MetaFilter

Does it bug anyone else that if you have a MetaFilter account with cookies enabled, it automatically enters your password (which can be read in view source)???
Personally I think this is a very bad thing, as I've visited metafilter at the library a few times..
comment posted at 7:54 PM on Jun-28-00
comment posted at 12:42 PM on Jun-29-00

Boy Scouts: 1 Gay Memebers: 0 Court Says Boy Scouts Can Bar Gays, which is slightly troubling, in that a psuedo-national organization can make rules that go against government policy. I don't see how a scoutmaster being gay has anything to do with teaching kids how to tie knots and go camping though.
comment posted at 8:19 PM on Jun-28-00
comment posted at 1:16 PM on Jun-29-00

Fidel's victory over the U.S. is complete. Elian will return to Cuba, probably before the next sunrise. Why did this decision take so long? The negligent bungling of the Clinton adminsitration, the Department of Justice, and the INS. When Elian first arrived, the INS placed him in the custody of his nearest kin here in America, and advised them to seek a state court ruling on custody. They relied on that advice and did so. Then, for political resonas, the administration betrayed both the family and the boy, critically undermining our foreign policy objectives in the process. His future as a pawn of the Castro tyranny looks bleak indeed. We can only hope he and every other Cuban are soon freed from Fidel's rule.
comment posted at 8:23 PM on Jun-28-00

:::SCREAM::: wouldn't it be more efficient to just dip britney in wax..?
comment posted at 8:25 PM on Jun-28-00

Another online discussion forum experiences growing pains. Lance writes: "glassdog.CLUB is a good example of what can go wrong in an online community." And so he's pulling the plug. Perhaps killing something while it's still young is the only way to keep it from growing old and dying miserably?
comment posted at 7:18 AM on Jun-28-00

I've never actually seen this in use (probably because I'm totally amerocentric in my browsing), but apparently you can get some wäĉkŷ characters in your domain name if you want to, assuming you want a dot-nu domain. If your browser speaks Japanese, you can even have a kanji domain. That's pretty neat.
comment posted at 8:04 PM on Jun-27-00

the don rickles of the web speaks what a charming personality....
comment posted at 7:26 AM on Jun-28-00

And now, here's something we hope you'll really like...
Californian David Simon decided that It Would Be Nice If you could use the Internet like your VCR. The MPAA and the Studios disagreed. Is this guy crazy? Or crazy like a fox?
comment posted at 8:10 PM on Jun-27-00

YAHOOGLE!!
Your average weblogger's favorite search engine makes the big time (and they just hit a billion pages indexed, too). Will success spoil the Googs?
comment posted at 10:34 AM on Jun-27-00
comment posted at 8:12 PM on Jun-27-00

like your news grassroots flavored? this is a really comprehensive list of hundreds of free weekly newsmags across the country. rock!
comment posted at 7:44 AM on Jun-28-00

Top Secret Recipes is a site that aims to reveal the secrets of almost any popular restaurant's items. They have McDonalds Shakes, Orange Julius, Hot Dog on a Stick (complete with video), and Girl Scout Cookie Thin Mints. Oh my god, they actually reverse-engineered McDonalds' Secret Sauce. Be careful with the knowledge of that last one, you could be killed just for possessing it. If food is considered a restaurant's intellectual property, how does this site continue without being sued silly?
comment posted at 8:37 PM on Jun-28-00

Chicken Run's "dark, concentration-camp-inflected imagery." This new Nick Park film is entertaining, but like Newsweek's David Ansen I couldn't avoid viewing the bleak chicken farm (and neighboring slaughterhouse) as a Nazi death camp. Anyone hungry for a chicken pot pie?
comment posted at 4:22 PM on Jun-29-00

Three words: Charlie's Angels Trailer. This looks pretty funny, especially with Bill Murray involved. I guess the real question this movie raises is "are the re-makes of yesteryear successes going to continue in the 00's?" Personally, I thought it was a 90's thing, which I often call the "recycled decade." Side question: why don't the angels have guns in the ending silhouette? Is that because of the current anti-gun climate? [thanks Kristin]
comment posted at 8:47 PM on Jun-23-00

Unsurprising posts: Perhaps this should be in Metatalk (and certainly it's more Matt's business than mine), but I want the readers of MetaFilter to read it. Unless I'm confused, the point of a post to Metafilter is to satisfy two criteria:

1. It's interesting to the readership.
2. It's something they're unlikely to discover or encounter elsewhere on their own.

