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Whole countries? Liechtenstein or Vatican City: easy. Russia or Canada: not so easy. :-)

Whole countries? Liechtenstein or Vatican City: easy. Russia or Canada: not so easy. :-)

Whole countries? Liechtenstein or Vatican City: easy. Russia or Canada: not so easy. :-)

You still have time to prevent this from happening in Canada. We have similar connectivity to the USA and are very close in proximity. Our laws prohibit personal weapons but are much more lax in digital expression at this time.

Check out this article on ITBusiness.ca or the government's submissions page on the issue. We're engaging in "Copyright Reform" -- submit your opinions.

You have to remember, the USSR went in there to "pacify" what they considered their territory.
The US has no such intentions or illusions.

Consise Backgrounder Linkage:

Pakistan 1
Pakistan 2

Afghan 1
Afghan 2

If Afghanistan were turned into a smoking crater in the Earth do you really think anyone would miss them? The only thing that country exports is terrorists and refugees.

I'm sure their families would miss them just as much as American families devastated by last Tuesday's attacks miss their loved ones. Why would it be any different? The idea that you would kill innocents out of indifference or due to the notion that they simply don't matter is even sicker and more fucked up than killing because you feel strongly that you have some grievance that can't be addressed any other way, which is pretty fucked up to start with.

Exports: A lot of their terrorist exports were originally imported from elsewhere, trained, then left. Other MidEast nations saw Afghanistan as a great dumping ground for their local nutcases, and happily sent them on their way. Refugees tend to think leaving a hellhole is better than sticking around to get killed or beaten up for shaving. Would you stay in a place like that if you could leave?

If it were a stable nation, Afghanistan could be exporting things the world wants and needs. The CIA World Factbook for 2000 lists Afghanistan's natural resources, namely "natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious and semiprecious stones". Even if you don't give a flying fuck about the ordinary people there, maybe you can see the potential value in stabilizing and improving Afghanistan for economic reasons and maybe even find it in that big heart of yours to hope that to do so would raise the standard of living there, which would tend to make the locals less tolerant of violent extremists (remember, the Taliban do not have the hearts and minds there,) which would tend to make us safer. That is a daunting goal, and a very long-range one as well (it obviously would need to come after nailing everyone responsible for last week's massacres,) but I don't think it's undoable. And it would make us safer.

Or we could nuke them all , feel great for a week or month, then live in fear for generations. We don't need to martyr the innocent. If we do that, we will have dug ourselves a hole we can never climb out of. We need to be thinking about the effects of our actions in a very long-term way. Right now, most of the world is behind us. We shouldn't squander such a rare and precious advantage by killing innocent people. The rest of the world won't stand for it, and some here will not as well. What happened is not a license for barbarism on our part. Please stop and think about this.

If Afghanistan were turned into a smoking crater in the Earth do you really think anyone would miss them? The only thing that country exports is terrorists and refugees.

I'm sure their families would miss them just as much as American families devastated by last Tuesday's attacks miss their loved ones. Why would it be any different? The idea that you would kill innocents out of indifference or due to the notion that they simply don't matter is even sicker and more fucked up than killing because you feel strongly that you have some grievance that can't be addressed any other way, which is pretty fucked up to start with.

Exports: A lot of their terrorist exports were originally imported from elsewhere, trained, then left. Other MidEast nations saw Afghanistan as a great dumping ground for their local nutcases, and happily sent them on their way. Refugees tend to think leaving a hellhole is better than sticking around to get killed or beaten up for shaving. Would you stay in a place like that if you could leave?

If it were a stable nation, Afghanistan could be exporting things the world wants and needs. The CIA World Factbook for 2000 lists Afghanistan's natural resources, namely "natural gas, petroleum, coal, copper, chromite, talc, barites, sulfur, lead, zinc, iron ore, salt, precious and semiprecious stones". Even if you don't give a flying fuck about the ordinary people there, maybe you can see the potential value in stabilizing and improving Afghanistan for economic reasons and maybe even find it in that big heart of yours to hope that to do so would raise the standard of living there, which would tend to make the locals less tolerant of violent extremists (remember, the Taliban do not have the hearts and minds there,) which would tend to make us safer. That is a daunting goal, and a very long-range one as well (it obviously would need to come after nailing everyone responsible for last week's massacres,) but I don't think it's undoable. And it would make us safer.

