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How's this "news for nerds?" Or someone explain me why it even matters?

(right... I started to feel I overstayed on /.)

It's news for nerds because it involves academic plagiarism. It matters because it affects a whole country.

I think (no... scratch that... I know for a fact) the last problem for Romania is whether or not the incumbent PM did or did not plagiarize his PhD thesis (there were 3 governments in the last 4 months...).

Also... I didn't see posts on /. about Greece problems... believe me, what happens in Greece has more impact on the whole world than what happens in Romania.

So you're argument is "I know about a better system. Except any country implementing it would be destroyed. Here are No links to literature or any clue about what that system is". Sounds good to me. You'll be elected world leader for sure.

In other news...we have iPads. Also, it seems even the utopian Germany is not invulnerable to economic downturn:

http://www.france24.com/en/20090106-germany-agrees-new-50-billion-euro-stimulus-plan

This was possibly a result of being associated with the EU, and all of the cultures involved that are not as...hard working as the Germans.

The problem is how distingishable was most of it from background noise just outside the solar system, or 20 light years away, even if you are trying to focus what comes from here specifically.

With SETI Research, NASA, and others short on funding, it's time that the media industry trade groups pay their sharing to catch those on other planets tuning in with unlicensed televisions.

Beings from afar should be careful what they say in reply too.

http://www.france24.com/en/20120602-islam-free-speech-turkey-pianist-fazil-say-insulting-religious-values-twitter-muslim

and this is pretty unlikely given that the U.S. doesn't have the sort of cozy, formal overlap of public and private sectors that France, China, or even Great Britain have

That would be why there's never been any suggestion at all of US commercial interests influencing foreign policy, then.

There's a difference between those two cases, which may seem small to you on a practical basis, but is significant from a policy standpoint.

You correctly point out that companies like Halliburton actively lobby the legislature and executive branch to do things like lower taxes on the oil & gas industry or re-authorize the U.S. Export-Import bank. The company's political contributions can be interpreted as bribes, with consequent improper influence over U.S. policy. I agree that's at best questionable, and at worst just plain corrupt. You're probably also aware of problems like regulatory capture, or you wouldn't have made the comment you did.

The French take this to a whole different level, though. Corporate security groups recognize the French National Intelligence services as active threats. In other words, Schlumberger (French competitor to Halliburton for global oilfield services) doesn't need to ask the French equivalent of the CIA to spy on Halliburton, the French spies do it proactively. The French government thinks it's their patriotic duty to help French companies get ahead on the global stage by committing national intelligence resources to corporate espionage. In the U.S.A. that sort of action by agents of the U.S. government on behalf of U.S. industry is illegal (even if the action took place off of U.S. soil).

I don't know where you're from. You may feel that there's nothing wrong with French spies working to help their National industries. You may feel that corporate political contributions are a greater evil than corporate espionage on a national level. As an American, though, I feel that the possibility that individual politicians can be corrupted by corporate bribes is much easier to accept than a national policy of working directly for corporate interests. YMMV.

It's going to be hard to convince any nation to sacrifice for air quality when China has smog as thick as peas soup over major cities and pretends it is not a problem (link goes to http://observers.france24.com/ article):

http://tinyurl.com/85xkhka

Seems to me that Greenpeace made their point as even alerted to the presence of other activists the authorities needed time to find them.

From an English version of a French newspaper:

"Later on Monday, Greenpeace revealed to FRANCE 24 that there were several other activists still holed up in another unnamed power station, waiting to see how long it would take security guards to track them down. Two were reportedly arrested late in the evening."

http://www.france24.com/en/20111205-security-breach-nuclear-debate-greenpeace-sarkozy-hollande-fukushima

>All that CO2 for nothing!

All those digits were calculated with Occupy San Fran bicycle-powered laptops, you insensitive clod!

How many cans of beans were consumed by those bicycle powering homo-sapiens? I doubt their internal microbial colonies are carbon sequestering.

>All that CO2 for nothing!

All those digits were calculated with Occupy San Fran bicycle-powered laptops, you insensitive clod!

Who said you had to be American?

http://www.france24.com/en/20110316-2011-03-16-1140-wb-en-webnews
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13188507
http://www.inforse.dk/europe/nuclear.htm

You do know that looking down one's nose like that will severely restrict your vision, right?

There are alternative sources if one looks. Some material may be objectionable, viewer discretion is advised.

