When you buy a DVD of a TV programme (or a film, or whatever) you're not only paying for the cost of the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of that DVD. There's a royalty cost involved, too.
Because, as I've pointed out, the BBC doesn't have exclusive rights to do what it wants with this content over IP.
Its digital (and analogue) terrestrial and satellite transmissions do spill over to some neighbouring countries but no more so than is avoidable.
If you have read my initial post on this subject and still don't appreciate why there is a difference between what the BBC can do over the airwaves and what it can do over IP space then you're missing the whole point.
The BBC is responsible for its actions. Any action that would violate the rights of other broadcasters would be incredibly stupid, both short-term (as it would no doubt get sued) and long-term (as broadcasters and content creators would cease to make their content as readily available to it).
Just because you could record a BBC broadcast to your PC via a DVB-T tuner and then make that recording available to the world via a P2P network and probably do it all without being caught in the act that doesn't mean that the BBC has the same luxury.
It's nice that you can see the world purely in terms of black and white. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to deal with shades of grey.
Tell me, if you were responsible for an archive of content that you had exclusive rights to for the UK only but which you didn't have exclusive rights to for any other market then how would you go about making it available online to your exclusive market only while respecting the rights of your partners to their own markets and without getting yourself sued to oblivion and back for overstepping the mark?
The BBC does not work in isolation. It works in partnership with other broadcasters around the world. And in making its content freely available to licence payers in the UK it has to make sure that it doesn't abuse the rights of its partners by giving away content to those outside the UK, where the rights may be shared with or even wholely owned by those partners.
Take two productions as examples.
The newest Doctor Who stories are co-developments with CBC, a Canadian broadcaster. I imagine that the BBC owns the broadcast rights in the UK, the CBC owns the broadcast rights in Canada and the broadcast rights elsewhere have been split or sold under an agreed formula.
To make Doctor Who freely available to everybody everywhere would be to the detriment of not only the CBC but to those third parties who buy the broadcast rights everywhere else.
Similarly, with Band of Brothers, which was a co-production with HBO, the BBC probably owns the UK rights, HBO the US ones and the rights elsewhere split, etc.
To expect the BBC to release all its content to everyone would be unrealistic, not least of all because securing the worldwide internet rights for all of the productions concerned would be impossible, strategically as well as commercially.
Faced with that reality, what choice does the BBC have if its going to make this content avaiable online in Britain and Britain only other than some from of rights management?
I'm all for the BBC coming up with a cross-platform solution but I don't think it's fair to hit it with the unfair charge of using DRM for DRM's sake when it's bending over backwards to make more content available to their customers (licence payers), on it's own initiative, without stepping on anybody else's toes in the process.
They're trying to be good guys here. Why blast them with both barrels over pipe dreams?
I'm certain that, in the relevant meetings, the Surgeon General would be one of the few (if not the only) trained scientist in the room.
I'm also pretty certain that he'd be pretty up-to-date on the scientific issues of the day, because he would (amongst other things) be reading peer-review publications that covered more than just biology. You know, the ones that have had thousands of papers backing up global warming with hard, empirical data and not a single one that contradicts them.
But, putting that aside, the Surgeon General's job is to protect the long-term public health.
And if a situation that has the potential to cause millions of medical emergencies (from skin cancers and heat stroke deaths at one end of the scale to making large parts of the planet very uncomfortable for human life, as well as destroying the ecosystems upon which that human life depends on for sustanance), well, I would think that it would be his duty to speak up and explain the potential risks and consequences to those who should be made aware of them.
I'm guessing from the rest of your post that you'd be more comfortable with scientific input being provided by the Christian right than by a man with a decent grasp of the best data available and the knowledge and understanding of what it actually means.
Betrayed why? As I and others pointed out, when Dell sells you a Windows PC it generates income from third-parties whose pay for their software to be pre-installed on the desktop. With a Linux PC there's no such third-party income.
Ergo, even before you consider support or other costs, it's almost certain that the Windows PC generates far more profit for Dell than a identical machine without Windows on it.
This isn't exactly a new concept. Look at mobile phones if you want an example.
A new unlocked phone, untied to any additional source of income (ie, free of any contract) is identical to a new, locked phone that is tied to an additional source of income (ie, a new contract). Identical phones, with identical capabilities but different prices, and different prices for a reason.
This Dell PC with different Windows/Ubuntu pricing (and "free" extras) is exactly the same.
Or, if you want to look at it another way, the "free" extras are a form of rebate or payment for taking a PC that includes adverts for other software and services.
