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UTD Lifts Ban On WiFi Equipment
boredMDer writes "As seen in this /. story, the University of Texas in Dallas had issued a ban on students operating 2.4 GHz WiFi equipment. However, UTD has now lifted said ban, because of 'the discovery of an FCC ruling prohibiting such a move.'"
veni vedi concidi
I came, I saw, I failed it!
Okay, I can see one of the reasons they wanted to do this was, according to the article, not interference per se, but this:
The connectivity problem stems from the fact that, if not told to do otherwise, many wireless cards will automatically connect to the strongest signal available. In Waterview's case, a network card might jump onto a neighbor's stronger access point instead of the possibly weaker UTD wireless network. The network swap can cause a "denial of service" conflict and a failure to connect to the Internet, Jackson said.
IR officials said they hoped shutting down personal access points would stop cards from arbitrarily swapping their signal source.
Now, just WTF are they thinking? Of course if I don't configure my WiFi card to a specific SSID, it'll use whatever network happens to be close by. Couldn't they just have set up an instruction sheet that said "if you want to use our network, set your SSID to campusnet" or whatever? In Windows XP this is trivial, with older ones you may need to go to network driver settings and punch it in there (or use software included with the card). With Linux you just say iwconfig wlan0 (or whatever your device is) ssid blahblah.
I'll grant that they do have a problem with gazillion wireless networks combined with default settings for Wifi cards, but they clearly went the wrong way of dealing with it. Considering that even warchalk markings include SSID names, I don't think it would have been too much trouble to give instructions on how to set up your card.
So let me get this straight...an FCC ruling has resulted in having a BAN on 802.11 LIFTED? Surely this must be some kind of twisted parallel dimension this news comes from...
Next thing you know Microsoft will start asking Windows pirates to come forward on their own volition.
.. to see that in the last few years the FCC and FTC has been doing some good to citizens of the US. With this wireless policy, the law that states that property owners cannot prohibit a tenant to install a satellite dish as long as it is within the leased/rented property, the Do Not Call List, and the recent spam bounties, and the heavy charge for that jackson's boob incident. A "boob" like hers should have never been shown on TV. Just nasty...
Many fellow /.s predicted this would happen, mainly because like it said, these devices _must_ accept interference.
f r15_01.html
For more information on the Part 15 docs, see this site:
http://www.access.gpo.gov/nara/cfr/waisidx_01/47c
The university has taken a novell approach instead, telling owners of aps that their networks will be visited by the riaa randomly. Hear that? the sound of an empty 2.4ghz band!
The FCC is the only body with the legal authority to regulate the spectrum. The vast majority of the comments in the original /. story agreed with this.
UTD didn't own the apartments in question, even if they did they aren't allowed to prohibit their tenants from establishing legal wireless links. FCC regs allow tenants the ability to place dishes as necessary, antennas as necessary (so long as they're legal), and amateur radio equipment as necessary. Landlords cannot interfere with the above legal placements. End of story.
I'm glad to see that UTD backed down. As much as I loathe the FCC for going after Howard Stern, and for making a huge issue out of Janet's n1ppl4g3, this is a major victory for the average joe.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
There were several postings on the original story that pointed out the FCC rules. Does anyone know if they were instrumental in getting the ban lifted? ie. Did a student see a posting and then point out the rules to the university?
And what does novell (www.novell.com) has to do with this?
years and years of dealing with the crappy windows version of this software really have gotten to me havn't they
Not only was the ban lifted, but an apology was issued from the head of IR at UTD. He took full responsibility for the ban (which wasn't run by him before being put in place, afaik) and the less than tactful accusations in the notice.
Anyway, there's been much geek rejoicement over the past week.
Either the UTD is staffed by total idiots, (which I doubt, but it is possible), or, more likely, they thought they could get away with this blatant, illegal attempt to intimidate their student body. (Sadly, not unusual behavior for a college/University).
