I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club for a very long time (probably over a decade). I joined back in the pre internet days (in the early 90's). Early on I thought it was just great, I would keep up with the mailings (you had to explicitly say you didn't want the book(s) of the month in order for them to NOT automatically mail it to you) and felt like it was a pretty good deal (although with shipping I was always a little bit unsure).
But after I got somewhat of a life (and forgot to fill out those cards saying I didn't want the book of the month on a monthly basis) they started bombarding me with books (which I always sent back), but it was a hassle (and I'm sure my mail person hated me). I did eventually get on the list so that they no longer automatically sent me the books, but by then I was done with them.
To me the web (Amazon, B&N online, etc.) and the proliferation of huge physical book stores totally obsoleted the need for the SFBC, especially in the age of cheap shipping. Also, I agree with some of the other posters, your library is probably a good first stop, that's were I got started back before I had money to burn on books.
There's a simple fix for this though, since there IS a 64 bit build of Ubuntu 7.10. I've been using it since it came out and it works well (and it does see and use all 4 Gigs of RAM).
I would disagree based on my reading of the article. The kids that were praised for their hard work did better on future exams (even when presented with difficult problems), then kids who were praised for their intelligence. Once they hit problems that were not trivially solvable, they determined that they simply couldn't do it and just stopped trying (what this article calls learned helplessness).
I realize that this is totally anecdotal, but when I was quite young (1st or 2nd grade) I was told I had a learning disability and had to take special classes for years (until early high school), mainly focusing on how to learn/study. One of my best friends who was classified as gifted and was in fact placed in various gifted programs.
I trudged through grammar/middle school and many parts of high school, only becoming "smart" (to some of my peers) because I took a strong interest in several subjects and worked very hard at them (science, history and computer programming to name a few). Many subjects were incredibly difficult for me such as math, foreign languages and english (because my spelling and handwriting sucked, but these improved dramatically when I got my first computer with a spell checker!). I don't think I ever received a grade higher than a C for low B for any math class I ever took. But none the less I persisted and have done quite well in life and academically. I ended up getting a degree in computer science (in which I had to take many, many math classes), and got an MBA with a concentration in finance (honestly, easy stuff compared to what you need to do for comp sci).
My friend did very well in grammar school (straight A's), pretty good in middle school, ok early on in high school, and then just fell apart. He ended up dropping out of college after his freshman year. Like myself, he was not a genius when it came to math, but he just couldn't deal with it. Unfortunately for my story we ended up growing apart as friends (after he dropped out of college), and I have no idea how he turned out. He could have very well turned it around, he certainly had the talent.
The same thing happened to several others I know, many of them scored perfect 1600's on their SAT's (back when that was the top score), got into great schools, and then ending up dropping out (again, maybe they made it big later on, I lost track of most of them).
So based on my experience I would agree that hard work pays off (at least academically).
I've been using s3sync to upload/download stuff to Amazon's S3 service for months. It works great. I even use it on Windows (since it's a ruby program, it works anywhere).
There are many graphical managers as well, I use jetS3t, which is a java based gui client.
The huge added bonus (for me) is that with S3 it's trivial to make something public (with or without authentication), or even have it host a torrent.
I realize that this is slashdot, and I will be modded down for saying this, but if you read the actual bill, the very first item states:
(1) After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush Authorized the National Security Agency to intercept communications between people inside the United States, including American citizens, and terrorism suspects overseas.
As far as I can remember (as a student of history) the President of the United States has ALWAYS had the ability to intercept foreign communications within the boarders of the United States (Remember Washington intercepted the communications of General Benedict Arnold and thus was able to stop him from turning over West Point to the British). The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was put in place by congress to make sure the rights of US citizens are protected.
"I mean, they are all very hot," the governor says. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it." He goes on to recall a former weightlifter and competitor, Cuban-born Sergio Oliva. "He was like that," Schwarzenegger says.
So obviously the original quote was being taken out of context. When he said "Hot" he meant passionate, unless he's also into Cuban Male weight lifters...
This service does look fantastic for the price. They offer 50GB for $15/month and unlimited transfers with samba/nfs/sftp/ftp/rsync support, which is much better than the services reviewed in the article.
Unfortunetly when you go to sign up you get: "Ordering is closed temporarily. It will return in 1 weeks time." To bad, I for one will check back in a week to see if it's up. It almost seems to good to be true, I tried doing a couple of google searches on it and came up with essentially nothing. Anybody use these guys?
For those who don't RTFA (from the NYTimes), the meat of the story is buried 16 paragraphs into the article:
What the agency calls a "special collection program" began soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, as it looked for new tools to attack terrorism. The program accelerated in early 2002 after the Central Intelligence Agency started capturing top Qaeda operatives overseas, including Abu Zubaydah, who was arrested in Pakistan in March 2002. The C.I.A. seized the terrorists' computers, cellphones and personal phone directories, said the officials familiar with the program. The N.S.A. surveillance was intended to exploit those numbers and addresses as quickly as possible, they said.
In addition to eavesdropping on those numbers and reading e-mail messages to and from the Qaeda figures, the N.S.A. began monitoring others linked to them, creating an expanding chain. While most of the numbers and addresses were overseas, hundreds were in the United States, the officials said.
