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Hard to believe no one has mentioned Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs. While Knuth is a great set of reference bibles, SICP is a perfect textbook. It's funny, well-written, incredibly comprehensive and appropriately mind-expanding. Work through all of the exercises in that book and you've got a solid grasp of programming fundamentals.

Chris

For this reason, under capitalism, all transactions make everyone involved richer -- for sufficiently small values of everyone.

Quoting Bruce Reed's review of Kevin Phillips' Wealth and Democracy:

CEOs make 419 times as much as the average worker, and CEO pay is rising five times faster than profits. Payroll taxes mean working people don't take home much more than 20 years ago. Bill Gates's fortune is 1.4 million times larger than the median family income.

Some are getting violently richer than others, it seems. So remember: Time is time. Money is money. Try not to conflate the two.

Anyone know of any online bookstores that at least check a few pages of used books for highlighter marks and the like, and mention if they found any in the book description?

Enough with the "humans are hard" complaint, please! I'm down with folksy attitude about people and all, but fundamentally it gives the social-science flakes fuel and excuses their whole field from scientific rigor. And there's science to be had here.

Evolutionary psychology has its roots in sociobiology, and attributes human behavior directly to selection pressures. By guessing at likely past conditions under which humans evolved (the "ancestral environment") and examining current behavior not explained by the standard model (embraced by said flakes, and which has been around since the start of the 20th century), ev. psych'ers have made some damn good strides in explaining the way people and social networks *really are* - without resorting to feel-good theory.

Of course, just because we can explain something wonderful doesn't at all mean we will explain it away.

Yes - all the details have not been worked out. This is left as an exercise for the creative readers. CA anyone?

Good reads can explain it better than I can:

The Moral Animal by Robert Wright, who also writes for Slate;
The classic, definitive Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby-edited tome on ev. psych;
Stephen Pinker's eminently readable The Language Instinct, which was my bridge from linguistics to this;
and Nonzero, for the advanced topics...

Be enlightened, grasshoppers.

Enough with the "humans are hard" complaint, please! I'm down with folksy attitude about people and all, but fundamentally it gives the social-science flakes fuel and excuses their whole field from scientific rigor. And there's science to be had here.

Evolutionary psychology has its roots in sociobiology, and attributes human behavior directly to selection pressures. By guessing at likely past conditions under which humans evolved (the "ancestral environment") and examining current behavior not explained by the standard model (embraced by said flakes, and which has been around since the start of the 20th century), ev. psych'ers have made some damn good strides in explaining the way people and social networks *really are* - without resorting to feel-good theory.

Of course, just because we can explain something wonderful doesn't at all mean we will explain it away.

Yes - all the details have not been worked out. This is left as an exercise for the creative readers. CA anyone?

Good reads can explain it better than I can:

The Moral Animal by Robert Wright, who also writes for Slate;
The classic, definitive Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby-edited tome on ev. psych;
Stephen Pinker's eminently readable The Language Instinct, which was my bridge from linguistics to this;
and Nonzero, for the advanced topics...

Be enlightened, grasshoppers.

Yeah, I know I saw a Sony-distributed movie recently, but I intend to be more vigilant in the future.

If you really need your corporate media, buy it USED. Half.Com is a good place to start. So is Second Spin and Powell's.

Stop buying new DVDs and CDs. Stop going to movies. Maybe even get rid of your cable service, because the cable companies pay their tribute to the MPAA and the RIAA too. Take the money you would have used on new DVDs, new CDs, movie tickets and cable bills and donate it to the EFF.

And for crissake FAX YOUR CONGRESSCRITTER! And like Zappa always reminded us, Don't forget to vote.

Oh, wait, did you mean tracking of possible copyright infringers? I suggest reading Jessica Litman's Digital Copyright book, where she takes on the very hard problem of formulating a new copyright, and suggests that we move from copying being the activity being controlled to commercial gain from copying.

Yes. Well, I dunno how many bits are involved, but they certainly have color. On the other hand, for an illustrated version of a novel -- like this one -- maybe I'd prefer the dead-tree version anyway. On the gripping hand, many textbooks and references are in color, and it'd be great to be able to have those in an ebook.

Let me first state that between books and magazines I probably spend about $300-$400 a month. When I travel the stores I check out are CD and book stores. When I go to New York my travel itenerary basically consists of arriving around 10 a.m. on Sunday, parking in front of Academy Records on 18th Street, getting breakfast and showing up when Academy's doors open thereafter filling my car's trunk with used CDs (relax oh keepers of the digital copyright--Academy is almost all classical and opera CDs, which rank very, very, very low in the Napsterizing and CD-R world. Find me someone that has copied Schabel's Beethoven recordings and traded in the orginals.) I then proceed to the Strand bookstore on 11th (?) & Broadway--a half-block sized warehouse of used and remaindered books. Then onto St. Marks place, for further used CD and used book purchasing. Then on to the West Village for more of the same. Oh, and if I get done fast enough, I can stop at Princeton Record Exchange on the way home.) Anyway, to make a long story short, I'm 33 and the only difference from when I was 10 is that back then I was riding a bike around instead of a car and I was riding around Hollywood, FL instead of NYC.

The reason the Writer's Guild's petition is so ridiculous is that used books shopping has been the regular course of behavior for book collectors back a few generations. Find me a real writer that didn't spend most of their pre-royalty check days trolling used bookstores and, likely, working in them. Particularly genre writers, who live in the places.:)

It was riding my bike around from store to store twenty years ago that I found the Lensmen and Skylark series by E.E. Smith, back before I realized they were unreadable. ;) Harlan Ellison's stuff, Phil Dick's surreal novels, Asimov, Clarke etc. etc. etc. When I got interested in politics, there for a buck a copy were Ted White's presidential campaign books, Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, history books by the hundreds.

I rememebr times my backpack was so weighed down with used books that I had to be careful turning corners that I wouldn't tip my bike over.

