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The Washington Post thinks that "This service is an embarrassment to the company that gave the world the Walkman.".

The impact however, which Sony has on culture, society and laws is certainly no laughing matter.

*) Don't bother if you are not using IE; I quote from the link:

We appreciate your interest in the Connect music store, but our store currently only works with Internet Explorer 5.5 and above. You don't seem to be using that particular browser at the moment, so, unfortunately, we'll have to part ways until we support the browser you're currently using or you upgrade to the latest version of Internet Explorer. Please click the Download link below if you'd like to upgrade now.

The MSNBC article is based on the first version of the Reuters report, which misquotes the FSF on the provisions concerning software patents. Reuters has meanwhile updated the story. Here's a few links to the new and corrected version of the story:
Washington Post
eWeek
Reuters.com

Many researchers have been able to replicate the Pons/Fleischmann experiment, and apparently SRI, have had some success... yet all we hear about is hot fusion, which appears to be a dead end.

Perhaps if the resources which get diverted to hot fusion, had been invested in low-energy fusion, we would have a workable technology in production now. Shame it was unfairly demonised...

These same people are now sayuing "screw new orleans bunch of savages". Sure there are scumbags causing trouble there .. but a vast majority of people are there because they didnt have the means (no cars & buses) to evacuate in time ..let me stress that not every new orleans person is involved in looting.

This is evidence of a primitive, savage mentality, and occurs in every country with concentrations of third world people:

L'HAY-LES-ROSES, France, Sept. 4 -- Firefighters treating survivors of a blaze that killed 15 people Sunday at a housing project were pelted with stones by youths complaining of a tardy response, in what the mayor called a "night of horror." Police said it appeared local youths were to blame for the pre-dawn fire in the 19-story project south of Paris

These same people are now sayuing "screw new orleans bunch of savages". Sure there are scumbags causing trouble there .. but a vast majority of people are there because they didnt have the means (no cars & buses) to evacuate in time ..let me stress that not every new orleans person is involved in looting.

This is evidence of a primitive, savage mentality, and occurs in every country with concentrations of third world people:

L'HAY-LES-ROSES, France, Sept. 4 -- Firefighters treating survivors of a blaze that killed 15 people Sunday at a housing project were pelted with stones by youths complaining of a tardy response, in what the mayor called a "night of horror." Police said it appeared local youths were to blame for the pre-dawn fire in the 19-story project south of Paris

..you are not alone.

Bullshit.

The disaster recovery's issues lie with the New Orleans and State's lack of preperation, not the Federal Government. 205 buses that belong to the City of New Orleans, that could have carried 13,000 people away were left in thier lots and are now sunk.

http://www.cityofno.com/portal.aspx?portal=46&tabi d=26

"Other federal and state officials pointed to Louisiana's failure to measure up to national disaster response standards, noting that the federal plan advises state and local emergency managers not to expect federal aid for 72 to 96 hours, and base their own preparedness efforts on the need to be self-sufficient for at least that period. "Fundamentally the first breakdown occurred at the local level," said one state official who works with FEMA. 'Did the city have the situational awareness of what was going on within its borders? The answer was no."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/09/03/AR2005090301653_4.html

Measuring from the passage of the storm from the target area -- say 1500 hours on Monday, The Plan would therefore expect federal aid at the earliest at midday Thursday. Does this excuse any bureaucratic errors that we will find to have been made? No. But it should put the federal response in perspective.

Read through ANNEX I: HURRICANES - PREPAREDNESS (PHASE I: TRAINING, EXERCISES AND EDUCATION) and count the number of times New Orleans dropped the ball on this.

The EROEI of oil shale is around 3:1, whereas that of conventional oil is 35:1 - oil shale can not replace conventional oil. Nothing can unfortunately. Not all of the refinery capacity will be recovered - several of the refineries have sustained a lot of damage: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/09/04/AR2005090400999.html It might be months before some of them are back online. This coupled with the loss of around 30 rigs in the gulf (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti cle/2005/09/04/AR2005090400999.html) may well have long term implications for the US. There are indications that demand is very nearly exceeding supply, and things will become very challening once we pass that point.

The EROEI of oil shale is around 3:1, whereas that of conventional oil is 35:1 - oil shale can not replace conventional oil. Nothing can unfortunately. Not all of the refinery capacity will be recovered - several of the refineries have sustained a lot of damage: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/09/04/AR2005090400999.html It might be months before some of them are back online. This coupled with the loss of around 30 rigs in the gulf (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/arti cle/2005/09/04/AR2005090400999.html) may well have long term implications for the US. There are indications that demand is very nearly exceeding supply, and things will become very challening once we pass that point.

The entire population of the USA is ~280 million. That number includes all manner of folks who are ineligible to vote, such as children, felons, etc. I don't have a ready figure on the number of eligible voters, but it is CERTAINLY NOT 351 million.
When folks start using wildly inaccurate figures while ranting and raving, is it any wonder no one believes anything they say? A little truth goes a long way...

Just for the record: Bush officially won 62.02 million votes, while Kerry won 59.02 million. Interestingly, the reported percentage of eligible voters was 60.7%, supposedly the highest percentage since 1968. Hm.

What I liked most was that he was a true federalist. Even if I didn't always like his decisions, he understood that the US government is a limited government.

Maybe if you're colorblind. The whole problem with the "activist judge" label is that it merely a term for a judge who makes decisions that displease the right wing of the Republican party. A judge can make a straight ruling based on the Constitution and be labeled an "activist" (see just about any ruling on school prayer). However if a judge pulls stuff out of his ass on a regular basis he's not an "activist" if the right wing likes his decisions. See Roy Moore for an example.

