(Note, I tried to make the subject line read, "Books>Kindle>Audiobooks", but for some reason, Slashdot removed the ">"s.)

I absorb least of all from audiobooks, only partly because I usually fall asleep in the first five minutes.

Ever since the Kindle app got rid of the little graphical representation of where you are in the book (like a timeline, at the bottom, where you saw whether you were 1/4 of the way through, halfway or close to the end), I've been a little uncomfortable with my ebooks.

Say what you will about those old paper-and-board book things, at least you knew exactly where you were, and could get some mental image of the progression of the narrative arc. So when you'd only got maybe 1/10th of the book read (based upon the fact that only a little bit of the book was on the left hand side) and you were reading a mystery, you could pretty much rest assured that there were some pretty big plot twists to come. Maybe that has something to do with any less absorption from ebooks (if there really is less, which I doubt this study proves).

Even so, I read mostly everything on a tablet, except sheet music. And when a really good sheet music e-book reader (and editor) comes out at less than $2000, I'm going to grab one. Musical manuscripts are just too small, even on a 10" tablet. I need to be able to see two pages of music at a time (at least).

The ad hominem was not yours, it was in the article you approvingly cited from The Federalist.

A hundred years ago, the first group of progressives concluded that this country needed to change in a big way. They argued explicitly for a refounding of the United States on the grounds that the only absolute in political life is that absolutes are material and economic rather than moral in nature.

The people from that "first group of progressives" that I cited were starting purely from moral grounds, and demanding that the United States live up to the morality professed by the very "federalists" from whom the group got its name.

I think he was just pinging me for the ideas, which do predate my efforts and is certainly fair -- I started my whole "object" approach to c in 1985.

Of course, the whole point was to avoid using compiler tech that generated code I didn't intend it to generate, and in that sense, I got what I was after.

I wish I could still write my code in assembler, though. I was never more at home than when churning out 6809 or 68000 code.

Thanks, looks like very interesting reading. Bookmarked it.

This 3D-printing works without mold, and it's a continuous process.

The purpose of security is to prevent unauthorized people from accessing the account. There are tons of accounts that are legitimately shared, and there is nothing wrong with sharing passwords in those situations, if the account doesn't have any technical mechanism to allow for multiple users/profiles on a single account. For example bank accounts, utilities, Netflix, Hulu, wireless router administration, all have been shared accounts with my wife (some have since added profiles, but not all).

Furthermore, even with accounts that we keep separate, like email, there are useful reasons to share the password, like when my wife is away from internet at work and wants me to print a boarding pass that was emailed to her. Sure I could snoop through her email, but I don't just like I could snoop through her purse or journal, but I don't.

Even Wikipedia would have let you know that this is inadequate for the range of temperatures found on Mars.

Right back atcha

Yes, I did. I also made the point that his point is irrelevant. We're talking about a minuscule proportion of the population. It's not that their wishes should be ignored, exactly; I believe that creation and protection of rights is a valid pursuit. But "It is virtually impossible for people to not run into each other," is still a completely valid statement. Virtually nobody lives in a situation where they won't see other people. Someone always turns up, if only for a sample of something. Maybe you. And frankly, there really is nowhere like you describe in the USA, either. There's a number of large private ranches of thousands of acres; those guys often have stories of trespassers. And a large portion of the country is owned by the Bureau of Land Management, which regularly portions big sections of it off for military and police training, and which patrols it regularly and investigates fires, target shooters in hunting season and hunters out of season, and the like. Then there's the big state parks, which are full of state park rangers on horses and in Jeep of various types, and IIRC Chevy trucks. They manage to cover quite a bit of ground.

So yes, it is virtually impossible to not run into people. You have to go to significant lengths, especially since people are actually looking for people in those supposedly empty places. Sure, you could get lost in the asscrack of some mountain somewhere, but even getting there is beyond the reach of many people. Only a tiny slice of the world population even lives away from someplace where you can avoid seeing people for more than a few minutes at a time.

Say what you mean in the first place, and I won't "make" you do anything. How weak are you that I can "make" you do things on Slashdot, anyhow?

Yes, by all means, engage in defensive prevarication instead of examining the problem. That will surely lead to advancement!

http://www.oldielyrics.com/lyrics/nervous_norvus/transfusion.html

At Wired, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has posted his take on net neutrality. He lays the problem at the feet of the large ISPs.

The argument was that the early progressives were not acting out of moral beliefs. I showed that's not true.

The Scotsman can't protect you from The Federalist's misrepresentation. It's funny that you would cite a logical fallacy in order to defend an ad hominem attack ("Progressives were never moral!")

At Wired, Netflix CEO Reed Hastings has posted his take on net neutrality. He lays the problem at the feet of the large ISPs.

File this one under, "No Shit Sherlock".

Nobody needs to get murdered. You merely must create an environment where it's more profitable to research fusion energy than it is to commercialize fusion energy.

Right, because trial can set precedent and the city *really* doesn't want that.