Seems a little silly to be debating the point of whether he "should" or "should not" disturb them with his aeroplane. The whole point of this disturbance was to save their "natural habitat" since it is threatened by logging, correct?

Had no policies been changed, far worse than a flyby would have occurred. They would have tried to kill the loggers, and they would have been "integrated". Forcefully.

An interesting point though, by declaring this area their natural habitat, it seems as though we are saying these particular humans require special protection. Why does this then not apply to other tribes and peoples around the world? What is the defining line where you leave a people alone, when they've heard about a telephone? Are wearing second-hand novelty t-shirts? "Need" electricity in their village?

And why are we accounting these homo sapiens special treatment when others around the planet are not afforded that same treatment - is it because this tribe is ignorant of the destruction their fellow sapiens are causing? Perhaps they've already noticed changes. If not, they'll find out about the environmental damage soon enough.....

Freedom of speech and all that.

You can have your music turned up loud, and it doesn't matter if your elderly-next-door-neighbor really hates norwegian death metal, you have that right. Between certain hours, of course.

This anti-teenage system DOES obey the curfew laws, right? It turns off after a certain time? If not, the kids look like they might be able to press charges for violation of noise curfew.

Except the system he built is a single-processor system. The Mac Pro is a dual-socket system. Adding a quad-core to a desktop bored IS NOT equivalent to having a dual-core, dual-socket motherboard, and once you start to hit your memory pretty heavily with all cores, you'll see what I mean.

Minimum cost for motherboard, case, powersupply, heat sinks, processors, and the FB-DIMMs that a Mac Pro uses are going to be $2000. Minimum.

@ #2 Kaiguy - I think this is more a reflection of the user and customer base of Youtube (that happen to look at, or host, music videos) than an indication of anything else.

Remember, indie bands are simply those that imply that they have rejected mainstream labels and formulaic-pop-cultured sounds. As the scene grew, and the capital inducing potential increased, so did the interest of Big Business. After a time, the popular sound of the indie scene centered around some major central players who cultivated the indie sound. It's a new style. Has been for a very long time.

To ruin the aesthetic and mystique of the label indie as Independent Thinking would be to stop its saleability..

Music is music. If it's good and suits you, listen to it. The term Indy is a Natural Progression from Alternative. Maybe the next scene will be the revolutionaries and we'll have the "revo" sound that replaces indie....

@#16 - During questioning about this in the early campaign, Jr was quoted as saying, "I didn't penetrate, and I didn't try again."

Or, better yet, just let them live? IANAPF (I am not a pig farmer), so I'm guessing this is done for a couple of reasons:

1. It's expensive to keep pigs past their selling date. Keeping them alive is probably more money it's worth to the farmers in the long run. There is probably some formula that factors in the cost of keeping a pig over X years at Y cost per day.

2. Older flesh is not worth as much. I'm not saying worthless, but the cost would be reduced.

Let's say a wholesale pig is worth $800. The government is paying out ~$333 a pig. The farmers can now turn around and sell these on the cheap and still get at least close to a profit.

Also, it's not like these pigs weren't going to die anyway - they were, probably in a very horrific and bloody way. But their life is cheapened in our eyes because they aren't being consumed by humans, but instead will be consumed by pets or by nothing.

I'm sure there are many arguments people will make, i.e. starving people everywhere would want to eat pig meat, what a waste of life, government is too powerful, etc. The main problem we are looking at here is the way we raise our animals, and the factory farming system in general.

http://www.themeatrix1.com/

JPANEGA1, yes it is a filter. That's the point. But it's animated - and impossible to watch as the server is broken. Mirror, anyone?

The glowing forge on R2D2 is a nice touch. Very thorough, and nicely done!!

Looks like this article dates back to 2005. A little more info available here - http://www.seacology.org/projects/individualprojects/INDON_bunaken2004.htm - does anyone know how well the project is doing 4 years after beginning??

@ #6 - Gia, it's not that I don't believe you, but even in the deep back woods of Mississippi you won't see this. Could you post a picture please?

Nice way to tie up our patent office with even more trivial bullshit. I mean, romantic in it's own retarded way, much like people at sports games who get the camera to zoom in as they go down on one knew with a panicked look on their face and the soon-to-be-ex-girlfriend nodding and saying yes so that it doesn't ruin the game you're seeing.. But still.

In case you're wondering about the patent submitter, here is his profile: http://www.merchantgould.com/attorney-profile-244.html

Someone beat me to the "Everything is Illuminated" reference - BTW, that's the rest of the band at the train, and they also did the music for this movie.

I was able to see Gogol Bordello play at the Roseland here in Portland about a month ago - they put on the best show I have seen in a very long time. The band has great energy, the crowd really gets into it, and I think they played over two hours! Absolutely Fantastic, highly recommended, if you can see these guys play live DO IT. I would follow these guys from show to show if I could afford it.

#7 - I agree with that, but the same is true for television and the internet. This is a popular media, not fine-crafted art. (No offense mag writers, really!)

I like getting National Geographic - it's great bathroom material. It updates every month. It won't be damaged by the moisture in the air of the shower, and if it is you can dispose of it (Recycle!!)

I love my books too much to want to expose them to moisture. Mold is contagious among our dead-tree friends...

Cheap is not always better. Considering that the "backlight" in this example is a 24" Mac Studio display, I would say far from cheap. The size of the holes will need to decrease as the size of your monitor does which decreases available light.

Not to mention you are tethered to your monitor, which is tethered to (best case for portability) a laptop. A good idea but totally impractical for almost anything.

A much better DIY project for interesting lighting effects is a softbox. There are a ton of links for this stuff on Google.