Nonesense. Freedom has, historically, been vastly more successful than tyrany. One of the biggest lies you can believe is the idea that freedom/democracy/whatever is somehow less efficient or less workable, than tyrany. Your entire premise is false.
I do not accept the argument that the profit motive excuses all other behavior. Furthermore, Google Inc. claimed to reject that argument when they claimed that they would not be evil. In retrospect, it is obvious that the "don't be evil" line was nothing more than marketing. I had hoped otherwise, and I will admit to a definate bitterness at discovering that it was, in fact, total BS.
You seem to have missed the point. Google's decision to aid the Chinese government in the repression of its people has brought the integrity of Google into question. If they will help the Chinese government, what prevents them from helping other governments? If they are willing to skew their search results to benefit the thugs who run China, who is to say that they won't skew their search results for other (perhaps less vile) people/politicians/governments/whatever? Their integrity as a web search engine went out the window the instant they agreed to alter their search results for the benefit of a repressive government.
Try alternatives: Vivisimo which offers clustered searching (quite nice, actually), or or Lycos old, but still working, or any number of other search engines. I like Google's functionality, I like many of their extra features. I will be writing to Google, asking them to stop aiding the Chinese government in its abuse of the Chinese people. I will also be trying to avoid Google, because I *do* think that their integrity is gone, and I do not think that I can trust their results anymore.
Google has a very simple way out of such silly decisions: tell the Chinese government to go fuck themselves. It is the response any freedom loving individual can, and should, use when confronted with repressive governments.
The people of China deserve better than the government that is thrust upon them, and every company that does business in China is (indirectly) supporting the evil government of China. This is not a difficult choice: do you support freedom, or do you support tyrany? Google has made their choice, and they have chosen to support the Chinese government. I will not argue Google's freedom to support the Chinese government, but I disagree completely with that decision.
If I owned Google I would rather see my search engine banned in China, than participate (however marginally) in keeping its citizens down. There is a clear line here: the censoring pseudo-facists in the Chinese government are on one side, and I am on the other. Google has chosen to side with the Chinese government. That's their choice, but I will not pretend to respect that choice, or offer any defense of that choice.
As citizens of a free country we should be offering an uplifted middle finger to the thugs who run China [1], and I cannot feel good about any company rooted here supporting them.
.
[1] And Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and Pakistan, and the list goes on. But the response should always be the same, contempt and derision for the thugs, and support for those citizens who are attempting to overthrow the thugs who run those countries.
Of course. Every new technology gets applied to porn. I imagine that there will be a couple of lawsuits because of this, actually. It should be possible to produce a computer model of a famous person which is virtually indistinguishable from the real thing, taking faked porn to the next level. The result could be a hardcore porn flick appearing to include anyone (Lucy Liu, Gwyneth Paltrow, etc). The real question is: what's the legal status here? As far as I know, it isn't illegal to fake a photograph, or movie of someone as long as you acknowledge that its a fake. Maybe they'll change that.
And probably will for the forseable future. One thing computers still don't do well at all is pattern recognition, and that's kinda the heart of Go. I've always wondered if even truly sentient computers would have a hard time with pattern recognition (just like we have a hard time doing arithmetic or sorting).
I'm not sure any game is perfect, but Go does come damn close. I'm pretty sure that any sentient aliens will play games, and I'd be surprised if they didn't have games of the "move pieces, capture the special piece" vareity (like Chess, Shogi, etc), those games won't be Chess or Shogi, but I'm sure they'll be similar. But I'm pretty sure that they will play Go. Not a "Go like game", but Go, the utter simplicity of the rules ensures that if they evolved a game along the lines of Go it would be Go. Which is pretty neat, when you think about it. The Go problem you worked this morning was probably being worked by beings with tentacles hundreds of light years away too.
As for a Go based Linux distro, I do have to admit to asking "Why?" Obviously, why not, but still, it seems a bit too specialized.
A virus writer is not necessarially a hacker, and hacker is not necessarially a virus writer. There are criminal hackers, and non-criminal hackers. Hacker does not imply criminal, and I hate that people keep writing "hacker" instead of "criminal" (or "computer criminal").
I know I'm fighting a loosing battle here, but sheesh, *I'm* a hacker, of course I'd hire me. Virus writers, OTOH, I don't think I'd want around me. Like spammers, I'm just afraid that they're just too evil for me.
