Slashdot Mirror

these words may be more appropos than ever right now...

--| The Distress of Arjuna |---

ARJUNA'S HEART melted with pity,
while he uttered this:

Arjuna.
Krishna! as I behold, come here to shed Their common blood,
yon concourse of our kin, My members fail, my tongue dries in my mouth,
A shudder thrills my body, and my hair Bristles with horror;
from my weak hand slips Gandiv, the goodly bow; a fever burns
My skin to parching; hardly may I stand; The life within me seems
to swim and faint; Nothing do I foresee save woe and wail!

It is not good, O Keshav! nought of good Can spring from mutual slaughter!
Lo, I hate Triumph and domination, wealth and ease, Thus sadly won!
Aho! what victory Can bring delight, Govinda! what rich spoils Could profit;
what rule recompense; what span Of life itself seem sweet, bought
with such blood?

Seeing that these stand here, ready to die, For whose sake life was fair,
and pleasure pleased, And power grew precious:- grandsires, sires, and sons,
Brothers, and fathers-in-law, and sons-in-law, Elders and friends!
Shall I deal death on these Even though they seek to slay us?
Not one blow, O Madhusudan! will I strike to gain The rule of
all Three Worlds; then, how much less To seize an earthly kingdom!
Killing these Must breed but anguish, Krishna! If they be Guilty,
we shall grow guilty by their deaths; Their sins will light on us,
if we shall slay Those sons of Dhritirashtra, and our kin;

What peace could come of that, O Madhava? For if indeed,
blinded by lust and wrath, These cannot see, or will not see,
the sin Of kingly lines o'erthrown and kinsmen slain,
How should not we, who see, shun such a crime-- We who perceive
the guilt and feel the shame- O thou Delight of Men, Janardana?

By overthrow of houses perisheth Their sweet continuous household piety,
And- rites neglected, piety extinct-- Enters impiety upon that home;
Its women grow unwomaned, whence there spring Mad passions,
and the mingling-up of castes, Sending a Hell-ward road that family,
And whoso wrought its doom by wicked wrath.

Nay, and the souls of honoured ancestors Fall from their place of peace,
being bereft Of funeral-cakes and the wan death-water.
So teach our holy hymns. Thus, if we slay Kinsfolk and friends for
love of earthly power, Ahovat! what an evil fault it were!
Better I deem it, if my kinsmen strike, To face them weaponless,
and bare my breast To shaft and spear, than answer blow with blow.

(The BHAGAVAD-GITA, translated by Sir Edwin Arnold,
Chapter 1 - Of the Distress of Arjuna)

Storm's Nest

--

when it comes down to it, HERE's an actual Mac OS9 screenshot to compare to the Xfree anti-aliasing.

notice that OS9 doesn't anti-alias text below (user settable) 12 points (handy, and faster). i've set the browser font to be: Times-12 -> imo, after examining both the X shot and this shot at 400% magnification, it seems to me that the hinting and definition of the MacOS still yields clearer text.

someone might also want to post up a OS-X and XP screenshot of the same web page:

http://salon.com/ent/feature/2002/03/02/shakespear e/index.html

so we can have a REAL comparison of actual screenshots instead of a lot of /. theorizing about about the Nyquist limit.

regards,
johnrpenner.

when it comes down to it, HERE's an actual Mac OS9 screenshot to compare to the Xfree anti-aliasing.

notice that OS9 doesn't anti-alias text below (user settable) 12 points (handy, and faster). i've set the browser font to be: Times-12 -> imo, after examining both the X shot and this shot at 400% magnification, it seems to me that the hinting and definition of the MacOS still yields clearer text.

someone might also want to post up a OS-X and XP screenshot of the same web page:

http://salon.com/ent/feature/2002/03/02/shakespear e/index.html

so we can have a REAL comparison of actual screenshots instead of a lot of /. theorizing about about the Nyquist limit.

regards,
johnrpenner.

