I've advised my parents (who are about to sell a condo that's paid for, and finance a new one) to break up that money into multiple banks.

They are normal people. They're just retired.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 6:32 PM on July 15, 2008

Logically, the possessive of "it" should be "it's." That it is not so is one of those myriads of inconsistencies in modern English.

What????? No!

"His," not "hi's."

"Hers," not "her's."

And "its," not "it's."

You know, all consistent-like and stuff.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 2:41 PM on May 22, 2008

You don't have to "memorize different spellings for the same sounds." First you think of the word you want, then you think of how it is spelled (if you are writing) or how it is pronounced (if you are speaking). You don't think of how a word is pronounced and try to derive the spelling from that! If you did it that way, you'd make all kinds of mistakes.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 6:00 PM on May 22, 2008

So basically, if you get the $75 deluxe set with the multitrack files, the CC license lets you release your own remixes. Sweet.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:35 PM on March 2, 2008

Maybe I'm stupid, or maybe all the births I've ever seen have occurred on television where the reason for this is obvious, but do most women give birth in the altogether?
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 11:47 PM on January 20, 2008

My favorite of his is probably Piano Phase. It hurts my head in a good way.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:56 AM on January 2, 2008

Dear Google. How do I shot Web?
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:39 PM on October 19, 2007

Needs Alaska' Salmon-Thirty-Salmon.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:30 PM on October 19, 2007

Where's "Insane in the Brain"?
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 9:41 AM on October 10, 2007

Nesmith did a great variety show called "Television Parts" in the '80s too. I still remember a couple of songs from that show, and a young Jay Leno having to shut off his Buick's engine because it was burning gas faster than the attendants could pump it in, and the movie "Old Yeller" re-enacted in five seconds (old guy comes out, yells).
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 12:18 PM on September 23, 2007

That's Therapists, Mr. Connery.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:20 PM on September 15, 2007

There was (what I guess must have been) a variant of Elk Cloner going around the high school I went to. Someone had hex-edited their OS so the line on the CATALOG that normally said "DISK VOLUME 254" now said "LEE'S DISC". The reason I think it must have been Elk Cloner was that it used the same mechanism to spread and kept a flag in the VTOC to track which disks were already infected and which were not. I wrote a couple little programs to write a fresh DOS to a disk (to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 9:33 AM on September 2, 2007

C.H.I.C.K.E.N.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 12:24 AM on May 22, 2007

Early in the series (first episode, IIRC) Penn pointed out that if they called people "frauds" or "con artists" they could be sued, but if they called them "fuckers" or what they did "bullshit" then they were legally protected, since that was clearly a matter of opinion.

Of course, it could also be that he just likes swearing.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 1:00 AM on April 29, 2007

I don't think anything I wrote when I was 16 would be very much better.

A friend of mine and I wrote a novel together my senior year of high school. It's no great work of literature, but I humbly submit it is better than "The Eye of Argon."
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:22 AM on April 15, 2007

I'm not going to pay for an AAC just so that I can transcode it to MP3 with all the loss of quality that entails.

You're not going to lose any noticeable amount of quality going from 256Kbps AAC to any supported MP3 bitrate. A 256Kbps AAC is going to be audibly lossless (though, natch, the waveforms won't match up) and higher-quality than the maximum MP3 bitrate, which IIRC is 320Kbps.

Seriously, those of you who want lossless?... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:37 PM on April 2, 2007

The reason to buy from another provider is that you don't have to deal with converting the tracks to MP3, if that's the format you want. Or it's cheaper. Both of which are perfectly good reasons.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 7:58 AM on April 3, 2007

The shampoo mohawk was great. The rest, meh.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 7:48 PM on February 5, 2007

I remember playing with one of these when I was a kid too.

"Spell... boobsher!" (It wanted "butcher.")

"Spell... carrotman!" (it wanted "caravan.")
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 5:03 PM on January 30, 2007

the head fascist & his sadistic henchman were presented as evil personified

I got the impression that the Captain was in fact trying to do the best he could, knowing that his military career at the very least, and almost certainly his life as well, was on the line. His job was to suppress the rebels, but he couldn't achieve that. In fact they were more or less rubbing his nose in that fact, taking great risks that he nonetheless failed to... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:55 PM on January 29, 2007

MetaFilter: the ture, pure expression of anythong
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 4:38 PM on January 26, 2007

a good way to think about whether a situation/story is ironic or not is whether or not it seems like an impish god -- the kind that likes to make people eat their words -- is pulling the strings

Which is why Spider Robinson coined the phrase "God is an iron." (Iron, in his pun-infested mind, meaning one who commits irony.)
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 6:57 PM on January 15, 2007

Apparently scientists have already genetically-engineered cows that are supposedly not susceptible to BSE because they lack the protein that the prions fuck up.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 5:53 PM on January 7, 2007

The lack of sleep is indeed a symptom. Of holes in their brain.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:59 PM on January 11, 2007

Why do people think Demetri Martin is funny?

