What's pathetic is that the USA Today technical writer Kevin Maney wasn't smart enough to really investigate the product/technology he was reporting on. Not a shred of investigative reporting or critical thinking in the entire article.
Even my grandmother would have to sense to do more investigating and be more doubtful about the claims of the product than this guy.
Yeah - there is a company advertising on the radio called "bigstring" and they claim to not only be able to tell you when and where your email was read but also the following:
* Prevent other's from getting a copy of it. * Prevent it from being printed. * Delete it entirely, even after it has been read.
They use the claim that "it's like having a big string tied onto the envelope that you can yank back whenever you like".
Of course, anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of mail protocols knows this is rubbish. Aside from there being no way to accomplish this with the SMTP protocol, there isn't a single way they could prevent a POP user from retaining a copy forever.
Having never looked into the company, I can't think of anyway they could accomplish the things claimed unless they require that you and the recipient use *their* mailservers, *through* webmail only and disable forwarding *and* convert all text into an image to prevent copy & paste. Of course, then you could just save the image(s) or take a screenshot in the most dire situations.
It's unfortunate that company's like this are defrauding joe-average-user with hyperbole and propoganda.
The difference between re-enactment and staging is obvious. For one thing, a re-enactment is the acting out of something that happened as opposed to staging something which did not and portraying it as something that did. This also doesn't even have anything to do with flat out splicing edited evens or words together to cannote something that never occurred nor was ever expressed.
For example, Rescue 911 and America's Most Wanted use re-enactments. The news piece NBC did years ago where they poured gasoline on trucks and set them on fire, claiming the video was of self-combusting Fords was staging.
The fact that this has to be clearly explained here on Slashdot goes to show that Moore's videos can easily confuse the average person who doesn't know the difference between staged and re-enacted and just believes anything on television, radio or in print as long as it caters to their pre-existing point of view.
If I had the know-how, I would persue something like this, except the big-wigs would never authorize the use of their likeness. I'm sure Woz and ESR and Linus might, but I don't think Jobs and Gates or Balmer or any of those guys would.
Still, if someone put out a high-quality series of true geek figures, I would absolutely buy the whole set. Especially if they came with lots of detailed information about the person on CD.
Balmer would have super-monkey powers. Run around, jumping up and down making squeaky Howard Dean-esque hoots and flinging bananas at you.
Gates would just assume the form of Satan and suck all the will from your soul, until you hand it over for a very modest price.
Darl would be totally ineffective, largely doing nothing but slinging threats at you that he could never back up and accusing you of stealing his patented Mojo.
* a film or TV program presenting the facts about a person or event * relating to or consisting of or derived from documents * factual footage arranged in such a way that it informs and expresses a point of view
The problem is that Michael Moore's last two "documentaries" are none of the above. They present some facts and some material derived from documents and some factual footage, but they also consist of a large quantity of invented and staged footage and manipulation of factual footage spliced together and mixed up in such a way that it is no longer factual.
One could take video of a priest giving multiple sermons and arrange it in the editing room in such a way as to present a god-fearing priest as stating that god does not exist. Though every frame of the material could be factual, the product of it as derived and manipulated by the editor is entirely false, fictional and misrepresentative to the point of having absolutely no establishment in fact or truth.
I would like to see Bush and his administration replaced this year (though whatever they are replaced with will be little better as is always the case in politics), but I don't have to cling to or support the satirical or downright fradulent claims of a hypocritical entertainer to further my cause.
Instead of some generic geek cheaply made action-figure, I'd rather see a high quality series of action figures that depict real geeks that we all respect, admire, like or... at least know of.
The following, for starters:
RMS ESR Alan Cox John "Maddog" Hall Linus Torvalds Capn'Crunch Kevin Mitnick
And of course, more traditional scientific geeks like:
Linus Paulings Albert Einstein Charles Babbage
And famous literary or movie geeks from our favorite 80's and 90's films.
In fact, I kind of thought that's what the Action Figure in this article was going to be like until I went to the site...:(
It isn't just that he was posting screenshots of videogames. He was also posting images and screenshots that, while of games, were (sometimes) copyrighted material. I suppose you could think of it like someone being arrested for passing off one of those Getty/Associated Press photographs as your own.
