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The Microsoft codec looks like a cheaper alternative than the others. But of course, Microsoft's history strongly suggests that it'll subsidize its entry into a market, then apply the screws later once it has got leverage. But then, Sony has its own market domination techniques. On the third hand, IBM was topped by just such arrogance. At least consumers are moving away from dependence on physical media, so we might get to escape into a a world of our own alternatives, no matter what these giant players decide for us.

BTW, your .sig has an interesting link to the Annenberg factcheck.org. That's like a rudimentary Consumer Reports for politics. I'd like to see a class action lawsuit, on behalf of a politician's constituents, suing for damages from breach of contract in broken campaign promises. Speeches, ads, platforms: they're all well documented agreements that are routinely violated. It might start with just a single town school board member, and build precedent to keep the president straight.

Uhmm the whole point of the swift vets is to point out that Kerry did this when he came back. He backstabbed his fellow soldiers by saying they committed war crimes

Kerry Senate Testimony (1971): "I would like to talk, representing all those veterans, and say that several months ago in Detroit, we had an investigation at which over 150 honorably discharged and many very highly decorated veterans testified to war crimes committed in Southeast Asia, not isolated incidents but crimes committed on a day-to-day basis with the full awareness of officers at all levels of command".

A group funded by the biggest Republican campaign donor in Texas began running an attack ad Aug. 5 in which former Swift Boat veterans claim Kerry lied to get one of his two decorations for bravery and two of his three purple hearts. But the veterans who accuse Kerry are contradicted by Kerry's former crewmen. One of the accusers says he was on another boat "a few yards" away during the incident which won Kerry the Bronze Star, but the former Army lieutenant whom Kerry plucked from the water that day backs Kerry's account. In an Aug. 10 opinion piece in the conservative Wall Street Journal , Rassmann (a Republican himself) wrote that the ad was "launched by people without decency" who are "lying" and "should hang their heads in shame."

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A wealthy Texan and prolific Republican donor is helping bankroll a television ad assailing Democrat John Kerry's decorated military record in the Vietnam War.

Houston homebuilder Bob J. Perry has donated at least $100,000 to Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, a suburban Washington-based group airing a new ad in which Vietnam veterans who served on swift boats accuse the Democratic presidential nominee of lying about his war record.

The group bought $500,000 of airtime for the 60-second ad to air in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Ohio and West Virginia.

The effort is reminiscent of a 2000 effort that helped drive George W. Bush's then-rival John McCain from the presidential race.

Four years ago, Dallas brothers Sam and Charles Wyly financed $2.5 million in ads run under the auspices of "Republicans for Clean Air" criticizing McCain in the week before GOP presidential primaries in California, New York and Ohio. Those ads promoted then-Texas Gov. Bush's environmental record and criticized that of McCain, the Arizona senator. Bush won the primaries in all three states.

I suggest you go read this before writing any further on the subject.

Kerry did get self-inflicted shrapnel in the buttocks, but then continued fighting. Later he got his arm injured (and bleeding) from the explosion of an ennemy floating mine, and this is what earned him his third purple heart. Also, that Letson guy in the ad did NOT treat his wound, Carreon did.

The best link is here. That site, FactCheck.org, is a fair, non-partisan research group solely devoted to debunking false claims in politics and the media.

In short: One purple heart was for a contusion to the arm and shrapnel taken during the explosion of a nearby swiftboat. He *also* recieved shrapnel shortly before this in the buttock from a too-close toss of a handgrenade at a stockpile of rice to deny the VC foodstuffs. One of the silver stars being falsely questioned was for charging his swiftboat into an ambush and routing an entrenched VC force. Regardless, go read the analysis by factcheck, and you'll better understand exactly how fraudulent these slanders of John Kerry are.

Instead of using some distorted version of the truth to sway voters, why don't you educate them with something that actually holds water?

Bush isn't the best president you've ever had, Kerry isn't the best presidential candidate you ever had. But you can still support one without resorting to blatent lies.

Out sourcing is an evil plain and simple. Why should a company's profit be at the expense of an individuals welfare?

