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If so, Edgar Rice Burroughs was more accurate than he thought. If so, there's a lot of grand adventure waiting for us on the Hidden Planet!

Before you go any further with the Bates Method, or suggest it to anybody else, you really need to see what Martin Gardner said about it in Fads and Fallicies in the Name of Science. It isn't pretty. In essence, the Bates Method relies on "accomadation," the ability of the eye to change its focus depending on what you're looking at, while denying its existance. About the best you can say about it is that it lets people brag that they don't need glasses, while walking around in a fuzzy world because they won't admit their vision isn't really clear.

>What confuses me are the most is that some of my favorite books are the most the expensive. Among them:
>
> * Tom Mitchell's Machine Learning
> * Duda, Hardt & Stork's Pattern Classification
> * Russell & Norvig's AI: A Modern Approach (the book that every AI teacher uses)
>
>
>Why? These books are standards and needed by everyone. They should be able to capitalize off the >popularity by lowering the price. Surely it doesn't take $120 to make Mitchell's Machine Learning--it's >such a tiny book!

Get Alpaydin's "Introduction to Machine Learning (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning)"
It is newer, better, and cheaper (less than half the price of Duda & Hart or Mitchell's)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0262012111/ ($50)
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnin quiry.asp?ISBN=0262012111&pdf=y ($45-$50)

[hey! wrote:]A Victorian pervert probably got all kinds of sticky enjoyment out of pictures of ladies in their underwear, even if the ladies were rather, uh, plain and middle aged, and the undewear looks like a cotton interpretation of a teutonic knight's jousting armor.

It's not that simple. The rovers are full of fairly sophisticated sensor packages, most of which can't handle the extremely low temperatures on the Martian surface. They need the batteries to basically, well, run the heater.

Bingo. Indeed, it's even worse than that: if you can't run the heaters, all of the electronics undergo more extreme thermal cycling. This causes components to contract, flex, break, etc. Several critical components -- e.g., the CPU -- have no redundancy; if one of those goes, the whole rover goes.

This failure is the most dangerous thing to happen to Spirit since the flash anomaly on sol 18, when we effectively lost contact entirely for several days. Frustratingly, we're within sight of a safe haven -- only about a football field away -- but we might not be able to get there. Some people on the team think that if we have to drag a wheel, we can't climb the slopes we need to climb to make it to safety. I would just hate for Spirit to go this way; it would be like dying of thirst within sight of water, and she deserves better. (On the other hand, one thing I've learned is this: never bet against the rovers.)

The principal investigator for the missions has written a book, "Roving Mars", that really is worth the read.

Agreed! And since Steve's such a great guy, I'll linkify that. :-)

Also looks like it's coming out in paperback soon.

It's not that simple. The rovers are full of fairly sophisticated sensor packages, most of which can't handle the extremely low temperatures on the Martian surface. They need the batteries to basically, well, run the heater.

Bingo. Indeed, it's even worse than that: if you can't run the heaters, all of the electronics undergo more extreme thermal cycling. This causes components to contract, flex, break, etc. Several critical components -- e.g., the CPU -- have no redundancy; if one of those goes, the whole rover goes.

This failure is the most dangerous thing to happen to Spirit since the flash anomaly on sol 18, when we effectively lost contact entirely for several days. Frustratingly, we're within sight of a safe haven -- only about a football field away -- but we might not be able to get there. Some people on the team think that if we have to drag a wheel, we can't climb the slopes we need to climb to make it to safety. I would just hate for Spirit to go this way; it would be like dying of thirst within sight of water, and she deserves better. (On the other hand, one thing I've learned is this: never bet against the rovers.)

The principal investigator for the missions has written a book, "Roving Mars", that really is worth the read.

Agreed! And since Steve's such a great guy, I'll linkify that. :-)

Also looks like it's coming out in paperback soon.

Rather than use policy and statistics refute your egregiously false (and borderline racist) conception of Chinese culture, I'll just point you to some resources so that you can begin to correct your ignorance, if you so desire.

Don't worry, folks. Bruce and Sheila are going to miss being able to readily buy Vegemite at their local Woolworths and Coles. However, since all Australians--including the greatest one of them all--live right next to the outback and the reef they'll simply go out and make their own rooburgers and shrim on the barbie.

I have no problem with purchasing ebooks, and do this all the time from either Fictionwise or eReader to read on my Palm Zire (yes, the older one), which I upgraded to 8 MB. And I use to read many hours on it without any problem.

