Were they told the hardware specs? Because that's the real dead-giveaway. I mean, yeah you can make Vista look like XP... who cares if it still sucks up twice as many resources and thrashes your hard drive when it's idle?
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 5:18 PM on July 24, 2008

I just wanted to chime in that after having used 32-bit Vista for a while, and feeling it was just fine (I didn't pay for it, it is better in some ways than XP) I've really learned to love the x64 version.

Funny, I'm personally loving XP 64-bit. The stability of the 2003 codebase without any of the unnecessary services. And surprisingly, I haven't had a single problem with drivers.

There are plenty of valid... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 4:40 AM on July 25, 2008

Wikipedia will eventually own Google, metaphorically speaking.

Yeah, maybe in Soviet Russia.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:57 PM on July 24, 2008

Less harmonica. Less lead vocals. More banjo.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:54 PM on July 24, 2008

Pixar can take inferior talent like John Goodman and Jerry Seinfeld and make them successful.

Heil Hitler.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:34 PM on July 24, 2008

Tastes like Grandma.

[licks post]

You're right! It does taste like Grandma!
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 5:14 PM on July 24, 2008

'tragically, Violence.'

Much better than plain 'Violence'. In fact, I suggest that every name be predicated with an adverb.

"My name? Yes, it's Smith. Predictably John Smith."
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 10:29 AM on July 24, 2008

An aquaintance of mine once printed up his own bumper sticker:

Your twelve year-old daughter (hearts) my enormous cock.

So. Many. Key scratches.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 9:42 AM on July 24, 2008

These are sort of the Holy Grail of UAVs right now, I think.

Until you can get three or four megapixels out of the onboard camera, I'll stick with the larger (louder) 'copters.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 4:21 PM on July 22, 2008

It's all about the baby hedgehogs.

You are correct.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 3:33 PM on July 22, 2008

Also, I humbly submit the following addition:

Baby Wombat
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 3:38 PM on July 22, 2008

What does that mean, huh? "China is here." I don't even know what the hell that means.

Hey, slow down... I'm feeling like a bit of an outsider here.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 10:42 AM on July 20, 2008

I remember going to a LAN party sometime in the '90s where people were playing DN3D in preference to Quake. Inexplicable.

Count me among the crazy, then. Duke Nukem 3D was a fantastic game, made all the better because of the jetpack. Being able to fly around added a whole new dimension to the gameplay, particularly in death matches. They even had hotkeys to choose a Duke "catch-phrase" to say to your opponent after slaughtering them.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 8:31 AM on July 19, 2008

Nice sentiments, but bullshit.

100% yes. This country is full of apathetic doo-gooders who just want to close their eyes and make all the boogie men go away. It doesn't work like that. Turn the other cheek and you just get slapped twice.

If you ask me, this nation hasn't got nearly enough hate. It's got plenty of don't like, but not enough raw, animal hatred to do anything about it.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 5:36 AM on July 18, 2008

Delia is the Ada Lovelace of electronic music. She is the pioneer. Like in Genesis... before her, there was nothing. I wish more of the world knew about her contributions. Delia Derbyshire was so profoundly prescient she should be taught about in schools. Hell, they should name schools after her.

In my eyes, she is the epitome of the sexy geek girl.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 5:06 AM on July 18, 2008

It's not like it would be stealing or anything.

Yeah, because broadcasting a copy of a recording is exactly the same as playing a copy for your own personal use.

Nice try, troll.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 2:03 AM on July 18, 2008

My friend once wrote an article comparing penguins to koala bears after visiting Australia and New Zealand. The basic gist was, koala bears get stoned and sleep three quarters of their life away, while the poor penguin is faced with unbearable harshness in its life. For example, they have no knees. Which isn't a big problem when you're swimming, but makes walking on land very cumbersome. And you have to constantly worry about becoming some seal's snack. They build nests out of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 4:13 AM on July 17, 2008

But how can you be a top marathon runner, a top sprinter, a top weightlifter, and a top gymnast all at the same time.

That's easy. He's Batman.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 11:18 AM on July 16, 2008

I used to work at a place that both wrote and graded the state exams they give in the Northeast. The description of the table-leader and "voice from above" is apt: that's exactly how we did it as well. From the readers I talked with, the most painful part of the process was downgrading essays because they didn't "hit" the right number of points. For instance, if the question asked about the economic causes for the civil war, you had to mention industrialization and you had... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:50 AM on July 14, 2008

Vonnegut's overuse of em-dashes is stylistically rather clunky.

That's the editor's fault, not Vonnegut's. Unless you mean you don't like—and I really can't understand why—the stylistic use of said em-dashes—at least in small doses.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:12 AM on July 14, 2008

but five year old Yoo Ye Eun is improving upon the original work. Making it her own.

That's not entirely correct.

One can adapt the work to "make it theirs," but whether such adaptation is an actual improvement or not is still up for debate. Or not, depending on who you ask.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 11:57 PM on July 13, 2008

This? This is what happens in monoculture. [...] If anything I see these people as potential victims of a system, or symptoms of an unhealthy cultural ecosystem.

I dunno, loq. The funny thing is that they aren't decorating their cars with Nike or Gucci or other high-end merchandise. Instead, it's breakfast cereals and candies... all fairly common, inexpensive stuff. It's almost like they're trying to find the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:07 AM on July 12, 2008

No, this is how it works in Moscow.

Get it?
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:40 PM on July 12, 2008

Dammit, no one got my joke.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 12:58 PM on July 13, 2008

His lyrics are clever, unfortunately he was not born with a natural singer's voice so the presentation comes off as whiny.

