Slashdot Mirror

After researching dozens of websites, a dozen stores, and going back and forth between different models, I finally bought an LCD HDTV last month. I decided on the LVM-42W2 from Westinghouse. It has 1080p resolution, tons of inputs (including two DVIs and HDMI for hooking up your laptop) and works flawlessly. I couldn't be happier with the picture and it's by far the best price for a 40"+ 1080p screen.

Bull. In The Design and Evolution of C++, Stroustrup clearly lays out how he decided which features should be included. He was sensitive to feature creep, and rejected far more ideas than he accepted. Ideas he did accept had to be useful to a majority of programmers, feasible to implement and feasible to teach.

And frankly, C is not hard if you have enough understanding of a computer. It is widely considered a small language that does its intended job well.

I first heard of Xandros when No Starch Press based their book Linux Made Easy on the distro. I assumed it was a distro meant for those with simple home needs. But here we hear about a "professional" edition. What's the niche of the distro, and how do its maintainers intend to set it apart from the many other options out there?

What about Morse code? Is that not code either?

Maybe you also want to convince San Ling and Chaoping Xing, authors of Coding Theory: A First Course that "codes" must be Turing complete.

Or maybe you aught to realize that words can be used in different ways, and the term "HTML code" is actually matches pretty well with the traditional usage of the word. At least it matches a lot better than your Turing completeness requirement.

The book's $15 cheaper at http://www.amazon.com/Designing-Web-Standards-2nd- VOICES/dp/0321385551/ than at Barnes & Nobles

Barnes and Noble is selling this book for $44.99, but Amazon.com is only selling it for $29.69!

Save yourself $15.30 by buying the book here: Designing With Web Standards. That's a total savings of 34.01%!

After reading the linked "details" article, I am at a loss to tell whether or not this will work with HD-Tivo. I've wanted to buy one of these for a long time (and they've recently hit the market, but at $700ish I can't justify the cost

Amazon's third party sellers are showing $660 now. After Christmas, the price might even get down to the mid-500s for those lucky enough to order from the cheapest seller before he's out of stock. And if the DRM is a major annoyance, as the reviews suggest, one might even start seeing very cheap used items.

Is anyone reminded of the descriptions of the arcing loops in Stanislaw Lem's Solaris?

I am constantly amazed by the number of people posting here who have strong opinions on climate change without, evidently, having read much of the available literature. (Cue the "you must be new here" posts...)

Granted, I believed what I heard through the media and education system too, until I met Sherwood Idso in 1990. A good starting point for Slashdotters (and the BBC, for that matter) is The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming , in which Patrick J. Michaels cites hundreds of peer-reviewed papers that question the catastrophic predictions of "mainstream" climate research, and explains how such research is systematically suppressed.

For some reason Slashdot has linked to B & N, but it seems Amazon has it cheaper.

In The Satanic Gases: Clearing the Air about Global Warming , Patrick J. Michaels does a great job of explaining how this happens. I'll try to post some excerpts here when I get home to my copy tonight.

This one is pretty incompatible with that one, so far as I could ever figure out.

Apparently, not enough people have read The Art of Fisting, so there are no "opposite" books to read.

Grandparent poster isnt *entirely* wrong. Parent is right, of course, due to the evolving language. However, bemuse did used to mean something akin to (paraphrasing): "to amuse in a borderline annoying fashion". In fact, even in the parent's post, you can get that from definition 3 still. So... bemusement is *really* supposed to mean reluctant amusement. I hate it, but I have to admit... it amuses me. Maybe like clowns for some people.

Of course, the evolution of language ruins complicated words like these, so I have to say to parent that pulling out the latest dictionary defintions of a word doesnt necessarily make me feel any better about what that word is SUPPOSED to mean. For example, have we reached the point yet where the word "irony" is just defined as a synonymn for "coincidental"? I see it coming.

For anyone further interested in the madness that is the english language, you should check this out: http://www.amazon.com/Mother-Tongue-Bill-Bryson/dp /0380715430.

Finally someone who makes some sense in this discussion. I agree with most points you made (I will disagree with one a bit further down). "One cannot hear a difference" is one of the most annoying /. memes to me, regardless of whether it is applied to lossy codecs or good audio equipment in general.

