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All that is nonsense today. World War Two is over and so is the USA/Soviet war, the so-called 'cold war'.

It seems that the Russians under Putin are becoming increasingly threatening to the West and to the USA in particular. There have been a number of incidents of late of Russia testing Western defenses, recently a number of Russian nuclear-capable bomber flights making incursions on NATO airspace and being intercepted by NATO fighters.

http://news.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-1280809,00.html

And here:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/09/AR2007080902211.html

Let's not also forget that China is also a serious threat.

That being said, the idea of autonomous fighting machines is not a new one, I recall hours of entertaining reading from Keith Laumers' "BOLO" series, about artificially-intelligent super-tanks. There's an informative Wiki article on the Bolo tanks here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bolo_(tank)

The bottom line I guess, is that all of human history proves that the world is not a friendly place. Unilateral disarmament will be happily taken advantage of by powers that care not a whit about anything but gaining more power and territory, and are more than willing to sacrifice huge numbers of people on either/any side towards those goals. If we wish to both survive and remain a relatively free people, then we have no choice but to make sure we are first and best with weapons and battle systems.

Cheers!

Strat

The identity thief sues you for endangering him when he sticks his hand into your shredder while trying to steal your mail.

But at least that only applies to the USA for the time being.

Yeah, keep on believing that.

It's the squirrels!

The BBC said they are going to look at other platforms later. They are just making downloads available to the vast majority of the people who paid for it first, this is normal.

This is like 4oD and SKY Anytime which currently only work with Windows XP (not even Vista). I'm sure they will be updatiung their software for at least Vista and Mac soon enough. It not like they said NO is it!

Malaria, West Nile Virus,, Dengue Fever, just to name a few.

And I'm sure it has nothing to do with The Sun being owned by the same person that owns this http://packages.sky.com/buy/?CMP=KNC-UKesalesSearc h.

The Dirty Digger doesn't like the BBC.

PLEASE HELP
follow this event at SKY NEW special section:
http://news.sky.com/skynews/madeleine
PLEASE HELP

I have a Squid proxy server set up to block all advertisements. If a site sends me an advertisement, I add it to an ACL which blocks it. The full Squid is a bit overkill for the purpose, though, and I do plan to write my own "mini" proxy server just for advert-blocking (and I'll even add options to have it download the advert and just not display it, so blocking advert-blocker-blockers; and maybe even falsify clicks to distort their figures -- though I'm not sure if this is kikely to make them show me more adverts).

When watching TV, I make sure to change the channel on my Sky Plus box when the programme starts; then go and do something else for ten minutes or so (basically just enough time to account for all the advert breaks in the show, minus a little bit to account for any pausing and rewinding I'm likely to do). Then I rewind it to the beginning, watch the first part (pausing and rewinding wherever appropriate) and fast-forward through the advert breaks. By the end of the programme, I've caught up with the live transmission and can flick to another channel (for obvious reasons, you can only rewind as far as the point where you changed the channel).

Sky news have a video of the bastard things http://news.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0,,3 0100-prints_221106_0900,00.html via http://i.have.no.com/2006-11-22/police-pilot-roads ide-fingerprinting/

Ramsey Clark was ordered out of the courtroom in Baghdad's fortified Green Zone.

Mr Clark had handed the judge a memorandum calling the trial a travesty. Judge Rauf Abdul Rahman pointed to Mr Clark and said in English: "Get out."..."

I love it. :)

As far as I can figure out this friday's episode on sky one is the start of season 9, so either they're doing a big recap in the hiatus or they really are that far behind the usa. The sci-fi channel aren't showing it at all, so if they normally do then we're having the hiatus like everyone else, but iirc they're normally behind too.

If you want to see the kind of stuff we get on sky then look here: http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/tvlistings , but yes, the sci-fi is mostly american.

Credit card fraud. Go to jail - do not pass go!

Fraud? Well, then we're right at home talking about ars technica. They stole this story from sky news (uk news website), who posted it yesterday.

You're right. The muslims don't want to turn us into Muslims.