Or we could nuke them all , feel great for a week or month, then live in fear for generations. We don't need to martyr the innocent. If we do that, we will have dug ourselves a hole we can never climb out of. We need to be thinking about the effects of our actions in a very long-term way. Right now, most of the world is behind us. We shouldn't squander such a rare and precious advantage by killing innocent people. The rest of the world won't stand for it, and some here will not as well. What happened is not a license for barbarism on our part. Please stop and think about this.

The GDP for South Korea is $13,300 (according to the CIA World Factbook) compared to $33,900 in the US.

So is it any wonder then that such countries have more piracy? Relative to their wages, Koreans are paying 2 or 3 times as much for their music, videos and software. How many people in the US would pay $50 for a music CD or $100 for a DVD?

And South Korea is a relatively rich country. The GDP in places like Thailand, Indonesia or Vietnam is less than a tenth of the US. Imagine paying $400 for a computer game or $2500 for Windows XP.

No one in the right mind would, which is why piracy is so rife. If the music, video and software companies had any brains they would lower the cost of their products so that people could actually afford them.

You may be right about who they claim as an employer, but this makes me think they are at least partially under the DoD. This makes me think that State has some control, but the whole thing looks like a civilian/military compromise over who gets the goodies.

Allow me to apoligize, I made a slightly small mispelling in my post. Of course this is my being a vulgar American. I swapped the b for the p.

Only 10 percent? Well, considering that the US has about 275 million citizens, I can sleep easier at night knowing that only 27 million of these can be re-identified.

Identifies well with others. The Linux Pimp

Zulfiya comes from a mangling of my real name Sylvia. I found it wasn't usually available as a login name, so I applied a little morphological shift, and voila! Imagine my surprise when I found out that I had picked an acutally used name - in Azerbaijan (one of the former Soviet nations). I did pick up some interesting pen pals that way...

Karmakaze is just a cute handle dating back to my BBS days. I quite deliberately avoided using it on Slashdot because of the alternate interpretation here.

Since when is the Phillipines desert? AFAIK, it's tropical rainforest. But, getting back to your original point, yeah, I don't understand why people live in countries like Western Sahara or Mali. I'm sure their rich neighbors (like the wealthy Mauritanians) would welcome their millions of impoverished citizens with open arms.

Since when is the Phillipines desert? AFAIK, it's tropical rainforest. But, getting back to your original point, yeah, I don't understand why people live in countries like Western Sahara or Mali. I'm sure their rich neighbors (like the wealthy Mauritanians) would welcome their millions of impoverished citizens with open arms.

Since when is the Phillipines desert? AFAIK, it's tropical rainforest. But, getting back to your original point, yeah, I don't understand why people live in countries like Western Sahara or Mali. I'm sure their rich neighbors (like the wealthy Mauritanians) would welcome their millions of impoverished citizens with open arms.

Since when is the Phillipines desert? AFAIK, it's tropical rainforest. But, getting back to your original point, yeah, I don't understand why people live in countries like Western Sahara or Mali. I'm sure their rich neighbors (like the wealthy Mauritanians) would welcome their millions of impoverished citizens with open arms.

From the CIA World Fact Book entry on the United Kingdon:

Country name:
conventional long form: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland
conventional short form: United Kingdom
abbreviation: UK

Government type: constitutional monarchy

Then again, they probably don't have a clue about what they are talking about either, huh?

From the same document:
Constitution: unwritten; partly statutes, partly common law and practice

I always took this as meaning that they don't have a constitution, and so the legislative powers can pretty much pass whatever laws they like...