About lossyness:
I agree with you that ears can be trained, and that you won't miss stuff if you don't know it should be there in the first place, or don't care whether it is. When I decided how I want to encode my music I did a quite extensive test and I found that to me even high-bitrate mp3 encodings made by lame can sound noticeably different from the CD. For example, I encoded the first track of Mike Watt's Contemplating the Engine Room CD. It starts with an e-bass solo, and using reasonable lame presets there were no artifacts and I certainly could hear the notes played. Somebody expecting nothing more will probably be happy with the compressed sound. However when you know how a bass can sound and listen to the CD, you realize that there is so much more in Watt's bass sound: it is full of harmonics that make the bass come alive and turn it into the recognizable Watt bass in the first place. And these harmonics are gone even in the highest lame preset. (And oggenc adds a nasty hiss which makes the song completely unlistenable.)

About equipment:
You said "All of the high end audio products generally have no benifit for the average consumer, but in a studio setting, when trained ears are listening, that expensive gear tends to be more valued", and that's where I disagree a bit because you make it sound as if only a professional sound person could appreciate good gear. I's agree that someone who is not particularly interested in music has no need for good gear. That's pretty obvious. If you're going to listen to music only as background noise while cooking, go with the cheap stuff by all means.
However I would argue that everyone who likes music and spends time actually listening to it will profit from good gear. To everyone who doubts that I can just recommend to grab a few favorite CDs and make an appointment at a good hifi shop for a listening session. "Good" means "a shop that has solid equipment from the lower to very high price ranges, but that will not rip you off by trying to sell you air conditioners."

Not directed at you, but I need to say this once on /. because it has been bugging me a long time:
To those discussion contributors who lose all ability to differentiate when they hear the word "audiophile": one cannot deny that wackos exist in this field. On the other hand, since when is being an analog geek not allowed on /. anymore? Sound recording and reproduction (that is, turning a complex air vibration into an electric current, storing it in some form, and later turning it back into an air vibration again that sounds as close to the original as possible despite this happening in a completely different room situation) is an extremely complex topic. And, like it or not, there is still a significant analogue part to this, and will be for the foreseeable future. This means that you have to live with the difficulty of interacting with the real world in a less deterministic way. Only recently has it become possible to simulate microphones, amps, and speakers digitally, and sound reproduction has benefited tremendously, especially by making good gear much cheaper. But until then the only way to become better was to design analogue gear and try it out, relying on basic measuring equipment and your ears to assess the sound quality. This IMHO is hardcore geekdom worthy of honorable mention on /. and not ridicule. There were and are serious practitioners out there like Nelson Pass or the naim guys who have dedicated d

So, in addition to short-shrifting consumers with less-than-perfect (to the ear) product, the movers of downloadable music thumb their noses at the collective profession of sound engineers and engineering... pretty rude.

Not all sound engineers are as dedicated to the art as you suggest. Okay, sure, if one wants to listen to something recorded in a state-of-the-art lab by consummate lovers of both the music itself and clean audio in general, then one should invest in the right conditions.

From my own collection, I'll take the world premiere recording of Boulez's Repons as an example. It was recorded in the projection space at IRCAM, one of the world's foremost music and acoustics research laboratories, and I only listen to it from the CD on my home stereo system, which isn't the most whizbang, but the best I can afford.

Contrast this with Rush's 2002 album Vapor Trails , a musically strong release which was recorded in poor circumstances and remastered in worse. The clipping that plagues every track in the album has long been criticized by fans (see the Amazon reviews for further info). So, since the guys who engineered the album didn't aim for clear audio, I feel no shame in putting this in 160 kbps Ogg Vorbis and listening to it with merely average headphones on my portable MP3 player.

As has already been said in many places in the discussion, lossless is probably going to be a draw mostly for classical (or, in my case, modern-classical) fans.

So, in addition to short-shrifting consumers with less-than-perfect (to the ear) product, the movers of downloadable music thumb their noses at the collective profession of sound engineers and engineering... pretty rude.

Not all sound engineers are as dedicated to the art as you suggest. Okay, sure, if one wants to listen to something recorded in a state-of-the-art lab by consummate lovers of both the music itself and clean audio in general, then one should invest in the right conditions.

