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Since this story has been posted, I might as well ask the Slashdot community: I've often heard Watchmen held up as an example of a comic having real value as literature. However, I personally found it rather poorly written (see my Amazon review). What other graphic novels might you recommend that validate the format? I haven't read Sandman yet, but I hear of that one a lot.

First, contradiction is not falsification. If I say "grass is green" and "grass is purple," nothing has been falsified, and the contradiction does not imply that both statements are false. Falsification requires some contradictory observation, not just a contradictory statement. Contradiction might say something about the logical consistency of a set of beliefs, but in itself says nothing about their actual veracity.

By "1st chapter" I assume you mean first and second chapters. The stories are obviously contradictory (the attempts of literalists to reconcile them notwithstanding). However, my understanding is that they probably came from different original sources and were incorporated into the single text of Genesis later on, and that the compilers weren't so concerned with smoothing out the differences as simply recording the various stories. Trying to read the stories as history when they weren't written as history is obviously going to cause problems.

Finally, you link to "Zeitgeist: The Movie." I have not seen it, but from what I understand there is a great deal of criticism surrounding the arguments made in the film. According to Wikipedia, it argues in favor of the "Jesus myth hypothesis," in spite of the fact that "Most scholars in the fields of biblical studies and history agree that Jesus was a Jewish teacher from Galilee who was regarded as a healer, was baptized by John the Baptist, was accused of sedition against the Roman Empire, and on the orders of Roman Governor Pontius Pilate was sentenced to death by crucifixion." So I'm not sure that "Zeitgeist" unequivocally qualifies as an "excellent and brief treatment of this subject." Personally, I'd recommend John Collin's Introduction to the Hebrew Bible for a strong historical-critical overview of the Old Testament.

Why would the burden of proof be with the guy who refuses to believe the religious crap?

Any sources to your claims?

When you dig deep down into Astrology, beyond the silly tabloid stuff, I find there's a lot of perplexing accuracy there. Too much, in my opinion, to be a complete coincidence. Two things that I found very useful: reading Astrology for lovers (apart from the stupid title, it's very much in depth), and having my ascendant and "houses" analysed by a professional.

And this is all considering the affects on macro-organisms...

The only fucking games on communist linsux are lamr puzzles and a yahtzee clone thatcan't fucking randomize properly.

Maybe you've heard of a little game studio called Id Software? Or Epic Games? I'm not even going to mention what works on Wine.

Whie we're at it, where are the professional 3D applications?

Oh, I don't know, Maya? That's off the top of my head -- I don't do 3D professionally.

But while we're at it, why did you bring up games in what is clearly an article about professional graphic design hardware? Or do you actually buy Quadro cards and wonder why your games run like shit?

I am not talkin about the gpl3 shit

Like what? Closest I can think of is blender, which is under the GPLv2. Is that what you're not talking about?

BTW, great initals, Richard stallman=RMS Titanic

Yeah, because that was totally unique to the Titanic. Except it wasn't -- it actually stands for "Royal Mail Ship".

Then you wonder why you can't get a fucking job

I'm doing nicely, thank you.

Never suspected it was the Windows fanbois living in their mother's basements all along, though. Thanks for that, you just made my day.

This is the first game that I can remember really enjoying the music as more than background enhancement while I played. I do like how the trend seems to be more "real" music and I hope that they keep mixing in lesser known bands. And it has the added bonus of really fleshing out the game if done right.I think have the reason I enjoyed Vice City so much is it took me back to my youth with its soundtrack.IMO the soundtrack really meshed well in that game. That said,I agree with the parent-if it sounds good to your ears,go for it.Just try to buy any RIAA music used,if you can.The last thing we need is even more insane copyright laws.But that is my 02c,YMMV.

If you want the context that would make it surprising if the white house did anything other than hide every aspect of what they did, take a look at the book Worse Than Watergate. Or get it on audio book and listen to it. It certainly contains some bias, but that's an unfortunate and unnecessary detriment to a text that very thoroughly documents numerous counts of unreasonable and often illegal attempts to maintain a monumental shroud of secrecy over everything this administration does.