At least here in the Netherlands you've got to have a 2/3rds majority to change the consitution, and all other laws that contradict it are not valid in court (or something: you know IANAL)

Nope. It's a constitutional monarchy.

Effectively a democracy in all but name.


--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me

From the CIA world fact book, I see that the 1998 power consumption of the UK was 343 billion kWh. This translates, by my calculation, to about 78,000 of these LIMPET generators. From the pictures I estimate that they are about ten meters wide. So this gives us a total of 783 km of coastline to match the entire 1998 electricity demand. The coastline of the UK is 12,429 km. So we would need about 1/15th of our coast to match out requirements. Of course we are lucky on this count because we are a small island with large ratio of coast to area. Anyway, gives you some idea.

Rupert

There's a long history of Really Dirty Shit coming out about the United States. The real problem is that the event horizon for this sort of thing is 10 to 30 years. At that point, news about the heinousness may or may not come out. The media gets to make a big stink about it, while keeping an implicit attitude that says "That sort of thing couldn't happen these days". For example, Operation Shamrock, the secret bombing of Cambodia, heinous shit in all of Central and South America, UKUSA, Nixon's dirty tricks, Crypto AG, and the list goes on.

The real problem is that nothing is done to fix the system. The people involved are not taken outside and shot, they're still where they were before. What's the current set of semi-atrocities? If you read a lot of the foreign or independent press, you might find out sooner.

Hooptie
P.S. All population/area numbers are from the CIA WorldFactBook

The one thing that makes me despise arguments about the preservation of people's basic human rights, is when people do not realise what is a right, and what is effectively a privilege. Being able to vote democratically is a right. Not being discriminated against due to race, creed or sexuality is a right. You have the right to not be imprisoned illegally, or to be tortured.

Being able to play video games is a privilege, not a right.

If you have the rights I've outlined above, you will be able to vote the government out of office who has banned video games, if that is your preference. A populous that is mostly in support of the banning of video games has the right to ban them (through democratic means) if they wish. Just because a minority disagree, does not mean that they are having their basic human rights taken away from them. If that were the case, the Klan would be able to argue it's their basic human right to set fire to black people, I would have the right to steal Dr. Pepper from the store whenever I couldn't afford it, and the legal system would just fall to pieces.

Perhaps something I've never really noticed about American xenophobia before, and it's only just clicked for me in the /. context. I really hate to break this to you guys, but other countries than the USA are democracies as well. In fact, if you had looked up your very own CIA's World Factobook entry for Malaysia yourself, you would notice that they do indeed have a democratically elected lower assembly, just like the UK. Marvellous. If they don't like it, they can vote them out. In fact, the legal system is based upon UK law (which is pretty hot on the old democratic rights stuff) and they have universal suffrage at the age of 21. Fancy that, they even let women vote as well! These foreigners are getting very advanced aren't they, and there you all were thinking that just because it was somewhere "foreign" it must be one of those places you see on CNN with pictures 100 foot tall of Commies everywhere. Indeed.

No need for Amnesty International in this particular situation then - I'm sure that AI is busy enough dealing with real infringments against human rights. In fact, do us all a favour and go and read their Annual Report and read about some real horrors before describing the banning of arcades as a travesty.

Morons. Get your priorities right. I can understand you wanting to bitch about the FBI snooping your data - it's your contry, your right. But to bitch about a democratic government banning video games???? Purrr-lease....

I bet this doesn't get touched by the moderators, or if it does it will be negative. :-)

As you can see on this map, Germany has a North coast. (Thats if you trust the CIA of course)

"Computer code is not purely expressive any more than the assassination of a political figure is purely a political statement"
Judge Kaplan

Stuart Biegel commented "I'm very troubled by the implications of the analysis in this case, particularly with regard to linking"

Too Right. Try these... (with excerpts for your convenience)

MPAA
"In 1955 he met the man who would have the largest impact on his life, the then Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate, Lyndon B. Johnson. Valenti's agency was in charge of the press during the visit of President Kennedy and Vice President Johnson to Texas. Valenti was in the motorcade in Dallas on November 22, 1963. Within hours of the murder of John F. Kennedy, Valenti was on Air Force One flying back to Washington, the first newly hired special assistant to the new President."

