Slashdot Mirror

Give him the virtual thumbs-up (or thumbs-down ... or a display of other assorted fingers?) in this text chat on Monday. Werner Vogels, Amazon.com, CTO will be doing a live chat, open to all on Monday, October 1, 2 p.m. eastern. Or maybe you can tell him what you think of their new Website in general. They are asking for comments.

If you use Linux, you can currently buy individual songs. A Linux version of the Amazon MP3 Downloader is under development, and when released will allow entire album purchases. For more information, please visit the Amazon MP3 Downloader Help page.

One other thing to note is that their terms of service explicitly state that you are only receiving a license, and there are restrictions on what is allowed by that license. For the most part you can do anything that would be considered fair use, but there are a few exceptions. For example you may not resell the files, or "modify or edit them" even for personal use.

So you don't have quite as many "rights" as you would buying a CD, but at least they are trusting their customers to follow the law rather than punishing everyone with DRM.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Definitely the Books. Cut & paste & cello & song, amazing stuff.

If you like things a bit louder: Liars. Hardly any guitars on this album, but plenty of drum.

For the poetic at heart, Smog. Very peculiar sense of humour.

German electro-blues: Laub. The only records I know that has a songtext about incompatible Windows software.

100% songs about girls, bars and highways: Pere Ubu. Great for the misogynic!

Deceptively simple guitar: John Fahey. Also check out his back-catalogue, all amazing stuff.

Radical field recording: Ultra-Red. You mentioned expanding your musical horizon!

You want some Japanese weirdness? The Boredoms are heading your way.(Once saw them performing with a guitar with an integrated combustion engine. Man, that was a great sound!)

Last but not least: American Music Club. As long as there's music like this, you can be proud to be American.

A Linux version of the Amazon MP3 Downloader is under development

I was hoping they took care of the high price problem as well as the incompatibility issues. I thouhgt they had except when I went to look up one of the bands I enjoyed while much younger.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/163856011
Note the banner on the top of the page. Top 100 Songs: 89 cents!

Here is the list;
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-track//ref=amb_link_5531872_1/103-2200715-4874201?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=ilm&pf_rd_r=13Y3V63RXKXRQFE4Z722&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=311420601&pf_rd_i=163856011

There are a couple golden oldies on the list, but most of them are newer stuff I never heard. Many of them are marked Explicit, so I know I never heard them on the radio. Just how do the explicit albums get popular to make the top 100? Peer to peer maybe?

Oldies on the list include;
I Walk the Line I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash
Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd
God Only Knows by The Beach Boys
Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours) by Stevie Wonder

Explicit stuff on the list include;
Can't Tell Me Nothing [Explicit] by Kanye West
I Got 5 On It [Explicit] by The Luniz
Give It To Me [Explicit] by Timbaland
In Da Club [Explicit] by 50 Cent
The People [Explicit] The People [Explicit] by Common

I guess there is enough variety to satisfy most everyone.

How about anything that is not top 100?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dm_hp_nav_lk/102-3010256-9360139?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=styx&Go.x=8&Go.y=9&Go=Go

Rats.... Still 0.99 per track.

Sadly it is priced to not under price iTunes. DRM free on the other hand and at the higher bit rate should shake up the apple position with the higher priced DRM free tracks. Competition is good.

Someday, they may get into my price range for back catalog stuff.

I was hoping they took care of the high price problem as well as the incompatibility issues. I thouhgt they had except when I went to look up one of the bands I enjoyed while much younger.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/163856011
Note the banner on the top of the page. Top 100 Songs: 89 cents!

Here is the list;
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-track//ref=amb_link_5531872_1/103-2200715-4874201?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=ilm&pf_rd_r=13Y3V63RXKXRQFE4Z722&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=311420601&pf_rd_i=163856011

There are a couple golden oldies on the list, but most of them are newer stuff I never heard. Many of them are marked Explicit, so I know I never heard them on the radio. Just how do the explicit albums get popular to make the top 100? Peer to peer maybe?

