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For those of you just starting out, try the the practical sql handbook. I recently glanced through edition 3. I started at edition one years ago. It still remains an awesome book.

"American High School Graduate: OK, two brothers are Singaporian-American of four Americans, OK, thats 2/4, so I er, carry the two, um, denomi-whassit. Oh Damn, I've run out of fingers, I'll just google it"

Obviously counting on one's fingers is seen as unmanly in the US.

I agree with you that they should really just have kept quiet about it a bit longer, since it suffers in comparison. Personally, I'd rather have the missing rumble back.

All this is largely beside the point, though. People will forgive a lot if the price is right, but if you price yourself over the norm, then perfection will be demanded, and any slight lack will be seized upon regardless of the features or overall value.

Basically, Sony may have significantly misjudged the Western market's price tolerance, and might as a consequence lose their lead in most of their markets (not Japan, of course).

You are right that it has nothing to do with Warcraft. The song is from the musical Avenue Q, and it's just as funny without the video.

Personally, I prefer the version with the two cute girls lypsynching it into a webcam. However, while I don't like to criticize, I think the artistic effect would have been enhanced if the "for porn" girl flashed each time.

I have one of these sitting in a junk bin in my basement: the old Microsoft Sidewinder Freestyle Pro. This thing has the exact same accelerometer-based movement detection as the "innovative" new PS3 motion sensitivity, and it is hideous; think the non-auto-centering joysticks of the Atari 5200. Of course, if you love having to hold your arms at one exact position constantly, I suppose it's wonderful.

Sony didn't just drop the ball on this one. They detonated the ball with high explosives and then fed the ball's remains to a goat.

Aspartame, like MSG, is an "excitotoxin", which is increasingly believed to be a very dangerous nurological agent. Getting cancer, maybe, someday, way in the future, isn't that scary... but IMMEDIATE NUROLOGICAL EFFECTS including substantial loss of brain cells (not to mention birth defects in your children) certainly gets my attention.

Let me quote a quick summary from http://www.pamrotella.com/health/excitotoxins.html
"Aspartame (often called Nutrasweet) is a controversial food additive used to sweeten "diet" products artificially. The product has a long history of causing severe health problems. Along with MSG (monosodium glutamate) and MSG-like food additives, aspartame is in a class of compounds known as "excitotoxins". These excitotoxins basically excite brain cells until they die. In other words, each serving of MSG or aspartame has the potential to cause a little bit of brain damage, which becomes cumulative and could eventually lead to Alzheimer's Disease, Parkinson's, or other neurological diseases.
Aspartame is especially controversial, as laboratory tests BEFORE it was approved showed that it caused brain lesions, cancer, death, and a number of other serious health problems. The substance was originally rejected by the FDA, but later Donald Rumsfeld (the current Secretary of Defense) went to work for Searle with the goal of having aspartame approved. Since its approval, brain cancer rates have risen, although a portion of those cases may be due to the explosion of cell phone usage at around the same time. Aspartame is the substance the FDA receives most complaints about, with a range of known side effects including birth defects, cancer, and death."

Someone needs to mention these things before others follow the same uninformed advice I did. Just because companies are allowed to sell you something like aspartame and MSG it doesn't mean that it is safe for you, or that they have your best interests in mind. MSG is getting harder and harder to avoid... this "safe" substance is so safe that companies are HIDING it in almost all foods by using loopholes in product labeling. Just look and see if you have anything (I'm certain you do) that contains "Natural [anything] Flavor", Hydroloyzed [anything], Aspartame, Caseinate, bouillon or Stock, Citric Acid, Malt [extract/flavoring], anything enzyme or protein fortified, Spices, etc. the list goes extensively on.

I've recently started to cut as many excitotoxins from my regular diet as I can (man, it is tough to find anything without them). And I actually feel healthier than I use to (and I thought I felt pretty good before, so this is an interesting thing...)

Give some love to Dr. Blaylock's book.

Delegate: direct them to someone else that can and will help them. "I don't have the bandwidth to help you right now, but [insert junior admin name here] is available. I'll let him know you're coming and brief him on what you need."

