Merc

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• Commented on North Korea Finds Two US Journalists Guilty of Unspecified "Grave Crime," Sentence: 12 Years Hard Labor
  It's too bad they were taken prisoner, but they were the ones who put themselves in danger. Whether they were within China or within North Korea at the time they were captured, they must have been very close to the...
• Commented on Chuck Aaron, the only FAA-certified stunt helicopter pilot
  According to the youtube description: Yes, it does back flips. It is a Eurocopter BO-105 CBS 4 Twin engine helicopter. Stock model with a Rigid Rotor system, the fixed rotor is why it can do aerobatics. Does anybody know what...
• Commented on Critical Mass bicyclist knocked over by NYPD
  One thing is absolutely clear from watching this video: the cop pushes this guy off his bike in a surprise attack without warning. It's clearly not an accidental collision. If you look at the way the cop's feet are planted...
• Commented on Critical Mass bicyclist knocked over by NYPD
  Wow. The cop doesn't warn him (the audio is pretty clear there) and the rider is pretty obviously trying to avoid the cop while staying on the road. There isn't anything that would justify that. If the guy were wanted...
• Commented on Paparazzi at The Ivy in Los Angeles
  The paparazzi is really a consumer-side problem. There wouldn't be anybody taking pictures of celebrities "in the wild" if those pictures didn't sell. They sell because the public wants to see those pictures, and are willing to buy newspapers /...
• Commented on Loyd Case on installing solar panels (one month later)
  His original posts say the panel installation cost $35,000 or so. If he routinely saves $300 a month in electricity bills, that's about 120 months or 10 years to break even. (And apparently the $300/month power generation offset is very...
• Commented on Lessons Learned.
  This once again proves that the best way to draw attention to something is to try to hide it....
• Commented on Official <i>Fallout 3</i> trailer
  The floating robot in the kitchen was a bit of a disappointment. The fallout games had a sort of "steampunk" quality to them, but rather than souped up industrial revolution technology it was souped up 1950s tech -- it looked...
• Commented on Power On Self Test: Cargo Cult of Mac
  DON'T GET RIPPED OFF! That's not really a mac. Notice its touchpad has *two* buttons. Who would ever need more than 1 button on a mouse? And also notice that the apple logo on the back is upside-down. On macs...
• Commented on Experiment: 96% of passers-by ignore famous artist's street painting
  The fact that some people pay millions of dollars for this guy's paintings says as little as the fact that only 4% of people looked at his paintings when they were on the street. I'm sure that the people paying...
• Commented on NYPD cop: videoing me breaking the law is a terrorist act
  The guy filming is an asshat, but he's right. Police officers break the law all the time because they know they can get away with it. According to those "broken window" theories (i.e. major crimes are more likely when minor...
• Commented on Bowl with spoon-rest
  You people who have spoons that fall into your bowls either need bigger spoons or smaller bowls....
• Commented on Bathtub with built-in bookcase
  So let's see, I get out of my chair with a built-in bookcase, walk up my stairs with a built-in bookcase to take a bath in my bathtub with a built-in bookcase. It's probably just more practical to put in...
• Commented on Video: Purported Dell Call Center Employee Calls Customer "Little Girl"
  Sounds like this tech support call Arnold made: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-poZ0AOZAc...
• Commented on Tom Cruise's Scientology video -- and Gawker's legal battle to host it
  FWIW, the background music is a loop from the remix Mission Impossible theme from the movie that Cruise starred in....
• Commented on Photo of extension cord in swimming pool
  This is one of those cases where people who have only seen something in a movie / TV show think they understand it. Just like being shot with a gun doesn't send you flying 6 feet back through the air,...
• Commented on Hey TiVo, Ditch the Subscription!
  Oh no, they definitely claim they're monitoring what you watch, down to the second. They know when you fast forward a commercial, which bits of a show you replay, etc. The part they claim not to be doing is attaching...
• Commented on Hey TiVo, Ditch the Subscription!
  Makes sense. I wonder what it would take to make TiVo start their own listings division. Aggregating all the listings data from all the stations around the country is no small task, but it would seem some competition is needed....
• Commented on Hey TiVo, Ditch the Subscription!
  My understanding is that TiVo doesn't own or control the TV data, but instead licenses it from somebody else (Tribune Media Services?). TMS won't grant anybody (including TiVo) a flat rate, instead they charge per user, and the cost is...
• Commented on RFID Guardian, open hardware/software to firewall your RFID tags
  That site is very low on details, I was hoping they would at least say what frequency of RFID tags they're claiming to work with, but after 10 minutes of searching I couldn't find a single mention of frequency. My...
• Commented on Prankster reddens Rome fountain
  Is the Italian police overreacting and calling it a "terrorist act" yet?...
• Commented on Why Comcast's BitTorrent-fux0r is bad for quality of service
  You would think there's got to be a good market out there for people who want to: 1. Have a high bandwidth 2. Have no usage caps 3. Have a fixed IP 4. Run servers (web, game, etc) Even if...
• Commented on Hollywood writer's strike close? New bits on web work.
  Ugh. A writers strike means that shows that don't involve "writing" will dominate, i.e. reality TV....
• Commented on How to board a plane without ID -- be a pageant queen
  The reality show footage doesn't show her getting through security, only getting checked at the ticket counter. What I noticed here though is that although they said to google her, she showed various forms of ID, etc. she never once...
• Commented on Hunt for the twirly-faced pedophile
  Shouldn't that be "suspected child molester who appears to have taken pictures of himself molesting children"? The distinction is that pedophelia is a condition, child molestation is a crime. Not all pedophiles commit crimes. If pedophelia were a crime it...
• Commented on <i>Portal</i> Weighted Companion Cube Papercraft
  It's a very good game, but it's short. I finished the game in one evening. On the other hand, once you finish the game, you can replay all the maps with added challenges, for example, try to do it with...
• Commented on Cops bust water-balloon pranksters
  I think the physics prof's math is a bit off. Wikipedia says a storey is between 8 and 14 feet, typically 10. That puts the total height at about 80 feet. Add 5 feet for the arm-height of the people...
• Commented on Physics lecture cribbed for TV commercial
  ... and the guys who think this stuff up call themselves CREATIVES (really, thats their job title)! Yeah, they used someone else's words, but the content of those words didn't really matter. They were essentially technobabble to get across the...
• Commented on Physics lecture cribbed for TV commercial
  Blog link is missing, it should be: http://scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=277 I'd say this might qualify as fair use, especially because it's a tiny portion of the copyrighted work, and it has a negligible effect on the market for the copyrighted work. It...
• Commented on Cops complaining about cops writing cops tickets
  "For Dick of the month, I nominate Trooper Davis, badge number #314159 of the GPD. I was doing a routine traffic patrol while I spotted somebody DWB. It was clear he was a drug dealer because he was driving a...