Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the western spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun.

Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-two million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.

This planet has - or... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 5:17 AM on May 31, 2008

<spoken>
Whenever life gets you down, Mrs. Brown,
And things seem hard or tough,
And people are stupid, obnoxious or daft,
</spoken>

<sung>
And you feel that you've had quite eno-o-o-o-o-ough,

Just remember that you're standing on a planet that's evolving
And revolving at nine thousand miles an hour.
It's orbiting at nineteen miles a second, so... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 11:54 PM on June 9, 2008

Microsoft's Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences: Getting the Design Right and the Right Design.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 10:44 AM on June 6, 2008

Dress up your article by mentioning some authoritative cartoons: here's Strong Bad on IT and Business Trips.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 10:21 PM on June 8, 2008

2nding the Cold War connection as important - Egypt and many of the other post-colonial Arab states were recipients of aid and other overtures from the Soviet Union so the Jewish - Arab conflict served as another proxy war between the superpowers.

Also, another theory I've heard advanced, though I'm not sure how mainstream the idea is nor whether it's motivated by anti-Semitism, is that there's some legacy of guilt among Western powers from unsuccessfully opposing the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 10:36 AM on June 6, 2008

It's a non-muslim democratic foothold in a vast sea of muslim theocracies.

Well now there are lots of Muslim theocracies in the Middle East but at the time Israel was founded the governments were much more secular, usually Saddam-Hussein-type dictatorships, and weren't totally shabby democracy-wise. There were actually large enough, legit and existing Communist parties in some places that the Soviet Union didn't have to set them... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 10:05 PM on June 8, 2008

Yeah, I would second moleskin. Even if the original superglue was made of things that don't function as contact poisons it seems entirely possible current ones may. I think my tube of it at least has a death's-head printed on it along with "do not ingest" warning.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 10:19 AM on June 6, 2008

I liked Attack of the Zombie Copy by Erin Kissane, a short, sweet, and wry piece that was the Halloween 2005 "issue" of the web design magazine A List Apart.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 5:55 AM on May 31, 2008

If you set it up as a project under one of the conventional open source licenses, which generally permit "share alike" use of the code and other aspects of the software product, there is no way you would be able to retain "ownership" of the project in terms of rights to determine what is done with your idea. For all practical purposes anyone could take your idea and run with it in their own version of the software (which under many licenses could even be a commercial... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 5:46 AM on May 31, 2008

All my experience with self-supporting artisans is peripheral but I had a brainstormy idea:

I bought a coffee-table book a while back on turning bowls and it demonstrated two techniques for decorating them: woodburning and inlaying a design with pewter or some other metal.

How about your dad goes for the niche market of finely crafted bowls decorated with custom designs? I'm thinking of a bowl with an inlaid inscription, like you might give... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 12:37 AM on May 30, 2008

If you have Netflix this video is good for a start, though it's focussed on home maintenance stuff.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 12:15 AM on May 30, 2008

Bang Zoom (Honeymooners reference... and double entendre?)
The Dislocatrix
Deadly Ambrosia, how sweet the kiss of Death
Amberpocalypse
Intercontinental Ballistic Amber
Princess Hurtsalot

And finally... (drum roll please)
The Bung Dropper
(now that's menacing)
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 12:01 AM on May 30, 2008 marked best answer

Charlotte Observer photographer Patrick Schneider lost an award over photo alterations and then was let go from his job for a digital photo alteration that he claimed was simply restoring the real color of the sky in a photograph.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 5:44 AM on March 22, 2008

This 1997 Wired article mentions two alterations: one of a photo of Princess Diana and one subtle alteration rearranging the text on the placard worn by the winner of a national spelling bee.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 5:51 AM on March 22, 2008

I liked Putin's Russia by Anna Poltikovskaya (a journalist who was suspiciously murdered in 2006.) It's mostly about outrageous wrongs on the part of the government but it covered a wide range of issues.

I don't know that the current politics - i.e. who is currently in power and what the relationships between different quadrants of society and power are - is going to be very tightly connected to the past - the fall of the Soviet Union and subsequent... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 8:39 AM on March 21, 2008 marked best answer

Okay, this thread makes me want to see if I can establish some mathematical relationship between the way cars end up distributed in a parking lot and the positions of herd animals like sheep or cattle in a field. (rtha seems to have gotten the same idea.)

O Google Earth, thine cup overfloweth with data…

I also like stupidsexyFlanders' idea that it's the parking lot version of slipstreaming.

I do this "fancy... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 4:47 PM on March 18, 2008

I'm prompted to wonder if the "differences in Japanese between the north and the south" is talking about the distinction between Japanese and Ryūkyūan. (upon Googling, Ryūkyūan is one of the things adamrice mentioned.)
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 4:18 PM on March 18, 2008

If you want to become familiar with the server-side IT apps available for Linux and develop facility with the command line (which, although I don't consider myself a hardcore Linux guy, I would say is necessary to being able to really leverage Linux) you don't need to install X Windows so of course any distribution would do.

