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There's an annotated edition that is much more than "decent".

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Annotated-Alice/Lewis-Carroll/e/9780393048476/?itm=1&USRI=annotated+alice

Electronic books are probably one of the iPad's killer apps. Maybe not the ones we'll see immediately -- the ones basically just ported from the Kindle or something -- but the next generation of books, or the ones after that. Interacting with the book is where the technology will really shine. Think about A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (from The Diamond Age).

Books as a killer app? I don't think that'll be quite enough. Remember that the killer app for the iPod was not the music, but the store to access that music at a reasonable price.

Likewise, the killer app for the iPad has to be much more than just the books, no matter how you dress them up.

Unfortunately for Apple, electronic book stores already exist. And they haven't shown too much promise (yet?). There's no need for an equivalent to iTunes, either (organizing a bookshelf isn't nearly as difficult as a music library).

So, what else can be offered by the iPad? Color? Not good enough.

So, like you said, maybe interactive books: a touch screen opens some opportunities there. But even here I'm skeptical: interactive content is one of the most difficult products to make well. And it's not the sort of thing that Apple can control.

Textbooks, however, might be the key. Here is where an eReader can provide many advantages, even without providing anything more than a basic book. Searching and note-taking, to name a few ... and so, so much more portable. Even at a lower price the publisher makes more money. If it's done right, every student will have one. I would have bought one, for sure (and that's saying something!).

The key, though, is the target demographic. Remember that, at least to general perception, Apple targets the young and hip (or at least those that want to appear young and hip). Literature (in general) has the perception of appealing to the old and intellectual.

Even then, I don't think we've seen what the killer app could be for the iPad or any other eReader. Maybe that's why there's so many skeptics of the lastest Apple product -- and maybe they have a point this time.

Electronic books are probably one of the iPad's killer apps. Maybe not the ones we'll see immediately -- the ones basically just ported from the Kindle or something -- but the next generation of books, or the ones after that. Interacting with the book is where the technology will really shine. Think about A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer (from The Diamond Age).

Do you think you would see "#4 best seller on Amazon.com" on a book sold at Borders or Barnes and Nobles?

Well they certainly aren't censoring the keyword "amazon.com" from their website or store...

Besides, do they really think the kind of person who would be buying an iPhone or an iPod touch wouldn't already know what Android is anyways? Not to mention the fact that if someone is already browsing the app store, then they probably already own one. It's a bad move if you ask me...

"Does anybody think Barnes and Noble would be willing to post a sign saying your book was #38 in its category on Amazon"

Ironically, I've seen similiar signs in many BANs.

Also, it isn't uncommon for a retail outlet to let you know where else to buy a product. It's called 'customer service'

Hell you can even learn how to compete with BaN at BaN:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Home-Based-Bookstore/Steve-Weber/e/9780977240609/?itm=1&USRI=amazon

No, the FISA requires they get a warrant within 72 hours if they want to keep the intercepted data - it does nothing to prevent gathering it in advance of getting a warrant.
There ARE Directives which govern the activities & practices of SIGINT organizations (see James Bamford's books Body Of Secrets or The Puzzle Palace for details about USSIDs) but those also limit what you can keep and not what you can gather.

No, the FISA requires they get a warrant within 72 hours if they want to keep the intercepted data - it does nothing to prevent gathering it in advance of getting a warrant.
There ARE Directives which govern the activities & practices of SIGINT organizations (see James Bamford's books Body Of Secrets or The Puzzle Palace for details about USSIDs) but those also limit what you can keep and not what you can gather.

In the current market, hardware-only e-book makers like this have no chance at all. Amazon has their e-book library, B&N has one, Sony has one... the proliferation of e-libraries isn't a problem in itself, except each is tied to the same brand of hardware, and nothing else. With iTunes and iPhone apps, Apple has pushed media lock-in further than I ever thought would be successful. I congratulate their shareholders, but I still think it's a terrible idea. It's like we're reverting from the era of the Internet back to proprietary BBS's like GENie Online and (old) AOL, where everything was bundled together and walled up.

