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"Yeah, yeah, make it black and white like that. That's another symptom."

Yeah, I know; scary! Now it's Black and White, but the next symptom is seeing computers getting working again because my ESP powers kick in! ;-p

"Right. You've just used magical dragons, invisible tooth fairies, and little green magical men as examples. Not pixie dust, though. Thank Jehova you didn't go for the pixie dust!"

Lol. Well, the magical dragon example was from Carl Sagan, actually, but it's clear you don't have any grasp what was meant by it. It's not about the analogies themselves, it's about *the reasoning* behind sustaining and upholding notions of things that are 'unmeasurable'.

Here you go, in the off-chance you really are interested in improving your logical reasoning skills (and if not, it's still a worthwile read): http://www.amazon.com/Demon-Haunted-World-Science- Candle-Dark/dp/0345409469

The best way to do this would have been to ask nicely, as it would cause the customers to feel guilty about taking advantage. But instead, Amazon demanded retribution (and it did "demand" it -- according to the summary Amazon effectively said "give us the product or we will take whatever we think you owe" despite the fact that nothing is legally owed)

Let's see.

Hello from Amazon.com. In reviewing your order placed on 23-Dec-06, we discovered that due to an error we did not charge you the correct amount for the items you purchased. According to the terms of the promotion, purchasing one DVD at the regular price entitled you to a free DVD of equal or lesser value. You can view the terms of the promotion here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...D=ATVPDKIKX0 DER

Because these items have already shipped to you, you can either keep the items and we will charge you the amount you should have been charged or you can return the items - at no cost to you - to Amazon.com within 30 days. Please note that we can only accept the return of unopened items in their original condition.

To return items from this order, please visit our Online Returns Center:

http://www.amazon.com/returns/

As the return is the result of our error, you will not be charged for return shipping. To make sure you are not charged for return shipping, please select "Missed estimated delivery time" as the reason for return in the drop-down box that appears on the form.

If you decide to keep the items or we have not received the items you wish to return by January 28, we will charge your credit card for any unreturned items in a manner consistent with the terms of the promotion described above.

Please be assured that the amount that would be charged to your account is the same price that was listed on the product detail page on our web site at the time you placed your order.

We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your understanding in this matter. Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com.

Best regards,

Amazon.com Customer Service http://www.amazon.com/

Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

Some rude jerks. What ungrateful assholes, listen to them demanding I do what they tell them or they'll screw me anyway. Apparently your definition of "ask nicely" is somewhat different from the rest of us here in the real world. What is it, they send a rep around to your house who begs you to "pretty please" return the product whilst she's performing fellatio upon you? (With apologies for the bastardization of a Reservoir Dogs quote.)

Errors And Omissions Excepted is a cornerstone of commercial law. It means that "the seller giving you the goods" is not your grounds to go "Hey! Score! Freebie for me! In your face!". It is only your interpretation that somehow, shipping the goods is "validation" of the transaction (and if you'd read more, you'd have seen in many cases, that letter went out beforeshipping, so how does that equate with your "validation"?). You also neglect the fact that the terms and conditions of your Amazon purchase almost certainly state that you give Amazon permission to bill your card for discrepancies, the same way they'd issue a refund on your card if they discovered "after you "validated" the transaction by receipt of goods" that you'd been overcharged.

The best way to do this would have been to ask nicely, as it would cause the customers to feel guilty about taking advantage. But instead, Amazon demanded retribution (and it did "demand" it -- according to the summary Amazon effectively said "give us the product or we will take whatever we think you owe" despite the fact that nothing is legally owed)

Let's see.

Hello from Amazon.com. In reviewing your order placed on 23-Dec-06, we discovered that due to an error we did not charge you the correct amount for the items you purchased. According to the terms of the promotion, purchasing one DVD at the regular price entitled you to a free DVD of equal or lesser value. You can view the terms of the promotion here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...D=ATVPDKIKX0 DER

Because these items have already shipped to you, you can either keep the items and we will charge you the amount you should have been charged or you can return the items - at no cost to you - to Amazon.com within 30 days. Please note that we can only accept the return of unopened items in their original condition.

To return items from this order, please visit our Online Returns Center:

http://www.amazon.com/returns/

As the return is the result of our error, you will not be charged for return shipping. To make sure you are not charged for return shipping, please select "Missed estimated delivery time" as the reason for return in the drop-down box that appears on the form.

