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Save yourself $18.50 by buying the book here: Extending and Embedding PHP. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%! That's a total savings of $18.99, or 38.58%!

The attribution of that quotation to Churchill is apocryphal. Furthermore, Churchill had no training in linguistics. If he did, he would have known that English has been placing prepositions at the end of sentences for centuries, for they are no longer strict prepositions but really coverbs much as like in, say, Hungarian. Also, it is the point of linguistics to be descriptive (explaining what's heard on the street without judgement), not prescriptive (telling people how to speak). You should really pick up Trudgill & Bauer's Language Myths (New York: Penguin, 1999) and you'll see just how naive your comment was.

I know that Slashdot gets kickbacks from B & N, but it's very inconsiderate of them to make their readers pay so much when Amazon has it for less (see Amazon's third-party sellers, cheapest prices on the 'Net).

For example, Ford has a concept truck that can run on gasoline, ethanol, or hydrogen. (Other auto makers also have concepts, no doubt.) Also, considering the fact that most people's daily commute is about 24 minutes (24 miles assuming average speed of 60 mph, which is generous), commutes are well within the range of electric vehicles (if anyone would sell one) or plug-in hybrids. That would allow the energy source for your car to be whatever is on the grid. Which allows wind, solar, bio-mass, nuclear, hydro, etc. to enter the picture. Furthermore, bio-diesel has to be considered as well. So, the long-and-short of it is that while ethanol cannot completely replace gasoline as THE next wonder-fuel, it is entirely feasible for all of our vehicles to be run using renewable energy. Besides, ethanol is produced locally and it reduces our dependence on foreign oil (that's for all those Republicans out there).

You might want to read this: Fooled Again: How the Right Stole the 2004 Election & Why They'll Steal the Next One Too (Unless We Stop Them)

but the ability to respond quickly will lesson as they grow

`And how many hours a day did you do lessons?' said Alice, in a hurry to change the subject.

`Ten hours the first day,' said the Mock Turtle: `nine the next, and so on.'

`What a curious plan!' exclaimed Alice.

`That's the reason they're called lessons,' the Gryphon remarked: `because they lessen from day to day.'

Of course if you read it cover to cover, you'll probably never want to eat a ground meat in the United States again.

The deluxe edition of Roadhouse is out. Or is that bad news as well?

The only career book to match the right job to your byte-loving personality The inspiring Careers for Computer Buffs and Other Technological Types encourages you to embrace your individuality by finding the job that matches your character traits. Includes: Suggested jobs in a wide range of settings, from the office to the outdoors A selection of jobs with different levels of educational requirements Advice on competing in hot job markets Tips on transforming hobbies into job skills

I think it's very disingenuous of Apple to claim that the Mac "is a PC too," when they have no interest (other than offering beta/shareware software) in helping users use it as a PC. Windows is not an add-on application like Half-Life 2. Frankly I wouldn't be surprised if Apple chose to support Windows with yet another extra-cost service, considering all the things AppleCare already doesn't cover for $350.

OEM copies of Windows are subject to different licensing agreements than the full retail copies. Yes, they're cheaper and Slashdot users don't give a shit about EULAs, but I'm just saying. As I was taught in Fake Law School, when you buy an OEM copy of software you have to buy it with a piece of hardware; the OEM copy is then tethered to that piece of hardware. No hardware, no license, and you go to Fake Jail for life.

I have a $300 Dell that didn't come with a Windows CD. It has a hard disk partition with recovery files on it, and the "recovery CD" merely boots to that HD partition so that it can re-image the primary partition with the factory settings. If I could extract the copy of Windows and throw it onto an Intel Mac, it would violate the OEM EULA just the same as if I threw Mac OS X/Intel onto a Dell system.

Before I had the $300 Dell, I bought Virtual PC. It was incredibly slow to the point of unusability. As I watched individual widgets in my Quicken* window draw and redraw, I thought, "man, this sucks."

* Yes, I bought a Windows machine to run Quicken. No, this will not read my Quicken for Windows file.

Hey, does Amazon sell office chairs?

Linguists have tried to develop new international languages to replace English (e.g. Esperanto)...

Actually, Esperanto was created by an ophthalmologist. In general, linguists don't attempt to replace languages with "better" ones. They recognize that linguistic change is natural and unavoidable. And, like other sciences, linguistics is largely occupied with observing and recording phenomena. They do not, as a rule, take a prescriptive point of view.

