We'll have to agree to disagree on Amazon. I've had nothing but pleasant experiences with them.
Case in point, a couple of years ago I subscribed through Amazon to a foreign (and therefore somewhat expensive) weekly magazine. I waited and waited to get my first issue. After about 10 weeks, I figured it was time to complain. Knowing that Amazon didn't handle the subscriptions but handed it off to another company, I called that other company. It took me a while to get to a real person, and when I finally did, he told me that since it was a foreign magazine there was little they could do, and even better, he tried telling me that my subscription, for which I had yet to receive a single issue, was nonrefundable. I was less than pleased to put it mildly. I hung up, called Amazon, and two minutes later they were refunding the full subscription price to my credit card.
As for USAA, I've heard nothing but great things about them. My fiancee has USAA and speaks highly of their customer service. I haven't had any experience myself with USAA, but it sounds like they're another one of those few companies that really do things right.
It's really unfortunate that so few companies do customer service right these days. Off the top of my head I can think of only two that have provided me with exemplary customer service: Amazon and American Express. You call either with a problem and it's quickly resolved. Practically everyone else and it's like pulling teeth.
The video shows some interesting features but I think that attempts to create an electronic device that emulates a physical book is misguided. The "page-flipping" feature doesn't grab me at all. What I'm more interested in seeing in a next gen e-book reader is a nice balance between portability and adequate screen size, a screen resolution sufficient for displaying maps and other graphics, a variety of fonts, unicode support, and search capability that allows me to search either the current book, particular titles from my library, or my library in toto.
Feynman was a character, wasn't he? "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" doesn't really fall into the category of a science book per se, but it was a great read. Safecracking at Los Alamos as a practical joke? Priceless.
I heard this segment as well. The woman they interviewed at the end of the piece was a model of almost willful ignorance. As for the man, he was an example of idealism taken to the nth level of idiocy. I realize that the segment had to do with the possibility of private eavesdropping but you can't talk about privacy very long without entering into the topic of governmental policies and powers -- and it's there where this simple-minded notion of "well I have nothing to hide..." becomes terribly pernicious. What the two who were interviewed don't get is that it's not about them, it's not about what they personally may or may not have to hide. They seemed to have no capacity to think at any level more abstract than their own self, and in that regard, they unfortunately have a lot of company.
McCain 70-80% likely to pick up Florida? Obama 70-80% likely to grab Pennsylvania? Everyone is expecting those two to be big battleground states. Those probabilities seem pretty lofty to me.
Given my original comment, it's really interesting that you've brought up Fahrenheit 451. I won't say anything more than that in case you haven't completed the book.
In any case, I'm also a bibliophile -- my fiancee would probably use "book hoarder" or some similar term instead -- and I also wonder about the future of books. About six months ago, for instance, we saw Amazon introduce the Kindle, the first e-book device that appears to be having some measure of success. I'm sure that over the coming years, e-books will continue to pound at the gates.
But as you alluded to and as anyone who appreciates the covers of those vintage paperbacks will confirm, there's more to a book than just the actual words. There's the font of the text itself, the quality of the paper, the smell of the book, and for those nice editions, the leather binding, the end leafs, the gilded pages. So while I will read on a Kindle or some future version thereof, at times quite willingly because the thing is darned convenient, it's not, however, what I want in my hands when I'm sitting down to read in a comfortable chair with a glass of wine by my side.
The intangibles will always be on traditional books' side, but on the other hand, the idea of being able to search one's entire library for a particular word in what basically amounts to an instant... that's pretty seductive. And as we've already seen many times in other areas, we've proven willing to sacrifice tradition and aesthetics for the sake of efficiency and convenience.
Writing (if you're willing to consider writing as technology). The ancient Greeks (Homer era and before) were said to be able to perform what we today would consider absolutely incredible feats of memory.
Of course that's not to say that writing didn't come with its attendant benefits, too...
You make many valid observations. I will point out, however, that Sony's e-book reader has indeed been available in stores -- you can find them at Borders for instance, and for $60 - $100 cheaper than Kindle -- but it has not taken off the way that the Kindle has.
