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Save yourself $17.00 (!) by buying the book here: Practical Ajax Projects with Java Technology. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself $17.00 (!) by buying the book here: Practical Ajax Projects with Java Technology. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Because if I can make your PC think my PC is amazon.com, it doesn't matter if your credit card transaction is using SSL.

Yes, it does matter. You might be able to fool my PC into thinking your PC is http://www.amazon.com/, and you can have a lot of fun with that, but you will never fool my PC into thinking your PC is https://www.amazon.com/ unless you have a signed SSL certificate for amazon, which is pretty hard to get.

Now, many people won't know the difference, but that's a user problem.

Because if I can make your PC think my PC is amazon.com, it doesn't matter if your credit card transaction is using SSL.

Yes, it does matter. You might be able to fool my PC into thinking your PC is http://www.amazon.com/, and you can have a lot of fun with that, but you will never fool my PC into thinking your PC is https://www.amazon.com/ unless you have a signed SSL certificate for amazon, which is pretty hard to get.

Now, many people won't know the difference, but that's a user problem.

Mining the Sky - by John Lewis The premier book on asteroid mining is now sadly out of date with recent developments in asteroid exploration - it holds absurdly low estimates on near earth asteroid population, and doesn't include the results of the latest research and space probes (such as deep impact).

This book would benefit greatly from being turned into a wiki.

Don't all depictions of space elevators, like that in Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars involve enormous amount of strong carbon, like carbon nanotubes or diamond? Where would small teams be able to acquire such amounts of a material that's not even mass-produced yet?

Like the Apollo program, maybe this is one area where strong government funding is vital.

• There's no definitive interpretation of the Bible. Never was. You can go all the way back to the earliest copies, and they're different, sometimes in substantive ways.
• The combination of scribes and lack of widespread literacy, and copies, people -- sometimes accidently, sometimes willfully -- changed the Bible. Case in point, one of the most popular Jesus quotes in the Bible, "He who is without sin, cast the first stone." Not just the quote, but the entire story of the stoning of the woman doesn't even exist in the earliest copies. Good story. Consistent with Jesus's teachings, but it wasn't part of the Bible.

Well, yes and no. Texts of Shakespeare are available for free -- that is, texts published before 1932 (or whenever, I forget the precise date). Editions published later than that are under copyright. It makes a difference: the text printed in critical editions does change significantly from generation to generation.

The copyright to current editions will normally be owned by the editor of the edition. So, for example, the copyright to this edition of Julius Caesar , edited by Roma Gill and published by Oxford University Press, is owned by Roma Gill or Oxford University Press (depending on the nature of the deal made between the editor and the publisher). Basically, almost any book you see on sale in any bookshop -- unless (like me) you're in the habit of frequenting antiquarian bookshops -- is going to be under copyright, even if the author is centuries dead.

Similarly, it is likely that, for example, out-of-copyright books available on books.google.com are under copyright by Google, though Google doesn't seem interested in enforcing its rights. Books available on Project Gutenberg are certainly under copyright, or there'd be no reason to enforce the use of licences prepended to each book there.

"220 years of hindsight and court decisions have added an unbelievable amount of nuance and interpretation to what is simply the most carefully and expertly drafted political document in human history."

Gush much?

You may want to read this.

"How many other such documents have stayed around and had to be altered so little for such a long time? "

The Bible.

I bought the Shure's, but they become uncomfortable after sometime and they are pretty expensive so I don't use them any longer. I've been using the Sony Fontopia's for $30 which work awesome. Comfortable as hell. Nice soft rubber ear buds that go into your canal. Blocks out everything. Almost too well. http://www.amazon.com/Sony-MDR-EX51LP-WHI-Fontopia -Headphones/dp/B000095SB6/sr=1-2/qid=1161579540/re f=pd_bbs_sr_2/102-8822307-2042561?ie=UTF8&s=electr onics

These are great ideas (though I don't like the US bias :| ). But! $100M is a lot of money. It'll earn you a lot of annual interest. And academic books become dated quickly. Wouln't it be wize to buy updated copy each year, than as much as you possibly could all at once?

I think that this would be a good target as far as literature is concerned. I know that this costs ~$8k on Amazon so the copyrights are probably worth a lot but I think that a lot of these titles are public domain. If they are, I think it would be worth making a proposition in the millions to Penguin for their editions to be made available on the Wiki. I'm a computer scientist so I don't know how realistic this would be. Of course, they could probably host Project Gutenberg for free if they wanted.

