Yay! Can't go anywhere myself, but represent me too when you're there!

Orange, how appropriate. Looks like uranium-glazed Fiestaware.

I wish there were Budgens stores where I live so that I could never buy there again.

I find the freeze-drying method better, anyway. http://www.boingboing.net/2005/10/19/freezedried-funeral.html

And I, for one, welcome our new oviparous overlords.

This might be an approximation of what you get when you slice it diagonally. http://www.lifeaftercoffee.com/wp-content/uploads/2006/04/munch_scream.jpg

The bears http://www.reinert.de/english/marken/baerchen/baerchenwurst

Pretty! I tried this once, hoping to attract some faeries. Not a single one moved in. Instead, all I got was a nasty Smurf infestation...

#4 Agent 86: Simple replay attacks are prevented because there is no unique signal that can be copied. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Challenge-response_authentication - The reader sends the chip a cryptographic challenge. The chip takes this data, processes it with its own secret key, and sends it back. An attacker cannot reproduce the protocol without knowing the embedded information on the chip.

Monowheel! Sort of... http://www.flickr.com/photos/avi_abrams/1004659106/sizes/o/

Two images of a similar effect are shown a little down the page at http://www.randi.org/jr/070403.html , it's further explained at http://www.randi.org/jr/071103.html

There also are 'magic mirrors' that project entire images, due to slight imperfections from a corresponding relief on their backside. http://www.grand-illusions.com/articles/magic_mirror/

#21: In Defense of Women, around 1918. http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/hlm/defense.htm

#10, thanks for that image...

That was a nice excerpt. I can't wait until they finish the rest of the book! The story seems really promising. Terror, suspense, the ever-vigilant public constantly kept aware by the authorities of the great looming threat.

They might want to rewrite it a little bit though. Some parts of the plot clearly appear to be plagiarized from elsewhere.

I remember reading a story where a girl was mentioned who slipped off from the hike of her spy troop. She follows a strange man and hands him over to the patrols. Bang. Must have been an enemy agent. Because he was wearing a funny kind of shoes.

The point was that, at this young age the smart girl had already learned to be overly suspicious and to constantly live in an abstract fear. We can't afford to take chances. What I mean to say, there is a war on.

Funny shoes > funny cameras. That's not really original writing, is it?

#19 posted by Scott Wetterschneider:

That 200 billion hours per year computes to 526,315 lifetimes worth of waking time, unless there was some error in my math.

Though it's kinda put into perspective by the fact that mankind is currently churning out 211,090 additional lifetimes (population increase) per day.

Doing some quick calculations myself, the work capacity of all ants on earth amounts to 80,000,000,000,000,000,000 ant-hours per year. Humans are truly slackers, aren't we?

Obvious. He only let himself get caught in order to divert attention from his accomplice with the real bomb.

Can't imagine why anyone would object.

As long as no additional horses get diverted from beer production.

#16: FWIW, I'm playing Daggerfall right now (in all its 320x200 glory), about 12 years old. It runs fine in a DOSBox emulator. (with the exception of a savegame utility that steadfastly refuses to recognize the CD)

Depends on whether you consider computer games (or music) to be culturally worthless throwaway items. I for one would never rent an intangible license and leash myself to the whims of external corporations. When I spend good money on a game I expect to get something in return, worth keeping, worth remembering, worth to keep alive on newer hardware. CD checks are worse enough already in this regard. To hell with DRM.

#1: Heh. It'll all be annulled retroactively of course.

Appalling, as usual. (Nothing useful to say, really. Just wanted to be counted.)

#14: Really. Just a few years ago these cards would have been neat. But their funniness gets kinda lost in the light of posts like UK man hassled by cop for not having a "camera license"...

#13: What kind of cameras were they using up there? Wow.

70-mm Hasselblad, 60-mm lens, film type SO-368. The ID of this particular image is AS17-137-20979, for what it's worth.

http://www.cartoonworld.org/nss-folder/stripcartoons/Wolf1s.gif

Aaahrgh! Kill it. It must be killed. Kill it while you still can!

No, I usually don't listen to the voices in my head. But this thing... (shudder)

Okay I did it. Yup it's awful. There's something to hate for everybody. (But the tuba & banjo jig rocks!)

#49: Thanks for sharing the Porcupine Overture link. I listened to it five times over now, and honestly, the more I listen to it the more I like it. While at first it sounds terrible, I think it's just a matter of getting used to an unaccustomed hearing pattern. Maybe it's easier for some people than for others. When you "expect" the wrong note you "hear" a wrong note. There's definitely an inherent beauty to those harmonies. Certainly expanded my horizon.

#69: Calliopes, thanks, there's another one for my list!

I once made a list of instruments that I seem to like more than other people. Bagpipes, accordeons, banjos and tubas were among them. I'm not going to download this song until someone tells me it also contains steel drums, harpsichords, bassoons, sitars, and electric fiddles.

