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I don't know, it was no Where In The World And Where In Time Is Stephen Colbert Going To Be In The Persian Gulf?.

I just loved the intro to that segment.

I had a friend in the coffee shop business and it cost him about $0.04 per POT for coffee.

I think it's neat how you still keep in touch with your friends who live in 1963.

Green coffee beans trade at wholesale prices of somewhere upward of one dollar per pound on international markets. Specialty, fair trade, organic, or higher-grade beans will cost more.

Let's assume that your friend is using a small, 50-ounce coffeepot. Figure that will take a couple of ounces of ground, roasted coffee. Two ounces at one dollar per pound is a bit more than twelve cents' worth of green beans. That assumes that there is no cost to roast the coffee, package the coffee, store the coffee, or deliver the coffee; it also ignores the fact that coffee is actually trading closer to $1.66, and that it will lose another fifteen percent of its mass when roasted.

Heck, if the barista making the coffee earns $7.25 an hour (the U.S. federal minimum wage), then four cents pays her for a hair less than twenty seconds of work. I hope that you're not expecting anyone to spend time to wash those coffeepots and mugs. If the coffeemaker draws 1200 watts, and electricity is ten cents per kWh, then the ten minutes it took to brew the pot just burned through half our budget: 2 cents.

Well.. the "RPG" games that I've played on Facebook involve repeatedly clicking the same button to "complete quests" to gain exp to level so that you open up a new button that you can click repeatedly to complete quests to gain exp to level. As far as I can tell, there was no maximum level and the storyline was simply "You steal a car." "You steal a car." "You have failed to steal a car." which then evolved to "You rob a bank." "You rob a bank." "You have failed to rob a bank."

Then if you look at Farmville, you buy a cow then wait some time, click on it and it gives you more cows, then repeat. Ok, so I haven't actually played Farmville, but I've seen people do it, and I'm fairly certain that's the mechanic at play.

The point is, all these games do is give you trivial rewards for giving them clicks/money. The rewards don't mean anything, except to your brain which is sucked into getting some sort of thrill by receiving these random rewards.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2010/3/12/
http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Operant_conditioning

Seriously guys, we're limited by the technology. There's a reason CRPGs and JRPGs are what they are -- it's just not feasible to make the kind of experiences you are asking for. Consider Mass Effect or Dragon Age, games that have hundreds of thousands of pages of text. Even they feel "railroady" at times. You can't join the villain, after all, because they didn't have an extra 5 years to write, script, draw, program, etc that scenario and the 500 sub-scenarios involved.

Try Fallout 1&2 sometime. You can pretty much do anything you like (well, you can't join the villains, but usurp them at least).

See e.g. http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Fallout_2_endings

Ok, I looked up ME's achievements and I do have to concur they seem worthwhile to chase. However, they are not the "gold star sticker"-esque achievements I despise.

Increase experience gains, unlocking character levels, harder difficulties, weapons, buffing squad mates... you know, actual rewards (mostly).

I have no problem assigning some metric to progress in a game. Metroid tallies everything up with a %. Mario has stars. Other games will show placeholders for levels, vehicles, characters, weapons, and items. Racing games have track times and sometimes separate times set by the devs. Shooters may come with a bevy of statistics (shots fired, taken, missed, hit, headshots, etc.). Stamp and coin collections aren't applicable examples because no one follows them around to tell everyone else about how awesome the collection is.

And what about conduct in good old nethack? I can't believe it hasn't been mentioned by anyone. They are described here http://nethack.wikia.com/wiki/Conduct and I defy anyone to finish with any of these: You have gone without food, You have never hit with a wielded weapon, You have been a pacifist, You have been illiterate.

Check out the Hearts of Steel series

Well, one could make the case that this pointless, non-functional project could only have happened on an iPhone: Android phones lack the combination of standard form factor and money-to-burn audience that would make it profitable for someone to market the chunk of aluminum that adapts the iPhone to be used as a camcorder.

And without that chunk of aluminum, the author might never have had the idea of mounting a random selection of lenses on the thing and thinking it might work. He certainly wasn't going to machine the thing himself.

The whole thing reminds me of the "200Gb iPod Nano upgrade" joke from several years ago. Sure, it's theoretically possible, but it combines the worst aspects of its components into something that is both outlandishly expensive and barely works.

