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I don't think Mr Source is all that much of a techie.

Check out Washington Post article: Student Accused of Taking DirecTV Data: Hacker Sites Got Documents, FBI Says

Ask your self: How the hell did they know to image his laptop on September 11th? This means they already knew he was part of the attack, and they were already on to him. Funny how we, the people, were never warned.

Have you been living in a Cave for the past year?

You've never heard of Moussaoui?

(Recall that Massaoui was already in jail before Sep. 11. These pre-Sep. 11 e-mail search requests were rebuffed, according to FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley.)

High on the Bush administration's list of justifications for war against Iraq are President Saddam Hussein's use of chemical weapons, nuclear and biological programs, and his contacts with international terrorists. What U.S. officials rarely acknowledge is that these offenses date back to a period when Hussein was seen in Washington as a valued ally.

Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions.

The story of U.S. involvement with Saddam Hussein in the years before his 1990 attack on Kuwait -- which included large-scale intelligence sharing, supply of cluster bombs through a Chilean front company, and facilitating Iraq's acquisition of chemical and biological precursors -- is a topical example of the underside of U.S. foreign policy. It is a world in which deals can be struck with dictators, human rights violations sometimes overlooked, and accommodations made with arms proliferators, all on the principle that the "enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Throughout the 1980s, Hussein's Iraq was the sworn enemy of Iran, then still in the throes of an Islamic revolution. U.S. officials saw Baghdad as a bulwark against militant Shiite extremism and the fall of pro-American states such as Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and even Jordan -- a Middle East version of the "domino theory" in Southeast Asia. That was enough to turn Hussein into a strategic partner and for U.S. diplomats in Baghdad to routinely refer to Iraqi forces as "the good guys," in contrast to the Iranians, who were depicted as "the bad guys."

A review of thousands of declassified government documents and interviews with former policymakers shows that U.S. intelligence and logistical support played a crucial role in shoring up Iraqi defenses against the "human wave" attacks by suicidal Iranian troops. The administrations of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush authorized the sale to Iraq of numerous items that had both military and civilian applications, including poisonous chemicals and deadly biological viruses, such as anthrax and bubonic plague.

Opinions differ among Middle East experts and former government officials about the pre-Iraqi tilt, and whether Washington could have done more to stop the flow to Baghdad of technology for building weapons of mass destruction.

"It was a horrible mistake then, but we have got it right now," says Kenneth M. Pollack, a former CIA military analyst and author of "The Threatening Storm," which makes the case for war with Iraq. "My fellow [CIA] analysts and I were warning at the time that Hussein was a very nasty character. We were constantly fighting the State Department."

"Fundamentally, the policy was justified," argues David Newton, a former U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, who runs an anti-Hussein radio station in Prague. "We were concerned that Iraq should not lose the war with Iran, because that would have threatened Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. Our long-term hope was that Hussein's government would become less repressive and more responsible."

What makes present-day Hussein different from the Hussein of the 1980s, say Middle East experts, is the mellowing of the Iranian revolution and the August 1990 invasion of Kuwait that transformed the Iraqi dictator, almost overnight, from awkward ally into mortal enemy. In addition, the United States itself has changed. As a result of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, U.S. policymakers take a much more alarmist view of the threat posed by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

When the Iran-Iraq war began in September 1980, with an Iraqi attack across the Shatt al Arab waterway that leads to the Persian Gulf, the United States was a bystander. The United States did not have diplomatic relations with either Baghdad or Tehran. U.S. officials had almost as little sympathy for Hussein's dictatorial brand of Arab nationalism as for the Islamic fundamentalism espoused by Iran's Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini. As long as the two countries fought their way to a stalemate, nobody in Washington was disposed to intervene.

By the summer of 1982, however, the strategic picture had changed dramatically. After its initial gains, Iraq was on the defensive, and Iranian troops had advanced to within a few miles of Basra, Iraq's second largest city. U.S. intelligence information suggested the Iranians might achieve a breakthrough on the Basra front, destabilizing Kuwait, the Gulf states, and even Saudi Arabia, thereby threatening U.S. oil supplies.

"You have to understand the geostrategic context, which was very different from where we are now," said Howard Teicher, a former National Security Council official, who worked on Iraqi policy during the Reagan administration. "Realpolitik dictated that we act to prevent the situation from getting worse."

To prevent an Iraqi collapse, the Reagan administration supplied battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis, sometimes through third parties such as Saudi Arabia. The U.S. tilt toward Iraq was enshrined in National Security Decision Directive 114 of Nov. 26, 1983, one of the few important Reagan era foreign policy decisions that still remains classified. According to former U.S. officials, the directive stated that the United States would do "whatever was necessary and legal" to prevent Iraq from losing the war with Iran.

The presidential directive was issued amid a flurry of reports that Iraqi forces were using chemical weapons in their attempts to hold back the Iranians. In principle, Washington was strongly opposed to chemical warfare, a practice outlawed by the 1925 Geneva Protocol. In practice, U.S. condemnation of Iraqi use of chemical weapons ranked relatively low on the scale of administration priorities, particularly compared with the all-important goal of preventing an Iranian victory.

Thus, on Nov. 1, 1983, a senior State Department official, Jonathan T. Howe, told Secretary of State George P. Shultz that intelligence reports showed that Iraqi troops were resorting to "almost daily use of CW" against the Iranians. But the Reagan administration had already committed itself to a large-scale diplomatic and political overture to Baghdad, culminating in several visits by the president's recently appointed special envoy to the Middle East, Donald H. Rumsfeld.

