Probably blew on top of the car by the wind.

You'd notice if somebody ran up to your car and put something on top of it. For one, Fairbanks isn't exactly brimming with people, and the speed limits on College Road are pretty high.

Of course, I'm more interested as to why on earth Google were even in Fairbanks to begin with. Some of the locations they photographed there were downright bizarre (read: extremely isolated).

Sounds to me like the street-view photo car got hopelessly lost, and took a 3,000 mile detour!

Please register for this.

Due to cost constraints, the marrow registry doesn't have nearly as many people as it should, making the odds for producing a match are still far lower than they should be.

A successful donation *will* directly save the recipient's life.

I can go for weeks on end without 'net access (*gasp!*)

those are wonderful weeks too.....

Gaffa's better.

Almost definitely illegal in the US.

How come the effect of illegal immigrants upon the cost of healthcare keeps getting dragged into every topic imaginable, and never has any sort of evidence to back it up?

Out of curiosity, are there actually any reliable numbers for how much illegals cost the healthcare system?

The anti-immigration crowd keep going on and on about how much illegal immigrants are costing the US healthcare system, although I've never actually seen any firm numbers that support or refute that hypothesis.

Jean Painleve did a fascinating series of underwater video documentaries between the 1920s and 70s, a few of which documented this sort of thing (which is truly amazing considering just how old they are).

You can still see a few of them, along with a brilliant soundtrack by Yo La Tengo.

A few years back, I saw it performed live alongside the video projections, and never imagined that an unsuspecting crowd could become quite so captivated by octopus sex (which is indeed deeply weird, yet oddly captivating).

Highly recommended, especially if you want to see where David Attenborough and Jacques Cousteau got their inspiration. Yo La Tengo's brilliant soundtrack seals the deal.

What's to keep the ship from capsizing if there's a big gust of wind?

This just has "bad idea" written all over it, as cool as it may look on paper.

Tesco's generic coke is called "Tesco Premium American Cola"

It's actually quite good too.

Wow.

If the government wants to tighten border security, who am I to say otherwise?

But for christ sake.... practice some oversight! $15bn on an unsuccessful program is absolutely insane. The brakes should have been put on *long* before the number got that high.

(That all said, it does make sense for air travelers to foot the bill for travel-related expenses. Otherwise, it's not exactly fair to those who don't do any sort of international travel)

#7: That viewpoint seems a bit extreme, and goes almost directly against thousands of years of Chinese history.

For almost as long as it has existed, China has been one of, if not *the* most introverted civilizations on the planet. Although I'm sure that the communist government has done a great deal of "cultural engineering," I simply don't foresee any sort of massive world conquest.

My hypothesis is that the communist government is playing things by the book. Marx predicted that every civilization will go through a period of successful capitalistic growth. The Chinese government is currently allowing this to happen, milking the country's vast supply of cheap labor in the process. Once the balance of trade even remotely begins to shift against China, they'll close their doors, and begin to focus inward once again.

Marxist theory, and the remainder of China's history as a civilization both predict this.

I'd say it's a step worse than censorship, as it's effectively modifying a statement with my signature on it, making no note of the fact that this was done.

If not illegal, such behavior is at the very least, dishonest.

(And I apologize if I came across as a troll. I have a low tolerance for articles that contradict themselves, are hopelessly out of date, and USE ALL CAPS. I'm normally a big fan of Mr. Doctorow, but this post comes across as rambling and incoherent)

Are we being disemvoweled simply for disagreeing?

I don't, in fact, disagree, but this post is sensationalism at its worst. (and barely coherent at that). Disney have been doing this for years, and it's been well-established that the data captured by these readers is good for authentication, but not identification.

Thy'v hd ths fr 10 yrs.

Ths s vn lttl bt vrbrd fr Cry. Wr y drnk whn y pstd ths?

If she gets struck by a train, the railroad has a huge mess to clean up, as well as numerous liability issues to deal with. Likewise, if the engineer slams on the breaks upon seeing somebody on the tracks, there could be other damages.

Railroad tracks are *always* strictly marked as 'No Trespassing' areas.