Delay: Push them off to a time that is convenient for you. "I'm in the middle of something else right now. Can you enter a ticket or send me an e-mail of when you'd be available when I'm free later. It may not be today."

Do it: Go get it over with so you can continue with the rest of your work.

Believe it or not, you can also say "No" and not offend someone. I'd suggest you fulfill their request one more time, but when you finish tell them that your responsibilities lie elsewhere. If possible find them a replacement support person that can take care of them.

My sympathies for your losses, but just hang in there; you'll get through it and be the stronger when life returns to "normal." I strongly encourage you to get the above linked book. Typical time management (Franklin Covey, etc.) does not work for IT people. This book is helping me greatly.

Something that continually impresses me is the prevalance of these devices among drivers and deliverers in New York.

I'm sure the the law requiring drivers to use a hands-free headset when talking on thier cellphone and driving may have some bearing on that... :)

..But yeah, I see people everywhere driving, biking, and walking around the city with thier headsets on too. If you don't mind wearing a wireless headset while driving, you probably won't mind using it everywhere else. I just bought the Plantronics Voyager 510 for a decent price (~$45), so I guess I'll be of of those people now too.

Now if the city would only distrubute wireless headsets to all the crazy homeles guys who stand around and talk to themselves...

$399 is for the *basic* xbox360 with no hard drive, no HD, no wireless controller... not really comparable.

The 360 is already >$500. Amazon have two prices - $569 and $519

$399 is for the *basic* xbox360 with no hard drive, no HD, no wireless controller... not really comparable.

The 360 is already >$500. Amazon have two prices - $569 and $519

100 more than microsoft's most expensive model? Gee a parousal at http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000B43OY4/ref=cm _lm_fullview_prod_1/002-0494354-3012017?_encoding= UTF8&v=glance&n=468642 indicates a price of 570.00. 30 dollars seems a tad closer than 100.

FUD? Oh yes. Lotsa FUD.

I bought a Nokia NS-26W bluetooth headset about a month ago. It clips around the back of the ear rather than over the top. It's reasonably comforable when I'm wearing my sunglasses.

I paid $69 Australian from Organiser World. If you're in the US, you can get it from Amazon.com.

To be fair, MS had a motion sensing gamepad out many years ago. I have one (haven't used it in a while). It does pitch and roll (no yaw).

I've tried to play flying games with it (MS flight sim), and it sucked then, and I'll be surprised if it doesn't suck now. It's hard to get any precision from such things. Maybe they've improved, but I doubt it.

This story reminds me of one I read in Steven Levitt's book Freakonomics .

A day care center in Tel Aviv were trying to encourgage people to pick up their kids on time. A couple of economists at the local university suggested that they charge the parents $3 per child if they were more than 10 mins late in picking up their kids.

Instead of encouraging the parents to get their on time, it had the exact opposite result. Parents were turning up even later than before to pick up their children. In fact the number of late pickups double in the month that they introduced the fee.

Moral of the story. People don't necessarily respond to finanical incentives or penalties. There has to be a social/moral component to some interactions. Which is why charging them $240 for five minutes work didn't faze your clients, but demanding that they only call you when you have a day's worth of work did.

I can't believe Sony had the cheek to say their new controller is innovative! Ignoring the obvious comparisons with the wii controller, Microsoft released a sidewinder control pad for the PC years ago which had this functionality! http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00004Z729/103-96 55422-5521442?v=glance&n=172282

Then either you need to wake up, or stop just downloading all your music from the Net...

25 years ago. Hmmm. OK, that doesn't quite work

but didn't you ever wonder why there was a big fat apple on the CD? (Or, if you really were listening 25 years ago, in the middle of the record).

Wait a minute. You said the "middle of the record". Well, I paid less attention to that than I did the cover. However, I do remember the cover artwork to those Beatles albums. In any case, one of the few record designs that I remember paying attention to was a copy of the white album at a friend's house. It belonged to a guy I had met in middle school. He was a huge Beatles fan. I was over at his house one day and he showed me a copy of the white album that was pressed on white vinyl. I thought that was pretty neat as I had only seen black records up until then. Impressive for a 13 year old. I also vaguely recall a record of mine that had a spiral on the label. It was a nice effect when it spun around. It was either some kind of children's record, a Dr. Demento record, or something like that.

