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The news is that our fucking government, which is all high and mighty about truth and justice and democracy, is employing the same fucking methods used by Nazis, Stalinists... I know that for some odd fucking reason, it's unhip to be outraged by the transgressions of governments and corporations.

Sadly our government has been doing things like this for a long time (check out People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn). Remember that we founded this country on a genocidal land grab while touting the ideas of "liberty" and "freedom" (as long as you were white). We also founded the League of Nations, which later became the United Nations, but refused to join. We emancipated slaves and then promptly stood on the lower class to start the industrial revolution.

I will totally agree that the hypocrisy and is a good reason that this is news and is a major reason for my bitterness with our government. Remember that hipness and trends will come and go. I've seen it become hip to be informed at least three times during my life. I've been outraged since Reagan's first term - even at the "Democratic" administration that interupted the Republican strangle-hold. Whatever you do, don't let it discourage you! You have good intentions, good conclusions and every right to be mad. The people that laugh now will either say how right and insightful you were in five or ten years or become an unwitting plunderer. If you can be there to remind them they were being trendy and not smart, they might think twice about following the trend again.

Then they could go back in time to a year before the first iPod was released and sue the makers of the ePods handheld computer. Too bad they're not in business anymore or they could sue Apple, since the ePod was a WinCE device capable of playing MP3s (among other things).

Lindley also wrote Degrees Kelvin which I am starting. It's about William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, the origins of thermodynamics and the Industrial Age.

I think we underemphasize the thermodynamic view in science education, yet it is omnipresent in the world. These books show that viewpoint.

Lindley also wrote Degrees Kelvin which I am starting. It's about William Thomson, later Lord Kelvin, the origins of thermodynamics and the Industrial Age.

I think we underemphasize the thermodynamic view in science education, yet it is omnipresent in the world. These books show that viewpoint.

A compilation of those two books was recently published, entitled Classic Feynman: All the Adventures of a Curious Character. It also includes a CD of the lecture he gave that was the basis for Los Alamos from Below. Definitely the sort of thing that's perfect for a curious 5th or 6th grader.

Thank you for saying it - because it is true. I was going to say that these Islamic extremists are ruining the world for the rest of us, but the problem is that they are not really extremists - that's Muslim propaganda trying to convince us otherwise.

Everyone should also read the book "While Europe Slept":
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385514727/sr=1-1 /qid=1155814187/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-4046653-8897741?i e=UTF8&s=books

And as the recent ceasefire reminds us of the Munich Agreement of 1938, and as we attempt to duplicate the appeasements made as a build up to WWII, there will be no peace in our time. Rest in peace, Neville Chamberlain. It's happening again.

There is more to business skills than the stuff you find in The Prince

Too bad that the current crop of high-flying CEOs seems heavy on machiavellian tactics ...

I hadn't heard about the TSA approved locks - it bothers me that I have to hand my luggage over with no ability to prevent someone from taking anything of value. I didn't care for the combo lock and your link mentioned dual key locks. A quick spin through google led me to an amazon page where there were two reviews (for a combo lock). Both reviewers stated that their TSA "approved" locks had been cut rather than opened. Does anyone have first hand experience with these locks? Do they get cut or opened often? Until then, I have holiday season colored zip-ties (I figure that the white ones are too comon - sue me if I'm too paranoid) amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0009XLBSI/002-23 20945-5358457?v=glance&n=1036592

Dignifying Science: Stories About Women Scientists is a collection of comics about famous (and unfortunately not so famous) women scientists including: Marie Skladovska, Hedy Lamarr, Lise Meitner, Rosalind Franklin, Barbara McClintock, and Birute Galdikas. While the profiles in this book may not be deep enough to be a final resource for student projects, they can definitely ignite some interest in further study.

Not strictly what the poster is asking for, as it's not a single, long biography, but I can't recommend highly enough Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology. It's a thick, massively cross referenced volume with mini biographies of over 1500 scientists arranged chonologically from Imhotep to Stephen Hawking. Lengths range from a short paragraph to several pages (Galileo gets 4+ pages, for example).

As a teen, this book was a constant pleasure. I'd look up a single scientist and find myself following the cross references from one to another, coming up for air hours later. Never boring, although the heavy cross referencing really screams out for an online version.