As I look at MetaFilter today, I see several articles which are nothing except digests of news events which I could just as easily have read at Reuters, or the BBC, or CNN, or any of half a dozen other normal web sites. Unless the post here includes an odd editorial slant, just what does it contribute that I can't get from those other sites?

To contrast this, we spent a great deal of time discussing Elian over a period of weeks, and many of those articles included links to the mainline news organizations. But these were means to permit commentary, not treated as ends in themselves.

If you want to tell us that the Dutch truck driver has been indicted, tell us something else besides which we can't discover by visiting CNN or Reuters or the BBC. And why were we told about the end of the hostage standoff in Fiji? What was added here beyond what I would have discovered on my own at CNN?

Unfortunately, what this looks like is "Gawd, this is neat! I want to participate, too!" syndrome. That part's fine, but before you say something, make sure you have something worth saying!
comment posted at 8:53 PM on Jun-23-00

Dennis Miller to co-host this years Monday Night Football. "That's the game and I am outta here."
comment posted at 7:09 PM on Jun-24-00

It looks so ridiculous. "School is supposed to be teaching our kids how to read and write. Not about dangerous drugs like PHP."
comment posted at 8:57 PM on Jun-23-00

Do you use Microsoft Word? Or does Microsoft Word use you.
comment posted at 3:14 PM on Jun-21-00
comment posted at 3:16 PM on Jun-21-00

Where am I going, and why am I in this handbasket? What's happening to copyright law lately, why, why ignoring it may well be the best thing to do to fix it, and why Mickey Mouse is a Yakuza. Very nice piece from (former?) EFF Legal Counsel Mike Godwin
comment posted at 12:47 PM on Jun-21-00
comment posted at 12:50 PM on Jun-21-00
comment posted at 2:14 PM on Jun-21-00

Let web designers have Jakob Nielsen for usability guidance, we Flash designers have our own budding guru of usable Flash on the web at Flazoom.com. The guy behind Flazoom follows up his Cancer piece with some good guidelines for Flash on the web. The best link in the article goes here, where he asks you to find both uses of Flash on the page. I totally missed the first one, even when I knew what to look for. His use of Flash that just blew me away - hardly any animation, just usefullness. I'll stop cheering now...
comment posted at 9:04 AM on Jun-21-00

An essential HOWTO For the people that don't know the trauma they are causing.
comment posted at 9:10 AM on Jun-21-00

Dru Jay has a good article on voluntary micropayments, and the theme is something the failed micropayments crowd never thought of: instead of forcing the charge before you see it, treat a site as shareware, and pay after you've enjoyed it. Thanks to two individuals, I'm $0.50 richer today. Are voluntary paypal donations the wave of the blogging future?
comment posted at 9:25 AM on Jun-21-00
comment posted at 12:42 PM on Jun-22-00

"[11-year-old] Greg Smith loves going online and playing soccer . . . he spends afternoons reading outdoors, hiking through the mountains and playing basketball with buddies...except that this 11-year-old has just completed his first year as a full-time student at Randolph- Macon College in Virginia..." Why do I have a feeling this kid is going to be writing a painful memoir about his lost childhood by the time he's 19?
comment posted at 2:29 PM on Jun-21-00

Well, we're all screwed. Seems like BT patented hyperlinking years ago, and they plan to aggressively enforce it in the US. Anyone know how to setup blogger for gopher? (free registration is required to view article)
comment posted at 5:43 PM on Jun-19-00

