The latest issue of Consumer Reports has a multi-page comparison of cell phone companies and plans. I am sure your local library has one. At the moment their website has only the January issue available online. To summarize the articles very briefly, all the companies have way more customer complaints than most businesses-- Verizon has the best customer service and Sprint the worst. The plan you want may depend on where you live. Glancing at their tables comparing plans, I see ATT at the top of them all, and it has the second-best customer service after Verizon.
Unsolicited plug: I subscribe to CR both the paper and online versions, it saves me money, wasted time, and lots of bad decisions every year.
Apparently the sage of Walden grew up using the old New England pronunciation of his family name, accent on the first syllable, rather than the (original, French) pronunciation now popular, accenting the second syllable, according to this website and a bunch of other guys. And of course Albert Einstein pronounced his last name "Ine-shtine," as German-speakers still correctly do, but English-speakers sound funny saying it that way in the states. Or how about the correct Dutch pronunciation of "van Gogh" with full gutteral g-sounds?
Anyway, it is cool to discover that the Pepys family prefers Pee-piss to Peeps, but since most people don't know this, you'll probably be understood by more people if you still just say Peeps, IMHO.
I admit to enjoying Pepys's sex tales, though I'm not so interested in his bowels. I also get a bang out of the polyglot mix of Spanish, French, and Latin he used to disguise these bits in case his wife figured out the rest of his shorthand.
To quote a Boston Globe article, now available only in the Google cache:
"Edited out until as recently as 1970 were the clumsy rolls beneath alehouse tables and the gropings in horse-drawn carriages, generally rendered in his unique personal porno style: 'and yo did take her, the first time in my life, sobra mi genu and poner mi mano sub her jupes and toca su thigh, which did hazer me great pleasure.' "
...he came up with an innovative way to do something that nobody else is doing--and I loved the description of that homemade mouse-glove.
Yes, we can think up modifications and improvements--the original guy still did something cool. It's a lot easier to improve somebody else's idea than it is to be crazy enough to be an inventor. And speaking of crazy, I do agree that surfing the web in your car could be dangerous--but not as dangerous as cell phones!
They're not uncommon--stupid, yes, but uncommon? No.
According to this Guardian article McDonald's trademarks include not only "We love to see you smile" and "Have you had your break today?" but more than 100 other phrases including "Black History makers of tomorrow" and "Hey, it could happen". It's hard to see why McDonalds should get an exclusive right to these words, but if nobody challenges idiocy like Microsoft's claim on "Windows", such looting of the public domain will prosper. What next, is Microsoft going to sue folks who use the word "Word"?
My first memory: I was at my grandmother's house, staring at the radiator and wondering if my parents would come back for me. They had gone to the hospital, where my sister was getting born, so I know I was 15 months old. If someone explains to me why adults (none of whom were around) later "reminded" me of this unpleasant memory, I will be impressed by the theory that we can't remember stuff that happened before we were 2.
One hundred years ago, the psychological/medical authorities "knew" that masturbation caused insanity, to name only its least unpleasant consequence.
Fifty years ago, the authorities "knew" that healthy women had orgasms after brief bouts of missionary-position intercourse--and that autism was caused by cold, rejecting parents.
Twenty-five years ago, the authorities "knew" that smallpox would never again be a threat and it was a great idea to stop vaccinating kids against it. American doctors also "knew" that kids should all sleep on their stomachs to prevent inhaling their own spit, a brilliant scheme that resulted in an unprecedented toll of crib deaths by smothering.
Who knows which of the many things authorities now "know" are going to look equally outrageous in the future? I'm not saying all or even most textbook ideas are dumb--just that human error and arrogance can sometimes sabotage even the smartest of us.
shut up with your bigotry. Will you assholes ever learn to respect other religions or do you need a few more 9/11s to get it through your thik skulls.
Your goals are too modest--I think the deep thought, humane empathy, and tolerance expressed by this AC deserve not only to be imitated in the US but all over the globe.
In fact, I think in a lot of places they already are quite standard.