Not chickens but maybe turkeys.

Even better, they're a Beatles cover band made up of Muppets.

I thought they were constant in any person, and http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Midi-chlorian seems to agree. They are more of a channel for the force than an energy source.

It doesn't really matter. Headers almost certainly cannot be copyrighted anyway. A header file is really no different than a phone book. It is a purely factual description of an interface. Phone books were held to not be copyrightable in Feist Publications v. Rural Telephone Service. In that case, the court ruled that although creative aspects of a collection of facts can be copyrighted (which facts to include, the order and style of the information, etc.), the facts themselves are facts and cannot be copyrighted.

An interface definition is a fact. There is only one interface definition that correctly describes a given interface. Change even one letter (not including comments) and code written against that interface will not compile without modification (unless you're doing something funky with C preprocessor macros, but even then, what the compiler eventually sees must be identical). Therefore a header is nothing more than a collection of facts. So long as the organization of the header is substantively different from the organization of the original header and the new header does not contain any non-paraphrased comments from the original, it is unlikely that copyright violation has occurred.

And Sega v. Accolade seems to support that assessment, along with several other reverse engineering cases.

No, dead is correct. However, the robot's name is Linguo, not Lingo. So get out! You're banned from making corrective posts on Slashdot! You, and your children, and your children's children -- for three months.

Didn't this used to be called Mariana's Trench? I used to know a girl named Mariana, she wasn't too trenchant. Maybe the name went wherever the pronunciation of Uranus went. Probably up Urectum.

Software piracy has been around since at least the early 80's. You would be hard-pressed to find a Spectrum or Commodore owner that didn't copy games for their friends and family, and since those days piracy has only gotten easier, and hence more widespread.

So, with this in mind, why haven't we already seen this widespread change of mindset amongst the consumers? Despite how much they moan about lost sales, the movie, and gaming industries are at worst maintaining a slow upward trend, and at best are positively booming; how are they seeing revenue continue to rise for the most part if increased piracy means less people are willing to buy even when they're able?

Sources: Video game industry revenue, Movie industry revenue (look under chart for sales figures).

Whoa, whoa, whoa, let's put it in terms we can all understand, shall we? Are you saying that the FSB is like the Klingon ISF, while the FSO and SVR are the equivalent of the DSF?

You could bone Morrigan in the first one.

Did George ever getting around to suing Blizzard for including a brightly lit and lightweight sabre in Diablo 2? Just ridiculous if he did not go after those deep pockets. He's had 10 years to sue, so I guess if he has not gotten to it by now it might not happen...

As much as I hate to admit it, it does look way too similar to a lightsaber.

And a lightsaber looks way too close to a Regallis Engineering FastTurn-3 Hydrospanner. Lucas better watch out or else a galaxy-spanning company with a long history is going to sue (or maybe start a trade embargo).

I've played Halo over the Internet. I've played Counter-Strike over the Internet. I've played Quake 3 over the Internet. All of these are fast-paced action games, and all of them are perfectly playable.

One difference is knockback. In first-person shooters, taking a bullet produces little knockback. Taking a rocket produces far more knockback, but it's also likely to sap all your HP in one hit. Fighting games are also more likely to incorporate flinching, or a short delay after taking damage when you cannot attack. Knockback and flinch hurt the client's ability to dead-reckon the position in future (unreceived) frames, and the delay between when someone applies knockback or flinch to you and when your screen updates to take the knockback or flinch into account can produce a disconcerting jump-cut, as a position close to the opponent is changed to falling and an attack on the other player is changed from landed to not landed. Knockback and flinch occur more often in a fighting game than in a first-person shooter. So to keep these jump-cuts from dominating a fast-paced fight where both players are doing combos on each other, fighting games just delay the input instead of doing prediction.

Is Smash Bros actually faster than these other games, somehow? Or did Nintendo manage to screw up multiplayer?

If Nintendo screwed it up, Capcom screwed it up the same way. Google finds reports of people noticing lag in Street Fighter IV , another fast-paced fighting game.

I've played Halo over the Internet. I've played Counter-Strike over the Internet. I've played Quake 3 over the Internet. All of these are fast-paced action games, and all of them are perfectly playable.

