Hear hear. The way the US seems so blindly to assume that it is and was naturally the best irritates me. (Especially since [I think] they're wrong...) I think, however, that the discussion should be praised for making a very important step in the right direction: taking a (constructively) skeptical stance to patriotism. Thinking like this is good for any country: you're no prophet if you honour your country with lavish praise. Moreover, I think it's particularly important for the US.
The USAmerican national myth (no derogation intended) is based upon the idea that the Revolutionary War was one of freedom, and that they have, ever since, led the world in democratic civilisation. Everyone blindy repeats this, and maintains that it is true today, as it is the 'patriotic' thing to do. And so the actual state of the US never really gets a good look-at. The general beleif is that the US is, by definition, perfection, at least on the front of democratic spirit. This is, I think, dangerous complacency. (Witness: the last election. Despite it all, everyone still goes on about the beauty of the system, confusing it's miraculous survival (and dubious accuracy) with some kind of inherent strength. BTW, have any of the pundits ever visited countries like Israel, Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom, India (with 400 million odd people!) or Canada?)
Then there's the case arguing that the USAmerican Founding Myth is more mythical than most, etc., etc.... But I won't get into the whole liberty vs. property thing, because that's not the (my) point. My point is simply that if everyone beleives so blindly in the US and the (white, male, upper class, belligerant, self-interested*) founding fathers, the current state of the US, no matter how fine it's origins may have been, may well go to hell! (a la Orwell). I think, therefore, it's a very good thing that this discussion is being had: it affords a much needed mirror to the USAmerican face. Let us hope that it doesn't crack (And that the 'patriots' of various countries don't smash it...)
* Not so much self-interested, as class and trade interested. (Which, remember, was somewhat patriotic, in that day, age and class. They probably felt what was good for them was good for trade and for the country. Perhaps correctly.) They were all members of the monied class: the second constitution was essentially an exercise in limiting popularism so as to insure that their bonds still had value. Oh, and "saving the country from anarchy" sounded nice, too. Has a familiar ring to it, even today...
After that, anything which helps to build a relationship between the developer and the company is a particularly good idea, as it is not only red-letter recognition, but it increases the likelyhood the programmer will do more work. Giving them new hardware & specs for more drivers is a clever idea. But I think all these things should be quite plainly gratis--you should go to some lengths to avoid giving the impression that you now expect something of the programmer, because that would destroy the hobby value. Hire her/him, or support him/her as a hobbyist (recognition, specs, source [w/liberal nda, if neccessary], hardware beta), but don't try to mix the two.
I think the point was rather that a) they are fully integrated -- no wires to battery packs
b) yes, small, though non-integrated models for children have been round for a while, I think
c) Talks to Nerves, not muscles, like previous ones did. Now, I don't know if this is the first device to talk to nerves directly, or even if the BBC was right about that, though it's usually fairly good, at least next to CNN, ABC MSN etc., BUT I do know that the older/current(?) models simply detected muscle contraction -- ie. physical translation of skin -- or relied on some other form of control, and so direct communication with nerves would be an improvement.
It seems sad to me that he dare not post a story without worrying about ("your") trolling. I for one know nothing about the HURD, or indeed the design philosophy behind any nicrokernal, and so would be interested to hear any wisdom out on offering.
It might be comforting for him to know that the trollers are getting worn out and he can post with impunity again...
"Healthcare accessable to all, rationed by need, and free at time of delivery."
This is not something that happens w/o the gov't somewhere. Read history.
The amazing thing is that the current failures in healthcare up here are a) nothing like the immoral hospitals in the US and elsewhere and b) basically the result of a fundamental concession to the (more greedy of the) doctors, which is pay-by-service instead of salary.
By the same logic, why would any terran military stockpile more than 300 or so nuclear warheads? The military mind is no more rational than the mind of the film producer, it seems...:-)) Though I admit, it is pretty glaring economic bad sense, if narratively natural.