Although the maintenance workers might have let it slide, she was very clearly breaking the law and violating the policies of the railroad. She had to have known that there was the potential to get caught and kicked off.

That all said, I was genuinely intrigued by her project, and hope that she can come to some sort of agreement with UP that allows her to continue it safely.

Please. Go easy on your EBEs

My favorite bit:

Fur Con --> NO NO NO NO NO!

You're forgetting about TV licensing.

Yes, TV signals are indeed broadcast all across Britain for anyone to receive.

However, watch what happens if you put a TV Aerial on your house without paying the license fees.

Unlike American terrestrial TV, however, the BBC is funded entirely through license fees, and does not run advertising.

Watching the BBC via iPlayer outside of the UK is piracy, plain and simple.

1/8" plugs are rarely, if ever balanced. You'd need XLR, or a balanced 1/4" jack connector for that.

Whomever said the Queen has no power is quite incorrect.

Although she obviously has very little to do with the day-to-day operations of the government, she does meet with the Prime Minister on a regular basis. (What occurs during those meetings is famously unknown, although it's fair to say that the opinions of the Queen do indeed carry considerably weight).

Likewise, since the Queen very rarely makes her political opinions publicly known, she is taken quite seriously when she chooses to do so.

Numerous odd powers are also still directly reserved for the monarch, and should the parliamentary government start acting egregiously against the will of the public and the crown, the reigning monarch almost certainly has the power to "put on the brakes." The British people also tend to hold an extremely high level of respect and loyalty for the Queen, which would make it extremely difficult for the government to act directly in defiance of the monarch.

Personally, I've always liked the zlib license. It's probably even less restrictive than Creative Commons (although it doesn't have the backing of a big organization)

Its terms are roughly as follows:
You may do whatever the heck you want with [product] as long as:
1) We get credit if you modify and redistribute.
2) You don't sue us. We're not liable.

This just has bad idea written all over it.

On the other hand, if they can determine the resonant frequency of neds and chavs, I'd greatly appreciate such a device.

This is stupid.

Build a normal standard-gauge elevated railroad instead. It'll be cheaper, faster, and more compatible with the rest of the network.

The simplistic artwork is a huge part of XKCD's charm.

Some of the earlier strips *do* make use of considerably more "advanced" artwork, proving that the strip's author is a fairly decent artist.

I suppose we're still a few decades away from Anti-Homophobia boy.....

Although I do see how this could be useful for keeping the house cool in the early parts of the day, I fail to see how it would do *anything* for insulation on an extremely hot summer day.

Think of what happens to a swimming pool with a solar blanket on top of it. Now put your house underneath that pool. Ouch!

Also, keep this away from rednecks. Although humorous, I certainly wouldn't want to see the effects of an errant bullet striking the ceiling!

A few folks on Slashdot are reporting that only a single router has gone down, and that Iran still has connectivity, which means that the cable probably hasn't been cut, nor any significant amount of connectivity lost.

That's not to say that the other four cable outages aren't troubling, but I'd likely write this one off as a coincidence.

#9: They do.

http://www.google.com/search?q=biodegradable+cutlery

Plastic #7 doesn't mean anything. "7" is defined as any type of plastic that doesn't fall under categories 1-6.

Have any actual studies been conducted to see exactly how much Bisphenol A is released from a plastic bottle under normal use? The main backlash against the chemical seems to be a knee-jerk coming from the usual environmental groups. This doesn't mean it's necessarily not true, but at the same time, I haven't seen any legitimate science to back up the claims that it's something I should be worrying about.

For those of you drinking out of aluminum bottles, I should also point out that there have been similar "health scares" going on about Aluminum cookware since the 70's.

Strictly speaking, although the end result is a normal, "standards-compliant" MP3 file, the process by which Amazon encodes and tags their files might very well be "proprietary", meaning that the software to do so was privately developed and is exclusively used by Amazon.

The center of gravity isn't necessarily all that high, as long as the base is sufficiently weighted down.

Agreed, #13.