If you decide to keep the items or we have not received the items you wish to return by January 28, we will charge your credit card for any unreturned items in a manner consistent with the terms of the promotion described above.

Please be assured that the amount that would be charged to your account is the same price that was listed on the product detail page on our web site at the time you placed your order.

We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your understanding in this matter. Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com.

Best regards,

Amazon.com Customer Service http://www.amazon.com/

Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

Some rude jerks. What ungrateful assholes, listen to them demanding I do what they tell them or they'll screw me anyway. Apparently your definition of "ask nicely" is somewhat different from the rest of us here in the real world. What is it, they send a rep around to your house who begs you to "pretty please" return the product whilst she's performing fellatio upon you? (With apologies for the bastardization of a Reservoir Dogs quote.)

Errors And Omissions Excepted is a cornerstone of commercial law. It means that "the seller giving you the goods" is not your grounds to go "Hey! Score! Freebie for me! In your face!". It is only your interpretation that somehow, shipping the goods is "validation" of the transaction (and if you'd read more, you'd have seen in many cases, that letter went out beforeshipping, so how does that equate with your "validation"?). You also neglect the fact that the terms and conditions of your Amazon purchase almost certainly state that you give Amazon permission to bill your card for discrepancies, the same way they'd issue a refund on your card if they discovered "after you "validated" the transaction by receipt of goods" that you'd been overcharged.

The best way to do this would have been to ask nicely, as it would cause the customers to feel guilty about taking advantage. But instead, Amazon demanded retribution (and it did "demand" it -- according to the summary Amazon effectively said "give us the product or we will take whatever we think you owe" despite the fact that nothing is legally owed)

Let's see.

Hello from Amazon.com. In reviewing your order placed on 23-Dec-06, we discovered that due to an error we did not charge you the correct amount for the items you purchased. According to the terms of the promotion, purchasing one DVD at the regular price entitled you to a free DVD of equal or lesser value. You can view the terms of the promotion here:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/A...D=ATVPDKIKX0 DER

Because these items have already shipped to you, you can either keep the items and we will charge you the amount you should have been charged or you can return the items - at no cost to you - to Amazon.com within 30 days. Please note that we can only accept the return of unopened items in their original condition.

To return items from this order, please visit our Online Returns Center:

http://www.amazon.com/returns/

As the return is the result of our error, you will not be charged for return shipping. To make sure you are not charged for return shipping, please select "Missed estimated delivery time" as the reason for return in the drop-down box that appears on the form.

If you decide to keep the items or we have not received the items you wish to return by January 28, we will charge your credit card for any unreturned items in a manner consistent with the terms of the promotion described above.

Please be assured that the amount that would be charged to your account is the same price that was listed on the product detail page on our web site at the time you placed your order.

We apologize for this inconvenience and appreciate your understanding in this matter. Thanks for shopping at Amazon.com.

Best regards,

Amazon.com Customer Service http://www.amazon.com/

Please note: this e-mail was sent from a notification-only address that cannot accept incoming e-mail. Please do not reply to this message.

Some rude jerks. What ungrateful assholes, listen to them demanding I do what they tell them or they'll screw me anyway. Apparently your definition of "ask nicely" is somewhat different from the rest of us here in the real world. What is it, they send a rep around to your house who begs you to "pretty please" return the product whilst she's performing fellatio upon you? (With apologies for the bastardization of a Reservoir Dogs quote.)

Errors And Omissions Excepted is a cornerstone of commercial law. It means that "the seller giving you the goods" is not your grounds to go "Hey! Score! Freebie for me! In your face!". It is only your interpretation that somehow, shipping the goods is "validation" of the transaction (and if you'd read more, you'd have seen in many cases, that letter went out beforeshipping, so how does that equate with your "validation"?). You also neglect the fact that the terms and conditions of your Amazon purchase almost certainly state that you give Amazon permission to bill your card for discrepancies, the same way they'd issue a refund on your card if they discovered "after you "validated" the transaction by receipt of goods" that you'd been overcharged.

The PS3 60GB model has an amazing sales rank of 58

Why is that amazing? Because Amazon does not carry the PS3 (except in short bursts where it sells out in minutes). The only ones you can buy are from third party sellers through Amazon for $720 or more (that's over $100 above list).

So while you can find them in some stores, the PS3 must be doing something right if people are willing to pay $100 above retail to get them through Amazon.

If Sony can raise production to the point where Amazon can list them for 24 hour shipping, then I think we'll see sales rise - also the release of Motorstorm should be another notch up in sales.

