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Get a copy now before it's banned....

http://www.amazon.com/1984-George-Orwell/dp/045152 4934/sr=8-1/qid=1162295165/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-445943 2-6695308?ie=UTF8&s=books

D

A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975
In Retrospect:: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

I wanted a relatively unbiased view and then arguments from both sides. It's a good method if you have the time and a willingness to actually understand the issues.

Cheers,
Dave

A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975
In Retrospect:: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

I wanted a relatively unbiased view and then arguments from both sides. It's a good method if you have the time and a willingness to actually understand the issues.

Cheers,
Dave

A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941-1975
In Retrospect:: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam
Dereliction of Duty: Johnson, McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam

I wanted a relatively unbiased view and then arguments from both sides. It's a good method if you have the time and a willingness to actually understand the issues.

Cheers,
Dave

the money spent on preventing global warming is a waste. ...
If global warming provides us with an opportunity to implement renewable energy, it would provide economic stability for future generations.
Thus, the money would not be wasted. Instead, it should be considered as an insurance policy.

Um, sound like you want money to be spent on renewables to fix global warming. I think that we need a whole switch to nuclear. http://physicsweb.org/articles/world/14/6/2
This was around 2001, but asks do we really need nuclear? This is what that article had:

"Estimates suggest that, at current extraction rates, we have over 200 years' supply of oil, 450 for natural gas and over 1500 for coal, the weighted average being nearly 700 years (see Rogner in further reading). Even this is an understatement, since it excludes natural-gas hydrates in the permafrost and under the ocean floors, and other sources that together are thought to amount to five times these values."

700 years of known fossil fuel reserves. I was trying to find some info on the amount of nuclear reserves. The information was kinda surprising. Nuclear is uneconomical. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power At current cost levels, we have about 50 years of nuclear reserves. Sounds dangerously low. Well, that's at the current price. If the price of uranium doubled, the nuclear reserves jump to a life span of hundreds of years. (That doesn't even take into using the Thorium cycle rather that uranium. That'll give us thousands of years.) I like renewables, but after actually looking into it, I'm not worried about running out of fuels any time soon. Heck, I'm more worried about environmentalists getting laws put into place that say you can't use any form of non-renewable energy source. Humanity is stupid enough to put really harmful restrictions on our energy use.

I just finished reading this book http://www.amazon.com/Family-Tree-Sheri-S-Tepper/d p/0380791978 last night. I got pissed that the author is animals have more right to live on the planet than humanity and let's have small religious minitoriy that makes up less than .01% of the population be the heros and create a disease that kills off all the rest of humanity and lets room for sentient animals. It was an o.k. story, but the more that I read of the eco political slant and let's bio-engineer animals to be as intelligent as we are and then say humanity is using up too much room... well pissed me off big time. I like sci-fi, I like fantasy. I don't like any eco folks saying that I or others are using up too much resources just because they don't like humanity. I think we could house 90-100 billion humans easily on this globe. If we have to remove some un-needed wasted wild life to make it happen, so be it. Humanity is natural wild life. Nature was meant to be for us to bend to our will, not for us to bend over and take it just because we don't have the ability to do anything about it. Hurricanes, earth quakes, torandos, floods, and thunderstorms are annoying, but they don't slow us down for long. We can beat this planet. Don't under estimate humanity. Remove our current energy methods and just make us have renewables and we'd figure a way to make it work. It'd be annoying, but we could do it.

Personally, I'd like to live in a place where I've got at least a ghost of a chance of buying a decent 3 bedroom plus an office house without needing a galactic-scale interest only ARM.

In the Bay Area, the solution right now is to rent, not buy. The ratio between rents and home prices are at historic highs; to buy the place I'm living in would cost me nearly twice as much per month. Academics are predicting a 10% drop in housing prices, which might mean your entire down payment would be lost. If things go worse, you'd have to pay money to move out.

So just rent, and sock the extra dough away for when you move back to a place with a property market that isn't completely insane.

a paltry 16% more than I make in nowheresville, South Carolina

You negotiated, right? I'm assuming yes, but for the rest of the readers let me say that I'm shocked at the number of techies who don't bother to negotiate salaries. In your situation, for example, I'd find a cost-of-living calculator and get hard numbers on the difference between the two locales. Then I'd reply saying, "I'd love to work for you, but you're asking me to take an effective pay cut. Take a look at these numbers..." and attach the references.

