@ #5
The first line could have been forgiven, but the second? No, no second chances. That's the kind of man I am.

Assuming the home thing is right , this should be an easy enough law to sink. Just get enough people writing to their representatives asking if, with the current economy, they really want to publicly support a bill that will see more American families lose their homes.

A comment on the second pipe discussion that I don't see above. If I have missed it, I apologize.

Let's say the current pipe is 1X speed. They install a second pipe for priority traffic that is 2X speed. Sites and services that pay the protection money get delivered by the 2X pipe and everything else is 1X.

My question is this: How is the connection advertised?

If the connection that you have signed up for is advertised and delivered as a 1X connection, no problem. If some sites want to pay extra to be delivered at 2X speed to the 1X customers, I can't see much problem there. That really is an added bonus. Regular sites aren't being downgraded and customers get a little something extra. Classic value added with little room to complain.

Call me cynical however because I can see these connections being sold to customers as being up-to-2X-speed services. That's the problem.

I think this whole thing was just an excuse to use "tawdry" in an actual communication :)

Also, like many legacy industries, there is more to the print industry than the obvious final output. Professional editors are incredibly important to the process of making good works. The industry supports paths for nurturing new writers and spreading information. It provides various ways for people to meet the people they need to.

The music and movie industries have/do serve similar rolls.

It's obvious that a digital transition is going to happen. The trick is going to be making it through while preserving the various necessary institutional processes.

Something like this, an experiment that explores the ideas of voluntary payments and digital works while at the same time trying to remain sensitive to the current industry process is very important.

Way to go Cory :)

Oh, and great book.

When you consider all the replacement heart valves, pacemakers, hearing aids, hip replacements and now these a shocking percentage of our elderly population is mechanically enhanced.

Cyborgs live among us. And they crave bingo night.

This is actually kind of sad. Before this I had never heard of McTeague. According to his Wikipedia page (which of course may not be entirely unbiased) he has got some good things done for military personnel and funding education. Looks like he has been about as effective as you can be as part of the opposition. Add to that the fact that it looks like he's in a fairly safe district.

Really, this guy has no need at all to kiss entertainment industry ass. So it's tragic that he is doing it anyways.

I'm not familiar with Toronto. Anyone know what the student population is like in Pickering—Scarborough East? Enough college/university people around that could be rallied or be a factor in the next election?

I also have to say this is the last place I expected to find giant animated Pro-Scientology box ads

Looks like Nanny Ogg's song was wrong after all. This poor little hedgehog got proper... well I'm sure you know the rest.

@ #3
Well, considering Cory is a Canadian living in the UK, I suspect that the US$ exchange rate doesn't bother him too much. It does however let him mock it.

BB Gadgets posted this yesterday. It's still the top post over there.

Anyone else want to book a flight, fill a suitcase with rocks, and then insure it for the maximum possible amount?

Oh, and no matter where you live, go grab the torrent here

The more people download it, the more likely we are to see more experiments. The mobile version is only 280 MB, so it's hardly going to break your download caps. Heck, you might even like it.

I found it highly amusing that the first legal torrent from a North American broadcaster was hosted on Mininova and tracked by the Pirate bay.

While it's true that there are environmental laws in China, it's kind of universally acknowledged that they are on the books just for show. By the letter of the law, China has one of the strictest set of environmental regulations anywhere.

In reality, they are only enforced when the government needs to make an example for the foreign media or an inspector doesn't get his bribe on schedule. Or when the Olympics are about to come to town and the air quality suddenly matters.

Except that as far as I can see, this Slow Food movement legitimately is good for the environment, agriculture, and independent farmers and producers. So why should the people involved not take pride in that? As far as I can see, if they are going to be eating expensive food anyways, this is about as moral and thoughtful as it gets.

What's next, condemning someone for putting in an ultra expensive environmentally friendly home heating system just because most home owners can't afford it?

I kind of disagree. The strict emphasis on food here is a dead end. It will never be much more than it is right now. Call it the fashion or Fine Art of the food world. Inherently exclusive but not automatically irrelevant.

However, carry the same ideas over into other industries and I think you could see some positive benefits. Applied to things like furniture I'd think the same ideals would encourage local manufacture and quality. Put the value back into individual objects. Would this encourage more of a second hand market for unique quality goods? I'm not talking about the current 'antique' market, but the idea of things built to last and having value over time. It may or may not work, but I think it's a logical extension of what is being done here.