Secret talking points prepared for the first Rumsfeld visit to Baghdad enshrined some of the language from NSDD 114, including the statement that the United States would regard "any major reversal of Iraq's fortunes as a strategic defeat for the West." When Rumsfeld finally met with Hussein on Dec. 20, he told the Iraqi leader that Washington was ready for a resumption of full diplomatic relations, according to a State Department report of the conversation. Iraqi leaders later described themselves as "extremely pleased" with the Rumsfeld visit, which had "elevated U.S.-Iraqi relations to a new level."

In a September interview with CNN, Rumsfeld said he "cautioned" Hussein about the use of chemical weapons, a claim at odds with declassified State Department notes of his 90-minute meeting with the Iraqi leader. A Pentagon spokesman, Brian Whitman, now says that Rumsfeld raised the issue not with Hussein, but with Iraqi foreign minister Tariq Aziz. The State Department notes show that he mentioned it largely in passing as one of several matters that "inhibited" U.S. efforts to assist Iraq.

Rumsfeld has also said he had "nothing to do" with helping Iraq in its war against Iran. Although former U.S. officials agree that Rumsfeld was not one of the architects of the Reagan administration's tilt toward Iraq -- he was a private citizen when he was appointed Middle East envoy -- the documents show that his visits to Baghdad led to closer U.S.-Iraqi cooperation on a wide variety of fronts. Washington was willing to resume diplomatic relations immediately, but Hussein insisted on delaying such a step until the following year.

As part of its opening to Baghdad, the Reagan administration removed Iraq from the State Department terrorism list in February 1982, despite heated objections from Congress. Without such a move, Teicher says, it would have been "impossible to take even the modest steps we were contemplating" to channel assistance to Baghdad. Iraq -- along with Syria, Libya and South Yemen -- was one of four original countries on the list, which was first drawn up in 1979.

Some former U.S. officials say that removing Iraq from the terrorism list provided an incentive to Hussein to expel the Palestinian guerrilla leader Abu Nidal from Baghdad in 1983. On the other hand, Iraq continued to play host to alleged terrorists throughout the '80s. The most notable was Abu Abbas, leader of the Palestine Liberation Front, who found refuge in Baghdad after being expelled from Tunis for masterminding the 1985 hijacking of the cruise ship Achille Lauro, which resulted in the killing of an elderly American tourist.

While Rumsfeld was talking to Hussein and Aziz in Baghdad, Iraqi diplomats and weapons merchants were fanning out across Western capitals for a diplomatic charm offensive-cum-arms buying spree. In Washington, the key figure was the Iraqi chargé d'affaires, Nizar Hamdoon, a fluent English speaker who impressed Reagan administration officials as one of the most skillful lobbyists in town.

"He arrived with a blue shirt and a white tie, straight out of the mafia," recalled Geoffrey Kemp, a Middle East specialist in the Reagan White House. "Within six months, he was hosting suave dinner parties at his residence, which he parlayed into a formidable lobbying effort. He was particularly effective with the American Jewish community."

One of Hamdoon's favorite props, says Kemp, was a green Islamic scarf allegedly found on the body of an Iranian soldier. The scarf was decorated with a map of the Middle East showing a series of arrows pointing toward Jerusalem. Hamdoon used to "parade the scarf" to conferences and congressional hearings as proof that an Iranian victory over Iraq would result in "Israel becoming a victim along with the Arabs."

According to a sworn court affidavit prepared by Teicher in 1995, the United States "actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure Iraq had the military weaponry required." Teicher said in the affidavit that former CIA director William Casey used a Chilean company, Cardoen, to supply Iraq with cluster bombs that could be used to disrupt the Iranian human wave attacks. Teicher refuses to discuss the affidavit.

At the same time the Reagan administration was facilitating the supply of weapons and military components to Baghdad, it was attempting to cut off supplies to Iran under "Operation Staunch." Those efforts were largely successful, despite the glaring anomaly of the 1986 Iran-contra scandal when the White House publicly admitted trading arms for hostages, in violation of the policy that the United States was trying to impose on the rest of the world.

Although U.S. arms manufacturers were not as deeply involved as German or British companies in selling weaponry to Iraq, the Reagan administration effectively turned a blind eye to the export of "dual use" items such as chemical precursors and steel tubes that can have military and civilian applications. According to several former officials, the State and Commerce departments promoted trade in such items as a way to boost U.S. exports and acquire political leverage over Hussein.

When United Nations weapons inspectors were allowed into Iraq after the 1991 Gulf War, they compiled long lists of chemicals, missile components, and computers from American suppliers, including such household names as Union Carbide and Honeywell, which were being used for military purposes.

A 1994 investigation by the Senate Banking Committee turned up dozens of biological agents shipped to Iraq during the mid-'80s under license from the Commerce Department, including various strains of anthrax, subsequently identified by the Pentagon as a key component of the Iraqi biological warfare program. The Commerce Department also approved the export of insecticides to Iraq, despite widespread suspicions that they were being used for chemical warfare.

The fact that Iraq was using chemical weapons was hardly a secret. In February 1984, an Iraqi military spokesman effectively acknowledged their use by issuing a chilling warning to Iran. "The invaders should know that for every harmful insect, there is an insecticide capable of annihilating it . . . and Iraq possesses this annihilation insecticide."

