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Mirror linked here too. Ironic - and revolting - thing is that Diebold is also the company responsible for protecting the original Constitution, Declaration, and Bill of Rights.

Then should we attack Israel and every other country that breaks a UN resolution? Iraq has been by no stretch of the imagination any threat to the US or even to its neighbors since 1991. They could barely contain the Kurds. I don't pretend to whitewash Saddam's murderous regime, but we pick and choose which thugs to go after. And Saddam was no threat to us. If we were enforcing the UN resolutions why the hell wasn't the UN on board? Because the UN inspectors made it clear that they didnt need an invasion to do so. Look up "Hans Blix" on google if you want more information, but you should know this since you claim to read the news.

The fact that Saddam was uncooperative with U.N. weapons inspectors was worrisome regardless of what was known. You'd think he'd want to prove he was clean so sanctions would be lifted and Iraq could get on with normal life.

I can't account for Saddam's twisted thinking but as I said it is not our job to enforce UN resolutions, and the UN wasn't pressing for our assistance here.

Me: our intelligence agencies knew their WMD were nonexistent from the beginning and there was no threat to US national security.

You: Wow, you must have access to information that no-one else has access to.

Yeah, I do, really obscure sources like the New York Times. Even Fox news was reporting on this. I guess you missed it. The CIA (prior to the recent fuss about "yellow cake") was telling the Bushies they couldn't find an al Qaeda link and that they thought most of the evidence for WMD was weak. The Bush Administration wound up creating a separate intelligence agency in the Pentagon whose sole purpose seems to have been to produce a different intelligence estimate than the CIA. Here's an article about some of this from the Washington Post. I don't feel like doing more of your research for you; suffice to say that if you don't believe any of my claims you're free to look them up. Some links might be easy to find on the warblog I was keeping on the war for a while, if you care to look (though a lot of the links have probably expired). Also I would recommend The Agonist; he does a really good job of culling a lot of this information from mainstream news sources. I'm not in the habit of making stuff up or believing everything I read on the internet.

So it's not terrorism, it's guerilla warfare.

Talk about self serving definitions -- you define Saddam's attacks on his own people as terrorism but suicide bombers attacking the UN building and American soldiers as guerrilla warfare. I don't particularly care what you want to call it; my point is that our involvement in Iraq has increased the threat and power of Islamist fundamentalist organizations who wish to do harm to the US and who wish to institute theocratic goverments in the Middle East. Call it what you will, but I see that as a much greater threat to US national security than Saddam gassing his own people twenty years ago (as horrible as the latter admittedly is).

So how is the U.N. supposed to know if any particular dictator is just being a pain in the ass or really has something to hide? Saddam *HAD* WMDs, that's common knowledge and accepted.

If you define chemical weapons as WMD, fine, but those kind of WMD are hardly a threat to anyone (except someone who invades Iraq), and they have been an accepted part of conventional warfare since WWI. But the UN inspector Hans Blix made it clear that he was confident of the inspectors' ability to keep Iraq's WMD t

I nominate one of these images: http://nofuncharlie.com/LA/fear.html

I realize it's a joke, but it seems to me that mucking with an open standard and then closing it in order to extend their monopoly might just be a reasonable cause of action. XML is not a "trade secret," and making their version incompatible with the rest of the world's in order to force the world to adopt MS products is not "innovation." Reminds me of what they did with Kerberos a couple years ago. This may or may not be worth a lawsuit, but it would certainly be anticompetitive of them.

Homer: "hmmm, they have the internet on computers now?!"

Oh, damn.... it's already been done.

why the hell would you put mutilated Barbies on your website other than as an artistic statement? Crappy art is still art, whether nor not you're an artist. And, just for the record, you can put mutilated Barbies on your website, at least according to one court decision.

Yeah, right, because Israel's been doing such a bang-up job of preventing terrorism through their methods. Israel taught those terrorists a lesson back in 1967 and they've had no significant terrorist incidents since then.

It amazes me that the people who warn us not to cave in to terrorists are the same ones urging massive retaliation to teach them a lesson or to make sure they fear us enough to stop committing terrorist acts. Get this through your heads, folks. Massive retaliation is caving in to terrorists. It is exactly what they want us to do; read this article, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one for five very different pieces of the same puzzle. The bottom line is that massive retaliation is exactly what bin Laden wants and what terrorists want in general, since it makes them stronger. The empirical evidence is clear: Israeli policy has demonstrably led to increased terrorism. The theoretical evidence is clear: terrorists and their teachers, like the Brazilian writer cited in the first of the links above, themselves have stated quite clearly that they want massive retaliation because it will expose their enemies and unite their friends. The growing anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world, even amongst communities not directly targeted in the attacks on Afghanistan is evidence that the terrorists' plan is working. We are handing them what they want on a silver platter. And for those who are calling for a policy that will make the US "hugely feared" in the middle east, peep this: Islamic terrorists will never fear the US more than they fear Allah. Their leaders might, for a time, and most of the people in the region might, for a time, but if even .01% of the Muslim world still believes that Allah will reward them for killing Americans, that's 150,000 terrorists on the loose.

Finding and destroying the people responsible for the attacks on 9/11 is common sense, and that goal has my full support as an American and as a human being. But surely the greatest and most powerful nation in human history can find a way to crush a relatively tiny cult of ignorant thugs without driving half the world into their arms and to their defense.

Yeah, right, because Israel's been doing such a bang-up job of preventing terrorism through their methods. Israel taught those terrorists a lesson back in 1967 and they've had no significant terrorist incidents since then.

