It's true that in theory, it's a conflict of interest to edit an article about one's self/company, but these are also the people most knowledgeable on the subject and have the most to contribute. I imagine the people who are large cash donors aren't trying to do it as a bribe, they're just heavy wikipedia users that wanted to help the site. Ideally they should document a conflict of interest, but that's not very clear how it should be done.

More likely it would go down (as a % of GDP) as it has the past few years.

But we shouldn't let our fear of these people stop us from trying new technologies. It's possible to take counter measures to prevent the evil hackers getting in while still enjoying the benefits of it.

I was referring to the parent post who said "deactivates and wipes EVERY PHONE", which would not be very useful. There are much softer targets already for people looking to cause mayhem, and even terrorists use cellphones.

I like how every time a new piece of technology comes up with integration into devices we have (phones, cars, toasters), the immediate response on /. is always "But what about the hackers!" as if there's a group of malicious hackers just waiting for the technology to appear so they could exploit it. There are plenty of vulnerable technologies out today (SCADA systems for one) but hackers aren't so interested in disrupting these systems because they're pure evil. Most systems get hacked because there's some profit to be made out of it or someone is trying to put a message out there. While beeping people's car horns or shutting off their cell phones might send A message, it's not sending a useful one, and unless T-Mobil or HTC is doing the hacking, there isn't a profit to be made from it.

Hell no, it would rev up the engine to 5k RPM and refuse to let me turn on the radio while it checked all the previous components had been installed properly. Only after I towed it home would it finally idle when I went to turn it off.

Apparently it was $4B in cash, $12B in stock, and $3B in vested stock.

Even if the stock tanks, I'd be happy with the $4B cash.

Well most cable ISPs also provide advertising networks, so it's not a big jump to move to another one.

Google isn't actually an advertising company though, they just get revenue from advertising. Similarly Comcast is a cable company that also gets revenue from advertising.

Well there's the old NAT-PMP, though not many support that. The real answer is IPv6, but then the game needs to support it and all the players.

Some games can do NAT hole punching.

I second this. I just got IPv6 through my ISP and most of my devices just picked up an address and started using it right away.

However, the GP is correct in that ISPs need to upgrade a lot of expensive routers to add support. The good news is they have to upgrade them regularly anyways, so if they just make the decision to go the IPv6 route, it'll happen. I imagine plenty are partially supporting IPv6 already, but that one stubborn switch won't die.

I just signed up for Comcast's 50mbps package. Got it hooked up and saw it was only getting to 15 at best, yet they still sell that (when they also have a 25mbps package that I switched to). The line's probably just overloaded, but it seems almost fraudulent that they'd sell two services that provide the same thing except one advertises higher and costs more.

Now if we can just invent floating orb technology, and stick some visible red lasers on the outside, we'll be in business for mapping alien spaceships!

Also worrying: If you were on the no fly list, why did they print you a boarding pass? Just because you didn't look like a terrorist?

Google is a search company that get revenue from advertising, not an advertising company. Similar to how newspapers gain revenue from ads, but are in the news business, not advertising.

It's a metadata profile definition that's linked to by lots of social media sites. It's pretty much just defined in the header (lets people add different attributes to html). For the same reason that w3.org is up there since people link to it when setting a doctype.