Besides, while a certain amount of the middle/upper class are rich twats, many are normal people who have worked hard and caught a few lucky breaks. If they want to spend their money on nice things, let them. Why should culture be completely homogeneous? By your thinking, everyone should have to shop at the same store and eat the same food. After all, differnt is bad.

@ #3

While your ideas are good as far as they go, they don't look quite close enough to be accurate. While it is true that 90% of the wealth is controlled by 10% of the population, that 10% actively spends only a fraction of that wealth. Someone who earns 100 thousand a year is going to spend most of it in one form or another. Someone who earns (is it possible to truly deserve?) ten million a year is not likely to spend a significant fraction of their yearly earnings.

There are very few companies that can or do survive purely on the richest 10% because while they may control more money, they spend less overall than the other 90%. If any company ever came under the sights of the 90%, they would be doomed. From Best Buy to Toyota to Walmart to The Olive Garden to anything else you can name.

If this kind of collective consumer voting comes to pass, it could make a very real difference on a national or international scale.

I was actually surprised at how many were reasonably accurate, as long as you allowed for minor stuff like the colour of the lighting. And there are a handful that really don't belong on the list. Ones that are known to be different. Sort of like I don't expect whole oranges in a pack of frozen orange juice, even if that's what's on the tube.

I almost hate to ask, but who needs a two-pack of MP3 carriers? Really, how many people out there have two identical MP3 players that they need carrying cases for? There is a reason that this is on clearance.

RSS is working fine for me.

For the answer to that, I think the people to ask are astronauts Jan Davis and Mark Lee. Only married couple to ever fly in space together on STS84 in 1992.

Now, officially according to NASA, nothing happened. Realistically? You can't tell me that the other astronauts didn't make a little time in the schedule so the two of them could catch twenty minutes alone.

Well, you have to admit that it's a nice turn of phrase. Besides, assuming that he was involved in raping the economy, why is it unbalanced to say it?

@ Guin
Suggestions for other shows? Everything. I'm serious. Everything from the documentaries to 22 Minutes to the evening news. I'm never home for the news broadcast. I'd love to be able to grab it overnight and watch it on my morning bus ride.

If the CBC produces it or has the Canadian distribution rights, get it out there. The reality is that most of the good stuff gets torrented anyways. So take control of the distribution. Get better mind share and find a way to make a few $s off of it.

@ #8 SXE
It might happen eventually. But really, who wants to be the first to go on record to complain about how lucky the guy with no limbs is?

@ #4

It's like the CBC thought... let's take one of our least-interesting upcoming shows, which no one outside Canada would ever bother with, and put it on this file-sharing thingy!

Why should the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) care if anyone outside of Canada is interested? It's not our fault that with 500 stations you can't find anything to watch. Fox must have SOMETHING on for you... of wait, they already canceled to good stuff :)

To be fair, the man is 86. If these are the worst comments that they can dig up after a lifetime of being a public figure, I think he's done pretty good. Frankly, I'm a quarter of his age and with half my lifetime of inane comments having been sent through an electronic medium of some sort I'm sure I have worse floating out there.

Life is going to be interesting for the first major public figures who have grown up completely with the internet. There's going to be nothing like having a message board post or school paper you wrote when you were 16 being brought up during your run for office.

@ #7

Medical equipment is expensive because of the engineering that goes into it.

Alot of engineering goes into computers, but they get more powerful and cheaper every year.

That's rather a disingenuous argument. argument. Computers get cheaper every year because new practices allow for more to be done with less and because they are massively produced. Each year they can get more transistors out of the same amount of silicone and then amortize their engineering costs over 100,000 chips.

For a specialty drill? Well, as far as I know, it will take a special kind of breakthrough for us to make two drills next year out of the materials we can make one from today. And if there is ever a yearly demand for brain surgery drills that hits five digits I'll be very worried.

The silicone chip industry is so unique that applying it to anything else is a blatant strawman argument.

@ #23

Currency != real wealth. Currency = medium of exchange.

While this is true in purely theoretical sense, in a real world sense it is pure nonsense. It only holds true if your entire savings are stored as a physical medium.

