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See Shadow Statistics for more on how the government cooks the economic reports.

US Trade Deficit: When the Sausage comes home to Roost has some good discussion on the coming consequences of the trade deficit, and how we got here. Particularly pertinent is the section at the end about the 1987 book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, and how the U.S. has definitively entered the "fall" stage of the power cycle.

But as you seem to indicate, few people seem to know that the federal reserve system is at the root of our poor nation's economic struggle. See the 1983 book The Misdirection Conspiracy: Or Who Really Killed the American Dream for a good history behind how the banking class (not your friendly neighborhood banker, but the Rockerfellers/Morgans/other globalist shysters) are sucking the lifeblood from the working class.

Also worth mentioning that Michael Mandeville, author of The Coming Economic Collapse Of 2006 (2003) says that the predicted collapse is well underway. The current trouble at Ford and General Motors marks an acceleration of the decline.

The present economic calamity was, of course, set in stone as soon as Nixon closed the gold window back in 1971, removing all incumbrances to out-of-control monetary growth (monetary inflation), or perhaps even as early as the establishment of the Federal Reserve system in 1913... See 1970's, redux for more on how globalization & the federal reserve bleeds america dry.

Yes, the huge shopping malls located far away, and the lack of public transport is just the result of having really cheap gas for a couple of decades.

Once the american society adapts to the fact that driving 1 mile might cost 1 dollar, then the malls will be smaller and closer, and the cars will be more efficient.

After WW2, the federal government gave out subsidized/guaranteed mortgages (GI Bill) to tons of veterans and their families, but basically forced you into the suburbs (if you were white; if you were black, you could only get a mortgage in the city). The current suburbia is the result of this and other government policies. Cheap gas certainly helped, but was not the motivator.

Ah, here's a reference: "the five years after V-J Day, eight million returning vets made use of the bill's educational provisions, while the bill's loan guarantees brought home ownership within the reach of five million vets, resulting in the explosive development of suburbia. Humes is alert to the G.I. Bill's failures as well. For example, black vets were shunted into vocational training rather than college and were systematically redlined away from the new suburbs."

By the way, if european cars get better mileage, why not buy a european car??

They're not legal in the US. They would pass the required safety/emissions tests, but have to go through the paperwork first.

There are specialty dealers that will import non-US cars for you, doing all the paperwork, but it's so expensive that it's not worth it unless the car is >$100k or so.

Back in the early 80's a group of hippy hackers in California did it. Read The Eudaemonic Pie for the details. Fun, and funny, book.

How democratic is the American Constitution? by Robert A. Dahl ISBN:0-300-09218-0

You fucking idiot, read the article before commenting. It includes content from extremely reputable sources, for example http://www.amazon.com/Was-2004-Presidential-Electi on-Stolen/dp/1583226877/sr=1-1/qid=1158532837/ref= pd_bbs_1/102-9667400-8468913?ie=UTF8&s=books

From Andrew Gumbel, "Steal This Vote: Dirty Elections and the Rotten History of Democracy in America"
http://www.amazon.com/Steal-This-Vote-Elections-De mocracy/dp/1560256761

Just as long as they don't play "Singing in the Rain"...

I live in a small town which has been an anchorage for my family for two hundred years.

There is nowhere I can go without being recognized. My actions are neither private or anonymous the moment I step out the door.

That is the way most people have lived for millennia.

Privacy and anonymity as the Geek understands it is only possible in the modern mega-city and suburb and only when the social order has broken down. You are not anonymous if your neighborhood is intimate and stable. The Life and Death of Great American Cities

Have the administrators contacted Bruce Schneier yet? His guide Applied Cryptography is one of the friendliest yet at the same time rigorous introductions to the science, and now that 11 years have passed since its publication, perhaps he'd be willing to allow the use of it as the basis of further expansion of the encyclopedia.

Various attempts have been made by engineers to overcome the house edge through predicting the mechanical performance of the wheel, most notably by Joseph Jagger, the man who broke the bank at Monte Carlo in 1873. These schemes work by determining that the ball is more likely to fall at certain numbers. Claude Shannon, a mathematician and computer scientist best known for his contributions to information theory, built arguably the first wearable computer to do so in 1961.