As for Rehnquist personally, it was hard for him to find an expansion of law enforcment powers he didn't like or an unreasonable search and seisure he didn't approve. That doesn't sound "limited" to me.

There's plenty of blame to go around. You wanna keep score? That's one against the mayor, 5 against the Federal government. Your turn.

With the level of support sent by the US to disasters around the world (like the Boxing Day Tsunami), I wonder if the rest of the world is trying to help the US now?

A quick Google News reveals this article: "By Friday, offers had been received from Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Bahamas, Belgium, Britain, Canada, China, Colombia, Cuba, Dominica, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, France, Germany, Greece, Georgia, Guatemala, Guyana, Honduras, Hungary, Iceland, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Jordan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Paraguay, the Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovak Republic, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela and the United Arab Emirates."

Some of the more interesting offers include:

Venezuela - "apart from the million dollars in monetary assistance, Venezuela is offering two mobile hospital units, each capable of assisting 150 people, 120 specialists in rescue operations, 10 water purifying plants, 18 electricity generators of 850 KW each, 20 tons of bottled water, and 50 tons of canned food."

Cuba - "1,100 doctors and 26 tons of medicine and equipment."

France - "a range of aircraft and two ships, with helicopters and planes capable of airlifting tons of supplies, a disaster unit with 20 soldiers, a civil defense detachment of 35 people and an airborne emergency unit"

Germany - "medical evacuation planes and airlift field hospitals, water purification systems and portable shelters"

Of course, one could criticise these offers as oppertunistic publicity-seeking, but then the same could be said of political photo-ops like Bush 'comforting survivors'.

Oddly enough, I found this quote in the washington post:

Bush told ABC-TV: "I'm not expecting much from foreign nations because we hadn't asked for it. I do expect a lot of sympathy and perhaps some will send cash dollars. But this country's going to rise up and take care of it."

Michael

And the precious irony is that the French Quarter - you know, the heart of NO's lascivious nightlife, Bourbon St. et al - is one of the least damaged parts of NO north of the Mississippi. While parts of the city had almost twenty feet of water, the water on Bourbon St. itself was only waist deep (and is now empty), and other parts of the area had no water at all.

By the way - your quote reminded me a bit of Do Gays Cause Tornadoes? (a statistical analysis).

Too bad the 256th (Louisiana) and 155th (Mississippi) weren't in the US - they have key engineering and support battalions (the 256th being some of the best equipped in the US military) that could have been incredibly useful here. Who'd have guessed that the same logistics, engineering, and support skills that they have in Iraq would prove so important at home? :P At least (70%?) of the Louisiana National Guard was still there, even if their most applicable units weren't - they need all the manpower that they can get.

This year it was announced that FEMA is to "officially" lose the disaster preparedness function that it has had since its creation. The move is a death blow to an agency that was already on life support. In fact, FEMA employees have been directed not to become involved in disaster preparedness functions, since a new directorate (yet to be established) will have that mission.

We spend millions to provide MREs to Africa/Asia; spending billions on our own people shouldn't be a problem.

I don't know that gouging is necessary to ensure a healthy profit and encourage rebuilding. I'm quite sure "getting rich" instantly is not necessary for construction projects to be worthwhile.

But I must emphasize your 1000x underestimation of US aid to Africa. Please note that we spend Billions in Africa (with a 'B') just to fight AIDS and that's not enough!: There remains today a huge gap between the estimated annual needs of $3-4 billion for HIV/AIDS and current annual expenditures.

Bush has refused to endorse Blair's plan to double aid to Africa from rich nations to $25 billion annually now and $50 billion each year starting in 2015.

The White House has not decided how much more direct assistance to Africa it will offer at the G8 summit. The United States provides $3.2 billion in aid and much more through Bush's AIDS program, which calls for $3 billion a year to be spent combating the deadly disease, of which about 80 percent is expected to go to Africa. About half of the $5 billion Bush has promised from the Millennium Fund, which provides financial assistance to governments that commit to democratic and economic reforms, will go to Africa.

While giving to money to help ease the Katrina-related suffering is eminently laudible, please do not do so through the Salvation Army.

The Salvation Army is an rather strident anti-gay evangelical Christian organization. For example, they lobbied the Bush administration to add anti-gay provisions into the faith-based initiative legislation.

Please give by some alternate means, such as the Red Cross.

Yeah It's hard to believe.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/30/AR2005083000848.html

mp3.washingtonpost.com
fixed your link. :)

Washington Post writeup on this

Thats funny, "yesterdays" article detailing how unsophisticated attacks against US DoD systems with no information classified more than "for official use only" for a large part had asian source ip`s turned into the chinese goverment being involved in massive and organized spying.

I guess the crack team of investigative reporters at time have some hard evidence of chinese goverment involvement? I mean before pointing the finger they wouldn`t go with the guess of one civilian who was recently fired over cracking chinese routers to find who did this would they? Could time sink as low as to casually mention the "Attacks bounced through unsecured asian hosts where no police effort can be expected to find the real attackers" explanation only to continue with page after page of aligation? Nah even if it would help them sell a few more copies to people who are already scared of China and all the "cyberterrorism" stuff.

Ofcourse the US fearmongering around china isn`t incidental. If you are part of a defense project that even the dumbest senators and taxpayers can see isn`t gonna stop even half a terrorist then you have to point to another threat that looks like, say, cold war era soviet russia. There are plenty of these projects:

• nuclear bunker busters
• missile defense based on rockets that don`t leave the launchpad and if they do miss targets by only a little bit (as long as the targets fly a carfully aranged route ofcourse). Anyway, to be absolutely safe, lets not test this system again, it might fail again and enemies (in nuclear weapons states/congress) might read about that and then they might lose their fear of the US having/not having such a system)
• and ofcourse the stealth spysats that are only a few billion more expsensive but that are also somewhat harder to spot by an amateur with a cheap telescope and a computer. Thats ofcourse compared to the normal spysats that are not stealthy but that realy are much much more.... impresivily over budget to the point where the all importand radar imaging sensors get dropped.