Expect people to cut you off, jaywalk, and stop at random places. Just expect it...Don't take it personally.
Amen to that--thus I recommend Boston BINGO on any car trip. Each outrageous driver or pedestrian gives me a point--when I get to five points I win!!!
I haven't actually won the game yet, but I once got all the way to three on the few blocks of Mass Ave between Harvard and MIT. (If I hadn't been carting my daughter's pet snake, I would have been riding the Red Line, I do know it's better.)
I would like to recommend some fun presents--anybody else want to join in?
Voice changer from Discovery Toys, about $16. The best is to get everybody to laugh into it--you don't know "bwa-ha-ha" till you've heard this. I can hardly wait to use it on a telemarketer. "Yes, I would like to discuss your low mortgage rates. There is a bridge in Brooklyn I want to purchase, yet local banks are strangely reluctant to help me--puny humans!!!"
The extended DVD set of LOTR. Can't wait to watch every minute.
Not high-tech but a perfect computer companion--a bird feeder to hang outside the study window, just to remind me that life does exist outside.
...after a peaceful Christmas morning with our whole family opening gifts. Nobody got anything huge this year--but everybody got some fun stuff. Then by 11 a.m. everyone was totally, instantly starved, so we put the world's fastest-ever Xmas meal on the table. Vegetarian stuff is really quick, just the shopping and planning and pre-cooking took time. (I'm not vegetarian, btw, but everyone else in the family is, so what the heck.)
One of our neighbors lives alone, so I took her over a big slab of eggnog cheesecake. It turns out the two friends who were supposed to drive over to have Christmas dinner with her had flaked out, scared by the snow. If I hadn't shown up with the cheesecake, she wouldn't have seen a single person today. I could see her table all set up for three people, two of whom would now not show up. She is about eighty, and I bet she worked at least as hard as I did getting ready for the big day.
My Christmas resolution is to spend some time getting to know this neighbor better. Also watch the extended DVD set of LOTR I got, and maybe go see Two Towers again.
Some claim those mazes of one-way streets were put there on purpose. Keeping a steady flow of 10,000 autos daily going round-and-around-and-around, totally lost, generates enough waste heat to save homeowners millions on fuel oil.
...is going on at the Boston Museum of Science. If you don't live in Boston (gosh, why not? It's the hub of the universe), the same movie will probably be traveling to similar humongous-screen theaters elsewhere.
What a headline: Lovable trickster created a monster with Bigfoot hoax
Lovable? This jackass and his family played a stupid practical joke, then swore up and down that they were telling the truth. Now they are having a very public laugh at the trusting people who believed them.
But this does clear up a mystery about those Microsoft/astroturf guys who hang out on Slashdot. "Shameless-Bullshit-Enabler Discovered in Washington Water Supply."
In addition to lots of old reference stuff, Bartleby.com has the Harvard Classics available. I don't know what their policy is about duplicating and distributing their files, though.
And I quote: "The Harvard Classics The Shelf of Fiction
Selected by Charles W. Eliot, LLD
The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume "5-foot shelf of books" and the the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century.