Granted, it's unpleasant to think that you can beat your wife and children and not raise anyone's attention and even shoplift without much more than a quick trip to be booked and released with a fine, yet arrested for showing an image on your website that originally game from some videogame magazine.
But of course, corporations don't run our governments, politicians, police forces and legislation. Why, that would be a silly claim... Just silly... *cough*
Or don't find an investor. I'm $25,000 in the hole for my 5+ year old auction site. I don't even know why I do it. Part fun, part education, part excuse to remain a reclusive hermit in my office avoiding the light of the sun and human contact.:)
Um... the GPS is in the GBA, which you would presumably be carrying with you. Unless your wife had her own GBA with the GPS module and you had a GBA with the GPS module and she could somehow pinpoint where you are through hers. Although, with some sort of logging capability I suppose your wife could make you pull out the GBA the next morning to find out it shows you were really working late the previous night or out boozing at strip clubs.
Re:you can't?
on
GPS for GBA
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Except that the GBA's GPS product is $250! It's a neat idea, but for that money I'll just go buy a dedicated GPS unit. It'll probably outlast my GBA and there will come a time when I won't care to tote my GBA around and play games on it anymore - whereas my GPS unit would probably have a constant place on my hip.
I recently took the liberty of building my own 'SecurityCD' that I distribute to friends and family. It has an html file in it with detailed instructions and screenshots for installing every application I provide on the CD. I've only given it to two people, but I found that they appreciated the CD and it allowed them to do most of what I would normally be doing for them with minimal trouble.
On the CD, I put AdAware, Spybot, Thunderbird, Firefox and ZoneAlarm. Then I couple it with a copy of OpenCD 1.2 (going to start giving out OpenCD 1.4 now). It took a lot of time to write the documentation for them, but in the two cases I've dealt with so far, my involvement was very brief; nothing more than "Here, use this first CD to secure your system. Follow the instructions in the README.html" and then "When you're done, check out that other CD. It contains open source, free applications to replace almost all of your expensive Microsoft garbage".
They're surprised that they can get so much for free - from the firewall and adaware program to openoffice, 7zip, filezilla...
I think more geeks need to take the time to develop something like this. It takes a lot of time at first, but you will reap the full returns the first time or two you are able to respond to a call for help by whipping out two CDs for them while you go back to playing Unreal Tournament 2004.:)
"I can't find this one option I used before in Outlook one time.. You know, with that little button that looks like this one thing and blah blah blah.. Can you tell me what that was?"...uh... No. Sorry - I haven't ever used Outlook. I don't know what to tell you. Did you try F1? Did you try reading the documentation? Did you google it? Did you ask this question on some online tech help sites?
Actually, that is a good solution, too. Find some decent online forums for newbies where they will be treated well and they can ask for help there. That should reduce the load on their favorite real-life techie a bit.
Some people have the impression that techies are lazy. They think this because they mention a computer problem to us, expecting us to jump up and immediately come over and fix it for them. But we deal with tech stuff for a living, as our hobby often, and for everyone we know. We get burned out and sometimes would rather just not deal with it. Hence, your simple request to "see why my computer is so slow" goes weeks or months before we get around to checking it out for you.
It isn't so much that we don't care as it is that... well, we're tired.
I gave up on everyone in my family always asking me "what do you do again?" - especially when they are talking to friends and distant family members about me.
Occasionally, I just invent something out of thin air. They never know the difference. Tell them you write software for communications systems for NASA that they use in the space shuttles. Whatever amuses you.
I hate when people ask me random Windows questions or expect me to know what is wrong with their computer when they describe some strange Windows behavior and they get upset when I shrug and tell them I have no clue. They seem to act like I must be stupid if I have a career in technology, but can't tell them how to fix their particular glitch. I don't care to deal with Windows beyond securing it and then installing and playing my videogames. I save my Mac, Linux and Solaris boxes for real work. It would be nice if people could comprehend that just because you can write code and support enterprise networks doesn't mean you know every obscure thing in the world.
And when I think of "big computer", I actually think of... say... an E15K and up.;)
It would be nice if this were a world where you could just put everyone on a Mac or Linux and leave it be. Unfortunately, most people are major cheapskates. That's why they're trying to get you (friend or family member that you are) to fix things for them. They don't want to pay a few hundred bucks for their computer, much less the cost for a Mac. I've let my family play with my TiBook and everyone always loves it, but the sticker price puts them off.