I found the bit about him blatantly violating Texas law by keeping all his gubernatorial records completely sealed very interesting. This was well documented and easy to find out about before he was elected in 2000, but the media barely touched it. It turns out it was a pretty good indicator of future performance.

What really drives this is Blu-ray's skimpy catalog, which will take a couple of years to pump up.

What really drives this is Blu-ray's skimpy catalog, which will take a couple of years to pump up.

This is going to be one of those really unpopular posts where I get modded to hell, so I'll just say what I need to and get out.

Maybe ten years ago, I read On Killing, written by a psych professor at Westpoint, the U.S. Army Academy. The book was not about video games: it was a study of how the U.S. Army had successfully changed its effective fire ratio from 10% in WWII to over 90% in the Vietnam war, and how those 80% who got psychologically "tricked" into killing people they weren't prepared to kill were the ones who got extremely ill after the war. These people were trained to easily go past the non-violence barrier that most people have.

There is, however, a short chapter near the end of the book where he warns that the elements FPS games are functionally equivalent to the training methods the Army used,teaching players to go across that barrier, too.

Whether you agree or disagree, he still knew a lot about war and psychology.

Thanks for posting about the castle doctrine.

Some states require you to get on your knees and beg for mercy (unless you're fast-footed). Others allow you to stand your ground.

Here's a book on the subject: No Duty To Retreat: Violence and Values in American History

I just finished reading this and I'm thinking maybe the human race needs to just STFU?

(good luck finding a used copy, it's way out of print :/)

That's exactly why I like the book Genesis and the big bang.

Nano segmented metallic snake things invade small town California.

http://www.amazon.com/Crawlers-John-Shirley/dp/0345446526/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204910682&sr=8-1

NOTHING was done right on the Bay of Pigs invasion. NOTHING.

Not true! The anti-aircraft guns the American advisers (really commanders) personally had added to their otherwise unarmed ships worked very well in fending off Cuba's air force for quite some time, and despite the terrible landing location their plan to stymie the Cuban army by turning a narrow road in the swamp into a killing field worked perfectly.

Oh yeah, that was all pretty much in spite of the higher-level mission planners and politicos... Everything they did was a clusterfuck.

Decision for Disaster is a great book on the Bay of Pigs invasion, written by one of the two American advisers who went on the mission. Highly recommended.

That said, neither my BS or MS, nor my Ph. D. when I attain it, are worthless. The universities may not be prestigious and the degrees alone may not mean much, but what I've done while attaining them has given them worth beyond their stature.

You just keep telling yourself that, bro. ;) I believe the quote, "I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper and I was free.", would be apropos in juxtaposition, if one subscribed to that particular frame of reference.

I dare you to read this book http://www.amazon.com/University-Ruins-Bill-Readings/dp/0674929535 and consider again how much value your acronyms confer upon you.

this? One of my favorite sci-fi stories. Kid invents anti-gravity drive, builds homemade spaceship, goes to mars, experiences system failure on return trip due to lack of spare for one simple part and gains new respect for NASA engineering, gets rescued by equally genius girlfriend, who neglects to arrange for the return trip at all. I mean, who wants to be rescued?

There is no need for a trip to Mars to be one-way only. Robert Zubrin lays out a detailed plan of a round-trip to Mars in the non-fiction book The Case for Mars.

Getting people to Mars and back is entirely possible. It wouldn't be cheap, but it could be done with current technology for well under 100 billion US$. Basically two or three launches to Mars are needed and would land on Mars near each other. One of the launches would contain a spacecraft with the three or four people. Another launch would contain a return-to-earth craft. Nothing is going to automatically wipe out the astronauts who make the couple year round trip. However, the astronauts' risk of getting cancer some time during their life will be increased probably by a couple percent.

