Carbon Credits are just a euphemism for "It's okay to pollute if you're rich."

@16 - But with modern peer-to-peer software, you *are* distributing when you're downloading - bits of the file are automatically offered to other peers for download. So you fall under that clause.

If you get the reference wrong, they dock ya'!!

I'm kind of confused... I think. You seem to have used a quote that implies there is a link between children playing M-rated games and violence, after saying the link "might be the inverse of the common argument." Well, it might just be that I'm parsing it wrong, for some reason.

Anyway, the thing that gets me is that (a) this is an M rated game, kids shouldn't be playing it, and (b) the actions in the game all have terrible consequences. You drive drunk, crash, and get jailed, yes, but even worse is that as a result of driving like a maniac and killing people, you die and get arrested a lot. Perhaps children can't process that in real life, you would also die but not come back, but that's why it's not for children.

Anybody that can process what your character lying on the sidewalk covered in blood would mean in real life is capable of separating the in-game fantasy actions from reality.

I bet you could make one out of 90-degree copper "street elbows." Those are made to nest into one another. Like this:

http://www.cornerhardware.com/12inch_90_degree_street_elbow/6748_6961_7824/11895

Though the soldering would be really tedious, and at .69 (tee hee) per elbow, it would add up fast.

You know this one was meant to have pot plants in it:

http://www.omodern.com/Eurobad/euro8.html

I kind of like some of them. But the one you used is retina-searingly difficult to look at.

They should have woven platinum into the cloth!

"the fact that elevator close door buttons were nothing but scams"

They're definitely functional in my building. If you get on the elevator and press it, the doors close immediately. If you don't, they wait several seconds.

And chiming in on the walk buttons, here in Columbus Ohio, there are many intersections that won't give a walk signal unless the button is pressed. Primarily at higher (car) traffic intersections.

I give it 3 days before someone's decrypted the military side of it. Probably a 14-year-old in Belarus.

EthylCannes, I'm going to break the rule too, and say you're right on.

Sometimes you gotta sip at that little 1oz of scotch hiding in the bottom of a rocks glass, other times you're polishing off a liter of Dewars after a long hard night. (Hopefully with the help of some friends on that liter, though.)

markmarkmark, I'm a vegetarian and would say that the idea of eating it would be kind of distasteful based up on the "yucky laboratory experiment food" factor, but the ethics wouldn't bother me. The actual physical act of eating it might, though, since I tried to eat chicken and had horrid vomit and diarrhea afterwards.

I used to be a veg by choice, now .. not so much so.

I have a Revox cassette tape deck and receiver; those things always ooze style through and through, even when their functionality is more mundane than this.

Here's a pic of the same model of cassette player I have:

http://www.analogstereo.com/images/r2r/b710_main.jpg

As much as I hate combo devices, I would love it if someone came out with a good microwave + toaster oven. We only have room for one "permanent" appliance on the counter at work.

But, it's not to be, so I'll stick to dragging the toaster oven out to toast my pitas.

*I* thought it was interesting, Pork Complainer.

DrBlack, this isn't a sampler.. it's using acoustic sounds triggered by electronics to approximate a voice.

A senator said something that makes sense! That's so awesome it boggles the mind.

Sometimes it takes a bit for her to get to a given post; there are really a lot of comments for her to review.

Time passing doesn't mean the comments were acceptable. It can sometimes just mean they haven't been moderated yet.

Fnarf, you're right! You need to be on a marketing team. But also I guess that's why they spell it eXtreme rather than the preferred XTREME!!

http://www.taquitos.net/snacks.php?snack_code=12

Maps may be intended to help you find where you are going, but GPS and nav systems are intended to get you there. Progress, my man, progress!

That's really cool. I can't figure out how he did the illusion part of it, though. I thought it was a hologram, but he says "any symmetrical 3d object will work for the illusion." Where does it go? How does it appear to float inside the PC?

@John and Fnarf: Extreme Cheddar!!!

The bum is one thing -- the unsecured load is another issue entirely.

@nobody special, the point isn't your opinion, it's your way of communicating it. If you've actually been reading BoingBoing, and it's comments, you've seen Teresa do a lot of moderating based upon tone and little else. She's the arbiter of civility here. Read over your comments again, and really think about how they might be taken antagonistically. If you're honest with yourself, and with us, you'll probably see that your initial comment wasn't an auspicious beginning.

@everybody else: What I find especially amusing is that "nobody special" cropped up out of nowhere, to comment a bunch on this post as his very first comment after having read BoingBoing for years upon years? What are the chances he's not a sock pupped that Teresa has already taken care of in the past?

This isn't an especially interesting thread to jump into after "years" of lurking.

Definitely. Even covered in moss, it looks like it's from the future. Doc must have put it in a barn, but the barn collapsed, sparing the C5 but exposing it to the elements.

Is this it?

http://www.gelaskins.com/

It's a Sinclair C5:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_C5

@syntaxerr0r - I said they weren't worth defending because they made three serious errors in a row.

1) Poor packaging on a $3k camera
2) Rude response when called about it
3) Inappropriate and unprofessional response to negative review

So how have they earned defending?

Oh, and calling the complainant 'a whiner' and saying 'I think the company is offering a fair deal here' are pretty clearly defending their actions.

Oh yes, I will have a margarita made in my mouth! Spring break!!

Shipping damage is something fresh on my mind, since I had a set of projection tubes damaged after sending them to England, and one of a set of lenses damaged after sending them to Canada. The damage is the fault of the carrier, because I always pack extremely carefully. However, I still refund the appropriate amount (more, actually) and make sure the buyer is happy. Even if it means losing money on the deal - that's just how it works. Your packing needs to survive whatever the incompetent morons at USPS, UPS, or FedEx can throw at it. (Which will include 5' drops, or greater, and possibly a 150 pound box dropped on top for good measure.)

If Cameta wanted to "make it right," the only way I see that is possible is to take the camera back and send him a new one that's professionally packaged. I wouldn't be happy with a multi-kilobuck camera that got rattle around hard enough to damage the internal packaging.

syntaxerr0r, you really seem to have jumped to the defense of a company that's clearly not worth defending. I didn't get any of the feel that you got from Jason's post.

