You're right, the "post anonymously" checkbox is unclickable for me too. In fact I guess that explains why that last comment was posted under my name ...

If they were "lost", surely they wouldn't be part of that 10,000 figure would they ...

Why can't I click any links in slashdot comments anymore? I'm using Firefox 4. Can't even right click.

Any why is that yellow box overlapping everything when I'm previewing a message? Slashdot seems a bit messed up

There are 20,000 bodies that have not been properly laid to rest.

Is a potential iPad 2 shortage really that serious?

I'm just saying. It's like worrying about a lack of, I dunno, parking spaces right after the September 11 attacks.

Someone needs to let this blog writer know that writing an article based on knowledge learned in another article is not plagiarism.

It's not copyright infringement, but it is plagiarism.

Not that that's a big problem. Plagiarism is not of legal importance in the general world. It is of importance in certain professions where attributing the source of your ideas is important. The academic world is the primary example - not citing the source of an idea, or knowledge learned elsewhere, is fraudulent because by submitting a paper you are usually claiming anything not cited is your own idea.

In the commercial world, however, plagiarism is generally not important, and in this case, it's a pretty trivial idea too. The blog writer has a grandiose sense of importance.

Strangely enough, that skill seems to be universal to all people born later than about 1990, and yet it's something I've never known someone my age (30) to be able to do. It'd be certainly impossible on my touch phone.

A school teacher friend fills me in on these things. The other thing that sets such young people apart is sending 50-200 texts a day, whereas I'd be lucky if I sent 5. Who knew - pre-paid plans aimed at teens with less than 1 cent per text are readily available. And they have their phones on silent or vibrate.

Back in my day - I don't remember what we did. Just talk in class I guess. Occasionally passed a paper note. But we didn't have that constant connectedness with classmates that they can get with text messages.

It's not fully Amazon's fault either - I would do a lot of my finger pointing at the record companies.

Amazon sells other stuff to Australia. I'm guessing the record companies have made it prohibitively hard to license their stuff. Maybe Apple's done an exclusivity deal with them in this market for all I know - who knows.

Australians can't use Amazon or any of those similar competitors. iTunes is the only choice for most mainstream music here. There are competitors but they offer tiny catalogues.

There's also CD stores or piracy of course, but online there's no real competitor to iTunes.

Once you look beyond the US and UK, I'll think you'll find iTunes has quite a monopoly. And I'm sure it's partly the fault of the record companies.

You mean Katey Sagal?

Why is this a reason to use Firefox 3.6? 3.6 used software-only rendering on all platforms.

What's new here is Firefox 4's Direct2D acceleration on Vista and above, and Direct3D or OpenGL acceleration on all other systems. Remember that there is no such thing as Direct2D on Windows XP.

You're not losing anything.

Remember that there is no such thing as Direct2D on Windows XP, so no version of Firefox (or any other browser) has had or will have Direct2D acceleration on Windows XP.

Firefox 4 does however add Direct3D compositing acceleration on certain video adapters - which is used at a higher level such as when elements overlay other elements.

The suggestion that Firefox 4 uses less acceleration than previous, or other, browsers on XP is mythical.

Slashdot ate my angle brackets - see my other reply next to yours.

Stoopid angle brackets. That should read:

"on Mac OS X *less than* 10.5.6",
"iOS *less than* 4", and
"Windows Mobile *less than* 7".

Only if the client is running IE on Windows XP (or older). Every other system supports SNI

That's wrong. The following won't support support SNI.

* Internet Explorer (any version, even IE8) on Windows XP
* Safari on Windows XP
* Safari on Mac OS X 10.5.6
* Any browser on Android
* The browser on iOS 4
* The browser on Windows Mobile 7
* The browser on Blackberry
* wget
* Konqueror/KDE

It's gonna be a long time before we can consider using SNI. Wouldn't be surprised if IE8/WinXP hangs around for many years.

Why do you need a cert to establish privacy

To protect against a man in the middle attack. The certificate ensures you are connecting to the server at the end and not some intermediate or impostor that's relaying the messages or posing as the server.

Why is there no mode with encryption, but without the bother of an SSL certificate at all?

Because that would provide no assurance that you are communicating with the server at the end and not some evil computer in between you and that server. It would make the encryption completely useless if you didn't know if the encrypted connection you've negotiated is with the server you want or is with an impostor.

Why was it ever possible to send a password in clear text to begin with?

Because people trusted the connection between their computer and their ISP and onward not to be easily to eavesdrop or intercept. With open wireless networks, this is not the case. As an aside, I've long thought that the existence of open wireless networks was the main problem here and nobody should be using those, but that's my opinion.