I'm not Kindle's biggest proponent -- I actually had one but returned it -- but Amazon has gotten enough right with the Kindle to make it the first VIABLE e-book reader out there. Its early success is what will make a Kindle 2.0 commercially possible, in which some of the issues you bring up will hopefully be addressed.
On what basis can you say that "Kindles are selling like Zunes"? For months, the Kindle was back-ordered; it wasn't until about a month ago that you could order one with the expectation of having your order promptly filled.
Sales of the Kindle, in terms of absolute numbers, may still be fairly modest, but it is hands down the most successful e-book device that's ever come to market. It's a far cry from being the "Zune of ebook readers."
I lean conservative/libertarian (as others in this thread have pointed out, "Republican" and "conservative" are not the same), and I wanted the more moderate McCain to win over Bush in 2000. He didn't, of course, and the rest is rather unfortunate history.
I held my nose the last two general elections and gave the Republicans my vote, votes which, particularly over the last two years, I've come to deeply regret. I watched Bush do nothing about Social Security, do nothing about illegal immigration, I watched him spend money like a drunken Democrat, and then of course there is Iraq, which I initially supported until it became clear that the WMDs were about as real as the luminiferous ether.
All this is to say that even though McCain was my guy in 2000, the Republicans have made an absolute mess of things, so I too will be voting for Obama this time around. I'll most likely strongly disagree with an Obama administration on some matters of policy, but the Republicans have in my opinion earned their day of reckoning.
HD-DVD is dead and buried, and if Blu-Ray prices don't go down -- substantially and soon -- Blu-Ray will wither on the vine. I was at Costco this weekend and the two Blu-Ray players for sale there were $379 and $449 for Sony and Panasonic models respectively. At Costco! Not many folks I know going to buy at those prices, especially when the gas station is hitting them for $60 every week...
You mean Cortés, right? Point taken. Of course, the one who probably most reflected the attitude that the native inhabitants of the New World were "greasy, inbred savages" was probably Pizarro. I think it's somewhat unfair to judge historic figures by modern standards and sensibilities, but even allowing for the times he lived in, Pizarro was a monster.
I for one would have loved to have been able to hear and understand the conversation that took place among that tribe after the helicopter passed over.
[Tongue somewhat in cheek here] Maybe the guy's really into Dante or something. The numerology of Dante's Divine Comedy is tremendously significant, and the number three is inescapable. There are three canticas (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), each with 33 cantos, and the whole Comedy is written in a terza rima rhyming scheme. And that just scratches the surface. See here for more. The numerology -- Dante's, that is -- is centered on 3, as opposed to 2 or 4, because of central importance of the Trinity.
Out of curiosity, then, is this the brainchild of the Democrats or the Republicans?
In this case, this is the Democrats' baby, but I have to agree with another reply here that the question is beginning to lose relevance. Anytime one political party controls all the reigns of government, it just gives that party a green light to go to excess. Republican, Democrat, local, state, federal -- none of that seems to matter. The particular brand of excess differs with the parties, but the tendency to strong-arm their respective agendas is the same.
... is the price that we Marylanders have to pay for returning one-party rule to the state. This tax is part of a $1.3 billion tax package that our "rock star" governor called a special session to get. In addition, he just increased the sales tax by 20 percent, an increase that disproportionately impacts poorer folks, the very people who the governor and his party keep telling me they deeply care about.
It could just as well be a pretty good indication that the exit poll methodology is faulty.
A LOT of people, Republicans and Democrats alike, were upset with the news networks back in 2000 for their early calls in the presidential election, calls which they made largely based on exit poll data. I know a number of people who make it their policy to deliberately lie whenever they're interviewed for an exit poll, their motivation being to taint the polling data and thus weaken the networks' confidence in using them.
Having said that, it is criminal that any state, including my own of Maryland, would implement electronic voting without a paper trail.
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We'll have to agree to disagree on Amazon. I've had nothing but pleasant experiences with them.
