Slashdot Mirror

Biodiesel from fast-growing algae might be a goer. Biodiesel from conventional crops is a stunt.

Why on earth is it being left to the Information Commissioner to pursue spammers? Does he not have enough on his plate with the British Govt...

a) ... about to reverse the legal right to privacy trying create the world's most intrusive database on citizens.
b) ... using taxpayers' resources to frustrate hundreds of thousands of valid requests under the Freedom of Information Act?

If you buy a book that was made and/or distributed unlawfully, you haven't broken the law.

There are a lot of contradictory studies on bird navigation.
This news article discusses how robins get lost if one eye is patched (but only the right eye, not the left one) and talks about some experiments that indicate that pigeons navigate long distances using smell instead of sensing magnetic fields.

This beautiful paper (big pdf) indicates that pigeons navigate visually when near home, and by smell for longer distances, claiming "sensory inputs, being neither olfactory nor visual, do not substantially contribute to determining current position with respect to home."

So don't go sticking magnets all over your car in hopes of averting bird poop: if they can sense magnetic fields, it might not mean anything to them.

Unfortunately, even the 'scientific method' can be and is systematically subverted.

Pharmaceutical firms are inventing diseases to sell more drugs, researchers have warned. Disease-mongering promotes non-existent diseases and exaggerates mild problems to boost profits, the Public Library of Science Medicine reported.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4898488.stm

In cancer, heart disease, mental health and related fields the [Pharmeceutical] industry has sponsored trials of new drugs which have held out great promise for patients. But when the same drugs have been tested in independent trials paid for by non-profit organisations - governments, medical institutions or charities - they have yielded different results.

http://www.mindfully.org/Industry/2004/Drug-Trials -Profit23apr04.htm

A drugs industry insider turned whistleblower, who claims to have proof that multinational companies are 'bribing' thousands of doctors to prescribe their products, has narrowly escaped an apparent attempt on his life.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4 064664,00.html

I'll be honest here. I am not a 'believer' in homeopathy. I cannot see how it can possibly work. (excluding placebo effects and any benefit accrued from having a practicioner that exhibits some empathy for your basic humanity.)

On the other hand, promoting health with a holistic approach adressing mental state (stress levels), diet, lifestyle etc. and involving a compassionate relationship between patient and practioner I can see as both effective and preferable in many instances to being palmed off with the latest badly researched pharmaceutical cash cow by a disinterested and corrupt practioner of 'conventional medicine'.

Life is, as always, complicated.

Water is not scarce.

Are you sure about that?

As a contrast, American slashdotters might like to know that Philip Anschutz, (an American) has plans to set up a casino in London.
He even spoke to the deputy prime minister about it. http://politics.guardian.co.uk/homeaffairs/story/0 ,,1856204,00.html

Reminds me of this guy who was arrested for "looking suspicious" - I wonder what the police made of his BeBox...

Okay, so let's see. We have data on both sides of the balance. What can we make of it?

On the one hand, we have ONE group of west Himalayan glaciers which are remaining constant or maybe even growing a bit. Meanwhile, the other NINETY FIVE PERCENT of Himalayan glaciers are retreating. http://observer.guardian.co.uk/international/story /0,6903,1646656,00.html Also, note that the Himalayas (east and west) have a total of 34000 sq km of glaciers.

On the other hand:

There are 1834000 sq km of glaciers in Greenland, which are shrinking. Oh, and the rate of melt is ACCELERATING. Greenland showed a record melt in 2002 ... followed by an even larger one in 2005. http://images.google.com/images?q=greenland+melt+m ap

And of course there's Antarctica, with the world's largest ice mass, which has been losing thousands of sq km each year. http://nsidc.org/iceshelves/

Hmm, but those are just individual parts of the world. We can't possibly draw a conclusion from such limited data without viewing the overall picture... http://images.google.com/images?q=glacier+mass+bal ance+global+OR+cumulative

So, according to Fragmer, thousands of data points confirming loss of glaciers can be counterbalanced by one study that showed the POSSIBILITY of one glacier growing. What a convenient way to view the world.

Great subject line, by the way, and thanks for finding those WMDs.

Ah you clearly haven't seen Mr Blair's UK initiative.

Ok it's not retailers, but I think your point was broader than you realise.

Aha! I think I've located your problem, sir. If the people you are listening to are crazy, shrill, or not-awfully-credible, then you should stop listening to them and look elsewhere for your information. Trying to interpolate between two crazy extremes will certainly not lead to the truth, no.