A company has one chance to treat a customer right. If their representative is rude to you, then that is the company being rude to you. Why would it be otherwise? Whether they were then fired or reprimanded doesn't change the fact that, at the time of your dealings, they were the duly appointed representative of said company. Then, to follow it up with an obviously shady bribe, just shows that it's business as usual for them. I can't imagine a single legitimate business that would make an offer and demand like that. If any company made said offer and demand of me, I would immediately place them on my shit list. No way I would ever trust them with a penny, much less thousands of dollars, again.

@Jake, I had one of those nixie calculators; I loved to watch the numbers dance back and forth as you did calculations. I ended up selling it on eBay in one of my "eliminate clutter" phases. Sigh...

Small merchants get obsessed with losses like this for some reason. They dwell on a $100 chargeback where they feel like they got shafted to end all shafts, and let it color their perception of their entire business and all customers. I would wager that chargeback abuse as a percentage of total credit card sales would be miniscule, even with a small vendor. If you're doing full address verification, which all internet vendors that accept credit cards should, then you're pretty well covered.

It's just been my experience, from a decade of selling stuff and accepting credit cards, that the total chargeback activity was very small. But people really get incensed by it, and let fighting it take over their lives. Let me put it this way: out of ~$100,000 in sales one year, I had one go south with a $970 bad check. I handed the information to a collection agency, who pursued the party and many, many months later finally sued, got payment, and happily kept 50% of the money for their fee. I didn't let it color my dealings with other customers, I didn't threaten to sue every future customer I might have had, I just rolled with it and continued to treat all potential customers like they were my best repeat customer.

That's not the only person that's ripped me off, but again in total it's been less than 1% of sales. You pay more than 1% for check guarantee services! Same with credit card transaction fees; they're 1.95% to 2.57% on a bargain rate.

I also feel that the most suspicious people typically are the most willing to screw other people. I wouldn't doubt that any one of these merchants is willing to overcharge, sell inferior merchandise, and otherwise willing to royally shaft their own customers. But it's okay in their book as long as they come out ahead. A legitimate, reasonable business would not be willing to risk breaking their merchant services agreement and alienate their current and future customers in order to (poorly) defend against that 1% loss rate.

Man, referring to a government's workings as "Rube-Goldberg-esque" has to be about the most mild "bigotry" I've ever heard. Grow a pair, and some skin, folks. Criticism is not the same as prejudice.

Plus a pad lets the mouse slide around nicer .. and keeps all your fingerprints off the desktop itself.

That drawing of Ballmer is the creepiest thing I've seen in a long time.

And his name is Knox Harrington.

It's a schooner!

Watch the Road Warrior again; the intro seems to be even more timely now than when it came out. It gave me chills when I watched it a few months ago.

@Matt, #7, yes. There is such a thing. Being mean to someone does as much harm to yourself as them, in my opinion, and whether they're a serial killer or Mother Teresa doesn't make it less harmful to your subconscious.

Given how detailed UPS'es internal tracking system is, you'd think their employees would realize that the exact date, time, and location that a specific package disappeared would be available immediately to everyone in the world.

But I guess that's giving the thievers too much credit!

A faster video card, to a point, makes your entire machine more pleasant to use. I dropped a somewhat-decent PCI Express card into my machine at work, which doesn't have any games on it (other than probably Solitaire hidden in the maze of menus) and found my work life smoothed and accelerated just a bit. Enough to make it less mind numbing.

Man, I actually cringed at the end of that first paragraph. That's a pretty tough reaction to get out of me nowadays, in this post-Internet hardened world.

Re: The picture: I do not want a free job! I require payment at my job!

@Anon (#2), I do not know of a single $6 coffee drink at Starbucks. Even the largest Latte is around $3. Using your reasoning, it's an even better deal than your precious Gatorade.

[But it's not a good deal, when making one at home is so much cheaper!]

"ostracized by her friends in the deaf community as some sort of race traitor"

I've heard of this, and even read of deaf people fighting to stop deafness being treated like a disability. It makes no sense to me! I can not understand it at all.

Removing a sense is a pretty clear cut disability. Adding it back or attempting to do so should not be seen as "discrimination."

The low wattage of each is because a standard US AC outlet is rated by code for 15 amps max. (So 800w+900w / 120v = 14.2 amp)

Misleading in what way? She sells drugs! All kinda awesome fun stuff like keflex!

My understanding is that the PS3 makes an excellent media center out of the box - working with any DLNA media server software, meaning you're not tied to a Microsoft product like Windows Media Player. It's not open source, but it's an improvement (in my opinion) except for the Sony bit..

Josh42042, an original xbox can't handle 1080p video at high bit rates. It can't compare, quality wise, to a modern high def device.

It's no worse for the engine than working under load, and in the worst case can stall it. But it definitely shouldn't damage anything.

(Think: potato in tailpipe. It stalls the car but doesn't damage it. Unless you didn't put it in tightly enough, in which case it shoots out like a potato cannon!)

Yep, overclocking uses more power and generates more heat. Seems like the Crave guys should know that?

I wouldn't mind a "slow-mo" button on my laptop, for when I'm doing something that requires more thinking on my part than the computer's. I bet it could add time to your battery life!

Anon (#4) had a good tip, but it looks like the identical device is $80. Still a lot less than 150 GBP!

They have a larger, "high power" version that's $40.

I'm amazed, though, at how well their video game foray has gone. Maybe not financially good for them, but they've become a market player at least.

Oh, and DEVELOPERS!

Someone needs to find the Killbot's escape sequence!

Arkizzle, your comment 74, just when I thought it couldn't get any worse. I don't know why I thought that - I had already been proven wrong multiple times.

Zap. Heave.

TradeMark is always a good time. I've had pizza with him, and sold computers to him, and he's fun to talk to.

@Harrkev: Is it by accident or hilariously subtle joke that you misspelled nocturnal in a different and equally creative way?

