I can see my house from here!

But God would still be able to see them.

Apparently, the Saudi God doesn't have x-ray vision.

The cake is real.

The lie is a lie.

UR TAGZ. CLOZE THEM.

Damn! Now I'll never get that job at Blizzard!

Wow. How irresponsible can you get? I mean, don't they know that you're not supposed to drink and thumbdrive?

Ravetastic!

This video just needs 2 things:

1) A didgeridoo (see: Aphex Twin for applicability)

2) More cowbell!

It's just a raffle. The only difference is, the winner is always the person who bought the last ticket. And the only thing they really win is the privelege to buy the item for $.15 x the number of tickets sold.

I mostly only played EVE in beta. Was poor at the time so I think I only paid for a month or two. It was a really fun game, though. I often consider going back. But it seems like one of those games where newer players are at an extreme disadvantage. At least it was early on. Is that still the case?

Oh, and Cory, you may not hear economics described as experimental very often, but it really is. Most of the laws of economics really only work in a controlled closed system. Once you throw politicians and other irrational factors into the equation, it becomes purely experimental. For example: "Let's see what happens when we encourage fairly stable lending organizations to loan money to people that they'd normally consider high-risk."

@#3: I think that's kind of the point of the song. Unless I'm missing something. The cryptozoology guy doesn't believe in scare goats because they ARE real. All the creatures he believes in are the mythical ones.

@#15: Just like emo kids love to hear people sing about cutting themselves and country music fans like to hear people sing about beer and pickup trucks, us nerds like to hear songs about the things we love. Not all boingers are nerds, though, so it's understandable that not everyone's going to "get it".

Me, I like the Front. He's got some great lyrics, and I actually like his unique flow. I may just have to pick this up.

I used to have a lot of trouble getting up in the morning. I'd have hit the snooze like 3 times before I even realized I did it. I could probably feed this thing a buck fifty before I was aware I'd run out of change.

I finally started using the alarm on my cell phone to get me up. I just leave the cell phone somewhere out of reach of the bed so that I have to actually get up to turn it off. Now I wake up on the first "ring" every time.

The police are currently seeking a man with a 22-foot inflatable penis.

Not Steampunk.

Gilliganpunk.

"Separation of church and state" is a myth and an impossibility. The constitution just forbids congress to make any laws establishing a "state religion" or keeping people from practicing their own religion. It doesn't require them to keep their religious beliefs out of their office. In fact it would be impossible to require lawmakers not to allow their religious beliefs to influence their decisions. Which is why it is so scary to many people that Palin (and many other people currently in office) hold such strong fundamentalist beliefs.

In some ways, I have more admiration for fundamentalist Christians than I do for more liberal Christians. At least they hold to their beliefs. They don't say "well, I believe some bits of the Bible and not others, and I just decide which pieces I want to believe". They say "for some of the Bible to be true, it all has to be true" and so they hold to beliefs like dinosaurs co-existed with man because the world is only 10,000 years old, so there couldn't have been dinosaurs millions of years ago.

Of course, just because I respect their dedication doesn't mean I want them making domestic policy decisions based on 5,000-year-old mystical beliefs.

The article says that they smelled alcohol on her the second time.

Apparently, she was cow-tipsy.

I guess that's one use for them.

In high school, my friend hit a truck in his Chevy Nova. So, we took off the front quarter-panel that was damaged. Then we jumped on it until it was as flattened as we could get it (i.e. not very). And then we wrote a bunch of unflattering remarks all over it, and left it on his ex-girlfriend's front porch.

Police were eventually able to corrall her.

When asked to comment, her coworkers at the dairy plant said "Bessie was always very docile. She'd never herd anyone."

Her recent stampede may have been related to a comment from her boss who told her "We can't look pasture recent performance. We have a brand to consider."

When asked what her current plans were, her lawyer responded that she planned to change her name to Patty and consider an offer from McDonalds.

That's just a plain ol' weighted storage cube.

And is this another image from one of those "XXX made SFW" videos?

I don't know if you guys have the power to do this or not, but could someone PLEASE get rid of that stupid cruise ad? When I come to BB, I immediately grab my scroll-wheel and scroll down to the first post I haven't read yet. When that ad pops up, I can no longer scroll until I close the ad. BB has never been about annoying ads, and I'm sure this is probably one that just snuck in to a rotation of some sort. But it is really annoying.

I completely agree with the sentiment of this article, that the whole electoral process has become an entertainment spectacle. Decisions and choices are made based on how well they'll scan with a particular demographic. And although I agree that Palin was definitely not chosen for her political leadership qualities, I would argue that the whole Democratic primary was based on the same premise. There were other democratic nominees that I would have possibly voted for. But once Obama and Hillary were in the running, nobody paid much attention to them. It was not about nominating someone who would make a good president, but about nominating someone popular enough to beat the Republican nominee.

I also think this article (and a lot of the responses to it in this thread) illustrates a prime issue with the 2-party system. Our electoral system has become less and less about voting FOR someone, and is increasingly about voting AGAINST someone. And while this problem wouldn't entirely disappear if there were more than 2 viable parties, it would be increasingly difficult to focus on the opposing parties, and would force candidates and their followers to focus more on the merits of voting FOR a particular person.

I'm not sure what the solution to the problem would be. A more anonymous electoral system could be abused, and supporters of "candidate A" could still bash "candidate B". A non-partisan electoral system wouldn't work because candidates could still identify themselves with a particular "party-like" affiliation. Taking away campaign contributions removes the freedom of Americans to support their candidate. So, yeah, I don't know that there's a better way except to encourage candidates to concentrate on selling themselves instead of bashing their opponents. And to encourage the American people to know more about the candidates before nominating or voting for them. But we're the country that invented Survivor, so, I don't have too much hope for that working out.

One thing that people often leave out of the equation is new home building during the last few years. With demand for property and home prices both on the rise it became more difficult for real estate investors to buy homes on the cheap and flip them for a profit. So they instead bought land in underdeveloped suburban areas, and built lots of cheap new homes which they could make more money off of than buying existing homes and selling them. These were attractive to two types of people. There were the lower-middle-class who may have normally been stuck in an apartment or an older home, and were now able to afford a new home thanks to the lending incentives offered by builders through their finance companies. Then there were the speculators who were buying up new homes hoping to turn them for a profit. (Obviously there were also regular home buyers who just happened to buy a new home in a newly developed area).

When housing prices srarted to decline, builders and investors drove the price down competing with each other to ditch their excess properties and recoup their dwindling profits. And with a lot of homeowners foreclosing, that put more homes on the market driving the prices down even further.

