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I became increasingly fond of TNG as it found its legs and focused upon ongoing, cross-episode character development. Combined with this deeper philosophical questions. To me, and to many others, I believe, "classic" science fiction has always been primarily about character, psychology, sentience. Knowing only ourselves, it comes down to questions and speculation about humanity, being human. The setting can serve very well to emphasize these issues, and can provide some great entertainment (and eye candy, nowadays -- and yes, you can take that more than one way), but the best of it lies with the characters (where, so far, the eye candy is holding her own very well, I might add).

I've made the point to others that I felt a subset of the TNG characters formed the core of the show and helped it to endure to success and its long run. Picard, of course. Data. (Some of Trek's most interesting characters have been on the edge of the human condition: An android seeking humanity; Q, a God (for all intents and purposes) confronting the same; the Doc on Voyager; Seven of Nine), La Forge (an engineer with enough quiet personality to round him out). These characters grew with the show and became much more complete. By contrast, several of the others, even when written focus shows, just didn't come much beyond the two dimensional caricatures with which they started.

By the way, I include Wesley in the group that grew and really helped to give the show some continuity and enduring basis. He was a bit geeky, but in a passionate manner and without too much attitude. And he was given some wonderful opportunities for growth by the writers. Wesley became a character that felt "real" and in whom I remained interested, even when his appearances became sporadic. I felt there was much more depth to his participation, and the questions he faced were not shallow or overly formulaic.

In my long-winded manner, my question is: Do you have any sense of what I'm describing (without picking favorites or "rilin' the troops")? If so, can you provide any insight, based on your experience, as to how such characters are created and evolve? What tends to foster them, and what tends to prevent the same? From an actor's perspective, what are the influences that favor or hinder such character development? What helped you to make the most of Wesley? What do you see as risks or hinderments to the actor? In all of this, I'll take whatever opinions you have to offer, whether specific to TNG or more general.

An often repeated frustration of mine is to see a new show (of whatever genre) start off terrifically, only to have its depth curtailed and its characters practically parodied by themselves sometime into the first or second season. A contrast would be the improvement of TNG itself over time, or the pickup with Deep Space after TNG ended. At the character level, at the show level, I'm wondering what you noted about such developments.

Looking forward, I wonder how such things will play out with Enterprise

The one is a caricature of medieval backwardness, like a character from Monty Python's Search for the Holy Grail. The other is more modern and doesn't always hold his finger up when he talks.

Beyond that....

I'm not being intentionally dense. There is no such thing as a "pacifist nation." There are pacifist people. This is why we cannot respond to your challenge. India never even counts, because while there were pacifists in India, the government was British (The Raj, whatever). So, now that I consider further, your challenge has no meaning.

For that matter, You're making a caricature of pacifists in general. Most pacifists know that at some point, you need to defend yourself. And sometimes you need to be able to make the credible threat of violence to keep people from attacking you. The few pacifists that do not share this opinion are the ones that are willing to die rather than kill. It's hard to malign Quakers by saying that they'd rather have others do the fighting. They don't want to defend themselves or their way of life.

It's always important to remember, that Ghandi's hunger strike was a non-violent solution to their problem only because the British knew that if he died, every single Indian would wage unending war against the Raj. It was pacifist, but they still needed an army.

As I cruised through the various booths at the Linux Expo, I kept wondering if I might meet him.

Pretty much just wandering around; checking out the sights. A couple of neat gadgets here and there...free CDs, magazines, a couple cool booths from some big megacorps. Usual stuff, just not as much as I'd hoped for.

Then, a scent. Just a little something; a scent so weak I cocked my head to the side and sniffed to catch a little more of it. Socks. Smelly socks, with a tinge of underwear--a skidmark, definately--and underneath it all...yes, I'm picking it up...smegma. The kind of smegma a normal man would get by dipping his dick in yeast and wrapping a rubber band around his foreskin for three days in a humid jungle. Without looking up, I knew he was there...Richard Stallman.

When I finally took a quick look to confirm my suspicion, he glanced away quicky. RMS was scoping me out! Goosebumps trembled across my skin, and I felt a little woozy. It was him--the "Linux Commie". The one everyone hates. He's much taller in person, by the way.

So I played it cool, I just let a hint of a smile cross my face as I said it: "I know you. You're Richard Stallman". Even though I had caught him looking, and I think he let me do that, he was cool--cool like the ice in a sweaty asian sex club, a club where the kids are barely through puberty and two busloads of child-rearing german businessmen just walked in off a 22 hour flight.

