For my Internet dollar, no one is funnier than James Lileks

Are you talking intentionally or otherwise?

Luteshark? I'll pass, thanks anyway. I still haven't worked up the nerve to actually try the lutefisk in the market near where my dad lives in the Yoop.

In this world, the authority to bully others and the legal right to harm them are both for sale...

Hmmm. Sounds suspiciously like OUR world, although most people would never admit it.

Yeah, I guess it is a poor choice of words at that. Nobody's going to sign up if the recruiters actually tell the truth for a change.

"For Pascal, the prove that god exists is that you are free to believe in him or not"

You're free to believe (or not believe) in Santa Claus, too. Is that proof that Santa exists?

Ben is still pissed about his entire "Win Ben Stein's Money" audience vanishing at almost the exact moment the door slammed behind Jimmy Kimmel's departing ass. So he's taking his frustrations out on all of us.

Maybe this behavior is hard-wired into humans as some aspect of pack mentality.

The herd instinct is strong.

If you want to learn about due process, a better method would be taking a history class.

unlucky enough to attend a school run by morons

Like there are schools that aren't?

“You’re sitting there waiting for the message you hope never comes,” says Tony Gatlin

The problem I have with people like Tony is that if and when that message comes, they'll dutifully push the button and kill all of us. Not because we did anything to deserve it, but because someone told them to.

It's about time somebody in government took a stand against corporate greed.

Wal-Mart did not invent the smiley face and has no rights to it. They saw it, decided they wanted it, and tried to use their huge legal department to simply steal it.

Gateway (the computer company) used a similar tactic to attempt to obtain the gateway.com domain name. It had been registered by a small computer/network consultant on the east coast since the late 1980s. "Gateway" is a common term in computer networking, so it's not like the guy had registered cocacola.com or something that's definitely a trademark. But Gateway wanted it, and was willing to use their army of lawyers to try to take it away from the legitimate owner. When the court sided with the owner, Gateway cut a deal with him for the name.

This is why I will never buy a Gateway product. If they'll try to out-and-out steal someone else's property, what makes anyone think they'll treat their customers fairly?

Sounds like an awful lot of work to me, particularly when a handful of barbituates and a few slugs of whiskey would accomplish the same result quickly and painlessly.

It's not so much the $120 a pair pricetag that puts me off - it's the $120 pricetag on a pair of pants that look like they came from a Salvation Army thriftstore. Is the wino look really that trendy these days?

My personal favorite was the lady who had a question about time zones and e-mail. The conversation went something like this:

Her: "We're two hours time difference from California, right?"

Me: "Right."

Her: "So if someone in California sends me an e-mail at 10:00 California time, will I receive it at 10:00 our time?"

Me: "You mean will the e-mail travel back in time and arrive before it was sent? No."

Her: "Oh."

It may LOOK like it, but it's really not magic, folks. The laws of physics still apply.

Buckley famously smoked marijuana — after sailing his boat outside the U.S. territorial limits, where it would no longer be illegal.

Interesting "reasoning" from someone who was supposed to be an intellectual. Trouble is, it's not just smoking marijuana that's illegal - merely possessing it is enough to get you a trip to the cross-bar hotel. So unless Buckley had the marijuana delivered to him after his boat left the US, (which is pretty unlikely) he still broke the law by possessing marijuana inside the US. He just - in typical conservative fashion - made up some bullshit spin trying to conceal his lawbreaking.

Intellectual? More like a bullshit artist.

The pictures are disturbing, but not nearly as disturbing as those who would make excuses or ask for "perspective" as if it were somehow wrong to be outraged over this. Those are the people who really scare me.

Not very professional of the techs, that's for sure.

Back when I was still doing service calls, a customer had me install video RAM in a Compaq laptop. The woman who used the machine was a young, pretty marketing type - certainly not someone you'd suspect was into hardcore porn. She asked that the machine be backed up before any work was done "just in case."

No problem. It's your money, or your boss's anyway, but I have to take it back to the shop to back it up. (this was before USB hard drives)

So I'm sitting there back at the shop bored out of my skull watching files copy across the network when I happen to notice the names of some of those files are . . . odd. I'm usually not one to snoop through people's personal files - don't really have the time or the desire - but my curiosity was piqued. So I noted the name of one of the "odd" files and did a quick search after the backup completed.

It was a video clip of a girl orally servicing a horse. Some of the other stuff was equally outrageous. I'd never in a million years have suspected she was into that sort of thing.