I wonder how happy motorcycle riders are, on average? I bet you they're happier than non-riders! There's even a similar (and even more inexplicable) resentment from non-participants.

I wonder if they've just tapped into the whole "people with hobbies and interests are happier than couch potatoes" vein.

@DougRogers: That's a pretty ridiculous statement to make; there's a lot of power and fear in a stick. You try getting hit with a stick every time you make a mistake in a routine, and tell me it doesn't royally suck. You grow to fear the stick, and thus the stick has power over you.

No! Jeff's mean!! he started it! I'm taking my ball and going home.

(sulking)

The only thing I miss are the halcyon days of no-pain-in-the-ass-comments. Those were good times.

Qozmiq, yes, I think this site is about what it's creators enjoy. Perhaps you might like dpreviews? They cover a lot of digital still cameras.

@6 - HDPE is considered safe so far; it's not known to leach chemicals in any significant amounts.

How does this compare to a PS3? It sounds like the additional features (which didn't work well) are all it has to offer that a PS3 doesn't. So for a $49 price premium, you get a blu-ray player and video game machine in addition to your 1080p media extender.. 'Course, I've not used either so take that for what it's worth.

It's not just the collecting - it's his overwhelming sense of style that goes along with it. He really seems comfortable with his aesthetic, and it's really uncommon to see someone with such a large yet somehow still consistent collection of stuff!
My stuff ends up looking too random. I have a Crest guy phone and a Mayan ocarina, a 50's EEG and a didgeridoo. Ahh well, we can't all be as cool as Mr. J!

I bet it was just light bulbs with an opaque or reflector center. So the light is bounced off the rear reflector before going out the front glass.

I say! The world would be more civilized if people still went on road tours.

I think you'll find desert both engrossing .. and high grossing!

I seem to have stumbled upon something very confusing here. I'll just back away slowly. Carry on.

Hellhead, his best work was Vampire Bat.

Rock over London! Rock on Chicago.

"School is closed and pools are open!"

This is an amazing composition.

Oh, and Phil Dokas: I actually enjoyed that song. Quite a bit.. Man, I'm a sick bastard.

Benschomatic, this has been a popular theme since way before 1996.

Many themes survive decades or centuries. I would argue this is just a continuation of the formerly thriving chariots'n'harlots genre that swept Rome at the beginning of the last millennium. I bet one of those t-shirts would fetch a mint right now.

Woah, woah, woah... I didn't say it was grating in the least. My comment was actually meant as a compliment.

John, I apologize profusely. Please revise my comment #8 in your head to read:

John, your writing can be even stranger than Joel's. And that's awesome.

Yeah, nothing says honest like a company selling an unlimited connection that has limits.

Limits they won't disclose until you exceed them.

Nice.

John, your writing can be even stranger than Joel's. And that's saying a lot.

Yes, x10 products are utter, utter crap. I spent a few hundred bucks with them years ago and wish I hadn't.. most of the stuff sits in drawers in the basement. I think they're one reason why I don't have much interest in having a bunch of fidgety gadgets around, preferring instead to have just a few well researched and actually functional ones.

Forget nitrous oxide for your hot-rod! Pure O2 is where it's at!

As Random John mentions, athletes sometimes train at high altitudes where there's less oxygen so they can be more competitive in an oxygen rich environment..

Tigerbomb - I'm not. If I was, perhaps I'd read CNet?

Awesome! But I really want that anti-gravity orange ball. Do you think it's the color that makes it float?

Wouldn't almost any GPS tracker need a subscription service? 'cause it's gotta communicate the location somehow and there's no ubiquitous free wireless data networks around, right? I'd love it if there were, something like this would be awesome to use for good or evil.

Good point - Rocket mail is an example of something preemptively obsoleted (obsolesced?) by unexpected tech... pretty cool really!

I just had to say:

SHINOBI!!!!

and, @Deleet: Did you try moving your paddle around? Because you can change the angle of the ball.

// the interval (ms) between new astroturfers
var interval = Math.round(86400000/perday);

Cantennas?? For 280 feet?! When I had a very similar situation for my dad between his home and office, I got two nice omnidirectional antennas - about 5" tall with a lithe magnetic base. The office is the origin. The omni antenna at the house picks up the connection just fine. The office gets a nice solid connection broadcast all over it.

I promise a few db of gain at each end will give you a good connection in both locations. I bought my antennas from eBay, complete with the right connectors at the end.

I started with a coffee cantenna - it worked, but it completely cut the office off from wireless. And if anything - and I mean anything - passed between the can and the house, the house's connection went down.

My wife and I forgot our anniversary a year or two back. We had a good laugh about it. She's awesome.

My opinion is this: if the woman doesn't bring up anything special, why is it the man forgetting? Maybe he remembered and was testing her?

Yeah.. probably not, though.

That's being awfully cruel to Bile!

685! Yeah, it's way more fun than it has any right to be. At least for a movie and stats geek.

Nick (#30): Your point three strikes me as really selfish and self-serving. As flamingphonebook says, what does it matter what the percentage is, if the dollar amount is higher than anyone else? It's still more. The only reason to claim it isn't is to fulfill some predetermined "the US isn't good enough" claim.

I'm jealous on all accounts!

I dream of the day that I can read the comments on a steampunk [or insert any new/old/questionable thing] post without seeing any naysayers. For people to have matured so much that they can skip past something they don't like. For anyone with valid criticisms to express them eloquently, succinctly, and tactfully, remembering that the person or persons they are addressing are human being(s). I'll probably be dreaming a long time.

Correction: by "voracious" I just mean they chew up a lot of wood building a place to lay their eggs. They don't actually eat the wood.

Carpenter bees are cool until they drill hundreds of holes in the soffit and fascia boards of your house. Those things are voracious!! Tons of damage.

I've been able to crack and dispense eggs cleanly ever since I was 12, but my mother-in-law still can't seem to get the hang of it. And she was even a short-order cook for a bit! Some people just can't do it, so this would be very handy for them.