CIA
"President Kennedy's Checklist was published daily for two and a half years, capturing the regular attention of the President and serving his needs. Created out of an almost desperate desire to please a President who had found the Agency wanting, it proved to be the forerunner of the President's Daily Brief, the publication that was to serve all presidents from 1964 to the present.

For reasons undoubtedly growing out of the earlier political rivalry between Kennedy and Johnson, Kennedy's intelligence assistant, Bromley Smith, early in the administration had ordered that "under no circumstances should the Checklist be given to Johnson."

The Transition to President Johnson

The transition to President Johnson was as abrupt for the US Intelligence Community as it was for the rest of the country. In some respects, it was also as uncertain

Saturday morning, 23 November 1963, the day following Kennedy's assassination
The new President's Daily Brief, designed specifically for President Johnson, was delivered to the White House on 1 December 1964. Its fresh appearance obviously appealed to the President. His assistant, Jack Valenti, sent the first issue back to Bundy with word that the President read it, liked it, and wanted it continued."

Jack Valenti
"My greatest achievement? I survived - I'm not joking."

Niether Am I... Check out The List - JFK Assassination Key People

JFK

• The nearest equivalent to the FBI ... is the RCMP - Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP also provides the services provided in the US by the Treasury Police, including dealing with "crimes about currency," and the protection of heads of state and diplomatic persons.
• The RCMP used to also perform services equivalent to the CIA, but this group was spun out, becoming CSIS - Canadian Security and Intelligence Service.

  There was a scandal where RCMP "spooks" burned a barn where purportedly nefarious people were planning ill; the "public" view was that this made the RCMP look bad, and so the RCMP wanted no more to do with the "spooky" activities. When they're the "secret service," who can really be sure???. The public face on this was thus:

  The establishment of the civilian Canadian Security Intelligence Service and the disbanding of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police Security Service by an Act of Parliament in 1984 recognized the differences between security intelligence activities and law enforcement work. The 120-year old interlocking of Canada's security intelligence service with the federal police force was brought to a close.

• The nearest equivalent to the NSA is the Communications Security Establishment, an "establishment" in the Department of National Defence.

  See also the CSE Unofficial Web Page, which has a rather interesting discussion of the organization.

  They are a mixed civilian/military group largely devoted to "signals analysis," and include pretty much the same functions associated with the NSA, notably not including having their own chip foundries. (Unless there's one hiding somewhere in Labrador!)

  Notable "listening" sites include Gander (a formerly notable airport), Alert (the most northerly inhabited place in the world), Masset, and Kingston. My father used to work next door to CSE headquarters, the Sir Leonard Tilley Building.

Just when the Tuvalunese start getting an income stream that doesn't involve having their islands, or their neighbours', trashed by phosphate mining, ICANN wipe them out with the .tel TLD !

it's a small island in the Indian ocean - Cocoas or Keelings Islands - territory of Austrailia, pop. 636, sale cash crop: coconuts. Just the perfect site for your servers.

It took us 3 years and a big bribe--affectionately referred to as "grease money"--to just get a second phone line installed in our house. And that's not bad from PilTel, whose customer service antics include severing our telephone wires while performing "routine maintenance checks."

There are still many areas where the only way to get messages in and out is via Ham radio operators to a telegraph office. I'm not kidding! So in an area that's beset by typhoons, earthquakes, seasonal floodings and volcanoes, building and maintaining land lines is extremely difficult compared to simply putting up a few wireless towers.

(BTW, the 1 peso fee for texting is about $0.02 at today's exchange rate.)
--

I have seen many posts on /. indicating they are boycotting DVDs, and many other posts saying how they are also doing so but torn over the choice.

