Slashdot Mirror

http://www.amazon.com/Star-Trek-Academy-Collision-Startrek-Starfleet/dp/141650396X Go read this book. Its worth it.

White noise RNGs aren't perfect. In some environments, white noise can be predicted/replicated. Consider the average server room, which produce the rather constant sound of small fans going at high RMPs. For more detailed information on RNG predictability and other exploits on digital communication, I recommend "Silence on the Wire" by Michal Zalewski.

It happened. As told in the book, before the time came to do the jettison, Swigert had nightmares that he'd flipped the wrong switch and watched his crewmates drift away. He made the sign (saying NO) as one more check in the system. I seem to recall that he asked one of the guys to check him on it, too.

When you get one, be sure to buy the shirt also.

Toggle switches rule period. Batman used toggle switches in the batmobile. Fighter pilots flick toggle switches in the movies before they blow up bad guys. The Millenium Falcon probably had a couple hundred thousand toggle switches. Cool electric guitars? They've got a toggle switch. When I built my first model rocket launcher - I think it had 3 toggle switches. A good solid 'click' of the old toggle is just the thing - all other switches pale in comparison. Even the big red button.

>"people have to trust their computers."

NEVER. I have been using computers since 1970. This book:

http://www.amazon.com/Satan-Psychotherapy-Unfortunate-Kassler-J-S-P-S/dp/059514506X

Will prove to you, beyound any shadow of doubt, that computers are the essence of all evil.
If you trust your computer, then give your teenager the keys to your car, and your bankcard and tell me how much you'd trust them. 'Trusted-computing' is a self contractictory phrase, like Airline Food, and Military Intelligence.

It has a virtual keyboard similar to the I-Phone. The stats on it and a few review can be seen here.
Motorola Ming A1200 (Unlocked)
-FataL

I personally think this Motorola Ming A1200 (Unlocked) is the best smart phone out right now. Except the the lack of WiFi, but it runs linux so that makes up for that!
-FataL

I guess I'm wondering- are modern medical advances really as expensive as we're led to believe they are in America?

The real advances in modern medicine are the cheap ones that actually treat the root causes of a problem. Nutrition, Osteopathic Manipulation, IV therapies (w/ vitamins, EDTA, H202, and others), Energy Medicine, etc.

Most the other 'advances' can best be explained as 'profiteering' - clinics have to pay for for their $million+ MRI machine somehow, and the handful of cases a month where they're actually justified isn't going to pay the bills..

See links on how healthcare became screwed up, read Dr. Davidson's testimonial pages for examples of conditions which respond well to Cranial Osteopathy, check out Donna Eden's system of Energy Medicine, and get yourself a copy of Dr. Reilly's Handbook for Health Through Drugless Therapy, and I'm sure you can easily get your intestine flowing freely again.

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-John-Perkins/dp/0452287081/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194725442&sr=8-1

Your post has pretty much summed up what this book is about, meaning you may have read this already. But, if not, check it out and keep it in mind when reading international news. It makes a lot of sense.

I wouldn't really mind being one of the experts while freeing up a large portion of the population to do whatever they want.

Technology hasn't increased leisure time. Rather it has only lengthened working hours except where the law has gotten involved (thank goodness for 35-hour working weeks in the EU as opposed to Victorian-era coal mines). Modern technological societies work much longer hours than hunter and gatherer cultures, though of course sitting in a cubicle is much less exhausting than chasing after a boar.

There is the old adage that work expands to fill the hours set for it. Now that the Western world is used to working all day every day, even after the rise of robot labour we might not necessarily get the utopia some people envision.

John Zerzan is probably the most well-known writer on the theme that technology only shackles humanity, see e.g. his Against Civilization . I don't agree with quite a lot of what he writes, but it is nonetheless thought-provoking.

Because geeks -- computer geeks, anyway -- tend to be of an engineering mindset, rather than an analyst mindset. Hence, you have the distinction between the beliefs in engineering and spontaneous order: a distinction between the beliefs in pre-planning and proaction to a successful outcome, and a successful outcome arising purely reactively through the interactions between multiple agents. Engineering versus emergent behavior.

Free-market economics professor Russell Roberts wrote a good piece on the difference.

Anyway, that's one answer. Another answer is simpler: Slashdot's largest demographic segment is 18-24 year-old males, i.e. college-age geeks. It's pretty much a given that if somebody is in college, their beliefs turn leftist for a while; the arrogant notion that they know it all means they favor ideologies which proclaim success through knowing all a priori, as Soviet socialism did.

