That ship has sailed and its never coming back. Save for the hobbyist minority, most other users don't care about any of the selling points of a Linux Desktop Operating System.

Tell them its free, and they will tell you they didn't "pay" for Windows and that it came with their PC. Even if this is a load of crap, they don't know the difference. Some of them will even ask you what Windows is, or what an operating system is. I hear this lots from all age groups since many people just don't care how it works.

Tell them they can customize it and there's many choices, and they'll tell you they just want to check their email and write up their reports.

Tell them there is games, and they'll argue they can't play Skyrim. Tell them they can play Skyrim with Wine, and they'll tell you its too complicated.

Your average PC user wants consistency, and that's either going to be Windows or Mac. This is especially notable in the area of people who know just enough about computers for work purposes. The only people who I have ever convinced to try Linux are those with dated hardware that don't want to run XP but can't run Vista or Windows 7.

I knew this extremely large trollface would come to represent something important, someday!

Unless Linode decides to cough up $15k in a private deal, there will likely be no compensation. IANAL, but since the United States government doesn't recognize bitcoins as a legal form of currency anyway, taking this to court would probably be fruitless and a waste of time. Unless I'm missing details, of course.

If they were to be compensated, though, there is some potential to have this incident set a major precedent in regards to the legitimacy of bitcoins in the U.S.

Your average Granny-user remains clueless and storing gigs of uncompressed bitmaps on their system.

It's not all their fault, really. MSPaint doesn't have JPEG support in Windows 98.

To be honest, I don't get it either. I said "maybe" because that's a complaint I've heard from a few people, but a roundabout maintains the usual merge-left, exit-right concept expected most everywhere else in a right-hand drive configuration.

I think its simply the act of driving around a circle that confuses lots of people here when in fact nothing has changed the rules of the road. Mostly because roundabouts just aren't that common here.

I wish these were implemented more often in the U.S. I prefer them over traffic lights as they permit a constant flow of traffic and if there is ever a collision, it won't be one driver running a red and broadsiding another vehicle at speed limit (or faster), but more likely a low speed collision which would be safer for everybody involved.

I think the only things prohibiting widespread popularity in the United States is their perceived complexity, people who don't understand when it is and isn't appropriate to yield before entering a roundabout (or people who yield so people can enter the roundabout when they aren't supposed to), and maybe the counter-clockwise rotation that roundabouts usually follow which feels a bit foreign at first. Nothing that couldn't be resolved with time, of course.

No, sharp braking is what happens when you are yacking on your cellphone or reading a newspaper, and glance up to see that you are about to rear end the car in front of you.

Welcome to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where wizard deer that appear around every corner, wooded surround and ditch find fun and new ways to give people heart attacks, broken windshields and fits of unbridled rage.

They almost finished getting the new USB stack up and running in a different branch, but it isn't reliable (or stable even in most virtual environments) to sync it into the main branch prior to release. That's fine in a virtual environment, but on real hardware it would be nice for a few different reasons (ReactOS on USB may be possible soon because of this, maybe even debug output over USB, to name a few).

I'll just keep building the USB branch until then.

Tearing the steering wheel away from the hands of all the men and women who have had the privilege to drive for years, and feel a sense of freedom is being stripped away.

Add in a sense of paranoia as far as trusting a computer to taxi you from point A to point B. Why, just the other day my TomTom set a path that, for part of the drive, intended for me to drive straight through a 1 meter high snow bank because the road segment in question *did* exist, but that particular section of road was not maintained by the town during the winter as it wasn't deemed crucial and no homes were on this segment of road. I'm sure autonomous vehicles will be loaded with sensors to detect these kinds of obstructions, but its not to say they can't fail.

Somewhat misguided paranoia; most computer systems aren't distracted by backseat drivers, prone to drowsiness or ingest alcoholic beverages, so this still puts them a bar higher nonetheless. I could still see it taking a few generations before people accept them.

Novice to average level computer users trying to use this interface will be interesting. I wonder how it will handle all the ambiguous cases and vague implications...

"open that thing"
"show me stuff I like"
"do my term paper for me"
"initiate sexy time session"
"hack the pentagon lol"

Then disappointment ensues, followed by the rabid facebook posts of elderly people and 12 year olds because its not built to make an intelligent decision between 2000 potential implications.

Its basically the same canned response everyone else receives from SOPA/PIPA supporting senators and representatives. Give reasons but never any backing. Declare everything else to be bullshit but never explain why it is bullshit. I really hope the regular CNN readers don't take this bait verbatim and analyze it for what it is. With all the information provided about *why* this bill is bad everywhere else, information which actually goes into depth regarding all implications, I can only hope that will be enough of a counterweight to this statement for people to see the holes in what Smith is saying.

Of course, I will do my part in explaining to friends why his statement is bull, and offer more than a thesis.

But, hey, at least CNN had the decency to declare their slant on the issue at the bottom of the page.

I've seen a few other people recommend them already, but I rather enjoyed the low-end VPS offerings from ThrustVPS. I use my VPS for a number of different things (web-facing sandbox, if you will) ranging from web hosting for personal PHP projects to a testing platform for game servers in various configurations.

I've also found their staff helpful and patient when I put in a ticket for a problem, or via the email support system. Such a recent example coincides with a recent change of passwords I made to many of my accounts around the Internet. Well, I eventually forgot what my new password was that I set to access their client area panel, and when I entered the answer to the security question I set, I discovered that whatever I set had some kind of typo. Via the email support system, I negotiated a means of identifying myself to the staff, who eventually reset my password for me.

The only "gripe" I have is their various virtual machines they offer aren't all quite up to date. Not ancient, but it would be nice to have an option to use Debian 6, or CentOS 6 (these might have been updated since I last checked a few weeks ago).

They don't over sell their VPS's. When a server is full, its just full. The users on that server won't see terrible performance as a result. Thrust is usually prompt about setting up more servers as resources permit, but with several different host machines around the world, its not often an issue where you can't get a server near by.

I've enjoyed their service. I would recommend them to anyone provided they keep their level of service up.

You've only interpreted part of my response, and fitted in your own. Of course I understand there is a legitimate need for hacktivists on the Internet, and that many of them follow a justified cause, but I didn't feel it was necessary to reiterate this reality in my statement. I felt it was implied by now.

I for one wouldn't expect anyone to sit idly by while my basic human rights are stripped away by a corrupted democratic republic. On the flip side of things, however, I must question the ethics of my actions and others. Causing disruption to the commerce of an evil corporation by taking down their online shop for days on end, causing all kinds of financial loss to prove a point is one thing. Discovering an exploit for said service, raping their databases of all their customer's personal information and then scattering it across the web, on the other hand, is different. These hactivists have violated the implied, basic human rights of other persons, just to teach a lesson to a company. A twisted, Pyrrhic victory, if anything.

Its a grey area I just don't bother getting into, because I know the implications and the decisions that could be made. It just depends on how desperate the situation is that determines the justification for such actions at different levels.

Vigilantes have no regard for the law. The law is not their concern. Their concern is getting retribution for offenses delivered or pending delivery by an entity they do not agree with or feel wronged by.

Pinning hacktivism as a form of illegal activity will only deter kids who jumped onto the bandwagon for fun or to revolt.

I hope for his sake the SOPA bill doesn't pass, or its going to push many of these hacktivists further away. Any legitimate protection of rights online they hoped for will be lost.

I'm not saying $200 isn't excessive, it still might be cheaper than someone purchasing domains utilizing your brand name before you can, and then having them charge you even more to get ownership of the domain.

If someone knows you're a big-name porn company flush with cash, they will probably weasel every penny they can out of you should they obtain ownership of a domain before you.