Many online banking and stock trading groups require some way to verify your identity.
The automated account verification systems with most of these groups send you a few small deposits, which you get to keep.
Michael Largent signed up fifty thousand times, and cashed out with thousands of dollars.
In a sad day for cheating, he has been indicted.
There are many things to like/dislike about John McCain, but I doubt any item will cause greater bipartisan support for John McCain than the idea of John McCain willfully submitting to a modified version of the House of Commons "Question Time".
One of the things that I truly admire about the British system of democracy is "Question Time", and I have long wished that it could be integrated into our American government. Maybe it would grow weary after awhile (as I have spent the majority of my life listening to politicians talking past one another rather than directly to one another the novelty may wear quickly), or maybe it will increase vitriol and partisanship exponentially and to our detriment. Either way, the specifics of the deal would be welcome from my end because it wouldn't require a change in the institutional structure of the government, allowing the idea to be ditched if poor, or expanded upon if well received.
Apparently Nintendo did not send their new 'Wii Fit' video game through enough focus groups. Parents are livid that their children are being called 'fat' by a video game.
They have every right to be. As noted in the article, the BMI Nintendo uses while accurate for adults, fluctuates daily for children and teens. Factor in the mental and emotional volatility of youth, and a game which should be great for young people has suddenly become a potentially harmful game.
A warning should be written into the software (akin to the "Why don't you go outside and play" prompt) telling users each time the game is booted up that the BMI measurement may have varying degrees of accuracy for people under the age of 18.
That song was Greg Brown's Who Woulda Thunk It?
Most importantly was the way I got the answer, by "querying the hive." AskMeFi was exactly the sort of thing I needed. I never got the point of Metafilter until now.
Over at FP, you can vote on your five favorite influential intellectuals! (Finally, a "hottest celebrity" poll for geeks like us!)
It's a hard little game. Posner, Lessig and Zakaria were easy picks for me, but after writing myself in, it was hard to find anyone else who measured up.
(I noticed that Bryan Caplan, who studies the the irrationality of voting, did not make the poll. That's probably for the best, since his biggest fans usually don't turn out for these sorts of things.)
