peterbruells

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• Commented on TV vs Web: consumption characteristics
  I have real qualms with "figure it out" and "powerful, can do almost anything". That reeks of someone dearly in love with the internet, blind to the many users who treat computers as magical devices. Fer chrissakes, don't people like...
• Commented on Fangst
  @linkwitch Considering that in German "fangen" means "to catch" (prey by angling, hunting or by hand, like a ball), the noun "Der Fang" means a) the catch, b) the act and c) the teeth (Usually plural Fänge, though) and that...
• Commented on Pathways of Desire: Detroiters carve their own streets out of the snow
  @cymk I remember talking with one of my colleagues about this topic and he claimed that people will not choose a direct line of sight. He cited (well not cited, since he couldn't provide a source) that for example simply...
• Commented on Short papercraft film on the beauty of the book
  @Anonymous Yes, I'm saying that. While I *can* visualize just fine when I want, I don't do so automatically. I do keep track of the described facts (placement, time, hair color, gender), but – excuse the lame metaphor - more...
• Commented on Short papercraft film on the beauty of the book
  "Meh!" Sorry, but I really, really hate that metaphor. As an avid reader, visualisation of what I read is a non-issue for me and for years I thought that it's only something children do. I don't have anything against movies,...
• Commented on EZ Cracker egg cracker
  The garlic peeler actually works quite well, though not for fresh garlic. I crop my fingernails very short (okay, I bite em off when I think) and therefore have trouble peeling stuff once in a while. That might have something...
• Commented on Invasive Slugs Run Amok in Canada (Relatively Speaking)
  Who the heck transports slugs to another continent? It's the revenge for those damn North American squirrels!...
• Commented on SFPD cops from imaginary anti-dance-party squad steal laptops
  Jamie, that's a but silly. There's lot of music that can be made without computers. Most of it, acually. However, some things can only be done with a computer....
• Commented on SFPD cops from imaginary anti-dance-party squad steal laptops
  Guys, if your income depends on it, backup does indeed mean "backup computer", too. You must be able to replace your tools at any given time or be able buy another one. "Backup" should be taken literally in this case...
• Commented on Maricopa deputy steals defender's paperwork during a court case
  What I do wonder: There's always so much 2nd-Amendment-Porn on the net, people who claim that they take their guns and shoot this and that because of such and so - and yet apparently nobody shoots this guy and his...
• Commented on Guns 'n Gardens - How to Survive the Zombie Apocalypse
  Because nutjobs preparing for volcanoes, plagues, asteroid impacts and zombie apocalypse probably wait for the big one (I'll argue that they even picked something totally implausible so they don't have to act on their obsession) while race war bozos can...
• Commented on Comic on the joy of online reading
  Well, ebook readers still operate in terms of pages, because right now they want to mimic books. Myself, I think in “screens”. However, I'll believe that the word “page” will stay with us for a long time, because books and...
• Commented on Comic on the joy of online reading
  “Half the beauty of a bookk is its physicality -- the texture of the pages, the gloss of the cover, the smell of slowly aging paper and glue, the grain against your finger when you run it down a page,...
• Commented on Klingon as a First Language
  The article does in now way imply that the kid was only spoken to in Klingoneese. It's quite common for parents who have different languages to speak their child in their language - the children are able to divide...
• Commented on Comic on the joy of online reading
  I'm a fast reader and reader on large screens - after all, it's trivial to zoom up the font and still have a lot of paragraphs to see. The drawback is that the screens kinda fast away - from 50...
• Commented on Lou Jing, half black Chinese girl, sparks race debate in China
  @Anoymous Couldn't you at least spell out the last letter, too? Because it's quite relevant if you meant "******" or "negro". People still using "negro" I could understand, that was, like "Neger" (frowned upon over here with good reason, even...
• Commented on Silly udder pitcher
  I don't think so. Some hot water or a dishwasher should do the trick....
• Commented on The decline of civilization symbolized in a modern light socket
  About the pre-WWII remark: You people do realize that only he best-made (or unused) stuff of that time remained and that all the crap they bought and sold back then is gone? Remember: It's only a classic because it stood...
• Commented on Sound-copying technology and countermeasures, 1890-1978
  "For the CD I see posted most often, I get 25% (wholesale) for each unit sold (or legally downloaded), so those downloads are money out of my pocket." No, it isn't. Only a very small part is. If that stuff...
• Commented on Sound-copying technology and countermeasures, 1890-1978
  Well, it was a crude metaphor and I don't take it as serious as all those stupid car and theft analogies. The very fact that there is such a concept as copyright shows that immaterial property is something else than...
• Commented on Sound-copying technology and countermeasures, 1890-1978
  @bingothechimp please come back with your crude metaphor when we are allowed to resell DRM protected movies, music or books, like we can do with our shares....
• Commented on SAME we can believe in
  teapot: "Commonly accepted knowlegde"? Then why are there so many comments about how "harmless" a little waterboarding is? I very much doubt that the American or Western public really know how despicable these acts are. There was a reasons why...
• Commented on An evening of confusion with Dell customer service
  Yay, a Dell thread... Strange company, I don't know what happened to them. When I had a problem with my monitor 1 year (well within the legally binding 2-year warranty in place here in Germany) I got transfered to an...
• Commented on TSA bans snowglobes. TSA, meet Archimedes.
  Okay, the TSA probably can't submerge the globe in water because so much liquid on an airport is dangerous, but surely {4 \over 3 }\pi r^3 isn't beyond their grasp?...
• Commented on URL shorteners suck less, thanks to the Internet Archive and 301Works
  Coaxial, this is simply not true - url shorteners are 5 years older than twitter. And frankly: Get over it, people. It's not like every goddam link needs to archived for all eternity. Doesn't boing boing even wipe their comment...
• Commented on Woman accidentally buys wrapping paper covered with swastikas
  Atlantis and Nazis: Yes, the did, in parts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlantis#In_Nazi_mysticism While not part of the mainstream ideology, stuff like that found was to be found among the fringe, much like it is today. Come to think of it, so it's not...
• Commented on Woman accidentally buys wrapping paper covered with swastikas
  I know its quite en vogue to thumb one's breast and claim how cool it is that "the swastika is not forbidden here in XXX", but you might think differently if your county has ever been turned into a genocidal,...
• Commented on To the anonymous gay teen who asked for help in a Boing Boing comment thread
  @brainspore Your wording implies that finding a life partner is a common and good goal for all people. I doubt very much that this is so....
• Commented on Do you understand my first-grade child's homework?
  I didn't get it either, but didn't stop to think about it. (Well,actually i thought this was about algebra. ) Any way, part of the problem in judging these exercises is that math and even more so reading are overlearned...
• Commented on Real calculators modeled after desktop calculators
  Cute. But I use "emacs -f calc" - model *that* :-)...