It is the utterly lackluster performance of older hard drives and less than 2 gigs of memory that is killing most of the Vista installs I have seen. 5400 rpm drives are constantly seeking even for the most mundane tasks in Vista. A clean install of XP x64 pro on my old AMD 3000 1 gig ran gloriously for 2 years. Tried the Ultimate version last weekend on the same machine. Besides the Nvidia driver problem in Vista I have come up against a brick wall trying to get my old PCI IDE card working.

As much as I'm glad this Pogue guy can get paid writing this book, but goddamn, we're talking about an operating system that costs hundreds of dollars. Microsoft should be ashamed that their shiny new OS needs an 800+ page book for people to use it effectively.

Pogue has written similar manuals for Mac OS X - are you saying Apple should be ashamed that each release of their shiny new OS needs an 800 page book for people to use it effectively?

As much as I'm glad this Pogue guy can get paid writing this book, but goddamn, we're talking about an operating system that costs hundreds of dollars. Microsoft should be ashamed that their shiny new OS needs an 800+ page book for people to use it effectively.

Pogue has written similar manuals for Mac OS X - are you saying Apple should be ashamed that each release of their shiny new OS needs an 800 page book for people to use it effectively?

As much as I'm glad this Pogue guy can get paid writing this book, but goddamn, we're talking about an operating system that costs hundreds of dollars. Microsoft should be ashamed that their shiny new OS needs an 800+ page book for people to use it effectively.

Pogue has written similar manuals for Mac OS X - are you saying Apple should be ashamed that each release of their shiny new OS needs an 800 page book for people to use it effectively?

As much as I'm glad this Pogue guy can get paid writing this book, but goddamn, we're talking about an operating system that costs hundreds of dollars. Microsoft should be ashamed that their shiny new OS needs an 800+ page book for people to use it effectively.

Pogue has written similar manuals for Mac OS X - are you saying Apple should be ashamed that each release of their shiny new OS needs an 800 page book for people to use it effectively?

When I need a book these days, I just go to my local bookshoppe. It's run by an older lady, and she's able to order virtually any book I need, right from the publisher.

Amazon still has a formidable selection of out-of-print books which the publisher has dropped but which are still vital in the sciences. Were it not for Amazon, how else could students buy their own copy of, say, Joseph's Synchrony and Diachrony of the Balkan Infinitive (Cambridge University Press, 1983)?

And beyond the mere buying of books (not to mention rare CDs), the site has other useful features that your neighbourhood bookstore doesn't. Reviews, wishlists you can send to relatives around Christmas time, and (once you've reviewed a couple of hundred titles) recommendations that are actually fairly interesting.

And finally, I divide my time between Finland and Romania. There's no substantial English-language offerings there. Amazon is a great resource for expats.

Fox no longer possessed the ability to be the first to display the content to the general public.

Is that supposed to be tangible?

Meanwhile, this ECOTtotal wasn't the one who made first disclosure, so he wasn't the one "thieving" this ability from Fox.

All evidence points to someone getting the premiere-DVD ripped before it was to be made available on store shelves, or a leak in the production chain. Hell, I've received pre-ordered DVDs from Amazon.com a day before they were supposed to be made available on more than one occasion!

Here's a couple pertinent questions: was the YouTube video widescreen (16:9)? and is the DVD widescreen (or anamorphic) or full-screen?

However in this case it is truly theft, because the 24 video was never in the public to "copy". This was outright theft of what is basically confidential data.

That may depend on whether or not you consider an unencrypted satellite uplink transmission "in the public". First-run syndicated programming is often like this. Hell, I saw the first episode of Viper on my cable, without commercials, well before its premiere and well before I'd even heard of the show. I've even seen rough storyboarded commercials before they were finalized, in 10, 15, 20, and 30 second versions. (That may have been before our local CableVision become Time Warner Cable. I'd have to research the dates.)

I wouldn't expect network programming to be in the clear on satellite like that however. But then I don't have the hardware to pick up those signals.

However, reading the article (and the article linked to by the article), it appears to only be the first four episodes of 24 that were made available in advance, again pointing to someone getting ahold of the DVDs of the first four episodes prior to their street date (the day after the two-day premiere).

And this "ECOTtotal" probably wasn't even the ripper nor could identify who was. As reported, the episodes were available elsewhere before they were available on YouTube. So if they do succeed in tracking him down, he's screwed.

