Unfortunately you did not take into account all of the financial factors involved. I seriously doubt very many middle-class families have $15K available in their checking and/or savings accounts. Therefore they are going to have to borrow. Ignoring the bank end of the deal, with market valuation of their homes below the pre-mortgage assessed value, you can forget second mortgages, lines of credit, and the like. It'd be interesting to see how many could do it with their credit cards, although the interest rates are high and going higher. BTW, assuming an interest rate of 20%, you would end up paying out approximately $60K, so you are better off just paying the j$200 a month utility bill. Even at 10% interest rate it will take 10 years to pay off the loan, so that isn't exactly a great ROI either. Interest rates have to be very close to the prime rate to make this a wise investment. In any case, what we are seeing in middle-class families is a serious attempt to reduce debt, not increase it. This behavior is historically normal whenever the financial system suffers a collapse or near collapse.
The other part of the equation is a willing lender. As has been repeatedly reported, banks aren't loaning money to anyone. No wonder either as I think that they are reeling from the near collapse, so the historical norm of behavior happens to be 'wait and see', and I firmly believe that the mortgage foreclosure mess is farther reaching than has been publicized to date. Between forced mergers and lax lending and similarly lax documentation of same, the banks are going to be a while trying to sort it all out. God help them if/when the states AG's get documentary evidence on this, and they will.
If you have studied American Economic History, which btw has very little to do with the history of the 'science' of economics, these things fall into patterns (Toynbee is right about that). Near as I can tell, it'll be about seven years to unravel the knot that resulted from the policies (decades before Bush II came along) that created this. Thus it will be about that long before the advice on solar will have a chance of actually happening. Given recent developments in solar technology, and I expect even better improvements by then*, not only will it be economic, it will be rampant stupidity that would oppose it. People have no problems practicing that, but that's people.
*: Pure conjecture on my part, but there are several interesting combinations possible with recent advances that could result in a close order improvement in true power out. If that happens, and the price-point sufficiently reasonable, you would not only stop paying the power company but actually reap a signicant profit. It'd be interesting to see the contortions utility companies would go about when the customer-base becomes a high-minor to low-major player in power generation. Sadly I probably won't be around to see it.
From reading TFA, I don't think you have to be a genius (although it probably helps) to realize that Chrome will be a target and it's 'nix based and the trend of late is to provision devices using open-source Linux as a baseline. While dense, Microsoft isn't totally brain-dead, especially when it comes to identifying a potential cash-cow. Another thing they are quite good at is arming their army of developers.
[Rant] Time and again I've seen the devs in the open-source community ignore that army whether we are talking about the people developing software professionally or the garage/basement operations. They are 'a bunch of c lueless robots using Microsoft crapware.' Crapware or not Microsoft has always been good at arming devs with inexpensive to free tools and there is a whole ecosystem around that community that you ignore at your peril. Hell, I have one of my mailboxes here set up just to keep a weather-eye on the opportunities and several dozen messages a day, two-thirds to entirely Microsoft related, show up here. Case in point, giving away a Windows Phone 7 development environment. There are many more examples and not just MS, especially toolset firms that serve both the MS and F/OSS communities. [/Rant]
Going back to TFA, it'll be interesting to see how we things match the path laid out. I can see it going that way but there are some factors that could derail it, as always.
While I was serving in the military and handling classified material on computers the regulations on data handling were quite clear. Classified material was never to be stored or manipulated on an unclassified system. Furthermore, even on classified systems the classification of the system set a maximum clearance level, material classified secret could not be handled on a classified confidential system, etc. You could handle confidential on a secret system but then it could never be put back on a classified confidential system. I can understand, in light of the 'connect the dots' problem that you need to have access to pretty much all material in the hopes someone will get the 'Eureka' moment but storing, even allowing access the wrong way is what gets you into this kind of mess and supposedly we had procedures to prevent it. Obviously not after 9-11.
And on that topic, post 9-11 changes, the Republicans, and Democrats when they wake up to this fact, can stick it. The post 9-11 changes to the handling classified material happened under a Republican administration at the behest of (severe pressure from) Congress on both sides of the aisle. As with the mortgage meltdown, Congressional members are pointing everywhere else but at themselves.
So far as the legalities go, there is no difference. Actually they are the same. Period. A long time ago I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic. I therefore had an interest in exactly what I was swearing to after that and so I got to reading and collecting material on the subject, especially Supreme Court rulings. I have no idea if Assange is a US citizen or not, nor do I care. The plain fact of the matter is that he is simply using the right to free speech in accordance with the role of a journalist. The people that actually leak these documents have something to worry about, especially if I catch up to them. Similarly the people that attempt to harass or execute these people will also have a problem if I identify them. Wikileaks and the people that actually publish it (ISP providers), staffers, and the rest that support the site, do not.