Obviously not enough for those needing complete biographies, but an excellent starting point.

Asimov's Biographical Encyclopedia of Science and Technology

When I was a kid I remember reading this. Last updated in the 1980's [although Asimov's daughter is working on an update], so no new names from the last 25 years. Biographies for over a thousand scientists from ancient egypt to 1982 [with hyperlinks].

IIRC, the reading level was more geared toward grades 8-10, so it might be a stretch for grades 4-6. [But then again, my high school science teacher had us reading Scientific American articles as an intentional stretch - in the 1970's when Scientific American was still hard science.]

Gene Shoemaker

Best known as one of the discoverers of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet that hit Jupiter in 1994, but he did an incredible amount of other stuff as well. He was the first person to prove that craters on Earth and the Moon were caused by asteroid impacts, and he practically invented the field of Astrogeology. This all lead to him being heavily involved in developing scientific experiments for the Apollo missions, and training the astronauts to perform them - most likely he would've been sent to the Moon himself if not for health problems. He spent the last few years of his life alternating between searching the night skies for asteroids and comets, and travelling the world hunting for impact craters. He was killed in a car crash in 1997 in Central Australia.

As far as I know there's only been on biography written on him - thankfully it's a decent one, written by long-time friend David Levy. See here.

I just finished A World Without Time: The Forgotten Legacy of Godel and Einstein. Though the material is a little dense for those without a background in science and philosophy, I thought the book was great. Kurt Godel never made it on the "usual suspects" list, for some reason, but was one of the most important philosophers/logicians of the last century (wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_G%C3%B6del)

Here's some biographies of the less conventional scientists:

Ada Byron Lovelace: The Lady and the Computer
Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius
Turing and the Computer: The Big Idea

Here's some biographies of the less conventional scientists:

Ada Byron Lovelace: The Lady and the Computer
Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius
Turing and the Computer: The Big Idea

Here's some biographies of the less conventional scientists:

Ada Byron Lovelace: The Lady and the Computer
Nikola Tesla: A Spark of Genius
Turing and the Computer: The Big Idea

Not to be confused with Insomniac's Dave Attell, although both equally fond of the back door.

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

Actually, try this instead, if you are just getting started on sql AND are a developer.

The article links to B & N, but it looks like Amazon has it cheaper. Not that it makes much of a difference with something generally priced as low as an O'Reilly pocket guide, but it might help those penny pinchers.

Ok...Every time I read an article like this, and I see sites like Google and Yahoo referenced as "portals", I go a little crazy. A true portal to me is a domain squatter buying a name like, googles.com or ytahoo.com and putting a crapload of ads and "related" searches on it.

I think of sites like, http://weed.com/ as a true portal. I know the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_portal is a little broad, saying that they are, "sites on the World Wide Web that typically provide personalized capabilities to their visitors," but c'mon here...just because you can customize your Google or Yahoo homepage doesn't make it a Portal IMHO. I really think there needs to be a clear distinction between the two types of sites, instead of a branching term for any site that offfers custom content. Seriously...that would mean http://www.amazon.com/ is a portal because I can customize my User Account screen.

Ok...Every time I read an article like this, and I see sites like Google and Yahoo referenced as "portals", I go a little crazy. I think of sites like, http://weed.com/ as a true portal. I know the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_portal is a little broad, saying that they are, "sites on the World Wide Web that typically provide personalized capabilities to their visitors," but c'mon here...just because you can customize your Google or Yahoo homepage doesn't make it a Portal IMHO. A true portal to me is a domain squatter buying a name like, googles.com or ytahoo.com and putting a crapload of ads and "related" searches on it. I really think there needs to be a clear distinction between the two types of sites, instead of a branching term for any site that offfers custom content. Seriously...that would mean http://www.amazon.com/ is a portal because I can customize my User Account screen.

My father, a medical statistician, was one of the authors of a book on skeletal maturity http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0702025119/ref=sr _11_1/002-0416510-2702407?ie=UTF8. I was asked to provide a program to accompany the book so that paedeatricians wouldn't need to do the complex maths that goes from measuring x-rays to assessing growth. This was a simple VC++ routine which came to less than 200Kb. The publishers insisted that it should be on a CD, not a floppy, because

• They were geared up to use CDs
• The end users couldn't be guaranteed to have a floppy drive available

There is a book out called Effortless Mastery and It's written by jazz pianist Kenny Werner. A very good read for anybody, not just musicians. I highly recommend it if this topic interests you.