One difference is knockback. In first-person shooters, taking a bullet produces little knockback. Taking a rocket produces far more knockback, but it's also likely to sap all your HP in one hit. Fighting games are also more likely to incorporate flinching, or a short delay after taking damage when you cannot attack. Knockback and flinch hurt the client's ability to dead-reckon the position in future (unreceived) frames, and the delay between when someone applies knockback or flinch to you and when your screen updates to take the knockback or flinch into account can produce a disconcerting jump-cut, as a position close to the opponent is changed to falling and an attack on the other player is changed from landed to not landed. Knockback and flinch occur more often in a fighting game than in a first-person shooter. So to keep these jump-cuts from dominating a fast-paced fight where both players are doing combos on each other, fighting games just delay the input instead of doing prediction.

Is Smash Bros actually faster than these other games, somehow? Or did Nintendo manage to screw up multiplayer?

If Nintendo screwed it up, Capcom screwed it up the same way. Google finds reports of people noticing lag in Street Fighter IV , another fast-paced fighting game.

I've played Halo over the Internet. I've played Counter-Strike over the Internet. I've played Quake 3 over the Internet. All of these are fast-paced action games, and all of them are perfectly playable.

One difference is knockback. In first-person shooters, taking a bullet produces little knockback. Taking a rocket produces far more knockback, but it's also likely to sap all your HP in one hit. Fighting games are also more likely to incorporate flinching, or a short delay after taking damage when you cannot attack. Knockback and flinch hurt the client's ability to dead-reckon the position in future (unreceived) frames, and the delay between when someone applies knockback or flinch to you and when your screen updates to take the knockback or flinch into account can produce a disconcerting jump-cut, as a position close to the opponent is changed to falling and an attack on the other player is changed from landed to not landed. Knockback and flinch occur more often in a fighting game than in a first-person shooter. So to keep these jump-cuts from dominating a fast-paced fight where both players are doing combos on each other, fighting games just delay the input instead of doing prediction.

Is Smash Bros actually faster than these other games, somehow? Or did Nintendo manage to screw up multiplayer?

If Nintendo screwed it up, Capcom screwed it up the same way. Google finds reports of people noticing lag in Street Fighter IV , another fast-paced fighting game.

His body may be dead, but his head is still alive and is attached to a horrible tentacled machine that he uses to eat Cuban children.

ref: Robot Chicken

Toxoplasma gondii, the great (×30) grandfather of Hypnotoad.

TOXO FOR THE WIN!

Everyone's missing the real reason for the ban: too many "photographers" are using their "cameras" to steal the souls of the clean-up workers. The lich-kings (aka "Ted Turner" and "Ruport Murdoch") have long been stocking souls in preparation for the 2012 apocalypse. Louisianans, thanks to their voodoo culture, understand this and want to keep their souls for the use of the local shamans.

Dark matter?

According to Dr Dan Streetmentioner's Time Traveller's Handbook of 1001 Tense Formations, this is the grammatically correct use of the present future tense.

The well of an Indertictor Class Imperial Medium Frigate of course.

No, quite the opposite, you're confusing it with Bacta, the medicine (for pretty much anything). "If there's a spark of life, bacta will keep you going."

Look...you mixing it all up!

Natural Gas doesn't pollute as much, they generate 3,000 MWh for 400 Simoleons. (0.13/MWh)

That is not enough power for our cities! I think we would need quite a bit of these plants and of course parks to mitigate the effects! Now if your considering this on a region basis, this shouldn't even be an issue because pollution can disappear over borders completely.

Source

In the end its all how we zone, not where our power comes from...

True. I hate fighting packs of zombines more than anything else, except for maybe Hunter packs.

Actually, as soon as I saw them I thought of the Stalkers from Half Life 2.

Beaten:

http://wikiality.wikia.com/Stephen_Harper#Harper-bot

Does it run on banana peels? That would really be something.

Just like people complaining how in Star Wars, Han Solo said he made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs...yes, we know that parsecs are a measure of distance, Solo was talking about being able to complete the race using a shorter route than the standard 18 parsecs, which is why a measure of distance makes sense.

Source.

