The only reason any of us are even posting comments on this story is to get the April Fools achievement...

I'm just being honest about it.

This isn't entirely accurate. Base installations of source game servers don't easily allow for this, even if you have RCON. However if they've installed a third party server administration addon, such as Mani Admin for Counter-Strike Source, etc, where there is a command called ma_browse, which allows users to bring up websites in the MOTD window, admins with sufficient access can use the ma_cexec command to force players to bring up websites using the ma_browse command, but the majority of servers (I.E. the well run ones) do not give out this kind of functionality to most of their admins.

Really, it's not a huge deal, and you barely ever see it happen, and I mean, what's to stop someone changing their server's MOTD to a simple HTML page with a bunch of gay porn pictures or something else most people find unpleasant to have forced upon them? Power has the potential to corrupt, the way I see it, it's not very different than if the admin were to slay people or set his health or give himself guns, or anything else.

So did Tech Dirt copy Slashdot? Did they both copy someone else?

Wow, I never even noticed those little department subtitles on /. before... Are they new? Am I just blind? I know they've been on Tech Dirt for a long time, did /. copy TD? Or vice versa? Or did they botch copy the idea from elsewhere?

Would such a clause actually hold up in court? I just can't see how it possibly would, it's purely "You're damned if you do you're damned if you don't.

In this case, if you simply left, they kept all your content, if you wanted to delete your account, you need to log in to do so, thus accepting the new TOS, allowing them to keep all your content, I thought one of the conditions for a binding contract was that is was under no duress, and this clause appear to be inescapable.

Why don't they just modify the old TOS to say something along the lines of:
"When you delete your account, only your profile content will be deleted."
To cover the issues such as:
If you send a message to a user, and then you delete your account, they don't need to delete the message from you in that person's inbox
Or, if you submitted a picture via the graffiti app etc, they don't need to delete your entry on the other person's profile, etc.