eriko: "Mr O'Leary is expected to announce plans to buy more than 50 extra aircraft, as part of plans to beat the recession by undercutting more expensive rivals."

- from the last link. I'm assuming that means they'll buy something capable of the distance?
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 4:56 PM on November 2, 2008

Just wait until camphones that embed GPS data in the photo are the norm. Can you imagine the Google Maps mashups? (The inevitable march of technology is going to privacy a charming anachronism).
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:02 PM on October 17, 2008

...going to make privacy...

Stupid brain.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:07 PM on October 17, 2008

Um, like what?

The one about murder?
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:28 AM on October 10, 2008

I thought about doing this the last time carbon credits came up on metafilter... based on the technically-not-dry states in the US that give out liquor licences to local churches who then sit on them. But like DU, I figured if I was successful at gaming the system, they'd change the rules. I really need to get off my backside and do something with my bright ideas occasionally.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 6:32 AM on September 19, 2008

Does anyone know why expertexchange hasn't been blackholed by google yet? It seems like such an obvious candidate for blackholing.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 7:39 AM on September 15, 2008

Jesus, that's a messy interface. Each post has Votes, Answers, Views, Title, Tags (which are replicated in the side-bar and is therefore superfluous), Last Update Time (I assume - it might be Post Time, it's not labelled), Username (again, might be last posted or first posted), then some random number I have to mouse over to find out is "Reputation Score", Silver Badges and Gold Badges (WTF?). And that's for every post on the front page. I had no idea it would be that bad.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 9:02 AM on September 15, 2008

Did you know I'm feeding half my RSS feeds through Yahoo Pipes to remove posts with the word "chrome"? Enough, already.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:14 AM on September 11, 2008

Does Chrome do something that firefox doesn't do? What is it's great must-have feature?

Tabs sit in their own processes, so a dead tab doesn't take down the entire browser. Consequence of that is that it eats lots of memory. With Opera/Firefox's "restart with all your old tabs open" already in place, that doesn't seem like a great trade-off to me.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:26 AM on September 11, 2008

delmoi: I don't think it's a plan so much as an observation.

I have a throwaway address that begins with an underscore. I've used it all over the web for... must be getting on for ten years now. Usenet too. It receives a trivial amount of spam in comparison to my "real" addresses.

I suspect that the lists get scrubbed by poor regexes before they're resold.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 2:31 AM on September 4, 2008

AbnerDoon - they put that stuff on t he google.org domain, instead of google.com
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 5:29 AM on August 28, 2008

When you become a {{nurse|doctor|physiotherapist|dentist|whatever}}, you are explicitly giving up the right to withhold treatment. Your job is to provide medical services to other human beings, period. There is no negotiation, there is no wiggle room. Your job, and you know it before you go in, is to heal.

So a doctor shouldn't withhold treatment to hasten death in a terminal case? Terri's Law?

Or maybe you're going to tell... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:45 AM on August 24, 2008

But, you know, nice snark! Really, I give you a 9.2.

I just have this funny knee-jerk reaction against moral absolutism. I don't have all the answers, I certainly don't think anyone else does, so I think we need some give and take in the system to deal with corner cases as they arise.

To take an example from this thread, lets say there was a committed, Islamic female medical student, who wanted to study in Europe and then go... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:45 AM on August 24, 2008

And nothing is stopping you or anybody else from setting up a pharmacy in these areas to provide these things. No need to force others to follow your worldview.

Wait a sec. What about abortion clinic protesters?
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:13 PM on August 24, 2008

What about them? They can't stop you from opening a pharmacy to dispense abortion pills, and their protesting can't force you to follow their worldview.

You really don't see what will happen if you try to open the only pharmacy within 100 miles that dispenses RU486?
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:27 PM on August 24, 2008

True dat, well it still applies here, to both of you.

BrmP84: was that directed at me?
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 2:15 AM on August 25, 2008

"Could you blow my car over here?"

That would be a bit... socially unacceptable over here. Would you really get away with that in the US without someone calling the police?