If your wealth is stored as bread and the 'value' of that wealth drops by half it is true that you have not lost any bread. If your wealth is stored as numbers in a bank computer and the 'value' of your numbers drops by half, you have lost a measurable amount of bread. yes, the numbers in the bank computer have not changed but you have still lost a significant amount of wealth.

@ #22
The knowledge economy is a wonderful thing but I have always been confused by the idea that there is some sort of either/or choice between that and manufacture.

At some point, someone needs to make the goods and grow the food. The idea that America can transition to a purely knowledge/service based economy is dependent on the idea that whoever is making the goods will be permanently content with simply providing cheap manufacture in exchange for our ideas.

If the manufacturers ever start providing their own ideas we have nothing left to offer them. And at the same time will not have the infrastructure to simply pick up where we left off.

What is wrong with coming up with all these wonderful ideas... and then following through by making them ourselves?

@ #3
And that's just what they have said for every non-lethal weapon yet. And then the first time it is used the target will fall into traffic or water or something and not be able to get out. Or they will have a heart attack or medial problem and the paramedics won't be able to treat them because they are wrapped up in a great big net.

And then everyone will run around saying that life was so much better when the cops just had clubs.

Yes, I am a little jaded, why do you ask?

First things first. The 'delete' function on a MacBook Pro is function-delete. I know this because I use it all the time. As a recent convert myself, the shortcut I am looking for is usually not too hard to guess, but I wish it was a little more consistent in using the function or Apple key as the modifier.

Now, onto my actual comment. While I enjoyed the video immensely, that first video filter she uses should be banned by international treaty.

Now that is two minutes of pure joy.

This is incredibly sick. They are torturing people for the entertainment of the masses. You can dress it up in fancy language, but that is what they are doing. Now, there has always been a undercurrent of this in the reality genre, but it has always been presented as something to be overcome, not endured and celebrated.

They are TORTURING people on NATIONAL TV for other, presumably regular, people to LAUGH AT over dinner.

I swear to god we are mere years away from televised executions a la Running Man.

Well 1 in 100 are in prison, so one in 300 being a terrorist sounds about right to me. Assuming the US defines 'terrorist' as broadly as it defines 'criminal'.

Actually, in another discussion of this same topic the explanation that seemed to be agreed on is as follows. People upstream take their medications. Those medications are not 100% metabolized. They are then, uh, passed into the watter supply accompanied by a flushing sound. This happens along a couple hundred kilometers of river and those little traces add up.

POE forever!

No, actually, I think that spraying paint on someone else's property does implicitly carry a great big 'Fuck You'. After all, if you respected them, you would not be spraying paint all over their stuff.

@ #7
Disposable stuff? What disposable stuff. The keg gets recycled, the dispenser get used again and again. And Heineken already tastes like it has been through the system once :)

See, everything gets used.

For water, pick up little hand pumped microfilter like this one
http://www.mec.ca/Products/product_detail.jsp?PRODUCT%3C%3Eprd_id=845524442621145&FOLDER%3C%3Efolder_id=2534374302696689&bmUID=1204655275651
Your local camping store should carry them and you can get a good one suitable for one or two people for less than $100. Means you only need a day or so water on you as long as water sources are available.

I've used a couple of these things and they have all done a great job.

@ #6
I've heard that a flare gun works even better. It counts as a firearm as far as the airlines are concerned, so you get the full locked luggage and only key treatment. But you don't need the go to the trouble of buying a real gun.

You are over thinking it. This is just converting some of the heat to a differnt form of energy. Imagine a current heatsink has to get rid of X heat. Right now, all that X heat has to be moved from being thermal energy in the heatsink to being thermal energy in the air.

Now imagine this. The heatsink converts half of X into kinetic energy, first in the fan and then in the air, leaving only half of X that needs to be transfered to the air as heat.

Well, from a philosophical standpoint, I completely agree that having Apple as the gateway is questionable at best. On the other hand, from a practical real-world use standpoint I can see where they are coming form.

Frankly, the cell networks are fragile. No, they shouldn't be. Yes, all the companies have been skimping on infrastructure investments for way too long. That doesn't change the fact that as far as robustness and ability to handle large, continuous amounts of info goes, they suck.