The poverty of that view has long since been demonstrated. In spite of the massive computing might possessed by the likes of IBM, Google, the NSA, and so forth, mankind is still quite a ways away from having amassed nearly enough knowledge and understanding of that knowledge and ability to process it all such that the sort of engineering-driven, planned society and economy can possibly succeed.

Oh, I should include as a classic example the various hedge funds out there. They hire brilliant quantitative analysts to work on risk models that require grid computing clusters to calculate. The result? The current, massive sub-prime mortgage meltdown we are seeing.

See also the book titled When Genius Failed, about the failure of Long-Term Capital Management -- a hedge fund that failed 10 years ago for much the same reason those today are failing: lack of sufficient knowledge and predictive capability, i.e., a lack of engineering skill. Nevermind the existence of 2 economics Nobel Laureates on their team, including one (Myron Scholes) partially-responsible for the Black-Scholes formula now considered the defacto standard in risk-pricing...

Geeks appear more at home in Soviet Russia because they have the arrogance to believe they can outsmart tens, hundreds, thousands, millions, even billions of people. So have the people involved in the above-named organizations...

It is interesting to remember that the most high-profile case they FBI (Fools, Bozos and Ingrates) pursued was that completely bogus one where they attempted - and failed - to smear Scott Ritter with that phony child molester allegation -- promptly thrown out of court with the federal judge soundly rebuking those Feebs at the useless FBI.

Of course, the FBI should probably be used to such rebukes as they've collected a countless number of them over the past forty years. I once did a research project for a political organization on the FBI - truly a most useless organization...the true lawmen (especially of the 20th century) was/is the US Marshals Service - truly heroes who on more than one occasion, probably saved democracy in America. Truly unsung heroes (and heroines), indeed!

Don't forget, those clowns at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (what a misnomer that is!) sat on the major tipoff to the (alleged) anthrax assassin for over eight months - and this was after 9/11/01!!!!

An excellent example of the frequent cowardly behavior (and anti-American behavior) of the FBI - and the heroism of the US Marshal Service - is presented in a passage regarding the integration of the University of Mississippi by the Kennedy Administration in the truly outstanding book by David Talbot (founder of Salon.com) titled "Brothers: Hidden history of the Kennedy years".

They should do this with history, too. History text books are terrible. Lies My Teacher Told Me makes a pretty good read.

There are religious maniacs out there that hate our culture...

What, like this one?

Does it really matter who knows? The bigger problem is who doesn't know. The general public doesn't and won't until it gets over its xenophobia. The opportunities to learn from a foreign intelligent is priceless.

But since you asked,
* NASA
* A few people who have been somnambulistic regressed in Custodians by Doloress Cannon.

Cheers

Does it really matter who knows? The bigger problem is who doesn't know. The general public doesn't and won't until it gets over its xenophobia. The opportunities to learn from a foreign intelligent is priceless.

But since you asked,
* NASA
* A few people who have been somnambulistic regressed in Custodians by Doloress Cannon.

Cheers

While Twain may have said that, he must not've been convinced because he later on wrote his own version: The Jumping Frog: In English. Then in French. Then Clawed Back into a Civilized Language Once More by Patient, Unremunerated Toil. It's a brilliantly funny book, especially inasmuch as Clemens, himself, did the translation back into English, carefully choosing his idioms for maximum effect.

to DRM shens ( Explain to your mom why the new movie she just bought for 30 bucks doesn't work in her 600 dollar player ).

to DRM shens ( Explain to your mom why the new movie she just bought for 30 bucks doesn't work in her 600 dollar player ).

Cough

Microsoft is selling the 120 GB hard drive for the Xbox 360 for $180. For the same price, you could get a 750 GB hard drive for your PC. Or, you could buy a 160 GB hard drive for $50.

Sounds like its right out of Max Brooks' Zombie Survival Guide http://www.amazon.com/Zombie-Survival-Guide-Complete-Protection/dp/1400049628

Try a Trekstor Vibez. It's got a decent hard disk, and supports open/free file formats alongside WMA. Kickass sound quality, too.

Read Mutineer's Moon by David Weber.
http://www.amazon.com/Mutineers-Moon-Dahak-David-Weber/dp/0671720856

Earlier this week at woek an Amazon rep present on the Amazon Web Services (AWS). I didn't expect much, but the presentation at least sounded pretty impressive. So the RH on Amazon compute servers is something I and others should check out.