More than a few vegans/vegetarians take a "holier than thou" stance that tends to annoy the rest of us, and gives them a bad name in general.

I have quite a lot of respect for vegetarians who *don't make a big deal about it*

The issue is *FAR* from being black-and-white. Like so many other things, easing meat in moderation isn't so bad. The fact that a vegetarian diet must be carefully monitored to ensure that you don't malnourish yourself would seem to indicate that one lifestyle choice isn't necessarily better than the other.

Going around and decrying the meat-eating population of the world (ie. the vast majority of people), and cursing them with an "increased risk of cancer" isn't going to win you any favors.

"It was invented to soak up oil-spills, and now no one really knows what to do with it."

They could use it to clean up oil spills.

Problem solved. NEXT!

Ah.... somebody else beat me to the Irn-Bru advert :-)

I've still got a 12" Powerbook, and use it as my main machine (unlike some, I can't afford to upgrade less than every 4 or 5 years, nor do I really have the need to...)

I don't really see a need for it to get any *smaller* I can fit it into any bag, and although it's a tad thicker than the other powerbooks, it's still pretty darn thin. I also prefer the aluminum casing to the icky plastic of the Macbook, as well as the better keyboard.

The truly great thing about the 12" Powerbook was, however, that it was a completely full-featured machine. Nothing got left out, and it was speced similarly to the other Powerbooks, and *vastly* exceeded anything of a similar size in the PC world.

I'm sure they could shed a few mm in terms of the thickness, but the need to do so doesn't really exist.

The Air's biggest crime, however, is the battery. It needed to be 8 hours. Minimum. Long enough that I can use the machine unplugged all day without worrying about charging. My 12" PB easily manages 4+ hours. The fact that a tiny solid-state laptop can't do the same is absolutely pathetic.

In conclusion: The Air is almost as useful as an iPhone. (Perhaps Apple should revisit the eMate concept?)

Just add a bit of paint, and It's the perfect Dalek costume!

This would be even better if there were a police-box within eyeshot, especially given that underground metro systems are one of the few places where they still do exist in a functional capacity...

You know..... it wasn't too long after my family made my Grandmother stop smoking, drinking red wine, and eating bacon & eggs every morning that her health started to go downhill.....

Coincidence?

Don't eat too much of any one food-group, stay away from over-processed crap, and get as much exercise as you can.

Well, if they were born in a city as big as London or New York City, the odds of being born on the same date in the same city aren't all that remote. Most would just write it off as "an interesting coincidence"

Too many things about this don't add up.

1) Do we have any actual confirmation that the people on the speedboats were members of the Iranian military?

2) What sort of terrorist *taunts* a warship that could easily blast him out of the water? The entire premise of using a small craft in an attack is to remain inconspicuous, eg. the USS Cole incident a few years back.

Somehow, it all comes off as a childish prank. I'm guessing that some 3rd party was trying to provoke some sort of incident.

Given the choice between dying of Alzheimer's or Cancer, I think I'd pick the latter.

Still, that's a horrible choice to make.

Teller's audio-only podcast is considerably less interesting.

You know...... it's not like the rest of UK cuisine is particularly healthy or nourishing.....

Actually, the Empire State building had an airship mooring device built into it (and still does IIRC)

However, the updrafts caused by the massive size of the building made this an extremely dangerous proposition, and the idea was eventually abandoned long before 1939.

At least one successful docking has been photographed: http://www.poster.net/anonymous/anonymous-empire-state-building-with-graf-zeppelin-1931-2804912.jpg

And oddly enough, no taller buildings were ever constructed in that vicinity. The only NYC skyscrapers taller than the ESB were destroyed on 9/11.

NEMA (North American) plugs are actually supposed to be installed with the ground pin at the top, to reduce the chances of a foreign object falling and creating a short between the live and neutral leads. (Although this is the official standard, it has only become a widespread practice over the past few years)

British plugs don't require this, due to the shutter built into the outlet, which prevents any power from flowing unless the plug is fully inserted. Fused plugs go a step further to prevent wiring faults from becoming dangerous.

