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This book has a chapter on how non science-based medicine actually is. For instance, when you go in and get a checkup and they listen to your heart with a stethoscope, guess what that's for? Nothing. But everybody does it. Malcolm Gladwell's "Blink" also has a chapter about how an extremely small decision tree (with about 4 nodes) diagnoses heart attacks more accurately than physicians can do it subjectively.

http://www.amazon.com/Critical-What-About-Health-Care-Crisis/dp/0312383010/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235966206&sr=8-1

And modeled on the UK system where a review board develops a formula the determines if the cost-benefit is worth it or not.

Sounds all good and all, but basically this is what HMO's try to do now.

Only difference I can tell is that the government will be the ones telling you what treatments you can/cannot get instead of the HMO's.

I was wondering, could a newspaper sell ther editions on Amazon?

That was a feature of the Kindle 1, even.

The free cell phone data access makes some things easy to do, since an e-newspaper reader isn't that much different from an e-book reader.

It's missing a screen that's as normal an off-white color as the product shots on Amazon's site.
Apparently it's a dark and dingy gray color, "darker than any paperback" ever seen.

Ah, now we're talking - very nice list and terrific to see that 802.11n is coming on strong. The $60 Planax is pretty cheap and a USB port could be quite handy! Poking around now looking to find some good info on configuring\hacking\loading this puppy with OpenWRT...

Amazon has it here -> http://www.amazon.com/IEEE802-11N-Wireless-Broadband-MZK-W04NU-Designed/dp/B000YDS0YG

There's certainly a big break in the very practice reading with the advent of digital media. People growing up today perhaps less concerned about the smell of the paper, the feel of the binding and so forth as you mention. But it's not just that. Traditions of typography have been eroded now that a lot of publishers are allowing layout to be done with word processors like Microsoft Word instead of a real typesetting engine, with IMO a severe loss of readability and aesthetic craft.

Nonetheless, I myself travel most of the year, so carting around a lot of books isn't possible, but reading off my notebook screen isn't so pleasant (and I'm always chasing AC power sources). Now that the Kindle 2 has been released, I may get one. But it sucks to be a member of a generation torn between older traditions and these newfangled devices.

If you are running a business in the new Capitalist China and you prescribe to the new Greed is Good mentality you suspect that you can get away with watering down the milk and adding Melamine to make the protein count look good and sell more product at a lower price than competitors. Unfortunately the plan backfires and Sanlu Group is bankrupted by the scandal and the one time entrepreneur Tian Wenhua is sentenced to life imprisonment. The communist government tries to cover up the incident and amazingly points fingers at other countries but in the end it was the capitalist entrepreneurs that chose to taint their product with Melamine, not the communist government.

Fixed that for you.

People who are extremely in favor of capitalism tend to assume that people will spend their money well. Adam Smith implied that the system would only work well if people with money spent it wisely (it's been a long time, so I don't remember the context, but I remember him implying this though not saying it explicitly).

I think Adam Smith said something like this in his book, which many people don't know or think about, " The Theory of Moral Sentiments".

Falcon

You don't need wine. You need a web browser.

And what does the $100 comment have anything to do with what the GP said?

iJobs?

Hey, there's already an iWoz, so why not?

Go read Cyberbooks by Ben Bova. 20 years ago and he got it pretty right.

Instead of whining about the "liberal" media (which was completely complicit while Bush took a monkey wrench to the country) you should read about the real power brokers...Democrat AND Republican. And why we're all screwed.

I dunno, Mr. Correia got my money directly, and now his book's even being published by a respectable publisher which doesn't screw over their authors.

http://www.amazon.com/Slobbering-Love-Affair-Pathetic-Mainstream/dp/1596980907/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235618228&sr=8-1

Whether you call it audio rights, which means the right to perform the work orally, or an audio performance, you're talking about the same result and the same thing. Let's not let semantics bog us down.