I'm saying that those who want to add in extra rules (or remove rules) from Christianity are not Christians.

Well, that's all Christians. Because every Christian has rules from the Bible they don't follow, and other rules that aren't in the Bible that they do follow.

Actually there are quite a few perfectly normal people who do. That's exactly why you think they don't exist because you're looking for some weirdo wearing a burlap sack - you don't realize that you can lead a normal life and follow it.

No, that's not what I'm looking for. It's pretty much impossible to lead any sort of normal life, and follow every rule of the Bible.

How? Christianity does not promote violence of any sort, so therefore people committing violence in the name of Christianity are not Christians and it has nothing to do with the religion.

But Christianity does promote violence, even the New Testament - and people who commit violence in the name of Christianity has everything to do with the religion. How can it not have anything to do with the religion if people commit violence in the very name of it?

First off, abortion IS murder, there's no debating that. When you intentionally cause a creature that is alive to stop being alive, you are killing it.

Actually, there is plenty of debating that. Firstly: in what way is an embryo a "creature"? Secondly: "killing" is not the same thing as "murder." Finally: How can you kill something which is not yet alive?

Just because some groups want to claim that somehow a baby isn't human doesn't change the fact that it is human....

We're talking about abortion, not killing babies. An embryo is not a baby.

If a non-Christian says to go do xyz, it doesn't f-ing matter if they claim to be Christian, they're NOT Christian.

Yeah, so what? I'm not talking about non-Christians doing it, I'm talking about Christians doing it.

Wrong. It's about believing in Jesus's teachings (which were all in the New Testament) AND accepting Jesus as your savior. You can't claim Jesus as your savior if you do not believe and follow what he taught and stands for.

So, children, mentally retarded people, and others not capable of comprehending this, cannot be Christians?

Blame the person, don't project their actions onto a group that did not condone their actions. Just like you respect a person based on their character, not their job title or family name.

But their actions stem from their religion, and there are large church groups who condone there actions. How does that have nothing to do with the religion?

Many people have different ideas about Christianity to you. That does not make them not Christians. Seeing as you seem to believe so strongly in one true Christianity, would you mind telling me which denomination the "true Christians" are? After all, there can only be one denomination of Christianity that is correct, if there is only one way to interpret it.

ahem. Roughly 1.5 million units in Q3 2009 is not untested and suffering from weak adoption for a new product.

You want to talk about weak adoption? Windows Mobile lost 28% in Q3 over a year before. In order to lose 28% share year-over-year in a market where your customers are typically locked into a two or three year contract you have to sell essentially none .

And that's just smartphones. Android also powers the hottest eBook reader this holiday season. They're sold out. If you order now you might get one in February.

Being PG-13 wasn't way the first AvP was bad, that was just the salt on the wound.

I'm not saying that it would have been a great movie if only it had been R rated... I'm saying that it would have sucked less if we could have at least enjoyed some of the set-piece scenes that we've come to expect from the respective franchises.

When all those people got impregnated, and then the camera cut away when the chestbursters popped... I was genuinely insulted. It's an Alien (vs Predator) movie - I want to see chestbursters!

It was bad because one Alien, "Net-Scar", killed 2 Predators. WTF seriously, I don't care if they were in the middle of their right of passage, the Predators wouldn't go down that easy.

I have less of a problem with an Alien killing multiple Predators (remember, not only were they n00bs, but they didn't even have their shoulder guns) than I do with them trying to turn an Alien into a real character. That was the whole point with the "net scar" thing... To let us distinguish that Alien from the rest of them. So we could keep score and cheer it on.

Aliens are bugs. They're part of a hive mind. They're as interchangeable and disposable as our individual skin cells are. We shouldn't be individualizing them, we should see them as a faceless ravening horde.

Then you get to the part where the human woman saves the remaining Predator and he adopts her into the tribe and gives her a spear and shield made out of dead Alien.