It's fascinating, indeed to the point of being nauseated, to see how the Constitution is being twisted and destroyed by both sides of the political ailse. Actually, I don't see much difference between the two political parties as they push and support pretty much the same set of interests and elites. Sad. Very sad.
With the same attendant problems with the Unemployment numbers, e.g the really disgruntled that don't post a negative review, and/or a company deletes such reviews on their site. Non-reporting and underreporting are the two things that usually bite us in the ass, statistically speaking. I believe Google actually has an easier job that what most econometricians face, namely they are already in the business of scoring items semantically, so determining positive, neutral, and negative reviews should be fairly old hat. Call me weird, although that is distinctly a relative term here, but I'd like to understand how they intend to pull this off since it does overlap a couple of favorite disciplines here.
Nothing at all makes me believe that they won't be sold off like the office furniture. However, that durned degree in economics (and a black-belt in Reality) has me going "and on the other hand";-).
The question here, once EMI goes under, is what/to whom the rights devolve to under the terms of their contracts with the artists and labels under the EMI banner. If they devolve to the musicians, great. If they do not, then expect to see a fire-sale to pay off the bond-holders with whatever few scraps leftover to go to the (remaining) share-holders. Frankly, that would probably be the worst result since the musician will have new masters determing to flog the most out of them before the new entity goes bankrupt as well. Indentured servitude is a bitch and well should I know since both sides of my family came over to the US that way. Definitely not bed-side story fodder.
Just 'cause it's (primarily) Science-Fiction doesn't mean we can't have fun. Rick Cook's Wizard Series is awfully (sometimes the puns can be as bad as a Xanth novel;-) fun. Eric Cook's and David Drake's Belisarius series practically defines the most recent alternate history genre (okay a bit of an exageration but not by much), lately. Lackey's Serrated Edge novels are pure urban fantasy as best exemplified elsewhere by Seannan McGuire or Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or Kim Harrison, heck a lot of what I read these days.
What you are missing here is the chance, for a negligible download (now I sound like a shill, sorry), to get a sample of each author before you commit. Eric Flint wasn't even on my radar here, let alone Mercedes Lackey, yet I absolutely adore all of their works and Lackey writes a heck of a lot of Fantasy. I get a sense, probably mistaken, that you are pidgeon-holing authors. So far as I can tell, the good authors wander all over the terrain. Ably.
And I send a serious "thank you kindly" for that link! I rather like the Bujold's Vorkosigan and Weber's Honor Harrington books but that should be no suprise given my addiction to Cromwell's Sharpe's Series and the ever present Horatio Hornblower (which the BBC ably redid not too long ago). Heck, Chandler even took a swipe at the Hornblower books.
My mother always told me, she has a well-earned doctorate in anthorpology, that there are only senven stories that humans tell. Seeing it in print, or even on the screen, I now belive her. Still, the variations are always interesting, at least to me.
The problem here is you didn't described what books you like! I read pretty much everything that isn't nailed shut and I'd be there with a claw-hammer prying the nails out. No joke. Even just pointing at a genre (Science-Fiction, Fantasy, etc.) isn't good enough these dsays. For instance, in Science-Fiction you have Military Science-Fiction (a favorite here given my background), Space-Opera (still alive and kickin'), even cross-over series such as the Recluce series (which is most definitely a scientific magic based series, and if you don't believe me, go read "The Practice Effect" by David Brin and completely different from L. E. Modessitt's novels). Hell, I read romances, especially historical and vampire romances, thank you Mom!
To borrow from an advert that came out when Baen Books was getting started: "I like Baen Books because they taste good." While I haven't ever eaten one (although with this economy and a healthy bit of mayo, it looks tempting), the author of that had the sense. What books taste good to you? I've probably read them and I'm certain the other denizens here have so we can recommend away.
[OMG, have I opened the Thread From Hell? Will my Karma survive;-).]
Income doesn't derive from preventing theft, it comes from making sales. A certain amount of loss due to theft is simply one of the overhead costs. Obviously, taking simple measures to eliminate as much theft as possible is sensible. But at a certain point -- and much sooner than you might think -- the measures you take to prevent theft can start cutting your income.
One of the best descriptions of opportunity cost for both buyer and seller I've encountered in a long time. And the fact that it has to be described is a fundamental damning indictment of "modern education".
Baen Books has been posting e-books, several formats available, for several years now. And, curiously enough, it's the authors that make the choice. I have a solid library of their titles that are loaded on all my machines to read during down-time (waiting on something) and all of them, including ones that I initially wouldn't have bought in book form normally, are here in the pulp as well. So, it's a good deal for the author, give me a book that may have me buy the series, rather than miss a potential sale.