As far as educational works go, I'm all for the textbooks. Grade school & high school, of course. But what I'd really like to see is the "Canonical works" of each field. I'm talking about the standard books that are used to teach each major in the United States. They could do a survey of books and then attempt to contact the authors & publishers to work a deal. Some titles I've seen on everyone's shelves are, of course, the Donald Knuth series and this list has a lot of standards I recognize just by the covers.

The most important thing for them to do would to pay lawyers and literature experts to scan the internet for potential authors willing to put out books for free. I've seen some classic computer science books go up like this and I'm sure that if Wikipedia asked for permission to host, they would be able to with mild restrictions. Like the author having the final say on what is kept and removed from the Wiki page. I mean, look at O'Reilly's OpenBook Project, don't you think they would allow Wikipedia to host that for a tiny one time fee? I'd bet that sales would increase if they even put a link to buy the book. I've heard a lot of authors argue for their books to be put online so that people will feel compelled to buy a hardcopy. Wasn't that the point of Google's textbook preview search?

Other people they could target is an open invitation to any estates that own the rights of long dead authors to have their ancestor's works published. Dr. Suess, anyone? I mean, how do you license a loved one's works and continually soak up money for them? To me, the work of Disney in this respect is just plain rotten and ruined some good guidelines to release works to the public domain.

I don't know, I just think that they should spend money over a period of time searching for permission to host books for free or nearly free. I have hope that this is done very very well and augments the OLPC project nicely.

I think that this would be a good target as far as literature is concerned. I know that this costs ~$8k on Amazon so the copyrights are probably worth a lot but I think that a lot of these titles are public domain. If they are, I think it would be worth making a proposition in the millions to Penguin for their editions to be made available on the Wiki. I'm a computer scientist so I don't know how realistic this would be. Of course, they could probably host Project Gutenberg for free if they wanted.

As far as educational works go, I'm all for the textbooks. Grade school & high school, of course. But what I'd really like to see is the "Canonical works" of each field. I'm talking about the standard books that are used to teach each major in the United States. They could do a survey of books and then attempt to contact the authors & publishers to work a deal. Some titles I've seen on everyone's shelves are, of course, the Donald Knuth series and this list has a lot of standards I recognize just by the covers.

The most important thing for them to do would to pay lawyers and literature experts to scan the internet for potential authors willing to put out books for free. I've seen some classic computer science books go up like this and I'm sure that if Wikipedia asked for permission to host, they would be able to with mild restrictions. Like the author having the final say on what is kept and removed from the Wiki page. I mean, look at O'Reilly's OpenBook Project, don't you think they would allow Wikipedia to host that for a tiny one time fee? I'd bet that sales would increase if they even put a link to buy the book. I've heard a lot of authors argue for their books to be put online so that people will feel compelled to buy a hardcopy. Wasn't that the point of Google's textbook preview search?

Other people they could target is an open invitation to any estates that own the rights of long dead authors to have their ancestor's works published. Dr. Suess, anyone? I mean, how do you license a loved one's works and continually soak up money for them? To me, the work of Disney in this respect is just plain rotten and ruined some good guidelines to release works to the public domain.

I don't know, I just think that they should spend money over a period of time searching for permission to host books for free or nearly free. I have hope that this is done very very well and augments the OLPC project nicely.

I think that this would be a good target as far as literature is concerned. I know that this costs ~$8k on Amazon so the copyrights are probably worth a lot but I think that a lot of these titles are public domain. If they are, I think it would be worth making a proposition in the millions to Penguin for their editions to be made available on the Wiki. I'm a computer scientist so I don't know how realistic this would be. Of course, they could probably host Project Gutenberg for free if they wanted.

As far as educational works go, I'm all for the textbooks. Grade school & high school, of course. But what I'd really like to see is the "Canonical works" of each field. I'm talking about the standard books that are used to teach each major in the United States. They could do a survey of books and then attempt to contact the authors & publishers to work a deal. Some titles I've seen on everyone's shelves are, of course, the Donald Knuth series and this list has a lot of standards I recognize just by the covers.