In late 1987, the Iraqi air force began using chemical agents against Kurdish resistance forces in northern Iraq that had formed a loose alliance with Iran, according to State Department reports. The attacks, which were part of a "scorched earth" strategy to eliminate rebel-controlled villages, provoked outrage on Capitol Hill and renewed demands for sanctions against Iraq. The State Department and White House were also outraged -- but not to the point of doing anything that might seriously damage relations with Baghdad.

"The U.S.-Iraqi relationship is . . . important to our long-term political and economic objectives," Assistant Secretary of State Richard W. Murphy wrote in a September 1988 memorandum that addressed the chemical weapons question. "We believe that economic sanctions will be useless or counterproductive to influence the Iraqis."

Bush administration spokesmen have cited Hussein's use of chemical weapons "against his own people" -- and particularly the March 1988 attack on the Kurdish village of Halabjah -- to bolster their argument that his regime presents a "grave and gathering danger" to the United States.

The Iraqis continued to use chemical weapons against the Iranians until the end of the Iran-Iraq war. A U.S. air force intelligence officer, Rick Francona, reported finding widespread use of Iraqi nerve gas when he toured the Al Faw peninsula in southern Iraq in the summer of 1988, after its recapture by the Iraqi army. The battlefield was littered with atropine injectors used by panicky Iranian troops as an antidote against Iraqi nerve gas attacks.

Far from declining, the supply of U.S. military intelligence to Iraq actually expanded in 1988, according to a 1999 book by Francona, "Ally to Adversary: an Eyewitness Account of Iraq's Fall from Grace." Informed sources said much of the battlefield intelligence was channeled to the Iraqis by the CIA office in Baghdad.

Although U.S. export controls to Iraq were tightened up in the late 1980s, there were still many loopholes. In December 1988, Dow Chemical sold $1.5 million of pesticides to Iraq, despite U.S. government concerns that they could be used as chemical warfare agents. An Export-Import Bank official reported in a memorandum that he could find "no reason" to stop the sale, despite evidence that the pesticides were "highly toxic" to humans and would cause death "from asphyxiation."

The U.S. policy of cultivating Hussein as a moderate and reasonable Arab leader continued right up until he invaded Kuwait in August 1990, documents show. When the then-U.S. ambassador to Baghdad, April Glaspie, met with Hussein on July 25, 1990, a week before the Iraqi attack on Kuwait, she assured him that Bush "wanted better and deeper relations," according to an Iraqi transcript of the conversation. "President Bush is an intelligent man," the ambassador told Hussein, referring to the father of the current president. "He is not going to declare an economic war against Iraq."

"Everybody was wrong in their assessment of Saddam," said Joe Wilson, Glaspie's former deputy at the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, and the last U.S. official to meet with Hussein. "Everybody in the Arab world told us that the best way to deal with Saddam was to develop a set of economic and commercial relationships that would have the effect of moderating his behavior. History will demonstrate that this was a miscalculation."

> I Wonder if some of the Indian exports assisted in DPRK weapons systems development?

No, that was Pakistan. Actually the only country India has a history of defence cooperation with is Israel (and that too is sort of recent - 10yrs IIRC)

Why do you think India consistently gets a strategic-non-threat assessment from the DoD? Largely because it's too dependent on American and European money (even in the absence of a formal NATO/ASEAN-like treaty), much too peace-loving, and finally (and most importantly) not energy sufficient enough to pose a threat.

A quick Google search turned these up:

From the Boston Globe: One Year Gap in Bush's National Guard Duty

From the Dallas Morning News (reprinted in the Washington Post): Records of Bush's Alabama Military Duty Cannot Be Found

A guy then used the Freedom of Information Act to get the actual reports detailing Bush's "issues" with reporting for duty: You Can't Just Walk Away

CNN reported Bush's denial (Bush Dismisses Report He Skipped Air National Guard Service), but it's notable what a weak denial it was: "Asked about his Air National Guard attendance record, Bush told reporters it was 'spotty attendance but I did the duty necessary... I did the time that was required in the Guard.' " Not the kind of ringing denial you'd expect if there wasn't at least an element of truth to the story.

Unsurprisingly, the media didn't press him on the issue back during the campaign, and they're certainly not likely to now. But as far as I can see the questions are still open, and the "Bush was AWOL" side seems to have more facts and evidence at their disposal than does the "no he wasn't" side.

"the country of freedom and liberty"

not anymore: [[ from an AC slashdot post today
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=49046&cid=4962 648 ]]

"""

here is a snapshot on how these fucks think:

"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."

found this in a quick search in TODAY's news. if you are not paranoid about our government, you're not listening.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A379 43-2002Dec25.html

"""

so here is a snapshot on how these fucks think:



"If you don't violate someone's human rights some of the time, you probably aren't doing your job," said one official who has supervised the capture and transfer of accused terrorists. "I don't think we want to be promoting a view of zero tolerance on this. That was the whole problem for a long time with the CIA."



found this in a quick search in TODAY's news. if you are not paranoid about our government, you're not listening.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A379 43-2002Dec25.html

There is a related article about the changing chairmanship of the Judiciary committee, from Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT), a great advocate for the People, to Orrin Hatch (R-UT), a major supporter of DMCA.

The article's coverage on the "News for Nerds" issues of that committee starts in pargraph sixteen, which begins "The entertainment industry's quest for legislation to stamp out the growing problem of Internet piracy..." and also touches on providing digital content online including webcaster royalties.

