OT: MS Passport to be used for online National ID system??

Quothe Jeff Hellige, from writings of Sun, Apr 21, 2002 at 09:07:40AM +0500: Wow, that Orwellian article reeks of Big Brother! However, that's not surprising considering that the majority of modern-day U.S. politicians are greedy b*stards lacking in intellect---they dislike liberty and freedom, and are interested only in the higest paying special interest groups (e.g. - very large corporations), sex scandals (involvement in and making issues out of), passing insipid laws, bilking the citizens out of their income and property, and partaking in religious warfare. It's also interesting how Micro$oft got off the hook in the anti-trust suit once Little Georgie "the anti-intellect" Bush'em replaced Slick Willie & Kooky Hillary & Co. as chief executive loon (or is that goon or both: gloon?) of the U.S. *** The question of most relevance to this group: if any of this goes through, will we be prevented from using classic systems, or even non-Microsoft systems period, to access the Internet? It appears that they have the long-range goal of requiring people to be "authenticated," using Micro$lothware, in order to use the 'net for anything, and hence, trace who does what where and when, and keep better track of who says what. It also looks like an attempt to stike a fatal blow to the use of free software in the U.S., notably free operating systems, e-mail software and Apache, etc. -- Copyright (C) 2001 R. D. Davis The difference between humans & other animals: All Rights Reserved an unnatural belief that we're above Nature & rdd(a)rddavis.org 410-744-4900 her other creatures, using dogma to justify such http://www.rddavis.org beliefs and to justify much human cruelty.