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Holy crap - the Register finally did something right. In their article which gleams comments from Amazon - I took a gander at the book's amazon feedbacks. They are laugh out loud amusing and are in dire need of a direct link.

Can we make this a cover-story here? Sure it's dated - but that never stopped Slashdot...

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0767900111/sr=8-1 /qid=1140642702/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-3629241-2859308?_ encoding=UTF8

Can't wait for her next book. The comments from those should be quite the hoot. The literary equal of MST3K.

Favorite feedback quote "Fire engines are red and have loud sirens". Wow.

You're making your comment in jest, I know. You actually have a good counterpoint to his article: His claim is that the life skills WoW teaches are bunk, and you point out that "making money" is a life skill in the USA.

Why not look at his points one by one? He repeats himself twice, so he really just has 3 objections:

Time > Skill

He's right that a great talent can do as much in less time as a mediocre talent. That's just to get the same quality of work.

My best friend is in a band. He and I both admit that I have more musical talent in my left arm than he has in his whole body. The difference is that I'm a slacker, and he's constantly working at it. The result is that he has more and better CDs than I will ever make. His Ability far exceeds anything I've ever accomplished in any context.

And that's how it goes: Ability is a combination of effort and talent, and the coefficients favor effort: The mediocre talents who put in great effort always get ahead of the great talents who put in a mediocre effort in the real world.

I also feel that this is more fair; God has not seen fit to distribute all talents evenly, so claiming that talent is the most valuable thing (moreso than effort or ability) is tantamount to saying that blond hair and blue eyes are more valuable than black hair and brown eyes.

So here, I have to agree with what WoW teaches.

group > solo

I'm an introvert, just like the author. I am not a hermit. A few years back, I took the Dale Carnegie course -- you know, that Dale Carnegie?

The knowledge I gained changed my life. Learning the skills of how to get along with others didn't mean abandoning the introverted lifestyle. The main thing to realize is that people skills are learned skills, not inherent abilities. Even if you're an introvert, that doesn't mean you want to be a hermit or die alone -- and it also doesn't mean you can't learn how to deal with people effectively.

Your so-called "superior" may be an idiot jerk to you, but he got his position because he isn't a jerk to the right people. And if you look at the superiors who are great managers, they aren't great because they know more about your field than you. They're great because they are easy to get along with and know how to let you do your job well.

Take a look at the great bands that were great together, but when they split apart the solo acts all seemed wanting. Or how your family is not just a number of people, but seems to have a life of its own. Very few people really want to be completely alone, but some of us are just not very good at it; it would be a problem, except that anyone can get better at it. I know that I did -- or at the very least, I recognize my mistakes when I make them now. :)

So once again I find that WoW is teaching the right things with real life.

Terms of Service

I don't really have an opinion on this, because I am not a subscriber. :)

Work, in the real world, is more valuable than skill, and it also seems more fair that it should be that way. And well-made groups are more valuable than the sum of their parts -- especially families. In the end, I'd say the top two lessons he says WoW teaches are very important lessons and are the right things to teach.

Save yourself some money by buying the book here: OpenGL Shading Language 2nd Edition. And if you use the "secret" A9.com Instant Reward discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

Save yourself some money by buying the book here: OpenGL Shading Language 2nd Edition. And if you use the "secret" A9.com Instant Reward discount, you can save an extra 1.57%!

There's a good book, called Math Coach by Wayne Wickelgren (a pretty renowned psychologist, but also a math lover - you can see some of the books his kids have written on amazon too) that discusses this exact problem. His suggestion (if I recall correctly) is to see that your kids can go to another school for just one period so that they can get the instruction they need, and then return to their main school where their peers are. Check out the book - it's pretty good.

Full disclosure - he's my uncle-in-law.