In terms of the cost $50 billion is not chump change and would probably be better spent on things like healthcare. But sending people to Mars is a much better investment than the trillion dollars spent on the war on Iraq.

...which for me is one of the trickier bits of Apache, get Rich Bowen's excellent mod_rewrite book. It's helped me figure out a bunch of complicated stuff and even has a great chapter on when _not_ to use mod_rewrite - e.g., if a RedirectMatch will do the trick, use that instead.

here you go

You're right. There's just NO SERVICE OUT THERE to provide temporary storage, cpu, and bandwidth. There's just NO MARKET for it. NONE.

It's not a monopoly when there are several alternatives available, dipshit.

Yeah but saying Bush and Right-Wingers are fascists is a lot easier to do than check facts and find the origin of the embargo was done by Liberal Democrats.

Just ignore all of the Liberal Fascism and blame the Neocons.

Please raise those "Impeach Bush" signs high, flood all of the Digg, Reddit, DailyKOS, Kuro5hin, Slashdot, and any other social networking or discussion board site you can.

Just tell us all about how the Conservative Fascists are manipulating us with fear of Radical Islamic Terrorists, and please do ignore the fact that Liberal Fascists are manipulating us with fear that the Conservatives are taking away our freedom, fear of global warming to force us to give Liberals our money via carbon credits, fear of peak oil and high gas prices, fear of the RIAA and MPAA suing us for using BitTorrent, fear of our employers firing us for reading Slashdot, fear that Police can read text messages on some stoner's cell phone after pulling him over for speeding and see he contacted a drug dealer, fear that "The New World Order" controls everything so we have to vote in Liberals to keep the NWO out (and hope we don't notice that Liberal Politicians are part of a NWO if it exists in the first place), fear that "Big Brother" is watching us over the Internet and listening to our phone calls.

When you compare Conservative Fascists to Liberal Fascists, you'll find that Liberal Fascists use fear more often to manipulate and control most of us than the Conservative Fascists do. You'd have to ignore that FDR put Japanese-Americans into concentration camps and arrested anyone who was against WWII and put them in jail without a warrant or habeas corpus, you'll have to ignore that Harry S. Truman dropped nukes on Japan and started a war in Korea, you'll have to ignore the LBJ started the Vietnam war and helped bring about the embargo with Cuba in the first place, you'll have to ignore that Jimmy Carter supported Israel and helped out the Shah of Iran to get cancer treatment and it lead to a big Islamic Uprising in the Middle-East that lead to Radical Islamic Terrorism and 9/11, you'll have to ignore that Bill Clinton had military actions against Iraq and Afghanistan and was the first one to say Iraq had WMDs and ties to Bin Laden and tried to get Bin Laden since 1993 when OBL had his men do a failed truck bomb on the WTC in 1993. You can even ignore that Bill Clinton and Al Gore rejected the Koyoto treaty and were in favor of the foreign trade agreements with India, China, Mexico, etc that cost the USA a lot of jobs, and Hillary Clinton supported it and also worked for Wal-Mart and told them to offshore the manufacturing to Asia and when Wal-mart employees vote to unionize just close down the Wal-mart store and fire all the employees and open up a new store somewhere else in town.

I mean yeah, if you ignore the history of Liberal Fascism, you could say that Conservative Fascism is the worst form of fascism, but then isn't any form of fascism supposed to be bad?

Also in the former ex-Communist states, the word progressive and progress stood for Communism and the KGB, Stalin, Mao, and other Communist leaders told everyone they stood for progress. So did Hitler and Mussolini also claim to be progressives and stood for progress. So if a person calls themselves a progressive, that is a bad thing.

As for color calibration, my Trinitron is probably not correctly calibrated, but I'm a bit colorblind anyway :) But at least black is really black, and with a lot of calibration work you can even get a lot of fine gray-scales correctly. Another point: if you are not watching HDTV on an LCD, but just normal TV, then the scaling of the resolutions creates a very crappy, blurry, pixelated image on the LCD. For some reason it looks much more natural and fluid on a CRT. This problem will probably solve itself as TV will be made in higher native resolutions, though.