...we tend to modify/evolve langauge to suit our culture and circumstances, so any designed language (and even existing natural ones) will be modified into many different dialects as it is used...

This is exactly why attempts to replace English (or any other presently used natural language) with constructed languages generally fail. Construction, and its attendant notions of maintenance and static-ness, preclude incorporation into actual use. Remember that Frege in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and Russell as late as 1919 were interested in describing an 'ideal' language, but they gave up in the end - Russell long after Frege, for various reasons. Frege did, however, manage to stabilize the symbology of formal logic, and Russell contributed a great deal to both mathematics and linguistics.

The notion that English is somehow less grammatical than other languages is just bunk. All languages function on similar principles, and all languages are heavily governed by syntax. IANACS (I am not a computer scientist), but I've often wondered just why, exactly, the grammar of English is so hard to parse. It does contain exceptions, unlike the computer languages of which I am aware, but I don't know why those have proven insurmountable.

Add to that the color depth of the human eye. Granted, not 16 M colors, but still pretty high.

I would argue that the color depth of the human eye is much better than 16 M colors. Particularly when one color "fades" into another, I routinely see "color lines" where two very similar colors match up. 16 M colors is sufficient is where there's alot of contrasting colors and/or complex patterns. Heck, make the picture sufficiently contrasted/complex and 256 colors can do a decent job!

What's hard is the the realization that we don't "see" the world as a flat image, two images, or even a stereoscopic image. We "see" the world as a set of abstract concepts. We don't see a flat surface with a rough texture, we see a wall. We don't see a strangely shaped, brightly colored object that moves quickly, we see a "car". When driving, the specifics of other cars are seldom even noticed, let alone considered.

This is so much so that even when faced with two, substantially different items of the same type (EG: a barn) used for driving directions, we often have trouble discerning which barn to turn at!

So the first thing we'll have to do in decoding human sight is to separate the act of seeing from the act of decoding/interpreting. Then, I think we'll be getting somewhere.

For an astonishing, broad view of what I'm talking about, I'd recommend reading Animals in Translation by Temple Grandin. Written by a functional autistic, the author makes clear (for the first time, for me) many of the differences between animal and human perception.

It's a broad, sweeping work that kept me up for almost 48 hours straight - I just couldn't put it down!

Yeah... it's all propaganda... well, and economic theory based on math... but don't let that get in the way. Freaking read a book on economics, preferrably by this guy.

The world is becoming more like Brave New World than 1984. Most people are either on drugs or act like they might as well be; high culture fades into oblivion; and the silent masses mewl in approval at the behest of leaders who they don't understand.

This book, ISBN 1 85723 897 4, by John Clute and Peter Nichols, published by Orbit publishing, is a huge collection of encyclopedic entries on everything Sci-fi, from authors, to themes, literary terms, but pertaining to this discussion, the science as well. It will list the history, who talked about it or used it, the theories behind the science and the fiction of the idea, and give cross references. I have it on my shelf since I have an English Lit degree, but took a class on Sci-Fi and have been reading it all my life. It's priceless ( except for right here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031213486X/102-84 00598-1536961?v=glance&n=283155 ) and I highly recommend it.

If you're interested in reading the account of someone who started out pretty much where you are, except that he's an attorney specializing in constitutional law, you might want to check out How Would a Patriot Act

From the back cover:

Glenn Greenwald was not a political man. Not liberal, not conservative. Politicians were all the same and it didn't matter which party was in power. Extremists on both ends canceled each other out, and the United States would essentially remain forever centrist. Or so he thought.

Then came September 11, 2001. Greenwald's disinterest in politics was replaced by patriotism, and he supported the war in Afghanistan. He also gave President Bush the benefit of the doubt over his decision to invade Iraq. But, as he saw Americans and others being disappeared, jailed and tortured, without charges or legal representation, he began to worry. And when he learned his president had seized the power to spy on American citizens on American soil, without the oversight required by law, he could stand no more. At the heart of these actions, Greenwald saw unprecedented and extremist theories of presidential power, theories that flout the Constitution and make President Bush accountable to no one, and no law.

The article also doesn't mention the other crucial time factor, beyond transmission speed: the lag between unconscious perception (when the signal from the eye has reached the brain) and conscious perception (when you are aware that you see something). This lag of roughly half a second was first measured in the 1970s by psychologist Benjamin Libet. We don't sense any lag, though, because we automatically antedate the experience of our sensory inputs, pushing it all a half-second into the past, and thus experiencing everything as "now" even though we are actually a half-second behind. A good book about all this is The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size by Tor Norretranders.