They want to rape our women in Sweden. http://fjordman.blogspot.com/2005/12/immigrant-rap e-wave-in-sweden.html
They want to burn our cars in France. They don't like trains either. http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=2 &objectid=10362567
They don't like tall buildings. http://www.terrorism-victims.org/terrorists/wtc-pe ntagon/3trade-towers-collapse.jpg
They want Sharia law in Indonesia. http://washingtontimes.com/upi-breaking/20041022-1 01916-3985r.htm
Forget discos. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2002_Bali_terrorist_b ombing
They want Sharia in the UK. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/ne ws/2006/02/19/nsharia19.xml&sSheet=/portal/2006/02 /19/ixportaltop.html
Oh crap, no more political cartoons. (I think you know of this one)
No, they don't want a Caliphate. Oh no. http://www.khilafah.com/home/index.php (wish I still had the pic of the guy protesting in canada w/ sign asking for Caliphate)
What does that sign say? Oh, it only says to massacre those who INSULY Islam. Nothing in it about conversion. http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30100-135019 17,00.html

You're right. 100% spot on. We need to fear the Christians.

You say everything legal is open and public in China? Hahaha. When so much is "legal" in China for the government to do, it's not difficult for them to do *anything* to the people. It's entirely legal for the government to whitewash everything and disappear people from their families. At least in the US that only happens to foreign enemy combatants.

The government of China is designed to protect and serve itself, not the people; this is the opposite of what the US government was designed to do, and even then, it does it poorly more often than not. When the state 0wnZ the media and everything, they make it all look like gingerbread and lollipops, when behind the scenes they're raping and pillaging! It's in their best interest! Can it be any more obvious?

http://www.sky.com/skynews/video/videoplayer/0%2C% 2C31200-china_p10436%2C00.html# Were these people's cases open, and subject to public review, scrutiny, and appeal? That would certianly appear not to be the case.

Just FYI, here is how China handles eminent domain

In addition to providing access to the internet

If you were to bother to read the requirements page, you'll see that one of the requirements is "A broadband internet connection of at least 512KB (1MB is recommended)".

This service does not provide connectivity, that's a separate requirement. Also, I don't know quite why PC Doctor is getting so upset about this. I briefly checked out the Sky by Broadband info a week or two ago, and from a few minutes clicking around the linked site it was perfectly plain to me that it involved installing the Kontiki P2P app. Ok, they may not shout it from the front page, but they're not exactly hiding the fact, either.

On top of that, the service is free to existing qualifying customers. It's not like you're paying to have the eevil Sky corporation steal your bandwidth...

5.4We will be liable for any fraudulent misrepresentations We make and for any death or personal injury caused by Our negligence. We will not be responsible or liable to You for any other loss or damage that You or any third party may suffer as a result of using or in connection with Your use of the Sky Site.

No, that's from the article, written by a third party. The website says no such thing. No marketing department would be so foolish as to say their service has a "darker side". The FAQ answers some questions about the P2P nature of the system (quite reasonably, I think), but if you just click through the "Experience Sky Broadband" and "Sign up" links, you'll never know it's P2P.

You could always spend your cash on moving to the UK where we are well served with free to air programs via Freesat and Freeview. I use Freeview which works through your existing aerial and has all the channels I need. The cost of the decoders has plummeted in recent months. I paid about £100 18 months ago. You can now get them from the supermarket for less than £30. There are paid for channels available on Freeview if you want them and, of course Sky satellite.

There are wired and wireless appliances for the house. Philips have a load like this and you can pick that and this from Dlink up from your local PCWorld. At home I have an Airport Express plugged into my stereo and Airfoil feeding every kind of audio media into it. Even Sky have got into the act with their Skygnome (needs Java, isn't really worth it). The hardware is there, basically.

Actually its coming sooner than you think
Telewest Trials for cable customers
and
Sky Trials for satellite (if the site would work!)

Can't get cable where I am and don't want to pay for Sky so Digital will have to do with digital terrestrial (or freeview) for now. Like the poster says, this is pasted on the BBC calendar for 2010!.
Come on UK, pull the finger out or we will all have these HDTVs with nothing to watch on them.

... when you consider this guy :)

Not really, the first think "Sky" Brings to mind is one mr R. Murdoch

Hey Mr. Naive, does this finally prove to you that this is a problem?

