If they really didn't bother to find out who may have been on the other side of that door before knocking it down it sounds like pretty shitty police work.

I'm becoming increasingly convinced that granting expanded powers to enforcement agencies tends to lend itself not only to abuse but also to serious inaccuracy. If you don't have to work to back up your suspicions by building a real case, suddenly some real incentives designed not only to protect... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 7:40 PM on August 7, 2008

I've been part of some interesting groups of people, know a bit about what it's like to get caught up in a group identity and the excitement of feeling that group is doing something fresh and worthwhile. I've kindof wondered about the People's Temple and wondered if being a part of it was like that for a while. And it's interesting to see recent radical religious movements that embraced the elements social responsibility implicit in Christianity in a time where most of it seems mysteriously and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 10:25 AM on August 7, 2008

When George W. Bush is desperately trying to make you obey international law and adhere to the standards of civilized society

I think it's far more likely the key phrase is "President Bush asserted authority" -- that this is another manifestation of the lawyering style of the current administration.

And this is a terrible poster-case, even if it is a good idea to give accused foreign nationals access to their... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 11:20 AM on August 6, 2008

Uhh...justice isn't when you achieve good ends by dubious means.

I don't know, man. I do think procedural details like this are important, and the death penalty in the hands of the state makes me nervous. But it sounds like Medellín didn't:

* notify the authorities that he was a Mexican citizen
* raise the issue of not being informed of his Vienna Convention rights during the first trial

And... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 12:09 PM on August 6, 2008

It was great fun, but let's call a spade a spade: it was a cash-grabbing rip-off of somebody else's intellectual property.

Like hell.

Even assuming there's a clear and compelling legal case that Scrabulous infringes on one of the sloppily-named "intellectual property" laws (and I'm not sure there is) there should not be. Why in the world should a board game have any kind of property status for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 9:50 AM on July 29, 2008

These guys built this application. Did they seriously think, having done so, that two large game companies could not possibly do the same thing?

So far, that position appears to be correct.

If someone offers you ten million bucks for some flash nonsense of very dubious legality you whipped up in your spare time... TAKE IT.

Probably a good idea.
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 10:40 AM on July 29, 2008

We understand your passion for the SCRABBLE brand.

Who actually talks like this? Who actually thinks that any passion people feel for Scrabble has anything to do with a *brand*?

similar to what the recording industry did when kids were posting music to illegal sites and allowing their friends to copy the music for free.

This is one of the problems with the practice of referring to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 9:07 PM on July 29, 2008

Q: What’s the policy argument for having copyrights in the first place?

A: The term of protection is what allows authors, composers and other creators to successfully exploit their works.

Because if they couldn't for a term of their lifetime plus an additional lifetime, nobody would ever be able to reap benefits for their works.

I'm fully behind the basic copyright bargain, but let's face it, this case... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 10:29 AM on August 2, 2008

If you have the time to camp out in front of the store to buy a luxury product like that, the economy you must still be doing reasonably well.

The statement makes more sense that way. There's a lot of reasons you could be seeing danger clouds on the horizon while doing well enough for yourself to buy consumer electronics.

People still buy Moleskin notebooks for $12 a pop even though staples sells... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 3:33 PM on July 17, 2008

Learned Logo as a kid, loved revisiting some of the ideas when reading the heavily Papert influenced Turtles, Termites, and Traffic Jams 10 years ago. Just played with Scratch today for the first time. I'd love to have that mind well and able and with the world a bit longer. And it'd sure be interesting to hear his thoughts as a firsthand observer of his own recovery if he reaches that point.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 6:17 PM on July 15, 2008

This is cool. I wish the video were finer resolution -- I'd love to get a better view.

This is one poem that's always been interesting to me because it managed to move me with the concept of an experience long before I had it -- others I sometimes like because they capture an experience I've had, but I'd never seen anything like it until one fall about 8 years ago when I was out by Utah lake, and suddenly it just happened, just like he said "one bird, prompted by... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 3:46 PM on July 15, 2008

The fact is, you will never get enough qualified math teachers until you pay them enough to make teaching a viable alternative.

I have my doubts that pay scale is the biggest problem. Phillip Greenspun's on to something when he talks about how university science really doesn't pay well, yet competition for positions is fierce.