If any and all apps were able to be put on the iPhone, I can guarantee that at the very least, the data side of the network would be DOSed into oblivion almost immediately. I can think of a half dozen kind of apps that would generate way more traffic than it could handle. As much as we would all like, major upgrades are needed before AT&T is going to allow five million people to run a torrent app on their unlimited data plan, or stream stuff from home Slingbox style. It would fly for all of three days before it got popular and saturated the network.

The day will come, but not until the hardware back end is up to the task.

Oh, someone's going to Gitmo for this one.

@ #7
Nope, the ISS is at full pressure. The shuttle is kept somewhat lower than sea-level.

And all that air is fully re-circulated. They are going to be breathing kimchee air for months.

So, in exchange for a $200 loan, they ended up charging him the equivalent of several thousand percent interest?

What's the answer? Laws on the maximum amount of interest that can be collected on a loan. A fix on the amount that can be collected on a given amount of principle.

And jail time for people who break the laws.

Happy Mutants? I begin to think that tag is being overused. What happy mutants are present in this story? It seems like every story that is slightly unusual acquires this tag. Kind of devalues it.

@ #5
I agree that the phrase out of context sounds rather dark, but I can't disagree with it. Just one of those social rules that has been codified into law. It's the community saying "We, the sane majority, aren't going to let you inflict this well intended suffering upon your defenseless child"

These naming laws are the verbal equivalent of the laws that don't let you beat you kid. Spanking? Sure, but then again, you are allowed to name you kid Horace or Gunther too.

Neat idea. I really like the look and the reclaiming of otherwise unused space.

Only thought is could you imagine how much damage a single dog or child could do in a short amount of time? I know my parent's dog would leave a pile of confetti where those books used to be.

Good to see you posting again Cory. BB is not the same without you. Hope family life is treating you well.

I think an anthem says a huge amount about the basic character of a country. Canada's is basically a hymn to the country. Star Spangled Banner is about the Americans getting their asses kicked by the British. God Save the King/Queen has obvious historical ties.

So what does it say about the character of a people to propose an anthem based on a midi track from a video game?

@ #5

Assuming they have the same types of evening storms I've seen in other tropical/semi-tropical places, I'd imagine that the statue gets struck on a fairly frequent basis. Probably just a case of setting up the camera, letting it run through the storm and then scrubbing through the film until you find the shots you want.

@ #11
Hey, thanks for the heads up there. I had a couple posts in there, but had not checked the thread for a couple hours. Deleting the whole thing was most uncool. There were only about 40 posts last time I checked, and all of them had been fairly civil and thought out. If the quality of the comments was going down hill after the last ones I read, locking the thread might have been appropriate, but deleting an important discussion?

Cory, we need you!

Hey, I'm going to hijack the thread here with a question for Joel.

Since this section of the site is dedicated to gadgets and tech, is it also being sponsored by Microsoft like the main BB blog?

I have to strongly agree. The stuff with Honda was one thing. Honda isn't often featured here on BoingBoing, and when it is, it is usually a neat ad or robot or something else incidental to their main business.

Having content directly sponsored by Microsoft undermines the credibility of this blog and everyone who posts on it. Microsoft is a big company, known for throwing its weight around. It competes heavily in several areas that this blog often comments on.

it is going to be very hard to take the next iPod review or Apple news seriously when it comes with a 'This post sponsored by Microsoft' label attached. Same goes for anything involving Wii or PS3 news. Or Mobile phone news. Or anything involving Linux devices. Or DRM news. Or Google news.

If they want to run ads, fine, let them buy ad space. Directly sponsoring posts of any sort is a much more questionable connection. If the site needs money badly enough to NEED this type of partnership, then how am I supposed to believe that the reporting will remain unbiased towards whoever is holding the purse strings?

This is really quite exquisite. I'd actually love to see a company, either independent or one like IKEA, made a line of stuff meant to pack down together.

Could you imagine a setup where there is a standard box size that unfolds into a table or dresser or some other large element. Then, within that standard container you could pack a collection of other objects, each based off of subdivisions of the main box. Four 1/4 section objects. Or two 1/4 section objects and four 1/8 section objects. Wouldn't that be fantastic?

I don't know. I kind of have to applaud anyone, corporate or not, who sits down at a meeting and says "you know what would be a really keen idea? Let's make a giant woman out of peaches".

