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Now if only *you* would post under a real name.
Interesting example, isn't it? Why would somebody decide to post such a thing anonymously? It makes the poster look informed, helpful, attentive, and polite. Is the poster afraid of being caught /.ing at work? And, if so, that's a perfect example of anonymity supporting continuing bad policy. It was a running joke because it was so true that the most widely installed software on old minis was Rogue, a game. Those of us in the operations field have always known that users always use their computers to do more than read work-related email or equivalent. And human behavior scientists have long since proven that people work better if they're managed on the basis of net contribution, not of micromanaged data about what keystrokes they made or what windows they had open at any given second. But as long as just about everybody takes part in the conspiracy of denial about this, managers can get away with managing by keystroke and claim that they're being rational. I point you to this book for plenty of data on how and why.
But they only get away with this because people don't fight hard enough to spread the word that their approaches don't even maximize profits, let alone inspire creative work.
Y'all love sitting around posting here about the evils of The Man when things like keystroke tracking software get more widely implemented. Whatever. You want to really fight it? Post under your own fucking names for a change and admit at work that you're doing it. That you Slashdot from your job. AND that it doesn't impede your productivity. Otherwise you're just wanking.

Granted, in this case I don't know the language C#, but in general I never really understood the Head First series, unless you really like printed introductions to languages. It would just make more sense to use free Internet resources to take your first steps in C#, and then get O'Reilly's e.g. C# 3.0 in a Nutshell as a good desk reference. Tech books are expensive, so it just doesn't make sense to invest in a primer that, after you finish with it, is a paperweight.

You're reading it from the perspective of someone who already has a good knowledge of programming in general, though. While I haven't read the Head First C# book I do have their Ajax book, and while I do not find it to be a good general reference it is great for my high school students to read. They have far less experience programming than I do and they pick up on these easier from the Head First book than they do from most.

If you don't know C# you might not know that C# in a nutshell is also rather limiting. on C# is much more .NET oriented, and much longer and more thorough for only slightly more money.

Granted, in this case I don't know the language C#, but in general I never really understood the Head First series, unless you really like printed introductions to languages. It would just make more sense to use free Internet resources to take your first steps in C#, and then get O'Reilly's e.g. C# 3.0 in a Nutshell as a good desk reference. Tech books are expensive, so it just doesn't make sense to invest in a primer that, after you finish with it, is a paperweight.

Following your logic, we should all be hunting and gathering instead of shopping for food because now we can't feed ourselves, either.

I wouldn't go that far but I do believe that certain experiences make us better people. There are some basics to life that shouldn't be skipped. If you eat, it's important to understand that something had to die so that you could live. If you're a vegetarian, growing some of your own food can give you an appreciation of the cycle of things, how dung and dirt and seeds can become the sustenance for your body. If you eat meat, actually taking a life is an educational moment like almost no other, a time when you discover, for real, not via a computer simulation but with blood on your hands, that other beings must die so that we can live.

There's individual, spiritual power and wisdom in knowing those things, really *knowing* them by experience rather than making do with the pale reflection of reality provided by a book or a digital simulation.

This is a big subject, though, and I can't do it justice in a short comment. I strongly recommend "Meditations on Hunting" by José Ortega y Gasset.

How many people here get that reference? Valis a prime example that you shouldn't write while you're out of your mind on drugs. Reading the PKD Reader in one sitting is a truly disturbing experience ..

I think the problem may be that you use your name as your internet handle? If Curt Monash is your real name, it's pretty easy to see your web presence and scrapers will have no problem putting your first and last name together, it doesn't even have to be randomly generated in your case.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/curtmonash
http://twitter.com/CurtMonash
http://www.amazon.com/gp/pdp/profile/APY7OA7WIXSJI

I'm sure this actually may be an issue in the future, but how can you stop them from putting X together with Y and generating web pages? We have to leave it up to the likes of Google to purge these sites from their results.

In his book, Don't Start the Revolution Without Me! former governor of Minnesota Jesse Ventura said that possibly there won't be another election. Possibly there will be a faked attack against the U.S. by Iran. (The idea of attacking Iran is to get more control over oil, so that the price can be made to rise even higher.) The U.S. has faked attacks on itself before. The Gulf of Tonkin incident is an example, Jesse Ventura says.