That's silly Amazon crap. They have PC CD-ROM as the platform like where they'd put "PS2" or "GC" if it were for a console. That makes it so a game that comes out on DVD-ROM ends up having conflicting acronyms in the description. It looks right on the item page, but it always looks screwy in the e-mail if you have it set to 'plain text'.

This item is particularly bad because "(DVD)" is part of the name, so you get "(DVD)" (title) "[CD-ROM]" (platform), "[DVD-ROM]" (media).

Ummm.... wow.

How about an encyclopedia?

I've got a row of "The New Illustrated Science and Invention Encyclopedia" across the top of one of my shelves.

Had it about forever and it is the dead tree version of "How stuff works" but limited to science-ish stuff.

It's a set of 26 & the cover of each one has a unique picture on it. I grabbed #10 randomly and the cover has a cut-away view of a real jet engine.

I actually used to grab one every now and then and just flip through it to read about random stuff. Not only was it interesting, but it had pictures too.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0856855227/102-82 81153-6962526?v=glance&n=283155

Try reading Gilles Kepel's Jihad[Amazon.com], which explains the situation within the Middle East in more detail. The religious fundamentalists are usually not the ones running the country (only in Iran were they ever successful in taking over), and the more the populace is oppressed, the more power the fundamentalists get by appealing to the people's misery.

That's why most bombings happen in Muslim countries, because the main goal is to destablize the current goverment so that the fundametalists can take over.

Check out the book, and see if whether or not you agree with the details. But just because a country gets a lot of money doesn't mean everyone inside gets an equal share.

I think you mean Long Bomb: How the XFL Became TV's Biggest Fiasco. You know, without your pathetic little referer code?

This sounds a lot like major league soccer, that new sport (not so new to the rest of the world) that hasn't caught on in spite of long effort. Or women's basketball. And if venture capitalist thing that something being zany and hi-tech is enough to make it worthy of funding, they should remember the XFL, eulogized and dissected in Brett Forrest's Long Bomb: How the XFL Became TV's Biggest Fiasco

It is incredibly difficult to produce a "market" leader measure without some consideration to the way that the market is measured. Fundamentally, that method determines the leader. Consider the obvious:

• If you measure by units sold in a particular month, you would miss a sizable chunk of the market. How? Well, for nearly every 4 years, every system I installed at SMBs (small to mid-size businesses) was either Debian or Gentoo. As such, there was no direct cost associated with those units, but they were the foundations of many applications, file and print services, email services, directory services, databases, etc. More and more, as much of the functionality of a file and print server is commoditized, it can be handled more cost effectively by Linux, Samba, and other OS apps. Therefore, since these items incur no revenue in the market to a company, they would not be counted. Thus the distortion.
• If you consider units deployed, you have a difficult data mining challenge. How do you collect the vast amounts of data? As a researcher at times, you'd have to subscribe a number of organizations--we're talking hundreds--and then over the span of years, see what their deployment considerations are. From that measure, you can more accurately determine the statistically valid (within 5% perhaps) measure of deployed systems, more accurately demonstrating a market. It's a market, but in a different way, that is, for ancilliary products and services, upgrades, etc.
• If you measure a market by sales, you distort the market by not considering all forms of distributed products. When I install a MS system, there typically is required a number of ancilliary products that must be installed, including things like SQL Server (to hold the LDAP store). Are these sales counted as part of the market? Without Active Directory, you almost can't do anything else--SharePoint, Exchange, etc. Therefore, it is almost a component of the OS. On a comparable *nix, you would simply use a compliant LDAP system, but then, you would not consider it part of the OS. Considering the LDAP may be from another company, it further distorts the true market.

The market measure should be considered a dubious statistic, much like a political one. Raising the overall spending on education means nothing. Raising the overall spending per student, that means something. If you raise overall spending per student in constant dollars (inflation adjusted dollars), now you are really producing an accurate measure. The fact that most people can't understand basic comparisons--read the book Innumeracy by John Allen Paulos--leads to this fallacy of a measurement.