Well, I'm here to play devil's advocate, to give you reasons why boycotting the DVD format is not in your best interests. I'm really interested to see the counter arguments to the ones I give, as I think it's an interesting discussion.

First the monetary angle - you not buying a DVD player or DVD's is hurting the MPAA.

Let's say that you get one million followers of the boycott going. Pretty impressive, surely that would stop the MPAA and make them reconsider the evil of there ways!

But wait - the estimated population of the United States in July 1999 was 272,639,608. The estimated number of televisions is 215 million. If even a quarter of the people with televisions buy a DVD player, what impact does the loss of a mere million people worth of revenue have?

Consider also how you are fighting them. By simply not buying a player or DVD's, you may think you are fighting them. But unless you are writing to the studios explaining that you are boycotting the system, you are really doing nothing except making them market a bit harder than they were before to your demograohic. That means you are helping a SALESPERSON make more money!!

But all that is just pointless jabbering unless I have some kind of soltution to replace the boycott (and even then no doubt some will still consider it pointless). As you might have guessed, I of course have such a plan.

I propose that to really make a difference, you see who is already in the fight and is making a difference. Though there may be other forces, the main ones I can think of are:

The EFF (providing legal help in many cases, including the deCSS case).
The people who make (essentially) regionless DVD players.

To support the EFF is easy - send them money. Lots of it. If you got that same hypothetical million people to donate $100 each to the EFF, don't you think that would help a lot more than simply not buying "It's a Bugs Life"?

In the second case, buying a DVD player where the region encoding is easy to defeat helps to make this a more desired feature in all players. This is already true in Euorpe where the DVD players in which they can play region 1 DVD's are selling like hotcakes. If you provide enough of a profit incentive then eventually some of the brand name DVD players will have to follow suit.

But more than buying one of these for yourself, explain to others around you why they should buy one as well. Let's face it, are you going to be able to convince more people they simply should not buy a DVD player at all, or that they should buy a really cheap one that can play DVD's from anywhere?

I will add one final argument. By not getting a DVD player now you are missing out on some DVD's that will not be around when the fight is won. Things like Disney movies that cycle into the market every few decades. Thing like the "Army Of Darkness Special Edition".

And in addition if you really don't want to give the MPAA money while still getting DVD's, buy them all from used CD stores.

I have seen many posts on /. indicating they are boycotting DVDs, and many other posts saying how they are also doing so but torn over the choice.

Well, I'm here to play devil's advocate, to give you reasons why boycotting the DVD format is not in your best interests. I'm really interested to see the counter arguments to the ones I give, as I think it's an interesting discussion.

First the monetary angle - you not buying a DVD player or DVD's is hurting the MPAA.

Let's say that you get one million followers of the boycott going. Pretty impressive, surely that would stop the MPAA and make them reconsider the evil of there ways!

But wait - the estimated population of the United States in July 1999 was 272,639,608. The estimated number of televisions is 215 million. If even a quarter of the people with televisions buy a DVD player, what impact does the loss of a mere million people worth of revenue have?

Consider also how you are fighting them. By simply not buying a player or DVD's, you may think you are fighting them. But unless you are writing to the studios explaining that you are boycotting the system, you are really doing nothing except making them market a bit harder than they were before to your demograohic. That means you are helping a SALESPERSON make more money!!

But all that is just pointless jabbering unless I have some kind of soltution to replace the boycott (and even then no doubt some will still consider it pointless). As you might have guessed, I of course have such a plan.

I propose that to really make a difference, you see who is already in the fight and is making a difference. Though there may be other forces, the main ones I can think of are:

The EFF (providing legal help in many cases, including the deCSS case).
The people who make (essentially) regionless DVD players.

To support the EFF is easy - send them money. Lots of it. If you got that same hypothetical million people to donate $100 each to the EFF, don't you think that would help a lot more than simply not buying "It's a Bugs Life"?