Possibly after the staged attack George W. Bush will declare martial law. There have been many, many efforts by Cheney and others in the Bush administration to make that more easily possible, former Governor Ventura says.

It's difficult to imagine that, after all the efforts to circumvent laws, those in power will let Barack Obama become president.

>He's going to be out of office via the normal process come next January.

That is what the Constitution calls for.

This administration is claiming that the Commander in Chief's inherent wartime authority allows him to override the Constitution.

In 2004, Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge asked DeForest Soaries Jr., chairman of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, how to postpone a national election. Soaries, mirabile dictu, told him to get authority from Congress. Over in Congress, the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee responded "...we're preparing for all of these contingencies now".

I hope that was just a trial balloon, but my relative who watches Fox now thinks that if the "wrong people" win the election we'll end up in a Stalinist state. If you believe that Senator Obama is the Manchurian Candidate, aren't you obliged to stop him from taking power?

Ob. dogfood.

I highly recommend Enigma: Battle for the Code. It's highly readable and informative at the same time.
http://www.amazon.com/Enigma-Battle-Code-Hugh-Sebag-Montefiore/dp/0471490350/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1215385882&sr=1-1

I'm confused by many of the replies here which talk about auto sheet-feeders and 'double wide' flatbed scanners, but they all seem to ignore the original problem: the spine would be damaged or require disassembly of the magazine itself.

There are special flatbed scanners such as this one which allow scanning without flattening the spine. And you could also try a palm scanner, which I think they also have wider "stick" versions which can do 8.5" sizes too.

IMO these would be the best options to not ruin your original collection. I think the palm scanner I linked is a really old greyscale one, and the special flatbed might not be the best brand... But I'm just providing an example of the type of scanning technology I would use, not suggesting the specific products themselves.

Thats nothing.
http://www.amazon.com/Denon-AKDL1-Dedicated-Link-Cable/dp/B000I1X6PM/

You save $49.75!!!

Check out the user reviews.

If I could use a rusty boxcutter to carve a new orifice in my body that's compatible with this link cable, I would already be doing it. I can just imagine the pure musical goodness that would flow through this cable into the wound and fill me completely -- like white, holy light. Holding this cable in my hands actually makes me feel that much closer to the Lord Jesus Christ. I only make $6.25/hr at Jack In The Box, but I saved up for three months so I could have this cable. It sits in a shrine I constructed next to my futon in Mother's basement.

I only gave it four stars in my review because I can't find music that is worthy enough to flow through this utterly perfect interconnect.

It contains both volumes.
http://www.amazon.com/Persepolis-Boxed-Set-Marjane-Satrapi/dp/0375423966/

Or this one. Newer edition and slightly cheaper:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Persepolis-Major-Motion-Picture/dp/0375714839/

And for the lazy ones, or those who can't read, there is a movie:
http://www.amazon.com/Persepolis-Chiara-Mastroianni/dp/B000YAA68W/

The movie ain't bad, but it is simplified at some points to make it more understandable to the "western viewers" I guess.
Books are far deeper.
BTW... movie got shafted at this years Oscars.
A talking rat took the little golden statue. A work of great cultural importance I am sure, as cartoons with talking animals usually are.

It contains both volumes.
http://www.amazon.com/Persepolis-Boxed-Set-Marjane-Satrapi/dp/0375423966/

Or this one. Newer edition and slightly cheaper:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Persepolis-Major-Motion-Picture/dp/0375714839/

And for the lazy ones, or those who can't read, there is a movie:
http://www.amazon.com/Persepolis-Chiara-Mastroianni/dp/B000YAA68W/

The movie ain't bad, but it is simplified at some points to make it more understandable to the "western viewers" I guess.
Books are far deeper.
BTW... movie got shafted at this years Oscars.
A talking rat took the little golden statue. A work of great cultural importance I am sure, as cartoons with talking animals usually are.

It contains both volumes.
http://www.amazon.com/Persepolis-Boxed-Set-Marjane-Satrapi/dp/0375423966/

Or this one. Newer edition and slightly cheaper:
http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Persepolis-Major-Motion-Picture/dp/0375714839/

And for the lazy ones, or those who can't read, there is a movie:
http://www.amazon.com/Persepolis-Chiara-Mastroianni/dp/B000YAA68W/

The movie ain't bad, but it is simplified at some points to make it more understandable to the "western viewers" I guess.
Books are far deeper.
BTW... movie got shafted at this years Oscars.
A talking rat took the little golden statue. A work of great cultural importance I am sure, as cartoons with talking animals usually are.

