Add to this that this is the second time in 6 months I have heard of a
such an incident where the net was usefull in stopping this.Reminds me of the time a guy walked into our offices and turned over
the handgun he had been toying around with the night before because
one of our staff convinced him not to use it.
Not as exciting or controversial as a suicide attempt, but an interesting
timing coincidence, no less...my next door neighbor showed up at my front
door yesterday morning holding a branch from a house plant. Her six-month
old had just eaten couple leaves off of it, and the poison control hotline
had told her to wait for symptoms before rushing the kid to the hospital.
Still, she was frantic enough to knock on our door to try to identify the
plant and it's toxicity. Bottom line, it took about 6 or 7 minutes to
identify the branch and show that it's relatively safe...the "consumer's
Internet" (just a web browser & no privledged access) serviced a practical
and immediate need.
My neighbor's now threatening to get connected, maybe with a WebTV box.
Just an interesting tidbit for the archive.
-jp