Besides the U.S. commercial and cable broadcasters, there is news service on PBS stations with some streaming and podcasts available from http://www.pbs.org./ Many PBS and other public stations also carry the BBC which has much available on the web too.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/

A great many international newscasts are carried by the non-profit public satellite broadcaster MHz on their WorldView channel. (They have a number of other international channels also)

This guide is easier to browse than the one on their website:
http://proweb.myersinfosys.com/day.php?timezone=0&station=world&channel=MHz+Worldview&airdate=

They have free news and paid programs on-demand streamed through ROKU
mhznetworks.org/roku

Many of the news sources they carry have websites with some content available, here are some:

http://www.dw-world.de/ (Deutsche Welle from Germany)
http://www.euronews.net/
http://www.france24.com/en/
http://www.rt.com/ (Russia Today)
http://www.aljazeera.net/english
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=AlJazeeraEnglish#g/u
http://www.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/ (NHK Newsline)
http://www.youtube.com/taiwanmactv

Not sure where a country is? Here's a good but simple map.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3f/CIA_WorldFactBook-Political_world.svg

More info and a list of stations carrying WorldView:
http://www.mhznetworks.org/mhzworldview/

Sometimes a station has them on a secondary digital channel (Like KCET 28.4 Los Angeles) that isn't on cable. Ask your cable operator to add it if they're not carrying the feed.

Thought I'd add a link to this article on Roundup resistant "Palmer pigweed".

I said how the problem of people starving isn't from lack of food but because of other reasons.For instance Zimbabwe used to to the breadbasket of southern Africa but since Robert Mugabe came to power it has been a basket case. Politics reduced Zimbabwe from a food exporter to a nation that needs food donations.

GM crops with increased yield help no matter what the cause is. Famine though plant blight is common, and GE is the best way to get rid of it.
http://www.africanagricultureblog.com/2010/01/gates-foundation-to-fund-cassava.html

But more importantly, there are many areas of the world where the problem isn't caloric, but nutritional. Golden rice is the poster child for this. Lack of vitamin A leads to blindness and death, so adding it to the rice in places where that is the staple diet can save many.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rice

Golden Cassava was developed (patent free, with grants from the Bill and Malinda Gates Foundation)to solve similar problems in Africa. Before the Cassava blight it was starting to be used by World Vision in its aid work.

It is a good sign that the people who understand GM techniques are the least scared of GM food.

I disagree. Though no expert I understand GM techniques, and because I do I am scared of them. For instance I am afraid Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops are creating superweeds.

Pesticide use made that problem(if it turns out to be one), not GE. Without GE other pesticides would be used, and pesticide resistant plants would evolve.

I am afraid allergins will be introduced into food that does not contain it now.

So we made a gene transfer, did tests, and it did what we thought it would? What's the rest of the story? Is the resulting food being marketed?

And I am concerned about the unforeseen. Asbestos used to be called the miracle mineral because of its acid and heat resistance. Well now we know how deadly it is.

I am not calling for an end to genetic engineering, I applaud it's medical potential. What I am calling for is more thorough research being done before it's released into the wild, which is not being done.

Falcon

What research is being done now, how is it insufficient, and how would you change the level of research required?

"Green" campaigns against GM technology that is truely patent and licensing free, created by non-profits for the good of poor nations, is causing people to die of starvation and malnutrition.

Citation needed. You did include a quote from a doctor of plant pathology but does he consider non-GM answers? In a previous post I said how the problem of people starving isn't from lack of food but because of other reasons. For instance Zimbabwe used to to the breadbasket of southern Africa but since Robert Mugabe came to power it has been a basket case. Politics reduced Zimbabwe from a food exporter to a nation that needs food donations.

It is a good sign that the people who understand GM techniques are the least scared of GM food.

I disagree. Though no expert I understand GM techniques, and because I do I am scared of them. For instance I am afraid Monsanto's Roundup Ready crops are creating superweeds. I am afraid allergins will be introduced into food that does not contain it now. And I am concerned about the unforeseen. Asbestos used to be called the miracle mineral because of its acid and heat resistance. Well now we know how deadly it is.

I am not calling for an end to genetic engineering, I applaud it's medical potential. What I am calling for is more thorough research being done before it's released into the wild, which is not being done.

