984 MetaFilter comments by angry modem (displaying 51 through 100)

Formula One car "skin" provides it's own power. A potentially very cool application of nanotechnology might appear on F1 cars as early as next season.
comment posted at 8:33 PM on Aug-24-05

Ten years ago today, Microsoft released a massive overhaul of their flagship product — Windows 95. It added support for 256-character mixed-case long filenames, pre-emptive multitasking, and protected-mode 32-bit applications. Detractors noted that its updated interface owed a number of debts to Apple's MacOS and IBM's OS/2. Most importantly, however, Windows 95 included built-in support for dial-up networking and a TCP/IP stack. Once this technology was widely-available, it was only a matter of time until the Internet became a household word.
comment posted at 3:07 PM on Aug-24-05

Google Talk Connect with their client, or yours. It runs on the first Jabber network with more than two users!
comment posted at 10:26 PM on Aug-23-05
comment posted at 12:14 AM on Aug-24-05

The experimental wake-up drug CX717 is the the talk of the internets. But who needs it when Modafinil (aka Provigil, aka Alertec) has been available by prescription since 2001? And if you don't want to get a prescription, there's always Adrafinil, its metabolic precursor, which is marketed as a "supplement". After all, caffeine is, like, soooo last century.
comment posted at 9:22 PM on Aug-23-05

Thudguard: proudly creating a generation of children who randomly slam their heads into the ground after not learning the do-not-hurt-head part of growing up.
comment posted at 7:38 PM on Aug-23-05


It's baby killing time. Taking on one of the most highly charged questions in the abortion debate, a team of doctors has concluded that fetuses probably cannot feel pain in the first six months of gestation and therefore do not need anesthesia during abortions.
comment posted at 7:27 PM on Aug-23-05

A clash of British Steel. Ozzy and Harriet Sharon get down on the Dickinson for outing Ozzy as a teleprompted addler. An anonymous backstage view here. More discussion care of our friends at I love Music.
comment posted at 7:34 PM on Aug-23-05

The scammer gets scammed in this tale of an ebay auction gone hilarious as well as many other fine pranks. Favorites include the credit card prank and the Chinese tattoo prank. What is also hilarious is when the Nigerian E-mail Scammers target Pro Poker Player Paul Phillips, and get schooled themselves.
comment posted at 9:21 AM on Aug-23-05

An unexpected side effect of iTunes. Remember Bowie Bonds? Introduced in 1997, bonds tied to future profits of music artists (besides Bowie, James Brown and the Isley Brothers offered them) tanked with the advent of online filesharing. Thanks to iTunes, some on Wall Street are betting that the Bowie Bond is a concept with a future.
comment posted at 9:44 AM on Aug-23-05

Esquivalience-n. the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities. Lillian Virginia Mountweazel, a fountain designer turned photographer who was celebrated for a collection of photographs of rural American mailboxes titled "Flags Up!" Phony entries to dictionaries and encyclopedias to catch copiers. By posting this at work I am practicing esquivalience, no?
comment posted at 3:29 PM on Aug-22-05

Google Live Search
A Greasemonkey Script that enables you to watch your google results come in live, as you type the search terms. Mesmerizing, time-wasting, and possibly useful.
Greasemonkey and Firefox required.
comment posted at 3:08 PM on Aug-22-05

A double whammy for the U.S. economy this winter: Bankers have announced credit card minimum payments will double starting in early 2006 as a 10-year payback system is adopted. Meanwhile in October comes the controversial bankruptcy reform. All this on a blanket of spiralling gas prices. That Unahome may be the wave of the future for a lot of Americans.
comment posted at 9:33 AM on Aug-22-05

The meth myth? New blog takes critical look at media coverage of meth; other skeptical observers also ask whether meth babies and meth mouth really exist.
comment posted at 8:01 PM on Aug-21-05

Linux®
comment posted at 7:44 PM on Aug-21-05

China to invade USA within the decade, using biological weapons to kill "hundreds of millions". On the other hand, China is a wonderful land which has given an immensely rich culture to the global community.
comment posted at 3:19 PM on Aug-21-05
comment posted at 3:23 PM on Aug-21-05

Listen to Railroad Radio! Frequencies scanned are listed, as well as background information on the areas. Shoutcast streams for your favorite player. Hobos optional.
comment posted at 2:29 PM on Aug-21-05
comment posted at 5:12 PM on Aug-21-05

Top 10 Things I Like in My Apartment by Jaime Stewart of Xiu Xiu.
comment posted at 3:07 PM on Aug-19-05

Kill the president: Games! Dating!
comment posted at 9:19 AM on Aug-19-05

Evil Metafilter doppelganger has been birthed unto the internet.
comment posted at 3:37 PM on Aug-18-05
comment posted at 7:49 AM on Aug-19-05


Less scary than Cheney. Christopher Walken for President 2008.
(Walken Friday flash... or just do a little dance!)
comment posted at 7:40 PM on Aug-12-05
comment posted at 9:16 PM on Aug-12-05

This website is about advertising mistakes, such as the L in Staples, capitalized letters where they shouldn't be, and other things that could confuse kindergarten students.
comment posted at 5:05 PM on Aug-12-05

Thou art no Romeo
It turns out that the beloved pair of swan's in Boston's Public Garden are a same-sex couple.

Tests have shown that the pair, named Romeo and Juliet, are really Juliet and Juliet. The city's Parks and Recreation Department conducted the tests months ago, but didn't announce the results for fear of destroying the image of a Shakespearean love story unfolding each year in the Public Garden.

