Slashdot Mirror

I know what you mean, but this link leads me to consider that Darl McBride has been also been pretty consistant in deed, if not in word.

The predator is the intelligent person who understands what it means to be an entrepreneur. They create marketing departments for the sole purpose of selling useless widgets for a profit. These marketing departments hire psychologists.

The prey on the ignorant masses that purchase things they see advertised by "cool" people on TV. They are being manipulated every day by commercialism and our use of psychologists.

interesting reference

Here's a quote:

"We are writing today about the latter prohibition. We are concerned that members of the APA are ignoring it, for monetary gain. They are not using their knowledge to mitigate the causes of human suffering. They are using it instead to promote and assist the commercial exploitation and manipulation of children. As individuals, that is their right, of course. But as a profession dedicated to human welfare, psychologists have a responsibility to the public. The APA should not condone such behavior among its members, nor should psychologists look the other way."

Looks to me like they are preying on children. If children, like the elderly, in our society are not one form of prey I don't know what is. This is truely sick, btw. This is "our way of life".

At least they're an equal opportunity privacy violator, as happy to spill the beans on their customers as their employees. People just have no respect for corporate consistency these days.

Microsoft has hated it forever. For much the same reasons movie makers and other large advertisers of shoddy junk hate information exchange. Large forums, such as TV/Radio, Slashdot, your local, state and federal governments can be astroturfed. Micorsoft's problem with smaller groups, like your local lug, is that they can't spam them all. They don't have the resources and never will to create trused users in all of those groups. So long as reliable search engines exist, we will all continue to enjoy honest information from impartial sources.

Marc Smith's efforts represent Microsoft's response to such groups. Efforts to "add core value" and rank newsgroups from a company that's proved it's willingness to lie to the public should not be trusted. Poor Marc has been at this for four years, but Microsoft's search engine, mail client and web browser all still blow. What I imagine M$ will do is start steering users of their OS to M$ friendly newsgroups. They will also try to destroy the structure of newsgroups themselves and limit who can run them and focus harrasment on groups unfavorable to them. They won't win but they will try. They have already forced most large ISPs to block ports on cable modems and DSL so that the average person has a hard time serving information. The push for control of information is ongoing.

Who needs AI when all you want is put out is the same old garbage you put in? Microsoft never developed anything.

Martin is more like Rick Segal all over again.

When you know what you want to find you are no longer researching, you are writing marketing paper. Research is when you compare things and try to understand them. This tool will be trying to prove things that everyone knows are bullshit. Microsoft security is not an advantage, it's an oxymoron. TCO and sanity are clearly in free software's favor. Just ask Largo, Florida.

This lab is more like Steve Barkto but announced. What comes out will feed many trolls untill Microsft finally runs out of money to pay them or wins and does not have to. They are not going to win.

I mean, I don't necesarilly trust OSS-sympathetc studies

Why not? What do you think people have to gain by lying about free software? If you don't like the Red Hat thing, go get a Debian version. Hell, you could even download the source and make your own. That's how free software works, why it's so good and why you don't have to lie about it. It's all right there, where anyone can see it and get the same exact results.

Microsoft spending money on bogus Mac switchers and Linux "studdies" is a total wast of investor money. They already know the TCO issues for Microsoft Server platforms vrs free software from running Hotmail. Why don't they just publish the numbers? Because they are every bit as embarassing as the whole failed switch, then the switch that worked and showed them just how much better free software was. Where are the folks who wrote that report? Fired, I'm sure.

Yeah, that's about the size of it.

Maybe not good reasons or reasons anyone here would agreee with, but reasons that will make sense to the IT departments and executives that make up Microsofts customers.

Oh, like the wierd philosopy that all must pay the Microsoft tax or be branded unAmerican? People here want facts, numbers and real performance. Microsoft is not going to get any of that for their stuff from this lab, all it's going to get is fodder for lies. It will help some executives continue to cover their gross mistake of sticking with Windoze. It won't help their bottom line and their companies will continue to spend good money after bad.

Either rebut, or fix, whatever issues this new lab comes up with. Easy, and good for open source too.

