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There is no such thing as a 'natural monopoly', it's government created propaganda.

An economy of scale is not a monopoly, monopoly can prevent others from entering the field not because of the market forces but because its ability to apply government power and modify the barriers of entry. Again: any economy of scale that market gives its money to, is only going to get that money as long as its providing a good product at a good price.

And again and again and again: 19 century - prices FALLING.
20th century - prices RISING.

Difference? Government manipulation and creation of monopolies.

You want to argue on something MEANINGFUL? Argue how is it that with more and more government prices are going up all the time while without government prices were falling all time.

You conveniently ignored the the last part of my statement

- conveniently ignored? What?

This nonsense?

Then, while it regains the monopoly, charge "what the market would bear" (a.k.a gouge).

- again.

WITHOUT GOVERNMENT: prices falling.

WITH GOVERNMENT: prices going up all the time.

Tell me, what is the PURPOSE of government "fighting monopolies" in your mind even given your understanding of what a monopoly is (and really it is a complete misunderstanding, but OK)? To RAISE PRICES?

What is the point of having government 'fight monopolies' so that prices go up after that?

What you don't understand is very simple. Government is not there for you. It's not there to make your life better. It's not there to help you. It's not to allow you to have a good product at a low cost. That's what COMPANIES are there for - real businesses in a free market.

No. Government is there to allow politicians to gain as much power as possible by promising you something for nothing (bread and circuses) while in reality making friends with a number of businesses and helping them to become monopolies (or oligopolies) and prevent any competition with all the regulations, taxes and inflation.

That's what is really happening, and you are talking about 'fighting monopolies'. Do you have a problem with getting lower prices? Do you wait for prices to go up to go shopping? Or do you want lower prices and more choice?

Then you should stop with this nonsense and realise that you will not get lower prices and more choice with bigger government supposedly 'fighting monopolies' for your benefit, it's not what is happening.

Wake up.

As for why this is a good thing, there's a difference between the speed of electrons through copper and silicon vs. the speed of light through translucent plastics and crystals. It should also run cooler.

Ive seen varying numbers that indicate that the difference is not as large as some are supposing.
This wikipedia article seems to indicate that 82% for coax is possible, 72% for plenum cat 5.
From what I've read, and according to google calculations, the speed of light in optical fiber is about 66% of that in a vacuum. ( also supported here, and here, as a reciprocal)

In other words, copper is faster. There are certainly some benefits (removal of the interference factor, possibly running cooler, possibly lower power usage), but I dont believe signal propogation speed is one of them.

http://www.google.com/search?q=3.5+floppy+diskettes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=3.5+floppy+diskettes&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=oYF&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvns&source=univ&tbm=shop&tbo=u&sa=X&ei=C5OMT-XdHoWE8ATdgI30CQ&ved=0CH8QrQQ&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=ad49340c7b3396fc&biw=1366&bih=618

i did look around, and i mostly saw a bunch of writer/director interviews (the same short list of people; the "one" person i was previously referring to being Mac Walters since he was the most prolific interviewee and nobody else really said anything he didn't) in which they say something to the effect that the ending will be super-awesome. i couldn't find a single definitive "promise." i couldn't find a single definitive statement that couldn't be taken out of context or construed to fit however one feels. the closest thing i saw was a statement -- anecdotally in the writer's excitement to talk about the ending -- that the rachni have a major role to play in the ending. considering they were a bunch of spider thugs to start with and in the end they work on the crucible off-camera is enough to stretch that statement from the writer's point of view. i hear chatter about some "16 promised endings" but can't find a single source on that from bioware anywhere. the most i will concede is that bioware employees tried to amp up enthusiasm for the game by praising their work hyperbolically, and a lot of fans (who care way way too much) took these for graven oaths that would exceed their (much too) wildest imaginations. hyperbole in interviews are not contracts. also, the list of inconsistencies with the mass effect novel is far greater than the game's finale. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XBpMF3ONlI308D9IGG8KICBHfWKU0sXh0ntukv-_cmo/preview?pli=1&sle=true

i'd also like to point out that just because you can raise galactic readiness with multiplayer it doesn't necessarily mean they cheated. a lot of people conveniently forget that your first option in playing the game is whether you want pure story, pure action or mix of both (the RPG mode). if you're not going to do the side missions in action mode, the multiplayer allowed a way to raise the readiness rating so you could still get an ending where not everything was destroyed. when you try to please everyone you end up pissing off at least a few. unfortunately too many people felt entitled to the vision they formed in their heads of what would happen. i liken this to the phenomenon of having your bubble burst when you finally get to know the person you've had a crush on (especially long distance and/or internet relationships). you build a fantasy in your head comprised of nothing but the greatest things about the person and then you find out they're human and have flaws. suddenly they're nothing like what you imagined and your infatuation ends.