"Hmmm?" he whined, in a nasal sort of way, kind of like a caricature of a old jewish woman you might catch on late night TV. "You are!" I said, trying to hide my inner excitement. "I'm so glad to meet you! I' m sure a lot of people tell you this, but I've got to say it too...you're my hero and I think you, single handedly, are correcting at least a thousand years of injustice done to modern society."

Well, what could he say? My words had done their magic, and there was a twinkle in his eye as he cast off my flattery. "Oh, please", RMS said, "it's nothing another person wouldn't have done in the same time and place..." Well, I won't bore you with the rest of our social intercourse, but let's just say I did my best to grovel before his excellence.

Hook, line and sinker, as they say. By the time we moved on, I had an invite to a BOF later that night, and a curious smile from the hippie-man. I was smiling to myself as I walked away, knowing that things were shaping up for one heck of of a gay-o time.

I wasn't disappointed. I arrived at the address fashionably late...a crappy motel 6 in oakland (big suprise there). The door opened to my knock, and the smell of poppers and pot wafted past me. "Krikey", I thought to myself, "it like 1983 all over again". Little did I know how much!

It was worse than I thought. All young geeky boys, bottles of vodka and bongs all over the place, a couple twinks making out on the couch with some trannie.

"Where's RMS?" I asked a little fag near the stairwell. "He's in the next room." the gayboy lisped boozily. "You'll have to get in line with all the rest" he slurred. For some reason he thought that was particularly funny, and kind of made a little snort. I looked away as a booger fell out of his nose and onto his shirt. Like I give a fuck.

Into the next room I went, and a line there was...right around a king size bed RMS was laying on. As expected, fan boys were lined up, each grateful for the few moments they were given to pay homage to his majesties' royal sceptre. I observed carefully, and my hopes were realized...none of these geeks had much talent, and RMS had obviously been bobbed by the best...he was barely erect and bored shitless!

"Ladeedaadeedaa" I thought while waiting my turn at his (still flaccid) delight. Finally, one geek to go, and I'm freaking out! This punk knows what he's doing! He sucking well--massaging his balls, making smacking sounds all around the head, tongueing the foreskin and slurping--and RMS opens his eyes and grunts! "Oh Shit" I think to myself...all this travelling and hoping and now some local takes the prize? WTF? Is there no justice?

I think fast. "Rimjob", I whisper, "he likes rimjobs". Pumpkin is so absorbed in the knob job that he doesn't think about it, and slides his tongue down to Richard's ass crack. Sure enough he jerks his head up, coughs, and this huge dingleberry flys across the room and lands in some twink's martini! "Yes!" I mutter, as the kid turns green and goes to puke in the bathroom.

My turn. I look him in the eyes and lower my mouth to his foreskin, then start working it. Occasionally I slide up and whisper quotes from "The Communist Manfesto" and Mao's little red book. As expected, his dick gets a little harder with each quote, and then I'm back down there, humming the commie folk songs he grew up with as I take him so far down my throat his scrotum is right against my teeth, yet it's no problem pushing my tongue out and gently caressing his nuts.

"How long can he take it?" I thought, getting a little worried. My face was reddening, and my throat was getting sore, but luckily he was grunting and I could feel some early warning signs...as I twisted my throat around his meat, his left nut twitched ever so slightly...I knew he was close.

Suddenly it happened without warning. I was totally caught by suprise...the first shot went deep in my throat before he made a sound, and even when he finally yelped it sounded more like a kitten after its first bath than a man.

I recovered fast; two quick plunges in my throat before the next spurt and then some slow twists as he finishes. I'm pulling him deep into my throat and working my muscles like a boa constrictor takes a rabbit. Jet after jet of his steaming sperm chowder rolls down my throat. I went to another place; time stopped as I revelled in my good fortune.

Long after the last spurt, long after the softening, I gently suck my hero.

And who can forget the Naked Now (episode 2) where writers (apparently already grasping at plot straws) reverted to the old saw of "everyone acting opposite" which would have been a lot better if we had more than caricature opinions of what their personalities WERE in the first place!

Actually, the reason they used The Naked Now is that they were rushing into production just as there was a writers' strike (1988). Since Paramount had already paid for the script for The Naked Time they simply dusted it off and rewrote it for the new characters. Really.

Also, it provided a means for the actors to "loosen up" and explore their characters early on, which was probably a useful exercise.