Oldies on the list include;
I Walk the Line I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash
Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd
God Only Knows by The Beach Boys
Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours) by Stevie Wonder

Explicit stuff on the list include;
Can't Tell Me Nothing [Explicit] by Kanye West
I Got 5 On It [Explicit] by The Luniz
Give It To Me [Explicit] by Timbaland
In Da Club [Explicit] by 50 Cent
The People [Explicit] The People [Explicit] by Common

I guess there is enough variety to satisfy most everyone.

How about anything that is not top 100?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dm_hp_nav_lk/102-3010256-9360139?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=styx&Go.x=8&Go.y=9&Go=Go

Rats.... Still 0.99 per track.

Sadly it is priced to not under price iTunes. DRM free on the other hand and at the higher bit rate should shake up the apple position with the higher priced DRM free tracks. Competition is good.

Someday, they may get into my price range for back catalog stuff.

I was hoping they took care of the high price problem as well as the incompatibility issues. I thouhgt they had except when I went to look up one of the bands I enjoyed while much younger.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/163856011
Note the banner on the top of the page. Top 100 Songs: 89 cents!

Here is the list;
http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-track//ref=amb_link_5531872_1/103-2200715-4874201?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=ilm&pf_rd_r=13Y3V63RXKXRQFE4Z722&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=311420601&pf_rd_i=163856011

There are a couple golden oldies on the list, but most of them are newer stuff I never heard. Many of them are marked Explicit, so I know I never heard them on the radio. Just how do the explicit albums get popular to make the top 100? Peer to peer maybe?

Oldies on the list include;
I Walk the Line I Walk the Line by Johnny Cash
Free Bird by Lynyrd Skynyrd
God Only Knows by The Beach Boys
Signed, Sealed, Delivered (I'm Yours) by Stevie Wonder

Explicit stuff on the list include;
Can't Tell Me Nothing [Explicit] by Kanye West
I Got 5 On It [Explicit] by The Luniz
Give It To Me [Explicit] by Timbaland
In Da Club [Explicit] by 50 Cent
The People [Explicit] The People [Explicit] by Common

I guess there is enough variety to satisfy most everyone.

How about anything that is not top 100?

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_ss_dm_hp_nav_lk/102-3010256-9360139?initialSearch=1&url=search-alias%3Ddigital-music&field-keywords=styx&Go.x=8&Go.y=9&Go=Go

Rats.... Still 0.99 per track.

Sadly it is priced to not under price iTunes. DRM free on the other hand and at the higher bit rate should shake up the apple position with the higher priced DRM free tracks. Competition is good.

Someday, they may get into my price range for back catalog stuff.

Did you even read the FAQ that explained that amongst other things, the app is only needed to get albums in one go, it makes things easier by placing things in a nice folder for you and THEY ARE WORKING ON A LINUX VERSION!!!OMGPONIES!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154210&#os

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154210&#downloader

Did you even read the FAQ that explained that amongst other things, the app is only needed to get albums in one go, it makes things easier by placing things in a nice folder for you and THEY ARE WORKING ON A LINUX VERSION!!!OMGPONIES!

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154210&#os

http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=200154210&#downloader

I am webmaster of swactionnews.com and reviewstarwars.com and I'd like to share this, which was posted on my site a few minutes ago:

Buy music for a cause (Amazon DRM free MP3s)

No, the cause isn't saving the Earth, helping the poor, etc. The cause is fair use of what you own.

For too long we have been slaves to the corporations who truly run this country. One of those enslavers has been RIAA, who has for almost a decade now tried to push an obsolete business model onto us. They sue with reckless abandon, suing 90 year old grandmothers and 12 year olds who don't know better. They call it theft, yet no one is being deprived of anything.

Now, I'm not an Apple die-hard, but God love Steve Jobs, for he has helped us to break the shackles of RIAA just like his 1984 commercial showed the working class breaking the shackles that bound them, for his iPod has become popular enough, and powerful enough, to wrest the arms of RIAA into allowing DRM free music.