Anyway, I'm far more interested in the music, and the people who make it, rather than who sells it or what the artwork looks like. This thread shows I'm in the minority when it comes to that. These days I hardly look at the CDs that I buy. I flip through the booklets while I rip the CD but once that's done the CD is packed away with the others in a box in the closet.

Then either you need to wake up, or stop just downloading all your music from the Net...

25 years ago. Hmmm. OK, that doesn't quite work

but didn't you ever wonder why there was a big fat apple on the CD? (Or, if you really were listening 25 years ago, in the middle of the record).

Wait a minute. You said the "middle of the record". Well, I paid less attention to that than I did the cover. However, I do remember the cover artwork to those Beatles albums. In any case, one of the few record designs that I remember paying attention to was a copy of the white album at a friend's house. It belonged to a guy I had met in middle school. He was a huge Beatles fan. I was over at his house one day and he showed me a copy of the white album that was pressed on white vinyl. I thought that was pretty neat as I had only seen black records up until then. Impressive for a 13 year old. I also vaguely recall a record of mine that had a spiral on the label. It was a nice effect when it spun around. It was either some kind of children's record, a Dr. Demento record, or something like that.

Anyway, I'm far more interested in the music, and the people who make it, rather than who sells it or what the artwork looks like. This thread shows I'm in the minority when it comes to that. These days I hardly look at the CDs that I buy. I flip through the booklets while I rip the CD but once that's done the CD is packed away with the others in a box in the closet.

Just in case anyone needs a quick visual:

nsfw! La Blue Girl nsfw!

I still think that magic in that novel is so much part of the basic fabric of its world, and yet people are so recognizably realistic (whether human, faery, or 'other') that this qualifies it to be more of a counterfactual historical novel (along the lines of Turtledove).

And you're more likely to find Jonathan Lethem not in a fantasy or scifi section since the fantasy does not define the narrative, it only informs it.

Perhaps you're right, that the mere presence of magic means it's a fantasy, like how the mere presence of a time machine would make it science fiction, but I still feel that the book transcends its genre, and would be palatable to a larger audience that would balk if it were compared to some of the standards of that genre.

Vanilla Ice

Kids hating to go to school and/or do their homework isn't a problem with the kid. It's a problem with the teachers and parents. They're being dumbasses, adopting behaviors of their own that necessarily drive the kids away from the behaviors they wish the kids to adopt.

Because they do not want the kids to mature. They want them to shut up and do as they're told; and right now we have a society that tells them this is the way they should behave until their eighteenth birthday, when they are then supposed to automagically transform into responsible adults, without ever having taught, or evern offered the opportunity to learn on their own, just how to do that.

1. 
      
2. go to one place all day long (and don't do anything productive, as in do something for the good of your family)
3. 
      
4. infantilizes them ("shut up and do as you're told")

Knowing Intel, who would have ever thought that the successor to the Core Duo would be the Core 2 Duo!?"

Another good book is "Take My Word For It" by William Safire. Very enjoyable as well as educational. English can be a lot of fun... I remember my roommate in college pointing out that the phrase "new bride" is redundant :-) http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0805006060/sr=8-1 7/qid=1147097068/ref=sr_1_17/002-7165766-8894455?_ encoding=UTF8

It's to a selected group; not available to anyone (eg police) who's interested.

If the police suspect anybody in your circle of friends, couldn't they do any of the following to break into the circle of trust and monitor your activities:
(1) Sneak into your associates' houses and install hidden monitoring software directly into their HTTPS stacks on their computers.
(2) Coerce your associates into providing them with access to their activities
(3) Use social engineering to convince you to let them into your circle of trust

When you are fighting a government, which has basically unlimited resources, you cannot grant trust as easily as when you are merely dealing with civilian adversaries. For example, I trust https://amazon.com/ enough to put my credit card info into a form there, but I wouldn't trust _ANY_ server or peer-to-peer host with my detailed plans to subvert and/or overthrow the government.

