Okay, seriously, I'm a historian and an AGW skeptic - and _I_ say that we're in a warming trend.

The question is not "are we warming?" - we're right on schedule for a warm period, just as we had a thousand years ago, and a thousand years before that. The question is "to what degree is human activity influencing this warming?"

And for that, I only know of one real-world study comparing UV coming in vs. UV bouncing out compared with CO2 content in the atmosphere using EBRE data, and its results came in at the opposite of what climate computer modelling had suggested. But, this still has to be reproduced.

There's a difference between ignoring something and contesting it. Your post had some merit, but it also missed the Salafi ideology and the war of ideas, both of which have a tremendous impact on this discussion.

When you leave Muslims alone to govern themselves in a democratic system, they do tend towards liberalism and secularism. That's the actual trend - you can see it in the Muslim majority democracies in the Pacific Rim. The Salafi ideology out of Saudi Arabia does not want either - they want a totalitarian Caliphate based on the Koran. It's no accident that Saudi Arabia is one of the most oppressive countries on Earth. The Arab Spring is one of their worst nightmares - it's a popular movement valuing democracy and liberalism over theocracy.

You cannot solve the problems leading to Islamist terrorism without confronting the ideology behind it, and part of that is recognizing that there is a war of ideas, that there is a well-funded and vocal totalitarian ideology behind the Salafi Jihad, and that issues like Israel are being used as a smokescreen to keep Western democracies from interfering with them. The more you get caught up in the smokescreen, the harder it is to get at the heart of the issues in play, and the easier it is for the Salafi Jihad to indoctrinate new members and keep the violence going.

Israel is no saint - frankly, there are no good guys there at this point - but it is NOT the root of our problems with the Muslim world. And Israel is not the political master of the United States - that's just Islamist propaganda.

You talk about its ethnic cleansing - but I know at least a bit about that situation, and I cannot think of a single Israeli example. So, WHAT ethnic cleansing? Where are the mass graves of Palestinians murdered because of their race? And what about Darfur? What about all the Islamic ethnic cleansings, which are far greater, and for that matter, REAL (remember the Armenians in Turkey during WW1, or the Kurds in Iraq, or the 120,000 murdered by Salafi Islamists in Algeria in the 1990s)? What about the fact that the Salafi Jihad wants to create a totalitarian caliphate with Taliban-style rule, and uses Israel as an issue to create a smokescreen so that the world won't take a close look at the totalitarian nature of Islamism?

Put simply, our problem with the Muslim world comes from the Salafi Jihad, which is an aggressive, expansionist, and totalitarian political ideology that wants to create a caliphate with Taliban-style rule. Israel is very much a convenient sideshow for it that allows it to play the victim role when it is anything but one, and keep promoting liberalism and democracy as bad guys when the reality is that they are the threat.

And I fear that you're being caught up in the Salafi smokescreen. In a lot of cases, they don't have legitimate grievances, but it is in their best interests for creating their totalitarian Caliphate that we believe that they do.

There's a very good book on this subject titled War of Ideas, by Walid Phares. Basically, there is a section of Islam called the Salafi Jihad, which is the most conservative form of Islamism (as opposed to Islam - one is a religion, the other is a totalitarian political ideology, and while there is occasional overlap the two are not the same thing). Based primarily in Saudi Arabia, it has spent a lot of oil money to create a smokescreen with the goal of presenting the Muslim world as a unified whole (it isn't) that has been the victim of Western imperialism (it has been, but not nearly to the extent that they claim), and that the Muslim complaints by the Mullahs should be seen as a reaction to Western actions, with the West at fault (it isn't).

And, so long as we believed this, they were free to attempt to impose religious totalitarianism without us taking any measures to stop them. They would talk up issues such as Palestine so that we wouldn't look at atrocities in places like Darfur and try to stop them. They worked very hard to prevent us from engaging with Islamic countries so that the people of those countries wouldn't see democracy or liberalism as an option to Islamism.

They are very good at propaganda too. Take those big anti-west demonstrations that pop up whenever an incident such as the Danish Mohammed cartoons occurs. They don't happen because lots of Muslims have a hair-trigger temper whenever anybody criticizes them. They happen because a number of Islamist news stations grab onto them, propagandize them, and keep building them up as more than just an isolated incident until enough Muslims are upset enough to come out. And there's a clear message being sent to the West: back off.

So, while there are some areas who have legitimate grievances, it is also very important to understand that the Salafi ideology coming out of countries like Saudi Arabia is NOT a reaction to Western imperialism - it is an expansionist totalitarian ideology that has existed since the 1920s, and it is advancing itself through propaganda and psychological warfare. We are the enemy to them, and we are in the middle of a war of ideas. Fighting and winning that war must be part of any solution.

