Appropriately referred to as "The Tetris Effect"

Well at least having bear hands will make it easier to kill the buffalo. Where do I get a set of those?

samzenpus's campaign to gradually introduce awful articles that should have been in idle onto the main site continues. The plan seems to be to post one or two of these every day until we no longer think of them as odd. Then they can increase the rate a bit, eventually merge idle entirely into the main site, and voila! Slashdot can be as hip and successful of a site as digg is!

History up to this point:
April 28 - Tokyo Scientists Create Mobile Slime
April 27 - Air Force One Flyby Causes Brief Panic In NYC
April 27 - How To Have an Online Social Life When You're Dead
April 23 - Race Car Made With Veggies And Powered By Chocolate
April 22 - Robotic Penguins
April 22 - Yamaha Unveils Golf Cart Powered By Cow Dung
April 21 - Biotech Company to Patent Pigs
April 21 - The Taste of Space
April 17 - Philosophies and Programming Languages

Do we really want the guy behind the worst articles I've ever seen on slashdot shaping the direction of this site?

I have Shaw's "High-Speed Xtreme-I" in Calgary, and regularly max my download speed out at 1.8MB/s. So I actually seem to be able to get above their "up to" limit. YMMV, etc.

Don't take the article too seriously, it's just samzenpus' once-per-day "should have been in idle" test post to see how close to digg we're willing to let slashdot become.

ScuttleMonkey didn't do his job as an editor properly?

I must say, I am shocked and dismayed at this sudden development!

This is my favorite captcha, some are ridiculous: http://random.irb.hr/signup.php

Refresh the page a bit, fun to see what you can get.

I'm not sure what the random "pretend you know Japanese" jab is about, but regardless, I wasn't trying to say that it should be normal for people to write posts in other languages. However, I've seen multiple instances where someone tried to clear up some details related to a story, where the only source of information is in a foreign language. They write a post along the lines of:

Slashdot then totally mangles the quote they took out of the article and displays it in random ASCII characters. Is it something that's totally necessary for the site to have? No, but it's 2009, sites should be able to deal with more than ASCII. I certainly think it would have been a better use of developer time than achievements.

How about adding Unicode support so that posts aren't often filled with random garbage when commenters assume one of the major technical sites on the internet should be able to handle curved quotation marks. Never mind when someone tries to write a word/post in Japanese or any other non-English language.

Just install Ad Block Plus, after the Firefox restart associated with installing it, you'll get a popup asking you to choose a list. The default (which is EasyList, the one maintained by rick752) will do the job very well.

Not that I'm the person you're replying to, but I'm in Canada and get exactly the same message on Hulu. Not exactly "overseas", considering I could drive to the US in less than 5 hours.

And the other free option you mentioned? Pandora? Let's have a look:
We are deeply, deeply sorry to say that due to licensing constraints, we can no longer allow access to Pandora for listeners located outside of the U.S.

last.fm also is extremely restricted outside of the US (we get 30 second clips where you get full songs), and even YouTube blocks some videos.

Have a look at Vimperator. It's slow to get started (much like vim itself), but very efficient once you get it. Make sure you read the help/manual so you realize all the commands possible.

You mean the latest masterpiece of fantasy storytelling from Lucasfilm's(TM) Brian Moriarty(TM)? Why it's an extraordinary adventure with an interface on magic... stunning, high-resolution, 3D landscapes... sophisticated score and musical effects. Not to mention the detailed animation and special effects, elegant point 'n' click control of characters, objects, and magic spells. Beat the rush! Go out and buy LOOM(TM) today!

There's a quote I've always liked along these lines:

"Live a good life. If there are gods and they are just, then they will not care how devout you have been, but will welcome you based on the virtues you have lived by. If there are gods, but unjust, then you should not want to worship them. If there are no gods, then you will be gone, but will have lived a noble life that will live on in the memories of your loved ones." - Marcus Aurelius

The pope decided that the idea of limbo was too depressing and decided to drop it: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/magazine/5406552.stm

Who knows what happened to all the babies' souls that had supposedly been in limbo up until that point. It makes absolutely no sense to me how people can believe in religion when things like this are fairly common.