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Free As In Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software , Sam William's biography of RMS, has a good explanation of RMS' philosophy that free copying is in the public good.

I wonder how you would compare the nature & scale of the neurological changes you observed vs the changes associated with CIT and the cognitive OCD treatments?
thanks...

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REFERRAL FREE LINK

Amazon has it cheaper than BN ($16.47 vs $20.20).

-FL

-FL

one of the people where I work has a mirror

...as does my father where he works, though his is the kind you'd stick on a car for a blind spot view.

When I used to where ear phones at work a lot, I liked the over-the-ear-but-still-ear-bid kind (mine were from Koss (similar to these on Amazon)). I had all the benefits of personal music, but could easily hear people coming up who needed to talk to me.

Large voter turnouts lead to "the rule of the dumbest"

NO, it leads to the rule of the AVERAGE.
You have heard of bell curve distribution right?

Also the larger the group, the smarter the outcome:

http://webcast-law.uchicago.edu/levmore-cbi-09-29- 05.mp3
http://uchicagolaw.typepad.com/faculty/2005/11/the _wisdom_of_g_1.html

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385503865/002-73 33566-8455228?v=glance&n=283155

"Wise crowds" need (1) diversity of opinion; (2) independence of members from one another; (3) decentralization; and (4) a good method for aggregating opinions.

In other words the process of voting will tend to choose the better candidate. The more people you have voting, the more likely this is to happen, regardless of their reasons for voting.

Skunk Works.

This is a group that developed the first operational jet fighters, and that kept the U-2 and SR-71 and stealth planes out of the public eye forever. We think the Wall Street Journal is getting the real story from them? If it's true, you have to wonder why the massive cultural shift at Lockheed is happening just now...

The chart is interesting but it seems to focus on a pretty specific subset or group of subsets of the table-top gaming genre. This would be akin to talking about fantasy writing and then just mentioning people who worked on Forgotten Realms books.

Much to my chagrin, Settlers of Catan is mentioned in the summary, but not actually charted. TFA doesn't even mention that game or Klaus Teuber. Ravensburger publishes some of the best games I've ever played. The problem is only a very small fraction of them ever makes it to the US. For those who like easy-to-pick up games that are never the same twice, may I recommend The Amazeing Labyrinth which is sort of a treasure hunt game where the board changes every round.

"Prey" is a very bad book to learn about nanotech threats from. However, I would recommend two others:

Crescent City Rhapsody by Kathleen Ann Goonan demonstrates by example the threat of nanoplagues and what they can do. She has other novels in this series dealing with similar subjects, which I also recommend.

Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear has a lot of information about interstellar warfare with nanotechnological weapons.

Sadly, there aren't any more that I've seen. Most authors fall into the same pits as Michael Crichton, as illustrated in "Assemblers of Infinity" and "Blood Music", and seldom "get it" when it comes to the subject of nanotech warfare.

"Prey" is a very bad book to learn about nanotech threats from. However, I would recommend two others:

Crescent City Rhapsody by Kathleen Ann Goonan demonstrates by example the threat of nanoplagues and what they can do. She has other novels in this series dealing with similar subjects, which I also recommend.

Anvil of Stars by Greg Bear has a lot of information about interstellar warfare with nanotechnological weapons.

Sadly, there aren't any more that I've seen. Most authors fall into the same pits as Michael Crichton, as illustrated in "Assemblers of Infinity" and "Blood Music", and seldom "get it" when it comes to the subject of nanotech warfare.

(Links at the bottom)

I've been using a cheap pair of Sony behind-the-ear's at work for a while. Easy to put on, decent sound (little muddy), cheap, and doesn't look like my other phones. At home it's Sennheiser HD497's, incredible sound (good alternative to Grado SR-60's I hear). The 497's are about 60-70, and they're open design so you can basic hear everything around you not muffled at all. Same with the sony behind-the-ears, you can still hear around you and you can simply pause the music to hear people.

I tried the Sennheiser PXC-250's, same physical design as the 100's but with active noise cancelling. Even with the noise canceling *off*, the phone physically blocked out a lot of noise (surprisingly). Good for music, bad for coworkers.