I have no idea where the B-52 are now, Google Maps doesn't show a single one now.

Check out the BUFFs at http://maps.google.com/maps?hl=en&ll=32.176076,-110.856085&spn=0.005709,0.008256&sll=32.165368,-110.864239&sspn=0.032296,0.066047&oq=dav&mra=mr&t=h&z=18. If you zoom out, you may find more near here.

Standard Oil was never a monopoly.
As I keep repeating: an economy of scale is not a monopoly. Economy of scale can offer the best product at the lowest price, and once it stops doing so, there is no government force with all the licenses, special taxes, special regulations - all these and other barriers to entry into the market.

By the time Standard Oil was broken up, there were at least 6 other competitors on the market.

AT&T was given a government monopoly very specifically as a 'national security concern', by the time they were handed a government monopoly, 3000 other providers existed in the market. They were all destroyed by the monopoly that gov't gave to AT&T. Talk about a bad example on your part.

De Beers is quite successful, the most successful cartel on this planet. Of-course there is plenty COMPETITION to De Beers. You do realise that you do NOT HAVE TO BUY DIAMONDS, do you? Or are you that brainwashed? What, a cubic zirconia ring is not good enough for you? Not all products have to be exactly the same, as I said: there is price and quality ratio, and competition arose to De Beers in form of other types of stones. No gov't required. Of-course De Beers is using plenty of GOVERNMENT connections around the world, what do you think happens with diamond mines in different locations around the world, no government intervention there?

Microsoft used government protection in form of copyrights to create a very high barrier of entry, however it is not a monopoly, there are plenty of competitors, including Free/Libre/Open source competition. I don't US MS products, I haven't bought anything that even has their logo for more than 5 years now. Then again, MS does plenty of 'business' with plenty of governments around the world to stifle competition. You didn't know that?

United Aircraft, and all other cases, like Alcoa Aluminium, all this stuff is government attempts at DESTROYING COMPETITIVE ECONOMIES OF SCALE that are providing markets with high quality, low cost goods.

They destroy a working company - economy of scale in case of the companies I just mentioned, and then they allow their friends to enter this market in a way that raises prices for everybody.

Nobody could COMPETE with Alcoa on aluminium prices and few people could compete with the Boeing, so gov't had to step in, to allow UNCOMPETITIVE businesses to enter the market by destroying what was successful economy of scale.

Of-course now Boeing is one of the preferred gov't supported corporations, talk about irony.

So Sergei, when exactly will I be able to look at all the information Google has on me

Here you go:
https://www.google.com/ads/preferences
https://www.google.com/dashboard

and share it with other search engines if I so choose?

Download from here, and upload it to any service you like:
https://www.google.com/takeout/

Oh...I can't huh, wow, your garden is so very, very open I cannot believe it

Since you actually can get your data, perhaps you're willing to reconsider that statement?

So Sergei, when exactly will I be able to look at all the information Google has on me

Here you go:
https://www.google.com/ads/preferences
https://www.google.com/dashboard

and share it with other search engines if I so choose?

Download from here, and upload it to any service you like:
https://www.google.com/takeout/

Oh...I can't huh, wow, your garden is so very, very open I cannot believe it

Since you actually can get your data, perhaps you're willing to reconsider that statement?

So Sergei, when exactly will I be able to look at all the information Google has on me

Here you go:
https://www.google.com/ads/preferences
https://www.google.com/dashboard

and share it with other search engines if I so choose?

Download from here, and upload it to any service you like:
https://www.google.com/takeout/

Oh...I can't huh, wow, your garden is so very, very open I cannot believe it

Since you actually can get your data, perhaps you're willing to reconsider that statement?

There is no such thing as a 'natural monopoly'.

It is incredible hard to find anything on this topic. Might as well not try.

...and no mention made at all of Facebook's recent scary support of the SOPA-heir: CISPA? Why wouldn't google want to tar Facebook with that one? ...might it be that google likes CISPA?