It amazes me that the people who warn us not to cave in to terrorists are the same ones urging massive retaliation to teach them a lesson or to make sure they fear us enough to stop committing terrorist acts. Get this through your heads, folks. Massive retaliation is caving in to terrorists. It is exactly what they want us to do; read this article, or this one, or this one, or this one, or this one for five very different pieces of the same puzzle. The bottom line is that massive retaliation is exactly what bin Laden wants and what terrorists want in general, since it makes them stronger. The empirical evidence is clear: Israeli policy has demonstrably led to increased terrorism. The theoretical evidence is clear: terrorists and their teachers, like the Brazilian writer cited in the first of the links above, themselves have stated quite clearly that they want massive retaliation because it will expose their enemies and unite their friends. The growing anti-American sentiment in the Islamic world, even amongst communities not directly targeted in the attacks on Afghanistan is evidence that the terrorists' plan is working. We are handing them what they want on a silver platter. And for those who are calling for a policy that will make the US "hugely feared" in the middle east, peep this: Islamic terrorists will never fear the US more than they fear Allah. Their leaders might, for a time, and most of the people in the region might, for a time, but if even .01% of the Muslim world still believes that Allah will reward them for killing Americans, that's 150,000 terrorists on the loose.

Finding and destroying the people responsible for the attacks on 9/11 is common sense, and that goal has my full support as an American and as a human being. But surely the greatest and most powerful nation in human history can find a way to crush a relatively tiny cult of ignorant thugs without driving half the world into their arms and to their defense.

For those who care, we have a brief wrap up of most Linux distros available for PPC at GNUpples. Enjoy.

Here is a link to some studies and articles on DARE programs; the evidence is pretty overwhelming that the programs are ineffective, and that DARE has used political pressure to squash legitimate criticism. DARE even funded a study in 1997 that concluded DARE was ineffective; instead of examining the conclusions, DARE chose to harass and attack the credibility of the researchers (whom they hired in the first place).

Yeah, nuking the moon would have been good for the world by making it safer for capitalist culture! I mean, look at the decadence that has ensued as a direct result of not nuking the moon. Elian's father wants to stay in Cuba. Micros~1 was declared a monopoly. In general, commie threats abound!! Remember the lines of people in the former Soviet Union waiting to buy bread!! That would never happen in a capitalist country, where we only line up for Pokemon!! I say let's finish the Cold War properly and nuke the moon today!!

Commodore Sloat

You hate double standards? Why is it ok for you to deprive the poor helpless advertiser of the revenue they need to keep their cupboards stocked with Ramen noodles, but it is not ok to similarly deprive poor crybaby Lars of the revenue he might have had if you bought his crappy CD instead of downloading it?

You will say, the difference is legality - distributing illegal mp3s is illegal whereas junkbuster is not yet illegal. Frankly, if the advertisers had their way, they would make it illegal, just like the RIAA and other corporate captains of consciousness have had their way with the laws for years (trading cassette tapes is illegal, even though the RIAA has not gone after cassettes since the OTA answered their arguments in this study back in 1989). I mentioned this before - all the arguments are the same; the only change is the technology. Record companies (and, more importantly, artists) should embrace the implications of the new technologies and come up with a business model that allows them to profit off the new medium. This excellent article in Red Herring suggests just that, if anyone wants to read something more articulate than my own words. (heh - but if you want more of my own ranting, read more on nofuncharlie

You're right that Metallica is just telling Napster to enforce their own rules by handing them 300000 names. But it's notable that they only did that after they started the lawsuit. Which suggests the lawsuit was filed in bad faith and that their real goal was extortion of money from Napster, Inc. rather than "protecting intellectual property." (By the way, Lars claimed in the Metallica chat that their goal was to put Napster Inc. out of business). And I suspect that their real goal in "naming names" is intimidation of their fans rather than any desire to see "justice" done.

Someone else pointed out that trying to stop "piracy" by attacking Napster is like trying to soak up the ocean with a sponge. These millionaires are whining because they see that their unfettered monopoly over artists and consumers is soon coming to an end. The Commodore says, tough luck: evolve or die.

Commodore Sloat

I made it too and agree with all of the above. I posted my feelings briefly here and the transcript should be available here. The lamest thing of all was the way Metallica left the chat without even saying they were leaving. And it was clear they only saw the questions they answered, not the actual stuff going on in the chatrooms.

Forget him then. The only decent thing he's done recently is sign Eminem. Read my coverage of this on nofuncharlie here and here. This is not about "piracy" at all in my mind. Sure there are plenty people downloading copyrighted music out there, but there are also plenty of people taping stuff off the radio. CD sales are up despite napster and despite CD-R availability, and studies have shown that the people who copy music are also more likely the people buying more records. They also spread the news of new music to their friends who also buy more records. And mp3 may be better quality than tape but it ain't that great. This isn't about piracy at all - it's about an industry that is afraid to change with the times. Get over yourself, Dre, and take a hint from your buddy Chuck D: the reason the industry is scared of napster is because it gives small unknown artists the power of distribution without having their work extorted by music industry gatekeepers!

Forget him then. The only decent thing he's done recently is sign Eminem. Read my coverage of this on nofuncharlie here and here. This is not about "piracy" at all in my mind. Sure there are plenty people downloading copyrighted music out there, but there are also plenty of people taping stuff off the radio. CD sales are up despite napster and despite CD-R availability, and studies have shown that the people who copy music are also more likely the people buying more records. They also spread the news of new music to their friends who also buy more records. And mp3 may be better quality than tape but it ain't that great. This isn't about piracy at all - it's about an industry that is afraid to change with the times. Get over yourself, Dre, and take a hint from your buddy Chuck D: the reason the industry is scared of napster is because it gives small unknown artists the power of distribution without having their work extorted by music industry gatekeepers!

Commodore Sloat

Commodore Sloat

Commodore Sloat

Commodore Sloat

Commodore Sloat

Read more at nofuncharlie.com and RTMark.