Case in point, a couple of years ago I subscribed through Amazon to a foreign (and therefore somewhat expensive) weekly magazine. I waited and waited to get my first issue. After about 10 weeks, I figured it was time to complain. Knowing that Amazon didn't handle the subscriptions but handed it off to another company, I called that other company. It took me a while to get to a real person, and when I finally did, he told me that since it was a foreign magazine there was little they could do, and even better, he tried telling me that my subscription, for which I had yet to receive a single issue, was nonrefundable. I was less than pleased to put it mildly. I hung up, called Amazon, and two minutes later they were refunding the full subscription price to my credit card.
As for USAA, I've heard nothing but great things about them. My fiancee has USAA and speaks highly of their customer service. I haven't had any experience myself with USAA, but it sounds like they're another one of those few companies that really do things right.
It's really unfortunate that so few companies do customer service right these days. Off the top of my head I can think of only two that have provided me with exemplary customer service: Amazon and American Express. You call either with a problem and it's quickly resolved. Practically everyone else and it's like pulling teeth.
The video shows some interesting features but I think that attempts to create an electronic device that emulates a physical book is misguided. The "page-flipping" feature doesn't grab me at all. What I'm more interested in seeing in a next gen e-book reader is a nice balance between portability and adequate screen size, a screen resolution sufficient for displaying maps and other graphics, a variety of fonts, unicode support, and search capability that allows me to search either the current book, particular titles from my library, or my library in toto.
Flu by Gina Kolata, which recounts a search for the flu virus that caused the 1918 pandemic, was a great and at times harrowing read.
Feynman was a character, wasn't he? "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman" doesn't really fall into the category of a science book per se, but it was a great read. Safecracking at Los Alamos as a practical joke? Priceless.
The green is reflected. Red and blue are absorbed. Why plants are green
I heard this segment as well. The woman they interviewed at the end of the piece was a model of almost willful ignorance. As for the man, he was an example of idealism taken to the nth level of idiocy. I realize that the segment had to do with the possibility of private eavesdropping but you can't talk about privacy very long without entering into the topic of governmental policies and powers -- and it's there where this simple-minded notion of "well I have nothing to hide..." becomes terribly pernicious. What the two who were interviewed don't get is that it's not about them, it's not about what they personally may or may not have to hide. They seemed to have no capacity to think at any level more abstract than their own self, and in that regard, they unfortunately have a lot of company.
McCain 70-80% likely to pick up Florida? Obama 70-80% likely to grab Pennsylvania? Everyone is expecting those two to be big battleground states. Those probabilities seem pretty lofty to me.
Given my original comment, it's really interesting that you've brought up Fahrenheit 451. I won't say anything more than that in case you haven't completed the book.
... that's pretty seductive. And as we've already seen many times in other areas, we've proven willing to sacrifice tradition and aesthetics for the sake of efficiency and convenience.
In any case, I'm also a bibliophile -- my fiancee would probably use "book hoarder" or some similar term instead -- and I also wonder about the future of books. About six months ago, for instance, we saw Amazon introduce the Kindle, the first e-book device that appears to be having some measure of success. I'm sure that over the coming years, e-books will continue to pound at the gates.
But as you alluded to and as anyone who appreciates the covers of those vintage paperbacks will confirm, there's more to a book than just the actual words. There's the font of the text itself, the quality of the paper, the smell of the book, and for those nice editions, the leather binding, the end leafs, the gilded pages. So while I will read on a Kindle or some future version thereof, at times quite willingly because the thing is darned convenient, it's not, however, what I want in my hands when I'm sitting down to read in a comfortable chair with a glass of wine by my side.
The intangibles will always be on traditional books' side, but on the other hand, the idea of being able to search one's entire library for a particular word in what basically amounts to an instant
Agreed. The point was simply that writing did lead to a diminishment of at least one specific measure of mental ability.
Writing (if you're willing to consider writing as technology). The ancient Greeks (Homer era and before) were said to be able to perform what we today would consider absolutely incredible feats of memory.