NEW YORK: P.F. COLLIER & SON, 1909-1917, NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 2001,
The Harvard Classics
VOL. I. --- His Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin --- Journal, by John Woolman --- Fruits of Solitude, by William Penn
II. --- The Apology, Phædo and Crito of Plato --- The Golden Sayings of Epictetus --- The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
III. --- Essays, Civil and Moral & The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon --- Areopagitica & Tractate on Education, by John Milton --- Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne
IV. --- Complete Poems Written in English, by John Milton
V. --- Essays and English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
VI. --- Poems and Songs, by Robert Burns --- VII. --- The Confessions of Saint Augustine --- The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis --- VIII. --- Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, The Furies & Prometheus Bound of --- Aeschylus --- Oedipus the King & Antigone of Sophocles --- Hippolytus & The Bacchæ of Euripides --- The Frogs of Aristophanes
IX. --- On Friendship, On Old Age & Letters, by Cicero --- Letters, by Pliny the Younger
X. --- Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
XI. --- The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
XII. --- Lives, by Plutarch
XIII. --- Æneid, by Vergil
XIV. --- Don Quixote, Part 1, by Cervantes
XV. --- The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan --- The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton
XVI. --- Stories from the Thousand and One Nights
XVII. --- Fables, by Æsop --- Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm --- Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
XVIII. --- All for Love, by John Dryden --- The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan --- She Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith --- The Cenci, by Percy Bysshe Shelley --- A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, by Robert Browning --- Manfred, by Lord Byron --- XIX. --- Faust, Part I, Egmont & Hermann and Dorothea, by J.W. von Goethe --- Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
XX. --- The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
XXI. --- I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni
XXII. --- The Odyssey of Homer
XXIII. --- Two Years before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
XXIV. --- On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French --- Revolution & A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
XXV. --- Autobiography & On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill --- Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh & Sir Walter Scott, by --- Thomas Carlyle
XXVI. --- Life Is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca --- Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille --- Phædra, by Jean Racine --- Tartuffe, by Molière --- Minna von Barnhelm, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing --- Wilhelm Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller
XXVII. English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay
XXVIII. Essays: English and American
XXIX. The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
XXX. --- Scientific Papers
XXXI. --- The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
XXXII. --- Literary and Philosophical Essays
XXXIII. --- Voyages and Travels: Ancient and Modern
XXXIV. --- Discourse on Method, by René Descartes --- Letters on the English, by Voltaire --- On the Inequality among Mankind & Profession of Faith of a Savoyard --- Vicar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau --- Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
XXXV. --- The Chronicles of Jean Froissart --- The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory --- A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison
XXXVI. --- The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli --- The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper --- Utopia, by Sir Thomas More --- The Ninety-Five Thesis, Address to the Christian Nobility & Concerning --- Christian Liberty, by Martin Luther
XXXVII. --- Some Thoughts Concerning Education, by John Locke --- Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics --- and Atheists, by George Berkeley --- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume
XXXVIII. --- The Oath of Hippocrates --- Journeys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Paré --- On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey --- The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, by Edward Jenner --- The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, by Oliver Wendell Holmes --- On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, by Joseph Lister --- Scientific Papers, by Louis Pasteur --- Scientific Papers, by Charles Lyell
XXXIX. --- Prefaces and Prologues
XL. --- English Poetry I: Chaucer to Gray
XLI. --- English Poetry II: Collins to Fitzgerald
XLII. --- English Poetry III: Tennyson to Whitman
XLIII. --- American Historical Documents: 1000-1904
XLIV. --- Confucian: The Sayings of Confucius --- Hebrew: Job, Psalms & Ecclesiastes --- Christian I: Luke & Acts
XLV. --- Christian II: Corinthians I & II & Hymns --- Buddhist: Writings --- Hindu: The Bhagavad-Gita --- Mohammedan: Chapters from the Koran
XLVI. --- Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe --- Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth & The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
XLVII. --- The Shoemaker's Holiday, by Thomas Dekker --- The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson --- Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher --- The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster --- A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger
XLVIII. --- Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works, by Blaise Pascal
XLIX. --- Epic & Saga: Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Destruction of Dá --- Derga's Hostel & The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
...to this thread rated higher than zero interest (unlike yours.)
If you don't like the topic, go post to one you fancy. A lot of geeks have to do lots of business travel, and some nice geeky destinations round the world are a very cheerful, interesting thought.
Boston area, I would recommend the Big Dig and MIT's AI lab. Both have occasional public tours.
Greensburg, Kansas has a geek double-header. The world's largest hand-dug well, and the world's second-largest stony-iron meteorite
Lowell, Mass. has a ninteenth-century mill rigged up as a national park, very interesting tour.
There are lots of great European geek sights, but labels are almost all in local languages. Some good ones:
Paris has a great display on techno-history of WW I and WW II at the Invalides, and a fine retrospective on military medicine near Port Royal metro stop. The Cite de Science et d'Industrie sounds good, but it's kid-stuff.