So if the speed of your turntable was 0.6% slow (a 170th of a semitone if I did this math right) your whole listening experience got screwed up? And hence, any slightly shorter heap of manure would have sounded like the perfect song to you... Sounds perfectly solid to me. It would explain the musical taste of quite a lot of people.

I guess it's safe to assume that you and your IP address will get screened if you click on the video. And if you're living around that area you even might get a friendly visit from the police, especially when you're not on their "white"list. Feel lucky?

#13: >> "OK if they've never been caught, their prints won't be on file."

Not if you live in the UK. Or apply for a passport. Or if you're a foreigner and take a plane in or out of the US. Or go through a UK airport. Or plan to adopt a child from abroad. Or travel in or out of Japan. Or get a visa from China... etc. The FBI database (officially) already has some 50 million criminal and 1.5 million civil fingerprint records. The DHS (officially) already keeps a biometric database of 85 million sets of fingerprints. And your government (whichever) is already working on putting all your fingerprints into a criminal database too. Nice to know they're so hard trying to catch the burglars, innit?

#1 posted by Nick D >> "no offense to the honest lawyers out there"
Really? All three of them? :)

#5: A copy of a 2-dimensional public domain work is still a public domain work. There is no such thing as a copyright on "digitized versions". They can't claim this. The guiding U.S. case law is Bridgeman Art Library v. Corel Corp., 36 F. Supp. 2d 191 (S.D.N.Y. 1999) (Wikipedia)

Sure, expect more legal fighting in the future. There's money involved. And there's grasping for power involved. Until then, it's perfectly legal for anyone to do anything they want with public domain material. It's our damn right. Take it away from us, we dare you.

People must not let themselves be stopped from sharing free information simply out of fear that some overreaching claim might be valid. Every single millimetre that you give in to these FUD campaigns is an irrecoverably lost freedom right.

He's never going to lift off with that wimpy rotor.

#1: Do what? Hard to tell without knowing what "hack[ing] into restricted websites" means.

The way the term has gotten watered down nowadays, it could mean he signs up through a library proxy with a throwaway email address. Or "to hack" is simply used as a synonym for "sign up with the intention to download much more than the average user". Or he uses a borrowed password. Then he might have a problem.

But getting at the documents doesn't really seem to be the issue here, it's the redistribution.

The problem is that some companies falsely and deceptively claim copyright on public domain documents, holding them for ransom, essentially. You can't claim exclusive rights on reproductions of public domain documents. But a few people are trying to establish just this.

They argue that if you reproduce these documents you're stealing from them. In order to protect their revenue they want to take away your right to redistribute free information. If we just sit there and accept this corruption of copyright we legitimatize it.

So... GO ERIK!! Maybe join forces with the http://public.resource.org/ project? (the page has backlinks to similar stories at boingboing!)

And I, for one, welcome our new reptilian overl...

Dammit, #13 beat me to the punch saying #2 beat me to the punch.

We're a totally meme-controlled species, aren't we? :) No wonder the alligators are taking over.

It doesn't deliver a "painful" electric shock. It's much more startling than shocking, and it certainly isn't "demobilizing". To put this straight, these intstructions make it clear that the nasty capacitor gets removed first.

#47 Xopher: Um, yes, when I trust my kids that they are responsible enough to try something on themselves before they use it as a prank on others, I don't worry about knitting needles, even today.

If you're inferring that everyone is the bully type who defends pranking their friends, you couldn't be more wrong. Usually it was me getting bullied. They didn't need improvised devices, and they don't arrest them for that. I don't see any of your "improved" world here.

On the contrary, statistically speaking, this means that the proportion between punishments has shifted away from preventing aggressive antisocial behavior. Towards preventing non-aggressive social pranks.

By your definition, a jack-in-the-box is a "potentially deadly assault weapon", yes? You never know if the "victim" has a heart condition. And unsolicited teasing and tickling between a group of friends is antisocial behavior and a punishable offense too. Because you have the right to choose.

Yes it was funny. They were my friends. We laughed. Haha, got me. They still were my friends afterwards, even moreso. We didn't "assault" each other, we "socialized". Nowadays they aren't supposed to do this anymore?

Nothing has changed here. When there are bans at your schools against hugging each other, an atmosphere of fear of getting arrested for harmless interaction, honestly, what creatures are you breeding!

Lest someone get a wrong idea, yeah, I'm pretty sure we already had color photos in those days...

When I was in school I did a 'shock box' as a freakin' crafts project, ferchrissakes. (got me an A+ too!) What has happened to people?

Encourage their curiosity. Make sure your precious little snowflakes understand how stuff works. Teach them some sense of responsibility to know what not to do, and why. Let them have fun with the rest, and be independent among themselves.

(They told me that shocking my fellow students or my other teachers was clean old fun. They also told me I shouldn't startle this particular older teacher because he might have a weak heart. And guess what, I didn't. Hands-on, I learned to make a conscious decision about right and wrong.) Instead...