Personally, I'd got with behind the ear Koss porta pro's (KSC55's probably). They're slightly less intrusive than over-the-head phones, that series of koss's are supposed to be the best bargain phones (ie. under $30), and they're really easy to pull down to your neck when a coworker wants to talk. That's important, as at my 1 year review one of my feedback from coworkers was "he's always wearing his headphones". Programming for 8-10 hours straight in the only office in the building without a window of any kind? Heck yes. I'm still going to wear phones, but I have to be careful not to appear "unapproachable" to the higher-ups. Aww, screw it. I'm doing important work, they don't need to disturb me.

(I think it's outside the scope of the OP's requirements, but I can't say enough about the HD497's. Music sounds incredibly different listened with those compared to cheap phones, cars, computer speakers, etc. There's just a whole lot more there that you never realized. Love it, I want to listen to music all over again just in these phones.)

Sony MDR-G52LP's, $20, ok but not as good as the Koss (so I've heard). Little muddy.

Koss KSC55, ~$20, behind the ear, titanium diaphram, cheap and good

Grado SR-60's, ~$70, bigger over the head, "best under $100"-kine (open design, can hear everything)

Sennheiser HD497's, ~$70, more bigger over the head, "the other best under $100"-kine (open design, can hear everything)

*Don't pay attention to frequency response numbers, 20-20000hz. Means nothing. Go try some phones, goto the Apple store and plug your personal ipod into the bose triports and listen to something you know well. If you're not rushed, you might notice a big difference.

Just started reading "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond yesterday. An interesting book which promises to trace and explain the evolution of human societies.

The book starts out by mentioning how large mammals went extinct in America and Australia when humans reached there. The reason was because these animals evolved without co-existing with man(hunter) and hence did not develop a natural fear of man. As a result when man came upon them, he literally clubbed them to extinction.

I guess the new mammals(tree kangaroos, spiny anteaters...) that are being found in New Guinea may be slightly better off than their ancestors because of the better understanding of conservation/environmental awareness our present world has.

Still I wonder how many of these new species will still be around(in the wild) in about 30-40 years?

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Our ideals. You may think they are mythical and that we don't live up to them, and you may be right. But the solution is to find a way to live up to them, not to abandon them. I think you have become a little too fixated on your Rome/Carthage analogy. Our real choice is to either handle our problems in a way that allows us to live in harmony with the world and other nations, or (as you say) to continue to exploit others' suffering for our own gains. The latter course is unsustainable in the long term -- note that the Roman empire (and all other empires) are just as extinct as Carthage. You might also think about why Germany lost World War II.

Assuming that you are serious about the subject and not just being deliberately provocative, you might be interesting in this book, which looks at how various societies succeeded or failed in dealing with their problems, and why.

Really no. They sound like crap compared to a real set of headphones, a set like my HD 497s sound amazingly better than any pair of earbuds I've used. They were $40 or so when I got em. The only in-ears that I think might be better are those Etymotic Research ones, and those are too expensive for me.

Sony MDR-EX51LP
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000779RZU/

Bought these around Christmas for $19. About the same quality as the original ipod buds, but with noiseproofing. Comes with 3 different size earbud attachments to fit different size ears.

Mine just went through the laundry and after drying it out for 24 hours, still works.

Good points. One more to add to the mix: the trend in global warming debate thus far has been to say that CO2 must be the unknown cause of global warming because no other factor could account for the increase in temperature. This is generally said because the increase does not map to the increase in solar output.

However, if solar output were to trigger non-linear increases in global temperatures (e.g. by triggering the ~2% increase in percipitation in the 20th century, trapping solar radiation under increased cloud-cover and water vapor content), then such models could easily be quite wrong.

This is nothing new. Solar researchers have been trying to point out the sun-climate interactions since the 1970s.

Provided that the new job does not instill specific hardships - that you will have enough to keep yourself and your family fed, housed, clothed, insured and the like - I would say yes. Life is very short; would you rather spend your days at a job that gave you money, but never gave you a chance to use it for the things that mattered most to you? Consider how many hours in a day you spend at work; I see my officemates more than anyone else. If I were given more money for a boring job, at the most I could use it to buy myself leisure time to try to counteract it - but since that would be less than half of my time, I would be losing in the bargain! Better to ensure that all your moments are spent on things which are worth the while.

But other people have said this before -- Seneca wrote on the shortness of life (Or in an excellent dead-tree edition, either way it's very short) much more eloquently than I could.

