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"This is the kind of thing that we should be cracking down on, the commercial pirates, not teenagers and old ladies who download a song or two. "

Rather than debate your silly argument, I'll just recommed you read this.

Skum-skimming wasn't hard to learn. You got up at dawn. You gulped a breakfast sliced not long ago from Chicken Little and washed it down with Coffiest. You put on your coveralls and took the cargo net up to your tier. In blazing noon from sunrise to sunset you walked your acres of shallow tanks crusted with algae. If you walked slowly, every thirty seconds or so you spotted a patch at maturity, bursting with yummy carbohydrates. You skimmed the patch with your skimmer and slung it down the well, where it would be baled, or processed into glucose to feed Chicken Little, who would be sliced and packed to feed people from Baffinland to Little America.

Yum!

See this entry on Chicken Little.
The Space Merchants is still available here. The equally entertaining sequel, The Merchant's War appears to be out of print.

Personally I'd love to see us progress to the point where it was possible to grow just the meat itself without the animal.

There is a great 'speculative fiction' novel by Margaret Atwood called Oryx and Crake where they have genetically engineered chicken to be just masses of flesh that you can 'harvest' meat from. They have no brain or heads...just the necessary organs to let the meat grow.

They call them Chicki-knobs, which is still my favourite word to describe things like chicken McNuggets and Big Macs.

She also wrote about pigoons, which are fictional transgenic creatures that look much like domestic pigs, but their DNA has been spliced with human genetic information and they have been engineered to grow multiple organs for transplants.

My point is, is that the chance that any one particular tribes story of how the world came into being is EXTREMELY unlikely to be true. I highly doubt that we came into existence riding on the back of giant walruses, or whatever, when big bang theory has modeled the universe coming into being back to the last second or so after the big bang. If you chose to be deluded and believe the walrus theory that is your right to do so but don't be surprised if I laugh at you. Ditto for the old testament, new testaments, Koran, etc, etc, which are just more "back of the walrus" theories with more believers. Most of us are over the tooth fairy and Santa Claus, isn't it time we grew up the way and progressed onward from the high standards set in the 18th century enlightenment? Are we really going to back slide towards a medieval conflagration of the Christian and Jewish God is better than the Muslim God in the information age when we should know better, and with nuclear weapons? Is that how little people have really learned in our million year plus journey on planet earth? And of course the belief mongers will tell you the Christian God doesn't want you studying evolution, etc, etc,

THAT is why I'm railing on faith, we can and MUST do better if we are survive the challenges of WMDs, global warming, population growth, energy scarcity, water scarcity, terrorism by BOTH state and non state actors, etc. If we really chose to fight like little kids in a sandbox over who's God is bigger when we face these sorts of crises than we will be getting EVERYTHING we deserve if for example we use our last drop of oil to kill the "unbelievers," and then we find our society collapses soon afterwards. Don't think we couldn't be that foolish, read Jared Diamonds collapse focusing on the foolish behavior on Easter Island and then think long and hard if your "faith is worth it again.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0670033375/104-03 33473-9723953?v=glance&n=283155

The thing that utterly terrifies me for the future is how credulous Americans are currently, it seems they'll believe any damn crap presented with a slick graphic on tee vee and I firmly BELIEVE (AH HA a belief) that the faith in "transcendental miracles" and other such who-haw Americans are taught as children is at the root at that credulity that allows them to transfer faith to the MSM and manipulative leaders. And that's all well and good until a dumbass who believes the "end times" are near has his finger on the button, listening George?

Really the point of my whole long screed in favor of scientific knowledge and against "faith," is a plea for skepticism and critical thinking in an age when some very stupid boys have some very dangerous toys. If we lapse into "believing" in childish fantasies at this critical juncture in history I have very little "faith" in the future of the human species.

You can also go fart around with Amazon's Web Services for fun and profit.

They rolled this out a few months back, when I was one of the brave few to sit through the presentation at a programmers conference in Santa Clara (for a free t-shirt and pen.) It was actually amazingly cool and I'm planning something of my own with it. (but I ain't telling you because I wouldn't want anyone tempted to swipe my neat idea, like thinkgeek did to me once already.)

That is not even mentioning the difference in the cost of books due to monopoly rents in Western countries. I was shocked, when I first bought text books in Asia, at how little they cost. The more copyrights are enforced, the more students are ripped off.

Now, the universities are starting to sell English text books, and the cost of education is going up dramatically.