Hello there, Mr. Bill Gates! ;-) I had no idea you read Slashdot!!! Thank you for honoring us lowly "patent infringers" with your presence. Let me be the first to welcome you by telling you that I will not be buying any Microsoft hardware or software until you back down from your patent threats against the open-source community.

I read the reference you sent and it talked about Madden 2008 running at 30 FPS, not 20 (the framerate is 50% faster than you claimed in your post, but I'll try to not cloud your truth with my facts) in 1080p on the PS3. Keep in mind that we're talking about the world's biggest console game port company, EA. They were probably targeting the 360 as the primary platform to make more $$$ from game sales, had to meet a release deadline that one of the suits placed in their calendar, and chose to lock the framerate at 30 FPS to save time when porting the game to the PS3. The article also names Resistance: Fall of man, Motorstorm, and Call of Duty 4 as games that perform better than Madden graphically on the PS3.

I think that the PS3's day will come when the price drops to a reasonable level ($200-$250). I do agree that we're having great Wii and 360 fun right now, but expect that the PS3's graphics will put those two systems to shame in the coming years on HDTVs. I will probably buy a PS3 for the Blu-Ray player and 1080p games. I see no point in buying a 360 for 720p games, because I would only be helping Microsoft fund their FUD campaign against the open-source community.

The newest HDTVs support 120 Hz refresh rates; there are models from major manufacturers (Sony, Toshiba, JVC, Mitsubishi) and Samsung also has a few 120 frame per second models that I'm looking at. The days of the 60 frame per second refresh rate for HDTVs and games are numbered and Microsoft is dreaming if they think that 720p@60hz will last them as long as 480i@30hz lasted the PS2.

Apparently Brin is a fan of Singularity, per this back cover blurb: back cover of Singularity: "DeSmedt veers an action-packed thriller into perilous realms of black hole physics. The combination of adrenaline and intellect sizzles." -- David Brin, Hugo and Nebula award-winning author.

They share several indoles, terpenes and so forth which create smells and flavors. This shouldn't be surprising: horse dung is made from vegetable matter. Some of it's going to survive.

The actual charts are enormous, and I'm not retyping them; if you want to see them, buy this book.

Sounds like Earth written by David Brin...in 1991. It was up for a Hugo, same year.

There's an intersting Sci Fi novel that asks "What if the cataclysmic Tunguska explosion of 1908 was caused, not by a meteor or a comet, but by a microscopic black hole?": Singularity by Bill DeSmedt, 2004. Download the FREE unabridged audio book, read by the author.

Which crap? That Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Saudi Arabia would like to see the west fail as superpowers?

That they publicly or covertly sponsor terrorism from state coffers?

That their leaders (except the Saudis) explicitly state that a goal of their government is to destroy the United States?

That it takes more than one or two atomic weapons to kill thousands (if not millions) of people?

That the United States has the right, as any country, to defend themselves from attack...without first becoming a martyr?

That Iraq (pre-war) and Iran would probably not say "Oh..wow, you guys want stuff to make atomic weapons? Man...I really wish I could help, but I'm dealing with all this shit from Bill Clinton..."

That a significant portion of Americans are willing to believe that George Bush is the head of the largest conspiracy ever created on US soil, but that Saddam Hussein and the Ayatollah are too stupid to buy active Antrax and Uranium?

That somewhere in Syria, Iraq, or Iran are there at least 10 scientists capable of engineering a nuclear reactor without help from the US or Russia? And that somewhere, perhaps in the same place, perhaps not, are 10 other scientists capable of building a delivery vessel?

The only part that I don't believe is that you were in the White House and the Defense Department while they were planning for the war; either you were, or you're entire opinion is based on what you've seen and read through laughably filtered sources...just like me.

If, however, you are a General that was in charge of planning and know, for a fact, that you only planned for two months, then I retract my statement. But in that case, I do blame you, entirely, for the situation we're in now.

Now is definitely *not* the time to attack Iran, and I certainly want to avoid it at all cost, but Iraq just happens to be a very nice long-term strategy for a staging ground, don't you think?

If you still don't buy it, I highly recommend Holy War, Inc -> http://www.amazon.com/Holy-War-Inc-Inside-Secret/dp/0743234952/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-5456481-7704168?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1194530691&sr=8-1

It's a little off balance to say everything the Federal Government does is the sole impetus of the President. He's not a dictator, he's the highest governmetn executive.

