Did you ever notice how they set up good stuff, real nifty rides, way down at end of a long line of "joints" full of hawkers and talkers.

Yep, that's what they call those tents and trailers where you can "WIN" world's largest teddy bear, "joints". If you don't want to walk by these guys to get to good stuff, you have to go long way around.

If you do walk by, "jointees" or "agents", as some call 'em, are gonna be screaming at you "HEY, BUDDY" "HEY, YOU WITH THE GOOD LOOK'N MAMA!" "HEY!" to get you to come play their "game".

And, if you succumb to their calls you will find that you can "win" a prize for merely 3 or 4 times what it would cost you to buy it.

On Internet there are lots of good rides, sites you can go to fairly easy and have a good time.

I've come away from that very enlightening conference with a rather pessimistic conclusion -- That Sun Microsystems CEO Scott McNealy was correct when he said, "You have zero privacy anyway," to a group of reporters in January of 1999, but I stop FAR short of McNealy's suggestion that we should . . . "Get over it." On contrary, I suggest we all consider getting ON it and taking a wild ride to protect what little privacy we have remaining and attempt to regain ground lost since September 11.

The worst thing for privacy from 9/11 beyond innocent deaths was call for a national ID card from our good friend Larry Ellison and echoed by less enlightened members of congress. That concept was discussed in great detail at CFP2002 conference by Andrew Schulman. I highly recommend you visit following site for more information on futility of that idea. Schulman is a software litigation consultant. Click on top link under "recent work" for his paper on so-called border crossing card with direct relevance to a National ID card.

http://www.undoc.com

California State Senator Jackie Speier spoke at conference on her legislation SB773, which seeks dramatic curbs on financial institution's efforts to sell private Californians' financial information to other companies. Californians have a fighting chance at preserving privacy since we have Senator Speier working to pass privacy initiatives in state senate.

But I don't see any serious national privacy advocates within federal government since most listen when money talks before they listen to public opinion. Although there is furious activity, there is no clear leader on issue as discussed in following ComputerWorld article.

http://computerworld.com/cwi/story/0,1199,NAV47_STO61707,00.html

The USA Patriot Act had, at it's heart, national security and protection from terrorism as clearly laudable goals, but some unintended consequences leeched on to suck away some freedoms when politicians used emotion above reason to attach some privacy eroding amendments to it.