I've never been afraid of any type of weapon, except the small chance of it blowing up by itself (think nuke exploding in silo because of a software glitch). The only thing to be afraid of, is the person whose finger is at the trigger, and that makes cars, knives and random blunt objects just as dangerous as guns.
That said, I generally feel safer without any guns around, no matter the situation. Even for self-defense, just pulling out a weapon acts like a magnet for counter-fire directed at you. And accidents do happen. Luckily where I live, guns are rare items, the only ones I see are strapped around cops walking in the streets.
From the article: "No child could pick up a gun and pull the trigger. The gun just won't work, and that's how it should be."
No it shouldn't. The gun should work, and therefore the owner should make sure no child could get his hands on it. BTW: If you have any kids, they're probably safer without guns in your home. See above, check statistics about accidents, and no matter how many robbers there are to defend yourself from: those guys are always better prepared for the event than you are.
fucking moderators on this site need to be kicked in the head.
No need, many of them seem to have had that kick to the head already - maybe that's why they're moderating so silly?
Yo! Mod this up, and promote a comment that is bashing you. Mod it down, and know that you show poor moderating skills. What a dilemma... Oh you poor mod point totin' folks, I feel your pain, and my sympathy is with you.;-)
If the software maker presses this upon the researcher, the customers need to press the software maker.
And my guess is, that's exactly what will happen. The company made a mistake by producing flawed software. The researcher didn't make that mistake, only pointed it out.
With these flaw(s) pointed out, the company didn't handle it in a grown-up manner. Instead of fixing the mistake, focusses on attacking the messenger. Dumb: mistake #2, again made by the company. And only makes the problem worse.
So customers may drop the product because it's flawed, stay away from the product/company because it's gaining a bad reputation, and because they dislike the company's response to the issue. Either way, all losses are caused by the company's actions, not by the researcher.
Regardless of the outcome, any company that handles software quality in this manner deserves to be dropped like a brick. Let's hope the (financial) fall-out for this company will be big.
I think the only way that this is going to start is if developers put together good graphics engines, up to the standard of the latest offerings from Id and the Unreal guys, (..)
The tools, engines (and operating systems to run them on) are already there, see for example this database of 3D engines, many of which are free/open source.
But for a succesful game project you need not just good coder(s), but graphics artists / musicians as well. I don't really see the difference between code and artwork here, it's the same thing: put in a lot of hard/creative work, with something other than money as reward. So coders are there, but where are the artists?
I have often wondered, but think I figured it out: in the modding community! Ever notice how many mods / maps / models / skins get made for popular 3D shooters? Can you even count the number of UT/Q3 mods or total conversions? There's your working-for-free highly talented artists! And quite a number of them too.
So why are they working with commercial 3D engines, instead of free software projects? Ideas welcome, but I suspect an important reason is just plain popularity. There's way more copies of Quake3 than of Tuxracer or Bzflag around. And the reasons for that? Lack of a free/OS 'hit' game? Software industry inertia? I wouldn't know, but lack of a good, free 3D engine surely isn't THE problem here.
There are editors for a reason (..) Wikipedia is useful for some things, but when it comes to contentious political issues, it's pretty lousy.
The virtues of Wikipedia are IMO directly linked to reasons that visitors have for editing content. Like current news events: something big happens, and people flock to WP to check out how a tsunami speeds across the Pacific -> lots of edits on tsunami related articles. This makes Wikipedia look like a strange mix between encyclopedia and news site. If you would sort edit statistics by topic, and place that side by side with news events, a striking correspondence wouldn't surprise me.
Being web-based, and used mostly by folks that spend much time online, you can expect more-than-average tech interested editors, and yes, voila: a rich filled section on computer lingo and related topics.
So yes, biased in many ways, maybe not too accurate or authorative, but very useful nevertheless. Works for me...
Windows XP is overall a lot better than linux, you people just bitch about every litte thing to take everyone's attention off that fact.
Good for you! But with all these vulnerabilities and resulting spyware bogging down your Windows install, the shit creeping in before you manage to download & install the latest patches, I am really impressed you actually get any work done (and managed to make this Slashdot post).
...about every litte thing...
I don't consider yet another worm 0wning my box and handing it over to a spammer, a little thing. But okay, YMMV.
EPIC 2014: A total, extremely powerful information resource to some, but at the same time, an endless collection of trivia for others: filtered, edited, much of it untrue.
Very scary-yet-insightful indeed, BUT: This is different from the media landscape we have today,... ehhh, how?