From my own collection, I'll take the world premiere recording of Boulez's Repons as an example. It was recorded in the projection space at IRCAM, one of the world's foremost music and acoustics research laboratories, and I only listen to it from the CD on my home stereo system, which isn't the most whizbang, but the best I can afford.

Contrast this with Rush's 2002 album Vapor Trails , a musically strong release which was recorded in poor circumstances and remastered in worse. The clipping that plagues every track in the album has long been criticized by fans (see the Amazon reviews for further info). So, since the guys who engineered the album didn't aim for clear audio, I feel no shame in putting this in 160 kbps Ogg Vorbis and listening to it with merely average headphones on my portable MP3 player.

As has already been said in many places in the discussion, lossless is probably going to be a draw mostly for classical (or, in my case, modern-classical) fans.

The truth lays in the middle ground between your argument and conspiracy argument. Conspiracy theorists are as much wacko absolutists as you guys who believe there is only total disorder in government.

There are actors in government, business or any private endeavour, who have interests and use their influence to make sure events happen. Read the pulitizer winning book "The power broker" By Robert A. Caro for over a thousand pages of well documented research on examples of a individual who had control over governmental systems. Sometimes the actors influence works and the events pan out.

Othertimes it doesn't work because of greater systemic issues and unforeseen events. Take international politics for example. The greatest single predictive analysis for international events has been the realist approach (the liberal and constructivist approaches have also been useful). It posits that actors will use force (usually military, to a lesser degree economic) to get what they want. This happens all the time in international affairs. Sometimes it works (bombing of Hiroshima), sometimes it doesn't (Current Iraq). Not only does this theory allow control over how affairs might pan out for the press and general public, it also gives governments an idea how it might turn out. So your idea that there is no control is as ludicrous as some sinister hand in control.

Having read Hard Drive, one of his more popular autobiographies (which I didn't detect any bias in whatsoever), I got the impression that Bill Gates' parents, and his girlfriend at the time whose name I forget, pushed him to start spending his money charitably. I'll see if I can locate the passage..

I can't, maybe someone else knows where it is. Even if it's true this doesn't mean Gates isn't a very generous person of course (ruthless and generous perhaps).

Read the Gates Foundation page on what they're doing about sub Sahara African malaria and then read Plague Time by Paul Ewald describing precisely why none of the approaches used by the Gates Foundation can be really effective against a sexually reproducing, horizontally transmitted pathogen like malaria -- and describing the approach that actually works -- which of course the Gates Foundation can't pursue because none of the grant writers are serious about really stopping the scourge of malaria.

Beautiful. You cite Capital Research to back you up. It's an organization "whose stated mission is to do 'opposition research' exposing the funding sources behind consumer, health and environmental groups." I too need to read more Capital Research because of those terrible liberal causes like watching out for consumers and addressing public health issues - like poisons in the environment - are way out of hand. Thank you for bringing this very important research to our attention, my good sir!

I also like your sense of fair play and objectivity in selecting Michelle Malkin. I much prefer her 2005 perspective rather than this article from 2006 from the liberal spin machine. While we are talking about her ground-breaking research, we should also point out her other important ideas such as her book documenting the important need to bring back Japanese-style internment camps for Arab Americans - which is also coincidentaly based on the cutting-edge research of another person doing important work exposing the myth of the so-called "holocaust".

I can only applaud the efforts of the Slashdot moderators to make sure that your comments get pushed right to the top. No one should be compelled to go through another day without an awareness of these two fascinating, unbiased sources of good information. As a good conservative, I am finally starting to feel like Slashdot is like a second home.

Nah, the Cold War "victory" was of the same type as the "victory" over Germany after WW 1. The Allies beat the Germans, but they left an impoverished, dispirited people who were educated and in possession of fairly advanced technology. The time was ripe for a charismatic leader to come in with promises of wealth and victory and rebuild their war machine. Same goes for Russia ca. 2006.

-b.

The cold war never ended. The soviet empire coming down was a farce according to KGB agents who defected. Notice that book was published back in 1984.

Russia is slowly getting back onto her feet economically. She paid off the last of her Paris club debt from the Soviet era under Putin. She helped Bush stumble into the Iraqi war by provinding false intellegence much like America did to Russia to lure them into Afghanistan years ago. The spike in oil prices has helped the Russian economy. So why was Litvinenko killed? Well, he was alleged that al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri was trained by the FSB (KGB)in Dagestan in the years before the 9/11 attacks.

