(1) Nonsense, people cheerfully pay for all manner of internet services. Spotify, Netflix, etc. etc. Even Google, the patron saint of spying on people to advertise effectively, has finally started the process of simply allowing people to give them money so they don't have to bother with ads.

(2) Yes. Because, despite the enormous amount of effort the advertising industry has made to try and stop people noticing: Advertising is not the only way to make money off a website. Adverts are a tired, unpopular, ineffective way of raising cash. Their only virtue is they're no effort at all to use, so the lazy and unimaginative webmasters turn to them time and time again.

Don't over-dramatise. This is a way of making it easy & convenient for non-techies to use Tor. Anyone with anything to hide - criminals, terrorists, activisits, whatever - will have long-since spent the 30 seconds it takes to find out how to use tools like Tor without buying a gadget for it.

You think so?

As a Londoner, I've yet to encounter anyone who supported the Tube strikes: Everyone I know considers it near-criminal extortion and loves the notion of trains that aren't subject to strikes by drivers who are insanely over-paid already. The DLR has had them for years and nobody bats an eye.

What makes you think people need to be bribed with Wifi to get driverless trains into use?

> It's what they can expect every month end from now on.

No it isn't. Literally nothing has changed about the system other than it no longer mails you tax discs afterwards - nobody's leaving anything to the last minute now that wouldn't have before, NOTHING has changed. This is an "odd spike" caused by people seeing the story everywhere of "you can look your car up online!" so instead of the usual trickle of people going there to update their tax once a year, they're getting flooded by half the country going "Oo, a website, must click!"

The summary is BS, all the "before it's ready" is pure fantasy: This is a massive spike in visitors causing an outage, nothing else.

Seriously, I RTFA, AND the link on TFA to the original source. The guy just says he wants to open up a debate about how much policing of the Internet there should be. Where the FUCK did "get a license for a website" come from??? This isn't even a biased summary, it's flat-out misrepresentation. Get this shit off Slashdot.

As an EU citizen, I was delighted when the "right to be forgotten" ruling began a debate that's long overdue about online privacy. And I have no problem with the company at the absolute forefront of gathering information about individuals being told "Tell people what you're gathering, yes it's your problem to make it accessible."

The Internet we HAVE, where all information that can be gained about a person is considered fair game, is not necessarily the one anyone actually WANTS. The EU should be applauded for insisting that actual thought be applied to what's going on instead of just allowing the endless procession of "Hey, we can do this! So we'll do it from now!"

You can call them "tech-incompetent", but I label people with your attitude "social-phobic". The only limit on what's happened on the internet since its inception is "What's technically possible?", it's about time the people who asked "What do we want to permit?" got some room at the table.

Or generating them ;)

"Lorem ipsum" is industry standard "filler" text for incomplete web pages - typically used to show clients what a page will look like when it has some useful content.

Not that it isn't appalling that it's appearing on a page in production, but it isn't "random Latin" - there are even browser extensions to make it easy to C&P for you.

> If the building had to be torn down then the cost / loss would be so high that developers would never make mistakes like this again

Yes, and if we had the death penalty for theft, there'd be no more mugging!

RTFA - the architect behind the "Death Ray" building designed in measures to prevent the problem. Idiot cost-cutters removed them during the build.

From TFA: "If a golf ball were to fly fast enough, it would be better off with a smooth skin."

The dimples make things better at low speeds, and worse at high speeds.

Oblig. http://xkcd.com/242/ :)

No, no! Here come the Men In Black!

He's a physicist. He'll have assumed a spherical wall in a vacuum.

Actually, Great Whites don't even hunt us out of necessity: We are literally useless to them as food. All they ever do to us is take a bite, realize their mistake, and carry on looking for a worthwhile meal.

The trouble is, given their method of taking a bite involves slamming into their target at high speed and sinking hundreds of teeth in, you may well have been torn in half by the time they go "oops" and spit you back out...