I have not played a single game of Sins of a Solar Empire online, and I love it. The single-player experience could only be better if it had a campaign, but then with RTSes I always got more play time out of fighting skirmishes with seven AIs than I ever did out of the campaigns.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 6:44 PM on September 8, 2008

the condensed version of his (then half-) year in dancing. Also, thanks to that guy, I found this, my introduction to the Remains. Fun times!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 7:20 AM on September 6, 2008

Word of mouth is fine, but I think you've missed the point of JHarris's comment. If everyone had decided they were going to "pay" for Dr. Horrible by passing it on to a bunch of their friends, Joss Whedon would have exactly zero dozens of dollars from that project. There needs to be a balance between supporting creators and allowing the free flow of information.

All JHarris said was it would be nice if people didn't trade the episodes you could get on DVD,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:07 PM on August 13, 2008

I'm glad to see this ruling as I am a Canadian citizen

If you read the "throttling practices" link leading to the CRTC filing, you'll see that no ruling has been made yet. In fact, the CRTC denied a motion to force Bell to immediately lift the bandwidth throttling, as an interim action before final ruling. There's still plenty of time for the CRTC to screw this one up, so don't start partying just yet.

Also, yes,... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 2:26 PM on August 8, 2008

No entry on pessimistic speculative fiction is complete without a link to EmptyWorld, I think.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 10:13 AM on August 7, 2008

Another problem, besides the bad acting and the overdone video effects, is that for a post-apocalyptic story, it's not very post-apocalyptic. 24's last season had the same problem—omg, a nuclear bomb went off in L.A.! But two episodes later some guy drives through downtown L.A. in a Maserati all calm and composed, and there isn't even TRAFFIC. No sign of panic, no hordes of people fleeing the city, not even a little kid whose ice cream fell on the ground.... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:56 AM on August 4, 2008

The article namechecks Vancouver on the first page, but the phenomenon has also been prevalent enough in Toronto that I've read (somewhat alarmist, to be fair) articles about the possibility of downtown turning into a bedroom community for rich folks. Certainly the trend of immigrant communities now settling largely outside the city has been around for years, if not decades, though I guess that's not exactly demographic inversion—there are still plenty of low-income areas around that have... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:55 PM on August 2, 2008

Related to the last.fm graph: make your own.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 4:45 PM on July 31, 2008

WHAT. This is awesome. Add this to the list of community sharing deals I would like to one day take advantage of (also see: tool libraries, community screenprinting studios).
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 3:25 PM on July 30, 2008

I'm confused—the article says he is NOT the first transgendered male to give birth. I assume that's why the original post says "first legally transgendered man," but what does that mean? Did the ones before him not legally register their gender change? And actually, what's the paperwork for that sort of thing, I wonder?
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:19 PM on July 25, 2008

Ah yes, yet another in a long line of attempts by city governments to raise funds and profile by selling the rights to cover large statues of animals in company livery, only to be semi-abandoned months afterwards when drunken louts start vandalizing them in earnest. The idea of basing these statues on a fake animal is neat, though. Even better if they were covered in some sort of rubber that felt exactly like a banana peel.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:59 AM on July 25, 2008

Yes, we're planning to continue the traditional format in a new venue, and taking the thumbs along with us. I'm involved in that, and it will be a great consolation.

So "taking the thumbs with them" actually means something different from what I thought it meant when I first read the post (which was that they'd be gone for good too).
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 10:20 AM on July 24, 2008

Ebert almost certainly is never returning to the air; his recovery from cancer has been valiant but has left him in a condition in which I'm fairly sure he can't co-host a television show. And Siskel, of course, has passed. So I can't really see that it's Siskel & Ebert anymore...

Oh, yeah, I assumed Ebert was never going to have a TV show again; my reference to the thumbs was specifically to the thumbs system Siskel and Ebert came up with, which... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 12:04 PM on July 24, 2008

Number 16 Bus Shelter

If you're going to name the kid after the place they were conceived, try something slightly less specific?