From Amazon
"Werner, a masterful jazz pianist in his own right, uses his own life story and experiences to explore the barriers to creativity and mastery of music, and in the process reveals that 'Mastery is available to everyone,' providing practical, detailed ways to move towards greater confidence and proficiency in any endeavor. While Werner is a musician, the concepts presented are for every profession or life-style where there is a need for free-flowing, effortless thinking."

Are you employed as a J2EE programmer, by any chance ?

Yeah, but I could have never written that straight through. I just began with the "naive implementation" and started cramming patterns into it. Plus I needlessly referred to concrete classes via interfaces wherever possible like you're supposed to. (Otherwise I might be tempted to stray outside the bounds of the interface and use implementation specific features.) Singleton and Factory were both no brainers. Strategy, though, was what really turned the program flow into a mess.

I initially posted it in a BS slashdot comment but this code actually became famous. It's all over the web. It appeared in one of the Patterns books as a warning of what not to do. I got a free copy from the author after I found this code in his online draft. There are also C# versions around if you need a Hello World in your Microsoft shop.

I hope to improve my Hello World in the next versions with even more patterns. Ones I'm looking at include Mediator, Proxy or Bridge, and Decorator (maybe to replace "." with "!" at the end of strings or something obnoxious like that, so I can name an interface "Excitable"). There may possibly be room for Visitor and a few others. Command and/or Interpreter would be nice but Interpreter might require a significant amount of code- using a library is unacceptable in a project like this one. Although that code then might need some more PATTERNS to help it out because otherwise it's hard to think of stuff that these patterns should be used for except for earlier infrastructure to implement previous patterns! (This would make the Hello World similar to projects I have seen in real life.) Maybe a stack- I'll push a Noun onto it ("World") and an Interjection ("Hello") that knows how to modify a Noun operand. Then I'll feed the stack to the Interpreter which will generate a MessageBody. That would really make a nice mess of things. If things get too complicated I'll have to jam a Facade in there somewhere.

For what it's worth, Peter Norvig has already pointed this out (he cites research from John Hayes and Benjamin Bloom).

Check out his short essay on how to learn to program in 10 years.

For what it's worth, Peter Norvig has already pointed this out (he cites research from John Hayes and Benjamin Bloom).

Check out his short essay on how to learn to program in 10 years.

Spiriting Around: A Modern Guide to Finding Yourself
This is a book on practical spirituality. It's not another sea-foam-on-the-beach type book. Its theme is that life's too hard but gets easier when we accept spiritual responsibility. It was written with teens in mind but it's really for anyone. It's a guidebook for growing up. And who couldn't use that - at any age? It describes work and responsible ways to make money. Then love, sex, marriage, friendship, and love for God, all from a spiritual standpoint. Then a unique chapter explains the paradoxes life forces on us as we make the decisions that frame our values. And the last chapter comes full circle and describes God, our future in the world, and what we can do about it.

You're not addressing the point of faith in science, which was all I was trying to get at.

We could get into the God debate, but quite honestly, I don't feel equipped enough without spending more time researching and learning to adequately argue my point, and there are people much better equipped to argue this than I am. Clearly, looking at the same point from two differing views will produce difference opinions. If you want to view this as a victory, by all means.

There are a couple of excellent books regarding the miracles in the bible that I would recommend, if you feel so inclined. The first is The Case for Christ: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310209307/103-52 17319-0259813?v=glance&n=283155
and the second, The Case for Faith: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310234697/sr=1-1 /qid=1155682461/ref=sr_1_1/103-5217319-0259813?ie= UTF8&s=books.

You're not addressing the point of faith in science, which was all I was trying to get at.

We could get into the God debate, but quite honestly, I don't feel equipped enough without spending more time researching and learning to adequately argue my point, and there are people much better equipped to argue this than I am. Clearly, looking at the same point from two differing views will produce difference opinions. If you want to view this as a victory, by all means.

There are a couple of excellent books regarding the miracles in the bible that I would recommend, if you feel so inclined. The first is The Case for Christ: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310209307/103-52 17319-0259813?v=glance&n=283155
and the second, The Case for Faith: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0310234697/sr=1-1 /qid=1155682461/ref=sr_1_1/103-5217319-0259813?ie= UTF8&s=books.