I also found out why I don't see the infamous lines so much: my eyes are about 40 cm or more from the screen, the lines disappear at that distance.

Life is all about compromises, and for house and desk work the LCDs are a huge advantage, more space on your desk, better way to communicate with other people (there's not a huge lump inbetween you and the other) the screen can be further away from your eyes, and already for a few years the sharpness equals or exceeds that of a CRT. Also the monitor will fit on any desk, whereas I had to buy a separate rack to put my 25 KG CRT on :) So I understand you were not trolling, but I really do understand why people loved their Trinitrons, despite or maybe even because of its flaws.

Used in Stephen Baxter's excellent Sci-Fi novel Manifold: Space.

One of the best hard-science Sci-Fi books I've ever read.

Right, but Star Trek's Stardate idea was mostly to "seem" cool, and I think was at some point established how it synced to "Earth" time (probably in San Francisco).

No, Star Trek's stardate system was intended in part to avoid setting the original Star Trek universe in a particular time frame so the show wouldn't seem dated as quickly, and in part because they had no control over the order in which the shows were aired. Since major characters didn't die (just a bunch of random red shirts who were always episode-specific), the shows could be resequenced as desired. The ability to do this was dependent on the stardate system having little bearing on reality. The notion of it being in sync with Earth time didn't happen until decades later, AFAIK, when the TV and movie industry were very different than they were in the 60s.

Stardate order, part 1
Stardate order, part 2

Right, but Star Trek's Stardate idea was mostly to "seem" cool, and I think was at some point established how it synced to "Earth" time (probably in San Francisco).

No, Star Trek's stardate system was intended in part to avoid setting the original Star Trek universe in a particular time frame so the show wouldn't seem dated as quickly, and in part because they had no control over the order in which the shows were aired. Since major characters didn't die (just a bunch of random red shirts who were always episode-specific), the shows could be resequenced as desired. The ability to do this was dependent on the stardate system having little bearing on reality. The notion of it being in sync with Earth time didn't happen until decades later, AFAIK, when the TV and movie industry were very different than they were in the 60s.

Stardate order, part 1
Stardate order, part 2

I've seen this in a textbook published in 1998, which contains references to papers dating from the 1960's. That text highly recommendeds a collection of review articles found here, and what appears to be a later book by the same author is here.

I've seen this in a textbook published in 1998, which contains references to papers dating from the 1960's. That text highly recommendeds a collection of review articles found here, and what appears to be a later book by the same author is here.

If you are looking for a good piece of fiction on the Panopticon in modern times, you should give The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks. It is a trilogy and this is the first book, the second The Dark River came out this summer. It chronicles the lives of the last "travellers" who can move between this world and several other realms, the "Harlequins" who defend them, and their epic battle with the "Tabula" who are trying to build a real world Panopticon for the entire world, starting with certain cities like London/Berlin. One of the interesting things about the books is the way the current world, with all the automation, cameras, etc. are quickly becoming a real panopticon. The author, who puportedly lives "off the grid", touches on a lot of real world stuff and extrapolates fairly convincingly where it might lead in a short space of time. There are also interesting "other realms" one of which gives an interesting picture of what Hell might really be like. It wasn't so much as scary as it was without hope... probably as good a description of hell if I ever heard one. I've found the books intriguing and pretty much a "can't put them down until I'm done" kind of adventure.