For those scared of negotiating, immediately go get the book, Getting to Yes . It tells you how to negotiate without it devolving into some sort of unpleasant villiage market drama. It's a short, readable book, and even a minor improvement in your next salary negotiation can mean thousands of dollars.

"CIGS also doesn't degrade in sunlight like other thin-film technologies."

"CIGS also doesn't degrade in sunlight like other thin-film technologies."

Exactly, you can't have an interface free interface, we are interfacing with the world. Want some really mind blowing interface design work check out Jeff Raskin's The Humane Interface Go back to the fundamentals of how humans interact with the world, find where we retain the most information, are the fastest to react, what gives us higher error rates, etc and redisign computer interfaces. Imagine an OS without applications or files. That's what he outlines. This is just another input device.

Even if you are not designing an OS, any programmer, designer, or engineer (computer related or not), can gain a lot from this book.

Before someone brings up the citations in Michael Crichton's State of Fear , which inevitably happens in global warming discussions here, let's remember that Crichton is not a scientist, he's not competent to judge the strength of the material he was relying on, and you shouldn't be forming your opinion about grave issues from airport paperbacks.

"Wild at Heart: Discovering the Secret of a Man's Soul"

What kind of a fucking book title is that you worthless, effeminate freak?

Go ang get yourself a real mans book!

I have my own theories on why this is happening. The out-of-control femininization of men (metrosexualization). The lack of strong male influences on children (single mom families). The move from field to factory (strength and skill gives way to repetition and button-mashing). I think this should be required reading for men: http://www.amazon.com/Wild-Heart-Discovering-Secre t-Mans/dp/0785268839/

Midnight Syndicate
Midnight Syndicate
its like a creepy halloween fx tape, but made into terrific music
this album is the best halloween music for my buck, http://www.amazon.com/Born-Night-Midnight-Syndicat e/dp/B00004SYUU/ altho, unless yer some weirdo goth, it won't get much use other then the halloween season.

[05:31] * nobody np: Midnight Syndicate: Born of the Night - 12. Haunted Nursery [02:48m/128Kbps/44KHz/MP3]

Raison D'Etre should work. I bought a bunch of Peter Andersson's stuff a while back. It's usually classified as Dark Ambient, monks singing, bells, etc. You can get a small sample on amazon, but the best place to buy them is directly from the Artist--maybe buy it for next year. :)

"When houses, restauants, shops, shopping centers can be made according to the ancient science of Vastu Shastra then why cann't the Websites also follow the same rules" Hmmm.. Seems like I remember a book that answers this question. http://www.amazon.com/Web-Pages-That-Suck-Looking/ dp/078212187X/ref=pd_sim_b_1/002-7345104-9047259

I know 5 years isn't impressive, but I have only been a serious music fan for less than a decade. My favorite albums from 20 years ago I'll admit don't ago too well, but cut me some slack. My parents never played me Tom Waits at that age, so my options were pretty limited.

Of course some of my favorite albums are from well before I was born too. No surprise there, it would be absurdly improbable for all the best music to have been written in your lifetime.

As it is, html serves its purpose. Neither the visitors nor developers need more from html.

HTML doesn't serve its purpose, because it doesn't mandate a lack of separation between content and style. For one, that means that it's difficult to process HTML pages with semantic tools. One of my favourite recent reads has been Visualising the Semantic Web ed. Geroimenko and Chen (Springer Verlag, 2005), which shows the rich possibilities of extracting information and transforming it, such as into a graphical display, or reorganizing it. This is all a cinch with any valid XHTML Strict page, but as long as we're stuck in HTML 4.01, these abilities will never be widely available to us.

Furthermore, creators of accessibility software are constantly marching uphill. Just yesterday the BBC had a report on how hard it is for blind users to use most plain HTML websites.

I hope they sent something in return... maybe this! ;)

in MS style shops there are two kinds of bugs... those that you fix in the documentation, and those that you fix in an update. the item described here sounds more like a "showstopper".

