On Tue, 7 May 2002, George William Herbert wrote:
1) This message had no operational content.
You have to at least admit this is the biggest one yet to hit the fan. And there's plenty of operational concern for those that have some foresight. As former MAPS evangelist Nick Nicholas put it: "MAPS is no longer devoting its energy to fighting spam and co-operating with others in that fight..." "Rand also claimed that, if he chose to, he 'could shut down half of the DNSBLs out there' if he wanted to." And probably take out half the Internet's electronic communications too. If he only wanted to, he could press that red button... Chaos. Besides, this is not the only instance in which MAPS officials have clobbered other fellow partisans for capricious reasons. The revolution has started to eat their young. You have sheepishly entrusted the fate of your connectivity to an unstable bunch of predators without a government mandate. What about if tomorrow they take YOU out? Or blackhole most of YOUR country? The rare glimpse into the inner workings of MAPS offered first-hand by a former insider shows none of these holier-than-thou vigilante groups can be entrusted with de-facto powers of regulating electronic communications. Government intervention is urgently required, if for no other reason than as a matter of national security. Let's not forget why such distributed communications network was started in the first place. --Mitch NetSide