Ah, classics! Then what better way than to start with The C Programming Language?! Makes for great bedtime reading!!!

"Every other form of media has gone digital -- music, newspapers, movies,"

True. Music has gone digital, mostly because people take their un-copy-restricted CDs and rip them into MP3s. Then they can use the MP3 on as many computers and devices as they want, give it to friends, and have backups. Newspapers exist as un-copy-restricted HTML pages, which may be printed, sent to friends, and stored digitally without restriction.

What the publishing industry is peddling right now is copy-restricted garbage. It will be locked to a particular computer or device. I can't have backups of the text or lend it to a friend. Often I can't even print it. If the Microsoft operating system that stores the text wipes it out, oh well, go buy another one. Meanwhile the publishing industry salivates at the thought of copy-restricted electronic textbooks that expire after a single semester!

This copy-restricted garbage will not take off. If I want digital content, I'll go for something that does not have these ridiculous restrictions. Such unrestricted media can and will take off, because it has advantages--i.e. it's searchable, and cheap to distribute. For example, Wikipedia is far superior to its dead-tree equivalents for these two reasons alone. Also, the Amazon Shorts model looks promising. But I'll take a dead tree over copy-restricted garbage anyday.

Looks like these specials are already out on DVD...

Eric Idle's Personal Best

John Cleese's Personal Best(coming soon)

Graham Chapman's Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Jones' Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Gilliam's Personal Best(coming soon)

Michael Palin's Personal Best

The two that are released are already available on Netflix (with four to be available 28-Feb).

Looks like these specials are already out on DVD...

Eric Idle's Personal Best

John Cleese's Personal Best(coming soon)

Graham Chapman's Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Jones' Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Gilliam's Personal Best(coming soon)

Michael Palin's Personal Best

The two that are released are already available on Netflix (with four to be available 28-Feb).

Looks like these specials are already out on DVD...

Eric Idle's Personal Best

John Cleese's Personal Best(coming soon)

Graham Chapman's Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Jones' Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Gilliam's Personal Best(coming soon)

Michael Palin's Personal Best

The two that are released are already available on Netflix (with four to be available 28-Feb).

Looks like these specials are already out on DVD...

Eric Idle's Personal Best

John Cleese's Personal Best(coming soon)

Graham Chapman's Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Jones' Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Gilliam's Personal Best(coming soon)

Michael Palin's Personal Best

The two that are released are already available on Netflix (with four to be available 28-Feb).

Looks like these specials are already out on DVD...

Eric Idle's Personal Best

John Cleese's Personal Best(coming soon)

Graham Chapman's Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Jones' Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Gilliam's Personal Best(coming soon)

Michael Palin's Personal Best

The two that are released are already available on Netflix (with four to be available 28-Feb).

Looks like these specials are already out on DVD...

Eric Idle's Personal Best

John Cleese's Personal Best(coming soon)

Graham Chapman's Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Jones' Personal Best(coming soon)

Terry Gilliam's Personal Best(coming soon)

Michael Palin's Personal Best

The two that are released are already available on Netflix (with four to be available 28-Feb).

It was the A&E special that they did for Monty Python when they were given the Lifetime Acheivement award by the American Film Institute. It was hosted by Robert Klein and features comedian Eddie Izzard trying to pose as a member of the Monty Python crew. It's really funny, and is available on DVD. You can find it here.

The relationship between humans and dogs is sufficiently close that some consider them a virtual symbiont. Not only did ancient dogs keep the human's living areas clean, they also may well have served as an alarm system. (Mine sure as hell do!) The dogs get free meals, which probably mean they survive longer and have more vigorous offspring. Humams get garbage and alarm service, which means they probably had better survival rates as well. Everybody wins.