The US is still fighting the cold war by proxy, even if they don't realize it.

I can't see a reason why the Russian government would poison the former spy so long after he defected.

Because he was publishing embarassing exposees about Russian politics. His book Blowing Up Russia blames the Russian government for the apartment bombings used as an excuse for escalating the war in Chechnya. It's easy to see why some would want to shut him up permanently.

They are lies told by their proletariat in order to keep their position in their society and to convince their workers that they are paid the best in the World.

Marxism hasn't been the publicly asserted guiding philosophy for China since Tiananmen. The rhetoric of Mao Zedong is almost totally forgotten among the younger generations. See Meisner's Mao's China and After (Free Press, 3rd ed. 1999) for the rather dramatic shift in perspective from the 1980s. Now it's just generic authoritarianism and a good dose of Han nationalism. Get with the times.

The definitive book on sharpening:

http://www.amazon.com/Complete-Guide-Sharpening-Le onard-Lee/dp/1561581259/

Worth every cent too.

I don't think that the majority of people are psychopaths.

That's true, I don't think most people will intentionally hit me. But here's a sobering thought: According to "The Sociopath Next Door" by Martha Stout http://www.amazon.com/Sociopath-Next-Door-Martha-S tout/dp/0767915828/sr=8-1/qid=1165002752/ref=pd_bb s_sr_1/104-3007941-4375118?ie=UTF8&s=books, 4% of people are sociopathic. Yikes. So how many drivers do I have to encounter (assuming they are representative of the general population) to have a 50% chance of finding someone who'd run me over without a second thought? About 17. There's another response to my previous post that illustrates this point well.

I know other things can kill me, and I do keep riding, but the odds are against me. Suburban USA is just not set up for bike transport, and the "I've got mine, get out of my way!" attitude of car drivers around here is all too common.

That reminds me of a great children's book I ran across a few years ago called Motel of the Mysteries. It was a comical take on what archaeologists might think of our culture as they unearth a 20th century motel. It really makes you wonder how utterly wrong our understanding of history may be. The one thing I remember best from the history of ancient Greece is that all of our knowledge of that culture is based on a single book and a few fragments.

A book I have - published back in 1988 proposed the same idea. It's a good read. Here's the Amazon link if anyone wants to try and pick up a copy:

The Pryamids

TCP/IP wasn't really innovative. The Hawaii based ALOHANET inspired Bob Metcalfe in creating Ethernet. The protocol they used thereon ( PUP : PARC Universal Packet ) was largely passed to the creators of TCP/IP as a series of rather specific "suggestions" by the members of PARC. They did so against the wishes of Xerox who had previously refused to share the PUP to be used outside of Xerox. See Dealers of Lightning for source ( and to call me out on incorrectly remembered details ).

The article says the collider should be able to duplicate conditions just after the Big Bang. We're only guessing about conditions after the Big Bang and we don't know what caused the event. So how do we know they won't reproduce conditions just before the Big Bang? Oops... At least in Schild's Ladder, civilization had time to run like hell.

The parent makes a point that should be stressed.

High-energy physics has reached a point where the cost-effectiveness of larger particle accelerators is questionable. And building a particle accelerator that could test string theory is both technically and economically impossible today.

Astrophysicist David Lindley wrote The End of Physics: The Myth of a Unified Theory, a book that explains the current state of affairs in high-energy physics and astrophysics.

As for string theory, Lindley doesn't take sides in the book. He merely explains the evolution of high-energy physics and astrophysics and points out how theory in both fields has become less and less based on experimental and observational data and more and more based on simplifying theoretical assumptions.

"Zune is basically going to pretty much kill off all non-iPod players"

Not likely. Despite the title of the article, go take a look at the actual sales rank of the MS-Zune players on Amazon. The black is #52, the rest are significantly below that (greater than 250). Sansa has a player in the top 10, and a 2nd one at number 11, Creative has a player in the top 20, Sansa has a couple more scattered around the top 100. Apple has players everywhere on this list. Everywhere.

Again, I urge folks to look at the actual Amazon site instead of reading articles about Amazon.

