Government intervention in a capitalist market should take place only when a good or service being provided is monopolized. Monopolization is certainly possible where physical medium is layed at great expense; whoever owns the cable can then dictate how it is used. This is why AT&T was broken up. When a good or service is not monopolizable, then the government has no business sticking its nose into the situation. It can only make things worse in this case.
The real question at hand is whether or not this particular service is subject to being monopolized.
This was heavily debated at my school last year. I attend a conservative religious college with an Honor Code. A homosexual was kicked out of my school last year because his lifestyle violated the school's Honor Code. Every major newspaper in the region carried the story except for the school newspaper. The editors responded by saying that they sat down and decided that the story was not newsworthy, and so they did not print it. While the school administration did not dictate to the newspaper what they could or couldn't print, many said that this was an incident of self-censorship.
With the advent of wireless technology, speed is not the only issue at hand. Energy is going to be a major factor to consider. While we may be able to compress video into oblivion, the processing power required to perform the compression/decompression may be too high for handheld wireless deviced with limited battery power. Broadband availability for desktop computers is rapidly becoming a non-issue.
People are going to want to send and receive video emails from their handhelds. We need a technology that will be able to strike a balance between energy required to transmit the signal (bandwidth) and the energy required to compress and decompress the signal (signal processing).
It is not from the benevolance of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Society cannot rest its future on the noblest motives, but must use the strongest motives in the best possible way.
For now, I present this idea as a theoretical one. But in the not-so-distant future, I think we can all agree that this is not an "if" scenerio, but a "when."
Our biological immune system is designed to fight biological threats. For the most part, these threats have been encountered some time in the past, and all immune systems that were not able to combat the threat were compromised, and the host died. Due to mutations, only a few immune systems had some characteristic that allowed them to defend against the threat. These immune systems were slight deviations from the "mainstream" immune system in the gene pool at the time. All hosts that had the "mainstream" immune system perished, and those resistant to the threat survived. Due to the void created by the deaths, those with the resistive immune system had more access to the resources left behind, and they reproduced and created the new dominant gene pool, which is resistent to the disease. This is known as "natural selection."
Suppose a nanobot virus is developed against which the human immune system cannot possibly defend. In this case, the only thing that would save the human race would be another nanobot that augments the immune system to provide protection against the new threat.
In this case, most of the human race would not have the resources, or even the means, to learn about this "white-hat" nanobot and to obtain it. Would it be ethical to start distributing this anti-viral nanobot in community water systems?
I took a statistics course at BYU. My professor, Dr. Tolley, with the help of his "31337" kids, built an AI system that played Quake. Each possible move was designated as a random variable, and each random variable was weighted according to its success in keeping the player alive and killing the other player. The code would randomly try different actions with the game interface (walk forward, fire weapon, duck, etc.), and then register what worked and what didn't. At first, the computer-controlled player would just stand there. After getting blown apart a few times, it would start jumping to the left, and then ducking, etc. Eventually, it "learned" that it had its greatest chance for survival if it immediately ducked and went behind a box. It then learned to wait until someone walked around a corner, and then it would fire its weapon in the direction of the corner. Finally, it learned that coordinates of the game contained the "respawning" positions, and upon fragging the opponent, it would run to the next respawning point and wait until the player showed up there, blowing him away upon entry into the game.
This code could be similarly adapted to any game, inasmuch as the code can register a table with all the possible moves provided by the interface. It doesn't even have to know what those moves do; it only needs to know if, by doing certain moves according the "state" (or the attributes) of the game, it gains points (or stays alive or whatever) or loses points. The moves are then given a distribution weighting factor. Then, the algorithm just needs to approximate the game state with the registered table entries, determine which moves have the highest "survival rate" based on the current game attributes, and then perform those moves.
Depending on the game, it may take a long time before the random variable distribution table gets populated to the point where the algorithm can make "intelligent" decisions, but it works nonetheless.
I wrote with one of the developers of XMMS, and he complained like none other about the poor quality of the AC'97 hardware. When I used the AC'97 sound drivers in the Linux kernel, I would frequently get long periods of popping noises whenever I played a game. The Alsa mailing thread is full of people having trouble with the Alsa 0.9.0beta4 drivers and the Via686a chipset; I myself was unsuccessful at getting them to work.