I've had a pair of MDR (the MD5 series) headphones for years, and they do a fair job of filtering noise while still allowing you to hear things like the tap-tap or the shuffle-stop. I know Sony's on the fscker-company list right now because of DRM and DVD wars, but they make a nice affordable set of headphones. Heck, you can always take them back if they don't work for you - might as well try a variety.

&laz;

Read "Diet for a New America" by John Robbins for an interesting view on this (and all sorts of other diet-related issues). He contends that all the hormones we're feeding our dairy cattle as well as meat animals are contributing to earlier puberty (he was citing 8 year-olds developing breasts, etc.).

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0915811812/103-44 66893-7535803?v=glance&n=283155

I wish I still had a copy of the facts sheet used to promote the book. Had all sorts of gems (like the fact that the average American house-cat eats more meat than the average El Salvadorean (IIRC)).

For print resources I would suggest:

Understanding Search Engines by Michael Berry and Murray Browne

as well as

Modern Information Retrieval by Ricardo Baeza-Yates and Berthier Ribeiro-Neto

For online resources I would of course direct you to the work of our Search Focus R&D Group

That's based on the false premise that the number of terrorists is somehow predetermined and fixed, regardless of what you do (and that you therefore preferably keep them busy as far away from you as possible). That is not true.

No it's not. Nowhere in the author's statement did he indicate that he thought there were a fixed number of terrorists.

Presenting targets of opportunity to an enemy in the form of U.S. troops is actually a good strategy. It forces them to reveal themselves by attacking us where we are most prepared. This is aggressive, yes, but not an ill-founded, strategy.

Doing "nothing" is better than doing things which as main consequence have that more people become so desperate that they are willing to blow themselves up.

Ahh.. but is based upon the false premise that terrorists are desperate, tormented souls. This isn't the case. Look at Osama Bin Laden. He was extremely rich and grew up a privileged life, only to become the most notorious terrorist in the world. And he's not an exception to this. I suggest you read "Dying to Win." The author creates a database of every suicide terrorist incident since the mid 80s until the time that the book was written. The resulting conclusion is that our stereotypical views of terrorists and their motives are strikingly incorrect.

What the we in the West view as a last desperate attempt is actually seen as just another means of coercion to achieve victory by our enemies. Many suicide terrorists are educated and not actually personally affected by the conflict in which they participate. Given that is the case, how can you be so confident in your claims that the current administration is creating more terrorists or that "doing nothing" would alleviate the situation?

I'm not saying just doing nothing is the optimal solution, but I am 100% convinced that the current approach of the US is only worsening things

Fair enough, but don't be surprised if others look upon your views as whiney criticism without a viable alternative. It's like Tim Caine's speech. He kept saying "There's a better way" after mentioning Republican failures but never cared to elucidate what that "better way" was. Now I'm no fan of the Bush administration but THAT is a position of weakness.

-Grym

There may also have been mention of some internet browser, but that hardly seems relevant...

There may also have been mention of some internet browser, but that hardly seems relevant...

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Every body has at least one!

Actually it's a reference to American Psycho.

I liked the way the pychopathic anti hero, Patrick Bateman, is completely souless and amoral and actually _thinks_ in advert speak - lists of features and so on.

Penthouse called it "a sexy satire on the 1980's".

Amazon's homepage currently seems to be a redirect to a different page (which is another redirect). That last page contains a unique identifier in the title. This behavior probably interacts poorly with Google's ranking algorithm (since "nobody" links to a page with a unique identifier in the path), just as a guess.

$ telnet www.amazon.com 80
Trying 207.171.175.29...
Connected to www.amazon.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.0

HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently
Date: Mon, 06 Feb 2006 05:07:51 GMT
Server: Server
Set-Cookie: skin=; domain=.amazon.com; path=/; expires=Wed, 01-Aug-01 12:00:00 GMT
Location: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/home/home. html
Vary: Accept-Encoding,User-Agent
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/plain

Connection closed by foreign host.

I wonder if anyone has any insight into why.

Henry Petroski's classic To Engineer Is Human : The Role of Failure in Successful Design shows its age a bit, but it's a great read on structural engineering, factors of safety, and failure to learn from the mistakes of the past. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0679734163/sr=1-1 /qid=1139177043/ref=pd_bbs_1/002-3727742-0917603?_ encoding=UTF8

Frankly, if you just follow the guidelines established in Stephen McConnell's Code Complete, most if not all of your concerns will be addressed. The guidelines pretty much apply independent of language, operating system, etc.