Cory could post pictures of his shit for all I care, I wouldn't be interested but I'm not going to tell him to stop.

I think that would be incredibly interesting. Not that I want to see anyone's feces, but because it would mean he's gone completely and utterly bonkers. And how often do you get to see someone's descent into madness posted on a blog?

#12, The "tips go into the general pot" statement sounds to me like the tips are split between the workers. I doubt they get all that many tips anyway. Canadians don't generally tip people for doing their job. Waiters get tipped but people behind the counter usually don't.

There are better, if more uncomfortable, places to store your SD card. Like the back of a Volkswagen.

If, at 50, I wander into the YA section, will the security guard detain me?

If you have a relative who's age-appropriate, you're looking for something for them to try to encourage them to read more. Not that I've ever seen a security guard in even the big book stores.

I always feel weird going into the YA section in the local Chapters. It doesn't help that it's part of the kids section and the media has decreed that single male + place where kids are = pedophile.

I didn't see him mentioned above, but Gordon Korman has some great YA books. One of them, Son of Interflux, deals with some of the same themes as Little Brother. Both involve teenagers rebelling against an unbeatable enemy though Son of Interflux is a lot more light-hearted.

Think Merlin Mann will show up with his steampunk penis pump?

My copy arrived on Friday and I finished it that night. Awesome book. Hopefully I can get my teenaged nephew to read it.

Flint, MI? I've seen Roger & Me. How would you even tell if it'd been attacked by terrorists?

PS:When is the e-release on this one? Are you producing an official e-version, or just letting us make them?

Cory has stated on his podcast that the ebook will be posted either on launch day or a few days after (since he'll be be in the Fabled Canadas on launch day and presumably kinda busy).

PPS:You should have a Donate button on your site next to the free downloads. We're techno-friendly, not cheap. Just saying.

He's also said on the podcast that direct cash donations aren't the best thing. There's supposed to be a system set up for the people who want to donate to send a book directly to a library or teacher. That keeps the publisher happy, increases sales figures, and gets to the book to more people.

Also, I just got an email from Chapters (big chain book store in Canada) that they've shipped my copy of Little Brother today.

This took place in Zion, IL. Would that make it a Zionist conspiracy?

You people make me sick with all your fancy addons.

Grilled cheese sandwich:

1. Get some chedder cheese and slice off the desired amount for each sandwich. Put the cheese in between the bread. No butter.
2. Plug in the grilled cheese maker. It's like a waffle iron, but with flat cooking surfaces.
3. Place the sandwiches in the grilled cheese maker. Push down on the top of it so the sandwiches are squished together. The cheese will be forced into the bread.
4. Let the sandwiches get brown. Cut in half corner to corner. Eat with ketchup.

Do you people have any idea how many shit a pig produces? A lot. This is just a buyout for the farmers who want to get out of hog farming.

The reason we have farm subsidies is that famine sucks. If we don't produce more food than we can eat, eventually some crop will get hit with a nasty disease and we'll have less food than we need. Then we get to have food riots. Trust me, you don't want food riots. You might think that the market will adjust and fix an imbalance in food production. And it will, eventually. But crops take a long time to grow and in the meantime, people starve.

Someone probably realized that having people that crawl around in tight spaces and work with dangerous equipment wear a suit and tie is a stupid idea. The tie is a choking hazard and the clothes are going to get dirty or ripped.

From the description of it only transmitting a mile, this seems like it's intended more as a unit for a news crew to report on location to relay the signal back to the station. Or maybe it was paired with a more powerful transmitter (on a truck or something) that would relay the signal back to the station so the crew could report from farther away.

The city closest to me has a bylaw that requires sellers of permanent markers and of spray paint to obtain proof of age before making the sale. In this case, the claim is that it will help stop graffiti (as if it's hard to obtain permanent markers or spray paint).

That cat is terrible at playing the theremin. Though I do give the cat credit at not running away all freaked out by the sound.

It's my understanding that all of George Orwell's books are public domain in Canada (life plus 50 years). So get all of his books Canadians.