Yes, it's semantics, but it's also important. If "audio rights" is used in the same sense as "movie rights", then "audio rights" means the right to produce a derivative work. If "audio rights" mean the right to publicly perform the work, that is a different right in the eyes of the law.

Once again, courts have determined that the use of player pianos constitute a performance.

If you're referring to White-Smith Music v. Apollo (which, as described by my IP law prof, is recognized as "one of the worst Supreme Court decisions ever"), the court found that piano rolls didn't constitute copies of sheet music. This in turn led Congress to pass a new copyright act. In any case, read on for why this isn't relevant to the Kindle.

In the exact same way, the use of the Kindle 2 to translate text to an audio format constinues a performance.

Yes, it constitutes a performance. It does not constitute a public performance, unless it's done in public (thus my auditorium example). 17 U.S.C. Sec. 106(4) is very clear that there is an exclusive right to public performance, not to performance in general.

Of course the pianos were not sued.

Fair enough, I was just being pedantic here :-)

God, I wish people who knew nothing about the law would simply stop smashing their fingers. The copyright on the book is fixed. The book was written down and is sitting on a shelf someplace in a fixed state. God, why are you wasting our time on this BS?!

The copyright (on the original portions) of a derivative work is separate from the copyright on the original work. 17 U.S.C. Sec. 103(b). TTS can't constitute a derivative work, because it's not fixed, which is one of the fundamental requirements of copyrightability.

If we agree, then what are we arguing about?! . . . For Amazon to pay for the audio license. God, was that so hard?

No, I'm saying that Amazon doesn't need a license for audio rights, and that their current e-book license gives them the right to include TTS technology with the Kindle, and that perhaps the e-book license should be more expensive.

Because what you know about copyright law comes from what you've read online. Everything you read on line is not true. Seriously.

Funny, I could have sworn that what I know about copyright law comes from my IP law book and the lectures I've attended at the law school.

In any case, I can't waste any more time on /., I've got reading to do for tomorrow :-)

Vista is $235.95 [amazon.com].

Vista is $109.99.

Redhat RHEL is $179 [redhat.com]

Redhat RHEL is $179 per year.

Mr. Blunt is NOT ranting. He actually does put forth a good argument that authors should be paid for the audio rights for their books if an audio production is being sold by a third party.

Your argument falls apart however, when you examine the two separate issues:

1) A computer/communications device is sold with the OPTION to enable the ability to convert text on the screen to another format, namely spoken English.

and

2) Files containing text or existing audio are loaded to the device, either through purchase from Amazon, or other methods. Content Formats Supported: Kindle (AZW), TXT, Audible (formats 4, Audible Enhanced (AAX)), MP3, unprotected MOBI, PRC natively; PDF, HTML, DOC, JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMP through conversion (from amazon.com).

The vast majority of these formats come from locations other then Amazon. Only Kindle and Audible formats are sold by them, and the Audible format already has paid audio book royalties. In theory, the MP3 format has paid as well.

One of five things will have to happen here if the Author's guild wants to pursue this line of inquiry:

1) A separate license will have to be purchased to convert a file of any type to spoken English. The problem with this is that I can load a .doc or .txt file of my own creation and then request it be converted, but then have to pay to do so, as it does not have a license for that file.

2) Restrict the device to only convert text to spoken English on Kindle format text, and increase the price of the Kindle format purchases to cover the increased royalty.

3) Increase the cost of the Kindle to include the license. Of course, if you do this, you're going to have to go to Microsoft, HTC, Nokia, Apple, and every other company that has included text to speech software in their computers, phones, pdas, etc and enforce the same licensing rules.

4) Remove the TTS technology from the device altogether.

or 5) Ignore the Authors Guild, and let them sue. Once in front of a judge, they will have to prove that Kindle's text to speech technology constitutes a public performance or offers significant competition to professionally recorded audio books, and not a version of fair use. I personally think that all Amazon is going to need to do here is play a Kindle read version, a Professionally Recorded version of the same book, and then the statistics on how many books each year are published in audio book format vs. paper format. Worst case scenario, Amazon is forced to implement one of the three other options. Best case scenario, fair use lives to fight another day.

