Because they solve problems: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipYkuCZ2IYI

...you can hardly call Wired a 'magazine'

...that's the stuff.

personally i can't imagine how people use everyday things without being at least a little bit aware of how they work. i wouldn't be able to live with myself like that. what the hell is wrong with the world? and yes, i do mean 'wrong'. without our curiosity we'd still be in the stone age.

furthermore the article seems to correlate how much you 'tweet' to how h4rdc0r3 you are about computers. is this a joke? i consider myself pretty technologically savvy, but i couldn't give less of a shit about web 2.0.

i don't understand why this is on /. either...

Most is, but 30% (and shrinking) of the state budget comes from oil and gas. I suppose that's still a large fraction.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/russia/budget.htm

Surprisingly enough, they don't get all of their money from oil and gas.

"Despite higher energy prices, oil and gas only contribute to 5.7% of Russia's GDP and the government predicts this will drop to 3.7% by 2011."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russia#Economy

perhaps

but that won't stop me from being an elitist douche canoe towards people that visit other, inferior websites. makes me proud of my vaguely-defined online 'community'.

feels good man