As others have pointed out, rental stores also got them early and some Blockbuster employees were permitted to rent them before they were made available to customers. So how public is public? A privileged group had access early, but who had the privilege was not under control of Fox. It just wasn't broadcast-televised.

(Huh, my Firefox installation's dictionary didn't include the word "ahold".)

Barnes and Noble is selling this book for $27.99, but Amazon.com is only selling it for $23.09!

Save yourself $4.90 by buying the book here: Windows Vista: the Missing Manual. That's a total savings of 17.51%!

That is an associates link - if that bothers you, don't click it. If history holds true there will be a non-associates link available right quick if not already

Here ya go.

You can get it at amazon for $23.09 (eligible for free shipping if you go over $25). (That is an associates link - if that bothers you, don't click it. If history holds true there will be a non-associates link available right quick if not already)
 
It has received very high reviews there. (bookpool has it for about 59 cents less - though you do have to buy more to get free shipping - that one is not any kind of associates link or anything-- just giving some options.)

Before someone jumps all over me, I should mention Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation.

-Ted

This had been discussed here, and the plan to create microscopic black holes on Earth is something to be wary of.

Am I the only one concerned that making mini-black holes might suck in the whole earth? That they're trying this kind of stuff is pretty scary. What about doing it on the moon or on mars instead? Sheesh..

Heh, the premise of Roger MacBride Allen's science-fiction novel The Ring of Charon (first volume of The Hunted Earth) is that an experiment out near Pluto ends up swallowing the Earth into a wormhole leading to a far-off part of the universe. One can't seem to get far enough away from the Earth to tinker with creation fearlessly.

Did Captain Copyright even have "super powers", or was he just a muscular and dandily-attired dude who took it upon himself to educate kids? Even if you can't use the term "super hero", which probably shouldn't apply in this case, there's always the term "masked adventurers" a la Watchmen .

If the song is NOT on iTunes (recent example: Justified & Ancient by Tammy & the KLF), I click the icon I keep right next to iTunes... Poisoned. It's exceedingly rare not to find exactly what I want on P2P. As far as I'm concerned, I made a good faith effort to pay for it, and my conscience is clear.

One more click for your icon panel.

For those interested in this field, may i suggest a book, Naturally Intelligent Systems? It's slightly older, but it explains a wide gamut of neural networks without a single equation, and manages to be funny and engaging at the same time. it is one of the three books that changed my life (by it's content and ideas alone - i'm not otherwise into AI). highly recommended: Naturally Intelligent Systems on amazon

This goes beyond neural networks. This is actually simulating the behavior of physical neurons, but in silicon. Physical nerve cells have extremely nonlinear behavior in various regimes (hyperpolarization, depolarization, etc.). To what extent is this is necessary for complex behavior exhibited by animals? Frankly, we don't know. This research will hopefully answer some questions (and raise a host of others in the process).

Neural networks are a simplification of the actual electrical response of a neuron. Or, to put it another way, we "dumb down" neural networks to the point where we can grasp how the math involved in backpropagation, etc., work out. This isn't a criticism -- in fact, it's a useful abstraction -- but we've only scratched the surface of neural networks in this manner.

Boahen is a graduate out of Carver Mead's lab at Caltech. Carver spent a lot of time trying to replicate the behavior of neurons, the cochlea, and the retina in silicon. If you're an electrical engineer, take a look at his (rather readable) book, Analog VLSI and Neural Systems.

-FL

Well, I haven't bought a single sony related product since the CD-DRM crap they pulled... so, I'm pushing for HD-DVD (despite my distain for MS)... I will probably be hooking up one of these to my Media Center box...

Holy shit, this is the cheapest Dx 10 card I could find.

Non affiliate link

Barnes and Noble is selling this book for $39.99, but Amazon.com is only selling it for $28.39!
 
Save yourself $11.60 by buying the book here: PHP 5 in Practice. That's a total savings of 29.01%!

For some reason, the post links to B & N, but it seems Amazon has it cheaper. Take a look at the "Used and new..." listings. Why does the article link to an overpriced site?

Reminds me of this book: http://www.amazon.com/Cloudy-Chance-Meatballs-Judi -Barrett/dp/0689707495

As described in: http://www.amazon.com/Intelligence-Jeff-Hawkins/dp /0805078533/sr=8-1/qid=1171294577/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/ 002-9722002-6024059?ie=UTF8&s=books
P.

