Before opening your big mouth did you follow the link that I provided? I did read the article. In fact, I read more than just the article, which is why I was able to provide a pulled-quote from one of the Van's Aircraft pages on Jon Johanson and his aifcraft. But, because your too lazy to follow a simple link, here's that quote for you again:
"Jon's RV-4 is a stock airplane, built from a Van's Aircraft kit exactly to designer Richard VanGrunsven's plans. It had to be. Australia does not have the equivalent of the US Experimental category, so each amateur built airplane has to be inspected and tested to the same standards as a factory built. No deviations from the plans are permitted."
Now, what does that say to you?
Did you bother to read what I wrote before firing off your snotty reply? What am I thinking, stupid question.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how a couple of extra fuel tanks makes an off-the-shelf aircraft "experimental", as the original poster suggested. And, as I've said all along, I fail to see how this is even remotely science.
Think about what I said and what you just typed there.
I didn't say the UK had the most miles of highway per capita, I said it had the most miles of road per capita. The term "highway" clearly doesn't describe all roads, does it? Please don't interchange the two to twist what I said into something else entirely.
I did RTFA. That's how I know they talk about motion control and mirroring. But UI design that fails to take into account how we use devices - and I'm not stretching anyone's imagination by suggesting that mobile phones are primarily used by people on the move - is bad UI.
If these features prove unusable to anyone moving at average walking speed or higher, then what yse are they? (NB. I'm not saying that is the case, only asking what use they are if it is so.)
More miles of road per capita than anywhere else? I doubt it - there simply isn't enough space. You do the math....
No, it's quite accurate. The UK does indeed have more miles per capita than anywhere else in the world. I did have a link to a Department of Transport consultation paper but it seems to have been moved.
I wonder how well the motion control and mirroring work when you're on the move.
I can imagine how annoying it would be to have web pages scroll when you don't want them to scroll just because you were walking too quickly or the car or train you were travelling in provided a less than perfect ride.
Frankly, it seems like a big gimmick to me. UI that doesn't take into account practicality - UI for UI's sake - is doomed to failure.
I understood what you were saying and it's a valid point. What I was trying to add was that there are several factors that account for UK (and European) fuel taxes being so high, which few motorists will readily acknowledge.
On the contrary, it's a standard model that anyone can buy pretty cheaply. It's even flown as a military trainer by the Nigerian Air Force, so being able to fly it to Antartica and then find yourself stranded there is hardly as impressive as you make it sound.
I think UK motorists conveniently like to forget that we have more miles of road per capita than anywhere else.
Yes, the taxation is used on more than just the roads (by the way, the average cost of a traffic accident is 100,000 pounds, once you factor in things like clean-up, emergency service call out, etc), but alcohol and tobacco taxes are used to pay for more than just the cost of treating the relating illnesses too. Taxation isn't homogenous and it can't be, which is something that motoring organisations often fail to realise.
By that rationale, a story about an adventurer whose kit car breaks down in the Sahara and then can't buy the fuel from a remote waystation there because they won't sell it to him for whatever reason would be a reasonable science story?
Face it, this isn't science. The guy's flying a plane that's got no significant modifications from the factory spec. Here's a quote from one of Van's Aircraft pages about him:
"Jon's RV-4 is a stock airplane, built from a Van's Aircraft kit exactly to designer Richard VanGrunsven's plans. It had to be. Australia does not have the equivalent of the US Experimental category, so each amateur built airplane has to be inspected and tested to the same standards as a factory built. No deviations from the plans are permitted."
So there's nothing unique about his plane whatsover, and it's not the kind of aircraft that's put together with rubberbands - heck, it's even flown as a air force trainer.
So, this clearly isn't science, and it's barely exploration - he wouldn't have been the first man to fly from Australasia to South America by any stretch of the imagination. So what the hell is this doing in the science section of Slashdot?
At a stretch it's exploration, but science? No fricking way. So why does Slashdot think of it as such?