Before I began reading ebooks I did some research and found eReader's DRM scheme to be very nice, unlike others. The ebook comes encrypted with your name and the number of the credit card you used to purchase it as the decryption key. In other words, the ebook isn't device-locked, so I can open it in any Windows, Mac, Palm, Pocket PC and/or Symbian machine (no Linux version so far) I have access to. Also, the standard versions of the reader software are freeware, and the purchaseable Pro ones also aren't device-locked, so I install and reinstall them anywhere. Thus, so far I've purchase both Windows and Palm eReader Pro. And the Fictionwise store has the advantage of also having DRM-free copyrighted ebooks. These don't come nicely formatted as the DRM'ed ones, but they are as readable as any Project Gutenberg text file, so no big deal there.

However, the main advantage I see on ebooks is that they're much cheaper to purchase than printed versions, at least for me who don't live in USA. The shipping charges practiced on online stores such as Amazon or Barnes & Noble to send printed books to Brazil are outrageous, while on ebooks they're $0.

All in all, my ebook reading experience, with both DRM'ed, DRM-free copyrighted and public domain ebooks, has been almost excelent. I've around 200 ebooks and will keep purchasing them no matter what. :)

on the book Revelation

Darn, I did not know that amazon was that bad, anyway there are some other options like Barnes and Noble, and in some cases, if you look in google you can buy the book almost directly to the author/publisher.

Now that you say all that, I remember sometime in the past my brother bought something like 5 CD's from Amazon (we have always bought CD's to them easly), unfortunately none of them arrived and after two months he tried to contact Amazon but of course he did not got any kind of reply, so his $100 were stolen by Amazon.

After that, we changed to CDUniverse to buy CD's (we continue to preffer having the complete plastic product w/booklet, I personally rip them to OGG-6). Although I have not bought from them in a long looong time (it is sad, as I really want to buy some Cd's but, I find that they are too expensive...).

From the winner of the 2004 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Science and Technology and in association with the WGBH-produced six-part series RX for Survival: A Global Health Challenge comes a gripping journey around the globe to the hot spots of disease fighting in the worldwide battle to defeat the threat of new and resurgent outbreaks.

In conjunction with PBS, Philip J. Hilts, longtime New York Times science and health reporter, has traveled the world to visit the sites of both the greatest disease peril-where the threat of runaway outbreaks is most severe-and places in which remarkably powerful new approaches are leading to astonishing success in combating the disease menace.

Reporting on in-depth research and interviews with the dominant players, Hilts brings to life the crucial choice facing the world community. The leading nations and global organizations now have the means to win the fight against "the coming plague" if they will only join together and devote the resources to doing so. We stand at the brink of a new golden age of public health in which, if we will marshal the necessary resources, we can achieve an even more impressive defeat of the disease threat than that of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, known as the vital revolution, in which one after another deadly plague was eradicated. We can bring about a second vital revolution if we are willing to face the "shadow at our backs," as he calls it, with the same courage, conviction, and innovation of those who went before us. But with new infectious diseases emerging and so many old ones raising their ugly heads, if we don't make that push now, we may well lose the fight. We stand at the precipice.

By telling the moving stories of a host of individuals who have been plagued by the disease threat as well as the inspiring stories of the pioneers who are fighting the good fight-the researchers and "boots on the ground" who are the major forces pushing for a coordinated world campaign-Hilts brings the story of this crucial moment in world history to vivid life in a book that will be essential reading for all those concerned about this vital global challenge.

There's people who do not disagree with you. How difficult will the war on terror be when islam subjugates Europe?

Former West Point instructor Lt. Col. Dave Grossman wrote a fascinating book called On Killing: The Psychological Cost of Learning to Kill in War and Society that addresses, among other things, techniques used by the military to train soldiers to kill.
He brings up some interesting points, including only 15 to 20 percent of the individual riflemen in World War II fired their own weapons at an exposed enemy soldier and Conditioning in flight simulators enables pilots to respond reflexively to emergency situations even when frightened. And similar application and perfection of basic conditioning techniques increased the rate of fire to approximately 55 percent in Korea and around 95 percent in Vietnam.

In other words, simulation and conditioning absolutely has an effect on people.

Read that as Ellison's I, Robot screenplay or Asimov's I, Robot stories, but don't please read it as I, Robot. Damn Hollywood for attaching one of my favorite childhood titles to a movie that had almost nothing to do with either Asimov's work or Ellison's brilliant (and never produced) screenplay. It deserved better.