He contributes money to Hamas. Hamas has killed Americans.
Actually, its disputed whether Mr. Islam (or Cat Stephens, or whatever he's calling himself this week) [1], actually ever gave money to Hamas. Islam denies it, and Israel never offered much in they way of proof. President Bush's close personal friend Prince Bandar and his wife, however, are well known to have given millions to various terrorist groups. Will you join me in trying to keep them out of the US?
Also, not to get *too* snarkey or anything here, but: George W. Bush (who once said, and I quote: "If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist.") just allowed four terrorists into the US. These four include Louis Posada Carriles, who once bombed an airliner killing 77 innocent people. Can we throw George out? Please?
[1]And, have you ever noticed that people who convert to Christianity don't change their names? Why not? I'd like to see someone change their name to Bob Christian after they convert. Or Fred Buddhist, Suzie Hindu, Akira Wiccan, etc.
True, though the Senate seems loathe to use that power (prolly because individual Senators don't want to risk a presidential veto of their pet bills unless its *really* important). Note that John Ashcroft was confirmed even though the Senate was, at that time, controlled by the Democrats. Admittedly 58 to 42 is a damn close vote (especially for confirmation of presidential appointees, which are usually close enough to unanamous), but still. OTOH, since we're talking about a hypothetical Libertarian president, its quite possible that the Senate would be more willing to oppose appointments, especially crazy appointees.
Actually, all you have to do is use Mozilla, and uncheck the box that allows scripts to move or resize existing windows. I've got JavaScript turned on, and the link wasn't able to move my window.
Well, let's not underestimate the power of the Executive branch, the Prez does get to decide who runs the various federal agencies, and that's a pretty impressive power. There's around 1500 important positions that the president (or his advisors anyway, I doubt anyone would be able to personally find the people to fill around 1500 positions) gets to pick. It does a pretty good job of setting the tone in Washington.
Look at what the impact of the Bush appointees has been in, say, the EPA, and IRS. So, a Libertarian president, putting in thousands of people who take "privatize everything" as an article of faith, could make some waves. Personally, I'd rather have the Green, but if I got to chosose either the Libertarian, Bush, or Kerry, I'd go with the Libertarian; just to shake things up.
Personally, I think that his basic philosophy (privatize everything) is purely insane. And I'd vote for him if I thought there was any real chance of him winning. 'Course,that also goes for the Green candidate.
I am not a member of the religion of the Holy Free Market, but I'd rather have him in office (especially given that our current Congress could act as a break on his crazier ideas) than either Bush or Kerry. Hell, I live in Texas, so I might as well vote for Mickey Mouse because of the winner take all aspect of the Electoral College. I thik I could put up with the EC if only they'd split the vote.
See, I *like* the 30's era campiness. I *like* weird retro-tech stuff. And I didn't like Sky Captain. Its like they had all the ingredients, but somehow it just didn't work. I didn't think the movie was terrible, but it definately wasn't good. I won't be watching it again, and I can't see ever spending money to buy it.
What really puzzled me was how it was possible for the action sequences to be boring. I can't say what specifically they did wrong, but every single action sequence in the movie was just blah. Of course, the fact that quite a bit of the movie was shot in the famous "let's make it so dark you can't see shit" style didn't help much either.
I really wanted to like Sky Captain, it seemed like a movie almost specifically made for me. I did like a few bits (some lines, the occasional visual, etc), but overall, it just wasn't good.
Think about it. There are still places in the world where something equivalent to a small nuke can go off -- mushroom cloud and all -- and we don't NOTICE it right away.
Wrong assumption. I would guess that the various governments noticed right away, its just that us plebes are only now being told about it.
Back in the 80s, we had satellite technology to detect nuclear explosions. Don't you think we have it now?
Of course I think we have it (and by "we" I mean "the government). I question whether the US government would release the facts in a timely manner. Something as big as a nuke can't really be covered up, even if the US gov tried, but the news could be delayed for a few weeks. Hell, the story didn't even break until three days after the event, that indicates something.