Here's the link:
    http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/5 1549011/ref=pd_ts_pg_1/002-1687820-0216019?ie=UTF8 &pg=1

Keeping in mind that the holiday is when a big portion of sales, unless MS drops the Zune prices down by about 40%, this this is headed for the bottom pretty quickly. While that's obviously my opinion, all you need to do is watch the trend of the player. Just the novelty of this thing should have kept it in the top 10 until xmas. But to fall to #52 in just a week is pretty amazing.

the Amazon sales rank may have been thrown off by Zune sales being divided between the three colors.

You mean, like the iPod sales being divided between 14 or so models and colours?

Yes, the zune's initial week was fairly good. If you read just a little further on any mainstream press article, however, you'll see that the total failure was attributed not to first week sales, but to the fact that after all the fanboys and easy-to-fool idiots had bought one, sales dropped to almost nothing. The same Amazon sales rank that was #2 in the first week was #13 in the second if I recall correctly. Right now, it's #60, which definitely qualifies as "abysmal". The 4 GB silver nano, the lowest listed iPod model, beats it jumping on one leg with both hands tied behind its back (rank #15).

Sorry, MS fanboy, zune is as dead as a doornail and twice as hard to sell.

the Amazon sales rank may have been thrown off by Zune sales being divided between the three colors.

You mean, like the iPod sales being divided between 14 or so models and colours?

Yes, the zune's initial week was fairly good. If you read just a little further on any mainstream press article, however, you'll see that the total failure was attributed not to first week sales, but to the fact that after all the fanboys and easy-to-fool idiots had bought one, sales dropped to almost nothing. The same Amazon sales rank that was #2 in the first week was #13 in the second if I recall correctly. Right now, it's #60, which definitely qualifies as "abysmal". The 4 GB silver nano, the lowest listed iPod model, beats it jumping on one leg with both hands tied behind its back (rank #15).

Sorry, MS fanboy, zune is as dead as a doornail and twice as hard to sell.

Well I think it's a little more insightful to look at just mp3 players, since Zune doesn't compete with HD TVs or blank CD-Rs. And to restrict it further, to just the hard drive based MP3 players, since people looking to buy a 4GB MP3 player won't even consider Zune, it shows up at #6: http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/1 5752041/ref=pd_ts_e_nav/002-0155549-1503201 . You could even argue that it should really only be compared with the other 30 GB MP3 players, which would make it #4. So really that's not too bad considering what a bad rep MS has and how strong the iPod is in this market.

How about the fact that an apple sleeve accessory is destroying it by over 30 slots?

Damn, post *then* drink.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/5 1549011/ref=pd_ts_pg_1/103-5417193-5657455?ie=UTF8 &pg=1

Turns out Zune was the #2 Digital Audio player in its first week of sales.

That a RECORD PLAYER is over a dozen places higher in the list than the top selling Zune.

I wouldn't agree that it will take a PS4 to kill off the PS line- there's a lot of press out in all media that's already declaring the Wii as the winner over the PS3...

And vice versa if you look around such as this one which was referenced in What Analysts Will Be Buying For Christmas

...citing the early sales numbers...

Both the PS3 and the Wii have sold out all available units, with the Wii actually having a slightly longer average shelf life than the PS3 (probably due to supply rather than actual demand).

the $600 price tag is daunting... there's still a perceived price ceiling with consoles that the 360 seemed to actually push against, and Sony has jumped completely over.

This again is based on misleading information. No previously high priced console had a marketed predecessor let alone a market dominant one, which should only be seen to mean that there is a price ceiling for entry into the console market, which is why no respectable analyst has mentioned the price ceiling issue. Second in real/relative cost the PS3 is cheaper than any of the examples commonly used to illustrate the price ceiling.

The average person... looks at a game console, sees a $600 price tag, ... then look next door, see a $400 or a $250 price tag

Or the average person looks at High Definition Video players and sees $1000 price tag, then looks next door and sees $500 or $600, plus gets the ability to play the most extensive line up of video games currently available.

...and the semi-negative press about the PS3 being mainly for "true gamers" with HDTV's, and I would expect Sony's market share to fall considerably.

The HDTV market share is rising and a significant rate and will continue to do so until it is the dominant format. There is no doubt in anyones mind that HDTV will eventually be the dominant format. As the HDTV market share increases so will the desire for peripherals capable of High Definition output. Secondly the difference between "true gamers" and casual gamers shrinks every year, but that is just an opinion (from a casual gamer) so take it how ever you like.

