This newsweek article is a verrry indepth article that
gives personal accounts of the Iraqi regime in pre war
Iraq, its kind of disturbing but not more than I
expected.

Pre War Iraq

The chief reason why dollars are more than pieces of green paper is that countries all over the world need them for purchases, principally of oil. This requires them in addition to maintain dollar reserves to protect their own currency; and these reserves, when invested, help maintain the current high levels of the US securities markets.

...the need to dominate oil from Iraq is also deeply intertwined with the defense of the dollar. Its current strength is supported by OPEC's requirement (secured by a secret agreement between the US and Saudi Arabia) that all OPEC oil sales be denominated in dollars. This requirement is currently threatened by the desire of some OPEC countries to allow OPEC oil sales to be paid in euros.

THINGS THAT MAKE YOU GO, "HMMM"...

Bush's Deep Reasons for War on Iraq: Oil, Petrodollars, and the OPEC Euro question

] To this end, I have decided to publish the top ten signs
] that your son is a hacker. I advise any parents to read
] this list carefully and if their son matches the profile,
] they should take action. A smart parent will first try to
] reason with their son, before resorting to groundings, or
] even spanking. I pride myself that I have never had to
] spank a child, and I hope this guide will help other
] parents to put a halt to their son's misbehaviour before
] a spanking becomes necessary.

Before reacting to this piece, I advise reading all of it very carefully and thoroughly. And especially check the embedded hyperlinks. My own reaction is that it's very clever satire, since it's far too well-researched to be as ignorant as it sounds (grin). But many of the people who replied to it seem to have very different opinions . . .

Is Your Son a Computer Hacker?

] As DSL loses ground to cable, wireless technologies may
] be the phone companies' best hope for linking customers
] to the Net at high speed

This is one of the worst articles I've read about telecom in quite some time. To wit:

At the end of 2002, just 6.2 million of the 18 million broadband households in the U.S. were using DSL

hmm... not bad, considering that cable got a 2 year jump on DSL thanks to the Bells, and that most of the companies that were offering DSL in the first place are now dead. I'd take a 3rd of the market anyday given those circumstances.

The writer also fails to mention that the reason why DSL deployment is so abysmal for the Bells is because they don't want to deploy it at all.

Broadband Internet service is fast becoming the cable industry's biggest moneymaker: CIBC cable analyst Alan Bezoza estimates that its operating margins on high-speed data run as great as 60% before interest, taxation, and amortization.

yeah, it also helps that a lot of those customers they acquired for pennies when @Home got raided. Compared to the typical $500+ acquisition cost for a DSL customer (or even a new cable HSI customer), that makes the economics look gooooood.

Verizon Chairman Larry Babbio predicts that his company will break even on DSL once he signs up 3 million subscribers.

LOL! 3M? Larry.... who's running your network? How is it that investors allowed a big dinosaur who doesn't even want to deploy DSL cook up a scheme to blow billions of dollars and not make a penny until they've got 3M customers, when dozens of CLECs were left to die who had business plans that showed profitability with one tenth that?

A large niche market is developing that the Bells could have all to themselves: Internet access from rural areas -- those huge stretches of the country where cable doesn't go.

and every economic analysis of this market is that it will never be profitable unless you are a satellite company. No matter what tech you're using.

BellSouth also is testing fixed wireless as an alternative to DSL in both suburban and rural areas.

It fails to mention that the reason why BellSouth is doing this is because they have significant FITL in the suburbs and they don't want to share that fiber with anyone, or allow anyone to colo at the remote terminal. Sounds like good business practices to me.

"There's no advantage," declares Ed Charleton, SBC's vice-president for Internet product management, who explains that SBC's research has shown that it would cost about the same to provide wireless broadband as to upgrade existing copper network to handle DSL.

Hey? How'd this get in there? I was sure this was a flak piece from the wireless lobby!

Moreover, in February, 2002, the Federal Communications Commission ruled that the Bells wouldn't have to share high-speed fiber lines with competitors, as they are required to with copper phone lines. That means they have an incentive to invest in fiber, not wireless technologies, as a way to shut out competition.