To try to prevent exploits like this, the casinos monitor the performance of their wheels, and rebalance and realign them regularly to try to keep the result of the spins as random as possible.

More recently Thomas Bass, in his book The Newtonian Casino 1991, has claimed to be able to predict wheel performance in real time. He is also the author of The Eudaemonic Pie, which describes the exploits of a group of computer hackers, who called themselves the Eudaemons, who in the late 1970s used computers in their shoes to win at roulette by predicting where the ball would fall.

In the early 1990s, Gonzalo Garcia-Pelayo used a computer to model the tendencies of the roulette wheels at the Casino de Madrid in Madrid, Spain. Betting the most likely numbers, along with members of his family, he was able to win over one million dollars over a period of several years. A court ruled in his favor when the legality of his strategy was challenged by the casino.

In 2004, it was reported that a group in London had used mobile cameraphones to predict the path of the ball, a cheating technique called sector targeting. In December 2004 court adjudged that they didn't cheat because their special laser cameraphone and microchip weren't influencing the ball - they kept all £1.3m.

Companies have sophicticated electronic detection equipment that can detect the hash from your shoe computer. Using a device to 'help' with roulette is thirty years old. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend the book The Eudaemonic Pie. One of the first shoe computers, using a 6502. This should be in the nerd's top ten books to read.

Of course, if you used an asynchronous computer there would be no hash to detect....

If you want to know just what kind of consequences are in store for serious cheaters, even if what they are doing is perfectly legal, see Mezrich's Bringing Down the House , the story of the MIT students who used card counting to make millions. Even when they wore disguises on repeat visits, the casino still found them out, and hired goons to put the hurt on. So all of you thinking that you'll now become millionaires, think about how hard it would be to hide all this whizbang gadgetry if even simple card-counting doesn't fly at casinos.

just like it will be legal for the Casino to shoot you in the knees... Spot on the subject, every geek should read the Eudaemonic Pie about besting the Las Vegas roulettes.

At that height I bet the efficiency on a solar charger would be enough to charge a spare battery, you can also ask the airline if you can mount it on the outside of the plane like the RVers do. I'm sure pilots from the south will understand.

Also when sitting at a computer it is more important to get up every once in awhile for me than to conciously try to sit "correctly". When I sit for 3-4 hours without getting up no matter how I sit I am miserable the rest of the day.

Also when sitting at a computer it is more important to get up every once in awhile for me than to conciously try to sit "correctly". When I sit for 3-4 hours without getting up no matter how I sit I am miserable the rest of the day.

Barry's contribution mentioned up top was to write a book called Pirattitude . The book was pretty funny, but as this meme moves farther from an in-joke among Internet cognoscenti, to something larger where you'll even hear people in the street talking about it, there's a decreasing amount of joy in it. Maybe the matter has come and gone already.

However, I have been able to find *nothing* like that for her... Any thoughts out there?

http://www.amazon.com/Books-Flood-First-Strike-Rea ch/dp/0345473043/sr=8-3/qid=1158355563/ref=sr_1_3/ 102-4060738-4988146?ie=UTF8&s=books

For those that have already read them, the 4th in the series is coming out in November, and is written by Eric Nylund, who wrote The Fall of Reach and First Strike: http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Ghosts-Eric-S-Nylund/dp /0765315688/sr=8-1/qid=1158355563/ref=pd_bbs_1/102 -4060738-4988146?ie=UTF8&s=books

Definitely looking forward to it!

http://www.amazon.com/Books-Flood-First-Strike-Rea ch/dp/0345473043/sr=8-3/qid=1158355563/ref=sr_1_3/ 102-4060738-4988146?ie=UTF8&s=books

For those that have already read them, the 4th in the series is coming out in November, and is written by Eric Nylund, who wrote The Fall of Reach and First Strike: http://www.amazon.com/Halo-Ghosts-Eric-S-Nylund/dp /0765315688/sr=8-1/qid=1158355563/ref=pd_bbs_1/102 -4060738-4988146?ie=UTF8&s=books

Definitely looking forward to it!

