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> But then again you mention spirituality in conjunction with food intake, which is definitively not related.

All the world's major religions discuss the importance of not defiling the Body Temple.

If you don't care for the moral reasons, there is also the health reasons to consider. Maybe you enjoy increasing your odds for disease -- that is your prerogative.

Everyone has to their own choice to make concerning their fate... but it doesn't change the fact that you are a product of what you eat, think, and do.

Hm, well it seems there are as many sites who claim the poem is about the Plague as those who claim it isn't. I suppose I could instead mention Roald Dahl's book, Danny, the Champion of the World, which singularly failed to create a generation of pheasant and salmon poachers, instead?

I did discover how to build fire balloons after reading that book though. Much fun.

Really, does the fact that the computers are Russian matter? Broken software is broken software, and broken hardware is broken hardware. It's not like the Russians would send crappy stuff up to the ISS anyways, they would put all their best into it. And the Russians have a history of having some excellent mathematicians.

This is an interesting read on this subject. The answer to your question is that the fact that the computers are Russian probably does matter.

It's not that the Russian mathematicians aren't excellent, it has more to do with their engineering approach.

That, and of course politics on both sides...

Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 is $122 from Amazon.com, retail boxed. Three seat license. Currently - and predictably - #1 on the Amazon software sales chart.

There is of course the OEM edition and academic pricing.

The Geek is far too quick to equate max retail list with the street price for a legit copy of Office. But the deeper truth is that MS Office is still overwhelmingly dominant in every market and still best of class.

Sun Star Office 8 - a solid alternative, one might argue, for the home user - is $73 at Amazon and #1000 in sales.

Microsoft Office Home and Student Edition 2007 is $122 from Amazon.com, retail boxed. Three seat license. Currently - and predictably - #1 on the Amazon software sales chart.

There is of course the OEM edition and academic pricing.

The Geek is far too quick to equate max retail list with the street price for a legit copy of Office. But the deeper truth is that MS Office is still overwhelmingly dominant in every market and still best of class.

Sun Star Office 8 - a solid alternative, one might argue, for the home user - is $73 at Amazon and #1000 in sales.

Are you suggesting there wasn't a better outcome that could have been negotiated without having a war?

Plausibly, there was. Might also have prevented the horrid mess of the US Civil War, too.

I'm advocating the construction of a future in which we don't slaughter each other anymore. We are human beings, not lions or baboons. We're able to exchange knowledge to better ourselves and thereby avoid conflict through negotiation and compromise.

We're still animals. And, yes, while we have the abilities to exchange knowledge, negotiate, and compromise, the use of the first does not assure the latter two will be used, nor does anything assure that we'll even exchange knowledge.

For example... say you have a bundle of cash and a couple of cute college age daughters. (Unlikely combination, but just barely imaginable; Warren Buffett might have managed it if his daughter had had an identical twin.) I'm a sociopath who'd like to kill you, take your money, brainwash the girls, and add them to the harem of human sex toys I keep locked in my basement. It's not in my interest to exchange knowledge with you (since you probably don't know if they're carrying any STD's); even if I'm crazy enough to do so, I'm not sure there's any "compromise" to my "proposal" we'd agree on.

The problem with many idealists is they assume everyone will choose to be good, rather than selfishly evil. Evil is always a possibility; society tries to discourage it, and increases the probabilities of undesirable consequences. However, no matter how many meddling kids it throws at the problem, there's always a chance of getting away with it... and often the chance is perceived wider than it is. If the outcomes posed by being good are sufficiently undesirable (like being born black and poor in a ghetto), the potential gains of being evil (like becoming a violent crack dealing pimp) become more palatable. The nature of evolution is that almost any possible strategy gets tried, and it only needs to prosper slightly and sometimes to continue on down towards eternity.

Yeah, it would be nice if we didn't kill each other. However, we're still a pretty stupid species, and the societies we run around in (which are also subject to evolutionary pressures) are universally moronic. War isn't going away any time soon.

Try reading The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers

This reminds me of Gregory Benford's SF novel Timescape. In that story a researcher at the end of the 20th century is researching with a material sample and ends up sending a message back in time to 1962. A dialogue ensues, two way communication continues until the communication causes a change in the past that causes a parallel world split. I've seen this same story in different guises twice since. Most reasonable view of time travel. But then again I haven't trusted the whole time travel stuff since I thought hard about it in philosophy 101 ... later exposure to lots of physics didn't dissuade me from the opinion that the time travel notion is like the meta-physical mumbo jumbo scientists got up to in previous eras ... we just think we're too smart / knowledgeable to make the same mistakes. Meh.

