Slashdot Mirror

Slashcode decided the first non-ascii character must be where the hyperlink should end. Bah!

http://www.amazon.com/Instapar...

While I'll be the first to complain that FIOS has a hidden 15W+ tax (could be more than $20/year), which Verizon could easily have solved, the Ars Technica rant seems to be almost entirely about their 8 hour backup being insufficient and nobody having a clue how to deal with it.

Verizon's FIOS ONTs operate on 12V batteries for backup, and even HAVE A JACK ON THE SIDE LABELED FOR 12V AUX POWER.

A $25 (5W) solar panel, a diode, some wire and a few brain cells are the ONLY thing you need to give your FIOS service unlimited runtime during a power outage. Yes, it'll keep working just fine during your 14 day power failure. And these monocrystaline panels will be good for 30 years.

http://www.amazon.com/Instapar...®-Black-High-Efficiency-Mono-Crystalline-Solar/dp/B004FWXWGS/

With less time and effort than these people put into their vitriolic rants to Ars, they could have what they claim they desperately want, but can't get at any price.

And in a pinch, 8xD batteries, connected together with aluminum foil and tape, will keep it going for a few days after the backup battery dies.

The claims about Verizon letting lines fail, to push customers to FIOS seems to be rumors spread by a few unhappy customers (I had my phone line go down for a few days, too, long before FIOS existed!) and perhaps some sub-contracted installers who don't actually have any way to know jack about Verizon's plans and policies.

The pushy and misleading telemarketers working for Verizon certainly deserve a major slap from the FCC or FTC, but the Ars story barely talks about that.

"Luckily for libraries, they're safe for now because they still beat Kindle Unlimited and its competitors in at least one category: content you want to read.

There is so much wrong with that backhanded insult that there is no "content you want to read" among self-published books.

Currently, the top bestsellers lists contain more self-published authors than authors represented by publishing houses. Self-publishing authors are outselling traditionally published authors and are .

The OP's comment comes from the misnomer that self-publishing is the last bastion of a writer whose writing was so bad, he couldn't get it accepted. The reality is the cartel of the Big-5 publishing companies have been artificially keeping the number of authors on the market artificially small so they could better control the markets in terms of product availability and price controls.

The advent of digital publishing has given authors a way to get around the market controls of big-industry publishing. Even traditionally published authors such as Barry Eisler and H.M. Ward have walked away from the publishing houses and turned to self-publishing. The work coming out of self-published authors is incredible. Hugh Howey's dystopian science fiction Wool would probably have never seen the light of day if not for self-publishing and his books have sold millions of copies. There are other yet-to-be discovered authors such as William D. Richards Aggadeh Chronicles Book 1: Nobody or Michael Patrick Hicks Convergence who are turning out real page turners with gripping stories and excellent writing.

Yeah, there is some crap out there (published as a joke; read the description; the author, Phronk, is a satirist and pretty damned funny). If you are unsure about a book by a self-published author, just download the free sample of their work and see how it reads before you buy. Many authors with a series of books offer the first book free—if you don't like it, you aren't out any money. If you do, then you've got a whole series to buy.

Many independent writers take their craft very seriously. They employ a team of editors, proof readers, and a cover artist or two to ensure that the reader is going to get the best reading experience possible. If they weren't putting so much work into assuring the quality of their work was there, the self-publishing movement would have collapsed years ago. Instead, because of the commitment to quality by the authors, the self-publishing movement has been growing in strength, variety, and quality. Self-published authors gain no support from advance payments, no corporate backing, and no financial assistance. They are not subsidized by monies from other authors (as is a practice in traditional publishing). Instead, they make 100% of their incomes from direct sales to readers. If they weren't doing the proper Q.A. on their books, their livelihoods would be unsustainable.

So, don't go listening to big-publishing shills trying to shoot down the first real competition they've ever faced. There is plenty of excellent reading to be found among self-publising writers, contrary to what the O.P. alludes. And as far as public libraries are concerned, independent writers are huge supporters of libraries, unlike big-industry publishers who try to milk money from municipalities by over-charging libraries for books and ebooks.

As a counter-annecdote: when I was taking a course in Fourier theory, the professor teaching the course was in the process of writing his own textbook on the subject. Each week or so we got a printed copy of the appropriate chapter. He had been working on it for a while, and it was more or less complete: with huge numbers of embedded mathematics (including lengthy derivations), graphs produced in Matlab, all properly typeset using LaTeX. It was a fantastic "text" (although not exactly in book form), and better than the actual assigned text. It cost us, the students, nothing (other than the costs of being a grad student, monetary and otherwise).

