A little surprising that my original comment got deleted - though brief and to the point, there was nothing offensive.

There is the original issue here, which has been expressed quite eloquently several times. Then there is the response. Both in words and actions. The actions seem a bit panicked. The words seem arrogant. Unfortunately, even if the words were a consideration of the situation, or even a retraction, I think the line has been crossed and there is no going back. How do we know from now on that a review is unbiased, and hasn't been paid for? Everything is temporary, though, and though it's sad to say goodbye, others like you will rise from the ashes (eventually to fall...).

In the meantime, I'll have more time doing real stuff away from the computer screen :)

Umm... frying in raw olive oil ain't any healthier - olive oil has a low smoke point, which makes it rather bad for heating to high temperatures... in fact extra virgin olive oil starts producing carcinogens when heated to frying temperatures. Deep frying should be left for deep frying oils

If the pot were quite tall, you could cook pasta in the bottom, and have the triangle bits sitting above the water, steaming your vegetables while the pasta boils.

I've done a similar thing using kerosene soaked ball (of tightly would thread) without burning myself. Kerosene burns relatively coldly, and its only the gas that burns - the liquid itself needs to evaporate (by the heat of the flame) before it burns. The trick to avoid burning yourself is to keep it moving. You could make juggling balls of this fashion and juggle flaming balls if you wanted.

Real estate agents, too, have known about this for a long time. If you're trying to sell your house, you should always bake cookies just before potential buyers come around for the inspection.

A kid I taught at high school was into pigeon racing (and no, he wasn't a nerd). Always had the most interesting stories about the races, and the other (always older) folks who were into it.

Let's get rational for a second here; the ISP is trying to inform you you're reaching your limit, so you don't overshoot it and start having to pay extra. Lets put arguments about limits aside (after all, you've agreed to a contract involving limits). It's in their interests _not_ to inform you, as you'd have to start paying them extra. But they're trying to find a more pervasive way of letting you know. How else can they do it? Via email? They'd just send it to the email address they provide you with. Who really uses isp-provided email these days? it's all webmail, so they need some window to get through to you, and maybe http is that window.

A type of Indian tortoise has a shell much the same shape

Doesn't this remind you of Homer's car design when he discovers he has a long lost brother who runs a car manufacturer?

Don't you know The Underground(tm) forbid the taking of photographs on The Tube(tm) without authorisation? Lawbreaker!

Find the integral from zero to pi of 2x*sin(x^2) dx.
Make those Canadians suffer :)

Actually in Australia we have a similar thing for non-registered lotteries/sweepstakes, usually turning out to be a guessing competition in the form of a word (like the company's name or something) with three letters blanked out, which you have to 'guess'

Was it just me, or did, at first glance, that look like a hedgehog that had been shot with a stuffed sock, and said projectile was still embedded in it's belly?

I wonder how these compare to 'magnetic' or 'ionized oxygen' wash balls. Everything I've read about these say they work, but not for the 'magical' reasons claimed. Rather, it's a mechanical effect; the balls bash the clothes around to release the dirt (up-side is you don't need detergent; down-side is your clothes wear out sooner). The ions or magnets are snake oil, and a couple of tennis balls work just as well. I'm curious if these soap nuts work on a similar principle.

Duskiboy: I see your point, but most gigs I go to are a lot smaller than you describe, and the audience aren't generally in as much of a hurry. A small flash drive would certainly work, but would cost more than producing a CD, and you can't listen to it on the way home. One of the rationales for this is to lower production costs for small bands. 100Megs should only take a few seconds to copy over usb2.0, and a small flyer/brochure explaining technical details and legalities would cut down time too. The other obvious alternative is a 'download ticket' with a URL and code, but this costs both the band and the consumer money for bandwidth (I like in the backwaters of Australia where the internets are still expensive). And you can't listen to it on the bus home.

The main problem with this is that if the files get copied to the ipod database, they'll disappear when you sync up back to the itunes library. Alternately they could be copied as files to the disk, but then they can't be played on the ipod until you get home, import the files to itunes, and sync. It could do both, but that wastes disk space, and is still a pain in the ipod. This is the primary reason why ipods suck, and you should switch the open source firmware of rockbox if your ipod is compatible.

In fact, this has been the main stumbling block to my super-good idea for bands selling music at gigs (feel free to implement this idea if you want). I go to a gig, see a band I like, want the album. But really, I don't have any need nor space for the CD. I just want the songs on my portable jukebox (iRiver H340 running rockbox), and later on my PC. Imagine if the merch stall had a little box I could jack into, hand over some coin, and voila, I can listen to the album on the way home. The box need not be much bigger than a cassette tape - just needs a CPU, some flash to hold a small linux distro, some more flash to hold the mp3 of the albums, and a number of usb sockets (connected to a variety of different USB endings - mini-USB, and those horrible proprietary apple things). Plugging in a device auto-mounts it, copies the album, unmounts it, and flashes a light to indicate it's done. Bands get more distribution with less costs. The only thing stopping it being useful is the aforementioned stupid apple restrictions.

Oh well, back to dreaming...

What if there were two tiers of friends - something like 'friends' and 'close friends'. You choose who are your close friends, but only you know who they are - from your friends perspectives, they do not know if they are close or normal/distant. Then have the apps be able to choose all friends or close friends, or ignore/deprioritise things from distant friends. Hell, you could even create an entire spectrum like this (or keep it discrete)

ARI1413: a newborn's digestive system is more or less designed (well, evolved) to pick up and nourish a colony of digestive bacteria. A baby has plenty of close contact with its mother to get them from. The stomach isn't in full swing yet, so it doesn't indiscriminately destroy anything living. Conversely, an adult digestive system generally doesn't allow bacteria to pass through the stomach alive. Research suggests little (if any) of the acidophilus you get in yoghurt or capsules survives to reach the intestines where it's needed. So this theory makes sense in that regard. On the other hand, this also complicates the suggestion that in a modern society we re-build our good intestinal flora from other people; those shouldn't really have much chance of getting to the gut either.

And that comment at the end about tonsils - heh - tonsils have been known for some time to have a role in the immune system.

Maybe the idea is you make your pot of tea, then put freshly made toast into the top of the pot, where it is kept warm by the heat of the tea?

How about making links and images as relative rather than absolute? i.e. rather than src="http://www.boingboing.net/foo/bar.jpg" use src="/foo/bar.jpg".

Strangely, my work blocks www.boingboing.net but not boingboing.net, so a lot of bits go missing :(