But he acts like whatever he wants better be done. Spy on US citizens, done. Use torture, done. Round up and deny people's Habeas Corpus, done. Bush acts more like an emperor than previous presidents have. Bush has even issued hundreds of Signing statements when signing bills into law. In 4 years in office he signed 232 statements whereas Clinton only signed 140 in 8 years.

I served a tour in the Air Force in South Dakota. There were periodic protests and such from some of the Lakotas about how their land had been taken.

I served in the Army, spent most of my tyme stationed in Georgia but also went to Wisconsin, Florida, Alaska, Panama, and Germany. I don't know if I was ever on Lakota land while in, maybe in Wisconsin but I don't know. However I currently live on Lakota land, in Minneapolis, MN. Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851) was one of the first treaties signed with the Sioux. However the US broke that one and forced the Sioux to sign the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) which created the Great Sioux reservation. This one was broken as well. Eventually the Sioux were left with a few isolated reservations scattered throughout the Upper Midwest. Where the Great Sioux Reservation once was most of Minnesota, and both of the Dakotas here are now only small pockets here and there.

One of the most important reasons we had so many ICBMs there was it's location as the center of the country which would give more time to respond to an incoming attack and also the land was predominantly shale which would shatter and absorb force.

As stated above, the Sioux lost most of their land way before ICBMs were even dreamed of.

I don't have sufficient knowledge to know if the commonly-repeated statement that every treaty with the Indians was broken.

I don't say every treaty was broken but a lot were. Good references are "Black Hills/White Justice: The Sioux Nation versus the United States, 1775 to the Present", "Documents of United States Indian Policy: Third Edition", I've got the second edition, and "Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations". Though I've got others I don't see them on my book shelves.

Snager, the founder of Planned Parenthood was big in the eugenics movement. That really started in the U.S. but the victor in war writes the history so that's been less public because we had to blame the evil Germans

The NAZIs went beyond eugenics. And I'd bet Nietzsche was rolling in his grave when the NAZI used him. It's been a while and because of bad memory I don't recall much of his writing but he wouldn't have approved of the NAZIs.

I have worked with an Italain man whose mother was pregnant with him during WWII. Her husband had been in a German prison camp when she got pregnant. The Nazis went into their village and lined all the people along a wall and started to machine gun them from one end to the other. This man's mother was on the opposite end. She ran around the corner and kept running. She survived.

Yea, in college I met and talked with a concentration camp survivor. Some 40 years later I saw the numbers on her arm.

We have lots of Mung people here.

It's a little off balance to say everything the Federal Government does is the sole impetus of the President. He's not a dictator, he's the highest governmetn executive.

But he acts like whatever he wants better be done. Spy on US citizens, done. Use torture, done. Round up and deny people's Habeas Corpus, done. Bush acts more like an emperor than previous presidents have. Bush has even issued hundreds of Signing statements when signing bills into law. In 4 years in office he signed 232 statements whereas Clinton only signed 140 in 8 years.

I served a tour in the Air Force in South Dakota. There were periodic protests and such from some of the Lakotas about how their land had been taken.

I served in the Army, spent most of my tyme stationed in Georgia but also went to Wisconsin, Florida, Alaska, Panama, and Germany. I don't know if I was ever on Lakota land while in, maybe in Wisconsin but I don't know. However I currently live on Lakota land, in Minneapolis, MN. Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851) was one of the first treaties signed with the Sioux. However the US broke that one and forced the Sioux to sign the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1868) which created the Great Sioux reservation. This one was broken as well. Eventually the Sioux were left with a few isolated reservations scattered throughout the Upper Midwest. Where the Great Sioux Reservation once was most of Minnesota, and both of the Dakotas here are now only small pockets here and there.

One of the most important reasons we had so many ICBMs there was it's location as the center of the country which would give more time to respond to an incoming attack and also the land was predominantly shale which would shatter and absorb force.

As stated above, the Sioux lost most of their land way before ICBMs were even dreamed of.

I don't have sufficient knowledge to know if the commonly-repeated statement that every treaty with the Indians was broken.

I don't say every treaty was broken but a lot were. Good references are "Black Hills/White Justice: The Sioux Nation versus the United States, 1775 to the Present", "Documents of United States Indian Policy: Third Edition", I've got the second edition, and "Tribes, Treaties, and Constitutional Tribulations". Though I've got others I don't see them on my book shelves.