Oh come on now! Just get your private banking records, secret software projects, xxx pics of your girlfriend & her mother, and goatse collection. Upload the shit to an FTP server, submit link on Slashdot, install webcams all over your home, and be done with it, okay?
Welcome to the no-privacy age!
Disclaimer: yes, you are correct in questioning my mental sanity. But then again, insanity is just a different view of reality, right?
That said, I disagree with him that all software must be libre. I don't like being told that I may not release my own work as I see fit. At the same time he is welcome to not use it as he sees fit.
I can't speak for RMS, but maybe you can read his view as: "all drinking water in this world should be clean and safe for consumption". That would be the optimal situation. At the same time you realize, it will never happen (at least not any time soon), and you can't force the rest of the world to make it so.
Maybe RMS would like most if there was simply no need for free software to require GPL style license, just to keep it free.
But I think it ultimately boils down to how people regard works that can be mass reproduced with near-zero effort (music, software, pictures, designs, etc). For clarity: I'm not talking about requiring everyone to share music, idea's etc., I'm just talking about work that for some reason or another was released to the public. Some people will view such work as 'ideas, floating freely through space, free for everyone to grab from the airwaves', and other people will say 'my personal property, get your dirty hands off it'. I believe that is a fundamental divide, that may shift, but will never go away. As long as you have that divide, there will be copyrights, patents, and GPL style licenses to counter their effect.
Seems that most of our greatest achievements have been by individuals.
Rephrase: many GREAT archievements have been by individuals, but most of our GREATEST archievements have been by groups of people.
Great: discovering how to make fire, Newton figuring out laws of gravity, Einstein coming up with E=m*c^2, Linus starting Linux project, coming up with Wikipedia concept, etc.
Greater/greatest: USA and USSR putting men in space, Egyptian pyramids, the Great Wall of China, filling Wikipedia with content, producing 10.000+ package Linux distro, human-like species surviving for millions of years,...
Why are these greater? Making a scientific discovery, or coming up with a new idea is great, but somebody else could have done it. If Einstein didn't figure it out, some great mind could have done that later. If it had been forgotten how to make fire, you might re-invent that. But greater/greatest archievements can ONLY be done with groups of people working together. You can't put a man on the moon on your own, even if you would know how to build a rocket. It's just too much work for one person alone. Same with the other examples.
People working together usually create destruction.
Yeah, that happens a lot too, unfortunately. Maybe we should work some more on human co-operating skills?
Wikipedia is doomed
In that case, the rest of the WWW would be still be left;-))
As far as I can tell, the judge wasn't impressed with Microsoft's arguments, and ruled essentially that software interfaces should be openend up enough to allow competing implementations of protocols, even if these happened to be patented.
And also that documents defining protocols or interfaces may be copyrighted, but that fact alone should not prevent competing implementations of such protocols. Read: perhaps a patent covered protocol, a copyrighted document describing the details, but still allow 3rd parties to make their own implementation of it.
Microsoft may have many bases covered, but sometimes the interests of society to enable inter-operating software, weighs heavier than the patent/copyright interests of a company. IMHO a very balanced, and righteous decision. It doesn't prevent Microsoft from making money with implementation of such protocols, it just levels the playingfield a bit for other parties who want to do that as well.
If a software interface isn't so crucial, one might say: let company have its way, and consumers choose alternatives if they want to. But with 90+ % market share, a software interface can become crucial, or leave no real alternative. A legal decision like this is good, simply for putting at least some limits on corporate greed and vendor lock-in.
Whatever it was, it still is. I still get a 503 from the main page.
And I'm reading all comments on this article, but lots of 'm don't make any sense. There's always some noise, but in this case it looks as if comments on random articles get attached to this article. Maybe some server or software processing the submitted comments has gone cazy?
From the summary: "the Indian government is planning a law based on the DMCA that would establish the responsibility of the corporation when dealing with copyrighted materials."
The word "responsible" is what it boils down to here. One should determine guilt on "Who was responsible for it?".
If you run a website, and you do maintenance personally, than you are responsible for putting content on the site. If I upload some kiddie porn to my site, then I did that, and I should be held responsible for that.
But: in the case of large sites like ISP's or eBay, with huge numbers of customers, it doesn't work that way, does it? You have an automated system where users modify some bits all by themselves. Regulated, managed, but users do the uploading.
So who was responsible for the 'dirty deed' here? The CEO of Baazee.com? No, from what I read, he had nothing to do with uploading the material. Who uploaded the material then? Some user of the site. So that user should be held responsible.
