what format are the downloads? Are they mp3s? Could they be converted?

They have an actual console application that manages the playing, and it uses Windows Media player -- with all the expiration and stuff, it looks like a fussy hack, and I might as well borrow CDs, rip, listen and delete at that point.

I wonder if Apple has any intention of licensing their DRM...I guess not--but some expirable stuff on my iPod would be great.

I just checked out my local library, and it looks like they use the same system. Fairly unhelpful, really.

What was your overall impression, Hil? I was surprised by how sensible I found it-- I went in ready to point and mock, but came out with the feeling that he'd taken a relatively balanced and honest approach, and now I'm not sure if that was because it was balanced, or because it was well written and had lots of maths.

Next up: either I Capture the Castle or an annotated edition of Ring Lardner Jr. stories. (Now there is a book whose time came and went!)

Casting my vote for I Capture the Castle. Loved it. Might be time to reread, in fact.

What was your overall impression, Hil? I was surprised by how sensible I found it-- I went in ready to point and mock, but came out with the feeling that he'd taken a relatively balanced and honest approach, and now I'm not sure if that was because it was balanced, or because it was well written and had lots of maths.

I did find if fairly balanced, but I found myself wanting to ask, "Yes, but...?" a whole lot. I bought it after I'd gone to see the author speak (he was speaking at a science bookstore near my university, and I went with a bunch of other people from the math department), and his talk didn't convince me much, but I found his argument in the book interesting.

I just finished listening to Chocky.

I'd read this a long time ago when I was little, so remembered the basic outline.

What stood out to me as an adult was the supreme reasonabless of some of the adults. Not only does his father indulge the strange story, he believes it. Sure, we need conflict, so ma freaks a bit, and there are bad humans, but still. The kid is honest with his parents, and that's rewarded before things go south.

Hil, did you find the maths to be basically sound? I liked him for being open about the fact that other people could use the same theory to get to different numbers, but having never encountered the central Bayesian thing before, and not being having much of the maths background, I didn't feel competent to evaluate that, let alone his use of it.

I just finished listening to Chocky.

ita, is that the story in which there's some sort of alien entity that connects with a boy, who maybe used to draw? And he becomes more mathy and able to do things he wasn't able to do before that entity talked to him, and maybe draws strange places?

Because I remember a TV show with that name, from when I was a kid. I mean, I only now even tried to guess how to spell its name in English, which I just copied from your post. I never knew there was a book.

That is the very one, Nilly. I like John Wyndham -- as a teen in the UK it was pretty impossible to avoid his TV adaptations, so I have a hard time remembering what I've read and what I've seen.

Hil, did you find the maths to be basically sound? I liked him for being open about the fact that other people could use the same theory to get to different numbers, but having never encountered the central Bayesian thing before, and not being having much of the maths background, I didn't feel competent to evaluate that, let alone his use of it.

Pretty much, yeah. Some of the numbers he was putting into it seemed a bit pulled out of thin air, but the actual theory and equations seemed sound. (I'm not a statistician, so the last time I saw this stuff was a first-semester undergrad stats class a couple years ago, so I don't really know most of it that well.)