Used book shopping is completely ingrained in the book collector's behavior. Suggesting that used books be driven off of amazon is like suggesting that people shouldn't buy in thrift stores because of all the jobs it costs poor textile workers, and think of the manufacturing jobs lost in North Carolina when people buy used or antique furniture!! It's just silly--go to any writer's place and were did their books (at least the non-promotional copies) come from? Used bookstores.

Amazon's practice of selling used copies side-by-side with the new copies isn't even a new idea. Jeez, Powell's in Portland, OR has been doing it for decades--Amazon probably got the idea from Powells.

For anyone not familiar with Powells (and if you aren't you shouldn't be posting on this topic anyway): the fellow that owns Powells opened a book store in Portland after his son opened a store in Chicago. Dad didn't know much about selling books, and didn't know that used books are supposed to be shelved separately from new books. So he shelved them together. He also couldn't see how multiple used copies could be priced the same--the more copies that show up on the used shelf the less desirable the book, so each extra copy should be priced a little less than the one before it. So Dad went on his merry, stupid way. The main Powell's store now takes up a city block in Portland, burrowing its way through the existing buildings on the block in such a fashion that they publish a map of the store to guide you around its catacombs. Powell's and Strand are the Meccas of the East and West Coast for book nuts.

Amazon's sales look to me like just the Powell's system brought online, which makes some since as Powells is one of the online stores Amazon competes against. Other online used book sources are the Advanced Book Exchange, bookfinder and alibris. ABE and bookfinder are searchable databases of used bookstores around the country, which albiris is a (sometimes pricey) centralized fulfillment warehouse where people send their used books for sale (also used book sellers that have gotten tired of running stores or going from flea market to flea market just put their inventory there for sale.) I have purchased _many_ books through Powells and bookfinder. Too bad Portland is a little far from Philadelphia--wandering around the store is a great time.

Anyway, I've rambled on and on, but one final point, and it has been made earlier in the discussion--unlike digital media, there is no cost-effective way to duplicate printed media while turning the original into a used store. When you see a book in a used store, or on amazon's used lists, it means someone has deemed the book disposable and is relinquishing all interest in the book. Same as a table, or used car, or sofa, they're giving up the whole thing and the buyer has the only instance of that copy running back to the original purchase. The point? The only way used sales can make a dent in new sales of the work is if a large enough percentage of previous purchasers deem the book disposable and not worthy of keeping. If enough purchasers of your book believe it isn't worth keeping, then maybe you should loose out on some royalties! After all, I still have those Phil Dick and Harlan Ellison books I bought when I was 12 (nothing a 7th grade teacher likes more than seeing a student reading "Love Ain't Nothing But Sex Misspelled" during study period). I still have the same $2 used Book Club Edition copy of Lathe of Heaven I bought years ago after seeing the PBS movie. (Too bad I loaned the Lensmen books to someone that never returned them, and then bought the new printings last year when I was then old enough to realize they were unreadable!) The idea that someone who doesn't want a book should be stuck either a) throwing it in the trash or b) using it to get the fireplace started is offensive. Better the book should be taken to Ye Used Booke Store or sold through amazon to someone that want it.

By the by, I checked amazon and, for example, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, which sold 60,000 copies just from Amazon pre-orders a couple of years ago, has a grand total of 72 copies available used--.12% of just the number pre-ordered from one source, amazon. Guild member Judy Blume's Blubber, which the Judemeister has been earning royalties on for 26 years, has a grand total of 22 used copies available. I think Judy's gonna make the car payment without a problem from amazon.

Last time I was in Powells in Portland, Oregon (rocking great bookstore), they had USED COPIES OF BOOKS on the shelves. What was worse, these books WERE INTERSPURSED WITH THE NEW BOOKS, meaning I had to choose between the new and used copies of several books. In fact, Powells' website provides the option to purchase used books (which, unlike Amazon, they actually stock themselves). Since these used book sales cut into the profits of starving authors (and, incidently, their publishers), perhaps they should set their sites on the rest of the used book-selling world.

Oh, wait, I didn't have the option of picking between new and used copies of some books, because some of the used books were out of print, which means that even if I managed to personally hunt down the author or the publisher and offered a reasonable of money to purchase the book, they'd laugh in my face and mumble something about economies of scale. And if I should decide that a mass market paperback isn't the edition I want the book in, tough luck, because that's what has been handed down to me.

And while they're at it, why shouldn't they go after the entire used book industry? I've seen whole stores that are devoted to nothing but selling used books! These stores, and their fat-cat owners, are stealing DIRECTLY from the authors and should be eliminated! Who needs to bother with the doctrine of first sale when you have sufficient lobbying power on your side?

Greed is not an admirable quality. When will people learn?

DRM is inherently user-unfriendly, because it exists to prevent the user from doing some things.

By the way, have you noticed the opposite meaning of words in such terms like copy-"protection" or digital "rights" management, etc.? Does it remind you something? Like the Ministry of Truth? Yes, I linked to Adobe eBook version of George Orwell's 1984, how ironic... "THIS TITLE IS NOT TEXT-TO-SPEECH COMPATIBLE"

To be more optimistic, I'm just reading "Secure Programming for Linux and Unix", a great book released under the GNU Free Documentation License. Fortunately, not everyone is a copy-"protection" freak yet.

All the O'Reilly books of which I am aware have seemed dis-organized and lacking in important information. In general, I think computer books are of very poor quality. Yes, it is true that O'Reilly books are often better than the alternative, if the alternative is to read sketchy documentation that comes with some open source software.

The city in which I live, Portland, Oregon, USA, has what is said to be the biggest bookstore in the world, Powell's. I went to Powell's technical bookstore and looked at about 20 books on Samba. ALL of them were very incomplete, as was easily proven by comparing them with each other. ALL of them were poorly written. Most assumed that you already knew something about Samba. And, Samba is an important subject; file serving Microsoft OS clients using Linux is a first step toward reducing dependence on closed source software.