I was very impressed, though, when I saw the guys (and gals) and BD's Mongolian BBQ crack and empty an egg using nothing but their wooden stir sticks. Amazing. No shell in the food, either!!

Some IC's are more EMP resistant than others, too. A lot of it (but not all) depends on the density - more dense is worse.

Well, and it obviously depends on the EMP strength.

Put your robot's control circuitry in a Faraday cage, though, and you're good!

Hmm.. I bought then returned one before then. I wonder if I'll still get this email? ;-)

I tried an HD-A2 and it was an astoundingly good upconverting DVD player.

Joel, I'm just constantly amazed when you rattle off a thoroughly amazing post like this. We're not worthy.

@Chris - after taking a look at your personal link, a cliché about glass houses comes to mind. You've got an awful lot of time to waste on non-jobby things apparently.

I think Takuan's suggestion that people just comment on what they enjoy is a great one. You don't need to push down on the milk to make the cream rise.

I'm late to this comment party, but I wanted to toss in my vote for how awesome Gogol Bordello is.

@#2 (Ft Myers, etc): I think you mis-typed! You meant to say "We are Ft Myers Spamming Photographers!"

Say what you will about stoners and their ability to eat anything while baked, but that sounds like an awesome pizza.

Unfortunately, my favorite pizza place has neither anchovies nor sundried tomatoes. Time to go hunting!

I don't understand why the dog's in for monitoring and not in for being put down.

@Anon 22: That says "Rocketdyne," the company that makes the engines. While that is a great name, Rocketdyke is very cool for a completely different reason.

Phantoms are cooler than skunks; Skunk Works is only cooler because of it's history! Maybe Guitars and Laser Guns Works would top Phantom Works, but probably not much else.

Well, if the iPhone has an antenna port in the dock, there's no reason this couldn't just be a traditional antenna wrapped in rubber.

(ooh, kinky.)

Cawwwww!

@Gabrielm: Uhhh.. the only thing I'm coming up with is this:

"Orion 2 and Ares I have their first manned launch"

Chava, if the "Office of Procurement Operations" is an office within Homeland Security, then it is in no way misleading to say "Homeland Security" in the headline. The procurement operations sets procurement policy for all Homeland Security divisions.

If a division of a department issues a statement banning all divisions of that department from dealing with a company, then it is fair to say that that department has banned said company.

Nobody's "got to concede" anything, especially something that's wrong.

Most car dealerships will refer you to other local shops if you need your old car worked on.

Why hasn't air travel taken a cliff-face decline since all these incidents started taking place?

I've stripped a relatively modern Accord's dash and wiring before, and it was amazing how many hundreds of wires there are. Replacing the heater ductwork would require removing the steering column, center console, instrument panel, and entire dash. That takes anyone many, many hours of work. On top of that, they apparently damaged his windshield, roof, both door panels, center console, cup holders, and much trim with prying and such.

Nothing on the estimate looked inflated to me, assuming the damage was done. Keep in mind this car had 700 miles on it when they got their mitts on it.

Hellllooooooooo, Sarah! Welcome!!

bcsizemo: The problem with using people to decide that sort of thing is that humans are far more fallible than you think. Even highly trained people take bad risks if left to their own devices. Research has shown that actuarial software makes the "right" choice far more frequently than humans. ("right" being defined as statistically safer)

Finance is exactly the sort of thing that computers are "good" at. This isn't medicine or music where there's a lot of judgment and gray areas. Money is pure numbers and math, and if you can't afford something, you really just can't afford it. People treating it as a gray area and something flexible is what causes mortgage defaults.

That just totally sucks. I would have just left without getting on the flight.

@SteveW: As I read it, that article has some serious flaws in it. If the Y chromosome is passed down "essentially unchanged" through entire racial groups, how the hell do you figure out who is the specific ancestor?

@50 - you seriously think the "quest for immortality" is an American thing? Really? I'm not being rude, but that's just surprising to me. It predates America by centuries, if not millennia, and possibly predates written history and civilization. I can assure you it is not at all an American idea.

Well, I guess Ponce de León might have thought the Fountain of Youth was in what is now Florida, but that was the early 16th century, several hundred years before the revolutionary war.

Just for ol' Ray's sake, I've been listening to Alice Smith too loud while making a batch of curly fries and a couple fat tuna melts. Maybe Lisa and I will have Manhattans while we play cribbage.

(Ooh, cribbage, am I seventy yet?)

Ashcan, all the silos that are privately owned are remote. Any silos retired recently have been destroyed as part of arms-reduction treaties, I believe.

Some people seem to be misunderstanding what Biddle means by "transitive." It doesn't mean trust being applied to different people, but to different actions/activities performed by the same person.

Meaning:

Transitive:
We trust (a) to do (x), so we trust (a) to do (y).

Non-transitive:
We trust (a) to do (x), but have no idea whether or not to trust (a) to do (y).

Jeez, moderate quietly and people harp on you for not having a posted moderation policy. Post a moderation policy, and they whine and whinge about you having posted a moderation policy.

Talk about having your point proven for you.

Teresa, thanks for taking your time to post this, and thanks for your ongoing efforts in keeping BB civil.

@mindysan33: You won all kinds'a Mindycred with that Gogol Bordello quote. First one I've ever seen dropped anywhere, other than between me and my wife. ("Monkeys clapping...")

Neato! I wonder how they chose their theaters, though? The theater they're playing in closest to me in smack-dab in blue collar suburbia. Not that there's a problem with that, it's very close to me. But I think I'm one of about three This American Life fans on this side of town. Most of their target audience is on the opposite end of town.

Well, their head asplode.

Very nice! I like the electrodes at the top especially. I expect the bulb can be transmogrified or otherwise form-shifted through obscure Victorian-era ether-magic.

@Hammerhog: What's the point you're tring to get across there?

"More stuff that the U.S will single handedly destroy..."

Right... because India, China, Germany, Japan, Dubai, Indonesia, Singapore, etc, etc have no industry, no pollution, and do no damage to anything in the entire world.