If you are looking for a good piece of fiction on the Panopticon in modern times, you should give The Traveller by John Twelve Hawks. It is a trilogy and this is the first book, the second The Dark River came out this summer. It chronicles the lives of the last "travellers" who can move between this world and several other realms, the "Harlequins" who defend them, and their epic battle with the "Tabula" who are trying to build a real world Panopticon for the entire world, starting with certain cities like London/Berlin. One of the interesting things about the books is the way the current world, with all the automation, cameras, etc. are quickly becoming a real panopticon. The author, who puportedly lives "off the grid", touches on a lot of real world stuff and extrapolates fairly convincingly where it might lead in a short space of time. There are also interesting "other realms" one of which gives an interesting picture of what Hell might really be like. It wasn't so much as scary as it was without hope... probably as good a description of hell if I ever heard one. I've found the books intriguing and pretty much a "can't put them down until I'm done" kind of adventure.

Paging Mr. Gibson, Mr. William Gibson....

I would also recommend the book "About Face", as an excellent book for both UI designers and programmers, as I programmer it taught me a lot, when I was working on developer tools.

http://www.amazon.com/About-Face-Essentials-Interaction-Design/dp/0470084111/ref=pd_sim_b_img_19

I want a kingston drive, or at least the software program. He who haveth one, have fun. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/159749237X/

Change your life. http://www.saramednick.com/ http://www.amazon.com/Take-Nap-Change-Your-Life/dp/0761142908

• The Twenty-Four Hour Society: Understanding Human Limits in a World That Never Sleeps by Martin Moore-Ede

Among the anecdotes in the book are an account of a coast-to-coast airplane crew who put the plane on autopilot then all fell asleep. The plane, loaded with passengers, overshot the destination and was a hundred miles out to sea before air traffic control was able to wake them over the radio.

Also, the author was paid a visit by a Secret Service agent - the people who guard the life of the US President. It seems they were expected to stay on the same shift, in local time, no matter where in the world the President went. That is, if they work 9 to 5 Washington time, then fly to Iraq, say - where the president has visited a couple times - they are expected to then work 9 to 5 Iraqi time, without taking any time to get used to the time zone change. The agent who consulted the author felt that their constant exhaustion that resulted put the President's life at risk.

My own experience includes, at my very first salaried programming job, where I wasn't paid very much and didn't get overtime pay, I was regularly expected to work twenty-hour days and once worked a twenty-nine hour day.

When I was self-employed as a software consultant, quite often I'd work twenty hour days trying to make a milestone so I could get paid. Several times, when times were really hard, I worked forty-hour "days".

Employers of salaried employees seem to feel quite justified in requiring their employees to work without enough sleep. I'd like to see legislation passed that forbids this. Even if your paid work isn't safety-critical, going without sleep needlessly puts lives at risk when you drive your car home. People are killed all the time when drivers fall asleep at the wheel.

"And lastly, the Internet is lousy for browsing. Browsing is about finding out what's available within a very broad class of stuff. Search engines can tell you that documents share keywords; they can't tell you for certain that the documents are actually about similar things. And within the search results, they're organized according to (roughly) how popular they are, as measured by how many sites link to them. They're not organized based on their similarities to or differences from one another."

The Semantic Web is ultimately about bringing that kind of distinction to the Internet.

"We aren't going away any time soon. Plenty of change a' comin', I reckon, but we're going to be around for a while yet."

As pointed out here the internet's about information, not knowledge. Librarians can provide some of that knowledge. Anyway as eInk improves and get's larger one of the disadvantages of electronic will go away.

Sheep facing left at sunset: http://www.northcoastphotos.com/images/CapetownSheep.jpg

155,190 world history books to find out more about, and in many cases browse part of: http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_b/103-4983867-6918237?url=node%3D1000%2C9%2C5035&field-keywords=&x=0&y=0

if libraries go the way of the dinosaur, we can certainly expect that the first first-world-nation to dispose of them will be the first to lose footing in the future. the evolution of the internet has helped to spread information and knowledge a lot more swiftly than in the past: this is excellent. does this mean that the internet can replace libraries? can a food-processor replace a knife? the whole idea of knowledge/information being power is almost a cliche, but that doesn't change its truth value. jean-francois lyotard discusses this in his essay http://www.amazon.com/Postmodern-Condition-Knowledge-History-Literature/dp/0816611734/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204514280&sr=8-1"the postmodern condition", and i think it is something that the "powers that be" and the media should be examining (if this article is any indication of their feelings)