Lots of projects means lots of people in those projects means lots of people out of a job if the project get canceld to fund say competent airport security personal hired at a pace that does allow for decent selection and training. So people point to china as the new superpower threat.

Also the fact that these systems don`t help at all against ied`s targetting soldiers on police missions to prevent civil wars starts to piss people of, but hey, lets put weapons in space anyway.

That said I do think the Chinese are behind this. China is famous for its reliance one open source inteligence and cracking hosts with non classified information is only a small step further from normal web browsing. Ofcourse it is nothing like cracking the networks with top secret stuff on them (like siprnet host). But if you stay away from smil.mil and sgov.gov you get plenty of easy targets without drawing to much attention. This has been going for how many years?. You might get information thats interesting if you have the manpower to study the huge loads of documents you get. Also the militairy/industrial/space targetting fits with China`s efford to get western style high tech weapons though cloning the western ones. But none of this means the chinese don`t just buy their documents at a few bucks a gigabyte from some russian who did botnet when he was a kid and now does this with botnets on the side though.

Anyway, if western reporters would just get of their asses and send someone over to china we would know for sure. There is no way you can talk to a couple a chinese weapons enineers and not have one of them brag about where they get their ideas. Cleverly stolen or cleverly designed sound like exciting answers to give to an reporter. Western engineers already have pointed out simalairities between chinese and western weapon systems. Ofcourse they could fin

BTW, you may not think you're a "Bushevik", but with your complaints that research isn't showing value, etc, etc, you may as well be. Research is showing value. It always has. Despite this, funding is being cut from NSF and NIH, and diverted to military spending and homeland security. This leads to a distortion of scientific priorities, e.g. towards biowarfare and away from public health, which can properly be seen as part of the massive fear-driven distortion of US priorities following 9/11. Yes, go ahead, accuse me of being driven solely by blinkered public-sector greed again; that's what you faux-libertarian nobs do best; regardless, that's the context to your comments attacking NSF. Maybe you'd like to take a pop at the UN next? In the least-Bushlike way possible, of course. See, no matter how anti-Bush you claim you are, no matter how nuanced and unique you think your particular "indignant-taxpayer" drone may sound, in the end it's indistinguishable from the chorus of similar voices on the right wing. Especially in its rampant nationalism. "But I hate Bush," you cry, oblivious to the fact that the main problem with most self-styled opponents of Bush is that they sound exactly like Bush on so many issues....

And which large profitable airline would that be? If you are talking the United States, there is only one - Southwest. And since you didn't seem to know, Southwest hedged 85% of its fuel expenses through the end of 2006 at the equivalent of $26 per barrel, not the $60+ it is running presently. And those fuel hedges are running out, and I don't think any banks are willing to bet like that again.

http://news.airwise.com/story/view/1111087731.html

http://www.time.com/time/globalbusiness/printout/0 ,8816,1074147,00.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A551 40-2005Apr14.html

Do the math on that, and its closer to 40% - 50% of operating costs when that runs out; Southwest has freely admitted that it would be losing money just like all the other large U.S. airlines if it was paying market prices for fuel. Presently, Continental and Southwest have industry leading CASMs of about $.09 when running 737s, of which about $.04 is fuel. Make fuel $400 per barrel, and your fuel CASM goes to about $.32, leading to a total CASM of $.37, an increase a factor of 4, not 2.

In addition, if the price of a seat goes up by a factor of 4, a tremendous amount of traffic will die away, which means either the airlines will have to park a tremendous number of airplanes with expensive leases, raise the ticket prices even more than 4 times to cover it, go into bankruptcy to cover the leases, etc. - airlines do NOT shrink in size easily, because they have such high initial capital costs for equipment.... But let's assume that the prices "only" go up by a factor of four.

Hotel in the U.K. (figures taken from friend who just came back)
75 pounds/night / .554 pounds/USD * 21 nights = $2,843 hotel cost.

Flight round trip EWR to Heathrow on Continental (SWA doesn't go international): today's cost: $729.00 round-trip. Times 4? $2,916.

Your holiday just got more expensive.

But I agree with you that $400 a barrel for oil will have much more significant effects than doubling your holiday cost. Quadruple the cost of anything that has to be transported or farmed.

I simply was pointing out that DIA is a symbol of an industry that has peaked, and is on the way downhill, like vinyl records, incadescent light bulbs and CRT manufacture. And it's a bit depressing for me.

I'm sorry, but not denouncing Pat Robertson for the Assassination remark, clearly shows what the current administration has as values to the international community in regard to terror. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/24/AR2005082400331.html

With stem cell research, you're talking about taking cells from something that hasn't even evolved beyond a tiny ball of cells---far less alive than that infant---and yet most parents would gladly give up that infant's organs so that someone else's child might live, but a surprisingly high number of those same people would not be willing to give up a handful of cells from a frozen embryo so that adults can live.. It's an appalling ethical contradiction.

1. You mean it has not developed beyond a ball of cells. Human embryos, since they are by definition part of the human species, have evolved the same as you and me.

2. The cases of embryo and infant would only be parallel if it were a question of the parent choosing to destroy a healthy infant.

3. At this date, embryonic stem cells do not help adults to live. They are used for research.

The researchers hope one day to make useful therapies from this work. But the therapies do not yet exist.

To call it anything other than research is overselling. It will probably lead one day to a backlash, much as the overly-hyped promotion of "gene therapy" of the early 1990s has led to criticism, restrictions, and poor PR starting in 1999 and continuing through 2005.

