At some point? We need to just set up a website that says "Rule #1 - if you don't understand the Internet? Please don't try to legislate it. Rule #2 - if you don't understand that the Internet isn't American or geographically dependent? Rule #1 applies to you."

Happy Birthday you young thing!!! :)

Jealous about the Boot Camp!! (No really, I am... I'm doing better, but I sure wish I could handle that!)

Miss you sister. Let's do a belated bday celebration soon? ((hug))

Time is not only the healer but the teacher... in time, we all progress from "why??" to "thank goodness..."
Love you sister. Still in my thoughts and prayers - as is your family. Today, Scarlett, is that other day at Tara... :)

I love that movie... despite it's overuse of Movie OS and the post-War-Games 'all hackers are really just nice, well meaning kids' theme.

You've made some really interesting analogies here though Doyle. It's true that the medium is simply the way we find to get the message out and altogether too often the 'early adopters' are those with a lot of time on their hands to get familiar with prohibitive technologies.

It's amazing to think that there was a time when there were payphone banks pretty much everywhere you went, isn't it? ;)

The funny part is that I *did* have a handle back then (before that movie actually) and it was nothing like the 'geekmommy' brand at all. I even have a phone phreak gadget I'll have to bring up and show to you sometime that predates that movie by 5 years! ;)

But you and I have always agreed that we are simply using 21st century technology to accomplish communications the same way we did from the 19th century and before.

Speaking of which - we need to do a night of geek movies - Hackers, Sneakers, the Net etc - some time soon! :)

Well, you really ought to hide BlissfulGirl's comment to be fair!! Wish I lived close enough to come, now tha tI know the answer!

Sorry I missed this... I've been so out of blog reading lately. That said, it's not a huge surprise that you got painted as "the problem" by those afraid of losing their jobs to a medium they don't understand.

The irony is that so many folks don't get what the *actual* thrust of the FTC regs is... including your antagonistic reporters.

What's the point of the FTC regs? Google "acai berry oprah" and you'll see. You'll come up with a page full of fake blogs pretending to be someone local to you who magically found the secret to weight loss. There's before and after pics. There's an "it's free!" pitch. And it's one huge scam. But those who fall prey to scams like that? They lose what... $10? $20? $100? do you think they're going to tell someone? Do they have the money to bring a lawsuit against a scam outfit that preys on people like that? No. They aren't going to spend thousands of dollars and years of effort trying to go after con artists who will change their web address, billing address, and info every 2 weeks over a few dollars lost. But it's NOT a few dollars lost. It's hundreds of thousands of dollars scammed out of people looking for something to help them lose weight and falling prey to these people. It's the good name of mom bloggers getting besmirched.

So the FTC needs a way to go after them. Good. I say more power to them.

But the journalists? Need to quit trying to find someone to hang the story on and do their actual homework. It would've taken them just a little bit of actual research to figure it out.

Hang tough Jess.