Falcon

The whole European continent is over-leveraged on debt and Britain is doing their best to make an example by balancing their budget

Hardly the only ones though. France and Germany jointly announced similar budgets, for instance France committing itself to

cut 45 billion euros from the nation's budget and raise the retirement age to 62 years... "We've made a commitment to bring down our deficit from 8 to 3 percent by 2013, and we will concentrate all of our efforts on it."

as noted at http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2010/06/17/couples_retreat?page=full As for Germany, http://www.france24.com/en/20100608-merkel-rolls-out-unpopular-austerity-package-germany

Merkel...pledged to find around 11.2 billion euros (13.4 billion dollars) in savings in next year's budget. By 2014, the government hopes to cut 86 billion euros in spending.
The German government last year passed a constitutional amendment requiring an approximately balanced budget by 2016. The austerity package is intended to bring the budget into compliance with that law.
The government is also considering cutting up to 15,000 jobs from the federal administration by 2014.
The armed forces may be slashed by 40,000 soldiers and major projects such as the rebuilding of the Hohenzollern Palace in Berlin, which was badly damaged during World War II, has been postponed until at least 2014.

US President Barack Obama does not think racism is "the overriding issue" in the fierce debate surrounding health care, but that tempers are rising over government roles in daily life, according to interviews to be broadcast Sunday."Are there people out there who don't like me because of race? I'm sure there are. That's not the overriding issue here," Obama insisted in an excerpt of an interview to be broadcast on the CNN show "State of the Union."

Aside from the ATCA, any individual committing violence would be subject to prosecution in Columbia.

Yea, just like Blackwater was subject to prosecution in Iraq. After years Blackwater is finally being prosecuted. This after a US judge dropped charges. And if Columbia were to try to prosecute DynCorp it may lose a lot of money the US gives it in aid for the War on Drugs, which is why DynCorp was there.

If their actions were severe enough, they could be tried as war criminals or for crimes against humanity in international court. As corporations operating in a UN member state, the organization which employs such a person would be subject to sanctions or fines decided by a body that they are a lot less likely to have successfully bribed. YMMV.

A lot of good that would do, the US will not hand over a US citizen to face charges in an international court. For instance the US is one of those critical of the International Criminal Court.

The punishment in this case does not fit the crime, but the alternative was for the prosecution to do serious damage not just to Pfizer but to hordes of relatively innocent people as well. Perhaps that is what should have happened, perhaps not.

How would innocent people be harmed by prosecuting to the full extent Pfizer? It could actually help more people. For instance if all of Pfizer's patents were taken away and released to other pharmaceutical companies, they they would compeat with each other and reduce the costs of drugs. Lower prices means more people could afford the drugs.

Falcon

http://www.france24.com/en/20100110-firm-unveils-x-rated-robot
 
As you can see, the uncanny valley has not been bridged with sex robots. Looks less human than a mannequin. Nothing to see here, move along.

You must have a different source of news on the vast Iraq war combat operations for US troops.

Huh? You claimed that "We won the war and the combat troops are coming home."

Well, you got it half right...the troops are coming home:
But the
war is
far from
over

Disclaimer: not only IANAL, but I'm from a "civil law" country (France) while the matter at hand is about the USA, a "common law" country. As a result, the rest of this post may be misinformed or biased, despite my best attempts at avoiding it by way of prudent wording and documentation on the fly. Please don't be too harsh on my possible inaccuracies.

Laws don't actually pile up on each others, but rather modify the corpus of applicable texts at a given moment (sometimes adding to it, sometimes removing from it, sometimes replacing or rewording parts of it). Now, if I get it right, the official and ultimate reference for federal laws in the USA are the United States Statutes at Large, which indeed seems like quite an impressive mass of paper. It seems like turning all of it into a code is a sisyphesque task due to the way laws are voted in Congress.

As I understand it, acts passed in Congress are formulated as "The activity X is now prohibited" or "The activity Y is no longer prohibited" and stuff like that, with the addition of some definitions, and sometimes a time scope and other precisions. Which makes apparently for rather legible texts when voted, but leads to a lot of work for the Law Revision Counsel to handle the repercussions in order to maintain the United States Code in a coherent and accurate form. This may be what gives the USA's law an air of being bloated.

