I only read the precis, but I see no control isolating whether the phone was just affecting the sensor directly rather than the brain.

Anyone else only seeing the intial f-you followed by the boingboingtv splash and then a menu?

While I have no experience with the genius bar tech support types at the apple store I have found their retail help to be some of the best in the business. As the one with the computer science degree in the family/friend group/office I get drafted into helping people choose/buy machines more often than I would like. I've found that the retail staff at their 59th street location gave as good or better advice than I would have, not pushing extra ram or upgrades on people and being pretty candid about the pros and cons of applecare. That said, Apple has been expanding their retail operations a lot lately so I would be unsurprised to learn that there was a corresponding decrease in the quality of help of late as well.

Are posts not checked for spelling at all?

It sounds like sprint is using a third party authentication system like the one from Verid to generate the questions. Given that they can't come to your house and give you a polygraph and take a DNA swab this is basically as good as remote security is going to get. The traditional questions (mother's maiden name, SSN etc.) are all data that has been compromised on so many people from so many databases as to be worthless. This data is compiled from numerous credit and public databases and so is at least somewhat harder to gain access to. Let's face it if someone actually puts real effort into getting your information there is basically nothing you can do to protect yourself, this system just works a little bit better at keeping people who have access to a single credit card application or health insurance claim sheet from impersonating you.

I've always thought it would make a good hacking project to make a multiple watch winder. I have a bunch of automatic watches but every time I look for an 8 barrel winder the cheapest I can find is a couple of grand. Which is kinda nuts. It seems like a fairly simple drive chain plus a stepper motor could bring the whole project in around $150. That or a giant washing machine size one that has one giant barrel all the watches get strapped in. That would be awesome.

Strictly speaking I'd have to argue that this is a homicide robot. A suicide robot would kill itself, which would be robocide anyway.

"guys like Wider were part of a movement of savage rapine of the world's economies and exploitation of the poor and disenfranchised, something that went all the way up to the big trading houses and their regulators"

Wow.

Balanced analysis that.

Could they have had worse playactors pretending to be totally freaked out by a thin nylon web? One guy just lies down (not falls, takes care to go down safely) and kicks his feet in the air like he's having a tantrum.

I bet it's not even made from real Americans.

The US is actually fairly unique in not currently having any sort of check by an immigration agency whey you leave the country. Almost every other country in the world checks you as you leave as well as when you enter the country. The fact that they finally woke up to the fact that it would be nice to actually have some idea how many visas are being exceeded is a fairly sensible play. Resorting to such ham-fisted kludgework as trying to pawn it off on the airlines just indicates how ineptly the VISIT program was implemented in the first place. Rather than hiring security experts to come up with a comprehensive overhaul of the US's ridiculously lax immigration and border control policies they chose the plan that featured the neatest tech demos you could fit into a press release.

Economic exchange also would probably be alien to them because when a space faring culture meets one that is not they are in a position to easily and completely destroy the non-spacefaring one by throwing a bunch of rocks at their planet. I'd imagine the exchange being more like a shopping list being delivered, followed by the systematic destruction of population centers until the requests are met. This is how most human cultures interacted when one had a (seemingly) unassailable technological edge over the other.

Yeah, I've wanted one of these, though I saw another company making a similar product that looked better. The problem is that in NYC I was unable to find a supplier that had actual good beer in these containers. Does anyone know of a distributor of those kegs in the new york area?

I'd say it has to do with the visual tone of the products, and the underlying feeling they evoke. While the Indiana Jones movies do in point of fact have appeal for kids, they deal with real danger in order to drive the plot. Real (looking) nazis and equipment are pretty necessary to establish both their literal physical danger to our beloved Dr. Jones as well as their larger alignment with evil in terms of the overall plot. Fighting an enemy which is immediately recognizable as both real and a personification of pure evil drives a lot of the conflict in the movies without forcing us to view them actually doing a lot of evil stuff. If you think about it this is a good way of adding a layer onto the plot of the movie, since while the nazis behave consistently like movie bad guys they don't actually have to tell you that they are operating death camps and slave labor camps. The grownups know it and the kids don't need to.

Contrastingly, the Lego re-imagining seems to only work at the kids level. Try to imagine layering the final solution into the personification of nazis in lego form. It just doesn't work. A couple of small dialogue exchanges and shots in the movies hint at this kind of background, but that simply won't work in the form of this kind of video game. Since there is no added benefit driving the plot in the game by specifically including this (troubling) imagery, I'd say it's a good call to omit it. After all the beauty of the Lego video game franchises is their doing less with more, both in terms of dialogue and character representation, as well as with clever (but quite elegantly minimalist) level and game design.

P.S. I'm not trying to imply that the Lego games are just for kids, merely that they are trying to only capture that simpler and purer tone, rather than the more layered representation usually found in the subject matter they represent

Why doesn't he just come back next week?

Given that most undergraduate programs have at least one required seminar with an English (language) fiction title as required reading I would say this could at least partly be titled "curricula at dumb schools". Not that all the favorite books of people will be on the mandatory curriculum, but they will all be exposed to them and so there will be a higher proportion that considers them favorites. That said, correlation vs. causation can be some tricky stuff.

I think I like the avanti mini-keg fridge better, both in terms of how it would look in my kitchen and in terms of compatibility.

http://www.beveragefactory.com/draftbeer/kegerators/pony/MBD5L.shtml

Unfortunately, like this other solution it is not compatible with the beers I drink. My research seems to indicate that Germany and Belgium are the place to shop for these mini-kegs.