Berlin has a tiny "Zuckermuseum", which says slavery ended only because German chemists perfected beet sugar.
Vienna has a wonderful clock museum.
The Utrecht (Netherlands) University museum has fascinating "medical curiosities" going back to 1700s or so. Also, go up inside at least one windmill, you can really see how it works.
...imaginary universes that surprise you again and again. Books can do this too, and more books than movies do it really well.
Douglas Adams was a master of getting you to imagine great special effects--he started off writing for radio. In addition to HHG, I love _Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency_ and _Starship Titanic_ (cowritten with Terry Gilliam.)
Fun sci-fi eye candy:
The attack on the Death Star in the original Star Wars
Dune
Gotham City in the Batman movie with Catwoman in it
I probably wouldn't have bothered posting a response, but I thought the "Stupid whore" thing was creepy too. So I just want to stick up for bbc22405 here.
I thought the bedside table joke somebody else posted was pretty funny, though.
...to single out someone as an "AC", as if that alone discredits them.
Sorry, my point wasn't that ACs never say good stuff, but that a lot of the flames get posted by ACs--many of whom, I'm sure, have/. accounts with lower numbers than I do!
Anyway, if you care, the opinions you just expressed are worthy of respect, IMO.
Ah, if only more people in this world were as clear-sighted and rational as you.. utopia would no doubt be near at hand.
IMO Utopia would come closer if more people tried to be "clear-sighted and rational"
--do you think sarcasm and flames are a better approach?
The EULA in question violates one of the time-honored values of open-source. To suggest that people objecting to it must 1) despise the "mere programmer" and 2) have no morality--wow! You're wasting your time on/., AC, you could be pulling down big bucks writing speeches for politicians.
Oops, a little sarcasm just crept into my post too, didn't it? Sorry about that, but it is contagious.
About 40 years ago, one of the things a university's statistics department "did" was help analyze statistical data for other scientists whose experiments yielded some. Now, thanks to easy computer programs, researchers (or their grad students) just type their data into the little blanks and --bingo!--statistical analysis! Probably pretty good statistical analysis too, in about 9 out of 10 papers, and wouldn't it be nice if we knew which was #10.
I believe a lot of statistics departments got downsized once computer programs could do the stuff they were doing.
I foresee the same process with computational biology. That is, biologists trained in nuances of living systems don't have a clue how to plug data into computers for simulation or whatever. There is a natural opportunity for computational specialists to get involved analyzing some interesting stuff. The question is, how long does the stuff stay interesting?
For example, modeling fluid dynamics inside a cell is fascinating the first time somebody does it. After a few iterations, it's cut and dried to plug in appropriate values for viscosity, boundary conditions, etc. Cells won't change much in the next 40 years.
I think ecological models will stay interesting the longest, if only because this beautiful planet of ours creates so much variety in those initial values and boundary conditions.
If you know someone who has trouble walking, what about an electric scooter? There are a bunch of models for sale at Invacare , and probably other manufacturers also.
I looked at the spec sheet for their Zoom 3 model, here's how it stacks up against a Segway's specs on Amazon.
Slashdot Mirror
Unsolicited plug: I subscribe to CR both the paper and online versions, it saves me money, wasted time, and lots of bad decisions every year.
Anyway, it is cool to discover that the Pepys family prefers Pee-piss to Peeps, but since most people don't know this, you'll probably be understood by more people if you still just say Peeps, IMHO.
Wasn't that what WC Fields claimed his name was in _The Bank Dick_?
To quote a Boston Globe article, now available only in the Google cache:
"Edited out until as recently as 1970 were the clumsy rolls beneath alehouse tables and the gropings in horse-drawn carriages, generally rendered in his unique personal porno style: 'and yo did take her, the first time in my life, sobra mi genu and poner mi mano sub her jupes and toca su thigh, which did hazer me great pleasure.' "
Yes, we can think up modifications and improvements--the original guy still did something cool. It's a lot easier to improve somebody else's idea than it is to be crazy enough to be an inventor. And speaking of crazy, I do agree that surfing the web in your car could be dangerous--but not as dangerous as cell phones!