If you really want to understand what John Cramer is talking about, read his article here. John Gribbin also his a good description of John Cramer's theory in his book Schrodinger's Kittens.

If you really want to understand what John Cramer is talking about, read his article here. John Gribbin also his a good description of John Cramer's theory in his book Schrodinger's Kittens.

This is a different method of time travel using circulating light to bend space-time and create time loops.

I was starting to think I had gone crazy.... I didn't remember having actual moving graphics when I played as a kid! There were a few (but only a few) pictures... If you can call them that by today's standards

And, to someone else who asked, yes I think you can still buy newer versions. I checked out a copy from a local library (a great source for educational games such as this) maybe five years ago. I thought my daughter would be interested, but I guess she was still too young. I don't think I still have a copy.... It was a Windows version, with fancy graphics. I remember seeing it somewhere for sale new around the same time

Actually, looks like you can get it from Amazon. Oregon Trail 5, and someone is selling Oregon Trail 3 on the cheap.

This also does the trick!

http://www.amazon.com/Canon-TC80N3-Remote-Control- Cameras/dp/B00009XVA3/ref=sr_1_1/104-4601399-93479 55?ie=UTF8&s=photo&qid=1181645140&sr=1-1

Just add one of these (SD to CF adapter) and you're all set:

http://www.amazon.com/Premiertek-Card-Compact-Flas h-Adapter/dp/B000NVD1ZW

I read in David Brin's sci-fi novel _Earth_ where anyone recognized in a recording would be compensated through royalties. Some people happened to film some character and one day that character got residual checks. That character then tried to go figure out why.

To me, it seems reasonable that either the NCAA or the school should get residuals from whatever ads are on the blogger's site. The gripe from the NCAA or the school would be they wouldn't get as money if they had exclusisve control over distribution of recordings and recountings of the event. That seems unreasonable.

So many things in it came true since I read it in 91 that it's almost prophetic. I could only hope things work out as well as it did in the book.

http://www.amazon.com/Earth-Bantam-spectra-book-Da vid/dp/0553057782

How does it hold up to Linux Administration Handbook by Evi Nemeth et al?

This is a book that I've used for years and years (since before it forked into a Linux book and a Unix book) teaching Linux system administration classes, and I never found its match. Strongly recommended for novices and masters alike.

Mechanical Turk

Because he first has to get other people money to trade with. Else he is what is known as a day trader, a mug who bets his own money on the stock market. To see how the stock market is really run, take a look at Liars Poker.

was Re:Fantasy stock markets.

Some dSLR's do have wifi- for saving photos on the fly to a little hard drive cube.
http://www.amazon.com/Canon-WFT-E1-Wireless-Transm itter-Digital/dp/B00080OQUM

The photos queue up on the local memory (and flash?) and get sent off to the destination as soon as possible. I don't imagine it would take a rocket scientist to modify that.

You'd think you could define a general tag for all of the photos you're taking (eg 'wedding') and go back and tag them additionally later.

whereas Macs are always the same price, no drops, no competitive pricing, nothing. A macbook is a macbook is $1,099 is $1,099. No matter where you go.

I find that CMYK and LAB support are both very important to me as a photographer, and I've never done any prepress work. For instance, I find CMYK useful for adjusting skin tones (see Dan Margulis' Professional Photoshop) and for adjusting shadow detail with the K channel. I also like to use the K channel for channel blending.

Zonk's word, never heard the term wetware before

Kids today. Don't you read the classics in school anymore?

http://www.amazon.com/Job-Comedy-Justice-Robert-He inlein/dp/0345316509

Enjoy.

There are books out there using that premise. My favorite being The Devil's Apocrypha: There Are Two Sides to Every Story. Written to sound kind of like KJV of the Bible, but a with story that would make King James spin in his grave.

You're correct.

They have a long way to go before they get to the top - from their route, it looks like they will be going through the Northeast ridge route. This means that they have a long way before reaching the First, Second and Third Steps and finally, the summit.