You know you must really suck at your job if a federal body steps in to tell you you're doing it wrong...
UTD didn't own the apartments in question
It doesn't own the apartment complex per se, but it does own the land.
UTD didn't have undergrads for a very long time, and no dorms either. So they decided to let a private company build student housing. It was their way of outsourcing all those dorm problems that become university administration problems to somebody else.
That way they can try to mandate their own rules, while ignoring most the problems. I hated living at Waterview.
"to see that in the last few years the FCC and FTC has been doing some good to citizens of the US."
The FCC is doing far more harm than good through their attempting to censor speech on the radio (not in their charter), giving away billions in spectrum, and their rulings that force DRM onto HDTV. It gives me a headache just to think about it.
Actually, I don't see where the FCC has jurisdiction over this. I mean, obviously they think they do, but think about it.
The university has no right to prohibit legal electronic equipment in the dorm...true. But the FCC has no right to force private property owners to allow the university to do something just because it has police and a military to back up their decision. Its utterly arbitrary.
The FCC is a bunch of idiots, run by an idiot son of a guy who sold his soul the biggest moron who ever occupied the oval office. And that's quite an accomplishment.
When I lived at Waterview... me and my friends didn't have all this fancy shmancy wireless stuff, so we buried hundreds of feet of coax cable underground between multiple apartments.
Sure it wasn't too efficient, but it was fun.
RMS was right. Enough eyes make all bugs shallow.
Any lawyers in the house?
The new college year is already a happy time for spammers, as all those infected PCs get back online at colleges across the USA. Now they've got a free supply of hotspots to get into their zombie networks from!
I just spoke with the University of Guelph resnet (I used to work there wanted job)...
It's banned on campus here as well with no plans to remove the ban.
When I enquired further no response was given but I was lead to believe it was a policy decision not a technical descision (security is a technical problem).
Keep in mind that UTD is not the only educational institution that has banned WAP. Dickinson College http://lis.dickinson.edu/AboutLIS/Policies/wireles s.htm here in Pennsylvania is, I imagine, one of many others. It may be a small little place, but we should be just as worried. It would be a shame if the enforcement of it's WAP policy were to be used as precedent. Yes, it violates federal law, but I'm not sure how much it would take to convince the FCC (either current or Kerry's) that the college was right and law had to be changed... Does anyone know of other institutions that have violated this law?
The university has no right to prohibit legal electronic equipment in the dorm...true. But the FCC has no right to force private property owners to allow the university to do something just because it has police and a military to back up their decision. Its utterly arbitrary.
This is actually one of the few areas where the FCC should be regulating things - their job was (and still should be limited to) regulating the use of the airwaves and preventing interference. 2.4GHz is declared as free to all comers with some power restrictions, so declaring that all bans on equipment use (outside of FCC rules) makes perfect sense.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
WHy are you talking about Jimmy Carter? ;->
maybe us youngsters can find that old network
bizarro lifted?
Hi! I make Firefox Plug-ins. Check 'em out @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/youtube-mp3-podcaster/
It seems that they are more interested in banning the devices which use this part of the spectrum rather than the actual use. Would this make any difference? I mean, they're already banning toasters and the like (though it's not that people who like toast can't find it anyway . . .)
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Too US cetric, anyone?
Where I go to school we have an even more dangerous mix. We have idiots who attempt to intimidate the student body. Talk about a disaster!
Next thing you know Microsoft will start asking Windows pirates to come forward on their own volition.
Thats already happend
*wonders if the tinfoil hat will protect him from the coming apocalypse*
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Let me get this straght, If someone is an employee for a company, and he has a wireless laptop and wants to use it that way, and he buys a linksys and plugs it in out of the box without any security, the company cannot do anything about it and some wardriver can come around, hit it, hack the network and drive away.
I don't know about you but it sounds scary to me.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
This is actually one of the few areas where the FCC should be regulating things - their job was (and still should be limited to) regulating the use of the airwaves and preventing interference. 2.4GHz is declared as free to all comers with some power restrictions, so declaring that all bans on equipment use (outside of FCC rules) makes perfect sense.
