Amusement: When I went to The Register's article, guess who had an advertisement in the sidebar? (Yep.)

It's so hard to quantify and express, because we do not have an alternate universe where everybody agrees with standards, but please believe me when I say that this arrogance from Microsoft will cost you personally, both in additional exprenses for developing the software you use (always passed on to the consumer, one way or another), and in software you will never see.

Even as I've been going into spastic twitching fits over Mozilla (If you've ever seen Disney's Alladin, think Jafar's first few seconds of being a genie... "The power! The incredible power! The stars leap at my command!" or something to that effect), Microsoft has been bringin' me down over IE5.5 for Windows. The Web Standards Projects had some stuff to say about it, and I second it.

Even in Orwell's 1984, you could escape from the watchers because they were human. How would you like to be watched from by a computer, based on what you buy, how you buy it, when you buy it, what else you've bought recently, and all other sorts of things like that? Better be careful buying bleach over the internet if you're a farmer... if you buy fertilizer within a couple of days of the bleach you might find the FBI at your door if they could have their way.

Later, "An FBI request for additional funds to 'data mine' public and private sources of digital information has set off an alarm in the privacy watchdog community. In addition, the Justice Department has proposed changes to electronic surveillance laws that would beef up law enforcement power to investigate crimes like hacker attacks."

Uh.... why does Congress need to expand the constitutional protections? They apply already; Congress can delimit and clarify, but I hope the 'privacy advocates' aren't truly pushing for "expansion". We're supposed to already be protected against that stuff.

We consumers can not and will not bear the liability for these digital signatures. I will not use one if I am going to be held responsible for misuse. Forget it. I'll simply never get one, since that ought to be a reasonable defense.

But... the real source of confidence is the strict laws in place that limit my liability should a screw-up occur. As long as I notify the credit-card company within some time period, I'm only liable for up to $50, be it a $51 purchase or a $51,000 purchase.

I used to tell people not to worry about the Internet so much while shopping; I felt safer dealing with reputable on-line retailers then I did dealing with a credit card in the real world; odds are good that no human being has ever seen my credit card number from an online transaction I've performed. That may not be 100% true, but certainly fewer have seen it then if I had made the purchases off-line, where at least one person would have seen it on each transaction.