Something this heavy... must be slow, right? Slow like this slow news day maybe? ... What do you mean, it's constantly getting faster? Are you nuts?

* As I don't have an encrypted hard drive, the encrypted hard drive problems didn't affect me.
* As I don't use full-screen applications, the flickering full-screen application problem doesn't affect me that much, though I couldn't use a full-screen Firefox for pseudo-kiosk mode when a family member wants to do some things with a web browser.
* Linux 2.6.32 hasn't posed many problems.

However, the bugs I'm affected by are mostly PulseAudio, Totem (media player) and CD-ROM related. PulseAudio skips and freezes in Audacity; Totem has a 1/200 or so chance of freezing at the start of a song (but then going one track forward then back to the previous one fixes it); DVDs won't eject if played in xine; CD-ROMs won't unmount if they're ejected via the hardware button, leaving the next one you insert inaccessible if you don't unmount the previous one yourself.

There were many more bugs in the alphas, obviously, but those are alphas.

Person A's car crashed into Person B's car by accident, B's car being parked on the side of the road and neither A nor B being you. Since B's car is now on your lawn, you are liable.

Or even: Person A buys a DVD at your store, and you are the cashier. Person A, unbeknownst to you, copies the DVD to give a copy to Person B. Since you sold A's DVD, you are liable.

None of these make sense. What the fuck are these ACTA guys smoking? An ISP just sends packets to and fro, maintaining the infrastructure to do so in good shape so most packets can go through.

And how on Earth are ISPs going to police everything and still offer low prices to their customers? In addition, the small independent providers are going to have an even higher barrier of entry in the Internet due to this requirement, giving the major telcos even less competition.

If this happens and Canada is in on this, (disclaimer: I'm Canadian) Scientology ain't seen nothing yet.

But the post also has a 150; which unit is that in? (Rhetorical question, I know it's Farenheit, because in Celsius the user would have boiled away.)

At least we know the unit can't be Kelvin.

Forget about .slashdot, .dot is where the real fun is!

"Ok, so the address is slashdot.dot - I'll spell it out for you. (attempting to add emphasis) It's http colon slash slash slashdot dot dot.
- Dot dot dot... So an ellipsis? How do I type those on a computer?
- No, I mean slashdot, as in S-L-A-S-H-D-O-T, then a dot, then dot spelled out.
- Oh! Ok, thanks!"

You don't understand. Punycode is how second-level domains are already implemented, even on top of relatively old browsers. This is an extension of Punycode to be usable in the TLD as well.

In other words, your current version of Firefox will be able to visit pages in IDN TLDs when they're implemented, and so if someone does create a .örg TLD today, you can go to www.anysite.örg to your heart's content already.

Note that this doesn't mean you can go to www.anysite.örg in NCSA Mosaic or anything, because these old browsers were around when Punycode wasn't even a standard. You can go to www.anysite.xn--rg-eka and NCSA Mosaic will recognise that, though. The seamless IDN TLD usage is just going to be present in the more modern browsers. I expect that Opera 8+, IE 6+, Firefox 2+ and recent Safari/Konqueror/Epiphany are going to be able to visit www.anysite.örg and 'hide' the xn--etc- access details from you, the user.

Happy surfing!

Yeah, Slashdot apparently needs to be internationalised too. That ".ws" should be "[U+27A1].ws" (BLACK RIGHTWARDS ARROW).

Since software makes the assumption that TLDs only contain [a-z0-9-], UTF-8 can't be used in the DNS. Internationalised domain names, even before these new ccTLDs, used that xn-- system, called Punycode. For instance, the site tinyarro.ws, which provides short URLs via a Unicode domain name, already used .ws for that purpose. It turns into xn--hgi.ws when the DNS request is issued.

ccTLDs using Punycode is just an extension of that mechanism for second-level domains.

... of course, is Punycode.

A comment before yours has www.íçáñn.örg, which, when entered into Firefox, turns into

www.xn--n-tfarxw.xn--rg-eka

. Looks like the software will still live :)

Err, goggles. I posted the parent comment without even reading the summary. (Ha!)

That's not so bad then. And don't we already have virtual-reality glasses and goggles and other things already? How would this be revolutionary?

Who knows what ads they want to burn into our retinas.

I just hope it won't be an unignorable HeadOn ad, because that is liable to give me unignorable... headaches.

Now if only I had unignorable audio too, so I could know where I apply the HeadOn...

If you have the legal right to a broadband connection, do you have the legal right to get a computer to use that connection?