On the flip side, a TSA employee has now been enjoying their new laptop for a year and counting...

Hey, I think the TSA is far to strange to have developed though any natural process.

Far as I can tell, the whole thing is standard Lego pieces. The board, the figures, everything appears to be Lego. So, no reason I can think of that you couldn't go wild and build what you want.

If the merger goes through, I give it a month before you need Microsoft's Silverlight platform to view the Yahoo homepage page properly. And less than a month before they have disabled the ability for Firefox to open new tabs in Yahoo mail like they have in Hotmail.

I have trouble seeing why someone would buy this instead of either an iPod or portable satellite radio. It looks like a solution to a problem that the suppliers are having (how to make money off of free music) and not a problem that the consumers are having. If it is going to be add supported, the least they could do is give away the hardware. Of course, to do that, it would need to be much less expensive hardware. A big screen? really?

It looks like they just picked a middle point for each country and that's where the lines run to. Or rather, they defined the geography and let the program decide what the middle point was. As long as you include Alaska and all the northern islands in the Canada land mass, the spot the lines are running to looks to be right smack dab in the middle if you chopped it in half north/south and east/west. The other countries look similar. The line for Mexico actually terminates in the ocean.

That right there just made my week. Man, that looks like it was fun to set up.

I have to agree. A graphic format has a lot to offer. It all comes down to density. The old 'picture=1000 words' idea. Done right, a single panel of a comic format can convey as much information as pages of prose text. Think about all the things that can be shown at once. Background details, setting, lighting, mood. Character appearance, emotion, actions and interactions. All in one panel. How much room would it take for a prose novel to thoroughly describe all of that?

Sure, 99% of comics are silly junk. So is 99% of everything else. And the ones that rise above hit real heights.

This says that it is not good news for Apple, but I can hardly see it as bad news. Perhaps less than optimal is the best way to put it. After all, they still get the sale at a profit. They get another customer. Larger percentage of the market = more brand recognition.

Also, when their exclusive with AT&T ends, having millions of iPhones already working on other networks is going to create a lot of incentive for those networks to play nice with Apple to provide the most service. After all, who wants to be the only network that DOESN'T support the iPhone?

An "Unlicensed Reproduction" of a car that first appeared 80 years ago? If there was ever a perfect example of the type of things that should be public domain, this is it.

As far as I know it ended just because the creators had other things to do. They got together, banged out a really fantastic twelve issues and moved on. Neither one of them is exactly hard up for work or interesting opportunities. To some extent, I have a lot of admiration for the act walking away from a successful idea just to find something new.

Another take on the use of this. I used to do sales as a job to pay the tuition. Where I worked, we carried a number of products that were essentially identical from two or three different manufacturers. We would carry them all because some people would come in looking for a specific brand, but most people didn't know, care or need the difference.

So, when someone came in looking for these, you bet I would use every trick I had to subtly point them to one of the choices. Why? because you can't just hand them one and say 'take this one' because 50% of the time they assume you are ripping them off and want to know what's wrong with it. And if you try and demonstrate the minuscule differences between the brands you will spend an hour trying to help someone on a 30 second decision.

So tips to guide the process along are not always a bad, or even underhanded tactic.

Well, of course sasquatch are from Saskatchewan. They just did what everyone from Saskatchewan does. Move somewhere else :)

...
* Not actually clothes

... and then a bunch of little documentaries about civil wars be permanently erased on the justification that they are not notable enough. After all, they never even heard of these little countries in school and nowhere with a funny name like that could be real. This will be done on 28 minutes consultation in a locked forum.

Took a look. It sounded interesting. Not a lot of demo available, but what is there looks... questionable at best.

What they are talking about is essentially supplanting the standard Internet with a 3D metaphor. Integrating all the standard social networking site stuff with the other basic stuff that your browser or another application handles now.

Instead of an RSS reader or Live Bookmark or whatever, you walk your little avatar over to the RSS terminal in your private clubhouse. Instead of opening a chat window to talk with a friend, you go visit them in their personalized little room. All the other usual suspects are here. The virtual arcade machine for playing games, the virtual photo album that you store your photos in.

I have seen versions of this idea since the 90s. It is right out of 80s SF movies where everyone puts on VR goggles and explores a mediated version of cyberspace.