You can't fix what is not broken.

This is all perception management. They need to have more of a clue, but the goals remain the same. They will force the results they want and try to make it look reputable. The insults will continue, it's in their blood. Microsft has not learned and never will. The same things that make their software insecure and buggy today will make it insecure and buggy tomorrow.

They keep saying the same old stuff, Microsoft is secure, Microsoft has a lower cost of ownership, Microsoft is more stable now, Best Windows Ever. All they have done is hire someone to help them lie better. No repeatable test will ever show what Microsoft says is true, because none of it ever is. A linux lab is not going to change anything, but the quality of the lie. They will produce literature filled with half truths and nonsense. As it is today, all they have is nonsense and it shows.

Don't think for an instant the name calling will stop, either. It's just going to be pushed onto "independent" PR firms and study groups. Tools like SCO will rage on under M$ funding. Microsoft understands they screwed up by directly insulting their customers and people who were giving superior software away as free. It won't be long before officials there start spewing about "hippies", "cancers" and all that again. They will continue to say such things off record. These are the same folks who think they have a right to read your files and control what software is on your compter, they might believe they have a right to your money and that saying otherwise is unAmerican. The Astroturf will only get worse. It's a trick M$ has know since Yes, the company that screwed DRDOS with bogus error messages is capable of it. Barkto was not an aboration, it was the norm and it's always worse than you think.

Those are the two changes I predict. More and nastier lies.

God, I LOVE competition.

I don't think you or Microsoft know what competition is.

It is obviously the most technically advanced carrier in the fleet, taking the term "hardware" to new levels.

Hang on a minute. Isn't this the same USS Ronald Reagan that's run on a Windows 2000-based computer system?

http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/am-info/Week- of-Mon-20001023/004185.html

"FIRE!" "We can't fire sir, the ship is rebooting."

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/13921.html

WTF.
The 'hardware' might be state of the art, but the software has a LONG way to go.

Is anybody scared yet?

If you think Slashdot sucks in all those ways, grab the Slashcode and make your own site to fill up with trolls. It's like people are getting paid to be disruptive. Oh wait, that's the topic. Sorry, my bad.

I'm suspicious about any additional powers being granted. The same arguments can be made for any crime in the public eye, "We must violate your rights in order to combat this_daterdly_deed" All criminals hide their assets. That does not make me want my tax money paying government clerks to read my email.

I'm waiting for the big sting that shows that most spam is comming from MSNBC, AOL, Earthlink and others who advertise "spam fighting email service". I doubt I have to give up any more for this than I gave up when "Steven Barkto" got nailed. Spam, not everloving, astroturfing Microsoft!

The USS Yorktown, has been disabled several times by windows networking errors. Basically, Microsoft doesn't make products that are up to Military Specifications.

Slashdotters defending DRM... am I crazy or am I the last sane one? I'm not sure sure anymore.

Slashdot continues to get more mainstream readership, even getting mentioned in print articles these days. As a side effect of this visibility, the activity of astroturfers has increased -- notice that the pro-MS AC(s) tend to have the same writing style and logical fallacies. When other readers put them in their place, a handful UIDs dog pile one or two posters with ad hominem attacks or the "you-just-don't-like-Microsoft" (appeal to emotion?) attack. Microsoft has a long practice of 'turfing in it's marketing:

• MSFT paid Gartner to publish MSFT material as Gartner's
• fake "grass roots" letter writing
• another fake letter writing campaign
• paid for people to hang out in AOL forums
• paid for people to hang out in ZDNet "talkback" forums
• paid for people to hang out in CompuServe forums
• MSNBC doctored Wall Street Journal material
• Stuffed an on-line ballot box
• planned to plant fake op-ed pieces in local newspapers
• funded favorable think-tank whitepapers
• 'Astroturf' PR campaign exposes Microsoft goals.
• Joseph Menn. "Lobbyists Tied to Microsoft Wrote Citizens' Letters." The Los Angeles Times; Aug 23, 2001; pg. A.1 (print)
• Windows Outstuffs Linux in Poll
• Dead People, Fake Letters, Support Microsoft - Report
• Dead people rise in support of Microsoft
• Microsoft employee's move against AOL backfires
• The Freedom to Innovate Network - an 'Astroturf' Organisation

Also, right now MS is in a panicked marketing blitz. notice all the product placement on the tech sites. The embarassing stuff just disappears from the top page less than a day, but the press releases sit there for weeks.