I started reading this book (or at least, the Dutch translation).

Already it has learned me a lot about my complaints, ranging from severe tension problems and psychological problems (which could be categorized as depression, I'm afraid).

It is really written very well and it's worth reading just about every page, but what it boils down to is that people today (and both me and computer programmers in general not in the least) try to rationalize too much of what they feel, or channel it in accepted ways.

For instance, when I was totally angry at a collegue once, but couldn't deal with it appropiately, all I did was go to my boss and say 'I would like to go home now, I cannot concentrate on work any longer'. It went downhill from there because I couldn't cope with being unhappy with the situation (I like to be positive about things, but I couldn't find too much to be positive about). I thought I was going crazy (I was) and my muscles ground my bones to dust every day. On top of that I started to worry about my (mental) health, of course.

For a large part I already learned to accept that I would be so much better off simply finding a more normal place to work (it can be crazy here), but the book gives me insights beyond my current problem. I have not finished it yet, but for the first time I enjoy reading a book that tries to teach me exactly how I am 'crazy'.

If you go X10 I can swear by this model, we live out in the country and can adjust it pretty reliably not to go off when every single critter in the woods comes by at night, yet it still works when people and deer come over.

The best of ask Norm:
http://www.amazon.com/This-Old-House-Best-Norm/dp/ 1929049358/

You know, I could spend about twenty hours trying to explain to a troll why the environment is very much the opposite of pointless. But I'm tired, and others have done it better.

Verily, the KJV sucks as a translation, but it makes fine literature - not to mention being the source of so much of the modern English speaker's idiom.

But if you are bragging about old school transmissions and razors, then I do hope this (or its like) is the edition you are using. Of course, Douay Rhiems is older (as is Tyndale, but that's just NT) but KJV is the best read as far as complete (and accessible) Bibles go in English. At least (Early) Modern English - 'cause you could be reading this as well.

Just remember, the KJV is plenty errant, despite what some believe.

Hi, I'd definitely recommend the Pragmatic Programmer http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journey man-Master/dp/020161622X/sr=1-1/qid=1161902709/ref =sr_1_1/104-0184310-1779920?ie=UTF8&s=books It's a great book and really well written, by the time you've finished not only will you be full of useful knowledge, but you'll be raring to use it. I'd also recommend the Write Great Code series especially this one, Thinking Low Level, Writing High Level, http://www.amazon.com/Write-Great-Code-Low-Level-H igh-Level/dp/1593270658/sr=1-1/qid=1161903244/ref= sr_1_1/104-0184310-1779920?ie=UTF8&s=books this book really opens your eyes about what your code is doing. Enjoy!

Hi, I'd definitely recommend the Pragmatic Programmer http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journey man-Master/dp/020161622X/sr=1-1/qid=1161902709/ref =sr_1_1/104-0184310-1779920?ie=UTF8&s=books It's a great book and really well written, by the time you've finished not only will you be full of useful knowledge, but you'll be raring to use it. I'd also recommend the Write Great Code series especially this one, Thinking Low Level, Writing High Level, http://www.amazon.com/Write-Great-Code-Low-Level-H igh-Level/dp/1593270658/sr=1-1/qid=1161903244/ref= sr_1_1/104-0184310-1779920?ie=UTF8&s=books this book really opens your eyes about what your code is doing. Enjoy!

I actually like that somewhat.

There is a writing tool called the "Flip Dictionary"...It's a dictionary, but backwards, where you're trying to come up with the word that describes some thing you don't know the word for, so you look up "thing thats sorta like x" and it gives you the word.

I think of Google kind of like that. I was trying to come up with a search for a specific type of security device a while ago, and I was putting in "auditory alarms" and "sonic detectors" and other stupid crap, but the thing I was looking for (glassbreak sensor) still showed up on the first page.

Matthew Hart's book is also an excellent resource on the topic.

After I learned and was first using C, over a decade ago, I realized that I was only using a subset of its power. This was solved by C Puzzle Book by Alan Feuer. This book breaks down the C language into small component parts and alternately teaches you and drills you on all the features and how to use them in small, incremental steps of increasing complexity. It is required reading for programmers using C, once they've learned the basics.