This depends on your library. I used to live in silicon valley, and the San Jose library system had a great catalog with many new books, including tech books. I used a bookmarklet that would automatically take me to my library's webpage for a book I was viewing on Amazon, and I could then request it be delivered to my local library. When it was ready for pickup, they'd send me an email. It doesn't get much easier than that, and I'd say at least 75% of the flavor of the month-type books I was looking for (e.g., Freakonomics, Blink, Stumbling on Happiness, God is Not Great) were in the system and available (they bought many copies of these sorts of books). They even had a highly recommended but hard to find book on C that I had been looking for (Pointers on C).

So I'd say it really depends where you live, what kind of people live there, and how much the library caters to the tastes of its local residents.

This depends on your library. I used to live in silicon valley, and the San Jose library system had a great catalog with many new books, including tech books. I used a bookmarklet that would automatically take me to my library's webpage for a book I was viewing on Amazon, and I could then request it be delivered to my local library. When it was ready for pickup, they'd send me an email. It doesn't get much easier than that, and I'd say at least 75% of the flavor of the month-type books I was looking for (e.g., Freakonomics, Blink, Stumbling on Happiness, God is Not Great) were in the system and available (they bought many copies of these sorts of books). They even had a highly recommended but hard to find book on C that I had been looking for (Pointers on C).

So I'd say it really depends where you live, what kind of people live there, and how much the library caters to the tastes of its local residents.

This depends on your library. I used to live in silicon valley, and the San Jose library system had a great catalog with many new books, including tech books. I used a bookmarklet that would automatically take me to my library's webpage for a book I was viewing on Amazon, and I could then request it be delivered to my local library. When it was ready for pickup, they'd send me an email. It doesn't get much easier than that, and I'd say at least 75% of the flavor of the month-type books I was looking for (e.g., Freakonomics, Blink, Stumbling on Happiness, God is Not Great) were in the system and available (they bought many copies of these sorts of books). They even had a highly recommended but hard to find book on C that I had been looking for (Pointers on C).

So I'd say it really depends where you live, what kind of people live there, and how much the library caters to the tastes of its local residents.

This depends on your library. I used to live in silicon valley, and the San Jose library system had a great catalog with many new books, including tech books. I used a bookmarklet that would automatically take me to my library's webpage for a book I was viewing on Amazon, and I could then request it be delivered to my local library. When it was ready for pickup, they'd send me an email. It doesn't get much easier than that, and I'd say at least 75% of the flavor of the month-type books I was looking for (e.g., Freakonomics, Blink, Stumbling on Happiness, God is Not Great) were in the system and available (they bought many copies of these sorts of books). They even had a highly recommended but hard to find book on C that I had been looking for (Pointers on C).

So I'd say it really depends where you live, what kind of people live there, and how much the library caters to the tastes of its local residents.

This depends on your library. I used to live in silicon valley, and the San Jose library system had a great catalog with many new books, including tech books. I used a bookmarklet that would automatically take me to my library's webpage for a book I was viewing on Amazon, and I could then request it be delivered to my local library. When it was ready for pickup, they'd send me an email. It doesn't get much easier than that, and I'd say at least 75% of the flavor of the month-type books I was looking for (e.g., Freakonomics, Blink, Stumbling on Happiness, God is Not Great) were in the system and available (they bought many copies of these sorts of books). They even had a highly recommended but hard to find book on C that I had been looking for (Pointers on C).

So I'd say it really depends where you live, what kind of people live there, and how much the library caters to the tastes of its local residents.

One good reason is that aluminum is a limited resource. Although there's lots of it around, current estimates show that it will only last for about 200 more years ( source). That may seem like quite a long time, but it probably wouldn't hurt to start investigating alternatives before we run out.