The round-pin 15A British sockets are also still commonly found in use in theatrical lighting installations, as well in domestic use in South Africa.

(And nobody except for North America uses the horrible "Stage Pin Connector"......)

I remember when my 20" Cinema Display was *huge*

Now it's pretty average. However, comparing the 5 year old display to newer (and cheaper) LCD panels side-by-side reveals that cheapo LCD screens are not all that good. (Brighter, yes. But overall, a much poorer image). The comparison between a bad LCD, and an expensive CRT is even more striking.

But, really. Why can't Dell design things that are pretty, *AND* reasonably affordable? The design isn't even that striking.

Apple's got a pretty significant edge here... even their budget machines are beautifully designed (both in form, and function -- even the "affordable" Mac Mini and iMacs are gorgeous, and in a convenient form factor to boot)

#15: Nothing against you personally, but I can't for the life of me understand why most people and governments closely associate terrorists with Bond villains.

That would be giving them *FAR* too much credit.

Terrorists are typically disillusioned 20-somethings with easy access to explosives. (The UK should also know a thing or two about *real* terrorists, having *successfully* dealt with the IRA for all those years, without resorting to this sort of bullshit)

scotland FTW!

Is the TSA employing some backwards logic here?

If a lithium battery "Goes Sony" in the cabin, there's a significantly greater chance that somebody will be able to smother the resulting fire. Granted, it'll cause a panic, but the integrity of the aircraft will be maintained.

If it's in the cargo hold, good luck....

Also, a few stupid mistakes:

1) Scotland is red in the table, and black on the map

2) Why the heck is Svalbard red? I'm pretty sure the polar bears aren't all that interested in your personal details.

"They've gone to plaid!"

Musicthing's review is enlightening (and disappointing)

Summary: It's not particularly *bad*, but looks and feels like a Toy, which is a bit less than what you'd expect for a $1200 gizmo.

A Moog is expensive, because they're produced domestically in small batches by a tiny company. Likewise, a Moog contains a fully-analogue synthesis pipeline, and is built like a tank (like all decent pro audio gear should be!). It's very easy to see how the material costs represent a big enough portion of the price for me to be reasonably confident that Moog aren't ripping me off.

On the other hand, the Yamaha product doesn't look like it's particularly expensive to build. $1200 is inexcusably high.

A better, and cheaper alternative is the Monome, which is produced by a *really* small company (ie. they have 2 full-time employees). It's essentially a "dumb" USB control surface version of the Tenori-On.

It's a really solid piece of kit, and the guys who make it strongly encourage users to hack and develop their own applications for it. What's not to love?

Production runs are hilariously small, so you'll be hard pressed to be able to actually find one. Still, if you're in the market for this sort of thing, Monome is clearly the way to go.

If they make it absurdly and unnecessarily difficult to cancel, you could always call your credit card company and ask them to issue a chargeback the next time Napster sends a bill.

That usually gets their attention right away

Shame on Fox, but seriously..... aren't you all overreacting just a tad?

#1: Driverless ATO trains are indeed quite popular these days, with systems such as Bombardier's Advanced Rapid Transit becoming popular for the construction of new lines.

However, implementing such a system requires an investment far more considerable than rolling stock alone. Switching, platform and signaling equipment all need to be retrofitted as well. For a system as small and proprietary as the Disneyland monorail, it's wouldn't be all that surprising if the cost of an ATO system far outstripped any of the alternatives.

#5: Read up on Seatlle's monorail woes. Although political corruption played a big role in the demise of the project, it's done a pretty good job of scaring off any prospective monorail buyers. The situation with their current monorail hasn't been pretty either.

Monorails also have some fundamental problems -- switching is extremely difficult, and although accidents are rare, evacuations are extraordinarily difficult and dangerous.

I'd be very surprised if any new monorails ever got built (on the other hand, I'd *really* like to see a Gyro Monorail in operation...)

Gosh... I must be some sort of dinosaur -- my iPod only has breakout!

@Twoshort

This is actually true of just about any device without a "firm" on/off switch that physically cuts all power to the device. Otherwise, a trickle of current is still drawn.

