Subject: Holiday Greetings...

From: Jan Labanowski <jkl)at(ccl.net>
Date: Tue, 23 Dec 2003 18:35:10 -0500 (EST)

Dear CCL,

The new year is coming...  And the Holiday season is starting or ending...
We usually feel something warm about this time of the year, yet, it is
getting cold here in Columbus, Ohio. But not too cold... And we look towards
a white snow to make everything look serene and pure (oh, well, these
damned salt trucks will spoil everything, unless you are already out there,
where, the trees smell...).  We should be happy, even when the "orange"
threat level is announced and the credible intelligence sources profess doom.
Many of you will not even read this message on time, since they pulled
the plug from the wall, and allowed their monitor screen to get dark.
I will try to do some of this too, though the crackers nights are coming,
and the viruses are brewing in those thousands of abandoned and helpless
desktops left vulnerable to hackers who want to convert them into spam
belching monsters. Some of you may remember the Internet of 10 years ago...
When we used "finger" to check if our friend sits in front of his computer.
And when the e-mail message was a touch from a fellow or friend. New mail
arrived... Who can this be?... Oh well... This is history now...
Some of us look at our mailboxes with disgust, sorting though tons
of garbage... Some wonder how many relevant messages the spam filters
removed from our view. Some just stopped using e-mail... Human nature
once again took a gift from heaven and turned it to waste. To some extent
it probably happens due to passive acceptance of all of us, who assume
that if something is legal, and if there is money to be made on this,
it will happen, whether we want it or not. The "good" and "bad" does not
exist anymore, since it tends to be biased -- my "good" may not be your
"good". So we let lawyers decide. Socially unacceptable behavior does not
bring the condemnation... For the most part, we are all anonymous, and there
is no society any more. And we escape this loneliness and lack of belonging
by embracing our families (which again, statistically, we tend to change
much too often...). The CCL gives me some sense of belonging, beside
my other environments. I hope it also gives the same sense to you.
Now the warning... CCL may go through a few convulsions... I will need
to move it to another IP address space and to new computers... Be patient
with me... If it does not work for a few days, just keep trying.
Some issues are totally beyond my control, and some problems will just
attest that I am learning how to deal with registrars, name servers,
and legal mambo-jumbo... But let us hope for the seamless transition.

Happy Holidays and best of luck and happiness in the coming 2004.

Jan Labanowski
jkl)at(ccl.net/jkl)at(ccl.net/jlabanow)at(nd.edu