#1 gets to be really interesting, and not practical, as there is no way to tell the difference between something I wrote in .txt format, and something copyrighted by someone else.

Personally, I would hope that Amazon opts for number 5. They really have little to lose, and lots to gain, not to mention all the free publicity that they, and the Kindle, will get out of the fight.

No, this is what you need.
Plenty of space for each wart to plug in directly.

OSX can only realistically come from one over priced manufactuer

OS X is $106.99.

Vista is $235.95.

Redhat RHEL is $179

Based on fully-featured offerings with cheapest support package.

A lot of non-technical people want to be able to call their vendor when something breaks and have them fix it. This a different market from where Debian, Gentoo, at al fit in.

OSX can only realistically come from one over priced manufactuer

OS X is $106.99.

Vista is $235.95.

Redhat RHEL is $179

Based on fully-featured offerings with cheapest support package.

A lot of non-technical people want to be able to call their vendor when something breaks and have them fix it. This a different market from where Debian, Gentoo, at al fit in.

So what, do they want proof of blindness before the speaker is activated? It's futile. There is no user test for blindness that can't be passed by a sighted person with their eyes closed (no pun intended). Even if it had the hardware, there's nothing to prevent a sighted person from learning braille, and even if blind people had electronically readable disability identification cards, it can't prevent a blind person from using it in the presence of sighted people or a microphone.

This is like the movie industry rejecting an invention of a non-rewindable-by-user VHS tape for rental stores because it could not track how many people sat in front of the screen in that one viewing and charge accordingly.

You can however create a device that converts sighted people into blind people (lasers), thereby authorizing them to hear their books. They could test market this DRM on Day of the Triffids (Kindle Edition).

What it comes down to is range. Having the bulk of your guns available at range is what used to win naval battles.

While I agree with your reference to the Dreadnought (beautifully told in Robert K. Massie's book) I think the power of that concept could be beter explained as:
1) Few, large guns onboard. All the same caliber, all of the longest range you can build.
2) Light armor -- you will keep your ship always beyond the range of opponents.
3) Highest mobility -- you need to outrun all other battleships in order to *stay* in the range where only you can hit.

Building large warships was always a trade-off between armor, guns, and speed. The trade-off was both economic (use the years' steel production for a large number of light-armor, high speed ships, or small numbers of heavy-armor, slower ships?) and physical (pile too much armor and guns, and the ship will become a fixed platform).

The dreadnought design was the "sweet spot" in that mix for a relatively short period of time: roughly between 1900 and 1920, the WWI era. Then came submarines, torpedos, air-carriers, and things stopped being as simples as "having the bulk of your guns available at range".

...Exploring the Internet: A Technical Travelogue. He relates a couple of funny episodes dealing with various ISO bureaucrats... good stuff.

"He really believed Nixon when he told him there was all that gold in the continental shelf."

I don't recall anything about gold, but the "official" cover story for the Glomar Explorer was deep ocean mining, and they even made at least one test run.

I still have a couple of deep sea photos showing the manganese nodules littering the ocean floor, and a small box of tennis ball sized manganese nodules recovered on that test run (they are soft like Ulexite/Borax, and turned my hands black when handled).

My late father was a principle designer on the H-MB "mining barge", and "Clementine", the huge claw made to pick up the Russian Golf class sub.

Every time our family drove past the H-MB on the 101 in Redwood City, he'd point it out to us, likely chuckling inside because if we only knew what it was really for ...

After it was declassified, he eventually received a framed commendation from then President Regan, and a bronze medal.

If you want some more history, try to read "A Matter of Risk", it was the first book published after the covert operation was declassified, my father said it was fairly close to actual events.

Wow, guess it's out of print: http://www.amazon.com/Matter-Risk-Incredible-Explorer-Submarine/dp/0394424328

I would still have to boot into windows to update my Iphone, and use Itunes. I have gone completely legit in the music, movie and software areas and I like being able to download DRM free music whenever I feel like it. Bottom line, you can't do that with Linux.