So, easier mortgages drove home demand up which pushed the price higher, which brought out the investors and builders who artificially inflated both the price and the supply. And at some point the supply of houses and the price both far outstripped demand, and when interest rates got too high and foreclosures started becoming more common, the market was just oversaturated. And now it's collapsing. And because a bunch of lenders tied securities to mortgages, they're being dragged down with the housing market.

It's a prime example of how making a seemingly small decision can have vast consequences in the market. By artificially expanding the market for new homes through the CRA, the government precipitated an expansion that a lot of people tried to take advantage of. And although most people in the business should have been smart enough to know that that sort of expansion was unsustainable, they were having too much fun making money to cash out and let the market settle gracefully.

My big issue with the bailout was that there was no real analysis done to say "this will work" or even, as the Dems kept trying to claim, "this will keep people in their homes". Correct me if I'm wrong, but it doesn't really matter who holds your mortgage. If you can't pay it, you're out. If you want to keep people in their homes, you have to refinance their mortgages based on the current value of the house, and at a fixed rate lower than their current mortgage. And even that probably wouldn't do much more than cause another drop in the housing market.

Also, without a massive reduction in government spending, the only way to recoup the money would be to raise taxes. And I know I don't want to have to pay the government for a bunch of loans that people made without doing their due dilligence.

The whole idea that the government will "eventually" recoup the money, I think is pretty shaky at best. After all, that's the theory that most of these investment firms were working with before they found out that the mortgages backing their securities were near worthless. There's no guarantee that a significan amount of those mortgages will ever regain the value that the government would pay for them right now.

In fact I would hazard a wager that these mortgages would eventually be re-sold to some of the companies that were bailed out for far less than they're worth some time in the future, so that the companies can turn around and instantly make money off of them. The government "recoups" a bit of the money they spent and writes the rest off as an "investment in the economy". The bankers who were about to go bankrupt become richer. And the people are still stuck either paying their inflated ARMs, or ditching their home.

Maybe I'm being overly cynical. But that just seems like the kind of thing that's likely to happen when the government and the banking industry are in collusion.

Darn, I was hoping this was about David Blaine.

I bought something similar for one of my boys who liked to make a mess at mealtime. He considered it a challenege. It took him a bit longer to get the stuff onto the floor, but he got good enough at it that even if I sat there watching him, he could usually manage it.

Funny thign is, once we took the sticky device off the bowl, he stopped trying. I guess it just wasn't fun anymore.

Crikey!

I don't know if they were so much "forced" to write risky loans, so much as "encouraged" to. The financial industry is, by nature, a greedy industry. So when given the opportunity to make loans to people that they knew would probably not be able to repay them, they figured it was a win-win situation. They either get the loan payments and rake in the interest, or they get the house and sell it for more than they originally mortgaged them for.

@8:Ugly Canuck, I don't see anywhere that Jakartaslim made any even "not-so-hidden" racist comments. There are plenty of white people who are in way over their heads, too. And I don't really see how giving risky high-interest loans to people who can't repay them just so that they can pretend to own a house could be called compassion.

Quick! Someone call Al Gore! Only HE can save us now!

Next up, Johnny Knoxville attaches it to his scrotum.

I think the current economic problems will see a shift in the next year or two away from as many MMO games and back toward single player or non-MMO multiplayer games. The competition in the market, and the idea that you have to keep paying monthly to play the game (even if it is cheaper per hour than just about any other non-free entertainment option) will make it harder both for developers to justify producing new MMOs, and for people to continue playing them). Especially a new one, which requires the game purchase in addition to the monthly fee.

I expect games like Spore will do really well with a lot of replayability for your initial purchase. As well as multiplayer action RPGs like Diablo 3 and Guild Wars 2 when they come out (assuming things haven't significantly improved by then).

And of course console games generally do well, so the Wii will probably continue to sell games, even if new console purchases drop off some (which they probably will).

Of course if things get really bad, you can always break out the board games (or break them out even if things get better. They're fun!)

Maybe that's what Britain needs. More pictures of women plunging "personal massagers" into their netherlands at the dentist's office.

s/typographical/typornographical

Where's the cell-phone version so you can increase the range?

@#18: Ditto here, Royaltrux. Going on 5 years with no landline. Haven't missed paying an extra $40/mo for nothing. Even when my city was hit by 2 tornadoes. Cell phones worked fine (unfortunately, because it meant I got called in to work disaster recovery all night).

The only situations I can see having one would be either in a remote location where cell service is spotty, or if I lived in an area where my kids couldn't just run next door (or to any of half a dozen neighbors) if mom or dad were incapacitated.

heh, the "censored" one reminds me of a particularly hillarious "Whitest Kids U Know" sketch.

Reminds me of the Penn and Teller BS! episode where they have a restaurant offering "gourmet" water to their patrons. The waiter that they've planted in the restaurant offers each of these waters and claims that each has an individual flavor, and the patrons go right along with it saying that they can taste that this one is smoother or that one is woodier or whatever. And out back they have some guy filling up the pitchers from a garden hose.

I'm pretty sure they did do this with the oil companies a few months back, didn't they? I thought that I saw something in passing where a few oil company execs were in front of some sort of panel explaining how gas pricing worked, or something like that.

Dr. Egon Spengler: There's something very important I forgot to tell you.
Dr. Peter Venkman: What?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Don't cross the streams.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Why?
Dr. Egon Spengler: It would be bad.
Dr. Peter Venkman: I'm fuzzy on the whole good/bad thing. What do you mean, "bad"?
Dr. Egon Spengler: Try to imagine all life as you know it stopping instantaneously and every molecule in your body exploding at the speed of light.
Dr Ray Stantz: Total protonic reversal.
Dr. Peter Venkman: Right. That's bad. Okay. All right. Important safety tip. Thanks, Egon.

I think Karl Malone (or at least Jimmy Kimmel) would approve.

KB8675309 - Windows Vista may crash and you may receive a Stop error message on a blue screen when colliding high-kinetic-energy particle beams.

Since you've abandoned all pretense of being an actual gadget blog, could you please also review the pharmaceutical substances that you have obviously been sampling?

:D

I think there are some inherent flaws in more...complete prophylactic dispensers, which may prevent them from ever being made.

First off, any dispenser that would roll the condom on for you would either feel really good, or feel really bad. And when you've got a young lady waiting for you, either is probably not a good thing.

And the spray-on idea would just never work. It'd require a complete coverage to be effective, and seriously who's gonna take the time to make sure they haven't left any "leak spots" when they can just do a quick one-pass spray and get going.

As an alternative, I propose "condorwear". Condom + underwear. Wears like underwear, but with a built-in "sheath" in front. The sheath has a replaceable latex lining that acts as a condom, but is as easy to take off and put on as underwear. And in the heat of passion, you just take off your pants and you're ready to rock!