Snager, the founder of Planned Parenthood was big in the eugenics movement. That really started in the U.S. but the victor in war writes the history so that's been less public because we had to blame the evil Germans

The NAZIs went beyond eugenics. And I'd bet Nietzsche was rolling in his grave when the NAZI used him. It's been a while and because of bad memory I don't recall much of his writing but he wouldn't have approved of the NAZIs.

I have worked with an Italain man whose mother was pregnant with him during WWII. Her husband had been in a German prison camp when she got pregnant. The Nazis went into their village and lined all the people along a wall and started to machine gun them from one end to the other. This man's mother was on the opposite end. She ran around the corner and kept running. She survived.

Yea, in college I met and talked with a concentration camp survivor. Some 40 years later I saw the numbers on her arm.

We have lots of Mung people here.

Throw that bad boy in a nice case with some ram and a decent hard drive, and it's not a bad deal. You could probably put together a machine with maxed out ram, decent storage and a much more attractive case for the same amount if not less than you'd pay for the Walmart version. And while the processor isn't a powerhouse, I'm sure any distro could do allright on there. Gentoo might not be the best choice, but otherwise... (Just kidding there. While the gentoo crowds seem to have calmed - it really was a joke.)

Throw that bad boy in a nice case with some ram and a decent hard drive, and it's not a bad deal. You could probably put together a machine with maxed out ram, decent storage and a much more attractive case for the same amount if not less than you'd pay for the Walmart version. And while the processor isn't a powerhouse, I'm sure any distro could do allright on there. Gentoo might not be the best choice, but otherwise... (Just kidding there. While the gentoo crowds seem to have calmed - it really was a joke.)

Throw that bad boy in a nice case with some ram and a decent hard drive, and it's not a bad deal. You could probably put together a machine with maxed out ram, decent storage and a much more attractive case for the same amount if not less than you'd pay for the Walmart version. And while the processor isn't a powerhouse, I'm sure any distro could do allright on there. Gentoo might not be the best choice, but otherwise... (Just kidding there. While the gentoo crowds seem to have calmed - it really was a joke.)

I'm fairly certain I know his reference.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Buildings-Learn-Happens-Theyre/dp/0140139966

If you read spanish, you can delight with "El cocinero científico" [The scientist chef] (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9871220928/). If you not read spanish, you can buy http://www.amazon.com/Diccionario-Espanol-Ingles-Merriam-Webster/dp/0877799202/.

A lucky band might get a deal whereby they are paid 15% of revenues *after the record label recoups it investment*. Costs to be recouped can include nearly anything: secretaries, fat cat lunches, photography and printing costs, air conditioning, parking, coffee. You name it. Perhaps most importantly, the label has to shell out a pretty hefty percentage of revenues to the distributors and manufacturers whether they be a disc manufacturer or iTunes.

My band had a record distributed through V2 records and I believe our tiny label was *supposed* to get paid about $2 per record. Despite selling a few thousand records, we never got paid a dime because they claimed they didn't recoup the cost of their sales department selling our record to Target, Best Buy, etc.

I'll admit my band isn't as popular as radiohead, but let's do a little arithmetic. Suppose radiohead sells 1 million copies of their record at $20 a pop. That's $20 million dollars. Let's further suppose they get an extremely generous (nay unheard-of!) deal whereby they're paid 20% of gross after the label recoups their 'investments'. Let's suppose they get an amazing distribution deal that only siphons off 10% of gross revenues. Hell let's go crazy and assume that the record label doesn't expect to recoup anything and pays radiohead their percentage from the first record sold.

20% of $20 million is $4 million

take 10% of that and give it to iTunes and that leaves $3.6 million dollars

I'd bet my right arm that radiohead have made out like bandits on this.

For some interesting reading on the crooked record business, I would suggest Donald Passman's book All You Need to Know About the Music Business

You've got some facts wrong, and have missed any actual understanding of the release schedules in question to make your point that Sony is somehow furthering longer life-cycles for their consoles while Nintendo is pushing the life-cycle down. The fact is that both are on a 5 year cycle and that the only console maker to shorten this time frame, that is still in the game, is microsoft. But even there I believe, despite hating microsoft with a passion, that this is merely an anomaly due to the stumbling of their initial console and if they remain in the business they will settle into a 5 year cycle as well.