For what it's worth, I've been buying DRM free music from Amazon using Ubuntu for a while now. They even offer a handy downloader for Linux.

or you could use one of these

or you could use one of these

Fry's has the Acer Aspire One on sale for $300 - it comes standard with a 3 cell battery (1 - 2 hours)

I have it -- its a great 2nd portable computer for spare web browsing, coding, mp3, and old-school 2d gaming.
http://shop1.frys.com/search?search_type=regular&sqxts=1&query_string=acer+aspire+one&cat=0&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

Just got these spare parts from Amazon...

9 Cell ( 7+ hours!) Spare Battery, $75
http://www.amazon.com/HQRP-Replacement-Lithium-Ion-Subnotebook-Mousepad/dp/B001P0F71G/

Spare AC Adapter, $21
http://www.amazon.com/HQRP-Replacement-Subnotebook-Netbook-Mousepad/dp/B001ODA6II/

Cheap way to get XP Home :-)

--
"Gamestar: A famous game developer, or player"

Fry's has the Acer Aspire One on sale for $300 - it comes standard with a 3 cell battery (1 - 2 hours)

I have it -- its a great 2nd portable computer for spare web browsing, coding, mp3, and old-school 2d gaming.
http://shop1.frys.com/search?search_type=regular&sqxts=1&query_string=acer+aspire+one&cat=0&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

Just got these spare parts from Amazon...

9 Cell ( 7+ hours!) Spare Battery, $75
http://www.amazon.com/HQRP-Replacement-Lithium-Ion-Subnotebook-Mousepad/dp/B001P0F71G/

Spare AC Adapter, $21
http://www.amazon.com/HQRP-Replacement-Subnotebook-Netbook-Mousepad/dp/B001ODA6II/

Cheap way to get XP Home :-)

--
"Gamestar: A famous game developer, or player"

Or spend less for something that already does all of that. It runs Linux too. Seriously, I have a few of these around the house along with some of the more expensive pan/tilt versions. They work great. Built-in webserver means I can run a custom perl script on my home server to grab images at any frequency and do whatever I the hell want with them (time-lapse movies, anyone?).

Or spend less for something that already does all of that. It runs Linux too. Seriously, I have a few of these around the house along with some of the more expensive pan/tilt versions. They work great. Built-in webserver means I can run a custom perl script on my home server to grab images at any frequency and do whatever I the hell want with them (time-lapse movies, anyone?).

What is really weird is that I'm reading the Jennifer Morgue right now. The book starts with the operations.

200 Mbps? Meh. I'll take the GigE. OTOH, a 6-port powerline network hub is pretty cheap.

uh what? ralink drivers are supported both in the Linux kernel and by ralink themselves. Did you even bother checking the wireless chip manufacturer's website?

I just built a mini-itx machine using a Medialink USB wireless ethernet stick which lsdev showed as a Ralink chip. Both the rt73usb driver in the kernel and the rt73 driver from ralink work perfectly.

And should be modded up.

http://www.amazon.com/Time-Crisis-4-Guncon-3-Playstation/dp/B000P297IO

I bought a Eee, with Linux preinstalled to give to my wife for her birthday last week. The wifi didn't work. Called Asus tech support, and they figured out that the problem was that the machine had an RaLink wifi card, but the only one they had working drivers for was Atheros. They weren't able to offer any solution other than returning it, so I did.

Since they have RaLink on some of their machines, and they say they don't have working Linux drivers for RaLink, it sounds like some of the Windows versions have RaLink, and therefore the OP should check that before trying to switch to Linux.

If you look at the Amazon reviews for the model I bought, you'll see a lot of people complaining that they bought the Linux version, installed Windows, and then Windows didn't work right. On all of those, I clicked the "NO" link next to "Was this review helpful to you?," because that's just silly. If you want Windows, you buy the Windows version. Installing an OS on a desktop tends to be a hassle, doing it on a standard notebook has many more pitfalls, and doing it on a netbook is even more difficult to get right. It's pretty silly that these people are blaming Asus when essentially they just bought the wrong model.