In the EU, there is an increasing trend to require these on all devices, especially TV/Computer monitors. British power outlets also have switches next to each socket.

Updating the North American electrical standards to require these two features would be a lot more practical if you wanted to save energy in this manner. It'd take a generation or so to be fully implemented, but also wouldn't break compatibility or force an upgrade at any point.

#7 brings up an excellent point that I'd like to see a post on someday.

It's no secret that conservative advocacy groups pay bloggers and "independent newspapers" to advocate their cause.

A handful of college newspapers are funded in this manner, and are required to adhere to certain viewpoints. Most will jump through all sorts of hoops to hide this fact.

We have one at our university that has been causing quite a bit of trouble after its editors (and a few political bloggers) were given massive "scholarships" to start a smear campaign against the school. It's been an absolutely terrible ordeal for the university, especially since most of the attacks have been outright lies.

Shrdlu @ 21:

1) Safeway was also a supermarket in the UK up until a few years ago when it was absorbed into Morrison's. I'm assuming you're referring to the American chain, which split off from the British one in the 80s. I generally find Morrison's to have better prices, and to be cheaper than Tesco (especially for produce)

2) Goods in the UK are generally disproportionately more expensive than everywhere else (and this isn't entirely due to the VAT). Also don't forget that Minimum wage is quite a bit higher than in the US, that income taxes are a bit lower, and that the government provides free healthcare to its citizens. Taxes may be higher, but unlike the US, European governments generally invest much of their tax revenue in ways that benefit their people. I'm not sure I'd go as far as to say that the UK's "quality of life" is the best in Europe, but the higher price of food is a tradeoff that might or might not be worth it depending upon how you view the situation...
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rip_Off_Britain

3) McDonalds knows that it cant get away with selling the crap it does in the US at inflated British prices. As such, their food actually is somewhat better/slightly healthier in the UK. Depending upon your location, McDonalds may or may not be cheaper than going to a traditional "chippie", although most people, myself included, prefer the chippies.

A silly question:

What happens if you just don't pay?

Actually, the plywood box distinctly looks a lot more like a Lisa 2 or Macintosh XL (which was essentially a Lisa that could run the Macintosh Operating System)

Granted, Woz didn't have anything to do with the Lisa either.

I really do like the gritty realism of the new sets, however. Kudos to Disney for making it realistic!

shouldn't there be probes plugged into the scope?

Although a "live" view isn't theoretically possible with DSLRs in the same manner as it is on a compact point-and-shoot due to the configuration of the mirrors, a few new models are offering a live-view feature by using a second sensor (notably, the Canon 40D)

That said, one doesn't lose all that much flexibility by not having the live view.... I generally find that I compose shots far better through a viewfinder anyway.

It should also be noted that most viewfinders do not capture 100% of the frame, which means that the Zigview likely captures even less, which might be a bad thing depending upon how you look at it.

Considering that Seinfeld is pretty much the *only one* good American sitcom that didn't make it over to Britain, I don't think George would be a particularly apt name...

Since its inception, Greenpeace has set the environmentalist movement back a good 20-30 years.

Leave it to the Media Lab to come up with something that's both extremely high-tech and profoundly useless.

Tipping waiters is very much an American phenomenon. If a wealthy European executive doesn't tip you well, it's probably because your provided average service, and because (s)he assumes that you're making a decent wage on your job (which is indeed the case for Waiters elsewhere in the world).

Although there's a fine line between thriftiness and stinginess, I have enormous amounts of respect for the billionaires who don't squander their money away on status symbols, expensive cars, massive houses, etc., and choose to live modestly instead.

I have actually noticed that the truly wealthy people tend to spend considerably less on frivolous luxury items than the middle classes. Just look at the explosion of uber-expensive luxury brands in the US over the past few years.

wow. that was fantastic.

The only thing there remotely worthwhile would be the last one... I'd imagine that hardcore golfers might be interested in a portable lightning strike detector for use on courses that don't have a siern permanently installed.

CHASER --- NOW!!!

These guys have nothing on Daft Punk...