OK, so he's flying a kit plane - but it's not a kit plane that he designed, is it? It's one that he bought from a company that sold hundreds of them.
So I'll ask again, how is this news for nerds or stuff that matters? If I bought and assembled a kit car then drove it across the Sahara desert would that make the science section of Slashdot? On what basis?
I'm not trying to diminish Jon Johanson's achievements, I'm only trying to establish how this is remotely worthy of inclusion in this forum. No doubt that's enough to get me modded down as flamebait.
OK, so one one hand you're suggesting that an Iraqi colonel who says that the US/UK troops who spearheaded the invasion were lucky not to have been massacred by WMDs on the battlefield is a credible source but you can't show a single instance of a WMD shell or round having been discovered?
Sorry, help me out here, if the WMDs were there, ready to be used against the invading forces then why hasn't a single one been discovered?
Did every single one of them just become invisible? Did the Iraqi troops who supposedly had them suddenly all contract mass amnesia and forget everything about them?
If the WMDs were hidden in "secret weapons caches throughout the country to supply resistance fighters after the war", how is it that not a single one has surfaced? After all, it is after the war now, and if the WMDs aren't going to be used now when are they ever going to be?
What about the WMD facilities that Colin Powell highlighted to the UN? Did they all suddenly vanish? Where did they go? Are we to believe that they were on the satellite picture one minute and gone the next? Of course not, so why haven't WMDs or traces of their manufacture and/or storage been found at any of these facilities?
Even the White House and Pentagon and now admitting that it looks more and more likely that Saddam Hussein ordered a significant amount of Iraqs stockpiles destroyed secretly. While this was technical violation of the UN resolutions set in place, let's not forget that this is what the US, etc all wanted in the first place.
Why would Hussein destroy stockpiles secretly? Well, most experts in the field agree that doing so would allow him to maintain the illusion of having some WMDs left, which he may well have thought would act as a deterrent against Western and Middle Eastern enemies. If this is true, it looks like this may well have been a fatal miscalculation on Hussein's part but it doesn't negate the fact that this war was started under false pretences.
What if there is a failure of some sort around Europa and the probe ends up crashing on the planet?
That nuclear material could have an unmeasureable detrimental effect on any life there is there, so NASA needs to be damn certain that this baby will not contaminate the surface even if the worst case scenario was to occur.
Remember, recent NASA missions to the other planets have not all gone smoothly, so this is a very big concern.
Re-read the article that you linked to. The Iraqi officer also claims that the only reason why these biological and chemical weapons weren't used during the recent invasion was that "the majority of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam".
OK, if that was the case then wouldn't these WMDs have been found by US/UK troops upon inspecting Iraqi troops that they had captured or killed?
Wouldn't any of the captured Iraqi soldiers, especially those that surrendered willingly, been able to show the Coalition forces their local stockpiles?
Wouldn't the Colonel himself, being so knowledgeable about the WMDs and their readiness potential, be able to point to a single base, garrison, stockpile or manufacturing facility?
The truth of the matter is not a single Iraqi soldier was found in possession of WMDs. Not a single one has been able to identify where WMDs can be found. And not a single location where WMDs have been manufactured or stored has been identified or discovered. Kind of blows some major holes in what was said in that interview, doesn't it?
And as for your "terrorism != Al Qaeda" statement, well, gosh, living in London and having walked past at least one IRA bomb minutes before it was safely detonated and having felt the consequences big and small of IRA terrorism virtually all my life, thanks for clueing me in on that one.
(By the way, that would be the same IRA that George Bush Sr. refused to stop Americans from donating to, as it would be "against free speech". Funny how the US wasn't so gung-ho about declaring war on terrorism when it was its citizens funding the murder of British soldiers, civilians and politicians, of innocent men, women and children. I won't bother to even mention Iran-Contra or a dozen similar examples of the US exporting terrorism abroad.)
But tell me, just how did Iraq pre-invasion pose a threat to US national security?