I think the real issue is ownership. Yahoo owns the servers, and thus our web-based e-mail, no?
NO.
Maybe Yahoo's policy, or laws say otherwise, but consider this: When you ask people, many feel that e-mail has similar function, and should have similar legal status (privacy protection and such) as snail mail.
I looked it up once how this is for postal service where I live: if mail bags are stolen, whose property was it? What I found, is this:
Law says that you are free to do with whatever you want to mail, until you drop it in a mailbox. As soon as your hand lets it go, that mail becomes the personal property of the addressee you wrote on the envelope. The postal service is never a 'temporary owner' here; all they do, is transport that mail to the addressee.
Now with e-mail, I feel you should treat that similar. You can change your mind as often as you want, but at the moment you click "send e-mail", the e-mail becomes the recipient's property, and all the ISP's do, is transport it, and keep it stored on their mail servers for a while. Remember, we're not talking about a comment on Slashdot or other public forum, but a private message from person A to person B.
So what if you mother wrote a love letter to your dad long ago, your mam & dad die, and you inherit their belongings? Right: you could read your mams letter, even if it was originally directed to your dad. But that is normal, right? Ultimately, it's just property that gets inherited. You should expect though, that 3rd parties that keep property, should check, and possibly only respond to court orders that confirm someone has died, and who inherits what (and confirm identity of people who claim belongings).
Same here with Yahoo: they should just sit on it, until they have confirmation about who inherits what, and then pass any stored info to those who are entitled to it.
Where does that leave you? Simple: just consider what you have laying around, online, things that get sent to you, and what you want to happen to that when you die. Then act accordingly. Like put some passwords in a safety deposit box in a bank. Encrypt files you don't want family to find when you're gone. Or download mail to local storage, so that family could find it on your PC after your death, but delete mail that you wouldn't want them to read.
Obviously you dont have a lot of experience teaching computer-idiot people how to do basic things... They dont know what "IE" is. They dont know what "Firefox" is. And the worst part is they dont care.
Like it or not, the computer-dummies are spot on here! They just want to look at a webpage. A browser acts like a 'window', that lets them see that webpage. The users don't care about that 'window', they care about what they can see through it: the webpage. And that's how it should be.
They don't know what "IE" is? Doesn't matter, as long as "IE" shows their webpage. They don't know what "Firefox" is? Doesn't matter, as long as "Firefox" shows their webpage. And the worst part is they dont care? Doesn't matter, as long as [whatever browser is used] shows their webpage. And that's how it should be.
I do exactly what parent said, install Firefox and remove all IE icons, and tell them the icon to get on the internet looks different now.
That is a good idea. "The icon has changed, because the program used to view webpages, has changed. Some navigation buttons may look a bit different, that's all". Simple, logical, easy to understand, even for computer-dummies.
Is it that suprising? A video game can offer so much more than an hour and a half movie.
That, and the fact that an ever increasing number of people reach a certain level of wealth (or join the 'first world' if you will - see development of Asian countries, China, India), giving them more free time, and 'disposable income' to throw around.
In other words, the same reason that building cruise ships (or tourism in general) is booming business. People just have more free time, and part of that is spent on gaming.
..anyone who can figure out where that figure came from, and who's getting it...
Well let's see, who can come up with that kind of money? Governments? Naahhh, then they would be using FOSS everywhere, and that's clearly not the case.
Then maybe it's Mr.Gates, trying to purchase all available copies, so that none are left for the rest of the world? That must be it!
The money would then go to... FTP mirror sites? Yeah, that's it! That must be why my downloads are going so fast lately, they must have been getting some shiny new hardware.
"Damnit. That's the 3rd router to walk out on us, this week alone! And that DNS server doing squat, chatting with his IRC buddies all day long, while running 98% CPU... What do I have to do? Pull the network plug, kill the fusebox or something, just to hammer some sense into these drones, or what?"
You're currently going through a difficult transition period called "Life".
When their robot drones start pointing plasma cannons at us?
The article already hints at a solution: at that time, we'll just have to crawl down to the ground, throw our eyes wide open, act really scared, just begging for a little compassion from the 'higher being'. With a bit of luck, the drones will then feel sorry for us, lower their plasma guns and spare our miserable lives.
"GIMP 2.2.0 released" on Slashdot...
on
GIMP 2.2 Released
·
· Score: 1
...and Slashdot's revenge released onto the poor Gimp;-))
In cyberspace nobody can hear your server scream - but they can watch it crawl.