Stephen Budiansky, in his book The Truth About Dogs discusses DNA evidence that indicate that dogs broke off from wolves about 100K years ago. He suggests that there was no reason to do so except for following bands of humans. So, this cooperation between humans and dogs goes back a bit.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000 04ZBSX/sr=8-1/qid=1140553218/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3361 972-4446416

From the article:
> By contrast, our closest relatives - chimpanzees - have been shown
> not to come to the aid of others, even when it would pose no cost to themselves.

I guess the authors have not read the book "Out Inner Ape" published in 2005:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1573223123/103-02 02513-6289443?v=glance&n=283155

The book talks about empathy displayed by bonobos. I highly recommend it.

In a week which shall be recorded in Wikipedia infamy (and then vandalized and redirected to clitoris), the oft persecuted and never defeated internet missionaries of the Gay Nigger Association of America struck yet another powerful and telling blow against the powerful forces of bigotry and racism. Most notably, the growing zionist community on renowned internet pissing yard wikipedia.org.

And the records have indeed tumbled, with an unheard of third successful survival from the digital shitheap that is "Votes For Deletion". Coming in spite a heinous act of self promotion and cyber terrorism by Pat Gunn/Improv (formerly known as Aharon Meshenstein prior to his infiltration of the United States), who listed and inspired mob vandalism upon the GNAA's entry.

Fresh from his promotion of Wikipedia's $50,000 fundraiser for arms and supplies to the Jewish state of Israel, Improv launched a series of unprovoked and slanderous attacks against the well loved organisations leadership, all the while using foul and unholy necromancies to enlist the dead themselves to vote the entries deletion. Names such as "Wolfman" and "Demonslave" only adding to the damning list of evidence linking Mr Gunn to the occult.

Though Improv's actions gained him a small majority, a shock last minute intervention from Pope John Paul II spared the pages untimely fate, although as yet unconfirmed reports have indicated that several hundred 8-year old negro children were driven to the Basilica to secure the pontiffs support. Others point towards the black curse cast upon the deletion campaign by the support of infamous Brawl Hall mouthpiece "Yoyo" as the main driving force behind the salvation of the aforementioned entry.

But the details are likely to cause few sleepless nights among the group, only one of whom was willing to speak to the press. Namely GNAA Wikipedia contributor Popeye, who interrupted his drawing of pornography to give a brief dismissal the controversy: "Even with Improv's shady dealings, the sheer size and girth of a swollen GNAA phallus enables it both an identity and a vote of it's own. Making such discussion moot".

About Wikipedia:

Wikipedia, a content-free encyclopedia in many languages, started life in January 2001 and has already risen to the status of the internets premiere "trollpedia".

Currently Wikipedia contains 363950 articles, 10032 of which are genuine, and 343 of them factually accurate. Leaving Wikipedia on an academic par with "Star Wars: Incredible Cross-sections: The Ultimate Guide to Star Wars Vehicles and Spacecraft" and "My First Book of Animals from A to Z".

About GNAA:

GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a GAY NIGGER ?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what

In a week which shall be recorded in Wikipedia infamy (and then vandalized and redirected to clitoris), the oft persecuted and never defeated internet missionaries of the Gay Nigger Association of America struck yet another powerful and telling blow against the powerful forces of bigotry and racism. Most notably, the growing zionist community on renowned internet pissing yard wikipedia.org.

And the records have indeed tumbled, with an unheard of third successful survival from the digital shitheap that is "Votes For Deletion". Coming in spite a heinous act of self promotion and cyber terrorism by Pat Gunn/Improv (formerly known as Aharon Meshenstein prior to his infiltration of the United States), who listed and inspired mob vandalism upon the GNAA's entry.

Fresh from his promotion of Wikipedia's $50,000 fundraiser for arms and supplies to the Jewish state of Israel, Improv launched a series of unprovoked and slanderous attacks against the well loved organisations leadership, all the while using foul and unholy necromancies to enlist the dead themselves to vote the entries deletion. Names such as "Wolfman" and "Demonslave" only adding to the damning list of evidence linking Mr Gunn to the occult.