...the explosive sales of DSs among non-gaming adults and the relative failure of the PSP...

If you consider selling 1 million more units a failure, or if you prefer 8% less in world wide sales, let alone the fact that the PSP is the 36th and 40th best seller in Amazon's computer & video games category (all be it well behind the DS, but certainly not a failure). The Idea that the PSP is a failure is yet another fallacy which is commonly passed.

And worse-case scenario for Sony, if they lose enough in system sales, and don't recoup the amount, the entire company may fail or at least downsize drastically, considering the problems they've had in other areas, such as laptop batteries and digital cameras

Beyond my previous comments, which fairly debunk the argument, I would like someone to give me examples of a $72 Billion in revenue company (30th world wide), or even close, that has failed catastrophically without the involvement of illegal activity. I mean look how bad the Valdez global catastrophe did to Exxon (#1 rank, $370 billion in revenue company).

It's nice to think that a company we don't like is going to fail or if our preferred manufacture and products ar

Rather than click parent's link, this plain-text link takes you to the same discount:
http://www.amazon.com/Practices-Agile-Developer-Pr agmatic-Programmers/dp/097451408X

Or if you still don't trust MY link, go to amazon.com and put in the title Agile Developer.

Fair disclosure: I have used books for sale through Amazon, though not this one.

Barnes and Noble is selling this book for $29.95, but Amazon.com is only selling it for $19.77!

Save yourself $10.18 by buying the book here: Practices of an Agile Developer. That's a total savings of 33.99%!

The review here inexplicably links to B & N, who offer the book at a fairly high price compared to Amazon.

That's quite a bold prediction. Have you ever actually read a detailed account of what happened? You should. I strongly recommend Howard Zinn's People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present. Your comment sounds particularly uniformed.

Cheers.

Here you go...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060933267

Well that's no surprise - have you seen the reviews on Amazon? . I'm not sure I'd buy a product like that given that most of the reviews are so negative.

Even Paul 'WinSuperSite' Thurrott thinks it's a disaster :

http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/zune.asp

What amazes me is that they managed to get so many things wrong on the software side of it, even when the hardware is quite decent. But there's nothing quite like the stupidity of a committee, maybe the software design process was something akin to that used for Vista.

As I write, the Zune is number 22 on Amazon's top MP3 players. Although it really isn't a fair count: 14 of the top 22 are iPods.

The last time I checked the Zune was at #96 and at risk of completely falling of the top 100 Amazon list.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/bestsellers/electronics/5 1549011/ref=pd_ts_pg_4/103-2463489-7006241?ie=UTF8 &pg=4

I remember reading about the "victory" of the pro-science anti-religion crowd, where they got a school board to not only fight back the religious assault on evolution, but to actually prohibit any questioning of evolution in the classroom... I wanted to cry...

Science REQUIRES questioning. Elevating scientific theories to dogma isn't science, it's religion. Prohibiting the questioning of a scientific theory undermines the whole point of science.

While I'm not terribly approving of the Church's historical stands on research that contradicted their religious views, I think that the anti-religion crowd has adopted scientific evidence that undermines a fundamentalist reading. Interesting, in Genesis and the Big Bang Theory and MIT educated scientist and Orthodox Jew, has been working to reconcile the teachings of the Torah with scientific knowledge, based upon the assumption that the two are in-sync, and whenever you think that they aren't, one is being misinterpreted.

The fact is, the religious world isn't as one-sided as Slashdot portrays it, but the anti-religious crowd is risking turning themselves into what they hate, a close-minded society that is as dogmatic as the medieval Church.

> Where is this disconnect happening in their heads?

If you really want an answer to this question I very strongly urge you to read: Conservatives Without Conscience by John Dean (former White House counsel under Nixon)
(http://www.amazon.com/Conservatives-Without-Consc ience-John-Dean/dp/0670037745/sr=8-1/qid=116474367 5/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-6914497-3816065?ie=UTF8&s=bo oks)

In it he describes how Conservatism as a movement has been largely radicalized by so-called "Right Wing Authoritarians".

If you really want to know how these people think and why your country has become what it has. Read this book.