A must for all those interested in Iran is Persepolis (look mom! no ref tag!),
Mmmm and no link either :) there you go, Persepolis

Now, you can produce music with ZERO MONEY (provided you got a PC). With GNU / Linux and a decent Audio editor and recorder (Ok, Audacity isn't the cream of the crop, but at least it gets the job done), and some music editor (forgot the names, but there are), you can produce your own album, and then burn the CD with k3b or another CD recording tool.

But let's get back a little in time, and that zero money became a couple thousand dollars: First you needed Microsoft Windows, and then an audio and music editor like Cakewalk Studio. The difference from zero to 2 thousand dollars is enough to keep amateurs out of the business. That's the power that Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and the rest keep over you. They keep for themselves, the tools that YOU NEED to succeed.

Given that Microsoft, Apple, etc. wrote that software, isn't it well within their rights to "keep it to themselves"? They're not obligated to give you the software they wrote for no charge. I think it's a great thing that you now have some free alternatives, but I find your statements absolutely ridiculous. No one's stopping you from writing your own music production software. If you can't, or it would take too much time, then why do you expect other people to do it for you for free?

And the more money you give to them, the more powerful they become to keep improving their product AND CHARGING MORE FOR IT. Or have you see software prices decrease over time? Well, actually, they have. According to this page and Amazon, Photoshop has decreased in price. $1000 - $999.00 = One dollar :)

So Photoshop has improved itself over the years, but costs roughly the same? What's the problem?

Now let's go to Microsoft Windows. In the 80's, MS-DOS costed around $40. The price for Windows Vista Ultimate is $319.95. Eight times more. Connect the dots, and guess how much Microsoft Windows 7 will cost when it's out.

$40 in the 1980's is worth more than $40 today, you know. It's not an eightfold increase in price.

Or have you see software prices decrease over time? Well, actually, they have. According to this page and Amazon, Photoshop has decreased in price. $1000 - $999.00 = One dollar

Oh sure, if you ignore inflation and added features.

These cars are great if they ever come to market and if people will buy them. We keep hearing about these new and revolutionary cars, but nothing ever makes it to the showroom floor.

I find it depressing that the concept cars are still mainly petrol-driven. When I read Poul Anderson's Harvest of Stars in high school many years back, I was enthralled by his view of a future where hydrocarbons had been surpassed as motorists' fuel by a more efficient use of hydrogen (elaborately described in a character's monologue I now recognize as clunky). But even the most whizbang concept car doesn't go too far. Solar vehicles are completely on the fringes even when in some markets they would be quite useful.

As a matter of fact, if all of my computers were to vanish right now, my life wouldn't change that much.

Speak for yourself. You don't NEED computers as much as graphical designeers, movie and music producers (and I mean the musicians, not the RIAA tycoons), etc. We live in an age where handling information is vital for the economy. But tell me, how will poor people compete with big businesses if the tools they need cost THOUSANDS of dollars?

30 years ago, only the big labels were able to distribute music for you. Because making records was one of the most expensive things on earth. So you needed to depend on the big labels, the radio stations (who depended on the big labels), and so on.

Now, you can produce music with ZERO MONEY (provided you got a PC). With GNU / Linux and a decent Audio editor and recorder (Ok, Audacity isn't the cream of the crop, but at least it gets the job done), and some music editor (forgot the names, but there are), you can produce your own album, and then burn the CD with k3b or another CD recording tool.

But let's get back a little in time, and that zero money became a couple thousand dollars: First you needed Microsoft Windows, and then an audio and music editor like Cakewalk Studio. The difference from zero to 2 thousand dollars is enough to keep amateurs out of the business. That's the power that Microsoft, Apple, Adobe and the rest keep over you. They keep for themselves, the tools that YOU NEED to succeed.

And the more money you give to them, the more powerful they become to keep improving their product AND CHARGING MORE FOR IT. Or have you see software prices decrease over time? Well, actually, they have. According to this page and Amazon, Photoshop has decreased in price. $1000 - $999.00 = One dollar :)

Now let's go to Microsoft Windows. In the 80's, MS-DOS costed around $40. The price for Windows Vista Ultimate is $319.95. Eight times more. Connect the dots, and guess how much Microsoft Windows 7 will cost when it's out.