Has NOONE here been to Toronto in summer?... (No, they all melted and never returned!:-) Good grief... Canada, for the most part (where most is defined by population density!:-) is perfectly termperate; Toronto boils in summer (34 Celsius temperatures, high humidity, American smog adding to our home-grown varieties, etc.) Vancouver is like England. Even Calgary is perfectly habitable, even in winter -- we get used to it. Like other snowy countries, there's even a following which *likes* snow.
I admit the winters are cold, relative, to, say, one of Texas, N.Y., Miami, etc. But summers are very hot, too hot in T.O. I quite like our climate; at least we can hope for a decent amount of snow...:-)
Yes, the general rule in the UK is the 30 Years' Rule, although this is sometimes extended to 50 or even longer, depending on context...
But really, we have to remember that this was in wartime. Money really was no object. After WWII, Bletchley Park was entirely dismantled, and the GCHQ moved on to other things. (Like discovering RSA -- but that's not like quantam computing: the first is insight, the latter engineering) While they might make insightful breakthroughs, things like Collosus and bletchley require maassive funding (not to mention employee loyalty), and probably don't happen much in peacetime.
This is why all the griping over the enigma machine handouts makes so little sense: it really took a massive effort to break a well organised enigma network back then, several thousand people. Neither Britain nor anyone else were going to devote that kind of effort to one minor cypher used in friendly or post-colonial countries. Of course, with computers coming into wider use, it got much easier...
Can't be bothered to reaad the log for myself, but the impression I get from the quote posted is that 31 refers to the secondaries, and so it actually got all 32?
Well, before Thatcher, Britain's healthcare was one of the best in the world...
Please, let's not draw irrelevant political comparisons; I think this one is, not because you fail to make a point with it, but because it simplifies the British political situation.
Seriously, why couldn't he just certify certain countries as "Freedonia" and incorporate this into the licence? I imagine there's some legal reason... It could be done at least for the major software producing countries... (It could be a whole new premise for flamewars: my country's free-er than yours! Even though it tortures Tibetans!)
After all, the US Senate seems hell-bent on unfreedonia!
Of course, it could get to be quite hard work... Especially after revolutions...:-)
Err, you're probably right -- but my impression has always been that it's Not Quite The Same. (But then, it wouldn't be, would it?) I don't do much (any) technical Windows programming, but my impression of vanilla COM has always been that its essentially local linking, and so networked COM (COM+ ?) would be similar... A network transparent (and secure!) version. This is all very well and good, and useful for many multi-layered processing tasks (network data servers, db, spring to mind), not to mention way cool (Network wide dlls! Specialised servers! Transparency! Wow!) but isn't (I would imagine) great for the good ol' fashioned dumb X Terminals + App Server setup. The beauty of that was that it was (is!) totally transparent -- anything that runs X normally can, with a flick (as it were) of a switch, be made to work in this setup. COM (I think) you have to think about. Am I close to the mark, or do I just have no idea about Component Object Model?
...the idea of an application server. Archaic, a pain in the neck, I'll admit, but cost effective. Something I've yet to see MS talk abvout. Any takers?
BTW, if you're reading this, "The Man", can you post under me IF you use an Apple LaserWriter...
Ah, the fallacy of the peacemaker! (To whit, the seemingly just and even compromise imposed between two sides, whose true perditiousness is only revealed when one considers the outrageous position of one of the two sides.See also: appeasement.)
I have not found any such shallow posts; while what I have read so far has not been the hight of insight, it has mostly been fairly honest assesments of personal experience. Anecdotal, but undeniable. Depressing, but true.
Oh right. And you'd like to take your chances with a machine that didn't work in the store (had they let you look at it), had never worked right and will never work? I have an AMD K6-233, and have recently discovered that such processors of a certain batch No. don't address more than 32 mb. of RAM. And so what do I do? I really want to stick another 32mb dimm in there... Fortuneatly, I beleive that the laws are quite sane about this in my jurisdiction... Although I may be about to be proved wrong...