The problem always comes down to the fact that the new metaphor adds no value to the things it is building on. Having to walk a little 3D person to a console does not make my RSS feeds magically contain more information. And while the gimmick is cute for a few minutes, once you have it set up you never want to see it again. Watching your avatar stand around has no value in and of itself. The value in the metaphor is how seamless and invisible it is.

I suspect this will be a big, revolving hit with the less connected 6-10 year old set. Sort of a walled garden introductory Internet for those who don't want to dive right in. However, it doesn't seem to add anything for those who are already making use of these tools.

Now, I could be completely off base. They have not released much info or many examples. But unless there is an entire dimension that has gotten no press so far, I don't see a bright future.

"This may all sound like a big fuzzy Mac commercials, but who cares?"

It's that last comment that caught my eye. I bought a MacBook pro a while back for the hardware. I was looking for something thin with dedicated graphics, and Apple was the only one really doing that.

The most aggravating part of the experience? Any time I say something nice about the laptop or Apple's service people roll their eyes and assume I'm some kind of fanboy. If I said the same things about a new Toshiba or Dell they would run out and buy one.

Oh, and one nice Apple thing that your father (and you) might appreciate that I hadn't expected till I used it. All those apple stores and apple approved dealers are typically apple approved service centres. I had a problem with one of the fans on my laptop found a little apple shop a few blocks away. Dropped it off, they swapped out the fan and I picked it up the next day, all under warranty. After the troubles I've seen with laptop repairs in the past, this really blew my mind.

I am currently doing work for the Canadian Space Agency with 3D printers, although of the plastic extrusion sort and can answer to some of the comments.

First, part of the reason some of these models look really sculpty-like is that they are tiny. The one in the pic above is 7", but most of the others on the site are much smaller.

The other reason the detail suffers is that none of these models were designed with printing in mind. It may not sound like a big deal, but in my own work, I have found that it is. When a random model is taken and simply scaled down, the printer has to figure out how to deal with that. 3D printers have resolutions just like ink printers and this can cause odd outcomes.

As an example. One of the printers I am working with has a resolution of one quarter (.25) of a millimeter. Now say I take a model and scale it down. What does the printer do with a piece that at the smaller scale is smaller than that .25? or what about two pieces that have a gap between them of less than .25? Or something that has a fluctuating width along its length so that it passes in and out of this limit? I think the 5" long Serenity shows these issues best.

Results in these types of cases can be inconsistent. You can see the differences in the cleanness of the edges between the space ships and the geometric shapes, even at the same sizes. The ships were built as meshes, which are sort of the raster format of the 3D printing world. While technically vectors, they don't scale well. My guess is that geometric shapes were built in some sort of math modeling/graphing program and exported in a format that the printer could export much more cleanly.

I am not sure that there IS a real market between the Touch and the MacBook. Sure, the MacBook (or this) could drop an inch to 12", but how much of a difference would that REALLY make for portability. Yeah, the Air fits in an envelope, but there is still a power cord, cables, and all that. So, if I'm taking a bag either way, how much difference am I going to see between this and a standard 13" MacBook?

If I am taking a bag, the laptop should be fully functional. No serious compromises. If I'm not, everything better fit in my pants pocket (even if it takes a deep pocket to do it). I figure the first hardware revision of the Touch/iPhone will be souped up for apps. That should handle my needs for mobile access.

oh, and Joel, just curious but is your Pro the 17" model? My 15" is about a year old with 85% health for the battery and as long as I turn off wireless and keep the screen brightness in the lower third I still get roughly 3 hours video/DVD playback. Tested a couple weeks ago on a Christmas flight. I was surprised to hear your much lower number.

Honestly, if the laptop is still doing everything you ask of it two or three years down the road, paying for a new battery plus the $40 to get it installed would make this a fantastic purchase no matter how you look at it.

@ #4

I'm not sure how you can call this a web appliance. The only thing it isn't is a high end games/graphics machine. I have trouble imagining what business/professional software would not run happily on it. So, music/movie playback. Internet connectivity (and all that implies) lots of power for word processing/powerpoint/spreadsheets. My father does professional aptitude testing and travels quite a bit. I can't think of any of his software this would not run just fine.