It makes sense. Most Windows users have both Windows and Office because it's what the OEMs had installed on the machines they bought, nothing more or less. Most of these are either apathetic or know nothin else, so they will not write. Others are pissed off at the low quality, made worse by Microsoft treating security and stability issues as PR issues -- How many times have you heard "computers" crash from BSD, Novell, QNX, Linux, or OS X users? Or is it just the MSCEs? Most remaining clients could go easily over to OS X or one of the Linux distros and the next IT boom would start, like the previous one, without Microsoft.

In short, they need DRM to survive the summer and few, except for MS and RIAA staff

Troll???????????????

I should not feed the Trolls.
I should not feed the Trolls
I should not feed thr trolls.

I will burn my karma anyway, feeding this troll.

How do you figure?

A nice little thing known as a EULA.

• microsoft enforcing a EULA on a Linux system.
• A legal opinion on that story.
• The microsoft EULA vs the GNU GPL.
• one of the Linux Media News stories.
• a doctor asks questions about its effects on his medical treatment.
• The microsoft faq on their EULA.
• etc, etc, etc.
• Let us not forget the microsoft hardware tax.
• Nor the fact that for a business to prove it has a legit licence usually requires it to pay for the software three times:
  
  1. When they buy the pre-configured hardware;
  2. when they negotiate their site licence with microsoft
  3. When they buy the actual software.

Does Microsoft have exhorbatant fees on the licenses?

Do you consider giving a third party blanket permission to delete any and all software on your system to be be something other than exhorbatant? Especially if you only find out about it, after the fact.

Wind under Thy Wings

Amber

the human genome...the planet's largest open-source project ever.

Hold up! The genome has been patented, or parts of it anyway. This means that if you procreate you are guilty of distributing patented material without a license. As the joke goes, sex is a misdemeanor, da more I miss, da meaner I get.

This might be some sort of DMCA violation (Dont Make Children Americans) so I suggest everyone not have sex until the courts have hashed this out.

Ok, bad jokes, but its not open source either, until we talk them into opening up the source, which would mean abandoning the patents so they go to the public domain. (except for Mexico.)

Terrorism is really a path to world socalism and a world government - in the same vein as the UN. Every time an "terrorist threat" appears, there is always a call for money. Money from the government. Also, each new claim comes with associated calls for limits to our freedoms.

It's easy for (some of you) Americans to shout "socialism!" everytime there is something you don't like, isn't there?

i hunt and fish, and love the outdoors as much as anyone. but, i think capitalism and freedom are far more important. do you really want the corrupt third world dictators telling the US how to run its economy?

I don't know about you, but I'm pretty damned sure I DON'T want the US telling the world what to do. I mean, how can the US sit and pontificate when their Congress" is corrupt? Or how about profiteering from a war which the US started preemtively and unilaterally on "humanitarian" grounds? Or actively supports terrorists" and backs dictatorial regimes when they are in the apparent best interest of the US? Or the best interests of certain member's of government?

Do I really want the corrupt nuclear supperpower to be telling the world how to run their affairs? No. And you should be worried too. The US is becoming the Land of the Progressively Less Free.

(I apologize for this being off-topic. When someone spouts off like this person did, I feel a need to respond. As for the current war in Iraq and the soldiers on the ground there: I support you and hope you come back safely. I do not support the government who sent you, or the reasons they give for doing so.)

Between July 1995 and June 1997, the Yorktown lost propulsion power to
buffer overflows twice while using the new Smart Ship technology, said
Capt. Richard Rushton, commanding officer of the Yorktown at the time
of the failures. But in each incidence the Yorktown crew knew what
caused the failure and quickly restored systems, Rushton said.

1986 ruling by the 8th Circuit Court.