A good example of this is Joseph Needham's Science and Civilization in China series. This book is like an encyclopedia of Chinese science. On Amazon, Science and Civilization in China volumes appear to go for prices between US$120 and US$210 per volume. When I bought the versions "licensed for sale in Taiwan", however, I only paid between NT$500 and NT$800 per volume. At the current exchange rate, according to XE.com (the first converter I found in a Google search), thats between about US$15 and US$25. These books are not pirated. They were legally produced by a publisher that has the exclusive rights to these volumes in Taiwan only.

During my college years, I was always shocked at the rip offs on campus. However, buying books in Asia changed my shock into indignation. Not only are books more expensive in the West, from the standpoint of someone who is interested in languages (especially those with scripts that are not Roman or alphabetic in nature), this is even worse. While books in China have always contained Chinese characters, and Asian publishers have no problem incorporating Roman characters into their books, the opposite is true of Western publishers. This is why most works dealing with China in Western languages lack Chinese characters. This means that books published by Western publishers are not only more expensive but also contain less information, less value for a higher price.

Books can cost up to 10 times as much. Teachers need higher salaries because of higher taxes. Bureaucracies waste more money. Yet it is assumed that spending more on education necessarily yields better results.

Considering the figures in the Slashdot post, one should come to the conclusion that Asians are less educated than their Western neighbors. However, India has the largest number of engineers in the world, and Chinese students consistently best other students at universities in the US and other countries. Are those Western students really getting their money's worth?

Post Post: I should add that government spending is also less relevant in Chinese cultural areas. Half of schooling is done after school at cram schools. These are private schools that make up for the deficiencies of public schools. Government spending is, therefore, only a fraction of per capita spending on education in Chinese cultural areas.

Those are maybe not newbie books, but the books here all have some nuggets while learning databases (maybe not the initial start, but after a while if nothing else)

An introduction to database systems - C.J. Date
Covers the relational model, quite heavy on theory, but gives an excellent walkthrough of the fundamentals.

SQL For Smarties - Joe Celko
A good SQL Programming book, covers normalization and most features found in databases, anyone programming databases should read this one

SQL 1999 Complete, REALLY - P. Gulutzan, T. Pelzer
Good coverage of what's included in the 1999 SQL standard and some examples and discussions around this.

Translucent Databases - P. Wayner
Covers how to handle sensitive data in databases, letting users use data, but not be able to fetch or abuse it

The two MySQL books I'd recommend are "High Performance MySQL" by J.Zawodny and D.Bailing and "MySQL" by Paul Dubois.
Another good database book for performance tuning is "SQL Performance Tuning" by P.Gulutzan/T.Pelzer

Hope this helps...
cheers,

Those are maybe not newbie books, but the books here all have some nuggets while learning databases (maybe not the initial start, but after a while if nothing else)

An introduction to database systems - C.J. Date
Covers the relational model, quite heavy on theory, but gives an excellent walkthrough of the fundamentals.

SQL For Smarties - Joe Celko
A good SQL Programming book, covers normalization and most features found in databases, anyone programming databases should read this one

SQL 1999 Complete, REALLY - P. Gulutzan, T. Pelzer
Good coverage of what's included in the 1999 SQL standard and some examples and discussions around this.

Translucent Databases - P. Wayner
Covers how to handle sensitive data in databases, letting users use data, but not be able to fetch or abuse it

The two MySQL books I'd recommend are "High Performance MySQL" by J.Zawodny and D.Bailing and "MySQL" by Paul Dubois.
Another good database book for performance tuning is "SQL Performance Tuning" by P.Gulutzan/T.Pelzer

Hope this helps...
cheers,

Those are maybe not newbie books, but the books here all have some nuggets while learning databases (maybe not the initial start, but after a while if nothing else)

An introduction to database systems - C.J. Date
Covers the relational model, quite heavy on theory, but gives an excellent walkthrough of the fundamentals.

SQL For Smarties - Joe Celko
A good SQL Programming book, covers normalization and most features found in databases, anyone programming databases should read this one

SQL 1999 Complete, REALLY - P. Gulutzan, T. Pelzer
Good coverage of what's included in the 1999 SQL standard and some examples and discussions around this.

Translucent Databases - P. Wayner
Covers how to handle sensitive data in databases, letting users use data, but not be able to fetch or abuse it

The two MySQL books I'd recommend are "High Performance MySQL" by J.Zawodny and D.Bailing and "MySQL" by Paul Dubois.
Another good database book for performance tuning is "SQL Performance Tuning" by P.Gulutzan/T.Pelzer

Hope this helps...
cheers,

Those are maybe not newbie books, but the books here all have some nuggets while learning databases (maybe not the initial start, but after a while if nothing else)

An introduction to database systems - C.J. Date
Covers the relational model, quite heavy on theory, but gives an excellent walkthrough of the fundamentals.