Actually, there is fairly strong evidence that even the FCC's original regulatory job is obsolete. Here's the article link at the economist, should be free to read by all, at least for a while longer:
On the same wavelength
and now thanks to Jimmy's dumbass deal that he got a nobel peace prize for, the North Koreans will soon be able to do much more than pronounce nuclear.
You may not be able to ban the devices, but you can make a policy prohibiting them from being hooked to your network.
-Foxxz
I had an apartment at UTD and thought it was cool that I could get free Internet access through the schools wireless. I previously had a setup of three machines that were connected to a wired router and from there to a DSL line. When I moved into the UTD Waterview apartments, I just bought a wireless bridge to plug into the wan side of my router.
The lan side of my router was serving DHCP. I had to plug the bridge into the lan side in order to configure it. Once it was configured, there was an immediate tug of war between the campus dhcp serving 10.x.x.x and my router serving 192.168.x.x.
If I got a 10.x.x.x address, I could use the campus network with my bridge on the inside of my network. My anttenna was apparenlty stronger than the campus antennas at that point, because when I looked at my router's arp table, I saw that I had actually served 200+ campus machines a 192.168.x.x ip address. Since my router had nowhere to route that traffic, I had effectively broken the campus network for a signifigant number of machines.
The reason this happened is that the campus antenna network is pretty weak. So weak in fact that once I had everything set up to play nicely, I realized that My machine was often starving for an IP address or more bandwidth. I ended up ordering Comcast Cable. I actually considered plugging my bridge back into the lan side of my router so people could use my Comcast connection when I wasn't using it.
BTW, the UTD campus Wifi can be a pain to use, because when connecting, you must always use a web browser first. The UTD system intercepts your first web traffic and throws you back a campus wifi login page instead. Once you log in, all types of traffic are allowed. The problem with this is that if the first thing you do is open usenet, or check pop email, etc. It just appears that the connection is down because you have not logged in yet.
I didn't get around to it, but I was going to have a similar scheme where people who connected to my router would be served a page that said, "this is not UTD internet access, it is a private Comcast connection. click Ok to verify that you understand this, or click quit to attempt to get to the UTD network again" I also wanted the page to have a check boxes for "remember me and always accept this alternate connection when available", and another for "remember me, and always reject this alternate connection because I'm not sure I trust it". A record of mac addresses would allow me to do that.
another thing this experience made me realize, is that with my Comcast connection and the campus ssid, I could offer wireless access silently to anyone who was in range, which would allow me to eyeball all of their traffic at leisure.
The university I attend/work for is having problems right now with one of its apartment buildings that receives its connection to the university via 802.11 wireless (using special unidirectional antennas). We have determined that at least part of the problem has to do with the current preponderance of WAPs in the building. Admittedly, this case is quite different in some respects, as the students who set up WAPs may effectively be denying themselves internet access. Our conclusion is either the students need to stop using WAPs in their apartments or we need to change our equipment. We took the latter approach, as it needed to be upgraded anyway.
I don't see why the university we are discussing didn't implement an 802.11a network, thus eliminating most problems. Provide the necessary cards to the students, for free or discount. Yes, you can complain that most students that already have wireless capable machines don't have a-cards, but tough shit. If the sole means of providing the university network to some students is via wireless, then you need to do what it takes to make that wireless work. This includes spending some extra money on higher-end equipment that isn't subject to interference from consumer WAPs and cordless phones, among other things. Either that, or you have to come down and enforce heavy-handed policy. While I don't condone that option, I personally believe they are well within their rights to enforce it.
I also believe that if I found out that my WAP was causing other students to not be able to access the internet at all, I would be obligated on many levels to disable my WAP. I don't see how this could be any more obvious.
