First, is page loading of Kairosnews significantly--intermittantly though--slower during the day for the last week or so? For me it is. I'm writing this via a proxy server connection into our network backbone to avoid delays which have even caused time out errors.

Seems that FSU removed the Internet traffic control mechanism that they put in place at the beginning of the semester, the one that caused problems then. Turns out that it was a loan from a commercial vendor and had to be returned. Now our network is all clogged up as they try to reconfigure the system. Whether this experiment was successful or not at slowing down P2P, the major consequence is that the entire campus network has been thrown into disarray during the first two weeks and the last two of the semester.

Second, Madonna has become really aggressive fighting piracy of her work. In preparation for her new album release, she's flooded the P2P networks with mp3's that don't play her music, but rather the nice message to file traders:

What the f*** do you think you're doing?

Shortly afterwards, though, others decided to play. Some happy hacking file traders countered by hosting downloads of Madonna's albums on her website (see the mirror of the hack).

Read the two reports from Ars Technica:

Madonna's special greeting for P2P users

D'oh! Madonna.com owned