The measure of good quality in technical books is whether the author has done everything he or she could possibly to make the subject easy for the reader. By that measure, very few technical books rate higher than 20%.

There are plenty of books that achieve their bulk with extensive source code listings. There is a high percentage that promise something on the cover that they don't deliver. Most indexes are of poor quality.

Next time you are in a technical bookstore, pick up books on unfamiliar software subjects. Turn to the first few pages. You will find that very few books have even one paragraph that introduces the subject to those who are new to it, that explains the importance of the subject, or that explains how the subject relates to other software.

Trust Us, We're Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future

But don't apply that to Apple, cos Apple uses figures like HH the Dalai Lama, Jack Keroac, and other like them to make people Think(different) that they are somehow not being a big Mega corp who expolit Asian workers, patent technology, profit greatly, use media players as virus's to wreak havoc on file typing of your system, use legal might against the small guy.

Nope, smug ol Apple pays some big ad agency to figure out things like "Ho Hum, Another day, another revolution". The zelots eat that shit up. And they should, cos its a real live revolution.

How about starting a new campaign? I personally have been on this campaign for a while now due to the insanity that is known as the music industry

Campaign title: I choose piracy!!

I have been refusing to buy Major Label albums for years now, trouble is even most of the indies are being fuXored by the majors and the RIAA through distribution and legislation deals that are wrought in the favor of business and not art.

Later on as more facts came in, I began refusing to buy any albums/cds/tapes at all. The advent of p2p and all sorts of wonderful little corners where I find the music I want (usually hard to find) has made living the reality of no support to the industry at all pretty easy.

But what of the artists you say? Well, here's how I do it. I download like mad, but pay the artist directly. Here's an example:

Sonic Youth released a new album on Geffen, I download it as well as another Geffen SY album I was missing from my collection. As payment I goto sonic youths website, click the link for their own label SYR and purchase a copy of one of their own CD's directly from them. Later in the year, sonic youth rolls through town, I buy a t-shirt, a book of poetry and a canvas shopping bag from the stand outside the show- cos that stuff is theirs and they make the most profit from it.

Granted, if we were talking Creed here, the stuff for sale outside the show does not have the same level of intimacy that it does at a Sonic Youth gig. But, we are not talking about Creed. If for some strange reason I liked any of the output from that band, I would have no problem stealing a cd or two from them because everything about that band has been manufactured from start to finish. I don't get the guilt that drives me to the edge of the stage to hand the guys from Modest Mouse a 10 dollar bill, while telling them I downloaded their latest album off of the internet, so here's ten bucks. With Creed, you just simply can't do that, unless you win the "wow man, rockin" contest from the local Alternative market (read: radio station). The same contest that if you had any scruples would require a few showers to wash off all the dirty feelings you got from the payola scams going down left and right around you. The contest that would make you feel like you needed to be a woman so you could get your tits signed backstage by the lead singer. But wait.. I digress.

And why are we talking about Creed anyway? If you stop squinting Creed has nothing to do with alternative anything. We should be talking about Negativeland and the fact that they have made a career out of challenging the record industry about copyright issues. You should too.

Tell em all: "I choose Piracy!"

I second (third? fourth?) the nomination for Journey to the West, though I haven't gotten to read that one yet, and I'd also like to put in a hearty recommendation for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes just titled Three Kingdoms, but don't confuse it with The History of the Three Kingdoms. It's not exactly fantasy. More like historical fiction, but I guess it falls in parallel with the Icelandic Sagas. It's about the fall of the Han dynasty, with a focus on the extended military campaigns of the three major competing successor dynasties. It's got warfare, political intrigue, loyalty, betrayal, strategy, virtue, and a damn good story to boot. A 400 page abridgement was released this past year, and other editions may be available at used book stores, but I don't believe any are in print. (I could be wrong)

Or if your not into strategy/intrigue stuff, and would rather go for a story of wandering badasses, check out Outlaws of the Marsh, sometimes titled Heroes of the Marsh or Water Margin Outlaws.

They're both incredible. Both very long (roughly 1500 pages apiece) but worth every page.

I second (third? fourth?) the nomination for Journey to the West, though I haven't gotten to read that one yet, and I'd also like to put in a hearty recommendation for the Romance of the Three Kingdoms, sometimes just titled Three Kingdoms, but don't confuse it with The History of the Three Kingdoms. It's not exactly fantasy. More like historical fiction, but I guess it falls in parallel with the Icelandic Sagas. It's about the fall of the Han dynasty, with a focus on the extended military campaigns of the three major competing successor dynasties. It's got warfare, political intrigue, loyalty, betrayal, strategy, virtue, and a damn good story to boot. A 400 page abridgement was released this past year, and other editions may be available at used book stores, but I don't believe any are in print. (I could be wrong)

Or if your not into strategy/intrigue stuff, and would rather go for a story of wandering badasses, check out Outlaws of the Marsh, sometimes titled Heroes of the Marsh or Water Margin Outlaws.

They're both incredible. Both very long (roughly 1500 pages apiece) but worth every page.

I've seen LeGuin speak, been to book-signings at Powell's

Offtopic, but...I recently discovered powells.com and it it rapidly becoming one of my favorite things in the universe. Great selection of used books at decent prices, a rare/out-of-print book finding service, in adidtion to typical new book service, and free U.S. shipping for orders over $50. And a well-designed website. Yow.

A great alternative for those of us who would rather not deal with certain large patent-abusing book merchants.

I live in Portland, Oregon, home of LeGuin. I'm working on NW Raleigh St, just a few blocks from her house on NW Thurman. I've seen LeGuin speak, been to book-signings at Powell's, and seen her guest-lecture at PSU.

She's brilliant, and her contribution to science fiction is immeasurable. I'm a man, and I don't want to bash male SF writers unduely, but until LeGuin started writing much SF was pretty dull.