Wow, jump to unfounded conclusions much?

Sergey Brin has listed three threats to Internet freedom: Facebook, Apple,

...and no mention made at all of Facebook's recent scary support of the SOPA-heir: CISPA? Why wouldn't google want to tar Facebook with that one? ...might it be that google likes CISPA?

Every big firm wants, above all, to get rid of the quaint notion that the Internet is a network of intelligent peers. Much better to have dumb terminals all locked in to your service.

While this does seem to be the general trend, companies like Comcast are surprisingly actually pretty good about v6.

It's like Google pretending to champion IPv6 then setting absurd conditions for their IPv6 services. So ISPs which offer native IPv6 by default, such as England's Andrews&Arnold, have to jump through artificial hoops before they're "supported".

Bullshit. From their website:

To qualify for Google over IPv6, your network must meet a number of requirements. These include:
        Low latency, redundant paths to Google using direct peering or reliable transit
        Production-quality IPv6 support and reliability
        Separate DNS servers for your IPv6 users (not shared with IPv4-only users)
        Users who have opted in to IPv6 services and know how to opt out if they experience problems with Google services

Google damn sure doesn't want provider's shitty v6 implementation to cause people problems with their service. Seems like a pretty reasonable desire to me, and pretty reasonable conditions to meet to prove you don't have a shitty implementation.

And it's no coincidence that half of abusive SixXS is half-run by a Google employee.

Um what? Care to provide any support for "abusive SixXS"? I did a quick search and couldn't find anything suggesting it, aside from people who were pissed that they got cut off for abuse. They actually seem to be more responsive than HE about abuse complaints, so I don't get it. Plus, I've never had any trouble with SixXS - at least not in the 3 years or so that I've had a tunnel with them.

Oddly enough - and this'll get me the mod to oblivion - only MS has historically shown neutral support for IPv6, neither trying to control it nor eschewing it. That's because, I expect, Microsoft was traditionally about the powerful desktop and local server (running NT, of course). Now it's jumped on the cloud bandwagon, who knows?

While MSFT has admittedly been pretty decent about v6 support (at least Vista+, their v6 implementation for XP worked, but was lukewarm), Apple had some of the earliest consumer routers that really supported v6 properly. Their phones, tablets, OS, all do as well. As noted before, this utility is a rewrite, and lacking several features that will (presumably) be added back in. The hardware still supports it; if you need v6, just keep the older utility for now.

I don't know why you were modded up.

I'd point out the balance in gender back when computers were first breaking out. However, I think how popular portrayals of male programmers is irrelevant, and they're almost exclusively -male programmers- portrayed. I can think of a few female examples, but they're usually comical.

Do you mean after the men came back from war? Because Grace Hopper et al were pretty happy with the industry until it acquired more aspects of traditionally male office hierarchy http://knol.google.com/k/the-decline-of-women-in-computer-science-from-1940-1982#

You are an idiot.

--
Marcan, asshole and proud.

This attack is done by taking advantage of an exploit in the Java plugin. There are also lots of exploits in Flash (unless they have all been found and fixed...) You should try using Chrome and Click to Play: https://plus.google.com/118187272963262049674/posts/Mmgbr3BcYWb

Okay, what was wrong with your scenario? Someone whose business is the study of something would be considered knowledgeable about the subject. Right? I tend to listen to my mechanic, do you?

(side note: The oceans are boiling, the ice caps are melting (ignore the biased article and the biased website, just look at the picture), and the fields are burning! What more do you want?)

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS455US455&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=video+clipping+service

sorry.. let me try again

Yer Wrong
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS455US455&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=video+clipping+service

https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS455US455&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=video+clipping+service

sorry.. let me try again

Yer Wrong
https://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1ASUT_enUS455US455&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=video+clipping+service

I think you are thinking of a complete belief in magical thinking, whereas this is talking about the "magical" type of thought that "this car does not like you to use full throttle until its warmed up", or feeling anger at a beer bottle with a top thet "doesn't want to come off". If you stop and reflect of course you know its nonsense, but I bet you sometimes have those thoughts anyway.

Maybe, but at that point you're not really talking about beliefs, you're talking about the quirks of language, which is something very different. For example, in the case of the bottle cap "not wanting" to come off, you're not anthropomorphising the bottle at all. You don't believe that the bottle has a life or a mind of its own. More often than not, you're commenting on your own inability to achieve the desired result. Maybe it evolved linguistically from magical belief, but I doubt it.