The most important thing for them to do would to pay lawyers and literature experts to scan the internet for potential authors willing to put out books for free. I've seen some classic computer science books go up like this and I'm sure that if Wikipedia asked for permission to host, they would be able to with mild restrictions. Like the author having the final say on what is kept and removed from the Wiki page. I mean, look at O'Reilly's OpenBook Project, don't you think they would allow Wikipedia to host that for a tiny one time fee? I'd bet that sales would increase if they even put a link to buy the book. I've heard a lot of authors argue for their books to be put online so that people will feel compelled to buy a hardcopy. Wasn't that the point of Google's textbook preview search?

Other people they could target is an open invitation to any estates that own the rights of long dead authors to have their ancestor's works published. Dr. Suess, anyone? I mean, how do you license a loved one's works and continually soak up money for them? To me, the work of Disney in this respect is just plain rotten and ruined some good guidelines to release works to the public domain.

I don't know, I just think that they should spend money over a period of time searching for permission to host books for free or nearly free. I have hope that this is done very very well and augments the OLPC project nicely.

Eventually the public will get tired of sending money to people who don't deserve it.

Especially when something else comes along that will fulfill that need without all the extra cost.

Example: You buy Windows XP, then have to purchase Microsoft Office to get some use out of the OS.

On the other hand, if the public gets tired of sending money, etc., they can get off their behinds and "learn a new OS."

Here's one that might work.

The story appears in the collection DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore. Highly recommended.

Thanks for the link. I have the TPB of "Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow", which rocks (Moore's two-issue take on the end of the original Superman continutity, before the mid-1980's reboot); I'll have to pick this up.

In loudest din or hush profound

This isn't just a cute parody. This is from an Alan Moore Green Lantern story where they tried to recruit someone to the Corps who lived in a lightless world. The inhabitants had no word for "light" or "lantern", so they translated the concept to that of sound... which these inhabitants were intimiately more familiar with.

The story appears in the collection DC Universe: The Stories of Alan Moore. Highly recommended.

Actually, as someone who works with a bunch of chatty people, I've found that earplugs do a pretty lousy job at blocking out conversations. The problem is that the best earplugs you can buy at your local drug store only attenuate noise by ~32 decibels. But a typical conversation, at close range, is ~60 decibels. You wind up just blocking out all the low-level background noise (computer fans, air conditioning, ...), leaving the voices even more distinct.

I've found the best solution for me is a pair of headphones that seal pretty well, combined with music. The sealed headphones drop everything, so the music can be much quieter and still drown them out.

I'm actually thinking of picking up a pair of Shure E2C earbuds for just this purpose. Has anyone got any experience with them? Will they do what I want?

In his first novel World of Ptaavs (now part of the Three Books of Known Space omnibus) Larry Niven suggested that over the next couple of centuries people would evolve to be able to more powerfully focus on relevant conversation and filter out noise. The growing population, he suggested, would result in all public spaces being much more full of chatter than now. People would be driven mad if they didn't adapt.

It seems a better solution than earplugs, which would block out everything, even useful sound. But the idea is fanciful, for instead of biological or psychological progress, it seems that these sort of technological advances as described in the article will serve to keep the world around us quiet.

I've heard this logic before, and it sounds good. However, I can also cite cases where bigger is worse, and not just for a particularly bad design decision. Case in point, I was in an accident a little over a year ago involving a tractor trailer and my 1995 Honda Civic, traveling 70 mph down I-85 in Georgia. The tractor trailer clipped my back wheel, sending me out of control and hit me again on the driver's side door. My wife (in the passenger seat) and I managed to get out of our car without a scratch. Now, I'm not going to tell you that the semi-truck was worse off (mainly because it wasn't), but imagine what would have happened if we had been driving a tractor trailer. Most likely, it would have been a serious pile-up.

Now (as with your examples) this is just speculation and case-by-case analysis. In order to really understand, you have to look at the studies done. Studies find that people driving bigger vehicles are no more (or less) likely to be injured/killed than those in smaller cars. They are, however, more likely to kill others. Perhaps it's because they drive more recklessly (see "Why Things Bite Back"), or maybe it's just that those vehicles are designed worse. We can't really know. All we know is what the data tells us.

We've shown they code for the self same proteins, therefore the changes are pointless.

No, all you've shown is that you don't know any reason for the changes. There is a vast difference between you not knowing a reason for something, and there actually being no reason. In any case, as I have stated, these changes do not require evolution (in a "all living creatures are descended from single celled creatures" sense).