LeGuin herself has said that for years she wrote SF as a man, because she had no idea how a woman would or could write it. Her main characters were male, they did manly things (conquered, explored, solved problems). After she wrote The Dispossessed she realized she was doing a disservice to herself, and to the world, and started to consciously write as she would - not as she thought others wanted her to. Her success is proof that many people agreed with her.

If you want to read more LeGuin, read two essays. A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be is beautiful social criticism, and interesting for other reasons: about half-way through she consulted the I Ching, casting the yarrows asking it to describe for her "a yin utopia." "Yang" being bright, masculine; "yin" being dark, feminine. A "yang utopia" would be, for instance, the highly-mechanized, clean, bright future cities of much of the male-dominated SF of the early century. A "yin utopia" would be, well, read the essay :). It's in her collection of essays, Dancing at the Edge of the World .

Also, her introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction is a deep and thoughtful introduction to SF. The book is one of the best SF collections ever, and worth it for that essay alone.

(She's also written a beautiful poetic translation of the Tao Te Ching .)

On another note, for those who don't know, Philip K Dick also used the I Ching extensively when writing The Man in the High Castle. He said he threw the yarrow thousands of times, consulting the book at every plot point and decision. Circularly, the book's characters use it, too.

I live in Portland, Oregon, home of LeGuin. I'm working on NW Raleigh St, just a few blocks from her house on NW Thurman. I've seen LeGuin speak, been to book-signings at Powell's, and seen her guest-lecture at PSU.

She's brilliant, and her contribution to science fiction is immeasurable. I'm a man, and I don't want to bash male SF writers unduely, but until LeGuin started writing much SF was pretty dull.

LeGuin herself has said that for years she wrote SF as a man, because she had no idea how a woman would or could write it. Her main characters were male, they did manly things (conquered, explored, solved problems). After she wrote The Dispossessed she realized she was doing a disservice to herself, and to the world, and started to consciously write as she would - not as she thought others wanted her to. Her success is proof that many people agreed with her.

If you want to read more LeGuin, read two essays. A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be is beautiful social criticism, and interesting for other reasons: about half-way through she consulted the I Ching, casting the yarrows asking it to describe for her "a yin utopia." "Yang" being bright, masculine; "yin" being dark, feminine. A "yang utopia" would be, for instance, the highly-mechanized, clean, bright future cities of much of the male-dominated SF of the early century. A "yin utopia" would be, well, read the essay :). It's in her collection of essays, Dancing at the Edge of the World .

Also, her introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction is a deep and thoughtful introduction to SF. The book is one of the best SF collections ever, and worth it for that essay alone.

(She's also written a beautiful poetic translation of the Tao Te Ching .)

On another note, for those who don't know, Philip K Dick also used the I Ching extensively when writing The Man in the High Castle. He said he threw the yarrow thousands of times, consulting the book at every plot point and decision. Circularly, the book's characters use it, too.

I live in Portland, Oregon, home of LeGuin. I'm working on NW Raleigh St, just a few blocks from her house on NW Thurman. I've seen LeGuin speak, been to book-signings at Powell's, and seen her guest-lecture at PSU.

She's brilliant, and her contribution to science fiction is immeasurable. I'm a man, and I don't want to bash male SF writers unduely, but until LeGuin started writing much SF was pretty dull.

LeGuin herself has said that for years she wrote SF as a man, because she had no idea how a woman would or could write it. Her main characters were male, they did manly things (conquered, explored, solved problems). After she wrote The Dispossessed she realized she was doing a disservice to herself, and to the world, and started to consciously write as she would - not as she thought others wanted her to. Her success is proof that many people agreed with her.

If you want to read more LeGuin, read two essays. A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be is beautiful social criticism, and interesting for other reasons: about half-way through she consulted the I Ching, casting the yarrows asking it to describe for her "a yin utopia." "Yang" being bright, masculine; "yin" being dark, feminine. A "yang utopia" would be, for instance, the highly-mechanized, clean, bright future cities of much of the male-dominated SF of the early century. A "yin utopia" would be, well, read the essay :). It's in her collection of essays, Dancing at the Edge of the World .

Also, her introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction is a deep and thoughtful introduction to SF. The book is one of the best SF collections ever, and worth it for that essay alone.

(She's also written a beautiful poetic translation of the Tao Te Ching .)

On another note, for those who don't know, Philip K Dick also used the I Ching extensively when writing The Man in the High Castle. He said he threw the yarrow thousands of times, consulting the book at every plot point and decision. Circularly, the book's characters use it, too.

I am saying that, for me as a native English speaker, the cost of being involved with Ruby is high:

Ruby is a language primarily written and maintained by one person. The author of the language says this in one of the links that I provided. The documentation in English is poor, and, because there is only one primary person working on the language, the documentation is likely to remain poor. That makes a big difference for anyone trying to learn a new computer language, because it vastly increases the cost (in time) of learning.

Also, if there is poor documentation in English, it has been my experience that fewer people adopt a new computer language. English is the world's most common second language. EVERY Japanese student studies English, my Japanese friends say. A friend in Thailand told me that there was a scholarship program to teach computer skills to Thais in Japan. The courses were taught in English.

Try a test: Call the main number of any large German bank. When the operator says hello in German, just start speaking English. You will find that the operator immediately switches to perfect English. If German banks think that communicating in English is important, maybe that is because communicating in English is important in today's world.

If fewer people adopt a computer language, there will be less development. If there is less development, then it may become one of the hundreds of languages that have eventually died. This would increase the cost of adopting Ruby still further.

Poor communication is a BIG issue with open source software, in my opinion (and closed source, too). In my opinion, poor communication is the one big barrier to getting rid of the Microsoft Windows operating system completely. I don't like Windows because I don't like being abused by Microsoft.

My city, Portland, Oregon, USA, has what is said to be the biggest bookstore in the world, Powell's. I went to Powell's technical bookstore and looked at about 20 books on Samba. ALL of them were very incomplete. ALL of them were poorly written.