In a nutshell, I just recompiled the kernel with "Sound=y" being the ONLY thing related to sound that I enabled, and then installed Alsa driver version 0.5.11. Everything works beautifully:-)
You're not alone. I get white horizontal lines across the page at the section that was at the top/bottom border before I used my mouse wheel. The problem does not present itself when I scroll using the scrollbar on the side.
I would like to see how this works out. Frequently, those who use StarOffice receive embarrasing statements from those with whom they try to share Word-formatted files. The environment is bloated, and dealing with fonts is a nightmare (not to mention that they're ugly to begin with).
Hopefully, as StarOffice gains momentum, we will see a greater demand for a more lightweight solution that has better interoperability, better font handling, and anti-aliasing.
And this seems to be the difference between a real, well-respected news agency and Slashdot. The people who work as professional journalists write articles of substance, including opinions from professionals in each area he addresses and objective reporting of the facts. An occasional personal opinion is appropriate in most circumstances. But a drawn-out rant that sounds like it was written by a religious zealot attempting to incite a Holy War completely turns me off. If this kind of thing keeps getting posted as "news", I will find another place to turn for updates on the technical world around me.
Slashdot has a level of popularity at this point that I think it's time that it lets some of its editors go, and start accepting resume's for more qualified individuals to write its editorials.
Apparently, the call to replaceString is broken. If it depends on a library version I don't have installed, then the configure script fails to catch this. This occurs around line 217 in mgaXconfig.c. If I comment-out that line, the next thing that segfaults is "gtk_widget_show(wdgWinCentral);" around line 1500 in callbacks.c. I tried installing the latest "stable" binaries of GTK+ 1.2.8 and gLIB 1.2.8, but this had no effect.
Microsoft also has a formal research and development process and plans to invest over $4 billion in R&D in 2001. Microsoft invested over $3 billion in R&D in 2000. They invest huge amounts of money like this in R&D every single year. Linux has no comparison.
They there is fightin' words!
Money doesn't develop software. People develop software.
Have you ever known someone who does what they do because they have a love for it? Have you ever known someone else who goes to work only for a paycheck? It's analogous to a student who goes to school for a grade, compared to a student to goes to school to learn. If I were hiring someone to work for me, I would choose the student who loves to learn over the student with the perfect GPA (who only wanted the grade) any day.
In that same sense, I want software written by people who love writing software (whether or not he gets paid for it is irrelevant - but when someone writes software w/out getting paid for it, it's a sure sign of how much they like doing it!); not software written by some guy just doing what he does for a paycheck.
The great strength of the Open Source movement lies in the fact that the people developing the code are doing it for the love of doing it! That makes a difference. A big difference. Microsoft, and most other companies, have to pay people to get anyone to make Windows software.
Oh, and one more thing... how does having the source code open for worldwide scrutiny make a product *less* secure anyway?
Due to the complexities involved with international law, legislation on this issue can never really be effective. I believe the best way to deal with the problem to be at the level of the individual. People should proactively adopt a method to protect themselves from spam. Telemarketers have been with us for a while. People in my neighborhood deal with calls by subscribing to a service with the phone company to only let phone calls through that are identifiable (caller ID works).
For those calls that don't have an ID, a recorded message informs telemarketers to remove the number from their list, and then the system asks for the person to give his name. The system informs the resident being called what that name is, and then the receiver can decide whether or not to take the call. It can be a little annoying for those who are calling from a number that can't be identified, but by and large, it is effective.
I see a market for Email providers that automatically blocks spam. I would be willing to pay $5 a month to have an Email account that is largely spam-free. Or, I would be willing to pay an ISP $5 a month that provided spam-free Email service. The revenues that the subscribers pay would help maintain the software that would effectively block the spam (this includes paying for ongoing research to defend against the eventual loopholes that spammers will find in any such system).
People will pay for effective virus protection. People keep paying for updates as virus writers find ways around the virus protection software. If spam is as annoying as everyone says it is, why aren't they paying up for services such as these?
At the end of World War II, trade sanctions and persecution of native Germans devastated eastern Europe. Have you ever done the research to find out about what happened to the people who were affected by the conditions? Have you ever read in a history book, the debased and horrid descriptions of a people under seige or in a famine?
In the event of a crisis, if the trucks stopped rolling, the supermarkets in the major metropolitan areas would be cleaned out in 72 hours. The gas stations would be dry within 48 hours.