Now teachers would not be a group that has a pre-existing bias, would they?

From the study

"One study showed that children who played a violent game for less than 10 minutes and then took a mood assessment test rated themselves with aggressive traits and aggressive actions shortly after playing.

Teachers of 600 8th and 9th graders, aged 13 to 15, said children who spent more time playing violent video games were more hostile than other children and more likely to argue with authority figures and other students. "

It would have been interesting if they asked the kids the next day what actual violent acts they committed.

Yeah, I suppose the easy way for the US to deal with this is to actually sign the treaty, then ignore it... like the Europeans.

But Republicans apparently believe that the environment is nothing more than an infinitely exploitable resource, so while 153 countries do their part, the world's #1 greenhouse gas polluter continues to belch out 25% of the world's CO2.

Time for a little history lesson, isn't it? Perhaps you'll recall the Democrats controlled the Senate for three years after Kyoto was signed, and it never came up for a vote because the Democrat-controlled Senate wouldn't ratify it. You see, neither party is really itching to commit political suicide. If the Dems regain control of the Senate in 2006, one thing you can be sure of is Kyoto still won't come up for a vote unless it's substantially modified.

This unsubstantiated rumor came out within days of 9-11. It sounded plausible -- at least worth checking into. But years and years of detailed study of the event has repeatedly and conclusively demonstrated that it was not true. The only people still repeating it are grossly misinformed. Yet there are still people, such as Newt Gingerich, repeating the claim in 2005, more than 3 years later. He said, "Far more of the 9/11 terrorists came across from Canada than from Mexico." You'd think politicians speaking on news programs about the subject, and the news people asking them questions, wouldn't be so (ahem) misinformed, but apparently they are (other politicians have repeated the same error). At least Gingerich had the grace to apologize for the error, but it makes you wonder what the heck the 9-11 commission was for if basic facts get ignored like this.

Please get it through your head: NONE of the hijackers came into the US from Canada or Mexico. NONE. ZERO. Anything otherwise is an urban myth. As far as I can remember, ALL the hijackers got into the U.S. legally with visas.

The only guy that might be relevant in a discussion like this is Rassam, who entered the US from Canada (I think it was from Quebec or Ontario) with the intent to bomb LAX. He was caught at the border, and apparently had nothing to do with 9-11 anyway.

Look, it was possible that Canada could have been the way the terrorists got in on 9-11, but it did not happen that way. Canadians are still deeply mindful of the possibility, and the implications if terrorists ever did get in that way. Canada does not want this to happen, ever. But we have to go through the same debates about acceptable measures as the US does.

The power for police to wire-tap e-mail without court order goes too far, in my opinion. It should be subject to the same procedures as phone taps.

You mean the budding police state to the south?

Um, yeah, I can really see a "family-friendly" magazine carrying strips like this, or this, or even this (one of my favorites). Even the Washington Post got flack back when For Better or Worse ran a storyline with about a gay character. Can you imagine the uproar generated from just a *week* of Gabe and Tycho's standard fare?

Don't get me wrong, PA makes me laugh more than any other gaming comic out there, but it's not something that I would want my baby daughter reading on the Sunday comics page.

"he is willing to oust as many as 50 senior managers in a housecleaning rivaling the purge after the 1986 Challenger explosion."

Pretty harsh...

In fact in 1950 the average American family paid 2% in taxes. Today that average American family pays 27% in taxes to the federal government. Oddly enough the difference, 25%, is what the average second wage earner makes in America today.

Increasingly, Computer Game Playing (or, rather, Computer manipulation) is becoming a skill of some importance. For example, there was a recent article in the Washington Post about Coal Mining in Virginia:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/artic le/2005/08/14/AR2005081401174.html

Our tastes have dictate that we cook meat; texture, flavor and temperature are enhanced by many of our tried and trued cooking methods. We have come to like cooked foods better, but not because raw (or rare) meats will kill you. The current problem that the grandparent post complains about doesn't have to do with cooking the meat, but cooking the bacteria on the meat and the parasites in the meat. Meats are now overcooked (to the tastes of some) to make sure that we are not being served bacteria.

Where do these hazards come from? Some have always been there, like trichinosis in pigs. Some are new, like the increasing amount of E. coli on our beef. Why are we getting more bacteria on our beef? Modern slaughterhouses run their line speeds at rates that are too fast for the meat packers to assure that they aren't cutting into the intestines of the cows. Every time they do so, more bacteria enters our beef supply

Why not just walk up to a cow and take a bite out of their shoulder? It amounts to the same thing.

Actually, it's worse than that. Eating uncooked hamburger is the same as walking up to a cow and taking a big bite out of its rectum. Yes you get some meat, but you also get some "organ meat" and a whole raft of E. coli. Yum!

"Ask questions first, then execute."

Well, duh. They have to teach this at West Point? You can't get good intelligence from them the other way around. They won't be getting any good intelligence out of former Iraqi general Abed Hamed Mowhoush, for example.

The Oklahoma City bombing was 10 years ago. Here let me help:

According to The Washington Post:

"An analysis of the Justice Department's own list of terrorism prosecutions by The Washington Post shows that 39 people -- not 200, as officials have implied -- were convicted of crimes related to terrorism or national security...For the entire list, the median sentence was just 11 months...Among all the people charged as a result of terrorism probes in the three years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, The Post found no demonstrated connection to terrorism or terrorist groups for 180 of them."

Even if you allow for the fact that Bush is not using courts and using a system of secret, off-shore prisons, this seems an absurdly low number - possibly 20. I mean you would think they would at least be able to find a few people like the Unabomber or something that would at least make the argument even plausible when they talk about all these "terrorists".

I agree that supplies are tight, but that is not because there is no oil. See this and this for more information.