-Robert

I'd be suprised if he'd get any votes from female senators, since the Post published that he's a member of Burning Tree, a sexist country club.

...Not only were septuagenarians golfing shirtless [ewww - ed.], he said, but when his wife arrived to pick him up, she was intercepted in the parking lot and not permitted inside...

We've seen with Lott that if somebody on the hill is implicated as a racist everybody is going to distance themselves from him. It can't be long before sexists get the same treatment. Already Greenspan and executive branch officials are boycotting the place.

From the article:
Approximately 50 percent of Europeans under the age of 30 have downloaded ring tones, according to Stonefield, who believes the U.S. market is ripe for similar growth. "There is no way that kind of distribution is going to be held back; it is a real social trend," he said.

Yes, it is a social trend, but not a U.S. one.

Most of the fads we see tend to have some obvious -- if obnoxious -- logic to it. Macarena? Catchy and annoying as all get-out. Pokemon? Competition, community, kids running around saying dumb things (which is precisely what kids are supposed to do). Micro RC cars? Cute and disturbingly entertaining to everyone but our employers and cats. I could go on for quite some time but because I wish to annoy you, the gracious reader, as little as possible, I'll get right to the point.

What do frickin' ringtones offer?

"Oh, hey! Cool, Rock Me Amadaeus as a ringtone! Sweet! ... Hm. Hey, so anyway, did you watch Friends last night?..."

This is not a U.S. phenomenon and it won't ever be a U.S. phenominon. I'm not trying to imply that the United States is somehow more sophisticated, I'm suggesting that Americans tend to view cellphones ringing about as enjoyable as listening to a car alarm going off. And not because they're boring, monotone and tedious, either. We dislike the phone because it represents an interruption, rendered jarringly, like an audial ICQ popup (though I'm told they don't do that anymore).

Again, from the article:
"This is huge," said Jay A. Samit, senior vice president for new media at music label EMI Group PLC. "This is the largest growth area for music companies and our artists."

This is a sign that companies are literally scraping the bottom of the barrel, not the bleeding edge of the Next Great Thing.

Eh, what do we care what foreigners think? ;-) Americans don't HAVE an accident! Er, accent!

To be honest, and I'm trying here, I can't fathom how to pronounce "our" and "are" differently. I'll have to bring this one up at dinner. These things make me feel bad as I try to teach my 6 y.o. to spell and feel I must keep apologizing for our language. Verb conjugations doesn't help ("what do you mean 'teared' isn't past tense for 'tear'? well, son, y'see, English is a collection of other languages that it mutilated and mixed and misremembered about until....") Like, why do flammable and inflammable meant the same thing? (Yes, I know the answer, but I will feel silly explaining it to him.)

The tendency in American English is towards eliminating the "duplicate" word, which is fine by me if we can still speak intelligibly. "Potatoe" refers to an old joke about a certain U.S. vice president. (The sharp-tongued little boy later appeared at the Democratic Convention.)

Happy holidays!

Your comment was moderated as Flamebait, so here is a flame:

Nobody voted for Ashcroft- he is a Bush appointee. The only "votes" taken were in his Senate confirmation hearings.

That having been said, I believe you are otherwise correct in your analysis of the fucktards you were speaking of.

After all, nothing assures freedom like easily manipulated, credulous and distractible voters. Keep it up!

We'll see if everyone stays at home on election night in 2004 the way they did this year. People actually don't seem to mind living in a police state, but there may be trouble ahead for Bush once the word is out that his administration wants to increase income taxes on those earning between $50-75K per year by a third to support their tax cuts for the highest income brackets that they're always bragging about. This idea was test marketed in a recent Wall Street Journal editorial. The plan is to raise taxes on the poor so that they become furious at government spending, which means they will vote for antitax Republicans.

They are also arguing that the FICA payroll tax isn't really a tax, it's like a "Christmas club" at a bank and you eventually get the money back when you retire anyway, so therefore we poor suckers are very lightly taxed. The WSJ even refers to people earning $12000 or less per year as "lucky duckies".

Public discourse has fallen into a sad state of affairs. I'm going to get skewered and modded down for saying this, but I miss the Clinton years- no police state and there wasn't this open class warfare going on either.

Am I the only one who sees a distinct likeness between the pictures of Niklass Zenstrom and Bill Gates?

• Congress to Block Imaginary Internet Tax Bill from the Washington Post
• E-mail Rumor Completely Untrue from the United States Postal Service
• E-mail Tax Hoax from the US Department of Energy's Computer Incident Advisory Capability
• No Consumer Per-Minute Charges to Access ISPs from the Federal Communications Commission

I hate to say this, but the idea of doing this in the Phillipines (especially the imposition by a non-Phillipine organization) makes the the referenced newspaper article sound like a hoax too.

I don't really know about that. Take the tornado in a can, which is a very different way to process organic materials (among other uses). It's pretty simple, technologically speaking, but no one invented it until relatively recently. No, it hasn't proven itself to be revolutionary as of yet, but as has already been mentioned many times already, few if any truly revolutionary inventions were recognizable as revolutionary when they were invented. I saw this tornado in a can back in 1993 being used somewhat like a sandblaster to create rather unique works of art, and that use is way different than this agricultural use touted in the article. The person showing it to me back then said that it has many other potential uses, too, such as in the mining industry, which is mentioned in the article. There is no telling what ubiquitous use they might find for for this invention which might be considered revolutionary 20 years from now.