Iraq has never possessed the technology to launch a direct attack on the US from its soil and what military capability it did have left after the Gulf War was severely diminished by over a decade of sanctions and regular retalitory strikes by US/UK forces for violations of their designated no-fly zone.
The only way that Iraqi WMDs (if they still existed) could have posed a threat to the US/UK is if those countries had troops on the ground in Iraq. And even when that came to pass, not a WMD round or shell surfaced, and not a single one was found.
So, to suggest that the invasion of Iraq took place becuase "Iraq (and its WMD) posed a threat to our national security" is laughable. Almost as laughable as your statement that "nobody has tried to deny that claim" - why do you think the majority of the world's nations were opposed to the US-led invasion?
Well, if you think you can't avoid getting sick then make damned sure you can afford to pay your own bills. Get an insurance or stash money under your mattress, but don't ask me for help. You don't owe me anything and I don't owe you anything.
If you don't see how it's in your interest that your fellow citizens are fit and able to contribute to society rather than be sick, infirm and unable to work then you're rather more short-sighted than I first thought.
(Oh, and if you have any more insightful comments to make, then please do so while logged in. After all, you're not ashamed of your opinion, so why post as an AC?)
Having the government pander the citizens only makes them weak and spineless (like modern day US or almost any "civilized" country).
If you don't want to pay medical bills, don't get friggin' sick in the first place.
Wow, what an insightful position. I suppose you can somehow chose whether or not to be born with a congenital illness can you? Or to grow up in an environment where, say, TB is present? Or whether or not to get hit by a drunk driver? Or to contract leukemia? Or cancer? Or to need a working kidney?
Who knew it was that easy!
Here's a related story that you'll like.
In the 1990s, the US Agency for International Aid (USAID), which was set up specifically to help the poor in developing world nations, put the US itself on its list of developing nations, and started providing assitance to housing and poverty projects in Washington DC, Boston, Seattle and elsewhere. In 1994, USAID took a group of Baltimore healthcare workers on a field trip to Kenya in a bid to boost that city's child immunisation rates. Before visiting Kenya, which boasted a near 100 percent record, only 56 percent of Baltimore's infants were effectively immunised. After learning from the Kenyans, Baltimore managed to improve that figure to 96 percent.
Clearly, Baltimore made a big mistake in seeking to improve the health of its future generations. All it's succeeded in doing is making them "weak and spineless". Yeah, right.
You do realize that Britain's health system is socialist don't you? Under socialism, you take what is given to you.
Oh My God. A health system where you will be treated regardless, where you can get a heart bypass, a kidney transplant, cancer therapy or IVF treatment without someone first asking for your health insurance details or your credit card number and you choose to dismiss it because it's egalitarian?
I'm sorry, but I think a government has a few basic responsibilities towards its citizens. Making sure that it does its best to keep them all in good health by providing them all with decent medical care regardless of their ability to pay or their social standing is a good thing.
A sick child that needs a vital operation is a sick child that needs a vital operation. Whether or not her parents can afford to pay for whatever it takes to make her well again should not factor into the equation.
If this is what you decry as "socialist" then give me a "socialist" society any day of the week.
"No offense"? I told you something that actually happened to a personal acquaintance, of the most decent and honest people that you're ever likely to meet, and you're calling me out for "stray[ing] from the truth"? Gee, when you put it like that why would I take offense?
An aide worker that I know tried to take some crayons into Iraq as a gift for the children of an Iraqi hospital worker that she had befriended. Those crayons were taken away at a checkpoint because they were deemed to be in violation of UN sanctions.
Paint it any way you want, but don't try to pretend that it didn't happen just because you didn't see it with your own two eyes. What next? Are you going to deny anything that didn't happen live on CNN? Well, that's a nice way of looking at history through rose-tinted glasses. Revisionism at its best.
It's nice that you've bothered to look up how the sanctions were meant to work. It's sad that you fail to recognise that there's often a world of difference between what's meant to happen and what's not meant to happen. History is littered with examples, most of which had more severe consequences than a child missing out on a box of crayons.