Though Improv's actions gained him a small majority, a shock last minute intervention from Pope John Paul II spared the pages untimely fate, although as yet unconfirmed reports have indicated that several hundred 8-year old negro children were driven to the Basilica to secure the pontiffs support. Others point towards the black curse cast upon the deletion campaign by the support of infamous Brawl Hall mouthpiece "Yoyo" as the main driving force behind the salvation of the aforementioned entry.

But the details are likely to cause few sleepless nights among the group, only one of whom was willing to speak to the press. Namely GNAA Wikipedia contributor Popeye, who interrupted his drawing of pornography to give a brief dismissal the controversy: "Even with Improv's shady dealings, the sheer size and girth of a swollen GNAA phallus enables it both an identity and a vote of it's own. Making such discussion moot".

About Wikipedia:

Wikipedia, a content-free encyclopedia in many languages, started life in January 2001 and has already risen to the status of the internets premiere "trollpedia".

Currently Wikipedia contains 363950 articles, 10032 of which are genuine, and 343 of them factually accurate. Leaving Wikipedia on an academic par with "Star Wars: Incredible Cross-sections: The Ultimate Guide to Star Wars Vehicles and Spacecraft" and "My First Book of Animals from A to Z".

About GNAA:

GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) is the first organization which gathers GAY NIGGERS from all over America and abroad for one common goal - being GAY NIGGERS.

Are you GAY ?
Are you a NIGGER ?
Are you a GAY NIGGER ?

If you answered "Yes" to all of the above questions, then GNAA (GAY NIGGER ASSOCIATION OF AMERICA) might be exactly what

OK, this is redundant, but this is a better comment to reply to. Try Parts Express. You can also get a lot of their stuff through Amazon. For audio parts (speakers in particular) their selection is far better than Radio Shack's ever was. Oddly enough, I've gotten Radio Shack branded cables from them.

It's interesting and more than a little depressing to see just how greatly Radio Shack has changed in the past ten years. In 1995 I got my amateur radio license. Everyone knew that Radio Shack's license exam preparation materials, done by one Gordon West, were rubbish that taught people how to pass a test without understanding any of the concepts between it. That's why I ordered the ARRL's dependable guide Now You're Talking from another store (check the book out if you are looking for an interesting hobby, it's also in many libraries). But Radio Shack was incredibly helpful for providing all the parts one needed to build little projects. Whenever I found an interesting project in the ham magazine QST, such as an audio amplifier or a QRP kit, I knew Radio Shack would provide the materials.

But now, things have changed, there's hardly more than a couple of soldering irons for sale in the back of a Radio Shack today. The hobby of tinkering with electronics is no longer profitable for a retail store, possibly due to the decline of amateur radio. Hams today order what they need from the Internet or the catalogues that a few specialty stores like to spam technophiles with. Instead, Radio Shack has decided to entirely focus on consumer electronics. But it can't win there either, larger stores like Best Buy or Circuit City will always have a better selection. I can't really see any way for this company to survive.

What support do FLAC and Ogg Vorbis have for surround? I keep my ripped music in these formats because I like how they provide smaller filesizes for lossless and lossy sound than WAV or MP3, but since I listen to music off my computer with a pair of headphones, I wouldn't know what support there is beyond stereo.

Anyway, the article raises an interesting issue with MP3. This format is where it's all at. Anyone old or young understands this three characters. There was MP3 for Dummies for pedestrians, and clearly there's enough technophiles out there that a Martin Ruckert found a publisher for his book Understanding Mp3 , which has a pretty in-depth explanation of the format and the concepts behind it. Yet, the format itself is not offered from places young people are buying music, and we nerds have moved on to other formats. And when people say "I got an MP3 of it", they are using the acronym generically to refer to any sort of digital audio format. MP3 is a format that is alive and dead at once.