Today's Washington Post has a feature story on employee blogs and the legal problems that can follow workers who post any sort of company info., from the mundane to the specific.

Halle Berry is half white. Her black father abandoned her and her white mother raised her. In Feb. 2000, she was involved in a hit and run. Berry and her father set a great example for minorities.

Please pick positive african-american role models instead of a media whore. Dr. Condoleezza Rice has earned a LOT of respect and her contributions to society aren't limited to "Showing her boobies."

-Lucas

$300k profit isn't tremendous but, considering that the third largest bankruptcy in US history has just been announced, it's not bad. Not bad at all.

Well, to start with, we can include the current state of anti-trust legislation in, for example, the Microsoft anti-trust case and the access that enough money has in determining legislation and legal opinion.

In yet another example of questionable practices in our legal system, the Washington Post is reporting that given the states budget crisis, Microsoft would not only fight any appeal the states chose to make in the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit, but the company would also contest any legal costs states might be able to recover from litigation. However, if those states and the District of Columbia were not to appeal, Microsoft would be happy to cover the legal expenses and provide an extra amount of money to "help enforce the settlement deal".

I would argue that this continues the stranglehold that Microsoft has on innovation. What does this say about our legal system and technological innovation? Perhaps another question from this would be: How does one distinguish between appropriate settlement money and outright bribes?

Well, to start with, we can include the current state of anti-trust legislation in, for example, the Microsoft anti-trust case and the access that enough money has in determining legislation and legal opinion.

In yet another example of questionable practices in our legal system, the Washington Post is reporting that given the states budget crisis, Microsoft would not only fight any appeal the states chose to make in the Microsoft anti-trust lawsuit, but the company would also contest any legal costs states might be able to recover from litigation. However, if those states and the District of Columbia were not to appeal, Microsoft would be happy to cover the legal expenses and provide an extra amount of money to "help enforce the settlement deal".

I would argue that this continues the stranglehold that Microsoft has on innovation. What does this say about our legal system and technological innovation? Perhaps another question from this would be: How does one distinguish between appropriate settlement money and outright bribes?

How about drug dealers firebombing a wowans house and killing her and her 5 children?

Here's some more arson. These clowns had murder on their minds, luckily they didn't pull it off.

I guess flammible liquids and lighters are immoral.

There's also an alarming rise of roadrage incidents, with the overwhelming majority of perpetrators using their vehicles as weapons. I guess cars are immoral.

People just need common sense. And I'm only assuming that zealots on one side of the issure or the other are idiots.

I'm for liscensing of firearms, and ballistic fingerprinting. An out-and-out ban is unreasonable and a lost cause. The status quo of 'untracable guns for all' is unacceptable as well.

Most people dont commit murders, and those who decide they want to will find a way.

Read Stephen Hunter's review in the Washington Post.

He has some good things to say about the movies directed by Nimoy. He also likes Stewart's acting. Other than that, it's a long entertaining rant.

At an hour long, in black and white, and starring a miracle-fiber toupee with an actor attached, the material that ultimately became "Star Trek: Nemesis" might have entered the canon as classic TV.

At twice that length, realized at Paramount's most exquisite level of technical excellence and starring a bald guy who can actually act, "Star Trek: Nemesis" is an ordeal ....

... The Remans (natives of Remus, doncha know) have acquired a DNA strand from Patrick Stewart's Jean-Luc Godard - Jean-Luc Picard, I always make that mistake - and cloned a mini-him. Why? Because, as we all know, the captain of the Starship Enterprise is the world's coolest dude, so this second version will by genetic destiny be high class in the capability department.

Anyhow, mini-Picard ...take on Starfleet and eventually the universe. And who is there to stop him but Picard and the big Frisbee with the two flashlights attached?

But the movie is slower than molasses on the dark side of Uranus. Worse, it's tacky. ...Tiny and blurry on the tube, it's cute and adorable. Blown out to 36 feet by 18 feet, and, worst of all, in actual focus, it just seems depressing.

...Demographically, the whole "Star Trek" shebang must skew toward the Alzheimer's generation. We ain't in a country of young men. The movie is almost utterly devoid of youth; the two babes (Marina Sirtis as Counselor Deanna Troi and Dina Meyer as Commander Donatra) could be your grandma, and most of the guys look like they need oatmeal twice a day because their teeth and gums hurt and they want to stay regular...

Was the Extras Union on strike or something? There must be seven speaking roles in the whole damned thing...

Even the big effects payoff ... looks disconcertingly dead. ...

In the rubble, certain graces should be noted. Stewart, as ever, is utterly professional and always believable. While all about him people like Hardy are overacting and people like Jonathan Frakes as Riker are underacting (possibly because he has almost nothing to do in the film except bark "Retro-designate the photon torpedo attack module!" and fistfight a guy in a rubber mask that somebody left on the radiator overnight), Stewart is acting. It's an actual performance - elegant, crisp, entirely committed. Then there's Brent Spiner as Data, the adenoidal android; I hate the silver goo they paint on his face to signify his mechanistic endo-soul, but he always seems the most human of the characters, and in this film he's the only one to project recognizable emotion.

the result of the duopolistic control of satellite TV (soon to be monopolostic in America, unfortunately)

I heard on the radio the other day that the merger between Hughes (DirecTV) and Echostar (Dish Network) has been called off.