First, some facts on Nintendo: Famicom was released in 1983, in Japan. The NES, a retooled Famicom, was not released until 1985, and then only in limited release in the United States. The wide release of the NES did not come until 1986 and included the United States as well as the Canada and the PAL regions.

The Super Famicom was released in 1990, again in Japan. The Super NES, again a refactoring of the Japanese model, was released in North America in 1991 and the PAL regions in 1992.

The Nintendo 64 was released in Japan and North America in 1996, and the PAL regions in 1997. GameCube followed in 2001 with the PAL releases in 2002. Wii hit basically all regions in 2006.

What you are seeing here is the convergence towards a staggered global release separated by months rather than years, perhaps towards an eventual simultaneous world-wide release at some point in the future?

Second, some facts on Sony: Playstation was released in 1994, in Japan. Everyone else got it in 1995. Playstation 2 released basically everywhere in 2000. Playstation 3, despite your claims to the contrary, released world-wide in 2006, not 2007.

Again you see a convergence toward a tighter release schedule world-wide. Just as with Nintendo's releases they are normalizing on the North American release, adjusting the Japanese and PAL releases as necessary. This has been less apparent with Sony because a) they have released fewer consoles, and b) they were pushing a closer world-wide release from the start.

To sum it up:

NES: 1985/1986, SNES: 1991 (+5/6), N64: 1996 (+5), GameCube: 2001 (+5), Wii: 2006 (+5)
Playstation: 1995, Playstation2: 2000 (+5), Playstation3: 2006 (+5)

Kind of agree that we may be seeing a longer console life-cycle this time around, but not exactly with your reasoning. But I've written way too much already so I'll just have to agree to agree on the points that I agree with.

Here's some reading to get you started. You might also check out Game Over by David Sheff. It's a pretty entertaining read and will give you some decent insight into the release schedules of the early Nintendo consoles.

Nintendo Entertainment System
Super Nintendo Entertainment System
Nintendo 64
Wii
Playstation
Playstation 2
Playstation 3

At least not yet, it doesn't. But there are many aspects of it that are emerging that come closer to approaching the rate of progress you see in the tech industry. The pace of technological advancement in recent decades has been facilitated by Moore's Law. Only recently has the medical community been able begin taking advantage of this. Now there are advancements like imaging/MRI systems doubling the number of "slices" they can scan simultaneously, every so often, use of microchips to detect cancer markers, etc. Andy Kessler wrote a book about this convergence called The End of Medicine: How Silicon Valley (and Naked Mice) Will Reboot Your Doctor. http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/07/17/1623217&from=rss http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/006113029X/andykessler-20

This reminds me a little bit of the rash of i-products that came out after the iPod became successful. Items like the iTrip and the iSpeakers took the design style of the iPod, coupled with the letter I, and sought to piggyback on their sales. I'm not sure if they ever had a deal with Apple to link their products like that, but the simple outcome was that a lot of people, at least that I knew, bought those products thinking that they were official Apple products and not third-party vendors. They weren't terrible products, but there was still market confusion, which I guess is the point here.

Not only do they have lobbyists but somehow the US has managed to have private companies build, run, maintain, provide guards and food for them. Hell even private companies can administer the death penalty! Crime control is a multi billion dollar industry for private companies in the US. Check this for some bed time reading: http://www.amazon.com/Crime-Control-Industry-Towards-Western/dp/0415234875

Here you go http://www.amazon.com/Rez/dp/B00005ULXM
For around $34 still cheaper than a new game

But hasn't Sony already done that?

First off - great idea. Love it. Gonna go there and buy something for a kids' hospital somewhere myself after this.

But... how is the new Casino Royale children's hospital material? http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/registry.html/?_&id=1YESGR3K97CSS
And 5 of those?

I mean.. I can imagine one teen desperately needing a daily dose of Daniel Craig in his/hers life, but five of them?
Or could it be that someone thought that this would make a great (free) Christmas gift?

Food for the Dead: On the Trail of New England's Vampires by Michael Bell, Rhode Island's state folklorist.

He makes a pretty good argument for the origin of the vampire legend being in the spread of tuberculosis in isolated farming households. The first victims die, then one by one other family members begin to waste away, often resulting in the extinction of the entire family. However, don't let this scientific explanation turn you off, the stories are creepy enough, only it's the living, not the dead, whose are the gruesome ones.