"Al Qaeda was a reaction to Arab tyrants propped up by the American government."

No, it wasn't.

Al Qaeda is part of the violent arm of Salafi ideology. It wants to institute a totalitarian world Muslim state with the Koran as its constitution and Taliban-style rule. This ideology has existed since the 1920s - Al Qaeda is just one of the more recent wrinkles.

They were never a reaction to Arab tyrants. If they reacted to anything, it was secularization. They hit the United States in part to try to drive it out of the Middle East, so that the Arabs there would not see democracy as an alternative to totalitarianism. And a lot of oil money has been provided in the last few decades to create this image of the Muslim world as victims of American policy, so that when the Salafi Jihad pushed, the West would not push back. They were almost successful too - right now there is a split in academia with Middle Eastern Studies being heavily compromised and Security Studies (a new branch that deals with Salafism without the smokescreen they put up) being very new and controversial.

There's a very good book on this subject titled "The War of Ideas," by Walid Phares. If you want to know more about this, it is very worth checking out.

Well, I was born in 1976, and I spent my entire childhood without the Internet. And, so long as you can take care of any professional online needs (stuff for the office, etc.), you should be fine.

In fact, your biggest problem may be other people in your social circle being too used to contacting you by email or over the 'net, and having to remind them to contact you by phone instead. But, really, I have a feeling that if you have no problems going back to basics (like newspapers for news, etc.), you shouldn't find too many real annoyances.

Well, it's not that simple. From what I remember reading of this (which, granted, was at least five years ago, so perhaps...HOPEFULLY...some of this has changed), the recording industry is set up to shaft recording artists upon entry.

Let me put it this way - I am an agented author. So, when I deal with the publishers, I have an agent on my side who will play hardball if she sees the need. My agent works for me - she gets a cut of what I receive, so it is in her best interest to ensure that I get the best possible deal. This is how it is supposed to work.

In the recording industry (around five years ago, and hopefully not today) many of the lawyers involved in the contract negotiation on the artist side are in cahoots with the labels. So, a bunch of stuff that should get caught and removed from the contract isn't. And, there's a trick that often gets used where the initial offer is a contract in disguise - a "letter of understanding" - locking in the recording artist before a proper negotiation can even take place.

To cut a long story short (I know, too late), it's not a situation of read the contract offer, negotiate to take out the bad stuff, and walk away from it if the other side isn't reasonable. It's often receive the offer, take it to an entertainment lawyer who is secretly working against your interests, and later find out that you've agreed to terms that leave you going platinum while making less than you would if you were working at a Macdonald's.

(At least, that's how it was when I was reading about it around five years ago.)

Okay - somebody has to defend the arts degrees here, and I guess I'll do it. A lot of people are looking at this in terms of technology work (hardly surprising, as this is a technology site), but a liberal arts degree is far from useless.

Take me, for example. I just finished a Master of Arts in War Studies with a history concentration. Prior to that, I got a B.A. in English literature, and prior to that, a B.A. in Medieval Studies. Where did this lead me? Contract defence research. The work I do will hopefully help my country (Canada) avoid a debacle like the United States had in Iraq between 2003-2005. No new graduate with a B.Sc. could do what I do.

Will a B.A. immediately lead to a job paying $80,000 per year? Probably not. But, it does tell an employer three very important things: you can finish what you start, you can work under pressure (depending on the reputation of the school), and you can think critically. All of these are attributes that are looked for in the senior positions. So, you may be making $30,000, or possibly less, right out the door, but you will be on the path to a much better senior position as you get more experience.

And, if you want to get ahead outside of the technology field, the liberal arts are important. Want to work in politics? A liberal arts degree will take you farther. Same with defence research, or working in developing countries. Or social work.

So, a liberal arts degree is not useless. It just doesn't lead into a technology field right after graduation.

Okay, yes, that changes matters. The way you initially described it, it sounded like time tables and sources of delays were written into the fine print, and the company had over-booked itself.

Many apologies - I see your point now.

I'm sorry, but I can't really side with the pool company here, and I'm a small business owner.

In the initial negotiations, it is up to the contractor to set reasonable expectations and timeframes. If there's a good possibility that the pool won't be ready when the customer wants it, this must be made clear up-front.

If you have told your customer that you can have the pool installed by July 4th and you do not deliver on that, it is your fault. If you have over-extended yourself by taking on too many contracts for the season, that is your fault. Whether the customer can read his or her contract with you is irrelevant.

If you have created an expectation with your customer that you then cannot meet, you have earned a bad review. The fault does not lie with the customer.

Are you referring to the frame rate or the 3D looking less real?