It is somewhat ironic that this is the least ironic thread yet posted on/. Perharps you were trying, but it's late at night and it's borderline enought that I need to refute it.
And it's Irony that can make failure funny. The funniness of failure does not "glorify" it, or promote its practice. Failure can be funny for people who have some perception of a wider perspective, who have the humility and optimism to take their foibles in stride with a laugh, the flexibility to step out of their own perspective into one where they are relatively insignificant. Remember Zaphod Beeblebrox and the Universal Perspectivve torture-whatsit? (forgotten name).
However, independant of humour, failures and defeats can be celebrated; you yourself gave Alamo (about which I know naught) as an example. The heroism of people deliberately taking the strongest and most damaging stand possible against evil, even if failure, death and matyrdom is assured, is something I and many others call noble. (Speaking of which, my understanding of the Mexican-American war was that the Americans unilaterally and without provocation attacked an independant Mexico, bothering to declare war only after their troops had attacked the Mexicans, and sustained the first casualties. This after having first illegally infiltrated it with loyal settlers--- all this from an American author!) The implicit slur in the above (replied-to) note is that people who do find failure humurous do so out of failure, is not fair. I don't count myself a failure, Australia certainly isn't, Canada is limping along and the UK has yet to collapse. (Despite the best efforts of the Thatcher Tories-- "There is no such thing as society")
And I happen to think the comic foil pitiful, unjustly harrased and the victim of cruelty! This isn't logical, but I really have a hard time watching or reading things like this, as I squirm, finding the world a little too cruel.
I really don't want to insult Americans. It's not necessarily bad to find failure unfunny. I have known many fine American people, some with a highly keen sense of humour, even irony. Despite the somewhat revisionist history of the U.S., I would even argue that the fruit of this slightly synthetic identity has great elements. This description is probably true of most nations. But I do, as a Canadian, have some sympathy for Douglas Adams. Independantly of this, I also disagree completely with the idea that finding failure funny is bad/ludicrous. If nothing else, I want to be able to laugh at this!:-)
The difference is that when I publish a pamphet attacking a certain school, or issue a public statement about it, I will NOT be shipped off to the nearest detention centre and have my pens and all my personal records seized. There is a school which I would attack; I would do so on perfectly fair grounds, based upon indisputable facts. Yet the substance of my article/speech, etc. would not be much different from the webpage that this boy wrote.
The difference is that when it's done on the Wed, the authorities overeact viciously and unfairly. Without being guilty of libel (you are innocent until a trial proves you guilty beyond all etc), he was forcibly detaned and had his ability to express himself both constrained, and undermined through insinuations which clearly are libellous. If he had spoken out by nearly any other means, and also as nearly any other persona but the teenager, he would not have been so harshly treated. This is Jon Katz' point.
There is no question that the authorities have essentially denatured this person's "inflammatory" opposition. My question to you: what if he was right? I've been in a school I could denounce, would denounce, should denounce (for the public safety), and do denounce. I don't want to be censored so effectively and insiduously. It's akin to red-baiting: just because he's communist (or, in this case, web-savvy [ish]) doesn't mean he's wrong, or a libeller.
Well, really, I don't think that the UK would take well to anyone else blowing it up... So it's really a question of whether they will / will be pressured into blowing it up.
The Iron Lady (Margaret Thatcher) comes out of retirement: "I have ordered Her Majesty's Armed Forces to end the illegal occuptation of" --- Sealand?;-)
In short, revolution by best available means, be it judges' words, ballot box, or bloodied streets? (All right, so no-ones quite going that far) But seriously, I think that there is a fundamental distinction here, between two different philosphies both against MS: 1) those who keep some kind of faith in the law, and want it (or something) to stop MS engaging in censorship, and those who beleive that the law is so far gone that it can only be a means to the end of re-establishing just (freesoftware, whatever) society, wherein these laws are nearly totally rewored. Say, maybe this is part of the rift between Open Source and Free Software mov'ts, or at least analogous?