Yeah, Tower of Goo is a beginning effort towards World of Goo:

http://www.2dboy.com/games.php

Sounds like an awesome game!

I love the nearly organic accumulation of parts and computers evident in the photos. A time-lapse of the build-up of that inventory would be incredible.

I wonder if they would want my old Amiga 1000?

And.. I also can't help but speculate as to the motivation for hanging on to this market. I hope it works for him, though! It's really cool to see. I absolutely loved my Amigas, but am hopelessly unsentimental most of the time and have moved on. I had a 1000, 2000, then 3000. By the time the 4000 came out, their price/performance ratio had hit rock bottom. I still say the Amiga was the last computer that was fun to just use.

Well, yeah, Vermont doesn't seem as "crooked" as Lombard, but that's such an imprecise term. The increasing radius turns on Vermont lend themselves to a nice race, though!

I bought a Dell business class desktop recently - 0 crapware installed. I was shocked.

I just came in to say.. Explode Pigboat! I want that on my iPod.

Weaksauce, mikey.. Putting up an ad versus surreptitiously trashing a product with lies are very different.

Clarke is without a doubt my favorite author of any kind, particularly of SciFi. He not only wrote good scifi, he did it with a class that was rare for the field. [no old men consorting with nubile girls, etc.] He taught me that atheists can have morals - sometimes more deeply rooted than those of religious people. He helped me grow in wonderful ways without ever meeting me.

The world is truly a better place for his having spent those years here.

It sure does sound like Chicken Little to me. I'm not able to know for sure, but for everyone's sake would love to have been proven right a year or two down the road.

Yeah, the GDP could never be "replaced" with something that reflects "quality of life." GDP is an economic indicator, no more. Perhaps you could try to get people to focus less on it, and maybe even introduce measures for other aspects of life, but that wouldn't be replacing GDP.

IE: In the US, GDP is released by the BEA - Bureau of Economic Analysis. Not the BHED - Bureau of How's Everyone Doing. They're the ones we should ask about relative happiness.

Yeah, the "knowledge economy" is pretty much a useless catch phrase batted around by people that don't know any better.

Let's assume the drill gets used for over a hundred surgeries - which seems a safe assumption to me. I would gladly pay 300 extra dollars for brain surgery to have medical-grade equipment used. How much is even cheap brain surgery? A lot, I'm sure.

To those claiming the Bosch drills should be used: if you had the choice, would you accept the Bosch? Even if you were told the Bosch was 50% more likely to kill you or leave you braindead?

And obviously wealthy people aren't going to accept the cheaper equipment. So you'd end up with an even more drastically tiered medical system.

Dude, thanks for the ring! It's really stunning. My wife will love it.

-balloon hunter

Michael, I suspect it's due to the massive number of liability suits that would be filed after kids started losing fingers.. Those things look sharp in more than one way.

That is an entire museum's worth of macs!

Well, and correct me if I'm wrong, but aren't they paid on salary and expected to work full time for the TSA? When do they run their consultancy, evenings and weekends? I highly doubt it.

The aerial is made of adamantium.

Devophill, you're right! Oh my goodness, that's pretty cool.

I must confess to being slightly stoked about their return to rear wheel drive.. the G8 should be a bitchin' car, especially with a 6-speed manual.

Many projector lamps are xenon arc lamps. Every decent projector that I know of uses some sort of arc lamp, I'm just not sure if they're all xenon. Projectors that use other lamps are never as nice - not anywhere near the league of Joel's projector.

I bought an Epson because the bulbs were so much cheaper than normal ($125 - $175) but really the bulb cost isn't a big deal if you "amortize" it over it's usable life - even with the more costly bulbs. I figure using $.50 worth of bulb life to watch a 2-hour movie isn't a big deal. And burning through a dollar or two worth of it for a long video gaming session is totally worth it.

It used to be absolutely nuts how labor-intensive these bulbs were. I had an early DLP projector, based on the TI reference design, and the bulbs for it came with hand-lettered QC notes in little tiny print on the fused area of the bulb. (fused area = or whatever you call the squashed bit below the capsule.) I Can only hope that production has become a little more efficient since then!

In answer to your query, though, Joel: My theory is it's a combination of complex design, high precision requirements, expensive materials (fused quartz, dichroic reflector, etc), low production volume, and insanely high profit margins.

The Lumenlabs projector wouldn't be anywhere near the quality of a good home theater projector, by the way. You really do get what you pay for in this area - there's no $500 projector that's as good as a $3000 projector. It may be good enough for some people, but that doesn't make it a nice projector.

Sean (25): And they refer to "gravity drive" which, again, implies control over gravity and massive amounts of energy available. io9's chart is teh sux.

So.. let me get this straight. Someone posts on their web site about something they like, and you think he's deserving of a cockpunch? No. You are actually wrong. Once you figure out how, you'll have grown as a person.

It is a quandary, though. I have in the past told someone they were charging too little for something that I was interested in. But then, I also have paid far too little for things I knew I could resell for thousands. I do believe you have a moral responsibility to treat people fairly when buying stuff from them, whether they know the value or not, but I'm also aware of the difficulty and risks in doing so..

I'm amazed someone in his position would be annoyed and turn down a band based on their show being *busy*. That shows some real business acumen right there.

The white looks more like image file error to me and not snow or any other weather I recognize!

Seriously, I thought the BB headline was "Woman sat on toilet for two hours." My thought was, "Really? Is that so amazing?"

Once I blinked and re-read it, well, I'm with Reaction Cat up there.

Kyle, low 100's is a lot by any standard, especially when you consider the median income in the US for those fully employed and over 25 is $39,336.

Selling a fossil is no better or worse than selling land, or art, or research. Should a research scientist accept room and board for his or her work? Hell, should oil be sold for something as crass as money?

Micah, good catch. But that was Russian, this is Ukrainian. Not exactly the same. ;-)

JTF, the quote does specifically say "at sea-level density" which means the pressure is specified. As per Wikipedia:

"Average sea-level pressure is 101.325 kPa (1013.25 mbar) or 29.921 inches of mercury (inHg) or 760 millimeters (mmHg)."