What is DRM free music? Put simply, it's music you can do anything with. Currently if you buy a digital song most places, like Wal Mart or Napster, you are limited where you can play it, how many computers you can play it on, etc. Same with iTunes. You are only allowed so many computers to play your songs. This was enforced by RIAA, scared that we would have one person pay $0.99 for a song and then give it away for free.

iTunes started allowing DRM free music, but it wasn't enough, for as anyone knows, iTunes purchased songs work only with iPods. Sure, it was a good first step as now a song you buy from iTunes would work with any computer, as many iPods as you own or go through in your life, but it wasn't enough. Additionally, they charged more for DRM free music...paying for freedom seems ironic to me. While it's better, it was really allowing one corporate overlord to replace another.

Now Amazon has stepped up in this war and brought TRUE free (free as in freedom, not free as in no cost) music to the people. DRM free MP3s.

Here's what you need to know:

*$0.99 per song, no additional fee for freedom
*Discounts if you buy entire albums at once.
*Tens of thousands of songs to choose from
*Popular new releases as well as some catalog (i.e. older) titles
*Older titles are cheaper on a per-album basis.
*256kBPS encoding means a higher quality sound than most all other digital music stores provide.
*Burn to as many CDs as you like
*Play on ANY MP3 player
*Put on as many computers as you like
*It's YOUR song.

When it comes time to buy a song or an album digitally, please, I implore you, buy from Amazon.com. We should support companies that provide the people with some rights.

Too often I say "Vote with your dollars" because, truly, those votes more than the ones at the ballot boxes influence the course of America. We need to vote with our dollars to show Amazon that we support them providing us with free (as in freedom) music. Then more labels will sell DRM free songs, and all other digital stores, record labels, and even Apple and RIAA, will see that we, the people, want free (as in freedom) music, and we care enough about it to vote with every song purchase we make.

I'm not urging a boycott of the other stores. If the Amazon DRM-free catalog doesn't have what you want, buy it elsewhere. I'm not saying go without. Nor am I suggesting you spend a penny more than you would elsewhere. But if it's the same cost, and the same song, vote for freedom.

I am putting here a commission-free link. I am an Amazon affiliate and usually get a commission from sales made when you click on links I provide. I provide this commission free...I don't want a commission on your sales, I want free (as in freedom) music. I want the corporations to bow to the greater GOOD. I want the people's rights to matter.

Please, if you buy music, go here first:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/blog/post/PLNK1GR94T4PJ38D6

Thank you for supporting DRM-free music.

If you currently make purchases from Amazon on your computer system, you can make purchases from the Amazon MP3 store. The MP3 files you purchase will download directly to your computer and are compatible with any system that can read the MP3 music format. The Amazon MP3 Downloader application is required for purchasing and downloading an entire album and is currently available for Mac and Windows operating systems. A Linux version is in development, so you can't currently buy full albums using Linux, but you can buy individual tracks. For more information, please visit the Amazon MP3 Downloader Help page.

If you currently make purchases from Amazon on your computer system, you can make purchases from the Amazon MP3 store. The MP3 files you purchase will download directly to your computer and are compatible with any system that can read the MP3 music format. The Amazon MP3 Downloader application is required for purchasing and downloading an entire album and is currently available for Mac and Windows operating systems. A Linux version is in development, so you can't currently buy full albums using Linux, but you can buy individual tracks. For more information, please visit the Amazon MP3 Downloader Help page.

The Top 100 tracks http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/dmusic/digital-music-track are $0.89 each. I only had to go down to #17 to find one that I recognize (but wouldn't buy) - Blondie/Heart of Glass. A few steps down at #21 I found one to buy, Floyd/Comfortably Numb. All the other tracks (not top-100) on the double album are $0.99 or you can get all 26 tracks for $8.99. All 256 kbps non-drm'd files. This is how music buying should have been from day one.

You are right.
From Amazon's MP3 FAQ:

"Bit Rate: Where possible, we encode our MP3 files using variable bitrates for maximum audio quality and smaller file sizes, aiming at an average of 256 kilobits per second (kbps). Using a variable bitrate allows us to allocate a higher bitrate to the more complex sections of music files while using a smaller bitrate for the less complex sections. The average of these rates is then calculated to produce an average bit rate for the entire file that represents the overall sound quality. Some of our content is encoded using a constant bitrate of 256 kbps. This content will have the same excellent audio quality at a slightly larger file size."

Along this line, does anybody seem some unknown band on this service that I and other readers of Slashdot should listen too?