And before anyone gets too excited about all this, I found a research paper which finds that most findings in research papers are false.

Enjoy

Thus speaketh Matthew Hutson:

And in nearly every country around the world, the percentage of self-described atheists is only in the single digits.

Which is bullshit. And lies.

And to top that off, he is using the current date (at the time) to peddle this nonsense and his book through the "article" above.

According to Wikipedia "An international study has reported positive correlations between levels of education and not believing in a deity".... so the smarter you get, the more you start to think you are God ?

After reading the claims on the USPTO site it boggles the mind that such a patent could be granted in 2009. As a game developer myself, i can guarantee that every single thing mentioned in that patent has been done *at least* 10 years prior - probably more like 15 or 20

The patents in question date back to at least 1996. Anyway, if it's that easy to find prior art then the case should be a slam dunk.

the prior art considered is mostly limited to existing patents

The Patent Office's access to computer science-related prior art documents other than patents that are older than 1996 is not very good compared to the patent and patent application databases.

It does not help that the Patent Office fought tooth and nail against the patentability of software, thus finding itself completely unprepared to properly examine software patents once they were allowed. That continues to this day, with computer science and electrical engineering being some of the weakest technology areas in the examining corps. It also doesn't help that examiner retention is abysmal. The vast majority of examiners have less than three years of experience, since they tend to either burn out, return to industry, or become patent attorneys.

The short-term solution is to eliminate the presumption of validity. Longer-term solutions include tightening the enablement and written description requirements, increasing the Patent Office's budget by raising fees, and opening satellite offices near technology hubs like Silicon Valley and Seattle.

I find it *fucking offensive* that parasites like this can try to claim ownership over what is (for the most part) an extremely open, patent free, and innovative industry

Does it offend you that some people like to enforce property rights in their homes even though some people choose to live in communes?

Anyway, patent free? Check your hardware sometime. I guarantee that the device you posted that comment from is covered by thousands of patents, as is every gaming device on the market. As are the major operating systems on the market and many of the frameworks used to make games (e.g. DirectX). As are many related technologies like the servers that run XBox Live and the PSN. And lots of major players (e.g. Microsoft) own patents and applications related to video games. Here's one from Microsoft on spectating in multiplayer games.

Open? The commercial gaming industry is quite closed, actually, with very few games being open source, and many publishers quite fiercely protecting their IP. Lawsuits over clones and copycats are as old as the industry itself.

Patents don't affect games qua games much (e.g. a patent on a side-scrolling platformer) because copyright is free, instantaneous, international, broader in scope, and provides better remedies (e.g. statutory damages, criminal enforcement).

Ever been to GDC? Each year, hundreds of developers from competing companies will share the tips and tricks used in their latest technology, with no expectation of financial compensation. I have *never* heard a game developer complain that someone else was using their "invention" - much more likely they'd be flattered.

Don't confuse programmers with the video game business. A developer may be flattered if someone copies his or her code in violation of copyright. The business that employs the programmer may feel very differently. The same is true of other creative industries such as film (e.g. a director's response versus the movie studio's).

After reading the claims on the USPTO site it boggles the mind that such a patent could be granted in 2009. As a game developer myself, i can guarantee that every single thing mentioned in that patent has been done *at least* 10 years prior - probably more like 15 or 20

The patents in question date back to at least 1996. Anyway, if it's that easy to find prior art then the case should be a slam dunk.

the prior art considered is mostly limited to existing patents

The Patent Office's access to computer science-related prior art documents other than patents that are older than 1996 is not very good compared to the patent and patent application databases.

It does not help that the Patent Office fought tooth and nail against the patentability of software, thus finding itself completely unprepared to properly examine software patents once they were allowed. That continues to this day, with computer science and electrical engineering being some of the weakest technology areas in the examining corps. It also doesn't help that examiner retention is abysmal. The vast majority of examiners have less than three years of experience, since they tend to either burn out, return to industry, or become patent attorneys.

The short-term solution is to eliminate the presumption of validity. Longer-term solutions include tightening the enablement and written description requirements, increasing the Patent Office's budget by raising fees, and opening satellite offices near technology hubs like Silicon Valley and Seattle.

I find it *fucking offensive* that parasites like this can try to claim ownership over what is (for the most part) an extremely open, patent free, and innovative industry

Does it offend you that some people like to enforce property rights in their homes even though some people choose to live in communes?

