MetaFilter

Remember when PayPal was just for beaming money from one Palm to another? NYTimes covers Y Combinator, and points out one of their projects, TextPayMe.com, which is trying to repeat PayPal's feat but on your cell phone with text messages. For those interested: Wired coverage from last week.
posted by pwb503 at 8:48 PM PST - 27 comments

Mad Mullah Rave Party Sensation. via The Religious Policeman.
posted by semmi at 8:10 PM PST - 53 comments

'Dear Elders' Dispense Advice Online

The Elder Wisdom Circle was founded on the premise that people over 60 y.o. have wisdom to impart. Its members nationwide offer advice to thousands who e-mail the group's Web site.

posted by ericb at 7:45 PM PST - 29 comments

The impressive Gimli Glider. Yes, seriously: it can be a glider. An amazing story of a commercial pilot with mad emergency landing skillz.
posted by five fresh fish at 7:27 PM PST - 42 comments

The iTunes Billion Songs Countdown is bringin' out the nrrrrds: they developed a widget, published stats, wrote a Java applet, and even hacked a more accurate counter than Apple's (which by all appearances, seems to be to be rigged!)
posted by eener at 6:59 PM PST - 23 comments

It Only Takes A Second is the name of this 1996 industrial film from Federated Mutual Insurance. Essentially 3 straight minutes of chaotic on the job accidents geared towards terrifying the customers into being more careful (and thus more profitable), it may be my favorite industrial film ever. link goes to embedded QT video
posted by jonson at 4:40 PM PST - 64 comments

The Passion of the Christ 2: Judgement Day. (Let's see... There's a short advert at the beginning and one for X-play at the end. It looks like it uses Macromedia Flash 8, and it's probably NSFW. But it is the director's cut!) Oh yeah, Family Guy did a similar gag recently, too. And no, you can not get two minutes of your life back.
posted by Cyrano at 4:28 PM PST - 34 comments

Why is Ice slippery? You would have thought this would be well defined in 2006. But scientists are still arguing about the key elements. Plus no clear definition of Ice IX...
posted by somnambulist at 4:13 PM PST - 24 comments

Praise "Bob", slack off, lose custody of your child. A Texas woman has lost custody of her son, not even being allowed to write to him, because she was involved in activities of the Church of the Subgenius. Although her son never attended any of the events, which involved fun, nudity, and good old-fashioned blasphemy, a New York judge, James P. Punch, allegedly a "strict catholic", has denied custody of the child Kohl out of anger after seeing videos of the church's devivals and X-days. Rev. Ivan Stang goes into more detail about the situation in alt.slack.
posted by Jimbob at 4:07 PM PST - 100 comments

Jack Hamm Religious Cartoons. Hamm's art instruction books, including Cartooning the Head and Figure, have been widely influential among a generation of illustrators, Simpson's creator Matt Groening among them. Hamm began his cartooning career in the late 1930s and founded "The Jack Hamm Show," one of the first television art programs, which aired in the Dallas, Houston and Waco, Texas, TV markets.
posted by Otis at 3:57 PM PST - 17 comments

No stranger to controversy, Former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers steps down from Harvard. Somewhere, the world's smallest violin is playing...
posted by phaedon at 2:03 PM PST - 57 comments

Out along old Route 66 in Northern Arizona is Canyon Diablo. Best known for its large meteor crater, the canyon and its surroundings contain another fantastic story. It begins in the mid 1870’s with a Apache raid on the Navajo that ended in the gruesome death of some 50 Apaches trapped in what is now called “The Apache Death Cave”. The story picks up about 10 years later in 1880 when the Atlantic and Pacific railroad ran out of money at the canyon’s edge. Unable to progress any further a make shift boom town grew up over night. Said to be more dangerous than Tombstone and Dodge City combined, the first sheriff appointed at 3pm was dead by 8pm that same night. The city of Canyon Diablo lasted 10 grizzly years, ending only when the US Army was dispatched to gain control over the murder, theft and prostitution that ran rampant. The story continues in 1920 at the inception of Route 66. Harry E. (Indian) Miller, opens up one of the first and what would become one of the most elaborate Route 66 trading posts/gas station/curio shop/ tourist attractions. Named Two Guns, it was complete with Hopi made buildings, a gas station, a well-lit “Death Cave” , a “zoo” of filled with the local fauna. and lots of colorful characters. In a short time, the roadside stop began to take on what many by that time calling the curse of Canyon Diablo. Shady business deals, fires, maimings, and murder abounded. After several attempts thru the 50’s and 60’s to rebuild ,all that is left is a crumbling, beautiful husk.
posted by BrodieShadeTree at 1:59 PM PST - 28 comments

The Freaky Universe of McDonald's Advertising
posted by anastasiav at 1:23 PM PST - 31 comments

On February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down in Harlem. After being shot several times inside the Audubon Ballroom, he was pronounced dead on arrival at Vanderbilt Clinic, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital. Malcolm sez: "If violence is wrong in America, violence is wrong abroad. If it is wrong to be violent defending black women and black children and black babies and black men, then it is wrong for America to draft us, and make us violent abroad in defense of her. And if it is right for America to draft us, and teach us how to be violent in defense of her, then it is right for you and me to do whatever is necessary to defend our own people right here in this country." (from a November 1963 speech in New York City) Then, there's this 1964 speech.
posted by mickeyz at 12:23 PM PST - 59 comments