Nobody has found any evidence for God whatsoever in the genomes that have been examined...Collins believes in evolution and has hypothesised that moral values are derived from God.

Perhaps you might like to read his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief before you make any more statements like that. As I said, he probably agrees with you on some points, but he has also said "And therefore, science is completely unable, on purely logical grounds, to exclude the possibility of God. One who makes that particular stance has just made the ultimate logical error."

You've presented facts consistent with evolution, nobody is denying that. All I've been saying is that none of what you've said is decisive for evolution. The things you've said are consistent with evolution, but not only consistent with evolution. You seemed to be originally intending to refute creationism, I'm just pointing out that you haven't done so with your examples.

If the head of the Human Genome Project thinks that what you're saying is the ultimate logical error, do you think it might be worth re-examining your thinking? You might benefit from reading Mere Cristianity by C. S. Lewis.

Also, your earlier statement "So as we read the true book, not a book of man, but the book of life, the genome, we see the absence of God." is quite different to your current post "Nobody has found any evidence for God whatsoever in the genomes" as well as seeming to be contraditory to the views of Dr. Collins.

We've shown they code for the self same proteins, therefore the changes are pointless.

No, all you've shown is that you don't know any reason for the changes. There is a vast difference between you not knowing a reason for something, and there actually being no reason. In any case, as I have stated, these changes do not require evolution (in a "all living creatures are descended from single celled creatures" sense).

Nobody has found any evidence for God whatsoever in the genomes that have been examined...Collins believes in evolution and has hypothesised that moral values are derived from God.

Perhaps you might like to read his book The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief before you make any more statements like that. As I said, he probably agrees with you on some points, but he has also said "And therefore, science is completely unable, on purely logical grounds, to exclude the possibility of God. One who makes that particular stance has just made the ultimate logical error."

You've presented facts consistent with evolution, nobody is denying that. All I've been saying is that none of what you've said is decisive for evolution. The things you've said are consistent with evolution, but not only consistent with evolution. You seemed to be originally intending to refute creationism, I'm just pointing out that you haven't done so with your examples.

If the head of the Human Genome Project thinks that what you're saying is the ultimate logical error, do you think it might be worth re-examining your thinking? You might benefit from reading Mere Cristianity by C. S. Lewis.

Also, your earlier statement "So as we read the true book, not a book of man, but the book of life, the genome, we see the absence of God." is quite different to your current post "Nobody has found any evidence for God whatsoever in the genomes" as well as seeming to be contraditory to the views of Dr. Collins.

I can't let this one go. Republican strategists tried for all 8 years of Clinton's presidency to nail him, they hated him so. The fact that the most credible charge they could come up with was lying about the Lewinsky affair(which was, I admit, stupid and unnecessary) is a testament to his relative integrity as a politician. He was under such heavy scrutiny from the Republican congress that they would have nailed him to the cross had he done something else even remotely as morally reprehensible. But none of preceding accusations levied against him held water, so they were left with the stupid Lewinsky tapes. This is not to excuse him, but to simply show that we once had a competent and relatively honest creature for our president.

This all lies in contrast, of course, to our current president, whose resignation you apparently aren't calling for. He hasn't been held accountable for a single false, misleading, or outright deceptive public statement, of which there are plenty to cite. Some say that these lies have directly resulted in as many as half a million deaths. The only reason he has gotten away with them is because he has encountered virtually no resistance or scrutiny from Congress, and has skillful deceptive tactictians who, in a very real, cynical, Machiavellian sense, have artfully deceived the entire world, America included, into turning over as much power as possible to them and their cronies. Heavy accusations, I know. But unlike many of the Republican accusations against Clinton, these hold water.

So what I suppose you are really complaining about is that Clinton got caught.

Or the online version of Sartre's Huis Clos ("No Exit"). There's no action, and once you connect, you can't ever log off, but are forced to spend eternity enduring the inane conversation of lame fellow online gamers.

Final Fantasy VII - Advent Children
Final Fantasy - The Spirits Within
Final Fantasy X-2
Doom
Doom 3
Bloodrayne
BloodRayne 2
Resident Evil (Special Edition) / Resident Evil - Apocalypse
Resident Evil 4
Alone in the Dark
Full (?) list here...

...is TRON really supposed to be on that list?