This is right out of Aliens vs. Predator: Prey - a book that pre-dates the movie by a good couple of years. In it you've got a Predator fighting against a bunch of Aliens on a human-settled world, and a human woman who winds up on his side. At the end of the book he gives her the head of the Alien queen as a trophy and marks her as a Predator warrior. In the sequels she actually winds up joining a predator hunting party and going off to hunt more Aliens.

I'm not claiming that the fact it happened on paper before it happened on the screen makes it somehow better... But I can see where they got the idea and why they thought it would work.

If this is a free market, then as a consumer it is none of my concern how the supplier intends to make money. Nor is it my responsibility to use a product in such a way as to maintain the supplier's sustainability. This does not make me a crook. I'm merely trying to maximize the deal for myself. If this seems somehow unethical, consider that the same applies to the supplier. They need not concern themselves with such things as whether or not their products benefit society as a whole or whether a customer can really afford to buy such an offering.

Sigh, where to begin?

What is the premise? If this _is_ a free market, does this logic also apply to "open source". If I try to maximize the deal for myself, can I take open source code and distribute in a closed source form and break the GPL? If this _is_ a free market is that "none of my concern" how the person that spent the time to write the code intends? This doesn't make me a crook, I'm merely trying to maximize the deal for myself.

But you say I broke the "law", well, no I didn't technically break the law either, I broke a license agreement with the copyright holder (that's not the same thing as breaking the law). As with any license agreement, there is at minimium a written contract and contract remedies.

In case you are curious, you can read the terms and conditions of buying/using the nook here http://images.barnesandnoble.com/pimages/nook/download/User_Guide_nook.pdf

Of course similar type contract exists for the GPL. Basically, the remedy is if I don't like the contract, I have the right to return (with your money back) and I don't have the right to use it.

Well then there's the small matter of enforcing the terms of the contract when one party doesn't want to follow them. Under your "free market" argument, then if open source community were to take the long view, or the socially responsible view (since they are 1/2 of this GPL contract by your definition), then perhaps they wouldn't want to restrict the unrestricted distribution and use of their code? After all, it's just a licence (not the law) and they could write anything they want into the license. Why make the guberment the bad-guy for enforcing a contract between two parties which doesn't happen to take the "long view" or be "socially responsible"?

Hmm, that's a very interesting straw-man argument to make against a "free market". Demonize the license holder as not taking the long view and the socially responsible view and make the government into the bad-guy for enforcing such a contract between two parties... ;^)

B&N doesn't have an ereader store (or an ereader that will ship before the biggest consumer day in the western world - nice job, guys).

Barnes & Noble has been selling ebooks on their site for quite some time now. Further, most of their normal books have an indicator right on the page when they are available in ebook format.

Their ereader is available for download on the iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry, PC, and Mac - and has been for a while.

The nook's first shipments have already gone out. Several of those shipments will be on doorsteps well before Christmas. There was plenty of opportunity, if you had already made up your mind, to purchase one in time for Christmas. Granted, they're now back-ordered... If you buy one today it won't ship until January 15th... But what do you expect with a brand new electronic device launching just in time for Christmas? It isn't like this is the first time a hot new Christmas gift has been hard to get. Either plan ahead, or deal with the delay.

B&N doesn't have an ereader store (or an ereader that will ship before the biggest consumer day in the western world - nice job, guys).

Barnes & Noble has been selling ebooks on their site for quite some time now. Further, most of their normal books have an indicator right on the page when they are available in ebook format.

Their ereader is available for download on the iPhone/iPod Touch, Blackberry, PC, and Mac - and has been for a while.

The nook's first shipments have already gone out. Several of those shipments will be on doorsteps well before Christmas. There was plenty of opportunity, if you had already made up your mind, to purchase one in time for Christmas. Granted, they're now back-ordered... If you buy one today it won't ship until January 15th... But what do you expect with a brand new electronic device launching just in time for Christmas? It isn't like this is the first time a hot new Christmas gift has been hard to get. Either plan ahead, or deal with the delay.