1. That makes my brain hurt.
2. It doesn't look all that sturdy.
3. How do you get furniture up those stairs? I hope there's an alternate way to the next floor.

Ravenwood?

I know I'm way late to the comments thread and no one will read this, but I just want to point out that Merlin Mann is awesome. Despite not owning a Mac or even an iPod, I listen to the Macbreak Weekly podcast because he's on it.

Cliffs Notes are the same idea as Coles Notes. And if Coles Notes are legal in Canada, where we have less rights under Fair Dealing than the US has under Fair Use, then Cliffs Notes should be fine.

On a side note, does anyone know if punching a shark in the nose will stop it from biting off your limbs?

Can't hurt to try. If a shark is attacking you, it's not like you have anything to lose.

Captain Planet!

What's wrong with using Americans to describe people from the US? There aren't other countries with America in their name. Do any of the citizens of the other countries on North America or South America want to be called Americans? I know Canadians don't want to.

I bet it was a very small percentage of people who were actually having public sex. Don't they know that outdoor fucking doesn't start until the First of May?

I imagine if any of you lived near a serial rapist that was twice as strong, big and heavy as you and was on the prowl you'd want notification.

Hell yes I would. So would the Guinness Book of World Records. A man almost 13 feet tall and weighing *mumble mumble* would be impressive if only that he's able to walk without his spine being crushed.

I think they need to consult with some of the groups that release unathorized copies of tv shows. The standard for an hour-long show is 350MB and they usually look better than this one at 545MB. I noticed that this one seems to have some interlacing problems (you can see the image tearing) and pixelation. For a first try though, good job. And I love the idea of a public broadcaster serving the public.

I love it. This story actually made me LOL. I mean, I really laughed out loud a few times through the story.

Excellent. Now, things they could do next time to make it better.

1. Pick a better show. I have no interest in this one. I know they don't want to cut into DVD sales of regular shows, but how about This Hour Has 22 Minutes, The Rick Mercer Report, or something else that won't be coming to DVD?

2. Release it the moment it finishes airing in the first time zone it airs in. Otherwise, someone's going to beat you to it. The guy who captured the digital satellite stream will have it encoded and posted within hours of it airing (if anyone actually wants to watch it). You have the advantage CBC. You can have the file encoded and ready to go before it airs.

3. Try not to screw up the encoding. You don't want the guy from suggestion 2 to release a PROPER that looks better at a smaller file size and the proper frame rate when you had the original source.

#7, bite me. My grandfather was named Edwin, though he didn't know it until he immigrated to Canada. Everyone just called him Ed so he assumed his name was Edward. He was also definitely not a lawyer-type.

If you want to distrust people based on their name, I'd go with people who have a first name for a surname. Like Ron Paul or Nicole Richie.

If the airlines have to pay for it, won't they just declare bankruptcy again and get bailed out by the government?

So are you moving away from Britain before Poesy turns 5? After all, her father is a citizen of a foreign country who spends an unusual amount of time travelling to other foreign countries on short trips. Sounds like terrorist activity. And children of terrorists are definitely at risk of becoming future criminals.

I find it's a good idea to only eat food that is organic. Years ago I tried eating inorganic objects, but my body just couldn't extract nutrition from chunks of metal, old tires, bricks, and light bulbs.

Stargate had interbreeding with aliens? Where was that in the movie? Or in the TV series for that matter? The only alien in the movie was Ra and he didn't breed with anyone. He took over the body of his host, but that's not breeding. The only people that slept together in the movie were Daniel Jackson and Sha're. Daniel was a human from Earth and Sha're was a human descended from humans from Earth.

Very cool way to show what's there. And just think how much of that fresh water is controlled by the Great Lakes states. We have gold, we just don't know it yet.

States? There's a province on the other side of those lakes too so don't go draining them. Maybe Paul Gross (of Due South) will make a miniseries about the fight over water.