So Bakula's character admitting at the end of the episode that he needs to lose his prejudice and preconceptions if he's going to succeed gave me hope that we are going to see quite a bit of interesting evolution in the characters. And the uncertain diplomatic situation they're facing promises excellent space battles, unholy alliances, unmitigated catastrophies, and dogged perseverance resulting in triumph.

And for all the nitpickers out there, hey, at least they explained where that "to boldly go where no man has gone before" bit came from, which I thought an especially nice touch. And for all the prudes complaining about disinfectant gel scenes, hey, it's a damn sight better than listening to a superfluous ship's counselor screaming, "Pain! Terrible terrible pain!"

Mmmm, disinfectant gel. Think I'm gonna like this series.

I agree with the writers who point out that many of the pilot episodes were of similar ilk - the actors have not had a lot of opportunity to flesh out their characters, the sets and props are still version one, and so on. I think this, like TNG, will come around and develop into one of the better ST properties.

Personnel-wise, Commander whats-his-name is the weakest of the apparently planned-for-longevity characters, but so was Commander Riker - and he grew into a brief period of acting skill before his demise into obseity and caricature.

Set/prop-wise, I would've been happier with a more 50's space-ship style. The ship they're on looks more futuristic than the original series. In one of the original episodes, wasn't there models of the previous iterations of the starship? They should have used the "oldest" of those as the model.

As an viewer of the original series during its first season broadcasts with my grandfather, I thought it was very very cool to watch this premiere with my 4-mo old son!

aem

Fer chrissakes. "Hi there, we're the /. crowd, and we have the patience of a mayfly..."

"There wasn't any character development" : hey guys, this was a PILOT. Few pilots develop much characterwise, they have too much expositional ground to cover. Two hours is what, 80 pages of script? How much "development" can you cram into that without forcing it, AND still have time to show all the neato-whiz-bang special effects for which the series is famed? (And remember, they ARE trying to build a ~new~ audience, not just attract the old. The old will keep coming to con's and buying rubber vulcan ears forever.)

"How does armor plate go offline?" SOMEbody wasn't listening when they said that the armor POLARIZATION had gone off line. 1) At least in the NCC1701 a great deal of the hull stability was imparted by gravitic and other (insert pseudo-physics handwaving) fields. Assuming something has to assist normal matter holding together at 4.5 times the speed of light, yeah, I guess that would make sense. 2) Alternately, (insert more pseudo-physics handwaving) one could postulate that the "armor" was an ultradense iron/coherent molecules/whatever the heck - something that required a charge and computer support to dynamically resist damage. Whatever, it's nit picking.

I thought the pilot was decent. Bakula was (if I may mix genres) a physical Sean Connery-esque to Picard's Roger Moore-ish distance. I thought, yes, some of the supporting roles were pretty forced. But then again, I *remember* Encounter at Farpoint - a truly crappy pilot. Ship's Counsellor? What, a ship's prostitute in the future? And remember, Riker and Troi could communicate telpathically? That was dumped pretty quickly. And who can forget the Naked Now (episode 2) where writers (apparently already grasping at plot straws) reverted to the old saw of "everyone acting opposite" which would have been a lot better if we had more than caricature opinions of what their personalities WERE in the first place!
ST:NG took FIVE SEASONS to come up with ep's like "The Inner Light" - DS:9 royally sucked the first 2 years (fortunate, since I preferred watching B5 anyway...which ALSO took at least a few episodes to find it's feet).

The only two gripes I've seen that are valid IMO are the gratuitous slathering scene (not unappreciated, but pretty obvious. My god, no wonder we like the Vulcans!) and the points about putting spoiler comments on the front page before it aired. Rather provincial mistake, really.

The rest of you, cripes, give it a season or two. Let some of the characters' personalities gell a little, and let some chemistry develop. They may even change the theme music. I think it was a fine pilot, given the circumstances, no matter how "disappointed" some /.'s are from over-pumped expectations.

In your orig text, in which you were arguing the absoluteness of morality, you said:

There is never any justification for the murder of innocents.

While I agree with the statement, I did not write it. I have to credit beagle for that particular insight.

just what "murder" defines is a whole other arguement

Actually, it's central to the argument. Murder implies intent.

To argue that something is absolute then turn around and say "well, in some cases its not quite as bad as others" does not do your cause justice.