"Improvised electronic demobilizing device". "Possession of a dangerous weapon". WTF!? And of course the always popular "breach of peace".

With any luck this student will be so scared into submission by this arrest that he won't be capable of any creative engineering task or any free thinking again in his life. Well done.

#20 Tom: >> that he can act in that capacity at any time and for any reason if he claims that the security of the United States is at risk

One can't repeat the quote too often:

Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. — Hermann Göring at the Nuremberg trials

To hell with Goodwin. Heil Bush! (might as well start practicing...)

Seriously, could anyone explain, what are the remaining differences that distinguish this approach to national security from the mindset of the Waffen-SS and Gestapo?

Actual dialogue from another message board, on a thread about the expansion of the universe:

jb_farley: Is that a tau-neutrino in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?

DrMatrix: That's not a tau-neutrino in my pocket, I've got a hadron.

Seeing that people literally lepton his hadron reply, the guy used this line as a signature for years afterwards.

Miss your loved ones? http://xkcd.com/101/

Whoa, can't compete with this.

Here's my 'groovy' left alt key, about 8 years old: http://imageupper.com/i/?S0700010020011G206719727189349

(in case you're wondering about the missing windows logo on the other key, that's been sanded off on purpose. :)

Nah, the sale, transport, and disposal of radioactive luminous devices is strictly regulated. Quite certain these threads aren't self-luminous, they use the kind of phosphorescent stuff that is charged up by external light: copper activated zinc sulfide, europium doped strontium aluminate, something like that. No more dangerous than your average dyes.

Awesome. Indeed, there's a market opportunity for the first one who builds an automated color-selecting bead threading robot. Send in a photo and get your custom-made curtain, something like that.

...I wonder how it would look like if we took this idea one step further, if the beads formed a surface in a three-dimensional voxel space. (There already are 3d-hanging sculptures like this -I've seen a ship, I think- but the objects were sparsely distributed, and not in color.)

Second that: ARE YOU SURE it's a joke? Nowadays I just don't know anymore.

Hehe, you can still see the tee-tees.

("Held", not "hold". Would you believe I'm a compulsive-obsessive previewer...)

Hey, ziplocs! I've done this too! I took a small lens from an old viewfinder and taped it over a common digital camera, the aperture reduced by a piece of aluminium foil with a hole in it. Still a terrible depth-of-field, I tell you. Without any direct visual feedback it's only by sheer luck that you get the focus right, even when the object is hold in place with a soldering aid.

After the first few tries I gave up, because that gosh darned Sony camera has to be turned off each time you want to download a new image, and before you can take another image you have to plug it out again. Who designs idiotic devices like this anyway...

Aside from using a really sharp blade, it helps to freeze the plastic (thus hardening it) with a squirt of electronics cooling spray, to avoid those frayed-out edges on the cut or squashing the seal out of shape.

Here's what I got: (after cropping, color balancing, clarity filtering)

http://imageupper.com/i/?S0700010040011F2059319132077860
http://imageupper.com/i/?S0700010040021F2059319132077860

For the case that the pull-tab comes off, there's an emergency can opener in there, silly.

It's kinda weird that this post about a "gentle" weapon from China is making its rounds through the blogs right now. Why would anybody use toys like this "to subdue a potential outbreak of violence" when you can use tanks to maintain peace and harmony, huh?

Such incompetence, it's outrageous! Why should a DNA database be restricted only to a subset of society? Millions of dangerous criminals will slip through our fingers if overworked pedagogues have to identify their psychological traits first. For crying out loud, let's take DNA samples of every baby now, while they're still young. While we still have control over those monsters!

So, this child is dangerous. Now what? The government knows about these kids and expects us to live with potential killers!? If they have the evil eye, send them to Australia, I say.

The next few years will bring huge advances in the field of DNA phrenology anyway, making it possible to test directly for those traits. If you find the "totalitarian nazi arsehole" gene, BANG, death penalty! Already in the womb, if possible.

This guy is absolutely right. The long-term benefits for our society would indeed be enormous if individuals like him got culled at an early stage.

"Just stop going." ... You may boycott it, but those kids still go there, happily getting fingerprinted. They will grow up in a world where it's totally normal to be fingerprinted like a criminal, several times a day. What do you think your retirement home will look like? Implanted RFID locator chips (for your own safety)? Security cameras on the toilet (for your own safety)? Censored communication with the outside world (because too much excitement is bad for you)? You think that's weird? They won't. Old people have to be kept safe.

The young generation will have to pay so much for their (still ongoing...) war on terror. The old people should contribute for their safety too. Let's decide that the whole pension scheme is obsolete. Old people don't need so much money anyway, when it's cheaper (and safer!) to pen them up in secure retirement centers. Security works great. We taught them so.

You're not afraid of a society whose children never experienced individual freedom? Some of them will become politicians. Be afraid. Be very afraid. Paranoia? Yeah. Time will tell.