In civil law legal systems, the texts voted by parliamentaries tend to be more along the line of "In code A, book B, chapter C, paragraph D, the following alineas are modified as such [follows a list of modifications]". Not very legible, but at least it results in the Codes being maintained as they go. It's not that, at times, it doesn't need some refreshing, some rewording, in order to keep the whole coherent: a Code is more legible if it is homogeneous in terminology and phrasing. When it is felt like needed for a given part of a code, a text is voted to proceed to the modifications, normally without changing the meaning of the articles of law. Normally.

Because all this has its drawbacks too, as the technicity of the voted texts, and the resulting lack of legibility, cause representatives to not always fully understand what they vote. This is the cause of the recent blunder in France about Scientology: the law had been changed while it wasn't supposed to be, the text voted was meant to reword the parts of the Penal Code reguarding the sentencing of crimes commited by legal persons. The law previously stated that an organization guilty of fraud could be sentenced to dissolution. An tiny error in the rewording made this no longer possible, and due to the high volume and technicity of the text, no one noticed in the Parliament that something had been changed.

What I mean is voting a new law doesn't necessarily complexify the Law, and trying to simplify the Law can sometimes cause a mess. Yeah, right, that's what I meant to say from the beginning. I think. Can't remember, I've got a bit sidetracked by those fascinating considerations about comparative law.

As for your first question about why a law is needed for the matter at hand, well, it's because it apparently wasn't covered by any existing law, and nulla poena sine lege, like they say.

when a US court of appeal overturn the damages awarded by a lower court to a rightful holder of a patent, it's just sheer justice done to a strategic company. It absolutely doesn't matter in the latter case that the victim is EU based and the offender is an already convicted US based monopolist with a track record of shoddy behaviours as long as the road 66.

Mod me flamebait and prove that you have no sense of humor...

It absolutely matters that the 'victim' is French. If there's one country that has mastered a track record of shoddy behaviors it's the snail-eating surrender monkeys. If the US has victimized Alcatel by requiring that the accept less than $360 million for displaying a point-and-click calendar page on a UI, then I suggest that you victimize the US by placing an embargo on your Frenchy ways.

And that's not even all of it. There was a plan a few years ago (when I stopped reporting on these things - no idea what the status of it is now) to bring some HVDC lines down from Alberta into the US down through MT, WY, etc, into California, connecting wind and other power plants on the way. Then California enacted a ban on importation of fossil-fuel generated power, and that plan went by the wayside. The people wanting to make the HVDC line didn't think the project would suceed with _just_ connecting new (unbuilt) wind farms to the grid.

I did address that, politics, in one of my posts you replied to.

There is cheap and there is relatively cheap. Neither of those implies easy, btw.

I agree, but as I also said before technically it is easy, the hard part is politics.

Not higher than building new reactors, but higher than are usually understood, since it's not the total picture, and higher than people attempting to do a direct comparison to what is actually building new reactors

You're right. You yourself said "ots of opposition from the locals who don't want large turbines 'spoiling' (personal opinion) their view, or making noise 24/7... Then when you also add in heavy transmission line costs, you also get to deal with rights of way and environmental impact studies for that entire transmission line route, etc, etc." You talk about cost related to wind but not nuclear. For instance you say how people don't want turbines in view but you don't say people don't want nuclear power plants near them either. You also talk about how people don't like the noise from them, without acknowledging modern turbines are quiet. Then again you talk about how impact studies for transmission line routes have to be done without saying they also need to be done with nuclear, and every other large scale power source.

You keep attributing cost to wind without acknowledging those same costs exist for other power sources. When I pointed that out previously you shrugged it off.

Also, scaling up a wind farm to the same power output as even one nuclear reactor in the 1000MW range is going to be interesting

How many years does it take to build a nuclear reactor? Years and years. Even in Finland it takes years. Finland's Olkiluoto 3 the third reactor at Olkiluoto, being built by the French government owned Areva, has experienced cost overruns and construction delays. Olkiluoto 3 is already 3 year behind and "about $2.4bn dollars (1.7bn euros) over budget". They still don't know when it will start operations, the easiest expected is 2012.

Oh, and neither Finland nor France has the US's regulations. So compound their problems with those from building in the US.

Like the wind power industry isn't? Dude, you need to do some reading!