Does JWT fall short of the ideal? Yes! No one, not even Church leaders, will disagree with that. But there is a recognition that intent plays a large role in what we do. I'm not arguing that JWT gets us off scot free. On the contrary, it must be invoked only as a last resort and implies some very specific restrictions on what is allowed. Even then, still, we must face the consequences.

Now, as for the arguement that there are moral absolutes, we are going to come to a standstill (since I now realize this argument is based on faith, something that is unprovable).

No argument there.

To you, the absolutes are framed by your beliefs. To me (and many, many others) their morals are framed by thier beliefs (or lack thereof). To you, you are right and they are wrong. To them, they are right and you are wrong. Which is precicely why I say how the concepts of "right" and "wrong" are relative.

I would say, rather, that what we believe or what we wish to believe is relative. There is Good and there is Evil. Much Evil exists because of our own ignorance. I'm not claiming to hold the answers to what is right and wrong. I am a flawed human being struggling to understand the world, just like everyone else. But I do believe there is an ideal we strive for.

Then again, maybe there is an absolute "right" and "wrong." Whatever I say is "right" is "right." Whatever I say is "wrong" is "wrong." Anyone who thinks differently than I is deluding themselves :)

I know you say this in jest, but I have seen too many comments that use this caricature of religion and/or faith to discredit those with whom some disagree. Unfortunately, as a wise man once told me, religion often gets in the way of faith and such caricatures unfortunately all too often ring true. But please understand that the majority of faithful people don't hold such nacissistic views. They arrive at their conclusions through much education, thought, prayer, humilty and even anguish.

God does.

Which God? (a loaded question I know...I'm not trying to be glib here... I assume you mean the one true God who is very real to you).

Just to set the record straight, I am a member of the Roman (ugh, I can't stand that qualifier!) Catholic Church.

Regardless of whether we come to a shared conclusion or not, the exercise is very useful and I thank you and all the others who have helped me think things through a little more and come to some better understanding, however small that may be.

Extremists Seen Dancing And Cheering In Guardian
Fanatical anti-American supporters of the sinister leader Al-Rubbisha were seen openly celebrating in the offices of the Guardian newspaper at the news that the WTC had collapsed. Rubbisha was quick to deny the charge, saying "Only a proportion of my columnists, i.e. 80%, were involved."

(For those offended by the Eye's attempts at humour about the disaster, the magazine helpfully included a pre-printed response slip for cancelling subscriptions).

--

That ridiculous caricature bears no resemblance to the actual state of the evidence. There's a long chain of transitional fossils documenting the evolution of whales from terrestrial mammals; there's also the genetic evidence.

http://www.cs.colorado.edu/~lindsay/creation/nik ai do.html

Sounds like agnosticism to me.

To me, an agnostic is someone who is "on the fence" and cannot decide whether to believe or not. I am absolutely not in that category. I do not believe that there is a God and will not believe it unless someone provides me with credible evidence -- and old books don't count as evidence to me.

Also, you did implicitly state that you believed that God wasn't real:

I do not believe in anything without evidence -- God included. If credible evidence is presented, my mind can be changed, but right now, I see no significant chance that God exists in any form.

I also don't want to fall into the religious zealot trap that argues anyone unwilling to claim with certainty that God does or does not exist is confused. It's the same line of reasoning that causes them to claim that evolution is only considered a "theory" so creationism must be an an equally likely explanation.

I suspect that a lot of smart religious people do not believe in a bearded guy sitting on a cloud, but have a more sophisticated notion of a universal principle.

I am sure that is true but my intent was not to argue their point. A caricature the less sophisticated beliefs better serves my purpose and the very fact that God is so ill-defined as to be so different to different people is, in and of itself, telling.

Prove to me that the positive benefits of capitalism, secular humanism, Taoism, etc, etc outweigh the negative. What a pointless challenge.

Not pointless at all. You urge me to be more tolerant of religious views that I feel lead to death, torture, destruction, pain, suffering, grief, and war. All I am asking you to do is show me why I should be more tolerant of something that I feel does so much harm. Or should I just take it on faith that religion is good?

I don't worry that much about privacy.
Would Mcarthyism have been less of a caricature if there was more privacy?
If you're paranoid and you have little data, then you work with little data. Sometimes you get different results.

