I bet that they have lost more money paying people to develop DRM technology than they have lost from people downloading music illegally -- especially when a lot of people then buy the whole cd after downloading a few tracks online. What idiots! Their greed will eventually ruin them. (It's doing it already -- just look at the rise of creative commons and other similar licenses for music and whatnot...) I understand that downloading music and other media illegally is illegal but to fight for every penny when you're losing money doing it...that's just stupid and greedy.

I agree. What sets Google apart certainly isn't that their the good guys but maybe the fact that they seem to want that appearance. After they've turned into such cracked out pack rats with personal/usage/search information, they've got some imagination trying to seem like the good guys. Look out, here comes the next Micro$oft in disguise!!

I agree that it doesn't deserve as much attention as it gets -- though I hope the number of men in computer science don't by sheer number, get rid of the competition (that would just be a shame). Personally, as a woman in computer science, I don't feel driven away by men. There's always someone who will rattle your cage but I don't think gender is the issue. I've had many male friends and I have to say that the types of conversations are definitely different than with my female friends, men and women also seem to work very differently in groups and have different ways of doing things as a whole -- I don't find that discouraging, though. Men and women are different in many ways but people are just individuals. I think it's more important to really wonder "Why?" rather than assume it's a matter of being frightened away. There's an archaic stereotype that says that men are more suited for math and science than women -- meanwhile, it's been proven that men and women are equally capable, only our brains come to the same conclusion in different ways. I think the problem is that our society needs to stop thinking in terms of stereotypes and maybe stop seeing the difference in gender all together. Then people might ask themselves: What does it matter that there are more men than women? Should that really be an issue? Should we try to see how many people there are of different races and religions in computer science next? -- Maybe that would make it more transparent that it's not the fact that there are more men that's the problem, it's the fact that people are even bothering to count and make judgment on it. Why are people keeping tabs? I think the fact that people are keeping count is more of a problem than the number difference between men and women in computing. If equality is what people want then they should know that it can't happen as long as anyone keeps count. If more men want to be in computing, what's the problem? Why does that have to be a show of unfairness? What if it's just a natural number difference? I don't see as many female farmers as male farmers. I don't see as many male teachers as female ones -- especially in high school. Stop counting: that's the real problem.

True, once it's on the net, you can't get it off... BUT you can change your name. As long as no one connects your new name to the old one, the old name -- along with the issues related to it -- might as well be someone else. It's a legitimate reason to change your name if it's causing you so much trouble. If your family would get upset with you for changing your name, you can just switch your first and middle name and make it your legal name. Strange that people are tracking you so far back, though... I don't understand why someone would do that first of all, and secondly, how would they know it's necessarily you? I have an uncommon name and I'm not the only person at my university with this name. They don't have much reason to think it's you but if you're suffering too much from it, petition the court to change your name. I don't think it's that much of a troublesome process. Once you get all of your documents changed to your new name, the old one might as well be someone else.

That's really disturbing! The first book is one telling parents how to stop their kids from being gay! --Yeah, great way to mess up your kids for life! I've met some closeted married people and their whole lives have just been shot to hell because of being raised to hate themselves and deny who they are. It's sadistic! I just sent Amazon.com an e-mail telling them where to shove their homophobia and then canceled my account. --the bastards take way too long to ship things anyway. Borders/Barnes&Noble/Ebay, here I come!