Money wasn't an issue for me when I spent $3,200 on my TiBook, $2,200 on my 23" Cinedisplay, $500 on my iPod and $250 on my Airport. One day during a lunchbreak. There's not much call for a Mac in my line of work though as I deal mostly with NT and Solaris. But it's sure nice to have the flexibility of an Apple laptop when you need to move around from network to network and not spend half the day reconfiguring everything.:)
As for Linux, well... As much as I'd like to migrate them to it, that's not going to happen. It's nice to fantasize about masking the desktop to look like it's really just Windows, but people notice the difference. And people who have used their favorite browser, email client or other app for any length of time notice immediately that you are giving them something different. Besides, most people want to be able to play some videogames on their machines. Hell, that's the entire reason *I* even have a Windows machine in my home at all.
That really isn't four hours worth of work. If it's your first time, it might be - but I'm not talking about how extremely easy it is for grandma. I'm talking about how easy it is, in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, to do the above you would need to have some rudimentary education about the machine in front of you to perform those five steps - but in my experience, only those who have that education (beyond how to login, surf and manipulate the max/min/close window buttons) are even aware of the problem and the steps needed to handle it.
It isn't as difficult as you seem to suggest, though. A hardware firewall is common sense and even your ISP will instruct you to install one when you pick up your cable or DSL modem (or when they come out to install it). Not knowing you need a hardware firewall is like not knowing you need to buy a modem to use the internet. And they aren't that expensive. A high quality new one is about $80. A decent one can be had for $50. Basic installation is simple. Plug it in, change the admin password. Done.
Installing an antivirus program is also simple and has been drilled into every user. Most computers come with one, even if it's only a trial subscription. You can get decent ones for free (Grisoft's AVG, for example). They're easy to configure and usually have adequate walk-throughs.
Ad-Aware is easy to install and free. Same with Spybot. You might need to read a little before making full use of them, but just having them installed offers more security than not having them at all.
As for having both a hardware firewall and a software firewall - sure it's paranoid. The thing is that software firewalls are inadequate and ineffective. If you allow what you think is a legitimate program to have acces to the net (a windows service or MSIE for example), you may also be unwittingly allowing a sub-component to piggy-back with it.
I don't expect a software firewall to protect me or the family/friends I install them for. I like having one installed so I can see what applications are trying to get out. If something strange is trying to get out and it hasn't been caught by Ad-Aware, SpyBot or AVG/Kaspersky - I want to know about it. I could watch a netstat all day long - or I could just watch for pop-up notification sin the system tray.
In fact, it's more like saying "Any educated person can boost the performance of his car in 5 easy steps! Just install a turbocharger..."
But it isn't. This isn't about boosting your performance. This is about knowing to lock your car's doors, not locking your keys in the car, not leaving your keys in the ignition or the car running while you stop at 7-11, changing your oil regularly, checking the tire pressure occasionally, keeping your tags up to date and possibly having a car-alarm installed.
Any educated person should know not to drive their Lexus through the worst part of town, stop in front of a 7-11 with a bunch of crackheads standing outside by the pay-phones and leaving their keys in the car and the engine running while they go into the store and buy a coke and nachos.
I have Post Anonymously set by default since I stopped posting much a couple years ago. I post AC out of habit now. Also, it's harder to claim the elite "I don't even bother with Slashdot anymore" around all your friends when they can just finger you on Slashdot and see that you've been posting recently.;)
| I'm always going to Wikipedia -- you can't | really avoid them, not if you use Google at all.
Hmm. Google's cool people, right? With a lot of hardware?
Not necessarily so. Although I use google and find them to be the best search engine available (with many cool features and tools), the site linked to previously does bring up some issues of concern.
I've never used Wikipedia - nor did I really know what it was until this article. I'll play around with it once the servers are more reliable. In the meantime, I donated $10. Five for myself and five for that 16 year old Wiki contributor taking a beating in the other thread.
By the way, with all the server errors Slashdot is throwing this week, maybe they could use an injection of funds, too.:P
Slashdot Mirror
What's pathetic is that the USA Today technical writer Kevin Maney wasn't smart enough to really investigate the product/technology he was reporting on. Not a shred of investigative reporting or critical thinking in the entire article.
Even my grandmother would have to sense to do more investigating and be more doubtful about the claims of the product than this guy.
(reposted, non-anonymously -- oops!)
