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Some printers and copiers use a consumable developer, as well as toner. It can be packaged seperately, or togetherly along with the toner in a disposable cartridge, as was the case with the fleet of Sharp printers we used to use at work.

I'd like to further submit that such developer product quite plainly consists of "ultra-tiny particles of toner-like material."

FWIW, HTH, HAND, etc.

Some printers and copiers use a consumable developer, as well as toner. It can be packaged seperately, or togetherly along with the toner in a disposable cartridge, as was the case with the fleet of Sharp printers we used to use at work.

I'd like to further submit that such developer product quite plainly consists of "ultra-tiny particles of toner-like material."

FWIW, HTH, HAND, etc.

Music from Meatloaf? Lots of prior, art on that one!

Music from Meatloaf? Lots of prior, art on that one!

What, specifically, is gained by having a choice of hardware? You mentioned graphics cards. What, specifically, is gained by having a choice of graphics cards? I mean it! For 99.9998% if the population Apple offers hardware sufficient to their needs. Including graphics cards.

Are you kidding? The Mac Mini is too limited and underpowered. The iMac is too limited. The Mac Pro is simply too expensive. Sure, I do realize I'm not the majority, but more than 1/500,000 feel this way.

You admit that this is something that '90%' (I like my 99.9998% better) of folks don't care about, which is good because it reveals that you have at least some perspective. But you talk about having to recompile the kernel to suit your "needs". What "needs" are these? I'm not talking about "wants" or "would be cools", I'm talking about absolute, couldn't get it done any other way "needs". And, assuming you've got real "needs", do they balance against the time and headaches required to achieve them?

That's a stupid argument if I've ever heard one. I'm sure I could get by on a stock install of Windows Vista. I'm sure you could too. Why do you "need" OSX anyway?

You are correct that there is a staggering amount of 'choice' when it comes to Linux software. I can choose between any number of poorly-designed, inconsistent, and inadequately tested Linux apps. Particularly editors. (And they are all so EASY to install!!!) OS X, by contrast, offers a very good selection of well-designed, consistent, usable applications suitable, again, for 99.9998% of all user's needs.

Which is why you NEVER see anything like Firefox, Camino, VLC, or Handbrake installed on a Mac, cause who needs them? You're an idiot.

You said "I know a lot of people disagree with this" and you're right. A lot of people do. For good reason. One good way to measure usability is the "grandma test". Which system do you think grandma is going to have an easier time with? Enough said.

You Apple fanboys are hilarious. Just because a system works well for Grandma doesn't mean that everyone else wants to use it. Here's a computer that rates so high on the usability scale, that a 3 year old can use it. I don't see people pitching out their Macs in order to use this pinnacle of user interface design though.

No idea, but Mary Doria Russell tried it out in Children of God as well.

I'd bet that's not from a C# book. It's from a C# with .NET book, one of the 99% C# books on the market. If you just want to learn the C# language, though, I highly recommend C# Essentials. It cuts out pretty much all the .NET crap that consumes 95% of those 1000+ page books, and explains clearly the C# language in a concise way, using about as much space as The C Programming Language - just my style.

For .NET, just use online MSDN documentation. Much quicker and easier that way.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/

Awww, poor liddle fanboy...cry baby cry.

Have we forgotten the accomplishment of The Duchy of Grand Fenwick and professor Kokintz so soon?

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

http://www.amazon.com/Mouse-Moon-Margaret-Rutherfo rd/dp/B00004ZBVN

Sad, sad, indeed.

I first heard the term in isbn 1400042216. Probably comes from Chomsky or something. It's really a fitting term though, when you consider what republics used to stand for compared to what they stand for now...

While it covers v2.2, it's called "Linux Core Kernel Commentary: Guide to Insider's Knowledge on the Core Kernel of the Linux Code"
ISBN-10: 1576104699
http://www.amazon.com/Linux-Core-Kernel-Commentary -Knowledge/dp/1576104699

This is normal in the rest of the world. The law of supply and demand you know - let the free market decide the pricing...

No, the US isn't a capitalist country, it hasn't been one since the 1800s. The USA is nothing like what Alexis de Tocqueville saw when he tured the USA in the 1820s/30s, which inspired him the right the book "Democracy in America" . Today the US is a corporate socialist nation.