The book was by Robert Baer, and is called "See No Evil". I agree that it was very good.

One thing that I've definitely noted in searching the B&N ebook store is a complete and total lack of any computer/technical books. Here is a search for "programming" in B&N's ebook store, where I should see something about Perl, Java, Python, etc., but instead it's Glenn Beck???:

http://books.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.aspx?store=EBOOK&WRD=programming&box=programming&pos=-1

I can't be the only one on slashdot with shelves containing hundreds of pounds of technical reference material... I've been thinking about getting an e-reader to replace the mountain of paper with something that I can slip in my laptop bag and take with me, and I was leaning towards the nook. However, B&N's complete lack of technical tomes in ebook form means that I'll probably go the kindle route since Amazon has a plethora of books from O'Reilly, Wrox, Apress, etc.

I know the e-readers are definitely marketed outside the bounds of us gadget loving nerds, but I would have to imagine that there is at least a significant percentage of us that either have and e-reader or are looking to buy one. I can't believe that B&N seems to be dropping the ball on this market segment. I know it's early in the life of the nook, or the B&N app for the iphone, but it really feels like B&N is missing out by leaving us high and dry.

Sorry, my bad, you can use the WiFi anywhere (just about)... http://bookclubs.barnesandnoble.com/t5/eBooks-Help-Board/3G-and-Wi-Fi-Coverage/m-p/414206#U414206

Except that you're not allowed to buy new content on the nook when outside of the US. Read, sure, but not get anything new.

See the "Traveling with nook" subheading

As per the interview below, he did at one point use a word processor, but Neal Stephenson's recent work comes via fountain pen. http://bnreview.barnesandnoble.com/t5/Interview/Neal-Stephenson-Anathem/ba-p/678

Looking at the specs, it reads PDF, eReader and EPUB in addition to B&N's own format, so a lot of ground is covered outside of just B&N's store (eg Project Gutenberg) but you're right, it will be up to publishers to say "we want nook users to be able to read this" either through B&N or some other means.

If B&N moves forward with opening it to developers (even if we're only allowed to use wifi) I will buy at least one.

Meh. I'm holding out for a Nook. More open, more features, same price.

My wife's is supposed to ship today. She placed her order within an hour of announcement and hopefully won't get hit by the 2010 bump.

Meh. I'm holding out for a Nook. More open, more features, same price.

By the way: if you think this is an interesting thought experiment, you'll love A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter Miller.

Almost identical in nature? You mean because there is a eink screen over a color touch screen? They look nothing alike to me.
http://www.springdesign.com/resource/jsp/products/Products.jsp
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/
I think the screen size and button placement on the Alex looks fairly awkward. Adding an advanced but power-intensive feature that's usually turned off onto something that's more efficient but more limited is a pretty standard design approach. And until this gets some full investigation (journalistic or legalistic, either is fine) we're putting the cart before the horse in passing judgment. For all we know, Spring Design really is a troll-like company, whose idea of "working closely with B&N" is having a meeting once with the company who decided not to license their stuff. Who knows yet?

First, despite my writing skills, I expect we have more in common on this than appears - I am assuming that I'm speaking to someone who routinely adopts MS Windows revisions as rapidly as possible - I certainly do. (Although - never home editions of anything, and never CE or ME - but otherwise, I've been or have tried to have been on-board since the OS/2 and Win 1 days. I never saw the point of 95 or 98, though. NT and 2000 were pretty good. I never upgraded - most people I knew did, and less expensively. I've always paid retail for full pro releases - my data's too important to trust to anything less.)

I'm agnostic when it comes to operating systems - so, I'll slam MS, Apple and sometimes - rarely - Linux equally. (Not that I'm a Linux fanboy - I have a lot more forgiveness when is _free_ - but that's just me.)

I use all three, and I'm not gentle on criticism.