I am feeling fat and sassy
They should have an editor fire a round of moderations on all the comments from the last post. Why does it matter? Cause in the archives as you do searches on the subject we will find out how horribly wrong we were (in majority).
Thanks for all your help slashdotters. UTD might not have gotten the message without your support. -UTD Student
That's another good point.
Does the FCC say that a student's WAP on college property that's interfering with the college's own network have to be allowed?
IANAL, but from a common-sense legal point of view this is nonsense. Basic contract law says that two parties can negotiate an enforceable contract to do anything that is not illegal. "Not transmitting from my residence in the 802.11 band" is surely a legal activity: therefore I should be able to agree to do it in return for, e.g., housing or an education. I liked the analogy of an earlier poster, who likened this to prohibiting hot plates in your dorm room. Is this somehow not OK because the UL has certified the hot plate as a legal device?
It's hard to identify any constitutional right that this contract would abrogate. People sign contracts that require them to restrict their speech (presumably the relevant clause) all the time. I don't think the FCC can or wants to prevent folks from doing this.
IMHO (again, IANAL) the University in question needs to spend some serious time with quality legal counsel.
A drunk or stoner, probably.
The Denver Airport as well as Massport in Boston wanted to require tenants to use its (for pay) wifi network and prohibited them from setting up their own, claiming that since they own the airport they have the right to restrict tenant use over the wireless space. The FCC stated in a ruling that it alone has exclusive jurisdiction over radio frequency space regulation and a legitimate tenant has the same right to use unlicensed radio-frequency space as any other user, and that no one else, state or local government, nor any private party including a landlord, has authority to regulate or control use of unlicensed radio-frequency space.
The lessons of history teach us - if they teach us anything - that nobody learns the lessons that history teaches us.
After what happened to Iraq, do you blame them?
WTF does that have to do with him being president? He was in charge during one of the worst economic times in the past 30-40 years.
Hint, look at the inflation rate during that time.
Yes I think that you have that correct. Now, if this WAS a College owned building with ethernet jacks in each room, they would definitely be within their right to forbid them being connected because it's physically being connected to their network. They are not saying you can't buy cable and a cable modem and setup your own in that kind of policy and they are not breaking a FCC law either by regulating what devices can be connected to the campus network.
Gorkman
You probably should clarify: Legal bodies (states/towns/counties) must make "reasonable accomodation" according to PRB-1 and various state equivalent pieces of legislation.
However, the federal level PRB-1 does not cover covenents, as the FCC was hesistant to rule on the matter. I do not recall if any of the state level ones attempt to do so. I have not seen a discussion on what the FCC said about renting, although I presume that falls in a simialar category.
The Amateur Radio Relay League has a lot of material on this subject, including copies of the federal and state laws.
God fucking dammit.
/yes, I know schools abuse their students who live in dorms, and get away with it because the students, almost by definition, have no money to sue. /not full of angst.
Look.
If you are a school or landlord, you are not given the right to break the law.
If the FCC says something is illegal, than it is.
How the fuck is this difficult to comprehend?
1q2w3e4r5t6y7u8i9o0pqawsedrftgthyjukilo;p'azsxdcf
...is wrong. it spells "nukelar"
We're are still shutting down our students. You cannot provide access to University resources to non-University folks. This is already happening. It is a security hazard of the first order. I will gladly hand over any student who has a rogue AP and let's someone nefarious fucker on the their network. It would be their ass until they could prove otherwise. I stand by it. Also, you can't interfere with a previously installed system and must take steps to remediate the interference. That's in the FCC regs, which, BTW, are not law. Anyhow, we are cutting to G this semester. That takes care of the whole problem.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
The FCC has every right to prohibit "private property owners" from trying to lock down individuals to their own privately provided services - which is what often happened before the ruling prohibiting "private property owners" from barring otherwise legally approved electronic equipment - just like we don't allow "private property owners" to lock people inside buildings, use unsafe building materials where public safety is an issue, or hold individuals to indentured servitude.