Does Gareth Branwyn's / WIRED's Jargon Watch ever acknowledge its debt to Eric Raymond's Jargon File? I mean, the File's revision history states clearly that it began in 1975-- considerably before WIRED came to the trough --so isn't this Jargon Watch book just a rip-off of the print verison of the Jargon File, The New Hacker's Dictionary?
comment posted at 6:06 PM on Jun-18-00
comment posted at 5:45 PM on Jun-19-00

Coinstar seems like a good idea, however, in the FAQ, they don't give the exact amount of the service charge. How odd.
comment posted at 6:09 PM on Jun-18-00
comment posted at 6:30 PM on Jun-19-00
comment posted at 6:35 PM on Jun-19-00

fellow 3D geeks ahoy! strata 3D is free for download! get it. it's got a rockin' modeler.
comment posted at 12:49 PM on Jun-16-00

I like this Web site but its design is just a tad too similar to this one.
comment posted at 12:51 PM on Jun-16-00

Is the Boss really in charge? Tucows is -- supposedly legally -- posting tracks from his early album, "Before the Fame" (though that sounds like a title applied after the fact to *me*).
comment posted at 1:02 PM on Jun-16-00

We can try who we like, but don't anyone try to try one of ours.

From the article: "The Clinton administration is offering a "Get Out of Jail Free" card to future Saddam Husseins and Slobodan Milosevics, simply in order to pander to the Pentagon and the Republican right on Capitol Hill. American diplomats are fighting a rearguard action in New York, in tandem with Congress in Washington, to emasculate the International Criminal Court that was established by the United Nations last year in Rome.

"Why does the United States oppose a way to punish the world's greatest villains? In short -- and in no uncertain terms -- congressmen such as Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Jesse Helms demand that no such court have jurisdiction over potential American criminals."

Silly me, I thought the law was supposed to apply to everyone or to no-one at all. Am I just being old-fashioned, or is anyone else bothered by the hypocrisy at work here?
comment posted at 8:48 AM on Jun-16-00

Is linking illegal? New York Times article about DeCSS linkage fiasco involving 2600. If linking is illegal, the Web is SOL. This is insane.
comment posted at 8:49 AM on Jun-16-00

What in the hell is it going to take? Broderbund/Mattel puts spyware in kids reading programs... [/.]
comment posted at 3:45 PM on Jun-15-00
comment posted at 5:30 PM on Jun-15-00

A blast from my past... I know it's improper to do this in MetaFilter but I'm doing it anyway cuz I'm a cad. Actually, well I rationialize it this way... [more]
comment posted at 2:22 PM on Jun-15-00
comment posted at 5:32 PM on Jun-15-00

Sure, spud guns have been done, but sometimes we need reminders of the awesome power of a flying tuber. I prefer this design, as it is powered by compressed air, whereas a buddy of mine just finished a device he calls "The Judge" powered by Acetylene and O2.
comment posted at 2:25 PM on Jun-15-00

Hey Kids! Add your greeting to a mass telegram (meta-gram?) being assembled by a British website to wish Prince William a Happy 18th Birthday!
Nice to know that the newfangled internet is being put to good use in support of England's embarassingly obsolete monarchy. But then, I suspect some of you more opinionated MetaFilterers would probably have some especially entertaining "greetings" to add to the mix...
comment posted at 2:29 PM on Jun-15-00

Why can't I get a job like this?
comment posted at 7:04 AM on Jun-15-00
comment posted at 2:34 PM on Jun-15-00

Not sure what to title this... 'We come in peace'? dunno... but very interesting
comment posted at 7:02 AM on Jun-15-00

A harvesting we will go, a harvesting we will go... Sorry about the flippancy, but I don't know how else to mention this article without getting creeped out.
comment posted at 9:28 AM on Jun-14-00