Good article about it here.

The all important indexing information and page numbers are assigned by WestLaw and they claim that those are copyrighted. You can't effectively conduct legal research without being able to figure out the references.

That's close, but it's more like the troll did the same thing with 50 robots and whores so that no one could even get in the door, much less carry on a conversation or enjoy being there.

I like this and hope all the Steve Barktos and their company sponsors are ruined. That's right, whores, I'd like to see you lose your jobs, houses and reputations for such activity.

Actually, yes. MSFT has an amazing history of shilling and astroturfing:

• MSFT paid Gartner to publish MSFT material as Gartner's
• fake "grass roots" letter writing
• another fake letter writing campaign
• paid for people to hang out in AOL forums
• paid for people to hang out in ZDNet "talkback" forums
• paid for people to hang out in CompuServe forums
• MSNBC doctored Wall Street Journal material
• Stuffed an on-line ballot box
• planned to plant fake op-ed pieces in local newspapers
• funded favorable think-tank whitepapers

I'm sure there's more, that's just all I can scrounge up in a few minutes. I seem to remember another MSFT-funded think-tank ("Indepence Institute"?) white paper, and there was an interesting "Brill's Content" article on how MSFT tracks reporters and what they write about MSFT. Actually, isn't the above enough? 10 items from 9 different sources about all varieties of shilling and astroturfing in forums from small to nation-wide. Yes, I think it's prudent to believe that MSFT employees watch Slashdot and mod-up pro-MSFT articles, or even submit them.

I'd go so far as to say that the average person should be suspicious of any pro-MSFT article or viewpoint posted in a public forum. If you, the reader, are pro-MSFT, I'm sorry: if you lie down with pigs, you can't expect to wake up in the morning smelling like roses.

As for the original posters hope that U.S. thinktanks won't get the same idea, I would ask the same questions about the U.S. system.

In this case, the link was quicly mirrored by someone with VA System like networking bandwith and ability to kill bots. It must be tough reading Slashdot from a Microsoft owned IP address .

I'd love to see Slashdot prove my assertions, just as much as I'd love to see all of these threads modded to -1 off topic. It gets in the way.

Now consider how tiny the NSF and NASA are in the grand scheme of things. Consider all the software written for a much larger agency like the US Navy. Think you will ever see any chunk of the Yorktown's propulsion system software? Not m a chance, but think of how huge a project that was. Now consider all the Navy's work from design to implementiation. Now consider that the Navy is just one branch of the enormous US Military, which literally supports whole cities of people on land and at sea. Then consider that the US Military only accounts for one fourth of the US Federal Budget and realize how much software goes to the federal government each year that you will never see, but will pay for again and again.

Very little can be thought of as vast but visible next to the incomprehsibly large.

Darn those academicians who seek to educate and otherwise benifit the public by frank and honest publications! Public libraries, hurt publishers. Free software hurts software vendors who would sell us the same crap forever. Yep, they love the GPL. So should the rest of us.

If anyone could test for these genes without paying royalties, then the guy who made the discovery will not have ANY incentive to do the same in the future!

How about the University that made the discovery?

Some more info:

http://lists.essential.org/pipermail/ip-health/200 1-September/001909.html

Link fix: trojan behavior.

"Douchebag," or maybe I should just call you DB to save typing? Yeah, I like that better.

I'm sure that offering to clear up Yertman's question was purely for information's sake and had nothing to do with maybe making a sale. "You won't have these problems with our pro version, yours for a low low price." You're a true humanitarian, and it's an enormous shame that your spam^H^H^H^Hpurely informational post got modded down.

On the whole "trojan" idea, TopMoxie is by no means a trojan, first. Second, its aim is not to take revenue from webmasters -- we've been trying for many months to get them to fix the affiliate link issues, but they have yet to do so.

Well Einstein, here's a hint: Don't include it then. And as far as it being a trojan, a simple GIS indicates that it sure as hell acts like one. It's buried in your EULA 200+ lines down, doesn't uninstall, doesn't announce itself, transmits user information without notifying the user, and (accidentally I'm sure) commits theft on your behalf.