Issues like this are why we have a government, you moron.
UTD is NOT a "private property owner". It is an arm of the government of the state of Texas and it operates pursuant to the authority granted it by that state.
The FCC could not prevent a private landlord from prohibiting WiFi devices in a lease. It probably could not prevent UTD from prohibiting them in a lease either. But that's not what's happening here. This is a "school policy", which people are just now receiving notice of.
If this were a private school, it wouldn't be a problem. But since this is regulation by a state organization, the FCC ruling trumps it.
There is wireless support as well as wired, but I have never tried the wireless so I do not know if the encryption engine they use requires a university network account. But considering anyone with a laptop can sit down at a computer and do what they need to do (or perhaps even easier, anyone without a laptop just to sit down at one of the provided PCs) then what is served by locking down the wireless AP? No one is asking for ID to use the faclity; unless they have tracking cameras there's little hope of "policing" illegal activity, so why worry about this great, imagined, "wireless security hole?"
"Swipe the IPs?" So, your basic model for security is security through obscurity? And you are trusting your own users - thousands of teenagers, many away from home for the first time in their lives - not to run port sniffers and do other bad stuff? You know, here in Mississippi the admins are known to use things like firewalls (for the important stuff) and DMZs (like at the library). You might look into that...
When they still had the heirarchy, getting a first class radiotelephone license granted an individual a certain amount of "power" to assist the FCC in enforcement. You could even carry a badge if you so chose, as a public servant. Of course, the "power" of that badge is almost entirely imaginary... just like the FCC's. Much of what they get away with, they do so only because they are allowed.
I am so proud to be a UTD alum right now.
NOT!
I guess 802.x wireless is not the same as hot plates and 4ft bongs as the majority of the comments from the original story claimed. Amazing that once the lawyers look at it they come to the same conclusion as every other organization that has taken a hard look at this issue. Just goes to show you /. spinners are not lawyers :)
And did they, per chance, discover this rule on Slashdot the day their ban was reported here?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Most univerisities have strict policies regarding what you can and cannot connect to their network..
At least mine does:
University of Virginia Wireless airspace policy
And the medieval Residence hall bandwidth policy. 512 kbps limited + "timeout box" for people using more than 750 meg.
I'm a sophmore at UTD and I had no idea there was a ban on WiFi cards... I guess that's what I get for living off campus.
Bungo!
Great to see that old values are no longer restraining the use of modern technology at University of Texas Dallas. Some people will always demonstrate a defensive tendancy to control the use of innovative tools but we must always strive to encourage openness and the sharing of information. This is particularly in the advanced stages of the Information Age where knowledge is (or at least it should be) ubiquitous. Peter
If the wireless access at UTD wasn't so horrendous, it wouldn't have been an issue in the first place.
Basically, what happened was, we were promised free internet access, and then about 20% of us actually managed to get it. And that 20% still randomly loses the connection fairly frequently. So, a bunch of people said "screw it," bought DSL/cable and set up internet for ourselves. Then UTD tries to come down and blame us for the lack of internet (which is mostly due to the fact that there aren't enough APs more than anything else) and shut down our internet. Basically, as far as I can tell, the university is opposed to its students (predominantly Computer Science/Engineering majors) having internet.
Besides all that, UTD doesn't own the apartments, and thus has no say in the matter. If their wireless sucks so much, they either need to fix it or deal with us getting our own ISPs.
Remember kids, tin foil doesn't work, so use LeadHat.
My immediate reaction was that this was a stupid and deliberate attempt to be shocking or "extreme", dreamt up by some moron in the marketing department at MTV.
I'm prepared to accept the "OOPS!" explanation.
Janet's breast was a tad droopy. (Not bad at all, especially for someone her age, but not fully self-supporting either.)
If the flash had been deliberate, it would have been trivial to design the costume (which WAS custom) to provide the small amount of support required to show it off to best advantage.