In the second case, buying a DVD player where the region encoding is easy to defeat helps to make this a more desired feature in all players. This is already true in Euorpe where the DVD players in which they can play region 1 DVD's are selling like hotcakes. If you provide enough of a profit incentive then eventually some of the brand name DVD players will have to follow suit.

But more than buying one of these for yourself, explain to others around you why they should buy one as well. Let's face it, are you going to be able to convince more people they simply should not buy a DVD player at all, or that they should buy a really cheap one that can play DVD's from anywhere?

I will add one final argument. By not getting a DVD player now you are missing out on some DVD's that will not be around when the fight is won. Things like Disney movies that cycle into the market every few decades. Thing like the "Army Of Darkness Special Edition".

And in addition if you really don't want to give the MPAA money while still getting DVD's, buy them all from used CD stores.

Tuvalu is a little string of Islands, governed by the British. Since I didn't know anything about them, I looked them up on Google. Not much to tell, sort of like a little Fiji. If your interested there is a fact sheet Here.

If you were from Tuvalu, you'd be very happy right now. Wow, $4700 for you -- right out of thin air! Normally, you'd have to work about 5.8 years to earn this pile of money. (Source: CIA World Factbook.)
--

One of the major issues which has everyone up in arms is the ability for companies in today's environment to patent genes as soon as they isolate them. If they get there before the Genome Project, they can patent the genes and use them to extract royalties, in the event that researchers (who they don't pay for) discover a use for the gene. See this article for just one example. Before you think they did hard work to get large profits off of this gene, listen to the spin-doctoring:

"It was one of many genes that we found very early in our discovery program. Experiments confirmed that the CCR5 receptor played a key role in the biology of the immune system and as an AIDS virus receptor."

There is some IP which is worth protecting: that which is demonstrably detrimental to being released into the public. This IP would include certain information being held by those protecting our country, and other information which would hurt individuals or their rights. As much as some here don't like it, there is information which should be held tightly, including IP held by some commonly bashed organizations, since the information is being used for your benefit. Information that is tightly held only because it benefits some multi-billion dollar corporation, and could benefit everyone if had royalty-free, on the other hand, shouldn't be patentable in the first place.

I think there should be a moritorium on patents issued for gene isolation. Even if a private firm isolates a gene, they are doing research which will eventually be duplicated by the Genome Project, and that information should be released into the public domain, license-free. If they want to aid the cause, that's fine, go get a government grant. If they want to develop subsidiary products based on a particular gene, that's OK too. Conventional products and procedures which are limited by, among other things, ingredients and physical restrictions, such as complicated and novel processing requirements, are completely covered by today's patent process. IP, on the other hand, should be free for everyone.

For more information about IP in the gene patent area, check out these links:
Property Rights and Ownership
Genome Research and Traditional Intellectual Property Protection

Dave Blau

The CIA World Fact Book lists a literacy of 52% for India.

I do not understand why should "20 M chinese on net" be a "big news", unless it is meant as: Look, there are still ONLY 20 M chinese with internet access!

This is less than 2 percent of the chinese population, and my first thought was "this estimate is much too low". However, after taking a look at the CIA-factbook, I am ready to believe it. Their 1998 estimate for China is: 105 milions of telephones (compare this with US, with 180M telephones and 1/4-th of the chinese population)! Adding the Hong-Kong does not change the situation much: 1998 estimate for HK is 4.5M telephones.

I do not understand why should "20 M chinese on net" be a "big news", unless it is meant as: Look, there are still ONLY 20 M chinese with internet access!

This is less than 2 percent of the chinese population, and my first thought was "this estimate is much too low". However, after taking a look at the CIA-factbook, I am ready to believe it. Their 1998 estimate for China is: 105 milions of telephones (compare this with US, with 180M telephones and 1/4-th of the chinese population)! Adding the Hong-Kong does not change the situation much: 1998 estimate for HK is 4.5M telephones.

I do not understand why should "20 M chinese on net" be a "big news", unless it is meant as: Look, there are still ONLY 20 M chinese with internet access!