(Not that I don't agree that the idea can be trivially worked around).
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:10 AM on August 19, 2008

SteveInMaine: His Callsign. Not saying it's true, but the name, address and hobby match.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 9:44 AM on August 14, 2008

nasreddin: if you have some knowledge of the situation, it would be nice if you let the rest of us in on it.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:34 AM on August 8, 2008

And it's my birthday. Maybe I'll buy a lottery ticket.

There's a British Royal family minor child that was born on 8/8/88, too.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 1:33 PM on August 7, 2008

So in Britain you're considered a minor until at least 20 years old, then?

Charles is 59 and they still won't let him have a job.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 9:55 PM on August 7, 2008

Assuming whatever you guys are using is triggering on the eval() at the end of the page, it's just "window.status='Done';document.write('')" encoded. Weird, but not apparently harmful. I don't see anything deeper in the frameset, either.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 2:42 AM on August 7, 2008

Artw: first time around, that comment caused me to spend 45 minutes on Cambrian fossils and punctuated evolution, and to wishlist Stephen Jay Gould's book. So somebody read it.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 11:54 AM on July 26, 2008

equilibrium. damn.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 12:05 PM on July 26, 2008

I'm a real music nut with diverse taste, but 99% of what I hear today leaves me cold.

Heh. Don't worry, happens to everyone eventually.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:20 PM on July 22, 2008

yz: far?
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 12:47 PM on June 30, 2008

WCityMike: I'm assuming that was you listing colours on the most lighthouse post? That was beautiful.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 1:11 PM on June 30, 2008

WCityMike: If you're still arguing over there, you might want to check out when boingboing weighed in on the bluepulse debacle in 2006.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 2:37 PM on June 30, 2008

What's the problem with this?

Is a website a collection of essays that are being republished moment to moment, and so can be re-edited at any time, or is it an archive of past publications, which should be altered very rarely?

I actually think it's the first, and that publication might be an obsolete concept, but by their behaviour in the past boingboing editors seem to have tended towards the latter interpretation.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:27 PM on June 30, 2008

While I would imagine it's flattering that you compare a privately-held Web site with less than ten employees (I think) with two companies, at least one publicly held, that individually employ hundreds of people (and in the case of the Tribune, is the flagship of one of the largest media corporations in the world) it doesn't mean the comparison is particularly accurate.

Efficiency (and regurgitating other people's content) means fewer staff. Try... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 5:12 PM on June 30, 2008

a) Cory appears not to be immediately responsible for the event (nor does TNH, for that matter)

Someone is censoring incoming forum posts in real time, and went back and removed the rainbow post once they got the joke. That goes beyond "we need to have a conference call before we respond to this".

And the editors run DELETE WHERE body LIKE '%Violet Blue%' on the entore database without... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 6:13 PM on June 30, 2008

I've still got the comment open on another PC. screenshot.

Agreed. "Wow. Just wow."

I guess the justification is going to be the same "it's our site, we can twist the historical record as we see fit". Is anyone out there still defending this?
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:30 PM on July 1, 2008

The bitterness that's radiating off Xeni's posts is amusing. It appears she can't even bring herself to utter the name ("...the subject of the posts...", "...This person...", "...that material...").
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 4:54 PM on July 1, 2008

Sorry, I misquoted Xeni above. The words: "Further, which queen created this drama?" were not in Xeni's post.

My first reaction, on reading that, is to think "ah, Xeni's been doing some silent post-publication edits again".

And that's the hole they dug themselves when they started messing with the historical record - anyone can say "well it was there a few minutes ago, they must have edited it".... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:23 AM on July 21, 2008

Yeah. Those behind bars shouldn't be able to put their case in newspapers, on TV or by writing to politicians, either.

Not sympathetic to her cause at all.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 8:07 AM on July 18, 2008

Pastabagel: I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 4:06 PM on July 17, 2008

schwa: I still have the scar. Took a full-tilt run in the dark straight into one of their black-painted walls.

