FWIW, on the "cash auctions" -- where the item being auctioned is a quantity of cash -- they offer a "100% discount" on the final "sale price".

For example, in the auction of $50 mentioned above, for which the bid is over $80, the winner doesn't have to pay that $80.

Swoop still wins, because bidding the price up to $80 requires well over five hundred $1 bids.

Oh man, if /b/ catches wind of this...

There's an Amy Winehouse line that's been bugging me for exactly this reason:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=sniffed+me+out+like+i+was+tanqueray

Now I can rest easy knowing that line was, in fact, bought and paid for. Possibly in gin, which Winehouse no doubt consumed immediately.

While I can certainly understand owning over 120 gb of media... why do you feel the need to have all of it at your fingertips all the time?

You can't just pick out 120 Gig worth, and leave the rest at home?

My first MP3 player was 96 meg, nearly a decade ago (paid a pretty penny for it, too!). I could fit about 2 albums on there at decent quality. I swapped them out every day before I biked to school (uphill, I might add). I loved it, because the battery life was great, it was tiny, and it never skipped. Portable CD players of the day were big, only ran for an hour or two, and skipped like crazy; skip protection technology was just hitting the market.

I understand, more storage is *always* better... but refusing to buy a unit at all because 120 gig is not enough? That's just foolishness.

@199:
"t's fnny hw thr's n n frm "dwn Sth" mkng gnrnt gnrlzd cmmnts bt th nrth n hr lk y gys r th thr wy rnd."

Yh, thr's nn n *hr*, 'cs ths st s fll f hpps. Y hv t g lswhr fr tht. Lk frrpblc r lttlgrnftblls.

Wlcm t th ntrnt. Sm sts r fll f lbrls. Sm r fll f cnsrvtvs. nd thy'v ll gt thr shr f ntjbs.

First thought:
What happened to riding mass transit with friends?

Hard to pass the time with conversation when you're in separate pods.

Second thought:
On the local commuter train, the the event of disaster, there are emergency exits on each car on both sides of the train car, at two levels.

Even if 75% of the exits fail, for whatever reason, everyone can still exit safely.

With this pod design, if 75% of the exits fail... 75% of the passengers are stuck on the train. What a joy that would be.

Congrats to #18 and #20 for being the first sane posts in the thread.

Young adults are committing to monogamous relationships, getting tested, and using (non-condom) birth control.

This is a bad thing, how?
STDs and pregnancy are negligible risks in that situation.

Hell, the article (which I can only assume most of the commenters did not listen to) starts with "sex without a condom is not something we [the younger generation] enter into lightly". It also doesn't clearly specify an age group, but it doesn't seem to be describing the under-20 crowd.

This is not about promiscuity and risk taking. This is about adults committing to adult relationships.

As noted above, KISS uses the same "runic" style of S, as does Slayer. Slayer's even gone as far as to prominently feature WW2-era German symbology and themes in their visuals and lyrics. Several other bands have used the "Sig Rune" as well --
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sig_Rune

So, firstly, allusions to the Schutzstaffel are the stuff of 80's shock rock. Not terribly exciting in this day and age.

Secondly, these S's are more rounded, and nested, unlike those of the Schutzstaffel, which are angular and parallel.

Lastly, acronym finder has 250 potential meanings for "SS":
http://www.acronymfinder.com/SS.html

Sure, they're similar, if you want them to be. But it's a bit of a stretch to call this "problematic logo design".

Laugh at the silly foreigners failing to understand a vague cultural connection, and move on.

California has the highest population of any state, at 36 million.

Also, with a 50% increase in population since 1980 (23 mill then to 36 mill today), it's not surprising that there'd be a corresponding increase in fuel use.

Really, these statistics are pretty meaningless without any sort of basis of comparison. How does our *per capita* fuel usage compare to the rest of the country, and other first-world nations?

Take a look at the list of the world's most populous nations, and take note of how many of them are impoverished:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population#The_15_most_populous_nations

Is it any wonder that the US, being by far the largest prosperous country on the list would have higher rates of vehicle ownership?

For those continuing to wonder what happened, my best guess is that #40 nailed it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violet_Blue_%28author%29#Lawsuit

Using trademark law as a weapon to "protect" your lame blogger pseudonym is not cool.

The headline is a bit off though, reading: "The most extreme-life forms in the universe." Of course, studying these unusual organisms could give scientists insight into what life might exist on other planets, but all of the creatures in this article are found right here at home

AFAIK, if his island is within 12 nautical miles of the mainland, he doesn't have a leg to stand on.

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

I cataloged for a used book retailer for a few months.

I found a few interesting things -- the one that stands out most, is the copy of "When someone you love has AIDS" that contained a Polaroid of a young adult woman wearing only a pair of panties. I still wonder what the story behind that one was.

#21: "The Internet has made us cynical. We no longer wish to believe."

I think that probably dates back to television, film, or maybe the photograph.

The 1938 radio broadcast of War of the Worlds certainly didn't do much to convince people to unquestioningly trust media.

IIRC, last time I was at the Exploritorium in SF, they had an exhibit with live chicken embryos demonstrating the same thing.

I'm actually a little surprised the Exploritorium doesn't get more love here -- it's all about hands on, DIY scientific exploration.

Vegetarianism is, in many cases, driven by a desire to rebel. As evidenced by the multitude of tweens who go veggie for a few years in school.

Many of the suffragettes were vegetarians.

Extremism and vegetarianism are correlated.

The idea of the government spying on civilians based on dietary choices is disgusting, but there is a seed of logic in the insanity that lead to this decision

Disney's been struggling with this problem for years.

The futility of the struggle has been aptly embodied in the following sentence, constructed by a tween boy, from a list of "safe" words.

"I want to stick my long-necked Giraffe up your fluffy white bunny."

http://www.fudco.com/habitat/archives/000058.html

I worked for a large amazon marketplace retailer for years. This is common practice.

Frequently, customers go straight to leave bad feedback when something goes wrong with their order, without ever contacting the vendor directly. Good vendors will do anything to make you happy, but they can't help you if you don't contact them directly!

@#10: "Are there all child-molester websites?"

It's called 4chan.

This idea's been around for nearly as long as disposable cameras with flash have. When I was in highschool 10 years ago, a kid had disassembled a camera with similar intent -- I'm sure instructions were floating around the net back then too.

The 10 minute limit was all about creating a trivial barrier to people simply uploading pirated content (since TV runs about 22-44 minutes, and films about 90 -- both well over the 10 minute limit)

However, with a little work, you can abstract the 10 minute limit away entirely now -- it wouldn't be much of a stretch to come up with a service that'd break your videos into 10 minute chunks for you, upload them, and string them back together using omnision's technique.

I'd imagine youtube will have to rethink the 10 minute limit, if things develop to this point.

#80 - A constitutional amendment that helps terrorists sneak nipple bombs on planes? Not in Bush's America!

There's a good slashdot thread indicating that this story is probably blown out of proportion:

http://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=477114&cid=22657770

I could totally see terintino using the meow mix song in a torture scene, ala reservoir dogs:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XGrwSWqrCbA&feature=related