A rather radical thing that I recently encountered was a hardback Baen Book ("Rats, Bats, & Vats") that had a CD with several dozen titles from Baen on it that encouraged you to make a copy and give them out.
As for the e-book community, yes, they are alive and well in the newsgroups last time I looked (August I believe) and you can get what you want in almost any format. Then again, that's been true of anything that can be presented in electronic form pretty much since newsgroups (NNTP) came to be. Just as with the cracking community (hell Apple should know what with rooting the iPhone) you'll always see them out there. Keep the price point low enouigh and frankly most people won't go to the effort of finding, downloading, etc., since you never going to know what you get (unusable/, malware, and lawsuit, oh my!).
And before anyone professes that this is incorrect, go back and take microeconomics again, specifically opportunity costs. The beautiful thing about iTunes, iPhone Apps, NetFlix, downloadable software, and e-book marketplaces is that they have been an ecometrician's wet dream for statistical market behavior. I don't think that this was the intent of the providers of music, apps, and video, but there you have it. Saved us a ton of research grant money. Thank you!
Since it could be applied to any surface, it would practically ideal for use on the surfaces of devices (smart devices anyone?) to work much as the way the early solar-cell calculators did. Even if it did not totally provide device power, it would probably be a nice supplement. Heck, see what wavelengths work best with certain configurations (mixtures) perhaps even body heat might work.
What an get labeled as another tea-partier? Another racist, bigoted, patriarchal, homophobe, etc. ad nauseum? Sorry, a media campaign won't do it even if you have a billion or so in wealth.
Not a flame but the actual basis of the franchise (vote) in this country was property based, not agriculturally based. Most people don't understand the distinction but property holders not only included all landholders but also those men with plant/tools to conduct their manufactory/trade. The rationale was that this class of people would have a vested interest in maintaining precisely those powers and restrictions (heavy on the restrictions) enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
That with the ever increase in the franchise as the Republic has continued has weakened the precise powers, restrictions, and especially the relationship between the people, states, and Federal government should come as no surprise. I'm not saying whether this is a good or bad (morally or ethically) thing in any context just that one inevitably led to the other.
One however should be remember that once the franchise was quite a solemn thing when exercised. Those with it spent much time actually discussing and considering these affairs and when it came to the actual vote, well when someone voted it was announced to all present that such a person had voted. None of this is true today. Most people, it seems, that if they even bother to vote do so on the basis of whatever appeal was oft times presented last and frequently bearing little resemblance to the truth if that is knowable at all.
I'm no paragon of virtue here, far from it actually, but at least I bother to read the voter's pamphlet sent out by our (useless! [CA.]) Secretary of State here and have only missed one election in my life. The ballot went to the Persian Gulf while I went to Tennessee. Without an educated, involved electorate, the system is bound to fail. The reason for the 9th and 10th Amendments have everything to do with the power of the people but he people have no power if they don't exercise due diligence. But given our educations system, that's another intractable problem.
Eventually the middle class will tire of the current elites, finance/empower a revolution of some sort, kill all the current elites, and create a new set. That pattern is as old as 'civilized' Man. [Marx really needed to look outside industrializing Europe. He almost had it right.]
I guess it has everything to do with the insular nature of techies. Generally they don't wander off to the realm of political science, economics (except for the damned econometricians, myself included), or any of the other fuzzy stuff. And unless it's perhaps the history of science and technology, they don't want to have anything to do with the humanities unless it's at gunpoint. Sadly, I was thoroughly corrupted by that evil author Robert A. Heinlein (at the tender age of 3 by my mother!) and while I have an engineering and analytical background second to none, I really, really, love that fuzzy stuff as well since it tells me much of what to expect of the human condition. "There is what is and what people believe. Seldom are they the same." Expecting the real world of people to follow 'rational' expectations (despite what my fellow economists frequently assert) is asking too much. Some rules do still work though if applied properly.
With respect to lobbying, actually rent-seeking behavior ala Ricardo, for legislation I am ever mindful of the following quote: "When legislation is bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators." That the "great" Eric Schmidt has only recently discovered this proves that he needs to get out more, talk to his competitors, or just observe what they are up to.
/signed/ "Power-conflict libertarian" (with a small "L" please)
"Even if you need to download patches, etc, you simply download them to a box that is on the internet, put it on removable media, scan the media for viruses, remove it and connect to the stand-alone network. Really not that big a deal."
Actually it is that big a deal. Any time you do the removable media transfer (sneaker-net) you can kiss your system security goodbye. All the scanning in the world is not going to save you from something that does not have a signature in your scanning software. Behavioral heuristics may pick up on a piece of malware but even that is not guaranteed. Especially if it incorporates an easter egg.