I'm not the one missing the point here. You still have a choice of buying a PC with or without Windows pre-installed.
For $X, you can have a PC with Ubuntu pre-installed. Or, for $(X+50) or $(X+25) (the linked page gives both prices), you can get the same PC, with Windows Vista pre-installed, and a bit of extra hardware thrown in and install Ubuntu yourself.
Pick whichever deal suits you and enjoy your PC.
Just don't try to convince me that Dell is somehow "betraying" Linux users when it doesn't pass on the benefits of its Windows-based, third-party software pre-installation program to non-Windows users.
1. Buy the PC that gives you the best hardware for the lowest price. If that means taking a Windows PC that has "free" extra memory and a bigger hard disk drive then do it.
2. Shrink the Windows partition (that extra disk space is a boon), install Ubuntu and/or other operating systems of your choice.
3. Go about your business as normal.
4. If you ever have to speak to Dell tech support, you have the additional benefit of being able to tell them that you're using a Windows system (true), and them not giving you the cold shoulder when you tell them that you're using Ubuntu, etc.
5. If you sell your PC at sometime in the future you give yourself a more attractive package to sell and thus recoup more of your initial sale price. More RAM, more disk space, Windows Vista Home all have a value, and the Vista Home alone may make a huge difference to the resale price on eBay. Remember, 90 percent of PC users won't even have heard of Linux, so why cut them out of your resale equation?
Dell is simply trying to protect its standard business model, which includes making money from pre-installing offers from third parties (such as ISPs and AV vendors) on their Windows installations. There's no reason why you can't let them do that and still benefit from their reluctance to abandon that model.
Saving $50 (or is it now $25?) if it means half as much memory and half as much disk space (1GB/80GB vs 2GB/160GB) seems to be a false economy.
You take some male, top-notch sniffer dogs, you take some female, top-notch sniffer dogs. You breed them.
How hard is that?
Each mating gives you several puppies. I''d guess that some (around 25 percent) would be better than their parents, some (around half would be just as good) and some (around 25 percent) would be less proficient.
If you do that for a few generations then you'll end up with dogs that are better than what you have at the moment, plus you'll have a selection of dogs that are more genetically diverse than a bunch of clones. Which means that, if some canine disease or virus comes along, the chances of you having your entire sniffing team killed or incapacitated because they all share the same genetic disposition to fall foul of the illness fall rather dramatically.
Cloning introduces new problems. The example I've just given is just one of them.
By referring to a file that was supposedly removed the Swedish police can say that they did their job correctly and remove the black mark they put next to The Pirate Bay's name without having to backtrack or publicly apologise in any way.
This is pretty standard practice with police everywhere nowadays: the politics of policing seems to be more important than actual policing.
The Ring of Steel is around the City of London, which is the financial district that covers roughly one square mile. The car bombs last week were in the West End, which is a totally different part of town.
Imagine the Ring of Steel was around Wall Street and lower Manhattan. You're basically asking how it didn't stop something targetting Times Square.
The Ring of Steel in London was set up to counter terrorism carried out by the IRA (you know, those guys that were so romantically portrayed in Hollywood movies as lovable rogues). And, for its time and its role, it was pretty effective.
However, that sort of network, which acts as an effective deterrent against terrorists who want to get in, plant a bomb and then get out without being detected so that they can strike again another day, is not as effective as the sort of terrorist who's happy to martyr himself in the act by blowing himself up.
The recent trials of the would-be bombers who tried to detonate devices on 21st July 2005, shows that surveillance can play a role in helping to defeat terrorism, but obviously it's nowhere near being an effective method of catching terrorists in the act or of nullifying suicide bombers whose devices work properly.
How is Britain "a police state where anybody can be detained by police without reason"?
I think that you'll find that that's complete bullshit. However, if you want to find evidence of a western, developed world nation where long-term detention without charge (and, even detention without charge and any prospect of a trial) is happening today then look at the USA, because that's exactly what's happening at Gitmo.
If you want to talk about how Britain and the US handle terrorism then let's do that. A good starting point would be to look at how they each treat guests to their country.
When an American visits Britain, they're not treated like a criminal from the moment they set foot on British soil. On the other hand, the moment that a Brit sets foot on US soil, he's "greeted" by a lengthy (two hours plus isn't unheard of) wait to even speak to a customs officer, who'll invariably be rude, after which he'll be finger-printed like a common criminal.
Make up an excuse for not wanting to visit Britain (the weather's not as nice as Florida or California, it's expensive now that our dollar has tanked, this guy on Slashdot was rude to me) but don't literally make draconian shit up and use that as your reason and then go round telling everybody that Britain is a police state when you're talking out of your behind.