Anything that increases musical horizons is good.

On that note, I would just like to say that I am pleased to see that The Wrens are on there.

"Now that XML is the de facto standard (for good or ill) for doing message passing, I find that I need to give XML examples in the documentation that we produce."

Jabber basically is an XML bridge. Combined with Peer to Peer it's a powerful combination.

Go read Founders at Work (link to Amazon, no ref to me) and read the chapter on Apple. He's a f'ing genius.

My favorite recommendations are when I am comparing different versions of the same cd for example. I sometimes see that "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought" the same item, but the the hard back version, deluxe edition, etc. This can perhaps be attributed to the fact that such differen editions appear later and that some people buy both versions, but it's still dubious.

Or when looking at this cd by a band called Goose, Amazon says that "Other customers suggested these items:", followed by items such as "Favourite Christmas Recipes (Favourite Recipes)"...

When I'm in the US, I use an unlocked cell phone bought in a foreign country, and a local GSM card, it's easy. The only thing to watch out for is that the US uses 850&1900 Mhz GSM, most countries use 900&1800. So make sure the phone is at least tri-band, or better yet quad-band.

Really there's nothing difficult about getting an unlocked phone in the US, it just isn't well advertised. And really it's not a bad deal to get the phone bundled with a long-term contract, if you're going to have to have a cell phone anyway.

Warning about OP's book recommendation: the Amazon reviews for The New Primal Scream , Janov's updated defense of his ideas, suggest that this is highly controversial at best and outright crackpottery at worst.

You give away wads of money and in return you get a "HA-HA! Silly fan boy, we knew we could count on you!" pat on the back and a coupon for three packs of iPod socks. http://www.amazon.com/Apple-M9720G-iPod-Sock-Socks/dp/B0006JMX14

I wont even go into ramifications of buying 30$ socks for an inanimate music player.

I dare not think what would happen should MicroSoft or Sony venture such a customer-buggering move.
Thousands of turds shaped like Zunes mailed in for replacement as defective to MS? (If you are reading this and thinking "Oh, jolly good. Now I'm going to make a brown MS product joke!" - You are too late. MS and I both have beat you to it.)
PS3s boxes filled with tarantulas and/or roaches shipped to Sony?
Sony's HQ stoned (bricked?) with bricks with buttons and screen drawn on them with chalk?

But when Apple does that? Oh noooouuuuu...
Then it is hailed by fan-boys (fan-bots?) as "Brilliant Marketing Strategy" or "Quality Customer Relations".

Damn!
And I just got my karma back to Bad from the last time I spoke my mind about Apple and its cult.

Copyright is a fairly recent notion, as it popped up only four hundred years ago or so, and in a small part of the world. Long before that--and today in places were copyright is not respected--culture and content continue to abound.

Think about all the great poets and philosophers of Greece and Rome. They didn't get a dime when copies were made of their work by amanuenses and sold in the marketplace, but they didn't complain. Indeed, the only time someone had issue with copying, the Roman poet Martial in his Epigrams , it was because another fellow was putting his name on those copies. And even then, Martial didn't demand legal penalties; he just lampooned the guy.

In Hong Kong, the film and music industries continue to flourish even though very few pay for content, as creators there have discovered other viable economic models. In the European Union especially, many forms of art couldn't generate a profit even if all copies were sold, but government subsidies ensure culture remains vibrant.

Private space enterprise has not even matched Yuri yet. Not even close. The Russians poured money into the space race just to determine that a manned moon landing was not even realistic.

We tried very hard. It took 10 years (starting with Mercury / Gemini etc..) with the involvement of 400,000 people in Apollo on what was basically an initiative mandated by the president. Dozens of the best and most advanced private aerospace companies were funded by lucrative government contracts to the tune of about 19 billion dollars (in the 1960's & just for Apollo, not Mercury or Gemini). If you add Mercury and Gemini and the remainder of NASA's programs it's about $150B. (in 1996 dollars)

I fail to see how a private company could commit comparable resources and not vanish from lack of profit immediately after the first orbital test flights. Or even do it in 10-15 years with a fraction of that. There are companies with the money, perhaps, but few with the talent and the infrastructure. I don't think Boeing has a spare $150B laying around. I think you'd need lots of big powerful companies working together, or some as yet unforeseen commercial space gold mine.