What support do FLAC and Ogg Vorbis have for surround? I keep my ripped music in these formats because I like how they provide smaller filesizes for lossless and lossy sound than WAV or MP3, but since I listen to music off my computer with a pair of headphones, I wouldn't know what support there is beyond stereo.

Anyway, the article raises an interesting issue with MP3. This format is where it's all at. Anyone old or young understands this three characters. There was MP3 for Dummies for pedestrians, and clearly there's enough technophiles out there that a Martin Ruckert found a publisher for his book Understanding Mp3 , which has a pretty in-depth explanation of the format and the concepts behind it. Yet, the format itself is not offered from places young people are buying music, and we nerds have moved on to other formats. And when people say "I got an MP3 of it", they are using the acronym generically to refer to any sort of digital audio format. MP3 is a format that is alive and dead at once.

Lucid dreaming can be taught. There is a very good book The Lucid Dreamer that tells you how to do it. There are plenty of devices that detect REM sleep and start flashing LEDs, making noises, etc, that will let you know that you are dreaming. NONE of them I've seen detect brain waves, nor do any of the valid ones make that claim. The problem with lucid dreaming is that it seems to attract the same hippy "earth sprirt" crowd as the folks who think Sadonia AZ is a spiritual place just becuase of the pretty rocks and high altitude.

I haven't attempted to do it for a few years, but it does work, and if you get good at it, you can force your mind to do many intresting things. Some people claim to solve problems by trying them out in a dream first, but I really doubt it would help much, since your brain is controls the outcome and it becomes easy to gloss over things like the laws of physics and things you don't understand.

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

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

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

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

Gene Roddenberry must be turning in his grave. If you ask me, the space program needs more support and more money; but less protesters and hippies.

Herbert!

(Disclaimer: IANAP, but I do have a bachelor's in EE and a fair amount of self-study.)
If you know what a probability distribution is, the basics aren't that hard. Shankar's list of the basic postulates of QM as compared to classical mechanics is helpful. The following refer to a particle in one space dimension:

1. Classical: The state of a particle at any given time is specified by two variables x(t) and p(t), i.e., as points in a two-dimensional phase space.
Translation: Every particle's "state" (that is, what it's doing at any given time) is given by its position and momentum, both of which can change with time. Since these are just two numbers, you can think of them as representing a point (vector) in a plane.

Quantum: The state of a particle is represented by a vector |psi(t)> in a Hilbert space.
Translation: In QM, the particle's state is given by a "wavefunction" or "state vector" -- the different names refer to slightly different mathematical formulations. A Hilbert space is an infinite-dimensional space. Don't get too excited about that, there's nothing special there -- all it says is that the state is a continuous function (hence "wavefunction"). If you think of each point of the function as being a component of a vector ("state vector"), you get an infinite number of components. The important thing here is that while in classical mechanics you only need two numbers to represent the state of the particle, in QM you need an infinite number. Why this is will become apparent in a moment.

2. Classical: Every dynamical variable w is a function of x and p: w=w(x,p).
Translation: Since x and p determine the state of the particle, anything else you want to know can be related to those two variables.

Quantum: The independent variables x and p of classical mechanics are replaced by Hermitian operators X and P...
Translation: We're using funky math to do basically the same thing as above. This isn't important for your purposes.

3. Classical: If the particle is in a state given by x and p, the measurement of the variable w will yield a value w(x,p). The state will remain unaffected.
Translation: If you know the state of the particle, you can predict the results of experiments. The measurement is assumed to be "ideal", which means it has no uncertainty and doesn't interfere with the particle.

Quantum: If a particle is in a state |psi>, measurement of the variable corresponding to w will yield one of the eigenvalues with probability |<w|psi>|^2. The state of the system will change from |psi> to |w> as a result of this measurement.
Translation: This is the weird part. The state vector/wavefunction can be turned into a probability distribution for the results of whatever measurement you're making (most commonly, position). If you have a bunch of particles in an identical state and measure the position of each one, the results will match the probability distribution. Measuring a particle changes its state, no matter how ideal your measurement is. This fact is the source of the weirdness in the double slit experiment -- measuring which slit the particle goes through changes its state, screwing up the diffraction. This is the "wavefunction collapse" that's the source of most of the difficulties with interpretation.