If that's the sample, it's something kids should find on their own. (I'm intrigued, though: in what part of the world does spicy food scare people?)

It scares me just thinking of the burning ring of fire that would result. It's been a little bit since I heard it, but I believe the spice used was described as diluted pepper spray. I wouldn't put it past some kid to buy some, spray it on someone else's food, the person chokes to death, the kid gets caught, and the kid blames Little Brother and the teacher who recommended the book.

Wow. I really do have a demented mind to think up that scenario.

Is the book appropriate for the 13-14 year old set? Would hate to recommend it and then get fired for promoting inappropriate content.

The sample chapter that Cory read on his podcast a while back contained extremely spicy food, an illegal concert organized by hackers, a young couple making out, government supression, and fleeing from police. So it depends on what part of the country you're in.

"Don't trust anyone over 25"

Well shit. I'm 26.

There's a group in Australia called The Chaser that does a similar thing for their tv show. There are a bunch of clips to be found on Youtube by searching for "the chaser musical"

So The Day After Tomorrow wasn't actually fiction, but rather a documentary that was sent back in time to warn us?

Don't think that what happened in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in 2005 is special to the region, or just the fault of poor city location. Most climate models predict this kind of an event coming to a town near you in the not so distant future.

I'm in southern Ontario. If a hurricane is still a hurricane by the time it hits here, then the entire northeast US is well and truly fucked. The worst we get are snowstorms, icestorms, and the occasional tornado.

techsupportcomedy.com is a great site for these types of stories. I bet the CTRL-A/CTRL-eh thing is a fake but one time, the guy sitting next to me did get a "power is out and I can't get my email" call. He said it sounded like an elderly man so it's possible it wasn't a prank. I also used to intentionally bug Americans when spelling out a word with a "Z" in it. Most don't know what the hell you're talking about when you say "Zed" instead of "Zee".

If this was actually about drug dealers, he should have it whistle Farmer in the Dell.

Cory, it must take months and months for you to write a novel. Are your novels your main source of income? What is your motivation to give them away, no strings attached? Is your publisher cool with this?

I'm obviously not Cory so I can't really speak for him, but I think I can answer some of these questions. He gives his writing away because it helps sales (or at least doesn't hurt sales) by getting his name out. The publisher is cool with it. I definitely don't know the numbers, but he also makes money from speaking gigs, Boing Boing, writing articles, and short opinion pieces on a CBC radio show called Search Engine.

Seeing it as I eat my breakfast is, well, totally inappropriate.

It's not like this is some German Scheisse video. Everyone has different levels of "ewww. Gross." I had to stop mid-bite when the surgery photo story came up. Then I hit delete in the RSS feed and continued chewing on something copyright or music related. This is just a picture of a woman with elf ears on and a pretty tame description of some pretty tame porn.

One of the would-be robbers crashed through a plate-glass door and jumped off a balcony.

Omar?

Canadian Starbucks have to compete with Tim Horton's. You've got to do your best when your competition sells liquid crack.

The clip has been pulled, but the full video is available on your favourite torrent site. There's a section where the woman just finishes talking about how critical it is to use the right terms for illegitimate CDs and then she said "it could be even so much as someone offering something on a website that they can download to your computer." Good job on using the correct terms.

That peanut butter looks a bit off. I've seen dog crap that shade, but not peanut butter.

Audible's DRM is so ineffective that I didn't even really think about it until Cory brought it up on TWiT (This Week in Tech); during an advertisement for Audible. It's a sign of the integrity that Leo Laporte has that he didn't edit it out of the show. It's also made for some great moments in later episodes where Jason Calacanis goes way over the top on how great he thinks Audible is.

Am I the only one who lives in a house where flushing the toilet does not change the temperature of the shower?

Good. I hate it when food touches other food.

#9, that probably makes some sense. Cory is from Canada and there are very few Libertarians here. Even the Conservative Party mostly agrees that socialized health care is a good idea. I haven't read Ayn Rand's books, but it's my understanding that in them, bad guy = not Libertarian. It's also my understanding that his parents are Trotskyists.

