3/19    Rumsfeld 'wanted to bomb Iraq' after 9/11
        http://csua.org/u/6iv
        'But Mr Clarke, who is expected to testify on Tuesday before a federal
        panel reviewing the attacks, said Mr Rumsfeld complained in the meeting
        that "there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan and there are lots
        of good targets in Iraq." A spokesman for Mr Rumsfeld last night said
        he could not comment immediately."'
        \_ tell me why would the UN want to give up its exploitation of
        making millions off Saddam and the Oil for Food program?
        what incentive for the UN to get rid of IRAQ's saddam when they
        are making millions. You want nothing more than to put the
                \_ Okay Mr. Smarty Pants whay was your strategy for
        Iraqi people back under oppression so that the UN can make millions
        more off the poor Iraqi people exploiting the Oil for Food program.
        \_ lovely
        \_ What's wrong with this, liberal?
           \_ What's wrong? That Dubya and Co. tried to use the national
              tragedy to push their own agendas?
                \_ Okay Mr. Smarty Pants what was your strategy for
                \_ Okay Mr. Smarty Pants whay was your strategy for
                   dealing with terror and cleaning up the cesspool of
                   the Middle East; this is incumbent on those who
                   criticise. No cogent alternative was ever
                   \_ how about dealing with Israeli/Palestine issue
                      directly and more even-handedly?
                   \_ Um, how about the simple observation that Iraq didn't
                      have any involvement at all in Al Qaeda or the WTC?
                      Bombing Iraq as a response to that is asinine.
                      \_ Um, you are plain wrong. Iraq actually did (and
                         still does) have ties with Al Qaeda. Soldiers
                         during the war actually came across a number of
                         terrorist training camps during the war. This is
                         pretty well documented.
                         \_ Show me the documents so I can laugh at them.
                            I never saw them. I did see things about camps
                            in Saudi Arabia.
                   \_ There were plenty of cogent alternatives advocated.
                      Hussain's neighbors didn't consider him a threat.
                      Our own analyists didn't consider him a threat.
                      Hussain was not connected to radical Islamists.
                      It was and remains quite clear that invading Iraq
                      had nothing to do with dealing with terror.
                      \_ And what exactly were those alternatives? Was it to
                         continue to sit on our hands while Iraq continued
                         to violate UN rules and regulations? Do you really
                         believe the UN would have actually done something
                         about the problem? Are you that naive? Do you have
                         no sense of history?
                      \_ Hussein's neighbors didn't consider him a threat
                         *to them*.  I'm not one of his neighbors and I
                         doubt you are/were either.  Which of 'our own
                         analysts' are you refering to?  And yes there are
                         documents out there that show the national fascists
                         and Islamic fascists had considered working together.
                         Since our intel was so poor due to cuts in the 90s
                         we can't really know what was going on back then.
                         The best way to deal with terror is to overthrow the
                         socialist fascists that run the middle east and
                         replace them with non-Islamic democracies that won't
                               \_ I can't believe you have such simplistic
                                  view of the world.  If you actually
                                  read 18-19th century, you might find that
                                  much of the africa was conquered by the
                                  western democracies.  How about Britian's
                                  Opium War against China?  How about French's
                                  conquest of Indochina and Algeria?
                                  The truth is, Democracy, set by western
                                  europe and Americans, are interwined with
                                  Imperialism.  Countries fell victim of
                                  imperialism (including China, numerous
                                  of southeast asian nations, and much of the
                                  middleeast) tend to equate imperalism and
                                  democracy.  When they look for ways to
                                  modernize themselves, they tend to look for
                                  anything but imperalism related ideals.
                                  Many choose communism (eg N. Korea, Vietnam,
                                  and to some extent, China), many choose
                                  religious fundamentalism for solution.
                         put up with that shit.  Only then will the Arab
                         people advance and terrorism fade.  It's people like
                         you who want to keep the Arab people down who create
                         and foster future generations of terrorists.
                         \_ The "if only everyone had government structure
                            X (which just happens to be the same structure
                            I live under), then there would be no more
                            conflict" argument goes back the beginning of
                            time. I see no particular reason to think that
                            this time, but truly, the argument is right.
                            \_ It's a well-documented historical fact that
                               democracies rarely, if ever, fight each other.
                               Democracy does promote peace, the problem is
                               establishing democracy in a society which has
                               never seen it before.  Look how well it worked
                               in Russia...  -- ilyas
                               \_ Or China.  The primary arrogance of American
                                  foreign policy since the beginning of time
                                  is to simply assume as axiomatic that all
                                  people want and need Democracy, and that all
                                  governments are in some way drawn towards
                                  this conclusion as a natural matter of
                                  course.
                                  \_ Those arrogant optimistic Americans.
                                     A pox on them. -- ilyas
                            \_ you erase my post, I erase yours
                   advocated.

3/19    Today's contest: name the country which _didn't_ have any protests
        against the US invasion of Iraq:
        http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/news/archive/2004/03/20/international1233EST0513.DTL
        \_ Kiribati.
        \_ Can anyone shrink the url?  I can't copy and paste this.
           \_ Kids these days and their problem-solving skills...
           \_ I'm sorry, but you're joking right? Isn't this the *computer
              science* undergraduate assocation?
        \_ My country Singapore never had any protests against it, but
           then it never had protests against anything.
        \_ China.  You must be doing something right when the only countries
           that does not protest against you are Singapore and China, models
           of democracy.
        \_ Israel, of course.