I have both IE and Firefox on my machine. Why? Because I can't access certain sites that are very MS specific with Firefox.

Yo, you run windows (like most slashdotters), you can't not have IE on your machine.

FWIW I use Linux, some of my friends use macs. We also can't access some sites - odeon.co.uk for example. I haven't been to the odeon for years because of this.

Sadly I can't boycott my government, which continue to have IE-only sites like jobcentreplus.gov.uk and companieshouse.gov.uk. I've made my feelings known to my MP (not that it will do much good)

I note with disappointment that I can't use several government websites, includi
ng jobcentreplus.gov.uk. As I'm sure you are aware, many people, including Mac u
sers, cannot and will not use Microsoft's Internet Explorer web browser. In fact
, due to security issues, the U.S. Government advise people to use anything but
Internet Explorer - http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A674 6-2004Jun2
5.html.

While this government is quite rightly spending money ensuring access to their f
acilities for people that don't speak English, or have disabilities, they seem t
o ignore the 10% - and growing - of the country that use "alternative" browsers
or computers.

I'm sure this situation will improve over the next few months, as the media pick
  up on this issue - http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/4115806.stm . I can -
and do - boycott companies like The Odeon that choose to ignore so many of their
  customers, however the government still take a large percentage of my income. I
  feel it is unfair to have taxation for services I cannot access due to the lazi
ness or shortsightedness of certain departments.

The ongoing large-scale executions were largely in the form of starvation.

That's not an execution - you're now trying to change your claim, given that your prior claim wasn't supported. Unfortunately, this claim is equally false (see below):

In 1999, the United Nations Humanitarian Coordinator estimated that 6,000 to 7,000 per month were dying due to starvation because Saddam was refusing food shipments allowed by the sanctions system.

Completely false. Here's what the coordinator, Dennis Halliday, actually had to say. Halliday resigned because he blamed *the UN*, and most specifically, the *US*, for the starvation deaths in Iraq. He reported that Iraq had been cooperating excellently with the program, and once described the country as a giant "soup kitchen".

The US invasion removed this obstacle that stood between Iraqis and their food.

Completely false. Children Pay Cost of Iraq's Chaos: Malnutrition Nearly Double What It Was Before Invasion

"BAGHDAD -- Acute malnutrition among young children in Iraq has nearly doubled since the United States led an invasion of the country 20 months ago, according to surveys by the United Nations, aid agencies and the interim Iraqi government."

Iraq Body Count reports 26,599 victims.

IBC only counts direct war deaths, and of those, only the ones reported in the media. The only count of all deaths came up with a number of around 100,000, and that was half a year ago. Note that they tossed Falluja as a datapoint to get this *low* of a number.

There are imaginary totals as high as 100,000 killed as a result of war activity since the allies struck in early 2003.

The "imaginary" totals that you refer to are determined from the same method used to do epidemiology studies in Africa, and met the scholastic standards of the Lancet. Read up about passive vs. active counts, and why the former (such as IBC) are guaranteed to undercount.

The rest of the message included grudging admissions that Iraq had WMD just before the invasion.

It includes no such thing. Please repeat your attempt at reading.

You attempt to get around this by claiming that the WMD were too few or too small.

No. As I informed you, the mustard gas referred to was found in 1998, and was under UN control since then; even that find was miniscule, and considered by the teams to have been overlooked by Iraq.

You even try to justify Saddam having "50 litres of Mustard Gas" by mentioning WW1.

I said no such thing. Look, if all you're going to do is make straw men, why should I even bother talking to you? I was putting the quantity of Mustard Gas into perspective. I stated that's what I was doing, and nothing more. On average in WWI, there was one chemical agent fatality for every ~2400 kg of chemical agent produced.

The existence of any WMD was a gross violation.

Any violations were to be decided by the inspection teams. The inspection teams declared no "gross violations", and the heads of both the IAEA and UNMOVIC both opposed the invasion.

In it, they mention 50 litres of Mustard Gas

That Was Bloody Well Found Five Years Prior, And Had Been In UN Control Ever Since. Furthermore, it was a find that the teams considered to have been overlooked, and they did not refer the case to the SC (the referal would have been in 1998 anyways). In the US, we have several *tons* of unaccounted for chemical agents, most of them in unexploded shells on munitions ranges, but probably elsewhere as well.

At least, at this point, no-one can argue that the WMD did not exist.

Nobody is arguing that the WMD never existed! They didn't exist when we invaded. Just because the UN had

I've heard that one of the reasons that the Russians didn't sign the Kyoto Agreement was because they are tired of the cold and *want* a warmer country.

Might be reasonable except they have signed http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A294 59-2004Nov5.html.

I'm at a loss to know how to deal with the "Ohhh, I could do with a little global warming down my way" arguement. If anyone out in cyberweb-land has modeled rapid change in average temp and found it to be kinda nifty, then please share. The only analysis I've seen falls in line with what DARPA apparently reckon's, i.e. its gonna be a bumpy nasty ride with the big kids doing unpleasant things to the little kids...http://observer.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858 ,4864237-102275,00.html

Senator Bids to Extend Indecency Rules to Cable

  Cable television shows packed with sex and profanity, such as HBO's "Deadwood," FX's "Nip/Tuck" and Comedy Central's "South Park," would be subject to the same indecency regulations that govern over-the-air broadcasts if the chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee has his way.

Currently, the Federal Communications Commission has the authority to fine only over-the-air radio and television broadcasters for violating its indecency regulations, which forbid airing sexual or excretory material between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m., when children are most likely watching.

But Sen. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) told a group of broadcasters yesterday that he wants to extend that authority to cover the hundreds of cable and satellite television and radio channels that operate outside of the government's control. In addition to basic cable channels such as ESPN, Discovery and MTV, that would include premium channels such as HBO and Showtime and the two satellite radio services, XM and Sirius.