Tenn, don't be ridiculous! Everyone in [insert party here] is brilliant, and the people in [insert opposing party here] are all idiots. Anybody except straw man logic fallacy Godwin lolcats can see that!

We got 20" of snow over Friday night and Saturday. Played Cribbage on Saturday and shoveled on Sunday.

@Brit, I know several "young men" with untrimmed beards that are definitely not Muslim. They're bikers. Christian bikers. And no, Gilbert, they don't do meth. Not a chance.

It's also in the John Varley Reader, a (relatively) recent release.

Gomer, I wish you could see how hilarious it is for you to attempt to ridicule someone by asking them "Have you nothing better to do?" That is a textbook case of the pot calling the kettle black.

@Takuan, I know, isn't that ridiculous? It's like, "I just did this last year!"

One thing's for sure.. tossing your controller after a frustrating round or losing your grip on it would be way more expensive.

Enjoy your mom's basement.

Well then, didn't someone just prove my point for me.

If you have a valid argument, make it sensibly and politely and people will consider it. The messed up thing is, Moonbat, I agreed with you, until I read your post. That's my point now. Now I think you're a complete jerk and that caused me to re-think my position.

If someone punches you in the stomach then says "brush your goddamn teeth," is the next thing you do going to involve dental hygiene? I'm gonna go out a limb here and say no.

But I've just spent a whopping 30 seconds looking at some of your post history, and I realize.. you don't care that you're an asshole. You seem to revel in it. So again, I say: I hope you are OK with being a rude person. Because you are.

Gulp!

Bleh! Eww!

Moonbat, did you know you're rude? It's okay to be rude, but I just want to make sure you know that and accept it.

Moonbat, I had a similar thought, but was trying to think of an equitable way to put it. In not bothering with that essential part of communication, you undermined the entire position.

So, I'll just echo everyone else. I hate shoplifters!

Pesco's got a serious ass-kicker look going on in that picture.

"a pill [..] identifier"

Hell yeah! That'll make those ground scores so much sweeter and more convenient.

DVDMon, if you're feeding through a tube, how do you think you get water? I'm pretty sure that comes in through the tube, too.

I do hope that if I was in this situation, I would choose not to get on the flight. But I would be spittin' mad and raging to the TSA. I don't hold a chronically ill 14yo to the same standard, though. I imagine he felt pretty helpless.

I do think it's crap, but to be fair, these were all .com domains which are administered by the US Department of Commerce. So there is a bit of overlap there. Anyone in the world can register them, but the domain space is "owned" by the US. (At least as far as something like domain space can be owned.)

Terrorists! Just lock them all up and never charge them. Eternal holding cell.

That has to be one of the more disturbing phrases I've read today.

Awe-SUM!!!

James W, there is an enormous chasm between criticism of a work and calling something "dreadful" and "crap." If you told an artist to his face that his work was "crap" within earshot of me, I would give you an earful. If it was my place, I'd kick your ass out.

Get some manners.

That is amazing. DO WANT.

But one has to wonder: is it healthy to put your hands in a magnetic field that strong for hours on end? A field strong enough to make metal clang "much as it might on a solid surface." I have no idea, but would be hesitant.

Dragonfrog: Jeez, I know. I couldn't imagine anything less than $450k a year. I've made that since I was 19. Silk pillows feel coarse and scratchy to me now.

@Ross: "You.. want some more?"

I actually had some non-skunky Heineken recently, and it's really not that bad. For a weaky, drink-a-lot-of-it beer. It's just that the green bottles let it go skunky so fast!

Cpt. Tim: "confiscated a congressional medal of honor from a WWII vet because it was pointy"

Woah!! Really!? If I was that guy, I would have missed my flight. There's very little I can think of that would be worth losing that medal for.

@Skwid:

Not this Civic:

http://ls1tech.com/forums/showthread.php?t=730443&page=1&pp=20

!!

p.s. Blarglepnsft... Both the Foxtaur and the LS1 Civic give me the jibbilies.

Makes me wish I was gonna be in LA some time soon ... if for no reason other than to meet Mr. Jalopy and give him some of my money.

(In an entirely non-stalkery way, Señor Jalopy.)

Monster's not even the worst offender of this sort of thing. They're cheaper than pretty much any true "audiophile-grade" wire, by a lot. The sad thing is that this sort of double-blind test has shown that audiophiles can't even identify the coathanger versus a much more expensive wire ($1200+).

Nezzy, Mogami and Canare won't sound any better than a properly constructed cheap cable unless you're talking about seriously long runs.

Gruppler, if a few posts (one in 30, going by the home page right now) bother you that much, you must be upset a lot.

Why complain about 3% of the free content? Does 100% have to be exactly to your liking? There's only one way to ensure that: not read anything.

Instead of complaining or unsubscribing, here's a handy tip: skip over it. I do that with all kinds of stuff and it's not really that hard. It's even easier than complaining.

Malgam, where else do you go for $10 last-generation console games when you're jonesing for a different game today??

Joel's not cool, he's just suffering from awesomeitis.

I notice it was missing one on IPI'ing over your ASCII array of SMD MFM's while degaussing RLL's for VME. I should do a draft of that article, using my 3b2.

Ross, his point isn't that this particular item needs defending - it's that the whole concept of seeking to ban every item that's harmful is fundamentally flawed. I can definitely see his point, and don't see how banning this would really help anything.

It's not going to make the mean people nice and it's not going to make everyone "just get along." It's like taking an aspirin for a broken arm. It's not going to help fix the root problem.

Metafactory, I think that's the first time I've seen someone called a liberal for not wanting a weapon banned. Are you okay? Maybe you should have your temperature checked. You might have a fever.

Someone should train them to pick up fast food containers. That would help our urban landscapes to no end.

That, and take shopping carts back to the grocery store.

Codeloss, it sure does! It must be the toilet for those little drinking bird kinetic toys.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_bird )

Here's an oldie but a goodie; Starlings taught themselves how to steal coins from a carwash:

http://www.snopes.com/photos/animals/carwash.asp

(note; irritating pop-up/pop-under alert.)