Fermilab is located in Batavia. Population about 25,000. In 2000 The median income for a household in the city was $68,656, and the median income for a family was $81,689. Batavia, Illinois

Yeah, it sucks that they are going to a non-free option where the cheapest version is about $150 USD

Assuming you qualify for no deeper discounts:

MS Office Home and Student 2007 is $122 at Amazon.com. Retail boxed. Three seat license. No. 1 in Amazon software sales. Excel, PowerPoint, Word, OneNote. No academic ID required.

Office Professional 2007 - Academic Edition $170. Excel, Word, Outlook, Power Point, Access, Publisher, Accounting Express. Bare minimum for academic pricing is student ID for grades K-12.

Instead of a party animal and physicist who spent a lot of time drumming, here's a drummer who's taken advantage of the world around him, and is contributing to man's exploration of astrophysics. Very cool.

Oh, and if you're ever interested in a superb read about a real life nerd superstar, check out "Surely, You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Ryan Fenton

It's a one-shot purchase (not recurring) and not a significant chunk of your mortgage, I'd not worry about it. If you went through a financial crisis, a single $250 purchase isn't going to make the difference in keeping/losing your house a month longer/earlier.

On the other hand, taking the money you save and spending it on one of these or the 10-cup model will save you a bunch of time. So you might want to go with the cheaper system. But probably not because of the house purchase.

It's a one-shot purchase (not recurring) and not a significant chunk of your mortgage, I'd not worry about it. If you went through a financial crisis, a single $250 purchase isn't going to make the difference in keeping/losing your house a month longer/earlier.

On the other hand, taking the money you save and spending it on one of these or the 10-cup model will save you a bunch of time. So you might want to go with the cheaper system. But probably not because of the house purchase.

I actually think this could be quite good. All the original Trek characters had really interesting back-stories that have not been thoroughly explored. There's Mr. Spock and Captain Pike. Kirk as the youngest captain ever in Starfleet. Scotty's being drummed out of the command corps.

In fact, one of my favorite Star Trek books growing up was one entitled Kobayashi Maru, where each of the senior staff takes turns recalling their experiences in Star Fleet academy. It primarily focuses on each of their experiences with the Kobayashi Maru simulation at the academy, but also delves into some personal stories about these folks as young officers about to become Starfleet officers. Sulu's story was extremely moving (at least from my teenage recollections) and well-written. Scotty's was hilarious, and Chekov's was quite good too.

Anyway, if you're looking for a blast-from-the ... er, future, check it out:

http://www.amazon.com/Kobayashi-Maru-Star-Trek-Boo k/dp/0671658174/ref=sr_1_2/103-9039922-7888637?ie= UTF8&s=books&qid=1185566723&sr=8-2

Then again, I also remember Wesley's time at the academy. Ug, those were horrible TNG episodes! Yes, I know, I have the never-ending human capacity for self-delusion. What is it they say about second marriages? The triumph of hope over experience?

Worth noting: There is already a tivo that can save recorded shows to DVD. It's made by Humax, the box is basically exactly what you said, a tivo that can record dvd's. The dvds that are made have menus on them that look like the tivo menus. As a bonus, the box can also play any regular dvd. I'm using it right now as a pause live tv/dvd player because I don't feel like paying tivo $12 per month. See here for a picture. The humax website is all flash so I can't see any of it, but I would expect you can find them there too.

There's a rather underrated 80s film called Looker which uses this sort of device as a subplot. The gun in the film freezes people for an hour or two, and obviously can be used for nefarious purposes by the baddies.

Rich.

The best thing I see coming from this, there will longer be a Linksys WRT54G. [...] [Best Buy employees] constantly tell my customers that it is the finest router money can buy, and my customers, being the idiots they are, listen to the minimum wage dumbass patrol at Best Buy instead of their ISP.

Thank you. This claim in the Reuters article blows me away: "They said the finding casts doubt on theories that babies are born knowing all the possible sounds in all of the world's languages."

What modern linguist / cognitive linguist actually thinks this??? It boggles my mind that the people fighting this retarded "language war" are so one-sided either way. Anyone seriously interested in current research in the direction this field is going might be into Jerome Feldman's work on the Neural Theory of Language at UC Berkeley. It's still in its early stages but (as far as I know) he's the first to offer a genuine "bridging theory" between neuroscience and language / linguistics, while building on the excellent work of many others, notably George Lakoff.

It's a breath of fresh air to deal with real research for once instead of armchair science (so sorry, Chomsky).

The inability to upgrade the graphics (due to the video memory and bus timings that had to fit with NTSC timings) was one of the reasons for people perceiving the Amiga as a niche machine (games and video) back then and had no little influence in its ultimate demise.