I'm sure all the stolen revenue this unfortunate trojan-seeming unfixable programming error generates keeps you up all hours of the night.

Weaselmancer

Quoth the article: For nine years, the company has designated users with particular skills--usually seen by how often they intervene helpfully in newsgroups--as "most valued professionals". Currently there are about 1,200 MVPs, half of whom are in the United States.

Wow, 1,200 ultra suckers, is that all? I was sure there were at least 5,000 microsoft trolls at Slashdot alone. Oh well, it just goes to show what a few loud mouths can do to a useful conversation. Has it really been nine years since Steven Barktoo? You gotta love the M$ community where advocating M$ profits is more valuable than code.

Seriously, there are no new dirty tricks here. It's the same old BS that's been used with the MSDN and what not. M$ has attempted to build a community around purchasing their software. Tools developed by those members are shared, but they are routinely broken by M$. If M$ were free, or even just open, a real community could exist. What's there instead, at it's best, is simply a loyal group of ever abused consumers. At it's worst, these folks take their frustrations out on other communities.

You can fool all the people some of the time and some people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time. M$ will eventually run out of "developers". Is there realy anyone out there who develops for M$ platforms because they think it's the best platform? Most people who do write for M$ tell me that they "have" to know how to do it simply because of it's prevalance. That's not a situation that can last.

Don't people still remember This ?

Microsoft steals OS components from non-GPL sources and never admits it (TCP stack from BSD)

Apple develops software to assist you in ripping your CDs, mixing them to your liking and burning them onto new CDs or DVDs (iTunes)

Microsoft "patches" software while changing the EULA to allow them to automatically shut off ANY software you might be running that they feel violates their interpretation of DRM (Media Player)

Hardly seems like parallel tracks to me.

>> -They should have a general idea of how Bill Gates purchased MS-DOS from DEC and how Seymour Cray was out flying his airplane when the IBM sales people came to visit him, virtually guarenteeing that they would choose Microsoft

Of course, it was Gary Kildall that legend has it was flying when IBM came to call. However, there are multiple accounts of what happened at that time. Here's a short selection:

"Gary Kildall was not flying his plane" ... http://www.fool.com/Fribble/1996/Fribble961121.htm

"... the point person for IBM, has sworn that he never met Kildall that day. Kildall swore that not only did he meet with [IBM], but ..." ... http://lists.essential.org/am-info/msg04566.html

and the rather more sombre "What a tragedy. He was brilliant." (see "Subject: Kildall and DRI and IBM") ... http://people.smu.edu/rmonagha/4004.html

The truly important bit is regarding "trademarking of common phrases". I think it absolutely ridiculous that companies can trademark any common word or phrase. Reference a similar suit to this one, Mastercard suing Nader over "priceless" to see this kind of silliness in action. (feel free to find a better article, I just pulled the first item off google)

Basically, I do not condone the use of language "exclusivism". Language, as a whole, does not lend itself well to patentability. Satire, documentaries etc. are protected speech regardless of trademark, although occasionally (as usual) the courts can get confused. In this case it is even more bizarre. Suing over a name sounding the same? Poets beware!

I admit that this comment is going to sound very ad hominum: We need to examine Obasanjo's claims carefully. He's worked for Microsoft very recently.

Ordinarily, I wouldn't call attention to this, but Microsoft as a company has a really bad track record of astroturfing just about any kind of on- or off-line forum:

• CompuServe forums
• Political Action Committee
• "Independent" research groups
• Letter writing campaigns
• MSNBC articles
• online poll 1, online poll 2
• ZDNet talk backs

Sorry, Dare, but that's the facts: if you lie down with pigs, you wake up smelling a bit like pig excrement.

Exchange was nice enough to forward the name of the email recipient as well as the title of the email that refered the "recipient". For all we know the whole thing could have been a script on the exchange server itself, but I'll bet the name on the email was Stephen Barktoo. Almost as good as sending letters from dead people to congress critters saying how much they just love M$.

Incompetence in execution is no disproof of long standing evil plans, conspiracy and malice.