I realize that it's terribly difficult to avoid all the noise and confusion. Why, just the other day I was reading a report by those crazed eco-terrorists down at the Pentagon, and they said that "abrupt climate change could bring the planet to the edge of anarchy as countries develop a nuclear threat to defend and secure dwindling food, water and energy supplies" (that's quoting the Guardian, not the report). I got tired of their tree-hugging dogma, so I decided to check the report that president Bush commissioned from the National Academy of Sciences. All it said was that "Greenhouse gases are accumulating in the earth's atmosphere as a result of human activities, causing surface air temperatures and subsurface ocean temperatures to rise," so that sounded a bit better.

So I guess it really is impossible to find anyone giving honest information about global warming. Why, most of them are corrupted by the multi-billion-dollar wind power industry, nowadays.

There are speed cameras everywhere in Europe. But I think my remark requires some precision since UK cameras are a bit nastier.

• Everywhere in UK to film cars. It's coupled with OCR software and your plate number is archived whether you commit an infraction or not (speed cameras normally don't archive pictures if you are not overspeeding). See this article
• In london cameras, are used to film people. This could be similar to your store next door having a camera, except some are linked to facial recognition software. As early as 1998: here And more recently MI5 plugged the cameras of the London congestion charge area (CCTV with OCR to read plates.. again) to add a facial recognition: see here

If you're concerned about energy-wasting appliances, then you probably don't own a fancy plasma display. And if you don't, then a fancy home theater appliance is a waste of money anyway.

Yeah but the part myspace played in that success is 90% myth. The band hadn't even heard of the site until after they were signed and successful.

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1 781879,00.html

What actually happened is they gave their music away on good old fashioned CDs at their gigs. So yet again, the #1 way of independent bands getting successful turns out to be "doing gigs". Plus ca change ;-)

From 1996 to 2000, the Nasdaq went from 600 to 5,000! Dot-com companies run by people who were barely in their 30's, were going public and raising hundreds of millions of dollars of capital. These companies didn't even have much of a business plan, and certainly didn't have any earnings, either! For example, Pets.com had no earnings yet came public and raised billions of dollars. Dot-coms wasted millions of dollars per night on frivolous parties. Hard work was never part of the picture for dot-commers. There are many stories of dot-com employees walking around barefoot in the office and playing foosball all day. At one point, a new millionaire was created every 60 seconds! Many of these instant millionaires thought that they were so brilliant, that all they had to do was play to make money. Never mistake a bull market for brains.

. ... By early 2000, reality started to sink in. Investors soon realized that the dot-com dream was really a bubble. Within months, the Nasdaq crashed from 5,000 to 2,000. Hundreds of stocks such as Pet.com, which were each worth billions, were off the map as quickly as they appeared. Panic selling ensued as investors lost trillions of dollars. The stock market kept crashing down to 800 in 2002. One high flier, Microstrategy, slid from $3500 per share to $4! Numerous accounting scandals came to light, showing how many companies artificially inflated earnings. Shareholders were crippled. In 2001, the economy entered a recession as the Fed repeatedly cut rates, trying to stop the bleeding. Millions of workers were now jobless and had lost their life savings.

Needless to say, the New Economy was a farce, and traditional economic principles still hold. What is sadly interesting is how bubbles will continue to occur in the future. When they do occur, foolish investors will say, "This time is different!"

I'd be all for any laws that depict or show any wish of Prince Charles wishing to be a tampon. No, really I WISH I were making that up

So the throngs of Iranians chanting "Death to America!" in unison are something we shouldn't be worried about? A government-sanctioned suicide-bomber brigade, "The Lovers of Martyrdom Garrison" is something a peaceful people would support? The elected leader of Iran, Ahmadinejad publicly stating that the time of the 12th Imam (the muslim version of the Apocalypse) is near doesn't concern you in the least?

Stop burying your head in the sand. As it is now, Iran is a major obstacle to any potential peace within the middleast. With nuclear weapons, Iran could be the provocateur of the next World War.

If the Iranian people are as moderate as you claim they are, then where are they? Why aren't they speaking out? Even assuming these moderates exist, don't they share responsibility (through their inaction) for the aggression of their government regardless? How are we supposed to simultaneously protect the interests of the region as a whole if we can't do anything that might coerce the Iranian people (such as sanctions)? Furthermore, if you are right--the Iranian people don't support their government--how does sitting back and letting the Iranian government risk a nuclear conflict in any way serve the interest of the Iranian people?