The "forest fire" excuse is just lame, it can explain a mushroom cloud (though I question whether it could explain a 2.5 mile mushroom cloud), but it doesn't explain the huge explosion and crater at all. I have no doubt that the US government knew within a few minuts whether the explosion was a nuke or not. I just wonder when they'll get around to telling us. After the "Iraq has WMD, Saddam is buddies with Osama, Saddam is buying uranium" lies I kinda have less trust in my government than I might otherwise have. The truth will get out, probably within a week or two, but it bothers the hell out of me that I don't trust the government's answers. What will really bother me is if the US government has been lying about this. Anyone remember the whole "the thing on Reagan's nose isn't a cancer, they didn't even perform a biopsy", then the next day they admitted that the thing *was* a cancer. Why lie about something when you know you're going to be called on it? The government keeps doing that though.
There's always a carrier group in that general area. That's why we have so many carriers, we have one in just about every general area. Right now the John C. Stennis (CVN 74) is in the South China Sea. Not exactly next door to N. Korea, but close enough. A couple of other carrier groups are doing exercises near California.
As far as subs go, I rather doubt that there would be very many just off the coast of N. Korea. ICBM's can be launched from just about anywhere, and if you put a ship near them a medium range missile could be used to take out the whole carrier group. Better to stand off a ways.
I'd personally hope for a bit, er, lighter, approach though. Like TR said: Speak softly and carry a big stick. We've got the stick, I just doubt our current government's ability to make effective diplomatic use of the stick.
But we don't call our opponents Hitler, Nazis or Stalin.
Bullshit. "Feminazi" is one the Fanatic Right's favorite terms.
Re:And this is an issue because?
on
Open the Debates
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· Score: 1
Um. No. Sen. Kerry is opposed to tax reform. He wants to raise taxes. Maybe that's where you got mixed up.
So do you, personally, make more than $100,000/year? Because if you don't (and I damn sure don't), than saying "Kerry is going to raise taxes!!" is pretty stupid. Yes, John Kerry that horrible, evil, man wants to roll back the Bush government's huge giveaway to the elite. Cry me a river. I think Mike Dell and Mike Eisnier can afford to pay a bit more.
In case you didn't notice the USA now has the single biggest deficit it has ever had in its entire history. *Someone* has to pay for that, or do you think (as Bush seems to) that the magic money fairy is going to just make the debt vanish? Deficit spending is like using a credit card, you get instant gratification, then pay through the nose later on. Someone's got to pay, and the elite have more money than I do, so let them pay for Bush's war.
Sen. Kerry wants to keep Social Security as it is; President Bush wants to introduce privatization initiatives.
I think a more accurate term is "corporatization". Considering the fantastic record the stock market has given lately (Worldcom, Enron, Haliburton, Disney, etc) I'd rather that my social security money stayed *far* away from it. Additionally, due to the various brokerage fees any corporatization of social security amounts to nothing more or less than a huge giveaway to the brokers. No wonder they all surport corporatizing social security...
Sen. Kerry wants to make health insurance a federal entitlement; President Bush wants to cut health care and health insurance costs instead.
Yup, what a horrible idea, how *dare* Mr. Kerry suggest that the working poor should get health care. I mean, if there were socialized medicine that means we couldn't choose our doctors, completely unlike the situation today where our HMO's tell us what doctors we can see. Besides, if the HMO's went out of business the doctors would have to decide for themselves what treatment to give a patient, and we all know that greedy insurance companies are much better judges of health treatments than doctors are.
Less sarcastically, are you aware of the fact that here in the US we spend around $4,500 per capita on health care. In Canada they spend around $2,500 per capita. In Japan (where they also have socialized medicine) its only around $2,000 per capita. The USA has the absolute highest per capita health care expenditures on the planet, and yet has the third lowest average life expectancy of any first world nation (only Ireland and Portugal rank lower). My point here is that the fabeled "efficiency" of corporatized medicine doesn't seem to be apparent in the real world. We spend more money, and have shorter lives, and you want me to think that that's a good thing?
There are important differences. These are just a few. Read the platforms.
Yup. There are, and I prefer Kerry. He's far from my first choice, and I see him as being only marginally better than Bush, but I do see him as being the better choice. As far as platforms go, I think that you'd rather that people *didn't* read the Republican platform, that thing's scary. They carefully showed their moderates at the convention, but the fanatics wrote the platform, and it shows. I notice that you don't really seem to want people to read it (since you didn't supply a linke) so I thought I'd like to the Republican platform. For your viewing pleasure, here's the Democratic party platform so people can compare and contrast. I couldn't find an HTML copy of the Republican platform, so I had to link to that PDF.