Anyway, patent free? Check your hardware sometime. I guarantee that the device you posted that comment from is covered by thousands of patents, as is every gaming device on the market. As are the major operating systems on the market and many of the frameworks used to make games (e.g. DirectX). As are many related technologies like the servers that run XBox Live and the PSN. And lots of major players (e.g. Microsoft) own patents and applications related to video games. Here's one from Microsoft on spectating in multiplayer games.

Open? The commercial gaming industry is quite closed, actually, with very few games being open source, and many publishers quite fiercely protecting their IP. Lawsuits over clones and copycats are as old as the industry itself.

Patents don't affect games qua games much (e.g. a patent on a side-scrolling platformer) because copyright is free, instantaneous, international, broader in scope, and provides better remedies (e.g. statutory damages, criminal enforcement).

Ever been to GDC? Each year, hundreds of developers from competing companies will share the tips and tricks used in their latest technology, with no expectation of financial compensation. I have *never* heard a game developer complain that someone else was using their "invention" - much more likely they'd be flattered.

Don't confuse programmers with the video game business. A developer may be flattered if someone copies his or her code in violation of copyright. The business that employs the programmer may feel very differently. The same is true of other creative industries such as film (e.g. a director's response versus the movie studio's).

Thus speaketh Matthew Hutson:

And in nearly every country around the world, the percentage of self-described atheists is only in the single digits.

Which is bullshit. And lies.

And to top that off, he is using the current date (at the time) to peddle this nonsense and his book through the "article" above.

The company's earliest patents go back to at least 1996 and possibly earlier. You also have to remember that many patents are the result of continuations or divisionals and can thus claim the benefit of the filing date of the parent application. The other patents that I looked at seem to derive from the same early filing. You can't just look at the filing date of the application, you have to go up the chain.

And AFAIK the loser now has to pay the costs of the proceedings.

As a general rule this is not correct in the United States. Fee-shifting is possible in "exceptional" patent cases, but it's not very common. Even then it tends to be awarded in cases of willful patent infringement rather than in cases where the patent is invalid or uninfringed.

The patent was filed in March 19, 2009, WOW itself is prior ART...so is COD.... I DONT WANT TO LIVE ON THIS PLANET ANYMORE

I saw that....
Assignee: Worlds.com, Inc. (Brookline, MA)
Appl. No.: 12/406,968
Filed: March 19, 2009
.....
What? They filed in 2009? ..... maybe I don't understand how patents work, doesn't it go by first to file? Everything is prior art then.

Ok nevermind, I read the patent and they're legit, from back in 1994

I think Blizzard is going to owe them some money.

Ben Krasnow (Youtube videos) has done some insanely cool DIY projects, like an electron microscope, LED-in-contact-lens, and aerogel. No idea what he's working on at valve, but it's got to be interesting...

They don't have much experience with Missile launches either. It appears the launch failed, the second and third stage as well as the payload fell into the sea..

As long as they can get the missle to fly from North Korea to South Korea it won't matter where it falls apart. The whole point is to prove they can nuke another country.

It's clearly a slashdot reference. Just ask Google!

Most of these claims by Nest are poppycock. For example in US 7,634,504 is cited 5,065,813 which NEST claims was not shown to the PTO by Honeywell.

Nice catch there. From the article:

#7,634,504, which is Honeywell's wild patent for using natural language prompts to program a thermostat. Nest says this is a retread of patent #5,065,813, which was filed 15 years earlier and not shown to the PTO by Honeywell.

And here is the '813 patent cited on the '504 patent (10th one down on page 2).

That's a fine idea, until you get sued because the "random" numbers you're providing turn out to be inadequately random.

two-boobed chicks!

Indeed. Still, coming from a Portuguese itself, this is the most stupid idea ever! I got a better idea, why don't they reduce the parliament size to the minimum required by law and reduce their own wages to a sane value?

Did my Portuguese friends knew that the government servers that used to run Linux were just migrated to Microsoft DURING A RECESSIVE CRISIS?? It was for that reason that their web sites went down for several days:
http://exameinformatica.sapo.pt/noticias/internet/2012/04/04/sistema-de-redundancia-do-portal-do-governo-nao-funcionou

translation:
http://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fexameinformatica.sapo.pt%2Fnoticias%2Finternet%2F2012%2F04%2F04%2Fsistema-de-redundancia-do-portal-do-governo-nao-funcionou

Is someone willing to start a online petition with me?

