Slashdot Mirror
Sony Projector Gets Bright Images From Black Screen
da_foz writes "Sony has developed a new projector that can give a bright, unfaded picture without the need to eliminate ambient light. The secret is that they project onto a black screen instead of a white one. Their screen uses species filters so that white ambient light is absorbed, but the red, green, and blue light from the projector is reflected. Sony sees a possible use in home entertainment systems because of the ability to have a much bigger picture than conventional TVs as well as businesses adopting the projectors for presentations."
Just incase of a slashdotting, I include the article text below. Posted AC so noone thinks I'm karma-whoring.
Main
Fri, 28 May 2004
The Astroturf de Tocqueville Institute
Last year I wrote about how Tech Central Station was an astroturf operation, published by a public relations company to provide supposedly independant support for the PR companies clients. The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute (ADTI) is another astroturf operation.
As part of the Tobacco Settlement Agreement Philip Morris (PM) agreed to release millions of documents about their operations. These detail how ADTI was hired by PM to conduct a public relations campaign against the Clinton health plan in 1994. ADTI provided PM with regular progress reports to prove that PM was getting value for its money, so they also let us see how these campaigns are conducted.
The Clinton plan included an increase in taxes on cigarettes from 24c per pack to 99c. Understandably, PM was not in favour of this, so a Philip Morris executive suggested an astroturf campaign, writing to one of his people:
Having just read the Washington Post with a series of provocative articles about Canada cutting taxes, CBO estimating higher costs AND job loss from the Clinton plan and then our old favourite, former president current homebuilder, Jimmy Carter explaining why higher taxes will help tobacco farmers, it occurred to me that we ought to turn a few of our better letter writers loose to blitz the targeted states with letters to the editor about Clinton, Carter and Canada...
If you want some astroturfing done, who you gonna call? The Alexis de Tocqueville Institute:
David N & I think the Alexis de Tocqueville Institute is perfect for this kind of thing. We are working with them on a proposal.
And here is their proposal:
Our three key executives, Cesar Conda, Bruce Bartlett and myself, will run this campaign and we will devote the full energies of our operation and its consultants to this task. We plan to activate our key Advisory Board Members, including Jack Kemp, Robert Kasten, Dick Armey, Michael Boskin and others to mount a public awareness campaign immediately (see enclosed list of Center on Regulation and Economic Growth participants).
As you can see from our press in recent months, we are in a position to deliver. We would like to request $60,000, or $30,000 a month, to implement this program.
And over the next two months ADTI ran a PR campaign against the Clinton plan. For the benefit of PM they documented all their activities. You can see all the documents here, but some of the highlights are:
ADTI fellow Bruce Bartlett wrote an issue memorandum that formed the basis of their campaign, writing "the effect of the plan would be to increase federal taxes by over 27 percent". ADTI arranged for this claim to repeated over and over again on radio and in print. Now the cigarette tax increase that PM was trying to prevent was only an increase in federal taxes of 0.5%. Since the Clinton plan made health insurance compulsory Bartlett counted all health insurance payments as tax increases. The plan was also expected to reduce insurance costs and hence increase wages (since employers could afford to pay more). Bartlett counted the additional tax revenue from the increased wages as a tax increase. I think the average worker who heard about this 27% tax increase would feel that it meant they would be paying 27% more taxes rather than that their wages would go up and their employer would have to provide health insurance for them.
ADTI arranged for their "27% tax increase" message to be sent to hundreds of radio talk shows, to appear in a Washington Times news story and to be sent by a Congressman to all other members of Congress. The Washington Times published a Bartlett op-ed but apparently "27% tax increase" wasn't enough of a headline for them, so they gave it the headline "How to quadruple federal revenue". (Bartlett's op-ed actually says "Federal revenues,
mmmm....pjojectors.
I ask for a car and I get a computer. How's about that for being born under a bad
A lot of time projectors are just pointed at a wall. This projecter won't have the versitility to do that. A weakness.
Evolution or ID?
Be unemployed
smoke crack
be fucking your white sister
and
steal your car