"We put restrictions on the over-the-air signals," Stevens said after his address to the National Association of Broadcasters, according to news reports confirmed by his staff. "I think we can put restrictions on cable itself. At least I intend to do my best to push that."

ALEXANDRIA BAY, N.Y. -- Security officials gathered Monday at a Canadian border crossing to mark the first test of a radio frequency identification system to be used by foreign visitors.

If successful, radio "tags" carried by travelers will be part of the standard registration process for those entering the United States.

The technology is like that used to speed passage at toll booths on many highways, said P.T. Wright, the operations director for the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's US-VISIT Program [. . .].

  -Full story here

-FL

I've noticed something: throughout your posts, you keep mixing up the concepts of "unlikely existance" and "certain in the absense of". European governements, European populace, and much of the American antiwar populace seriously doubted the existance of such weapons. That's why we wanted the inspections: to *verify* and *certify* Iraq as WMD-free.

You seem to be hung up on the notion of certainty. Nothing in this world is ever certain - let alone when you're trying to verify quantities of objects destroyed in explosions a decade earlier. The European community and American antiwar community *seriously doubted* the existance, based on the available evidence.

The evidence *was* very dubious, and that's the reason for the aforementioned serious doubts and the insistance on inspections to verify Iraq's disarmament and certify it as weapons free.

My claim is that the notions that you advance are revisionist

What the heck? Did you not bloody well read the links that I gave you that I prepared *BEFORE THE WAR*? How can you call something that I prepared before the war "revisionist"?

If you were certain Iraq had no WMD

See, there you go with the word "certain". The proper phrase is "reasonable doubt". For example, if you check my Iraq FAQ from 2002, I described the case of Iraqi WMDs as "unlikely" - the stance taken by the majority of Europeans. You're the only one in this conversation talking about certainty.

who turned out to be correct not through analysis

Give me a frigging break. I've probably read more pages of IAEA, UNSCOM, and UNMOVIC documents in the past four years than you've read newspaper pages. I suggest you start reading. You'd probably be amazed at what they were saying, and what wasn't being reported in the US, in the months leading up to the invasion. For example, lets look at the four central conclusions of the IAEA's report right before we invaded, shall we?

* There is no indication of resumed nuclear activities in those buildings that were identified through the use of satellite imagery as being reconstructed or newly erected since 1998, nor any indication of nuclear-related prohibited activities at any inspected sites.

* There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import uranium since 1990.

* There is no indication that Iraq has attempted to import aluminium tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued such a plan, it would have encountered practical difficulties in manufacturing centrifuges out of the aluminium tubes in question.

* Although we are still reviewing issues related to magnets and magnet production, there is no indication to date that Iraq imported magnets for use in a centrifuge enrichment programme.

How *dare* you try and pretend like I was just pulling this out of my arse at the time? I was all but quoting the inspection teams with my views, as weas the majority of Europe. I suggest you bloody well better read before you reply again.

Again misrepresentation of my point

Quoting you is a misrepresentation of your point?

According to Robert Boyd (mirror), The Air Force's senior intelligence analyst:

Iraq had been suspected of trying to develop remotely piloted aircraft for more than a decade, starting with attempts to convert Soviet-made MiG-21 fighter planes. When that failed, Iraqi authorities began experimenting in the mid-1990s with transforming the Czech L-29, a trainer jet, into a UAV. That effort also went nowhere, ending in 2001, Boyd said.

The Iraqis then focused on developing several t

Look, I've provided two links from reputable sources on what the Russian intelligence agencies thought. The count is 2 me, 0 you. Time for you to catch up, instead of saying "I saw Putin say..."

It may have only been an offhand comment on TV, but I saw it.

Your own citations prove my point that at the time of the invasion no one knew whether or not Sadaam had WMD:
"Russian President Putin said on February 9, 2003, that the main task facing the international community was ascertaining whether Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), not a regime change in Iraq"
http://cns.miis.edu/pubs/week/030217.htm

Also proving my point that no one knew Iraq was WMD-free until long after the invasion, including Russia:
"Mr Putin said it was impossible to know whether the people who possessed weapons of mass destruction had been killed or whether they had just gone into hiding. "Perhaps their plan is to transfer these weapons to terrorist organisations," he said. "We simply do not know. Until we get answers to these questions we cannot feel safe and secure.""
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2F news%2F2003%2F04%2F30%2Fwput30.xml

While googling I found this interesting little bit:
"After Sept. 11, 2001, and before the start of the military operation in Iraq, the Russian special services, the intelligence service, received information that officials from Saddam's regime were preparing terrorist attacks in the United States and outside it against the U.S. military and other interests," Putin said, according to RIA Novosti, the Russian news agency.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A530 96-2004Jun18.html

The US and British were falsely accused of this Falsely? Time after time they spouted bogus information, and were told by the rest of the world that it was nonsense.

Again, you use creative editing to misrepresent what I said, you conveniently omit "intelligence was under pressure to conform their analysis to current political positions". The false accusation was not, as you misrepresent, that US and UK intel was wrong. The false accusation was that US and UK intel falsified reports to serve their political masters. US and UK investigations, 3 in the UK, have debunked that myth.

How the heck can you possibly claim that I'm revising my own beliefs, when you don't even know me?

My claim is that the notions that you advance are revisionist. If you were certain Iraq had no WMD prior to the invasion then you were pretty much alone, even anti-war states like Russia were not so sure. You would seem to be merely be a closed minded individual who turned out to be correct not through analysis but by luck, a fluke of history. Unless of course you had better intel resources in Iraq than the Russians.