Why is it that nobody gives a shit about the lack of male teachers?

There are plenty of people who do. You just don't see it on /. because it's not really news for nerds. Seriously, does nobody do a simple search before the spout off these ridiculous examples?

Seriously, did you even think about Googling that before you wrote it? There are pages of scholarships for men in nursing school, and for exactly the same reason. This is a Good Thing.

They don't have much experience with Missile launches either.
It appears the launch failed, the second and third stage as well as the payload fell into the sea..

Uh, yes it does.

https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp=frgbld&gs_nf=1&tok=9818gF2xF65k-vnvgI8gRg&pq=42&cp=7&gs_id=1d&xhr=t&q=The+answer+to+life+the+universe+and+everything&pf=p&sclient=psy-ab&oq=The+ans&aq=0&aqi=g4&aql=&gs_l=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=87c6230bd8e448f1&biw=1920&bih=989

If you put "the answer to life, the universe and everything" in Google, their little calculator is the top answer and it says "the answer to life the universe and everything = 42"

I recommend he learn some well established api. He should get straight into it. Something graphical with very intense visual feedback. He should start by just getting the demos to work. They are *really* simple to get setup, and give great insight in to the capabilities of the frameworks. Then as he progresses he will learn other things he can accomplish and add to them. http://code.google.com/more/ http://developers.facebook.com/ http://qt-project.org/ https://developer.apple.com/library/ios

As a base. he would need javascript (w3schools), or python (Python: Essential Rererence), or C (Programming in C), or C++ (Programming: Principles and Practises Using C++). He does not need to read these books. He just needs to reference them. All the information in them is available online, but having a physical reference is always great to have within reaching distance.

When I was a kid, I would only read a book if I knew it contained the solution to a problem. I would read the book cover to cover if I had to, but in general, I was always more interested in building rather than reading.

My only intent was to play video games, and I would do anything to get them to work. I would save every penny just to by another mb of ram. I was constantly changing the motherboards and processors as well. When I was 11, I was writing batch scripts. At that time, I was using 80386 architecture and DOS. I moved to windows to play games like ski-free, and to play around with winsock and tcp. I got into irc for videos and music, which also introduced me the concept of a newsgroup. At this point everything changed. Any problem I had could be solved with ease. Generally, somebody else would always have faced the same problem I had, and they had solutions!

I got into web development pretty early, but I got bored with it quickly, since at that time, the specification was pretty limited, and I was always more interested in playing video games and sports instead. I'm 29 now, and I have a bachelors in computer science, and a masters in engineering. I do numerical programming with C++ and OpenCL.

I only got into hardcore programming in university, but my general experience with computing placed me highly with my peers. My university was arguably the best in the country for that particular undergraduate program. Lots of my friends had fathers who were programmers, and taught them a lot at a young age, but none of them progressed faster than I did. I easily caught up to them.

My point is that you do not need to push him into programming, He may loose interest very quickly. My interest in things has always been very volatile, since there are so many other things to be interested in as well (sports, music, novels, etc). If his passion is genuine, he can catch up easily. The one corollary is that each generation is exponentially more intelligent than the previous generation. My generation was the first to have access to an over abundance of information. Before, there was a deficit of information and a surplus of attention, but now there is a surplus of information, and a deficit of attention. Access to such an infinite pool of information has made me much more ingenuous than my father's generation. Our kids will most likely be exponentially smarter than we are. Of course, previous generations more easily focused on one particular field, which had its merits, as they made incredible discoveries. The argument that there are less things to discover now is bulls$%*. We still understand very little in the scope of things. He does need to become the next teenage billionaire. His passion(s) just need to be nurtured properly. LET HIM PLAY! He has to work for the rest of his life.

All far too dense for an 11 year old, and all pretty much require more background knowledge than an 11 year old is likely to have. I'm not sure there really is an answer to the OP's question though, at that age, even a very bright kid is almost certainly going to lack the prerequisite knowledge to learn to program from just a book.

Say what?! I was programming at age 11, self-taught, using 'just books.' (Unless you count some early -- and very rudimentary -- Logo exposure in grade school; later scholastic use of the computer was, IIRC, limited to Oregon Trail, though once you got to high school you could take a class that taught Pascal...)