I bet that cop from Baltimore would really love pushing this guy around.

A good reason to feed your cat inside.

If I did to the cop what this prick did to the kid and I wasn't shot a dozen times, I'd be brought up on charges of assault of a police officer, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, and whatever other charges they could come up with.

The midwinter photos of the water polo team were very white.

Of course they were. Trying to play water polo in the middle of winter in Winnipeg will do that to you. It's quite cold.

I'm not in Winnipeg but this school sounds similar to the semi-rural high school I went to in south-western Ontario. As I recall, there were about 1000 students. 3 or 4 were black, maybe 2 were Indian (from India), around a half dozen were Oriental (if that's a bad word, what's a good word for referring to the people from that area of the world?), and there were probably about 10 Aboriginal Canadians. There were a few Muslims at one point because there was a room set aside for their daily prayers one year.

It seems like quite a coincidence that this happens so soon after Cory goes on paternity leave. Almost like they were waiting for the opportunity.

Is it the ranch dressing, the cheese, and the bacon bits (or whatever that is) that makes this so many calories? Because that doesn't look like a ton of fries or anything. Not split between 4 or 5 people at least.

Crime Stoppers is great. They always make sure to mention that they don't use Caller ID or *69. Except they have a toll-free 800 number. Toll-free numbers don't need to use Caller ID or *69 because they get ANI information. If you really want to report a tip to them anonymously, use a payphone not in your neighbourhood. I don't know if they will use ANI to match who called about what, but they can if they want.

Good thing it wasn't a weeping angel. If those things start moving on you, you're going to want to keep watching them or they'll get you.

If they'd like, we can send some Canadians to burn it down again. That would make it easier to start fresh.

Congratulations. There's been quite a run on babies lately in the tech world. I wonder if they're going to be on backorder for a while now. Merlin Mann, Alex Lindsay, Patrick Norton, and now Cory Doctorow. And those are just the ones off the top of my head who appear on TWiT podcasts.

#17, I wouldn't call that stuttering. More like trying to hold back tears and a mental breakdown. I wonder how many more episodes before he goes postal.

So was it hidden by hay bales or by straw bales? They're different materials. One's for eating, one's for bedding.

On Windows, Audible burns through Nero. And Nero has an option for burning to a disk image on a hard drive rather than a CD. It also will automatically create filenames for the images when burning multiple CDs. Mount the image as a drive with Daemon Tools or something similar and start ripping. When I do it that way, I end up with fade-outs and fade-ins in the middle of sentences. A little annoying, but not as annoying as ripping in real-time.

Legal tender just means that they have to accept it for a debt. Buying an item from a store doesn't count because they're just refusing to sell you the item. If you owe money on a loan from a bank though, they are supposed to accept legal tender in payment. I'm not sure how gas stations get away with it since the gas is already in my tank when I go to pay.

There are plenty of places around here that won't take $100 Canadian bills. When I worked in fast food, we had to show $50 bills to a manager for approval. There used to be a $1000 bill, but they stopped making them in 2000.

#39, the difference in tipping is partly because of the difference in wages waiters. In Ontario, the current minimum wage for a normal job is $8/hour. Waiters are under the class of Liquor Servers usually, so they get the slightly lower minimum of $6.95/hour. Tips are supposed to make up the difference. As I understand it, the minimum for waiters in the US is $2.95/hour, but the regular minimum is $5.85 (or higher in many states). So tipping is expected at a higher rate to make up the larger difference.

Does anyone know if prices in restaurants are cheaper in the US to make up the difference?

I agree with #2. Congress needs to quickly enact back to work legislation on these striking writers. Much like firefighters, police, and ambulance services, television and movie writing is essential to the nation. Think of the children and how much they have suffered without proper TV. Think of how badly months of reality shows will scar the children. The writers must be forced back to work; in chains if necessary.

Maybe I'm wrong, but that doesn't look strong enough to hold up my ass. Good for lightweights maybe?