Now, I'd never get this. I do a degree of graphics work and am quite happy on my MacBook Pro. That said, the only segments of the market that I can imagine not being happy with the hardware capability are positions that inherently use all capacity available. Video production, high end graphics, large scale application development, large physics/engineering simulations. Now, as I figure, that makes up a really small portion of the people who work on the move.

Personally, I'm amazed that they have not released a DDR style arcade version of Rock Band. You would need really heavily built instruments to survive long, but it could be done. I think it would be a real draw. Could build in lots of effects that would be impractical on a home console.

You know, if this catches on, it might be the first effective method of getting the really dangerous stuff off the street. No, I'm not talking about a little pot or whatever, but no one I know has ever had anything good to say about Meth.

This is the same issue that was talked about a few months back, then it is a little more complex than what is being shown here.

From what I gather, the site in question is an encyclopedia of the Potter universe. It is known for using large, slightly re-worded blocks of text from the books themselves to describe things.

Now, Rowling apparently had no issue with this being a free internet resource. I think she may have even given it her blessing. However, when plans to SELL this came up, she objected. I can understand where she is coming from. I think what is acceptable or even encouraged as a fan resource is very different ground than a commercial product.

Whether you do or do not (me) care about the Potter fandom, it is an interesting case for looking at fan's right and author's control.

#4
I'm all for not jumping to conclusions about people. Books and covers and all that. However, anyone with a prominent Nazi symbol inked into their skin has basically declared their beliefs for the world to see.

Well then, I suspect that we are going to come as quite a shock to them when our invasion fleet arrives.

@ #1

As far as TV law shows go, I have always gotten the impression that what they are reading are things that they had previously written. Like a report or previous testimony that says the opposite of their current testimony.

@ #3
I have to snicker softly at the implication that building/scenery models are somehow holding up Open Source games. That type of stuff is easy. GTA style buildings take a couple hours to whip up, and most of that is texturing.

What is holding back Open Source games is that 90% of game assets are boring to make. They are not flashy, impressive and are only notable in their absence. Most of the art needs to be done closely adhering to someone else's vision with a very low percentage of 'high profile' assignments.

Add to that the fact that game assets have very short shelf lives. The entire process needs to be done in no more than a year or two. After that graphics expectations will have moved on.

So, in short you need a fairly large group of dedicated artists (say a dozen or so) who are willing to donate lots of time doing what other people want them to do. Now, how many Open Source projects out there can you cant that have a dozen people happy to do the gruntwork? And I don't mean leads who squash bugs in their off time.

And all the scripting that goes into making those assets interesting is also 90% boring gruntwork
with little recognition or immediate payoff.

In short, the problem with Open Source games is that the majority of positions that need to be filled are precisely the hardest sort of people to find for Open Source projects.

If this pans out with any sort of accuracy, it could be a big boon for the field of compositing. Currently to crate a believable camera match with objects in a scene you need to do a lot of careful measurements to get the best effect. The ability to create 3D 'roughs' from existing objects would greatly simplify things. Especially basic operations like masking complex moving forms.

I doubt that she will go on to anything. I had to see for myself if this was 'fake' so I downloaded it. If the portrayal is anywhere near accurate, she can not read or write much above an elementary level. Functionally illiterate.

That video is really disturbing. Why are there people allowed to breed?

Actually, as an investor I'd be more interested in examples of a business or industry where litigation had proved to be a viable option. After all, if it has never worked out in the past, why risk my money on the people trying to get it right?

You know, if *I* discovered a giant prehistoric human skeleton, I'd be tempted to submit the picture to Worth1000 too. I mean, where else would you show it off and not get laughed at?

In communist Russia, POT smokes YOU!

Sorry, my bad. Just came from /.

To assist it when swimming around in the sink, searching for prey

Personally, a boss making inappropriate sexual comments would be far more uncomfortable than one that continually threatens to curse me.

Well, there is influence and then there is influence. So far, the last two MPs that tried to introduce this type of bill lost their jobs. If Prentice does as well, this type of bill is going to be much harder to put through in the future. After all, there is only so much that can be offered to induce someone to commit career suicide.

I'll be phoning.

An election is likely months away, and everyone knows it. Make this man so afraid for his job. He is elected to represent the interests of his constituents, not American businesses.

