merreborn

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• Commented on New Catholic video game promises to brings family closer to heaven
  The episcopal version involves a wii fit kneeler, right? Kneel, stand, sit. Kneel, stand, sit. Amen....
• Commented on Visualizing the decline of empires
  Apparently I know far less about this segment of history than I should. Why do we learn so little about world history 1800-1980 in high school history courses in the US? They go on and on about ancient china, medieval...
• Commented on Glittergeddon!
  I'd never heard of peadogeddon before. Awesome: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=9031532194656768989...
• Commented on Searching for the skinny on Ralph Lauren ad (UPDATE: "We are responsible," says Ralph Lauren)
  It's conceivable that they may not *be* an original advertisement. If we're willing to hypothesize an anonymous digital photo manipulator, surely we can also imagine that said manipulator may have also been responsible for pasting the "Ralph Lauren" logo at...
• Commented on Shelley Rickey's "Bad Dog Pâté"
  Classy food, classless presentation. The ironing is delicious....
• Commented on Bank of America demands thumbprint from man with no arms
  @27 why should he win the lawsuit lottery just because he was inconvenienced? It's not like he wasn't given an option, he just couldn't be bothered to go get his wife, whose account he was trying to draw funds off...
• Commented on Dutch government tries to stop 13-year-old girl from sailing around world solo
  The government has every right to step in and prevent her from driving the family car around the block - even if she had her parent's consent.They only have that right because they own the -- presumably -- public road....
• Commented on How many minutes do people in your city have to work to buy a Big Mac?
  I often think of how long it took my earn the money before I spend it, I call it my work/spend ratio. It takes me about 40 minutes to earn the cost of a cinema ticket for a (say) 2...
• Commented on Sprint executive killed when boulder drops on his car.
  Murphy's wife, Jennifer, placed the Tahoe in neutral in hopes it would come to a stop while it was on a steep downhill trajectoryPutting it in first gear would have been a bit more effective....
• Commented on EVE Online creates exotic financial instrument to combat gold-farming
  This might give parents an incentive to stop just buying their kids accounts. Now kids can earn their playtime themselves -- by playing and exchanging their in-game assets for more playtime.Why would I want my kid to be required to...
• Commented on Video camera hidden in tire-shaped clock
  I'd imagine that the fact that no one would actually want to bother putting this ugly thing on their wall kind of limits its utility. Maybe if it were visually attractive, and sported less engrish......
• Commented on Showdown at the 4chan corral: Doug Rushkoff
  You're not supposed to tell people about 4chan.This always cracks me up, what with both Wired and the NY Times having done articles on 4chan about a year ago. Rushkoff is late to the party, if anything. And, yeah... calling...
• Commented on "Smart Parking Meters" not as smart as the hackers who pwn them
  The thing that bothers me about these kinds of findings is that you have these really smart people analyzing this technology, but after the fact. It is the same story with voting machines. It bothers me that these really smart...
• Commented on Water-fueled "jet pack"
  Still a bloody waste of water. I don't think that the water is being ejected to another dimension.Potable water is a precious, limited commodity. And once potable water is sprayed out of this contraption, it ceases to be potable. We...
• Commented on Nicholson Baker on the Kindle
  But I'm thinking that, when the tablet computer arrives, the Kindle will be a memory.The Kindle's display is passive -- it can display a static image (a single page) with zero power drain. Only changing pages draws power. This results...
• Commented on Holy Vending Machine
  On an only tangentially related note, I hit up Tacqueria Mana in downtown SF the other day, and was delighted to find that they had Spanish-language chick tracts at the register. I'd never actually seen anyone distributing those things in...
• Commented on I'm with the <em>Band</em>: Harmonix opens <em>Rock Band</em> track creation, sales to Xbox 360 home users [Updated]
  Several of you seem to have missed my point. The peer review process takes place AFTER you've completed the "development" process, and you submit the song for publishing. That means you can bypass it. Say you get isolated bass/guitar/vocals/drum tracks...
• Commented on Video: Rushkoff on Colbert
  For our Canadian friends, the episode is available at: http://watch.thecomedynetwork.ca/the-colbert-report/full-episodes/...
• Commented on I'm with the <em>Band</em>: Harmonix opens <em>Rock Band</em> track creation, sales to Xbox 360 home users [Updated]
  I anticipate massive "underground" bootleg song trading. People will upload copyrighted tracks and MIDI note charts to 3rd party services, via P2P, etc., and others will download those, and import them into the tools as if they were "creating" the...
• Commented on Crudely streamlined Honda Civic reduces drag
  Hell, why park at all? This thing probably gets better gas mileage at 50 than most cars do stopped!...
• Commented on Crudely streamlined Honda Civic reduces drag
  He claims that when he hits a deer, the front end "scoops them up and over, with minimal damage to both deer and car", and backs the claim up with this video of a racecar hitting a deer: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rGJ0fJN10YY It's...
• Commented on Rap Rap Chess (found art / DIY personals)
  This guy's pretty prolific: http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b137/xeomt/bizarresign2.jpg http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b137/xeomt/phonepole.jpg http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b137/xeomt/011009_16401.jpg http://i18.photobucket.com/albums/b137/xeomt/6a00d83451afa369e201116903283e970c-.jpg And of course, credit goes to the finder: http://vnboards.ign.com/morningthaw/b5156/110832568/r110838833/...
• Commented on Spider pizza may be delicious, but I will not be eating it.
  The taste would probably get lost among the rest of the flavors Yeah... I really think I could damn near anything pizza, if it had plenty of other toppings. my experience mainly comes from a couple of house spiders and...
• Commented on Pea shooter traditionalists decry use of laser sights at annual competition
  Screw the traditionalists. This contest is just begging to become a makers' paradise.Oh, just you wait. I've got a brilliant idea for next year: why use your breath to propel your projectile? Two words: "gun powder". This is going to...
• Commented on I'm Not Hanging Noodles on Your Ears and Other Intriguing Idioms From Around the World
  "Give it to someone with cheese: Spanish - to deceive" That explains so much of Americanized Mexican food....
• Commented on Rushkoff: "Google's War On The PC"
  We buy a big powerful machine and do everything on it ourselves. This suits software and hardware companies just fine: they create new, bloated programs that require more disk space and processing power. We buy bigger, faster computers, which then...
• Commented on Embed virtual worlds
  O3D (the open source remnants of Google's failed Lively) should make a more interesting platform than Adobe Flash.The flash client is theoretically only the first of several. If you want to start work on an 03D client, I'm sure they'd...
• Commented on Pirate Bay to sell to private company, go legit (?) (!)
  TPB had a unique blend of hubris and convenient legal climate that makes it pretty hard to duplicate. You have to both: 1) Be in a country with copyright laws/enforcement as lax as theirs and 2) Be batshit crazy enough...
• Commented on The Devil's Kettle
  @Scuba SM I don't think GPS works too well underground. You need line-of-sight....
• Commented on Pirate Bay founders launch beta of "The Video Bay"
  Especially if... it uses a player (ie not the adobe flash player) that made downloads easyLooks like they're using the HTML5(?) <video> tag. In other words, wish granted. But you'll have to upgrade to a bleeding-edge browser. And you can...