when it comes down to it, HERE's an actual Mac OS9 screenshot to compare to the Xfree anti-aliasing. notice that OS9 doesn't anti-alias text below (user settable) 12 points (handy, and faster). i've set the browser font to be: Times-12 -> imo, after examining both the X shot and this shot at 400% magnification, it seems to me that the hinting and definition of the MacOS still yields clearer text. someone might also want to post up a OS-X and XP screenshot of the same web page: http://salon.com/ent/feature/2002/03/02/shakespear e/index.html so we can have a REAL comparison of actual screenshots instead of a lot of /. theorizing about about the Nyquist limit. regards, johnrpenner.

when it comes down to it, HERE's an actual Mac OS9 screenshot to compare to the Xfree anti-aliasing. notice that OS9 doesn't anti-alias text below (user settable) 12 points (handy, and faster). i've set the browser font to be: Times-12 -> imo, after examining both the X shot and this shot at 400% magnification, it seems to me that the hinting and definition of the MacOS still yields clearer text. someone might also want to post up a OS-X and XP screenshot of the same web page: http://salon.com/ent/feature/2002/03/02/shakespear e/index.html so we can have a REAL comparison of actual screenshots instead of a lot of /. theorizing about about the Nyquist limit. regards, johnrpenner.

Scientologists Reed Slatkin, who ran the largest Ponzi scheme in American history, and Sky Dayton are co-founders of Earthlink, which is presently the third largest ISP in the USA.

I hope Sky Dayton's new company Boingo fails where other companies survive. I don't want the Church of Scientology running any wireless networks in my neighborhood, thank you.

-Don

Exactly :-)

That is exactly what Overture is. We aren't a traditional Information retreival search engine, and that is exactly what Google is trying to muscle in on.

Look at the results on Earthlink now from Google -- and compare with AOL...

For what its worth I use Google constantly when I'm doing research - but for items I can buy, services I need, I'd prefer Overture.

Compare and Contrast:

Earthlink Web Search DVD Players

AOL Search for DVD players (Overture)

Winton

They added noise to all the other encodings. Don't believe me? I re-encoded their 8 kbps kts stream to 8.5 kbps rm and even after the recompression it sounds better, listen.

AnthonyM: Thank you for contacting Earthlink LiveChat. What can I help you with today?

Me: I don't use my earthlink.net email account; I use a third party's email service. However, when I try to connect to their SMTP server, I always get an error.

Me: Today I read that some ISPs block outgoing connections on port 25 to fight spammers. Does earthlink DSL do this? That would explain why I can't connect (I've tried several smtp servers... nothing goes through on port 25 to any server)

AnthonyM: The problem you are having is due to Port 25 blocking. This blocks any 3rd pary outgoing mail servers from being accessed while connected to the EarthLink network via Dialup, DSL or Cable. This has been done to elminate much of the spam originating from our customers. Most of this spam is being sent from 3rd party SMTP servers and not the EarthLink SMTP servers. All you need to do is go into your e-mail program's settings and change the outgoing mail server to either mail.mindspring.com or mail.earthlink.net. One of these will work for you and allow you to send mail while connected to your EarthLink connection without a problem.

To explain this in more "real world" terms, think of the US Mail system. All that's going in is that you're being required to use your current connection's post office (outgoing mail server) to post mark your email. Every ISP has post office server to do this for the customers connected. And just like the US Mail system, the postmark does not change the address the mail message is coming from.

This policy has been in effect for nearly 3 years on the MindSpring side of the company and is now being implemented on the EarthLink side of the company. You can find more information about this at the following site: http://help.earthlink.net/port25/

Me: Just to clarify... does this mean that earthlink's mail servers will send my outgoing mail instead of my ISPs servers?

AnthonyM: exactly right.

Me: how does earthlink authenticate me as the owner of the third party account? In other words, what's to stop a malicious person from doing the same thing and sending mail that appears to be from my account?