Propaganda? Don't talk to me about propaganda. The current administration attempted to justify this war with Iraq as an extension of the "War on Terrorism". Iraq had massive WMD stockpiles they said. These could be readied for use within 45 minutes they said. Iraq had definite links with Al Qaeda they said. All lies. There have been no WMDs found, even the Bush adminstration now admits that such claims were over-exuberant, and no evidence of any links with Al Qaeda has been presented. (Want a country with links to Al Qaeda? Try the US. Just ask the CIA.)
The US public and the world community were lied to deliberately. You want propaganda? That's propaganda.
Look at some of the links there, and who they're quoting. I'll just link to one article, written by a Seattle Times correspondent: The Catastrophe of Sanctions Against Iraq.
Here's a brief quote from that article:
So what are we to do?
Drop all non-military sanctions. This will not be "rewarding" Saddam Hussein. By allowing people to focus on something other than sheer survival, it will enable the professional middle classes to contemplate political change. Stop delaying or denying Iraq access to books, medical journals, pencils and papers, as the U.N. Sanctions Committee, dominated by the U.S. and the U.K., has repeatedly done.
I guess all those links are just lies and this Seattle Times writer was lying too, just like me. Yeah, right.
Food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies were never restricted by sanctions.
I know of at least one aide worker who went into Iraq during the period when sanctions were in effect who had children's crayons, which she was taking into Iraq as a personal gift, confiscated at the border as they were deemed to be in violation of the sanctions.
Children's crayons. Just what threat did they pose to international security? If you mix the blue and the orange can you make a nuke? Pathetic.
...presents twenty-five titles per console including the Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube, PC, and HandHelds.
Uh, I hate to break it to you, but a PC isn't a console. Would it behove you editors to actually correct sentences like this one before you hit the "publish" button?
Can't you correct other people's mistakes? Is that it? Well, let me help you out then:
"...presents twenty-five titles per platform, including the Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube, PC and HandHelds."
There you go. Drop the italics from the above, and you're good to go. I've even tidied up some of the punctuation for you. No charge.
Piracy is a crime and these folks were arrested for it. I don't see why this is news.
Uh, not quite. Software piracy may be a crime, but writing a P2P application, which has practical purposes for sharing files legally, isn't (as far as I know).
It's a sad day when writing a file sharing application is enough to get your house turned upside down by the police or get you thrown into jail.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you bother to read what I wrote before firing off your snotty reply? What am I thinking, stupid question.
I'm sorry, but I fail to see how a couple of extra fuel tanks makes an off-the-shelf aircraft "experimental", as the original poster suggested. And, as I've said all along, I fail to see how this is even remotely science.
Think about what I said and what you just typed there.
I didn't say the UK had the most miles of highway per capita, I said it had the most miles of road per capita. The term "highway" clearly doesn't describe all roads, does it? Please don't interchange the two to twist what I said into something else entirely.
I did RTFA. That's how I know they talk about motion control and mirroring. But UI design that fails to take into account how we use devices - and I'm not stretching anyone's imagination by suggesting that mobile phones are primarily used by people on the move - is bad UI.
If these features prove unusable to anyone moving at average walking speed or higher, then what yse are they? (NB. I'm not saying that is the case, only asking what use they are if it is so.)
More miles of road per capita than anywhere else? I doubt it - there simply isn't enough space. You do the math....
No, it's quite accurate. The UK does indeed have more miles per capita than anywhere else in the world. I did have a link to a Department of Transport consultation paper but it seems to have been moved.
I wonder how well the motion control and mirroring work when you're on the move.
I can imagine how annoying it would be to have web pages scroll when you don't want them to scroll just because you were walking too quickly or the car or train you were travelling in provided a less than perfect ride.
Frankly, it seems like a big gimmick to me. UI that doesn't take into account practicality - UI for UI's sake - is doomed to failure.
I understood what you were saying and it's a valid point. What I was trying to add was that there are several factors that account for UK (and European) fuel taxes being so high, which few motorists will readily acknowledge.