Techno author Norman, a professor of computer science and cofounder of a consulting firm that promotes human-centered products, extends the range of his earlier work, The Design of Everyday Things, to include the role emotion plays in consumer purchases. According to Norman, human decision making is dependent on both conscious cognition and affect (conscious or subconscious emotion). This combination is why, for example, a beautiful set of old mechanical drawing instruments greatly appealed to Norman and a colleague: they evoked nostalgia (emotion), even though they both knew the tools were not practical to use (cognition). Human reaction to design exists on three levels: visceral (appearance), behavioral (how the item performs) and reflective. The reflective dimension is what the product evokes in the user in terms of self-image or individual satisfaction. Norman's analysis of the design elements in products such as automobiles, watches and computers will pique the interest of many readers, not just those in the design or technology fields. He explores how music and sound both contribute negatively or positively to the design of electronic equipment, like the ring of a cell phone or beeps ("Engineers wanted to signal that some operation had been done.... The result is that all of our equipment beeps at us"). Norman's theories about how robots (referred to here as emotional machines) will interact with humans and the important jobs they will perform are intriguing, but weigh down an already complex text.

Is there a society that preserves TV and movie media like archive.org preserves the internet? Will a distributed P2P Storage Area Network ever be possible, like a huge ongoing TIVO?

TOS is still available via DVD, it will be rebroadcast in its original form on TV LAND... there's just no comparison to Lucas' repeated muddling of the Star Wars plot and effects. The only reason Lucas has decided to sell the original unmodified trilogy is because so many people downloaded or bought used laserdisc copies, rather than buy his recent updated box set.

I mean, I grew up with TOS and think it's kinda cool CBS will rebroadcast it in HD - but I'm not clamoring for it either. I just think the comparison between Paramount's changes tp TOS vs. what Lucas did to the original Star Wars is just plain unfair.

*shrug*

To me, Zahn's trilogy IS the 3rd trilogy. If you haven't read his Star Wars books (here is a book that he cowrote with your boy Stackpole) I highly recommend them.

Heir to the Empire (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 1)
Dark Force Rising (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 2)
The Last Command (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 3)

To me, Zahn's trilogy IS the 3rd trilogy. If you haven't read his Star Wars books (here is a book that he cowrote with your boy Stackpole) I highly recommend them.

Heir to the Empire (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 1)
Dark Force Rising (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 2)
The Last Command (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 3)

To me, Zahn's trilogy IS the 3rd trilogy. If you haven't read his Star Wars books (here is a book that he cowrote with your boy Stackpole) I highly recommend them.

Heir to the Empire (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 1)
Dark Force Rising (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 2)
The Last Command (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 3)

To me, Zahn's trilogy IS the 3rd trilogy. If you haven't read his Star Wars books (here is a book that he cowrote with your boy Stackpole) I highly recommend them.

Heir to the Empire (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 1)
Dark Force Rising (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 2)
The Last Command (Star Wars: The Thrawn Trilogy, Vol. 3)

by Robert Blumen

We are living in Brazil. The future as foretold by Terry Gilliam's 1985 rich and multi-layered film masterpiece Brazil is upon us. First released fifteen years ago, Terry Gilliam's Brazil was astonishingly accurate in forecasting political trends. In a previous essay, I examined the film as a critique of socialist central planning. In this piece, I will discuss how Brazil portends Bush's War on Terror.

The world of Brazil shows a totalitarian society in which freedom has been forfeited for a false promise of protection from terrorist attacks. Gilliam shows how the threat of terrorism is manipulated by the state as a means of political control over the population. The threat of terror is created by the internal security police in order to generate public acceptance of totalitarian police powers.

Gilliam's exposition raises some important questions: Is the terror created by the power of the state in the alleged pursuit of terrorism worse than the terrorism itself? And are they really any different?