"Adapting an old Mig, with the aid of duct tape"
No, no, no. Not "adapting an old Mig"

Again misrepresentation of my point. Sure the one aircraft you offer may not be impressive but that was not Sadaams entire inventory. I recall in-flight video of a drone that was not the aircraft you describe, the aircraft was clearly jet powered. My point that drones can be easily created from obsolete aircraft stands. That said, your redicule of wooden wings and a wooden propeller strongly suggests that you are way out of your league. I suggest you do a little research on aircraft such as the British Mosquito of the 1940s.

Yet I saw Putin say

Look, I've provided two links from reputable sources on what the Russian intelligence agencies thought. The count is 2 me, 0 you. Time for you to catch up, instead of saying "I saw Putin say...".

The US and British were falsely accused of this

Falsely? Time after time they spouted bogus information, and were told by the rest of the world that it was nonsense. And in most cases, it comes out that a good portion of our intelligence community thought it was bogus as well (for example, this - a must read; here's another which describes how the aluminum tubes claim really came from a small handful of analysts who were hotly disputed by the DOE, let alone the IAEA and Europe). And yet, the administration went on TV every day and made these claims, referred to rock-solid sources, claimed that there was no other explanation, and rewrote report after report to remove conditional and couched statements.

It's not "falsely accused". You seriously need to read how each of the claims got started, and how each of the reports got rewritten. They *deliberately* did this. It's not singly Bush's fault, mind you. It's the fact that he pack each agency's top with people who believed as he did, and each step that information took along its way, the originally plentiful caveats and doubts were dropped. Then the administration took those reports, and played them up still further to the public, who had no grip on the basics of chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons.

By the way, I assume that you accept by now the fact that German intelligence tried to warn the US off bogus information several times, only to have the US not only use it, but proclaim it as coming from rock-solid sources and be nails in the coffin for their case for war.

This displays the quintessential revolutionist attitude

How the heck can you possibly claim that I'm revising my own beliefs, when you don't even know me? If you doubt me, check my website, and look at the news page for Iraq. Also check out this particular page, section 7. The site has hardly been updated since the war, so it's pretty much a time capsule. Note that this was from 2002; my views, as with those of Europe, further solidified as time went on and the war approached.

In short, quit calling me a revisionist historian when you don't even know what the heck I believed at the time. I damn well know what I believed, and have documentation to prove it. These viewpoints, while rare in the US due to the god-awful job of the US media, were incredibly common in Europe; the editorials and letters to the editor in European papers from the time easily hold this out (need cites?).

How the heck can you even dream of calling this "revisionist history"? Have you never heard the name "Scott Ritter"? Did you completely forget what he was saying, and how Europe and America's antiwar population wholeheartedly agreed with him? Did you never read IAEA and UNMOVIC reports (as opposed to a US media summary of them, which were horribly cherry picked and distorted)? I'll cite plenty for you if you'd like.

Adapting an old Mig, with the aid of duct tape

No, no, no. Not "adapting an old Mig". The entire plane's structure was like something a teenager would build for a hobby. They have a picture - check it out!. This was the device that Bush tried to convince Americans was going to cross the ocean and spray deadly gas on us. Lets give some of its finer points, shall we?

* Wings made of plyboard
* Body made from an old fuel tank
* Propeller made of wood
* Held together with foil and duct tape

This could be useful for tracking sensitive documents in archives, and tracking when someone like Sandy Berger violates security and steals documents to use in a political campaign.

Microsoft as an ISP is taking the money.

U-CAN-SPAM permits AGs and ISPs to sue spammers for money. One of the things which sucks is most ISPs (in the way we think of ISPs) aren't going after them and AGs as well as the FTC serve in bulk mode: get billionz-n-billionz of examples, then ponder going after them.

It's the fault of the DMA, who essentially wrote U-CAN-SPAM. Take a gander at some of these from Jerry Cerasale, of the DMA, on June 16, 2004:

Washington Post...We agree that the consumer should have choice, that they can say 'no' to receiving further e-mail. (IOW, they demand the right for everyone to get one bite at the apple).

ZDNet.com, October 21, 2002..."We're finding that we need to give the consumers the choice to try and allow them to control their inbox, to try and say no, I don't want this, while leaving the medium open for commerce," Cerasale said.

But, Cerasale said, a federal requirement that consumers "opt in" instead of "opt out" of bulk e-mail is unacceptable. "We think the opt-in creates a true noneconomic model," Cerasale said. "We don't believe you get a viable economic model in opt-in."

Interpretation: any law which prevents businesses from making money via email is wrong. And anything which permits inbox owners to avoid getting business-oriented unless they give permission is wrong.

IOW, email serves one purpose and one purpose only: for businesses to make money. Anything impeding that is wrong and anything else is personal consumption and secondary.

But in a contradiction, here's what the DMA has to say about spyware legislation on May 25, 2005:

"The DMA strongly believes that consumers should be in control of their computers..."

Now, DMA, which is it? Do we have control or don't we?

This last quote is the newest. Does it mean they've changed their collective minds? I doubt it I don't think they realized they contradicted themselves. If confronted, they'd backpedal and perform some serious tap dancing in the process.

If you want to collect the loot yourself, set up a server, sell services to your neighbors, and you're in business as an ISP. When the spam rolls in, pay a visit to your local court and file the paperwork.

BTW, I'll say here what I said on SPAM-L: even though Richter was taken off of the ROKSO list, Richter has tasted the taste of money regardless of how it was obtained and he's sitting on millions of email addresses. He's not shutting down how he does business, despite anything he says. And he still stands to make a lot of money harvesting email addresses and selling them to others. There is nothing in U-CAN-SPAM which prohibits the harvesting and sale of email addresses, only the use of harvesting email addresses as the targets of unsolicited email.

I agree completely. However, that move should still have rightly left up to the discretion of a private party (the store owner) and not the government.