This would have reached the sidebar if it had been cortex that performed it instead of Bo.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 12:56 PM on July 13, 2008

Nothing can beat Gimme, Gimme Octopus for its insane perversity.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 12:43 PM on July 13, 2008

Ibuprofin is over the counter. It's available, legally, anywhere in the country. It's even available in generic form. A kid could walk into a supermarket, purchase a giant tub of 1000 ibuprofin generics for, like, $10, but as soon as the analgesic crosses the school threshold, all of a sudden they're a drug mule. Fucking insane.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 5:30 AM on July 13, 2008

Even if the defendant did violate a right, he or she could still have immunity if there was a reasonable belief on the part of the person involved that no such right existed.

Why would the defendant possibly believe they had the right to sexually humiliate a minor? Seriously, where's the precedent? Last time I checked, strip searches could only be demanded by law enforcement under custody--presumably because the delicate nature of the procedure... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 9:53 AM on July 13, 2008

and a freaking olympic indoor swimming pool

OK, that's fucking awesome.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:13 AM on July 12, 2008

I wanna hear him play the Bourgeois trombone concerto on that thing. Bet its got a sweet low-end rumble.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 6:16 AM on July 12, 2008

I still don't understand what calculus is, and I've read the wikipedia entry and everything.

The fucking wikipedia entry suffers from the same problem most math textbooks suffer from, which is that they don't explain things in common terms that everyone can understand. Every math class I've ever been in has carried this idea around that each class should build upon the lessons of the previous. Well that's all well and good if you did great in the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 11:29 PM on July 11, 2008

Look at that, I already done screwed up.

Area of a curve: integration
Slope on a curve: differentiation

Post-flooding corrections because you were too lazy to proofread before hitting "POST"? Priceless.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 11:38 PM on July 11, 2008

I'm even more glad that I'm an optimist!

I'm glad I live in Maine.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 12:14 PM on July 11, 2008

For years and years, margarine was all you could get in southern restaurants (I don't know about the rest of the country: maybe sanity prevailed elsewhere).

I experienced a similar phenomenon the first time I tried coffee in the Great Plains. There's like a crappy coffee forcefield that starts in the middle of Iowa and continues until Colorado where, nine times out of ten, the native population you encounter will simply not get... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 12:12 PM on July 11, 2008

Well, now. That was pretty incredible.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 11:56 AM on July 11, 2008

Enjoy the movie.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 3:50 PM on July 10, 2008

I loves me some iconiclasm here and there, but a few points of clarification need to be made, in fairness:

Does Daniel do any kind of conditioning specific to a fighting tournament?

Presumably he already has some fighting experience, though it's clearly undeveloped at the beginning of the movie. If we are to believe Daniel, he admits to getting into a few scrapes in Newark. It's... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 7:20 PM on July 10, 2008

They have a standing army of stoppers* ready, armed and waiting.

* Traffic police that stop traffic when kangaroos are crossing the street.
NO, REALLY!
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 9:50 AM on July 10, 2008

You forgot flammschmeisser.

And blitzkrieg.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 9:47 AM on July 10, 2008

On September 12, 1997, I had a court date in which Princess Diana was going to formally appear. [...] It had to do with a fact of my life I have experienced since I was seven-years-old in that there is always someone who tries to steal my writing.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking, too.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 4:20 PM on July 8, 2008

HOPE VI stands as a bitter footnote to this story.

Please. HOPE VI works great in some cities, works like shit in others. I'd hardly call any of the HOPE VI projects in Boston bitter footnotes, but that's because property prices have risen so much that developers will take any heavily discounted, centrally located property they can get their hands on.

The article is so utterly disingenuous that I fear I... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 9:28 PM on July 7, 2008

It seems like a no-brainer to move to a place where the difference between minimum wage and local rents is significantly narrower, so that (provided you can find a job) you are more likely to make a living wage...

This isn't as big an issue as you might think because no matter where you go, a Section 8 voucher is adjusted to whatever the fair market rents are in the area--the amount you pay is a percentage of your income, not to exceed a pre-calculated... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 5:12 AM on July 8, 2008

Wow, that got gruesome, huh?
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 3:17 AM on July 4, 2008

This video does roughly the same thing in 1/4th the time and is generally way more rad and funny.

Thank you for that awesomeness to contrast with this less-than-awesomeness.

Lightsaber punk: "You're not going to arrest me..."
Stormtrooper: "Shut the fuck up."
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 9:40 PM on July 7, 2008

Fucking WOW: DC10 jet converted to fight fires. More info. Just how low do they fly to the deck? Very low.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 4:58 PM on July 7, 2008

"I mean like, what's going to happen?"

"Well, you could get raped."

"Oh, yeah... but you live through that."

That's about where I stopped. Drunk girls are st00pid. News at 11.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 2:25 PM on July 6, 2008

And also this very charming hot-air ballon disaster video.

Now that's how you handle yourself when you're going down.

Note to self: turn Scottish.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 12:26 PM on July 6, 2008

When the Ostrogoths, Visigoths and Vandals are at our gates, I'm going to throw them the fucking key. We deserve it for allowing this kind of crap. FOX should have all media accreditation stripped bare, and be required to run a banner on the top of every program they air that says, FOR ENTERTAINMENT PURPOSES ONLY.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 6:21 PM on July 3, 2008

Taking something that isn't yours? That is theft.

Nothing is being taken, ergo, it's not theft. Too hard?

Here...

Copying == Duplicating
Taking != Duplicating
ergo...
Copying != Taking

People who keep bleating about "blah blah the legal definition is" are, by this point in the thread, far past... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 6:02 PM on July 3, 2008

Yeah, sorry for derailing the Ramones-a-thon. I'm going to have Blitzkrieg Bop in my head all day now.
posted to MetaFilter by Civil_Disobedient at 6:21 AM on July 3, 2008