Kurtmac, the fan and heatsink probably don't remove heat fast enough for that to happen. But if it did, and the fan stopped, it wouldn't be a problem - since the fan would restart as soon as the heat built up again. Think of it as a temperature controlled fan: the more heat is applied to the system, the faster it likely spins.

That's all conjecture, though.

The more dangerous scenario is: what if the other components in the computer heated the air up to the same temperature as the heatsink? Wouldn't there be no heat exchange to move the fan, thus causing it to stop? Well, then I guess the heatsink would get hotter and it would then start again but at a reduced efficiency/effectiveness.

So I think you need to make sure the case itself is well ventilated, too!

Ryan, as long as they only let hot people on the plane, that sounds like fun!

That could certainly be a rude awakening for someone coming through the door. Whoops!!

You're right! The mouse will never take off that way.

I couldn't help it. I read the whole thing. At work. That is amazing. All hail the good people helping secure the Free Mall! Huzzah! Huzzah!

One does wonder what a golf cart armed with modified Shrikes would look like. Especially given that it's 10' long, 3' wingspan, and 390 lb weight would be a little much for the average golf cart to effectively mount. Well, I'm sure they had Rancho 9000 shocks on that cart.

Yeah, I don't think a watch like this is worn in order to be a "clockwatcher." It's worn because it's neat looking and has blinky lights.

Jeff, this is the sort of thing where if you don't get it now, you probably never will. It's fashion.

Lilah, yeah!!! I got almost the same fortune, but with a bizarre grammatical twist:

"It's time to collect those goods."

The slightly more definite article (Adjective?) really made it .. strange.

I must confess to using my iPod occasionally while driving. And I agree, that's certainly not safe, either..

There's no roadmap for that territory.

Really? You do SMS while driving? I can honestly say I have never done that. I will confess to occasionally dialing a number while driving, but even that is tremendously stupid.

My worst moment was fishing my credit card out of my wallet while holding my phone with my ear and shoulder, steering with one knee. That was idiocy. (Smacks self in head.)

Meanie. Plbbt!

Language doesn't hurt. I can't figure out why Blackmore would think so. It's very adaptive, evolutionarily speaking, to be able to tell people about dangers and food sources. Our big brain is our primary weapon. It's the only thing that made us the dominant species. So how is it harmful?

My bat house never got any residents. I guess it was too close to my people house. (Which does have a couple residents.)

You certainly shouldn't be operating any phone or gadget while driving.

I want one that shows number of zombies destroyed.

Joel, fear not, for I want one - and it's just for the knobs, too. I was excited until I saw the price. Ouch! It's really cool looking, though. If it was cheaper, it would be awesome to buy just for gaming.

Ehh, who knows if the oars are loose? Maybe they're glued or screwed the the wall. Maybe the mirror is polycarbonate.

Also, I'm definitely not a kid, but I'd love to have that pirate ship on my wall. I'm not keen on the anchor pillow, though.

My favorite WTF?! fortune was:

"You may think it is a secret, but it never was one."

So creepy and insidious.

Couldn't the hospital have just paid more for the corpsemeat?

Blake, a $5 BLT and soup? I don't think I've *ever* seen one that cheap. Not even in a fast food place.

Kuanes, I instinctively read that as "sparkling." I kind of like "sparking" better. Like it's so clean, it's gonna shock ya'!

I am ordinarily strongly anti-graffiti, but I just can't work up any ire against the BLF.

Moon, the difference between a $12,000 power cable (made of standard wire) for a $50,000 turntable and an $80 coffee tamper (made of milled stainless an anodized aluminum) seem pretty clear to me. Even if you consider the functionality of the piece bunk, I bet it's really nice to use. By that I mean more comfortable in your hand, more solid feel, and easier to press on.

Heck, looking at the money involved, even if you can't accept that somehow, possibly, there's a way to make coffee taste better, that swilling Sanka is the pinnacle of perfection, and anybody that spends more money than that is a nut, we're still talking degrees of nuttiness. I'm okay with being a little nutty. Beats being boring!

I can guaran-damn-tee you've got something you're nutty about. Let's hear about it!

Our company has been with Nextel almost since the beginning. We've recently started shopping and will probably be switching. The customer support used to be just amazing. Absolutely top notch. It went into the toilet quickly after the Sprint merger. It's improving, but I still can't believe they gutted such a customer-centric company.

I forgot to add: the Wikipedia article is pretty brief. Do some research; there were incriminating memos and test abnormalities. CR basically decided in advance that the Samurai was going to roll over easily, and kept changing their test methodology until that was true.

Consumer Reports is not without it's flaws:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuki_Samurai#Consumers_Union_and_the_Suzuki_Samurai_Lawsuit

They lost a lot of credibility over that. Bias is present in all human endeavors, but hopefully they've eliminated some of theirs..

Jeff, I'm not taking sides here, but a marriage contract is not between an individual and a corporation. Unless you've got some mighty odd fetish.

Lents's mortgage was sold, so who does he pay? How can he know who the correct party is to pay without the original document? Sure this particular guy is almost certainly trying to game the system, but I can believe that a similar situation could arise that results in the wrong party being paid for a mortgage. (Or the wrong party being held responsible for repayment, which happened to my company. $1mm in legal fees later and we were clear. Ugh.)

Moon, no, I don't believe KitchenAid would include a brass tamper if they thought it would make a difference. I believe they include the bare minimum to make the machine usable. They didn't include a coffee grinder or beans, did they?

It's like the tires that come on a new car from the factory: they're usually expensive, short lived, and a poor compromise of various tire characteristics. Get a quality set and you'll see massive improvement.

All manufactured items are made to a price point. Even expensive ones.

I have no problem with the image or it's prominence / lack of a buffer. But the next time you're mulling over why BoingBoing is classified by SmartFilter as having "incidental nudity," realize that it is, in fact, true.