SQL For Smarties - Joe Celko
A good SQL Programming book, covers normalization and most features found in databases, anyone programming databases should read this one

SQL 1999 Complete, REALLY - P. Gulutzan, T. Pelzer
Good coverage of what's included in the 1999 SQL standard and some examples and discussions around this.

Translucent Databases - P. Wayner
Covers how to handle sensitive data in databases, letting users use data, but not be able to fetch or abuse it

The two MySQL books I'd recommend are "High Performance MySQL" by J.Zawodny and D.Bailing and "MySQL" by Paul Dubois.
Another good database book for performance tuning is "SQL Performance Tuning" by P.Gulutzan/T.Pelzer

Hope this helps...
cheers,

Save yourself some money by buying the book here: Pro MySQL. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself some money by buying the book here: Pro MySQL. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

I'm sure there are many fine ones, but I started with Understanding SQL. It's a bit old (1990), but there is a 2nd edition available (although only "used" on Amazon, which is why I didn't link to it). It's pretty DBMS-agnostic, covers the basic ground pretty well. I learned a lot without even having a DBMS to practice with (this was pre-MySQL).

Also, while the objection of President Bush and other moderates is killing the embryo, the Catholic Church and real "right wing zealot" Protestants have another deeper objection: the separation of sex and procreation. The idea is that it is fundamentally disordered to separate the two, as we have done since the 1930s. There is an analogous separation of eating and nutrition - also enabled by modern technology. While the Catholic Church has not said anything (that I know of) about the food angle, it is less emotionally charged and may help understand the reasoning concerning sex and procreation (described in full jargon laden glory in The Theology of the Body and various attempts to explain it to laymen).

Technology enables us to separate eating and nutrition. You can eat without nourishment thanks to Olestra, Aspartame, Sucralose, and friends. You can nourish without eating thanks to IVs, vitamin pills (get your necessary nutrients while eating junk food), feeding tubes, and friends. You can justify the nourishment without eating in various special circumstances - but the attempt to repeat the pleasure of eating beyond the requirements of nourishment is gluttonly and has generally bad results.

Similarly, the attempt to repeat the pleasure of sex beyond the needs of procreation (birth control, gay lifestyle, etc) has generally bad results - physical, emotional, and spiritual.

If you are just starting out with SQL, what book(s) would those familiar with it recommend?

If you mean MySQL, the topic at hand, I have nothing for you. However, if you meant exactly what you wrote, I picked up Sams Teach Yourself SQL in 10 Minutes from my local library last fall, and loved it. Learned a lot, quickly.

Thanks, I'd like to believe I'm qualified, at least for the work I have to do ;)
The book that actually changed the way I work is The Power of Full Engagement. It has it's problems, but got me thinking about working in harmony with the rythms of the day and how I feel rather than just pushing through it and burning myself out.

"The best programmers are between 20 and 100 times more productive than the worst"
At least 10 times, if not 100. I also lead a small team of developers and I can say that the best developers I've seen could replace the entire team and do other projects on the side. The others keep a steady, solid, reliable pace but never "peak" and seem to find the kind of flow that the high performers are capable of. Not that I'm criticizing their work; everyone has their niche.

Amazon disagrees

Did you even read the article you pointed to? Quote : "However, NOACs tend to poorly recreate the NES system's circuitry, which causes inaccurate colors, inaccurate audio, missing sounds, additional glitches, and the inability to run certain NES and Famicom games." That's hardly the kind of quality one would expect from Nintendo, and I'd rather they not do it at all than they do something crappy. And even if they made an adapter, you would still have to buy it, therefore paying to play games you already own.

Amazon sells the GameBoy Player over $50 (I have no idea of the retail price). Say you have a couple of NES games, a couple of SNES games, a couple of N64 games and a couple of Gameboy games (probably more, but only a couple might be worth playing over and over and over again after all those years). You could either buy 4 adapters at about $30 each (number was pulled out of ass, but still seems about right) and only be able to play the games you already own (not always easy to find a cartridge of Kid Icarus), hoping that those cartridges are still in good shape (I didn't check, but I doubt the battery on my Legend of Zelda NES cartridge will keep my saved games reliably), or you could "rebuy" only the games you actually want to play on the new console for prices ranging from $1 to $5 (was an official price list announced?), and then try other games that you don't already own the original cartridge and which can't be found anymore. If there's only one or two games on the N64 that I'd like to play again (let's face it...), it would suck to have to buy a $30 adapter if I can rebuy the games $5 each.