I know that citing Orwell's 1984 is cliche in these discussions, but one of the points of the book is that, when fighting against the government, even your most trustworthy companions and things cannot be trusted. Remember Winston's speck of dust?

In fact, you cannot even really trust yourself when against extremely harsh coercive measures. Look at what Winston did at the end.

Or the Pragmatic Programmer

From the intro:
This book was produced using LaTeX, pic, Perl, dvips, ghostview, ispell, GNU make, CVS, Emacs, XEmacs, EGCS, GCC, Java, iContract, and SmallEiffel, using the Bash and zsh shells under Linux.

That book, while simple, is the best looking, most organized book about programming that I own.

Or the Pragmatic Programmer

From the intro:
This book was produced using LaTeX, pic, Perl, dvips, ghostview, ispell, GNU make, CVS, Emacs, XEmacs, EGCS, GCC, Java, iContract, and SmallEiffel, using the Bash and zsh shells under Linux.

That book, while simple, is the best looking, most organized book about programming that I own.

My point was simply that speculating abut other dimensions is NOT science, but belief. Other dimensions are not subject to scientific experiments or observation.

That's not really the case. For instance, in The Fabric of the Cosmos Greene talks about how if the brane-world model were true, and the extra dimensions were large enough (though still quite small), it would be possible to detect their existence by testing for deviations from the inverse-square law of gravitation.

It seems that in that particular scenario, all particles save gravitons would be confined to the 3-brane, and therefore useless for detecting the extra dimensions, and successful detection of the dimensions with gravity would require measurements of its strength on smaller scales than have currently been performed (since such measurements are difficult). If I recall correctly, he says that the extra dimensions could be loops as large as a human hair, and no experiments would have detected them yet.

The book has some other experiments that could test claims from string theory and the like in the near and distant future, as well.

I've enjoyed and learned a lot from Bugs in Writing. It gets mixed reviews - it has an unorthodox style that some people like (I do) and some profoundly dislike. I have personally found it very useful in dealing particular constructions that are often confusing and problematic.

1. On Writing Well, William Zinsser
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060006641/102-34 73650-2323300?v=glance&n=283155

2. The Elements of Style, Strunk and White
http://www.bartleby.com/141/

There are two books that have served me well. The Art of Nonfiction is the best. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452282314/qid=11 47010363/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6558899-4510320?s=b ooks&v=glance&n=283155/

Writing and Thinking is also an excellent book. It has a wonderful introduction to the chapter on spelling which you would never see in a modern text. Basically, it stresses the importance of spelling correctly, otherwise you look ignorant and you lose the reader's confidence that you know what you are talking about. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1889439150/ref=no sim/104-6558899-4510320?n=283155/

Remember: Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

There are two books that have served me well. The Art of Nonfiction is the best. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0452282314/qid=11 47010363/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/104-6558899-4510320?s=b ooks&v=glance&n=283155/

Writing and Thinking is also an excellent book. It has a wonderful introduction to the chapter on spelling which you would never see in a modern text. Basically, it stresses the importance of spelling correctly, otherwise you look ignorant and you lose the reader's confidence that you know what you are talking about. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1889439150/ref=no sim/104-6558899-4510320?n=283155/

Remember: Say what you mean, and mean what you say.

Many people have already mentioned it, but it bears repeating. You absolutely cannot go wrong with Strunk (and White's) Elements of Style. It's short, easy to read, and informative. Following the advice in Strunk's book will be a great help for anyone wishing to improve his prose.

The best writing advice I've seen is the writing chapter in Don Lancaster's book, The Incredible Secret Money Machine. His tips:

• Involve the reader. Instead of "the user" or "I", say "You".
• Avoid passive voice. Stay away from words like "that", "which", "can", etc.
• Keep it simple. Use the most basic language possible to get your point across.
• Most important: Words are only half the story. To do good technical communication, you need to learn how to prepare figures, graphs, tables and photographs. If you want to do great tech writing, you must master basic skills in drafting, art and photography.

