GUEST, trying to put me in you're category three is desperately grasping for straws, in addition to being inaccurate. Do you have a reading disability? One can quibble as to whether a monthly Social Security check is a "pension" or not, but the only kind of income I have that the government has any control over is the Social Security check. And if I were to lose mine, millions of other Americans would be losing theirs at the same time. Do you seriously think the government would dare do anything like that? And even if they would, first, it would leave things a bit tighter for me, but I would not be without income; and second, it would cause one hell of an uproar in the population in general, and much can be done, far short of the bloody revolution you so earnestly desire, to restore the monthly Social Security check.

By the way, GUEST, there is that reading disability again. Internet 2, currently in the process of being developed, will be a fiber-optic inter-university network geared primarily for university research departments and is made up of a consortium of 208 universities. It is not intended to be a replacement for the current Internet system (which, admittedly, is cobbled together with duct tape and baling wire, but it nevertheless works quite well), it is in addition to the current network.

When Internet 2 is eventually up and running, some university students may have access to it. RIAA's primary bitch is with Internet 2. Being fiber optics, the system will be so fast that the RIAA folks have horrible visions of college students downloading whole CDs and full-length DVD movies at flash speeds. They are unhappy with the standard Internet, but they are especially horrified at this prospect. So it would appear that two of the bogeymen who haunt the scary world of your imagination are going to be duking it out in the courts. It won't have much effect on us normal folks.

It would be really nice if we all had a system this fast, but it is in the works sometime in the not too far distant future, as local telephone companies (DSL) and cable systems gradually switch over to fiber-optics. It'll be just like what we have right now, only faster. Some European countries have fiber-optic systems already.

You'd better stop wasting your time trying to scare us poor ignorant sheep and get busy digging your bomb shelter.

Don Firth