You are not powerless.

Anyhow, good news: "But after an outcry on electronic bulletin boards devoted to the game and threats by some devoted players to leave the game, the company backtracked."

What were they thinking? Note that as long as they ask permission in a clear fashion, do only what they say, and do not gather any other data, it would not really be a violation of privacy per se... but still. Scanning machines? For hacking tools that within the day would be rendered undetectable (you'd have to download a new copy, but that's no big deal)? And keep in mind the game players are paying a monthly fee; if they leave, they truly will hurt the bottom line.

Online game backs away from privacy threat: "Game developers Verant Interactive, worried about tools which allow people to cheat or disrupt the online game, wanted to examine players' personal computers for 'hacking tools' as a part of a new software upgrade. As recently as last night, executives said they would bar people from the game who didn't agree to open their systems to the digital bloodhounds' inspection."

Hmmm... some notes: Weblogs.com doesn't seem to update the XML files I'm pulling from as often as it 'should'; as I look at this, changes.xml is one hour behind the Weblogs.com home page. Also, the sidebar only seems to update once, when you start the browser. I am uploading a new data file every hour, so if anybody can tell me how to cause it to pull new data when you look at it, I'd be much obliged... (I've got some stuff I'll try...)

It's not perfect but it's a start: In honor of Netscape's long-awaited (by me, anyhow) Preview Release, I've created Weblogs.com-in-a-box. If you are using some incarnation of Mozilla, try this: Put Weblogs.com in your Sidebar.