Like it or not - Vista was for quite some time a PR nightmare for MS. In my opinion, and in my experiences shared by others in getting it working - rightly so.

There is a whole lot wrong with how MS develops it products - according the rumor / blog / "news" that I see - and I feel _exactly_ the same way about Apple. - And when I'm elected King of World and take over corporate practices for s/w development everywhere, everyone will tell you just how great my utopia is. (Hope that's as self-deprecating as I'd intended.)

One of Apple's OS X releases (10.2? jeez, memory is getting old) would have been a PR nightmare if the OS had the popularity that Windows had. It was a limited PR nightmare, however, until fixes came out.

I didn't intend to knock what Vista evolved into. I didn't intend to knock Microsoft, carte blanche.

I do, however, stand by point of view that the guy I was responding to was a bit too best-of-all-possible-worlds for what I'd remembered.

Yes - Longhorn failed. I was excited at first at what it promised, then as we both recall, strange crufty things seemed to have worked their way into the product development. What it seemed to have been becoming failed, and in my opinion, rightly so. By that, I only mean that what I was hearing was certainly reminding me of Operating System/360 (lurkers, read Mythical Man-Month if the reference is lost - http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Mythical-Man-Month/Frederick-P-Brooks/e/9780201835953 ).

Is Snow Leopard losing data? I hadn't been following that, I've been work-busy since it came out (and paying more attention to Windows 7, frankly). If so, then you are far more generous than I - I'd call that a failure.

I came up with punchcards. I'm not pulling color of my gray-beard or anything, you come across as very experienced yourself. And one thing that I was mentored to - and now mentor to others - never lose data, it's the whole reason that the computer is being used in the first place.

When I was a VMS freak, I loved that, hated unix. Unix improved, loved that - and have used a lot of its incarnations for decades. If I'm a fan of Apple's OS X, it's primarily because of of its BSD underpinnings. (I thank you for the Copland reference, I did not know about it - but enjoyed reading a bit on it. I started on Apple with a ][+, had slight and occasional contacts with Macs, then got on board during the end of OS X Beta.) I liked that in 10.0, some of us had gotten together, shared info, and had the Gnome desktop running on it - and Fink just made things easier. By the time Parallels came out, I had one platform would _reliably_ run my favorite apps from Apple, Linux, and Windows - slowly back then - but effectively.

And FWIW, if anything, it was my Apple hardware that I first got Vista running properly on, not my PC stuff (had to upgrade a year-old machine for that, as I recall.)

In my opinion, we've been through enough technological hacks that by now we should have operating systems that should be performing a lot b

Amazon sent out an email this morning to people who bought an International Kindle (mine arrived yesterday) informing them that they had dropped the price by $20 and would be applying a $20 refund to my credit card. With this kind of customer service, I buy even my groceries from Amazon these days; no need to venture outside. I suspect that this is also fighting back against the Nook.

Q. Can I use my nook while traveling abroad?
A. Yes, when you travel abroad, you can read any files that are already on your nook. You can connect to Wi-Fi hotspots that do not use proxy security settings, such those commonly used in hotels, and download eBooks and subscriptions already in your online digital library. You cannot, however, purchase additional eBooks and subscriptions.

Q. Will new issues of eNewspapers and eMagazines be downloaded to my nook while I'm traveling?
A. Yes, if you are traveling in the United States, or if you are abroad but connected to a supported Wi-Fi hotspot, new issues are delivered to your online digital library in both cases. When travelling abroad without Wi-Fi access, new issues are not downloaded to your nook (automatically or manually).

So no, it isn't international.

"I can't find a screen size. In a world of mm variation comparisons, I can only presume that the eInk screen on this reader is smaller than the Kindle2 screen."

no, you can only presume you don't know the size. I can presume you don't know how to use a website:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/features/techspecs/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/compare/

"I can't find a screen size. In a world of mm variation comparisons, I can only presume that the eInk screen on this reader is smaller than the Kindle2 screen."

no, you can only presume you don't know the size. I can presume you don't know how to use a website:

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/features/techspecs/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/compare/

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/compare/ says it supports epub, eReader, and PDF. epub is an open standard according to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_e-book_formats#International_Digital and you can convert docs in lots of other formate to epub.