I always assumed that the price hike was to make up for lower revenues from people switching to "all you can eat" text messaging plans. They get less per txt from those plans, so they charge more per txt for the a la carte plan to make up for it.

It's not like people can't choose NOT to text, though. I mean, are we seriously such a co-dependent society that we can't go 15 minutes without knowing what everyone we know is doing and updating them of our whereabouts? (he says as he adds his 2 cents to an internet discussion during the middle of the work day)

What's wrong with the ridged bacon microwaving tray? Seems much simpler and does the same thing.

"What would you think if a company took a cellphone, then removed all but one peripheral feature which had nothing to do with making phone calls, and made that the focus of the device? Absurd?
And yet digital cameras are a massive business: few see anything unusual about being dissatisfied with a cellphone's low-quality snapshots."

Am I the only one who's confused by this intro? I get the device that's being pitched. It's like a blackberry that only does email. But why compare it to a cell phone that has had everything but the camera removed, and compare that to digital cameras? A digital camera isn't really anything like a cell phone with everything but the camera removed.

Sorry, maybe I'm just having a confused day.

I'm sure it won't be long before someone figures out how to record the output of one of these things. I can't WAIT for all of the "guess where I've stuck my Ridgid SeeSnake" YouTube videos.

Ok, when you make this watch, you need to also include the ability to play the game, at least against the computer..er, watch, if not against another human (although that might be hard on 1 watch. maybe wirelessly between two?)

Any electronics company that just says "Oh. OK." and sends the guy some gear, probably deserves to lose it.

Also, do most electronics companies send out review stuff at request? Or do they send them to the magazine unsolicited? At any rate, I would think that the major electronics companies have the shipping address for the major review magazines/sites in a computer somewhere and aren't going to send them to some guy at his PO box or Apartment.

LOFL!

How is Netflix's streaming service a competing HD format? I wasn't aware I could stream from Netflix to my 1080p HDTV. I've read that they're planning on it. But until they can deliver better-than-DVD quality to my TV, I wouldn't consider it a competing format.

And with the Chinese format, as large a market as there is for pirated movies, you need studio releases to sell a format, and I doubt too many US studios are going to release their movies on a format that is ripe for piracy.

Put this in a 46" TV and I'm there.

"and the ability to get rid of unneccesary devices"

You mean like cardboard iPhone scanner stand thingies?

The only time I ever thought of switching to a Mac was when I thought it would help me hit on cute stoner chicks.

Maybe if they changed the Mac and PC guys to girls and made the Mac one a smokin' hottie, and the PC one her "nerdy friend" it might work better.

It's obviously a cowborg.

Ok, that's just ridiculous. These watches are very cheap so there are probably tons of people in the middle east who wear them. So some guy took the particular watch that he happened to be wearing that day and turned it into a bomb timing device. And it's ubiquitous so it's easy for people to copycat.

I'm surprised that metal, wires, and black electrical tape aren't on the terrorist list, too, since almost every bomb ever made probably has at least one of those components.

That.

Was.

AWESOME!

Now they need to make it fire 24 rounds per second and do some animation.

I'm in the "this is not a bad thing" boat. This cap is being driven by the fact that there are some people out there who will use more than 250GB/month. And the way that cable modem technology works, these people interfere with the quality of the connections of those of us who are well under 250GB/month. So Comcast has 2 choices. They can either install new equipment on their end just to handle these few users, and spread the cost out over ALL of their customers, or they can put on a (pretty generous, at least for the next few years) cap and force the heavy users to either cut back, or pay for their own excess bandwidth. At least they're now being up front about the fact that they don't actually offer "unlimited" internet. I think Comcast has actually made a good choice here.

Of course, it doesn't make up for all of their other monumentally bad choices and I won't be switching back to them any time soon.

@John, Yeah, I got that. :) Although I think if you had used apple without the capital A and the trademark symbol, people would have understood that you were talking about the fruit. But I was just using it as an excuse to make smart-alec comments. :)

Also, I wonder how mind blowing it would be to that time cube guy if someone pointed out to him that cubes have 8 corners, not 4.

2 words: Wing Commander.

"an orange sized case"

But...that's an apple in the picture.

And you can't compare apples and oranges.

Even though I like apples better.

Ditto the "not really a Photoshop project" sentiment. Which I also made note of about the beer tutorial as well.

It's great that Photoshop is incorporating a lot more drawing tools nowadays. But it's still a bitmap image editing tool and not a drawing tool. It's like using a knife as a screwdriver. Sure, the tool is designed in such a way as to work for your purpose, but there is a better tool that's specifically designed for what you are trying to do.

I think F could work, too.

Or maybe we could just go with fnord!

Are we not ready to move on to another letter yet?

We've done the whole e-thing. eMail, eCommerce, eDonkey, etc. At about the same time, the offline world was doing x. x-games, x-men, x-wives...whatever. Now it's all about the i. Everything, both online and off, has to have an i in front of it.

I'm done with I. I'm ready for another letter. I nominate p.

We could have the pPod, the pBasket, the pBrain...whatever. It'll be fun. C'mon marketing people. iStuff is so 2006. It's time to make with the p!

I realize that Adobe has incorporated more and more of the features of Illustrator into Photoshop, but I still would not use Photoshop to draw an image from scratch.

"the smug confidence that comes from knowing that you are naked and they have no idea"

Oh, we know. Believe me. We know.

Damnit! Now I have to change the name of my breast-shaped Wii peripheral.

How does "Wii grope" grab you? (PUN!)

Wow.

Just wow.

I remember before Rickrolling came along, my friends and I used to use this video for the same purpose. I still think it's a better grief link than Rick.

Ooh! It's like a Cyclone from Robotech (Southern Cross).

Plus it's got an ULTRACAPACITOR!

"Around here I demand that we all check out porn at least twice a day, whether we need it or not."

Where do I send my resmue?

The last apartment I moved out of had so much cat pee in one corner that it had absorbed into the concrete and the owner had to pay way more than my deposit to get the smell out.

Needless to say I didn't get any of my deposit back.

And it wasn't my fault. A "friend" brought her cat over while she was supposed to be cat-sitting MY cats while I was on vacation, and the little bugger didn't get along with my cats, so it peed on the carpet under the desk. All week.

Oh, and: he should have offered to sell it to Gabe and Tycho for them to use as a prize for PAX, either this year or next.

I thought the reason the Wii didn't play DVDs was so they didn't have to pay the decoding license?

How long before someone makes a T-Shirt with actual AV inputs on it?

I think it was due to some super secret new Apple project.