In these conditions, I think we will all stop worrying so much about free speech and Microsoft's latest blunders. Maybe then the systems like Slashdot would do something to help society move forward; granted that anyone will want to log on to check.
Oh, and speaking of political unrest, I heard of a little incident brewing with China...
Ads are only successful when they hit the right people at the right time. I have never clicked on an add for online hosting, chick clothing at ThinkGeek, or online privacy software. I don't have feel a current need for these products. I have clicked on an add for Java for Mac OS X from Slashdot, because I am interested in Java and Mac OS X.
Bingo.
The advertisers knew that, by focusing the right products in the right forum, and by making them fairly inconspicuous yes informative, they eventually got a "click-through" from me.
On the other hand, if any type of advertising tries to barge through into my life, I will automatically reject it just as forcefully as it tries to get my attention. Spam invading my mailbox is one example. I don't listen to the radio unless I forget my CD's at home, and even then I will change the station if the advertising drags on for more than 30 seconds.
If a site tries to interupt my surfing experience, I will find a way to circumvent the problem. If there is not an easy way, I will simply find something else to do with my time.
"A woman frantically explained her catastrophe. Her young son had been chatting online, and when she went to get him for dinner, she found his room empty. A last instant message was posted on the screen: "See you soon, can't wait." She begged me for the name and address of the person behind the dangling screen name. I had the information right in front of me, but I couldn't give it to her."
Suppose something happens to this boy. IANAL, but couldn't AOL be held criminally negligent in this case? Shouldn't they have a policy of working with law enforcement in these matters? They may not be able to give the address to just anyone who calls in. I understand that. But couldn't they give the information to the local authorities, and work with them to protect this boy from someone who may harm him?
Let's face it: if it weren't for Star Office, we wouldn't really have much of anything at all in terms of an integrated office suite for Linux. I think it's an excellent application, given it's price.
But SO falls short in many areas; one of which is the fact that it tries to mimic the Windows GUI. Really annoying.
And how long did it take for the competition to arise and contest AT&T? It case you haven't brushed up on your history books lately, about 75 years. Why? Because of barrier to market entry. Are we willing to wait another 50 years for the captalist market to get to the point where it can challenge Microsoft?
My university recently blocked Napster ports, because Napster use was using 46% of the total bandwidth available to the campus. This is largely due to a handful of individuals who were hosting dozens of gigabytes of MP3's to the rest of the world. Now, because of their irresponsible actions, none of us have access to this service. Perhaps the right to arbitrarily disable accounts isn't such a bad one to give the admins.
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
I subscribe through MSTAR, which is a service that charges the standard market price for access. When I first installed their software to create my account, they loaded a client-side content filtering program, an older version of Netscape, and an always-present application launching bar. After logging in through the front-end software, I tried opening Explorer. Within a couple of seconds, it closed down. I tried opening a newer version of Netscape next, and it closed after a couple of seconds also.
I decided that I didn't want tojans dictating which applications I could and couldn't use on my personal computer, so I ran RASSPY on the software to get my *real* user name and password, uninstalled all of their software (and afterwards, I had to manually delete a few directories their software so kindly left behind), and created a new internet connection.
A couple of days later, as I was happily browsing away, and I was surprised to find, at the bottom of every web page, two banners advertising MSTAR and a site related to it. Luckily, there was a link at the bottom which would disable the banner for 5 minutes at a time. I found that it simply called a script with an argument of '5'. I changed my browser's home page setting to call that same script with an argument of '32000'.
I also downloaded and installed The Proximator, to finish the job up of eliminating all signs of commercialization from my personal browsing experience.
I would really appreciate it if companies that charge for service, like MSTAR, would just charge my account every month, and then leave me alone.
Slashdot Mirror
Government intervention in a capitalist market should take place only when a good or service being provided is monopolized. Monopolization is certainly possible where physical medium is layed at great expense; whoever owns the cable can then dictate how it is used. This is why AT&T was broken up. When a good or service is not monopolizable, then the government has no business sticking its nose into the situation. It can only make things worse in this case.
The real question at hand is whether or not this particular service is subject to being monopolized.
