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Ds ths mt th stndrd f pltcl dscrs hr?

s t cl fr m t sy - n thr ths thrd r nthr n - smthng lk " cn't wt ntl thy bry bm - tht ccksckr - s cn dnc n hs grv" ?

Please send this item to the NYT and let it have some national attention

...says someone who didn't even bother to hover over the LINK and see that it's a NYT article that is being quoted.

Sigh.

I'm not getting "sustainability" from building giant houses for rich people in the middle of formerly pristine wilderness areas

Agreed.

The "self-sufficient" label also hides the outsourcing of the solar chip fabs, the metal smelting, etc.

Sustainability, on a scale applicable to more than one rich guy, pretty much means the same thing as dense urban living -- New Yorkers use a tiny fraction of the energy (and everything else) of sprawling suburbanites.

Disagree.

Urban energy usage is lower than suburban, if at all, because of the reduced standard of living (less floor space per person, less outdoor space per person, etc.). If you want to talk about a comparable standard of living, the suburbs are no worse than the cities.

Designing devices to be remotely overridden is a bad idea

And yet, politicians keep pushing for "smart guns" that require authentication to operate...

On the topic of chimney demolishing: I once had an article published in Fine Homebuilding on how not to demolish a chimney.

...learned the hard way.

Well, I had what I consider to be an excellent high school education, and we *WERE* taught the Greek elements, the Earth centered solar system, etc., and what evidence tipped folks to put aside these theories.

Would folks prefer that this sort of education be stomped out, and replaced with something where alternative theories that were hugely important in the history of science were not mentioned and explained?

Immorally (if not illegally) acquired by the current owner's father in Egypt in the 1920s from grave robbers.

Immoral? Says who?

Lots of Roman coins are found buried in urns, or just in fields - a glass die could certainly have turned up that way.

Even if it was in a clay jug that surfaced because of erosion, or that a farmer dug up, etc., why is it immoral to pick up something off the ground, especially if you own the ground?

Does the 2,000 years dead person have a better moral claim?

Does a government (either democratic or not) have a better moral claim?

Props to Kyle and Jflex.

mplymnt s n dlt cnsnsl rltnshp.

For some jobs, personal appearance does not affect the job performance at all. I run a 12-person company, and there's no dress code at all. Then again, we operate out of what used to be the men's cellblock in the town jail in Arlington, MA.

If we faced out customers ever day, I might ask my (male) customer support guy not to wear a skirt to work, I might ask my female purchasing manager to wear a collared shirt, and I'd have to go shopping post-haste to get some respectable clothes myself.

T m, t snds lk th mngr ws mr thn wllng t mt th mply hlfwy, nd sh chs t mk pltcl stnc.

Fn, gd fr hr ('m srs bt tht, btw!).

f hr r f th cntry s nythng lk mn, thr r thsnds f thr jbs sh cn tk.

f cstmrs lk cnvntnl lkng wt stff, thy shld frqnt th rstrnt. f thy vl fr-frm "nythng gs" sthtc, thy shld byctt t.

cn't s tht ths s mrl ss t ll.

I'm hugely interested in self replicating machinery, metalworking, and other forms of constructing items (I launched SmartFlix based on these interests).

...and I've done a fair bit of reading on RepRap (I was considering building one a year or so back).

I am dramatically underwhelmed.

The construction is shoddy, the technique (basically hot-glue extrusion of thermoplastics) is hackish and has poor tolerances, the concept of "self replication" is grossly dumbed down (a very very large number of parts are not constructed, even from high quality inputs, but just store bought), etc., etc.

In short, I was fairly embarrassed for the RepRap folks.

Their toy is somewhat cool (although nowhere near as cool as, say, the Gingery lathe that is cast from aluminum melted in a cast iron cookpot, and machines itself as construction progresses), but to claim that it represents any important step forward in self replication ...

Congress began protecting ISPs from the twin threats of regulation and taxation

What external enemy was going to inflict these threats ?

Oh, that's right ... there was no external threat! Congress was "protecting" ISPs from ... itself!

(and, of course, other levels of the government)

When the Mafia offers this level of service, it's called a "protection racket".

I'm not exactly holding my breath for the day when the government comes to my business and makes me an offer I can't refuse ... all I have to do to avoid taxes and regulations aimed at emptying my wallet is to run my business exactly the way they tell me to.

Wonderful.

Russian solar physicists Galina Mashnich and Vladimir Bashkirtsev, and Danish scientist Henrik Svensmark have done studies saying that the solar cycle influences climate.

Brits Terry Sloan and Mike Lockwood have done a study saying that it doesn't.

OK, great, this is how the scientific process is supposed to work: competing theories exist, work is done on both sides, and over time, the preponderance of evidence supports one side or another.

...but I don't understand how Cory takes one data point and boldly proclaims "Sunspots don't cause global warming, people do".

Really?

Is the preponderance of evidence in, and that's what it says?

Cory, what would you say are the strongest and weakest points of Sloan's argument? What would you say are the strongest and weakest points of Mashnich's argument? What further data would you like to see to really settle things?

My strong guess is that you don't have opinions on any of these topics, because you really don't know anything about the topic.

As a layman reading the various press releases (and, yes, the BBC article and most other articles are based on press releases), neither do I.

I imagine that you'd be pretty skeptical of a single press release "conclusively" proving something that you didn't agree with about, I don't know, the correlation of IQ with ethnicity, or the risky sexual behavior of different demographics...and you wouldn't immediately write a blog post with a subject line that boldly states "X does not do Y; Z does".