I miss the Tricorn. It had problems - the whole layout was just perfect for mugging someone and disappearing into the rabbit warren, and the sea of unadorned poured concrete was depressing - but the shops were interesting, and it had a unique ambience. Looked great from the air, too. It's going to be replaced with yet another soulless shopping centre (like the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 6:13 AM on July 7, 2008

Another thought about the Tricorn: long ago, I worked for a company that leased a couple of essentially-abandoned floors for storage (and I smacked my head on a concrete lintel while jumping down some stairs - I've just realised, that place was out to get me).

Anyway, the abandoned floors included spaces intended for apartments, so IMO the architect should score points for integrating functions (housing, shopping, etc). I see from Wikipedia that the apartments were... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 6:47 AM on July 7, 2008

mr. strange: If I'm reading your comment correctly, that top-down "expert-knows-best" attitude is how (to take my own industry as an example) we end up with confusing, user-hostile software that makes people miserable. The opinions of the people who have to live with this stuff every day are valid, and do matter.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 7:57 AM on July 7, 2008

I'd (still) rather see open access to the data that we paid for, but that is still sold commercially (eg the postcode database). £20k is derisory when compared to the amount of creativity a US-style overhaul of Crown Copyright would unleash.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 5:00 PM on July 5, 2008

Pity. I was looking forward to this turning up on the south coast of England this summer.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:47 AM on July 1, 2008

Moon Analemma
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 6:53 AM on June 26, 2008

1) For a significantly large group of people, timely updates are important for certain relationships and events e.g. families, close-knit friends, emergencies.

That use-case is inappropriate for SMS.

I have built systems in the same space as Twitter, although they probably haven't hit the traffic peaks Twitter has. And I've certainly never hit the peaks of Google Reader. IMO, if you want to see... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 5:52 AM on June 25, 2008

I think possibly the users decide that, and they might not do an evaluation of the possible solutions available in the messaging space first.

I totally agree that users bend technology to their will, and I think that's great - in fact, SMS itself is one of the better examples of that. But the fact remains that you can't rely on SMS; there are basic constraints built into the system that aren't going to change.

After the... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 6:06 AM on June 25, 2008

Snuh? Isn't reliance subjectively experienced? If there was evidence that millions of people currently use SMS for communication they find important would you change your mind?

Not really. That last few tenths of a percent is hard. SMS reliability in the UK is under 99.8%, and because of the architecture the time when it's most needed is also the time it's most like to fail.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:29 PM on June 25, 2008

3. Sell ringtones.

Nah. Ringtone market disappeared overnight when phones became mp3-capable. More likely it's the "no cash flow, but lots of signups, maybe Vodafone will buy us" model. ("Free SMS on the web" has happened dozens of times in Europe over the past decade. No company has ever made it pay.)
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:33 PM on June 25, 2008

It also proves that all that excitement about the Internet being a new oasis of LIBERTEH beyond the reach of national governments was total guff.

That's a bit unfair. I know someone who VPNs to Sweden to avoid local filtering. Censorship, damage, etc. Of course, 99.5% of people don't care about being beyond the reach of national governments, but I'm still hopeful that IPv6, if it ever comes, will make vast chunks of the internet go dark to anything... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 2:08 AM on June 24, 2008

The proportion of Americans who live in such landslide counties has nearly doubled since then.

Isn't that explained (at least partially) by gerrymandering?
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 12:24 PM on June 22, 2008

Listen to Green Day's American Idiot. The final masters are just bone-crushingly loud, but still sound really good.

You can actually hear the clipping on that album. It's awful.
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 6:36 AM on June 9, 2008

Will we soon create AI intelligent enough to assist us in improving AI? Maybe. If, as a species, we're still functioning on all cylinders 50 years from now, we'll probably have gotten there.

Strong AI has been 30-50 years away since the end of WWII. In that time the computing power available to humanity has been riding an exponential curve, yet it's still 30-50 years away. I love the whole Singularity thing as my own personal Sci-Fi Rapture, and it... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by Leon at 3:48 AM on June 5, 2008