CompuServe Messages

Jim: _Forbes_ had a cover story a few months back on computer forgery. They gave some of their reporters some moderately expensive, but readily available, desk top computer/scanner/printer equipment. That, the right paper (which they found in Manhattan) and a couple low-tech hand tools permitted them to forge a $3,500 check on _Forbes_ corporate account WHICH THEIR BANK CLEARED. It's a problem. But, if computers are criminalized, only criminals will own computers, donchaknow. While we wrangle on about STNG, the fact is that we, here on CIS, are in fact the current equivalent of those who boldly go where no one has gone before. CD technology is making the music business crazy. Faxes were an integral part of both the aborted revolution in China, and the so far successful ones in Eastern Europe. Computer/telecomm technology is making the transmission and duplication of the products of the human mind instant — and will continue to wrench our society for the foreseeable future. I heard on the radio the other day that advanced mathematics (per PhD and Nobel level) transmission, elaboration and finte tuning of new concepts has reached the point that, what took years through learned journals just five years ago is now accomplished in days on nets like CIS. And we're just scratching the surface. ?|^] Ray Lewis