Actually, the movie was stopped because MS wanted internet dist. rights and the rest of the group had already made a deal w/iTMS :)

The other books about Nylund were excellent - so I'm very much looking forward to this one.

quality costs more... spend less time maintaing...

Are you implying that Apple hardware is better? Correct me if I'm wrong, but it certainly seems so.

I'm a native PC user, but I've used macs a lot, particularly in recent years, and I own one myself. The Software is better. No questions asked. The hardware.... well it looks cool. And I have nothing else good to say about it.

Ironically, my 15" Ti powerbook is one of the worst designed computers (laptop or desktop) that I've ever owned. This is quite sad, because I was very impressed with it at first, but it had a massive amount of design flaws (I'll leave the one-button-ness out of this; I usually use a USB mouse anyway). I bought it in 2003, when about 99% of laptops sold had USB 2.0 (the other 1% or so being Apples), but no big loss. The first minor problem happened after about 3 months, when the latch to my Powerbook occasionally popped open. I didn't see this as a major problem at first, but it did start getting more frequent. It didn't perse affect the usability of the laptop, but a lot of times it would pop open and drain battery life, and one time it poppeed open and started running (very hot mind you) while in the case.
 
Just after a year passed (conveniently right after the warranty was up), my Superdrive jammed up and wouldn't accept any optical discs. Shame. There was nothing "super" about it in the first place. It was basically a DVD burner that costs $150 instead of $60 because it says Apple on it. Happens quite frequently so I hear, but Apple doesn't seem to care if it's past warranty.

Despite the sturdy Titanium shell, the frame on the side of the laptop is flimsy plastic, which ended up cracking in several places. Did I drop it? No. Just from picking it up occasionally with one hand (gasp). The weight of the laptop was enough to bend the plastic enough to fracture over time. Also, the cord started coming apart from the piece of plastic that I where the AC adapter plugs into the back of the laptop. I am not the only one that has had this problem (read the reviews).

As for price/performance, Apple has a very large history of being WAY behind the curb. When I got my powerbook (1 Ghz was the fastest), most P4 laptops at the time were around 2.0-2.2 Ghz. More efficient chip blah blah, there is no wsy, by any stretch of the imagnation that any 32-bit 1.0 ghz will beat any 32-bit 2.0 processor. In fact, the PowerPC isn't even that much faster even at a 1:1 ratio clock speed. And on top of being slow, still costs more? I am not particularly impressed.

I have to admit, Apple has made a LOT of progress moving over to the Intel platform; they have gotten a LOT faster (with considerably reduced power consumption too). Of course, now I fail to see how the mac hardware is fundamentally different from standard PC hardware. The architecture is the same now, and based on my experiences (and others'), it is certainly not better (Don't forget the passively cooled cube "supercomputer" either). I think Apple should suck it up and open up their platform a bit more, instead of suing the asses off of anyone that tries to do it for them. I'm certainly not saying they should phase out their hardware, but they (and their fanboys) really should stop putting it on such a pedestal.

This post is turning out to be a bit more of a troll than I intended, and I'm not certainly not anti-Apple, but I really feel like they should be making a few adjustments. In the future, I'd really like to see Apple focusing more on software (OS X is unquestionably the best OS out there), iPods, and services like iTunes.

I recommend that anyone who finds this article interesting should read Steven L. Kent's excellent The Ultimate History of Video Games (formerly known as The First Quarter). It's a detailed and nuanced history of the video game industry, starting with the pinball industry's birth in the late 1800s, all the way to the death of the Dreamcast. It's incredibly engrossing, and will leave you with a much clearer picture of how far the industry has come.

For an interesting take on the relationship between Freeman Dyson (mentioned in the article cited) and his son George, have a look at "The Starship and the Canoe" -- http://www.amazon.com/Starship-Canoe-Kenneth-Browe r/dp/0060910305/sr=1-1/qid=1161290947/ref=sr_1_1/1 02-8993040-3095324?ie=UTF8&s=books -- it's written by Kenneth Brower, son of David Brower, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_R._Brower founder of Friends of the Earth and other organizations. David shares with John Muir the distinction of having been forced out of the Sierra Club while acting as a director of the organization.

So what's the difference between economic growth and a bubble?

There's an exceptional (though very long and occasionally dry) book called "Manias, Panics and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises" on this specific issue by the noted historical economist Charles Kindleberger, Robert Aliber and Robert Solow.