Does Florida have a large problem with vans driving across their international border?

Maybe he's a Centauri.

Sand is used for traction, not for melting ice. The problem with using too much salt on the roads is that it damages vehicles and it starts to kill the plants along the side of the road.

How long until she's fired like the nuclear watchdog?

So Kucinich can't even have a Krusty partially gelatinated non-dairy gum-based beverage because of the gelatin? Poor guy.

Another method: instead of using regular glasses for drinking, drink out of vases. That way you'll always have plenty of vases for flowers and you save space on glasses.

People who advocate homeopathy use all kinds of words to make it sound like they know what they're talking about. James Randi explains what homeopathy actually is in this video: http://youtube.com/watch?v=BWE1tH93G9U

One thing that isn't mentioned in this article but usually is when the press talks about obesity is a statistic saying something like "In the past 12 years, the percentage of overweight and obese people has gone up by x%." The number of years changes, but it always refers to a time before 1997. The reason for this is that in 1997, the definitions of overweight and obese changed. The number of people who are overweight and obese probably has gone up since then, but we don't know the real amount because we're comparing apples to oranges.

So this movie has absolutely nothing to do with snowmobiling? I'm confused.

#12, check out the most recent Hacker Crackdown readings from Cory's podcast feed.

@13 We can't stop here! This is bat country!

I've found a much better solution to my ineptitude at wrapping presents.

Step 1: Find someone who is good with a sewing machine.
Step 2: Ask said person to make a bunch of cloth drawstring bags in various sizes.
Step 3: Put presents in drawstring bags.

Now when the presents are opened, you aren't knee deep in a ton of wrapping paper and the bags can be reused. Environmentally friendly and it hides your incompetence.

I remember being funneled into one of those drunk driving checkpoints a few years ago. The cops gave me a bag full of MADD schwag. It was *so* worth it to be delayed on my way home from work.

Some of Emmanuel Goldstein's early WBAI radio shows involved the events in The Hacker Crackdown. The second show on this page has Steve Jackson and John Perry Barlow as guests.

http://www.2600.com/offthehook/1990/0590.html

And the second show on this page interviews Craig Neidorf.

http://www.2600.com/offthehook/1990/0990.html

Phiber Optik later becomes a co-host on the show. He even calls in from prison during the time he spent there.

I'm accepting donations of $1000 Canadian bills. Just for the nice colour of them, mind you.

Imagine what eating a bowl of glitter must taste like. According to Wikipedia, it's made of paper, glass, or plastic. Forcing a unicorn to choke down an entire bowl of painted paper, glass, or plastic seems cruel. Even with the milk added, the best-case scenario is a gluey paper mush.

Still better than two girls 1 cup.

Having left a bottle of Coke in my car in the summer and tasting the result, I'd like to say that hot Coca Cola is a complete and utter failure. Thankfully, it did taste fine after being refrigerated again.

Screw Best Buy. I'll shop at Future Shop now. Oh. Wait. Future Shop is owned by Best Buy.

Something to take notice of whenever the rate of obesity comes up in the news is that they'll always refer to it increasing by a large percentage in the last X number of years. That number will always bring the comparison to before 1997. The reason they pick a year before 1997 is that in 1997, they changed the definition of obesity. Obesity probably is going up, but it's tough to tell by how much when the numbers are inflated by comparing groups measured by different methods.

They may be doing the same thing that Rogers Cable in Canada has been doing: throttling encrypted traffic. One of the ways to get around the bittorrent blocking is to encrypt your torrent packets. Rogers Cable's solution to that was to throttle encrypted traffic which also slows down ssh sessions and a bunch of other things. I expect that Lotus Notes traffic is encrypted.

I didn't see any mention of enslaving those from neighbouring countries (Canadians and Mexicans in this case). I guess that's not really a rule, just something you're allowed to do should the opportunity present itself.

And parliament isn't in session until October 18 because Harper delayed it by a month. So there'll be no Question Period for the opposition parties to call the Conservatives on it. Coincidence?