Membership models proliferate online where sites seek our opinions and want us to "join in." Most successful web sites encourage visitor participation and feedback in discussion forums.

Ebay asks for ratings of active sellers from buyers of their products. The highest ratings earn more business. Amazon publishes reader reviews of purchased books and encourages you to "Be first to review this book!" People read those reviews and appreciate them.

Personalization and community building are incorporated into all of major portals. Discussion forums are available at every one of major online publishers. The web encourages communication and sharing of knowledge - not hoarding, hiding and greedily seeking to outsmart consumer.

America Online pioneered in community building and was rewarded with rapid growth and customer loyalty. I believe they have lost their way now as greed leads them to keep a fence around their technology, refusing to allow their AIM instant messaging system to be accessed by non-members.

Greed, exclusion, proprietary systems and monopolistic megacorporations are giving way to community, inclusion, open source code and peer-to-peer sharing and swapping of information. As long as old ideas are applied to web it will go nowhere. Napster was killed by monster.

Online content providers are talking "Digital Rights Management" and seeking ways to "monetize content", which simply means monopolizing information. Scarcity doesn't work online. Community building, cooperation and being helpful, open, giving and sharing does work.

Businesses that work those traditionally feminine ideas into their online vision will be winners on web.

Next time Judge Jackson sees a horrific criminal act and is tempted to pronounce evildoer a bad boy, he'll likely temper his statements, something on order of, "Uh-uh-uh! Don't do that!" Then shut his mouth tight as he sentences crook to life in prison for ... "doing something that is not allowed in our society." Don't say anything bad to them.

The problem is that Microsoft is made to appear victim of unfair judgement when judge can't contain his disdain for absurdly monopolistic practices that have Microsoft ruling not only Planet PC, but Planet Earth.

I am occasionally tempted to trade in my Macintosh for a PC because I'm so frustrated that I MUST have Windows to run applications I need to have. I've occasionally considered purchasing Microsoft Macintosh version of software so that I can view PowerPoint presentations or upgrade from my old Word version 6.0 for Mac because it garbles text from new Word Documents. But ultimately, I just can't do it.

I won't. I can't even stand fact that new Mac specific software emulates look and feel of Microsoft products. It was other way round in beginning, before Bill copied Mac OS and put it on a PC and called it Windows. It angers me that Internet Explorer comes with Mac OS. It drives me nuts that WebTrends and Web Position Gold only come in Windows versions.

Linus Torvald is a personal hero to me. Open source is only answer to ridiculous Microsoftopoly. My iMac and I will stick it out and beg Steve Jobs to slay Giant. Or even an unbiased zipper-lipped judge could do it, as long as he doesn't talk about his opinion, just enforces it.