Cool stuff from gizmag

• Internal combustion/steam hybrid from BMW -- The powertrain is retrofittable into existing vehicles, down to a 4-cylinder 3-series
• French company Osmos "reinvents the wheel" -- hubless "orbital" wheel offers numerous advantages, they claim
• Peugeot shows off two-seater electric "city car" concept -- you enter and leave through the center of the hubless wheels

Some of these may be old.  But they're still cool.

That ain't no duck .....

People are people, and they're all different.  They vary in their attitudes, their preferences, their tastes.  You can tell most of the ones with better taste on my friends list quite easily, I think; most of them are fans of Schlock Mercenary.

...OK, seriously, Schlock Mercenary is in my opinion one of the better webcomics out there.  Most of its fans seem to think so too, which is why so many Schlock fans have gone out of their way to help support howardtayler and his wife sandratayler after Howard quit his job at Novell to work fulltime as a webcartoonist.  Mostly, this has taken the form of fans who found Howard's and Sandra's Amazon wishlists using those wishlists as shopping lists for Howard's and Sandra's respective birthdays.  And neither Howard nor Sandra has abused the generosity of Schlock fans to load up their lists with bling they don't need, either.  (Sandra's list in particular has often had more stuff on it for their kids than for herself.)

That's why this pisses me off.

As sandratayler points out, on the face of it, it's not conclusive.  However, there IS no Sandra Tayler (or even S. Tayler) in the Pleasanton, California phonebook, and there is in fact only one Sandra Tayler listed anywhere in California ... and Santa Ana's not real close to Pleasanton.  (Tayler is a pretty rare spelling in the first place.)  Go check out the list -- four pages of mostly XBox bling, a PlayStation 2, the latest Nintendo console, a PSPuny ... er ... PS Portable (yeah, there's three different friggin' game consoles on this wishlist), a radio-controlled Humvee, the complete Simpsons and South Park, a high-end gaming PC, an iPod and dock, Harry Potter books, even a $1000 plasma TV.  This has ALL the hallmarks of some pimply-faced 14-year-old who figures he can get Schlock fans to load him up with ph4t l3wt with no-one the wiser.  And I'll bet his parents don't know about his wishlist, either.  (Wonder if it's ever occurred to him how he's going to explain the plasma TV to them if it shows up?)

So here's my thought.  I'm pretty sure at least one person on my friends list either works at Amazon or has a personal inside contact at Amazon.  (I'm thinking specifically of you here, technoshaman, if I'm not mistaken.)  And if that inside person were to bring this to the attention of someone at Amazon with the authority to just crosscheck the name on this bogus wishlist against the shipping address and billing information on the account ....

Well, if it CLAIMS to be a duck, but it looks like a vulture, walks like a vulture, squawks like a vulture, has feathers like a vulture, and stinks like a vulture, it probably ain't no duck, is it...?  And I think it's a pretty safe bet identity theft violates Amazon's terms of service.

In Howard's words,

"I’d hate to think that your act of kindness is getting hijacked by some greedy, no-account punk who doesn’t want to have to pay for his X-box habit."

---

UPDATE, 2015E:

It has been brought to my attention by kendaer that the owner of the "bogus" wishlist has now added a disclaimer ,"Not related in any way to Howard Tayler of Schlock Mercenary".  I don't know at whose instigation, nor whether this was in any way a response to any poking or investigation on the part of Amazon.com, whether the owner of the list was contacted by a friend who is part of the Schlock community, or what.  Suffice it to say that the problem appears to be resolved.

BB&T's eminent domain policy

(Found and reported by janetmiles)

"BB&T Corporation today [yesterday, now] said it will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain."

"Hello, old friend."

Say hi to glitch25, folks.  Some of you already know him from the old days of ICB.

Yo, ilcylic:

Go read.  I think it's up your alley.  (The main body of print would have to be small, though.)

The return of BLAM!

No, I'm not talking about Schlock Mercenary.  olafthunderfoot found this report, which asserts that the US Department of Defense has finally ditched the Beretta M9 (after 20 years of reliability issues and unsatisfactory performance in the field), and is going back to a .45 pistol.  SOCOM has been tasked with finding the M9's replacement, to be designated the Joint Combat Pistol.

I think I know a lot of grunts who are going to be very happy with this decision.

(For Schlock fans, here's some classic BLAM from the archives.)