So they were monitoring the communications of people that had their phone numbers or emails on a terrorists computer, which is exactly what they (the NSA) should do.
According to the article MOST of this was done internationally (and therefor not an issue). The potential grey area is that some of the communications monitored may have been USA/International (which is generally allowed, according to the article) and USA/USA (in which case they would need a warrent).
Slashdot Mirror
I was a member of the Science Fiction Book Club for a very long time (probably over a decade). I joined back in the pre internet days (in the early 90's). Early on I thought it was just great, I would keep up with the mailings (you had to explicitly say you didn't want the book(s) of the month in order for them to NOT automatically mail it to you) and felt like it was a pretty good deal (although with shipping I was always a little bit unsure).
But after I got somewhat of a life (and forgot to fill out those cards saying I didn't want the book of the month on a monthly basis) they started bombarding me with books (which I always sent back), but it was a hassle (and I'm sure my mail person hated me). I did eventually get on the list so that they no longer automatically sent me the books, but by then I was done with them.
To me the web (Amazon, B&N online, etc.) and the proliferation of huge physical book stores totally obsoleted the need for the SFBC, especially in the age of cheap shipping. Also, I agree with some of the other posters, your library is probably a good first stop, that's were I got started back before I had money to burn on books.
There's a simple fix for this though, since there IS a 64 bit build of Ubuntu 7.10. I've been using it since it came out and it works well (and it does see and use all 4 Gigs of RAM).
I would disagree based on my reading of the article. The kids that were praised for their hard work did better on future exams (even when presented with difficult problems), then kids who were praised for their intelligence. Once they hit problems that were not trivially solvable, they determined that they simply couldn't do it and just stopped trying (what this article calls learned helplessness).
I realize that this is totally anecdotal, but when I was quite young (1st or 2nd grade) I was told I had a learning disability and had to take special classes for years (until early high school), mainly focusing on how to learn/study. One of my best friends who was classified as gifted and was in fact placed in various gifted programs.
I trudged through grammar/middle school and many parts of high school, only becoming "smart" (to some of my peers) because I took a strong interest in several subjects and worked very hard at them (science, history and computer programming to name a few). Many subjects were incredibly difficult for me such as math, foreign languages and english (because my spelling and handwriting sucked, but these improved dramatically when I got my first computer with a spell checker!). I don't think I ever received a grade higher than a C for low B for any math class I ever took. But none the less I persisted and have done quite well in life and academically. I ended up getting a degree in computer science (in which I had to take many, many math classes), and got an MBA with a concentration in finance (honestly, easy stuff compared to what you need to do for comp sci).
My friend did very well in grammar school (straight A's), pretty good in middle school, ok early on in high school, and then just fell apart. He ended up dropping out of college after his freshman year. Like myself, he was not a genius when it came to math, but he just couldn't deal with it. Unfortunately for my story we ended up growing apart as friends (after he dropped out of college), and I have no idea how he turned out. He could have very well turned it around, he certainly had the talent.
The same thing happened to several others I know, many of them scored perfect 1600's on their SAT's (back when that was the top score), got into great schools, and then ending up dropping out (again, maybe they made it big later on, I lost track of most of them).
So based on my experience I would agree that hard work pays off (at least academically).
I've been using s3sync to upload/download stuff to Amazon's S3 service for months. It works great. I even use it on Windows (since it's a ruby program, it works anywhere).
There are many graphical managers as well, I use jetS3t, which is a java based gui client.
The huge added bonus (for me) is that with S3 it's trivial to make something public (with or without authentication), or even have it host a torrent.
I realize that this is slashdot, and I will be modded down for saying this, but if you read the actual bill, the very first item states:
(1) After the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, President Bush Authorized the National Security Agency to intercept communications between people inside the United States, including American citizens, and terrorism suspects overseas.
As far as I can remember (as a student of history) the President of the United States has ALWAYS had the ability to intercept foreign communications within the boarders of the United States (Remember Washington intercepted the communications of General Benedict Arnold and thus was able to stop him from turning over West Point to the British). The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was put in place by congress to make sure the rights of US citizens are protected.
Interestingly if you actually read the article in the LA Times:
e p08,0,5945392.story?coll=la-home-headlines
http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-meeting8s
This is the entire statement out of the times:
"I mean, they are all very hot," the governor says. "They have the, you know, part of the black blood in them and part of the Latino blood in them that together makes it." He goes on to recall a former weightlifter and competitor, Cuban-born Sergio Oliva. "He was like that," Schwarzenegger says.
So obviously the original quote was being taken out of context. When he said "Hot" he meant passionate, unless he's also into Cuban Male weight lifters...
This service does look fantastic for the price. They offer 50GB for $15/month and unlimited transfers with samba/nfs/sftp/ftp/rsync support, which is much better than the services reviewed in the article.
Unfortunetly when you go to sign up you get: "Ordering is closed temporarily. It will return in 1 weeks time." To bad, I for one will check back in a week to see if it's up. It almost seems to good to be true, I tried doing a couple of google searches on it and came up with essentially nothing. Anybody use these guys?