Gödel's theorems have nothing to do with representing the human mind in any form. They cannot be applied to the human mind for the purposes of answering the question of strong AI. Basically, the only thing that Gödel's theorems do is carry the Liar's Paradox ("This sentence is false.") to the level of basic arithmetic. There is no magical process that proves or disproves anything about the human mind. The confusion stems from the fact that the mathematical terms "incomplete" and "inconsistent" seem to imply so much more when quoted in a non-mathematical context.

For anyone who is interested in reading further, Gödel's Theorem: An Incomplete Guide to Its Use and Abuse contains a thorough discussion of the issue.

I would like to believe that we will achieve strong AI one day. However, referencing Gödel's incompleteness theorems just because they sound appropriate at first glance does not give any argument scientific credibility.

...not to mention that Santa and Satan are one & the same. Sounds like we're building a real profile now: Communist dictator of wayward souls forced into the bodies of elves, who, while enslaved, are treated well by their benevolent acting master because they now make the very toys that once trained them into the materialistic lifestyle that brought them to "Santa's workshop" (Hell). These toys will now go out into the hands of children of parents who have unknowingly been slated for the very same fate as they too once received these toys and feel socially pressured to continue the "tradition". Santa/Satan has manufactured a cycle that takes all to Hell who have or will ever receive a 'gift' from him. Santa is on sick and creative bastard. Makes me glad that my parents never celebrated Christmas (not for the reasons outlined above). ...by this point, I've well passed when my fiancée would roll her eyes at me and say, "You're weird."

It seems that everyone is concerned about downstream modification, and is completely ignoring the possibility of upstream modification. What if Sprint started modifying upstream http-posts to start a more viral ad distribution system? Not only would they be able to target their customers, they would also be able to target the customers of anyone who could read the post!

This is the reason that we need to push for network neutrality. When the only choices are between a giant douche which alters content and a turd sandwich which alters content, the customer ends up screwed in the end.

If GM crops nudge out the conventional ones, eventually we'll be in a position where a company can starve millions of people to death at will. Legally. And since capitalism essentially equates morality with legality and profitability, who will really argue with them? People really, really need to watch The Corporation. I'm all about making a buck, but we really, really need re re-evaluate what we let corporations get away with. Do even the most materialistic among us really want a private corporation owning not only the food, but the capacity of the plants to reproduce?

non-scientifitc study: I personally know 4 non-gamers who bought a PS2 as a guitar hero machine. I only know 2 people with a PS3.

take a look at amazon's bestselling video games. PS2 is #16 (and #17 for the black one) and Guitar Hero 80s is #3Guitar Hero 2 bundle is #19. (PS3 is #2 and 360 is #21)

Not to mention DS or Wii games hold 8 of the top 12 games. Casual gamers anyone? the first "gamer's game" is Halo 3 at #13 then RE4 (wii) at #20.

The PS3 is almost a year old and still has very very few exclusive titles! ~by Aladrin (926209) Alter Relationship on Tuesday July 24, @08:56AM (#19968961)

The console was first released on November 11, 2006 in Japan and shortly after on November 17, 2006 in North America, Hong Kong and Taiwan.! ~Wikipedia

November = 11/12 month. July 7/12 month. That's about a 4 month difference before we see it's 1 year anniversary, or 1/3 (33.333%) of a year. You have a very loose definition of 'almost'.

According to this list, there are over 40 games slated to be released before their true 1 year mark. Over 11 of them exclusive. Of course, given the usual game development, some of this might be pushed back past November 2007.

Add to that the price difference and people have many reasons to buy a 360 over a PS3.

The "Elite" price of the 360 is pretty much on par with the 60-GB 'firesale' price at $479.99 compared to $499.99. Add on the option HD-DVD drive at $199.99 and now you're looking at a console that's MORE expensive than the PS3, which comes with Blu-ray. Though, you do get a bigger hard drive (120GB compared to 80GB)

Nah, the 360 is not a better price comparison than the PS3, given similar setups. It is better for consumers because of it's optional features, but that will also be a drawback for it's system. One cannot put a game on HD-DVD media for the 360 because they cannot guarentee everyone has an HD-DVD drive. Well, one could do it, but it could scorn consumers who might purchase it (and you know there are people who will) thinking it will work because it's a 360 game.

There are only 2 main reasons for get a 360 over a PS3. Game library (as you already mentioned) and online support. Both of these can be categorized into the 'maturity' of the console because it has been out longer.