The iFlamethrower. (marketing will probably change this to iBurnU)

Steve Jobs will announce it by saying "The iBurnU will drench your enemies in burning napalm, searing the flesh from their bones. You know what to do, my minions."

Oh, and they NEED to have a Watchmen poster or sticker of some sort. Preferably a bloody happy face.

And one more thing: INTERNET MEMES ARE NOT GEEKY THEY ARE JUST STUPID! ARGH!

Sorry. It's just that I paid for my geek heritage in blood, sweat, and tears (literally. I was beat up quite a bit as a kid). I was a geek back when people hated geeks. Geeks were picked on, put down, and beat up. Now, it's cool to be a geek. Everyone who has ever added text to a photo and uploaded it to their myspace page thinks they're a geek. So, suddenly, every "joke of the week" internet meme must be "geek culture". Everyone who's ever read a wikipedia article about Richard Stallman because they wanted to know what the latest XKCD meant thinks they're a nerd. Anyone who managed to download a Linux distro and get it working on their PC is automatically a h4x0r. Well, guess what? You're not. You want in our club? You have to take the initiation. Which means you have to have someone who plays a sport take your comics from you and throw them in the gutter.

(The proceeding rant does not apply to people who still have 15 year old comic books in their parents' garage. Offer valid except where otherwise prohibited. Not available to residents of Florida.)

What's not funny about it? I don't think I've ever shown it to someone and had them describe it as "not funny".

Also, @metlin: I think some people are confusing "IT worker" with "geek". They're not the same thing. Sure, you can work in IT and have good fasion sense and not have a house full of comics and computer games. You can also be a geek and not work in IT. But if you're going to make a TV show about a couple of geeks who work in IT, they're going to look like Roy and Moss. Otherwise, you're making The Office and setting it in an IT department instead of a paper company.

If you can't TELL someone's a geek, they're not a geek. They're just an enthusiast.

#16 Yeah, that would be pretty cool. Hmmm....I may have to run out and patent something real quick so I can make a bajillion dollars once someone else actually does the work of creating the product.

Although the first time someone drives through New York with the sound of an accelerating 747 blaring from their car, there'd be a new law faster than you could say "nine eleven".

And #17, that would be a cool idea. Except that it'd probably be easier for the government to mandate noise levels than it would be to mandate that all blind people get signal receivers. Plus, what happens if one goes bad or something. Although I guess if a car is artificially generating noise, that noise source could go bad, too.

Well, if not mom, who used to regularly stick a hose up YOUR ass?

:D

This does not bode well.

So, let's say someone steals something from my house, and while the cops are there they lift a bunch of fingerprints trying to find the thief. Well, obviously most of the fingerprints will be mine. What if I had touched drugs for whatever reason (a friend tosses me a bag and I say no thanks and toss it back. yeah, we'll go with that). Do they get to arrest me because they were in my house doing a legal search?

Ok, tinkerers, here is your mission: Mod this so that it can be worn while still allowing one to speak (i.e. remove the requirement to bite down on something), and then add a voice changer.

I would SO wear that to work.

Not a joke. And I thought I read about someone else doing this before Lotus, but am too lazy to look up the reference.

However, I would like to offer them a suggestion: If you are going to add artificial sounds to a quiet car, why just go with plain old engine nose?

How about the Batmobile (the turbines from the 60's series).

Or maybe an F16, or even an old turboprop airplane.

Or the sound of the Mach 5. Or hell, even have it play the theme song to Speed Racer.

Or the sound of two coconuts bashing together.

Ooh! Or that sound that Jim Carrey makes in Dumb and Dumber.

Oh wait! I've got it! I want the sound of a Tie Fighter. That's it. That's the one I want. Do that one.

Well, at least she sputtered all over the carpet before the laxative, and not after.

@#7:I had no idea that Murray Head was Anthony Head's (Giles from Buffy the Vampire Slayer) big brother.

The things you learn when you visit Wikipedia to find out "whatever happened to that guy who wrote One Night in Bangkok".

Bah. Both the original idea and the satirical retort are both ridiculous.

Copying a DVD for personal use does not create some "new value". The value of a DVD is that you get to see the movie whenever you want. If you make a personal copy for backup or watching on your laptop, it adds a small measure of convenience. However, the value of the convenience is not equivalent to the value of owning the movie itself. And it is of no value to the copyright holder.

Also, most of the examples provided in the "20 things I've stolen" article also don't fall under the category of having any value. For example, splitting a ding-dong. The value in the ding-dong is one whole ding-dong's worth of whatever (flavor, calories, etc.). Splitting the ding-dong also splits the value. The net value is the same. Splitting it doesn't create any new value. So there's no "right" even according to the "if value, then right" theory. Being cooled by someone else's fan also doesn't create any new value. Once the air blows past the person, it's waste.

Taking a napkin from Taco Bell, however, is actually stealing. Of course, trying to get Taco Bell to prosecute someone for 1 or 2 napkins...and trying to find a judge who would see the case...probably not going to happen. Now, if you wandered of with a couple of large packages of napkins, or came in daily to empty the taco sauce repositories...well, they probably still wouldn't try to prosecute you, but they'd ask you not to return to the store and could call the police if you did. But that's because it's private property and you'd be trespassing.

Sorry. I just didn't understand the whole point of either side of the argument. Of course, that also extends to my inane rantings about the articles as well. :D

Knight jumps queen!

Bishop jumps queen!

Pawns jump queen!

Gang bang!

Q: What would Eliza Doolittle say as a zombie?

Make sure that you get your engrams tested with your e-meter afterward.

Pointless.

"I am often treated by my friends like a chest-thumping, mouth-breathing pleb.

You say this as if to imply that you're NOT a chest-thumping, mouth-breathing pleb. And yet you don't use chopsticks. I am confused.

:D

I was lucky. When I was a kid, some friends of my folks ran a Japanese exchange student program. So for several years, we had a Japanese student live at our house for several weeks. They made us all sorts of delicious food, and taught my sister and I how to use chopsticks at an early age.

Of course, once I hit puberty, I didn't really give a damn about the chopsticks, the food, or the origami. I HAD A JAPANESE SCHOOLGIRL LIVING IN MY HOUSE!

You know, I should see who around here runs a program like that now.

Uh, for the cultural experience for my kids. Yeah.

Man that thing is overpriced and gaudy.

And then to go and stick diamonds on it to boot?

Well, technically all internet traffic is not peer-to-peer. Servers are not generally considered peers of workstations and vice-versa. Peer-to-peer is generally what happens when end-user computers connect directly to each other with little or no server intervention.

I didn't go for Beetlejuice right away. I thought of spider-walking Regan.

