The command line might not be as evident as it once was but it is still alive and well in its own world. There is a lot of equipment running linux out there with the only interface to it being a command line based serial port. Switches, telecommunications, and embedded industrial controllers are all examples of where the command line is alive and well.

I thought that there was a story recently about how Apply was going to start to 'punish' music labels that promoted their stuff with Amazon's Daily deals and this had the effect of a lot of people pulling out of Amazon's very successful deals venture? So now they are using their position as a top seller of music through itunes to force music venders out of someone else music store.

A lot of the recent financial problems were caused in part by deregulation and allowing there to be a mostly free market. When you take a real hard look at free and unfree markets neither works.

With a free market you will in the end have one player that wins, then become a monopoly. Its a very short jump from winning in the market to locking people in with contracts or DRM. An even shorter jump to locking everyone else out. In the end you have no choice, no innovation, and high prices.

An unfree market, you end up again with no choice, no real innovation, but prices can be cheap depending on who is trying to win favor with the masses.

Just my two cents.

For someone that works with open systems I still agree with you. Most people really don't care.

The three features that sold me on an android phone over an iphone are a real physical keyboard, running any application or program in the background while I'm on the phone, and that I have a choice of networks and not just ATnT.

Building a Titan' a quick overview.

Very basic overview, with time requirements attached to give an idea how how much work goes into it.

Materials: 30 man or more strip mining fleet running through some nullsec systems for materials.
Time: Two three weeks of a few hours of mining every day.
Skilltime: About three months of skill trainning to be able to do this job.

Blueprints: 3 or 4 people needed to do Research on the blueprints and make copies of needed components. A player owned structure is needed for this with all maintenance done. Usually but another group of players.
Time: Three to Six months of minimal research and development on blueprints to make them useful.
Skilltime:Four to Six months minimal time needed to make an effective researcher in eve.

Building: One Two or Three players depending on how you build to make a Titan.
Time: Takes about two months to build components and then a full month to build the full ship.
Skilltime: Nine months Minimum skill training time to have an effective industrialist.

Flying: One person, usually a dedicated player that does nothing else.
Time: Hours of sitting around waiting for something to happen followed by a few minutes pure terror as you take your alliances Titan into battle and hope to hell you don't lose it.
Skilltime: One year of dedicated training minimum required to actually fly the thing.

This is a very basic overview, and the support structure needed to make this all happen tends to take at least a few hundread people activily playing the game to make it happen.

How would culling players have been fair? The people on the IT side logged in and got into system four to six hours before the battle was reasonable expected to start, and goonswarm was told by all of their allies about the fleet lag and grip opening issue and chose to go in anyway.

From another thread I found out about leaked logs that they were aware of the problem and jumped so many people in at once with the intent of crashing the server outright and the plan failed.

Oh, I didn't know about the leaked logs and went looking for them. I know damn well that their allies told them that this was a problem. (one of them lost a 300 man fleet to just this problem) That just adds topping to the cake. Love it.

Large fleet battles are not a surprise anymore and fleet lagging of this kind is well known now. My own alliance lost 300 ships to just such a lag shortly after the new expansion came out. Anymore we actually get in system four to six hours before the main battle, and sit there bored to tears just so that we have the lag advantage. Goons never did have the discipline to do something with that level of dedication. Full Disclosure: I fly with IT and was there in system when this happened. I also flew with BoB before and after its fall.

She is in a PAC. When she formed it she misrepresented the scope and intent of her political action comity. The jail time they are talking about isn't about what she says, but what she signed on the dotted line when she summited to the Fed for Tax Exempt status. Lying on that form 'will' get you in very hot water. Part of the group of laws designed to keep corruption out of the government. AKA, there are limits to the number and types of contributions she can take in if she formed the PAC with the correct documentation, scope, and intent. Regardless, her site wouldn't get her in anything nearly that kind of trouble if she was spending her own money and time on the site and not making an official representation and taking in donations.

I'm all for you on freedom of speech but, when you dig into this it isn't about censorship or freedom of speech but about how her PAC is formed. She is claiming on the site that she is representing her views of her congress critter, and the site is all about Grayson who isn't. The PAC also is only working on raising money to remove him from office while the PAC was formed under a more general license. Meaning that Angie Langley can bypass campaign financing laws and collect more money then the law would allow. There are a lot of laws on the books now about PACs and there will probable be even more, and some of them are on the books because of massive abuses done by PACs. (They don't have too account for every dollar they get, unlimited donation.) On the flipside as a PAC you have signed away some of your rights to Free Speech to get the tax exempt status. From what I can see from digging into it, Angie Langley, is basicly running a generalized PAC, while specifically targeting Grayson and representing herself as one of his constituents to Federal Elections. So basically committing election fraud with a slice of corruption. Just the kind of thing that people don't like. Anyway, just reading more into it sense the headline is so wonderfully catchy.

Sounds like what you need is to bust up the reading material into some kind of sets. Then offer some books of the books that defined the genre.
So here are like three suggestions at least for scifi that I can name off the top of my head. (I have read all these works. And there are probable so many more that I don't name.)

Cyberpunk = The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner, (1975 book, introduced the concept of a computer worm.) Neuromancer by William Gibson. (1984, defines many concepts that are used on the internet today.) Or Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (1999, Just a damn good read, will let others define this one.)

Modern SciFi (Defined as post WWII) = Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein (1961, gives us the wonderful word... grok.) Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. (1985, a very definitive work.) The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin (1969, can't leave out a work by a very well known female writer.)

Classic Scifi = These ones everyone knows. 20 Thousands Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne (1870, Fun book... bonus points if you can find what parts are copies of that one nature book.) War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (1898, Alian invastion! 19th century style) The Call of Cthulhu by H. P. Lovecraft. (1928, short story that gives us Cthulhu.)

Best I can do at the time. Feel free to add more.

A cardboard case sounds good in principle but probable isn't practical for computers due to EMI issues and noise line interference. Hell, I take a look at the 'plastic' cases that some do and already think that they are not all that well shielded.

One advantage of a card board case is it would be easier to read what is happening in the computer with remote sensors. Or to just it down with a microwave with a hole cut in the door.

The argument can also be made that the only way to really understand technology is to be something of an expert in technology.
A case in point would be cell phones. They exist, are here, but have you ever really thought about the battery that goes into your cell phone? Cell phones in the past have had big batteries to make them last any useful amount of time. Today you have a battery that is not much bigger then a lego block, supplying more power to your phone then did that huge 80s style big block phone. Just how much innovation and revolutionary thought went into making that possible?
In the end you can't actually 'see' many of the changes that happen in your life. They are there, and nowdays, expected.

Zeeland

It would be ignorance for the subject. There were some really fantastic changes in the twenty years between world war I (end 1918) and the start of world war II (Start about 1939ish.) Mostly its probable the time span that gives you a bad impression. Improvements in engines, aviation, transportation, medical science, and electronics happened almost daily during that time. What might be getting you is that it was only 20 years.

When I read this and see the location I just have to think that they are trying to do something as an answer to clear. Portland, OR, has had WiMAX service in the form of Clear now for a few months, without the need to tie it to a home account.