Doubtful. That thing randomizes eight variables. Modern Hollywood is playing with four, at best.

@bookling: I'd recommend trying to get a copy of Machine of Death signed, but given that it's a paperback and Beck's book is a hardcover, they might not let you through the line.

Where's the love for Henry Armitage?

@TheFu: I suppose it may depend on the financial institution issuing your card, but the differences between geographical regions are disappearing. Visa and MasterCard's dispute regulations do occasionally make a distinction between domestic and international transactions, but over the last few years both companies…

Your financial institution's customer service mileage may vary, but they still work within Visa and MasterCard's well-defined regulations and dispute processes, which absolutely address this situation (and others like it). If this happens to you, attempt to resolve with the merchant, document your attempts, and…

Glancing through the other replies I can see that mine is on the quicker and simpler end of the quick and simple spectrum, but I'm a big fan of that old, British standby, baked beans on toast. The trick is that the beans MUST be the British ones from the Ethnic Foods aisle, which contain less sugar than American…

@bibulb: ...sure.

Off the top of my head I can't think of a good contemporary actor to play Dirk, but twenty years ago the perfect fit would have been Mel Smith. You know him as the albino from The Princess Bride, but in 1992's (otherwise abysmal) Brain Donors, he plays a character named Rocco Melanchek whose voice, manerisms, and…

I think you're thinking of the Tandy 1000 there. The IBM PCjr's 600x200 mode had a maximum of two colors, and one of KQ1's major selling points was that it had "vibrant," "realistic" 16-color graphics. The chunk, double-wide pixel look of Sierra's old AGI games resulted from the fact that the original King's Quest…

@Kogo: I dunno, is The Lurker on the Threshold even canon? Lovecraft only wrote about 2.48%, the rest being the inane (no S) dribblings of August Derleth, whose work I'm liking less and less as I read more of it...

Oh, bloody hell. Both of these depictions annoy me, because I'm a Lovecraft purist, and I tend to stick to this depiction:

As someone who investigates card fraud/dispute situations, I see a lot of this. Duplicated transactions not uncommon, and are — believe it or not — usually the result of a tape-loading error on the part of the card-issuing bank. Yes, magnetic tape, yes, your bank's fault. Usually the merchant can't even see that…