The perspective of the rest of the book is a bit dated (it's pre-Internet), but the basic concepts of his writing chapter are still just as relevant today.

Somewhat off topic, but there was a certain language that functioned like what you described, just not with numbers. It is called aUI (with that capitlaization) and was created in the 50s by Prof. John Weilgart, a (bored) psychologist. The language is composed of 42 very simple ideographic "letters" that each have both a meaning and set pronunciation. The letters combine to form concepts that can be as simple or as complex as you want to make them, and the latest edition of edition of his book (1979) has a dictionary of over 4000 words. It was made so that only the most general concepts (plus the numbers 0-10) would be classified as single letters, and I think this system works very well. I really suggest you check it out if you have any interest in languages or communication, but the information available online is somewhat limited. I was able to get his book, aUI, the Language of Space, through an interlibrary loan, but I am pretty sure it is long out of print. I really think this language has a much greater chance of being useful than anything based on numbers, and since it only uses very basic shapes (e.g. number shapes, a spiral, circle, oval, etc.) it could probably be recognized pretty easily by OCR systems, probably as well as or better than current print-letter recognition.

There are two books that help endlessly in your life as a technical person:

For everything but formal texts, you need you use the book (I think every Highschool Student should get a copy for free):

Style: Towards Clarity and Grace, by Joseph M. Williams

For Formal Articles, Books, Papers, etc, you need you use this book:

Clear and Simple as the Truth, by Francis-Noel Thomas

The first book teaches you how to write in a plain, eminently understandable style. It underscores how to structure writing, sentences, and even individual phrases to clearly get across the points you wish to communicate. It eschews proscriptive rules like certain other writing books do *cough* Strunk and White *cough* that get too much attention.

The second book explains how to write in what is called classical style. This is a style of writing that you'll come across in documents such as the american Declaration of Independence, all of Descartes writing, and most of the writing of the Enlightenment. It is highly adaptable, and very comprehensible to anyone. Many popsci books go towards this style of writing, including some of Hawkings work, and most of Bronowski's. Classical style is more sophisticated than the plain style advocated in Williams, but some ideas are important enough to pay the cost of nuance at the expense of conscision.

                      --Michael

There are two books that help endlessly in your life as a technical person:

For everything but formal texts, you need you use the book (I think every Highschool Student should get a copy for free):

Style: Towards Clarity and Grace, by Joseph M. Williams

For Formal Articles, Books, Papers, etc, you need you use this book:

Clear and Simple as the Truth, by Francis-Noel Thomas

The first book teaches you how to write in a plain, eminently understandable style. It underscores how to structure writing, sentences, and even individual phrases to clearly get across the points you wish to communicate. It eschews proscriptive rules like certain other writing books do *cough* Strunk and White *cough* that get too much attention.

The second book explains how to write in what is called classical style. This is a style of writing that you'll come across in documents such as the american Declaration of Independence, all of Descartes writing, and most of the writing of the Enlightenment. It is highly adaptable, and very comprehensible to anyone. Many popsci books go towards this style of writing, including some of Hawkings work, and most of Bronowski's. Classical style is more sophisticated than the plain style advocated in Williams, but some ideas are important enough to pay the cost of nuance at the expense of conscision.

                      --Michael

Here at NC State, the first year writing program is an exploration of writing. Using Engaging Inquiry by Kirscht and Schlenz we have learned writing through the "writing in the disciplines" approach. Out of five papers we do one initial one on... well the initial one didn't matter much, the second, third, and fourth papers were focused on different disciplines in writing. The first discipline explored was science, which was a research paper in most aspects and was supposed to be as free of bias and objective as possible. The second discipline was that of the social sciences where we had to write a experienced-based theory critique in which we (the students) selected a study out of three and used our personal experiences to critique it. The fourth paper was a humanities paper, a literature review, if I can remember correctly. The fifth paper is on a topic of our choice, it is our final exam grade, and I have just under 32 hours to finish mine. Overall, the course is quite nice, but I don't know if I can write any better than I could when I first started in the course this spring, but perhaps there is a slight improvement. I am a first year EE student.