AnthonyM: you must authenticate to connect to an earthlink access point. only someone who is connected through our access points can use our smtp servers.

Me: It authenticates me as an earthlink user, but it has no way of knowing that I own the third-party account, I could say I'm gbush@whitehouse.gov, for instance, and it sounds like the earthlink servers would send that.

AnthonyM: as long as you are connected to us, why would it matter? it's your account.

Me: Anyway, I'll give it a try, but I'd like to point out that I don't think this is a very effective way of doing this... it might be better to just investigate people who seem to be sending massive amounts of data over port 25. Thanks for your time.

Not really evolution - just freeing humans up from menial and dangerous tasks.

As for equality, will the the people of Afghanistan have robots to fight their battles as well? Of course not - they have a difficult time with the basics. Thus, it will widen the gap between the "haves" and the "have-nots", which is not equality. Maybe you're talking about equality only for those in the US? I don't know - give humans too much time, and suddenly you have exponential growth in drug/alcohol/television addiction. Not exactly a positive outcome.

Read Joe Haldeman's The Forever Peace - follows along the lines of the rich, technology-advanced countries beating on the 3rd world.

I think it is at least as likely that they are doing this because people could develop for the platform without going "through them", as it is that they would oppose this on any real "piracy" grounds, though I must admit to ignorance on their official stance on GBA development.

Myself, I decided to never touch their stuff after reading the classic paper The Expurgation of Maniac Mansion for the Nintendo Entertainment System.

Read it if you haven't already, it's hilarious.

Single Menubar - Reasons

A SINGLE MENUBAR AT THE TOP OF THE SCREEN that changes according to
the current context (window) instead of a menubar for every window.

Setting this as a User Default will improve Linux's ease-of-use.
Placing a single Menubar along the top of the screen:

1 - Makes it faster and easier to hit.
(no mouse overshoot to slow things down)

2 - Eliminates clutter in the interface.

3 - Reduces ambiguity (and hence - user error).

regards,
john.

if we're going to standardize, it would be a good idea to eliminate uncessary ambiguity in the interface by standardizing on a Single Menubar.

reasons: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/Si ngleMenubar.html

• On-Hand PC -- runs a variant of DOS and an SDK is available.
• Fossil PDA -- despite the word "PDA", it has limited RAM.
• TV/VCR Infrared remote
• MP3 watch
• Color digital camera watch

Greetings,

We don't hate you. We are here to help you. Please accept this wheat and soy milk. Also, if you are with the taliban, click here to find instructions on how to surrender.

Thank you.

The Western World

of course, if you're going to talk about AI,
you might want to ask a cognitive scientist:

Searle > Is the Brain a Computer? and Searle > Minds Brains, and the Chineese Room

regards,
storm's nest

kurzweil's premise that 'exponential increases in processing power' will lead to AI are unfounded, because a quantitative change does not presume a qualitative change. storm's nest

They always forget that scratching is just one little part of the experience of playing vinyl on a turntable.

Yes - one that leads to wailing and gnashing of teeth!

Tearing vinyl and snapping cantilevers - the stuff nightmares are made of.

But if you want some Real Audio and serious hacking try a DIY turntable and motor controler and a real Tone Atm. Of cause all real cartridges require manual hacking.

For a moderately retro look, try painting the case in a gloss finsih, preferably black, have all your drives painted black, and lots and lots of chrome!

Plus of course the fins on the back like the late 59 cadillacs

I've had a bit of a go at capturing this look, but this guy's done much better.

Actually they do though I use their DSL service. The reason I mentioned them is that this story specifically stated that Earthlink has multi-computer fees.

For the fun of it, maybe I should see if I can copy some of my own stuff (pictures - professional looking) at kinkos.

When they tell me no, I'll then Ask them if they have a release form I can sign for them. I bet they don't have one.

I haven't thought about this in years, but it might be interesting to "fake banner ad" collectors:

• fake Law.com banner or, if that becomes unavailable, fake Law.com banner.