You'll notice, as you read the Democratic platform that eating Christian babies, raising taxes on everyone, forcing streights to become gay, and surrendering to Osama are not actually part of the Democratic platform. Funny how reality doesn't really match what Rush says, isn't it?
Re:It ends when they get some tech folks in there
on
More Microsoft Patents
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Not a bad idea, but I don't think it goes quite far enough. After all, MS can spin off as many daughter companies as it wants to to file patents for it.
I'd argue that extending the block period to two years (more damaging to the false filers), as well as extending it to all daughter companies would be more effective. Personally I'd like to see a more vendictive clause put in: you file a false patent and three of your existing patents will be placed in the public domain. I don't see that happening, but I'll bet that'd stop this crap cold.
At the moment I feel that I trust the British government enough that this is an acceptable
Well, that's the problem, see. When the government changes, or becomes less trustworthy, or whatever, the cameras will still be there. Besides, trust is damn hard to measure (I'd argue impossible), and an entities level of trustworthyness can change overnight. I would prefer to base my privacy on something more solid than mere trustworthyness.
I'll go with David Brin on this one: we must be able to watch the watchers. I read in one article that several of those cams (the ones in the downtown London area) *are* monitored 24/7. There must be a publically available "watch the cam crew" cam. How will we know they aren't being racist, using the cams for inappropriate purposes, whatever? Easy, we can watch them. After all, if the cams are supposed to keep us safe from crime, shouldn't the same principle be applied to keeping us safe from the cam crews?
Similarly, I'd argue that the street cams should be available to the public; after all their taxes paid for 'em. You wanna see what's going on at 93rd and Main, check the cam.
What with cameras getting smaller and smaller it seems inevitable that they will, soon, be everywhere. Even if they were outlawed that hasn't stopped governments in the past, it'd just ensure that the cam network is hard to spot and kept a tight secret. Best to produce accountability, and transparency. Don't let access to the cams be a thing held only by the elite, make it available to everyone. And never forget to watch the watchers, naturally they'll scream that a public cam in the cam control room is wrong. Kinda interesting how they act when *we* want to watch *them*, isn't it?
I was once one of the "cams are evil, and I'll join the cam destruction teams" crowd. Then I read Brin's The Transparent Society. I'm still not comfortable with the idea of cams everywhere, but I can see the inescapiable conclusion that with cameras getting smaller and cheaper it will be possible for the government to put them out in secret. I'd rather have transparency and accountability on a known cam network than the false believe that I've got privacy because I don't know about the secret cam network. Let's have even more cameras. Cop cams (pubically accessable) mounted on every police officer's shoulder when they're on duty. My own private cam that I can put on *my* shoulder when a cop stops me. Kinda makes for amore polite discussion when we both know the world can watch, ne? Etc...
Brin says it better than I do (which is to be expected I suppose, considering that he is a published author while I'm just a geek on slashdot). I'd recommend The Transparent Society to everyone here.
Or all the demons in Monster Manual? Nothing like that in 3rd edition. I suspect they didn't want heat from the Christians.
Wow, I'm going to prove that I'm an utter geek now. In the 2nd Edition you are correct that there was an attempt to avoid using the words "demon" and "devil". Thus Tanar'ri and Baatezu were created as replacement words. However in the 3rd Edition Monster Manual they are listed under "Demon" and "Devil", just before "Dragon".
I dunno wheather the Fanatical Minority was responsible for the 2nd Edition changes or not, but it hasn't slowed D&D down any... And the changes have been reversed.
Slashdot Mirror
Try alternatives: Vivisimo which offers clustered searching (quite nice, actually), or or Lycos old, but still working, or any number of other search engines. I like Google's functionality, I like many of their extra features. I will be writing to Google, asking them to stop aiding the Chinese government in its abuse of the Chinese people. I will also be trying to avoid Google, because I *do* think that their integrity is gone, and I do not think that I can trust their results anymore.
The people of China deserve better than the government that is thrust upon them, and every company that does business in China is (indirectly) supporting the evil government of China. This is not a difficult choice: do you support freedom, or do you support tyrany? Google has made their choice, and they have chosen to support the Chinese government. I will not argue Google's freedom to support the Chinese government, but I disagree completely with that decision.
As citizens of a free country we should be offering an uplifted middle finger to the thugs who run China [1], and I cannot feel good about any company rooted here supporting them.