The choice Nintendo made both costs less, gives you access to more games, and is probably less prone to hardware defects.

One of the big trends floating around with the "GTD" nerds is carrying a small paper notebook or a pile of index cards. This works quite well--you never run out of batteries & can trade info for people. Some nerd chick thought it was "cool because it was like a lab notebook."

I've gone through the PALM, Clie (which runs Palm OS), and the Sharp Zaurus. The Zaurus is good, but the batteries would always die on me. Paper is great!

for a time.

Check out: "Eudaemonic Pie" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0595142362/102-37 29520-1412955?v=glance&n=283155

and

http://www.thomasbass.com/work2.htm

Yeah, Sean Carroll knows what he's talking about. He wrote the book on General Relativity. Ok, well, maybe not THE book, but a very good book nonetheless.

Yeah, Sean Carroll knows what he's talking about. He wrote the book on General Relativity. Ok, well, maybe not THE book, but a very good book nonetheless.

Headlines read: COMPUTERS PREDICT ROULETTE ROLLS WITH MATH!!!!!

Actually, this has been done. Effectively. No, seriously, it has. Read Fortune's Formula.

I recommend every aspiring trader have a read of A Mathematician Plays the Stock Market by John Allen Paulos.

The book is pretty much as it sounds. While the author doesn't *actually* invest in stocks, he *is* a mathematician and he plays through (mostly with logic) ways to get ahead in the stock market game. As you would probably guess, it's not easy.

A great read. Sadly, my dreams of a quick fortune by computing stocks were quickly squashed by his well presented arguments.

The use of computers models to predict what to buy has been around for some time. The absolute belief in these models caused Long Term Capital Management to go under in 1998 ( see When Genius failed ). I also highly recommend reading Fooled by randomness

The use of computers models to predict what to buy has been around for some time. The absolute belief in these models caused Long Term Capital Management to go under in 1998 ( see When Genius failed ). I also highly recommend reading Fooled by randomness

Save yourself some money by buying the book here: Network Algorithmics. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself some money by buying the book here: Network Algorithmics. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

But first let's act out Jack Of Shadows! Wouldn't that be cool?

Mizuno has often talked about the prehistory of cold fusion. Most great discoveries are visited and revisited many times before someone stakes a permanent claim. People sometimes stumble over a new discovery without even realizing what they see. Mizuno did his graduate and post graduate work on corrosion using highly loaded metal hydrides. His experiments were almost exactly like those of cold fusion, but they were performed for a different purpose. In retrospect, he realized that he saw anomalous events that may have been cold fusion. At the time he could not determine the cause, he did not imagine it might be fusion, and he had to leave the mystery unsolved. No scientist has time to track down every anomaly. I expect many people saw and disregarded evidence for cold fusion over the years. Mizuno makes a provocative assertion. He says that long before 1989 he wondered whether the immense pressure of electrolysis might produce "some form of fusion." He says: "This kind of hypothesis would occur to any researcher studying metal and hydrogen systems. It is not a particularly profound or outstanding idea. It never occurred to me to pursue the matter and research this further." He appears to downplay the role of Pons and Fleischmann. Perhaps he exaggerates when he says "any researcher" would think of it, but on the other hand Paneth and Peters and others did investigate this topic in the 1920s. ...

-source (emphasis added)

At a guess, this might be a reference to a children's book called "Help, I'm a prisoner in a toothpaste factory" by John Antrobus, out of print at Amazon though - always wondered how someone could put messages in toothpaste tubes, still haven't worked out if it's possible.

I have a 24" CRT on my desk in front of me that will do 1080p and beyond. In fact, it'll do 2304 x 1440 at 85 Hz. Even the cheapo 17" CRT I used to have could do 1920 x 1200 quite legibly. CRTs are certainly capable of decent resolutions.

OTOH, I also have a 15.4" laptop that does 1920 x 1200. I've never seen a colour CRT with that sort of pixel density. And the IMB T221 leaves that for dead. LCDs are capable of more than CRTs, especially at larger sizes.

You're referring to televisions only, and large-screen televisions at that, but that's hardly representative of what CRTs *can* do.