Given the extreme attention Janet pays to her appearance (in order both to give her fans a good show and keep her carreer on track), deliberately showing off her breast without that tiny bit of support seems out of character.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Oh, and Jimmy "Nukear" Carter can??
The FCC could not prevent a private landlord from prohibiting WiFi devices in a lease.
Actually, yes it can. Go back to the original Slashdot article, and read the memo linked.
Landlords can't prevent people from using satellite dishes (though they can prevent them from attaching them to the building, because the people don't have exclusive rights to the building itself). This is specifically addressed in the memo.
Really. I'm serious - it's very specifically stated that landlords, community organizations (condo associations), etc. cannot restrict usage of the unlicensed bands in the leases. So if your lease says "you can't have wireless routers" you can specifically point them to that memo and say "yes I can." They do not have authority to prevent you from using the 2.4 GHz band.
Don't try to use the "they can do anything they want" or "they can prevent you from using a hotplate" arguments - read the memo. There are many portions of leases which can be rendered invalid - you can't say "you can't have visitors over" in a lease in Pennsylvania, for instance. And there is no Federal Hot Plate Commission which states they are the sole authority on the licensing of hot plates. There is an FCC, and they have the only word on restriction of equipment to access unlicensed bands.
If they want a controlled network, they have to license spectrum from the FCC, like Ricochet. Educational institutions can usually get a good deal on spectrum. But they can't just arbitrarily take spectrum.
Slashdot.org, a national online discussion forum of technical issues.
Jimmy Carter stood down to Iran. George W Bush stood up to Iraq.
Next?
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Can someone please post a link to the letter the FCC sent?
I'd like to send it to my homeowners association. They believe THEY have the right to tell me if I can have 802.11b in my HOME!
Well, this particular issue is recognition that the university only owns the land. They do not own the spectrum that travels across the land, no more than they own the airspace above it. Those are the property of the FCC.
It's not surprising that a government organization is unhappy with people who try to claim its authority.
I am a UTD student that lives in the much discussed Waterview aps. As far as I'm concerned everyone who has been bitching about not being able to use their wireless routers are a bunch of greedy, lazy, better-offs with no concern for the other students who live in the apartments here on campus. Yes fellow students, I'm talking to YOU. First of all, "rogue" access points in a wireless network cause problems. There really isn't much to argue about. Interference issues, access point jumping, whatever. Radio waves don't stop for sheet-rock walls. Secondly, this is a UNIVERSITY. Not everyone here can afford dsl/cable. Some of us can barely pay for school. $50 extra a month is a lot, it's like $600 a year for those of us who live here all year round (most do). But ALL the students here deserve to get the access that our tuition and fees are paying for. Everyone (especially CS/EE students) need internet access to upload assignments. For some classes, that is the ONLY way to turn them in. How many things do you depend on internet access for? How important is it to check e-mail and announcement pages regularly for you as a student? How does it make you feel to think that you could be depriving somebody of that? Is it so damn hard to run a few network cables so the 4 foreign girls escaping oppression next door can upload their assignments from the comfort of there apartment just like your fat, lazy ass? "But people can still use it"--Many can still use the wireless network, but there are many who can't. Those who can have all kinds of problems, some which would be aleviated if the rogues were shutdown. As far as "Rights" are concerned, I'd be the first one to take up arms against the oppressors. In fact, that's what I feel like I'm doing right now. All those excuses about privacy and "the Principle of it" are a crock of shit and every one of you knows it. Maybe if this was a non-affiliated apartment complex that was forcing occupants to use it's wireless network for a hiked fee, but it's NOT. Like I said it's a UNIVERSITY with a very legally bizarre on-campus living situation. No legal precedence are going to be set in this situation. Oh, and for anyone that's interested, the FCC didn't breathe down anyone's neck. The IR head saw discussions on this site and others. He knew he could win if he fought it, but knew it wouldn't be worth the cost. So I hope everyone is real happy.
