It was a joke.

What the researchers didn't know was that this was an experiment in itself. The question the experiment aimed to answer was "Do researchers have too much free time, and do they waste time which is paid for using taxpayers money?"

The full paper will be published in Scientific America once it has completed peer review.

It probably is some windows worm or something written by a script-kiddie. But to admit that would be to embarrassing, so they make it out to be a big deal.

Like that poor Brit who was looking for info. about UFOs.

Actually it was britneynude.exe

Thanks for that. Good ideas. I think I might get some of that for myself...

Is it just me or are office apps becoming increasingly unimportant.

Ten years ago I spent most of my computing time in some kind of office app. Now I rarely use them. And I receive fewer office documents via email.

Perhaps the office app is just dying? Are they just transition applications between a paper based office and a paperless one anyway?

But do you really think that the leaders of the other first world and developing countries are not the same kind of power-hungry, lying, cheating politicians, and that they will not work with others of the same ilk to get more power at your expense?

Actually, no I don't. And it is depressing that this kind of attitude is so prevalent in the USA today.

Mr Anonymous,

ok, are you are seriously sourcing your below-the-belt comments from Slashdot? Have you checked 4chan? You might find some there too.

With regards to your second comment, that is a different kind of respect, and you know it. I am specifically referring to respect as a figure of authority.

at least by my count, below-the-belt attacks were at an all time high.

Can you elaborate? What do you consider to be "below-the-belt"? People mocking her when she said stupid things? People pointing out her lack of experience and knowledge? People laughing at her un-presidential mannerisms and speech?

Some people command respect. Palin isn't one of them.

I have 3Mbit down/384k up service (and was getting 3Mbit down and 360k up on their test, and it still told me I couldn't use VoIP with good QoS, yet I use VoIP all the time on my network and get quality equal to or better than my cell phone. It's not clear to me that their test is all that useful - or their metrics are screwed up. If they consider 33 ms ping times bad, I'd like to know where they can find a better residential connection.

Really though, this whole story is a non-issue. I have yet to see an ad for any residential serviice that doesn't say "speed not guaranteed". The speeds they quote you are always "up to this number", not "you always get this number". For cable it's a shared medium between other users on your head end, so unless you're the only user, you're not going to be able to max out the line. 802.11b is supposed to be 11 Mbit per second, but I rarely get that, because it's divided among the other users of the access point. It doesn't mean Avaya and Enterasys are scamming consumers because their access points don't always give 11Mbit/sec. DSL is very sensitive to your distance from the CO and quality of the wiring, so of course it's not guaranteed. Even a LAN is not guaranteed. For short and medium transfers, I rarely get 100 Mbits out of my local network. These "connection testers" are mostly useless - a better test is to download large amounts of data (BitTorrent, for example) and look at the average throughput.

You mean like an RFID tag in your wallet that makes your watch beep?