We do have the knowledge, but really, I don't think that would be a huge advantage and I'm not so certain we'd aim for a straight repeat of Apollo anyhow.

You are joking, right? Xpdf lacks all kinds of features useful in the corporate world. Forms that can be filled out is one. PDF is an open format, and Adobe publishes the standard for your convenience, but even after years of work Xpdf and offshoots like libpoppler still can't support much more than they did years ago.

The CIA is human intelligence, the NSA is signals intelligence.

The NSA also has the task of assisting American businesses in avoiding economic espionage. They publish specifications such as TEMPEST shielding and red-black separation which are distributed to (worthy) members of the civilian community. Though the NSA often has the reputation of being the most secret of all federal agencies, they are remarkably open in some aspects. See James Bamford's Body of Secrets for a good view of how the NSA changed a great deal in the aftermath of the Cold War.

Warren Farrel is a 3 time member of the National Organization for Women NY chapter board and feminist champion. He began researching the biases of pay and employment between men and women. He came to some very interesting conclusions which he discusses in this book.

One of the more controversial was that, in fact, women do not earn less for the same work and in some cases/fields earn more. Previous researched was too vague in job descriptions according to Farrell. For example, previous surveys would lump heart surgeons and foot surgeons into a general category of "surgeon". After taking a closer look, he found that woman often ended up in professions that payed less.

By assessing what women and men were looking for in a job (through surveys and such), he found that woman usually avoided jobs with long work hours, dangerous environments, frequent travel, or personal confrontation (like sales) preferring flexible work hours, no overtime, safe work environments, no travel, etc. It just so happens that these are the very professions that pay the most. Incidentally, Farrell thinks we men should take a page out of woman's book in career choices as they also had higher rates of job satisfaction, lower stress, and overall life satisfaction.

It would seem that though there may be various social road blocks that they don't lie in the employers or necessarily in the environment. . . unless we start getting really nit picky such as "the foot surgeon community is less sexist then the heart surgeon community"...since they probably just work on different floors of the same hospital.

And anecdotally, for every woman I've known who had obvious familial pressures to "get married and raise a family" or some other stereotypical career path, I've known a male who was pressured into some career that he neither wanted nor enjoyed. . . . often in the non-science, blue collar genre.

I'm not saying sexism doesn't exist or that social norms don't push people toward certain career paths, but what's more sexist? Thinking woman are the ones being socially discriminated/pressured because more of them don't choose higher paying, more stressful jobs or that jobs which provide greater personal and career satisfaction, low stress, and flexible work hours are "lesser work" because they don't pay more? By many measures, these woman are far more successful then their higher earning male counterparts.

First, have you seen the picture of the circuit board?

That's no 'circuit board', that's a Proto Board!

Have you seen Ingmar Bergman's film The Seventh Seal ? It's got some good lessons about how to stop fearing death. Of course, this guy isn't just accepting death, he's keeping good humor to the very end, which is more than most people are capable of.

For a bit of background on the original Orion concept, and an all-around interesting read, check out The Starship and the Canoe by Kenneth Brower.

You're right, and me without mod points

In today's political environment (in the US at least), a lunchbox based on a M-Rated game would cause hell. But you can have a lunchbox based on an R-Rated movie that tells you 3rd grader that he's dining in hell.

This is as seriously stupid as the Boston Police department shutting down the city over some flashing lights.

I wish more writers' archives would just be put online, so we can just simply see what they left out or what work was unfinished at the time of passing without a plethora of new material for purchase. For those of us who loved Stranger in a Strange Land as it was, the release of the uncut version turned something nice into something overlong. And don't get me started on the Dune sequels, where the notes of Frank Herbert, instead of just being shown as they were, were turned into dreck by his son and an airport paperback writer.

Maybe the TSA should add "controversial books" to its list of banned items.

> this has nothing to do with production costs, and everything to do with the change in the relative value of the currencies
That was my point exactly. The only way I would accept the deviation in pricing is if they were produced by Canadian printers at a higher cost due to lower production runs.