-Grym

Another thing to consider is why the CIA gave designs for nuclear weapons to Iran that accelerated their program. Has the invasion of Iran been in the planning stages already before 9/11? How long has the US been implementing the Project for the New American Century's vision?

The British Broadcasting Corporation was forced to pay up for its blatant anti-Americanism before and during the Iraq war. A frothing at the mouth anti-Americanism that was obsessive, irrational and dishonest.

The BBC - the "Beeb" - was one of the worst offenders in the British press because it felt entitled to not only pillory Americans and George W Bush, but it felt entitled to lie. And when caught lying, it felt entitled to defend its lying reporters and executives.

The incident involved the reporter Andrew Gilligan who made a fool of himself in Baghdad when the American invasion actually arrived in the Iraqi capital. Gilligan, pro-Iraqi and anti-American, insisted on the air that the Iraqi army was heroically repulsing an incompetent American military. Video from our own Greg Kelly of the American army moving through Baghdad at will put the light to that.

After the war, back in London, Gilligan got a guy named David Kelly to tell him a few things about pre-war assessments on Iraq's weapons programmes. And Gilligan exaggerated about what Kelly had told him.

Kelly committed suicide over the story and the BBC, far from blaming itself, insisted its reporter had a right to lie and exaggerate, because, well, the BBC knew the war was wrong and anything it could say to underscore that point had to be right.

The British government investigation slammed the BBC on Wednesday and a Beeb exec resigned to show they got it.

But they don't.

So the next time you hear the BBC bragging about how much superior the Brits are at delivering the news than Americans who wear flags in their lapels, remember it was the Beeb caught lying.

That's My Word.

I'm sorry you didn't appreciate the ironic quotes around "developed". Perhaps your definition of progress is uncontrolled industrialisation, environmental destruction and social injustice such as the West has enjoyed on an unprecedented scale since the Industrial Revolution. The quotes are intended to question these criteria of civilised Progress.

You have to be a pretty big wanker to think it's an insult to call a country both fat and lazy. That's a fucking achievement. Many countries -- wait a second, I think they're called developing countries -- are hard-working and starving-thin.

It is quite clear from context that I referred to Australians as "fattening" -- not as fat as Americans perhaps, but like all the "developed" bodies, certainly getting there. Oh, there I go again with the quotes.

Ditto "lazy republics" is obviously talking about those who manage to piss huge sums down the drain on dimwitted, porkbarrelling IT with not much to show for it. I even linked to two examples.

I'm sorry you somehow read that as criticising Chinese or Indians, who I fully realise often possess a very healthy work ethic undiluted by bourgeois sloth; I was not.

We have an almost quaint system of voting here that requires only a few paid volunteers, some paper ballots and a pencil. It's quaintness is offset by its efficiency; I have never waited more than a minute or two to vote and the results are known within a few hours after the election. I believe the UK and many other European nations follow a similar system.

So does Mexico. But nevertheless, problems are alleged.

Well, the government screwing up itself is one matter, it's just as I've noted before, it seems that the UK government likes to outsource its IT failures, and I'm sure the US is no different. It strikes me as plain bizarre that an entity in as good a bargaining position as a government can't get a good deal, and that they keep on hiring the same few consultancies who are clearly incompetent.

But you are right. These are not facts. Let's keep our eyes wide shut.

One could argue that the fact that we find these disfunctions is proof positive that the nuclear safety process is working, but the truth is that there is a hudge gap between the reality of the danger and the supposed nuclear safety : it's only because of various counter powers that these disfunctions are known. The nuclear industries are closely linked to the military industries and to say the least the field lacks in transparency

I should also point that if you sticked to a scientific and factual approach of the problem, you would certainly realize that defining something as safe once and for all clearly is not a good safety procedure. Err , let's just hope you are not in charge here !

Proliferation of nuclear power will lead to chernobyl like problems, if not only statistically then in the same way that the US power grid is failing : safety brings no short term profit.

But in all your arrogance and pride for your technology i doubt that you can stand back from this nuclear fiction, untill a disaster happens. In your backyard maybe ?