You mean W invaded Iraq for no reason, resulting in the needless deaths of over 1000 American soldiers.
"... for no reason ..." is quite mistaken, and you immediately disprove it. To mention this is fallacious and erroneous, but I'll let that slide for now ...
No weapons of mass destruction have been found.
Would unnecessarily massive amounts of fertilizer count? Because lots of ammunition depots have been just filled with this stuff, which happens to be a simple precursor to chemical weapons. The claim is that it's for agricultural reasons, but the Iraqi economy doesn't support that, and even then, why house it in military installations? I'd say, the jury's still out on this.
No credible link between Iraq and the 9/11 attacks has been found. Another lie.
I don't recall the Bush administration ever claming that Iraq was tied to 9/11. That they were tied to terrorists, yes, but 9/11, no. Tons of people have come to the same conclusion as you did, though, so it's troublesome.
From what CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and the BBC show, it sure does look that way. But try reading blogs of Iraqis in Iraq. Or soldiers in Iraq. Get your information closer to the source. You'll see a much different picture from what the liberal media shows you.
Dick Chaney, primary proponent of the war, has recieved a minimum of $7 MILLION in personal profit as a direct result of the war. The Bush family is one of the primary investors in the Carlisle group, which has also reaped windfall profits as a result of the war. Conflict of interest, anyone?
Where's your proof of this? And if it's Micheal Moore, well ... I feel quite sorry for you.
All of the senior administration officials (with the sole exception of Colin Powell) are chickenhawks -- they go looking for fights but they have proven themselves, to a man, unwilling to put their money where their mouths are and actually serve in combat, despite having had the opportunity to do so.
"chicken-hawks" ... real intelligent-sounding. But I'll bite: tell that to the ANG members who went to Vietnam (Bush even volunteered, but didn't have enough flight hours in the right planes to go). So to say that serving in the ANG is being unwilling to serve in combat is at least a little disingenuous. Let's be fair.
Cheney--well, I don't like him much, but will add this name, who started fights but never fought himself: Clinton
If GWB believes that the war is so important that Americans need to send their sons & daughters halfway around the world to fight & die, then he should lead by example and encourage those two little drunken sluts of his to enlist and go off to the front lines.
Again, name-calling. I see no evidence his daughters are acting any different from others their age in college, nor evidence that "sluts" is any kind of fitting. If you have first-hand knowledge otherwise, that's something--if not, you're not helping your cause any. ...
Similarly, I didn't see Chelsea in the Balkans. And we were only going to be there just that year, right? What? We've still got troops there? Whoa
Next!
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Shoulda hit Preview. This point didn't quite come through right. I apologize for the bit of confusion for this point in the above post.
They constantly deny that the situation in Iraq is degenerating into civil war. More lies.
From what CNN, CBS, ABC, NBC, and the BBC show, it sure does look that way. But try reading blogs of Iraqis in Iraq. Or soldiers in Iraq. Get your information closer to the source. You'll see a much different picture from what the liberal media shows you.
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Of course that doesn't count the direct CASH payments from Halliburton in excess of a quarter mil he's gotten since taking office, or the $30 Million "retirement bonus" they gave him when he took office.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
This article in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram mentions Slashdot.org and how it "nationalized" what would've been a local issue.
... realm of the university when it was covered on Slashdot, a Web forum on technology issues ...
...
...
Posted on Wed, Sep. 22, 2004
Network ban in dorm creates student uproar
By Aman Batheja / Star-Telegram Staff Writer
A controversy over wireless networks at the University of Texas at Dallas stirs debate on several nationally read Web sites.
"It turned into a much bigger issue than I had anticipated it would have," said Bill Hargrove, executive director of information resources.
The issue moved beyond the realm of the university when it was covered on Slashdot, a Web forum on technology issues read by millions. The posting received more than 1,100 comments in just 12 hours. The issue was soon discussed on other popular sites including Techdirt, News.com, and MIT's Technology Review.
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