Or you could take the opposite, add more detail in the middle name so we know what bench not to sit on.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 10:27 AM on July 24, 2008

Am I the only one who thought the plastic slides were MORE dangerous? I mean, sure, metal gets hot, but any idiot knows that's easy to check for and avoid. Plastic, on the other hand, would SHOCK you. That is, when it wasn't busy skinning your knees or gouging your skin off from rough edges or something. I don't know if the plastics have gotten a lot better now or something, but those things seemed designed to double as kiddie torture chambers.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 11:09 PM on July 21, 2008

I had to turn off type-ahead find in Firefox 3 before it would work at all, and then it was really jerky. Hopefully this works a lot better for everyone else!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 4:38 PM on July 15, 2008

Having played Travian before, I can attest that the 13-year-olds in giant alliances will pwn you regardless of whether or not they have access to daddy's credit card.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:28 PM on July 14, 2008

I can't decide if the big sack of money in the closet from the 30s makes it more or less likely that this was a really badly maintained criminal front. Reminds me of the smart house that continues to tend to its owners long after they have died—like the woman was tending to a tiny part of a criminal empire that had long since vanished.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 4:32 PM on July 11, 2008

I can't decide if this is a strangely illuminating article about 4chan (they tracked down some of the people running the site!), one giant whitewash (shock posts "occasionally" mar 4chan?) or a bizarre bid to somehow take 4chan public (boy there's a lot of talk about how profitable 4chan could be!).
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 5:19 PM on July 10, 2008

Anyone who can't appreciate something like this needs to be hit in the balls and shipped up to Canada, because they're certainly not Americans.

Funny, I was just thinking that if someone in Canada tried to shut down a bunch of kids playing road hockey, that person would've just signed their own death warrant. Send the party poopers elsewhere!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:59 AM on July 10, 2008

About the jezebel.com thing: until 2006, jezebel.com was one of Heather Champ's sites. Around that time, Gawker came knocking, and because jezebel had sort of fallen by the wayside, Champ felt it was time to let the domain go. Now you know!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 5:00 PM on July 6, 2008

(also, this thread is up for three hours and I get beaten to the punch by two minutes! double-doh!)
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 5:01 PM on July 6, 2008

Strikes me as a British version of the kerfuffle in Quebec about Muslim women having to unveil their faces in public in order to vote in elections. Every single story I read had Muslim women who wore full head coverings saying they thought having to unveil their face for identification purposes was perfectly fine and reasonable, and even Canadian Muslim groups saying there was nothing wrong with such a rule as far as they were concerned.

And then there were a bunch of... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:14 PM on July 1, 2008

Speaking of those VW bugs, in octothorpe's link, did I miss the part where we all decided "red" was the new word for the colour green?
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 3:17 PM on June 30, 2008

hmm, liaison: "communication for establishing and maintaining mutual understanding and cooperation (as between parts of an armed force)." This is a significant change in our terrorism policy—apparently we're supposed to cooperate with the terrorists now!

either that or we're supposed to use the terrorists to thicken stews.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:21 PM on June 29, 2008

Why are there no "cover" standup comics? Who can reinterpret previous material?

You mean Carlos Mencia?
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:17 PM on June 29, 2008

Someone has already bought out an entire movie theatre's worth of tickets in the hope that Joss Whedon will one day make a movie adaptation of Dr. Horrible that will tank at the box office but raise unrealistic hopes for a sequel.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:04 PM on June 29, 2008

The problem with public transportation is that it's utterly horrible.

Public transit works just fine when it's properly funded and managed. Hell, it even works when it's not properly funded and managed—Toronto's transit system is a mess and yet is relatively clean, free of hobos, and depending on where you're going, offers decent service.

But then your transit rant was so ridiculously over the top that it's probably a... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 7:46 PM on June 29, 2008

This site is epic. Ever since I learned to tie my shoes, I'd always have to retie them over and over and over again whenever I wore shoes for any significant period of time, no matter how hard I pulled on the loops. And then one day I read this site, saw the page on slipping knots, and thought, "no way, that can't possibly be it."

In the years since that fateful day, I've had to tie my shoe while walking on the street maybe once. That one page has saved me... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 12:01 AM on June 28, 2008

Everyone who's wondering why Gates didn't, you know, do anything about it besides the e-mail: I'll bet it has to do with the rumours-verging-on-fact of the power struggle between Gates and Ballmer that indirectly led to Gates taking a back seat and now retiring from Microsoft. In other words, I think you can blame Ballmer for all of this.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:37 PM on June 26, 2008

The suburbs have always creeped me out. I had a friend who grew up in Richmond Hill (north of Toronto), and when I visited his place (when we were younger and still living with our parents), what always disturbed me was the fact that you never saw anyone outside unless they were in a car.