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Links to respected news sources show how U.S. government policy contributed to terrorism: What should be the Response to Violence?

It doesn't fit perfectly within your course description, as all three are recently published, but their premise of elementary particles as being original sin is facinating. And they have fantastic communications and other tools that I would love to see develop in the future -- the althiometer, the lodestone reasonator....

These books are also chock full of complex allusions and interesting nuances English majors live for -- think of them as Narnia stories for the modern humanist. Totally readable as stories, but more complex should the reader care to dig in more deeply.

Liza

It doesn't fit perfectly within your course description, as all three are recently published, but their premise of elementary particles as being original sin is facinating. And they have fantastic communications and other tools that I would love to see develop in the future -- the althiometer, the lodestone reasonator....

These books are also chock full of complex allusions and interesting nuances English majors live for -- think of them as Narnia stories for the modern humanist. Totally readable as stories, but more complex should the reader care to dig in more deeply.

Liza

It doesn't fit perfectly within your course description, as all three are recently published, but their premise of elementary particles as being original sin is facinating. And they have fantastic communications and other tools that I would love to see develop in the future -- the althiometer, the lodestone reasonator....

These books are also chock full of complex allusions and interesting nuances English majors live for -- think of them as Narnia stories for the modern humanist. Totally readable as stories, but more complex should the reader care to dig in more deeply.

Liza

Forget about those tiny little dictionaries -- get some deserving word geek a copy of the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition. They may at first be speechless with joy, but your gift will allow them to find the exact word to express their feelings, with quotes to illustrate how the meaning of that word evolved over time. :)

Give them a copy of The Professor and the Madman at the same time; it's the story behind the creation of the OED, and an excellent book in its own right.

Buy them from Powell's City of Books. I now live in NYC, but even here there is nothing that can compare to the wonder that is Powell's. Hallelujah.

Forget about those tiny little dictionaries -- get some deserving word geek a copy of the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition. They may at first be speechless with joy, but your gift will allow them to find the exact word to express their feelings, with quotes to illustrate how the meaning of that word evolved over time. :)

Give them a copy of The Professor and the Madman at the same time; it's the story behind the creation of the OED, and an excellent book in its own right.

Buy them from Powell's City of Books. I now live in NYC, but even here there is nothing that can compare to the wonder that is Powell's. Hallelujah.

My favorite (and one with enough critical praise to make me think he'll be read for a long time) is George Saunders, a writer who publishes frequently in the New Yorker and has two books of short stories, Civil War Land in Bad Decline and Pastoralia. Some of his work has a science fiction edge, being set in the future, but it really defies categorization. One recurring subject is the downtrodden and picked-on. His stories are unbelievably imaginative, and there is both wit and heart in his writing -- in 2 pages one can go from laughing out loud to crying. My favorites are The End of Firpo in the World (in Pastoralia) and the 400-lb. CEO (in Civil War Land). At least one of his stories is published online here.

My favorite (and one with enough critical praise to make me think he'll be read for a long time) is George Saunders, a writer who publishes frequently in the New Yorker and has two books of short stories, Civil War Land in Bad Decline and Pastoralia. Some of his work has a science fiction edge, being set in the future, but it really defies categorization. One recurring subject is the downtrodden and picked-on. His stories are unbelievably imaginative, and there is both wit and heart in his writing -- in 2 pages one can go from laughing out loud to crying. My favorites are The End of Firpo in the World (in Pastoralia) and the 400-lb. CEO (in Civil War Land). At least one of his stories is published online here.

I suggest that you read Barbara Garson's book, reviewed here by Salon.

In it, she argues that no world government can regulate the financial industry. Every attempt leads to offshore loopholes. The financial industry actually regulates world governments. Every time a government votes to increase spending for health, education and other social services, the financial centers vote by sucking their money out of that country. Since capital is so concentrated these days thanks to mergers and consolidations, the effects are immediate and chilling.

Many times, people are living in wretched conditions because their governments promised to secure loans given to private corporations that end up failing. Indonesia, for example, closed 250,000 clinics, 6 million children dropped out of school, and the infant mortality rate has risen 30 percent, in order to raise taxes to pay back bad loans.

You can't help but think that that is going to have an effect on our ability to function as a civil society. People should have education and health care, it leads to technological breakthroughs and satisfying lives. Money should have a social cost associated with it. If that makes me a pinko commie, then so be it.

It seems to me that our foreign policy in the last half of the 20th century was to secure low wages for industry and keep democracies out of power in Central and South America, SouthEast Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. It's only fair that what's good for American citizens should be fair for our global brethren.

Ghandi said, "There are many things I'd die for, but nothing I would kill for." The terrorists would act differently if they truly had social justice as an end and not chaos, but they'd have a lot less sympathy around the world if our monetary policy were different. I think there are other ways to solve imbalance than crashing a plane into a building. I just wish someone would point them out to me.

I'd also suggest reading Warren Wagar's Short History of the Future, in which he argues that a corporate global economy is eventually superceded by local government/ communal anarchy. Many of his decade-old predictions have already come true.

The one mouse button was thought up by a guy named Jeff Raskin

Actually, that's Jef Raskin, author of an excellent book, The Human Interface: New directions for Designing Interactive Systems [powells.com].

This is what "competition" is all about. Vote with your dollar. If amazon starts requiring a passport login, they'll lose my business and I'll tell them why. There are plenty of others that don't require it and aren't likely to (Powell's for one, at least for books).

That's why we need to smack them down for even considering this crap.

I went to a local Borders today, and picked up about four ORA titles that I've been needing, plus a few other things. Maybe about $200 worth of cover price. I then went to the service desk and asked for the manager. He showed up and I told him that I had some serious concerns about the company's plans to use face-recognition software. He said the plan had been abandoned. I said that I was concerned that they had even considered such behavior, and that I didn't feel safe shopping at a bookstore that would consider such invasions.