If we accept as a precondition that we are all, essentially, law abiding, at feel that microsoft is improperly trying to twist a misguided, if well intentioned, law to their own evil ends, the real issue here is very different from the burthen of the above. (Yes, th, not d).
Without a doubt, the actions that the posters undertook was illegal. They were reciting to an audience things that they had, under the terms of the law, agreed not to relay. The only people whose case I'd plead were those a) publishing instructions (no-one said you weren't allowed to work out how to try to circumvent the EULA delivery system, if only as an intellectual exercise), or b) publishing links. (The worst these people are is grasses, whom the authorities love, or slanderers, whom the authorities love even more if their defaming communists!). But here's the rub: b) includes SlashDot. Slashdot is a public forum. It is right under the law to punish crimes. It is wrong to supress what someone said in the course of public discourse. That is censorship. This is an issue of censorship.
Of course, the difficulty, in the case of Slashdot, is that, normally, a certain amount of responsibilty goes to the speaker: their voice, as it were, is recognisable. (In turn, the state is, generally, prevented from instituting a reign of terror by various safeguards). But SlashDot guarantees total anonymity. The state, the Powers That Be, have a hard time with this concept. In the past, free speech has been allowed, but crimes using the voice punished. In a way, it is the almost parableistic nature of this which protected free speech: you stand up, and you are speaking on your own account, and will here you. Your sincerity alone (that you will risk arrest if you do do something unpleasant, like fascism, in your speech) is your talisman. Now, for the first time ever, society is really coming to terms with total free speech, abstracted from the people themselves, and on a large enough scale that a bucket of whitewash will not only fail to solve the problem, but make a lot of people very tetchy.
In short then, society is committing an act of cowardice here. The Powers That Be are hoping that this can be quickly and quietly settled by a few spins of the stators and a current to an electromagnet. In reality, they should be deciding what to do about SlashDot as a whole; what to do about this freespeech freed of personal cross-identification with life and work; what to do about the prospect of being unable to punish criminals. This is not an issue of whether someone should be able to walk out of his house and hand out pirate copies of Dune to everyone he meets; that was and is being settled elsewhere. It is a matter of whether society will continue to accept the principle of SlashDot and freespeech, now it is nearly platonically realised, and how we shall decide to go about curbing those who seek to use it to commit crimes. I personally would simply punish the electronic persona, and find ways of catching the actual person(ae) in the real world be conventional methods. But to pretend it is merely a matter of appropriate redress to Microsoft is pure cowardice and a sham, sacrificing the idea of the public forum to the gods of political expediance. Perhaps, in the end, we shall decide to end the kind of forum we see in Slashdot, and, to a far, far lesser extent, in certain immunities. But we must decide, not acquiesce to a corporate legal fiat.
*ONLY* in the criminal justice system. Despite MS's best efforts, offending them is still only a civil offense. The burden of proof in a civil trial is "a balance of probabilities". I.E., what's most likely. When you consider that the original reason for the burden of proof layed out (most famously) in magna carta and elsewhere, (Innocent until Proven Guilty beyond all reasonable doubt, [before a juury of his/her peers]) it becomes clear what kind of trial you're likely to receive at the hands of Microsoft and the judiciary.
And don't get me started on the way the #%$^$%#$ gov't of Texas does things, with criminal charges raised by private groups who fund their witnesses with bribes, ahem, fees... $#%#@... And don't provide access to consul... I won't be caught dead (by lethal injection) within 50 miles of that state, as a foreign nat'l...