This could have something to do with the deja vu experience: something goes wrong in the brain, and we somehow sense that half-second lag in a way we normally don't. In other words, you did "see that before," but the "before" was only half a second ago!

Actually, upon further investigation, I notice they sell Beneficial Insects (40). What kind of book store sells "Praying Mantids: 6 Egg Cases" ? One that's trying to be too much of everything...

a novel, a dvd, a lamp, diaper wipes, and a free MP3 performed by the US Marine Corp!

a novel, a dvd, a lamp, diaper wipes, and a free MP3 performed by the US Marine Corp!

a novel, a dvd, a lamp, diaper wipes, and a free MP3 performed by the US Marine Corp!

a novel, a dvd, a lamp, diaper wipes, and a free MP3 performed by the US Marine Corp!

a novel, a dvd, a lamp, diaper wipes, and a free MP3 performed by the US Marine Corp!

Their actions are defensive and justified. If there is going to be peace, Hezbolla needs to stand down, disarm, and give back Lebanon to the Lebanese people.

Don't you mean, "Give back Lebanon to the Lebanese people who are still left alive"?

Look, Israel has a right to exist. What at least some of us critical of Israel's war on Lebanon don't get is how "Israel has a right to exist" is in any way logically related to "Israel has a right to kill hundreds of innocent people." This is beyond the Big Lie: it is the Big Non Sequitur.

The implicit argument that Irsael's defenders make is that Israel has no other option but to bomb Lebanon back into the '70's, destroying a functioning democratic state.

But this is false. It has only been a year since Syria was induced by a mix of domestic and international pressure to pull out of Lebanon. The Lebanese economy was still rebuilding after the civil war and the democratically elected government still struggling to build unity within the country across different kooky religions. Changes and improvements were continuing to happen in Lebanon, and life there was getting harder for Hezbollah, not easier. There are any number of things that Israel and her allies could have done to support that process of change--pushing for a beefed up UN mission of the kind being proposed currently, for example.

"Jaw jaw is better than war war," said a well-known fellow who saw a great deal of both.

Israel had not even begun to exhaust the options that were available when it started bombing and killing innocent Lebanese (and the odd Finn and a few Canadians here and there.)

It is well known that war is never economically rational. It is always a dead loss, and there are always cheaper means to achieve the same ends. Therefore, those who would defend Israel's war need to be aware that they are trying to justify a fundamentally irrational act. Dozens of Israelis have been killed in the past few weeks who would not have died had Israel not elected to go to war. So "saving Israeli lives" cannot be invoked as a justification for war.

The justification for invading another nation is always prospective. It is based on the usually-false belief that certain desirable outcomes will be achieved if the invasion takes place. "Iraqis will become a pluralistic democracy... England will have it's neck wrung like a chicken... Russia will capitulate when we reach Moscow... We will have peace once Hezbollah is destroyed..." These desired outcomes almost never come about. A "short victorious war" more often than not becomes a long inglorious defeat.

Geeks will be aware how often managers make plans based on hopeless optimism. There is good evidence that wars start based on just this kind of thinking, and I highly recommend anyone interested in modern warfare read the linked book. You will never try to justify pre-emptive war on rational grounds again.

I wasn't suggesting that $1000 was a viable market price; I was providing that figure as an indication of how damn much I want such a device. A laptop is not an alternative, because laptops are too big to carry everywhere.

Really, it's like I'm saying I want a copy of The Elements of Java Style, and you're saying "Well, anyone who can afford Java books will just get a copy of the hardback Java Professional Library".

Yes, the latter encompasses the functionality of the former, but the form factor makes it useless.

Similarly, yes, anyone who can afford a 60GB iPod could use the same money to buy a rack of superior audio gear and some shelves for their CD collection. Does that mean the iPod can't possibly sell?

I wasn't suggesting that $1000 was a viable market price; I was providing that figure as an indication of how damn much I want such a device. A laptop is not an alternative, because laptops are too big to carry everywhere.

Really, it's like I'm saying I want a copy of The Elements of Java Style, and you're saying "Well, anyone who can afford Java books will just get a copy of the hardback Java Professional Library".