Just for the heck of it, I did some searching to see if he ever got it published. It's available for pre-order now (more than a decade since I took the course). I guess it'll be the required text now, and retails north of $100, but at least it will be good.

I believe I linked to both copies that included the MasteringBiology. The only difference seemed to be that US one might have a copy of the text as an e-book. I doubt making an encrypted PDF or equivalent merits the huge price difference.

Still your comment about the probability book is interesting. I wonder if this is particular to mathematics?

Here' s another example from Chemistry: Organic Chemistry by Bruice. In the US it's hardcover, in the UK paperback.

Amazon UK price $99.96
Amazon US price $240.60

it's possible that the difference is the publisher. Coincidentally, the two books I list are published by Pearson who are headquartered in the UK. It may be they price their books for the independent markets, whereas US publishers are more likely to stick to one price? That's pure speculation though and we'd need quite a few more data points to figure that one out.

The US textbook market is crazy.

An easy example is Campbell's Biology Plus MasteringBiology - a pretty standard 1st year Biology textbook. Amazon UK price $87.56. Price for the US equivalent is $190.40.

Most of the time it just boils down to a nifty story devoid of any evidence.

Yup, and such things belong in novels, not scientific papers: http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-...

This is a naive article. For a better analysis, see "How Asia Works", which is a comparison of the coastal Asian countries, how they developed, and why. Development requires several phases. One is raising agricultural productivity. There's the heavy-handed approach, which comes in the communist form of collective arms and the capitalist form of big plantations. Then there's the light approach, which involves lots of little services like tractor rental and agricultural agents. (The heavy-handed approach works well only for flat land. Hill operations require too many local decisions.) There's thus a visible relationship between what a country looks like and its Gini coefficient.

The second phase of development is about industrialization. Where investment goes really matters. Market forces do not direct investment towards overall economic growth, but toward short-term profit. The successful "Asian tigers" all had very directed investment controls, and how well countries did relative to each other depends on how well investment was directed.

The book has lots of country-by-country comparisons, both statistical and on the ground. It's worth a read.

Yes, Capitalism is the accepted economic system because it produces results; if those same results persist through extreme levels of inequality is a different matter. If what you are trying to say is that the current levels of inequality are actually beneficial for society, I believe most economists would disagree. See The Great Depression, this article, or this book. No one knows what they threshold really is, but no one argues that there isn't one.

Indeed. $100 seems to be a common barrier.

With the 256 GB Samsung 840 EVO less then $100 ($0.78125/GB) and the 256 GB for only $130 ($0.5078125/GB) people really don't have an excuse anymore.

* http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-...
* http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-...

Indeed. $100 seems to be a common barrier.

With the 256 GB Samsung 840 EVO less then $100 ($0.78125/GB) and the 256 GB for only $130 ($0.5078125/GB) people really don't have an excuse anymore.

* http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-...
* http://www.amazon.com/Samsung-...

only the trendy crap sold at best buy. I bought an otterbox commuter for $19 online. you can get china cases for as little as $4.00 with free shipping.

Got my daughter one of those China cases for her Moto G because it had to be neon green and had to have a kickstand, and the options were limited. But it's actually quite good.

I've got an Incipio Dual Pro on my S4 and it's definitely better. But only somewhat better, not dramatically. The Incipio is "really good" while the China Special is "quite good".

My phone is also way more expensive and the margin is worth it, but I would not steer people away from the no-name cases if they have good reviews.

There's a book you should read, if you haven't already.

... and I've known some who just didn't want to.

Personally, when I worked at a university, I kept a shirt and tie hanging in my cubicle for when I had meetings. As I never wore jeans in, when given 5 min warning, I was prepared.

Unfortunately, one day, I was dealing with server problems with our team lead, and my (new) manager came in and insisted we had to go to a meeting. I said I needed to grab my shirt & tie, but he insisted we were already late.

It seems that the executive director (3 levels above my boss) had decided that we were going to have an 'introduce the different groups within the IT department to each other', and the chairs were set up as rings of concentric circles ... and all of the free chairs were in the middle ... so I'm wearing a t-shirt that says "some people are alive simply because it's illegal to kill them".