In this case, I say, go Lindows!
One hundred years ago, the psychological/medical authorities "knew" that masturbation caused insanity, to name only its least unpleasant consequence.
Fifty years ago, the authorities "knew" that healthy women had orgasms after brief bouts of missionary-position intercourse--and that autism was caused by cold, rejecting parents.
Twenty-five years ago, the authorities "knew" that smallpox would never again be a threat and it was a great idea to stop vaccinating kids against it. American doctors also "knew" that kids should all sleep on their stomachs to prevent inhaling their own spit, a brilliant scheme that resulted in an unprecedented toll of crib deaths by smothering.
Who knows which of the many things authorities now "know" are going to look equally outrageous in the future? I'm not saying all or even most textbook ideas are dumb--just that human error and arrogance can sometimes sabotage even the smartest of us.
Your goals are too modest--I think the deep thought, humane empathy, and tolerance expressed by this AC deserve not only to be imitated in the US but all over the globe.
In fact, I think in a lot of places they already are quite standard.
Amen to that--thus I recommend Boston BINGO on any car trip. Each outrageous driver or pedestrian gives me a point--when I get to five points I win!!!
I haven't actually won the game yet, but I once got all the way to three on the few blocks of Mass Ave between Harvard and MIT. (If I hadn't been carting my daughter's pet snake, I would have been riding the Red Line, I do know it's better.)
One of our neighbors lives alone, so I took her over a big slab of eggnog cheesecake. It turns out the two friends who were supposed to drive over to have Christmas dinner with her had flaked out, scared by the snow. If I hadn't shown up with the cheesecake, she wouldn't have seen a single person today. I could see her table all set up for three people, two of whom would now not show up. She is about eighty, and I bet she worked at least as hard as I did getting ready for the big day.
My Christmas resolution is to spend some time getting to know this neighbor better. Also watch the extended DVD set of LOTR I got, and maybe go see Two Towers again.
Some claim those mazes of one-way streets were put there on purpose. Keeping a steady flow of 10,000 autos daily going round-and-around-and-around, totally lost, generates enough waste heat to save homeowners millions on fuel oil.
...is going on at the Boston Museum of Science. If you don't live in Boston (gosh, why not? It's the hub of the universe), the same movie will probably be traveling to similar humongous-screen theaters elsewhere.
http://triggur.org/silo/site.html
World's weirdest site--exploring an abandoned missile silo.
Lovable? This jackass and his family played a stupid practical joke, then swore up and down that they were telling the truth. Now they are having a very public laugh at the trusting people who believed them.
But this does clear up a mystery about those Microsoft/astroturf guys who hang out on Slashdot. "Shameless-Bullshit-Enabler Discovered in Washington Water Supply."
Don't worry, /. has now heard everything I know about Kansas. I did read your post, and thought you listed a lot of cool stuff, BTW.
And I quote: "The Harvard Classics The Shelf of Fiction Selected by Charles W. Eliot, LLD The most comprehensive and well-researched anthology of all time comprises both the 50-volume "5-foot shelf of books" and the the 20-volume Shelf of Fiction. Together they cover every major literary figure, philosopher, religion, folklore and historical subject through the twentieth century.
