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The frequent fliers who flew too much - latimes.com

2012 May 6, 10:24

“Both men bought tickets that gave them unlimited first-class travel for life on American Airlines. “

“He was airborne almost every other day. If a friend mentioned a new exhibit at the Louvre, Rothstein thought nothing of jetting from his Chicago home to San Francisco to pick her up and then fly to Paris together.”

“She pulled years of flight records for Rothstein and Vroom and calculated that each was costing American more than $1 million a year.”

PermalinkCommentshumor airline american-airlines travel

“On The Verge is ready for a lot of things, but we clearly...

2012 Apr 2, 8:31


“On The Verge is ready for a lot of things, but we clearly weren’t ready for renowned astrophysicist Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, who stopped by to talk space exploration, life as a meme, and why he carries a slightly-illegal laser with him at all times.”

PermalinkCommentsinternet meme humor video neil-degrasse-tyson

(via Tron-Style Light Dance Performance by Wrecking Crew...

2012 Mar 15, 5:21


(via Tron-Style Light Dance Performance by Wrecking Crew Orchestra)

PermalinkCommentstron dance video music dubstep

Star Trek: TNG Season 8 illustration has us longing for more [Star Trek]

2012 Mar 5, 3:17

Fictional plot summaries of TNG S8 episodes.    Like:

  • Q’s back: he’s wearing scuba gear and needs Picard’s help dumping his girlfriend. Barclay accidentally locks himself outside the ship.
  • Geordie and Data nurse a space bird back to health, and are sad when they have to release it. Picard is trapped in a turbolift with a baby.
  • Starfleet sends a cantankerous admiral to boss around Picard during delicate peace talks. Data seems to have mastered bragging.
  • Riker’s ex-girlfriend arrives and dies, leaving behind a pile of glowing dust and a mystery. Picard is trapped on a turbolift with a horse.
  • A planet of suspicious docents abduct Riker for their museum of amazing men. Geordi and Data are too excited to sleep at their sleepover.
  • Picard is trapped inside a sentient turbolift. A clip show highlights the most memorable “Picard is trapped on a turbolift” moments.
PermalinkCommentshumor twitter tng tv

Minimal Mac: TV Is Broken

2012 Feb 27, 1:58

minimalmac:

I say all of this to set up the fact that Beatrix has little idea of how traditional TV works and seeing her first real exposure to it was enlightening to say the least.

PermalinkCommentshumor technical tv netflix

Blackmail DRM - Stolen Thoughts

2012 Feb 13, 4:00

Most existing DRM attempts to only allow the user to access the DRM'ed content with particular applications or with particular credentials so that if the file is shared it won't be useful to others. A better solution is to encode any of the user's horrible secrets into unique versions of the DRM'ed content so that the user won't want to share it. Entangle the users and the content provider's secrets together in one document and accordingly their interests. I call this Blackmail DRM. For an implementation it is important to point out that the user's horrible secret doesn't need to be verified as accurate, but merely verified as believable.

Apparently I need to get these blog posts written faster because only recently I read about Social DRM which is a light weight version of my idea but with a misleading name. Instead of horrible secrets, they say they'll use personal information like the user's name in the DRM'ed content. More of my thoughts stolen and before I even had a chance to think of it first!

PermalinkCommentsdrm blackmail blackmail-drm technical humor social-drm

Portal 2's Turret Lullaby comic sheds light and lasers on the singing turrets

2011 Oct 2, 4:30
PermalinkCommentscomics mac microsoft pc playstation portal-2 ps3 singing-turrets valve xbox technical

The magic button — Make Everything OK

2011 Jul 13, 5:48Like the big red button that doesn't do anything but better "because it is slightly cheaper, and because it has the words "DON'T PANIC" in large, friendly letters on the cover"PermalinkCommentshumor internet web

MP3: Childish Gambino – “Break (All of the Lights)” at PMA | Pretty Much Amazing

2011 Apr 7, 2:31PermalinkCommentsdonald-glover childish-gambino music

JavaScript & .NET interop via WebBrowser Control

2011 Apr 5, 10:00

For my GeolocMock weekend project I intended to use the Bing Maps API to display a map in a WebBrowser control and allow the user to interact with that to select a location to be consumed by my application. Getting my .NET code to talk to the JavaScript in the WebBrowser control was surprisingly easy.