I just wonder how many comments posted around the net are posted with the same goals in mind.

Microsoft got caught ages ago with its hand in the cookie jar doing exactly that with the Barkto indcident.

Definitely not. In fact they have done much worse stuff, at the executive level.

And this is the difference between academic code and commercial code. Ever looked at 90% of the research projects from graduate students? Most of them barely work, or only work on one specific set of hardware (and not anything else), or require a huge set of work-arounds to get the code up and running.

Irrelevant red herring, and a bad example to boot. You're equating a potentially dangerous situation (in your example, less solder means a less solid joint, which means the oil could leak) with a harmless situation (reusing your old code, crufty as it is). In one case you're making a conscious decision to be less safe, while in the other you're making a conscious decision to leverage the work that's already been done.

You go girl! They don't even have a history of that kind of behaviour.

There is a method of killing Corporations. You can enact the death penatly by revoking their charter.

There are activists involved in trying to revoke the charters of Unocal and Tobacco Companies... see here: http://lists.essential.org/1998/corp-focus/msg0003 3.html and http://www.corpwatch.org/trac/feature/humanrts/res istance/mokhiber.html. The idea and practice are 'out of favour' at the moment, but in the past, Corporate charters were often revoke when companies commited wrong-doings. Americans have lost the ability to demand action of their politicians, the DoJ who should be upholding laws are neglecting them. The laws exist to do this now. People arent using them. Seeing how American Corporations have the same rights as American citizens, but none of the responsiblity and consequnces, these corporate acts - those of profit seeking - have become self-justifiying and unstoppable. YOU CANNOT HINDER COMMERCE is the rule of the day in America. I am a Canadian (who just applied for his Portuguese (mother was portuguese) citizenship to provide an escape hatch to the relative Sanity of the EU (escaping from just these issues i am discussing)), but i can assure you America, and Americans, you have a very real and immediate problem in your hands, your democracy *has* been subverted , your government is absolutely out of control in almost every respect - I have come to know this living so close to America, regrettably within the very real sphere of control that extends out of imperialist america, and I have watched things change dramatically in the last 8-10 years.... (im only 27).

The Plutocratic American Government hasnt the will to do this (bite hands that feeds them..) - as we see here in this ridiculously-light judgement against M$, the ability for the government (enabled by the citizenry) has been made impotent.

I am astonshed at this ruling, it really is telling that the anti-corporatist movement needs to remobalize in the face of anti-terrorist hysteria, and that the root cause of the attacks of 09.11 are the same problems that allowed M$ to skate - yet again.

Well, i guess we can hold out for Europe to do a deeper dive into M$'s monopoly abuse and corruption...

Microsoft has MOST DEFINITELY done this kind of thing before, and in a much more direct way! We're talking senior executives spamming online forums "anonymously" in support of Microsoft!

Unfortunately, Rick Segal no longer verks for MircoSoft, so ve cannot produce quaility verk anymore and must rely on this half-assed products ve do today.

I found the link to the little incident way back in 1994 with Rick Segal, a microsoft employee. I guess at least microsoft has gotten smarter over the years, now they simply pay people offsite to do their dirty work.

Kudos microsoft, you really are the king of innovation!!

Why, the Linux TCP stack originally came from Swansea University, thanks to Alan Cox -- as any dmesg can tell you.

Or are you attempting to imply something, troll?

Do you truly think a profitable company, as concerned about cost management as any other company is in this economy, would pay someone to post in forums and discredit media columnists?

Ahem..

http://lists.essential.org/1998/am-info/msg01529.h tml

MS buttfucking spyglass, or the conjuring of Steve Barkto, or maybe even vaporware

I know this stuff was touched upon in the suit, but during the whole trial it was just a big argument over whether or not MS could bundle IE with its OS.

And the senators who want an XP junction, unfortunatley, have missed the point as well, stating the bundling is the problem, but neglecting to address the issues of not letting people legitamately use the products they paid for.

Get to know this Brett Glass, he's typical.