I think he's partly correct that some of the reason for this is that many people don't have the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 4:05 PM on July 10, 2008

Can someone tell me why discussion of making-people-better-at-math instantly invokes Algebra and Calculus?

Some kind and degree of algebra is pretty much the foundation of everything else.

Calculus... yeah, probably somewhat overemphasized, given the breadth of useful Math out there, and I think one could reasonably argue that linear algebra and probability/basic statistics and some discrete math are all just as practical... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 4:21 PM on July 10, 2008

No room for standardized testing with that approach

If this were true, I'd largely consider it a feature instead of a bug. :)

But I don't think it's true. I think it just means you can't take a kitchen sink approach with mandated/tested curriculum under the setup I described.
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 10:52 PM on July 10, 2008

All kids deserve a Huck Finn summer. We perhaps have lost our collective minds about our overscheduled, overstressed young.

The former statement is obviously a little crazy, but the later isn't so much. It's possible the Times article misreads the mood and doesn't talk enough about specific problems the park causes, but if they really are having this much trouble figuring out how to bring this project (and the kids) inside of the community, I think... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 12:29 PM on July 10, 2008

I'm highly disappointed he supported the final bill. It definitely calls into question my support for him. But I think it should be noted that he really did support three amendments to strike immunity from the bill:

5059 - Specter's amendment ("To limit retroactive immunity for providing assistance to the United States to instances in which a Federal court determines the assistance was provided in connection with an intelligence activity that was constitutional.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 5:47 PM on July 9, 2008

Bottled water is delicious water in convenient, portable form. I don't want to always want to carry water around with me, so sometimes I buy it in a bottle.

Yeah, I think this a missing factor in the analyis Penn and Teller don't bother to explore. Bottled water is portable water. I think the most interesting question is when and how we got to a place as a society where people stopped being interested in carrying their own containers. Didn't people... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 9:48 AM on July 5, 2008

I think proselytizing against the evils of bottled water is almost as big a fad as is drinking bottled water.

That might be true, but does it make the reasoning invalid? It seems true that disposable water bottles generate unnecessary waste, and costs several orders of magnitude more for dubious benefits.

But advanced-level white people, the higher-ranking white people, realized that they were creating a lot of waste,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 11:01 AM on July 5, 2008

The World Bank kicked off this entire mess back in 2005

Now, now. Don't be too hard on The World Bank. When have they given bad advice before?

Who's in favor of this crap besides corn farmers?

Unfortunately, Barack Obama.

Maybe it's wrong for me to blame this on Iowa, but I wonder if this would be anywhere near the issue that it is if it wasn't the first... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 9:25 AM on July 5, 2008

But socialized medicine is even worse. There's no room for competition, innovation is stifled, and you end up with a typical bloated bureaucracy whose actual function is growing the bureaucracy, not treating patients.

Even though don't think it's fair to take it as an absolute that a state/social program has no room for competition or innovation, I'm not sure we have the cultural knowledge to make that work yet, so I'm willing to take it as a likely... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 5:04 PM on July 2, 2008

Either one refutes Hitchens on the evidence, or one risks being labeled a gasbag.

Man, now that's a false dilemma. A rather sizable chunk of Hitchens' conclusions are based on tenuous logic or value judgments, rather than laying directly on facts.

This article has some of those problems. I respect that the guy has gone to directly experience waterboarding, and confirm what nearly everyone with firsthand... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 2:26 PM on July 2, 2008

I just can't face another viral marketing post.

Yeah, and it bugs a bit that someone's very first metafilter post is a viral marketing post.
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 12:05 PM on July 2, 2008

In a world of outrageous suffering, unbelievable poverty, continual exploitation of the innocent and heinous abuses of power I find it difficult to believe that God is truly concerned (if there is one, and God is not indifferent) about whether or not women wear "feminine" skirts that reach below the knee.

I suspect people oriented this way probably see it something like this verse in James Ch 4:"From whence come wars and... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 9:54 PM on July 1, 2008

fashion buffer overrun

I just want to say I love this phrase. :)
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 9:54 PM on July 1, 2008

If we had true "one person one vote" representation the Republicans would be a tiny minority,

I can agree this gives Republicans (or anybody who can run a better populism that'll play in socially conservative rural areas) an unfair advantage.

I don't think it's as pronounced as one acre, one vote, though, and the problem is that without some kind of compromise like this, you run the risk of rural areas becoming nothing but colonies for the cities.
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 1:56 PM on June 20, 2008

weston Ummmm, so instead you think we should let the rural areas bludgeon the cities?