Then they started cracking down on the dress code. Of course, the memo from the executive director on this "interpretation of the dress code" included no logos, so the staff shirts were actually not compliant with his interpretation. It also said "shirt with a collar", without qualifying "dress collar" (so therefore, my crew-necked t-shirt was compliant). They also insisted on 'no large text', without defining a specific letter height. (I hung up my White Zombie "More Human than Human" shirt to show that the "some people..." shirt had medium-sized letters.)

I was later fired ... it had to go before the unemployment office as they claimed I quit , but refused to make a formal statement (where I could've then sued for libel ... of course, I likely also had a case for "constructive dismissal" anyway, as my project manager had been told to harrass me 'til I quit)

But ... as my job was all about problem solving, I found a number of ways to comply with the wording of the 'interpretation' of the dress code:

• took the sleaves off of dress shirts. (not a good luck for me, as I'm rather hairy)
• added 'A COLLAR' with an embroidery machine
• borrowed a steel gorget from a friend in the SCA (along with the rest of the platemail)
• bought a number of 'club shirts' (effectively, hawaiian shirts w/ comic book characters on 'em)
• wore the same shirt for almost 5 weeks straight (2 weeks, 1 day gap, then almost 3 weeks without washing it, only febreeze)
• obnoxious ties ... but that was a problem when crawling around the machine room (I was also a sysadmin)

If I had it to do all over again ... I'd have tried to find a priest's collar. Or a dickie. I mean, hell, I worked in a locked room -- it's not like anyone saw me except for when I went to meetings, lunch, or the bathroom.

So instead, I work at NASA ... about the only government agency (unless you're at HQ) that prefers you to *not* wear a tie (I was threatened with bodily harm by a small, 60+ year old woman if I continued wearing one to work). Unfortunately, a while back my employer got bought out by a military contractor, and they started pushing down dress codes on us ... so I've been trying to get a definition of exactly what a "graphical t-shirt" is. My co-workers all just ignore it, but I'm doing my best to point out what a pointless, stupid rule it is w/ ASCII art and stylized text.

And if you don't like it, stop eating the fucking cheese, mouse.

It'll still be possible to get off your duff and make your own damn cheese, won't it?

I don't see how controversial it can really be, given that there's ample evidence for it. This book dedicates a whole chapter to the formation of DEA and other related actions (introduction of no-knock raids, for example) of the Nixon administration, plotting the timeline against the political rhetoric.

A friend of mine wrote a little tutorial thing called 2K to 10K about increasing your word count as a writer. It's about properly planning what you intend to write, maximizing the output during your prime writing time, and getting excited about your writing. ("Drunk on writing" is a phrase in there that makes me giggle every time.)

Nowhere in the entire thing does she mention typing speed, at least not that I remember.

Why? Because programmers don't design products -- they throw wrappers around APIs.

Usability testing? Wuuuuuuut?

There's is a genetic component to intelligence, but it's just a very insignificant one, at least as far as modern science can tell. Read this book to learn more: http://www.amazon.com/Intellig...

The main problem with genetic arguments is that environmental advantages swamp genetic advantages when it comes to human intelligence, however defined. And importantly, how you define intelligence is driven by culture, which unsurprisingly means that the advantaged people in a culture are measured as more intelligent.

I like the way Nisbett goes after this topic b/c he doesn't deny any impact of genetics for intelligence, but he does give strong research evidence that it's not a meaningful measurement, so not really worth worrying about.

What was the result of all of this government regulation of a natural monopoly? Prices for long-distance calls dropped rapidly. Services were upgraded in many areas that were previously "unprofitable". Technologies that made heavy use of previously existing infrastructure(ADSL) spurred technological advances.

This doesn't necessarily invalidate your point, but your recap of the results of the Judge Greene decision and the divestiture of AT&T is a bit off. The original Department of Justice rationale - this suit being pursued under the conservative Reagan administration, which you would have thought wouldn't wanted to do it - for splitting up AT&T was that it was an un-natural combination of heavily regulated industries (local phone service) and largely unregulated industries (long distance). The ultra-conservative DoJ anti-trust bigwig who actually pursued the case did so on the doctrinal belief that you should either be in a regulated business (rates set by a local Public Utility Commission, as local phone services are/were), or in a competitive business (market pricing) but not both since it allowed the competitive business to be subsidized by the regulated business and distort competition.

