Kinda makes you look like Mr. Terrific. Or, Mr. Totoro-face.

In the future, everyone will be a superhero.

I think it should be metered, like water or electricity or any other utility. A small connection fee, including some basic amount of bandwidth -- enough for email and whatever -- then charge by usage.

Price = basic fee + (x * (bandwidthUsed - 20GB))

Something like that. Don't mislead. Don't charge ridiculous overage charges. Charge for what people actually use. Low users should pay less and high users should pay more.

I suppose there really needs to be either more regulation or more competition before that would actually work, though.

@18: IAWTC - I voted for the NDP in that election, but the best possible outcome was basically what we got. A Conservative minority government that couldn't do anything extreme, a Liberal party with a substantially reduced presence, and NDP and Bloc keeping and eye on things. Power goes back and forth between Tories and Grits and that's fine. While the Conservatives are in power, the Liberals will get their ducks in a row, make a case for why they should run things, and find a charismatic leader (Dion and Martin? Seriously, guys. That the best you can do?), and meanwhile the Conservatives will run out of steam. Reverse, repeat.

Prentice pretending (hopefully!) not to know what WIPO stands for while talking about this is pretty darn sad...

@17 - What kind of idiot politician would make a law like that in a million years?

I was just having a conversation earlier today about how plausibly near-future "Iron Man" was.

I'll totally settle for Mach-IV instead.

You could easily add some sort of cradle/case to an iPhone with gaming buttons on it -- like the handle pads that are available for the PSP.

@John, at least part of the reason the EEE has fast boot time (reputedly) is because of the solid-state flash drive. This has a hard disk instead. It might still be fast, but 22 seconds? Maybe not. Guess we'll see :)

The reason is the e-ink screen. I have an old PDA, and I've read a few ebooks on it, but the monochrome LCD screen is lousy for that. There are shadows behind the letters on the screen and it makes it really hard to read after a while. (Oh, and it's got a 3" screen, nowhere near 5".)

A color screen is better -- which is why I'm happy to use my Samsung P2, which has an even smaller widescreen 3" display -- as an ebook reader for now. Even that gives some eyestrain in the wrong lighting. Depending on the device, many color PDAs are low-resolution or grainy. E-ink is the real "killer" feature - it saves battery life and is far superior for reading.

The 5" version of this runs Linux, while the 6" and 9.7" versions run WinCE. The larger versions have WiFi and touch screens (optionally?).

I'm afraid you have not dissuaded me from getting excited.

This sounds promising, though the main appeal of the EEE for me is the fast boot time.

I wonder how moddable this is? Is the keyboard bigger than the EEE's? When are they going to give these damn things touch screens?

My next set-top will probably be one of those little EEE Boxes.

This reminds me of the time I tried to get into an R-rated movie a month shy of my 18th birthday.

I still haven't seen that damn movie, but I did hear it was kind of crap.

I saw a Magna Doodle the other day and thought, wow, this is like macroscopic e-paper. So good to know I'm not the only one...

When I first got my current cell phone, I was so enthusiastic about being able to download stuff. (This was like 5 years ago, it's kind of ancient now.) I downloaded a couple of games and 2 ringtones. It should have worked out to less than $15 -- instead it was $15 + $35 for the data transfer, at $50/MB. I was pretty damn shocked... especially since my service was $45/month and was advertised as including web access, and no mention was made of data fees. Of course, it was also advertised as costing $25/month (plus system access fee, plus 911 fee, plus tax -- I'm on prepaid now, $12.50/month with no catches).

I never really got into text messages, since none of my friends got into them. I don't mind the price so much, but I wish they weren't so ridiculously short. Cell phone novels might actually take off here if they allowed a couple of kB/message. They're advertising TV shows and cellular broadband, but a little text? Forget it.

Well anyway, it's never about cost, it's about the price the market is willing to bear.

Check your city's laws regarding bikes. Here, bells (always), lights (at night), and helmets (for riders under 18) are required.

The laws here also say that bikes have the right of way when there are no bike lanes and the road is narrow, not that the car drivers have actually read the rules or anything.

Oh, and a basket and a padded seat make all the difference.

One of my friends had a piggy bank like this when I was a kid.

There's a diagonal mirror in the box. The object inside is cut in two, and glued/attached to the mirror. You see the front half, but the back half is just a reflection of the front.