Yes, the latter encompasses the functionality of the former, but the form factor makes it useless.

Similarly, yes, anyone who can afford a 60GB iPod could use the same money to buy a rack of superior audio gear and some shelves for their CD collection. Does that mean the iPod can't possibly sell?

from a public terminal. Sexual Predators: How to Recognize Them on the Internet and on the Street. How to Keep Your Kids Away. I guess the best I can do now is keep them away from politicans and teach them to vote for people that aren't idiots.

Emotions Revealed, by Paul Eckman. The link didn't appear in the original post, so here it is in plaintext:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/080507516X/sr=8-1 /qid=1154097544/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-7885391-6632929?i e=UTF8

Actually, it was the merger of NSFnet and ARPANET. And of course adding a TCP/IP stack to BSD and System V which was the great tug-of-war between the two.

The book Nerds 2.0.1 has a fantastic origin story. I highly recommend it. It is an amazing story.

Amazon has it.

I still get a bit teary eyed when I hear "Eyes on Me" by Faye Wong.

Well I'm going to spare you all the usual song and dance routine every time music and the RIAA get mentioned here and recommend you read this.

One good book on investing is David Chilton's The Wealthy Barber. I recommend it.

Right here: Natural Tools by Weld I think the Internet keeps a lot of stuff available (like the aforementioned AFOS and Weld albums) long after 99.999% of the world doesn't really care about it anymore. Needless to say, this is a real boon for those of us still living in the 0.001%

One other thing.

even those made by Joseph Smith

I'm assuming this referred to my refusal to acquiesce to your interpretation of the Articles of Faith. If there's something else Joseph Smith said that you think I'm not standing behind, let me know. But before you accuse me of not standing behind Joseph Smith maybe you should study the things he actually said. (Again: it's all about context.)

Richard Bushman is a foremost expert on that topic. Two of his books are Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1400042704/sr=1- 1/qid=1154004630/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6105923-4548025? ie=UTF8&s=books ) and Joseph Smith and the Beginnings of Mormonism (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0252060121/sr=1- 2/qid=1154004630/ref=sr_1_2/002-6105923-4548025?ie =UTF8&s=books ). Yes, Bushman is an active Mormon. But the first book is published by Knopf and the second by the University of Illinois. This means the second book, in particular, rises to the highest standards of academic scholarship. While I'm suggesting books, By the Hand of Mormon: The American Scripture that Launched a New World Religion ( http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0195168887/sr=1-1 /qid=1154004833/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-6105923-4548025?i e=UTF8&s=books )is the first (and so far only) scholarly overview of the Book of Mormon as a religious text. It contains a pretty good overview of some Mormon theology as well as the historicity of the Book of Mormon. I'd be happy to send you a copy at no charge. Seeing as how the author is my father, I can get copies for free. I've already sent 2 out to people I've debated with on Slashdot.

Before talking about $100 laptop per child in India, one needs to have an understanding of the current state of public/private education system in India. School children need much more basic things than $100 laptops - teachers, books, supplies and in some cases a roof!

The fact that India is striving to be a "knowledge" based economy is quite amazing. Under the wraps this kind of economy at best benefits 5-10% of the population. India needs to develop the infrastructure (including basic public education) before looking at $100 laptops.

Negroponte needs to spend his time convincing India to cut its defence spending by half and spend the money on Infrastruture :-)

If you have time, read this book on various "school going" experiences across India.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1570 916667?v=glance

-- Ravi

-FL

Buy the book Options as a Strategic Investment

Use 10% of the available money to do these. While the book is pricy, it allows you to trade stocks at 1/10th the cost and risk of actually trading them. Which is exactly what you need.

Yes this is more complicated, however you'll be able to pick it up from the straightforward presentation of the manual

Put the rest of the money in an ING orange account (4.something interest rate).

Same profitability as stocks with less risk than mutuals.

                  --Michael

I also strongly, strongly recommend A Random Walk Down Wall Street. If you want a one-Web-page summary of why most other sources of investment advice are not to be trusted, see Greenspun.

I would strongly recommend reading some books. Two that come to mind are
1) A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Among other things, this provides an overview of places you can put money, starting from a bank account and moving all the way up to stocks, options, and futures.
2)The Intelligent Investor. This is the classic investing book that everyone should read. It focuses more on stocks and bonds, but still I wouldn't invest a single dollar without reading it (because everyone else has read it).