Actually, I made the fascinating discovery on *ahem* someone else's W'98 computer the other day that you can avoid some reboots! (also in 95?) By using the winipcfg tool (loaded from the dos prompt, oh irony of ironies), and (I think) the release all or renew all buttons, you can persuade it to start using new DNS and Gateway settings, and probably new IP settings, and perhaps the others without rebooting. Of course, I haven't tried this often (I try to avoid W9x, despite administering a labful) and so I may be wrong, but it worked well at least once!
Oh yeah, and I forward this as evidence of incompetence not laziness. Here, some engineer has clearly written an equivalent to raising and dropping an interface, changing routing tables, DNS, etc., and the control panel people have not picked up on it. (You'd think it was them who would've written it!) If there is a reason, I would guess their are stability/conflict issues w/ running apps (yeah, like you get more than one at a time in win...) that I haven't found yet, that they didn't want to support. A bit of a stretch, tho'.
Slashdot Mirror
The USAmerican national myth (no derogation intended) is based upon the idea that the Revolutionary War was one of freedom, and that they have, ever since, led the world in democratic civilisation. Everyone blindy repeats this, and maintains that it is true today, as it is the 'patriotic' thing to do. And so the actual state of the US never really gets a good look-at. The general beleif is that the US is, by definition, perfection, at least on the front of democratic spirit. This is, I think, dangerous complacency. (Witness: the last election. Despite it all, everyone still goes on about the beauty of the system, confusing it's miraculous survival (and dubious accuracy) with some kind of inherent strength. BTW, have any of the pundits ever visited countries like Israel, Ireland, Germany, the United Kingdom, India (with 400 million odd people!) or Canada?)
Then there's the case arguing that the USAmerican Founding Myth is more mythical than most, etc., etc. ... But I won't get into the whole liberty vs. property thing, because that's not the (my) point. My point is simply that if everyone beleives so blindly in the US and the (white, male, upper class, belligerant, self-interested*) founding fathers, the current state of the US, no matter how fine it's origins may have been, may well go to hell! (a la Orwell). I think, therefore, it's a very good thing that this discussion is being had: it affords a much needed mirror to the USAmerican face. Let us hope that it doesn't crack (And that the 'patriots' of various countries don't smash it...)
* Not so much self-interested, as class and trade interested. (Which, remember, was somewhat patriotic, in that day, age and class. They probably felt what was good for them was good for trade and for the country. Perhaps correctly.) They were all members of the monied class: the second constitution was essentially an exercise in limiting popularism so as to insure that their bonds still had value. Oh, and "saving the country from anarchy" sounded nice, too. Has a familiar ring to it, even today...
After that, anything which helps to build a relationship between the developer and the company is a particularly good idea, as it is not only red-letter recognition, but it increases the likelyhood the programmer will do more work. Giving them new hardware & specs for more drivers is a clever idea. But I think all these things should be quite plainly gratis--you should go to some lengths to avoid giving the impression that you now expect something of the programmer, because that would destroy the hobby value. Hire her/him, or support him/her as a hobbyist (recognition, specs, source [w/liberal nda, if neccessary], hardware beta), but don't try to mix the two.
It might be comforting for him to know that the trollers are getting worn out and he can post with impunity again...
This is not something that happens w/o the gov't somewhere. Read history.
The amazing thing is that the current failures in healthcare up here are a) nothing like the immoral hospitals in the US and elsewhere and b) basically the result of a fundamental concession to the (more greedy of the) doctors, which is pay-by-service instead of salary.
I admit the winters are cold, relative, to, say, one of Texas, N.Y., Miami, etc. But summers are very hot, too hot in T.O. I quite like our climate; at least we can hope for a decent amount of snow... :-)
But really, we have to remember that this was in wartime. Money really was no object. After WWII, Bletchley Park was entirely dismantled, and the GCHQ moved on to other things. (Like discovering RSA -- but that's not like quantam computing: the first is insight, the latter engineering) While they might make insightful breakthroughs, things like Collosus and bletchley require maassive funding (not to mention employee loyalty), and probably don't happen much in peacetime.
