The other day I filled a briefcase with millions of dollars and leaned it against the side of a building on a busy street. Three thousand people walked by without noticing before someone stole it.

People just have no appreciation for money.

Orphan parts?

The Nintendo DS was a flop. Almost no one bought it for its original purpose as a high-end potato chip bag clip. Microsoft and Sony already owned that market, though their chip clips were designed for more adult-oriented snack foods.

It was only when some blogger discovered that with a little effort the DS could also be made to play video games that it really took off, and Nintendo had to scramble to reposition the product. The new strategy was ultimately successful, but the DS's backward compatibility with corn chips and pretzels is also believed to have helped.

@31:

Getting all huffy and announcing that a "Best Of" post dated six months ago is old: $0.00

Falling for it when someone posts the exact same link as some kind of "proof" of your point: $0.00

Doing all of the above in a story about stoners: priceless.

It is possible to suffer a mental delusion that you are wearing a blue hat.

Putting on a blue hat does not cure this.

Absolutely stupendous.

The moment the security guard made a grab for Patrick's person or property, he committed assault. I'd have been on the phone to the proper authorities immediately.

For me, the big problem with the eyes is the highlights. They don't move when the angle of her head changes, so they seem pasted onto her corneas.

Except that they ALSO don't move when she moves her eyes, so it looks like there's an extra layer of plastic over the moving parts.

So, yuck. But a captivating sort of yuck.

First -- thanks very much for taking the time to make this post, Teresa. It's great to have some light shed.

Now, I have a suggestion or two that could make the BoingBoing discussion experience a bit smoother. These are really minor changes, but I think they'll help:

1. Could we have the "Recent comments" view on the profile pages sorted most recent first? It's a drag to have to scroll down to the bottom when catching up with recent discussions, not to mention having to see one's first-ever comment displayed with permanent prominence.

2. Along those lines, how about a way to indicate which post we're replying to? I'm not asking for a full threading system, just a "Reply to this" link that prepends a link back to the comment being replied to. This could even be used to trigger an email notification so that (at our option) we could be informed of replies to our own comments. A lot to ask, I know.

3. This is just a bug report, really, but the Favorite feature seems broken. It used to work, but now nothing I favorite ever gets added to the list on my profile page.

Thanks again.

I contacted the company about a year ago when this product was first announced. At the time, they wanted 9800 Yuan (around $1400 today) for it.

Oh, here's a retailer that has it for $1600.

Not really worth it since you can get a pair of used Bronicas with lenses for less than half that these days.

Milena (14), I think he's trying to get permission after the fact, from Joss Whedon or Fox or whoever owns the characters. Probably Fox. He'd not stand a chance if the proposed license allowed commercial or derivative works -- that would be asking Fox to stop guarding the henhouse, as it were.

#5 - yes, an unauthorized derivative work is owned by its creator, but the creator cannot enforce any rights under copyright without infringing the original copyright. Thus the CC license is most likely unenforceable.

But no one seems to have noticed that Brust chose a BY-NC-ND license, which prohibits derivative works! Now that just don't seem right.

If you can find some acoustic absorption foam to put behind the one in the corner, that might help a lot. You'll want to do that for both speakers, actually, to preserve balance as much as possible.

No foam needed for the subwoofer, if you have one. (In case that wasn't obvious.)

BTW, here's the Bugzilla entry regarding Maildir support.

This argument has been raging for seven and a half years. No apparent progress, although there is a claim that the feature is planned for Thunderbird 3. Posted a year ago. Sigh.

You can create an account and vote for the feature, if you don't mind your email address being exposed to spammers. See above re: sigh.

@dillenger69: which vacuum pot do you have? If it's the Bodum electric one, well, no kidding. If it's one of the manual glass models, then the problem is almost assuredly in your grind.

You sound like the kind of guy who might have a burr grinder, but if you don't, get one (unfortunately not a cheap proposition, although there are $100 models that aren't so bad). You'll be amazed at the difference.

If you do have a burr grinder, you might have to adjust either coarseness of grind or brewing time. If your brew is too weak, you're under-extracting your beans and need a finer grind or a longer brew time. If it's bitter, you're over-extracting. It's possible to brew coffee that is very strong yet not at all bitter; in fact, the best brews are actually regarded as sweet. Those vacuum brewers allow so much variation in the brew that unless something is physically wrong with your equipment or ingredients, you should be able to solve any problem by experimentation.