Maybe its my age showing, I dunno, but a good 10 - 15 years ago I too was a very enthousiast RPG player, the main interest lied in D&D. However, when looking back and looking at the 4th edition being launched I can't help wonder if this isn't a mere quest for more money and nothing else. Let me explain...

What I liked best about roleplaying was that you didn't really need much to have fun. You basically needed a good DM to setup a story and who was familiar with the rules, but that didn't have to cost much. When we started out a friend bought the D&D starters kit which had the basic rules, copied them for us and so began our quest. We didn't need much more; the DM setup the whole stories using using a notebook (the paper thing, not a laptop ;)) and that was it. We all had our own dice but we also used to take turns when playing. SO when adding up you didn't really need much money to get the most fun out of the game. And this is what has always fascinated me about D&D, a very well setup game which didn't require tremendous amounts of cash.

And when the party grew and we wanted more I eventually stumbed upon the D&D Rules Cyclopedia (sorry for the commercial link but its the best I could find). And that was the beginning of the end for us; all of a sudden we had all the rules and every table you could possibly dream of in 1 big ass book. Even better; it even clearly explained how you could expand on the D&D universe to add enhancements of your own. In the end we ended up creating our own imaginary island on which we would live several nice adventures. In the end it wasn't about knowing all the rules or living it strictly as told. We cared about the role playing and the adventuring, nothing else.

It was also during that time when I got in contact with AD&D 2nd edition. What struck me as odd from the start were the tremendous amounts of books you required to setup a good game, or at least thats how it looked to me. Personally I got completely sucked into Dragonlance. Not so much on playing but reading the stories from Weiss and Hickman. I collected the whole Dragonlance Chronicles and Legends and also many paperbacks with 3rd party stories. Some of those were quite amazing. However, then it suddenly struck me that the whole thing was aimed at a very particular crowd and many stories all centred about a common goal: stopping Takhisis from performing her evil deeds. And all guided by several (many) very strict rules and hints and tips.

And after checking out dozens of AD&D 2nd edition rule books (not specifically aimed at Dragonlance) I couldn't help wonder about one very simple and basic idea: "Where is the roleplaying in all this?". To me it felt like the whole "RPG experience" was picked up and used to describe a whole different thing. Sure, you had your roleplaying and it wasn't /all/ about rules. But compared to D&D there was much more to gain in AD&D if you at least purchased a basic pack of books in order to know your basics. Was this really only about gaming or....

Well, its a trend I saw happening throughout the scene. The Dragonlance books I so adored were illustrated mainly by Larry Elmore. An artist who's work I really admired. Its only natural that I bought some of his artbooks ("The art of Dragonlance") which I really enjoyed. But, picture my surprise when I noticed that after a few years (5 or so) they suddenly changed the pictures on the covers. The Elmore pictures were gone and replaced by other stuff. Even the whole TSR logo and approach was different. And it was then and there where I saw that things turned more mainstream (in my experience at least).

Next you had AD&D 3rd edition (not too long ago iirc, I could be mistaken) and now the next rules have leaked out. And then, to finish up this long story, I cannot help ask myself: "What happened to creating your own story based on existing rules using nothign more but some pieces of paper and your dice". But like I said; it must be my age showing ;-)

Software patens must continue to exist. Maybe in a better-defined way, but if they are abolished, software will be hindered severely.

If software patents are needed so much then how did all the software before patents were granted for them get written? And how is it FOOS projects exist now? Without patents the members of MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club were writing programs for the PDP1 then leaving them out for others to improve. A good read on it, and hackers, is Steven Levy's "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution".

Well, I would think it's probably dealt with in a lot of basic business textbooks, but I don't have any handy to refer you to at the moment. If your situation is related to supply chain (which covers a lot), "The Management of Business Logistics" by Coyle (Amazon here, although I'm sure you can pick up old editions for next to nothing) is fairly decent. I'm not sure how specifically it's going to address your particular situation, but at least the introductory chapter or two ought to be worth reading.