Read that as Ellison's I, Robot screenplay or Asimov's I, Robot stories, but don't please read it as I, Robot. Damn Hollywood for attaching one of my favorite childhood titles to a movie that had almost nothing to do with either Asimov's work or Ellison's brilliant (and never produced) screenplay. It deserved better.

That's a better analogy than you might think...there's some good history of telegraphy in a book called The Victorian Internet , which I was inspired to dig out last night after reading about this story over on JWZ's blog. The parallels in the history of the telegraph network and the Internet are striking...they had many similar uses, including news delivery and commercial transactions; telegraph operators commonly used the wires for "chat" and even "online gaming" (playing chess); people devised, and broke, codes and ciphers for telegraph traffic; there were even some "telegraph romances." And, in its day, the telegraph network was referred to by some as "the highway of thought." (Compare with the overhyped phrase "the information superhighway.")

Individual investors are ruled by emotion. Many stocks go down, even on high earnings, if their earnings are not as high as regular projects or "whisper" numbers. Smart investors capitalize on this very fact. Google has a lot of institutional (Huge amounts of money controlled by very experienced and rational investors) investor support, which is exactly why it didn't take a 30%+ hit - institutional support. If you look at the IBD chart (sorry, have to subscribe), you'll find that Google didn't even close under its 50 day moving average - a very, very good sign.

If you want to learn more, I suggest at least doing a trial of IBD. I've recently listened to an audio book that was quite helpful as well: http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnIn quiry.asp?userid=xD6wFbUCot&isbn=0760750106&itm=1

Well, oddly enough, "The Truth About Hillary", a book that describes Hillary Clinton as a lesbian, has not been pulled off of shelves. Neither has that Swift Boat Veterans book about Kerry. It seems that certain lies are more bothersome to certain people.

If you want to read a good book by a liar and a convicted felon, I hear G. Gordon Liddy has a new one coming.

Well, oddly enough, "The Truth About Hillary", a book that describes Hillary Clinton as a lesbian, has not been pulled off of shelves. Neither has that Swift Boat Veterans book about Kerry. It seems that certain lies are more bothersome to certain people.

If you want to read a good book by a liar and a convicted felon, I hear G. Gordon Liddy has a new one coming.

Well, oddly enough, "The Truth About Hillary", a book that describes Hillary Clinton as a lesbian, has not been pulled off of shelves. Neither has that Swift Boat Veterans book about Kerry. It seems that certain lies are more bothersome to certain people.

If you want to read a good book by a liar and a convicted felon, I hear G. Gordon Liddy has a new one coming.

Agreed.. This rewriting of Jobs history in the computer industry is pure flatulence, a lot of thunder but if you get up close to examine it in depth, it smells ..odd.. If someone wants to praise Jobs' accomplishments in light of the facts, you ought to try to read a good book or two on the subject. Like this one or this one

All I can say is Jobs' reality distortion field effect is alive and well in 2006. who'd a believed it..

Agreed.. This rewriting of Jobs history in the computer industry is pure flatulence, a lot of thunder but if you get up close to examine it in depth, it smells ..odd.. If someone wants to praise Jobs' accomplishments in light of the facts, you ought to try to read a good book or two on the subject. Like this one or this one

All I can say is Jobs' reality distortion field effect is alive and well in 2006. who'd a believed it..

You can purchase Intellectual Trespassing as a Way of Life from bn.com.

What a coincidence...you can purchase John David Funge's Artificial Intelligence for Computer Games: An Introduction from bn.com as well.

Capitalism is alive and well on Slashdot.

Almost nobody knows that John D. MacArthur, who funded the "genius" awards (posthumously), made his money with a life insurance company scam. His unauthorized 1969 biography, "The Stockholder", by William Hoffman, gives the details. MacArthur introduced mail-order life insurance sold through newspaper ads, and his company, Banker's Life, was notorious for refusing to pay claims.

If it worked for them, it should work for Gates. Gates isn't even alleged to have killed anyone.

Another recent book on the same topic: Extrusion Detection: Security Monitoring for Internal Intrusions . Haven't read it yet, but looks interesting.

(Although when I read the title, I kept thinking of detecting things that are extruded. WARNING! SILLY PUTTY FUN FACTORY DETECTED.)

