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Uh, no. Read up on 85th percentile speed limits and tell me that I can "choose" to speed. The speed limits are designed so that 15% of all drivers are always considered "speeding." This is regardless of what speed everybody travels.

No problem... let them snoop. Now I'll just be twiddling the "Encrypt and sign all outgoing email" box on my MUA, and finally start using GPG full-time for all of my incoming and outgoing email, instead of with just my friends and close colleagues.

There are plugins for Evolution, pine, mutt, Thunderbird and just about every other Mail User Agent you can find out there.

Another great benefit, is that I can automatically block/quarantine/delete any and all email that does not contain a gpg-signed component (i.e. 99.999% of all email out there, mostly spam). dspam does an amazing job, but being able to just reject it at the MTA level would be great.

And for those that wish to converse with me, please make sure to use my GPG key to do so (also available here with detailed instructions).

The Civil Aeronautics Board was abolished. Look what the resultant deregulation did to the airlines. How many have gone bankrupt since 1980? And of course, we're all seeing what wonderful customer service and convenient schedules and routes the deregulated airlines are providing.

We tried trusting the DMA to meet with the Internet community to define what spam is, and work with said community to promote anti-spam legislation with real teeth in it (unlike the YOU-CAN-SPAM act). The DMA paid lip service to the concerns expressed at the meeting, and then later betrayed everyone except their own members and interests by endorsing spam as "commercial free speech."

They continued on to promote the idea that the industry could regulate itself. Look where E-mail is today with the DMA's much-hyped idea of "self-regulation" of E-mail "marketing."

Even the Amateur Radio Service, supposedly self-regulating, is having its share of problems.

Do we really, REALLY want to trust the broadcasters and mass media to regulate themselves?

I don't think so. The biggest problem with the FCC right now is that its chief commissioner, Michael Powell, is a Bush crony who has no more of a grip on common sense and technical realities than the Shrub himself. Get rid of Powell, and replace the commissioners that are part of his little circle, and I would wager that things would start improving practically overnight.

And when you go flying out of control and careen into another car killing someone because you are irresponsible enough to drive 120 MPH, what then?

Of course, this brings up the studies which have shown that it is actually the difference in speeds rather than the absolute speed being driven. Here in Ohio, on rural Interstates, cars can go 65 but semis and busses are limited to 55. As a result, we do tend to have more accidents involving cars and semis simply because the semis have to go 10mph less than the cars. Read more here.

Who knows? Perhaps it is worth a shot.

Oh-- and to stay on topic... Ahem, looks like it is time to shut down ed2k... I mean...

I realize that this *sounds* funny, however this is apparently a serious problem.

There is reverse engineering work to do first.

This may be nothing more than my own paranoia kicking in, but...

Micro$platt has a long and colorful history of buying out (or attempting to buy out) their competition. If said competition refuses a buyout, the usual result is a hostile takeover of some form or another.

I think Billy-boy and 'UncaFester' Ballmer would love to "own" E-mail. However, it's such an open application (SMTP) that the only way they could come up with to "own" it is to come up with their own system of electronic postage.

This business of "ending spam in two years" is nothing more than a smokescreen. Our legislators already had the perfect chance to, if not end spam, and least put a big dent in it by BANNING IT OUTRIGHT. Did they take the chance? Nooooo. Not with their puppet masters in the DMA breathing down their collective necks.

It would have been a no-brainer to extend the junk FAX law to cover E-mail as well. Along those lines, I've often wondered what part of 'No!' it is that telemarketdroids and spammers Just Don't Understand.

Anyway... This is nothing more than Billy-boy's attempt to "own" something that he really can't. I predict the entire effort will end in utter disaster of a public-relations nature.

And the worst part is that I don't think it'll have the slightest effect on the spam problem. Nothing will, until legislators are brave enough to recognize where the private property lines are on the Internet, and subsequently say "No, spamming is NOT legal. Period."

It was inspired by Ray Kurzweil's In the Age of Spiritual Machines.

A great album, one of my favorites. Now if they'd just play in Michigan more so I didn't have to go to !$^@!$!@#$ Ohio to see them.

Others Here, which is not maintained by myself... not that you know who anonymous is.

For some projects that I have written, I used a modified Artistic License, a "General Artistic License".
Parts of the Perl Artistic License seemed to me to be specific to Perl, so I removed them.

If you have time, look at it, and tell me if its ok.

http://www.dma.org/~dma hurin/files/software/wkn/doc/LICENSE