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Sounds like a good idea, until you realize that a satellite can be shot down without much fuss:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASM-135_ASAT


That doesn't seems like an issue for the OP. Leo Babauta has six kids.


If your kids are toddler-age and older, it is certainly possible. But when you have babies, I consider step 1 impossible. I do all of the steps he mentions except number 1, and I am tired.


Don't forget the F-104 Starfighter, also designed by Johnson. Pilots nicknamed it "Lawn Dart" and "Widowmaker" for a reason.


Good luck making your own SWF creator or player without stepping on an Adobe patent.


There's no need to create a player; as far as the creator goes, Adobe's already released the free mxlmlc so you could simply generate ActionScript and let them compile it.


Sturgeon's Law Corollary: 90% of people will buy crap.


TRON is rarely used outside of Japan because the specification documents are mostly in Japanese. TRON is more like an industry standard for an embedded RTOS than a concrete implementation. Of course, some open-source code is available, but these are reference implementations. More info:

http://tronweb.super-nova.co.jp/itron.html


Opportunity knocks! I had heard of this way back when but always assumed it had died when the US was lobbying the Japanese government to scale back MITI.

Does anyone else remember MSX? Looks like it never quite went away.


Thanks; I suspected documentation might have something to do with it. I wasn't aware of the specification-vs-implementation issue though.


That's the old Web 1.0 startup scheme. Web 2.0 changed phase 2 from "?" to "Banner ads/Get bought by Google".


And Phase 3 has been removed. "Agile" teaches us to simplify, after all.


Exactly. John C. Dvorak is a professional internet troll disguised as a tech journalist. He uses misinformed rants ( or "controversial opinions" if you like the euphemism better ) as a source of hits. He has trolled the FLOSS and Mac communities for years. But trolling the White House ?. That's effing crazy.


If you want real subversive fantasy, I recommend Andrzej Sapkowski's The Last Wish and the other of books from the saga. It has everything: The main character is a male witch (or witcher), the female wizards have formed a secret society to take over the world and nonhumans (elves,dwarfs) are subjected to human racism and bigotry.


If you are just looking for fantasy that equalizes male and female practitioners of magic Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series levels the playing field. In fact, it is seriously tilted towards women for the first part of the series.


in the first part yes. unfortunatley in the second part all the men are just naturally more powerful and everytime a women is exposed to the male side of the onepower they freak out because oh it's so violent and hard to control, while the men have no problem dealing with the womens side.

not to mention that about half of the problems in the series are caused by women scheming and interferring because they're all thus so convinced that men are incompetent.

I remember being dumbfounded when I read an intervew with Jordan and the interviewer asked how he wrote such strong women. ... yeah if you assume strong women are all horrible humans sure I can see thinking he writes strong women.


You think they're horrible bc you see the world from rand/mat/perrin's eyes. If you were aes sedai & a bunch of ignorant kids with that much power popped up you'd do anything to control them. Brandon Sanderson said that as he gets older he finds himself thinking more like Moiraine. I feel the same way.

link: http://www.brandonsanderson.com/blog/599/WoT-Read-Through-EY... (running off to shadar logoth without telling anyone!)


Well I mostly agree with Brandon, and frankly even as I was writing my post I felt that Nynaeve and Moraine were the best of the bunch, Nynaeve particularly.

But the arguement of "but they ARE reckless ignorant kids" only works for the first couple books. 8 books in women are still running around saying Rand/Mat/Perrin is a wool headed moron who will only make things worse if left to his own devices, despite each having shown their competence time and time and time again, while the women's meddling caused things to go pear shaped just as often.


Rand still does insanely stupid things. At the end of ACoS he runs off alone to kill Sammael & nearly dies half a dozen times before Moridin(!) intervenes. That retinue of Aes Sedai was probably the best thing to happen to him. He nearly died numerous times without them in APoD. He would have died at the end of winter's heart if he tried that alone with Nynaeve like he originally planned. He'd never have left Far Madding.

The other two also do stupid stuff (well, Mat more than Perrin), but it's easy enough to argue they shouldn't be running around loose either, not this close to the end. They have no real protection.


As I wrote a comment above, I was trying to rack through my mind to come up with examples of strongly written females from Jordan. I decided to ignore the forsaken and royalty (as perhaps Graendal, Morgase and Tuon might count) - and I managed to come up with Aludra and Tylee Khirgan.

While the concept was good - in almost no place where the gender disparity was shown - does Jordan portray the women in a good light. (Perhaps only the Village Council / Womens Circle comparisons)


And do not forget to try the exercises at the end of every chapter. They are the key to fully enjoy the book.



Thank you very much for sharing this. I will be using this to verify my solutions for the exercises. I am planning to work through the book slowly but thoroughly.


Watch the video lectures as well, they're well worth it - and since they're for an earlier version of the book, you don't get presented with exactly the same information as you would be if they were in sync with the current version of the book.


The exercises are actually scattered throughout the text. Definitely don't skip them, some of them are a lot harder and more mind-blowing than they look.


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