Seems you'll be able to read any document on this device. Very nice.

The "free wifi" bit is actually for anything, not just on the Nook. http://www.barnesandnoble.com/u/Wi-fi-at-Barnes-and-Noble/379001240/ Borders did the same thing as well. http://www.engadget.com/2009/09/30/borders-pulls-a-bandn-offers-free-wifi-to-all-patrons/

According to the BN website ( http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/features/ ) you're also invited to "Protect your Nook". Sage advice, you should always keep your nook protected.

The wireless service is provided by AT&T. Says so at http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/features/

The real killer question is whether it supports remote deletion like the Kindle does. The feature comparison doesn't mention this. Of course we'll only really know for sure if and when the feature is actually used; claims that it doesn't support it can't really be trusted (and the feature might be added in a later firmware update anyway).

... will have wireless capability from an unspecified carrier ...

According to the comparison sheet, they're using AT&T.

For something far outside the box, build a rocket using your free 360!! Hack up the graphics processor for missile guidance [borrowing from the PS2 hype]. And guide your missile with your controller... no really, there's precedent. No, this project won't happen anytime soon. Yes, we all wish it would!

Congratulations, you can Google!... IIS 2... wow that was a while ago :)

Apparently you can also read his email address in his username tag line! Great job...

(I hope this post didn't come across too "assholish"... I'm just joking around)

this way... Think of a Wal-mart. In many Walmarts, there is a fast-food joint, usually some type of salon, an eye doctor of some kind.

And they have their own registers where customers pay. However all Amazon's affiliates do is link to Amazon, where the order is placed. Now if the affiliate actually took orders then your scenario would be correct but it does not work that way. Now if I buy a book online from Barnes and Noble because B&N has stores in my state I would have to pay sales tax on that book.

Falcon

Slightly OT: an interesting doomsday scenario was predicted in the sci-fi thriller novel Icefire, by Reeves-Stevens, where a rogue faction in the government of a large country detonates a bunch of bombs around the edge of the Wilkins ice shelf to detach it from land, and then detonate a big blast above it, in effect slapping the ice shelf into the Antarctic Ocean and creating a tsunami that threatens to wipe out the Pacific Rim --Hawaii, California, Japan, etc. It's a fast-paced novel about how the protagonists try to outrace the tsunami wave, which will take most of a day to get to the Pacific Rim, and how they try to warn various incredulous government organizations about how big the danger is, etc.

Oops, waitaminnit, that's the Ross Ice Shelf, not the Wilkins Ice Shelf. Sorry, wrong shelf.

Anyway, worth a read on your next flight that doesn't have WiFi to keep you occupied.

... should read Beak of the Finch

Euclid's Unabridged Elements

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Elements/Euclid/e/9780760763124/?itm=1

"Relativity: The Special and General Theory" Einstein (about 200 pp.) http://search.barnesandnoble.com/used/product.asp?EAN=2692771891703&Itm=9

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn's magnum opus, should be required reading before engaging in a debate on science. There's an aphorism that goes "all theories are wrong, but some are useful." We can and do use theories we know have flaws because in the vast majority of cases, they predict and explain what happens in nature. When a better theory comes along to explain the observations, we begin to use that one instead.

It's absolutely useless to say "this theory is wrong!" as long as the theory, however flawed in some cases, works well in the general case. What do you propose to replace it? Does your replacement make specific, verifiable assertions about nature that are more correct or accurate than those of the prevailing theory? I thought not.

(On the off chance that it does, and you can provide evidence, please, submit an article to Science or Nature; you'll be famous for generations.)

Let's see ... an average teacher already teaches for about 5 hours a day, which by any reasonable metric, requires about 5 hours of prep time. They also have to do about 2 hours of bullshit babysitting of students, parents, administrators, local, state and federal government, and somewhere in there also grade papers. Now, you think they should also be IT professionals. You're fucking retarded.