In any case, you will run afoul of classification if one 'net has a different classification level. Media for a particular classification level can not be inserted into a machine with a different classification level in order to at least do some bit of risk mitigation. That's the way it worked when I was in charge of the systems and the regulations have become even more draconian since then.
Actually, the immediate thought that occurred to me is that the gene is what disables photographic memory. The people that have it probably have a mangled version that doesn't do its job (isn't fully expressed). Since we have yet to find a common marker for the ability per se, we should try to find the people with the ability and check and compare theirs against the 'normal' version.
I personally don't have photographic memory although I am quite able to remember where I've heard or read something even after decades. Used to drive my fellow graduate students nuts (although my professors liked it since they had to never give chapter or page citations;-).
I'm not really "excited", just being practical. One of the areas of research I'll be returning to will be what they are labeling BI [Business Intelligence]. I just consider it part and parcel (member) of mathematical/statistical/scientific computing. Put whatever label you are comfortable with on it. I've been building forecasting models for decades now across nearly the entire range of physical, social, engineering, and even some medical disciplines. One overriding feature is the sheer number of IO operations per second [IOPS] required which is why engineering tricks are a feature of database design and the database engines themselves. SSD's, with IOPS a hundred tmes faster even on consumer-grade devices, with random access, completely changes the field in my opinion. Indeed, it would behoove anyone in the database and software engineering fields to reset to zero and rethink what constraints the new engines have to deal with in all aspects given that you also have multicore, large caches, and CUDA added to the available resources. I am currently building a machine to go play around with this and some other radical ideas. It's how I keep myself amused.
By the time I am done, the new machine will have four fixed HD's, four hot-swappable 2.5" drives, and two hot-swappable 3.5" drives. The fixed drives will be in some sort of RAID/MAID for archival/backup storage (under ZFS). The rest will let me experiment with different configurations to my hearts content. Such as how virtualization behaves in particular configurations which was the original intent.
There are notable counterexamples. For example, CPU clock speeds have been approaching a limit for years now.
Actually the limits had everything to do with thermal factors and materials required to operate at much higher (extreme) clock speeds. EE's use higher frequency components all the time in applications like RADAR. There is a material availalbe to build a chip to damn near any speed you want, diamond. Not only does it make a fantastic semiconductor material, it is a near perfect heat conductor as well as being radiation resistant. Unfortunately no on has bothered to leverage the manufacturing technique that Corning developed to start cranking them out. There are many other interesting things you can do with their process as well. I just wonder why they haven't bothered as yet.
Naw, must be like me. I'm a squid (ex-US Navy) and an economist (econometrician primarily), so I'm really dangerous! Five "on the other hands" to go through.
It really depends on whether they use an algorithm to generate the unlock code or just a one-time pad for each cpu/serial number combination. With the former approach, it will depend on the strength of the algorithm and seed but given enough unlock codes the crackers will eventually break it as was proved recently with HDCP, which came from Intel! The latter approach is unbreakable with even a quantum computer if the one time pad is changed for each cpu/serial number combination (think each individual chip has its own public/private key combination). You'd have to have some incredible luck to get the key or some method to hack the silicon (which is also imaginable). However, then you'll see a shift of targets from the cracked algorithm approach to attacks on the database. I know of more than a few people that can pretty much carve their way into any protected system, and have seen them prove it, so then it comes down to how robust the protection and whether anyone that is capable is interested enough to do it.
I personally believe this is a stupid move on their part as its just waving a red flag in front of the black community. And, unless it's somehow hyped at time of sale, I can't see many people springing for extra 'features' they don't have a dim understanding of in the first place. Those in the real know will avoid these chips like the plague,; those not in the know what know what they are missing. I could be wrong on that call but I will be advising everyone, client or no, to avoid these chips. Since I design, build, and optimize systems of devices (not just desktops, for instance), people do listen to me. I think that is also true of people here (the technologically engaged;-) and the places this is popping up on.
And what, you think all those super-computers that have been engineered over the last few decades are for peaceful scientific research!? These days, rather than designing a new bomb and then testing it underground, they design it and then validate the design against their reference models which have been validated using earlier designs and the data those generated. Hell, I was validating nuclear designs against a microcomputer back in 1979. It was very avant-garde then (and damned slow!) but it worked. Now we use distributed, networked processing to get the crunching down to something manageable.