> > The overwhelming evidence for the link between the presence of HIV antibodies in
> > human beings and the development of AIDS is convincing enough.
> >
> Funny, all the people I listed say they've been looking for that link in the science
> journals and have never seen it

Funny that! For more reading check out "Kicking the Sacred Cow" by James P. Hogan. It would appear that your reason and logic are falling on deaf ears.

Can someone please post links to peer-reviewed scientific journal articles that prove that HIV causes AIDS? If we truly are to believe this, then the burden of proof is on them to prove it, not us to disprove it.

if I didn't have VPN over wifi thanx to m0n0wall and my RADIUS server...... as such I guess I will wait for N assume my trusty BEFW11S4 (b router) dosn't crap out.

if anyone is thinking of going G the WRT54GL with the dd-wrt firmware is pretty sweet.

whatever you do DO NOT buy a WRT54GS or later model WRT54G models..as they suck pretty much http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WRT54G

On this page, there is a link to an amazon page. On that page, there is a link to "download the unbox video player", so I do believe the format will be somewhat proprietary. Amazon may take that page down, but I still saw what I saw.

He wrote a few utilities and a book or two, but short of maintaining the Jargon file, it's hard to see what he did on a day to day basis that allowed him to be quite so prevelant.

ESR's essay The Cathedral and the Bazaar inspired Netscape to open-source its browser code, which resulted in the Mozilla browser and Gecko, one of the best browser engines around. Netscape's decision in turn paved the way for open-source ventures from a number of hitherto opaque corporations. That "book or two" got quite a ball rolling. That's why ESR is so respected today.

The screenshot shows this URL: http://www.amazon.com/gp/video/help/faq.html. It seems that this URL actually exists, because it gives 200 OK and a 48 byte response.

Thomas Friedman wrote an entire book describing his belief that The World is Flat.

It only has tilt functionality, which is just half of the Wiimote's back of tricks. It's much more like the PSWiiStyle Pro controller for PS3 than the Wii's remote controller.

For the record the product you are referring to is the Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle Pro.

Perhaps the GP is talking about the Microsoft XWand, though I don't know that they were showing any of that stuff off as far back as 2000 or 2001. It also doesn't really work like the Wiimote, but does have some motion sensing capabilities.

Oh, and a 100 lb woman in stiletto heels can exert over 1000 psi if she balances on her heel.

Wasn't that covered in chapter 12 of Sex Tips from a Dominatrix? I think the term "thumb drive" has a completely different meaning in that industry, too.

Save yourself some money by buying the book here: Divine Proportions. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself some money by buying the book here: Divine Proportions. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

If it was 170 million of somebody's own money I think that it would have been done a lot better

It's nice that you think that. It's too bad it isn't true.

Human stupidity is not limited to any one type of human organization, and the money spent by poor-quality managers in large corporations is no more the manager's own money than money spent by poor-quality managers in governments is.

Fiscal control is the least important aspect of failures of this kind, and any serious student of large software project failures should read Stephen Flowers' Software Failure: Management Failure for a better understanding of how such projects go wrong. The book is an empirical study of ten failed software projects (most but not all of them public sector). He comes up with a list of risk factors that includes things like, "attempting to fix a management problem with a technological solution" and "lack of end-user buy-in", as well as more mundane issues like the adoption of multiple new technologies within the scope of a single project. Highly recommended.

Most of the issues with the browser started after that.

Really??? That's not how I remember it. I myself am aligned with Charles Ferguson's (yeah, arrogant) take on the matter...

You're either very lucky or full of shit. Looking here, the average price for a new UMD seems to be around $20, with some, like Pirates of the Caribbean going for closer to $30.

You're either very lucky or full of shit. Looking here, the average price for a new UMD seems to be around $20, with some, like Pirates of the Caribbean going for closer to $30.

Ikaruga and F-Zero GX are 'For Closers' only.

He figured this out in 1960:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/020000106X/002-40 93556-7879220?v=glance&n=283155

Read the book on nutcase theories regarding 9/11. No matter how many times you watch Loose Change, it doesn't make it factual. Even Oliver Stone couldn't make a conspiracy theory movie out of 9/11. Yes Virginia, terrorism is real. There are Islamic Fascists in the world that want you dead, no you cannot appease them and George Bush did not create them.

Agreed. I think we just need to send people "The World is Flat" http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0374292795/sr=8-1 /qid=1155844973/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-9971751-1890423?i e=UTF8 and send them to Wikipedia or something for the rest. Maybe to some of the following links: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_elasticity & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economies_of_scale oh - and lastly http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginal_cost