This was heavily debated at my school last year. I attend a conservative religious college with an Honor Code. A homosexual was kicked out of my school last year because his lifestyle violated the school's Honor Code. Every major newspaper in the region carried the story except for the school newspaper. The editors responded by saying that they sat down and decided that the story was not newsworthy, and so they did not print it. While the school administration did not dictate to the newspaper what they could or couldn't print, many said that this was an incident of self-censorship.
In the article entitled "Poll Finds Majority Back Use of Military" by Richard L. Berke and Janet Elder for the New York Times, we read this:
Americans say they are ready to alter their lifestyles, and even sacrifice some of their own liberties, for safety considerations.
With the advent of wireless technology, speed is not the only issue at hand. Energy is going to be a major factor to consider. While we may be able to compress video into oblivion, the processing power required to perform the compression/decompression may be too high for handheld wireless deviced with limited battery power. Broadband availability for desktop computers is rapidly becoming a non-issue.
People are going to want to send and receive video emails from their handhelds. We need a technology that will be able to strike a balance between energy required to transmit the signal (bandwidth) and the energy required to compress and decompress the signal (signal processing).
It is not from the benevolance of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest. Society cannot rest its future on the noblest motives, but must use the strongest motives in the best possible way.
What I meant to say... the information-retrieval resources or the physical means to obtain the good nanobots :-)
For now, I present this idea as a theoretical one. But in the not-so-distant future, I think we can all agree that this is not an "if" scenerio, but a "when."
Our biological immune system is designed to fight biological threats. For the most part, these threats have been encountered some time in the past, and all immune systems that were not able to combat the threat were compromised, and the host died. Due to mutations, only a few immune systems had some characteristic that allowed them to defend against the threat. These immune systems were slight deviations from the "mainstream" immune system in the gene pool at the time. All hosts that had the "mainstream" immune system perished, and those resistant to the threat survived. Due to the void created by the deaths, those with the resistive immune system had more access to the resources left behind, and they reproduced and created the new dominant gene pool, which is resistent to the disease. This is known as "natural selection."
Suppose a nanobot virus is developed against which the human immune system cannot possibly defend. In this case, the only thing that would save the human race would be another nanobot that augments the immune system to provide protection against the new threat.
In this case, most of the human race would not have the resources, or even the means, to learn about this "white-hat" nanobot and to obtain it. Would it be ethical to start distributing this anti-viral nanobot in community water systems?
I took a statistics course at BYU. My professor, Dr. Tolley, with the help of his "31337" kids, built an AI system that played Quake. Each possible move was designated as a random variable, and each random variable was weighted according to its success in keeping the player alive and killing the other player. The code would randomly try different actions with the game interface (walk forward, fire weapon, duck, etc.), and then register what worked and what didn't. At first, the computer-controlled player would just stand there. After getting blown apart a few times, it would start jumping to the left, and then ducking, etc. Eventually, it "learned" that it had its greatest chance for survival if it immediately ducked and went behind a box. It then learned to wait until someone walked around a corner, and then it would fire its weapon in the direction of the corner. Finally, it learned that coordinates of the game contained the "respawning" positions, and upon fragging the opponent, it would run to the next respawning point and wait until the player showed up there, blowing him away upon entry into the game.
This code could be similarly adapted to any game, inasmuch as the code can register a table with all the possible moves provided by the interface. It doesn't even have to know what those moves do; it only needs to know if, by doing certain moves according the "state" (or the attributes) of the game, it gains points (or stays alive or whatever) or loses points. The moves are then given a distribution weighting factor. Then, the algorithm just needs to approximate the game state with the registered table entries, determine which moves have the highest "survival rate" based on the current game attributes, and then perform those moves.
Depending on the game, it may take a long time before the random variable distribution table gets populated to the point where the algorithm can make "intelligent" decisions, but it works nonetheless.
I wrote with one of the developers of XMMS, and he complained like none other about the poor quality of the AC'97 hardware. When I used the AC'97 sound drivers in the Linux kernel, I would frequently get long periods of popping noises whenever I played a game. The Alsa mailing thread is full of people having trouble with the Alsa 0.9.0beta4 drivers and the Via686a chipset; I myself was unsuccessful at getting them to work. In a nutshell, I just recompiled the kernel with "Sound=y" being the ONLY thing related to sound that I enabled, and then installed Alsa driver version 0.5.11. Everything works beautifully :-)
You're not alone. I get white horizontal lines across the page at the section that was at the top/bottom border before I used my mouse wheel. The problem does not present itself when I scroll using the scrollbar on the side.