I live just south of Richmond Hill right now, and there are kids playing outside, people walking to plazas and strip malls, and plenty of trees. The problem with... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 3:29 PM on June 25, 2008

Reading print mags may be more satisfying than reading a PDF. On the other hand, I don't think I'm prepared to pay $10-15 for just any old 48-page magazine.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 11:04 AM on June 23, 2008

The live feed doesn't say conclusively but the consensus seemed to be there were no rules—batter and pitcher could switch whenever they wanted.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:41 AM on June 20, 2008

It's been a while since I've even listened to the radio, but last I checked, the top three radio stations where I live could all be classified as "adult contemporary." Methinks Bob Bruno doth protest too much about no one caring about the mature audience.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:46 AM on June 19, 2008

I'm voting Liberal because I want a government that likes killing babies as much as I do.

Hey, this is a fun game!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:44 PM on June 18, 2008

(er, crap, forgot this isn't Canada we're talking about. replace Liberal with Democrat. and strike several style points from my record.)
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:45 PM on June 18, 2008

Yeah, don't count your chickens before they've had their boots removed. Or something like that.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 8:43 PM on June 18, 2008

Want to run the Spore Creature Creator demo? Running Process Explorer? Go die in a fire.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 2:20 PM on June 17, 2008

(I mean, jfc, it's a DEMO, why does it have SecuROM in it?)
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 2:20 PM on June 17, 2008

I don't need a cheat sheet on how to nap, I need a cheat sheet on how to convince my employers that it's good for me to nap. Bastards.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 12:57 PM on June 17, 2008

Playing a character playing an MMORPG and playing a character managing an MMORPG strike me as two very different things, kind of like the difference between driving a train and managing a railroad company.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 1:05 PM on June 11, 2008

Maybe I just go to different concerts or something (or maybe it's because I've recently become one of those fucking tools with a camera ruining it for everyone) but in the years I've gone to concerts, I've never once had my enjoyment ruined by someone with a camera. I've had people who wouldn't shut the fuck up, or crowds that wouldn't dance, or people spilling drinks on me, or teenagers shoving elbows into my chest.

But photographers? Generally my thought is if they're... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 9:34 AM on June 10, 2008

Yeah, this isn't as shocking as seeing Top Gear put on the same competition. Seeing as the result's already been spoiled, I'll leave it to the reader to guess why this would be a big deal.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 11:23 AM on June 3, 2008

Yeah, I can't say I'm surprised by this move, considering that one Whedon fan bought out an entire theatre's worth of Serenity tickets and gave them out to people on the street. I have never been able to articulate properly exactly what it is about this sort of cultish devotion (as opposed to, say, Trekkers or Gray's Anatomy fans) that bothers me, but it does—in spite my appreciation for all things Firefly.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 11:57 PM on June 2, 2008

maybe that kid shouldn't be there.

Fine, that's fair. But even if the child should be in a special education class, that doesn't automatically make it okay that Portillo apparently took leave of her common sense. "Media monstering of a person put in a very hard to deal with situation?" Well, most people don't know how to deal with an autistic child—I have an autistic brother and I still don't know how to deal with him even though... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 12:30 AM on June 1, 2008

tell your douche friends: NOT EVERYONE HAS A WIDESCREEN MONITOR
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 11:50 AM on May 31, 2008

The very same CMAJ issue also has a counterpoint response [PDF] to the article.
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 11:42 PM on May 28, 2008

Can someone explain the author's last paragraph to me? Specifically:
Now, IPv6 proponents think that the cost of maintaining IPv4 address allocations will drive the transition to IPv6. I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm thinking that's Yet More Kool-Aid. There is no cost for IPv4/NAT high enough to drive adoption of IPv6, because IPv6 will never be an alternative to IPv4. The Internet will turn out to be, always and forever, the IPv4/NAT-only Internet we have today.This sounds... [more]
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 12:34 AM on May 24, 2008

He's hired! He's hired! He's hired! He's hired!
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 10:28 AM on May 23, 2008

You didn't think you could get away with leaving out the one that started it all, did you?
posted to MetaFilter by chrominance at 3:28 PM on May 22, 2008