And like someone else mentioned, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is his book on Everest - he talks about Anatoli Boukreev (a Russian climber whom Jon criticizes) and he talks about Beck Weathers who was left for dead but despite being frostbitten, he found his way to the nearest camp and was rescued (he did lose both his hands and part of his face).

If you want to read another awesome book that has nothing to do with Everest, but is about a story of survival in the Andes, you should read Touching the Void.

And yes, I'm a mountaineer - not good enough to climb Everest (yet), but I do plan on climbing Denali within the next couple of years.

You're correct.

They have a long way to go before they get to the top - from their route, it looks like they will be going through the Northeast ridge route. This means that they have a long way before reaching the First, Second and Third Steps and finally, the summit.

And like someone else mentioned, Jon Krakauer's Into Thin Air is his book on Everest - he talks about Anatoli Boukreev (a Russian climber whom Jon criticizes) and he talks about Beck Weathers who was left for dead but despite being frostbitten, he found his way to the nearest camp and was rescued (he did lose both his hands and part of his face).

If you want to read another awesome book that has nothing to do with Everest, but is about a story of survival in the Andes, you should read Touching the Void.

And yes, I'm a mountaineer - not good enough to climb Everest (yet), but I do plan on climbing Denali within the next couple of years.

Admittedly, it's impressive, but then again climbing Everest is no longer a glamour thing. It's become pedestrian, with basically climbing "tourists" being led up the mountain by guides making big bucks while the Sherpas do most of the hard work of actually summiting. And there are plenty of people going up that mountain who have no business being up there. And every year people die because of stupidity, in a place which is unforgiving of mistakes.

I admire the guy for doing it. God knows, my wife would like to go there just to reach Advanced Base Camp (though I know if she got that far, the lure of the summit would be too great for her). There's something about it that despite the current Disneyland quality of the trip, lures you in. I just am not that impressed by the whole spectacle.

-FL

no, the reason that Apple does not offer variety in configuration is that they understood a simple concept: "More choice equals less choice". (*)

Have you tried to order a notebook from Dell or HP? You'll waste hours undertanding the differences and trying to decide which one is the perfect one for you. And after you have ordered one, you will still think about "hum, maybe I should have bought the blue one instead".

With Apple there two choices: personnal use or business use. After that, it all depend on the size of the screen. In about 3 minutes your choice is made.

(*) See The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less

> Sure I can hear you, the trolls can hear you, but I doubt political parties can hear you.

They can hear you too. But political parties don't exist to serve the electorate. Why do you think so much time and money is spent slowing preparing the US nation for war - there was no outcry for the US to invade Afghanistan or Iraq - not even after 9/11. Links were made between 9/11 and Iraq/Saddam. Political parties are like an API - a layer between the public and the huge, extremely rich well connected individuals and the companies they are involved with. They're the entertainment wing of the armed forces.

There are a lot of nerds on this site - for information about both the NSA (the world's most advanced and well funded spying/cryptoanalysis organisation) and the political ends to which it is put (including covering up murderous attacks against its own employees by the Israelis) I suggest you read `body of secrets` by James Bamford.
http://www.amazon.com/Body-Secrets-Ultra-Secret-Na tional-Security/dp/0385499086

So, just buy a Wacom Graphire4 4x5 USB Tablet, Price: $89.99

http://www.amazon.com/Wacom-Graphire4-4x5-Tablet-S ilver/dp/B000BBCTHU/ref=pd_bbs_sr_2/002-8460058-47 96851?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1181079175&sr=8-2

It Includes Adobe Photoshop Elements 3, Corel Painter Essentials 2, nik Color Efex Pro 2 GE, JustWrite Office 4, and EverNote Plus.

Photoshop Elements is vastly better then any other Gimpy thing you can get for free, and Painter is great.

If you can't afford $90 for all that your really not that serious...

Photoshop costs about $649 list price. It's the CS3 suite that costs a couple grand, depending on which version of the thousand versions you get.

Are you suggesting that politicians would manipulate science to their advantage?

Nah, couldn't happen.

Are you suggesting that politicians would manipulate science to their advantage?

Nah, couldn't happen.

Actually, this most closely resembles Chris Moriarty's Spin State. Of course, she did write this in 2003 so the book may have been influenced by the early articles on Quantum Entanglement transportation. Still, it was a good book.

Just another example of the blurring of science and science-fiction. The ancient riddle of which came first, the chicken or the egg, has been supplanted with a new conundrum of "which came first, the science or the science-fiction?."