After you've learned the language in absolutely all its features, read and study Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley.

By the way, the great computer scientists and super coders are by and large not wealthy. If you want to get rich, get an MBA and then get very lucky. Being a super techie will mostly make your employers richer.

After I learned and was first using C, over a decade ago, I realized that I was only using a subset of its power. This was solved by C Puzzle Book by Alan Feuer. This book breaks down the C language into small component parts and alternately teaches you and drills you on all the features and how to use them in small, incremental steps of increasing complexity. It is required reading for programmers using C, once they've learned the basics.

After you've learned the language in absolutely all its features, read and study Programming Pearls by Jon Bentley.

By the way, the great computer scientists and super coders are by and large not wealthy. If you want to get rich, get an MBA and then get very lucky. Being a super techie will mostly make your employers richer.

1. Code bashers - these are people who bash out endless lines of cobol (probaly VB nowadays) with no real feel for the craft
2. Hippies - Hippies write good code badly. Once the problem of how to code this task is resolved they lose interest so the actual transformation of the concept to the written code is poorly executed
3. Nerds - Nerds write bad code very well. Nerds become obsessed with particular techniques and will use that techniqu whether it is relevant or not. However their attention to detail means that the code is well executed

Almost forgot - SICP is indispensable. Read it and do the exercises (also teaches you Scheme!).

Yeah, "Cross Platform .Net Development" is actually a good primer on this... the book isn't very in depth, but gives some good ideas to think about in general with cross platform dev... I'm partial to .Net myself...

Or we could just move the Earth a bit farther from the sun. That's how they solved global warming in Futurama.

Not just in that cartoon either. As teenagers we've all read about awesome feats of planet-moving in Greg Bear's Moving Mars or Larry Niven's Ringworld . But now that I'm older and more pessimistic, I suspect we'll all drive ourselves extinct through some screwup or another before reaching such a level of technology. Slashdot is partly to blame for my becoming bitter and crotchety because of all the coverage of climate doom here.

Or we could just move the Earth a bit farther from the sun. That's how they solved global warming in Futurama.

Not just in that cartoon either. As teenagers we've all read about awesome feats of planet-moving in Greg Bear's Moving Mars or Larry Niven's Ringworld . But now that I'm older and more pessimistic, I suspect we'll all drive ourselves extinct through some screwup or another before reaching such a level of technology. Slashdot is partly to blame for my becoming bitter and crotchety because of all the coverage of climate doom here.

Great, Civ 3 Complete is $18.98 on Amazon. The listed MSRP is $19.99, so it's not like you're even getting a discount from them. Steam is selling it for $10 more than that. What benefit are they offering you for your $10?

And considering that Amazon has the book for cheap, and the project favors it, it's ridiculous that Slashdot links to the always overpriced B & N.

If anything - take an evening with The Notebooks of Lazarus Long and come back later.

And you may have to know the system well in order to also know how to circumvent it's flaws so moving to another country may not serve you.

I think one could argue that Mr. Harper doesn't oppose RFID as much as he finds it impotent.

Though I've only met him once, and haven't read fully his book Identity Crisis I think he is very anti-RFID but chose only to discuss the issue in the context of how well it works for that particular blog entry.

I believe him to be very pro-privacy and civil liberties, but he often chooses to argue against a system on efficacy grounds instead of invoking philosophical arguments.

http://www.amazon.com/Getting-Out-Leaving/dp/09760 82276

[All of the following is quoted from the Amazon book description]

Book Description

Had enough?

Whether you find the government oppressive, the economy spiraling out of control, or if you simply want adventure, you're not alone. In increasing numbers, the idea is talked about openly: Expatriate.

Over three hundred thousand Americans emigrate each year, and more than a million go to foreign lands for lengthy stays.

But picking up and moving to another country feels like a step into the void. Where to go? How to begin? What to do?

Volume 2 of the Process Self-Reliance Series, this smartly designed two-color guidebook walks you through the world of the expat: the reasons, the rules, the resources, and the tricks of the trade, along with compelling stories and expertise from expatriate Americans on every continent.