Pharmacists (like other medical personnel) are regulated by the government for the safety and welfare of all citizens. Medical personnel are not permitted to withhold treatment to anyone based on race, sex, or religious beliefs. Nor should they be able to.

I've yet to hear of this happening. Can you provide some supporting evidence, or is this a rumor? The case in question did not involve refusal to give back the prescription (that is, assuming that there was a prescription in the first place).

Here you go. Sixth paragraph.

No, an unwanted pregancy is not an ailment. It's a consequence. The natural state of the human body tends towards reproduction. The term "ailment" is defined by dictionary.com as "A physical or mental disorder, especially a mild illness." Pregnancy cannot be a disorder because a woman's body is naturally predisposed to child bearing, and sex is the natural means for pregnancy.

The relevant definition of "disorder" from the same site is:

3. An ailment that affects the function of mind or body: eating disorders and substance abuse.

It's a bit circular, but the main point is that an ailment affects the function of the mind and body. The negative mental and physical effects of pregnancy are well documented. That's not to say that a pregnancy can't be an overall positive, if it's wanted.

Pregnancy is the natural consequence of sex, in other words, it's primary biological purpose. By definition, pregnancy cannot be a disorder but it is indeed a very real consequence of sex.

Biology is not destiny. Pregnancy may be the primary evolutionary purpose of sex but we as a people do not govern ourselves according to the dictates of evolution, nor should we. Pregnancy is one possible consequence of sex; it is not the only or even (I would argue) the most important.

When did I ever argue against preventative birth control?

When you said that what the pharmacists were refusing to provide was not medicine. Birth control pills are preventative and as this article indicates, pharmacists are refusing to fill prescriptions for them.

the constitution does not guarantee a right to the "morning after" pill

The Constitution doesn't guarantee any rights. It recognizes them and provides limits on government action accordingly. The founding fathers knew that they couldn't list every right so they provided the ninth amendment, which states "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people." I'm getting pretty tired of people arguing against every right that isn't specifically mentioned in the Constitution.

The question at the heart of this issue is: Should the government have the power to force mandatory access to non-vital pills over people's rights of freedom of religion and of self-determination?

No, the question at the heart of the issue is this: Should the government have the power to require medical personnel to do their job. And the answer is YES! It's no different than a doctor refusing to perform a blood tranfusion or provide assistance to a Muslim or atheist because it's against her religion. Incidentally, birth-control and morning-after pills are as vital as almost any prescription medicine available. The majority of prescription medicine is not of the "if you don't take this you'll die" variety.

Here's a solution for people who don't want to fulfill prescriptions for medicine that violates their religious beliefs: DON'T BE A PHARMACIST.

I find it odd that the Slashd

and are still threatened with religious wackos cutting off access to healthcare services. Any basis for this charge?

Perhaps you've not heard of pharmacists refusing to fill prescriptions? Or the FDA blocking the safe and effective morning-after pill because of pressure from extremist opponents of birth control? Or the continuing attempts to restrict abortion, by means ranging from legislation to terrorism?

... and so the champions of affirmative action march

I didn't say a damn thing about "affirmative action", thank you.

I always like a good joke. But your joke wasn't very funny, and I feel uncomfortable with so many jokes about something that should be taken seriously. It seems to me that there is too much joking about this subject and not enough seriousness.

If you want the violence and the degradation of the U.S. lifestyle to stop, study the situation carefully. Below is background information you need to know to understand the Washington Post article referenced in the Slashdot story. You could gather this information yourself, but people who joke easily about this kind of thing generally don't take the time:

The SITE Institute supplied information for the Washington Post article. SITE stands for "Search for International Terrorist Entities". SITE Institute provides examples of terrorist web sites. One of them, PalestinianInfo.net, published this photograph: Photo of the day. The caption says, "Palestinian children walk on the rubble of a Palestinian house that was demolished by Israeli occupation authorities, in the east Jerusalem neighbourhood of A-tur July 5, 2005. According to the Israeli authorities, the house was demolished due to a lack of permits." It seems that the issue might not be completely one-sided.

The Arab "terrorists" believe they are fighting a war, and that violence is a solution to social problems. The U.S. government believes it is fighting a war, and that violence is a solution to social problems. I'm not saying those groups have anything else in common, just that they share two beliefs in common.

If your government chooses killing as policy, expect others to choose the same. The U.S. government began killing Arabs and Muslims and corrupting their governments long before most Arabs and Muslims thought about the United States. None of the violence was secret. It was in the newspapers and in magazines and on TV, but not in enough detail that U.S. citizens could understand the implications. I remember reading that the U.S. government overthrew a democratically elected president of Iran (Mossadegh) because he wanted his country to share more of the profits of U.S. and British oil companies doing business in Iran. The U.S. government put a weak man in power, the Shah of Iran, who became very violent toward his own citizens. Eventually, people in Iran overthrew the Shah. The U.S. government's actions de-stabilized the country and encouraged the violence that came after. For more information, see the short article, To understand the present conflict, consider the past.

As of 2005-08-08, 04:24 AM PDT, the SITE Institute says these are other terrorist web sites: http://www.kataebaqsa1.com/, http://www.moqawama.net/, and http://www.qudsway.com/. The only way you can know directly what they say in Arabic is to read Arabic. Be careful about accepting what someone else says they say. You need to be able to trust that the translator is not politically involved.

The Washington Post article says, "Hampered by the nature of the Internet itself, the government has proven ineffective at blocking or even hindering significantly this vast online presence." This sentence worries me. It seems to justify U.S. government interference with free speech. It's not clear that preventing open speech for those who disagree with the policies of the U.S. government is a sensible idea. It seems likely that knowing what they are saying is important; we don't want