This is why all the griping over the enigma machine handouts makes so little sense: it really took a massive effort to break a well organised enigma network back then, several thousand people. Neither Britain nor anyone else were going to devote that kind of effort to one minor cypher used in friendly or post-colonial countries. Of course, with computers coming into wider use, it got much easier...
Please, let's not draw irrelevant political comparisons; I think this one is, not because you fail to make a point with it, but because it simplifies the British political situation.
After all, the US Senate seems hell-bent on unfreedonia!
Of course, it could get to be quite hard work... Especially after revolutions... :-)
...the idea of an application server. Archaic, a pain in the neck, I'll admit, but cost effective. Something I've yet to see MS talk abvout. Any takers? BTW, if you're reading this, "The Man", can you post under me IF you use an Apple LaserWriter...
I have not found any such shallow posts; while what I have read so far has not been the hight of insight, it has mostly been fairly honest assesments of personal experience. Anecdotal, but undeniable. Depressing, but true.
Oh right. And you'd like to take your chances with a machine that didn't work in the store (had they let you look at it), had never worked right and will never work? I have an AMD K6-233, and have recently discovered that such processors of a certain batch No. don't address more than 32 mb. of RAM. And so what do I do? I really want to stick another 32mb dimm in there... Fortuneatly, I beleive that the laws are quite sane about this in my jurisdiction... Although I may be about to be proved wrong...
Well, not primarily for the reasons you listed.
It is somewhat ironic that this is the least ironic thread yet posted on /. Perharps you were trying, but it's late at night and it's borderline enought that I need to refute it.
And it's Irony that can make failure funny. The funniness of failure does not "glorify" it, or promote its practice. Failure can be funny for people who have some perception of a wider perspective, who have the humility and optimism to take their foibles in stride with a laugh, the flexibility to step out of their own perspective into one where they are relatively insignificant. Remember Zaphod Beeblebrox and the Universal Perspectivve torture-whatsit? (forgotten name).
However, independant of humour, failures and defeats can be celebrated; you yourself gave Alamo (about which I know naught) as an example. The heroism of people deliberately taking the strongest and most damaging stand possible against evil, even if failure, death and matyrdom is assured, is something I and many others call noble. (Speaking of which, my understanding of the Mexican-American war was that the Americans unilaterally and without provocation attacked an independant Mexico, bothering to declare war only after their troops had attacked the Mexicans, and sustained the first casualties. This after having first illegally infiltrated it with loyal settlers--- all this from an American author!) The implicit slur in the above (replied-to) note is that people who do find failure humurous do so out of failure, is not fair. I don't count myself a failure, Australia certainly isn't, Canada is limping along and the UK has yet to collapse. (Despite the best efforts of the Thatcher Tories-- "There is no such thing as society")
And I happen to think the comic foil pitiful, unjustly harrased and the victim of cruelty! This isn't logical, but I really have a hard time watching or reading things like this, as I squirm, finding the world a little too cruel.
I really don't want to insult Americans. It's not necessarily bad to find failure unfunny. I have known many fine American people, some with a highly keen sense of humour, even irony. Despite the somewhat revisionist history of the U.S., I would even argue that the fruit of this slightly synthetic identity has great elements. This description is probably true of most nations. But I do, as a Canadian, have some sympathy for Douglas Adams. Independantly of this, I also disagree completely with the idea that finding failure funny is bad/ludicrous. If nothing else, I want to be able to laugh at this! :-)
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But, after all, "There is No Such Thing as Society", so I don't see precisely who she can recognise, if she didn't recognise even her own gov't :-)
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The difference is that when it's done on the Wed, the authorities overeact viciously and unfairly. Without being guilty of libel (you are innocent until a trial proves you guilty beyond all etc), he was forcibly detaned and had his ability to express himself both constrained, and undermined through insinuations which clearly are libellous. If he had spoken out by nearly any other means, and also as nearly any other persona but the teenager, he would not have been so harshly treated. This is Jon Katz' point.