The ministers of state in Brazil have succeeded in creating a society organized around a continuous response to the threat of terrorism. Random bombings occur regularly. The protagonist Sam and his mother must go through a security check in order to enter a restaurant. And then during their meal a large explosion blows out the back of the dining room; they continue eating while bodies are dragged away.

As in modern America, there is some doubt about whether Brazil's "War on Terrorism" is really working. At the opening of the film Minister Helpmann, the Deputy Minister of information (the internal security agency), appears on TV immediately after a bombing takes place:

• INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the government is winning the battle against terrorists?

  HELPMANN: Oh yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs, we're fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I'd say they're nearly out of the game.

  INTERVIEWER: But the bombing campaign is now in its thirteenth year.

  HELPMANN: Beginner's luck.

Now in the US, we are told by the Bush administration that the war on terrorism will become a more or less permanent state of affairs.

• U.S. war may last decades
  Military pushed to think broadly
  By KAREN MASTERSON

  WASHINGTON - The U.S. war on terrorism may rage for decades and has forced Pentagon strategists to think more broadly than they've had to since World War II, a top military official said Sunday.

  "The fact that it could last several years, or many years, or maybe our lifetimes would not surprise me," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday on ABC's This Week.

The film has been reissued on DVD with commentary by the director in which he states that it was his intention to convey that there were so many government plants, double agents, agents provocateurs, moles, infiltrators, etc. that at some point even the government did not know for sure whether there were any real terrorists or whether all of the terror was fabricated by the police as part of their anti-terror campaign.

In a conversation between Sam and Ministry of Information office Jack Lint, Lint reveals how he - as a key member of the internal security department - understands the events that are taking place:

• SAM: You don't really think Tuttle and the g

by Robert Blumen

We are living in Brazil. The future as foretold by Terry Gilliam's 1985 rich and multi-layered film masterpiece Brazil is upon us. First released fifteen years ago, Terry Gilliam's Brazil was astonishingly accurate in forecasting political trends. In a previous essay, I examined the film as a critique of socialist central planning. In this piece, I will discuss how Brazil portends Bush's War on Terror.

The world of Brazil shows a totalitarian society in which freedom has been forfeited for a false promise of protection from terrorist attacks. Gilliam shows how the threat of terrorism is manipulated by the state as a means of political control over the population. The threat of terror is created by the internal security police in order to generate public acceptance of totalitarian police powers.

Gilliam's exposition raises some important questions: Is the terror created by the power of the state in the alleged pursuit of terrorism worse than the terrorism itself? And are they really any different?

The ministers of state in Brazil have succeeded in creating a society organized around a continuous response to the threat of terrorism. Random bombings occur regularly. The protagonist Sam and his mother must go through a security check in order to enter a restaurant. And then during their meal a large explosion blows out the back of the dining room; they continue eating while bodies are dragged away.

As in modern America, there is some doubt about whether Brazil's "War on Terrorism" is really working. At the opening of the film Minister Helpmann, the Deputy Minister of information (the internal security agency), appears on TV immediately after a bombing takes place:

• INTERVIEWER: Do you think that the government is winning the battle against terrorists?

  HELPMANN: Oh yes. Our morale is much higher than theirs, we're fielding all their strokes, running a lot of them out, and pretty consistently knocking them for six. I'd say they're nearly out of the game.

  INTERVIEWER: But the bombing campaign is now in its thirteenth year.

  HELPMANN: Beginner's luck.

Now in the US, we are told by the Bush administration that the war on terrorism will become a more or less permanent state of affairs.

• U.S. war may last decades
  Military pushed to think broadly
  By KAREN MASTERSON

  WASHINGTON - The U.S. war on terrorism may rage for decades and has forced Pentagon strategists to think more broadly than they've had to since World War II, a top military official said Sunday.

  "The fact that it could last several years, or many years, or maybe our lifetimes would not surprise me," Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Sunday on ABC's This Week.

The film has been reissued on DVD with commentary by the director in which he states that it was his intention to convey that there were so many government plants, double agents, agents provocateurs, moles, infiltrators, etc. that at some point even the government did not know for sure whether there were any real terrorists or whether all of the terror was fabricated by the police as part of their anti-terror campaign.