Security processes have no zero default, and you know it. Nuclear safety is a myth. What is the risk ? Don't ask. What are the benefits ? Trust us. The reality is that we shall leave our fate in the hands of the nuclear goons, despite the wastes, despites the risk, despite the damage already done but most of all despite the fact that this energy is over used and wasted in mainly illogicals and ineficient ways. Only the fake sense of safe and infinite energy that the nuclear industries promess permits such a waste of energy, and this has other dramatic effects. One simple example : excessive packaging. Very expensive energy wise, very destructive (plastics, heavy metals in paints, chemical tratement of paper et al), mostly useless.

And keep the insults to yourself, nuclear monger, because be it reason or unfortunately disaster, time is on my side.

I'm no expert on Nuclear power, or waste but I wonder how we can expect future generations to safeguard our nuclear waste for 3000 years, which is a very long time.

However, I suspect that the future generations would prefer us to lump our nuclear waste on them rather than global warming...

http://www.guardian.co.uk/nuclear/article/0,,18342 59,00.html

Few Studies On GM Food

GM crops created superweed, say scientists

Few Studies On GM Food

GM crops created superweed, say scientists

I'm wondering: what are the government IT successes that were ran by a major IT consultancy? I can think of exactly zero examples from the UK. Most of them were screwed up by EDS and Capita, though other companies such as Systems Options (London Ambulances) and Siemens (who should stick to making toasters) manage to fail as well.

If Pizza Hut can manage to offer to deliver hot and on time, or it's free, then governments (who are hardly in a weak negotiating position) should insist on similar terms.

Which is the most simple explanation? That a bunch of people who don't have passports, plane tickets or (if the Register article is to be believed) the remotest understanding of explosives presented a genuine threat? Or that someone didn't really care what kind of threat they represented wanted to present themselves as the good guys by having "saved" us from this threat?

I am often amazed that even so sharp a tool as Occam's razor is unable to cut through the nonesense that gets posted on Slashdot.

Lets try this: It was a genuine plot, under invenstigation for a long period of time, (one of many) that was stopped when they decided to try a dry run. Cash, guns, and a bomb making kit have apparently been found. No word yet on if they are related to the suspected terrorist training going on in various places in the UK. This was as much about "saving Joe Lieberman" as the terrorist activity against Australia... which is to say, not related at all. (Maybe you've heard of the Bali bombing? It is just one of many attacks against Australians and the West in general.) There are many more like it in: Phillipines, India, Russia, Saudi Arabia, etc, none of which are designed to prop up a US president who can't be reelected any way..

Well, the court has granted an injunction against the secret program ("TSA," heh).

According to the Guardian, the NSA plans to appeal, but that doesn't keep the injunction from taking effect. But the NSA has asked for a stay until it has appealed, and the ACLU has agreed to that.

So, despite the injunction, the program continues, and everyone seems okay with that.

But if the NSA does not win its appeal, the injunction really takes effect, right? The injunction orders all NSA employees, and everyone else helping the NSA, to stop using the program and doing wiretaps. If they don't, they (each?) face contempt of court charges, according to Wikipedia. I'm guessing criminal contempt of court, rather than civil.

But I don't see where it is directed that the program actually be removed from the books, or that the program cease being funded. I suppose some Executive branch housekeeping function will eventually remove it?

ITYM the public apology he made for the whole Lewinsky affair, unless your head is too far up Rush Limbaugh's a**hole.

According to The Guardian

He wrote The government must be forced to reveal the costs of implementing identity card legislation

You mean like This UPS cargo plane fire?

In the current atmosphere of funding cuts to universities and researchers, they are looking for ways to monetize their 'intellectual property'. That means that data is jealously guarded and things aren't published the same way they used to be. The result is a lot of duplication of effort and a general slowing down of science. In that regard, patents are having an adverse effect on human progress. We got to where we are because scientists shared their findings after all.

Bill Gates realizes that secrecy among scientists is slowing down aids research. As a condition for his funding of their aids research, he is insisting that they share their data. http://www.guardian.co.uk/aids/story/0,,1824606,00 .html

In general, patents are being abused and are not fulfilling their original purpose. The people lobbying for patent protection for software are actually evil. They want to enrich a certain group of people at the expense of the rest of the world. When you see someone like Bill Gates acknowledging that, you know it has to be true.

When I said the claim I didn't mean "the submitter's claim" but, as my sentence made clear, "the claim which is right there in the news: (...namely the claim that...:) 'the call was intercepted by British intelligence'" .

Yes the submitter lied about that claim being in TFA. We were done talking about this lie. I was merely mentioning that that claim, which itself may or may not be propaganda, is found elsewhere.

That is true, and that is all.