In a nutshell, bubbles are unsustainable excessive growth not explained by underlying fundamentals. Kindleberger's historical analysis strongly suggests that excessive speculative credit is usually the best method for creating bubbles. When credit gets loose and easy, credit quality also degrades quickly and it becomes a highly elastic dynamic like a slingshot that snaps back very quickly when it is finally realized that the underlying fundamentals don't provide for the credit environment.

If you've taken an economics course, you learn about the multiplier effects that banks have due to reserve requirements being a fraction of what they can lend (e.g. receive a dollar from a depositor, and lend 90% of it back out, have that 90% dollar redeposited, loan 90% of that out, etc.), you might see that the opposite condition becomes a real problem quick when loans default and the spiral works in the other direction. Of course, it unwinds with much greater speed than the initial winding, which makes bubble busts interesting to study.

A good example of a recent bubble was the southeast Asia Thai Bahtcurrency crisis in 1998. Kindleberger suggests that there's a "sloshing around" effect when these things hit, like waves in a bathtub. There's considerable thinking that the dot-com bust actually started due to the Thai currency bust and sloshed back to the US.

'a combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital.

The last item really should be referred to as highly available speculative credit. Venture capital represents an speculative equity source that has similar issues, but while VC firms during speculative frenzies may cause their investors to lose their investment, they don't cause cascading effects that expand to impact the economy like credit bubbles do.

Here's a good one that addresses the important issues and is less likely to go out of date...

I realize the very mention of her name is likely to start an off-topic flame war here, but I have to point out that Ayn Rand wrote in some detail about this in The Virtue of Selfishness .

Also, Michael S. Berliner wrote an essay called Against Environmentalism on this subject.

Now, arguably he casts too wide a net in his diatribe against "environmentalists". I very much share his preference for technological and free-market solutions. But writing from Singapore - currently blanketed with an unhealthy level of smoke from Indonesian forest fires started by unscrupulous plantation managers and ignorant savages practicing slash-and-burn farming - I have to wonder whether there's a point at which pollution moves from being a tort, to a crime, to an act of war.

it hasn't been out for 'years' yet.

http://www.amazon.com/Blizzard-Entertainment-World -of-Warcraft/dp/B000067FDW/sr=8-2/qid=1161216305/r ef=pd_bbs_2/002-9874367-2485663?ie=UTF8&s=videogam es

Release Date: November 23, 2004

it's been out for 1 year 10 months and 25/6 days....

Save yourself $14.78 (!!) by buying the book here: Deliver First Class Web Sites. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself $14.78 (!!) by buying the book here: Deliver First Class Web Sites. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

I also disagree with your sig from personal experience. But it gives me a great deal of insight into your method of thinking. I have studied the Bible extensively. I'll make you a deal. Though I have no children, I'll read you're book if yout read this one.

None of this, "Timmy, if you don't stop pulling your sister's hair I'll count to three and give you a time out." shit.. If the kid knows what he/she is doing is wrong, then he/she can be punished.

Iranian president didnt say he want to wipe Israel off the map. he said Israel SHOULD be wiped off the map. So much for your point 1

And I ams STILL waiting to see a real proof OSama was involved in or planned 9-11.

For some reason Slashdot links to B & N, but if you look at the Amazon listing, you can see that some sellers are offering the book considerably cheaper.

Actually the administration is merely pandering to the evangelicals. They aren't actually getting much of what they want. This group in office has their own agenda. They just convince the religious to support it.

Sounds like someone else watched 60 Minutes over the weekend and listened to David Kuo lamenting the Bush administrations manipulation of the Christian Right, getting the backing they need for a few tokens and runs at legislation which would be unconstitutional anyway (some of the Faith-Based initiatives.)

The Iranian government represents mostly the conservative rural people, not the more cosmopolitan city dwellers, same way most despotic regimes seize power (get the peasants behind you) and then maintain it through fear and intimidation.

Welcoming them is the only choice we have. After all, the only protection we have against robot attacks, the tips in How to Survive a Robot Uprising , only work against single robots. If they are able to effectively band together against a target, we're doomed. At least insurance is available for letting your family pull through after the metal ones come for you.

In approximately 30 seconds I was able to verify his claim. That's a gig for just over $500. With a couple more hours of searching, I'm betting I could get it for under $500. Especially if I go internal instead of external. What was that about deep discounts?