In a conversation between Sam and Ministry of Information office Jack Lint, Lint reveals how he - as a key member of the internal security department - understands the events that are taking place:

• SAM: You don't really think Tuttle and the g

Zorastrians mostly live in India and North America [wikipedia.org], though started in an ancient Persia that included what is now sometimes called Kurdistan [wikipedia.org]. Zoroaster (Zarathustra) was probably a mountain Kurd. I find these details interesting, because a Canadian cabbie once told me he was a Zoroastrian Kurd, and that converting to Islam rather than accept genocide was "the worst thing we ever did". The legacy of Mideastern religious politics will probably upset humanity forever.

Yeah, most of what we know of Zoroastrianism and Zarathustra is from India. Friedrich Nietzsche used mostly Indian sources in his research as have many others. While remnants of Zoroastrianism still exist in Persian and Central Asia the people from these areas don't really know much about them. A few months ago I read a good book by Paul Kriwaczek, In Search of Zarathustra: Across Iran and Central Asia to Find the World's First Prophet. Why am I not surprised some Kurds are Zoroastrians? Maybe because they aren't one monolithic people, they've been scattered throughout the Middle East and Central, Western, and South Western Asia and don't have their own "homeland", Kurdistan. And that's just the way Iran, Syria, and Turkey want it, each having a substantial population of Kurds.

I can't believe you *ACTUALLY* wrote all that crap to defend Big Brother.

http://www.amazon.com/Confessions-Economic-Hit-Joh n-Perkins/dp/0452287081/sr=1-2/qid=1158268344/ref= pd_bbs_2/103-3467514-1933419?ie=UTF8&s=books/

Jes

and here. This is one of my astrophysics textbooks. Unfortunately, it is not in print anymore.

The early materials are the real-life achievements of Neal Stephenson's real characters in his "Baroque Cycle" (the novels starting with Quicksilver ), so if you liked the books, this should be exciting news for anyone wanting to know more about science in that period.

that old quote from Huey Long: When fascism comes to America, it will come wrapped in an American flag

try this CD ...

http://www.amazon.com/Battle-Planets-Original-Soun dtrack/dp/B00030B9UC/

CK.

Save yourself $1.80 by buying the book here: Mastering Regular Expressions. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself $1.80 by buying the book here: Mastering Regular Expressions. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

The MIPS architecture is a popular one with people who implement their own cores. In fact, it is rather common for computer science/engineering students to implement their own using FPGAs, based on the commonly used Computer Architecture by Hennessy and Patterson. The architecture is extremely simple, straightforward, and easy to implement.

I believe you can implemented a near complete MIPS R3000 core with only minor differences and avoid any patent issues (as long as you don't call it a MIPS). Some of the ops on the newer cores are still encumbered and cannot be implemented without paying money to MIPS Technologies. I've worked with a couple of MIPS clones, some by American companies, and there is nothing illegal about them. In fact, it would be far more surprising if the Chinese companies wasted the time creating their own architecture instead of basing it on a proven one.

Hmm. Thats the same frequency as the radar used to track clouds

W-band ARM Cloud Radar (WACR)

So it reflects off of water droplets.

Hmm. I wonder if fog machines will be de reguire for mass protests in the near future.

Personally I'd think that would look a lot more hip than space blanket ponchos

By understanding the approaches to regular expression processing, we can learn to help ourselves.

Which is why i would reccomend Assembly Language Step By Step, by Jeff Duntman for any programmer. It's easy to learn, and is merely a preparation for Assembly, but would be great for all programmers, if only to know the difference between CS and DS, near calls and far calls, and the like.

The only thing i don't understnad about regular expressions, is why they have to be so cryptic. Wouldn't it be easier to debug if the patterns were a little more clear?

I own an older version of this book and it really rocks.

As usual, Amazon has it cheaper than BN ($29.69 vs $35.99).