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Unfortunately you did not take into account all of the financial factors involved. I seriously doubt very many middle-class families have $15K available in their checking and/or savings accounts. Therefore they are going to have to borrow. Ignoring the bank end of the deal, with market valuation of their homes below the pre-mortgage assessed value, you can forget second mortgages, lines of credit, and the like. It'd be interesting to see how many could do it with their credit cards, although the interest rates are high and going higher. BTW, assuming an interest rate of 20%, you would end up paying out approximately $60K, so you are better off just paying the j$200 a month utility bill. Even at 10% interest rate it will take 10 years to pay off the loan, so that isn't exactly a great ROI either. Interest rates have to be very close to the prime rate to make this a wise investment. In any case, what we are seeing in middle-class families is a serious attempt to reduce debt, not increase it. This behavior is historically normal whenever the financial system suffers a collapse or near collapse.
The other part of the equation is a willing lender. As has been repeatedly reported, banks aren't loaning money to anyone. No wonder either as I think that they are reeling from the near collapse, so the historical norm of behavior happens to be 'wait and see', and I firmly believe that the mortgage foreclosure mess is farther reaching than has been publicized to date. Between forced mergers and lax lending and similarly lax documentation of same, the banks are going to be a while trying to sort it all out. God help them if/when the states AG's get documentary evidence on this, and they will.
If you have studied American Economic History, which btw has very little to do with the history of the 'science' of economics, these things fall into patterns (Toynbee is right about that). Near as I can tell, it'll be about seven years to unravel the knot that resulted from the policies (decades before Bush II came along) that created this. Thus it will be about that long before the advice on solar will have a chance of actually happening. Given recent developments in solar technology, and I expect even better improvements by then*, not only will it be economic, it will be rampant stupidity that would oppose it. People have no problems practicing that, but that's people.
*: Pure conjecture on my part, but there are several interesting combinations possible with recent advances that could result in a close order improvement in true power out. If that happens, and the price-point sufficiently reasonable, you would not only stop paying the power company but actually reap a signicant profit. It'd be interesting to see the contortions utility companies would go about when the customer-base becomes a high-minor to low-major player in power generation. Sadly I probably won't be around to see it.
From reading TFA, I don't think you have to be a genius (although it probably helps) to realize that Chrome will be a target and it's 'nix based and the trend of late is to provision devices using open-source Linux as a baseline. While dense, Microsoft isn't totally brain-dead, especially when it comes to identifying a potential cash-cow. Another thing they are quite good at is arming their army of developers.
[Rant] Time and again I've seen the devs in the open-source community ignore that army whether we are talking about the people developing software professionally or the garage/basement operations. They are 'a bunch of c lueless robots using Microsoft crapware.' Crapware or not Microsoft has always been good at arming devs with inexpensive to free tools and there is a whole ecosystem around that community that you ignore at your peril. Hell, I have one of my mailboxes here set up just to keep a weather-eye on the opportunities and several dozen messages a day, two-thirds to entirely Microsoft related, show up here. Case in point, giving away a Windows Phone 7 development environment. There are many more examples and not just MS, especially toolset firms that serve both the MS and F/OSS communities. [/Rant]
Going back to TFA, it'll be interesting to see how we things match the path laid out. I can see it going that way but there are some factors that could derail it, as always.
While I was serving in the military and handling classified material on computers the regulations on data handling were quite clear. Classified material was never to be stored or manipulated on an unclassified system. Furthermore, even on classified systems the classification of the system set a maximum clearance level, material classified secret could not be handled on a classified confidential system, etc. You could handle confidential on a secret system but then it could never be put back on a classified confidential system. I can understand, in light of the 'connect the dots' problem that you need to have access to pretty much all material in the hopes someone will get the 'Eureka' moment but storing, even allowing access the wrong way is what gets you into this kind of mess and supposedly we had procedures to prevent it. Obviously not after 9-11.
And on that topic, post 9-11 changes, the Republicans, and Democrats when they wake up to this fact, can stick it. The post 9-11 changes to the handling classified material happened under a Republican administration at the behest of (severe pressure from) Congress on both sides of the aisle. As with the mortgage meltdown, Congressional members are pointing everywhere else but at themselves.
So far as the legalities go, there is no difference. Actually they are the same. Period. A long time ago I swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States against All Enemies, Foreign and Domestic. I therefore had an interest in exactly what I was swearing to after that and so I got to reading and collecting material on the subject, especially Supreme Court rulings. I have no idea if Assange is a US citizen or not, nor do I care. The plain fact of the matter is that he is simply using the right to free speech in accordance with the role of a journalist. The people that actually leak these documents have something to worry about, especially if I catch up to them. Similarly the people that attempt to harass or execute these people will also have a problem if I identify them. Wikileaks and the people that actually publish it (ISP providers), staffers, and the rest that support the site, do not.