While I'm a Nintendo supporter, my crystal ball does predict the PS3 to overtake both the Wii and 360 in 2 years. It's going to be a huge gap to make up from the Wii but I believe you'll start seeing games on the PS3 that will just blow people away and everyone will be wanting one. One top of that, in 2-years that 80GB model will probably be selling closer to $400, which will be much more affordable for everyone as the prices of Blu-Ray and computer chips drop at their usual rate. Such games won't be possible on the 360 without a HD-DVD requirement.

You'll see the PS3 become more popular with developers as the 'casual gamers' market that the Wii is very effectively targeting, is also a market that does not spend gobs of money on games or as often. 1 game for a casual gamer family will probably satisfy them for months, while a hobby gamer (like myself) will 'beat' a game in a week or two and will want to move onto something else. Of course, this will depend on the game. MMO's will probably take over the 360 and PS3 consoles with the availability of a hard drive.

At that point, since "everyone"(tm) will be picking up a PS3, there will be a resurgence of interest in it as if it was part of a 'new' generation of consoles. Like "current + .5 generation". And maybe in the next 2 years Sony can correct it's PR from it's other department mishaps.

In 2 years, those gamers who sprang for a Wii or 'Wii60' while have $400 to spend on a new console and they'll see a good healthy library of games to c

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/videogames/re f=pd_ts_pg_1/104-3196751-9419921?ie=UTF8&pg=1

Oh look, the PS3 FINALLY DROPPED to 2nd spot since it becamse #1 after the price drop. Unless Amazon is really just in bed with Sony.

The Early Years of MUTT & JEFF (Forever Nuts: Classic Screwball Strips)
Walt and Skeezix: Book Three
Children of the Yellow Kid: The Evolution of the American Comic Strip

An astonishing number of classic comic strips have been or are being reprinted in full: Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Popeye, Terry and the Pirates; a good place to begin searching is Bud Plant Comic Art

Don't overlook the remainder stock at Edward R. Hamilton.

Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips Vol. 1: "Into the Wild Blue Wonder" $20

The Early Years of MUTT & JEFF (Forever Nuts: Classic Screwball Strips)
Walt and Skeezix: Book Three
Children of the Yellow Kid: The Evolution of the American Comic Strip

An astonishing number of classic comic strips have been or are being reprinted in full: Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Popeye, Terry and the Pirates; a good place to begin searching is Bud Plant Comic Art

Don't overlook the remainder stock at Edward R. Hamilton.

Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips Vol. 1: "Into the Wild Blue Wonder" $20

The Early Years of MUTT & JEFF (Forever Nuts: Classic Screwball Strips)
Walt and Skeezix: Book Three
Children of the Yellow Kid: The Evolution of the American Comic Strip

An astonishing number of classic comic strips have been or are being reprinted in full: Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Popeye, Terry and the Pirates; a good place to begin searching is Bud Plant Comic Art

Don't overlook the remainder stock at Edward R. Hamilton.

Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips Vol. 1: "Into the Wild Blue Wonder" $20

The Early Years of MUTT & JEFF (Forever Nuts: Classic Screwball Strips)
Walt and Skeezix: Book Three
Children of the Yellow Kid: The Evolution of the American Comic Strip

An astonishing number of classic comic strips have been or are being reprinted in full: Flash Gordon, Dick Tracy, Popeye, Terry and the Pirates; a good place to begin searching is Bud Plant Comic Art

Don't overlook the remainder stock at Edward R. Hamilton.

Pogo: The Complete Daily & Sunday Comic Strips Vol. 1: "Into the Wild Blue Wonder" $20

Not for dummies, but it will get you there... http://www.amazon.com/Fundamentals-Traffic-Control -Michael-Nolan/dp/0534393888/ref=sr_1_1/002-462251 2-2728863?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1185276890&sr=8-1

Here's another for a different angle on the software process.

Ok I'll bite. Why exactly? What makes a farmer any different than a butcher, doctor, or mutual fund investor? I don't know who made my computer, who made my car, or who picked my tomatoes. I don't really see why I should, the information is not relevant to the quality of the good.

Ok I'll bite. Why exactly? What makes a farmer any different than a butcher, doctor, or mutual fund investor? I don't know who made my computer, who made my car, or who picked my tomatoes. I don't really see why I should, the information is not relevant to the quality of the good.

Ok I'll bite. Why exactly? What makes a farmer any different than a butcher, doctor, or mutual fund investor? I don't know who made my computer, who made my car, or who picked my tomatoes. I don't really see why I should, the information is not relevant to the quality of the good.