Yes they have: A previously unknown group calling itself "Secret Organisation al Qaeda in Europe" said it carried out the attacks as revenge for British "military massacres" in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Source

The statements come from people in BBC, not FOX.

Source

A previously unknown group calling itself "Secret Organisation al Qaeda in Europe" said it carried out the attacks.
My thoughts go out to everyone in London!

why doe the UK have to act as testers for the program, and then have to wait an additional 4 months because the test went well???

Don't ask me - ask them: http://www.sky.com/skycom/feedback/enquiry/0,,,00. html

It's just another way of viewing TV. Rather like their radio service.

Tivo never really took off over here (UK) because the sort of people who would buy one are the sort of people who would have satelite or cable and something like a third of the population now receive digital television so all the EPG services and the like they already get. And the quality of an HQ VCR is good enough when compared to the loss in quality because you have to convert digital to analogue back to digital (when recording) and back to analogue (when playing back that recording).

Those who are interested in harddisk recorders have bought one of the PVRs/DVRs available here like the Sky+ box.

lucas is hedging against a flop

The cheapest sky package is £13:50 - see Sky Packages. Although you may be on a half-price introductory offer for the £19 package, it is a little disengenous to claim that it is £9 a month - a bit like saying the supermarket is giving away free pizzas when actually it is a BOGOF (Buy one get one free) offer.

Here in the UK the opposite is completely true - I used to have cable from NTL but I gave up in the end because they were so bad:

1. In August 2000 I phoned NTL to arrange an installation of telephone and cable TV. The wiring was already in from the previous owner of my flat but I was told that they couldn't do the installation for 6 weeks (first sign I should have given up right there). I also checked on the availability of a cable modem and was told that the current service was analogue but they were upgrading the whole network in my area to digital in November 2000 so it'd be available then. They also refused to do the installation on a weekend so I had to take half a day off work (I didn't really see this as a huge problem at the time).

2. On the arranged installation date the engineer showed up, plugged the analogue cable decoder into the existing wire (that worked ok), tested the phone line and told me he was just going down the the multiplexer to reconnect it. He never returned (second sign I shoudl have given up). I phoned up their support line, waiting in the queue for 90 minutes before being told that my phone line hadn't been connected because they needed to upgrade the multiplexer first (they had already had 6 weeks notice that they were installing the line!). They said it would be 3 months until they did the upgrade! (third sign)

3. Eventually the phone line was connected (they tried to make me take anouther day off work for that but I managed to convince them that they *would* do a weekend install), but the network upgrade to digital never happened and I eventually decided to save money by switching my Demon dialup internet connection to an NTL one since they did unmetered dialup. I was told that this wasn't available in my area.

4. Whenever you needed to phone them you would end up having to wait in the phone queue for 60 - 90 minutes and 75% of the time they would then just hang up the call (I have since been told by people who work in NTL call centres that the line-managers do that when the calls aren't being answered quickly enough, since if they don't meet their quota of answered calls they lose their bonus pay - picking up and immediately dropping a call counds as an answered call).

5. The cable TV connection would break for several hours at a time not infrequently.

6. The analogue cable TV connection broadcast everything in 4:3 ratio - if it was a 16:9 channel they chopped the sides off the picture. I have a 16:9 TV so I'm left with a choice: chop the top and bottom off to make it 16:9 again (you lose way too much of the picture), squash the picture to make it 16:9 (ugh, distortion) or live with it in 4:3 ratio and big black bars down the side of the screen.

6. Eventually in 2002 (well over a year after the promised digital upgrade) I gave up, dropped the NTL phone line and TV and switched to Sky Digital satellite TV, a BT phone line and a PlusNet DSL internet connection. BT connected the phone line within 12 hours.

7. Sky only very rarely goes out (usually due to bad weather - happens maybe once a year for a few minutes)

8. If I need to phone Sky, BT or PlusNet they pick up the phone almost immediately

9. PlusNet's service is almost flawless (I know many people who use NTL cable modems and they are always having outages). I also get a subnet of real IP addresses and am allowed to run services on my DSL connection with PlusNet's blessing (NTL won't give you a static IP and their AUP explicitly disallows you from running services on it). The DSL connection almost never goes down.