Well to be fair the pricing reflects a CDN $ at $0.65 - which it hasn't been in a long time. I've spot-checked my books, which span from the 1980's to now (the ones I checked - I've got plenty predating 1980) - you're right, that currency does seem to play a bit of a role in pricing, but it is updated VERY slowly - pre 1997 books, I can understand. But post-1997, with the option to buy online at currency value, well,

Here's an example:
K&R's C Programming Language in Amazon.com is $40 (rounded)
http://www.amazon.com/C-Programming-Language-2nd/dp/0131103628/ref=pd_bbs_2/105-0648757-4344429?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190309328&sr=8-2

The same book from Amazon.ca is $60 (rounded)
http://www.amazon.ca/Programming-Language-Brian-W-Kernighan/dp/0131103628/ref=sr_1_1/701-4896514-8538726?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1190309304&sr=8-1

Both are shipped free.

Why, as a consumer, would I spend $20 more for the same book? In today's world, it makes no sense for books which have currency-based price deviations to have static prices, or prices updated so slowly.

I'm sorry that the small store suffers - $20 more in my pocket means that I've got disposable income to spend - or invest - elsewhere. It's the publishing houses which pocket the difference - I can't imagine how the book stores take a larger margin. The Canadian book and comic stores need to petition the publishing houses to have a more sensible and more dynamic pricing strategy. I don't mind if their prices are out of date if it's a small deviation, but raising prices by 30% which doesn't reflect the currency state for quite some time.

I don't know how the publishing houses would reflect currency rates for books already in stock - as a consumer, I hate to say that this is just not my problem. I would buy Canadian if the price was equitable, but only a fool would spend 30% more as a matter of national pride, when a more sensible corporate policy could address this. They've been pocketing the currency difference for years - sorry, but with the internet, they've got to change their business model if they want to keep their Canadian stores open.

For comics, which are produced monthly (more or less), they can update the pricing accordingly - who knows what they can do for subscriptions, but that's their problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISBN/

If ANYONE ones the IP for ISBN it's W.H. Smith http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W.H._Smith/, who invented the ISBN.

It's now an International standard of 13 digits, similiar to the ISSN.
The "Harvard Coop" can in no way, shape or form claim to own the ISBNs of the books.
It is a patently false claim.

However, if you know the book titles, you can do a simple lookup on the name / author / keyword to get the ISBN/ISSN lookup amazon.com. http://www.amazon.com/New-Used-Textbooks-Books/b/ref=sv_b_7/102-3443928-1463353?ie=UTF8&node=465600/

Wait no longer! http://www.amazon.com/Star-Wars-Light-Saber-Battle/dp/B00061I4CE/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-1957806-5602037?ie=UTF8&s=toys-and-games&qid=1190299121&sr=8-1

As The Innovator's Dilemma documents, in many industries where there is a clear criteria of what is "better", there tends to be exponential improvement in that metric over periods of decades What is unusual about Moore's law is the speed of the exponential improvement, not the fact of it.

And this has been true whether that metric was the distance a steam ship could travel, the volume of dirt an excavator can pick up, or the quality of steel a mini-mill can produce.

VRML was replaced with X3D, an immensely superior standard. Unfortunately, it's difficult to get to grips with, since while there was plenty of publishing about VRML in its heyday, the only X3D print documentation I know is Don Brutzman & Daly's X3D: Extensible 3D Graphics for Web Authors (Morgan Kaufmann, 2007).

But VRML didn't fail just due to technical flaws. Interest in virtual reality petered out among the public. Where once kids thought it would be cool to strap on a helmet and explore cyberspace, act out fantasies, whatever, nowadays they seem much more captivated by social networking sites in plain ol' 2D.

"No-one would have believed, in the last years of the nineteenth century, that human affairs were being watched from the timeless worlds of space. No-one could have dreamed that we were being scrutinized, as someone with a microscope studies creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water. Few men even considered the possibility of life on other planets. And yet, across the gulf of space, minds immeasurably superior to ours regarded this earth with envious eyes; and slowly, and surely, they drew their plans against us."

- Richard Burton, opening Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds musical

http://fishbowl.pastiche.org/archives/stuff/wowintro.mp3
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B0000025CO