*"This is not a simple distinction to fathom, and that may be one reason Engelbart's project, unlike his mouse, never caught fire. Another reason, perhaps was his determination to stick to a pure version of his "augmentation" plan. Unlike later computer innovators who elevated the term "usability" to a mantra Engelbart didn't place a lot of faith in making tools simple to learn. The computer was to be a sort of prosthesis for human reason, and Engelbart wanted it to be powerful and versatile; he didn't want to cripple it just to ease the user's first few days or weeks in the harness. The typical office worker might be comfortable with the familiar typewriter keyboard, but Engelbart believed that the "chord keyset" he had built, which looked like five piano keys and allowed a skilled user to input text with one hand, gave users so much more power that it was worth the effort required to adapt to it.

His vision was of "coevolution" between man and machine. The machine would change its human user, improving his ability to work, even as the human user was constantly improving the machine. And, indeed, as the band of researchers clustered around his Stanford lab wove the NLS into their lives, something like that could be observed. According to Engelbart biographer Thierry Bardini, "Some astonished visitors reported that [Engelbart's team had developed] strange codes or habits, such as being able to communicate in a 'weird' sign language. Some staff members occasionally communicated across the distance of the room by showing the fingers position of a specific chord entry on the keyset."

You can glean a little of that sense of weirdness today in the picture of Engelbart we encounter in the 1968 video: With a headset over his ear, one hand moving the mouse, and the other tickling the chord keyset, he looks like an earth-bound astronaut leading a tour of inner space, confident that he is showing us a better future. From the apogee of the 1968 demo, though, his project fell into disarray. He wanted to keep improving the existing NLS, whereas many of his young engineers wanted to throw it away and start afresh with the newer, more powerful hardware that each...[OCR errors mine]"

Soon we will have a large class of people who's only choice in life will be to do exactly what their landlord tells them.

The situation you provided has been covered quite a lot by economists. What has been found is somewhat the polar opposite to what you believe. First of all, these exact circumstances exist today, you need only look at welfare housing, such as the "projects" in America and the housing trust in Australia and Great Britain.

People often believe that people with money are able to control other people through arbitrarily setting prices. However, this is completely false. Firms do not set prices, firms react to the market to charge the most economic price for their products and services. Firms which arbitrarily set prices, or attempt to use prices to control people, any firm which did engage in these practices would not survive unless somebody was able and willing to pay these prices. In a free market it is almost impossible to maintain a monopoly, even on natural resources, such as land and oil, as there will always be substitutes (Have a look at how people live in Tokyo). This is a poorly written and brief example of the invisible hand of the market

This isn't without going into economic mobility in a free market system versus our current systems, or even the inherent inefficiencies in large business which are only able to prosper due to regulation which is meant to "protect" people from large businesses (Being a small business man, I know this only too well).

There are so many reasons why these problems can either, not exist or temporarily exist (such that in the grand scheme of things, it's not worth ruining your freedom over), that it's just not funny.

You sound more like an English literature/communications major than an economist. Your thinking is too linear. Instead of stating this is what will happen, describe the transactions that will take place, and think about why they take place. If you ever describe a transaction where a person is forced to make a decision which is harmful to themselves, think about what you would do in that situation, and that is what other people will do.

Now, everything you have brought up in this one message, is covered really really well in "Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition" by Milton Friedman, it's not a very expensive book, it isn't very thick and it's written really well. It explains everything I have touched on and more.

If you want to discuss topics like this, you have to read this book or "Free to Choose: A Personal Statement" by Milton Friedman, or if you don't want to read free to choose you can download the tv series produced in the 80s just search on mininova or torrentspy for "free to choose".

Or if you're really into this topic, you need to read "Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market" by Murray Rothbard, hell it's even free!

Even if you think all of these are just libertarian propaganda, these books/tv series only deal with logic and discuss both sides of the argument, more so, these are the quint

Soon we will have a large class of people who's only choice in life will be to do exactly what their landlord tells them.

The situation you provided has been covered quite a lot by economists. What has been found is somewhat the polar opposite to what you believe. First of all, these exact circumstances exist today, you need only look at welfare housing, such as the "projects" in America and the housing trust in Australia and Great Britain.