Here are 2 I tried, I liked WebWindow a bit more, but IceSoft's supports more features.

• WebWindow
• IceStorm browser

ExtractStream for Unix

TivoApp for Windows

TivoApp relies on ExtractStream being installed on the Tivo, but it works like a champ. This is a 2.5.1 Tivo w/ the TivoNet setup connected to a WAP11.

Very cool.

A related system that should constitute prior art was describe in 1979 in a book called _Data & Reality_ by William "Bill" Kent in a system he called ROSE (Relations Objects Strings Entities). Excerpts at: http://home.earthlink.net/~billkent/Doc/darxrp.htm The proposal is also similar to Entity-Relationship database concepts by Chen and others, see: Chen, P.P. The Entity relational model - Towards a Unified View of Data. ACM Transaction on Database Systems. Vol. 1, No 1, 1976, pp 9-36.

Because vorbis.com is becoming slow, I have decided to post mirrors:

win32 binaries: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-win32.zip

i386 RPM libao: libao-0.8.2-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libogg: libogg-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libvorbis: libvorbis-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM vorbis-tools: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

To encode files, you need all the above RPMs.

There's little question that Vorbis is impressive. The question is, what is its competition? MP3 (created using LAME) is currently the most popular digital audio compression algorithm, but anyone will tell you Vorbis rocks its world. That can't be it, then... is RealAudio/WMA the true competition? How about Quicktime? Perhaps Vorbis is playing to different audience than the "big boys," mainly for the home enthusiast? Vorbis is not quite ready for streaming (e.g., not yet perfectly tuned for 22.1kHz like for 44.1kHz, not very low bitrates, etc.), so until then it seems Real will lead the pack in that arena.

When, however, Vorbis gets these features, I feel it will even be able to replace Real and WMA.

Because vorbis.com is becoming slow, I have decided to post mirrors:

win32 binaries: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-win32.zip

i386 RPM libao: libao-0.8.2-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libogg: libogg-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libvorbis: libvorbis-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM vorbis-tools: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

To encode files, you need all the above RPMs.

There's little question that Vorbis is impressive. The question is, what is its competition? MP3 (created using LAME) is currently the most popular digital audio compression algorithm, but anyone will tell you Vorbis rocks its world. That can't be it, then... is RealAudio/WMA the true competition? How about Quicktime? Perhaps Vorbis is playing to different audience than the "big boys," mainly for the home enthusiast? Vorbis is not quite ready for streaming (e.g., not yet perfectly tuned for 22.1kHz like for 44.1kHz, not very low bitrates, etc.), so until then it seems Real will lead the pack in that arena.

When, however, Vorbis gets these features, I feel it will even be able to replace Real and WMA.

Because vorbis.com is becoming slow, I have decided to post mirrors:

win32 binaries: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-win32.zip

i386 RPM libao: libao-0.8.2-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libogg: libogg-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libvorbis: libvorbis-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM vorbis-tools: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

To encode files, you need all the above RPMs.

There's little question that Vorbis is impressive. The question is, what is its competition? MP3 (created using LAME) is currently the most popular digital audio compression algorithm, but anyone will tell you Vorbis rocks its world. That can't be it, then... is RealAudio/WMA the true competition? How about Quicktime? Perhaps Vorbis is playing to different audience than the "big boys," mainly for the home enthusiast? Vorbis is not quite ready for streaming (e.g., not yet perfectly tuned for 22.1kHz like for 44.1kHz, not very low bitrates, etc.), so until then it seems Real will lead the pack in that arena.

When, however, Vorbis gets these features, I feel it will even be able to replace Real and WMA.

Because vorbis.com is becoming slow, I have decided to post mirrors:

win32 binaries: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-win32.zip

i386 RPM libao: libao-0.8.2-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libogg: libogg-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libvorbis: libvorbis-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM vorbis-tools: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

To encode files, you need all the above RPMs.

