brianary

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• Commented on TV vs Web: consumption characteristics
  This does seem pretty outdated. More and more people are hooking computers up to their HDTVs to watch hulu and Netflix and Boxee and Zinc and MythTV and Miro, and this setup shares similarities with both sides of that chart....
• Commented on Pfizer abandons property it won in Supreme Court housing battle
  Since Pfizer, IIRC, argued tax benefit as the primary reason for transferring the ownership, couldn't the original owners use that same argument now to get the land back?...
• Commented on Real calculators modeled after desktop calculators
  What you may really want is a stack-based postfix hp calculator, so there is no ambiguity or operator precedence: 2 3 4 × +...
• Commented on Y2K ten years later
  @Stephan Jones, in re: Peak Oil "scare": "Apparently we have nothing to worry about. The free market will magically make oil appear out of thin air, or rocks." -- Stephan Jones, Oil running out faster than the International Energy Agency...
• Commented on Y2K ten years later
  I wonder how much longer all of those "windowing" band-aids for two-digit year systems will hold: will they fail before or after the 32-bit rollover?...
• Commented on Real calculators modeled after desktop calculators
  This is obviously some strange new usage of the word "real" that I was not previously aware of. Also, similar to emacs comment: I'd like a physical perl -lne 'print eval' . Best of all would be a physical calculator...
• Commented on Robot olympics coming to China
  So, *Android* Olympics, then....
• Commented on What MP3 player should I buy?
  Another vote for Sansa e200 series (refurb rev 1 ONLY): you can get them cheap from Woot! periodically, and run Rockbox on them. They use microSD cards, which is where I put my podcasts. You can get two (they really...
• Commented on Germany's top fashion magazine bans models over "anorexia"
  ...and they weigh 83% less than Americans! *rim-shot*...
• Commented on Is Apple's tablet a kindle-killer?
  @DSMVWL THS: Let's hope the planet can withstand your nightly charging pattern indefinitely, and at a growing scale....
• Commented on Is Apple's tablet a kindle-killer?
  eInk matters not because we subjectively prefer it, but because you just can't physically spend your whole life looking at a screen without some ill effects. Besides: do we know for sure that it isn't eInk on the *back*? ;)...
• Commented on Here come the airport rectal exams!
  Is this headline the name of the upcoming TMBG album?...
• Commented on Here come the airport rectal exams!
  #1 @REDELEPHANTLABEL: No, I'm afraid our cowardice in the face of the tactic of terrorism is the joke. The whole point is to induce an autoimmune disease in your target, so that they spend a wildly disproportionate amount of resources...
• Commented on Would you be happy with metered internet in return for enforced net neutrality?
  That would certainly kill hulu. It would have been fair 15 years ago, but the web hasn't been built to be particularly bandwidth-efficient. The protocols and formats of the web are text, not binary, and include tons of useless info,...
• Commented on Al Franken draws map of the US
  You only have to draw three entire state borders: the freak states (AK and HI) and a starting state. All of the others share at least one border. You don't even have to really draw CO/WY, it's just a rectangular...
• Commented on SanDisk Puts Its $$$ Where Its Slot Is [Yet Again]
  I don't know, I think digital distribution and physical media can co-exist. Competition is generally good, right? Especially within an otherwise price-fixed copyright monopoly. OK, perhaps not. Maybe I've got a soft spot for Sansa, since I use an e280...
• Commented on Olympic cyclist predicts the future of bicycles
  ...and there'll be a firepole down to it, and it turns into a submarine, and it will shoot lasers, and it comes with an underground base protected by a moat filled with lava-proof sharks with friggin' lasers on their heads,...
• Commented on Firefighter allegedly shoots cyclist in head to teach him not to ride on a busy street
  it wasn't a good helmet it was cheap, low quality Chinese made bullets. You can tell they're Chinese because of the high lead content....
• Commented on Who is copyright for?
  @Bingothechimp: You are confusing Cory's repudiation of *DRM* for his position on copyright, I think....
• Commented on US withheld reports on the risks of driving while using mobile devices
  My grandfather and father use(d) mobile ham radio rigs while driving pretty much their whole adult lives without incident. Maybe ham radios are different? Maybe some people can do it and some cannot? -KB7IQR...
• Commented on Buzz Aldrin: Engineer, Rapper, Heart-Breaking Realist
  @PATRICK AUSTIN: Explain Paris Hilton....
• Commented on Leverage season one DVD: crime drama about Delta force who take down corrupt corporations
  Love the boss button on the TNT website....
• Commented on Laser-cut wooden keyboard
  BBG needs a couple of other tags: designonly (no product available), and unavailable (no product available--yet)....
• Commented on Javanese batikers say thanks but no thanks to copyright
  This seems like an interesting point in the copyfight discussion: whether copyright supporters are taking credit for God's inspiration. It only works for religious folks, but it should really make them think a little more before reciting slogans....
• Commented on Appreciation of "jumping hour" watches that display time as linear
  Neat, but I don't think I could bear to expose myself to any more progress bars....
• Commented on Massive bank fraud in massively multiplayer game EVE
  Hadn't EVE become the proving grounds for Libertarians?...
• Commented on Touchscreen fan controller for PCs
  When I need to control my fans, I use DRM. That always works! (rimshot)...
• Commented on Sony X-Series Walkman available
  Nah. Rockbox on a cheap Woot! Sansa for me....
• Commented on Smartphone guide keeps it simple
  Not really a fair comparison. The Android specs look like a generation behind the rest, rather than Cupcake/Hero/Samsung Galaxy-level. Wired should've waited just a bit (hopefully not too long) until these new Android phones were widely available, otherwise why even...
• Commented on Special Experimentation Zones to solve big problems?
  This is why a move back to actual *states*, from, let's face it, *provinces* would be useful. You could do things like pit different systems against each other, or at least offer people somewhere else to go if the state's...