Let's hear it for fun and amusing legal verbiage.

In the disclaimer for one of my businesses, I wrote "if you weld your head to a pipe, don't come crying to us".

To the credit of my lawyer, when he reviewed the document, he loved that bit, and insisted that we keep it.

...and we did.

Amusingly, I was ranting just the other day that it totally sucks that Next Wave is wrapped up, finished, kaput after 12 issues.

The comments at the end of the final book did seem to leave the door open to more.

Does anyone know why the title ended? Poor sales figures (I find that hard to believe with Warren Ellis' name on the cover) ? Too little time from the creators? Other?

I love creator interviews.

Girl Genius isn't really my thing (I think I once penned an intemperate blog post titled something like "Why Girl Genius pisses me off"...), but one of the cool things about running a comic book website is that I get to interview the artists and writers that I'm interested in.

(So, yes, this is a bit of a plug ... but before I get treated like "Some Guy" above, I'll note that (a) this is not my first post here; (b) I'm keeping the topic on 'comic book creator interviews').

The interview I want to plug is with Clevinger and Wegener of Atomic Robo, here.

We've got interviews with the guys behind Walking Dead (my personal total fave comic book) coming up in a month or two...that's one I'm really looking forward to.

TNH,

Apropos of nothing, I love the word "noosphere", even if I couldn't get through more than five pages of anything written by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin!

License Farm,

Carrying Indies is really important to me.

Right now, we just carry the Indies that are big enough to be carried by Diamond (the more-or-less monopoly middleman retailer in the comic book field).

...but we've got plans to go much deeper than that: we want to carry Indie stuff that's got press runs of 500, or 300, or just 75 copies. We've got a page ( http://heavyink.com/publishers_authors_artists ) asking small press publishers and independent authors and artists to get in touch with us...and this morning, we've already struck deals with two self-published artists to carry their work.

This is only the beginning - my goal is to go carry the most complete selection of deep-deep-indie work anywhere.

Jon,

I think we're more or less on the same page. I like having a local comic book store...and the kids who gather there to play HeroClix, and M:TG, and such do too. I think that brick-and-mortar stores will always have a purpose, and I think that they will always survive.

Some local bookstores have faced hard times since Amazon launched a decade or more ago...but tons of others have thrived, using the competition to sharpen their skills, to the benefit of the communities they serve.

I think that there are some disappointing brick and mortar comic book stores, and some of these have likely already been hurt by the rise of online comic book retailers (we're far from the first!). ...and there are also top notch brick-and-mortar comic book stores...and I don't think that HeavyInk is going to hurt them in the least.

My dream result, actually, is that HeavyInk succeeds not just in "preaching to the choir", but because of recommendation tools, an approachable design that doesn't scream "superhero ghetto", and other features, we end up broadening, to some small extent, the appeal of comic books, and create even more comic book fans...some of whom decide to wander into their local neighborhood store for in-person experiences, and face-to-face community.

Scoutmaster,

The post is a bit oddly worded. Here's what I wrote in my original email to Mark F:

"... HeavyInk.com is a mashup of Amazon.com-for-comic-books,
Facebook-style social networking, and a few other things..."

The description was meant to merely describe the fact that HeavyInk is a bit of a hybrid: half ecommerce website, half social networking website.

Hope that clears it up!

Hijinx,

Your services (storefront and website) sound great...especially since you were the sole developer! We had a bit more engineering staff (2.5 engineers, with about 0.5 of that going to support SmartFlix at any given moment, so 2.0 engineers overall). Anyway, I know how much work it was for us, so if you did it with half the manpower or less, then you're a true stud!

Your comments about our comments about local comic book shops are well taken...but I will point out that they are based, in large part, on the survey responses of 400 people that we quizzed about their comic book shopping experiences. We asked them what - if anything - they wanted improved from their current options, and most folks didn't just click a radio buttom: most of them left impassioned pleas in the free-form text boxes.

Also, and I think this is the key bit: most folks who are already big comic book fans either don't perceive the issues as problems, or don't perceive them at all... the loudest feedback came from folks who had a tentative interest in comics, but found it really hard to take that first step into the culture. I love my local comic book store, and the staff knows me by name...but not everyone feels this way. I've taken friends along from time to time, and they often feel put off, and out of sorts in there.

I'm sure that there are stores that do a great job of outreach, and make everyone feel welcome...but the sad truth is that not all stores are like that.

Finally: congrats on supporting the CLDF. I want to do something similar once we get out of the red - I'm a big fan of CLDF's work.

Jbarnier,

We do have plans to roll out worldwide shipping. It likely will be 3+ months out.

Jon Plante,

Comicscout is really well done - we learned of it about three weeks ago, and saw that it had a lot of the features that we had already developed. I think that HeavyInk wins on features, though:
* integrated comic book sales
* subscriptions to issues
* subscriptions to graphic novels (NOONE else has this, that I can find)
* recommendations engine
* reviews and ratings of authors and artists
* personalized / customizable RSS feeds (add an author to your personal feed to get alerts on new items by him or her; add a person to your RSS feed to get alerts on new reviews and blog posts by him or her; etc.)

So: comicscout is pretty nice, as far as it goes, but I think it's just one facet of what many comic book fans are looking for.

Don't forget that the front page advertises "20% off everything". Also, there's a Tripl Your Money guarantee (details here http://heavyink.com/help/triple_your_money).

Maybe we clap a lot, and wish really hard, we can replace our current for-profit dentistry system with a government run one like the UK has!