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About

"Serial Bus is a place for me to dump interesting links that I find."

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Archives

If you've got it, you've got it Monday, February 28, 2011 | comments

I went to Borders today; people were ransacking it | comments

Borders is closing some stores and today I went to one of the ones that was closing and it was jam packed. While there, I picked a bunch of random books, taking pictures of their prices. Every book that I photographed, I'm putting online so it's a fair contest. Lets compare prices and see why Borders is closing. Borders prices are figured with their 20% discount and a 6% Michigan sales tax since that's part of the price too.


Borders Price: $15.25
Amazon: $11.42

Borders Prices: $12.67, 12.72
Amazon Prices: $10.55, 10.20

Borders Price: $9.33 (Penguin edition)
Amazon Price: $5.99 (different Penguin edition)

Borders Price: $33.91
Amazon Price: $26.39

Borders Price: $14.37
Amazon Price: $11.53

Borders Price: 11.86
Amazon Price: 11.99

Borders Price: $20.34
Amazon Price: $16.31

Borders Price: $21.20
Amazon Price: $19.00

Lauren Conrad: Sweet Little Lies (paperback)
Borders Price: $8.47
Amazon Price: $9.99 (though hardcover is $7.20)

Dungeons and Dragons: Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms
Borders Price: $16.91
Amazon Price: $12.89

Puppy Place: Goldie
Borders Price: $4.23
Amazon Price: $4.99

Date Night on DVD
Borders Price: $16.95
Amazon Price: $14.99

World of Warcraft Programming: Second Edition
Borders Price: $42.39
Amazon Price: $29.80

Total (in case this is your exact shopping list)
Borders: $240.60
Amazon: $193.25


And still they had lots of people in line, buying everything they could. I mean even the needlepoint section was getting low on books.

Cookies sold via a string hanging out an apartment window Saturday, February 19, 2011 | comments

Allie had this on her twitter



[original post]

Hey guys. Apparently it's the future now. Just thought you should know. | comments



[source]

Cardboard, disposable flash drives Thursday, February 17, 2011 | comments

Check it out! Flash drives that you can mail in a regular envelope: you can even write on them.


[source]

The internet exists so people can argue about these kinds of things: how many toes does Yoda have? Saturday, February 12, 2011 | comments



[source]

Wizard of Oz doorstop Wednesday, February 9, 2011 | comments

ruby slippers ripe for the taking
My dad sent me this picture of the Wicked Witch of the East doorstop

Liu Bolin Tuesday, February 8, 2011 | comments


I've posted photos of this guy before, but I hadn't seen this one until Nicki Clyne shared it along with some other ones and a video. As a refresher, the guy that looks like he's at 5% transparency is actually painted so that he exactly matches the background behind him. After this got popular, you probably saw some TV ads and stuff that stole the idea.

Elijah Wood's acting debut was as Video Game Kid #1 in Back to the Future 2 Thursday, February 3, 2011 | comments




You know: Frodo from Lord of the Rings

Here you go Volkswagen, have some free advertising on me | comments



Darth Vader kid gets two points for acting skill while having his face obscured by a mask.

This is one of 3 leaked super bowl commercials I originally saw via srah.

I wonder how much money John Williams gets in royalties for that.

Guy solves lottery scratch-offs, picks winners 90% of the time Wednesday, February 2, 2011 | comments

Wired has a cool article that you should read. It talks about how this guy figured out how the random lottery algorithm on scratch-off tickets worked and used it to buy only winning lottery tickets:
"I start looking at the tic-tac-toe game, and I begin to wonder how they make these things,” Srivastava says. “The tickets are clearly mass-produced, which means there must be some computer program that lays down the numbers. Of course, it would be really nice if the computer could just spit out random digits. But that’s not possible, since the lottery corporation needs to control the number of winning tickets. The game can’t be truly random. Instead, it has to generate the illusion of randomness while actually being carefully determined.”"
The funny thing is the guy works for a mining company where he deciphers seemingly random data samples to figure out where gold will be.
Anyhow, go read the article.

Lego anatomical model Tuesday, February 1, 2011 | comments


[via GeekDad]