Another good reason to learn the command line ways first is that if you ever have a remote server anywhere (like the nice cheap... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 9:49 PM on March 14, 2008

Actually, having used Ubuntu and Debian for several years now and managed several live production servers I think I've only had to compile something once (which is why I wouldn't consider myself a hardcore Linux guy.) But I'm not disagreeing that compiling apps and recompiling the kernel et cetera are valuable experiences, the only reason I haven't done much of that myself is that modern package managers are so great and so I haven't gotten around to it.

On Debian,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 10:53 PM on March 14, 2008

Something this thread is reminding me of that's almost the same thing is an old timin' scripture quotes duel, the sort that two preachers might have in a public debate (or in a setting like the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou?).

In some venue where Biblical quotations would be regarded as supreme authority two extremely Bible-literate intellectuals are taking opposite sides in a discussion on a topic that isn't clearly scripturally supported either... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 3:59 PM on March 14, 2008

Bit of ironic timing, The Onion just put up this article making fun of Snyder's for only making pretzels.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 1:23 PM on March 14, 2008

Because of the whole might-makes-right thing I would think that scandals as we regard them today might not be so common. But a sort of blackmail might fit the bill. What comes to mind is the way that various Cossack hosts would squeeze protection money and noble titles out of princes and tsars in Muscovy and the Ukraine.

And I don't know about hidden heirs but there were certainly lots of fake heirs, including a couple of Cossack pretender tsars... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 12:49 PM on March 14, 2008

The thing is that for what many web applications need to do to be extremely useful the "Web 2.0" look just isn't necessary. For those who want it Flash and Silverlight are there and have been there (and Java applets and ActiveX controls before them). But they just aren't "killer app" enough (to use a demodeé Web 1.0 term!) to cause some sort of revolution. I know a fair number of people - not all of them jaded techies - who look at the Google apps and say "meh.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 11:25 AM on March 13, 2008

seanyboy - that kind of thing has its uses, and it's definitely a way to go (perhaps easier than developing a web application) for an internal app if you already have a deployed install base for the client.

But to go broad-based the way the web has the technology really needs to be standards-based and the client needs to be free.

Many people are going to remember Lotus Notes, which from my point of view as someone who built Lotus Notes apps... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 1:17 PM on March 13, 2008

XMLicious. the client app comes with windows and is avaiable for Linux and mac. Plus we already provide it succesfully as a hosted external app.
There is an issue of cost with licensing but for bespoke apps with less than 300 or so users, you make that cost back in speed of development.

Yeah, like I said it's great if you already have the installed client base. But everything you've said here was said of Lotus Notes and it did not take... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 7:22 PM on March 13, 2008

I once used text adventures (á la Zork) working with a kid I was helping to learn to read.

A guy I know wrote a skiing game designed to help quadriplegics use those eye motion sensors for controlling computers.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 1:42 PM on March 13, 2008

I never smoked until relatively late in life - almost thirty - and it's not even once a month for me, it's that every year or two I go through a phase where I smoke once or a few times a week for a while, usually after a passing visit to a good tobacco shop (surprisingly hard to find, for all that it's fashionable). Despite the fact that I don't mind smoking and do it myself I have had a couple of SO's who for some reason have felt intense shame about their own smoking and actually tried to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 12:24 PM on March 12, 2008

mockdeep, what you just said there is not true. The emotional / psychological benefits Miko mentions - calming effect, increased alertness and improvement of mood, reduction of moodiness - are present immediately. You don't have to be addicted to get those effects - just like with caffeine for example or any other drug.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 11:46 AM on March 13, 2008

Just think about what you're saying there. Are you seriously suggesting that recreational drugs do not create any sort of a positive experience unless one is addicted to them?

Like I said above, I only smoke a few times a year. Believe me, you can get a nicotine buzz without being addicted.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 12:56 PM on March 13, 2008

“Like any good arms dealer or crack dealer knows, if you can sell both the problem and the solution to the problem you've got it made.”
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 1:35 PM on March 13, 2008

Barenaked Ladies, Another Postcard

♪ Some chimps in swimsuits, some chimps are swinging from a vine
Some chimps in jackboots, some chimps that wish they could be mine.
Starsky and Hutch chimps, a chimp who's sitting on the can
A pair of Dutch chimps who send their love from Amsterdam. ♫

posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 1:30 PM on March 13, 2008

If you want to get really hard core - I'm talking a manly, beat your chest sixpack of IT whoopass - install VMWare Player and a nice lightweight web browser appliance (or Microsoft Virtual PC and one of the WinXP IE images they give out) and require the staff to use them for all web browsing. Both of those options are free solutions which will essentially result in all web browsing being done in a sandboxed 2nd operating system that viruses and spyware will be unable to... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 1:58 PM on March 12, 2008

flabdablet appears to be recommending IMAP in this scenario because undeleted messages will remain on the server. With POP3 generally all the messages are downloaded to a local store in the email client and deleted from the server; hence, unless the user does regular backups, any data loss on the client system results in permanent loss of the saved messages.