Disclaimer: some people may shout "retcon" at this explanation, but at this point singling out each instance retconning in the Star Wars universe is a wasted effort.

There was Doom95, but it came out a few years after the original.

Darn you, Graske!

What does getty have to do with photography?

That depends, how many hours before someone adds it to CHDK?

Really?

http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com/wiki/File:Kim_jong_hair.png

If Apple had a similar product, it might be called the iEye, requiring iSurgery to install.

And in just a few days after the iSurgery, one is over the iSore.

If Apple had a similar product, it might be called the iEye, requiring iSurgery to install.

Sorry, my bad. I did say I was pretty sure, not that I was positive. Wait a minute, what in the hell does the frame surrounding Tetris have to do with anything?

I'd love to see the readings off of a pair of these things when someone got an unexpected wedgie.

Also interesting, it seems this could be the first step towards a suit of medical power armor. Who'd have guessed that such a great item would have started inside your pants?

Magic Markers have no magical properties.
1. You have never given one to a three year old and watched the expression on the face of his mother. Magical.

      2. One word: inhale.

3. Nor have you ever played Nethack

STOP READING MY MIND!!

*adjusts tinfoil*

Hrmph.

Magic Markers have no magical properties.
1. You have never given one to a three year old and watched the expression on the face of his mother. Magical.
2. One word: inhale.

3. Nor have you ever played Nethack

most of the spill at depth and keeping away science vessels so they're free to misunderestimate the true magnitude.

Finally someone who agrees with me. I've been saying since the beginning of this thing that all they need is to get a few science vessels down there and hit it with a defense matrix or irradiate and the whole thing would be solved. Maybe stuff it with some biologics or something.

Don't worry, we thought it was a reference to Biff (see: http://home.comcast.net/~ervind/ij3mac.html and the hopelessly incomplete http://indianajones.wikia.com/wiki/Biff ), which is far better for your ./ karma than being a male Australian homosexual.

What becomes a violation of civil liberties is being detained because one looks suspicious. There are countless reasons why somebody could look suspicious to anyone's eye (trained or untrained.) Some examples are:

Passenger looks anxious- turns out that they realized they forgot something important (their kid's birthday present) and don't have enough time to go home, return to the airport, and proceed through security again.
Passenger looks uncomfortable - turns out that the person is claustrophobic and is scared of flying
Passenger looks angry - turns out the person is constipated.

Even the following example:
Passenger looks nervous (has a very slight twitch) - turns out the person is cheating on their spouse and is meeting the 3rd wheel.

None of these examples are of the passenger conspiring to do anything illegal (note that I am not implying morality for the last example, just legality), let alone in the process or carrying out terrorism. Yet each of these 4 passengers (or one terribly unlucky one) could be detained by TSA or whichever 'security' agency long enough for the person to miss their flight. And the next one. And the one after that. And then possibly even the 4th due to the airlines overbooking. All because the 'security' agent either thought they were doing their job or just were in a really bad mood (or is just a dick.)

Were the transmissions in French saying:

Iteration 17294530 : "Si qui que ce soit puisse entendre ceci, ils sont morts. Veuillez nous aider. Je vais essayer d'aller jusqu'au Rocher Noir. Il les a tués. Il les a tués tous."

Iteration 17294531 : "Il est dehors. il est dehors et Brennan a pris les clés. Veuillez nous aider. Ils sont morts. Ils sont tous morts. Aidez-nous. Ils sont morts."

Iteration 17294532 : "Il est dehors. Il est dehors et Brennan a pris les clés. Veuillez nous aider. Ils sont morts. Ils sont tous morts. Aidez-nous. Ils sont morts."

Iteration 17294533 : "Ils sont tous morts. Aidez-nous. Ils sont morts. Si qui que ce soit puisse entendre ceci"

Iteration 17294534 : "Il est dehors. Veuillez nous aider. Veuillez nous aider."

Iteration 17294535 : "Si qui que ce soit puisse entendre ceci, je vais essayer d'aller jusqu'au Rocher Noir. Veuillez nous aider. Ils sont tous morts. Ils sont morts. Il les a tués. Ils les a tués tous. Je vais essayer d'aller jusqu'au Rocher Noir."

From Lostpedia.