So, you've read "Waiting for the Galactic Bus"?

But not all religion is fundamentalist. Building on your "lightning bolts in the slime" notion, we really do have a better story on the origin of life, and it involves little more than natural selection. Stuart Kauffman, in his wonderful book At Home in the Universe offers a compelling vision of the origin of life as autocatalytic sets. (If chemicals A,B,C catalyze chemicals D,E,F and so forth until X,Y,Z in turn catalyze the production of chemicals A,B,C, then technically we have met the first minimum requirement for life: reproduction of organic matter without conscious design.)

Kauffman's work is in turn based on Ilya Prigogine on dissipative structures, in particular the "Brusselator" (devised by the Brussels group) which may be the simplest known autocatalytic set in existence.

What makes this interesting is that Prigogine, a nobel laureate chemist, believes in God. It's the political and religious fundamentalism that becomes incompatible with the scientific method... so you're both right.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

No additional money or effort is being spent by the copyright owners, and the games are no longer offered for sale. To me, that signals product abandonment.

That's
right.
These
games
have
been
completely
abandoned
by
Nintendo.

P.S.

He said conflict, not violence. A life without conflict is impossible and a naive dream of pacifists. Witness Gandhi's "Quit India Movement" where bombings and arson were used by supposed pacifists.

does not imply that we should not strive for a world without war.

I suggest that would-be pacifists read the book Double Lives: Stalin, Willi Munzenberg and the Seduction of the Intellectuals by Stephen Koch. It tells the story of Soviet controlled German propagandist Willi Münzenberg during the periods of World War one leading up to WW2. One of the most interesting things about the story was the directed use of propaganda against the Western Worlds intellectuals (mostly European at the time with some Americans), particularly with those who spouted the ideology of pacifism. The Soviets understood that propaganda is best used with riding the back of an existing strong zeitgeist and the intellectual current of the time was "peace not war" even to the detriment of protecting one's own people. They also understood that the best propaganda was truthful (and what could be more self-evident than peace being better than war?). So the Soviets, through Münzenberg, started a "peace movement" with the main aim of undermining the morality of Western war efforts. It had a dual purpose too. It both attacked the west and when, so the Soviets thought, they would defeat the west, they would also steamroll over the pacifists who would offer no competition. What am I getting at? Well nothing really, except that a lot of the history of pacifism isn't exactly what it seems.

Save yourself $5.09 by buying the book here: Convergence Culture. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%! That's a total savings of $5.39, or 22.81%!

Save yourself $5.09 by buying the book here: Convergence Culture. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%! That's a total savings of $5.39, or 22.81%!

A while ago I was going through a text on Astronomical Algorithms.

The beginning part of the book had a "be careful about computer calculations" section for those not already familiar with the concept.

One of the samples showed a simple program (in BASIC, of course!) which determined the number of significant digits used on your particular environment.

I forget the exact procedure the book used, but it involved doubling a number within a loop and then terminating the loop when the expression "x == x + 1" was true. (i.e. when adding one to a number did not affect the significant digits.)

New to Lisp, I decided to produce a Lisp version.

... To my surprise, the program ran for several minutes on my sooper dooper pentium 4 machine without terminating.

It turns out that in my naive, straight forward implementation, I was implicitly using Lisps 'bignum' support. It seems that you "automatically" get "bignums" within Lisp unless you specifically ask for something else.

A second snippet of code within this section of the same book showed how repeated rounding errors can accumulate to throw off an answer. For this, they repeatedly summed the following calculation "x = x + (((x+1)/3)*3)-1" IIRC. (The answer should always be "x".)

They showed example results from various machines for several iterations. The results dramatically illustrated the accumulated error after even a few iterations.

... Except for my naive Lisp version. It also seems that Lisp gives you a fractional datatype by default! The default implementation produced the exact answer.

Minor things really, but this was my first experience with a computer language that fit what I had learned in math class and I found it some what refreshing.

Eivind.

This - in humans, at least - can lead to the cyclic reinforcement of one's belief system. The belief system that explains observations initially is used to filter observations later.

Can someone put this in Orcad/Pspice or something? This is really just a blurb of the problem with no technical details whatsoever.