There's little question that Vorbis is impressive. The question is, what is its competition? MP3 (created using LAME) is currently the most popular digital audio compression algorithm, but anyone will tell you Vorbis rocks its world. That can't be it, then... is RealAudio/WMA the true competition? How about Quicktime? Perhaps Vorbis is playing to different audience than the "big boys," mainly for the home enthusiast? Vorbis is not quite ready for streaming (e.g., not yet perfectly tuned for 22.1kHz like for 44.1kHz, not very low bitrates, etc.), so until then it seems Real will lead the pack in that arena.

When, however, Vorbis gets these features, I feel it will even be able to replace Real and WMA.

Because vorbis.com is becoming slow, I have decided to post mirrors:

win32 binaries: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-win32.zip

i386 RPM libao: libao-0.8.2-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libogg: libogg-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM libvorbis: libvorbis-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

i386 RPM vorbis-tools: vorbis-tools-1.0rc3-1.i386.rpm

To encode files, you need all the above RPMs.

There's little question that Vorbis is impressive. The question is, what is its competition? MP3 (created using LAME) is currently the most popular digital audio compression algorithm, but anyone will tell you Vorbis rocks its world. That can't be it, then... is RealAudio/WMA the true competition? How about Quicktime? Perhaps Vorbis is playing to different audience than the "big boys," mainly for the home enthusiast? Vorbis is not quite ready for streaming (e.g., not yet perfectly tuned for 22.1kHz like for 44.1kHz, not very low bitrates, etc.), so until then it seems Real will lead the pack in that arena.

When, however, Vorbis gets these features, I feel it will even be able to replace Real and WMA.

Also look at this link

>> Anonymous Coward writes...

Wow, the Anonymous Cowards have personal webpages now? That surely helps them stay anonymous.

I'd also suggest Frederik Pohl's story "The Gold at Starbow's End" (collected in a book of the same title), plus the novel Gateway from around the same time. The relativistic physics speculation in these 25yo works may not have been treated kindly by subsequent developments but the fictive descriptions are worth the read.

BTW, Forever War isn't a novel but a concatenation of a series of stories published in Analog magazine. At the time Haldeman acknowledged the influence of both Troopers and his Vietnam experiences. Some may also enjoy his mundane (non-sfnal) novel about Vietnam, War Year.

This shouldn't be too surprising, as Haldeman was a physics major. More information about the author can be found at his website.

The Forever War has been called an "answer" to Starship Troopers. The main contrast between the two is that Rico volunteers, as does everyone else, for federal service, whereas Mandela is drafted. Rico knows his war to be just, whereas Mandela is never sure. Rico also revels in the destruction of the enemy of his own accord, while Mandela is forced to a bloodlust via post-hypnotic suggestion. Basically, Starship Troopers justifies its war by portraying an underestimated enemy that is ruthless, while the plot of The Forever War hints at the notion that it is mostly xenophobia and economics that drives the conflict. Rico grows to be eager to fight, of his own volition, while Mandela is coerced at every turn.

I suppose the over-riding thematic difference between the two would be that Heinlein's work portrays a protagonist that through the process of becoming more mature learns that societal duty is the highest, while Mandela has his cynicism and distrust of the powers that be confirmed.

I actually prefer his trilogy of Worlds, Worlds Apart, and Worlds Enough in Time, but Forever War has a couple of concepts that I come back to years afterwards. I disagree with the assessment that Forever Free and Forever Peace suck. These are different books, with different themes, in different styles. (That said, I didn't enjoy them nearly as much. If I had to recommend one book above all others as an introduction to Haldeman, it would be the short story collection Dealing in Futures

One thing that I enjoy about Haldeman's work that also maddens me is that he adores experimentimg. Although he is a consistently good writer, he really does try to fit the style to the story. Hemingway Hoax reads very differently from some of his other books, and The Coming is a study in rapid-cutting movie techniques applied to novels.