Now to mention that the US's actions for the last fucking hundred years have fueled Middle East hatred of the US in the first place.

So let me just see if I've got this straight - 100 years ago the Middle East was a peaceful, happy paradise with children singing and free candy for everyone? But then the mean evil US did something and now we have terrorists?

Wow, you are a giant sucking black hole of ignorance.

The problem with the Middle East isn't the US, it's the culture of the Middle East. They have a culture of sexism and discrimination and hatred. Of course, no every individual buys into that culture. There are plenty of good arabs. But as a whole, their culture is terribly backwards and breeds hatred.

Since we're going back 100 years, tell me this: what is it that the US did to deserve the Barbary Pirates? That was really the US's first encounter with Muslim culture, so I could point to that and say that the Muslim's started it.

http://www.amazon.com/Sufferings-Africa-Incredible -Shipwreck-Enslavement/dp/1602390428
">Here's another great example of Muslim culture *before* they had any contact with the US

Another good book is the Kite Runner (maybe I've giving you too much credit in assuming you can read)

The point is, your hatred of the US is just an easy excuse so that you don't have to deal with the real problem - the culture. Contrast that with the culture of Japan or Germany. If there is anyone who has reason to hate the US, it should be Japan. And if they had the kind of culture that channeled that anger into violence then I'm sure we would have Japanese terrorists. But instead, they shed off the violence and now Japan and Germany are two of the richest most prosperous nations on Earth.

Basically all the wealth of the world is in the Middle East. They should own the rest of the world. But because their culture sucks they are pissing it all away. Not all of them actually. Dubai is a smart country that is doing something productive with its wealth.

While I found speculation on technological solutions for climate change entertaining in the terraforming context of Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy (beginning with Red Mars ), I question whether the same concepts would work for Earth. Using some kind of orbital shade to limit sunlight would cause problems with wildlife. If you've been through a total solar eclipse, you've seen how the birds go crazy, imagine sudden loss of sunlight lasting for a long time. And who's going to pay for this? In terraforming another planet, you might have companies willing to invest in the context of development of mining, but it's hard enough to get even governments to allocate funds for climate responsibility.

True free trade is like every other aspect of life. It is a survival of the fitest competition that is advantageous to the fit and to the detrement on the unfit. In the case of economics a free trade environment puts the power in the hands of those with means. One good example of this is the employer and employee relationship in 'right to work' states. There is little or no government intervention and the since the employer has the greatest means and therefore is more fit the employer exploits the unfit to become even more fit.

First, right to work laws by their very nature are an interevention in free trade otherwise the laws wouldn't exist. Having said that though I Googled "right to work" and went through the results without finding a paper that had the cons of these laws. So I then added "pro con" and still didn't get any result, of the ten results on the first page I went through 9 of them but didn't check the tenth one because it was about the abortion debate, that said what the cons of right to work laws are though some gave what are the pros. Now can you provide a link to a research paper that supports your belief that right to work laws only benefit those with the means (and what you mean by "means")?

Direct competition is to the benefit of the consumer and therefore not in the best interest of market leaders.

Agreed! And you don't have real competition if you don't have a free market. Any market with restrictions, other than those that enforce contracts and such, is not a free market. Neither is a market free that has any barrier other than financial, know how, and ability to enter. The closest we come to a free market in the US is in FOOS, or in the illegal drug trade.

Adam Smith believed that the only right that is certain is the right to keep the things that you earn and accumulate. What that means is that Adam Smith and the principle of capitalism supports that idea that you have a right to your luxery vehicle despite the consequences to others.

If you really believe this, I suggest you read Smith's The Theory of Moral Sentiments . His first sentence in it is "How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature, which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it."

I can only imagine what that roaming charge looks like.

I'm sure it's "billions and billions". :)

Of course not (to the first question).

(to the second question:) There is a new, boldly non-sympathetic biography of Mao out that I am partway through. It won't EVER be allowed to be distributed in China, that you can count on. It says too much about Mao's opportunism and the total bankruptcy, going all the way back into the 1930's, of the Communists in China. It's not published by some pulp nut-case publisher.

No, I never, ever, read newspapers, and I don't have a fucking clue about anything regarding China.

Any more questions?

-FL

I mean come on, doesn't everyone know that the internet is run on Windows software and IE is the only REAL web browser! Anyone who uses anything else MUST be a hacker trying to break their site.