But then again, I am disturbed.

:This guy's nuts"

What about them?

Sorry, couldn't resist.

Oh, and there are just some things you shouldn't do in a hellicopter. Like anything that ends up with the rotors beneath you.

@#19 - Phikus:

Sorry, my previous post was meant as a joke. Thus my comment about the only way to fix the problem is to just keep people off of planes. :)

I'm fully aware that this screening does little to deter actual terrorism, and mainly just serves to inconvenience everyone.

Anyway, I doubt the terrorists have any interest in bombing anything in the U.S. Their goal is to terrify people and make them live in fear. Obviously they've already accomplished that.

'm wth #12. Why pply th trm "stmpnk" t vrythng wth dcrtv mtl bts n t? Stmpnk s bt tchnlgy, nt bt dcrtn.

Nw prdn m whl g dcrt my Tffny lmp wth clrd LDs.

I'm with #11. And no, I'm not a paid MS shill (wait, I shouldn't have said that, now they'll KNOW I'm a paid MS shill! Better cover up my tattoos!)

Kidding aside, I have Vista on my laptop, and I have no problems with it. I have a few programs that I have to "authorize" the first time I run them, but that's easily fixed by changing the properties on the icon just once (yeah, it's an extra step, but it means that nothing that runs on my machine is something I didn't start myself). I've only had the BSOD once since I got the laptop in February, and this thing is constantly on (and it has one of those Nvidia chips that will or won't get too hot...mine does.)

I think MS really shot themselves in the sack when they bowed to Intel and lowered the system specs on Vista. I think A LOT of peoples' problems with Vista stem from the fact a lot of people put it on machines that just weren't designed to handle it. I have a feeling that MS's next OS will have fairly stiff system specs. And as for the UAC...people want their systems to be super-secure, but they don't want to take any active role in securing it. Again, I think the next OS will have UAC, but it'll be like the firewall where you'll be able to easily turn it off or on.

I am shocked....SHOCKED......that it took 39 comments to get to a "don't taze me bro" joke.

They need to make up some stickers that say: "Certified NOT-A-BOMB by the TSA".

Maybe use those stickers that change color after 24 hours so you can't bring a bunch of bomb components on individual flights and then assemble them into a bomb later.

Although that does bring up an interesting point. What if they did let this battery pack on board. And they let some other guy come on board with some sort of circuit board all by itself. And maybe one other guy has some "grey playdough" in containers for his kid. By themselves, these are harmless enough. But maybe once on board these guys get together and suddenly they have a bomb.

I think there's only one solution to this problem: We have to stop letting people onto planes. When too many people get together in one place, bombs are bound to happen.

Congratulations.

You have discovered your penis.

Also:

This is a whole new direction in naval-gazing.

@TNH:

Two things:

1) It seems a tiny bit hypocritical to say "Do you notice that all the people who are making up new parts of the story, then taking them seriously, are coming up with reasons why the bicyclist was guilty", and then to go on to make a bunch of assumptions about what the police officer may or may not have been thinking, or why he may have done what he did.

2) I don't know about the others who have "made up new parts of the story", but for my own part my intent was not to imply the guilt or innocence of either party, but to suggest that there's just not enough evidence based on the video alone to suggest (as the first 5 posters automatically did) that the cop was just some brutal savage lashing out at a completely innocent passer-by. I've seen too many "trials by media" where "everyone knew" that one party was guilty, when in fact they weren't. It's easy to look at something like this and think that we know exactly what's going on. And yes, it's entirely possible that WYSIWYG. But to convict a cop before even giving him a trial is as unjustifiable as knocking a random person off a bike.

Xopher, I think you misunderstand the legal use of the word "justified". Justified just means the officer had sufficient legal reson to do what he did. What if 3 other officers had tried the things that you suggest? Maybe one guy called for him to stop and he didn't. Maybe the next guy tried to grab his handlebars and the guy kicked at the cop. Maybe another cop stood in front of the bike and the biker tried to run him down, or veered far and fast enough away from the cop to avoid him.

Again, I'm not trying to say that what the cop did WAS justifiable. Just that there are a lot of people in this thread who sound like Ronnie Dobbs: "Y'all are brutalizin' me!"

Assuming that the cop was using unnecessary force is just as bad as assuming that the biker "had it coming". Either way, people are making an assumption that it not necessarily correct. All we can say for certain are things about in the past and certain individuals. And these comments can be applied to both the police and the CM riders. And neither comments are proof of anything in this case.

This video is compeltely out of context and doesn't really provide evidence of anything except that an officer knocked down a cyclist. No judgement of justifiability or deservedness can be made from what we can see here.

@#140: I don't think you quite grasp the concept of Occam's Razor. Occam's Razor roughly says that the simplest explanation is usually the correct one. So by your logic it is a simpler explanation to assume that this officer (who can be clearly seen deliberately moving toward the cyclist) did this because he snapped and had a fit of rage? Why not target one of the closer cyclists? Why be so deliberate and consciencious about it?

No, Occam's Razor says that we must assume that the officer is acting as an officer. And by doing so, his actions are carried out in consideration of upholding the law. Which means that we have to assume that the officer is indeed targeting the individual (as he appears to be in the video) and that he is doing so because the individual has committed a crime and the officer is using what he determined at the moment to be the correct use of force.

Now, this does not imply that the officer WAS absolutely in the right and used the exact right amount of force and was definitely carrying out the letter of the law in his actions. It just means that, all other things being equal, that is what we should assume.

No matter what the guy just did, knocking him off his bike cannot be justified.

Really? No matter what? So like if he'd just pulled out a handgun and shot someone on the street you'd just let him go by? Or maybe wave your arms and yell stop?

Obviously the biker in question didn't shoot someone. But every time a cop uses force, he is always in the position of making a judgement call about how much force is appropriate given the current situation. But cops are people, too, and sometimes their judgement isn't 100% dead on. And sometimes they overreact. But until you get out there and put yourself in harms way on a daily basis, you can't really say that there will never be a situation where that level of force would be appropriate. Heck, without more evidence, you can't even say it wasn't appropriate this time.

Is it too late for me to get a "Zune Guy" tattoo?

Oh, and:

I TOTALLY want to get one of these. That way when someone pisses me off, I can say, "Ok, that's it! You're on the list!" And then I can proceed to whip out an actual list.

Hmm...that brings up an interesting dichotomy with this item. If you use it publically and tell people you're putting their name on the Shit List, it is a humorous novelty item. However, if you keep it private and secretly note down everyone who's done you wrong, it becomes creepy and somewhat pathetic.

Damn, pork musket beat me to it. Still, I want to be on the list, so:

How is this a gadget?