Then I asked if he'd mind helping me re-shelf the books I ended up not buying.

The keys to even being heard are to be polite and to explain the problem to them in a language that they can understand. In Borders' case, the language is mainly money. I probably blow a thousand or so on books each year, not counting the work-related ones that Borders/B&N don't stock and wouldn't be able to order. That's about a grand that Borders has lost, assuming that they stay on good behavior and I lift my boycott after a year instead of going indefinitely.

We're talking about corporations, not individuals. I'm not fond of the notion of punishing people because of their ideas. However, if a corporation could spring this and shut it down after public outcry, I think it's entirely reasonable to question what other plans they might have, and whether these plans came from the same mindset. And they damned well don't need to be thinking such thoughts with my money.

Yes, their acts are legal, although in some states they'd be required to post the signs. And I think such things should be legal, on private property. However, they can do it without my money. In the book market, we're fortunate enough to have other options. Tattered Cover in Denver, in particular, is a good one if you have privacy concerns. They got into, and won, a legal pissing match with a regional drug task force over turning over their customer records.

I haven't heard any complaints about Powell's in Oregon either. And I don't doubt that similar stores exist elsewhere in the US and the world.

• Carries lesser-known titles, not just the big sellers
• Cheap used books (recently, I picked up a hardcover--in perfectly good condition--for $15 instead of the brand-new $25)
• Employees that are actually knowledgable, and *care* about their jobs, unlike chain stores that employee cute-but-clueless people
• Has cool free speech campaigns and controversial book authors

Or you could try the best goddamn bookstore in the US: Powell's in Portland, OR.

"most teaching of C++ at the moment is terrible, which is the single biggest problem the language has"

I agree with this. My city, Portland, Oregon, U.S., has an extremely large technical bookstore, Powell's (http://www.powells.com/technicalbooks), and I have spent several afternoons looking through all the books on C++. There is a strong tendency in most of these books to explain without truly explaining, or to mystify without explaining at all.

It is great to know that C++ will eventually be extended. But the 2 to 4 human years that you mention is equivalent to 14 or 28 technology years.

You mention "better support for interfacing with other programming languages".

This is not a controversial addition to the C++ language. It seems to me that it should have been finished 2 years ago, not 2 years from now.

Dictionary.com might agree with you, almost. But I would consider it to be technology on the scale of a billionth of a meter. So I prefer a more liberal interpretation. Certainly the materials are nanoscale, nanophase, and state of the art. I wonder if you'd feel the same about nanoarchitectured materials?

I am afraid that you are incorrect. Diamonds for examply are incredibly hard but are also extremely brittle and hence are not used in places where structural strength is required.

This is where it gets fun. You're confusing hardness or strength (they ARE interchangable ask ASM or your favorite Mechanics of Materials textbook), and Toughness. Toughness is the ability of a material to resist cracking, or if you prefer how brittle it is. Diamond is most certainly the king of strength, but, as you astutely observed, is brittle. Sillicon Carbide, carbon fiber, as well as glass share this quality. Again, I can't stress this enough, don't take my word for it. Tell me I'm full of shit, goto this website and find out for yourself.

Unfortunately the actual article made no such claims. They did not invent a stronger steel. They merely invented an extremely durable coating which bonds to steel. Sort of like a "super paint" actually.

They did invent a stronger steel. It happens to be a coating, but with a strength of I think 16 GPa, which is about 16 times better than a typical high strength structural steel and in the realm of about theoretical. Considering they believe the coating to be all but free of defects, this actually makes a lot of sence, as it is the defects which start the cracks that limit the strength of a material.

But it's funny, how people are. I prefer a liberal interpretation of nanotechnology, but ridgedly adhere to the indoctrination I was educated under. In anycase it certainly seems the press release was written with a reader like me in mind, and in so far as that was a good choice, it is correct. I would have expected it to have less resistance to chemical corrosion, but material science can be counter intuitive. In anycase I'm sure Powell's has at least a few good books on mechanics of materials if you're into that kinda thing.

• The Art of Computer Programming, volumes I-III - Donald Knuth
• The Mythical Man-Month - Fred Brooks
• Peopleware - Tom DeMarco & Timothy Lister
• The Psychology of Computer Programming - Gerald M. Weinberg
• Compilers: Principles, Techniques and Tools - Aho, Sethi, and Ullman
• Compiler Design in C or Compiler Design in Java - Allen Hollub
• C+C++ Programming With Objects in C and C++ - Allen Hollub
• Object-Oriented Programming: An Evolutionary Approach - Cox & Novobilski
• Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach - Hennesy & Patterson
• The C Programming Language - Kernighan & Ritchie
• The UNIX Programming Environment - Kernighan & Pike
• Information Theory - Claude E. Shannon
• Claude Elwood Shannon: Collected Papers - Sloane and Wyner
• Cybernetics - Norbert Wiener
• Numerical Recipes in C - Press, Vetterling, Teukolsky, & Flannery
• Operating System Design: The XINU Approach - Douglass Comer
• Operating System Concepts - Silberschatz & Galvin
• Mobile Robotics: Inspiration to Implementation - Jones & Flynn
• Tog on Software Design - Bruce Tognazzini

• The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
• Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer - Freiberger & Swaine
• IBM's Early Computers - Bashe, Johnson, Palmer & Pugh
• The Cathedral and the Bazaar - Eric S. Raymond (I'm not a karma whore, I'm more of a self-promoter: I'm in the acknowledgements)
• The Age of Intelligent Machines - Raymond Kurzweil (not to be confused with his more recent book The Age of Spiritual Machines, which is likely a load of tripe, but may be worth including anyhow)
• Freedom's Edge: The Computer Threat to Society - Milton R. Wessel (a much saner analysis of the effect of computers on our culture than Kurzweil's recent book)

You should be able to find some very nice deals on a number of these books at used bookstores. Some of the books are out of print, so this may be your only real option. Amazon has links to used bookstores, and many of them have their own websites if you are still mad at Amazon over the one-click patent stuff. I'd suggest Powell's Books in Portland, they've got a better selection than I've seen almost anywhere else, and they deliver.