No. I don't think I implied any such thing, and I don't think anybody has a convincing case that's actually happening, hyperbole aside. Even through the regional electoral filters, populous areas still have a much greater influence than rural areas do, it's simply only roughly proportional instead of strictly proportional.

Do people... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 9:19 PM on June 24, 2008

John McCain (who I will not vote for; nor will I vote for Obama) has been an against-the-grain Republican for his entire career. He's not a Bush Neocon

McCain's main problem may or may not be that he's a Bush neocon:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnb2IrsU1Cg

But he sure looks like he supports the Bush neocon foreign policy.

I sat by and actually watched the Democratic... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 9:23 PM on June 24, 2008

"Religion distracts people from Jesus, Doug said, and allows them to isolate Christ's will from their work in the world."

Yes, I think that's part of the problem here, but almost certainly not in the same way Doug Coe thinks it is.

"As if Jesus doesn't know anything about building highways, or Social Security."
"“He excelled in every activity. He was a great... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 8:30 PM on June 24, 2008

(And I keep going through this, and I can't believe the conclusions David Coe's drawing out of the story of King David's transgressions, and following it up with appreciation for Genghis Khan's methods of disposing and torturing the conquered.)

I regret Ms. Rehm's affliction, but I agree: she is unlistenable, whatever the cause.

Hmmm. I don't find her voice the least bit problematic, and most days, I really enjoy her show. The... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 8:50 PM on June 24, 2008

Separately he has been called "The Most Dangerous Author in Britain" for his religious views.

This puzzles me a bit. To the extent that Pullman may have been able to construct a compelling anti-theist mythology, I realize it's possibly genuinely subversive. But I almost want to laugh at the idea that some people find purported atheist fiction threatening, and I think a man like C.S. Lewis, who found in pagan mythologies... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 6:40 PM on June 23, 2008

That Samurai scene was incredibly amusing to me as a 12 year old -- it's so completely non-sequitur. It's like snakes on a plane, except 100 times less likely. A samurai. Standing in the sewer. Friendly to Cliff. Ready to chop a helicopter in half. In case one should happen by chasing a friend.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=mynp5q0C0eE

Someday I'll have to watch Castle of Cagliostro to see if the narrative makes anymore sense. I sure liked the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 1:24 PM on June 22, 2008

eiπ = -1

I actually bring that up to illustrate a problem with this question: any succinct expression of a non-trivial, worthwhile proposition or fact apropos to the question is likely to be dense with meaning that's fully parseable only if you're familiar with the field. Real understanding of the single fact is likely to be dependent on initiation to a broad domain of facts.

On the other hand, maybe that's a good takeaway lesson, too.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 12:13 PM on June 19, 2008

What you're hearing is the similar to the easter eggs in some scanners and older disk drives that allow them to play music by modulating the speed of the motors; a neat trick, but certainly not a feature.

So this is not digital waveform data being fed to a DAC?

Anyone know when that was first done?
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 2:14 PM on June 18, 2008

There's something going on with Shyamalan and Day of the Triffids.
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 10:29 AM on June 18, 2008


MeFiHack, Copyright 1999-2008
See license for details.

Shall I pick a character's race, role, gender and alignment for you? [ynq] n
Pick a role for your character:
a - Programmer
b - Librarian
c - Bard
d - Samurai

Pick the race of your character:
a - human
b - troll

...
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 12:31 PM on June 11, 2008

the software development kit and other tools for developers have the potential to be more important to Apple and its users than the specifics of this year’s phone.

Yup.

This is not the first software ecology for mobile devices.

But despite the fact that the iPhone is not the open nirvana lots of geeks would love it to be, it's going to be the best game in town and standard-setting because it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 2:31 PM on June 9, 2008

for real? an sdk is changing the industry?

No. An SDK that sucks less combined with a high-profile distribution portal that sucks less (and is easier to put your app onto) is going to change the industry.
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 3:04 PM on June 9, 2008

I'll buy one when it does VoIP and I don't have to give any money to the criminal AT&T.

iCall Brings Seamless VoIP To IPhone Users.

(Sortof. Not yet.)