The maximum period of detention without charge in the UK, which is applicable for terrorism-related issues only, is 28 days.
The government would like to see it increased to 90 days, but almost everybody is opposed to that, including the judiciary and even many senior police officers, so the likelyhood of that happening is low.
And when I say the government, I mean Tony Blair's government: it's yet uncertain if the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, supports this measure but certainly he's started his administration with a more liberal attitude and changes for the good rather than changes for the better.
Indefinite detention, perhaps permanent detention, with the likelyhood of no trial vs 28 days. Chalk and cheese.
Have you actually seen the Taj Mahal for yourself? I have. Twice. The sheer beauty of it, in terms of aesthetics, and of design, and of engineering and even of mathematics, really blows your socks off.
The fact that you dismiss it without having actually seen it (the fact that you describe a mausoleum built by an Emperor to honour his dead wife as a house says it all) blows my mind. It's the single most breathtaking building I've yet to see, and I've seen many (but not all) of the others that made the shortlist, too.
One thing I would say about the voting for this new list is that it was let down by being turned into a national and even a religious pride pissing contest. In some countries people were strongly encouranged to vote for the entrants that were in their borders and there were similar ballot-stuffing manouvres by religous groups for those icons that were significant to their faiths.
Indeed, there had been some concern that some of the shortlist were only chosen for that reason. To be honest, as iconic as it is as part of the Rio de Janeiro skyline, Christ the Redeemer doesn't even strike me as being one of the most worthy Christian monuments to pick from. Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia, unfinished though it might be, is far more impressive.
There are lots of criticisms that you can make about this list. That the Taj Mahal is on it really doesn't strike me as being anything close to being one of them.
Dude, the Great Wall of China is awesome. It basically protects you from almost all aggression for a huge chunk of the game, thus allowing you to focus your attention almost exclusively on using your resources to build up your cities and rapidly expand your territory.
Wonders that you want to definitely want to have:
1. The Pyramids (free Granary in every city); 2. The Great Library (automatically get every advancement learnt by two rivals until Electricity); 3. The Great Wall (enemies must offer a ceasefire or peace in negotiations until Metallurgy); 4. Marko Polo's Embassy (free embassies, best info on your rivals); 5. Leonardo's Workshop (upgrades obsolete units to the best possible until Automobile); 6. Shakespeare's Theatre (city is always content, awesome for later conquesting); 7. King Richard's Crusade (huge shield boost for city, great for pumping out other wonders quickly while it lasts); 8. Michelangelo's Chapel (free Cathedral in every city, doesn't expire like some other happiness Wonders); 9. Sun Tzu's War Academy (produce veteran military units without Barracks until Mobile Warfare); 10. Adam Smith's Trading Co. (reduces your maintenance costs by a chunk); 11. Hoover Dam (clean power to all your cities, boosting shield output); 12. Women's Sufferage (free Police Station in every city, helps conquesting); 13. United Nations (like the Great Wall but later in the game); 14. SETI Program (doubles your science output across the board); 15. Cure for Cancer (one extra happy citizen in all cities).
The other 13 Wonders are a mixed bag. Some are pretty useful (eg, Magellan's Expedition, which will help your navy and is good if you're crossing large oceans) but some are just dire (eg, Collosus, which will get you a mediocre trade boost).
Given a choice between the Great Wall and the Hanging Gardens and I'll take the Great Wall any day.
Tamils aren't a religious group, they're an ethnic one. There are Hindu, Muslim and Christian Tamils.
Furthermore, the LTTE (or the Tamil Tigers, as they're commonly known) is politically-, not religiously-motivated. Their ongoing campaign has about as much to do with religion as Britney Spears has to do with who wins Nobel Prizes.
Other than that, you're correct in pointing out that suicide bombings aren't a Muslim fundamentalist invention: the Tamil Tigers were the first to use suicide bomb vests but there are plenty of earlier examples of suicide bombings. The Viet Minh used them during the Indochina Wars, the Japanese used them in Second World War, etc.
Well, I can't claim to speak for everyone but I don't think "the most honest man" wouldn't be enjoying child pornography, so that wouldn't be his crime but he might well be condemned for being a communist, a socialist, a liberal, a pacifist, a member of the wrong religion, an agnostic, an aethiest, etc.
These days anybody who raises a voice of dissent is a traitor to some people. The other day, on a special young person's edition of Question Time, one of the BBC's best politics programmes, Douglas Murray, who's described as Britain's only neo-con was so open as to say that people who would vote for New Labour (now centrist party) shouldn't be allowed to vote. If you don't agree with him then it's back to the political Middle Ages for you. Incredible.