Getting Out shows you where you can most easily gain residence, citizenship, or work permits; where can you live for a fraction of the cost of where you're living now; and what countries would be most compatible with your lifestyle, gender, age, or political beliefs.

So if you've had enough of what they're selling here and want to take your life elsewhere-well, isn't that the American way? At any rate, it's not illegal. Not yet, anyway.

About the Author
Mark Ehrman is a frequent traveler and freelance writer whose work regularly appears in the Los Angeles Times, Playboy, Travel and Leisure, and numerous travel magazines city guidebooks.

Robert Rodriguez did his award-winning film "El Mariachi" for U$S 16.000. He did it by using a minimum crew that worked for free, using stuff he already had at hand, using cheap lighting, university facilities, and some other technical money-saving techniques. Most of the money went to buying and developing film... so it could be argued that if he had access to a digital video camera at the time the movie would have cost almost nothing.

Kevin Smith did the award-winning cult-classic movie "Clerks" for U$S 27.000.

Hollywood doesn't know how to make movies for less than a couple of millions, and probably doesn't care... because throwing those millions around probably simplifies the process of getting the movie done on time, and they collect a bundle anyway, so it makes no sense to them to spend too little.

So actually... making a movie that would ordinarily cost 3-5 M for 1.75 M doesn't impress me.

While this book is probably fairly interesting, this is yet another slashvertisement. Notice the similarity between the two URLs?

http://www.boingboing.net/2006/10/23/getting_out_y our_gui.html

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0976082276/ >/

Send him a cheque for a dollar. It's probably more than Sony would give him fro a CD sale.

Mod it insightful. He most likely gets between 8% and 14% of the sales, which means that if his CD is sold for about $14 he gets between about $1.10 and $1.95.

I used to think that artists were getting ripped off (my parents are published writters) but I quickly found out that they could estimate themselves happy when they did get any money at all and in time (there easily can be a couple of years between a sale and the time the artist gets his share of the money, at least when it comes to books).

OTOH: I could use a scotch. (nudge nudge) :)

Unfortunately I had just bought some sony brand earplugs (I like them because they are in-ear but not as expensive as the shure E3c [or something like that]).

Sennheiser, my friend. Sennheiser.

Just set up an Amazon EC2 remote virtual machine, which costs $0.10 per hour, for the duration of your trip. Install the necessary software, and connect to it from a wireless hotspot. There are other hosting options available if that doesn't suit your needs.

Some amazing games resulted in sequels so bad or uninspired that they didn't even make it to market. I know this happened with Full Throttle , the success and humor of the first game was an accident, and you can't duplicate accidents according to market demand.

what i thought fc7 was already rolled and ready for dist in books... whats this fc6 non-sense...

http://www.amazon.com/Fedora-Core-Red-Enterprise-L inux/dp/0071486429

(yes, I realize its pre-order, but still impressive)

From Publishers Weekly
In France, this damning reckoning of communism's worldwide legacy was a bestseller that sparked passionate arguments among intellectuals of the Left. Essentially a body count of communism's victims in the 20th century, the book draws heavily from recently opened Soviet archives. The verdict: communism was responsible for between 85 million and 100 million deaths in the century.

The introduction, by editor Stéphane Courtois, maintains that "...Communist regimes...turned mass crime into a full-blown system of government". Using unofficial estimates he cites a death toll which totals 94 million. The breakdown of the number of deaths given in the Black Book is as follows: 20 million in the Soviet Union, 65 million in the People's Republic of China, 1 million in Vietnam, 2 million in North Korea, 2 million in Cambodia, 1 million in the Communist states of Eastern Europe, 150,000 in Latin America, 1.7 million in Africa, 1.5 million in Afghanistan and 10,000 deaths "resulting from actions of the international communist movement and communist parties not in power" The authors explicitly claim that Communist regimes are responsible for a greater number of deaths than any other political ideal or movemnt, including fascism. -- The Black Book of Communism

Doing a quick search of 'ham' on Amazon US/UK yeilds the following results:

American: top 6 results are for ham (normal)

UK: 3rd result is for Hardcore Eurhoria and the 5th result is for Concert For Banglades

I have no idea what ham means over there, but ham is definitely more perverted and kinky over there than over here in the states.