I'm 38 and nearly peed my pants laughing at "Sames and Opposites." If he never does anything else that funny in his career, he will forever have a place in my pantheon.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 9:44 AM on December 9, 2006

Here's another robot with a different approach.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 1:08 AM on December 5, 2006

Oregon can indeed be treacherous, especially if you think you're a better driver than you are. I was coming back from Utah last year right after Thanksgiving, and somewhere in the Oregon mountains watched a big 4x4 truck do a complete flip, bounce once on its roof, and fall off the side. It was dark so I have no idea how far they fell, but it could conceivably have been off the side of the mountain -- I couldn't see the vehicle from the road. My guess is that the driver swerved for some reason... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 1:03 AM on December 5, 2006

What is particularly humorous about this is that the domesticated dog is already a permapuppy (i.e. neotenic) compared to its wild counterparts. Just like we are.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 12:33 PM on December 1, 2006

Ted Chiang's work reminds me very strongly of Greg Egan's, although the subject matter differs a fair bit. If you liked what you read of Chiang, seek out some of Egan's short work too.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:35 PM on September 2, 2006

As a young assembly-programming nerd I always wanted to put this sign up at an Assembly of God church:

ASSEMBLY OF GOD: ∞ BYTES, 0 ERRORS
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 11:29 AM on August 21, 2006

can you point toward an example of a really good ms product?

Decathlon!
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:20 PM on August 15, 2006

Also, to be honest, Excel is really a very good piece of software. You rarely hear people slagging on it the way they do Word and PowerPoint.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:35 PM on August 16, 2006

I've been making photocopies of my discount cards for a while now -- just the backs, of course, and "laminating" them in pairs (two different barcodes back to back) with clear packing tape. Never had a problem. "I believe your barcode is on this side."
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:29 PM on August 15, 2006

The cards are being used to track item popularity among the biggest spenders. If you regularly buy a lot, and you like fancy cheeses, and there are a substantial number of other shoppers who also regularly buy a lot and like fancy cheeses, why then, you're likely to see the fancy cheese section expand. Because stores make all their money on the big spenders and want them to shop at their store instead of somewhere else. If these shoppers are having to go to some other store... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:37 AM on August 16, 2006

The effects of suffocation are pretty much the same regardless of whether you use CO2 or some other gas.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 5:37 PM on August 12, 2006

Oh my God, they killed Kenny!
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:44 AM on July 6, 2006

Yeah, I couldn't believe that either.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:49 AM on July 6, 2006

judges tear into them on a weekly basis, often insulting them, making them feel bad, destroying their dreams in arguably the most heartless way possible

That's why it's so popular -- it's like life in a microcosm.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 7:55 AM on May 26, 2006

Okay, say you share some personal information with a company. You would agree that an owner of that company has a right to look at your personal information, I'd assume?

Well, guess what: you can become an owner of most big companies for under $100. Unless the company in question is Google, then it'll cost you over $400. Berkshire Hathaway? $80K+. But don't worry, you'll get most of that money back, maybe even a little extra, when you sell the one share of stock that you... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 11:43 AM on April 29, 2006

No, I would not.

Seriously? If you walked into a cafe with say ten employees and bought something with your credit card, would you really expect that the owner of the cafe would not have the perfect right to see your credit card number if he wanted?

The only difference between that and, say, Amazon is that Amazon is a much bigger company with a lot more owners and it is simply impractical for every owner to be able to inspect... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 12:07 PM on April 30, 2006

Of course companies don't work that way, that was not and never was my point, as I just got done explaining in the post right before yours. Aside from illustrating the ethical difficulties inherent in publicly-held corporations, of course, which I'd have thought would go over pretty well around here...
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:12 PM on May 1, 2006

Yeah, couldn't you see my bigger overarching point, overarching over that? Like an arch?

Okay, I should probably have put more time into developing the idea before I posted.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 6:14 PM on May 2, 2006

minimum wage acts as a barrier to entry in the labor market.

Here's another way to look at it: a minimum wage makes it illegal to work if your labor is worth less than that amount hourly.

The value of your labor is set by supply and demand. How many other people have the skills you have vs. how many jobs are available for people with your skills. If you have no skills, then anyone can do the same jobs you can, and it becomes a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:03 PM on May 1, 2006

you're saying that if some lunatic came along to offer me a $100 an hour to, say, post batshitinsane shit to the web, it would be illegal?

Other way 'round. If the minimum wage were $100, it would be illegal to pay you less than $100 an hour to post batshitinsane shit to the Web.

It makes perfect sense, once you understand that there is an objective, innate "value" to labour, which exists... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 11:05 PM on May 1, 2006

I did read my own link. I had never heard that this was a problem before (the war).

Actually, it was, I remember hearing about this several years ago.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 11:23 PM on April 29, 2006

Are you people really suggesting that the median life expectancy of a WW2 veteran is 80?!?
or early 70s for Korea vets

Well, admittedly my sample size is pretty small, but I have five uncles, most of whom (I want to say all but am not 100% sure) served in either WWII or Korea, and the two who have died were well into their eighties when they died, within six months of each other, a couple years ago. The others are of course are still alive... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 8:22 PM on May 1, 2006

Tim Cohen dropped out of the Air Force academy six months short of becoming an officer?

THANK YOU JESUS!
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 7:29 PM on May 1, 2006

Criticizing Steely Dan because their records are over-produced to the point of soft-focus porn is perfectly on target.

On the contrary, it misses entirely the point of Steely Dan, which is to show off your hi-fi system.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 7:00 PM on April 30, 2006

I thought PlayStation was the absolute stupidest name for a game console

Are you kidding? It's great. You work on your workstation; you play on your playstation. In one stroke Sony dissed PC-based gaming (why would you play on something meant for work?) and defined their console as the alternative.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 1:27 PM on April 27, 2006

Y'all are talking about living comfortably. Living well is a step up from that. A step way up from that. Forbes is just giving CEOs a way of measuring their schlongs without having to unzip. This is especially handy for female CEOs, as they have no other way of comparing dick size.
posted to MetaFilter by kindall at 10:44 PM on April 25, 2006