NEW YORK: P.F. COLLIER & SON, 1909-1917, NEW YORK: BARTLEBY.COM, 2001, The Harvard Classics
VOL. I. --- His Autobiography, by Benjamin Franklin --- Journal, by John Woolman --- Fruits of Solitude, by William Penn
II. --- The Apology, Phædo and Crito of Plato --- The Golden Sayings of Epictetus --- The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius
III. --- Essays, Civil and Moral & The New Atlantis, by Francis Bacon --- Areopagitica & Tractate on Education, by John Milton --- Religio Medici, by Sir Thomas Browne
IV. --- Complete Poems Written in English, by John Milton
V. --- Essays and English Traits, by Ralph Waldo Emerson
VI. --- Poems and Songs, by Robert Burns --- VII. --- The Confessions of Saint Augustine --- The Imitation of Christ, by Thomas à Kempis --- VIII. --- Agamemnon, The Libation-Bearers, The Furies & Prometheus Bound of --- Aeschylus --- Oedipus the King & Antigone of Sophocles --- Hippolytus & The Bacchæ of Euripides --- The Frogs of Aristophanes
IX. --- On Friendship, On Old Age & Letters, by Cicero --- Letters, by Pliny the Younger
X. --- Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith
XI. --- The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin
XII. --- Lives, by Plutarch
XIII. --- Æneid, by Vergil
XIV. --- Don Quixote, Part 1, by Cervantes
XV. --- The Pilgrim's Progress, by John Bunyan --- The Lives of Donne and Herbert, by Izaak Walton
XVI. --- Stories from the Thousand and One Nights
XVII. --- Fables, by Æsop --- Household Tales, by Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm --- Tales, by Hans Christian Andersen
XVIII. --- All for Love, by John Dryden --- The School for Scandal, by Richard Brinsley Sheridan --- She Stoops to Conquer, by Oliver Goldsmith --- The Cenci, by Percy Bysshe Shelley --- A Blot in the 'Scutcheon, by Robert Browning --- Manfred, by Lord Byron --- XIX. --- Faust, Part I, Egmont & Hermann and Dorothea, by J.W. von Goethe --- Dr. Faustus, by Christopher Marlowe
XX. --- The Divine Comedy, by Dante Alighieri
XXI. --- I Promessi Sposi, by Alessandro Manzoni
XXII. --- The Odyssey of Homer
XXIII. --- Two Years before the Mast, by Richard Henry Dana, Jr.
XXIV. --- On Taste, On the Sublime and Beautiful, Reflections on the French --- Revolution & A Letter to a Noble Lord, by Edmund Burke
XXV. --- Autobiography & On Liberty, by John Stuart Mill --- Characteristics, Inaugural Address at Edinburgh & Sir Walter Scott, by --- Thomas Carlyle
XXVI. --- Life Is a Dream, by Pedro Calderón de la Barca --- Polyeucte, by Pierre Corneille --- Phædra, by Jean Racine --- Tartuffe, by Molière --- Minna von Barnhelm, by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing --- Wilhelm Tell, by Friedrich von Schiller
XXVII. English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay
XXVIII. Essays: English and American
XXIX. The Voyage of the Beagle, by Charles Darwin
XXX. --- Scientific Papers
XXXI. --- The Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini
XXXII. --- Literary and Philosophical Essays
XXXIII. --- Voyages and Travels: Ancient and Modern
XXXIV. --- Discourse on Method, by René Descartes --- Letters on the English, by Voltaire --- On the Inequality among Mankind & Profession of Faith of a Savoyard --- Vicar, by Jean Jacques Rousseau --- Of Man, Being the First Part of Leviathan, by Thomas Hobbes
XXXV. --- The Chronicles of Jean Froissart --- The Holy Grail, by Sir Thomas Malory --- A Description of Elizabethan England, by William Harrison
XXXVI. --- The Prince, by Niccolo Machiavelli --- The Life of Sir Thomas More, by William Roper --- Utopia, by Sir Thomas More --- The Ninety-Five Thesis, Address to the Christian Nobility & Concerning --- Christian Liberty, by Martin Luther
XXXVII. --- Some Thoughts Concerning Education, by John Locke --- Three Dialogues Between Hylas and Philonous in Opposition to Sceptics --- and Atheists, by George Berkeley --- An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by David Hume
XXXVIII. --- The Oath of Hippocrates --- Journeys in Diverse Places, by Ambroise Paré --- On the Motion of the Heart and Blood in Animals, by William Harvey --- The Three Original Publications on Vaccination Against Smallpox, by Edward Jenner --- The Contagiousness of Puerperal Fever, by Oliver Wendell Holmes --- On the Antiseptic Principle of the Practice of Surgery, by Joseph Lister --- Scientific Papers, by Louis Pasteur --- Scientific Papers, by Charles Lyell