Well.... it would be very hard for things to get any *worse* than they are now.

Giuliani's got more skeletons in his closet than he knows what to do with. Is this relevant to his ability go govern? Probably not, but it will definitely hurt his chances. His social views are also quite a bit more tolerable than every other republican on the planet, although if I had to pick an NYC mayor to be president, it'd be Bloomberg. Compared to Bush, he's still an angel.

Hillary's weaknesses are somewhat hard to pick out. For starters, she's not very likable, which (believe it or not) is a rather important characteristic for a head of state to have. If I had to peg any one weakness on her, it's that she's got a vaguely undefined platform, and that she will likely try far too hard to please everyone, resulting in a stagnant 1-term presidency. Still, it wouldn't be hell.

Obama's my favorite mainstream candidate at the moment. His "lack of experience" might very well in fact be his biggest selling point. He's not a product of the system, and he built up his base the old-fashioned way.

My favorite candidate overall is Mike Gravel, although he doesn't stand a chance of being elected. As much as I'd love to love Ron Paul, I simply can't bring myself to do it -- he'd make state governments far more powerful, which could potentially be a "very bad thing" down the road.

The point really isn't for depixelation. You'd be better off looking at one of the more advanced upsampling applications out there.

Genuine Fractals does a pretty good job of upsampling pixelated photos, although their algorithm isn't all that great for solid graphics.

Fortunately, VectorMagic DOES do a good job in this area, and is in many cases better than Adobe.

There are also some fairly obvious limits as to exactly how much information you can recover from a pixelated image. VectorMagic and Genuine Fractals do their magic basically by "guessing" what's between the dots, which is something that isn't at all easy to do computationally.

Obligatory Hipster Olympics...

And yeah.... 'Irony' got real old real quick (around the time the trust fund babies started pushing the artists out of Williamsburg)

Admittedly, it looks very cool, but $120 is pretty steep for a hoodie, even though it looks like a very nice one.

Why not get Threadless to make you up some swag? They've just upgraded their printing process to allow for some rather slick prints.

Why not the Manufacturer?

Seems to me that it'd be the *easiest* place in the distribution chain for an employee to nick the product, because you'd still end up with a pristine-looking shrink-wrapped box that wouldn't look look at all suspicious to the consumer or retailer.

«Stocks have reached what looks like a permanently high plateau.»
Irving Fisher, economics professor at Yale University, 1929.

Well... he was more or less right, was he not?

He's a photographer, and used a flash against a reflective surface?

For shame!

@#28: That last sentence made me laugh out loud.

"The dollar COULD collapse"?

Darling, it's already happened. Ask any American living abroad.

George Bush realized that he couldn't get his World War III until he triggered Great Depression II.

For Christ sake..... I used to be proud of being an American. These days, I try to hide it as best I can.

Makes you smell like tomato soup!

That's odd.... I a always just assumed they've been on strike for the past 10 years?

NYC's not in *that* much danger, compared to the areas around it.

This is what a 45 FOOT increase looks like:
http://flood.firetree.net/?ll=40.7532,-73.9572&z=5&m=14

I'm no climate scientist, but I seriously doubt there's enough ice to raise sea levels by anywhere near that much.

Why not hire some out-of-work actors to do it?

$13 million USD seems pretty cheap, considering what it's giving them.

I'd say that it's money well spent.

Say what you want about Gravel, but he's more or less the only one of the candidates with any sort of progressive ideas.

We need a pretty major shakeup to fix what happened over the last 7 years. Clinton was no angel either, and set up a horrible economic situation right as he was leaving office.

I was actually sort of expecting there to be some sort of gay character in the last book.

Like the above poster mentioned, Lupin would have been perfect for the role. (Alternatively, there were numerous other minor characters that gave off that sort of vibe)

On one hand, I commend Rowling for this, but on the other, I can't help but think that leaving it out of the book was a cop-our (although she *certainly* doesn't need or even particularly want any more money).

Don't get between the brits and their tea.

I think the most damning evidence in this case is that Apple knowingly (and probably intentionally) bricked the hacked phones.