There is no question that the authorities have essentially denatured this person's "inflammatory" opposition. My question to you: what if he was right? I've been in a school I could denounce, would denounce, should denounce (for the public safety), and do denounce. I don't want to be censored so effectively and insiduously. It's akin to red-baiting: just because he's communist (or, in this case, web-savvy [ish]) doesn't mean he's wrong, or a libeller.
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Thought makes me shudder...
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Without a doubt, the actions that the posters undertook was illegal. They were reciting to an audience things that they had, under the terms of the law, agreed not to relay. The only people whose case I'd plead were those a) publishing instructions (no-one said you weren't allowed to work out how to try to circumvent the EULA delivery system, if only as an intellectual exercise), or b) publishing links. (The worst these people are is grasses, whom the authorities love, or slanderers, whom the authorities love even more if their defaming communists!). But here's the rub: b) includes SlashDot. Slashdot is a public forum. It is right under the law to punish crimes. It is wrong to supress what someone said in the course of public discourse. That is censorship. This is an issue of censorship.
Of course, the difficulty, in the case of Slashdot, is that, normally, a certain amount of responsibilty goes to the speaker: their voice, as it were, is recognisable. (In turn, the state is, generally, prevented from instituting a reign of terror by various safeguards). But SlashDot guarantees total anonymity. The state, the Powers That Be, have a hard time with this concept. In the past, free speech has been allowed, but crimes using the voice punished. In a way, it is the almost parableistic nature of this which protected free speech: you stand up, and you are speaking on your own account, and will here you. Your sincerity alone (that you will risk arrest if you do do something unpleasant, like fascism, in your speech) is your talisman. Now, for the first time ever, society is really coming to terms with total free speech, abstracted from the people themselves, and on a large enough scale that a bucket of whitewash will not only fail to solve the problem, but make a lot of people very tetchy.
In short then, society is committing an act of cowardice here. The Powers That Be are hoping that this can be quickly and quietly settled by a few spins of the stators and a current to an electromagnet. In reality, they should be deciding what to do about SlashDot as a whole; what to do about this freespeech freed of personal cross-identification with life and work; what to do about the prospect of being unable to punish criminals. This is not an issue of whether someone should be able to walk out of his house and hand out pirate copies of Dune to everyone he meets; that was and is being settled elsewhere. It is a matter of whether society will continue to accept the principle of SlashDot and freespeech, now it is nearly platonically realised, and how we shall decide to go about curbing those who seek to use it to commit crimes. I personally would simply punish the electronic persona, and find ways of catching the actual person(ae) in the real world be conventional methods. But to pretend it is merely a matter of appropriate redress to Microsoft is pure cowardice and a sham, sacrificing the idea of the public forum to the gods of political expediance. Perhaps, in the end, we shall decide to end the kind of forum we see in Slashdot, and, to a far, far lesser extent, in certain immunities. But we must decide, not acquiesce to a corporate legal fiat.
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And don't get me started on the way the #%$^$%#$ gov't of Texas does things, with criminal charges raised by private groups who fund their witnesses with bribes, ahem, fees... $#%#@... And don't provide access to consul... I won't be caught dead (by lethal injection) within 50 miles of that state, as a foreign nat'l...
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Oh yeah, and I forward this as evidence of incompetence not laziness. Here, some engineer has clearly written an equivalent to raising and dropping an interface, changing routing tables, DNS, etc., and the control panel people have not picked up on it. (You'd think it was them who would've written it!) If there is a reason, I would guess their are stability/conflict issues w/ running apps (yeah, like you get more than one at a time in win...) that I haven't found yet, that they didn't want to support. A bit of a stretch, tho'.
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If you're interested, reply here and I'll E-Mail you if I find it again.... ;-)
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