4. Classical: The state variables change with time according to Hamilton's equations/Newton's laws/etc.
Translation: This is the "mechanics" in classical mechanics.

Quantum: The state vector obeys the Schroedinger equation.
Translation: The Schroedinger equation is responsible for, among other things, the fact that quantum oscillators can only have discrete energy levels. It also gives us quantum tunneling, where part of a probability distribution can leak through a barrier that the particle shouldn't be able to penetrate, classically spea

There are many reasons why today's existing cell phones are safe for now. They have more reliable coverage than WiFi, there are more cool phones available, some people ignore the rates, etc. However, voip is beginning to eat away from the bottom. It's true that for most, voip is still more trouble than it is worth but for a small and growing set of users, voip is perfect. If you make a lot of calls from a fixed point with an existing reliable ip network then voip already works well. I'm sure MSFT and Google can afford to tinker on the details for the next 20 years. A time during which the traditional cell phone market will begin to decelerate and then contract.

This is a classic example of The Innovator's Dilemma and traditional cell coverage cannot avoid it.

A few years back, I decided I wanted a "nice" watch...even though I'm surrounded by clocks, I still wanted something nice for my wrist. (it's about the only jewelry I wear, aside from my wedding ring).

As I looked, I was astounded at what was out there in the watch world. Unfortunatly, it's difficult to get really good information on all watches (manufacturers' sites are full of flash, and any Google search generally turns up thousands of fly-by-night outfits). I quickly decided I wanted something elegant, analog, and with a few key features (perpetual calendar, especially, 'cause I'm sick of resetting the date every month).

Some watches I looked at:

* The Yes Watch - Very cool concept, especially with the solar focus, the moon phase, and the day/night display. I decided against it because I didn't like the look of the LCD. If they'd used a pair of overlapping black wedges or something instead of individual LCD bars for the day/night display, and maybe a small analog dial instead of the digital time readout, then I'd probably have bought one. (again, I was focusing on mechanical (or at least semi-mechanical like a quartz).

* The Epos Emotion is especially nice. Very simple and elegant (that is, not gaudy like some seem to get), with a nice triple-date feature and a moon dial. This is my current favorite, but the nearest dealer is in New York, IIRC, and I'm not about to drop a kilobuck on something I haven't at least held in my hands, and definitely not from the grey-market resellers on the web.

* I briefly looked at Breitling, and while some of those are very nice and interestingly complex, most of them were too busy-looking for my tastes. (the same goes for some of the Citizen models...cool stuff, but I really don't need an aircraft fuel consumption slide rule on my wrist.) (now, if they had a regular slide rule, that'd be cool).

* While browsing through a very high-end watch store in Tysons Corner, VA, I picked up a free "magazine" that turned out to be a promotional rag for the International Watch Company. It had a great article about their Grand Complication, which sells for a cool quarter-million a piece. A sidebar article by their customer support team had some great stories, about people who own them complaining abut it stopping working after an ocean swim (he'd damaged the crystal beforehand), and another person complaining that the the chimes were inconsistent on his two watches (yes, he owned *two* of these...presumably one gold, and one platinum, and he was annoyed that the tones were a bit off).

* And I don't remember how I found this one, but the granddaddy (as far as I've seen) for complications and cost is the dual-faced Patek Phillipe Sky Moon Tourbillon. I seem to remember they go for multiple millions of dollars a piece.

* I ended up buying a Tissot New Titanium. It's not an automatic, but it's got some good features I like. Perpetual calendar (though on an LCD display), alarm, chrono, sapphire crystal, and a titanium band / case. Unfortunatly, this was never available in the US and I had to order from a company in Switzerland (who sent along a box of chocolate with it :) ). I think it may be discontinued, too... (I can't even find it on their webpage anymore, which highlights my previous comment about the difficulty of finding good information online).