10. In 2004 (i.e. almost 4 years after the promised digital upgrade), NTL came canvassing the area to say they now had digital services. They asked me what kind of internet connection I had and I replied "DSL

Slight correction/clarification - Sky One is the channel. Sky One is carried by NTL and Sky. It's probably carried by other providers, but I don't know anyone who uses them. Sky (or, more correctly, BSkyB) is the company who A) Provides satellite TV, and B) Owns the Sky channels.

(I only get BBC1, BBC2, ITV1 and Channel 4, and hardly watch any of those anyway, so I could be wrong on this.)

Gillian Anderson is *the* Scully in my book. But some people over on fark today noticed how Gillian is looking a bit (too) lean these days. Link to article with pic.

As many of you have probably seen, Wikipedia is listing charities in various countries of a temporary page. They mention the need to look out for fraud, but I hope none of the sites listed are fraudulent in any way. The page is here .

This is a news story about somebody changing e-mail headers to pretend to be the British government confirming friends of the recipients to be dead. Very sick. Luckily, the police acted in this case.

I'm in the UK. I've got two TiVos and love them, however I can't get another, because TiVo have already pulled out of of the UK. The only manufacturer making boxes discontinued them a few years ago, we never had series 2 boxes, and even though a US box will work, sort of, with a few software hacks, we can't sign one up for service.

What killed off TiVo in the UK was the mainly terrible marketing which focussed soley on the pause-live-tv aspect.. and who wanted to spend £400 ($700) for that, plus £10 ($17) a month service charge?? I hardly ever watch live tv! There is too much crap on there; I let the tivo pick out the very few good programs that are scattered about, so I can watch them when I want to! And to skip the adverts, of course. I also appreciate the suggestions!

Now, the monopoly satelite broadcaster Sky have their own integrated box which they virtually give away free (if you are on their top packages) but has many less features, not being a TiVo. There is no way TiVo Inc. could come back in now and capture any market share again, even with a generic box that would work with cable, digital terrestrial, etc. Nobody will pay for anything they can get for "free" from somewhere else.

In our defense. Fox is a television news channel. The Sun is a newspaper.

If you are going to compare the Fox News to something the UK, you should compare it to BBC News, ITN, Channel4 News, Five News or Sky News.

Even the trashy news channels here, Five and ITN stand head and shoulders above Fox "Bees That Kill!!! after these messages..." News.

Maybe the same as every other mainstream American media outlet, but there is a hell of lot of news they don't report on.

You mean Fox doesn't report on Selby miners or teenage murderes? Wow, what a surprise, a US news agency reporting primarily on US-centric news. I did check the headlines of numerous European newspapers online and, from my limited language skills, determined they all seem to be reporting on the same things as Fox News...Arafat, Iraq, and the US Election.

I won't deny that they, and most every other commercial and non-commercial news agency, are politically slanted. But to suggest that they ignore, rather than just spin, the news according to their biases is foolish.

comes from building hardware for a specific task. Unfortunately most of you can't access this little bit of nerd heaven but some incredibly cool hardware architectures are being described at the High Performance Embedded Computing conference. Sky and Mercury have some of their hottest new designs here. How about a machine that can do a 256 mega-sample FFT in real time?, or a self configuring supercomputer on a chip? Of course most of these tricks will never escape the lab except for the speed-ups for rendering engines...one place where gamers and the DOD are driving technology in a dead heat race with lots of winners. Besides, in a few months, something will come along that will go even faster than blue gene.

First What was taken out of context???

You're the one that seems quite happy dealing with murders, butchers, and torturers. It seems not to bother you the fact that Saddam was becoming enriched. How else was he using this money???

$25,000 dollars to Homicide Bombers who bomb US/Israel or any allies
20 million plus to terrorist. http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,30000-120410 96,00.html

Where did this money come FROM?

I thought you were smart enough to know these things. My mistake I will be more careful in the future to give links to past and present events, as it was again not on the 6'oclock news My apologies

It's interesting how the sky+ integrated digital satelite receiver and PVR does it. Subscription TV, including the movie channels, can be recorded and watched when ever. It does all the tricks like series recording automatically, being able to stream series to VCR and the like. The pay per view movies, which are usually last seasons movies from the cinema, can be recorded and stay recorded for a week. You can watch it any number of times in that week. If you don't watch it, because it's part of the receiver, the film is lost but the cost is refunded. So basically it's biggest use there is that it turns PPV broadcasting every ten minutes to video on demand by time shifting. Finally PPV movies always move to the subscription movie channels after six months so if you really want to keep it just wait and then record.