The article never mentions any Britsh wiretap of any kind.

'He has been staying here for quite some time and has been under strict surveillance since then,' a Pakistani intelligence source said. 'His calls to Britain and internet communications have been under surveillance that helped in revealing the plot.'

Following Rauf's arrest, one of his associates is understood to have phoned the UK urging those alleged to have been involved in the plot to speed up their plans. The call was intercepted by British intelligence and triggered the decision to arrest the suspects.

The article never mentions any Britsh wiretap of any kind.

'He has been staying here for quite some time and has been under strict surveillance since then,' a Pakistani intelligence source said. 'His calls to Britain and internet communications have been under surveillance that helped in revealing the plot.'

Following Rauf's arrest, one of his associates is understood to have phoned the UK urging those alleged to have been involved in the plot to speed up their plans. The call was intercepted by British intelligence and triggered the decision to arrest the suspects.

Here, the cure is the same as the malady it is supposed to be curing. Yeah, yeah, I know, sometimes you have to do things you don't like, but that's really not the issue. The issue is not whether X, Y or Z is necessary, the issue is whether X, Y or Z is substantially different from what they are remedies for.

If you wage a war to prevent a war, you still have a war. The war you attempted to prevent may now not take place, but since it has been substituted for something that is essentially identical, that isn't much of an achievement.

The biggest problem is when you don't, in fact, prevent whatever it is - or even causes it when it would probably never have occured on its own. Then everyone gets to suffer twice, quite needlessly. See World Wars I and II for details.

The current instability in Russia, and quite possibly the two Chechen wars as well, are likely a byproduct of Western countries depriving Gorbechev of the aid he needed to stabilize things after Glastnost. Ronald Reagan and George Bush I denied that aid on political grounds. True, we'll never know what would have happened if a concerted effort had been made at that time to bring Russia to a healthier economic condition. Things might have ended up worse. However, by waging a political war to prevent that "might be", conditions deteriorated to the point where actual wars were fought and actual people died.

If we look at the current instabilities, it is in populations that have been neglected, where poverty is high, life expectency is low, purpose and meaning are seldom to be found. It would seem obvious to me that smashing property and killing wildly is not going to improve things in such a climate, but this has been the typical response. As responses go, it is flat-out guaranteed to be counter-productive.

There's an interesting article in The Guardian (sorry, Teh Grauniad) newspaper where an anti-terror expert claims that 95% of terrorists are acting on secular or political grievances. (Notice the word "grievance". It's important.) The implication of the Palestinian situation, the Russian situation and the Middle East situation is obvious - if we created a tolerable society where we can, and avoided creating an intolerable one otherwise, 95% of the problem would go away on its own, leaving a paltry 5% for the super-paranoid police and intelligence organizations to fret over.

(I'm not sure I would trust them with much more than 1/20th of their current workload, anyway.)

many press articles on this.

http://observer.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,690 3,915393,00.html

for one.

After high-profile suicide bombings the police found a guy

Correct.

(that happened to live next door to the suspect)

Correct (although the suspect was innocent).

with a bulky jacket with wires visible poking out

Incorrect.

(and who happened to be an electrician),

Correct.

and who made a desperate run for it

Incorrect.

the moment the police tried to ask him to identify himself

Incorrect.

(and who happened to be working illegaly

Correct.

and thought the police had actually come to arrest him)?

Who knows.

We can argue whether or not the police panicked and could have tried to incapacitate him

Incorrect. The armed police thought they were told to eliminate him (check link below).

or whether they had no choice in ensuring public safety,

Menezes was a member of the public.

but at the end of the day the guy was a VERY unfortunate victim of circumstance.

Undoubtedly, although to what degree and why he was shot 9 times in the head remains a mystery. Although his family is suing her, the person in charge of the operation is now being offered a promotion.

Their grievances are real, stop whitewashing them. I do not enjoy the threat posed by terrorism either, but I do condemn our own actions.


Have you yet read Osama's "Letter to America" ?

One of the first reasons given for the attack is our support of Israel:

"The creation and continuation of Israel is one of the greatest crimes, and you are the leaders of its criminals. And of course there is no need to explain and prove the degree of American support for Israel. The creation of Israel is a crime which must be erased."

So, do you condemn our support of Israel? You must realize that, without our support, Israel will be "erased". Are we wrong to help prevent the erasure of Israel?

He also tells us what we can do to get back on his good side:

"(Q2) As for the second question that we want to answer: What are we calling you to, and what do we want from you? ...