What was going on was actually the reverse - AT&T made lots of money selling long distance but not much selling local phone service, and in effect it was subsidizing your local phone bill with what expensive long distance service cost. So, while opening up the LD market to lots of competition did in fact drive prices down for consumers, most people's local phone bills went up because the ILECs were no longer being subsidized. Local phone company "innovation" pretty much went into the toilet (remember, they toyed with making modem users buy separate additional phone lines, and their idea of "broadband" in the early '90s was still ISDN). It wasn't until the advent of ADSL as a way to compete with other emerging broadband technologies forced their hand in the late '90s (in concert with the 1996 telecom deregulation act) that there was much innovation or cost savings for customers in play.

So in some ways the Ma Bell breakup was an interesting exemplar of the "law of unintended consequences" and a demonstration of how heavily regulated services can sometimes drive higher prices and lower innovation than ones with a more open market. Competition will always make a company move faster than regulatory bureaucracy - so your "HEAVY regulation" mentioned above would need to not just be regulation per se but the type that also incentivized investment and competition.

By the way, if you're really interested in the Ma Bell divestiture and its consequences, be sure to pick up The Deal of the Century by the Washington Post reporter who covered the trial and its aftermath.

I highly recommend this quick read the 90's: http://www.amazon.com/Biology-...

It's written by a geneticist Richard Lewontin and very effectively shows the many flaws in biological determinism.

Don't waste the money on 5ghz. Unless you live in an apartment with a crowded 2.4ghz spectrum. Just buy the 2.4 wireless N model.

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti...

I have 2 of those (1 per floor of my house) and the ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite (in my basement). Everything connected to a cheap switch. Every inch of my house has perfect signal and the product is rock solid. I also have a PicoStation ( http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti... ) on my deck to provide great coverage in my back yard.

Don't waste the money on 5ghz. Unless you live in an apartment with a crowded 2.4ghz spectrum. Just buy the 2.4 wireless N model.

http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti...

I have 2 of those (1 per floor of my house) and the ubiquiti EdgeRouter Lite (in my basement). Everything connected to a cheap switch. Every inch of my house has perfect signal and the product is rock solid. I also have a PicoStation ( http://www.amazon.com/Ubiquiti... ) on my deck to provide great coverage in my back yard.

Specifically, the N300 (Amazon link). It has four gigabit ports, plus a gigabit WAN port, a USB port, and takes DDWRT/Tomato/Tomato USB like a dream. Oh, and it's cheap.

The only downside is a lack of external antennae, but you can get a set easily on ebay as big as you want.

Netgear's firmware is crap, but that cheap little router plus Tomato USB has been amazing. I have 150/150Mb FiOS service, and it has handled all levels of traffic beautifully. I've been doing 10MB down and 10MB up with torrents, and still been able to watch Netflix in HD with no problem. It handles heavy traffic silky smooth.

If you ask me, the Netgear WNR3500Lv2 is the "true" successor to the WRT54GL:
Pros:
- Cheap! -- around $40
- Is supported by Shibby's Tomato port -- no problems with uptime; frequent updates in the face of Heartbleed, etc.
- 4 Gigabit Ports in addition to the WAN port
- N support
- USB support for a NAS, but I've never used that functionality

Cons:
- Only 300 mBit N support
- Only 2.4 GHz
- Internal antenna only
- Flimsy base, heh. Mine broke, but the router still stands up.

Netgear seemed to be pretty open to the idea of supporting open source firmwares through their My Open Router website and forums. ...But Netgear was also caught with a backdoor in their firmware, like a lot of other vendors, but I would hope that replacing the stock firmware with Tomato would help with that. (Although since I'm using someone else's build instead of doing it myself who knows!)

I've really loved this router, though.

I wish it were newer (AC support I guess?), had a 5 GHz radio and/or supported faster N speeds... but 300 Mbit is enough for anything I'm doing.

For the same price has the higher-end consumer stuff you can get pro-level equipment.

Grab an EdgeRouter Lite: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CPRVF5K/ for $95

and pair it with an UniFi AP: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XXMUCQ/ for $68

The EdgeRouter is not as user friendly as DD-WRT/Tomato, its OS is based of Vyatta. It has three gigabit ports you decide what you want to do with. Have one WAN and two LAN? Sure. Dual WAN fail over with LAN? Ok. WAN, LAN, and DMZ? Yup. Need more? Get the standard non-lite, or even go Pro. Software configure wise they work exactly the same.

Having an AP separate from router is also nice. Keep the router in the basement near the drop. Then just run CAT to a central area. The UniFi only has a single Ethernet connector and requires PoE which it includes an adapter for. It also supports seamless hand off, so if you have more than one, you can transition between them, and your network connection will stay open.