My third-party wireless bridge cost me US$20. Free shipping if you buy something else to go over the $25 limit. Works great with the XBox, PS2, 360, took me all of two minutes to configure for WEP128.

The aim of this four-volume set is to spotlight some 400 works that have been censored, banned, or condemned because of their political, social, religious, or sexual content. The entries, which include a summary, censorship history, and brief bibliography, range widely from Aristotle through Galileo and on up to Adolf Hitler and Judy Blume. Such well-known prohibited works as de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, the Communist Manifesto, and Huckleberry Finn are included here, but so are many other works that are now less controversial, e.g., Milton's Areopagitica and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Some of the censorship histories are several pages long, but others are very short; Born on the Fourth of July gets only 50 words. Though most of the works are worth notice, too many describe fairly vapid objections: Fail-Safe was challenged by a school librarian who thought the book would undermine "America's confidence in their defense system." But as one might expect, many of the entries, such as the one for The Satanic Verses, are harrowing. Prepared by well-qualified scholars who have written and lectured extensively on censorship, the set is a very readable gathering of much useful information. It provides more depth and is more current than either Anne L. Haight's Banned Books (1978. 4th ed.) or ALA's Banned Books Resource Guide (1995). (Index not seen.)APeter A. Dollard, Alma Coll. Lib., Mt. Pleasant, MI Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The aim of this four-volume set is to spotlight some 400 works that have been censored, banned, or condemned because of their political, social, religious, or sexual content. The entries, which include a summary, censorship history, and brief bibliography, range widely from Aristotle through Galileo and on up to Adolf Hitler and Judy Blume. Such well-known prohibited works as de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, the Communist Manifesto, and Huckleberry Finn are included here, but so are many other works that are now less controversial, e.g., Milton's Areopagitica and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Some of the censorship histories are several pages long, but others are very short; Born on the Fourth of July gets only 50 words. Though most of the works are worth notice, too many describe fairly vapid objections: Fail-Safe was challenged by a school librarian who thought the book would undermine "America's confidence in their defense system." But as one might expect, many of the entries, such as the one for The Satanic Verses, are harrowing. Prepared by well-qualified scholars who have written and lectured extensively on censorship, the set is a very readable gathering of much useful information. It provides more depth and is more current than either Anne L. Haight's Banned Books (1978. 4th ed.) or ALA's Banned Books Resource Guide (1995). (Index not seen.)APeter A. Dollard, Alma Coll. Lib., Mt. Pleasant, MI Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The aim of this four-volume set is to spotlight some 400 works that have been censored, banned, or condemned because of their political, social, religious, or sexual content. The entries, which include a summary, censorship history, and brief bibliography, range widely from Aristotle through Galileo and on up to Adolf Hitler and Judy Blume. Such well-known prohibited works as de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, the Communist Manifesto, and Huckleberry Finn are included here, but so are many other works that are now less controversial, e.g., Milton's Areopagitica and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Some of the censorship histories are several pages long, but others are very short; Born on the Fourth of July gets only 50 words. Though most of the works are worth notice, too many describe fairly vapid objections: Fail-Safe was challenged by a school librarian who thought the book would undermine "America's confidence in their defense system." But as one might expect, many of the entries, such as the one for The Satanic Verses, are harrowing. Prepared by well-qualified scholars who have written and lectured extensively on censorship, the set is a very readable gathering of much useful information. It provides more depth and is more current than either Anne L. Haight's Banned Books (1978. 4th ed.) or ALA's Banned Books Resource Guide (1995). (Index not seen.)APeter A. Dollard, Alma Coll. Lib., Mt. Pleasant, MI Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The aim of this four-volume set is to spotlight some 400 works that have been censored, banned, or condemned because of their political, social, religious, or sexual content. The entries, which include a summary, censorship history, and brief bibliography, range widely from Aristotle through Galileo and on up to Adolf Hitler and Judy Blume. Such well-known prohibited works as de Sade's 120 Days of Sodom, the Communist Manifesto, and Huckleberry Finn are included here, but so are many other works that are now less controversial, e.g., Milton's Areopagitica and Uncle Tom's Cabin. Some of the censorship histories are several pages long, but others are very short; Born on the Fourth of July gets only 50 words. Though most of the works are worth notice, too many describe fairly vapid objections: Fail-Safe was challenged by a school librarian who thought the book would undermine "America's confidence in their defense system." But as one might expect, many of the entries, such as the one for The Satanic Verses, are harrowing. Prepared by well-qualified scholars who have written and lectured extensively on censorship, the set is a very readable gathering of much useful information. It provides more depth and is more current than either Anne L. Haight's Banned Books (1978. 4th ed.) or ALA's Banned Books Resource Guide (1995). (Index not seen.)APeter A. Dollard, Alma Coll. Lib., Mt. Pleasant, MI Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/100-Banned-Books-Censorship- Literature/dp/0816040591
[2] http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlink s/100mostfrequently.htm