The theory behind the move was that circuit city was basically an order-taking business, not a sales business. Basically they thought that the losses in upselling caused by having less competent staff would be offset by having lower overhead. However, given the fact that the only profit centers in that business are accessory and extended warranty sales, it is difficult to see how this is possible. If, as common sense would seem to dictate, this completely wrecks the company then I suspect that most of the architects of this strategy will find themselves rather difficult to employ in the retail space. That said, those types of policy decisions are usually made by only a few people, in this case I have to assume people with an accounting rather than retail background. As a result they won't have to find a job with a retail company anyway. So the only people who will really get hurt are the competent floor employees who got fired, the less competent floor employees who will be out of a job when the company falls apart, and the stockholders.

Cory, I did read the article, I think I just have a different perspective on the issue. When real goods were on the line Amazon was defending against people who didn't have a leg to stand on. My understanding was that the Authors guild was trying to enjoin or dissuade Amazon from reselling, or at least brokering the resale of used books. A few stops on the 6 train and I can stop by the strand bookstore, which has been doing this since 1927 (thanks wikipedia!). From a regulatory point of view the only hope they had of prevailing there would be if they had video of all the supreme court members beating Santa Claus to death. Even if they tried to somehow organize a some kind of collective bargaining/negotiation on behalf of the publishing companies they really had no significant chance as Amazon sales are at this point one of the cornerstones of their financial projections for their existing business, so they couldn't really play hardball.
Contrastingly, digital book distribution is at this point a non-business. It represents no significant revenue source to them, and is not seriously projected as one in the short term. As a result they can negotiate with some seriousness. Consider the two following scenarios:
Scenario the first: Edward Cleverboy, a junior executive walks into the office of Jane Friedman, CEO of HarperCollins (thanks again wp!). "We've hit a bit of a snafu in our negotiations with Bezos." he says. "I told him that we can't do business with them if they keep reselling old books. He said 'okay. we'll reduce our orders for this month by 50%. See you in a few weeks.'" At his point Jane's eyes widen in horror as the foundations of the building tremble and eventually split open. Rupert Murdoch then comes storming out of his subterranean tunneling machine dispatched from his secret Australian base and proceeds to tear out Edward's heart using only his bare hands. Then, pausing only to remind Jane that he will have her family killed if she fails to make the quarter's numbers, he dives back into his tunneler and disappears in a cloud of asbestos dust.
Scenario the Second: Frederic Mouthbreather, another junior executive, walks into Jane's (newly repaired) office. "Those Amazon guys want to distribute our books digitally without a technology that allows us complete and total control over how they are used!" he reports, amusedly. "I told them that it's a dealbreaker for us. They said they'll get back to me in a few weeks." At this point Jane looks up thoughtfully and replies "Whatever. Bezos will have to sell millions of those gizmos to make this thing work. By the time that becomes a real business I'll be long since retired. Just try not to do anything that hurts our existing business. If I make any kind of new decision that is noticeably a mistake Murdoch will use his earthquake machine to destroy my hometown. Say, do you think we can sell novelizations of family guy episodes in 7-elevens?"

Now admittedly I know nothing about how the publishing industry actually works, nor do I have specific information indicating that Rupert Murdoch is a megalomaniacal subterranean warlord who uses brutal intimidation and ingenious technology to pursue his eldritch and menacing goals. However I do think that these scenarios do illustrate the motivations and beliefs behind a lot of corporate decisionmaking, and how things shook out the way they did.

Wow. That was a slightly longer post than I intended it to be and I'm late for a lunch date. So I'm not going to check it for typos and whatnot. Sorry if I repeated some sentences.

Well I'm not a lawyer so this is largely speculation, but I would assume that part of the reason that the kindle books they sell are infected with DRM is that Amazon had to negotiate new contracts with publishers to get them to use their service. Publishers, having yet to experience the customer backlash that the record companies are finally starting to react to, still think of DRM as a clever and effective way to control their data. While a publisher would basically have to tear down and rebuild the entire legal nature of ownership to prevent amazon from selling used copies of books, it is super easy for a publisher to say that they will not participate in Amazon's downloading service unless some crazy DRM schema is followed.
One can only hope that as snafus inevitably arise and infuriate customers that the backlash will slowly percolate through the vast and sluggish corporate nervous system, causing said publishers to react in helpful ways. Of course they usually react in spectacularly unhelpful ways at first, but in the fullness of time a natural selection process should allow the sensible executives or corporations to survive more readily. After all, as the poster is well aware, it is not impossible to distribute books digitally without the backing of a publishing corporation founded in the dawn of time by members of the ancient and mystic order of typesetters.

I don't know about you guys but I'm now sending greenpeace an email a week asking them to provide proof that they are not engaged in irresponsible or harmful behaviors. This week I'm asking them to prove that they are not employing child labor by listing the name and birthdate of every employee they have. I'm assuming that every name or birthday not listed is a child slave for my survey.

Principles.

Phase, not faze. Unless that was an elaborate pun about shocking them out of using DC.

There is no way that this rig will power a saw blade with enough torque to cut anything more than paper. Given that the blade stopped as soon as the water was turned off in the demo I would guess it was spinning at closer to 300 rpm than 10,000.