It needed killin'

It sounds like some people may not have read the Critical Mass website before going on a ride:

CM is intended to be a celebration, not an opportunity to cause trouble. Those who want to try to tie up traffic as much as possible and be confrontational with motorists are missing the point. We can assert our right to the road without being rude about it. Focus on the ride, not on the cars that also happen to be on the road.

And I agree that the cop would have to have been monumentally stupid (which I'm not entirely ruling out) in order to just go knock some random guy off his bike for no good reason. I think at the end of the day the question will be was that level of force justified or not. Maybe the guy was using the bike ride as an excuse to snatch purses or something. Maybe he hit someone and failed to stop for a previous officer. I could come up with several scenarios where I would say that the cop did exactly the right thing. I'm not saying that he DID do the right thing. Just that there's not enough information to go saying that this guy's a bad cop.

People seem to want to blame cops for a lot of bad things. And unfortunately, when they make it into the news, it is precisely because they've done some bad things. But most of the cops I've met have been really good people who are genuinely interested in protecting the public. I'm hoping that's what's going on in this video, and we're just getting a poor perception of a basically good guy just doing his job.

I was referring more to the fiduciary duty itself, rather than the actual practice. I agree that a large number of companies look strictly at the bottom line and if they can't rationalize a direct profit from an action, they don't take it. However, there are many corporations, such as Microsoft, and really most of the ones that people usually accuse of being "heartless monsters" that do practice social responsibility. They may do this BECAUSE it gets them good press, and therefore more money, or they may do this DESPITE the fact that they won't get as good a return on their money as, say, investing in direct PR or R&D. Either way, the charities and social programs they invest in don't bring a direct measurable dollar return, and so one could say they're not meant to "maximize profit". But the executives of those companies can still show that they are fulfilling their fiduciary duty if they can show even the cynical link that they only did it to generate positive PR.

As a counter example, if a corporate executive gave themselves a 3000% pay rase and fired a whole department to make up for it, they would be hard pressed to show how that was a fiscally responsible move. And as Judge Posner points out, investing a lot of money into African areas where the government intercepts most of the incoming funds is not likely to result in a future market base for a company's products (unless the company is planning on having an exclusive deal with the corrupt government, and is only making "charitable donations" with the specific intent that they reach the corrupt officials, but you'd really have to sell me on that scenario).

And one further point to note: Just because a lot of companies "compete with each other in a drive to the bottom" does not mean that they are automatically fulfilling their fiduciary duty to their investors. There are plenty of examples of companies that try to cut corners for the sake of reducing costs, and have that come back to bite them in the ass, causing the company to tank. There are also plenty of examples of companies that "do the right thing" despite the higher cost, and end up doing better because of it. And yes, there are also too many examples of companies that cut corners and are rewarded for it, or do the right thing and end up tanking. In the end, the concept of fiduciary duty really boils down to "did we try to make money for the company?" You can do good things while maintaining your fiduciary duty, and you can do bad things. I understand that Creative Capitalism wants companies to choose to do good things. But I don't think that John, Daniel, and Cory understand that what Judge Posner is saying is that if your company does good things but ends up ruining the company, then your executives have failed in their fiduciary duty, and they have risked ruining the company for their own social goals. Which really doesn't end up helping anyone in the long run.

Ok, I'm going to see if I can summarize the articles in question here, partially for my own benefit, and partly because I think a lot of people have quite a lot of misunderstanding about what is being said.

It seems to all start with an article by Richard Posner which, if I am reading it correctly, basically says this: That simply giving away corporate money without regard for how it affects the financial future of the corporation is a bad idea. He uses the fiduciary responsibility of corporate management as the basis of his argument.

Next, a blogger named John came along and wrote a response arguing that this "fiduciary obligation to maximize profits" is not a good argument. He bases this on a disagreement over where this "obligation" comes from.

Then Daniel makes a response to that post saying that further more, the idea of "maximising profits" is also misleading and mercurial.

Next, Cory engages in a bit of hyperbole to call attention to and engage discussion of the previous article.

And finally, the comments section erupts in a chaos of discussion about judges legislating from the bench and other tangentially related topics from the original topic at hand.

Does that seem about accurate? Feel free to correct me if I've misunderstood something, as I'm genuinely trying to understand what exactly the big commotion is. Because from my point of view, all I can see is that a judge thinks that it's OK for a corporation to engage in socially responsible practices so long as there is some percievable benefit to the company. And a couple of bloggers think that companies should engage in MORE socially responsible practices without regard for whether or not it ends up harming the company. And if either of those two statements is incorrect, then I must have misread more than I thought.

Personally, I am fully on the side of Judge Posner. It is the duty of corporate management to maximize the profit of the corporation. However, I think that the confusion that is felt by the two bloggers is understandable and warranted. There really is no good way to put a measure on exactly what "maximizing profit" means. This concept is really only something that can be applied retroactively to determine the good-faith motive of a corporate executive when it is determined that he may not be acting with the best interests of the corporation in mind. If it is found that a corporate executive has squandered corporate funds and had no reasonable expectation that his squandering would eventually bring positive consequences to the company, then that executive did not fulfil his fiduciary duty.

So while it may seem that this "fiduciary duty of maximizing profits" may be an "absurd" concept that could be applied to any decision that a corporate manager could make, it is really not meant to be applied literally to each and every decision with some sort of formula that returns a number that says "this gives us a profitability of 6 while that gives us a profitability of 7". Rather, it's a concept that applies more in a big picture sense of the overall guidance of the company. Individual decisions can be made that negatively impact the company's bottom line, which will eventually synnergize into something that strengthens the company in the long term. As long as an executive can point to an overall goal of profit to the company and its shareholders, he is exercising his fiduciary duty. I think there is a lot of misunderstanding about that here, which is generating a lot of negative feeling toward this idea, on both sides of the fence.

And I've probably done nothing to help. :D

@#116: hahah! Was the pamphlet where you read this printed on hemp paper and handed to you buy a guy on campus wearing a Bob Marley t-shirt? Did he invite you to a sit-in to discuss the merits of hemp, and how it will change the world? And invite you to use hemp soap and hemp shampoo and wear clothes made of hemp?

Marijuana was outlawed for the same reason that talking on your cell-phone while driving is outlawed. Because amongst the millions of stupid things that people do every day, a few were shown to have a non-causal link with driving while talking (or getting high on marijuana). Then there's the public outcry, and the crusaders with money and influence, and a politician or two gets involved, and then BAM! There's a law.

And because there's a law, that pushes public perception, which in turn leads to the public viewing anyone who drives with their cell phone, smokes pot, or drinks on Sunday as being a delinquent and a criminal.