XXXIX. --- Prefaces and Prologues
XL. --- English Poetry I: Chaucer to Gray
XLI. --- English Poetry II: Collins to Fitzgerald
XLII. --- English Poetry III: Tennyson to Whitman
XLIII. --- American Historical Documents: 1000-1904
XLIV. --- Confucian: The Sayings of Confucius --- Hebrew: Job, Psalms & Ecclesiastes --- Christian I: Luke & Acts
XLV. --- Christian II: Corinthians I & II & Hymns --- Buddhist: Writings --- Hindu: The Bhagavad-Gita --- Mohammedan: Chapters from the Koran
XLVI. --- Edward the Second, by Christopher Marlowe --- Hamlet, King Lear, Macbeth & The Tempest, by William Shakespeare
XLVII. --- The Shoemaker's Holiday, by Thomas Dekker --- The Alchemist, by Ben Jonson --- Philaster, by Beaumont and Fletcher --- The Duchess of Malfi, by John Webster --- A New Way to Pay Old Debts, by Philip Massinger
XLVIII. --- Thoughts, Letters & Minor Works, by Blaise Pascal
XLIX. --- Epic & Saga: Beowulf, The Song of Roland, The Destruction of Dá --- Derga's Hostel & The Story of the Volsungs and Niblungs
LI. --- Lectures on the Harvard Classics
If you don't like the topic, go post to one you fancy. A lot of geeks have to do lots of business travel, and some nice geeky destinations round the world are a very cheerful, interesting thought.
There are lots of great European geek sights, but labels are almost all in local languages. Some good ones:
Douglas Adams was a master of getting you to imagine great special effects--he started off writing for radio. In addition to HHG, I love _Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency_ and _Starship Titanic_ (cowritten with Terry Gilliam.)
Fun sci-fi eye candy:
- The attack on the Death Star in the original Star Wars
- Dune
- Gotham City in the Batman movie with Catwoman in it
Really good sci-fi books:I thought the bedside table joke somebody else posted was pretty funny, though.
Sorry, my point wasn't that ACs never say good stuff, but that a lot of the flames get posted by ACs--many of whom, I'm sure, have /. accounts with lower numbers than I do!
Anyway, if you care, the opinions you just expressed are worthy of respect, IMO.
IMO Utopia would come closer if more people tried to be "clear-sighted and rational" --do you think sarcasm and flames are a better approach?
The EULA in question violates one of the time-honored values of open-source. To suggest that people objecting to it must 1) despise the "mere programmer" and 2) have no morality--wow! You're wasting your time on /., AC, you could be pulling down big bucks writing speeches for politicians.
Oops, a little sarcasm just crept into my post too, didn't it? Sorry about that, but it is contagious.
I believe a lot of statistics departments got downsized once computer programs could do the stuff they were doing.
I foresee the same process with computational biology. That is, biologists trained in nuances of living systems don't have a clue how to plug data into computers for simulation or whatever. There is a natural opportunity for computational specialists to get involved analyzing some interesting stuff. The question is, how long does the stuff stay interesting?
For example, modeling fluid dynamics inside a cell is fascinating the first time somebody does it. After a few iterations, it's cut and dried to plug in appropriate values for viscosity, boundary conditions, etc. Cells won't change much in the next 40 years.
I think ecological models will stay interesting the longest, if only because this beautiful planet of ours creates so much variety in those initial values and boundary conditions.
I looked at the spec sheet for their Zoom 3 model, here's how it stacks up against a Segway's specs on Amazon.
Weight: Segway: 83 lbs Zoom: 96 lbs
Width: Segway: 25" . Zoom: 22"
Seat: Segway: no. Zoom: yes
Range on full battery: both claim 10-15 mi.
Warranty: Segway: 12 mo. Zoom: 18 mo.
Available: Segway: March. Zoom: now. Top speed: Segway: 12 mph Zoom: 3.5 mph
Price: Segway: $4950. Zoom: $1695.
These scooters, like Segways, are meant to be used on a sidewalk.