I don't think it's that at all. WalMart is so profitable because it targets average middle America. Its niche happens to be precisely the vast bulk of people who don't know much about computers and stick with the default Internet Explorer. Because the company targets this niche so successful, it obviously would feel little need to ensure that its site works with the minority of users who use other browsers. It's not fear of hackers, it's just a desire to do as little work as possible.

In any event, should we really care about not being to shop online at Wal-Mart? Check out a report like Fishman's The Wal-Mart Effect (New York: Penguin, 2006) and you'll be convinced to take your business anywhere but there. At the same time you help Grandma install Firefox to beat the constant threat of spyware and adware installation, you might also want to do a good turn by doing some shopping for her at a locally-owned store...assuming you have any left.

(A) I'm not at all comfortable this will be overturned on appeal (and what a waste of legal fees!).
(B) There is a long, illustrious, and exceedingly valuable tradition of nude photography as art, including (perhaps especially) of persons under the age of 18.

http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Bodies-Nudes-Polaro id-Collections/dp/3908163323/sr=8-1/qid=1171153037 /ref=sr_1_1/104-8147539-7210360?ie=UTF8&s=books

So this isn't merely a travesty of the American justice system. It is a First Amendment violation, because constitutionally the crime CAN'T be the transmission of these photographs or, as the judges implied, the existence of the photos themselves. It can only be how they are used.

The average age of first sexual encounter in the US is 17 (might even be true for Slashdotters), so by the standards of our legal system, we are a nation of rapists. It's not just the politicians and corporations.

Time, maybe, to rethink our laws.

"Whatever happened to 'you show me your pee-pee and I'll show you mine'".

Maybe it's the parenting concept we have got wrong, more especially since going nuclear.

Read Judith Rich Harris's The Nurture Assumption with an open mind if you want to know where I'm coming from.

This is a very good point. Consider similarly, Dave Pritchard, the amazing MIT atomic physicist, who co-chaired a conference in 1992 on alien abduction. Weird stuff and a bit embarrassing to Pritchard's colleagues, but did not detract from his main work in atomic physics.

A more difficult case is Shockley, whose dabblings into eugenics and whose outright racism justly derailed his career but who undeniably was one of the crucial figures who set off the solid-state electronics revolution. Shockley is qualitatively different from Jahn or Pritchard because his private pet projects were noxious where theirs were innocuous.

This is a very good point. Consider similarly, Dave Pritchard, the amazing MIT atomic physicist, who co-chaired a conference in 1992 on alien abduction. Weird stuff and a bit embarrassing to Pritchard's colleagues, but did not detract from his main work in atomic physics.

A more difficult case is Shockley, whose dabblings into eugenics and whose outright racism justly derailed his career but who undeniably was one of the crucial figures who set off the solid-state electronics revolution. Shockley is qualitatively different from Jahn or Pritchard because his private pet projects were noxious where theirs were innocuous.

If you're interested in this topic, you might enjoy the book "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" by Matt Ridley. The reviews on the Amazon page summarize it better than I could. Worth reading.

The spot price of NAND an 8Gbit (1Gbyte) chip is $5.15 at the moment

http://www.eetimes.com/news/latest/showArticle.jht ml?articleID=197002923

A 4GB iPod Nano is $224 according to amazon.com. Adding 28GBytes of flash should be $144.2, so the total cost should be $368. Add in a few bucks for a bigger PCB since we're talking about 32 flash chips, and markup since Apple is not a charity, but it could be around $400 retail.

I'm glad to see my submission sparking some good discussion. (But I was surprised that only toupsie (heh!) caught the reference to a book by Glenn Reynolds, AKA Instapundit.)

It's true that the DoD has good reasons for requiring equipment to be "infantry-proof". The difference between "good" and "good enough" matters in most fields of human activity, and has done for millennia. The infantry themselves often prefer quick and dirty; this device is, in a way, just another of thousands of in-the-field innovations ... only a lot more high-tech.

Are you, William Shatner? Or perhaps, Horatio Cane? I couldn't help, but notice, your plentiful pauses, throughout your post.

According to the Ukrainian (and Russian) rules of punctuation, your first coma is erroneous, but you are missing one before "perhaps". The last two should not be there either.

As for the English rules, nobody — except for a few professors — seems to know exactly, what they are. Makes it very hard for someone, who learns the language by example, to figure them out. But I'm working on it...

Oh man, do you know how many puppies will be blended because of this article's title! Don't feed the monster!

this one? (though reviews there are a bit mixed on if it is all that good or not)