That's nice, but is this kind of blatant self-promotion allowed on /.? This is not your personal blog. Can't we abide by the secondary source rule that Wikipedia has, so that we can guarantee some degree of notability? If you've finished your study and it caught someone else's eye because it's well-written and interesting and they post it here, cool, but "Funding Open Source By Donations: Lighting the Path", really? You are not the first person to do this, sorry to burst your narcissistic bubble.

I hear about these kinds of things all the time. It's utter bullshit; they're literally making it more appealing for people to anonymously sell these exploits on the black market. "No, we don't want to know if our software has an exploit. If you've found one, go ahead and sell it to whoever you want, as long as we don't know, it's cool, we can keep deluding ourselves, thanks."

It reminds me of, among other counterproductive measures, media conglomerates pushing oppressive DRM on consumers as if to drive them toward piracy or forcing drug addicts to carry their criminal status with them as if to force them back toward poverty and drug abuse. If an alien race were to monitor us, they'd probably assume we're running some sort of elaborate self-extermination campaign.

When the summary says "numerous files which constitute child pornography", are we talking about nude photos of kids (e.g., his own, or friends') in the bath or something like that? In that case, I can totally understand them wanting more substantial evidence against him.

Also, is having "an intricate electronic folder structure comprised of approximately 6,712 folders and subfolders" a crime now? Good God. I have over 10,000 in my home directory alone. Looks like I should expect the FBI to come knocking any moment.

Seriously? I know they say, everything seems obvious in hindsight, but they really couldn't figure out squeezing sugar and creamer from one pouch into another coffe pouch? These guys design space ships? Am I the only one who sees something wrong here?

Sorry, didn't see that.

Er, no? Tell me you can buy one copy of SC2 or GW2 or even SC1 or any online game and tell me you can both play online with one copy. You can't (shouldn't be able to, anyway).

Now, certainly, you would be able to play game A online while your buddy plays game B online, but then people'll start pooling Steam accounts to share games, which is bad news for devs. And besides, is it really that bad? Just buy an extra copy for your friend when it's on sale. The point (one of them, anyway) of DRM is to make sure you can't give used games to others. Now, you can disagree with this on principle, but at least the way Steam does it, they don't gouge you for money, plus the DRM doesn't get in the way of you legitimately playing it, does it? Steam gives you two games for the price of one, and now you're asking for the right to share the games with others as well? Check your privileges (not meant condescendingly).

Ah, I get it now! The M in DRM stands for Masochism!

Props, I'd vote this up to a 6 if I could.

Can't one of you just play offline (assuming single player game)? You won't earn achievements, but really now.

In a sense, I wouldn't count that breakthrough invention though. The gun was invent in China back way before Europe even got around to burning witches. However, IIRC America did invent the rifle/barrel rifling?

Is 200+ feet enough to build an underwater city free from the greedy hands of capitalism and communism?

I think those people really just oppose bullshit DRM. Steam DRM is very tame and reasonable, and I think most people don't really have anything against DRM as a concept that help protect game devs a little from possible lost profits; it's the bullshit DRM that get in the way of legitimate players playing the game that's the problem.

Well, fuck. They really screwed themselves over, didn't they? "Our new URL: amazon.com.amazon"

That'll also have the pleasant^H^H^H^Hhorrible side effect of keeping all the stupid people out of any conversations. OH GOD FREEDOM OF SPEECH. Until eventually someone once again comes up with the bright idea of websitizing (honest to goodness word) IRC.

Zero percent, GP is speaking out of his nether orifice. Strictly speaking, it is theoretically possible to do what GP is suggesting, in the same way it is theoretically possible for a well-placed sneeze to cause a chain reaction culminating in the obliteration of the universe. In other words, possible in the strictestly sense of the word, but impossible in every other sense.

I wanted to say "Look redditors are stupid, 4chan/2ch are much better at things like this", but I only have anecdotal evidence from the few cases I've heard (hunting down kitten killers and stuff like that). Does anyone have any data on the "success" rate of witch hunts on 4chan and 2ch?