DonGateley

Sorry, I dropped a letter. It's:

http://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/dub/DUB_CommList.p...

The federal phone facility is a lot cheaper than local or state facilities which uses a collect call system with an intermediate company that gouges terribly. If you get a Google Voice phone number in the area code of the prison for the inmate to call it is very reasonable, 90 cents for 15 minutes, and easily supported from outside.

The rate to do email is only a nickle a minute.

(A note on a note on usage: Yes, living for some time on the Gulf coast is what made me familiar with "might could be" but I learned it in a professional setting that hardly fits lower-class so perhaps the usage has become wider. Maybe you have to live with it to appreciate the very subtle difference between that and "could possibly be." As I heard it used it expressed a much stronger likelihood of the possibility.)

Thank you very much for the JPay JPlayer tip. I will definitely investigate Jpay.

As may be obvious I have a long standing close friendship with someone who, through stupidity more than evil, finds himself incarcerated for quite some time in a Federal prison. He may be stupid but he is far from dumb and while reading helps him retain his sanity, he is older and his eyesight is failing fast. Thus my focus on finding a way to get audio books inside. It could also greatly assist the less than literate. Any tips from anyone on how to go about that will be greatly appreciated.

Do you have any influence on what Keefe can provide? Does Keefe have any influence on what is permitted?

Write to Jeff Bidzos. If he hears it from more than one of us it might get him to thinking. Despite his hard ass management style there is a strong element of community concern in him.

Not sure the net of the PR for Amazon would be positive or negative, though. I'm surprised at how many Americans feel that the incarcerated should suffer maximally, that there should be nothing provided to ease their time regardless of how constructive it might be. The will to punish runs deep in the American psyche.

Actually I meant audio books, not ebooks. ebooks are cheap enough but getting a portable device with a display into that situation is well nigh impossible.

Specialized versions of devices comparable to Google Glass might could be designed to be acceptable though. Now there's something to think constructively about.

(Sorry about the "might could be" but I just don't know any economical way to say that which actually exists within the language.)

It's not actually bad at all:

http://www.bop.gov/locations/institution/dub/DUB_CommList.pd...

Bring ebooks to these and it will be revolutionary. Prison libraries range from limited to non-existent.

The cost of ebooks is beyond ridiculous but one would hope that the content providers might be able to see digital contribution to the incarcerated as an investment in future readers (especially since we incarcerate such a mind boggling proportion of our population.)

"CPython makes it very easy to write C-extensions for your Python code because in the end it is executed by a C interpreter."

Say what? What C interpreter might that be? In the end it is executed by machine code compiled from C programs designed so as to implement a Python virtual machine. Much, much different and much harder to make the intended connection.

Now why, really, is it easy to write C extensions for your Python code?

Not too likely. It's aimed at a relative handful of pretty narrow specialists.

There is a performance criteria that is fundamental to the use of interpreted languages and justifies their use based on other criteria. It's called "good enough."

Oh, it certainly existed. Conspicuously no stricture on unwarranted spying for purposes of investigation was stated and that had to be read into it later by the courts (which I consider juristic legislation.) It's not clear to me that the framers didn't intend to reserve that right for investigation.

I'm not saying it is wrong to restrict it, just that the constitution should have been so amended for it to be considered a constitutional question.

What protection is that? Search and seizure is not about privacy; it's about physical intrusion into personal space. Had they meant to address intrusion into abstract privacy they would have.

Damn thing crashed my browser (Pale Moon) which hardly ever happens any more. Go away.

What I found most fascinating was the degree to which detail increases when the entropy of human constructs increases without intervention. Eventually this aspect will reverse and it will all become homogeneous. What actually is this thing that first increases and then decreases when a highly ordered system progresses into disorder?

What do you mean by "piggybacking and free-loading off free and open technologies."

I don't understand where this "closing down" comes from. They want the option of DRM. How could they close down open technology?

Reminded of the time my VW's trans-axle froze up in -27 degree weather and couldn't be started by pushing it (it just skidded down the road) I was wondering what the hell a fiber transmission is.

Too bad it failed to gain traction. It was an excellent idea.

There is much that can't be consumed via the browser for the lack of DRM. I fail to see the problem with enabling it because I do believe that content providers have rights and I'll respect them to be able to consume their product. Of course the industry organizations want a say in how that is done.

Two books on the way down to my Kindle and three more on my wish queue. Fine taste.

If you are a Raspberry Pi fan or even an Arduino fan this is really big news. I'm already pausing to consider changing course on something I'm developing.

If the outage was due to something malicious I don't really expect to see a postmortem.

Really clever promo add for FitMob! Hard sell something known to be successful, then criticize it just a bit and substitute something "better" at the end.

About FitMob, I might signup after I find out what's in my area but not _to_ find out what's in my area. But then you know there probably isn't anything in my area. Yet. :-)

So what the hell happened to 8080 and 6800 APL? That would have truly changed the landscape. It wasn't quite the low hanging fruit Basic was though.

Don't need your word on that. It's pretty generally accepted that it is a better language. It's that relative to what existed it is a new language, not an upgrade. It is incompatible with the old one and most all that has been written for it. Most who are invested already can't and won't go there. Most who are coming into it choose to maximize their options over language nicety. It's all just too problematic.

It was dishonest to call it Python.

Yes, but the depth of the pool is far from clear when you are considering diving in. :-)

Brilliant insight. Having successfully completed the building of something on Christmas day that has been my primary creative focus for nearly 10 years I am well placed to understand the high he talks about and know that there is none like it (I've a lot of experience with highs of all sorts.)

Something he doesn't address is the ennui of post-completion blues. I've suffered it for significant duration many times as an engineer and am in the middle of one now, primarily spending my time in other people's moments like right now. He provides the solution though; whether or not I feel like it it's time to start building the next thing. Thankfully I buffered a list when enthusiasm ran high. :-)

Frankly, my main takeaway with respect to Aaron Swartz was his willingness to terribly damage the people close to him. Could he have had insufficient self esteem to understand that consequence? Because if the answer to that is no, his behavior becomes sociopathic and all the blame that is being thrown around is misdirected.

Ok, so it's apparent that they know everything that can be known and can interfere with anything within that reach. Let's just get on with it under that invariant assumption.

Frankly, every such revelation impresses me more. These guys know their shit.

His views and past behavior with respect to employees below top management. He seems to believe that only owners should profit from success because only they create it.

This comes from my reading of Schroeder's authorized biography.