If I'd had to point to the biggest danger , i'd pick the lock-in between
giving more power to people/institutions/ways of thinking that thrive on fear and hate, and those people in their turn feeding fear and hate.
I think that has been (re)happening in Israel recently.
The lockin is very real and hard to reverse, even when the enemy is harmless. I remember reading that Mao maintained a regularly changing fake 'internal enemy' of 5% of the population.
Maybe harder if the enemy is real- and big(hm, what about a small enemy with sth big behind it).
There are ways to motivate people to become your enemy, and after a while you can't just suddenly start disarming- (removing the weapons or the people).

Imagine a war ending when one party suddenly just gets fed up with it and leaves.

That only leaves you faith (which is itself no indicator of the veracity of the concept of god).
As faith is outside of the scope of verification (the proof you spoke of -- your argument), that only leaves your "feelings" as justification for any statement in relation to a deity. Feelings are *NOT* knowledge (one can have knowledge *about* feelings, but feeling themselves ARE NOT knowledge) and have no meaning outside of your own subjective framework. [In fact feelings are a direct reflection of your internal "world." They speak to how you relate to the world that is outside (ie, not) you. It is knowledge, proof, and logic that give us information about the outside world. (Unless you are willing to argue that we are omniscient, there has to be a framework by which we gather information, which in turn implies that there is a procedure by which to do it, which also means that we are capable of being both right and wrong. Thereby we must be stringent in how we apply the mechanisms of understanding. You cannot escape the role of proof in *any* claim to knowledge.)] You feelings are only relevant to your own framework. And by that token, anyone else can assert feelings just the opposite of whatever your opinions are and they have exactly the same weight. Therefore any assertions about the *content* of faith are meaningless.

religion is not the root of all evil.

Just the opposite is the case. As I mentioned above, all knowledge is predicated upon a precise structure for the accumulation and verification of information. (This is our Aristotlian Excellence as humans, if you will.)

Religion dictates that you abdicate the stance that knowledge must be validated, in favor of the notion that one can have knowledge outside of this framework. (ie, that feelings/faith are just as valid as proof is) In a sense you negate your mind. I would argue that any system that advocates a surrender of your mind is necessarily evil.

Although this concept can be applied is a somewhat benign fashion (as benign as anything can be that preaches the surrender of one's mind), is can also and more commonly can be applied to causes that are, as you put it, "fanatisism and extremism." But this is not the distortion of "the beliefs religion is truly based upon into groteseque caricatures" but rather the logical conclusion of the religious mindset.

it cannot be proven or disproven.

The onus of proof lay upon the shoulders of he who affirms the positive. You are wildly mistaken in your epistemological agnosticism if you think that disproof is the standard by which knowledge is gained. True it is a functional tool in logic, but as I mentioned before, we are not omniscient. Everything we know, we have to go through a process to acquire. All information doesn't start out as probable. Nor does it start out as possible. ALL KNOWLEDGE HAS TO BE PROVEN.

If you assert a positive, you have to be able to validate your assertion. It is not up to everyone to disprove it to attest to its' veracity. (I don't know that I need to point out the logical fallacy here, but this entails the presumption of truth as a given in order to disprove it.) If you make a positive assertion, you have to be able to back it up.

As such it is incorrect to say it cannot be proven or disproven. Rather, it is proper to say "it cannot be proven."

Any point you might have made (and I don't doubt there's a valid point or two lurking somewhere in that mess) were obscured by your desire to attempt to paint the US in the absolutely worst light possible. Ignoring the good and noble things done by the US and US citizens is as much an error as ignoring the base and evil things that the same government and people have done. Both try and produce a mental image of a country that is, at best, a caricature. The real truth is that the US has, at times, acted despicably; and, at times, acted nobly. My personal opinion is that, overall, the US has done more good than evil in the world.

"Not all of them are. Some of them might think the DMCA's a great idea. But damn few."

I think you're wrong. It's inspiring to think this, but most programmers don't know what Slashdot is and don't really know what GNU is (though they probably know vaguely what open source is).

Remember that most programmers write on Windows or Macintosh, they're not used to the UNIX tradition, and don't have any grounding in RMS' philosophies.

"The PHB said, "Make me a copy protection scheme for the e-Book to guard our value drivers!" and they said "sir, yes sir!" and proceeded to implement it with the flimsiest piece of crap possible. "

This is a very caricatured scenario. I think the more objective appraisal is that those working for a commercial software company agree that they're in business primarily because piracy of their works is illegal; hence they're in favor of copy protections in general.

Now having said that, the treatment of Dimitri in this case probably would have more people questioning the grounds upon which he has been charged.