I asked SV to remove him from the panel due to his past history of annoyance but SV ignored me, and that lead to a fruitless debate thanks to Brett Glass and SV.

do I have a problem with this. Nope, none whatsoever. Because, if the big pharmaceutical companies can't protect their product then they won't manufacture it. And if they don't, who will? Who else can afford the R&D? It may be that by giving up my rights to this research I will help to provide a cure or prevention for diabetes. I'm happy with that.

Big Pharm spends *by far* more on advertising than Research. See here. Also, to as a side-note, please see here to understand that free-market capitalism in the health care industry doesnt make sense; to note "Canada insured 100 percent of its citizens for $2,250 per person in l998 while the United States expended $4,270 per person insuring only 84 percent of our citizens.", not only that, its cruel and disgusting to hold people's health ransom for money...

De-Regulating the health care industry is more about stable profit for big-pharm than anything else.. Canada and Britain's citizens would do well to understand what 'American Style' health care really means. Fewer healthy people, higher cost, profiteering at the expense of your health (literally).

What does this have to do with R&D & Patents? Patents are weapons used by the Health Care Industry to kill people for money. The 'R & D' they do is to make money. Neither thing has 'beans' to do with Healthy People. The R&D should be done by doctors with alot less attachment to profit motives, which by nature, make for an *UNHEALTHY* "Health Industry"..

"So how do you motivate people to make others healthy when your only incentive is profit" would be a better question.

This is you? I am impressed! Too bad for your sake that I'm not some cute blonde 19 year old impressed coed, but I am impressed all the same.... I've always wondered how you verify the discovery / recovery of a new / rare species. Usually I wonder this right when some cool looking gold-shelled beetle with emerald green eyes lands nearby and I wonder if this is a new species that I could name cybrpnkii bugii.... Please allow me to read between the lines of your postings and make a comment or two. So what if nobody else around you thinks trees are cool or even doesn't care about your solid achievements as a naturalist? What you care about IS important, whether anybody shares that with you or not, and deep inside you obviously know that. The world is full of people who don't care and own chain saws. The day that the few people like you stop caring about conservation is the day the last field gets paved over, and that will be a very bad day indeed. It's people like you who poke around under rocks in the forest (so to speak) that have given all of us the keys to genetic engineering and leads on a cure for cancer. This is important even tho the financial rewards are often lacking...So best of wishes on your wildlife pursuits, and who knows, I'm a Tennessee native (Go Vols!) living in north Alabama, if I ever bump in to you in Gatlinburg or the Smokies, the drinks are on me! -cybrpnk (rickyjames@email.com)

Article 29(f) of the proposed treaty (1999 draft) excludes 'recognition or enforcement [that] would be manifestly incompatible with the public policy of the State addressed.' Such "public policy" would clearly include First Amendment rights in the USA, as explained in this set of answers from the cousel to the US negotiators to questions from James Love.

But U.S. law wouldn't stop somebody collecting damages from you (or the forum owner, or the ISP) in any other third country if you (or they) had assets overseas.

Article 29(f) of the proposed treaty (1999 draft) excludes 'recognition or enforcement [that] would be manifestly incompatible with the public policy of the State addressed.' Such "public policy" would clearly include First Amendment rights in the USA, as explained in this set of answers from the cousel to the US negotiators to questions from James Love.

The problem occurs if you (or your ISP, from their point of view) have any assets outside the USA.

If someone gets a judgment in country A against you (or your ISP; or the discussion board) for something you posted in country B (ie the USA), they can then collect in any country C that doesn't explicitly protect your speech rights.

Article 29(f) excludes 'recognition or enforcement [that] would be manifestly incompatible with the public policy of the State addressed.'

Such "public policy" would clearly include First Amendment rights in the USA, as explained in this set of answers from the cousel to the US negotiators to questions from James Love.

Similarly, UK judges would be /very/ unlikely to enforce US imposed damages for business-method patents.

While there are some major issues for the negotiators to iron out (see eg this week's Economist article, no longer free online; and James Love's What You Should Know guide), the whole process should still lead to something consumers can welcome -- as reflected in the opening paragraphs of this resolution from a conference of EU and US consumer groups.