1. Blurring the line between hardware and software. The use of the phrase "every Windows system shipped since 1990", coupled with the phrase "Windows PCs", seems to subtly (albeit probably unintentionally) imply that Windows is either hardware itself, or irrevokably paired with hardware. (I.e.: "No, that's a Windows PC, it can't run Linux.")
   
   This, of course, is precisely the sort of vague, inaccurate half-understanding that Microsoft wishes end-users to have. If the phrasing of the article made it clear that Windows is not something physical, not something "shipped" in the same sense that a power supply or a mouse is "shipped"-- that there is no such thing as a "Windows PC", only a "PC running Windows"-- perhaps they'd begin to ask tough questions like "Well, are there any alternatives that we could run on our PCs to prevent these problems from affecting us?" These are, in their own small way, subversive questions, anti-authoritarian questions, anti-monopolistic questions-- and thus questions that Microsoft and their ilk don't want people asking.
2. Use of the overly simplistic term "virus" to describe any sort of computer security breach. I am getting incredibly sick of this. Yes, the biological metaphor was useful to convey the concept of a computer having problems. But it's worked too well. Now, any time I try to explain a non-virus form of computer affliction to a non-techie, they always seem to start out by saying "so it's a virus?" Spyware? "Viruses". Computer running slow? "Viruses." Pop-ups? "Viruses." On numerous occasions with numerous people, I've mentioned the word "spyware", only to have people say "oh, that's the program that gets rid of the viruses?" or something like that. (They confuse the name "Spybot" (as in "Spybot: Search and Destroy")" with the word "spyware".)
3. And last but not least: Demonization of those eeeeeeeeeevil "hackers". I know the "hacker vs. cracker" war of words is long since lost, but it still irks me when the term used to describe these guys (my heroes!) is now synonymous in the public mind with "malicious and destructive computer criminal".

On the bright side, at least they're admitting (finally) that the problems only affect computers running Windows. If I see another story talking about an "email virus" (read: "MS-Outlook-running-on-MS-Windows-only virus/worm/exploit"), my head is going to explode into a fine pink mist.

People, I'm sure, will say that I'm "nitpicking" or being an "English nazi", but one's choice of words does make a difference. The usages here are just reinforcing common vague half-truths and misconceptions that the general population has about computers, and for every article out there that says "Windows PCs" instead of "PCs running Windows", or "viruses" instead of "malware" or "security exploits", it just makes the already-huge problem of user ignorance that much bigger.

Consider the two sentences below:

• "Senator Smith has not yet released a statement concerning the situation."
• "When asked about the situation, Senator Smith responded, "No comment."

Which one makes Senator Smith out to be a sneaky crook, and which one merely cautious?

The difference is all in the choice of words. Words matter. So anyone who wants to tell me I'm just being nitpicky-- shove it. One's choice of words creates impressions, both conscious and subconscious, in the reader-- and thus, the seemingly

I recently reread Guns, Germs & Steel by Jared Diamond. In it, he describes the extinction of many large species that grew up on remote islands.

We're all familiar with the dodo bird which was a fairly large species but there were also appearant extinctions of other large animals in the Polynesian Islands.

The reason for their extinction is that they grew up without modern man on their islands. Now, animals that live in Africa like the giraffe, wildebeest, hippo, etc were exposed to the evolution of man. Our initial stone weapons didn't kill all the targets but gave them time to adjust genetically and grow wary and eventually instinctively fear humans.

Those that didn't were killed.

Once the remote island mega fauna became exposed to humans and their advanced iron or steel weapons, they did not have the time to adjust to fear us. And our weapons rarely didn't kill them ... in most cases, not even leaving a generation to try to adapt to our presence. For this reason, they were quickly killed without fearing us.

A supposed Kong would invariably never fear humans unless their were a race of Kongs and we adapted our 1920's technology to be able to kill them more efficiently.

If you haven't read that book, do so.

The following books show some of the history of the U.S. government's secret agencies, and help explain much of the underlying reasons for U.S. government violence in the Middle East. Often the secret agencies have acted for special interests and against the good of the people. For example, the CIA overthrew the democratically elected president, President Mossadegh, because he wanted his country to receive more of the profit from oil pumped from his country. The U.S. government's political interference eventually resulted in a violent revolution in Iran, and a determination by Iran to strike back.

1. Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America, and international terrorism by John K. Cooley, 2000, Third edition, Pluto Press, London, England and Sterling, Virginia, USA. Reviews: Powell's Barnes & Noble Amazon

   Osama bin Laden is "the personification of blowback". You can read more about how the CIA created a political climate very supportive of Osama and his ideas in an article by Jane's, a very well-respected publication devoted to military issues. The article was published 3 days after the second World Trade Center bombings, on September 14, 2004: Why? An attempt to explain the unexplainable.

