In the middle of the .com boom I did a brief stint as a kids chat room monitor. I was usually far more in tune with the language the kids in the room were using (both good and bad) than most adults would be, simply because I was listening to them talk for several hours every day of every week.

Sometimes, we did add words to a 'banned' list at the request of a parent or someone in the company, and almost always it resulted in several other kids inventing new ways to wriggle their words under the radar.

It was always far more effective to have an adult shape the conversation when things got out of hand. Often, when things were back on track, if someone used the "older" slang (you know, from two hours ago), the other kids had moved on and the group was able to police itself. I think they'll find they need to ban far less if their moderators are actively engaged.

@Keir - I think the largest problem with the net neutrality issue is that some large content providers might be more than willing to pay for a larger section of the road. Companies serving up large files (multimedia downloads, streaming media), or those with a large overhead (operating system updates) might see a pretty good financial advantage to being first in line for internet traffic.

Right now, I have equal access to all download sites. If corporations are able to buy preferential treatment, I might find that downloads from my provider of choice are significantly slower than a near competitor. If Apple pays the piper, and Amazon does not, then the Amazon music store may lose customers when people realize they're not getting the fastest downloads. Content providers already pay for their ability to serve up material - I don't think they should have to pay an extra TAX to an ISP to get that material better treatment.

I'm actually pretty happy to be reading the posts on the book here - it was nice to know when it came out and when it was available online so I could check it out while waiting for the local store to get a copy in for me. Now, I'm even happier to find out that the book tour is stopping up at Elliott Bay :)

Posts like this are making it really hard to like BBG. It's hateful, offensive, and provides no new information that hasn't already appeared (with much the same snarky, derisive tone) on other gadget blogs.

I've had good experiences and bad experiences in apple stores, but none of them were as awful as reading this post. It takes an impressive amount of crap writing to be more offensive online than a horrible salesperson in public.

I actually have a friend with one of Tor's side tables - it is setup like a marimba. It actually sounds quite beautiful, especially when played as an accompaniment to her piano.