Pretty awesome idea, regardless of actual financial necessity, or slight fudging. The point isn't how 'real' it is, it's how cool it looks, and it looks _cool_. The bit on the escalator is amazing.

When I read about this a few days ago, I didn't make the connection right away. It wasn't until I'd poked around at it for a few moments that I remembered where I'd seen those little rectangles of drab green computerized brushstrokes before - I'd been playing around on Mechanical Turk a week or so before, and had been paid a few cents to produce a couple of them!

And having done some volunteer work for OLPC before, I feel that I have albeit indirectly, furthered my support for their cause!

Phillipp Lenssen did a similar thing a while ago on blogoscoped.com: http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-02-11-n43.html

So if you just hold right and do nothing else, you die with 778 points. Somewhat contrary to what DCulberson says, you get 1 point per time tick before you meet your wife, and after she dies, and 2 points while you are with her. You run into no obstacles, and the scenery continues to change at regular intervals until the end.

On the other hand, if you press no buttons, you die with 0 points, when the screen shifts far enough to the left that you hit the right side. You don't age all the way in this time period; you don't get hunched over at all. You just die when you hit the right edge.

Hard to say how much of this is /b/'s fault, but there was a rather long-lived thread advocating voting for Mr. Splashy Pants yesterday.

Regardless of it's origin, it's on the sign cause it's a /b/ meme.

See here: http://4chanarchive.org/brchive/dspl_thread.php5?thread_id=35192450&x=immanentize+the+eschaton

How does Internet make any money by just letting people search for whatever they want? And I heard they even give emails away for free but I know that can't be right.

One of those dressed as a stick-figure was my roommate... The meetup was an absolute blast, complete with a break dancing raptor, tape-measure-extension contests, and much signing of things by Randall.

How does it turn itself off on trains?

The article doesn't load for me. Other articles do, and the rest of the page does, but the actual article (picture?) just isn't there. There's the title, the 'discuss this story' link, and then the footer material...