'If these two swans are happy together, they shouldn't have to have a guy," said Emma Stokien, a 15-year-old from New York. 'It's good to have the swans as a symbol of the acceptance in Massachusetts."
comment posted at 7:55 PM on Aug-12-05

Is buddytown the next rival to myspace? Browsing through the list of current citizens reveals that my AIM buddy list has about 3x as many people on it. So why would one want to join another community that labels themselves "snobs" and is invite only?
comment posted at 4:12 PM on Aug-9-05
comment posted at 4:20 PM on Aug-9-05

Massively Multiplayer Online Photo Sharing. A too-brief interview with Eric Costello about how The5K * begat The Game Neverending* begat Flickr.* "There’s kind of a feeling of exploration within Flickr. It feels like a world where you can move around and find wonderful things – the wonderful things being the great photographs that people upload."
comment posted at 4:48 PM on Aug-9-05

Cheney's Halliburton is Selling Iran Components and Technology for Nuclear Power Cheney and the Bush administration rattle sabers at Iran for working on nuclear reactors. Yet Halliburton is selling Iran nuclear components and technology. Using Cheney's rhetoric, this would seem treasonous.
comment posted at 11:43 AM on Aug-6-05

Work Well With Others or, how to power a matchstick plane with houseflies. Reports of success or failure are welcome.
comment posted at 6:36 PM on Aug-3-05

A Brief History of Slime , or How The Current Wave Of Global Islamic Terrorism Was Precipitated By A B-Movie Actor.
comment posted at 6:02 PM on Aug-3-05


Is Mac OS X Becoming Crufty? I definitely think so.
comment posted at 11:13 AM on Aug-2-05

Zombie flash mob in San Fransisco. Related blog entry and appropriate domain. [more inside]
comment posted at 9:30 AM on Aug-1-05

"The explosion of suggestive images [in Chinese media and art] is partly a reflection of changes in Chinese society -- many sociologists say China is in the midst of a sweeping sexual revolution -- and partly due to market reforms...The government has not given the press free rein to publish material with sexual themes, but the way censorship is carried out means that some media outlets can get away with quite a lot. Rather than issue top-down decrees, Beijing's censors primarily react to existing material, so websites, whose content is easily removable, and publications far from Beijing, which are less likely to attract censors' attention, can take more chances. Still, articles on topics such as 'China's Janet Jackson,' a TV star who has twice revealed a breast in public, and the incidence of erectile dysfunction among China's urban men are now common in the national media."
comment posted at 10:54 AM on Jul-31-05

Big object sighted... if you liked Sedna and Quaoar, you're bound to love 2003 EL61, which has been found lurking in photographs from a couple of years ago. There appears to be some speculation that this one could be larger than Pluto.
comment posted at 6:03 PM on Jul-29-05

Internets: Serious Business! These last few months have seen an increase in the attacks on the participatory culture of the web. The mainstream establishments, both political and corporate, have been looking with a cautious eye towards this new developing place. So far we've established that blogs can get you fired, keep you from getting a job, give pedophiles a place to ruminate on snatching your children, threaten journalistic integrity *snicker*, endanger the marketing , product planning, and product life cycles for automobile manufacturers, can infect your computer with virii, and have all sorts of negative consequences. The internets (both of them) can cause your children to be charmed, seduced, and addicted by readily available porn, and can also provide access to extremist radical and fundamentalist groups, prompting Congress to discuss more restrictive legislation (NSFW), but only for the porn. It has even been claimed that the web has given "Al Qaeda wings". P2P is blamed as causing record loses by the music industry, despite their investments in local station marketing payola. The FEC has held public hearings attended by both hemispheres of the blogosphere (amazingly in near-agreement) discussing the regulation of political speech online. The figureheads of a certain political party fear that their affiliated slice of the blogosphere may be too far-left. Newspapers and TV are leading the charge, with the internet standing in for pharmaceutical scares, yo-yo diets, and missing white women. The question is, how will the libertarian-minded digerati respond to this very real attack on the essence of web culture?
comment posted at 6:23 PM on Jul-29-05


Yahoo! acquires Konfabulator. [via] Previously trial-ware accompanied by a $19.95 fee, Konfabulator Yahoo! Widgets will now be offered as a free download. What if you purchased it? They're offering a refund. (Get your widgets right here. Konfabulator previously discussed.)
comment posted at 4:04 PM on Jul-25-05

$ rm -r bin/laden
bin/laden: No such file or directory
comment posted at 11:02 PM on Jul-24-05
comment posted at 11:47 PM on Jul-24-05
comment posted at 11:47 PM on Jul-24-05

"New Mexico, Cleaner than Regular Mexico" This isn't the first time that Urban Outfitters has crossed the line of good taste. Two years ago, [Urban Outfitters] stopped selling a game called "Ghettopoly" after protests by black civil rights leaders. Last year, it halted sales of a T-shirt that read "Everyone Loves A Jewish Girl," surrounded by dollar signs, after the Anti-Defamation League objected. As could be expected, not everone finds this stuff funny.
comment posted at 4:17 PM on Jul-22-05

It's a popularity contest. Aimfight is essentially Google pagerank for your buddy list. Compare yourself against your opponents and see who's on more people's buddy lists. Via slashdot.
comment posted at 3:05 PM on Jul-22-05


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