He's right. Thinking in C++ is helpful. And the electronic version is free. This book is not complete, however.

It is important to know that none of the books are complete. The biggest hurdle to becoming a programmer is learning to accept, and make sense of, poorly written documentation.

All the books that I've seen make object orientation seem much more difficult than it really is. Am I in a position to know? Yes. Powell's bookstore here in Portland, Oregon is the biggest bookstore in the world. I've spent hours looking at all the books there about C++.

The technical publishing world has become very corrupt. Publishers know that people find it difficult to evaluate a book while they are in the bookstore. So, a publisher who provides a poor quality book with big promises on the cover will sell books.

Remember to stay in control. If a book doesn't make sense to you, consider the possibility that it is the fault of the book, not you.

• Startup, by Jerry Kaplan. A 1994 tale about pen-computing venture Go, and how it went through $75MM in capital before burning up -- as told by the CEO (!).
  
  
• aol.com, by Kara Swisher. If you don't want to assign the whole book, the second chapter (about the company's founding by an alcoholic, eccentric, self-destructive entrepreneur) is worth the price of admission alone.
  
  
• Good stuff, but not quite as compelling:
  • Netscape Time, by Jim Clark (with Owen Edwards). A fairly human and not-too-smug account of the company's glory years. (c) 1999, when the stock was still worth something.)
  • The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman. Written with flair and wit. Really about one specific person, though -- doesn't dwell on bigger insights on the industry.
  • High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems, by Karen Southwick. Too adoring. By pure coincidence, I did P.R. work for Sun (after this book was written), and knew some of the folks responsible for making it so... nice.
• Two books by Peter Salus: A Quarter Century of UNIX, and Casting the Net (foreword by Vint Cerf!). Excellent for highly technical audiences, next-to-useless for general audiences. Sorry, Peter. (Random fact: I was friends briefly with his daughter when we were in high school. I believe she still works at Linux Magazine.)

Good luck with the class! --Tom Geller

• Startup, by Jerry Kaplan. A 1994 tale about pen-computing venture Go, and how it went through $75MM in capital before burning up -- as told by the CEO (!).
  
  
• aol.com, by Kara Swisher. If you don't want to assign the whole book, the second chapter (about the company's founding by an alcoholic, eccentric, self-destructive entrepreneur) is worth the price of admission alone.
  
  
• Good stuff, but not quite as compelling:
  • Netscape Time, by Jim Clark (with Owen Edwards). A fairly human and not-too-smug account of the company's glory years. (c) 1999, when the stock was still worth something.)
  • The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman. Written with flair and wit. Really about one specific person, though -- doesn't dwell on bigger insights on the industry.
  • High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems, by Karen Southwick. Too adoring. By pure coincidence, I did P.R. work for Sun (after this book was written), and knew some of the folks responsible for making it so... nice.
• Two books by Peter Salus: A Quarter Century of UNIX, and Casting the Net (foreword by Vint Cerf!). Excellent for highly technical audiences, next-to-useless for general audiences. Sorry, Peter. (Random fact: I was friends briefly with his daughter when we were in high school. I believe she still works at Linux Magazine.)

Good luck with the class! --Tom Geller

• Startup, by Jerry Kaplan. A 1994 tale about pen-computing venture Go, and how it went through $75MM in capital before burning up -- as told by the CEO (!).
  
  
• aol.com, by Kara Swisher. If you don't want to assign the whole book, the second chapter (about the company's founding by an alcoholic, eccentric, self-destructive entrepreneur) is worth the price of admission alone.
  
  
• Good stuff, but not quite as compelling:
  • Netscape Time, by Jim Clark (with Owen Edwards). A fairly human and not-too-smug account of the company's glory years. (c) 1999, when the stock was still worth something.)
  • The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman. Written with flair and wit. Really about one specific person, though -- doesn't dwell on bigger insights on the industry.
  • High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems, by Karen Southwick. Too adoring. By pure coincidence, I did P.R. work for Sun (after this book was written), and knew some of the folks responsible for making it so... nice.
• Two books by Peter Salus: A Quarter Century of UNIX, and Casting the Net (foreword by Vint Cerf!). Excellent for highly technical audiences, next-to-useless for general audiences. Sorry, Peter. (Random fact: I was friends briefly with his daughter when we were in high school. I believe she still works at Linux Magazine.)

Good luck with the class! --Tom Geller

• Startup, by Jerry Kaplan. A 1994 tale about pen-computing venture Go, and how it went through $75MM in capital before burning up -- as told by the CEO (!).
  
  
• aol.com, by Kara Swisher. If you don't want to assign the whole book, the second chapter (about the company's founding by an alcoholic, eccentric, self-destructive entrepreneur) is worth the price of admission alone.
  
  
• Good stuff, but not quite as compelling:
  • Netscape Time, by Jim Clark (with Owen Edwards). A fairly human and not-too-smug account of the company's glory years. (c) 1999, when the stock was still worth something.)
  • The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman. Written with flair and wit. Really about one specific person, though -- doesn't dwell on bigger insights on the industry.
  • High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems, by Karen Southwick. Too adoring. By pure coincidence, I did P.R. work for Sun (after this book was written), and knew some of the folks responsible for making it so... nice.
• Two books by Peter Salus: A Quarter Century of UNIX, and Casting the Net (foreword by Vint Cerf!). Excellent for highly technical audiences, next-to-useless for general audiences. Sorry, Peter. (Random fact: I was friends briefly with his daughter when we were in high school. I believe she still works at Linux Magazine.)

Good luck with the class! --Tom Geller

• Startup, by Jerry Kaplan. A 1994 tale about pen-computing venture Go, and how it went through $75MM in capital before burning up -- as told by the CEO (!).
  