For the same price has the higher-end consumer stuff you can get pro-level equipment.

Grab an EdgeRouter Lite: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CPRVF5K/ for $95

and pair it with an UniFi AP: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004XXMUCQ/ for $68

The EdgeRouter is not as user friendly as DD-WRT/Tomato, its OS is based of Vyatta. It has three gigabit ports you decide what you want to do with. Have one WAN and two LAN? Sure. Dual WAN fail over with LAN? Ok. WAN, LAN, and DMZ? Yup. Need more? Get the standard non-lite, or even go Pro. Software configure wise they work exactly the same.

Having an AP separate from router is also nice. Keep the router in the basement near the drop. Then just run CAT to a central area. The UniFi only has a single Ethernet connector and requires PoE which it includes an adapter for. It also supports seamless hand off, so if you have more than one, you can transition between them, and your network connection will stay open.

I recently purchased this: http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ... I LOVE the router. no issues whatsoever and amazing/blazing speeds.

For a company headquarters job I did recently we looked at a bunch of options, and went with a dozen WNDR3800 refurbs for about $50 a piece. Running OpenWRT with luci-ssl and wpad (not mini, for WPA2) installed on them.

Great for doing multiple SSID's over VLAN's back to the routers/firewalls for handling. After doing another job with a "big company brand" central controller and "dumb" AP's, I'd go the OpenWRT route again in a heartbeat. You waste a few hours configuring a dozen instead of a few weeks debugging a nasty, buggy, proprietary deployment.

There wasn't a huge budget so instead of buying twelve new ones we went with 16 refurbs. The 4 spares are still on the shelf a year later, knock on RSSI.

This model has a lot of users, projects like CeroWRT have chosen it as a target, and the OpenWRT wiki has it very well documented (port numbers, VLAN setup, etc.) Even a real power switch (next to the integrated gigabit switch) and a USB port. What it doesn't have is external connectors for big antennas, so if you need to do long-haul, either solder them on or look elsewhere.

N-range is not good on any compliant hardware, so for a typical house I just get two of these and give them the same SSID's on different channels and then there's great signal everywhere. The OpenWRT wiki's HOWTO on deploying a Guest SSID works well (I've done those for neighbors) but given the option I prefer to send the traffic back over a VLAN to a pfSense firewall and handle it there instead. That's fine for commercial but makes less sense in a typical residential install.

Since 'the incident' the police is knocking on doors of young couples living in the Fukushima area and in the fall out zones north east of it, telling the couples: " you know, you should consider to have no children" (Or move away to the far south or Hokkaido)

Can you actually show this, or is this just the latest of the tall tales making its rounds on the anti-nuclear blogosphere? And anyway, even if it did happen in some form, all it would show is that people are afraid and giving each other potentially poor advice. It doesn't show that they're at actual substantial risk of harm, otherwise you could go around telling everybody to stay indoors to prevent them from being run over by cars (you know, this we can actually show to happen).

In Chernobyl the death toll over all is estimated to be a million, roughly. /. posters claim it was 3 or 5 ...

Ugh, not that rag again. Yablokov's publication is a book, not a peer-reviewed scientific paper. It contains tons of errors and was translated and pushed onto the New York Academy of Sciences by known anti-nuclear crazies who aren't above outright falsehoods (like their assertions that Fukushima killed 15000 people in US in the initial 14 weeks after the accident, even though their data is trivially shown to have been manipulated and utterly bogus; Mangano is often seen publishing together with another crazie, Sherman, and they've even been torn a new one by an avid linear-no-threshold-supporting researcher). The Yablokov publication has since been criticized by the NYAS and they've distanced themselves from it. The short story is that the NYAS' reputation was co-opted as a vehicle to fluff up the credibility of an utterly bogus piece of non-scientific writing by anti-nuclear activists.

I witnessed 1986 about a few ten thousand ... it was news every day on TV. I really wonder how people in our days with straight face claim only a few people died.

Oh my, so if something's on TV, it is truth! Well fire the scientists then, obviously all we need to do to determine fact from fiction is to listen to the daily news cycle. Fox News will be pleased.

Luckily the initial disaster in Fukushima was far away from this. However the long term issues we only will know in 30 years ... plus.

Even assuming the fairly uncontended (mainly in anti-nuke cycles) linear-no-threshold dose response model, according to actual peer-reviewed studies, on average we'd expect ~250 excess deaths over the years with an upper bound of ~2500 (and that's assuming no evacuations). Was the accident harmless? Certainly not. Should TEPCO be made to compensate people for their troubles? Absolutely! But this fear mongering using junk science is in no way different to global-warming deniers and 9/11 truthers simply ignoring scientific facts to meet their political agendas. Do be like them.