Sorry I already have. Not one energy source does not get subsidies. However all alternative energy sources only get a fraction of the subsidies coal, natural gas, nuclear, and petroleum get individually. Alternative energies all together only get a couple of hundred million dollars. Individually the others get more than a billion each. Here's a video of Rep Edward Markey enumerating what subsidies different industries get. He starts with saying over the years the nuclear industry has gotten $125 Billion. Altogether all the potential alternative energy sources, be it biofuel and biomass, geotherm

Zelaya, you bastaheywaitasecond. Didn't the authorities have access to the machines, too?

The new government already has problems with bad press. The army killed a pro-Zelaya protestor: http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20090709-honduran-daily-photoshop-blood-crackdown-victim-murillo-coup-zelaya. And the police arrested his dad for some reason. Also, a union leader was killed (not clear who did it).

So they could have done the manipulation to distract from the bad news about them. They lied previously about Zelaya's resignation letter: http://incakolanews.blogspot.com/2009/06/honduras-coup-check-out-false.html

Or was it Zelaya? We don't know and we probably never will. What I know is: Voting machines suck.

Until a male member of the family arrives with the 'handshake' :)
Careful around any of the Forward Intelligence Teams.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forward_Intelligence_Team
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/jun/21/fit-watch-police-surveillance-val-swain-emily-apple-arrests
Also interesting to see the instant pickup on Facebook ect.
Guess the UK has learned from Egypt when it comes to "web 2.0" and the end 'users'
http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080729-paranoid-police-brutality-arrest-facebook-users-egypt

How come nobody talks what has happened this past week and is still happening in Honduras?

And what about the coup in Madagascar?

Falcon

The CIA.

We'll find out in five years than the hundreds of millions of dollars approved last year were for the purpose of overthrowing the Iranian government. That'll be the second time we've ousted their government. Should be good for relations in the future, don't you think?

Um, East Germany?

Hello?

Berlin wall? Iron curtain? Ringing any bells?

Yes, but even that was 20 years ago and those from east germany tend to ignore the bad parts of it.

http://www.france24.com/en/20081003-wave-nostalgia-former-east-germany-berlin-gdr-stasi

that bbc news is old propaganda (5th April) launch was 6th April. france24 news coverage

After all that worked so well for asking them to fix Iran.
We offered to sell out the Czechs and Poles (abandon our missile defense) if Russia would lean on & fix Iran and their nuclear problem.
I seem to remember someone else in history offering to sell out the Czechs and the Poles to a belligerent power. Don't remember how that worked out, but I think we got "Peace in our time".

Or we can just reset our relationship with Russia by giving them a red-button that says "overcharge".

I want to point out how much I support Obama's new "Smart Diplomacy" because not supporting Obama would be racist.

already been done..
here, well sort of.

I see. Is this the official Chinese description of what happened? I'm willing to admit that I might be less than fully informed, but I'm reluctant to give credibility to what the Chinese government says.

So what? The USA govt, sponsored and largely run by corporate interests (of which media corporations are subsidiary) isn't any more credible.

The USA establishment is pushing the lie that Russia was the aggressor against Georgia (which Russia was policing S. Ossetia by international agreement when they were attacked), and Presidential candidates are using that story as a call to arms against Russia!

Even the Tiananmen Square "Massacre" is a myth.

The Chinese government speaks not just though its state-controlled press, but through its actions as well, and their actions speak louder to me than their words. Members of the press from abroad have been intimidated and had pictures of protests confiscated by the Chinese government.

- How many requests for permission to protest were made? My latest sources say about 77.

- Of those, how many were granted permission to protest during the Games?

- Of those, how many actually protested during the Games?

- Learning Chinese would be great, but is more than I can do right now. What reliable and trustworthy (ie, non-government related) sources of information are there for an English-speaker like myself?

It seems that Beijing has gone out of its way to squash free speech, intimidate critics, and to imprison dissidents. Are all these sources willfully libeling China?

Have you paid attention to what's been done with protesters at the DNC and RNC events? The cops even arrested Amy Goodman and her staff; journalists from Salon.com were also threatened. Police surrounded protesters homes (no warrants, you see) and later charged them with intent to throw feces at convention-goers because they owned composting toilets; or that they were planning to make bombs because protesters had "chemicals" which turned out to be common cleaning and gardening products in their homes.

To the original topic: If it were in my power to grant or withhold, I would never entrust China (or any government - even my own) with tools that would help it roll back the shield of anonymity that protects the natural right of people to speak freely.

I can certainly agree with that.