Which is something entirely different than average even if they sometimes coincide in the "a stopped clock is correct twice a day" way.

I wrote it was an average. You know, indefinite article? You know, which implies there's are several, of which this is but one? I even named some other measures that are also averages. See that last word, in the plural? Is the concept that average is a generic, nonspecific term sinking in yet?

It's like I said dogs are mammals, and you're saying they can't be, because cats are.

For instance, in the data set "1, 2, 3, 4, 40" the median is 3 (in the middle) while the average is 10 (50 / 5).

No. The mean is 10, specifically, the arithemetic mean. If you knew anything about statistics that's the term you'd use, unless you were intending to mislead. (It's a pretty well known book, see chapter two)

That's a low id for someone who clearly hasn't graduated highschool yet.

How is geometry underrated? Calculus starts with the study of low dimensional curves. Linear algebra is the study of simple geometrical transformations (rotations, translations, dilations) in high dimensional geometry. Functional analysis is basically the study of infinite dimensional flat geometry. Partial differential equations are implicit equations for small patches of curves and surfaces.

Having studied all of these fields, I can safely say that the average undergraduate curriculum or textbox in any of these areas contains only the barest minimum of geometry, despite the vast amount of geometry inherant in these subjects. This is down to two reasons.

First and foremost, is laziness. It is easier to thrown down a rote definition by dictate than it is to motivate, explain and build a framework in which those definitions make sense. The former is the preferred method, and essentially leads to mathematics by rote learning, which is not really mathematics at all. The latter is the correct method, and leads to real understanding. Geometry is a key part of this method of explaination, which is why you see so little of it around.

The second method is related to the first. It has to do with the fact that after so many decades of poor textbooks devoid of geometrical meaning, very few people are actually aware of the geometry aspect of their fields, and write their textbooks accordingly. I'm sure not a few slashdotters went through a linear algebra course in which the only picture, if any, was to do with the solution of two, two variable simultaneous equations somewhere in the first lecture. In reality, linear algebra was developed from its outset, by this man, to be a method for solving problems in geometry via algebraic techniques. Most if not all standard techniques in linear algebra can not only be interpreted as a geometric method, but are essentially incomprehensible otherwise.

Classic example of the dearth of geometry in mathematics textbooks, and something relevant to this discussion, is the almost universal definition of "contravariant" and "covariant" tensors in general relativity/differential geometry textbooks. The usual "....whose coordinates transform according to the rule...." definition is essentially useless and betrays the authors incompetence and robs the reader of any real understanding of the topic. Contravariance and Covariance in fact have nothing to do with coordinate transformations of any kind and have far more fundamental origins, best revealed through basic geometric pictures. Try this book for an example of how things should be done.

Even worse...Jessica Simpson has gone country. So play her new song 24/7.
http://www.amazon.com/Come-On-Over-Album-Version/dp/B001B154KI/

Apparently my earlier impression of Amazon seems to be correct, as I heard back from them a few hours ago, and what they had could be summarized like this:

We received your report. We made some minor effort to look into it and it did come from our network, but we didn't do it. Please look at this URL which talks about buying service from us. We do make some pretense at caring, because the customer's actions are prohibited by our terms of service. However, they've terminated usage a few days ago, but we contacted them. In the future, it would be useful if you would report problems by sending us exactly the same information you sent us, but we'll insult you by listing it in a bullet-point list as if you were an idiot. Because we've confirmed that the malicious customer is no longer using that IP address, you should unblock it, because it prevents our new customers from being able to reach you.

Thanks again, we'll busily do nothing to solve this problem.

Apathetic Amazon Drone

That is why geology geeks use different phones that may not be all fancy and la dee da but they can be dropped from moving vehicles, be submerged in water/beer and still work to call into town for more supplies/beer. I do not understand the fascination with cell phone internet access. The majority of use I see for it is people in bars looking up statistics to win arguments or endless texting and picture sending from giggling girls. I have a GPS navigation system in the car as well as a laptop for full blown internet access when I need it. 95% of the time I have no desire or reason to be online when I am away from home as I have 10's of thousands of textbooks and reference books that I can use on my ebook reader. Thank you cheap SD cards.

I think that whitelists wouldn't work either.

Why?