I used an exercise ball -- a big one -- as a chair for a while. Mainly because it was $9.99 and the chair I wanted was like $199.99. It wasn't bad. Definitely better than just using a cheap chair. Bouncy. Easy on the bum. Vaguely dangerous.

"Someday, something will need to be done about China."

Yet I can't help but think that someday, something will be done about the rest of us instead.

@#46 - I second the nod to the Young Wizards series. I swear, the only reason it's considered YA is because it has kid heroes. It has one of the coolest takes on magic I've ever seen.

I'm always a little embarrassed to go through the YA/teen section -- the pickings were slim in that section when I was 12 -- but every time I do now I see something that looks interesting and different.

#3- That's a well known urban legend. Usually phrased "We only use 10% of our brain's capacity," or something similar. It popped up in an episode of Star Trek: TNG. Deathstroke the Terminator is said to use 90% of his brain's capacity. But it's complete nonsense.

They say that belief comes from the observation that only about 10% of neurons fire at any given time. Then a different 10% fire. Then a different 10%. Much more than that and you're having a seizure. If, say, 50% of neurons fired at once, signals would get crossed.

Before I knew that, I thought it came from the observation that only about 10% of the brain's cells are actually neurons. Most of the rest are glial cells, the maintenance crew of the brain.

If you're worried about a fire, put it in a microwavable casserole dish before you nuke it.

I lit a pack of gum on fire in the microwave once, trying to thaw it. That was sort of stupid of me. But anyway, it wasn't a big fire and no one found out...

I'm not watching the video, but I'm thinking early prototype laser harp. Yessir.

It needs some thing better than a plain blue desktop background, that's for sure.

@12: iawtc

Interesting.

Sixteen or seventeen years ago we bought a combination microwave/convection oven. It served us well as we had no place to put a regular oven at the time, and it was our only oven for about 14 years. Defrost to broil with a touch of a button! Alas, we gave it away.

We still had a toaster though, a Sunbeam Model T-20 from the early 50s. It was automatic -- you just kind of shook the toast and it went down, then it came up gently instead of popping. It was possibly the best two-slice toaster ever.... wait, why am I randomly getting nostalgic about my old toaster?

This is interesting. We recently traded in our old car, which was getting rusty and had been in a couple minor accidents (the sides were scraped against a parkade pillar, for instance). We touched up some of it, but left a lot of it alone.

I hope they don't try to scam someone by selling it for much more than it's worth -- maybe $1500-2000. But they probably will. Sigh. Hey, I just checked trader.ca and found it's selling for $1700. Good!

Wouldn't CARFAX only report major accidents? We never had any single thing go wrong that was over the insurance deductible, but there were a bunch of little things by the end.

4 extra things I've never regretted taking: breakfast/energy bars, a little rope, 1-2 tarps, and a handful of zip-lock bags. Then again, for 3-4 days you don't really need that stuff.

Good luck!

I could go for this. I have a P2, which has a similar fingers-only touch screen, and it drives me crazy that I can't work it with gloves on.

I also used to do a fair amount of writing by tapping rapidly on my Handspring with a plastic mechanical pencil.

That's what a Power Ranger's morpher would look like in real life...

Too bad it costs more than my house. By a lot.

I don't think it counts as "punk" if it was designed in the 19th century...

@1
It was an ordinary puzzle ring.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Puzzle_ring

I told a friend a few months ago about this awesome idea I had of using air vented from outdoors, controlled by an electronic thermostat, to help cool grocery store freezers on cold days, and he looked at me like I was crazy.

Who's laughing now, buster?

http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/product_info.php?products_id=287
...Getting there...

I'd get this for my grandmother, but does it come in rotary?

When I saw article in my RSS feed this morning, it was accompanied by this description: "Two physicists say they can explain poltergeist phenomena – and pubescent kids are getting the blame."

I took that to mean that poltergeists were mostly pranks by schoolkids.

I don't really understand why they decided to use MPEG2 compression for these signals (or for DVDs). Aren't there codecs that can give visually comparable quality at lower bitrates? XVID or Theora for instance?

Seems like not building tighter codecs into the standards is going to bite them in the ass.

Of course, now we know why we'll all have to upgrade from HD.