They charge you eight bucks a month for the privilege of using their modem. You can buy your own from Amazon for less than you'll pay Comcast for a year's rental - and that's for a DOCSIS 3 modem that handles IPv6 just fine, even with Comcast.

Here's the one I bought - it's $68. It doesn't include wifi, so you'll have to bring your own wifi base - but those can be had cheaply as well. Plus you don't have to replace both functions just because one or the other craps out...

I actually noticed this trend about 8 years ago, and wrote a book to solve it. The book is called Programming from the Ground Up. It is a Linux-based assembly language book, but also teaches a lot about systems programming in general, but without being too technical.

For the other CS-oriented stuff that they don't teach, the two books you should get are how to design programs and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. After that, I have written a series of articles to apply those ideas to "real" programming languages on IBM's developerWorks. You can find links to them here.

I actually noticed this trend about 8 years ago, and wrote a book to solve it. The book is called Programming from the Ground Up. It is a Linux-based assembly language book, but also teaches a lot about systems programming in general, but without being too technical.

For the other CS-oriented stuff that they don't teach, the two books you should get are how to design programs and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. After that, I have written a series of articles to apply those ideas to "real" programming languages on IBM's developerWorks. You can find links to them here.

I actually noticed this trend about 8 years ago, and wrote a book to solve it. The book is called Programming from the Ground Up. It is a Linux-based assembly language book, but also teaches a lot about systems programming in general, but without being too technical.

For the other CS-oriented stuff that they don't teach, the two books you should get are how to design programs and Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. After that, I have written a series of articles to apply those ideas to "real" programming languages on IBM's developerWorks. You can find links to them here.

Again, about 90% of what I do on a daily basis could be considered "code monkey" level. It's when a customer has a REALLY difficult math problem that my formal education comes into play, and for giving people confidence in me.

For your direct question, I'd study the book Computer Architecture, Fifth Edition: A Quantitative Approach (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design)

That's what I used, and it helped me understand a ton of memory management. Then again, my undergrad curriculum was based on C....

Best tech book ever! (Well, I have the 3rd edition or something older.)
For anybody who really wants to understand the stuff, go look up all the classwork for CS61c at UC Berkeley.
It's the undergrad course that uses this book. Heck, Patterson even taught it from time to time.

The department I go my masters in computer science from divided the discipline into three chunks:
      systems
      languages
      theory

I think this is a good way to divide computer science.

It sounds like your Java / C question involves mostly languages, and a little bit about systems (since Java programmers do not need to have a fundamental understanding of memory works at a system's level.)

I don't think this question really addresses the underlying issue - what is computer science? To me, I tell people that my formal education is closer to applied mathematics than what I do on a day to day basis. I also like to humorously use the derogatory term "code monkey" to people that have learned everything through the "languages" chunk above. A lot of times when I've worked with these people, they haven't even really studied languages (Why did the language designers make the choice that they did? What does the formal language specification say the language should do in this case? How is this language related to earlier languages?)

Again, about 90% of what I do on a daily basis could be considered "code monkey" level. It's when a customer has a REALLY difficult math problem that my formal education comes into play, and for giving people confidence in me.

For your direct question, I'd study the book Computer Architecture, Fifth Edition: A Quantitative Approach (The Morgan Kaufmann Series in Computer Architecture and Design)

That's what I used, and it helped me understand a ton of memory management. Then again, my undergrad curriculum was based on C....

You do realize that for the S3 backup to work Synology or the NAS (and the NAS has you Synology login info) has your login information for S3, and that if this thing is owning the NAS there is a pretty damn good chance the malware has owned your S3 instance as well right? The only way it wouldn't is if the S3 backup is totally manual.

Amazon has a very extensive authentication system -- you can easily configure the Synology with an S3 access key that only has "List Files" and "Upload Files" permissions, but not "Delete Files" or "Overwrite Files". This way, even if the Synology box gets owned or a user fat-fingers something, the files on S3 aren't at risk. You don't (and shouldn't) need to use your AWS root access keys for S3.

I have a similar setup with Amazon's Glacier: my standard access key has only list, upload, and retrieve permissions. A separate access key is required to delete files (I've configured my Glacier client, FastGlacier, to prompt me for a password when I switch to the "delete" key) so that I don't accidentally end up deleting important backups.

