'Weblogs' are a part of that, of course, but hardly even the only way of finding good writing on the net. Usenet's still around, among other things.

Other whining: "In making publication available to all, the Internet bypasses the editorial process that attempts to separate the wheat from the dross, the publishable from the unpublishable. ... It has no standards, because none are required." Also wrong. Not every website is equally popular; you can find your way to good writing on the net!

Still soliciting comments on yesterday's question... people other then Wesley Felter are allowed to reply too... the beginning of the thread.

Gagging the net in 3 easy steps: "It's easy to censor the internet, and to prove the point, here's a little exercise."

Is it just that I haven't been around long enough, or is the judicial system in this country becoming actively hostile towards the Internet? ACLU's Filter Appeal Rejected in the cphack case, and apparently quite summarily. The ACLU might as well start saving for the appeal right now. The judge has already ruled, I think.

Other Microsoft programs take those hooks and do whatever they want, based on those new hooks into the kernal.

Obviously, then, they cannot simply modify the kernal in a conventional way. Instead, they create a patch system. The Linux kernal code is never changed; it gets placed in a directory and gets write-protected, and is inaccessible to the developers to make changes to. When the Microsoft programmer wants to add a hook, he opens his patching program and adds a line to the code. Note this patching function is invisible to the user, the developer just adds a line in his special editor.

Let us suppose that Microsoft wishes to embrace and extend the Linux kernal. I don't care what exactly they want to do with it, but they do not wish to share their code with anyone else. The Linux kernal is of course protected by the GPL, which ties a contract agreement to the fact that the GPL can use copyright law to deny you the right to use GPL-protected code.

I've been claiming annotation is wrong for a number of reasons, and I know I'm not making myself perfectly clear. Part of the problem is that I'm triggering some pre-concieved notions... I'm not 'accusing' anybody of this, it's just a fact of life that such things happen and it's more my fault for not being more clear then anybody else. Since one of the things I'm deliberately trying to do is abstract these issues out and bring them all together, let's do an exercise.

Ok, I'm going to fulfill something closer to this site's original purpose today...