Yeah - there is a company advertising on the radio called "bigstring" and they claim to not only be able to tell you when and where your email was read but also the following:
* Prevent other's from getting a copy of it.
* Prevent it from being printed.
* Delete it entirely, even after it has been read.
They use the claim that "it's like having a big string tied onto the envelope that you can yank back whenever you like".
Of course, anyone with even the most rudimentary knowledge of mail protocols knows this is rubbish. Aside from there being no way to accomplish this with the SMTP protocol, there isn't a single way they could prevent a POP user from retaining a copy forever.
Having never looked into the company, I can't think of anyway they could accomplish the things claimed unless they require that you and the recipient use *their* mailservers, *through* webmail only and disable forwarding *and* convert all text into an image to prevent copy & paste. Of course, then you could just save the image(s) or take a screenshot in the most dire situations.
It's unfortunate that company's like this are defrauding joe-average-user with hyperbole and propoganda.
The difference between re-enactment and staging is obvious. For one thing, a re-enactment is the acting out of something that happened as opposed to staging something which did not and portraying it as something that did. This also doesn't even have anything to do with flat out splicing edited evens or words together to cannote something that never occurred nor was ever expressed.
For example, Rescue 911 and America's Most Wanted use re-enactments. The news piece NBC did years ago where they poured gasoline on trucks and set them on fire, claiming the video was of self-combusting Fords was staging.
The fact that this has to be clearly explained here on Slashdot goes to show that Moore's videos can easily confuse the average person who doesn't know the difference between staged and re-enacted and just believes anything on television, radio or in print as long as it caters to their pre-existing point of view.
Jobs and Wozniack figures would be sweet!
If I had the know-how, I would persue something like this, except the big-wigs would never authorize the use of their likeness. I'm sure Woz and ESR and Linus might, but I don't think Jobs and Gates or Balmer or any of those guys would.
Still, if someone put out a high-quality series of true geek figures, I would absolutely buy the whole set. Especially if they came with lots of detailed information about the person on CD.
Plus, he has almost as much personality as a UDP packet.
Balmer would have super-monkey powers. Run around, jumping up and down making squeaky Howard Dean-esque hoots and flinging bananas at you.
Gates would just assume the form of Satan and suck all the will from your soul, until you hand it over for a very modest price.
Darl would be totally ineffective, largely doing nothing but slinging threats at you that he could never back up and accusing you of stealing his patented Mojo.
A documentary is:
* a film or TV program presenting the facts about a person or event
* relating to or consisting of or derived from documents
* factual footage arranged in such a way that it informs and expresses a point of view
The problem is that Michael Moore's last two "documentaries" are none of the above. They present some facts and some material derived from documents and some factual footage, but they also consist of a large quantity of invented and staged footage and manipulation of factual footage spliced together and mixed up in such a way that it is no longer factual.
One could take video of a priest giving multiple sermons and arrange it in the editing room in such a way as to present a god-fearing priest as stating that god does not exist. Though every frame of the material could be factual, the product of it as derived and manipulated by the editor is entirely false, fictional and misrepresentative to the point of having absolutely no establishment in fact or truth.
I would like to see Bush and his administration replaced this year (though whatever they are replaced with will be little better as is always the case in politics), but I don't have to cling to or support the satirical or downright fradulent claims of a hypocritical entertainer to further my cause.
Instead of some generic geek cheaply made action-figure, I'd rather see a high quality series of action figures that depict real geeks that we all respect, admire, like or... at least know of.
:(
The following, for starters:
RMS
ESR
Alan Cox
John "Maddog" Hall
Linus Torvalds
Capn'Crunch
Kevin Mitnick
And of course, more traditional scientific geeks like:
Linus Paulings
Albert Einstein
Charles Babbage
And famous literary or movie geeks from our favorite 80's and 90's films.
In fact, I kind of thought that's what the Action Figure in this article was going to be like until I went to the site...
It isn't just that he was posting screenshots of videogames. He was also posting images and screenshots that, while of games, were (sometimes) copyrighted material. I suppose you could think of it like someone being arrested for passing off one of those Getty/Associated Press photographs as your own.
Granted, it's unpleasant to think that you can beat your wife and children and not raise anyone's attention and even shoplift without much more than a quick trip to be booked and released with a fine, yet arrested for showing an image on your website that originally game from some videogame magazine.