Neither Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD require HDCP for high resolution output. They can downscale or refuse to play without HDCP, but studios don't currently use that option.

@JamesMason: I saw several of these blades on a trailer in a rest area parking lot. The trailer was considerably longer than a standard semi trailer; I think they had to transport it at night. My unscientific wild-ass guess from hazy memory puts it at about 60' to 70', give or take .15 microns.

Loci, you need to heed your own advice. Really.

They had me until "In the early days, most internet users consumed material from websites." Uhh, in the early days there were no websites. Later, Mosaic and the WWW were a curiosity, but weren't used as heavily as Usenet, Gopher, Telnet, etc. My usage of the 'net predates the release of Mosaic, which was most old net people's first gateway to the web.

I spent most of my time in Usenet. Note to old 'net hands: don't go searching for historical email addresses in Google Groups. It can be embarrassing and humbling.

Brian, I see your point. I am still strongly opposed to the standard debt-trap that payday lending is, though; I think most places end up making multiple loans to the same people just in order to "pay off" the initial loan. Each loan then has a new origination fee, which is most of what is considered "interest" for the purposes of the APR. (Which, here in Ohio, can reach 370%!) I think one answer is to prohibit the use of one loan to pay another off. Perhaps require the places to allow extension of term without fees - maybe with a higher interest rate like 25%?

I just have a hard time believing that most payday loans are for utilities and the like. There's a place near my house that's open 24 hours; what are the chances that their average 2am customer needs to pay an electric bill?

Financial education is sorely lacking in this country. I am witness to many intelligent people making very poor financial decisions - people more highly educated than me. The debt service culture is completely ingrained into our society. These places are a symptom, rather than the cause, but I don't think that symptom should be allowed to go unchecked.

They look suspiciously similar to a rail spike.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_spike

Almost forgot.. the potential for o-rings and such made of this is amazing. But who knows if the bonds would still work if, say, oil penetrated the o-ring while it was cut.

So you start with urine, take the urea out, then make something from the urea?

I guess it's a little odd to say it's "made from urine" but not exactly inaccurate. Kind of like saying a regular house is "made from trees." You start with a tree, mill it down to lumber, the use the lumber to build the house.

It didn't even process at first .. what kind of bridge weighs four tons? (Or tonnes, or tuhns, or however you want to spell it.) It must have been a very small bridge. Crossing a pothole.

The pose is the best part! As if it's saying "Here's your light! Take it! Take these photons! Happy to serve, sir!"

I'll join the chorus of people saying it's lame. If you can pretty much do all that stuff now, it's not the house of the future! I hope they at least do some exciting stuff architecturally and design-wise. How depressing would it be if they made it a vinyl sided stick-framed cracker box?

The ISS is at 340km - within the Thermosphere. That would be pretty far from empty, wouldn't it? It seems like it would be full of ionized molecules, which would smell kinda burnt. But that would be very different from the smell of interstellar space, which would probably be all outgassing like Om says..

"absurd accumulation of technology"... I think I've been there. I know a couple of my friends are there.

The CCD in most cameras is IR sensitive. I know our Burle (commercial-grade) parking lot camera gets a blank spot with repeaters in it like the example image when there's too much IR. I doubt an IR LED would be bright enough, though. It's usually a result of a direct reflection of sunlight off a car window.

Oh, and: what about the FDIC? Do you not trust that? How many people have lost their bank account balances since the advent of the FDIC? Millions have lost their money due to investments. None that I know of have lost it when it was in an FDIC insured bank account.

Dude, if you put all your money in "investments," you cost yourself a ton of money in interest or fees when you go to pay for stuff.

A good buffer should be in the bank. If it's not in the bank, it's not a buffer. It's been spent.

I don't consider the bank my friend any more than I consider the grocery store my friend. But it's a necessity, just like the bank.

I can't imagine letting anyone take pictures of me naked. Unless I was comfortable with them being circulated worldwide. Which I'm not.

Why oh why would they allow him to take those pictures?

Not that it excuses the perp's actions - they should all be in jail.

I bet Yoga would help train people not to do that. At least Ashtanga for sure spends a good bit of its focus teaching regular breathing.

Waffle House .. nothing better for hangover prevention. Mmmm.

@Trent: Shattering is a method of absorbing energy. Given that it was a ricochet of a fragment, it would've been low energy to begin with, so the disc shattering could easily absorb enough energy to keep it from breaking his skin. But then, IANABE. (I am not a ballistics expert!)

I can never understand the lack of privacy in public mens rooms. I don't want to whip out my junk while rubbing shoulders with another guy. It's just creepy. A simple divider between the urinals is not much to ask. When we build out restrooms here at work, we always put a divider panel between the urinals. Wa-la! No more creepy.

@Mattharvest: I guess if you're comfortable with it, there's not a lot of debate to participate in. I just find it uncomfortable. Why wouldn't it be? We're socially conditioned almost from birth to consider our genitals a private thing. Very few people would be comfortable walking around in public with their penis hanging out, and that's essentially what an open urinal requires. Just because it's other men doesn't mean they're not strangers.

Yeah, selling patch cables on eBay. That'll net the big money. Everyone can do with an extra $.75 for an hour's work!

What happens if the paint blows in the open windows and doorways and sticks to bystanders?

But will the airplane take off?!

@MarlboroTestMonkey7: My gut instinct was to not jump out of that plane at 12,000 feet. But it was a ton of fun!

Gut feelings aren't rational: they're just reactions. They are an important point of input. But think it through thoroughly before actually "trusting" it.

@Seyo (#1), you mean seasick with envy, right?

That carpet is Art Nouveau awesome!

Yeah, those are Asian lady beetles; Ladybugs spend the winter in trees and not in structures. We had a major influx of those a few years back. I read online that a humane way to move them outside was with a vacuum cleaner; that you could suck them up then let them go. Well, that may be true for canister vacs but it's not true for uprights. The largest element I could recognize was a partial wing. I guess it was humane in that they didn't have much time to contemplate their demise.

A good quality induction motor based electric car conversion kit can easily cost $20,000. That's assuming he wo