A quick glance at these 2 lists only confirms my suspicions. We are well and truely fucked as a nation.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/100-Banned-Books-Censorship- Literature/dp/0816040591
[2] http://www.ala.org/ala/oif/bannedbooksweek/bbwlink s/100mostfrequently.htm

My favourite USB thingy is my memory card reader. Instead of the 347-in-1 readers that take up a lot of desk space, this one is a SD memory card reader shaped like regular thumbdrives. This should last a life time (mine or of the SD/MMC card standard). http://www.amazon.com/Simple-BONZAI-CARD-READER-ST I-USB2BONZAI/dp/B000189W0A

NeXT multiprocessed the guts of OS X on 2-4 processors. The result is that the mach kernel doesn't scale the processors linearly. There isn't the straightline performance boost of adding another processor beyond 4 cores with Mac OS X's mach kernel.

Let's assume for the moment that none of us in this forum actually know anything factual about how many years Apple (or even NeXT before them) have been running Mach on machines with more than 4 processors on the corporate campus behind locked doors.

However, we can probably reason this out if we try. We're all bright geek types, right? There are several clues. NeXT bought Apple for a negative $400 million or so in what, December of 1996?

The heritage of NeXT that you mention is a pretty big clue. I don't recall off the top of my head how many processors were supported by the production shipping Mach build for SPARC and PA-RISC back in the NeXT days, but let's assume it was 2, just for the sake of argument. Both of those platforms offered ready availability of systems with many processors even way back then. Perhaps there were systems like that in the lab.

Mach was originally a research project with an interesting goal: clean support of certain abstractions in a platform-independent way. One of those abstractions was support for multiple processors, beyond the typical SMP architectures we see today, which means that the author's concept of platform-independent went quite some distance beyond a different instruction set in a different risk architecture. Dig this:

Mach kernel
Unlike UNIX, which was developed without regard for multiprocessing, Mach incorporates multiprocessing support throughout. Its multiprocessing support is also exceedingly flexible, ranging from shared memory systems to systems with no memory shared between processors. Mach is designed to run on computer systems ranging from one to thousands of processors. In addition, Mach is easily ported to many varied computer architectures. A key goal of Mach is to be a distributed system capable of functioning on heterogeneous hardware.

That text is unattributed at the Wikipedia page, but comes from this document: Appendix B from the book: Operating System Concepts

An excellent book entirely about Mach is: Programming under Mach, which also mentions the design intent.

The original project was funded by DARPA, with the specific goal of developing operating systems technologies which would support super computers with hundreds or thousands of processors.

The Mach project developed new techniques which have migrated directly (via actual Mach code to OSF, NeXT, Mac OS X, et. al.) or indirectly into pretty much every modern operating system.

Mach research spanned a very long period of time, and two Universities. Curious, bright, and arguably insane people (or they would have been making money instead of slaving away making Mach on grad-student salary) with access to multiple processor machines with DARPA funded directives to make it scale to hundreds of processors. Hmm... that seems like a clue.

NeXT was, and Apple is a hardware engineering company. Apple has been building multiple processor boxes since before the reverse acquisition. I know, I had the, uh, perverse and shameful pleasure of running BeOS on one of them for sport.

If any joker with a web site can get ahold of pre-