Slashdot Mirror
When you buy a DVD of a TV programme (or a film, or whatever) you're not only paying for the cost of the manufacturing, marketing and distribution of that DVD. There's a royalty cost involved, too.
You do know that right?
Because, as I've pointed out, the BBC doesn't have exclusive rights to do what it wants with this content over IP.
Its digital (and analogue) terrestrial and satellite transmissions do spill over to some neighbouring countries but no more so than is avoidable.
If you have read my initial post on this subject and still don't appreciate why there is a difference between what the BBC can do over the airwaves and what it can do over IP space then you're missing the whole point.
The BBC is responsible for its actions. Any action that would violate the rights of other broadcasters would be incredibly stupid, both short-term (as it would no doubt get sued) and long-term (as broadcasters and content creators would cease to make their content as readily available to it).
Just because you could record a BBC broadcast to your PC via a DVB-T tuner and then make that recording available to the world via a P2P network and probably do it all without being caught in the act that doesn't mean that the BBC has the same luxury.
It's nice that you can see the world purely in terms of black and white. Unfortunately, the rest of us have to deal with shades of grey.
Tell me, if you were responsible for an archive of content that you had exclusive rights to for the UK only but which you didn't have exclusive rights to for any other market then how would you go about making it available online to your exclusive market only while respecting the rights of your partners to their own markets and without getting yourself sued to oblivion and back for overstepping the mark?
It seems to me that you're confusing the use of some form of DRM with the use of a form of DRM that's only available on a Windows platform.
A cross-platform solution is what we need: DRM and OS lock-in are two different issues and the real issue here is OS lock-in.
It's not paranoia, it's commercial sensitivity.
The BBC does not work in isolation. It works in partnership with other broadcasters around the world. And in making its content freely available to licence payers in the UK it has to make sure that it doesn't abuse the rights of its partners by giving away content to those outside the UK, where the rights may be shared with or even wholely owned by those partners.
Take two productions as examples.
The newest Doctor Who stories are co-developments with CBC, a Canadian broadcaster. I imagine that the BBC owns the broadcast rights in the UK, the CBC owns the broadcast rights in Canada and the broadcast rights elsewhere have been split or sold under an agreed formula.
To make Doctor Who freely available to everybody everywhere would be to the detriment of not only the CBC but to those third parties who buy the broadcast rights everywhere else.
Similarly, with Band of Brothers, which was a co-production with HBO, the BBC probably owns the UK rights, HBO the US ones and the rights elsewhere split, etc.
To expect the BBC to release all its content to everyone would be unrealistic, not least of all because securing the worldwide internet rights for all of the productions concerned would be impossible, strategically as well as commercially.
Faced with that reality, what choice does the BBC have if its going to make this content avaiable online in Britain and Britain only other than some from of rights management?
I'm all for the BBC coming up with a cross-platform solution but I don't think it's fair to hit it with the unfair charge of using DRM for DRM's sake when it's bending over backwards to make more content available to their customers (licence payers), on it's own initiative, without stepping on anybody else's toes in the process.
They're trying to be good guys here. Why blast them with both barrels over pipe dreams?
I'm certain that, in the relevant meetings, the Surgeon General would be one of the few (if not the only) trained scientist in the room.
I'm also pretty certain that he'd be pretty up-to-date on the scientific issues of the day, because he would (amongst other things) be reading peer-review publications that covered more than just biology. You know, the ones that have had thousands of papers backing up global warming with hard, empirical data and not a single one that contradicts them.
But, putting that aside, the Surgeon General's job is to protect the long-term public health.
And if a situation that has the potential to cause millions of medical emergencies (from skin cancers and heat stroke deaths at one end of the scale to making large parts of the planet very uncomfortable for human life, as well as destroying the ecosystems upon which that human life depends on for sustanance), well, I would think that it would be his duty to speak up and explain the potential risks and consequences to those who should be made aware of them.
I'm guessing from the rest of your post that you'd be more comfortable with scientific input being provided by the Christian right than by a man with a decent grasp of the best data available and the knowledge and understanding of what it actually means.
Betrayed why? As I and others pointed out, when Dell sells you a Windows PC it generates income from third-parties whose pay for their software to be pre-installed on the desktop. With a Linux PC there's no such third-party income.
Ergo, even before you consider support or other costs, it's almost certain that the Windows PC generates far more profit for Dell than a identical machine without Windows on it.