That's a fair question, but it's not about offshoring. Offshoring gives a MASSIVE boost to the well-being of a lot of people who need it desperately, has a positive effect on consumers (and ALL of us, from CEO to janitor, are also consumers), and can help a company expand or survive. It has a measured short-term negative effects, possibly... The studies I've read show almost no negative effect, and didn't even attempt to consider any compensating positive effect (such as prices going down due to more effective competition yielding more money for consumers to spend thereby creating more demand for the same product).

Who has the most votes after all.. the individual or the company? Government should serve you and me before the MD

This is a little frightening to me -- how do votes come into this? And government?

-Billy

Well said!

I'll also add that working for slave-labor wages is better than not getting wages at all, which is too often the choice.

Here's an analysis of the actual short-term effects of outsourcing -- even the harshest study can only find a tiny negative effect, and that only by totally disregarding any positive effect. You obviously recognise the positive effect.

Just thought you might like the info. And the site, factcheck.org, is fun too; it's apparently very nonpartisan.

-Billy

Considering that the reason that Kerry voted against it was because of riders on the bill, his voting against it wasn't as bad as you think, though I don't know entirely what to make about his statement that if his was the deciding vote he would have voted for it. He says he wanted it to pass but not with the appearance of overwhelming support for the bill in the condition it was in. More Info

Did you think about relocating? It has been my experience that if you have a high paying job in a (somewhat) specialized field, it isn't unusual to have to move to find an equivalent job if you aren't well-connected.

Anyway, the unemployment rate is not higher than the great depression (which is what I assume you mean by "depression"). From factcheck.org:
"In the 1929-1933 economic disaster an estimated one in four American worker were idle." and "In the Bush slump unemployment peaked at 6.4% ..."

I've pretty much stopped reading paper magazines for tech news... Slashdot and related links keep me in tune with what's going on in the tech and scientific worlds.

Subscribing to the SecurityFocus mailing list keeps me alert to the latest bugs, exploits and such.

For "news" news, I keep an eye on the New York Times and the Washington Post.

Like a poster above, I read The Economist as regularly as I can... it's a great source for stories from a non-US perspective.

Because it's an election year, I look at and subscribe to factcheck.org - they do a great job of analyzing political advertisements and correcting the exaggerations and outright mistruths on both sides.

Last but not least, Arts & Letters Daily always has quite a lot of thought-provoking articles and essays.

And the number of ill intentioned people required to oppress well-meaning people is vanishingly small. ... isn't that what you and your President and his "weapons of mass destra^Huction" are supposed to be all about?

I'd also point out that the US defense budget is only a fraction of the total budget

Uh huh...

Rather inconvenient facts for people like you.

See, there you go again, pigeon-holing, putting me in a little box, making me small with your words and your labels ... "people like me".

I'd sure like to meet a few more "people like me", frankly.

I had my economics course almost a decade ago. Since then I've developed the habit of double-checking what professional economists have to say. It's illuminating how often they've been dead wrong in their predictions. The Republican ones in particular love to twist the numbers beyond all recognition in order to prove that the status quo is perfect.

If you seriously like economics, I urge you to continue to study it, but make an effort to find material published before 1970. See how the predictions made then have panned out, then compare with predictions in the modern textbooks. I found that the modern economists stopped making efforts to verify their models, meaning since about 1970 they've been pushing policies that just don't work.

Some people seem to agree with me.

For a wishy washy economy at the moment, we sure have a lot of money to throw around.

No, we actually don't. That's the whole point. Hence our huge deficits. We actually had a surplus just 4 years ago. This administration is fiscally reckless, no matter what your politics are.

The deficit, in pure dollar amount is now higher than it has ever been. The previous record was set in 1992 (see same story). In terms of GDP percentage, it was actually a bit higher under Reagan and Bush Sr. The Beeb has a nice article about all of this.

So why do Republicans seem to love huge deficits? My speculation is that by running up the deficit, they starve Congress of money that could otherwise be used for social programs that they are morally opposed to. $1600 from every American is now used to pay off the deficit. Think what we could do with that money, if we now had a $5.6 trillion surplus instead of a $1.5 trillion deficit (as was the projection for 2004 at the end of the Clinton administration).