To have .NET execute JavaScript code you can use the InvokeScript method passing the name of the JavaScript function to execute and an object array of parameters to pass:

this.webBrowser2.Document.InvokeScript("onLocationStateChanged",
new object[] {
latitudeTextBoxText,
longitudeTextBoxText,
altitudeTextBoxText,
uncertaintyTextBoxText
});

The other direction, having JavaScript call into .NET is slightly more complicated but still pretty easy as far as language interop goes. The first step is to mark your assembly as ComVisible so that it can interact with JavaScript via COM. VS had already added a ComVisible declaration to my project I just had to change the value to true.

[assembly: ComVisible(true)]

Next set ObjectForScripting attribute to the object you want to expose to JavaScript.

this.webBrowser2.ObjectForScripting = this.locationState;

Now that object is exposed as window.external in JavaScript and you can call methods on it.

window.external.Set(lat, long, alt, gUncert);

However you don't seem to be able to test for the existence of methods off of it. For example the following JavaScript generates an exception for me even though I have a Set method:

if (window.external && window.external.Set) {
PermalinkCommentsjavascript webbrowser .net technical csharp

Electric Umbrella

2010 Dec 6, 9:03"The Electric Umbrella will glow with many pinpoints of light"
PermalinkCommentsart cool diy electronics geek umbrella

Internet Media Types and the Web

2010 Sep 30, 2:48A surprisingly readable and delightfully accurate summary of the history of MIME in the web followed by proposed next steps. Sounds like a plan to me! "We need a realistic transition plan from the unreliable web to the more reliable one. Part of this is to encourage senders (web servers) to mean what they say, and encourage recipients (browsers) to give preference to what the senders are sending."PermalinkCommentsmime contenttype browser web ietf reference history mimetype mime-sniffing sniffing technical

Make: Online : Hand lights — Cool Tools contest winner

2010 Sep 14, 2:24Good idea and solves some of the head lamp problems: "...Enter the Hand Lights, a pretty simple and cheap DIY project that puts adjustable lights on your forearms to light whatever is in your hands."PermalinkCommentslight diy hand head-lamp tool

Taiwanese News Animation of JetBlue Flight Attendant’s Dramatic Exit

2010 Aug 12, 2:09

PermalinkCommentsavlater video 3d jetblue airplane humor news

Draft: The Salmon Protocol

2010 Jun 20, 1:18Protocol for doing distributed commenting and implemented by Google Buzz! "This document defines a lightweight, robust, and secure protocol for sending unsolicited notifications — especially comments and responses on syndicated feed content — to specified endpoints; along with rules to enable resulting content to itself be syndicated robustly and securely."PermalinkCommentscomment blog atom rss google buzz salmon reference specification protocol syndication technical

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box on Vimeo

2010 May 21, 8:32
This is actually happening. Video of projecting light onto boxes looks very pretty.

ENVISION : Step into the sensory box from SUPERBIEN on Vimeo.

PermalinkCommentsvia:waxy 3d projector art video

WebSandbox - Microsoft Live Labs

2010 May 6, 7:16"Today web gadgets, mashup components, advertisements, and other 3rd party content on websites either run with full trust alongside your content or are isolated inside of IFrames. As a result, many modern web applications are intrinsically insecure, often with unpredictable service quality. Live Labs Web Sandbox addresses this problem."PermalinkCommentsweb browser web-sandbox technical javascript html windows live security sandbox microsoft silverlight

Amazon Kindle: Most Highlighted Passages of All Time

2010 May 3, 7:27Amazon has the most highlighted passages of Kindle users. Of course Dan Brown is all over that. But in 94th place of most highlighted is a passage from the 'Kindle Shortcuts' book on how to highlight passages: "Go to top Notes and Clippings (Kindle 2) To create a highlight: use the 5-way controller to highlight the content you want to clip and then press the 5-way to save your selection... Highlighted by 319 Kindle users"PermalinkCommentshumor highlight amazon kindle technical meta

Ars Colloquium: the official ACTA treaty draft and your reactions

2010 Apr 21, 6:47"After years of secrecy (and the occasional leak), a draft of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) treaty has finally been released by negotiators. We've delved deep into the treaty, highlighting its numerous problems. Indeed, there's a lot not to like about the treaty: Internet disconnections, anticircumvention prohibitions, and even the ability for rightsholders to get injunctions if they can show infringement is imminent."PermalinkCommentsarstechnica acta privacy internet todo government politics piracy technical

Atlantis Beach with Palm Tree in Sun

2010 Feb 28, 11:36

sequelguy posted a photo:

Atlantis Beach with Palm Tree in Sun

PermalinkCommentssunlight beach palmtree bahamas nassau atlantisresort skyocean
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