It's fascinating, indeed to the point of being nauseated, to see how the Constitution is being twisted and destroyed by both sides of the political ailse. Actually, I don't see much difference between the two political parties as they push and support pretty much the same set of interests and elites. Sad. Very sad.
With the same attendant problems with the Unemployment numbers, e.g the really disgruntled that don't post a negative review, and/or a company deletes such reviews on their site. Non-reporting and underreporting are the two things that usually bite us in the ass, statistically speaking. I believe Google actually has an easier job that what most econometricians face, namely they are already in the business of scoring items semantically, so determining positive, neutral, and negative reviews should be fairly old hat. Call me weird, although that is distinctly a relative term here, but I'd like to understand how they intend to pull this off since it does overlap a couple of favorite disciplines here.
Nothing at all makes me believe that they won't be sold off like the office furniture. However, that durned degree in economics (and a black-belt in Reality) has me going "and on the other hand" ;-).
The question here, once EMI goes under, is what/to whom the rights devolve to under the terms of their contracts with the artists and labels under the EMI banner. If they devolve to the musicians, great. If they do not, then expect to see a fire-sale to pay off the bond-holders with whatever few scraps leftover to go to the (remaining) share-holders. Frankly, that would probably be the worst result since the musician will have new masters determing to flog the most out of them before the new entity goes bankrupt as well. Indentured servitude is a bitch and well should I know since both sides of my family came over to the US that way. Definitely not bed-side story fodder.
Just 'cause it's (primarily) Science-Fiction doesn't mean we can't have fun. Rick Cook's Wizard Series is awfully (sometimes the puns can be as bad as a Xanth novel ;-) fun. Eric Cook's and David Drake's Belisarius series practically defines the most recent alternate history genre (okay a bit of an exageration but not by much), lately. Lackey's Serrated Edge novels are pure urban fantasy as best exemplified elsewhere by Seannan McGuire or Jim Butcher's Dresden Files or Kim Harrison, heck a lot of what I read these days.
What you are missing here is the chance, for a negligible download (now I sound like a shill, sorry), to get a sample of each author before you commit. Eric Flint wasn't even on my radar here, let alone Mercedes Lackey, yet I absolutely adore all of their works and Lackey writes a heck of a lot of Fantasy. I get a sense, probably mistaken, that you are pidgeon-holing authors. So far as I can tell, the good authors wander all over the terrain. Ably.
And I send a serious "thank you kindly" for that link! I rather like the Bujold's Vorkosigan and Weber's Honor Harrington books but that should be no suprise given my addiction to Cromwell's Sharpe's Series and the ever present Horatio Hornblower (which the BBC ably redid not too long ago). Heck, Chandler even took a swipe at the Hornblower books.
My mother always told me, she has a well-earned doctorate in anthorpology, that there are only senven stories that humans tell. Seeing it in print, or even on the screen, I now belive her. Still, the variations are always interesting, at least to me.
To begin, a link: Baen Books Free Library
;-).]
The problem here is you didn't described what books you like! I read pretty much everything that isn't nailed shut and I'd be there with a claw-hammer prying the nails out. No joke. Even just pointing at a genre (Science-Fiction, Fantasy, etc.) isn't good enough these dsays. For instance, in Science-Fiction you have Military Science-Fiction (a favorite here given my background), Space-Opera (still alive and kickin'), even cross-over series such as the Recluce series (which is most definitely a scientific magic based series, and if you don't believe me, go read "The Practice Effect" by David Brin and completely different from L. E. Modessitt's novels). Hell, I read romances, especially historical and vampire romances, thank you Mom!
To borrow from an advert that came out when Baen Books was getting started: "I like Baen Books because they taste good." While I haven't ever eaten one (although with this economy and a healthy bit of mayo, it looks tempting), the author of that had the sense. What books taste good to you? I've probably read them and I'm certain the other denizens here have so we can recommend away.
[OMG, have I opened the Thread From Hell? Will my Karma survive
Income doesn't derive from preventing theft, it comes from making sales. A certain amount of loss due to theft is simply one of the overhead costs. Obviously, taking simple measures to eliminate as much theft as possible is sensible. But at a certain point -- and much sooner than you might think -- the measures you take to prevent theft can start cutting your income.
One of the best descriptions of opportunity cost for both buyer and seller I've encountered in a long time. And the fact that it has to be described is a fundamental damning indictment of "modern education".
Baen Books has been posting e-books, several formats available, for several years now. And, curiously enough, it's the authors that make the choice. I have a solid library of their titles that are loaded on all my machines to read during down-time (waiting on something) and all of them, including ones that I initially wouldn't have bought in book form normally, are here in the pulp as well. So, it's a good deal for the author, give me a book that may have me buy the series, rather than miss a potential sale.