They may or may not settle, but I don't see the point. Just moving a lump sum of money may serve as punishment / compensation, but doesn't do anything about the issues with these voting machines, does it? Better to have Diebold work on that. Or better yet, stop relying on electronic voting machines at all.
There are 4 boxes in defense of liberty... ah, you know the drill.
35% = BitTorrent
35% = other P2P (the article tells you this)
5% = plain old FTP (just a random guess of mine)
2% = email / instant messaging
23% (the remainder) = other (newsgroups?) / plain browsing, of which a significant portion might be pr0n.
(All numbers about as accurate as the results of a Slashdot poll;-)
Slashdottings may be fun to note, but significant amount of all internet traffic? Don't think so. The low number for mail is because there may be lots of spam, but it's not that big a part of the total amount of data. Download a movie, >1 GB. traffic, and you can watch the content in an hour and a half. A single e-mail is maybe just a couple or tens of KB's, but may keep you busy for a while. And like IM, mostly text-based.
Slashdot Mirror
That said, I generally feel safer without any guns around, no matter the situation. Even for self-defense, just pulling out a weapon acts like a magnet for counter-fire directed at you. And accidents do happen. Luckily where I live, guns are rare items, the only ones I see are strapped around cops walking in the streets.
From the article: "No child could pick up a gun and pull the trigger. The gun just won't work, and that's how it should be."
No it shouldn't. The gun should work, and therefore the owner should make sure no child could get his hands on it. BTW: If you have any kids, they're probably safer without guns in your home. See above, check statistics about accidents, and no matter how many robbers there are to defend yourself from: those guys are always better prepared for the event than you are.
No need, many of them seem to have had that kick to the head already - maybe that's why they're moderating so silly?
Yo! Mod this up, and promote a comment that is bashing you. Mod it down, and know that you show poor moderating skills. What a dilemma... Oh you poor mod point totin' folks, I feel your pain, and my sympathy is with you. ;-)
And my guess is, that's exactly what will happen. The company made a mistake by producing flawed software. The researcher didn't make that mistake, only pointed it out.
With these flaw(s) pointed out, the company didn't handle it in a grown-up manner. Instead of fixing the mistake, focusses on attacking the messenger. Dumb: mistake #2, again made by the company. And only makes the problem worse.
So customers may drop the product because it's flawed, stay away from the product/company because it's gaining a bad reputation, and because they dislike the company's response to the issue. Either way, all losses are caused by the company's actions, not by the researcher.
Regardless of the outcome, any company that handles software quality in this manner deserves to be dropped like a brick. Let's hope the (financial) fall-out for this company will be big.
The tools, engines (and operating systems to run them on) are already there, see for example this database of 3D engines, many of which are free/open source.
But for a succesful game project you need not just good coder(s), but graphics artists / musicians as well. I don't really see the difference between code and artwork here, it's the same thing: put in a lot of hard/creative work, with something other than money as reward. So coders are there, but where are the artists?
I have often wondered, but think I figured it out: in the modding community! Ever notice how many mods / maps / models / skins get made for popular 3D shooters? Can you even count the number of UT/Q3 mods or total conversions? There's your working-for-free highly talented artists! And quite a number of them too.
So why are they working with commercial 3D engines, instead of free software projects? Ideas welcome, but I suspect an important reason is just plain popularity. There's way more copies of Quake3 than of Tuxracer or Bzflag around. And the reasons for that? Lack of a free/OS 'hit' game? Software industry inertia? I wouldn't know, but lack of a good, free 3D engine surely isn't THE problem here.
The virtues of Wikipedia are IMO directly linked to reasons that visitors have for editing content. Like current news events: something big happens, and people flock to WP to check out how a tsunami speeds across the Pacific -> lots of edits on tsunami related articles. This makes Wikipedia look like a strange mix between encyclopedia and news site. If you would sort edit statistics by topic, and place that side by side with news events, a striking correspondence wouldn't surprise me.
Being web-based, and used mostly by folks that spend much time online, you can expect more-than-average tech interested editors, and yes, voila: a rich filled section on computer lingo and related topics.
So yes, biased in many ways, maybe not too accurate or authorative, but very useful nevertheless. Works for me...
Good for you! But with all these vulnerabilities and resulting spyware bogging down your Windows install, the shit creeping in before you manage to download & install the latest patches, I am really impressed you actually get any work done (and managed to make this Slashdot post).
I don't consider yet another worm 0wning my box and handing it over to a spammer, a little thing. But okay, YMMV.