I'm glad to see this book reviewed, as Haldeman has consistently come up with some of the most interesting ideas in SF. Oh, and the tired thing about Forever War as a retread of Starship Troopers? Heinlein didn't think so. He congratulated Haldeman on "writing one of the most original stories I've ever seen."

Yes, it is about the vietnam war. In fact, I believe he wrote it while in the vietnam war.

Check Mr.Haldeman's website yourself.

This is the book that brought me into science fiction. By far, I consider this the best book I've read (over Ender's Game, and Starship Troopers).

The times are a bit off, if you read the unabridged version (it takes place in the 90s as I recall), but the way he deals with the thousands of years that go by is just ingenious!

There are two sorts of genes found on chromasomes, coding genes, which as described above are (eventually) transcribed to proteins, and regulatory genes, which work at a higher level, and control which proteins will be expressed and when. Regulatory genes aren't transcribed. A good description of the process is here. There is of course a third usage of the DNA, which is junk DNA, but (as far as we know) this has no purpose at all.

Earthlink blocks 25, but only on their dialup service. If you think dialup is the 'real internet', then, yeah, that suxors ass.

I've been with them since 94 or so, and have never had a problem. I run a FreeBSD web/mail server on my eln dsl line, and they have yet to gripe. Granted, if they ever decided to block 25 outgoing or (gasp!), 80 incoming on their dsl network, I'd drop them in a second.

...Earthlink finds out that one of our astronauts is illegally sharing his wireless access with everyone in LEO.

.. and all that comes inside is the network cable that connects directly to your NIC.

Actually, there's a power cable, too. The cell tower doesn't have that much power! From the faq:

Your equipment includes:
* A 14" square dish, which is mounted on the side of your home that best faces the Wireless Internet Tower.
* A receiver, approximately 14" x 10". This small box is mounted outside your home near the dish. This is the device that sends and receives data to and from your PC.
* A cable that runs from the receiver into your home. The cable will connect to an electrical outlet and to your computer's Network Interface Card (NIC)

I wonder how they mount the fairly big receiver box. Even though it has to be weather proofed and operate over an extended temperature range, there are far fewer mistakes that a customer can make with a CAT5 cable than an RF cable.

Best bug found so far - it seems all the new textures and models for clothing and armour are occasionally not being drawn. It is not known yet if this is the fabled "bonus" for signing up for the game early.

Boy those skinners really need to get out more.

On the bright side, if it's a bug, surely you could duplicate it with a simple client side memory resident program.

And, of course, once you have written said program,you could sell it on Ebay for only $139.99 and make yourself rich from 13 year old boys.

Topless Female Elven Paladin

Topless Female Barbarian Shaman

Naked Female Half Elf Warrior From Rear and Front

Naked Male Elven caster with carefully placed spellbook

Best bug found so far - it seems all the new textures and models for clothing and armour are occasionally not being drawn. It is not known yet if this is the fabled "bonus" for signing up for the game early.

Boy those skinners really need to get out more.

On the bright side, if it's a bug, surely you could duplicate it with a simple client side memory resident program.

And, of course, once you have written said program,you could sell it on Ebay for only $139.99 and make yourself rich from 13 year old boys.

Topless Female Elven Paladin

Topless Female Barbarian Shaman

Naked Female Half Elf Warrior From Rear and Front

Naked Male Elven caster with carefully placed spellbook

I found a nearly identical article on Excite yesterday, December 5th, at around 3 pm. I submitted it soon thereafter.

I log onto Slashdot this morning and see that nearly 12 hours later someone else gets the post.

Nice job Slashdot.

The Nugget

I suspect that the "GNAT Modified GPL" (GMGPL) solves your problem, since it specifically allows non-dynamic linking of libraries without infecting a program using the GMGPL'ed library.

Jacob

on a side note:

my school has essentially blocked all of the popular p2p clients. even limewire.

in the back of my head, i always knew that having a subscription to a national dialup isp was a good idea.