A rather radical thing that I recently encountered was a hardback Baen Book ("Rats, Bats, & Vats") that had a CD with several dozen titles from Baen on it that encouraged you to make a copy and give them out.
As for the e-book community, yes, they are alive and well in the newsgroups last time I looked (August I believe) and you can get what you want in almost any format. Then again, that's been true of anything that can be presented in electronic form pretty much since newsgroups (NNTP) came to be. Just as with the cracking community (hell Apple should know what with rooting the iPhone) you'll always see them out there. Keep the price point low enouigh and frankly most people won't go to the effort of finding, downloading, etc., since you never going to know what you get (unusable/, malware, and lawsuit, oh my!).
And before anyone professes that this is incorrect, go back and take microeconomics again, specifically opportunity costs. The beautiful thing about iTunes, iPhone Apps, NetFlix, downloadable software, and e-book marketplaces is that they have been an ecometrician's wet dream for statistical market behavior. I don't think that this was the intent of the providers of music, apps, and video, but there you have it. Saved us a ton of research grant money. Thank you!
Since it could be applied to any surface, it would practically ideal for use on the surfaces of devices (smart devices anyone?) to work much as the way the early solar-cell calculators did. Even if it did not totally provide device power, it would probably be a nice supplement. Heck, see what wavelengths work best with certain configurations (mixtures) perhaps even body heat might work.
What an get labeled as another tea-partier? Another racist, bigoted, patriarchal, homophobe, etc. ad nauseum? Sorry, a media campaign won't do it even if you have a billion or so in wealth.
Not a flame but the actual basis of the franchise (vote) in this country was property based, not agriculturally based. Most people don't understand the distinction but property holders not only included all landholders but also those men with plant/tools to conduct their manufactory/trade. The rationale was that this class of people would have a vested interest in maintaining precisely those powers and restrictions (heavy on the restrictions) enumerated in the Constitution and Bill of Rights.
That with the ever increase in the franchise as the Republic has continued has weakened the precise powers, restrictions, and especially the relationship between the people, states, and Federal government should come as no surprise. I'm not saying whether this is a good or bad (morally or ethically) thing in any context just that one inevitably led to the other.
One however should be remember that once the franchise was quite a solemn thing when exercised. Those with it spent much time actually discussing and considering these affairs and when it came to the actual vote, well when someone voted it was announced to all present that such a person had voted. None of this is true today. Most people, it seems, that if they even bother to vote do so on the basis of whatever appeal was oft times presented last and frequently bearing little resemblance to the truth if that is knowable at all.
I'm no paragon of virtue here, far from it actually, but at least I bother to read the voter's pamphlet sent out by our (useless! [CA.]) Secretary of State here and have only missed one election in my life. The ballot went to the Persian Gulf while I went to Tennessee. Without an educated, involved electorate, the system is bound to fail. The reason for the 9th and 10th Amendments have everything to do with the power of the people but he people have no power if they don't exercise due diligence. But given our educations system, that's another intractable problem.
Eventually the middle class will tire of the current elites, finance/empower a revolution of some sort, kill all the current elites, and create a new set. That pattern is as old as 'civilized' Man. [Marx really needed to look outside industrializing Europe. He almost had it right.]
I guess it has everything to do with the insular nature of techies. Generally they don't wander off to the realm of political science, economics (except for the damned econometricians, myself included), or any of the other fuzzy stuff. And unless it's perhaps the history of science and technology, they don't want to have anything to do with the humanities unless it's at gunpoint. Sadly, I was thoroughly corrupted by that evil author Robert A. Heinlein (at the tender age of 3 by my mother!) and while I have an engineering and analytical background second to none, I really, really, love that fuzzy stuff as well since it tells me much of what to expect of the human condition. "There is what is and what people believe. Seldom are they the same." Expecting the real world of people to follow 'rational' expectations (despite what my fellow economists frequently assert) is asking too much. Some rules do still work though if applied properly.
/signed/ "Power-conflict libertarian" (with a small "L" please)
With respect to lobbying, actually rent-seeking behavior ala Ricardo, for legislation I am ever mindful of the following quote: "When legislation is bought and sold, the first thing to be bought and sold are legislators." That the "great" Eric Schmidt has only recently discovered this proves that he needs to get out more, talk to his competitors, or just observe what they are up to.
"Even if you need to download patches, etc, you simply download them to a box that is on the internet, put it on removable media, scan the media for viruses, remove it and connect to the stand-alone network. Really not that big a deal."