Read The Washington Post's article, which notes: "The new institute, which will aim to create stem cell therapies for cancer and other diseases, is to be established with $12 million from an anonymous donor. Under a Bush administration policy announced last year, federally funded researchers wishing to work with human embryonic stem cells must limit their endeavors to a small number of approved cell colonies created before Aug. 9, 2001. But because the Stanford institute will be privately funded, researchers there will be able to create and experiment on new colonies."

..."Fiber-Optic Overdose Racks Up Casualties" back in May of this year. One quote:

Telecom wouldn't be the first to go through such a boom-and-bust cycle. During the railroad boom of the late 1880s, so much money was invested building so many parallel tracks -- or tracks to places that would never support profitable service -- that the entire industry went bankrupt. Much the same story is told of the airline industry, which because of so many losing years has yet to turn a net profit.

Interesting stuff--go read!

I think of de jure v. de facto in terms of the desegregation cases. I think you might be thinking enumerated v. unenumerated powers. The Framers did not envision a federal government so wealthy that it would be returning money to the states (this was a long time before the income tax), but I think would acknowledge that Congress could set conditions on the spending, which is an enumerated power. The standardized interstates -- originally promoted on the ground of national security! -- are I think are one of the federal government's better achievements.

Such conditions must have some nexus with the spending item -- this p[oint is weakly defined IIRC. "Forcing" states to enact laws -- it's not really forcing when the states can forgo the funds, as I think Vermont did for a while to resist the national age 21 drinking -- was central in NY v. U.S., which you can read if you really want to kill some brain cells (good luck figuring out which Justice voted for what, this is one of the worst I ever saw). Here is an informal discussion (and don't forget to sign up for SC Fastasy League contest, I did) -- Congress could at least say that speeding damages road (esp. true for trucks). Anyway, what I meant was I have no idea how they could function without setting conditions. I understand your point, but note that to roll back Congress to the handful of enumerated powers would be a radical change indeed. (Yes, I know, a lot of people would like to do just that ...) I'm arguing vocabulary.

You might like this article on the "new federalism." Change is in the air, and has been for a while.

Fair use -- For a hint, watch the current copyright case (Eldred?) for some explication of what the heck the Copyright Clause does mean. I am certain the Court will not disturb the extension of the copyright period (it is quite long, but not irrationally long as a matter of law, esp. considering other countries have similar terms), but I think there are very good questions to ask about the retroactive aspect of it, which is nothing but a gift to the rights holders. The Court is pretty darn conservative, but I'd not be surprised at a 5-4 or 6-3 reversal on the latter point, at least that's my Fantasy League bet. So fear not, Mickey may be ours next year. Er, to the extent permitted by trademark. :) ... thanks for forcing me to look this stuff up, it keeps me awake ...

I don't REALLY want a government run by judges, a Congress that's actually accesible and responsive to the public would be much nicer. I'm just grumpy.

Yes, and me too. Grumpy is good, grumpy gets things done.

Read Post reporter Shannon Henry's take on the same study -- online here.

[etc etc]Sembler added in one of dozens of fund-raising memos the political parties turned over to a court hearing the first legal challenge of the nation's new campaign finance law.

These memos came to light during hearings challenging the country's new campaign finance law. That's McCain-Feingold, right, wherein the individual contribution limit is being raised to $2000 per year and soft money is banned? What exactly is it that opponents to this law want?

Ravi

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.

The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.

Only now, however, is it becoming clear how these elements could ultimately interact.

For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.

How long until someone criticizing this law is told "If you've done nothing, you've got nothing to hide" and dragged off to a Homeland Security Office's dungeons for a dose of some rubberhose treatment just in case he actually does something to hide.

The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects -- U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike -- may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say.

The elements of this new system are already familiar from President Bush's orders and his aides' policy statements and legal briefs: indefinite military detention for those designated "enemy combatants," liberal use of "material witness" warrants, counterintelligence-style wiretaps and searches led by law enforcement officials and, for noncitizens, trial by military commissions or deportation after strictly closed hearings.

Only now, however, is it becoming clear how these elements could ultimately interact.

For example, under authority it already has or is asserting in court cases, the administration, with approval of the special Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, could order a clandestine search of a U.S. citizen's home and, based on the information gathered, secretly declare the citizen an enemy combatant, to be held indefinitely at a U.S. military base. Courts would have very limited authority to second-guess the detention, to the extent that they were aware of it.

How soon until someone criticizing this law is told "If you've done nothing, you've got nothing to fear" and dragged off to a Homeland Security Office's dungeons the next night never to be seen again?

I've wondered about this -- I wouldn't want to fall into the trap of sanctimony -- but I just don't buy it. It is easier to reconstruct what people knew and when they knew it than to decide when people of reasonable intelligence should have or probably did read between the lines. but for me, the 1935 Nuremberg laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and imposing numerous indignities were a point of no return. It was evident well before that that Hitler and his crew were a bunch of thugs. Finally the 1938 Kristallnacht was as blunt as one could get -- yet was met with apathy in the West. Our major affliction was not ignorance but isolationism, and it took Pearl Harbor to change our philosophy to interventionism.