The DMCA needs cleaning up, but I really don't think the majority of people hate this law, and that's mainly because there's been a very poor educational effort coming out of the free software community beyond "abolishing copyright", something that sends those with moderate views running to the hills.

The issue is that they go to the old mainstream sites. For instance, CNN. In my country, CNN is considered as the caricature of "spectacle as information" (i.e. we don't care about the actual importance of the event as long as there are spectacular images, information hour per hour). Of course, it is logical that people go frequently to the same sites, but at least this could have been web sites with content of extremely high quality.

Anonymous Coward I hope to metamoderate that post of yours some day because it deserves better than the score it got.

Your solution that we as consumers should walk away from corporate culture and use the net to create and support our own is probably the best response to all of this.

I don't know CGI and the last thing I "hacked" was a CD from which I copied MSCDEX 2.0 more thann ten years ago. Most users will never be able to implement the fancy patches and protocols necessary to route around damage.

When it comes to privacy I'm more concerned about an employer reading outgoing email or sampling downloaded files that go to my hard drive, than I am about FBI Carnivore.

But buiding one's own culture through creative writing, web graphics, midi (yes midi. They're smaller and easier to upload and play) etc... might be possible.

I say "might" because as I see it there are two barriers. The first is technical. There is a caricature of the typical web users as a stupid yutz living in the web's trailer parks.

There's a grain of truth here. In one of my ladies' groups I found out I was the only one who knew html. Being able to code your own static web page on your hard drive is empowering, so is making your graphics with PSP. I haven't tried making my own midi or arranging them yet. I don't have the equipment.

Not only can't the typical user not code her own page. She forgets to back it up. Candi the founder of RAOK lost her entire web site due to Geocities' ban on remote loading. She was serving images off her site and yes the images were displayed gallery style so the site was not storage. Remote loading is important for leaving graphics in guestbooks.

What make this technical barrier worse is that Corporate internet tells typical users they don't have to learn to code. This is to the point where I know professors and librarians who have refused to learn html fearing it was too hard. At its worst typical users become attached to drag and drop editors which make their sites nonportable.

That's the technical barrier. There are also social barriers. When it comes to web graphics FREEDOM IS NOT PRIVATE PROPERTY. If your stuff is really good and it gets stolen and put on someone else's web page, you are doing a good job. If someone uses your graphics to make more graphics, than there is more stuff out there. This does not seem to sink in in the world of "no right click" and "don't steal my graphics without linking back." What makes you think your graphics are good enough that I'd want them on my page?

A typical internet user also feels NO PAIN NO GAIN. This means graphics that only a few experts can do and only some graphics are "nice enough." It is more than possible to work smarter rather than harder and turn out something presentable. I bet nearly everyone has this in them. The result may not be representational art but it will with some tweaks and practice suit your needs.

A typical user thinks he or she is not good enough. Look at the pained posed portraits on most personal pages and then look at the human forms of dreamy, spiritual, and Victorian ladies. Why shouldn't a candid shot be good enough? Why not try writing your own prose or poetry? If your poetry doesn't work, then try prose.

The last barrier is "us." I'm not sure if I'm part of "us." I'm currently a member of RAOK and LOTH. That gives me a foot in both camps. We need to start treating them as equals. We don't have to like all their art, but I have learned a lot about web page graphics from them. I build lusher more interesting pages because of this. Also making pressies or quilt squares is about the best graphic training there is. Then take those pressies on the road and sign a few guestbooks or do support. You will be amazed what you learn about yourself. You will have more in common with these people than you think. A quilt square is a 130*130 pixel grpahic that is displayed as part of a "quilt" of such squares.

If you want to talk about a noncorporate culture, this is where some of it is being made and while LOTH is all female, RAOK takes guys.

If, and it is big IF, the typical internet user can get past all the technical and psychological/social barriers to building a culture outside corporate control, it just might happen.

Eileen H. Krmer/Roanna/ZOIDRubashov
ZOID CITY Community and Community Competition

Also, the 2600 case is not over yet.

How about the part of thelaw that says that parody, satire and caricature is free speech. Clearly the layout of this exploit is a satire along the lines of: How A Three Year Old Can Break Into Fort Knox And Get Away With Half A Trillion Dollars Without Even Trying Very Hard.

We await your lawyerly opinion.

You may be a lawyer, but it appears you are wrong about the link part. 2600 and many others were taken to court and lost, by posting links to DeCSS code, something that is quite outrageous, but it flew in court.