People often believe that people with money are able to control other people through arbitrarily setting prices. However, this is completely false. Firms do not set prices, firms react to the market to charge the most economic price for their products and services. Firms which arbitrarily set prices, or attempt to use prices to control people, any firm which did engage in these practices would not survive unless somebody was able and willing to pay these prices. In a free market it is almost impossible to maintain a monopoly, even on natural resources, such as land and oil, as there will always be substitutes (Have a look at how people live in Tokyo). This is a poorly written and brief example of the invisible hand of the market

This isn't without going into economic mobility in a free market system versus our current systems, or even the inherent inefficiencies in large business which are only able to prosper due to regulation which is meant to "protect" people from large businesses (Being a small business man, I know this only too well).

There are so many reasons why these problems can either, not exist or temporarily exist (such that in the grand scheme of things, it's not worth ruining your freedom over), that it's just not funny.

You sound more like an English literature/communications major than an economist. Your thinking is too linear. Instead of stating this is what will happen, describe the transactions that will take place, and think about why they take place. If you ever describe a transaction where a person is forced to make a decision which is harmful to themselves, think about what you would do in that situation, and that is what other people will do.

Now, everything you have brought up in this one message, is covered really really well in "Capitalism and Freedom: Fortieth Anniversary Edition" by Milton Friedman, it's not a very expensive book, it isn't very thick and it's written really well. It explains everything I have touched on and more.

If you want to discuss topics like this, you have to read this book or "Free to Choose: A Personal Statement" by Milton Friedman, or if you don't want to read free to choose you can download the tv series produced in the 80s just search on mininova or torrentspy for "free to choose".

Or if you're really into this topic, you need to read "Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market" by Murray Rothbard, hell it's even free!

Even if you think all of these are just libertarian propaganda, these books/tv series only deal with logic and discuss both sides of the argument, more so, these are the quint

You're thinking of the Wizardry series by Rick Cook.
Here's an amazon linky to one of the books: http://www.amazon.com/WIZARDRY-COMPILED-Rick-Cook/ dp/0671698567

They're excellent books, I throughly enjoyed reading them.

Check out the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series by George R.R. Martin

Amazon Link Amazingly developed characters, and moral ambiguity everywhere.

No Zelda you say?

http://www.amazon.com/Legend-Zelda-Twilight-Prince ss/dp/B000FQBPCQ/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/103-5942051-98758 16?ie=UTF8&s=videogames&qid=1185121721&sr=8-1/

It's a student project, and it shows. The article is superficial. The first two sources listed are Wikipedia and HowStuffWorks. There's a page on the Simpsons. You get the general idea.

Considerable work has been done on gambling psychology, but they didn't find it. There's an online Journal of Gambling Issues, with papers like Slot machine structural characteristics: Distorted player views of payback percentages. There's an annual trade show, Global Gaming Expo, and even an institute of higher learning devoted to the subject, the International Gaming Institute, part of (inevitably) the University of Las Vegas.

Their "experimental work" consisted of playing "freeslots.com". They didn't even notice that the "free slots" programs are set to have an expectation greater than zero when played in free mode. In fact, it's quite difficult to lose at "freeslots".

Industry analysis of player psychology has gone way beyond the stuff mentioned in this student paper. The big breakthrough was when slot machines started accepting player affinity cards. Today's casinos have the player's entire history, at the per-click level, on file, and considerable effort goes into mining that data. Some studies have compared what players have thought they won versus the casino's history of their track record. Many players don't even know that they're losing, let alone how much.

If you want to read about this subject, start with Super Casino, an 1999 inside look at some major Las Vegas properties.

"The problem is that the industry - especially Microsoft (and with an even worse attitude) - is pushing the limits of the current software development technology. The result is what we see everywhere: "Nothing works and nobody cares.""

Read this and understand that "software development technology" is BROKEN. Right now all the buzzwords isn't doing anything to bring good code. And even the fabled Bazaar isn't a silver bullet.

T1 speeds don't always cut it anymore - besides, I'm getting a 3mbit DSL connection today for $30/month, a whole $470/month cheaper than your 'solution.

For $400/month many places can afford to deal with a little downtime occasionally, especially home users.

Heck, if I was a business user, I could get DSL AND Cable, and still likely save more than $300/month. Sure, my NAT solution would be a bit hairy unless the two companies are willing to cooperate, but there's a NAT gateway/router/switch out there* for ~$210 that can do it.

*I do not endorse this product, have never used this product, just pointing it out. There was another one that I vaguely remember having eight ports and costing ~3k.

It seems that this "New book" is actually three years old. Inside the Spam Cartel: Trade Secrets from the Dark Side (November 1, 2004).

JP