The best thing my wife learned getting her masters degree in education was "fuck this." She now has a masters degree, and realizes that we have just the same amount of money at the end of the month since she quit teaching. Her school district buying computers for all of the students was actually a major factor pushing her to quit. There is nothing a computer can teach. It's all regurgitated material that teachers create. They have demonstrated there that computers interfere with education. Now, her colleagues have an extra half an hour a day of computer stuff to babysit, and the kids spend time breaking computers instead of pencils. There's very little in AP calculus that can't be taught with a graphing calculator. Some of the animations are nice, but the calculator did those just fine, and provided much less of a distraction.

Rather then throw money at the problem, the problem needs to be fixed. I strongly recommend you read Left Back, A Century of Battles over School Reform by Diane Ravitch.

I used Sedra and Smith's Microelectronic Circuits text during my undergrad and found it to be an excellent reference. It has a good balance of theory and real circuits.

not every real book is worth more than an electronic copy

Totally couldn't agree more. However, when you start reading a book you're going to make an investment of your time. Buying the paper copy; or, even better, getting the electronic copy free from Gutenberg is a way of protecting that investment. You're sure you can easily share it later. Since you can never be sure which books are worthwhile it's worth getting all of them DRM free.

There are also other ways to cut down that 90%. Sell your books in bulk to second hand book stores. Put them about through various book sharing schemes. Sell them in low volume through some reseller on the internet.

Even better is to find a lending library near you. Get most books from there. You get the benefits of cheap access and you can still even share the books.

Finally, a good thing to do is to subscribe to a source of book reviews. The New Yorker or the London Review of Books for example. Or most decent newspapers have a review seciton. Even slashdot has reviews, though they might not fit your taste. This will give you a better chance of buying books you like, so most books will be ones you want to keep and/or share.

I used to carry one of those little spiral notebooks in my pocket, but the spirals always got squashed. Now I carry a Moleskine. It's a lot more rugged.

I'm sure I'm younger then you think but all the dictionaries I've seen for looking up characters still use the radical-stroke order system. These are all current Chinese-English dictionaries (like this one), however I can't say how purely Chinese dictionaries are ordered. I'm curious, what sort of methods are more common for looking up characters?

"All theories are wrong. Some are useful."

Read Thomas Kuhn's influential book, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

The "founding fathers" were not for "small government"

"Jefferson attempted to eliminate the national debt because of his wish for small government. He also decreased the size of the military" ""While smaller governments are better adapted to the ordinary objects of society, larger confederations more effectually secure independence and the preservation of republican government." --Thomas Jefferson to the Rhode Island Assembly, 1801. ME 10:262. "Compare Alexander Hamilton's views of national government with those of Thomas Jefferson.?" "A wise and frugal government which shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government." - Thomas Jefferson. Also on that page a quote from James Madison, "The essence of Government is power; and power, lodged as it must be in human hands, will ever be liable to abuse." Now notice I did not say all of the Founding Fathers wanted small government, Alexander Hamilton was one of them that wanted a strong and powerful federal government.

those we traditionally call the founding fathers were almost all Federalists

Both Thomas Jefferson and James Madison repudiated the Federalists positions. Thomas Paine wrote many books and essays in support of small government, his "Common Sense", yes I have and read it along with other writings of his, was a cry for small government.

The idea that the Federalists were for "small government" shows a laughable ignorance of the early history of the Republic

Can you show me where I said the Federalists were for small government, or where I said all of the Founding Fathers were federalists? Perhaps you don't know your history, or are you blowing smoke out of your ass?

Falcon

Oh, and while Thomas Paine wasn't a Founding Father like Hamilton, Jefferson, and Washington he wrote the line "These are the times that try men's souls" in "The Crisis" while serving under General Washington's command. It served to help keep the Continental Army from disintegrating.