(a) We call you to be a people of manners, principles, honour, and purity; to reject the immoral acts of fornication, homosexuality, intoxicants, gambling's, and trading with interest." ...

And apparently Bill's blow-job in the White house is one of the worst kinds of events:

"(iv) You are a nation that permits acts of immorality, and you consider them to be pillars of personal freedom. You have continued to sink down this abyss from level to level until incest has spread amongst you, in the face of which neither your sense of honour nor your laws object.

Who can forget your President Clinton's immoral acts committed in the official Oval office? After that you did not even bring him to account, other than that he 'made a mistake', after which everything passed with no punishment. Is there a worse kind of event for which your name will go down in history and remembered by nations? "

Do you really believe we deserve to be attacked because the president got is cigar smoked?

I'm pretty sure the CEO of Ryanair creamed his pants when he heard about this. They are going to make a killing on 15 euro snickers bars.

Hell, they've already tried charging 18 pounds for wheelchair use to someone who had cerebral palsy.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/airlines/story/0,,137858 8,00.html

Shitty, shitty airline that makes you call a toll number to speak with their customer service / compl
intd department.
Fuck them. (Wizz was much, much better)

The CIA armed bin Laden in Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets.

Until then, he was a rich guy with a sick mind. "Al Qaeda" was "the base" from which bin Laden operated in the CIA operation.

Next you'll be telling me that Fidel Castro wasn't created by the CIA. Just because the CIA doesn't keep hold of the monsters it creates doesn't deny that they created them.

Then of course there was the total botch up where they raided a home in Forest Gate on no evidence whatsoever (except is seems that dark people live there) and shot Mohammed Abdul Kahar--again accidentally .

Wonder if someone (I was going to say I, but then you don't know who's listening) was to shoot, say, Tony Bliar or Jack Straw, and then say 'oops, that was an unfortunate accident' would there be no comeback at all? Is this now a valid defence?

Of course, your friend GWB is all over this a stark reminder that "Islamic fascists... will use any means to destroy those of us who love freedom"...he's actually right, just delete the Islamic part and you're getting close.

Well, it's nice that the NPCs are interacting with each other. Maybe someday they can interact with the player too!
I guess we will have to wait until EA release their latest innovation : Intelligent A.I.!

"The defining moment of EA's press release, however, is the boast that FIFA 2007 features "intelligent A.I". So that's intelligent Artificial Intelligence. IAI. "

sure that they would be able to recover thoses costs by haveing the right to control how and by whom it is produced
This is a fallacy. Revenue is not magically generated by having control over production, nor is control over production a guarantee of profit.

Explain to me how even the current patent system hurts the inventor.

In many ways, but mainly because the patent system has become a game for the Big Guys who can afford the law suits or defend themselves by using their own patents. Small inventors with one or two patents don't stand a chance. This article is but one example of this scenario. The way the multi-nationals use cross-licensing as a legal way of creating cartels is also pretty sickening (I recommend the excellent book Information Feudalism by Peter Drahos and John Braithwaite for more on that).

For a more general discussion around the patent system and some of it's problems, I direct you to a few references on the topic:

http://wiki.ffii.org/Martin041109En
http://www.quebecoislibre.org/000902-3.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/globalisation/story/0,73 69,665969,00.html
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20020805/newman200207 25
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/05/21/business/wh o.php
http://www.dklevine.com/general/intellectual/again st.htm
http://www.cepr.net/publications/intellectual_prop erty_2004_09.htm

Sony is facing a struggle over its PlayStation 3, with critics concerned about the processor and the price. Jack Schofield reports on the next stage in the console wars.
 
This is taken from the guardian newspaper. I don't think it took much surfing to find a negative view about Sony's PS3. In fact, I would go so far as to say that it is not just a slashdot slant (as with most things), there are a lot of people who don't like what has happened. The only one with a slant, it would seem, is you.

Sony already dominated the games market, having comprehensively crushed both previous leaders, Sega and Nintendo. -- Is Sony fighting a losing battle?

Why not link directly to the article here, instead of going via some other site?

http://technology.guardian.co.uk/weekly/story/0,,1 835502,00.html

i don't have much first hand experience with german comedy, but i found this article about how english jokes don't translate to german interesting. much english humor relies on the ambiguity and flexibility of the english language. the german language is too precise for such jokes. also, according to the article, the germans don't find the human body funny so dirty jokes aren't funny.