As I have pointed out elsewhere, there is nothing "experimental" or "expensive" about this aircraft.
On the contrary, it's a standard model that anyone can buy pretty cheaply. It's even flown as a military trainer by the Nigerian Air Force, so being able to fly it to Antartica and then find yourself stranded there is hardly as impressive as you make it sound.
I think UK motorists conveniently like to forget that we have more miles of road per capita than anywhere else.
Yes, the taxation is used on more than just the roads (by the way, the average cost of a traffic accident is 100,000 pounds, once you factor in things like clean-up, emergency service call out, etc), but alcohol and tobacco taxes are used to pay for more than just the cost of treating the relating illnesses too. Taxation isn't homogenous and it can't be, which is something that motoring organisations often fail to realise.
Face it, this isn't science. The guy's flying a plane that's got no significant modifications from the factory spec. Here's a quote from one of Van's Aircraft pages about him:So there's nothing unique about his plane whatsover, and it's not the kind of aircraft that's put together with rubberbands - heck, it's even flown as a air force trainer.
So, this clearly isn't science, and it's barely exploration - he wouldn't have been the first man to fly from Australasia to South America by any stretch of the imagination. So what the hell is this doing in the science section of Slashdot?
At a stretch it's exploration, but science? No fricking way. So why does Slashdot think of it as such?
OK, so he's flying a kit plane - but it's not a kit plane that he designed, is it? It's one that he bought from a company that sold hundreds of them.
So I'll ask again, how is this news for nerds or stuff that matters? If I bought and assembled a kit car then drove it across the Sahara desert would that make the science section of Slashdot? On what basis?
I'm not trying to diminish Jon Johanson's achievements, I'm only trying to establish how this is remotely worthy of inclusion in this forum. No doubt that's enough to get me modded down as flamebait.
OK, so one one hand you're suggesting that an Iraqi colonel who says that the US/UK troops who spearheaded the invasion were lucky not to have been massacred by WMDs on the battlefield is a credible source but you can't show a single instance of a WMD shell or round having been discovered?
Sorry, help me out here, if the WMDs were there, ready to be used against the invading forces then why hasn't a single one been discovered?
Did every single one of them just become invisible? Did the Iraqi troops who supposedly had them suddenly all contract mass amnesia and forget everything about them?
If the WMDs were hidden in "secret weapons caches throughout the country to supply resistance fighters after the war", how is it that not a single one has surfaced? After all, it is after the war now, and if the WMDs aren't going to be used now when are they ever going to be?
What about the WMD facilities that Colin Powell highlighted to the UN? Did they all suddenly vanish? Where did they go? Are we to believe that they were on the satellite picture one minute and gone the next? Of course not, so why haven't WMDs or traces of their manufacture and/or storage been found at any of these facilities?
Even the White House and Pentagon and now admitting that it looks more and more likely that Saddam Hussein ordered a significant amount of Iraqs stockpiles destroyed secretly. While this was technical violation of the UN resolutions set in place, let's not forget that this is what the US, etc all wanted in the first place.
Why would Hussein destroy stockpiles secretly? Well, most experts in the field agree that doing so would allow him to maintain the illusion of having some WMDs left, which he may well have thought would act as a deterrent against Western and Middle Eastern enemies. If this is true, it looks like this may well have been a fatal miscalculation on Hussein's part but it doesn't negate the fact that this war was started under false pretences.
What if there is a failure of some sort around Europa and the probe ends up crashing on the planet?
That nuclear material could have an unmeasureable detrimental effect on any life there is there, so NASA needs to be damn certain that this baby will not contaminate the surface even if the worst case scenario was to occur.
Remember, recent NASA missions to the other planets have not all gone smoothly, so this is a very big concern.
Re-read the article that you linked to. The Iraqi officer also claims that the only reason why these biological and chemical weapons weren't used during the recent invasion was that "the majority of the Iraqi army did not want to fight for Saddam".
