So anyway, I was on IRC the other day (as I am often wont to do), and, as I was being banned from the network for not running "identd", I thought to myself: "Why do we still use this???"

Can anyone come up with a valid reason why, in 2002, ident is still considered by some people to be a necessary and valuable component of the Internet? Most people use Windows for everything, and Windows has no identity service. Most UNIX folks I know disable it for security reasons. I've disabled ident lookup on the IRC servers I admin, and have encouraged others on my network to do the same. Why on earth do people still insist we all run it in order to connect to and utilize their network services? Is it still 1993 in some part of the world?

Okay, this is pretty retarded.

- A.P.

$LUSER writes: "$RANDOM-SHADY-INTERNET-SOURCE tells me that $COMPANY is doing $ACTION to its users ! This does not bode well for the future of the Internet!" CmdrTaco: $DRAMATIC_FORESHADOWING $TYPOGRAPHICAL_ERROR.

Um this is silly.