Of course that's not to say that writing didn't come with its attendant benefits, too...
You make many valid observations. I will point out, however, that Sony's e-book reader has indeed been available in stores -- you can find them at Borders for instance, and for $60 - $100 cheaper than Kindle -- but it has not taken off the way that the Kindle has.
I'm not Kindle's biggest proponent -- I actually had one but returned it -- but Amazon has gotten enough right with the Kindle to make it the first VIABLE e-book reader out there. Its early success is what will make a Kindle 2.0 commercially possible, in which some of the issues you bring up will hopefully be addressed.
On what basis can you say that "Kindles are selling like Zunes"? For months, the Kindle was back-ordered; it wasn't until about a month ago that you could order one with the expectation of having your order promptly filled.
Sales of the Kindle, in terms of absolute numbers, may still be fairly modest, but it is hands down the most successful e-book device that's ever come to market. It's a far cry from being the "Zune of ebook readers."
I lean conservative/libertarian (as others in this thread have pointed out, "Republican" and "conservative" are not the same), and I wanted the more moderate McCain to win over Bush in 2000. He didn't, of course, and the rest is rather unfortunate history. I held my nose the last two general elections and gave the Republicans my vote, votes which, particularly over the last two years, I've come to deeply regret. I watched Bush do nothing about Social Security, do nothing about illegal immigration, I watched him spend money like a drunken Democrat, and then of course there is Iraq, which I initially supported until it became clear that the WMDs were about as real as the luminiferous ether. All this is to say that even though McCain was my guy in 2000, the Republicans have made an absolute mess of things, so I too will be voting for Obama this time around. I'll most likely strongly disagree with an Obama administration on some matters of policy, but the Republicans have in my opinion earned their day of reckoning.
HD-DVD is dead and buried, and if Blu-Ray prices don't go down -- substantially and soon -- Blu-Ray will wither on the vine. I was at Costco this weekend and the two Blu-Ray players for sale there were $379 and $449 for Sony and Panasonic models respectively. At Costco! Not many folks I know going to buy at those prices, especially when the gas station is hitting them for $60 every week...
It's over. Move on.
I for one would have loved to have been able to hear and understand the conversation that took place among that tribe after the helicopter passed over.
"Greasy inbred savages"? Columbus, is that you?
With admission to be payable only in gold...
[Tongue somewhat in cheek here] Maybe the guy's really into Dante or something. The numerology of Dante's Divine Comedy is tremendously significant, and the number three is inescapable. There are three canticas (Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso), each with 33 cantos, and the whole Comedy is written in a terza rima rhyming scheme. And that just scratches the surface. See here for more. The numerology -- Dante's, that is -- is centered on 3, as opposed to 2 or 4, because of central importance of the Trinity.
Out of curiosity, then, is this the brainchild of the Democrats or the Republicans?
In this case, this is the Democrats' baby, but I have to agree with another reply here that the question is beginning to lose relevance. Anytime one political party controls all the reigns of government, it just gives that party a green light to go to excess. Republican, Democrat, local, state, federal -- none of that seems to matter. The particular brand of excess differs with the parties, but the tendency to strong-arm their respective agendas is the same.... is the price that we Marylanders have to pay for returning one-party rule to the state. This tax is part of a $1.3 billion tax package that our "rock star" governor called a special session to get. In addition, he just increased the sales tax by 20 percent, an increase that disproportionately impacts poorer folks, the very people who the governor and his party keep telling me they deeply care about.
It could just as well be a pretty good indication that the exit poll methodology is faulty.
A LOT of people, Republicans and Democrats alike, were upset with the news networks back in 2000 for their early calls in the presidential election, calls which they made largely based on exit poll data. I know a number of people who make it their policy to deliberately lie whenever they're interviewed for an exit poll, their motivation being to taint the polling data and thus weaken the networks' confidence in using them.
Having said that, it is criminal that any state, including my own of Maryland, would implement electronic voting without a paper trail.