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That is quite revisionist, but that is understandable given that the war has become extremely political. There is an argument for saying the war was a mistake, but irrational, no. At the time of the invasion there was a rational belief that Saddam still had WMD.

I disagree, but even if it was true that US intelligence thought Saddam might have WMDs, it's irrelevant. Under international law, you don't just march in and start a war because you think someone you don't like might have weapons you don't like.

As to whether it was right for them to think that... Like it or not, the UN inspection teams reported that Saddam was complying with restrictions, and that they could find no evidence that he had WMDs. Saddam's brother-in-law defected to the west and told us Saddam had no WMDs.

So it wasn't "rational", it was a decision made by disregarding available factual reports from informed people, and going entirely with gut instinct and speculation.

That is quite revisionist, but that is understandable given that the war has become extremely political. There is an argument for saying the war was a mistake, but irrational, no. At the time of the invasion there was a rational belief that Saddam still had WMD.

I disagree, but even if it was true that US intelligence thought Saddam might have WMDs, it's irrelevant. Under international law, you don't just march in and start a war because you think someone you don't like might have weapons you don't like.

As to whether it was right for them to think that... Like it or not, the UN inspection teams reported that Saddam was complying with restrictions, and that they could find no evidence that he had WMDs. Saddam's brother-in-law defected to the west and told us Saddam had no WMDs.

So it wasn't "rational", it was a decision made by disregarding available factual reports from informed people, and going entirely with gut instinct and speculation.

That's why the real solution is to announce that after a certain date, the SSN will be totally public. That there will be a web site anyone can go to, enter a name and address, and get the SSN.

It could even be done without government action being needed.

The problem we have now is companies acting as though SSN is a secret. The solution is obviously to make it so clearly non-secret that they can't afford to do that.

Pay-to-send schemes do not necessarily create a problem for free mailing lists. I've written about ways to implement pay-to-send without destroying useful things like mailing lists and without forcing your mother to pay to e-mail you.

If I create a work of art, it's also not something that anyone else will be using or benefitting from, because it's on my property. So we go back to the original supposed purpose of copyright, to entice people to distribute works of art by offering them very limited exclusivity.

Your point about ease of copying is relevant, though. If people could copy my shed without impacting my property in any way, would I have some kind of right to stop them?

This is not just hypothetical, either. The way the law has been changed, it is now illegal for you to make a copy of my house. The shed example was intentionally chosen because it is applicable, even though it seems clear to many people that it shouldn't be.

Maybe. His review of "Equilibrium" was pretty wide of the mark, though. What a stinker that was, and from the review I have my doubts that he even watched the movie.

Like many Mac users, I think it sucks. Go troll elsewhere.

I reckon the Oppo DV971H should be on every Slashdot reader's wish list.

http://meta.ath0.com/articles/2006/01/09/dvd-playe r-review-oppo-opdv971h

Well, to quote my own web site:

Either charge a subscription, or charge for the game, but don't ask me to pay twice.

If I need a subscription to play, I'm very unlikely to pay $50 for the game, because if I decide I don't like it I'm left with a $50 coaster. Games which are offline or online can get away with charging for the game itself, but it's still a bad idea if the main point is the multiplayer: A high up-front cost to join a subscription game screams "We don't think you'll stay a member for long so we'd better get some cash up front".

Monthly subscriptions don't work for me, unless they're really cheap.

Your market is people with broadband and significant disposable income. To me, that says adults with jobs. Like many adults with jobs, there are months when I don't really get any time to play video games at all.

It seems to me that it's not technically hard at all to have a "per hour" fee, capped at the cost of a monthly subscription. That would encourage casual gamers and people who aren't sure they will like the game enough to get really into it and spend hours on it every month.

I built a mini-ITX system in a cube case with a VIA C3 Nehemiah and a Seagate hard drive. Installed Gentoo, SlimServer, and daapd. Fire up iTunes anywhere on the network, click on the server icon found via Rendezvous, and there's all the music. I avoided the Shuttle systems because their fans are too noisy.

I wrote up the whole process including configuration. I finally got ALSA working this week, but I haven't updated the page with that info yet.

http://meta.ath0.com/d20/

http://meta.ath0.com/d20/