I got started hand-keying source code from magazines and books available at local booksellers. As I progressed, I picked up a copy (likely got it as a present) of the AppleSoft Basic Programmer's Reference Manual.

These days, I have to imagine it would be both easier (every API you need to get started is quickly available online, often with excellent accompanying tutorials and/or with user-contributed sample code snippets), and perhaps more intimidating (as the complexity of our systems has increased precipitously). (On the flip side, much, much easier to get a GUI working under Java than back in the day when you had to hand-code memory bank switching and deal with the bizarre "but it saved a chip!" oddities of Apple II graphics programming...)

Mind you, I wasn't a very good programmer, and honestly wouldn't be until I was finally exposed to proper procedural programming (C), then OOP (C++, and when it was released, Java), in college. But I had fun with it, and my stuff worked. Wasn't terribly robust or full-featured, but, it worked. (My database was a flat-file, not relational, and, um, written in BASIC... ;))

Okay, all that said, it might be worth checking out the Head First books. Head First Programming uses Python and is supposed to be a general introduction to programming. There's also Head First Java. No direct experience with either, but people rave about 'em.

> Many keyboards already have USB ports on them, so there is no need to be so elaborate.

No. Not really.

The idea of plugging a mouse into your keyboard is very much a non-PC idea. A keyboard isn't going to have it's own hub unless it is made to be sold to Mac users. PC users simply are not used to plugging mice into their keyboard.

Nice statement there. Any other truths to share?

Here are some anecdotal counter-claims (that don't make the mistake of overgeneralizing): I've seen several major stores that stock PC keyboards (read: non-Apple, and marketed to Windows users) with integrated USB hubs. I have been plugging my mouse into my keyboard for years on both Linux and Windows systems. Plenty of people I know plug all kinds of peripherals into keyboard hubs on Linux and Windows systems.

A simple Google search shows thousands of non-Mac keyboards that meet these criteria. Additionally, Dell and HP both sell them bundled with their systems. Keyboards with built-in USB hubs are not even remotely uncommon in the PC world.

Yes. https://encrypted-tbn0.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTcb0QHRB7FNhIO4zXQFxin2RL8AbgFPyHzVVG0ETISYd0FOttR9w

I just got custody of my two kids. When it came time to enroll them in school, I had trouble tracking down there vaccination records. I ended up having to get one of them a whole bunch of vaccines at once. I thought it had been because I didn't do a good enough job tracking down records. Later the school found a note in his record from one Dr. Buttar saying the kids shouldn't be vaccinated.
My heart almost stopped when I thought of all the diseases that he could have contracted.

So it's not a joke. One of the Google links points to a page mentioning a North Carolina law that basically protects Quacks from the medical board. So my advice is don't go to a doctor in North Carolina you haven't know for years. After all, they can do pretty much anything they want and the medical board can do nothing about it.

LMGTFY:
http://www.google.com/search?q=automatically+erasing+a+reader%E2%80%99s+borrowing+record+once+a+book+is+returned
~2 Million Hits

First 5 Results:
Tiffin-Seneca Public Library Privacy Policy
Paulding County Carnegie Library Privacy Policy
Johnson City Public Library Privacy Policy
Mount Wachusett Community College LaChance Library Privacy Policy
Springfield, MA City Library Privacy Policy

Happy?

The Panic Virus http://books.google.com/books?id=mxqVQQMZzFcC&dq=isbn:1439158649 says it all!

No, the first large distributed project is the Cunnigham project:
http://books.google.com/books?id=udr3tHHwBl0C&lpg=PA375&ots=s4GNA3LkQo&pg=PA375
that started in 1949 on the ENIAC !

And this project is still ongoing.

In fact, this search started with human efforts, so it was already heavily crowd-sourced since a least 3 centuries.
The culmination of the manual effort came in 1903, when Frank Nelson Cole showed that:
193,707,721 × 761,838,257,287 = 2^67 - 1
It took 3 years of Sundays to discover.
http://www.rutherfordjournal.org/article030105.html

Not sure if you're whooshing the parent or not. I've seen these trucks out and about. So have you, I think.

How else can you reasonably get the many arbitrary documents into Google Docs if you cannot upload them yourself as needed?

http://code.google.com/p/chromium-os/issues/detail?id=2343

Some bosses don't mind being filmed doing something stupid. Take this boss for example.

A definitive step forward for Nokia.

More like another stumble in the general direction of the cliff.

Toldya so.