If you have your own mail server this can lead to storage space issues on the server (but that's basic IT stuff,... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 7:10 AM on March 13, 2008

Just to bring up the default Loveline answer for the sake of self-awareness, could these dynamics have anything to do with parental relationships?
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 7:09 PM on March 12, 2008

The figure you're talking about is probably an estimate of the width of the observable universe, which has a technical cosmological definition. For all we know, the universe currently may extend infinitely in all directions and may have extended infinitely in all directions at the point of the Big Bang.

Scientific American article Misconceptions About the Big Bang.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 2:56 PM on March 12, 2008 marked best answer

Infinitely and non-repeatingly, I should say; caek makes a good point about cosmological geometry.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 3:00 PM on March 12, 2008

blue_beetle: based upon that Scientific American article and from what I've read elsewhere about cosmology, there aren't necessarily any edges and compression need not have anything to do with an infinite universe. The universe may extend infinitely in every direction as flat spacetime and that would be consistent with Big Bang theory and the rest of modern cosmology, I believe.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 4:02 PM on March 12, 2008

Is this maybe an application for the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud? It sounds like a good match for retro timeslice computing resources.

Also, you know about OLAP, right? Besides the commercial apps listed in the Wikipedia article there's Mondrian, an open source app.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 2:21 PM on March 12, 2008

This may or may not be related, but I definitely have Flash Player 9 installed, however some sites seem unable to tell in Firefox what version of the player I've got. This could just be poor parsing of the user agent string, though.

Also, a potentially relevant data point is that I believe under Windows there's something called "Esker ActiveX Plug-in for Netscape" that is used to display the Flash Player and other ActiveX controls; perhaps this plug-in is... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 12:44 PM on March 12, 2008

When I've gotten fish & chips in the UK at a take-away, they're often placed in a cardboard tray-type thing with the fish on top and then wrapped in butcher paper. As a result, in the minutes before you open and eat them, the whole thing gets lightly steamed by the moisture in the recently-fried slab of fish. Any salt and vinegar that has been applied results in a sort of steam-marination effect from those flavors.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 8:54 AM on March 12, 2008

Depending on exactly what form you need to get the information back in, you could simply have a telnet script log in, run the unix command line, and dump the response to a text file.

If you use XML-RPC or web services, all the UNIX system has to do is display an XML document on port 80 containing the info. I remember coming across a fairly simple way to do this, without even using a web server. An incoming HTTP request would cause a shell script to be run and the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 2:43 AM on March 11, 2008

Here it is: netcat is the tool I was thinking of. See this page, the use cases 4) Simple Socket Reply and 8) Simple Response Service.

With the output of the UNIX command line tools and a little good ol' shell script text processing to wrap it in XML you ought to be able to rig up the server side of a Web Service RPC. Or forget rigorous standards and hand-roll a POX or even simpler JSON service.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 7:30 AM on March 12, 2008

I've seen pieces of TV versions of Lonesome Dove. I'm not saying that the epic is exclusive to sci-fi but I think the forms of it presented in sci-fi are more faithful to the legacy of stories involving things like Enkidu and Gilgamesh wrestling the Bull of Heaven or Odysseus tricking and blinding Polyphemus to rescue his crew or sailing beyond the North Wind. If making the hero's journey “larger than life” is the kind of thing you mean when you say melodrama, I definitely agree with you -... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 10:10 AM on March 11, 2008

I concur with j1950's recommendation, if nothing else because navigation gets a bit confusing around NYC with New Yorkers' uncontrollable need to use all of their local names for the local section of every interstate.

Alas, you will just barely miss the opportunity to stop for some of the best barbecue on the East Coast, Dinosaur BBQ in Rochester and Syracuse.

Also, in case you haven't done lots of long-distance driving, try to avoid passing... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 8:46 AM on March 10, 2008

Well, you can't really just have the email address as the key for the account record, otherwise by switching the email address and not requiring confirmation someone could take over another's account.

Also, if the email address is displayed to identify the user in a forum or something, by not requiring the email confirmation someone would be able to impersonate an email address they aren't the owner of.

You might consider OpenID, which would... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 8:28 AM on March 10, 2008

Via the MeFi Gary Gygax thread, an amusing geekological diagram from the NY Times.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 8:16 AM on March 10, 2008

Saying that the gaslamp is all "downtown" makes as much sense as saying that Times Square is really downtown New York, and I really have to wonder what actual cities people have been to think otherwise. It's a little adult Disneyland fun zone.

Maybe it's because I've never been to Disneyland. I would just say that all the chain hotels and restaurants with neon signs shaped like palm trees up around the Mission Valley Freeway are more... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 11:47 AM on March 7, 2008

Yeah, you're right LionIndex. Downtown or touristy or otherwise, city planning or au naturel, I do think you've done a good job of answering desuetude's question. Better than me, as well you should as a resident. I didn't mean to say that Gaslamp is where he wants to go for his aprés oeuvre vacation, I was just mentioning some places there that I liked that he might just want to go to on the nights he's working. As an addendum to mentioning that there are cheap hotels in Mission Valley.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 1:54 PM on March 7, 2008

ARRRGH desuetude is a she. Sorry about that.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 1:55 PM on March 7, 2008

All right, MeTa.
posted to Ask Metafilter by XMLicious at 12:44 PM on March 7, 2008