There is no binary switch between moral and immoral conduct. Nor was there a precise moment of epiphany that it was time to spurn the Nazis. But of course some companies crossed the line. And why should we think they did not -- not even one of them? Even today we see that corporate run the gamut from pristine to deplorable, so logically some companies must have continued doing business even after the writing was on the wall. They should acknowledge their mistakes, or at least all the facts surrounded their conduct, address any necessary restitution, and get on with things. We expect no less of ordinary shoplifters.

If the plight of the Nazis Germans is not enough, recall that the infrastructure American companies helped Germany to build was in time turned against us.

The example I mention elsewhere in this thread is Henry Ford, a virulent anti-Semite who even bought a newspaper to publish his views. A google of Ford and Nazi provides plenty of reading. Most dramatic is Ford receiving the highest Nazi civilian honor in 1938.

Parenthetically, we are to varying degrees engaged in the problems with the trade issues you identify, perhaps too much, perhaps too little, according to whom you ask. But we do not have to be guiltless to smell something rotten from the past.

If you want to support EFF or other nonprofit organizations, you may be better off donating directly than going through the Combined Federal Campaign, which is administered by the local (D.C.) United Way.

The United Way in D.C. has been dogged by scandal because of improper financial management.

An article last week in the Washington Post reports "A new audit of the local United Way's handling of federal employee donations shows that the group held onto about $1.3 million it should have distributed to charities, took an unexplained $3 million short-term loan from the contributions and ran up more than $120,000 in questionable or unsupported expenses."

The article also notes "A federal grand jury began investigating the Washington area United Way this summer after revelations that the organization had withheld donations from charities, inflated its donation totals and allowed a former executive to take a retirement payment that was not authorized by the pension's rules."

Automated charitable payroll deductions through CFC may be convenient, but at what cost?

Umm, since even the papers which backed Gore in the recounts have now done their own recounts and confirmed that Bush won Florida, it's not clear what you mean by `won by judicial decision'...

From the article:
"More worrisome than the risk of escape, they acknowledged, is that the project could lay the scientific groundwork for a new generation of biological weapons, a risk that may force them to be selective about publishing technical details. But they said the project could also help advance the nation's ability to detect and counter existing biological weapons."

It used to be that you'd have to have a clear goal and some ethics to get funding and public good will. I guess all you need these days is to mention that it'll help protect the motherla, er, I mean assist Homeland Security.

Maybe I can get a grant to play America's Army: Operations.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not at all sqeamish about this project, I think it's great. I'm just wary of every science project ...every any project latching itself unto this Third Reich wünderclone speedboat and heelhauling itself into existence and the public faith.

but no sane food/drug company would risk the impact of such a level of carelessness/unconcern

And whats Good For GM is Good For the United States of America.

This 'trust' them attitude is absurd. In REALITY our friends at Monsanto have a history of astonishing irresponsible behaviour. As do our friends at Big Tobacco... as do any number of irresponsible private entities who took private gain in exchange for a "charge to the public".

DDT, Asbestos etc etc etc - in fact, history tells us that in time, some things will come to surprise us about their danger. What we are talking about here is exposing the future of the worlds FOOD SUPPLY to uncertainty. We already have the means to feed ourselves, this is not the issue, the issue is that the Monsantos of the worlds intend to use the "Food Market" to make profit -- this desire to make profit will cloud their vision (as it always does) and encourage them to take chances, cut corners and move 'forward'... the reality is that we must not let people, who's REAL motive is selfish (profit), expose OUR food supply to unnecessary risk.

Its far to big a chance (for 100% of the world) to take for No real gain (outside of a few very rich people getting far richer).

Would I support genetic research of food from a different motivation? Maybe, because the new risk analysis will exclude the Motivations of Capitalists -- it would therefore be lower... that *new* risk tolerance would have only public good as reward. Why would the public recieve only Risk in exchange for nothing?

This post was pretty interesting. I read it during metamod and thought about some business practices that are going on and on, that cater to driving away business.

One such policy is at local video stores when they are willing to drive away business to try and make money on long term late charges. I know it's hard because the video rental business needs to have every video in the store for other customers, but if you've got seventy copies of the latest blockbuster, how are late charges warranted?

Instead, rental companies would be smart to only charge late charges on customers when there are no other copies in the store AND the movie is late AND only when there are no other copies in the store. You would see that most custmers might stop playing the shop-a-video game, going from store to store racking up late fees if the policy was less inept. You would also find that a policy like that ("take your chances") would work out to be a way better business model in the long run, since customers would know damn well they screwed up, IF they had to pay charges, and the mom&pop would not lose business from people taking their video, returning it three weeks late only to never come back AND never pay the bill!

Another type of business faux pas is when they tack on extra service charges to make money the sneaky way. There is a really good article about sneaky billing HERE.

to be headed up by a convicted felon, no less

Ever since the former coke-addict and draft-dodger (he bravely defended Texas during the Vietnam war) Bush managed to weasel his way into the White House, comments like this have lost their zing.

They better get to it, since they seem to be lacking a strong title to sell the service.

Take a look at his Washington Post article. You'll see that oil is the biggest factor in this push for war. The fact that oil prices will drop is not the focus. It is that US companies will have unfettered access to the second largest oil reserves in the world, which will be conveniently administered by the US.

Thanks for the article, but Jenin is not the only time the IDF has killed Palestinians. Try a google search and you'll find that you simply don't know what your talking about.