But of course, corporations don't run our governments, politicians, police forces and legislation. Why, that would be a silly claim... Just silly... *cough*
Or don't find an investor. I'm $25,000 in the hole for my 5+ year old auction site. I don't even know why I do it. Part fun, part education, part excuse to remain a reclusive hermit in my office avoiding the light of the sun and human contact. :)
GothicAuctions.com
Unfortunately, the post office charges a lot of money for this service in America. The fee starts at $4.50 for a $0-50 COD.
USPS COD Fees
Um... the GPS is in the GBA, which you would presumably be carrying with you. Unless your wife had her own GBA with the GPS module and you had a GBA with the GPS module and she could somehow pinpoint where you are through hers. Although, with some sort of logging capability I suppose your wife could make you pull out the GBA the next morning to find out it shows you were really working late the previous night or out boozing at strip clubs.
Except that the GBA's GPS product is $250! It's a neat idea, but for that money I'll just go buy a dedicated GPS unit. It'll probably outlast my GBA and there will come a time when I won't care to tote my GBA around and play games on it anymore - whereas my GPS unit would probably have a constant place on my hip.
Ah. I misread. :)
Isn't that what CTRL++ is for?
Oh - by the way.
:)
I recently took the liberty of building my own 'SecurityCD' that I distribute to friends and family. It has an html file in it with detailed instructions and screenshots for installing every application I provide on the CD. I've only given it to two people, but I found that they appreciated the CD and it allowed them to do most of what I would normally be doing for them with minimal trouble.
On the CD, I put AdAware, Spybot, Thunderbird, Firefox and ZoneAlarm. Then I couple it with a copy of OpenCD 1.2 (going to start giving out OpenCD 1.4 now). It took a lot of time to write the documentation for them, but in the two cases I've dealt with so far, my involvement was very brief; nothing more than "Here, use this first CD to secure your system. Follow the instructions in the README.html" and then "When you're done, check out that other CD. It contains open source, free applications to replace almost all of your expensive Microsoft garbage".
They're surprised that they can get so much for free - from the firewall and adaware program to openoffice, 7zip, filezilla...
I think more geeks need to take the time to develop something like this. It takes a lot of time at first, but you will reap the full returns the first time or two you are able to respond to a call for help by whipping out two CDs for them while you go back to playing Unreal Tournament 2004.
"I can't find this one option I used before in Outlook one time.. You know, with that little button that looks like this one thing and blah blah blah.. Can you tell me what that was?" ...uh... No. Sorry - I haven't ever used Outlook. I don't know what to tell you. Did you try F1? Did you try reading the documentation? Did you google it? Did you ask this question on some online tech help sites?
Actually, that is a good solution, too. Find some decent online forums for newbies where they will be treated well and they can ask for help there. That should reduce the load on their favorite real-life techie a bit.
Some people have the impression that techies are lazy. They think this because they mention a computer problem to us, expecting us to jump up and immediately come over and fix it for them. But we deal with tech stuff for a living, as our hobby often, and for everyone we know. We get burned out and sometimes would rather just not deal with it. Hence, your simple request to "see why my computer is so slow" goes weeks or months before we get around to checking it out for you.
It isn't so much that we don't care as it is that... well, we're tired.
I gave up on everyone in my family always asking me "what do you do again?" - especially when they are talking to friends and distant family members about me.
Occasionally, I just invent something out of thin air. They never know the difference. Tell them you write software for communications systems for NASA that they use in the space shuttles. Whatever amuses you.
AMEN.
;)
I hate when people ask me random Windows questions or expect me to know what is wrong with their computer when they describe some strange Windows behavior and they get upset when I shrug and tell them I have no clue. They seem to act like I must be stupid if I have a career in technology, but can't tell them how to fix their particular glitch. I don't care to deal with Windows beyond securing it and then installing and playing my videogames. I save my Mac, Linux and Solaris boxes for real work. It would be nice if people could comprehend that just because you can write code and support enterprise networks doesn't mean you know every obscure thing in the world.
And when I think of "big computer", I actually think of... say... an E15K and up.
It would be nice if this were a world where you could just put everyone on a Mac or Linux and leave it be. Unfortunately, most people are major cheapskates. That's why they're trying to get you (friend or family member that you are) to fix things for them. They don't want to pay a few hundred bucks for their computer, much less the cost for a Mac. I've let my family play with my TiBook and everyone always loves it, but the sticker price puts them off.