As to your specific situation, I would consider either a CD or some type of money fund from a brokerage. For example, Schwab has a money fund that currently yealds around 5%... Here and Here If you are looking for online information, Investopedia is a good place to start.

I would strongly recommend reading some books. Two that come to mind are
1) A Random Walk Down Wall Street. Among other things, this provides an overview of places you can put money, starting from a bank account and moving all the way up to stocks, options, and futures.
2)The Intelligent Investor. This is the classic investing book that everyone should read. It focuses more on stocks and bonds, but still I wouldn't invest a single dollar without reading it (because everyone else has read it).

As to your specific situation, I would consider either a CD or some type of money fund from a brokerage. For example, Schwab has a money fund that currently yealds around 5%... Here and Here If you are looking for online information, Investopedia is a good place to start.

You should consider opening a Roth IRA Roth IRA. You can invest $4000/yr this way. You could open your account with a discount brokerage, so that you could choose any selection of public stocks/mutual funds/ETFs. The nice thing about the Roth IRA is that your initial investment is taxed at your current rate (which presumably is at an all-time low). Once you graduate, your income and tax rate will likely increase as you gain skill and experience. As you approach your maximum income you will be better off investing in a 401(k), but in the meantime you should fill your Roth first. As for investing, I suggest Buffet's letters, The Intelligent Investor, and Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market. Good luck.

You should consider opening a Roth IRA Roth IRA. You can invest $4000/yr this way. You could open your account with a discount brokerage, so that you could choose any selection of public stocks/mutual funds/ETFs. The nice thing about the Roth IRA is that your initial investment is taxed at your current rate (which presumably is at an all-time low). Once you graduate, your income and tax rate will likely increase as you gain skill and experience. As you approach your maximum income you will be better off investing in a 401(k), but in the meantime you should fill your Roth first. As for investing, I suggest Buffet's letters, The Intelligent Investor, and Toward Rational Exuberance: The Evolution of the Modern Stock Market. Good luck.

I read once a while back that deja vu was caused by the brain processing visual data from one eye marginally faster than from the other. This seems like a logical theory to me, but I am not a neurologist. Has anyone else heard of this?

I hadn't heard that specifically, but as explained in the interesting book The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size by Tor Norretranders, in the 1970s psychologist Benjamin Libet showed that there is a lag of roughly half a second between unconscious and conscious perception. Our brains don't sense any lag, though, because we automatically antedate the experience of our sensory inputs, pushing it a half-second into the past, and thus experiencing everything as "now" even though we are actually a half-second behind.

This could have something to do with the deja vu experience: something goes wrong in the brain, and we somehow sense that half-second lag in a way we normally don't. In other words, you did "see that before," but the "before" was only half a second ago!

Another thing we learn from that: the movies aren't lying when someone is blown up by a bomb or suffers some other quick death and another character says "They never knew what hit them." They don't feel the blast of the bomb that kills them because, if they are killed in less than half a second, their consciousness doesn't have time to experience it.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0688001238/

He was widely derided as a wacko. What has changed that makes this so new and wonderful now?

Save yourself $6.80 by buying the book here: Building Scalable Web Sites. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%! That's a total savings of $7.20, or 22.83%!

Save yourself $6.80 by buying the book here: Building Scalable Web Sites. And if you use the "secret" A9.com discount, you can save an extra 1.57%! That's a total savings of $7.20, or 22.83%!

I know Slashdot gets kickbacks from B & N, but it seems insensitive to their readership that they keep linking there when Amazon has it cheaper (look at the 3rd-party sellers, they have the lowest prices on the 'Net). O'Reilly's Safari program is also a good way to read the book for less.

In the immediate sense, perhaps you should be.

Definitely.

Everyone has their own idea of what good game design is, and this unique collection of articles provides a variety of different perspectives and ideas to consider in your designs. The articles are written by a diverse group of designers with varying levels of experience. Most of the key areas of game design are covered, and practical techniques and tools are included throughout. Each section begins with a broad overview of the topic and then includes a collection of ideas from other designers on how they think about or approach the subject. If you are just beginning in game design, you'll find useful information throughout the book, and if you're an experienced designer, you'll find new ideas to complement and compare with your own designs. Producers and managers will also benefit from the user community and managing a game development business sections. If you're interested in learning how other designers think about game design, you'll find plenty of great, and sometimes controversial, ideas to consider here!