific as the American military hopped over/around them. When the Japanese soldiers ran out of food, they started eating the locals. When they ran out of locals, they started eating each other. In some cases where they had captured American POWs, the officers make a special meal out of them. Particularly with their livers.
Probably one of the most horrifying descriptions was how they would actually eat people alive
... slowly. In order to keep the human meat fresh they would cut off part of a victim, like leg muscles, and keep them alive for later meals. Living flesh doesn't rot.I'm getting sick thinking about it.
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Straight out of the Stainless Steel Rat books
The sons Harry Harrison's famous sci-fi super-criminal, the "Stainless Steel Rat," were sent to the harshest military academy in known space, because no other institution would be able to get them to do even a little of their studying. Apparently, the boys did do their studies because the instructors kept recapturing them and chaining them to their desk. As a side effect, they also became expert lockpicks.
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Re:Sounds like a pickup line...
Hitachi already makes one and my girlfriend loves hers...
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First result on search for "Magic Wand"
This is the first search result for "magic wand":
http://www.amazon.com/Vibratex-HV-250R-Hitachi-Magic-Massager/dp/B00005M1WE
I think MS needs to rethink their naming. I doubt this is what they have in mind. Besides, the Wii beat them to it in designing a controller that looks like a sex toy.
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Re:It wasn't that simple
To say that it was kept somewhat secret is true, but don't discount that many, many people knew about the extermination. The prevailing theory in most circles was that most germans didn't know what was going on, but after What We Knew was published it became apparant that wasn't the case.