This is less than 2 percent of the chinese population, and my first thought was "this estimate is much too low". However, after taking a look at the CIA-factbook, I am ready to believe it. Their 1998 estimate for China is: 105 milions of telephones (compare this with US, with 180M telephones and 1/4-th of the chinese population)! Adding the Hong-Kong does not change the situation much: 1998 estimate for HK is 4.5M telephones.

I do not understand why should "20 M chinese on net" be a "big news", unless it is meant as: Look, there are still ONLY 20 M chinese with internet access!

This is less than 2 percent of the chinese population, and my first thought was "this estimate is much too low". However, after taking a look at the CIA-factbook, I am ready to believe it. Their 1998 estimate for China is: 105 milions of telephones (compare this with US, with 180M telephones and 1/4-th of the chinese population)! Adding the Hong-Kong does not change the situation much: 1998 estimate for HK is 4.5M telephones.

I certainly hope Red Hat have done their market research. Despite the rather gung-ho image projected by the State Department, China is still predominantly an agricultural based economy (average GDP/capita $3.6K, CIA factbook). Hence if they buy computers, it is likely to be cheap knock-down clones from the Taiwanese or white boxes assembled from components sourced inland. Getting the average person to spend a third of their (average) yearly income on a luxury good (to them) seems rather extreme. Microsoft have decided to go for an internet appliance and I beleive the home red team is also flogging their own TV hookup box. While the coastal regions like HK and Shanghai may be good prospects for sales, given that you can get pirated CDs/VideoDiscs/DVDs for near cost of media (if you even look foreign, they'd come up to you and openly offer to bargin titles) I'd wonder about the chances of any foreign firm trying to sell full-priced equipment. It is a really tough environment to do business, just read AsiaMoney archives on the pitfalls of western capitalism meeting eastern greed (not a pretty sight). I wound rank Japan, Singapore, Taiwan, India, Thailand, Korea higher up in the priority list as those countries have got good educational systems and would benefit more from computer automation and there are likely to be more multinationals there who could benefit from Linux support. It will be interesting to see what the WTO agreement will do to the ISP industry in that region though.

LL

Look up some facts first. China's children per woman is 1.8. Thats going down.. The US is at about 2.2 I believe.. see the CIA world factbook for more info. world factbook

I'm just passing you a quote from this year's CIA World Factbook 1999, and what is said there about US and use of metric system. We all other countries are waiting, why is it taking so long?

Note: At this time, only three countries-Burma, Liberia, and the US-have not adopted the International System of Units (SI, or metric system) as their official system of weights and measures. Although use of the metric system has been sanctioned by law in the US since 1866, it has been slow in displacing the American adaptation of the British Imperial System known as the US Customary System. The US is the only industrialized nation that does not mainly use the metric system in its commercial and standards activities, but there is increasing acceptance in science, medicine, government, and many sectors of industry.

"Intelligence" Community (US) home page is at this
location. And a couple of levels down is a single frame's worth of info on NRO (whose EXISTENCE was declassified in 1992 !!!) And surprise, surprise, the NSA frame doesn't mention Echelon :)

Me

From the CIA World Factbook



Telephones: 700,000

Telephone system:
domestic: NA
international: satellite earth station-1 Intelsat (Atlantic Ocean)

Radio broadcast stations: 27 (public or state-owned 1, private 26)

Radios: 2.015 million

Television broadcast stations: 8 (state owned 1, privately owned 7) plus 1 Satellite TV down link and 48 cable distribution systems

Televisions: 1 million

Here is what they have:

Ethnic groups: Serbs 63%, Albanians 14%, Montenegrins 6%, Hungarians 4%, other 13%

Religions: Orthodox 65%, Muslim 19%, Roman Catholic 4%, Protestant 1%, other 11%

Languages: Serbo-Croatian 95%, Albanian 5%

This is also interesting:

Geography-note: controls one of the major land routes from Western Europe to Turkey and the Near East; strategic location along the Adriatic coast