Very scary-yet-insightful indeed, BUT: This is different from the media landscape we have today, ... ehhh, how?
Welcome to the no-privacy age!
Disclaimer: yes, you are correct in questioning my mental sanity. But then again, insanity is just a different view of reality, right?
I can't speak for RMS, but maybe you can read his view as: "all drinking water in this world should be clean and safe for consumption". That would be the optimal situation. At the same time you realize, it will never happen (at least not any time soon), and you can't force the rest of the world to make it so.
Maybe RMS would like most if there was simply no need for free software to require GPL style license, just to keep it free.
But I think it ultimately boils down to how people regard works that can be mass reproduced with near-zero effort (music, software, pictures, designs, etc). For clarity: I'm not talking about requiring everyone to share music, idea's etc., I'm just talking about work that for some reason or another was released to the public. Some people will view such work as 'ideas, floating freely through space, free for everyone to grab from the airwaves', and other people will say 'my personal property, get your dirty hands off it'. I believe that is a fundamental divide, that may shift, but will never go away. As long as you have that divide, there will be copyrights, patents, and GPL style licenses to counter their effect.
Rephrase: many GREAT archievements have been by individuals, but most of our GREATEST archievements have been by groups of people.
Great: discovering how to make fire, Newton figuring out laws of gravity, Einstein coming up with E=m*c^2, Linus starting Linux project, coming up with Wikipedia concept, etc.
Greater/greatest: USA and USSR putting men in space, Egyptian pyramids, the Great Wall of China, filling Wikipedia with content, producing 10.000+ package Linux distro, human-like species surviving for millions of years, ...
Why are these greater? Making a scientific discovery, or coming up with a new idea is great, but somebody else could have done it. If Einstein didn't figure it out, some great mind could have done that later. If it had been forgotten how to make fire, you might re-invent that. But greater/greatest archievements can ONLY be done with groups of people working together. You can't put a man on the moon on your own, even if you would know how to build a rocket. It's just too much work for one person alone. Same with the other examples.
People working together usually create destruction.
Yeah, that happens a lot too, unfortunately. Maybe we should work some more on human co-operating skills?
Wikipedia is doomed
In that case, the rest of the WWW would be still be left ;-))
And also that documents defining protocols or interfaces may be copyrighted, but that fact alone should not prevent competing implementations of such protocols. Read: perhaps a patent covered protocol, a copyrighted document describing the details, but still allow 3rd parties to make their own implementation of it.
Microsoft may have many bases covered, but sometimes the interests of society to enable inter-operating software, weighs heavier than the patent/copyright interests of a company. IMHO a very balanced, and righteous decision. It doesn't prevent Microsoft from making money with implementation of such protocols, it just levels the playingfield a bit for other parties who want to do that as well.
If a software interface isn't so crucial, one might say: let company have its way, and consumers choose alternatives if they want to. But with 90+ % market share, a software interface can become crucial, or leave no real alternative. A legal decision like this is good, simply for putting at least some limits on corporate greed and vendor lock-in.
If you can't beat them, make them irrelevant.
And I'm reading all comments on this article, but lots of 'm don't make any sense. There's always some noise, but in this case it looks as if comments on random articles get attached to this article. Maybe some server or software processing the submitted comments has gone cazy?
The word "responsible" is what it boils down to here. One should determine guilt on "Who was responsible for it?".
If you run a website, and you do maintenance personally, than you are responsible for putting content on the site. If I upload some kiddie porn to my site, then I did that, and I should be held responsible for that.
But: in the case of large sites like ISP's or eBay, with huge numbers of customers, it doesn't work that way, does it? You have an automated system where users modify some bits all by themselves. Regulated, managed, but users do the uploading.
So who was responsible for the 'dirty deed' here? The CEO of Baazee.com? No, from what I read, he had nothing to do with uploading the material. Who uploaded the material then? Some user of the site. So that user should be held responsible.
Well, ehhh, maybe because he wrote it ? (and not -officially- working for Apple at the time)
I think the real issue is ownership. Yahoo owns the servers, and thus our web-based e-mail, no?
NO.
Maybe Yahoo's policy, or laws say otherwise, but consider this: When you ask people, many feel that e-mail has similar function, and should have similar legal status (privacy protection and such) as snail mail.
I looked it up once how this is for postal service where I live: if mail bags are stolen, whose property was it? What I found, is this:
Law says that you are free to do with whatever you want to mail, until you drop it in a mailbox. As soon as your hand lets it go, that mail becomes the personal property of the addressee you wrote on the envelope. The postal service is never a 'temporary owner' here; all they do, is transport that mail to the addressee.