So yes, the reason that marijuana was and still is illegal is because of the perception (at first by few, and then by many) that it's a "bad drug" and it will make you do crazy things. The whole "lumber industry" conspiracy was put together by the same people who think that if they can get everyone to want hemp shoes, that it'll be just that much easier to sneak in a few of the shorter cannabis plants amongst the taller "industrial" ones.

I'm all for the legalization of marijuana. But I'd rather that people come to their senses and see that it's a harmless recreational drug with enormous medical benefits, rather than becuase "we can make stuff with it that we already make out of other stuff".

It's really sad that we live in a world where a kid has to get his leg amputated to save his life and people say "oh, that's too bad." But then the kid has to take some medicine that's been arbitrarily decided is "bad" and people say "OH MY GOD! HOW COULD YOU DO THAT TO YOUR KID?!"

We should be asking ourselves what kind of parent would NOT do that for their kid, if it was what helped.

I didn't say it was THE shaggy dog story. I said it was the gadget-blog equivalent. And "pre-pubertal homoeroticism" is rampant in gadget-blogs (I think it's actually in the charter).

:D

"I flew my rocket to the moon and I saw aliens! They looked alot like us, only most of them were shorter. Some of the bigger ones would give the smaller ones long brown sticks which the little ones would devour. After eating one of the sticks I found that they were delicious even to my human mouth! The shorter aliens would then run around and latch on to aliens of a different variety. A much larger type of alien that looked remarkably like various Earth animals. A large dog, a big duck, and even a giant mouse-like creature. I've been there! I saw them!"

"No, Dr. Mitchell. You're remembering last year when The Home for Crackpot Astronauts took its anual trip to Disneyland and you rode on the Space Mountain and ate a Churro. It's time for your meds now, Dr. Mitchell. There's a good boy."

The gadget-blog equivalent of the shaggy dog story.

He could always just go extreme left and change his tattoo to read "Welcome to the socialist revolution."

Or he could turn this:

Wel
come
to the
social

into this:

Well, it has recently
come to my attention that paying homage
to the Zune was seen by many as a
social stigma.

@#18

That's the one. It's sung as a round. I'll have to wait until I get home to watch the xkcd-influenced videos, but if none of them sing the comic as a round, someone needs to.

ONLY 110,000. And that's out of 2 billion fliers. Which makes it sound like such a tiny percentage. But what percentage of fliers even does anything that requires any extra TSA attention? When I flew earlier this year, I'd say that almost everyone passed through the checkpoint unmolested except for the occasional "you have to take off your shoes first" or "please take the laptop out of its bag".

I'd be much more interested in what percentage of people complain out of the number of people whose experience with the TSA goes beyond the typical wave-through.

Also:

@#30: The nipple ring incident occured in March of this year. These are NOT things that were only occuring when 9/11 was fresh in everyone's mind. These are things that still happen today. As I noted, most people just get a wave-through. But even a few violations as eggregious as these are simply unwarranted.

We can't stop here. This is bat country.

I think that's an old Girl Scout song (my mom was a troop leader). I don't have discovery channel so I'd never heard the commercial, but I had read the xkcd strip when it was posted. Then a week or so ago when I was taking my kids somewhere they were listening to one of their cassettes with various "standards" on it. I wasn't really paying attention to the music but then I got that funny "wait, what?" sort of feeling in my brain and realized what the song was. heh

Well, why not? Apple stole Radio Shack's pricing model (i.e. sell cheap electronic crap for way more than it's worth)

If you read the article, it specifically says that it has the flame-spitting turbo.

Well, at least he wasn't eaten by dilophosaurs.

100 degrees?

Circles have 360 degrees in them.

And the mouse has 180 degrees in it.

You need mroe degrees.

@#40:

I have never EVER seen a jazzfest erupt at the mention of The Big Lebowski.

This is what happens when you find a stranger in the Alps!

(From the "for TV" expurgated version.)

Here's an idea you can put in your idea-dispensing gumball jar:

"Repost a boingboing.net article from yesterday."

:D

I bet they all say "Go F*ck yourself!"

I mean, that's what I'd make them all say if I'd thought of it first. :D

You don't have to do anything to it to "inherently ruin it as a computer". Apple already did that.

:D

Oh, and I was going to suggest the alarm clock idea, as well.

It sounds like what we need is a bra-bat detection center. I will get on that right away. Ladies, come see me and I will inspect your bras and any other articles of clothing that you happen to be wearing for bats, rats, cats, and any other small creatures or insects. I am happy to provide this service at no cost to you, in the interest of keeping ladies' undergarments completely bat-free.

Man, this looks awesome. I'd love to get this. For my kids. And not just for the fart thing.

It looks like this may just be a concept? Or is there somewhere we can buy this? I didn't see anything on the site that looked like an order page.

You had me at "see women naked whenever you want."

In for two!

I'll read the rest of the article later.

If "distracted driving" is already a finable offense, what exactly does this law do? Punish the small number of people who are actually able to talk on the phone while driving without causing a 27-car pileup?

Still, as much as I hate to see lawmakers passing ridiculous unnecessary laws, I am also amazed that we as a society are utterly incapable of doing ANYTHING anymore without being "connected". When I was in High School and I had an emergency on the freeway, I used a callbox on the side of the road (oh no, I had to walk 100 yards to get to one!). And if it wasn't an emergency but was somewhat urgent, I got off the freeway and used a payphone. But aparently the people of today MUST be able to find out what's for dinner and if they should pick anything up on the way home, where as those of us from the past just had to deal with eating whatever was made when we got there. And now there's a new law. YOU BROUGHT THIS UPON YOURSELVES, PEOPLE!

:D

Ooh! Great play idea!

"Here, kids. Why don't you paint the house with this bucket of water? Oh, wait, let me put some soap in it, and some sponges. Make sure you paint the windows real good. And paint daddy's car, too, will ya? And after that, you can 'paint' the front yard with the lawnmower. Now get to wor...uh, playing. Daddy's gonna go play 'dead' in the hammock."

So, were they able to actually prove that all of teh porn on his computer was directly put there by malware that he had no knowledge of? Or was their argument basically that "because the IT department was inept in keeping malware off his computer, you can't prove that the porn is his?"

Because it's been my experience that typically, when you get porn on a computer in any quantity more than one or two images, the user probably put it there in some fashion. Either by directly downloading it and/or visiting porn sites, or by visiting other sites that typically have porn ads on them (torrent sites, hack sites, etc).

Maybe I'm just being a cynical bastard. But I'm not always swayed by the Bart Simpson "you can't prove it! nobody saw me!" defense.