Yup. And while they're still pretty expensive, (around $360), they're well worth it. The really sucky thing is that 2 250GB hard drives will set you back around $220. For $3,360, they weren't even willing to spend the extra $140 (probably less as a vendor) to bump you up to 750GB.

How many ways are there to say it: Sony sucks, and this device is crap.

Yup. And while they're still pretty expensive, (around $360), they're well worth it. The really sucky thing is that 2 250GB hard drives will set you back around $220. For $3,360, they weren't even willing to spend the extra $140 (probably less as a vendor) to bump you up to 750GB.

How many ways are there to say it: Sony sucks, and this device is crap.

Agree with all you are saying, just thought I'd point out:

Even my five-year-old TiVo has dual tuners, and it's not you can't get a dual-tuner component for less than $70.

You linked to the 150 model which also only has one tuner. Here is the 500 model which has dual tuner support.

You've got to be kidding me. Keep in mind while you read this that this device costs around $3,360 USD.

If this thing gets an overall 8 out of 10, I can't help but wonder how a device can possibly get dinged for less. I mean, really, from TFA:

What happens what you try and watch an HDCP encrypted movie on a display without HDCP? I hooked up a bog standard 17in, 1,280 x 1,024 display and tried to play a movie. The supplied InterVideo WinDVD BD software started to play and then stopped - and that was that. So there you go - the disc won't even play.

So your fancy expensive toy won't let you watch your movies.

Storage comes courtesy of a couple of 250GB 7,200rpm Seagate Barracuda hard disks

All that money, and it stores less than one of my desktop's hard drives

Being a Sony, there's plenty of preinstalled software on the system, highlights of which are Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premier Elements, along with Norton Internet Security. There's also a trial version of Microsoft Office.

Ooh, around $150 worth of software, which they've undoubtedly OEMed for probably less than $20.

I was very surprised to discover that there's only a single TV Tuner supplied.

So you can only record one television station at a time. I hope you don't have two favorite shows that happen to come on back-to-back, or you're just SOL. Even my five-year-old TiVo has dual tuners, and it's not you can't get a dual-tuner component for less than $70.

To play a Blu-ray disc you need to use dedicated software that can handle the HDCP part of the AACS encryption standard and Media Center can't do this at present.

This extra bit of complication brought to you courtesy of the letters D, R, and M.

I contacted Microsoft about this and it confirmed to me that there will be a plug-in for Vista that at the very least will let you launch an external application, such as InterVideo when you try to play a Blu-ray disc from inside MCE... For now though, to play the movie from the sofa you'll have to pick up the keyboard—although at least it's wireless.

Oh, so to play our movies, we'll have to actually upgrade to Vista when it comes out. Good, because it's not like you've already spent enough to buy the box itself, right? And I'm sorry, I'm not going to use a frickin' keyboard to play a frickin' movie from my frickin' DVD player on my frickin' tv.

The software supplied is InterVideo WinDVD BD for VAIO, a rather convoluted title. On first attempt we got a region code error message. I then went into the software and selected Region B.

Yet more hoops to jump through to play a movie, again brought to you by the letters D, R, and M.

There was again a step up but the overall experience was marred by grain and noise. In terms of immediacy the quality was not as impressive as the lush samples you see demoed in stores with super detailed close ups of flowers. There was also a hint of the system struggling with the frame rate at times.

Oh, now we see why it earned an 8 out of 10! Oh, wait, those are bad things, aren't they? Well, all of that is worth it if we get image quality that knocks our socks off, so let's get to the bottom line:

It was as clear as day to me, but actually not everyone in the office could make this out or was impressed by it. In fact many were as under-whelmed as I was when I first saw Blu-ray at the launch of the Samsung player last month.

I then hooked up a Dell 2407 24in screen that let me see the full 1080 lines of resolution. There w

Visual Studio was never even cheap, let alone free. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000BTA4LU/ ref=amb_link_32042801_1/102-7144420-5205703 Or is $700 free by your standards ? And if you download VS Express and try it, you will know that its crippled, unusable on all but the smallest projects.

Save yourself $1.80 by buying the book here: Creating Web Pages With Ajax. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

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Or worse, John Conway's "Game of Life"

You might wanna go read The Swarm

I'm not much of a (book) reader any more (damn net) but I couldn't put this 900 page international best seller down. And if you like this story you'll really enjoy this book.