While I concede that Palestine has never been officially a sovereign state, the fact remains that the Palestinian people have lived for centuries in what is now modern Israel. In fact if you simply would take the time to read about the history of the conflict you will see that the Palestinian people have in fact suffered mass injustices at the hands of the Israelis including the obvious expulsion from their lands. While I am in no way condoning suicide bombers or any other acts of violence, I am simply stating that your view that Israel is somehow the good guy in this conflict is vastly distorted.

So not to add to the troll, but instead of trying to trump anothers comments with your obviously ignorant views, you should perhaps spend a little time researching your views so that they may seem a little more than an idiot's rant.

washingtonpost.com's story quotes several small webcasters praising the compromise bill. According to the article, the bill "does not establish specific royalty rates for webcasters. Instead, it authorizes the music industry's principal royalty collector, SoundExchange, to negotiate binding royalty contracts with small webcasters on behalf of all artists and record labels." Strange footnote: Sen. Jesse Helms had a big stake in the bill as he successfully protected small religious webcasters from the royalty axe.

" Xbox Live is doing better than expected, but the total numbers are pretty intimidating for MS. Last I checked (2 weeks ago), the score is:

- approximately 8 million GameCubes
- approximately 10 million XBoxen
- approximately 52 million PlayStation 2s

By those numbers, it's safe to say Sony has wrapped up this round, if you're looking for a 'winner'. "

I thought I'd highlight your comment about the Xbox Live! There are 10 million potential customers who spend 50$ USD and get it all working out of the box for one year. Everything is tracked, you have a friends list, and they even include VoIP for you to chat. I'm even tempted to look in to Xbox Live! without any games as a VoIP solution for keeping up with distant relatives, since it's so cheap and easy! How many PS2 online games support voice chat? Right, SOCOM.

How many of those 52 million PS2s will support online play? Let's see... " Sony, too, is selling add-on hardware to gamers who want to play online; a spokeswoman said the company hopes to sell 400,000 adapters this year. "

You may be asking yourself why they expect to sell so few. To most people, the PS2 is just a DVD player that also plays their legacy PS1 games.

Of the 10 million potential Xbox Live! customers, quite a few million of which will probably go for the easy-to-use service, vs. the 400,000 PS2 people. Besides, if you've ever gamed online for a long time, you know that to get a continued quality service, you need to put money in to it. Myth2's public servers went away because Bungie never received money for it, so did a lot of the "free" online service parts of the Dreamcast games. I'm confident that as long as Xbox Live! gets money, the servers will be there. I don't feel the same way about Sony or Nintendo's (lack of) plans.

How sad that on the day Microsoft launches Xbox Live, we have a story about how much money MS is losing on the Xbox.

The desire among the overzelous Linuxites for the Xbox to fail is palpatable at Slashdot. Just look all the posts advising people to buy a Xbox but not buy any games. Just so MS can lose money. Its pathetic and sad.

Go ahead and buy a Xbox, waste your time and install Linux on it. But I dare you not to play Halo on it (Game of the Year and a work of art).

I dare you not to plug in your Cat-5 and fire up Unreal Championship (released Today!). Oh! and when Halo2 is released later late 2003, please do'nt go and buy it. Leave it to the serious gamers.

The Xbox is a great piece of tech. Real gamers know it. Thats why in the states its outselling the GameCube (read linked article above).

Read it here. Note that the "new language would grant NeuStar an extra two years on its four-year contract to operate dot-us if it upholds its dot-kids obligations. The legislation also would allow NeuStar to throw its hat into the ring when the government re-bids the dot-us contract."

As mentioned in another post, the USGS webpage itself is unusable unless you're running Netscape 4 (windows or linux only) or IE for Windows.

I think it would be a good idea for as many people as possible to emailthe maintainer of the web page.

Unsurprising for the gov't to so thouroughly screw-up like this, especially with Interior Secretary Gale Norton at the helm. FWIW, she is facing contempt of court charges for lying in Federal court during a trial of gross mismanagement of the Native American Trust fund. Mismanagement by completely failing to secure a computer system...

Hell, why don't we all email Gale herself?!

The WashPost had an article about the database Safire speaks of.

The immediate problem with the line-item veto is that it is unconstitutional. Sometimes the Supremes get it right (6-3). :)

So of course it could be enacted as a constitutional amendment. This would be a grave error IMHO, as law-making authority belongs with the lawmakers, in Congress, not the White House, which has the veto as final sanity check on Congress (and over which the Framers pointedly permitted a 2/3 vote of Congress to override). A line-item veto would wreak havoc: the President would be able to "pass" a statute other than Congress intended (there's no reason the President would be limited to so-called pork -- why not dissect the statute's principal topic?). Why would anyone have this great faith in a single person to do the right thing -- Presidents engage in pork barrel politics, too, and surely we can all think of at least one President on the last thirty years we wouldn't have trusted with this.

If you have a problem with the lawmaking process, don't increase the power of a lone executive with whatever agenda; focus on the 535-member Congress, as the Framers intended. They did not want a monarch, or even an imitation one.

In fairness the debate on this is long and complex. I won't pretend to present or be able to present a full balanced picture. But grant that the issue is much more complex than a magic bullet for pork-barrel abuses, and look into it more than sound bites permit.

I'm hedging my bets. I've taken the pains to learn both .NET and Java (there are _some_ differences!-). I'm fortunate enought that I can use both at work. Then again, that's the reason I stay there.

That said, perhaps a place to look-n-see what you might need to study are some of the tech job postings via a source like Monster.com or the Wash.Post tech page?