:)
Money wasn't an issue for me when I spent $3,200 on my TiBook, $2,200 on my 23" Cinedisplay, $500 on my iPod and $250 on my Airport. One day during a lunchbreak. There's not much call for a Mac in my line of work though as I deal mostly with NT and Solaris. But it's sure nice to have the flexibility of an Apple laptop when you need to move around from network to network and not spend half the day reconfiguring everything.
As for Linux, well... As much as I'd like to migrate them to it, that's not going to happen. It's nice to fantasize about masking the desktop to look like it's really just Windows, but people notice the difference. And people who have used their favorite browser, email client or other app for any length of time notice immediately that you are giving them something different. Besides, most people want to be able to play some videogames on their machines. Hell, that's the entire reason *I* even have a Windows machine in my home at all.
That really isn't four hours worth of work. If it's your first time, it might be - but I'm not talking about how extremely easy it is for grandma. I'm talking about how easy it is, in the grand scheme of things. Certainly, to do the above you would need to have some rudimentary education about the machine in front of you to perform those five steps - but in my experience, only those who have that education (beyond how to login, surf and manipulate the max/min/close window buttons) are even aware of the problem and the steps needed to handle it.
It isn't as difficult as you seem to suggest, though. A hardware firewall is common sense and even your ISP will instruct you to install one when you pick up your cable or DSL modem (or when they come out to install it). Not knowing you need a hardware firewall is like not knowing you need to buy a modem to use the internet. And they aren't that expensive. A high quality new one is about $80. A decent one can be had for $50. Basic installation is simple. Plug it in, change the admin password. Done.
Installing an antivirus program is also simple and has been drilled into every user. Most computers come with one, even if it's only a trial subscription. You can get decent ones for free (Grisoft's AVG, for example). They're easy to configure and usually have adequate walk-throughs.
Ad-Aware is easy to install and free. Same with Spybot. You might need to read a little before making full use of them, but just having them installed offers more security than not having them at all.
As for having both a hardware firewall and a software firewall - sure it's paranoid. The thing is that software firewalls are inadequate and ineffective. If you allow what you think is a legitimate program to have acces to the net (a windows service or MSIE for example), you may also be unwittingly allowing a sub-component to piggy-back with it.
I don't expect a software firewall to protect me or the family/friends I install them for. I like having one installed so I can see what applications are trying to get out. If something strange is trying to get out and it hasn't been caught by Ad-Aware, SpyBot or AVG/Kaspersky - I want to know about it. I could watch a netstat all day long - or I could just watch for pop-up notification sin the system tray.
In fact, it's more like saying "Any educated person can boost the performance of his car in 5 easy steps! Just install a turbocharger..."
But it isn't. This isn't about boosting your performance. This is about knowing to lock your car's doors, not locking your keys in the car, not leaving your keys in the ignition or the car running while you stop at 7-11, changing your oil regularly, checking the tire pressure occasionally, keeping your tags up to date and possibly having a car-alarm installed.
Any educated person should know not to drive their Lexus through the worst part of town, stop in front of a 7-11 with a bunch of crackheads standing outside by the pay-phones and leaving their keys in the car and the engine running while they go into the store and buy a coke and nachos.
Heh. Thanks.
;)
I have Post Anonymously set by default since I stopped posting much a couple years ago. I post AC out of habit now. Also, it's harder to claim the elite "I don't even bother with Slashdot anymore" around all your friends when they can just finger you on Slashdot and see that you've been posting recently.
Yeah, much of it is "but I wanna exploit it for my spammish page-rank" drivel. But there are several valid concerns none the less.
| I'm always going to Wikipedia -- you can't
| really avoid them, not if you use Google at all.
Hmm. Google's cool people, right? With a lot of hardware?
Not necessarily so. Although I use google and find them to be the best search engine available (with many cool features and tools), the site linked to previously does bring up some issues of concern.
I've never used Wikipedia - nor did I really know what it was until this article. I'll play around with it once the servers are more reliable. In the meantime, I donated $10. Five for myself and five for that 16 year old Wiki contributor taking a beating in the other thread.
:P
By the way, with all the server errors Slashdot is throwing this week, maybe they could use an injection of funds, too.