   The CIA brought Arabs to the U.S. and trained them in terrorism. The rules by which al Qaeda operate seem to come from the CIA training.

2. Blowback: The costs and consequences of American empire by Chalmers Johnson, 2000, Metropolitan Books, New York, New York, USA. Also, there was a new edition in 2003 with a new introduction. Reviews: Powell's

Sean Egan's Open Source Messaging Application Development: Building and Extending Gaim covers basic to intermediate GTK+ programming [with sockets, no less] quite nicely. He meticulously describes everything he does with numerous examples. He never skimps on the details and even gives insights into his own thinking on most problems.

It's a very, very good read, even for non-Gaim developers. On the plus side, you'll be supporting open-source development if you purchase it.

Alright, so it's fiction, but it's really good fiction, in my opinion. All about a sat. that returns to the Earth with unknown organisms aboard that create a series of crisises.

Michael Crichton wrote 'Andromeda Strain' back in the 70's, which is a pretty good book. (Barnes & Noble link, no referral ID).

It was later turned into a movie, although the movie was so-so, in my opinion.

Crichton is probably best known for Jurassic Park, but he raises some interesting issues in Andromeda Strain, if you're at all interested in science, check it out. It's also an interesting look at technology and security - Chrichton goes into detail about the safety, security and containment systems at his imagined government research facility, and then...well, read the book, but you can guess how it turns out.

Why did he have to provide his "name, address, phone number and Social Security number" ... to read a book?

Cue discussion of RMS's paper on "The Right To Read", but still. Is this just sensationalism, or does one actually have to give all one's personal information to read this?

If your friends are into 3D programming or game development, I recommend some books about OpenGL.

If your friends are serious about 3D programming, I recommend books about D3D instead. D3D is used in 99% of PC game development studios. An OGL-like API is used on the Gamecube, and the PS2 doesn't have a formal API for graphics, although lots of studios choose to emulate OGL with their own API. Finally, the XBox (obviously) uses a D3D API. That being said, it is much easier for a first-timer into the industry to get a gig with a PC development studio then a console development studio, so *if* you do graphics in the game industry, it's much more likely you will be working with D3D (to start) than with OGL.

Stay away from anything by LaMothe, whether he edited it, wrote it or just wrote the forward. His books are absolutely terrible. I recommend the book Advanced 3D Game Programming with Directx 9.0 by Peter Walsh. Although "Advanced" this is a good treatment on quite a few game programming topics, and is really a good introduction to graphics programming.

If your friend is an advanced graphics programmer, then GPU Gems or GPU Gems II might be more their speed.

Finally, if your friend is interested in game development but not particularly in graphics per se, then the Game Programming Gems series is a must have, at least books 1-3. I cannot vouch for GPG 4 or 5 as I have not read them myself yet.. However, books 1-3 are phenomenal, and are widely used within the game industry.

If your friends are into 3D programming or game development, I recommend some books about OpenGL.

If your friends are serious about 3D programming, I recommend books about D3D instead. D3D is used in 99% of PC game development studios. An OGL-like API is used on the Gamecube, and the PS2 doesn't have a formal API for graphics, although lots of studios choose to emulate OGL with their own API. Finally, the XBox (obviously) uses a D3D API. That being said, it is much easier for a first-timer into the industry to get a gig with a PC development studio then a console development studio, so *if* you do graphics in the game industry, it's much more likely you will be working with D3D (to start) than with OGL.

Stay away from anything by LaMothe, whether he edited it, wrote it or just wrote the forward. His books are absolutely terrible. I recommend the book Advanced 3D Game Programming with Directx 9.0 by Peter Walsh. Although "Advanced" this is a good treatment on quite a few game programming topics, and is really a good introduction to graphics programming.

If your friend is an advanced graphics programmer, then GPU Gems or GPU Gems II might be more their speed.

Finally, if your friend is interested in game development but not particularly in graphics per se, then the Game Programming Gems series is a must have, at least books 1-3. I cannot vouch for GPG 4 or 5 as I have not read them myself yet.. However, books 1-3 are phenomenal, and are widely used within the game industry.

If your friends are into 3D programming or game development, I recommend some books about OpenGL.