OK, if that was the case then wouldn't these WMDs have been found by US/UK troops upon inspecting Iraqi troops that they had captured or killed?
Wouldn't any of the captured Iraqi soldiers, especially those that surrendered willingly, been able to show the Coalition forces their local stockpiles?
Wouldn't the Colonel himself, being so knowledgeable about the WMDs and their readiness potential, be able to point to a single base, garrison, stockpile or manufacturing facility?
The truth of the matter is not a single Iraqi soldier was found in possession of WMDs. Not a single one has been able to identify where WMDs can be found. And not a single location where WMDs have been manufactured or stored has been identified or discovered. Kind of blows some major holes in what was said in that interview, doesn't it?
And as for your "terrorism != Al Qaeda" statement, well, gosh, living in London and having walked past at least one IRA bomb minutes before it was safely detonated and having felt the consequences big and small of IRA terrorism virtually all my life, thanks for clueing me in on that one.
(By the way, that would be the same IRA that George Bush Sr. refused to stop Americans from donating to, as it would be "against free speech". Funny how the US wasn't so gung-ho about declaring war on terrorism when it was its citizens funding the murder of British soldiers, civilians and politicians, of innocent men, women and children. I won't bother to even mention Iran-Contra or a dozen similar examples of the US exporting terrorism abroad.)
But tell me, just how did Iraq pre-invasion pose a threat to US national security?
Iraq has never possessed the technology to launch a direct attack on the US from its soil and what military capability it did have left after the Gulf War was severely diminished by over a decade of sanctions and regular retalitory strikes by US/UK forces for violations of their designated no-fly zone.
The only way that Iraqi WMDs (if they still existed) could have posed a threat to the US/UK is if those countries had troops on the ground in Iraq. And even when that came to pass, not a WMD round or shell surfaced, and not a single one was found.
So, to suggest that the invasion of Iraq took place becuase "Iraq (and its WMD) posed a threat to our national security" is laughable. Almost as laughable as your statement that "nobody has tried to deny that claim" - why do you think the majority of the world's nations were opposed to the US-led invasion?
Well, if you think you can't avoid getting sick then make damned sure you can afford to pay your own bills. Get an insurance or stash money under your mattress, but don't ask me for help. You don't owe me anything and I don't owe you anything.
If you don't see how it's in your interest that your fellow citizens are fit and able to contribute to society rather than be sick, infirm and unable to work then you're rather more short-sighted than I first thought.
(Oh, and if you have any more insightful comments to make, then please do so while logged in. After all, you're not ashamed of your opinion, so why post as an AC?)
Having the government pander the citizens only makes them weak and spineless (like modern day US or almost any "civilized" country).
If you don't want to pay medical bills, don't get friggin' sick in the first place.
Wow, what an insightful position. I suppose you can somehow chose whether or not to be born with a congenital illness can you? Or to grow up in an environment where, say, TB is present? Or whether or not to get hit by a drunk driver? Or to contract leukemia? Or cancer? Or to need a working kidney?
Who knew it was that easy!
Here's a related story that you'll like.
In the 1990s, the US Agency for International Aid (USAID), which was set up specifically to help the poor in developing world nations, put the US itself on its list of developing nations, and started providing assitance to housing and poverty projects in Washington DC, Boston, Seattle and elsewhere. In 1994, USAID took a group of Baltimore healthcare workers on a field trip to Kenya in a bid to boost that city's child immunisation rates. Before visiting Kenya, which boasted a near 100 percent record, only 56 percent of Baltimore's infants were effectively immunised. After learning from the Kenyans, Baltimore managed to improve that figure to 96 percent.
Clearly, Baltimore made a big mistake in seeking to improve the health of its future generations. All it's succeeded in doing is making them "weak and spineless". Yeah, right.
You do realize that Britain's health system is socialist don't you? Under socialism, you take what is given to you.
Oh My God. A health system where you will be treated regardless, where you can get a heart bypass, a kidney transplant, cancer therapy or IVF treatment without someone first asking for your health insurance details or your credit card number and you choose to dismiss it because it's egalitarian?