But the fact is, most of the people involved in the revolution and all the stuff leading up to it were business owners pissed because their business was being effected. Of course they didn't separate businesses from the people back then, but it is no different then today.

It is entirely different for that very reason. Our relatively recent definition of corporatism (after the Santa Clara decision) allows the individuals at work to create entities that bear individual rights without requiring them to assume individual responsibilities. There's a reason the founding fathers spoke against allowing moneyed interests to control the government: because they viewed the ideal society as one where every individual had the freedom to conduct their business as they saw fit. Their system provided a means for businesses to be represented in government: by their owners. The change in legal perspective that I'm discussing, while constitutional, is an effect of exactly what they warned against, and exactly what you eagerly support: manipulation of an elected government by financiers.

And by the way:

And to be frank, the role of government is the county,state or whatever else it is presiding over. It isn't to suit the people[...]you can push the suggestion of the government working for the people but it just isn't so.

That is the essence of fascism, not republicanism. Your assertion is contradicted by the very preamble of the Constitution. It is also contradicted repeatedly by the writings of the Constitution's architects, such as Thomas Jefferson, as well as those of Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers. I don't know why these aren't more widely read. Frankly, somebody's fed you a line of stuff, and I would suggest a prompt emetic. The writings of the country's founders might be a good start.

But the fact is, most of the people involved in the revolution and all the stuff leading up to it were business owners pissed because their business was being effected. Of course they didn't separate businesses from the people back then, but it is no different then today.

It is entirely different for that very reason. Our relatively recent definition of corporatism (after the Santa Clara decision) allows the individuals at work to create entities that bear individual rights without requiring them to assume individual responsibilities. There's a reason the founding fathers spoke against allowing moneyed interests to control the government: because they viewed the ideal society as one where every individual had the freedom to conduct their business as they saw fit. Their system provided a means for businesses to be represented in government: by their owners. The change in legal perspective that I'm discussing, while constitutional, is an effect of exactly what they warned against, and exactly what you eagerly support: manipulation of an elected government by financiers.

And by the way:

And to be frank, the role of government is the county,state or whatever else it is presiding over. It isn't to suit the people[...]you can push the suggestion of the government working for the people but it just isn't so.

That is the essence of fascism, not republicanism. Your assertion is contradicted by the very preamble of the Constitution. It is also contradicted repeatedly by the writings of the Constitution's architects, such as Thomas Jefferson, as well as those of Hamilton and Madison in the Federalist Papers. I don't know why these aren't more widely read. Frankly, somebody's fed you a line of stuff, and I would suggest a prompt emetic. The writings of the country's founders might be a good start.

I think you're missing something about entanglement here. Once two particles are entangled, they can then be separated by great distance. Then an observation of one particle effects the other *instantaneously* (which would be infinitely fast, and faster than light-- at the same time!) regardless of that distance. Its a very difficult concept; in fact, Einstein believed it went against all common sense and spent a lot of time trying to disprove it, see EPR (and therefore all quantum mechanics). "The God Effect" by Brian Clegg is a wonderful, easily-read explanation of this phenomenon.

...So sales tax is inherently regressive...

I dunno what sales tax systems you look at, but the state sales tax in Texas is usually not exercised on items like food or other necessities (though 'luxury' food items may be). We also have a weekend in August where there is no sales tax on an expanded set of items to allow people to buy things related to going back to school tax free, including clothes.

Sales tax is not inherently regressive any more than a gun is inherently a tool of evil. It is what it is. If you really want to know more about a sales tax that works and what is wrong with our income tax system, check out The Fairtax [amazon] book by Neal Boortz and John Linder (congressman).

Yeah yeah, woo whoo. Where can you buy a legal copy online that you can download to your phone?

The vertical fly on underwear is indeed unworkable. That's why you should consider a brand with a horizontal fly. No problems getting your dick through there! I speak from experience.

JP

A major plot point of Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars is a space elevator's outer anchor being destroyed, sending the tether falling down on the red planet and causing all kinds of damage as it winds around. Obviously such a scenario would be taken into account by current thinkers, so how do they expect to avoid this risk?

Anything else I should know?

A few more things, by the sound of it. The first thing you should note is that the peer review system is very effective at filtering information. This makes it suited to both its official intent, which is to improve the quality of discourse, as well as to censorship. You seem to assume it is the former, but that is just an assumption about the intent and integrity of those holding editorial positions and key chairs.

