from: (http://foxsports.news.com.au/story/0,8659,10123846-23210,00.html)
GREEK police today said they stumbled across a cannabis plantation
during the Olympic torch relay through the Island of Crete at the weekend.
The plantation, covering 185 metres, was spotted at the base of a gully
in the north-east of the island by a police helicopter which was carrying
out aerial surveillance of the relay.
The torch arrived in Crete following a 78-day, 34-city tour of the
world's five continents.
It is now on a 7000-runner tour of Greece before arriving in Athens for
the August 13-29 Games.
OK, so this evening, I had to shut down, for the time being, the comments section of this web site. Why? Because spam has now taken over many of the more open communities' forums. It used to be you could swing by a site, look at the forums, maybe even post, sometimes anonymously. But all too many sites have been brought down by massive spam posted to web sites with open posting policies.
One of the beautiful things about Mind Space, or so it used to be, was open dialogue. This included the empowerment of people with being able to post anonymously. But now, everything is increasingly tracked. In order to post to a site, you are usually required to register and log in. Of course most of this can be filled-in with bogus info, but then many servers still maintain logs which record your IP address.
Sadly, we're not losing our voice to some worthy foe. Instead, it's blatant consumerism. Spam! It's the sediment that is clogging our medium, and before too long, this too will have faded from usefulness.
Seems like it would serve the Powers That Be well to cripple the Internet. It really is the last vestige of a free society. We see all kinds of regulation regarding breasts and F words, but how much in the way of USEFUL regulation, that is beneficial to consumers, geared to reduce spam and the virtual hi-jacking of the Internet?