Likewise I look at my Clie TH55 and see today's Mobile devices, 10 years ago. And where is Sony now?

Get a video phone, such as: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KO...

In the Alzheimers facility the phone is used just like a regular phone.

The fact that your municipality is almost certainly using COTS software is actually a plus in this case, even more so if the software is being operated by an outside third party; they're unlikely to have a horse in the race and be tempted to sway the results.

Walden O'Dell, the head of Diebold Election Systems, was a top fund-raiser for George Bush in 2004. He wrote in a fund-raising memo that "he was committed "to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the President." He did.

Formatting the book is a whole lot easier than it used to be, true, but that's only part of what an editor does.

You'd think that, but I returned an eBook to Amazon after their normal return period when starting about 30% through, paragraphs breaks started being random...sometimes there would be no break in 20 lines of alternating dialog, and sometimes paragraphs would break like they were trying to be wrapped to fit a very narrow line. It also had long runs of italics (no closing tag), random font size changes, and run-together words. It was obvious that nobody had read that book after some idiot formatted it.

Also, many eBooks are apparently not sourced from an electronic copy, but rather scans of the print version, as they often have dozens (or even hundreds) of versions of the section separators (like 3 stars) as images. I can maybe understand one copy of the image, but with Unicode and embedded fonts, you can usually convert those kind of dingbats to text.

Or how about this sample (that happens a lot) of how not to do small caps to intro a chapter. The entire span is set smaller than the main text, then the first character is made bigger, and the rest set in fake small caps (by using all caps and shrinking the font). I've seen even worse examples that result in the first words at about 30% of the main font size. These are straight from Amazon, and that's exactly how it renders on a Kindle.

The author is not going to be good at reading for consistency, since the author knows a whole lot more about the fictional world than went into the story (at least, this is my experience writing stuff that isn't really publishable). A casual reader may miss a name change or inconsistent backstory. That doesn't mean that name consistency is unimportant, but rather than a skilled editor will pick up on things that will make the book worse that most people will overlook.

I can tell you right now that publishers either don't have any skilled editors working for them, or they choose to only assign them to books I don't read.

From #1 best-selling authors to the somewhat obscure, I find errors that anyone who read the book at all would have caught. Gems include sections repeated outright in later chapters (character briefly introduced, then fleshed out, but the "fleshing" used copy/paste starting paragraphs that made little sense in the later context), character name changes, spelling/usage errors (I've seen they're/their/there confusion in far too many books), and no knowledge of the character/author (character says "should of gone" as many people incorrectly do, but is "corrected" by the editor to "should have gone" in some but not all instances).

What I'm basically saying is that if you think a publisher deserves money because they provide editing for the author, much of what is being sent out by the "Big Six" shows that you're wrong.

That would be the Mitrokhin Archive. That link is to the book (about 20 years old or so?) but apparently the entire archive was recently released.

Probably could combine a HEPA filter with a charcoal filter to get both particles and volatile chemicals.

Like this:
http://www.instructables.com/i...
Or:
http://www.amazon.com/Rabbit-A...
Lots more here:
http://www.grainger.com/catego...

How can they possibly tell how much of the matter is "Dark"?

By simple observation

Alright, go for it, man: tell us all why the verb "vegetating" only applies to screens and not pages.

Let's get TV out of the way - it's passive, dumbed-down, lowest common denominator entertainment.

Video games are nothing but interactive TV programs when you think of it. There isn't any redeeming value to them. And save the hand -eye coordination benefits argument. Nothing beats running around outside and playing.

Internet - surfing crap and at best, small articles that people don't even finish reading the article - yeah, it's not just Slashdotters. I hate researching on the Internet because for one, so much stuff is just copied verbatim. You go through hundreds of sites and read the same shit over and over.

WikiPedia can be good, but sometimes the writing is just dense or doesn't flow well. There is a lot to be said about a skilled writer. Here is an example of a skilled writer making complex material understandable AND enjoyable. You will not find material like that available on the net; although, you will find the author's individual articles. But those articles will not have the long narrative that the book has and you wouldn't finish his article anyway which leads to ....

Books: long narratives on a single format. Will not get distracted by other shit. How many times has one gone to read on the Internet and get distracted and end up on a time wasting site - like Slashdot? There is NO new and breaking news here.

I find having a dead tree book (can't surf the net or get email notifications or anything like that like I can on electronic things that distract me), I can get engrossed in it and absorb MUCH more than I can reading crap on the net.