I see. Is this the official Chinese description of what happened? I'm willing to admit that I might be less than fully informed, but I'm reluctant to give credibility to what the Chinese government says. Two elderly women could face a year of "reeducation through labor" because they applied for permits to demonstrate during the Olympics, according to one of the would-be protesters.

The Chinese government speaks not just though its state-controlled press, but through its actions as well, and their actions speak louder to me than their words. Members of the press from abroad have been intimidated and had pictures of protests confiscated by the Chinese government.

- How many requests for permission to protest were made? My latest sources say about 77.
- Of those, how many were granted permission to protest during the Games?
- Of those, how many actually protested during the Games?
- Learning Chinese would be great, but is more than I can do right now. What reliable and trustworthy (ie, non-government related) sources of information are there for an English-speaker like myself?

It seems that Beijing has gone out of its way to squash free speech, intimidate critics, and to imprison dissidents. Are all these sources willfully libeling China?

To the original topic: If it were in my power to grant or withhold, I would never entrust China (or any government - even my own) with tools that would help it roll back the shield of anonymity that protects the natural right of people to speak freely.

don't worry, you can still watch the highlights or if you're in the USA they're here OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

Let's just do this the right way: Rank by athelete.

#1 - Michael Phelps

#2 - Who cares...

OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

The obvious answer is to keep the U.S.A. on top. And no doubt, China's medal distribution is more impressive than the U.S.A.

But a less biased answer might be to avoid putting a country like Belarus with 10 medals but no gold medals after 4 countries with only one medal each, that happen to be gold.

IMO, winning 3 silver and 7 bronze is more impressive than one gold.

OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

Maybe because that is the only form of ranking that places the US above China...

OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

because that puts them top? trust me, if the yanks had won the most golds, they'd rank the table the same as everyone else

don't worry, you can still watch the highlights or if you're in the USA they're here

OT: Why do the US media sites rank the medal table different from everyone else?

I think you should take in a few of the "innocents"

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010883859
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-27-russia-gitmo_N.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=4033420
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/03/fbc50158-46a9-4921-80db-195b1fe720b8.html
http://www.france24.com/en/20080508-suicide-bomber-former-guantanamo-detainee-usa-iraq-mosul-kuwaiti
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/cubanews/2007w46/msg00251.htm

So once you've got Omar Bin Whackjob and a few of his friends settled into your home, why not pick up a few 100lbs of Fertalizer and leave him your credit card so he can rent a truck?

Try this one.
http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080516-hoax-cctv-video-get-out-clause-clip

Actually it was professionally shot. http://observers.france24.com/content/20080516-hoax-cctv-video-get-out-clause-where the band admit it was a publicity stunt.

Being a Brit, I love comparing US news sources to others around the world, including those of our "enemies", and I regularly find that news sources from the USA are very introverted compared not only to the BBC, but even Al Jazeera and Chineese State news are more outward looking (even if somewhat biased). It's not just the news of our enemies either I look at other allies news, they too are less introverted than their US equivilents. And it's not that you can't produce quality news from around the world, compare the versions of CNN:
http://www.cnn.com/
http://edition.cnn.com/

But who would think to put "edition" at the beginning of a URL?

IMHO, you guys misunderestimated the passion of Chinese youth irritated by CNN.

'Isn't there now an add compain going on in radio and TV over there telling you if you see strange activity in a house, a person with too many cell phones, or just strange behavior on the street to call a national hotline for terror?'

Indeed there is:

http://www.met.police.uk/so/at_hotline.htm

http://observers.france24.com/en/content/20080307-terrorist-campaign-photographers-searched-london

Examples of terrorist paraphenalia include cameras, credit cards, mobile phones, computers, suitcases, cell phones and, err, vans.

This is from the same people who brought us my all time favourite 'public security' campaign:

http://www.art-for-a-change.com/News/eyes.htm

'Aren't there cameras that talk back if you get unruly on the street?'

Generally only if the unruly behaviour is caused by mushroom intoxication. But we do have rather a lot of cameras:

http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/news/article-23391081-details/George+Orwell,+Big+Brother+is+watching+your+house/article.do

I don't know about you, but it plays fine on my Kubuntu Edgy with Firefox. Have you tried Mplayer with mplayer-plugin? Don't forget the w32 codecs from mplayer's site.

I went to France24 and clicked Live Feed and it played fine.

http://www.france24.com/ just launched. This will be a new trend.