(I'd love to see a mic/headset for the iPod touch that allowed the same thing.)
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 3:09 PM on June 9, 2008

I just can't shake the feeling that the iPhone, like Palm (and WindowsCE) devices, are a bit of a hammer looking for a nail.

To the extent this is true, it reminds me of the story of the home computer. They were put out long before most people could really figure out what to do with them, and by and large, most people don't really need them. A typewriter, calculator, and phone will get you by, and correspondingly, most people use their computers for... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 5:03 PM on June 9, 2008

as if he had been railroaded for being a programmer.

You won't find me wearing a "Free Hans!" T-shirt soon, but that doesn't stop me from feeling uneasy about some aspects of the case. Among them are wondering how his lack of social skills (possibly Asperger's) might have tinted perceptions in the courtroom, the fact there was at least one other ready suspect available (Sturgeon), and that much of the case against him really seems to add up... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 11:50 AM on June 9, 2008

The moral argument is bunk. God doesn't give a shit if you abort your child. Said child is not a miracle. It's a biochemical reaction under the right conditions,

I don't fear legal abortion, but I definitely fear the reductionism here, amongst other moral hazards. There are a lot of things that are pretty important -- perhaps *all* of the things that human beings find important -- that could be described as "biochemical reactions under the right... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 12:43 AM on June 7, 2008

As for the comments about Clinton, it's really strange to me how so many Democrats today sound like parrots of right-wingers from 15 years ago, with their dire predictions about how the bitch won't stop until she's destroyed everything good.

For me, watching Clinton is a bit like watching a mountain climber on Everest who isn't going to make the summit but is *so* *close*. I'm only modestly ambitious, but I can definitely relate to the ambition that... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 4:35 PM on June 4, 2008

No argument from me, scody. Personally, I think she should concede.

But one more point on this. She may not even just be being selfish. She may genuinely believe she is much more qualified to be President than Obama is (or that she's much more qualified to beat McCain than he is) and if he gets the nomination instead of her, the country will really suffer, either by effectively gaining McCain as president (a prospect I have been told by a few people somewhat familiar... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 5:02 PM on June 4, 2008

"Objective: Obtain a position at IBM"
—some idiot applying to Amazon.com
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 11:32 AM on June 2, 2008

I'm on Comcast where I'm living and I couldn't get on last night at all, which made a few hours of insomnia a little more work than usual. Wondered if there was something up.

On one hand, I'm kindof cranky if this was screwing up the service.

On the other hand, p0wnz0r1n Comcast!
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 2:17 AM on May 31, 2008

getting rid of competition (Keyhole).

Didn't Keyhole actually get turned into Google Earth?

they are the Microsoft of the web generation.

This comparison is only superficially valid. They're both wildly successful in their space, they both buy other companies, they're both tech companies, but one might as well compare Microsoft and Oracle, Google and Apple, etc. The thing I think... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 10:52 AM on May 29, 2008

All the US carriers (except T-Mobile) have been dragging their feet on VoIP-over-WiFi

I may have misunderstood this, but it looks to me like T-Mobile is:

(1) Asking you to buy a T-Mobile branded WiFi router to use this
(2) Use a specific phone rather than any handset (or other device) with 802.11x and a SIP client
(3) Charging an additional $10 monthly fee

If this is all true, I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 11:47 AM on May 29, 2008

To those who say cellphone companies don't want people to run random software on their phones... Windows Mobile already disproves this.

Windows Mobile disproves this (mostly) if developers don't have to have their applications signed in any way to participate on the network.

the Apple experience is all about getting everything from Apple.

This is demonstrably false with Apple's other... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 3:49 PM on May 29, 2008

My comment wasn't about mp3s.

But it rebuts your thesis completely. If you don't want to be locked into Apple's platforms, there are plenty of choices you can make that will make it easy-peasy to abandon Apple's hardware at any point in the future. If there's "lock-in" at any point in the customer's purchasing decisions, it's not in the Apple Hardware, it's at the Apple store, and purchasing there is completely optional,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 11:13 AM on May 30, 2008

Now stop it! that seriously .... tickles!

Are we talking about this Gray? Or this Dyson?

The Dyson who worked with Feynman to formulate quantum electrodynamics.

People who are dismissing Gray and Dyson are not all irreverent un-knowns.

Dismissing, or rebutting?

Rebutting:

"business-as-usual ... would... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by weston at 12:38 AM on May 28, 2008