The average question is something like (8*3)/4
As someone who has lived in Canada his entire life, I never really thought about these. They just are.

Well, in defense of their decision to filter BB, most of last week was devoted to variations on the 2 Girls 1 Cup thing. the fact that it is mixed in with political commentary and other useful stuff is kind of beside the point. If I was worried about potentially NSFW sites, I'd filter BB too.

Am I alone in finding that last moment of the clip incredibly disturbing?

Support the writers!

Thanks to our current minority government and (supposed) looming spring election, there will never be a better time to fight this. If enough noise can be made a difference can be made. I've already followed through on a few of the 30 points and I urge any other Canadian out there to do the same.

Thanks for that clip link. It's hard to get excited about this guy's work because the pictures on the site are so small. To really appreciate it you would need huge hi-res images.

I think a lot of people have a certain admiration for a certain class of hustle. Yeah, the pool hustler is tricking people into playing way out of their league, but the only reason he can do it is because he is REALLY good at pool. Same with some other cons. Some cons are noting more than cheating and no one really has respect for that. Part of what defines pool sharks is genuine skill. Genuine skill at anything deserves at least a little respect.

Add a diving board for that and you are looking for trouble. Cool!

I like how interesting people tend ot have interesting houses

The way I see it, this is a directory of wonderful things, and this is a wonderful thing no matter how recent or not.

Oh, the temptation is huge. The sample pages they show are wonderful. Tasteful and witty. And the woman are hot, which never hurts ;)

I wish my laptop had a hamster button. That would be awesome.

I am getting kind of mixed feeling about this story. On the one hand there is the standard negative of police forces oppressing protesters. On the other hand, like #1 mentioned, there are far more lethal methods they could be using.

I think that it would be really slick to build this into laptop cases. If it was embedded into the case material, it could give a very unique look to the finish while providing a nice little passive boost.

@ #6

Freshyill, that nytimes article is wonderful. Thanks for posting it. I almost see these oddities as a type of lifehack. Taking a piece of something traditionally seen as rural and moving it into an urban setting.

Another vote for Boot&Nuke. Easy to use. Clear options. I've used it on a couple computers that I was passing on.

I never really got why anyone would argue about if it is our fault or not. Once you have established that it is happening, is New York going to be under any less water if it was caused by a natural cycle?

In many ways, if it is happening (which I am not arguing) I would rather have it be our fault. If we broke it, we have a decent chance at fixing it. If it really is the result of some natural cycle of the solar system or something our odds of being able to mitigate it drop significantly.

Hey, it makes sense to me.

After all, music piracy does FAR more damage to the American economy then denying an education to the next generation could ever cause.

*Waves Canadian Flag*
I swear, watching the news from south of the boarder is the greatest spectator sport ever created.

I actually have a lot of sympathy for the PR people who work that kind of show. Think about it. In that kind of environment, you are either indulging, or not. There would not be a lot of in-between.
So, everybody is either on the mother of all sugar highs, or else is the type of person who does not eat candy. At all.

I am loving the idea of a maternity company called "Least Likely to Breed"

This is truly gorgeous. Anyone have any idea how long it takes to transcribe a single copy?

What means would you rather have them use? Physical force? Then every once in a while we read about how someone, as likely a police officer as a suspect, caught a blow wrong and is either crippled or dead.

How about Pepper spray? You still get the occasional allergic or shock reaction and deaths, not to mention a far harder weapon to apply selectively.

The police need some way to deal with violent people who won't calm down or respond to vocal means. What would you rather have them do? What was the good choice here? What happened was tragic, yes, but what should the police have done differently?

I'm going to be the guy who implies the police did their job

Some of the relevant details that the above article fails to mention was that he was extremely violent when the police arrived (which is why they called the police). The police showed up to find someone who was throwing furniture, computers and banging on glass windows. He was either unable or unwilling to respond to police (language or state of mind).

What would you have the police do? Sounds like the perfect situation for a taser to me. Only one of the offers there had a taser. The taser automatically records every time it was used. The guy was tasered once. He than got up and continued being violent. he was tasered once more, then went into shock and died.

Now, the airports actions need some real review, but the police seem like they acted appropriately.

For better reporting, see the CBC here
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/10/14/bc-taser.html
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/british-columbia/story/2007/10/16/bc-taser.html