I would like to see how this works out. Frequently, those who use StarOffice receive embarrasing statements from those with whom they try to share Word-formatted files. The environment is bloated, and dealing with fonts is a nightmare (not to mention that they're ugly to begin with).
Hopefully, as StarOffice gains momentum, we will see a greater demand for a more lightweight solution that has better interoperability, better font handling, and anti-aliasing.
And this seems to be the difference between a real, well-respected news agency and Slashdot. The people who work as professional journalists write articles of substance, including opinions from professionals in each area he addresses and objective reporting of the facts. An occasional personal opinion is appropriate in most circumstances. But a drawn-out rant that sounds like it was written by a religious zealot attempting to incite a Holy War completely turns me off. If this kind of thing keeps getting posted as "news", I will find another place to turn for updates on the technical world around me.
Slashdot has a level of popularity at this point that I think it's time that it lets some of its editors go, and start accepting resume's for more qualified individuals to write its editorials.
I downloaded the source and did some follow-up on this:
...f ie r), "Matrox PowerDesk configured.");...
Matrox PowerDesk: Configuration file parsed.
Calling replaceString(&(conf->conf_layout_lst->lay_identi
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
Apparently, the call to replaceString is broken. If it depends on a library version I don't have installed, then the configure script fails to catch this. This occurs around line 217 in mgaXconfig.c. If I comment-out that line, the next thing that segfaults is "gtk_widget_show(wdgWinCentral);" around line 1500 in callbacks.c. I tried installing the latest "stable" binaries of GTK+ 1.2.8 and gLIB 1.2.8, but this had no effect.
Has anyone had a similar problem with this?
Yoo-hoo!
/gobabygo!!!/
wget (everything)
killall X
cp mga_drv.o
startx
rpm -ivh mga_PDESK_YEAH!!!
mgapdesk
Matrox PowerDesk: Configuration file (/etc/X11/XF86Config-4) opened.
Matrox PowerDesk: Configuration file parsed.
Segmentation fault (core dumped)
It just had to be too good to be true...
Microsoft also has a formal research and development process and plans to invest over $4 billion in R&D in 2001. Microsoft invested over $3 billion in R&D in 2000. They invest huge amounts of money like this in R&D every single year. Linux has no comparison.
... how does having the source code open for worldwide scrutiny make a product *less* secure anyway?
They there is fightin' words!
Money doesn't develop software. People develop software.
Have you ever known someone who does what they do because they have a love for it? Have you ever known someone else who goes to work only for a paycheck? It's analogous to a student who goes to school for a grade, compared to a student to goes to school to learn. If I were hiring someone to work for me, I would choose the student who loves to learn over the student with the perfect GPA (who only wanted the grade) any day.
In that same sense, I want software written by people who love writing software (whether or not he gets paid for it is irrelevant - but when someone writes software w/out getting paid for it, it's a sure sign of how much they like doing it!); not software written by some guy just doing what he does for a paycheck.
The great strength of the Open Source movement lies in the fact that the people developing the code are doing it for the love of doing it! That makes a difference. A big difference. Microsoft, and most other companies, have to pay people to get anyone to make Windows software.
Oh, and one more thing
That works... until your family members give out the Email addresses of all their family members to the first site that asks for it...
Due to the complexities involved with international law, legislation on this issue can never really be effective. I believe the best way to deal with the problem to be at the level of the individual. People should proactively adopt a method to protect themselves from spam. Telemarketers have been with us for a while. People in my neighborhood deal with calls by subscribing to a service with the phone company to only let phone calls through that are identifiable (caller ID works).
For those calls that don't have an ID, a recorded message informs telemarketers to remove the number from their list, and then the system asks for the person to give his name. The system informs the resident being called what that name is, and then the receiver can decide whether or not to take the call. It can be a little annoying for those who are calling from a number that can't be identified, but by and large, it is effective.
I see a market for Email providers that automatically blocks spam. I would be willing to pay $5 a month to have an Email account that is largely spam-free. Or, I would be willing to pay an ISP $5 a month that provided spam-free Email service. The revenues that the subscribers pay would help maintain the software that would effectively block the spam (this includes paying for ongoing research to defend against the eventual loopholes that spammers will find in any such system).