The OP seems to be making the same mistake, but in reverse, which seems even less sensible to me. It means that MS is getting a Windows tax from him for an OS he doesn't like and isn't going to use. Great way to support an illegal monopoly when you didn't even have to, as well as creating huge hassles for yourself. My advice at this point would be either to return it if he can, or sell it on eBay, and then buy one with Linux preinstalled.

BTW, a little googling will show that a lot of people are receiving Eees with nonfunctional wifi. I'm really looking forward to the day when Linux-based desktop and laptop machines are so cheap and good that it puts MS out of business. Unfortunately, that day hasn't come yet. The quality just isn't there yet. I've bought PCs with Linux preinstalled from a variety of vendors (Great Quality, WalMart, Asus) over the last 5 years or so. The best that ever happened was that the hardware was fine but the version of Linux that came preinstalled (ThizLinux, gOS) was lousy, so I wiped the disk and installed something else (FreeBSD, Ubuntu). The worst that ever happened was this experience with the Eee.

If you're struggling to use Windows XP on a daily basis, perhaps you should try something like this laptop. I'm certain you will find yourself struggling just as much and see just as much bloat with any kind of GNU/Linux distribution, so this can really cut down on the learning curve and usability issues.

As you can see even now this product is sold by others, not MS.

And ill-informed as you are you didn't realise the vast majority of MS OS products are sold under an OEM re branding, meaning you can't even call MS for support...

When you're done with the chest hairs of the European Commissioner for Competition please report back :)

Are you by any chance this Tubal Cain? http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-url/ref=ntt_athr_dp_sr_1?_encoding=UTF8&search-type=ss&index=books&field-author=TubalCain

Actually there is:

http://www.amazon.com/Joomla-Dummies-Computer-Tech/dp/047043287X

You speak of the "free market" as if it really exists. It doesn't, governments all over world help their industries.

Oh, I agree. I have said in my previous posts about free markets, as well as post about monopolies and patents, that one does not exist.

In some cases it's by using a monopoly illegally, but in others it's from hard work.

Really? I've been in the software industry for a LONG time. Luck has a lot more to do with success than most people admit. I have seen excellent technical companies destroyed and imbecilic stupidity rewarded.

Surprise, surprise, I agree. That does not mean that those who apply themselves can't make it though.

Meanwhile some who do not make it don't because they refuse to offer what consumers and users want.

Like Microsoft and Vista and technologies like DRM? Where is the free market? Why does a CD cost $18.

In a free market Microsoft would not get away with what the company has done. Nor would DRM exist. And a CD would cost what buyers are willing to pay for it.

And who determines need and value?
One presumes a panel of experts appointed to do this. Not perfect, but something.

And how are those expert picked?

In a free market buyers do.
The "free market" is a myth. Microsoft buys the free market.

Just because the free market does not exist now does not mean it's a myth. A freer market existed in the late 1820s to early '30s. Read Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" some tyme to get an example of one. He wrote the book after touring the US back then. Quite simply corporations had not yet taken control of government.

Falcon

Dr Suess will save us! http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Zebra-Classic-Seuss/dp/0394800842/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235319102&sr=1-1?

Oh yeah, "The Free Market is the solution to everything!" A real sharp bunch of people believe that. You'd have to be hopelessly naive or ignorant to believe that libertarianism has a chance of working in the real world.

More rhetoric with no substance. Try reading Alexis de Tocqueville's "Democracy in America" sometime. Alexis describes what he found in America when he toured the country, freedom with most of the government at the local level. Of course this was before corporations became powerful as Thomas Jefferson warned about.

Falcon

Another $2 million is being offered to competitors who are able to beam power to a device climbing a cable at a height of up to one kilometer.

