Re: OT: Net traffic jams !

["Patricia M. Godfrey" priscamg@xxxxxxxx]

flash wrote:
> I think there should be a 'driver's license' for parents (i.e., in order
> to become one). Then we'd have fewer useless dweebs in the first place.
This is going FAR OT, but I cannot let this pass unchallenged. Do you
really want to give that kind of power to government? Especially since
9 out of 10 governments (an overly sanguine stat, but I don't want to
sound like an utter cynic) would prefer more, rather than fewer,
clueless dweebs among the citizenry. (And by that term I meant not the
"intellectually challenged" but people of normal intelligence who are
too lazy, careless, or indifferent to the common good to use the
brains they were born with.)
But that's the difficulty even with my own modest proposal (literary
allusion intentional). Who would administer a driver's license for the
Infobahn? Microsludge or its willing or witless pawns*? Please! The
Electronic Frontier Foundation or the Free Software Foundation?
Trustworthy, but they would probably set the bar too high for any but
gearheads like themselves. So we seem to be stuck with our present
system. As Robert might say, freedom is messy and risky, but anything
else is much worse.
* An M$ honcho actually called M$'s development partners that at a
meeting. Of course, he didn't intend they should find out, much less
that it should (as it did) become public knowledge (and be used in one
of the state antitrust suits).
--
Patricia M. Godfrey
PriscaMG@xxxxxxxx