One example would be Amazon.com;
http://www.amazon.com/AWS-home-page-Money/b/ref=gw_br_websvcs?ie=UTF8&node=3435361&pf_rd_p=413541701&pf_rd_s=left-nav-3&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=1AS2996111KQQC29RYZ7

With Amazon, I can upload instances of servers. Now my P2P node is running on Amazon.com, and my home PC is making an HTTPS connection to Amazon.com.

They also have hosted databases and file services at very cheap prices.

YaHoo and Google also have developer networks that could be exploited;
http://developer.yahoo.com/
http://code.google.com/

A white list will not work - you have to inspect the traffic and identify what's being copied.

Even with that, what's to prevent a stenography type P2P system from going into effect, where the exchanges occur in our hosted web sites images?
http://www.infosyssec.net/infosyssec/security/cry2.htm

One could post the 3MB MP3 into 10 5MP images which are uploaded to your Flickr account and tagged so that the P2P network knows what to get.

Anyway, you can't stop P2P - only escalate it.

Learned this in the very excellent Brain Hacks book by O'Reilly, which isn't about hacking the brain, really, at all, but just a top to bottom description of how the brain works, with various experiments to demonstrate their points (like optical illusions and such). I highly recommend it.

The title of the book is Mind Hacks . To learn why you remembered it as Brain Hacks, see Hack #85: Create False Memories.

Eerily enough, I reported the same title the first time I tried to recommend the book to somebody, having just recently read it cover to cover. Perhaps my hub had a collision.

Apparently behavioral modification is only for dogs.

You're just not using the shock collar correctly. Try bumping it up a setting or three.

I have been developing software or otherwise staring at a monitor for most of the day since 1995, and I have never had any eye problems. In fact with a couple of tricks, I have been able to work 12 to 16 hours per day, as a consultant, at very high resolutions (1600x1200) without any fatigue. Here are my tricks:

1. Refresh rate. This is the most important thing for me. . Keep the refresh at 85 Hz or above for a CRT in order to eliminate flicker. A trick I learned long ago in my days as a sys admin(and I really do not know if this works for anyone else) was to look at the monitor with my peripheral vision. I found that a low refresh rate on a user's monitor would flicker in my peripheral vision even if it did not flicker straight on, and I was able to determine that the refresh rate was too low without accessing system settings.

2. Brightness/Contrast. For YEARS I have had the brightness at 0% and the contrast at 50% or so. No one could ever understand why I had the screen so dark. Of course, they all wore eyeglasses, and I didn't. The way I see it, beaming a bright light into your eyes all day long cannot be good for your vision. I have short-cut keys assigned to increase the brightness and contrast in case I want to see a photo or a video with more brightness, but 99% of my work is staring at text.

3. Get a good quality monitor. Several times in my career, I have requested included provisioning a certain monitor as part of my software contract. Even several years ago, a few hundred dollars could by you a very high-res, high-refresh rate monitor. I would insist on this, stating that no hourly rate is worth sacrificing my vision. For as long as they were available, I have worked on high-quality monitors that could handle 1600x1200 @ 85 Hz and 19" in size or better.

4. If you work from home, as I have on occasion, try buying an ergonomic light for your computer and lower all other lighting. This can make a small but very worthwhile difference. As a consultant, if I could see and think clearly for just a couple more hours a day, it could have a *huge* positive impact on my project schedule. I have used the Eclipse for years.

In conclusion, I am living proof that with some careful thought and a lot of persistance you can eliminate the long-term side effects of a computer-based career.

Agreed, anyone that makes their money in front a monitor should be investing at least 400 dollars on a reasonably high quality model. Apple is junk for the money, you can get the same specs for less than half the price. What the extra 100 or 200 bucks buy you is better power circuitry, cathode ray tubes/LEDs and electronics. Any one of those things will makes a noticeable improvement in long term usage and durability. Cheap cathode ray tubes or their ballasts are what makes the monitor stop working a lot of the time. There is a reason my at the time almost 2000 dollar 21" SGI/Trinitron monitor lasted 10 years and I have not had a single LCD last more than 4. Of course I paid less than 600 dollars for my current center monitor, high end but not top of the line from Samsung about 6 months ago. Looks like it is only about 400 bucks now. Well worth the investment a had a cheap 500:1, 100 ms monitor that was unusable for anything besides web surfing and it is now on my left side running my Linux media server and displaying my 100's of RSS feeds.