I was trying to find a ceiling fixture a while ago, and I couldn't... so I was thinking of putting a table lamp on the ceiling (one with a finial, to keep the lampshade on).

I probably won't, if for no other reason than possible fire hazard, but the idea of a lamp upside-down on the ceiling amuses me.

I used the "two small rocks" method to move a washing machine a little while ago. It works pretty well.

To move the blocks over a longer distance, though, they might have used a technique that's been suggested for the building of the Pyramids... putting a series of round logs under the blocks, rolling the blocks forward, then moving the logs from the back to the front as the block rolls off of them.

They were not jewelery. They were grenade pins. Obviously.

@#6: Selling pornography IS legal in Canada. It can be tough to import, though. Border Services used to be able to block at their discretion anything they deemed "obscene." That power has been drastically reduced.

The only crack-downs I've ever heard of had to do with child porn. Beyond that, it'd have to be very extreme and illegal for other reasons to cause an issue.

Oh yeah, IANAL, but as far as I know, the Charter only applies to the government, not to corporations.

@#3:
The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms
Section Two: Fundamental Freedoms:

2. Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:

(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.

Careful -- a friend of mine got detained and interrogated shortly after 9/11 for filming a post office in NYC.

Nothing came of it, but still... leave your suspicious beards at home!

Tux is a mascot, not a logo. Quoth his creator: "Permission to use and/or modify this image is granted provided you acknowledge me lewing@isc.tamu.edu and The GIMP if someone asks."

(From the Wikipedia page.)

- CBC News at Six
- Marketplace
- Little Mosque on the Prairie
- the fifth estate
- The National
- The Hour
- This Hour Has 22 Minutes
- The Rick Mercer Report
- Mansbridge One on One
- Hockey Night in Canada

And possibly some of the kids shows.

If there need to be commercials, keep it to one commercial per break and make sure that none of them repeat during the course of the program.

A little while ago, they made a Spider-Man version of Operation.

The box art had Spider-Man lying on the table looking injured. Behind him, Doctor Octopus, leering, with surgical instruments.

Doctor Otto Octavius, for those who don't know, is a leading expert in the fields of nuclear radiation and robotics. He is not a medical doctor. And he hates Spider-Man with a murderous passion.

I found this unsettling.

A bathroom invasion, a honey-scented bee house.

Bees. My God.

"Retard" or "retarded" have kind of slipped into being insulting, but they weren't intended that way. Mental retardation is still the proper term. It means "slowed down" or "late" and just implies that the person's intelligence is (significantly) behind the average for their age (and that they won't eventually catch up). As with most loaded words, it's all in the attitude.

Developmentally disabled is more vague and can refer to many different things (including autism and cerebral palsy). Developmentally delayed is almost synonymous, but can refer to things other than intellect.

Anyway: this car is awesome, and a great idea.

I got ripped off by an unlicensed taxi for 80 Euros in Rome. On top of that, the shops in a particular area were giving kickbacks to tour guides who brought people there. I don't know if it's just because we weren't locals or what, but in Italy there seemed to be a huge culture of "take the money and run." Maybe it's different if you live there.

Good luck to this guy.

"Multus sanguis fluit."

I'm getting a haircut tomorrow... and now I'm worried...

If you're ever in Niagara Falls, there is a tour, I think a tunnel (not this one), that goes under the falls. It's totally amazing -- tons and tons of water falling just a few feet from you. I missed out on the Maid of the Mists but I'm glad I got to go under the falls.

A couple of my friends worked in a Sprint call center for a while. They weren't allowed to take days off for any reason, so one of them quit in order to take a day off to visit her family.

They said the week-long training course was brutally dull. They were stuck reading a script. They weren't allowed to make any deals, but they could redirect a call to someone whose job was to retain the customer at any cost. Once they were sufficiently sick of the job, they started doing that at the slightest hint of customer dissatisfaction.

Sprint is really shooting themselves in the foot, and they probably don't realize they're doing it. Employees who are unhappy don't do a good job, no matter how hard you try to make them work. And they don't stay, so you have to train new ones and you lose experience.