[1] And Saudi Arabia, and Iran, and Pakistan, and the list goes on. But the response should always be the same, contempt and derision for the thugs, and support for those citizens who are attempting to overthrow the thugs who run those countries.
I'm not sure any game is perfect, but Go does come damn close. I'm pretty sure that any sentient aliens will play games, and I'd be surprised if they didn't have games of the "move pieces, capture the special piece" vareity (like Chess, Shogi, etc), those games won't be Chess or Shogi, but I'm sure they'll be similar. But I'm pretty sure that they will play Go. Not a "Go like game", but Go, the utter simplicity of the rules ensures that if they evolved a game along the lines of Go it would be Go. Which is pretty neat, when you think about it. The Go problem you worked this morning was probably being worked by beings with tentacles hundreds of light years away too.
As for a Go based Linux distro, I do have to admit to asking "Why?" Obviously, why not, but still, it seems a bit too specialized.
I know I'm fighting a loosing battle here, but sheesh, *I'm* a hacker, of course I'd hire me. Virus writers, OTOH, I don't think I'd want around me. Like spammers, I'm just afraid that they're just too evil for me.
Also, not to get *too* snarkey or anything here, but: George W. Bush (who once said, and I quote: "If you harbor terrorists, you are a terrorist.") just allowed four terrorists into the US. These four include Louis Posada Carriles, who once bombed an airliner killing 77 innocent people. Can we throw George out? Please?
[1]And, have you ever noticed that people who convert to Christianity don't change their names? Why not? I'd like to see someone change their name to Bob Christian after they convert. Or Fred Buddhist, Suzie Hindu, Akira Wiccan, etc.
Look at what the impact of the Bush appointees has been in, say, the EPA, and IRS. So, a Libertarian president, putting in thousands of people who take "privatize everything" as an article of faith, could make some waves. Personally, I'd rather have the Green, but if I got to chosose either the Libertarian, Bush, or Kerry, I'd go with the Libertarian; just to shake things up.
I am not a member of the religion of the Holy Free Market, but I'd rather have him in office (especially given that our current Congress could act as a break on his crazier ideas) than either Bush or Kerry. Hell, I live in Texas, so I might as well vote for Mickey Mouse because of the winner take all aspect of the Electoral College. I thik I could put up with the EC if only they'd split the vote.
What really puzzled me was how it was possible for the action sequences to be boring. I can't say what specifically they did wrong, but every single action sequence in the movie was just blah. Of course, the fact that quite a bit of the movie was shot in the famous "let's make it so dark you can't see shit" style didn't help much either.
I really wanted to like Sky Captain, it seemed like a movie almost specifically made for me. I did like a few bits (some lines, the occasional visual, etc), but overall, it just wasn't good.
The "forest fire" excuse is just lame, it can explain a mushroom cloud (though I question whether it could explain a 2.5 mile mushroom cloud), but it doesn't explain the huge explosion and crater at all. I have no doubt that the US government knew within a few minuts whether the explosion was a nuke or not. I just wonder when they'll get around to telling us. After the "Iraq has WMD, Saddam is buddies with Osama, Saddam is buying uranium" lies I kinda have less trust in my government than I might otherwise have. The truth will get out, probably within a week or two, but it bothers the hell out of me that I don't trust the government's answers. What will really bother me is if the US government has been lying about this. Anyone remember the whole "the thing on Reagan's nose isn't a cancer, they didn't even perform a biopsy", then the next day they admitted that the thing *was* a cancer. Why lie about something when you know you're going to be called on it? The government keeps doing that though.
As far as subs go, I rather doubt that there would be very many just off the coast of N. Korea. ICBM's can be launched from just about anywhere, and if you put a ship near them a medium range missile could be used to take out the whole carrier group. Better to stand off a ways.
I'd personally hope for a bit, er, lighter, approach though. Like TR said: Speak softly and carry a big stick. We've got the stick, I just doubt our current government's ability to make effective diplomatic use of the stick.
In case you didn't notice the USA now has the single biggest deficit it has ever had in its entire history. *Someone* has to pay for that, or do you think (as Bush seems to) that the magic money fairy is going to just make the debt vanish? Deficit spending is like using a credit card, you get instant gratification, then pay through the nose later on. Someone's got to pay, and the elite have more money than I do, so let them pay for Bush's war.