Wouldn't it just make more sense to have solar panels in orbit and transmit the power along the space elevator? If I remember correctly, this is what Kim Stanley Robinson envisioned with the space elevator in his science fiction novel Red Mars . Being able to bring power down would be a nice bonus for a tool to get up to orbit easily.

Ever heard of the New Deal? It, not World War II, brought us out of the Great Depression.

Citation needed to back this statement up. Some economists have concluded the New Deal prolonged the Great Depression, and I'll back that up with some citations:

• "How Government Prolonged the Depression"
• "New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR's Economic Legacy Has Damaged America"
• "New Deal or raw deal?"
• "FDR's policies prolonged Depression by 7 years, UCLA economists calculate"

There's more from where those came from.

Falcon

We're living in the future. The thought of a library fit onto a quarter-sized device makes me think of that scene from Gene Wolfe's science fiction masterwork The Book of the New Sun where the curator of the Earth's largest and most ancient library says:

There is a cube of crystal here --- though I can no longer tell you where --- no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other.

The development of such small memory is a significant step forward. Just think about how the writings of the human race can be better preserved if it all fits on a small, lightweight and easily duplicated device. It could be spread all over the solar system as protection against all manner of cataclysms. I wonder how long it stays readable though, before it succumbs to some kind of rot.

I bring to my subject these commandments, I call them Laws. Such as Law of Demand and Law of Supply. Here is thy Bible for thee with questions. http://www.amazon.com/Micro-Economy-DiscoverEcon-Solman-Videos/dp/0073137847/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1235136905&sr=8-2

I have received a number of spam messages from some author I had never heard of before, sending me to her Amazon listing. After the third round of spamming I decided to make a note of it on the page for the book, creating a review titled "Please don't buy books from this spammer." I used my real name and account, gave an accurate description of what had happened and a fairly objective review of what I could glean about the book. I also observed that the other reviews appeared to be shills, so I gave a little review of their reviews as well. None of what I said was mean or vindictive, just matter of fact.

It has been a week since I wrote that review and I thought to check for it today. There is no trace of it. I was not notified in any way that it was unacceptable or that it had been removed. If you are curious, you can check out the books here , but please do not buy from this spammer! I think you will see immediately how poorly the book is written and what obvious shills the reviewers are. It is almost funny, if it weren't for the spamming.

Of course any comments you leave about that book, or feedback you send to Amazon about their pulling reviews is up to you.

-Dan

As another commentator pointed out here, a microwave beaming system would be seen by other countries as a potential space weapon, spurring a space arms race that we might not want to start right now. I think the only completely unobjectionable method of getting power down from orbit would be transmitting it along a space elevator a la Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy beginning with Red Mars . But I suspect that before a space elevator would be feasible, the human race will have already perfected fusion power, which would rather solve our energy needs, wouldn't it? Indeed, fusion is always 30 years away, but a recent BBC report makes me optimistic.

This may sound childish, but I'm sick of waiting for the future.

As you say, Fusion is always "30 years out". Though I have been a supporter of Nuclear Fission in the past, this seems to offer all the Pros of Nuclear Fission with none of the Cons (though I consider the cons of fission to be minor, I can not deny they exist).

If it is truly possible to do something like this in 10 years, then I say full speed ahead.

I mean, my God, we built the atom bomb in less than 5, and they were practically writing the physics books as they went along!

As I understand it, these Power Satellites require no new technology, just a massive re-tasking of currently available technology (Large enough launch vehicles, Microwave power transmission, etc.)

As another commentator pointed out here, a microwave beaming system would be seen by other countries as a potential space weapon, spurring a space arms race that we might not want to start right now. I think the only completely unobjectionable method of getting power down from orbit would be transmitting it along a space elevator a la Kim Stanley Robinson's trilogy beginning with Red Mars . But I suspect that before a space elevator would be feasible, the human race will have already perfected fusion power, which would rather solve our energy needs, wouldn't it? Indeed, fusion is always 30 years away, but a recent BBC report makes me optimistic.