@#18: Language skills are known to be stronger in one side of the brain or the other (usually the left side, but not always, and rarely completely). It could be that people hold their phones on the side closer, nerve-wise, to their language center. I'm not sure if hearing signals cross to the other side of the brain like most other sensory signals (I *think* they do, but I can't find a decent diagram). If they do, then someone who listens with their left ear might have their language center in the right side of their brain -- and thus more activity on that side. (I'm almost certain that some people have dominant ears, just like they have dominant hands and eyes.)

I personally have trouble listening to the phone with my left ear, because it's harder to follow what's being said. Being right-handed, it would be much more convenient to listen with my left ear, but I find it really difficult. I've got some (unrelated) reason to believe that my language center is in my right brain (as it is for around 8-9% of women).

After a quick Google Image search for "talking on cell phone" I've "concluded" that the odds are roughly equal that an image of someone talking on a cell phone on a Google image search will be using their right or left ears. Some of those will be left-eared, some right-eared, some ambi-eared, and some posing for a picture. This startling evidence, combined with a sample of me and your friend, leads me to conclude that...

I'm sort of losing interest in this line of thought. What were we talking about again?

Around here, they got around a smoking ban by closing their bars at night and calling themselves "private clubs." Basically you could stay if you were already there or the bartender knew you. I don't know how widespread this was but I was at a couple of parties where they did this.

I have no idea how the law liked that.

Anyway, closing time is my cue to leave anyway, being an asthmatic non-smoker and all.

Before closing time, people just smoked outside.

How difficult is it to get a fair-interest, low-limit credit card in the US? Having had at least a savings account since I was 9, this is baffling to me. How do people go their whole lives without a real bank account?

Payday loans were in the news a while ago here in Canada for disguising preposterous interest rates as "service fees". (Basically, a $100 loan would have, say, a $5 service charge--I think it was more, but. If it's due in a month, that's a 60%/a interest rate, which is Canada's legal limit IIRC. If it's due in a week, though, that's 260%/a.)

I bought some glasses from 39dollarglasses.com a couple of years ago. The frames were pretty cheap. Though they fit fine and looked OK, I'd have liked to pick them in person. The lenses, though, were perfect.

With anti-reflective coatings and everything, and a neato silver hard case (optional -- the standard case is "free"), and shipping, IIRC they cost $80. It was nice to be able to select exactly the features and type of lenses I wanted without any haggling.

They were shipped fairly promptly, inside the hard case, inside a padded envelope.

I re-lensed some old glasses locally around the same time, and that cost $90; they wanted $150 to relens sunglasses, but I passed.

I was thinking of going around the neighborhood putting one-way arrow signs on all the side streets.

Most side streets around here have 2 traffic lanes and a parking lane, which is great until it snows ten or so inches.

Or maybe they're just like my grandmother and put quotes around "everything."

Like items on a grocery list, or people's names.

@#7
What they need is the Oto-Hime.

Or maybe just some music or white noise... though I'd prefer better ventilation.

@66
Making your own is my preference as well. That way you get it exactly how you like it. It makes it easy at a party: just get the ingredients together, get a few crusts, and make the pizzas on request.

Pepperoni, tomato sauce or pesto, grated cheese, feta, chicken, hot peppers, sweet peppers, mushrooms, spinach, tomatoes, olives... Be generous with everything but sauce and cheese, use thin crusts, cut smallish slices so everyone can try them all. Make every pizza different.

If I'm just cooking for myself I use pita bread (crunchy, very thin crust; foldable) or naan (more chewy or bready--comes in garlic!). For more people, a flatbread or pizza crust. I've got to learn to make my own crust. I keep a jar of bruschetta sauce on hand for quick tomato-and-whatever pizza lunch.

Finally, something to measure my icing sugar with.

What? It must be precise!!

I just wish the hardware makers would work with the OSS community a teeny bit more. The peripheral libraries are constantly playing catch-up.

My new MP3 player doesn't work with Ubuntu, but slightly older models from the same company do. It's frustrating because the difference is small enough that it's probably an easy fix, but large enough that it's beyond casual users. I'm stuck dual-booting for now.

One of the best toys I ever got was eight six-foot, half-inch wide wooden dowels. Those, a few lawn chairs, some old blankets, and dry weather = awesome backyard forts.

Although it occurs to me now that if I were a boy they might have been used as weapons. Hmm.

I hope they export these things. For $2000?

After what I went through to move my washer and dryer just a few feet so I could fix the floor... and then seeing the poor delivery guys actually carrying washers and dryers up and down the stairs... Clearly this is a must for everyone.