People will pay for effective virus protection. People keep paying for updates as virus writers find ways around the virus protection software. If spam is as annoying as everyone says it is, why aren't they paying up for services such as these?
At the end of World War II, trade sanctions and persecution of native Germans devastated eastern Europe. Have you ever done the research to find out about what happened to the people who were affected by the conditions? Have you ever read in a history book, the debased and horrid descriptions of a people under seige or in a famine?
In the event of a crisis, if the trucks stopped rolling, the supermarkets in the major metropolitan areas would be cleaned out in 72 hours. The gas stations would be dry within 48 hours.
In these conditions, I think we will all stop worrying so much about free speech and Microsoft's latest blunders. Maybe then the systems like Slashdot would do something to help society move forward; granted that anyone will want to log on to check.
Oh, and speaking of political unrest, I heard of a little incident brewing with China...
Ads are only successful when they hit the right people at the right time. I have never clicked on an add for online hosting, chick clothing at ThinkGeek, or online privacy software. I don't have feel a current need for these products. I have clicked on an add for Java for Mac OS X from Slashdot, because I am interested in Java and Mac OS X.
Bingo.
The advertisers knew that, by focusing the right products in the right forum, and by making them fairly inconspicuous yes informative, they eventually got a "click-through" from me.
On the other hand, if any type of advertising tries to barge through into my life, I will automatically reject it just as forcefully as it tries to get my attention. Spam invading my mailbox is one example. I don't listen to the radio unless I forget my CD's at home, and even then I will change the station if the advertising drags on for more than 30 seconds.
If a site tries to interupt my surfing experience, I will find a way to circumvent the problem. If there is not an easy way, I will simply find something else to do with my time.
"A woman frantically explained her catastrophe. Her young son had been chatting online, and when she went to get him for dinner, she found his room empty. A last instant message was posted on the screen: "See you soon, can't wait." She begged me for the name and address of the person behind the dangling screen name. I had the information right in front of me, but I couldn't give it to her."
Suppose something happens to this boy. IANAL, but couldn't AOL be held criminally negligent in this case? Shouldn't they have a policy of working with law enforcement in these matters? They may not be able to give the address to just anyone who calls in. I understand that. But couldn't they give the information to the local authorities, and work with them to protect this boy from someone who may harm him?
Let's face it: if it weren't for Star Office, we wouldn't really have much of anything at all in terms of an integrated office suite for Linux. I think it's an excellent application, given it's price.
But SO falls short in many areas; one of which is the fact that it tries to mimic the Windows GUI. Really annoying.
Enter Open Office.
And how long did it take for the competition to arise and contest AT&T? It case you haven't brushed up on your history books lately, about 75 years. Why? Because of barrier to market entry. Are we willing to wait another 50 years for the captalist market to get to the point where it can challenge Microsoft?
My university recently blocked Napster ports, because Napster use was using 46% of the total bandwidth available to the campus. This is largely due to a handful of individuals who were hosting dozens of gigabytes of MP3's to the rest of the world. Now, because of their irresponsible actions, none of us have access to this service. Perhaps the right to arbitrarily disable accounts isn't such a bad one to give the admins.
Ye have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.
Matthew 5:27-28
I subscribe through MSTAR, which is a service that charges the standard market price for access. When I first installed their software to create my account, they loaded a client-side content filtering program, an older version of Netscape, and an always-present application launching bar. After logging in through the front-end software, I tried opening Explorer. Within a couple of seconds, it closed down. I tried opening a newer version of Netscape next, and it closed after a couple of seconds also.
I decided that I didn't want tojans dictating which applications I could and couldn't use on my personal computer, so I ran RASSPY on the software to get my *real* user name and password, uninstalled all of their software (and afterwards, I had to manually delete a few directories their software so kindly left behind), and created a new internet connection.
A couple of days later, as I was happily browsing away, and I was surprised to find, at the bottom of every web page, two banners advertising MSTAR and a site related to it. Luckily, there was a link at the bottom which would disable the banner for 5 minutes at a time. I found that it simply called a script with an argument of '5'. I changed my browser's home page setting to call that same script with an argument of '32000'.
I also downloaded and installed The Proximator, to finish the job up of eliminating all signs of commercialization from my personal browsing experience.
I would really appreciate it if companies that charge for service, like MSTAR, would just charge my account every month, and then leave me alone.