I'm sorry, but I think a government has a few basic responsibilities towards its citizens. Making sure that it does its best to keep them all in good health by providing them all with decent medical care regardless of their ability to pay or their social standing is a good thing.
A sick child that needs a vital operation is a sick child that needs a vital operation. Whether or not her parents can afford to pay for whatever it takes to make her well again should not factor into the equation.
If this is what you decry as "socialist" then give me a "socialist" society any day of the week.
They have lots of mountains that could be hollowed out to make ideal bad-guy secret lairs.
Get many sharks there?
Looks like his web server's made of Lego too.
"No offense"? I told you something that actually happened to a personal acquaintance, of the most decent and honest people that you're ever likely to meet, and you're calling me out for "stray[ing] from the truth"? Gee, when you put it like that why would I take offense?
An aide worker that I know tried to take some crayons into Iraq as a gift for the children of an Iraqi hospital worker that she had befriended. Those crayons were taken away at a checkpoint because they were deemed to be in violation of UN sanctions.
Paint it any way you want, but don't try to pretend that it didn't happen just because you didn't see it with your own two eyes. What next? Are you going to deny anything that didn't happen live on CNN? Well, that's a nice way of looking at history through rose-tinted glasses. Revisionism at its best.
It's nice that you've bothered to look up how the sanctions were meant to work. It's sad that you fail to recognise that there's often a world of difference between what's meant to happen and what's not meant to happen. History is littered with examples, most of which had more severe consequences than a child missing out on a box of crayons.
Propaganda? Don't talk to me about propaganda. The current administration attempted to justify this war with Iraq as an extension of the "War on Terrorism". Iraq had massive WMD stockpiles they said. These could be readied for use within 45 minutes they said. Iraq had definite links with Al Qaeda they said. All lies. There have been no WMDs found, even the Bush adminstration now admits that such claims were over-exuberant, and no evidence of any links with Al Qaeda has been presented. (Want a country with links to Al Qaeda? Try the US. Just ask the CIA.)
The US public and the world community were lied to deliberately. You want propaganda? That's propaganda.
Oh and regarding your "myth", just do a quick google: Google results for "iraq sanctions children pencils"
Look at some of the links there, and who they're quoting. I'll just link to one article, written by a Seattle Times correspondent: The Catastrophe of Sanctions Against Iraq.
Here's a brief quote from that article: I guess all those links are just lies and this Seattle Times writer was lying too, just like me. Yeah, right.
Food, medicine, and humanitarian supplies were never restricted by sanctions.
I know of at least one aide worker who went into Iraq during the period when sanctions were in effect who had children's crayons, which she was taking into Iraq as a personal gift, confiscated at the border as they were deemed to be in violation of the sanctions.
Children's crayons. Just what threat did they pose to international security? If you mix the blue and the orange can you make a nuke? Pathetic.
Hey, check this out: http://www.google.com/search?q=behove.
My spelling was fine and dandy, thank you very much. It would behove you to remember the following:
1. Not everyone on Slashdot is American; and
2. It's called English for a reason.
QED.
...presents twenty-five titles per console including the Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube, PC, and HandHelds.
Uh, I hate to break it to you, but a PC isn't a console. Would it behove you editors to actually correct sentences like this one before you hit the "publish" button?
Can't you correct other people's mistakes? Is that it? Well, let me help you out then:
"...presents twenty-five titles per platform, including the Microsoft Xbox, Sony Playstation 2, Nintendo GameCube, PC and HandHelds."
There you go. Drop the italics from the above, and you're good to go. I've even tidied up some of the punctuation for you. No charge.
Piracy is a crime and these folks were arrested for it. I don't see why this is news.
Uh, not quite. Software piracy may be a crime, but writing a P2P application, which has practical purposes for sharing files legally, isn't (as far as I know).
It's a sad day when writing a file sharing application is enough to get your house turned upside down by the police or get you thrown into jail.