#88: 4) Logical fallacies in spades. Most often used is the straw man and analogy fallacies.

Uhm...your whole post is basically a straw man. :D

Or:

I'M IN UR ARGUMENT KILLIN UR STRAWMEN!

(sorry, I couldn't resist)

Rule 34: Making the internet a creepier place since 1993.

In Soviet Russia, photograph takes YOU.

Oh, wait, this isn't slashdot, is it?

I know I shouldn't, but I'll go ahead and feed the troll.

There are some people in the armed forces who join them to "blow sh!t up" and/or to "travel to exotic places, meet new and interesting people, and kill them."

There are also some people in the armed forces who join them for the chance to defend our nation and its people against threats both foreign and domestic.

One of the things those people have in common is that NONE of them get to decide where they go or who they kill when they get there. Those decisions are made at a much higher pay grade than that of your common infatryman/airman/seaman (hehe. He said semen). It is those "highly paid leaders", especially the ones that we, the voting public, CHOOSE to elect, that we trust to make the decision on what constitutes a proper use of our military resources.

In recent (and not so recent) years, those leaders have failed to exercise good judgement in throwing the might of our armed forces around. That fact should in no way should belittle the fact that those men and women serving today have signed up not only to be "hired killers", but also to stand in harms way and take a bullet to save you in the event that some OTHER country's military leaders decide to fail to exercise good judgement.

Our soldiers serve as both sword and shield for our country. If that sword has gotten a bit bloody over the years, look to the arm that's swinging it, not the sword itself, for blame.

Have you ever taken a 15k RPM hard drive out of an enclosure while it was still spinning?

To say that they actally GET heavier is a misconception. But they will provide a resistance which is all that's required to get a workout.

Now whether it's enough resistance to replace anything but a 4 or 5lb barbell, I have no idea. Doubtful. But it's not ENTIRELY junk.

haha! When I first read the title I thought it said "toddlers shooting machine guns at CATS".

Does it make me a bad person that I was a bit disappointed when I re-read it? :D

Oh, and while in Metropolis don't miss the big Superman statue.

Not that you can miss it.

Well, unless you miss the whole town by blinking as you drive by.

#6:

"Anthony, all of Illinois south of, especially Springfield is Bizarro Illinois."

Everyone there works for the government, so they have to be bizarro versions of regular folk. I know, I live there.

Help me!

Fine. God made the banana. Whatever.

It took man to dip it in chocolate, coat it in batter, and deep fry it.

Also, the banana takes 2 hands to open, which means you have to put down your beer. Pizza is a far superior achievement.

I'd love to find a way to set this off accidentally. All the fundies who signed up for it would think the rapture happened and they didn't get on the boat. And all of their friends would be pissed at the sanctimonious bastards who entrusted their documents to them because they thought they wouldn't make it in.

Man, WHY are people still giving this guy an audience?

Nothing to see here. Move along.

Oh, and those of you who are in the position to do so (i.e. fast food workers, etc.), it's not that hard to smuggle out the day's waste (e.g. fully cooked hamburgers that were never served) and feed a homeless person or two. My ex girlfriend used to give away unclaimed pizzas from a large pizza chain. I would occasionally do it at the burger place I worked at ages ago. Sure it's against company policy, but it's one that can pretty easily be gotten around. Especially if you're not advertising "free food for homeless people from McDonalds!" or something like that.

You know, I have no problem with the idea of rescuing packaged foods that have been for whatever reason thrown out (like 1 day past the sale date or something). In fact we had a guy at work whose wife was the manager of the bakery at a grocery store, and he'd bring in the stuff that was going to be thrown out for us to pick through. But eating something that someone else has already taken a bite of...that's just nasty, not to mention unhealthy.

Better to direct your energy toward educating people about portion control so that we waste less food in the first place.

Aw, man. Now I really want a Heath Bar Shake.

I wonder if I can schedule myself 4 hours on the treadmill tonight.

You've no doubt heard of plausible deniability.

The Indiana Jones movies are all based on deniable plausability.

Nothing to see here, move along.

I wonder if these paintings were done on recycled paper with eco-friendly paint?

Oh, and Jake0748: Yeah, it's pretty common for kids just learning to write to get letters and/or words backwards. I have two who are writing now, and they both started out that way. Of course, for my oldest, this was at about 4 1/2, and not 6. But he's a genius (just like his daddy.) ;)

If you wear it with the controls inward, you could probably operate it one-handed by using your thumb.

If you wear it with the controls inward, you could probably operate it one-handed by using your thumb.

Nothing that you do, no amount of money that you pay has any impact on the service that you get unless the person on the other end of the transaction pays a bribe.

Once again, isn't this exactly the way the internet works right now? Company X pays a premium for faster service. Company Y does not. I buy my service from El Cheapo ISP. My service will be the same to either company.

Even if Company X pays El Cheapo ISP to prioritize their traffic, unless they pay a fee to EVERYONE who touches their traffic, they're never going to be able to guarantee that they'll get a faster speed to each customer.

What they're doing by buing the better service in the first place is guaranteeing that if they have 10,000 people trying to get to their site, that any slowdowns along the way won't be between them and their ISP. They'll be someone else's fault.

I don't quite understand what the whole brouhaha is with this. Isn't this pretty much the way the internet already works? Companies can pay for various levels of service, all the way from residential quality (i.e. "You MAY get up to X MBps, but we don't guarantee it) up to SLA-based managed pipes (i.e. "If you don't get X MBps with 99.999% uptime, we owe you lots of money.")

Now, I understand that at some point in the pipe between me and Company Z, the pipe has no SLA on it. And it doesn't really matter if it does or not, since Company Z is paying for their X MBps of data, and they'll always have that. The ones who are not paying for a CIR circuit with an SLA on it always have the possibility of getting their pipe squeezed no matter where along the tube it happens. And you can bet that if their ISP is advertizing 10 MBps and they're consistently getting only 2 MBps, they'll go somewhere else (well, if it matters to them. Alot of companies oversubscribe, and never notice that they're not getting their max data rate, but that's another issue).

Anyway, it is and always has been a fact that paying more money will get you better stuff, whether it's an internet connection or eating in a restaurant (WAH! I only paid $2 for my QPC, and it doesn't have top sirloin?!) It's the way a free market works. If you try to change that, then ISPs will not be able to offer their premium services, and it's those premium services which subsidize the addition of new tubes. You cut off the big ISPs ability to add new tubes, and then EVERYONE gets crappier service. Consumers have ALWAYS been basically paying for spare bandwidth left over on the circuits that have already been paid for by big business. Hell, the whole GEnie online service back in the 80s and 90s was run on spare cycles on GE's servers.