If your friends are serious about 3D programming, I recommend books about D3D instead. D3D is used in 99% of PC game development studios. An OGL-like API is used on the Gamecube, and the PS2 doesn't have a formal API for graphics, although lots of studios choose to emulate OGL with their own API. Finally, the XBox (obviously) uses a D3D API. That being said, it is much easier for a first-timer into the industry to get a gig with a PC development studio then a console development studio, so *if* you do graphics in the game industry, it's much more likely you will be working with D3D (to start) than with OGL.

Stay away from anything by LaMothe, whether he edited it, wrote it or just wrote the forward. His books are absolutely terrible. I recommend the book Advanced 3D Game Programming with Directx 9.0 by Peter Walsh. Although "Advanced" this is a good treatment on quite a few game programming topics, and is really a good introduction to graphics programming.

If your friend is an advanced graphics programmer, then GPU Gems or GPU Gems II might be more their speed.

Finally, if your friend is interested in game development but not particularly in graphics per se, then the Game Programming Gems series is a must have, at least books 1-3. I cannot vouch for GPG 4 or 5 as I have not read them myself yet.. However, books 1-3 are phenomenal, and are widely used within the game industry.

I guess that makes this book, Noah's Flood, a bit less interesting.

Biochemists songbook The Horror is not to be underestermeated (I bought the cassette 10 years ago... some songs live with me still <sob>)

The CD.

You could of course just pay for your Feynman lectures, rather than just stealing them.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/result s.asp?WRD=feynman&userid=0I26GdbCjr&cds2Pid=9481

Agreed. After all, have you seen the price of CDs at Borders or Barnes and Noble lately? Astronoical (even though the latter seems to be having a "sale"). Save five bucks and hit up Target or, if you have to, WalMart.

Of course, if you don't live in the states, I'm basically talking out of my ass. I know prices get jacked even higher for Europe. It's absurd.

And, hey, if it makes it easier for smaller bands to get off the ground, then more power to 'em. Given the choice, most people will go with what they know it it's the same cost as taking a leap of faith on music they haven't heard. Even at ten or possibly twenty cents cheaper, I'd be more likely to try out a lot of music.

In the unlikely event that any of your projects involve Perl (even if just peripherally as build tool scripts and whatnot), I'd highly recommend setting your company's Perl coding standards to just be "follow the Perl Best Practices book". It just came out this summer, and it's pretty much all you need for a fairly rigorous and insightful set of coding practices for Perl.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnIn quiry.asp?isbn=0596001738

Maybe you should suggest to H that he do this book for the next review.

Or you can buy it for 23.50 USD at bookpool:
http://www.bookpool.com/sm/1590594444

or for 29.69 at Amazon:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1590594444/002-09 47562-0071223?v=glance&n=283155&n=507846&s=books&v =glance

or you could spend 40.49 at BN:
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnIn quiry.asp?userid=ao05LCTCMJ&isbn=1590594444&itm=3


But of course BN is linked in this review.

At least they are not going to the extreme the corps do in this book

Short run down:
1. Uber-hype a new pair of shoes,
2. Only deliver 4 to a single store in each city to create psycho demand, hire a gunman to cap a kid in the crowd to give the shoe "Street Cred".
3. PROFIT!!!!
4. Then avoid the government coming after you... :-)

That is not the whole book, just one sub-plot. Really great book.

That book is especially one-sided. A more complete over-view is http://search.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnIn quiry.asp?userid=rf1CioKC11&isbn=0321290968&itm=2 This is a great introductory book on RFID.

I recommend Spychips to any /.er, especially for quick plane reading. It's easy to go all "black helicopters" about issues like these, but the authors do an outstanding job of explaining the technology and privacy risks; they even respond to industry criticisms (of their so-called paranoia).

I guess it's a matter of taste, to me it looked much better than some much more expensive movies. Some reviewers, like this one, were actually upset that it looked too polished--that it had lost it's TV retro feel. The director gives a lot more background on Jack Green's work in this interview and this book.

The Career Programmer should have been called "The Guerilla Programmer". It explains vital topics like how to get a spec from people who don't want to give you one.

The Career Programmer should have been called "The Guerilla Programmer". It explains vital topics like how to get a spec from people who don't want to give you one.

"If file swappers are so profficient at all this theft and cheating, music execs must be pretty worried about their job-security."

You know, that could be true...

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/BookSearch/isbnIn quiry.asp?userid=CX0abEHCEV&isbn=0679730613&itm=1