Now with e-mail, I feel you should treat that similar. You can change your mind as often as you want, but at the moment you click "send e-mail", the e-mail becomes the recipient's property, and all the ISP's do, is transport it, and keep it stored on their mail servers for a while. Remember, we're not talking about a comment on Slashdot or other public forum, but a private message from person A to person B.
So what if you mother wrote a love letter to your dad long ago, your mam & dad die, and you inherit their belongings? Right: you could read your mams letter, even if it was originally directed to your dad. But that is normal, right? Ultimately, it's just property that gets inherited. You should expect though, that 3rd parties that keep property, should check, and possibly only respond to court orders that confirm someone has died, and who inherits what (and confirm identity of people who claim belongings).
Same here with Yahoo: they should just sit on it, until they have confirmation about who inherits what, and then pass any stored info to those who are entitled to it.
Where does that leave you? Simple: just consider what you have laying around, online, things that get sent to you, and what you want to happen to that when you die. Then act accordingly. Like put some passwords in a safety deposit box in a bank. Encrypt files you don't want family to find when you're gone. Or download mail to local storage, so that family could find it on your PC after your death, but delete mail that you wouldn't want them to read.
"We don't know what we are doing, but we are doing it very carefully..." -Wherry
Like it or not, the computer-dummies are spot on here! They just want to look at a webpage. A browser acts like a 'window', that lets them see that webpage. The users don't care about that 'window', they care about what they can see through it: the webpage. And that's how it should be.
They don't know what "IE" is? Doesn't matter, as long as "IE" shows their webpage. They don't know what "Firefox" is? Doesn't matter, as long as "Firefox" shows their webpage. And the worst part is they dont care? Doesn't matter, as long as [whatever browser is used] shows their webpage. And that's how it should be.
I do exactly what parent said, install Firefox and remove all IE icons, and tell them the icon to get on the internet looks different now.
That is a good idea. "The icon has changed, because the program used to view webpages, has changed. Some navigation buttons may look a bit different, that's all". Simple, logical, easy to understand, even for computer-dummies.
That, and the fact that an ever increasing number of people reach a certain level of wealth (or join the 'first world' if you will - see development of Asian countries, China, India), giving them more free time, and 'disposable income' to throw around.
In other words, the same reason that building cruise ships (or tourism in general) is booming business. People just have more free time, and part of that is spent on gaming.
Well let's see, who can come up with that kind of money? Governments? Naahhh, then they would be using FOSS everywhere, and that's clearly not the case.
Then maybe it's Mr.Gates, trying to purchase all available copies, so that none are left for the rest of the world? That must be it!
The money would then go to... FTP mirror sites? Yeah, that's it! That must be why my downloads are going so fast lately, they must have been getting some shiny new hardware.
You see? Suddenly everything makes sense again.
"Damnit. That's the 3rd router to walk out on us, this week alone! And that DNS server doing squat, chatting with his IRC buddies all day long, while running 98% CPU... What do I have to do? Pull the network plug, kill the fusebox or something, just to hammer some sense into these drones, or what?"
You're currently going through a difficult transition period called "Life".
The article already hints at a solution: at that time, we'll just have to crawl down to the ground, throw our eyes wide open, act really scared, just begging for a little compassion from the 'higher being'. With a bit of luck, the drones will then feel sorry for us, lower their plasma guns and spare our miserable lives.
In cyberspace nobody can hear your server scream - but they can watch it crawl.
They may or may not settle, but I don't see the point. Just moving a lump sum of money may serve as punishment / compensation, but doesn't do anything about the issues with these voting machines, does it? Better to have Diebold work on that. Or better yet, stop relying on electronic voting machines at all.
There are 4 boxes in defense of liberty... ah, you know the drill.
35% = BitTorrent
35% = other P2P (the article tells you this)
5% = plain old FTP (just a random guess of mine)
2% = email / instant messaging
23% (the remainder) = other (newsgroups?) / plain browsing, of which a significant portion might be pr0n.
(All numbers about as accurate as the results of a Slashdot poll ;-)
Slashdottings may be fun to note, but significant amount of all internet traffic? Don't think so. The low number for mail is because there may be lots of spam, but it's not that big a part of the total amount of data. Download a movie, >1 GB. traffic, and you can watch the content in an hour and a half. A single e-mail is maybe just a couple or tens of KB's, but may keep you busy for a while. And like IM, mostly text-based.
Maybe we should try the CTRL key now?