I'm sorry Mr. Callahan, your surname may offend Muslims. Yahoo! has banned the use of the word Allah in all usernames. These names are still available however. [via]
posted by Mijo Bijo at 11:16 AM PST - 68 comments

"To tell the truth ... I'm sorta surprised they haven't caught me yet," The Washington Post ran an interesting interview with a botmaster, a young man who made serveral thousands of dollars a month installing XXX spyware on machines that he controlled. He installed the software on the machines of people he did not know by hacking into them remotely. The lenghty article included a partial photo of the botmaster along with vauge descriptions of the small midwestern town where the man lives, and was published with the understanding that the man's identity would be kept secret. Someone should have told that to the person that manages photos at the Washington Post. An estute reader over at Slashdot was able to locate some extra information stored in the picture's metadata including the photographer and the location the picture was taken, Roland, Oklahoma, a town of less than 3000 people. Whoops.
posted by daHIFI at 9:44 AM PST - 56 comments

Takeshi no Chousenjou may be the hardest videogame ever written. With a title screen warning that it was "created by somebody who hates videogames" (actually writer/actor/director/comedian Takeshi "Beat" Kitano) "Takeshi's Challenge" forces gamers to endure such tasks as singing karaoke for an uninterrupted hour and holding a single button for four straight hours. Players who endure to the end are rewarded by having to hit the final boss 20,000 times. If you don't speak the language, you might be able to enjoy the game as a Japanese precursor to Grand Theft Auto, but those who understand it more fully see it as "a videogame that riffs on human disappointment for as many hours as the player is willing to search for redemption." Warning: last link contains possible spoilers for Mother 2 and some of the Metal Gear Solid games.
posted by yankeefog at 9:15 AM PST - 31 comments

Retirement village VS permanent residence on a cruise ship. Crazy? Not so fast! Bea Muller has been doing it for years (and not on just any ship, mind you). It's not a hoax.
posted by spock at 9:15 AM PST - 29 comments

Nature's Control: Hired Thugs Bugs to police your garden. "If desired, you can keep ladybug adults from flying by "gluing" their wings shut, temporarily, with a sugar-water solution. Half water and half sugared pop (Coke, Pepsi, etc.), in a spray bottle, works fine."
posted by Gator at 9:10 AM PST - 13 comments

They come to life playing out scenarios which are in many ways less ridiculous than the reality of the politics they parody. [via]
posted by If I Had An Anus at 8:50 AM PST - 2 comments

We have all seen lots of YouTube and Google Video but have you ever seen a woman breast feed a cat? (nsfw) Or a 500 KV electrical discharge? wonder what the daily show take on social networking is? check out videosift, a digg like collaborative blog for trolling up the best/weirdest? in video on the web. [via mefi projects]
posted by sourbrew at 8:48 AM PST - 36 comments

Religious use of ayahuasca ruled lawful in U.S.
posted by xowie at 8:02 AM PST - 81 comments

OSX has a security bug that can be triggered simply by visiting a web page in safari There is an example of the exploit here, to see if your machine is affected. You should probably use firefox until a patch is released.
posted by delmoi at 8:00 AM PST - 67 comments

Going Down the Crooked Road. Explore the sights and sounds of Virginia's Heritage Music Trail.
posted by srboisvert at 7:04 AM PST - 6 comments

Berlusconi allies with Italian fascists. Declaring the opposition party as a threat to democracy, Italian PM Silvio Berlusconi did the obvious thing... he allied with the fascists. After all, what did they ever do to harm anyone? They look like a friendly, patriotic group. Cleancut... and they sound kinda cheery too. Their websites feature familiar faces. I'm sure the knifings and the bombings -- yes, plural -- were just a matter of youthful overexuberance. So, where's Bush on this issue?
posted by insomnia_lj at 6:15 AM PST - 70 comments

If indeed information technology is seeping out of cyberspace at a rate that will soon immerse us in a world of smart furniture and spime wranglers, I think we have bigger things to worry about than disambiguating the terminology (user experience and opting out come to mind). MeFi's own Adam Greenfield weighs in with his first book, Everyware.
posted by mikepop at 5:24 AM PST - 2 comments

The Immortal Game between Anderssen and Kieseritzsky is, by some, "considered to be perhaps the most entertaining game of chess ever played". Now, 155 years later, you can enjoy the interactive version, the many many commentaries , and even buy the movie.
posted by hoverboards don't work on water at 5:01 AM PST - 20 comments

Microsoft recently made a change to the license agreement saying that a new motherboard is equal to a new computer, hence you need to purchase a new Windows license. Here is what Microsoft has to say:

“An upgrade of the motherboard is considered to result in a “new personal computer” to which Microsoft® OEM operating system software cannot be transferred from another computer. If the motherboard is upgraded or replaced for reasons other than a defect, then a new computer has been created and the license of new operating system software is required.”

The reason Microsoft gave for this term is that “Microsoft needed to have one base component “left standing” that would still define that original PC. Since the motherboard contains the CPU and is the “heart and soul” of the PC, when the motherboard is replaced (for reasons other than defect) a new PC is essentially created.” Microsoft sent a memo to its OEM partners asking them to enforce this new policy, every time they upgrade a computer for a client.
posted by zouhair at 3:17 AM PST - 96 comments