I've heard of the Caveman diet, raw food diet, or whatever it's called. "Our ancient ancestors lived on this food, so it MUST be the best for us."

They always seem to forget the "nasty, brutish and short" elements of caveman life, to take Hobbes out of context.

That said, I eat too much candy and meat. I'm not big on vegetables, though I love fruit. Overall I think I'm doing OK but could do a little better.

My last phone was donated to a women's shelter when I upgraded, but I hope it ended up recycled when it gave up the ghost (if it has, yet).

Somehow I doubt it.

Bugs: I agree with everything you just said.

My favourites were #72, #32, and #113.

Of the finalists I think I like Nigel Keam's best, but it kind of says, "Caution: Soccer balls!"

Still, that's better than...
Caution: angular biohazards!
Caution: beetles with wrenches!
Caution: agglutinating Walkman logos!
Caution: bubbles!
Caution: planets!
Caution: exponents!
Caution: the letter N!
Caution: flying Starfleet badges!

But not better than...
Caution: Old man angry at grey goop eating his cane!

OK, like this, but 5.1.

I've done a few custom Heroclix. I turned Black Cat into Buffy and Blade into Angel, a Viper into Spider-Woman, a detective + "Con Artist" (really a hooker) + beret = Jean DeWolff... and a few others. It's a fun game to play, too, but most people I know just collect and/or customize them.

If I had to paint them all, though, I think I'd go crazy! Especially since they're blind-packed and it's hard to get your favourites sometimes. I wouldn't mind painting characters I really liked, but I'm happy to just ignore, say, Sabretooth.

I painted a laptop and a calculator (as practice for the laptop) a little while ago... pretty much the same way. The laptop is red and the calculator is blue-green automotive paint (looks much nicer than the enamel on the laptop but unfortunately wouldn't stick), both with light copper spray over it. A fun project if you aren't afraid of taking your electronics apart and have good ventilation! (I got in trouble with that...)

I can't help but think it's going to need bigger wheels if it's going to survive a blizzard.

But gosh if it doesn't look cool.

I've never rented videos online, but the last two I got from a Blockbuster B&M store were scratched up and wouldn't play. (Oh, and I had to install some stuff to even try to play them on Linux. That was nice. Thanks again for stomping on my face, forever, studios.)

Blockbuster OKed and exchange, but not a refund, and I was out of the movie mood by then, so I lost my money. Bah.

I can easily drink over 2 liters of liquid on a work day.

A glass of juice at breakfast.
A glass of water before I leave.
I drink about 1 to 1.5l of various drinks at work.
At least 3 glasses of milk/soy milk/juice/water/etc. at night.

I use both 8oz and 12oz glasses at home. That list is probably an overestimate but it still works out to about 3l (12 8oz glasses). I weigh about 135 lbs.

But I'd go crazy if it all had to be water (for one thing, I hate the plastic taste of bottled water), and I probably drink closer to 6 glasses if I'm not doing much.

@Dodds, that's only if one breaks.

If they don't break, one box and some tape will hold several years worth of worn-out bulbs.

Anyway, you'd probably want to wipe up an area with broken glass on it with a damp cloth or paper towel anyway.

Oh my... chocolate + banana! My favourite flavour!

Now, usually, I would just put a banana in a bowl and put some chocolate ice cream on it like a normal person.

But this is special.

I'm of two minds.

One, at least they're warning you before they screw you over.

Two, thank God I'm with 3web.

I have no idea what they'd do if I used 75 GB in a month, since I never have, but at least they're cheaper.

They probably thought he was drunk. Hypoglycemia basically looks exactly like drunkenness.

That said, hypoglycemic coma looks a lot like alcohol poisoning... either one needs medical treatment.

You know what would be a great variant on this? A 3x5 Wacom pen tablet instead of a touch pad. Touch pads are brutal ergonomically.

Every time I see wood on a computer I think of a great description from William Gibson's Idoru of a guy who made a name hand-making beautiful, unique, sturdy computer/laptop cases out of fine woods, inlaid with metal and jewels. Rather than buying whole computers with cheap plastic cases, people would just buy the guts and upgrade, keeping their personalized cases for years.

Nice laptop cases make me happy inside.