And that's my project - use my local library and read books.

So there you go. Sometimes, technology is a bad thing.

Why not weapons? Many kids will die in an armed conflict later on. Why not give them an advantage early. Give computers and similar toys to disabled people and future secretaries.

BTW.: is there *really* any advantage in throwing various tech gadgets at children? What makes you believe this? Read this. This was exactly 30 years ago! Did we learn nothing? Obviously, not.

"separating the individual from the actions of the Israeli government"

Bullshit. Most Jews do support Israel, globally. Yes you will see a couple in the limelight who oppose it, but most Jews do support it. Don't give me any of that fucking libtard crap about "Jews are not responsible for Israel's actions". The majority of Jewish organisations, including the media, fully support Israel in their rhetoric, financially and politically and have a wide base of members from the "Jewish Community".

Did AIPAC or ADL issue a statement condemning the Israeli actions? NO!

Israel exists and is able to slaughter the Palestinians, who they have already dispossessed of their homes and lands, precisely and only because of the Jewish powerbase in the west (http://thezog.info/list-summaries/) which extracts huge funding and exerts massive pressure and influence on anybody who dares so much as tweet "#freepalestine" after being contronted with a video, and via distortions of the truth in the "main stream media".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

What is more, if you read the Jewish press you will see the venom and hatred that Jews have for the Palestinians and how they cheer when a child is murdered and the calls for genocide by government officials (http://www.jonathan-cook.net/blog/2014-07-21/calls-for-genocide-enter-israeli-mainstream/) which of course you don't see on BBC CNN FOX or any of the other Hasbara agencies.

Not to mention the utter out-and-out racism which is prevalent throughout Jewish society and philosophy - not just against Arabs but against every person who is not Jewish. See Professor Israel Shahak's Jewish History Jewish Religion (full text: http://www.biblebelievers.org.... or buy http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-H...).

What is Israel? It is the Jew only state that was built on Palestine, beginning roughly late 1800's, a land where since the 1600's to 1900's there was a minority of fewer than 8% Jews. A land where even in biblical times there was only a minority of Jews in the land, and when they were there all they did was commit atrocities. They built their Jew only state by terrorising the inhabitants to flee and become refugees.

Ethics, Morals and Law:
The occupying power does not have the right to defend itself from attacks. It does not. It has a single right. Only one right. The right to obey the law and withdraw the occupation/annexation by allowing the refugees to return and live as equal citizens in the land, all of the land. Anything else is not self defence but an action to maintain the occupation, the annexation and the oppression. None of this stupid two-state-solution bullshit. There is one land and the refugees are entitled to return to all and any part of it!

The occupied, the annexed, on the other hand, they do have the right to use violent force against their occupiers and oppressors until such a time as the occupier ceases its occupation and annexation and allow the refugees to return to their homes and land and to live as equals under the law in the land.

Aside:
Before any Jew or misguided libtard replies with stupid analogies of native Americans or Aborigines etc... you only prove MY POINT! Any of those people's or their descendents are guaranteed citizenship in the US and Australia and can live as equals under the law in the land, all of the land, any part of the land.

Before any Jew or libtard pipes up and tells us that Israel is multicultural and diverse and has many Arabs then here is a question, of all of the Arab-Israelis, which of them are not descendants of Arabs who did not flee in 1948 and 1967, how many new, non-Jewish Arabs immigrated to Israel last year? How many non-jewish Blacks? How man non-Jewish Chinese? How many non-Jewish Indians? The answer is of course 0. Because Israel is a racist jew only state where you have to be Jewish to immigrate into and become a citizen.
 

But this could be the beginning of mainstream 3D printing.

We heard that when Staples did it.

Amazon's 3D printed product offerings are rather lame. They're not offering any of the more advanced 3D printing processes; for that you have to go to Shapeways. All you can get from Amazon is plastic junk.

http://www.amazon.com/Multifun...

very few successful businesses are doing what they were originally founded to do. business is all about experimentation. you tweak and reset and change and reset again until you see the numbers going in the right direction at the desired speed. unsuccessful businesses usually do the same thing, too; they just don't ever find a combination that works.

see also: "Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model" http://www.amazon.com/Getting-...

"To succeed, you must change the plan in real time as the inevitable challenges arise. In fact, studies show that entrepreneurs who stick slavishly to their Plan A stand a greater chance of failing-and that many successful businesses barely resemble their founders' original idea. ... Testing those assumptions and unearthing why the plan might not work."