What I'd really like to know is how one can get into collecting such expensive timepieces. Somehow, I imagine that you'd have t

Oh, a constructive comment on borderline flamebait! Sorry, but I had to add you to my Friends list.

W.r.t. English popular culture, I'm all with you there, Hell, I even have Black Books 1-3, Coupling 1-3, Bottom -an arse oddity, Father Ted 1-3 (don't know if that counts), Extras 1, Doctor Who New Series 1 (This one really makes the new Battlestar Galactica look like a soap opera. Once you meet the doctor, you can't turn back). I could even impersonate a northener, back in the time I had daily contact to one. So I do understand the sarcasm and the resentment of public piety, which I share with you.

But I always had a hard time accepting what I seem to have interpreted as malice. Another example: I was attending a summer course in Oxford and was surprised to see how much piss-taking the Irish were exposed to from the English. I felt a bit bad for them, but they seemed to ignore all the comments completely. Apparently, there was another layer of the discussion which I didn't understand. I guess I stand corrected, and a lot of situations make sense, now.

In the interest of self-critisim, here's a link to a book written by a handful of British authors exiled in my country. It contains some brilliant bits which I interpreted as malice up until now. My wife (she's also a "foreigner") laughed her head off.

Well, I'll be off then, you old w*nker ;-).

Maybe it's that they think stopping American businesses from pumping money into an evil regime is a way of taking on the Chinese government?

Seriously, read something like Blake Kerr's Sky Burial ("An Eyewitness Account of China's Brutal Crackdown in Tibet") and you'll see why the free Tibet crowd exists and why they think it would be a good idea for the U.S. to refuse economic support to China until this brutal rule ends.

An asshole (AC) blared :
For the love of God, read this book![link killed to reduce spamminess]

P.S. Learn to spell, while you are at it!

But be sure to use the referrerless link to it (here) to deny the referrer income to the asshole spammer.

Hey, it worked in The Man Who Folded Himself by David Gerrold.

A little off topic, but still related.

This xmas I was looking for a nice looking, sub-$500 watch and picked up the Citizen Calibre 2100. While searching for watches I stumbled across the ridiculously rich timepiece enthusiasts at thepurists.com. Don't bother looking for a watch you can buy there as most of the pieces they review are >$10000, but those same reviews are fascinating to read. I warn you though, after you see a flying tourbillon in action you will be unhappy with whatever you end up getting.

I encourage you to read this book.

Basically the author, John Perkins, makes the case that: in it's own interest, America has actively promoted corruption, tyrannical governments and human rights abuses in developing countries around the world. The author says he should know, he was one of those doing it.

While I have spent a little time in USA, and have met many wonderful Americans, the actions of those in power in the US make it a target for many in other countries. If you are really interested in "make sure we dont loose what we have gained through so much hardship. It is your duty to intervene, and take it upon yourself to fight the corrupt, the tyrants and the fanatics from taking over"., then start by educating yourself and others around you.

-B

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.

For the love of God, read this book!

P.S. Learn to spell, while you are at it!

Elements of Style `Nuff said...

Done already, cheap, and really pretty good.

$428.36 from Amazon, maybe cheaper elsewhere

The FUJITSI SCANSNAP FI-5110EOX2

Duplex, Color, Auto sheet feeder, 600DPI Scans to PDF or Word etc, including OCR software.

it can even scan A3 documents in one go, if you fold them first.

Can't really beat it for the price.

The only major difference between this and the Fuji scanners costing twice the price is that these models are (intentionally?) crippled by lack of TWAIN drivers, which can be a pain.

Doesn't say THEY have to label it, though.

A Dymo Labelmaker is one heck of a lot cheaper than an Intel iMac.