Regardless of the fact that they told him otherwise, since the check hadn't actually cleared, the bank basically allowed him to overdraft his account by $400k and then took his home to collect the debt. The whole Malaysian scam thing is irrelevant. Does this bank let all of its customers overdraw 6 figures? I think this guy, his lawyer and the bank are all dumb as shit.

worked for me have you ever seen a cd/dvd repair kit? it's just rubbing compound (about the consistency of toothpaste) and a buffing pad. extra gritty toothpaste could be a problem though

I broke a pin off an old 486 chip once. Didn't do anything about it and the computer worked fine.

Making a digital copy of something just doesn't feel like stealing. It's no wonder that people do it all the time without moral qualms. App stores should prove to be a great thing for software developers since they tend to eliminate casual piracy and make it much more convenient for users to actually purchase.

It's a sickening display of ignorance coming from people who are supposed to be professionals. Nobody takes issue with people investigating alternatives to SQL but SQL has come under heavy fire by NoSQL proponents and yes one can become very sick of hearing the same old fallacious arguments again and again.

and iomega zip drives! remember those?

Clouds are not spheres, mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, nor does lightning travel in a straight line.

unless you're going faster than 2500mph gravity will pull you back into atmosphere (it doesn't thin out to nothing until 700 miles up or so) and you'll slow down without thrust. also you'll probably want thrust to slow down or to change direction if you are going 2500+.. just guessing though IANAw/e

Didn't Gödel prove that you can't prove this or any statement like this?

Try P vs NP for dummies

when will we stop calling it 3D? tv/games have been 3D for a while - these new screens are stereoscopic or just stereo seeing as how we don't refer to our stereo speakers as stereophonic

I'm at the Premium Buyer's Exhibition in New York — the 1950's equivalent of the Consumer Electronics Show — and the massive halls are dominated by color TVs made by everyone from RCA to GE and Honeywell to companies you've never heard of. The manufacturers seem pretty excited, but color has so many downsides — most of all the lousy image quality and unimpressive color effect — that I can't imagine consumers are going to go for this. 'As a medium, color remains remarkably self-trivializing. Virtually nobody who works with it can resist flaunting garish stuff at the camera, just to make clear to viewers that they’re experiencing the miracle of color. When Elvis banged away at his piano during RCA’s event, a cameraman zoomed in and out on his ridiculous shoes for no apparent reason, and one of the company’s representatives kept robotically flicking his tie forward. Hey, it’s color — watch this!

most geek arguments are based on the Highlander principle

which one is a product?

it seems crazy but the purest form of Delphi these days is Prism for .NET