I don't agree with you. Much has been posted in this thread about the BBS era but I don't think a lot of you have any idea how important it was. And to go even further, how important it was that we had phreakers before that. The BBS community came up with, among other things, chat, email and forums standards (kiss my ass usenet), file transfers, global communication, online games (Nethack is awesome but the BBS took it to a whole new level), and the original foundations of peer sharing. We did that without the Internet, we did it through Fido, WWIV, MajorBBS, and Tymenet.

The reason that the Internet is where its at today is because they smart people (who did it because they loved it) went on and created what you see now. They don't post or comment because hey, if you had that much money would you bother with Slashdot?

Tymenet and its like were fascinating. 1985-1990 were exciting times. Most news services and Lexis/Nexis were members and it didn't take much to pull logins out of a dumpster. I still have it though it is much dogearred and so is the other one, but for anyone who wants to get an idea of how amazing that time was checkout these:

Out of the Inner Circle by Bill Landreth

The Hacker's Handbook

Read them for the social hacking aspect, not the ones and zeros.

I don't agree with you. Much has been posted in this thread about the BBS era but I don't think a lot of you have any idea how important it was. And to go even further, how important it was that we had phreakers before that. The BBS community came up with, among other things, chat, email and forums standards (kiss my ass usenet), file transfers, global communication, online games (Nethack is awesome but the BBS took it to a whole new level), and the original foundations of peer sharing. We did that without the Internet, we did it through Fido, WWIV, MajorBBS, and Tymenet.

The reason that the Internet is where its at today is because they smart people (who did it because they loved it) went on and created what you see now. They don't post or comment because hey, if you had that much money would you bother with Slashdot?

Tymenet and its like were fascinating. 1985-1990 were exciting times. Most news services and Lexis/Nexis were members and it didn't take much to pull logins out of a dumpster. I still have it though it is much dogearred and so is the other one, but for anyone who wants to get an idea of how amazing that time was checkout these:

Out of the Inner Circle by Bill Landreth

The Hacker's Handbook

Read them for the social hacking aspect, not the ones and zeros.

It doesn't work that way. I can't remember the exact details, but the interference pattern doesn't just disappear. Remember, an interference pattern is built up from a large number of particle impacts. It's a statistical process. The interference pattern only disappears when you later look back and sift through the data using information about the measurements the other experimenter did. The experiment has been done, and there's a good description in this book.

The rules are weird, but pretty airtight. You can't transmit data faster than the speed of light using entanglement.

The Riemann Hypothesis and RSA encryption both have to do with prime numbers, but the relationship between the two pretty much ends there. To break RSA you need to know how to factor large numbers quickly. RH, on the other hand, pretains to the distribution of prime numbers. It's pretty unlikely that a proof would make computers any faster at factorizing.

So this begs the question that a lot of people have been asking on this thread: why should you care? There tongue-in-cheek answer is that a solution is worth $1,000,000. While that response may suffice for non-mathematicians, mathematicians would have another, more important reason to celebrate. RH and its generalization, the Grand Riemann Hypothesis, have an absolutely enormous number of profound impliations in number theory, and it is difficult to overstate how critical a proof of either would be. (The implications are too technical to write about here, but you can read about them in most good survey books on analytic number theory; for example, see section 5.8 of Iwaniec & Kowalski). A successful proof probably won't affect your life in any meaningful way (unless you work with analytic number theory for a living), but it would be monumental in the world of math - indeed, this is precisely why there's a reward for solving it. If that's not enough for you, just remember that many mathematicians are motivated not by fame or money but by the beauty and elegance of mathematics, and any proof of RH would establish a truly beautiful and amazing result.

Of course, there's also the question: is Li's proof correct? I certainily don't know, and I doubt anyone will for quite some time, but there's an interesting story. Li's Ph.D. adviser was Louis de Branges who, as noted on this very website, claimed to prove RH in 2004. His proof has not been accepted by the mathematical community and is widely considered to be incorrect, in large part because the method he wclaims to use was shown, in a 2000 paper co-authored by none other than Xian-Jin Li, to have holes in it.

The top hit from Google would have told you. It's Amazon's Elastic Compute Cloud.