I'm sorry, but I doubt that frame rate is the problem here. A TV signal broadcasts at just under 30 fps (29 point-something), and a movie is shown at 24 fps. It's brought up to 60 fps (or 60 Hz) by doubling up frames.

So, as long as you've got at least 30 fps, the frame rate will look right.

Wow - that reminds me of what got me starting my own publishing company. A book that my collaborator and I had worked for some time on ended up in contract negotiation hell. The contract added the publisher's personal name to the copyright in the first clause, and went downhill from there. Finally, I was hungering to get my own company started anyway, so I decided to publish the book myself, and Legacy Books Press was born.

The good news is that all publishers are not like that. But, unfortunately, some are. Sometimes, knowing when to say "no" to a bad contract is half the battle.

I'm sorry, but we're not talking about food, or a necessity like running clean water. This is entertainment - there is no requirement for you to obtain it, and if a DVD or blu-ray isn't available in your region, then the mature thing to do is to have some perspective and do without until it becomes available. To skip "I guess I'll have to wait until it's out" and go directly to "it's time to pirate" is like going to a furniture store, finding that they don't have the chair you want, and then coming to the conclusion that you have no other choice than to break into their warehouse.

Now, that said, has it ever occurred to you to just write to the studio and ask them to release the movies you want on DVD/BD in your region?

The reason I ask that is because studios ARE responsive to requests like that. Every time they get letter asking "could you please release X on home video," they don't assume that it's just one person wanting to buy it. They assume that behind that one person writing there are anywhere from ten to hundreds of people - perhaps even thousands - who want the same thing but are too shy to ask for it. If they get enough requests for a title, then it establishes the presence of a market for that title. And since blu-ray releases of older movies, no matter how successful they were originally, tend to sell very poorly compared to new releases (which is one of the reasons that the first three Indiana Jones movies are taking so long to get to blu-ray), a few letters asking for that title can go a long way towards getting that movie released.

So, rather than hitting the Pirate Bay while declaring that you have no other choice, perhaps you should write a letter to the studio, or get an online petition going. Demonstrate that there is a market for the movies you want on blu-ray. Not only are you likely to have an impact, but you'll also be helping all those other people who want the movie too, but are too shy to ask.

Amazon is problematic, in fact, because among other things, they don't release their actual sales figures. This means that their claims are very difficult, if not impossible to verify. According to the trade book publishers themselves, as of October 2010, e-book sales represented 8.7% of their net for 2010 (up from 3.31% in 2009 - the full figures for 2010 aren't out yet, though).

As far as what is going on in the actual e-book market vs. the print book market, it is important to note that while the product is books, the mediums are different, and there is every sign that the markets are different too (for example, e-book sales figures are not impacted by any of the peaks and valleys in the printed book market). I've been tracking these markets for a while using the data from the publishers (you can find it at publishers.org), which strike me as far more reliable than Amazon, as they actually give you numbers to crunch. Everything I've seen suggests that e-books are a brand new and growing market, with very little overlap with the printed book market. Yes, the e-book market is growing, but at the same time, it is NOT cannibalizing the print book market (with the notable exception of tech manuals and a large part of the reference market, where an e-book version is far more useful due to the ability to do word searches).

This makes a great deal of sense. The e-book is an inherently technological product, while the printed book is not. The printed book is a self-contained and simple object, while the e-book requires a technological reading device. And, it would not surprise me in the slightest if it turned out that the e-book market has its links and associations with cell phones and the cell phone app market. In fact, I would credit the increased adoption of cell phones by the public with raising the e-book market up.

Now, this leads to two main questions. Question #1 is how far up can the e-book market go? If the printed book market is only tangentially related to the e-book market at best, then the printed book market tells us very little about what is likely to happen to e-books. They could reach very high, or they could be about to plateau.

Question #2 is how badly will the e-book market be impacted by the piracy wave? This is also a question of longevity - if the e-books are representing less than 10% of trade sales, then publishers are not likely to fight to keep the market alive if piracy makes major in-roads. They are more likely to cut their losses and leave the market. So, if the piracy wave is too great, the e-book market may not survive the next five years.

(And, I would point out, a lot of major console game production companies started off in the PC game market - when the piracy became endemic in the PC game market, they voted with their feet. So, such a move by publishers would not be unprecedented.)

And, I don't have any answers to these questions. I wish I did - I'm trying to formulate an e-book strategy for my own little publishing company. Among other things, I can't find any figures for the cell phone app market, to see if they do track with the e-book market, and give a sense of what will happen next.

But, no matter what, it is vitally important for people to keep in mind that the e-book market is not necessarily part of the book market, and therefore e-book sales from online retailers tells us a great deal about e-books, but relatively little about print books.