They could have very easily displayed a message to the effect of "You've hacked your iPhone. No Update For You!" which seems like a reasonable response.

In fact, it's downright bad programming for a software patch not to validate the checksums of the files it's patching...

Architecture was a well-known casualty of World War II.

Look at the absolutely *magnificent* architecture of the 1920s. Attention was paid to detail, and things were built to last.

Now look at what followed: 1950-1970 produced some absolutely horrendous samples of architecture.

Today, commercial buildings are produced on an assembly line. So depressing....

At least "New Urbanism" seems to be taking hold, which has all sorts of benefits. If we can make it affordable, we might even make it out of the 20th century architectural dark age.

There are £1 Million and £100 Million banknotes in the UK.

They're only used within the banks (specifically to maintain parity with the banks in Scotland and Northern Ireland that print their own notes), but they do indeed exist.

Given the current exchange rate, they're worth quite a bit more than $1,000,000 :-)

Compared to everything else, this scheme doesn't seem bad at all, and seems pretty much in line with what the law is these days.

The loss of the ability to resell the music is a bit disturbing, but I honestly don't see how the economics of secondhand digital media sales could possibly work without some sort of DRM in place.

The dreamliner doesn't even remotely compete with the A380.

787 is a very nice general-purpose plane, whereas the A380 is intended to service a very small number of high-volume routes due to its absolutely massive size. I doubt there will be more than a handful of airports that actually generate enough traffic to warrant an A380. Think of how many routes are currently served by the 747....

At the very least, their logo is outright sinister:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Blackwater_USA_logo.png

This entire decade has been full of real news stories that have been worthy of articles in The Onion.

This scares me more than anything else.

I seem to remember that they *did* get some of these audiophile nutjobs to do a double-blind test of a series of *insanely* expensive speaker wire against a spool of lamp cord from Home Depot.

The results were evenly distributed between each of the wires, including the dirt cheap lamp cord. In other words, nobody could tell the difference.

As long as you've got a good connection, and a heavy enough gauge to carry your signal, any moderately priced wire will be just fine. (Hint: Good connections are easy, even without gold-plated connectors, which serve only to protect against oxidation on the contacts which is pretty unlikely to begin with. Also, if you need to ask if your wire is a heavy enough gauge, it probably is.)

Go read them in whatever order you want. I certainly didn't start at the beginning, and I haven't regretted it. In fact, I'd strongly recommend against reading 'The Colour of Magic' and 'The Light Fantastic' before the rest of the books. They're not bad by any account, but they're not very representative of the series either.

A great place to start are the books that aren't as tightly connected to the rest of the series (dotted lines on the chart). 'The Truth' and 'Going Postal' both stand out in this regard. (Although it should be confessed that 'The Truth' was my first, and 'Going Postal' was my favorite)

On the other hand, it does make sense if you keep some order when reading through the main plotlines (sold lines on the chart). It's not absolutely necessary, and you can definitely get away with skipping, swapping, or jumping ahead -- however, you risk losing a bit of the backstory, although Pratchett does a remarkably good job of keeping new readers informed without boring dedicated fans to death. The Watch novels were my favorite line.

'Good Omens' was a non-discworld novel that Pratchett co-authored, and is one of the funniest and wittiest things I've ever read (ranks up there with The Hitchhikers Guide). Many Discworld fans tend to overlook it completely, which is a crying shame.

Never before has a band released an album for £40 (approx $80 USD -- tanking exchange rates = easy math), and been lauded for it!

I'm sorry, but this just reeks of arrogance on Radiohead's part. I commend them for standing up to the labels, but the pricey boxset is rather hypocritical.

It's about time!

flickr is a constant reminder of just how inferior of a photographer I am :-)

I'm *really* tired of reading about Second Life everywhere...

I think this one wins:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JRRLJ-v0KwM

Sounds like an infomercial testimonial, no?

The VW wedding commercial also goes down as being one of my favorite ads.

http://www.dvlabs.com/ has a beautiful high-res version of it.

If all ads were like these, I wouldn't need my TiVo :-)