  
• aol.com, by Kara Swisher. If you don't want to assign the whole book, the second chapter (about the company's founding by an alcoholic, eccentric, self-destructive entrepreneur) is worth the price of admission alone.
  
  
• Good stuff, but not quite as compelling:
  • Netscape Time, by Jim Clark (with Owen Edwards). A fairly human and not-too-smug account of the company's glory years. (c) 1999, when the stock was still worth something.)
  • The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman. Written with flair and wit. Really about one specific person, though -- doesn't dwell on bigger insights on the industry.
  • High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems, by Karen Southwick. Too adoring. By pure coincidence, I did P.R. work for Sun (after this book was written), and knew some of the folks responsible for making it so... nice.
• Two books by Peter Salus: A Quarter Century of UNIX, and Casting the Net (foreword by Vint Cerf!). Excellent for highly technical audiences, next-to-useless for general audiences. Sorry, Peter. (Random fact: I was friends briefly with his daughter when we were in high school. I believe she still works at Linux Magazine.)

Good luck with the class! --Tom Geller

• Startup, by Jerry Kaplan. A 1994 tale about pen-computing venture Go, and how it went through $75MM in capital before burning up -- as told by the CEO (!).
  
  
• aol.com, by Kara Swisher. If you don't want to assign the whole book, the second chapter (about the company's founding by an alcoholic, eccentric, self-destructive entrepreneur) is worth the price of admission alone.
  
  
• Good stuff, but not quite as compelling:
  • Netscape Time, by Jim Clark (with Owen Edwards). A fairly human and not-too-smug account of the company's glory years. (c) 1999, when the stock was still worth something.)
  • The Second Coming of Steve Jobs, by Alan Deutschman. Written with flair and wit. Really about one specific person, though -- doesn't dwell on bigger insights on the industry.
  • High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems, by Karen Southwick. Too adoring. By pure coincidence, I did P.R. work for Sun (after this book was written), and knew some of the folks responsible for making it so... nice.
• Two books by Peter Salus: A Quarter Century of UNIX, and Casting the Net (foreword by Vint Cerf!). Excellent for highly technical audiences, next-to-useless for general audiences. Sorry, Peter. (Random fact: I was friends briefly with his daughter when we were in high school. I believe she still works at Linux Magazine.)

Good luck with the class! --Tom Geller

Powells - disclaimer: I used to work for them. They have more obscure merchandise than you can shake a stick at, so if you ever need an old math or engineering text, try em out.

(yeah, I'm a shill- but that's what this topic's about)

"We need to get back to doing real science, the kind that generates patents!" --Schizmatrix by Bruce Sterling, by maybe it should be J. Craig Ventner

I'm sorry if I'm a traditionalist, but aren't games about having fun? Why do they have to teach us about zero sum? They shouldn't teach us anything.

Play is learning. Games do teach.

Have a look at a book like You Can't Say "You Can't Play" for a great example of what some Kindergartners and their teacher learn when she decides to make a new rule; not for any particular game, but for *play in general*.

Sure, some of the worst games created are the ones that were designed above all else to teach particular lessons. Those ones are far too didactic to be fun. But even the fun games teach.

Monopoly: (predatory) economics.
Organized sports: shared responsibilities, specialization, teamwork, individual achievement.
Chess: social ordering, scenario analysis.
Clue: deductive reasoning.
Scrabble: vocabulary, resource allocation.
...

I don't see anything wrong with someone casting about for games that suit a particular learning outcome. But yeah, make sure it can *also* be enjoyed.

And why not? Simple. It won't live up to its promises. No matter how many of your tax dollars go towards it.

NMD is the direct descendent of SDI, which was the paranoid brainchild of Edward Teller. Teller may be a Nobel Prize-winning physicist (even though he may have used someone else's work to get said honor), but the guy uses fear and secrecy to the extreme. He preys upon the fears of Americans to justify budgets, and uses secrecy to justify hare-brained schemes. (In fact, he rarely submits his "findings" to peer review, which brings his qualifications as a competent scientist in question.)

NMD, if I remember correctly, is now being sheltered by a Teller protege, Dr. Lowell Wood. (I may have the name wrong, sorry.) This guy at least is showing some more political finesse than the hyperbolic Teller, since he's trying to sell NMD (and its "smart pebbles" concept) much like NASA was trying to sell "faster, better, cheaper" probes: getting more for less. (Compare and contrast with the $8 billion flushed down the toilet with SDI in the midst of a Cold War frenzy.) But, Teller & his acolytes still prefer using a veil of secrecy in the name of national security to justify their claims, as opposed to allowing their ideas to stand on their own merit in a public (or at least not so classified) forum, the way real scientists do.

I'll conclude by recommending a great book on the subject of hoodwinking the public with faulty science: "Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud" by Dr. Robert Park. Read about it here .

(If you're real nice, and CmdrTaco wouldn't mind, I'll submit a review of it. Ask me or I'll forget about it.)

".sig, .sig a .sog, .sig out loud, .sig out .strog"

And Damn Their Eyes, they even provide that choice between used and new ONLINE (gasp!)

Powells.com for some of the best damn selection on the web.

Crafter
a maker of Fine MindCrafted answers

The problem they have is with Amazon's marketing tactics. When someone searches for a new book, that they might otherwise buy, Amazon pops up a link to a used copy of the book as well. Which is a sort of encouragement to the person to buy the book used instead of new as they'd originally intended. i.e., Amazon seems like it's trying to talk people out of buying new books, and convince them to buy used books instead. This is what is driving the authors into a snit.

And I have to admit, I can see their point. As I said, used bookstores and libraries exist. They're factored into the equation already--that a certain amount of people will buy new; others will buy used; others will read in the library and not buy at all. But Amazon seems like it is trying to skew the equation, thus depriving those writers of their bread and butter.
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