I think a more accurate term is "corporatization". Considering the fantastic record the stock market has given lately (Worldcom, Enron, Haliburton, Disney, etc) I'd rather that my social security money stayed *far* away from it. Additionally, due to the various brokerage fees any corporatization of social security amounts to nothing more or less than a huge giveaway to the brokers. No wonder they all surport corporatizing social security... Yup, what a horrible idea, how *dare* Mr. Kerry suggest that the working poor should get health care. I mean, if there were socialized medicine that means we couldn't choose our doctors, completely unlike the situation today where our HMO's tell us what doctors we can see. Besides, if the HMO's went out of business the doctors would have to decide for themselves what treatment to give a patient, and we all know that greedy insurance companies are much better judges of health treatments than doctors are.Less sarcastically, are you aware of the fact that here in the US we spend around $4,500 per capita on health care. In Canada they spend around $2,500 per capita. In Japan (where they also have socialized medicine) its only around $2,000 per capita. The USA has the absolute highest per capita health care expenditures on the planet, and yet has the third lowest average life expectancy of any first world nation (only Ireland and Portugal rank lower). My point here is that the fabeled "efficiency" of corporatized medicine doesn't seem to be apparent in the real world. We spend more money, and have shorter lives, and you want me to think that that's a good thing?
Yup. There are, and I prefer Kerry. He's far from my first choice, and I see him as being only marginally better than Bush, but I do see him as being the better choice. As far as platforms go, I think that you'd rather that people *didn't* read the Republican platform, that thing's scary. They carefully showed their moderates at the convention, but the fanatics wrote the platform, and it shows. I notice that you don't really seem to want people to read it (since you didn't supply a linke) so I thought I'd like to the Republican platform. For your viewing pleasure, here's the Democratic party platform so people can compare and contrast. I couldn't find an HTML copy of the Republican platform, so I had to link to that PDF.You'll notice, as you read the Democratic platform that eating Christian babies, raising taxes on everyone, forcing streights to become gay, and surrendering to Osama are not actually part of the Democratic platform. Funny how reality doesn't really match what Rush says, isn't it?
I'd argue that extending the block period to two years (more damaging to the false filers), as well as extending it to all daughter companies would be more effective. Personally I'd like to see a more vendictive clause put in: you file a false patent and three of your existing patents will be placed in the public domain. I don't see that happening, but I'll bet that'd stop this crap cold.
I'll go with David Brin on this one: we must be able to watch the watchers. I read in one article that several of those cams (the ones in the downtown London area) *are* monitored 24/7. There must be a publically available "watch the cam crew" cam. How will we know they aren't being racist, using the cams for inappropriate purposes, whatever? Easy, we can watch them. After all, if the cams are supposed to keep us safe from crime, shouldn't the same principle be applied to keeping us safe from the cam crews?
Similarly, I'd argue that the street cams should be available to the public; after all their taxes paid for 'em. You wanna see what's going on at 93rd and Main, check the cam.
What with cameras getting smaller and smaller it seems inevitable that they will, soon, be everywhere. Even if they were outlawed that hasn't stopped governments in the past, it'd just ensure that the cam network is hard to spot and kept a tight secret. Best to produce accountability, and transparency. Don't let access to the cams be a thing held only by the elite, make it available to everyone. And never forget to watch the watchers, naturally they'll scream that a public cam in the cam control room is wrong. Kinda interesting how they act when *we* want to watch *them*, isn't it?
I was once one of the "cams are evil, and I'll join the cam destruction teams" crowd. Then I read Brin's The Transparent Society. I'm still not comfortable with the idea of cams everywhere, but I can see the inescapiable conclusion that with cameras getting smaller and cheaper it will be possible for the government to put them out in secret. I'd rather have transparency and accountability on a known cam network than the false believe that I've got privacy because I don't know about the secret cam network. Let's have even more cameras. Cop cams (pubically accessable) mounted on every police officer's shoulder when they're on duty. My own private cam that I can put on *my* shoulder when a cop stops me. Kinda makes for amore polite discussion when we both know the world can watch, ne? Etc...
Brin says it better than I do (which is to be expected I suppose, considering that he is a published author while I'm just a geek on slashdot). I'd recommend The Transparent Society to everyone here.
I dunno wheather the Fanatical Minority was responsible for the 2nd Edition changes or not, but it hasn't slowed D&D down any... And the changes have been reversed.
Sheesh, try to be just a *little* less elitest in the future...