The Music of the Primes, by Marcus du Sautoy is, as far as I know, the best account not only of the great intricacies of the Theorem but also of the amazing quest for an explanation of the hidden structure of numbers.
You may also find interesting the book's website (warning: cool web design)

The Riemann zeta function is \zeta(s) = \sum_{n=1}^{\infty} \frac{1}{n^{s}} [written for LaTeX], or "the sum of 1/(n^s) as n goes from 0 to infinity (increasing by 1 repeatedly)" [in more human-readable form].

Riemann was interested in the zeros to this function, where s is a complex number. He conjectured that all zeros (aside from those of the form s = -2c, where c is a positive integer) would have to be of the form (1/2) + ki, where k is a constant and i is the square root of -1.

This paper is saying that they've found a way to verify this intuition by patching a hole in a previous attempt.

Assuming that everything is correct (a big assumption), this would finally solve a long-standing problem (dating back to 1859).


Details of the actual solution are a bit heavy. Those actually interested in this sort of number theory might want to start here.

I usually get up in the morning and read news.google.com first to see if the world has blown up and than peruse the RSS feeds from Eureka Alerts before downloading my custom top 50 stories unto my Sony Ebook Reader which I recently upgraded to from my old Palm M500. On the light rail I read the news like people used to read newspapers, completely on most days unless a slew of unwanted stories is downloaded. I find reading things that may not interest me at first can become a pretty enlightening experience and I am now as of a few months ago becoming more familiar with new economic movements such as crowdsourcing and Wikinomics.

William Gibson already covered this idea in detail

we'll wind up reverting back to a medieval society.

We'd better get ready.

we'll wind up reverting back to a medieval society.

We'd better get ready.

we'll wind up reverting back to a medieval society.

We'd better get ready.

we'll wind up reverting back to a medieval society.

We'd better get ready.

Here's a good example of bullshit in the college textbook racket. This book is the required text for the first year physics sequence at many schools. When I got it, 10 years ago, it was in its 7th edition and cost about $100. The only difference I ever found comparing it to earlier editions was they rearranged some shit, it was all the exact same material. Which stands to reason, it's mechanics, you know, the shit Isaac Newton invented, the branch of science that's been largely unchanged for 300 years. How are these profiteering bastards allowed to continue to make money off of works that (should) have been public domain for centuries? Now this exact same book is $200? Total bullshit. My opinion is that everyone in the world should be issued this book at birth. It's like they're trying to make the world a dumber place by setting the cost of a basic (yes mechanics is basic, everyone should know it, also math and history) education so high only the affluent can get one. Then we're just paving the way for a new caste system and a return to the dark ages.

Kindle is not an accurate use for digital distribution. It's a big ole marketing hype. Kindle is akin to 1 step of a complete staircase.

Content control is not the solution, and the device is a piece of garbage. DRM and other problems left and right. People just like that it's cheaper than normal books. This not being kindle's fault but the publisher's own.

Wait until people create a double sided OLED bendable/foldable reader....then you're good. I'm sure its being developed as we speak, probably by MIT or CMU.

Once book prices go reasonable online (say 2-5 bucks a book at maximum), then things will sell like hotcakes and piracy will drop. For now, even e-books for some books are ridiculously priced.

Internet/computers have created their own market for pricings. Until pricing gets to a volume level instead of scarcity level, things will continue to be purchased illegitimately. I'm not going to trade a night of going out to the bars just to buy a textbook...but I will download it free instead.

whiner, $75 is cheap! I paid over $200 for Internal Combustion Engine Fundamentals. That was a few years ago. Open Courseware my ass! Heywood doesn't post the book online. Just the labs, homework, and syllabus.

Uhuh... That is disingenuous at best, it is still a commercial product.

Buy one of these. They're excellent.
http://www.amazon.com/IBM-USB-Keyboard-UltraNav-31P8950/dp/B00009APTK

I use the internal trackpoint for most navigation, and relegate the external mouse to graphic design.
Much quicker, since you don't have to context-switch to use the mouse.w

Humans are not the great rational thinkers we think we are. This book goes into a lot of the scientific data for why that is, if you're interested.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0670019275?tag=theyoungturks-20&camp=14573&creative=327641&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=0670019275&adid=12NM04WGMRXRDTH7SN6V&

I actually haven't read the book. I just saw the author interviewed on The Young Turks and was very impressed. The data and experiments he discussed in terms of "rational" thought were really provocative because not only are we not rational we shouldn't exactly want to be so. It would deny our humanness.