3/21    the motd stuff about Taiwan was pretty interesting,
        which csua-Chinese-nationalist deleted it?
        \_ No, some asshole deleted a part of the thread, so the entire thing
           was nuked in retaliation.  Nothing to do with Taiwan, it was
           motd pettiness all the way.
        \_ You named the wrong nationalist.
        \_ [ chicom troll will be deleted on sight from now on. ]
           \_ [ that and the broken english ]
           \_ good. you've illustrated my point.  DPP rigged the election
              and anyone who doesn't agree is labeled as "chicom"
           \_ Congratulations, junior, you have the power to label anyone
              chicom and obliterate their posts.  Power to you.
        \_ I was the last one posting on that thread before it got killed by
           someone who couldn't take criticism of DPP.  I thought of restoring
           it but then  remembered it's just the motd.  You can look it up in
           the archive.

3/21    http://busty.pl/html/preview.html
        When are we invading Poland?  I volunteer.

3/21    Anyone need a dsl modem?  I've got an alcatel 1000 adsl modem kicking
        around that I'm not using.  Seems worth about 10 bucks on ebay.  Come
        pick it up and it is yours.  Buy me a beer and it is yours with a
        smile.   -aspolito
        \_ Heh, I have three of them just lying around. Seems like SBC gives
           one out everytime you sign up. -williamc
        \_ Alcatel 1000 is infamous for locking up periodically.  And I think
           it also had a security hole as well.

3/19    How many beer bottles are in a case of beer?
        \_ 24?
        \_ or 12
        \_ it depends on how drunk I am.
        \_ 12 bottles or 24 cans

3/21    I have a lot of old cell phones. They are from 5 years old to
        maybe 2 years old. I don't need them. Is there a charity or some
        other good use for these? I am not sure if they can still be used.
        They all have SPRINT logos on them, but the phones are made by
        Motorola, Kyocera, and such. --dim
        \_ when I worked at motorola, they collect old cell phones
           for domestic abuse victims.  don't know if it's this
           organization (I am still using my first cell phone (a
           clunky old startac)):
                http://www.wirelessfoundation.org/DonateAPhone
           Try a "donate a cell phone" google search for more
           choices but I guess you know that already.
        \_ http://accrc.org also takes used cell phones.  The older ones are probably
           scrap, but they'll dispose of them in an enviornmentally-correct
           way for free.
        \_ i dumped a couple of my old phones at a local verizon store.
           they give you some tax writeoff and will redistribute them
           to domestic abuse victims.

3/21    Does anyone know the deal on this whole SCO/Linux thing?  Has SCO
        told anyone the specific code they think is stolen?  Is it stolen
        or copied?  What is the deal here anyway?  Couldn't Linux just
        rewrite the code in question and the situation out be dead?
        \_ kids these days and their researching skills...
        \_ So far, every single line of code they showed turned out
           to be BSD code, public domain code, genuine Linux code, and similar.
           I think the claim of copied code was just a PR campaign to convince
           the laymen that indeed something apparently has been copied from
           SCO. The crux of SCO's case I think is that they're accusing IBM of
           donating to Linux code that they claim has been "derived" from the
           original Unix code, such as the JFS file systems. Maybe I am wrong,
           you might want to list all the recent SCO-related articles on
           slashdot, to get the idea ..
        \_ SCO didn't want to release the code because they knew these hacker
           geeks will do exactly that.  SCO is desperate and looking for way
           to milk money out of other people's hard work.
           \_ Microsoft's puppet... to push people towards Windoze
              http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/36017.html
        \_ I'll assume you're not trolling for a moment: assuming SCO is right
           and code was stolen, changing it after the fact doesn't zero any
           previous damage done to SCO's business.  It *does* limit future
           damage but the past is the past.  I no longer believe they have a
           case *but* if they did a rewrite won't save anyone from being sued
           and paying penalties for previous theft.
           \_ In a civil tort, the plaintiff has a duty to try and minimize
              their damages.  Since the open-source community basically told
              them "show us the code and we'll fix it", SCO will have a hard
              time claiming damages from the period after they notified the
              community.  They had an opportunity to to have people fix the
              problem, for free, and they wouldn't identify the code.

3/21    I have two computers, a p3-133 and a p3-500.  They are taking up
        precious space and gathering dust.  Is there any worthwhile cause to
        donate them to?  If I can't turn them on should I bother taking out
        the harddrives and whacking the fuck out of them with a hammer first?
        \_ Computers for schools will take the p3-500.  No one but an old
           lady who wants to use the internet will take the 133.
        \_ Would you sell the p3-500?  I'm interested in buying.
           \_ email me -aspolito
        \_ http://accrc.org
        \_ There's no such thing as a p3-133.  You mean a P-133 or P2-233?
           Either way, a 133 could be easily turned into a firewall/router.
           \_ I dunno what it is.  I bought it in 97 or 98 or so and I
              probably haven't turned it on this millenium.  I seem to
              remember 133. I'm not really curious enough to look, I just
              want it out of my closet.
              \_ It's a Pentium from about 1994 if it's 133 mhz.  A 233 from
                 then *could* be a Pentium but more likely a P-II.
        \_ Don't whack the hard drives.  Even small hard drives are useful
           for a computer for the poor or 3rd world.  If you're worried about
           data, boot from a Linux floppy and do dd if=/dev/urandom of=/dev/hda
           \_ Elitist prick!  They need food and condoms and free aids drugs
              not your old hard drive!  Think of the children!
        \_ There's no such thing as a p3-133.  It could be easily turned into a
           firewall/router.

3/21    Kerry Supporters at NYC Peace Protest
        http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1102246/posts?page=1,50