BINGO! Hey Jane, didn't you put 2 and 2 together after you wrote this? Oh I forgot, you're just another idiot flak.

Saving the Bells' Broadband Bacon

] According to the replacement page, the madonna.com
] defacement was supposedly "brought to you by the editors
] of Phrack," an online hacker magazine whose web site
] notes that it does not "advocate, condone nor participate
] in any sort of illicit behavior. But we will sit back and
] watch." In an e-mail exchange, a Phrack representative
] told TSG, "We have no link with this guy in any way, and
] we don't even know his identity."

Ha!

Madonna done got herself hacked.

The statement put up by blackboard about Interz0ne

BlackBoard Inc.

] Aircraft designer Burt Rutan unveiled Friday a
] fully-built launch system that, if flights outside the
] atmosphere prove successful, would be the first private
] manned space program. Both the spacecraft, called
] SpaceShipOne, and its launch platform, a futuristic jet
] known as the White Knight, were developed and built in
] secret and have already begun tests at lower altitudes.

Oh my gosh! I want to fly into space!!

Private manned space plane unveiled

[The Justice Department won't say what Hawash is a witness to or how long they intend to keep him.]

These aren't the only things the Bush administration won't say. It won't say why it's holding individual detainees at Guantᮡmo Bay; it won't disclose the factual basis for its prosecution of Zacarias Moussaoui; and it won't say how many immigrants it has detained or deported in INS proceedings. It won't say how many of us are having our telephones tapped, our e-mail messages monitored or our library checkout records examined by federal agents. The administration's defenders say such secrecy is an unavoidable cost of the war on terror, but it's an orientation that predated Sept. 11 and that extends beyond the terror threat. The White House won't reveal who Vice President Dick Cheney consulted in concocting the administration's energy policy; it won't disclose what Miguel Estrada wrote while working for the solicitor general; it won't even release documents related to the pardons that former President Bill Clinton granted during his last days in office.

...

Steven Aftergood, a researcher who monitors government secrecy issues for the Federation of American Scientists, calls Hatch's proposal a "direct assault" on Congress' ability to monitor the Justice Department. "If it goes through, we might as well go home," he told Salon. "The administration will have whatever authority it wants, and there won't be any separation of powers at all."

...

With the Domestic Security Act of 2003 -- the draft legislation dubbed "PATRIOT Act II" -- the administration is apparently contemplating other ways in which it might avoid the inconvenience of operating in the public eye or answering to the federal courts.

The draft legislation, prepared by the Justice Department but not yet proposed to Congress, includes provisions that would allow federal agents to keep secret the names of individuals arrested in investigations related to "international terrorism"; expand the circumstances under which agents could conduct searches and wiretaps without warrants; and allow the attorney general to deport resident aliens in certain circumstances without any possibility of judicial review.

Another good update on the scary legislation that is both in effect and being proposed in the future. Keep getting the information out there so that more people will raise their voice - while they still can.

Dolemite

Salon | The secret society

"BOSTON, Massachusetts (AP) -- A former Boston College student accused of using special software to collect personal data on thousands of fellow students, staff and faculty was sentenced to five years of probation. "

Well if you commit a crime with this information, thats one thing, helping people out is another thing entirely.

Campus hacker gets probation

] UMM QASR, Iraq -- Ahmed Ali believes Saddam Hussein can
] never die. All his life, the 23-year-old laborer has
] heard about the dictator's powerful stone.
]
] Saddam, the story goes, had the stone made shortly
] after he came to power 24 years ago. Its powers were
] first tested inside a chicken. One of his soldiers pulled
] out a gun and shot at point-blank range. The chicken's
] feathers fell off, but it lived.
]
] So the dictator implanted the stone in his upper arm.
]
] As the curtain falls on Saddam's reign, many ordinary
] Iraqis are reluctant to believe that their much-feared
] dictator has lost power, much less that he is actually
] dead. Stories abound of Saddam's mystical powers that
] have helped him elude assassination attempts and missile
] strikes.
]
] "The stone makes him bulletproof," Ali, a slim man
] with a Saddam-style moustache, said in a serious voice.

Talk about urban legends . . .

Myths About Saddam Fuel the Fears of Iraqis