Actually it is that big a deal. Any time you do the removable media transfer (sneaker-net) you can kiss your system security goodbye. All the scanning in the world is not going to save you from something that does not have a signature in your scanning software. Behavioral heuristics may pick up on a piece of malware but even that is not guaranteed. Especially if it incorporates an easter egg.
In any case, you will run afoul of classification if one 'net has a different classification level. Media for a particular classification level can not be inserted into a machine with a different classification level in order to at least do some bit of risk mitigation. That's the way it worked when I was in charge of the systems and the regulations have become even more draconian since then.
Made me smile! Nothing else to smile about here so I think you should wear your Troll badge with honor.
Actually, the immediate thought that occurred to me is that the gene is what disables photographic memory. The people that have it probably have a mangled version that doesn't do its job (isn't fully expressed). Since we have yet to find a common marker for the ability per se, we should try to find the people with the ability and check and compare theirs against the 'normal' version.
;-).
I personally don't have photographic memory although I am quite able to remember where I've heard or read something even after decades. Used to drive my fellow graduate students nuts (although my professors liked it since they had to never give chapter or page citations
I'm not really "excited", just being practical. One of the areas of research I'll be returning to will be what they are labeling BI [Business Intelligence]. I just consider it part and parcel (member) of mathematical/statistical/scientific computing. Put whatever label you are comfortable with on it. I've been building forecasting models for decades now across nearly the entire range of physical, social, engineering, and even some medical disciplines. One overriding feature is the sheer number of IO operations per second [IOPS] required which is why engineering tricks are a feature of database design and the database engines themselves. SSD's, with IOPS a hundred tmes faster even on consumer-grade devices, with random access, completely changes the field in my opinion. Indeed, it would behoove anyone in the database and software engineering fields to reset to zero and rethink what constraints the new engines have to deal with in all aspects given that you also have multicore, large caches, and CUDA added to the available resources. I am currently building a machine to go play around with this and some other radical ideas. It's how I keep myself amused.
By the time I am done, the new machine will have four fixed HD's, four hot-swappable 2.5" drives, and two hot-swappable 3.5" drives. The fixed drives will be in some sort of RAID/MAID for archival/backup storage (under ZFS). The rest will let me experiment with different configurations to my hearts content. Such as how virtualization behaves in particular configurations which was the original intent.
There are notable counterexamples. For example, CPU clock speeds have been approaching a limit for years now.
Actually the limits had everything to do with thermal factors and materials required to operate at much higher (extreme) clock speeds. EE's use higher frequency components all the time in applications like RADAR. There is a material availalbe to build a chip to damn near any speed you want, diamond. Not only does it make a fantastic semiconductor material, it is a near perfect heat conductor as well as being radiation resistant. Unfortunately no on has bothered to leverage the manufacturing technique that Corning developed to start cranking them out. There are many other interesting things you can do with their process as well. I just wonder why they haven't bothered as yet.
Naw, must be like me. I'm a squid (ex-US Navy) and an economist (econometrician primarily), so I'm really dangerous! Five "on the other hands" to go through.
It really depends on whether they use an algorithm to generate the unlock code or just a one-time pad for each cpu/serial number combination. With the former approach, it will depend on the strength of the algorithm and seed but given enough unlock codes the crackers will eventually break it as was proved recently with HDCP, which came from Intel! The latter approach is unbreakable with even a quantum computer if the one time pad is changed for each cpu/serial number combination (think each individual chip has its own public/private key combination). You'd have to have some incredible luck to get the key or some method to hack the silicon (which is also imaginable). However, then you'll see a shift of targets from the cracked algorithm approach to attacks on the database. I know of more than a few people that can pretty much carve their way into any protected system, and have seen them prove it, so then it comes down to how robust the protection and whether anyone that is capable is interested enough to do it.
;-) and the places this is popping up on.
I personally believe this is a stupid move on their part as its just waving a red flag in front of the black community. And, unless it's somehow hyped at time of sale, I can't see many people springing for extra 'features' they don't have a dim understanding of in the first place. Those in the real know will avoid these chips like the plague,; those not in the know what know what they are missing. I could be wrong on that call but I will be advising everyone, client or no, to avoid these chips. Since I design, build, and optimize systems of devices (not just desktops, for instance), people do listen to me. I think that is also true of people here (the technologically engaged
What really scares me is reading or hearing of such an event from the news would not surprise me in the least.
And what, you think all those super-computers that have been engineered over the last few decades are for peaceful scientific research!? These days, rather than designing a new bomb and then testing it underground, they design it and then validate the design against their reference models which have been validated using earlier designs and the data those generated. Hell, I was validating nuclear designs against a microcomputer back in 1979. It was very avant-garde then (and damned slow!) but it worked. Now we use distributed, networked processing to get the crunching down to something manageable.
:P
As for the rest?