Then again, if you have to add sugar and salt and let your beans sit for a day after roasting, chances are you're burning them, or else you're not working with very good beans to begin with. Or maybe you just don't like coffee very much?

#5, I don't get it either. Assuming there's only one bus, there's only a single time at which you can possibly arrive at your destination no matter where you catch the bus, unless you walk the whole way. So if the goal is to maximize the time spent on the bus vs. outside in the cold, then obviously it's better to wait since you can't catch the bus earlier at a later stop.

Why do we need to pretend there's a math problem here?

Holy mercury poisoning, Batman! Hope you at least took the batteries out first...

@alexeck - you're wrong. iTunes tracks are in AAC format, which is indeed better than MP3 but still lossy. iTunes Plus is unencrypted AAC with a somewhat higher bitrate. Neither format is lossless.

Cory @ 3: Reading the Grokster argument, I don't see where the RIAA claims space-shifting requires their authorization. On page 12 of the oral argument -- which is where the blog entry you linked tells us to look -- they refer to the practice as "lawful," not as "authorized." In fact, the only occurrence of the term "fair use" is on page 33, in a response by the Grokster attorney.

Rob @ 11: On page 15 of the brief, starting on line 16: "Once Defendant converted Plaintiffs' recording into the compressed .mp3 format and they are in his shared folder, they are no longer the authorized copies distributed by Plaintiffs." This line is also quoted in the Slashdot summary, but misrepresented: the RIAA nowhere says that converting to .mp3 is sufficient grounds for prosecution. The "and they are in his shared folder" is the key clause.

Slashdot summaries are, as always, a terrible place to get your news.

Unauthorized? Yes.

Requires authorization? No, because fair use is pretty well established to cover time- and space-shifting.

Remember, though, that fair use is a defense to infringement, not an affirmative right. It could be argued that by using a fair-use copy in a way that doesn't meet the fair-use standard, you lose the protection that allowed you to make the copy in the first place. I think that's the claim this filing is trying to make. See page 8 of the PDF.

Nex, what are you talking about? Copying an mp3 is copying, period. That's what copyright means -- the right to copy. "Owning" the file is irrelevant; you have to own the copyright or have permission (or a fair use defense) in order to copy it legally, no matter whose devices are involved. The wishes of the artist are also irrelevant unless the artist is also the copyright holder.

But yes, ethics are indeed a separate issue.

#16 - jurors don't always have to be silent. It's up to the judge, but the practice of allowing questions from the jury is apparently becoming more common.

#5 - perhaps because being in a courtroom when a cell phone rings does not constitute probable cause for a forced search, times 46?

General advice: if you've been sold a defective product and the merchant is unresponsive, call your credit card company and tell them all about it. A $2000 chargeback will get Apple's attention very quickly.

Sounds like they've shown it works for celebrities' faces, not anyone else's. Did they allow for the fact that celebrities might be more recognizable than ordinary folks because their features are unusually attractive, or even just unusual?

Cory, if you're still following this discussion, here's how to do what you want in Cream:

1. Choose Settings/Preferences/Expert Mode. Hit OK.

2. Select a range of text.

3. Hit : (colon) and at the weird prompt at the bottom, type:

s/old/new/g

(where "old" is the text to search for, and "new" is the replacement text). Hit enter. Voila.

Note: this is actually the underlying Vim search and replace command, so "old" is really a regular expression. If there are punctuation characters in your search string, they might be interpreted in unexpected ways. Precede them with backslashes to avoid this. The full documentation on regular expressions is available in Cream by hitting escape, then entering ":help regexp" (without the quotes). Escape then :q exits help.

Of course, by this point, you might be better off just learning Vim...

Bonus hint for dishonest waitstaff: if there are BoingBoing readers among your clientele, always overcharge by a multiple of $9.

D'oh!

Of course, by never mentioning or alluding to this in the text, she avoided all risk of the controversy affecting sales. How courageous.

What's next, we find out Rowling is a hero for racial equality because she's "always thought" of Harry as being black?

Sorry, not impressed.

Most terrorists don't travel with multiple-camera setups and professional A/V crews, either. That probably helped a little.

There's a lot more on Clive Wearing in the Memory and Forgetting episode of the always amazing Radio Lab.

Wow. They could have gotten in serious trouble for this. In the US it's pretty well established that you can't use deadly force to protect property. Here's a Wikipedia article claiming that UK common law agrees.