Well, the UK swimming team tried to give you a show, but it seems that their plans were thwarted at the last minute. It's a shame too, they could have easily been the fan favorites.

It's time for hollywood, NFL,RIAA and others to wake up and smell the CPU cycles.
People want to record TV shows,films and radio broadcasts. Not because they're freeloaders. It's because they like TV and want to watch it again. If you can't accept this and make money off it, then you have a poor business model and deserve to get driven out of business by smarter competetors.

The mass media have made money for one simple reason. They had a monopoly on the production and distrobution technologies of the media. Only they could afford radio towers, film reels and copying technology. Through this they have also maintained a monopsony over the base talent which they promote. Hence the low signal to noise ratio on TV and radio. Now, thanks to technology, even your average joe sixpack has the technology to copy a TV broadcast of music track. TiVo has given him the power to record the game, the soaps, the news, so he can watch them again. Does this mean we should shut down TiVo so the monopoly can continue?

HDD based TV recorders. MPAA and NFL want to shut them down because they encourage 'theft' of signals floating around in peoples homes. Nonsense. They just wish to maintain a monopoly over the distribution of their content, so they can jack up the price for their wares.

They deserve to be driven out of business.

If you want an example of a company that is using peoples wants and likes to make money out of HDD recorders, look no further than Sky+. Sky actually encourage people to record TV shows and are making a mint off it.

Put that in your smoke and pipe in NFAA!!! :E

Hassle the Hoff?

Sorry guys. Looks like Sky+ beat you to it.

Oh yeah and videoplus/VCR+ too. If fact people giving their techhie kids clear instructions on what to tape, for when they go on holidays have also beaten you too it.

What's that you say? It uses a computer?!
Oh well in that case of course you can patent it. Don't forget to file a patent for "Displaying images using a computer controlled device" and "Use of a software controlled device to add two numbers"

Remember here at the US Patent office the old dirty word is Common Sence.

I think Sky+ probably has it beaten... I certainly don't think there's anything like the range of hacks available for that one...

And a few more at The BBC, Sky News, CNN... None of them have a great deal of detail yet though, nor is there any mention of the connection between Sasser and Skynet alledged in the code of one of the varients.

can't seem to find out whether this is going to be a Windows-only thing -- I seriously hope not -- or if the BBC is going to support the Open Source movement {though the Dirac project would suggest that someone at the BBC already understands the dangers of allowing for-profit concerns to dictate standards}.

I think this will be sort of similar to Sky Plus, but just for BBC content, and using your Internet connection instead of a Minidish. And, of course, it's the BBC, so no adverts :) Quicker than waiting for them to come around on UKTV Gold, as well!

Terrestrial channels are: BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, Channel 4 and five.

BBC One & Two are paid for from the licence fee. ITV and five are fully commercial stations. Channel 4 pumps its profits back into production (AFAIK).

We have satellite TV (Sky) which has literally hundreds of channels. We have British equivalents of HBO (Sky Movies) and ESPN (Sky Sports).

Cable provides most satellite channels.

A full list of all satellite channels aimed at the UK audience si available at Lyngsat. In addition, you can also pick up hundreds of European channels.

Sky News

BBC

Wrong. I have the familly pack from Sky - if you think that
this list has only 3 channels on it you need to go back to school.

The point is that I watch about 1 show on BBC1 - if I had a choice about paying the licence fee I wouldn't pay any of it and would miss that show because it isn't worth 114 quid a year. I watch none of the other BBC channels and having seen the schedules for BBC3 and BBC4 I wonder who _would_ watch that crap. I don't listen to the radio channels, and whilest I do use the news section of the BBC website, I would be happy to pay a small subscription for that privalidge (or look at other commercial sites that are free anyway).

Shouldn't I have the choice about what I want to subscribe to? Wouldn't you complain if you were required to pay BT for a phone line because you had a phone, even though the phone was connected directly to some other company, never touched the BT network and you never used BT?