Secondly, editorial systems have been thoroughly corrupted before. For an example, read this book http://www.amazon.com/Into-Buzzsaw-Leading-Journal ists-Expose/dp/1591022304.

The cosmologies described here are based on the inference that the universe is expanding in a manner proportional to the observed roughly constant redshift-to-distance ratio (Hubble constant). The idea is that as space is stretched, the wavelength of light is stretched along with it, as it transverses that space.

The problem with all these mainstream cosmologies is that observations have been made that require rather different (non-cosmological) mechanisms for redshift to exist. Halton Arp has made and detailed these observations, and the surrounding controversy http://www.amazon.com/Seeing-Red-Redshifts-Cosmolo gy-Academic/dp/0968368905. Paul Mermet is another astrophysicist that has studied the matter http://www.newtonphysics.on.ca/HUBBLE/Hubble.html.

Essentially, current mainstream cosmology is likely to be complete bunk, because it is predicated on one particular ill-founded interpretation of redshift.

Such adapters exist, and aren't too hard to find. Here is an example.

Things like this will keep CF around for a bit longer, but I do suspect that its days are numbered. Flash is currently improving faster than CF-sized hard drives, so the little disks which made CompactFlash so desirable as a pro standard are no longer important.

And, there's something about the big, fat, durable, and mostly self-cleaning contacts on an SD card which makes the insertion process a whole lot less scary than the 40 pin (!!!) socket connector of CF.

Other than that, it's just a lot more compatible. My PDA, laptop, cell phone, car stereo, and consumer digital camera all have SD slots on them.

I'll miss CF when its gone, though, because the format's inherent ability to act, pin-for-pin, just like IDE hard drives makes for some useful (though probably not very interesting) hacks, which is something that none of the other flash formats are currently capable of. I've currently got two diskless computers here booting directly from CompactFlash cards which are plugged directly into the IDE bus, which has so far worked quite nicely. One is an old 386 laptop which now has zero moving parts (and which should last indefinitely), while the other is a K6-2 box that is doing some audio DSP work (which is now almost silent).

Cheers,
Dave

I agree, Daniel Teichman, who was born on April 28.

Have you ever checked out a Barbie movie?

I'm a dad of a 6 year old girl, and I have to tell you- I'm surprised.

These Barbie movies are intensely moral, and advocate for girls to develop an interest in science, delight in learning, sacrifice, strive, and struggle courageously for what is right and true. By my read, it's all straight out of Aristotle. Check out the Amazon reviews, especially this one, if you're a guy.

I don't know what bizarre turn of fate made it such that great talent should go to work on Barbie movies, but I can't deny what I've clearly seen: They're good movies, with positive message, and I now have absolutely no qualms buying Barbie toys for my daughter.

I recognize this is an odd bit of news to hear, but there it is; I can't deny what my own two eyes have seen.

Have you ever checked out a Barbie movie?

I'm a dad of a 6 year old girl, and I have to tell you- I'm surprised.

These Barbie movies are intensely moral, and advocate for girls to develop an interest in science, delight in learning, sacrifice, strive, and struggle courageously for what is right and true. By my read, it's all straight out of Aristotle. Check out the Amazon reviews, especially this one, if you're a guy.

I don't know what bizarre turn of fate made it such that great talent should go to work on Barbie movies, but I can't deny what I've clearly seen: They're good movies, with positive message, and I now have absolutely no qualms buying Barbie toys for my daughter.

I recognize this is an odd bit of news to hear, but there it is; I can't deny what my own two eyes have seen.

Have you ever checked out a Barbie movie?

I'm a dad of a 6 year old girl, and I have to tell you- I'm surprised.

These Barbie movies are intensely moral, and advocate for girls to develop an interest in science, delight in learning, sacrifice, strive, and struggle courageously for what is right and true. By my read, it's all straight out of Aristotle. Check out the Amazon reviews, especially this one, if you're a guy.

I don't know what bizarre turn of fate made it such that great talent should go to work on Barbie movies, but I can't deny what I've clearly seen: They're good movies, with positive message, and I now have absolutely no qualms buying Barbie toys for my daughter.

I recognize this is an odd bit of news to hear, but there it is; I can't deny what my own two eyes have seen.