The imager in the gameboy camera is a Mitsubishi Electric M64282FP CMOS image sensor (not a CCD). It is slightly more sensitive to near infrared than it is to visible light. The '282 has a resolution of 128x128 pixels, will do 30 frames per second and outputs the pixels in analog format.

You can find more information on hacking this chip and the gameboy camera at http://home.earthlink.net/~apendragn/gbcam/

> > Give me a break! You can't be softer than
> > the people you're trying to defeat.
>
> Being "hard" or "soft" is not what war is about.

war is a no-win game.

the only 'good end' to a war, is to find
a solution such that both parties will stop
their fighting and killing of each other.

bombing and retaliation will not bring that about.
that will only escalate the violence such that more
people will die on both sides.

i agree with the general gist of the original post.
that in order to 'stop the fighting', we have to
come to undersand the underlying causes that
brought about the fighting in the first place.

lets not add fuel to the fire

best regards,
john penner.

globalism can be a boon or bane. social threefolding provides a framework for sustaining rights within a global economy: http://home.earthlink.net/~johnrpenner/Articles/St einer-Social.html

It's probably a good thing that the people your father was dealing with at Earthlink didn't know their own terms of service agreement.

Almost every major terms of service agreement has a jurisdiction passage (this agreement governed under the laws of such-and-such state) like the following (cut and pasted from Earthlink's TOS):

---

11. JURISDICTION.

Under California Civil Code Section 1789.3, Members or Visitors who are residents of California are entitled to the following specific
consumer rights information: the Complaint Assistance Unit of the Division of Consumer Services of the Department of Consumer
Affairs may be contacted in writing at 1020 N. Street, #501, Sacramento, CA 95814 or by telephone at 916.445.1254.

This Agreement is governed by Georgia law without regard to conflict of law provisions.

The federal and state courts located in Georgia alone have jurisdiction over all disputes arising out of or related to this Agreement and the
Services. You consent to the personal jurisdiction of such courts sitting in Georgia with respect to such matters or otherwise between you
and EarthLink, and waive your rights to removal or consent to removal.

Link to full Earthlink TOS for dialup

---

If your father would actually sued them in California, there are a couple of options that Earthlink has to play with. The most expedient would be to get a summary judgement noting improper venue as proscribed by the valid agreement between the parties and get the case tossed out. If they were feeling particularly nasty about it, they could always file a motion for a change of venue to Georgia and get the case docketed there (if your father travels there, he loses the time and expenses...if he doesn't, he loses by not showing up...it's just more protracted and a big corporation would hardly notice the legal expenses which are a tax writeoff anyway).

California's laws may provide additional relief for your father that I'm not aware of (California is called out in this agreement so it might be interesting for you to see what rights he does have in the California Republic).

But I will give your father kudos for using whatever tactics (including bluffing) that works! About the only defence left to us against the big corporations is the legal ignorance of their average customer support rep!

(Usual disclaimers apply...I am not a lawyer but I can usually fake it pretty well! :)

SunFox

• 8mm video cassettes. Small, better video quality. But not good enough to make anybody switch from VHS.
• Every PDA ever invented, from the ancient WorkSlate to the latest "smart" phones. The idea isn't bad in itself, and there have even been a few successes. But there still isn't enough "added value" to make most people switch from paper-inscription technology.
• Spreadsheet software. The vendors have changed, but everybody still uses the klunky old macro language designed two decades ago for VisiCalc. Not even Microsoft could get people to accept a more elegant spreadsheet language.
• Desktop software. Yeah, I'd rather be using KDE or GNOME or even JavaStation. Anything but MS bloatware. But how to convince everybody to give up their Word/Excel/Powerpoint skill base?
• QWERTY keyboards. Yes, they're inefficient. (Although the inefficiency didn't actually come from a deliberate attempt to slow the machine down.) But who's going to learn typing from scratch?