Now, you'd think that keeping something like that on your work computer might not be the best idea in the world, but it's better than keeping something like that on your work computer and sending it in for service so the tech gets an eyeful. Fortunately for her, she got me instead of the Geek Squad.

Anyway, I guess the moral of the story is don't leave your porn collection on your computer (especially your work computer) when it gets sent in for service. Even if we don't mean to look, well, sometimes stuff happens, ya know? And you're a lot more likely to get the Geek Squad than me these days.

I printed out the gray one and cut out the two little squares. Although I didn't believe it until I actually saw them side by side, they're the same.

The flight attendants will bring you a perfectly serviceable weapon free for the asking - just ask for a seatbelt extender.

Hmmm. I've been an Audible member almost since they opened, so this concerns me. Hopefully Amazon will continue to honor Audible's TOS and any purchased audiobooks will always be available for download by the purchaser, even if the subscription is discontinued.

As for converting the books to non-DRM format, it's been a piece of cake since Audible started letting you burn your purchases to CD. It's still a bit time-consuming on longer books that can run 30 hours or more, but easy on shorter stuff. Just burn them to CD, then rip to MP3 or other non-DRM format.

Perhaps now people will begin to see the danger of giving the cops a "one size fits all" crime like disorderly conduct.

To me, it's basic politeness. Providing internet access to guests is kind of like providing heat and electricity, or a hot cup of tea.

Any of which I'll be more than happy to provide to an actual guest whom I've invited into my house. If they're my guest, I'll gladly give them the SSID (which is not broadcast on my wireless network) and the passphrase. But I don't go out into the street and chase down random passers-by to offer them a cup of tea - why would I do the equivalent by allowing them unrestricted access to my wifi?

In a perfect world, I'd agree with Cory. But in case you haven't noticed, it's a long way from a perfect world. I'm not willing to take this kind of risk just so I can do some stranger a favor.

Why would anyone want to enter this contest? You're essentially signing away all rights to your work - whether it wins or not - in exchange for a chance at a prize valued at . . . nothing. What a deal.

As for the idea that this is a standard practice among "art sites" on the Internet, nonsense. Most "art sites" require only that you give them the right to publish your work on their site, not complete ownership of the work.

Just goes to show that expecting justice or fair treatment from the lowlife scumbags in the legal system is a fool's errand.

The characters probably told the culprit's crime.

The cangue was actually a fairly well thought-out method of correction. Not only did the miscreant have to lug around a heavy piece of wood everywhere s/he went, but the device also prevented him/her from eating or drinking without assistance from another person. If you didn't have someone to help you out, you were screwed.

Can't really say how this will end, but anyone who thinks the USA will keep their word or honor their treaties is painfully naive.

I'm more concerned about someone using my Internet connection for bad stuff than about someone stealing my data. Suppose the guy next door is a spammer? Wouldn't be much fun trying to explain to your ISP how those ten million spam e-mails got sent through your hookup, would it?

And if you can explain that one, how about a bunch of kiddie porn downloads? Or a death threat sent to a public official?

Nope, too much chance of winding up in trouble for something somebody else did for my taste. I'll keep mine secured, thanks anyway.

I have to wonder how many of these cadavers were people who thought they were doing a good deed by donating their bodies to science. Not to mention how many would still do the same if they knew this was where they'd end up.

A few years back, I bought a flatbed scanner from BestBuy. When I got it home and went to set it up, there was a magazine addressed to some lawyer in the next town over on the scanner bed. Of course the BestBuy manager swore up and down that they would NEVER put returned merchandise back on the shelves and sell it as new. You believe him don't you?

I'd rather pay twice as much elsewhere than deal with the crooks at BestBuy.

the kids are such "coddled," "narcissistic praise junkies," they'll be beyond tough to bring into the military

The fact that they just keep getting smarter all the time doesn't help much either.

You gotta love all the whining, particularly coming from people who would have absolutely zero sympathy for "civilians" who whined about getting a ticket.

The part about how this "privilege" should carry over to the family members of any cop is pretty funny, too. Not to mention the claim that any "civilian" would get off with a warning. For doing better than 80 in a 55 zone? Shyeah, right.

But the best part of all is the complete and utter hypocrisy of claiming on the one hand that traffic laws are there to protect the public, (which they are) but on the other, that privileged individuals should be immune to them.

And people wonder why cops are so despised . . .