Engaging Inquiry: Research and Writing in the Disciplines

There are a number of comics that I think are fun like Stray Bullets, Milk & Cheese, Midnight Nation. But for my money, nothing comes close to what Chris Ware's been doing with Acme Novelty Library. Look at the way he establishes a character is adopted using an almost entirely wordless diagram. Admittedly, the plot isn't the type to keep you on the edge of your seat, but the artistry is second to none, IMO.

I agree. The free comic definitely blows. If anyone out there wants to read something that explains comics and how they work (and how good they can be and why) check out Scott McCloud's "Understanding Comics". Really good read. link here: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/006097625X/sr=8-1 /qid=1146936935/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-0068785-9417674?_ encoding=UTF8

Gregory Benford talked about this back in 2000. Somebody must've read it recently.

I recently read Watchmen , which I had often heard comic fans praise as elevating the comic format to legitimate literature. I found it rather disappointing, for reasons I set out in my Amazon review (namely the trope of the supervillian explaining the whole thing to the heroes). What comics would you propose to someone who wants to read something just as deep and well-crafted and a novel? I've admired Neil Gaiman's prose efforts, do the Sandman comics hold to the same fine standards?

I recall reading a book about a nanotech mountain suddenly appearing on earth. It was in the Death Valley though, and was actually a fake spaceship, placed there by hostile aliens about to destory the planet. We ought to look around there and see if there are any anvil-headed aliens lying nearby. The book was The Forge of God by Greg Bear, and it wasn't particularly good, although one might want to read it for background, complimentary to its sequel, The Anvil of Stars, which is superb.

I've recently been reading a great book called The Google Story (amazon link here) which states plainly that google stole the idea of text based, inconspicuous advertising from another company called GoTo.com (which was apparently later renamed overture inc.).

It says that google stripped out the idea of paying someone else to do their advertising, and apparently goto also did things like ensure that certain sites were placed higher in relevant search results rather than just displaying them in a side bar, but I figured you'd appreciate the info.

Any references you have of a popular series dealing with any of the themes you have mentioned would be very interesting.

Why does it have to be popular, and why does it have to be a series?

Try reading Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor. It's got some of those themes. And some funny bits too.

Except that Big Bang Theory neither requires nor expects a crunch. In fact, most modern cosmologists think that we live in an open universe, meaning that we will eventually suffer heat death. There's a lot of literature on this, but I highly recommend Guth's The Inflationary Universe for a layman physics treatment. The book is quite interesting, has little math and lots of references if you want to go look up where he's coming from. To say that Guth is an expert on cosmology would be a gross understatment.

Here's some lazy links:

Big Bang
Heat Death

A lot of anime has plotlines and characters that put things like 24 or Lost to shame.

Of course, I like Lost, what I've seen of it, so I'm not picking on it.

A lot of anime has plotlines and characters that put things like 24 or Lost to shame.

Of course, I like Lost, what I've seen of it, so I'm not picking on it.

...sparking a massive public debate over its controversial final episode -- which many criticized for leaving the work unfinished...

Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations! Congratulations!

You should also avoid situations that get your name into a database. For example, don't sign up for supermarket savings cards. If you really feel as if you have to, at least use a fake name. For the telephone company, ask that a pseudo-name be used in the phone book or ask that your name be removed entirely. For your outgoing mail, send everything directly through a U.S. postal service drop box. For your incoming mail, get a locking mailbox so that thieves won't have access to your information.

There's a book called How to be Invisible that gives plenty of extra (yet extreme) pointers such as starting an LLC and using the company to purchase all of your high-value assets such as your house and car. That way, public records will never link those items to you.

The new american heros are corporations and law firms who, without thought for themselves as rational beings, submit one trival patent after another. The rest of the world can only watch in wonder as the U.S. economy goes from the work ethic of Knute Rockne to the crazed junkies punting patents under the All American Bubble.