This isn't exactly a new concept. Look at mobile phones if you want an example.
A new unlocked phone, untied to any additional source of income (ie, free of any contract) is identical to a new, locked phone that is tied to an additional source of income (ie, a new contract). Identical phones, with identical capabilities but different prices, and different prices for a reason.
This Dell PC with different Windows/Ubuntu pricing (and "free" extras) is exactly the same.
Or, if you want to look at it another way, the "free" extras are a form of rebate or payment for taking a PC that includes adverts for other software and services.
I'm not the one missing the point here. You still have a choice of buying a PC with or without Windows pre-installed.
For $X, you can have a PC with Ubuntu pre-installed. Or, for $(X+50) or $(X+25) (the linked page gives both prices), you can get the same PC, with Windows Vista pre-installed, and a bit of extra hardware thrown in and install Ubuntu yourself.
Pick whichever deal suits you and enjoy your PC.
Just don't try to convince me that Dell is somehow "betraying" Linux users when it doesn't pass on the benefits of its Windows-based, third-party software pre-installation program to non-Windows users.
Quid pro quo. Or doesn't that work out for you?
Isn't this a no-brainer?
1. Buy the PC that gives you the best hardware for the lowest price. If that means taking a Windows PC that has "free" extra memory and a bigger hard disk drive then do it.
2. Shrink the Windows partition (that extra disk space is a boon), install Ubuntu and/or other operating systems of your choice.
3. Go about your business as normal.
4. If you ever have to speak to Dell tech support, you have the additional benefit of being able to tell them that you're using a Windows system (true), and them not giving you the cold shoulder when you tell them that you're using Ubuntu, etc.
5. If you sell your PC at sometime in the future you give yourself a more attractive package to sell and thus recoup more of your initial sale price. More RAM, more disk space, Windows Vista Home all have a value, and the Vista Home alone may make a huge difference to the resale price on eBay. Remember, 90 percent of PC users won't even have heard of Linux, so why cut them out of your resale equation?
Dell is simply trying to protect its standard business model, which includes making money from pre-installing offers from third parties (such as ISPs and AV vendors) on their Windows installations. There's no reason why you can't let them do that and still benefit from their reluctance to abandon that model.
Saving $50 (or is it now $25?) if it means half as much memory and half as much disk space (1GB/80GB vs 2GB/160GB) seems to be a false economy.
That, of course, should read "changes for the good rather than changes for the worse."
That's what you get for posting online before you've even brushed your teeth in the morning.
You take some male, top-notch sniffer dogs, you take some female, top-notch sniffer dogs. You breed them.
How hard is that?
Each mating gives you several puppies. I''d guess that some (around 25 percent) would be better than their parents, some (around half would be just as good) and some (around 25 percent) would be less proficient.
If you do that for a few generations then you'll end up with dogs that are better than what you have at the moment, plus you'll have a selection of dogs that are more genetically diverse than a bunch of clones. Which means that, if some canine disease or virus comes along, the chances of you having your entire sniffing team killed or incapacitated because they all share the same genetic disposition to fall foul of the illness fall rather dramatically.
Cloning introduces new problems. The example I've just given is just one of them.
What's wrong with selective breeding? It's proven to work, it's without any real drawbacks, it's cheap and it's easy to do.
Sometimes, the simplest solutions are the best ones.
By referring to a file that was supposedly removed the Swedish police can say that they did their job correctly and remove the black mark they put next to The Pirate Bay's name without having to backtrack or publicly apologise in any way.
This is pretty standard practice with police everywhere nowadays: the politics of policing seems to be more important than actual policing.
The Ring of Steel is around the City of London, which is the financial district that covers roughly one square mile. The car bombs last week were in the West End, which is a totally different part of town.
Imagine the Ring of Steel was around Wall Street and lower Manhattan. You're basically asking how it didn't stop something targetting Times Square.
The Ring of Steel in London was set up to counter terrorism carried out by the IRA (you know, those guys that were so romantically portrayed in Hollywood movies as lovable rogues). And, for its time and its role, it was pretty effective.
However, that sort of network, which acts as an effective deterrent against terrorists who want to get in, plant a bomb and then get out without being detected so that they can strike again another day, is not as effective as the sort of terrorist who's happy to martyr himself in the act by blowing himself up.
The recent trials of the would-be bombers who tried to detonate devices on 21st July 2005, shows that surveillance can play a role in helping to defeat terrorism, but obviously it's nowhere near being an effective method of catching terrorists in the act or of nullifying suicide bombers whose devices work properly.
How is Britain "a police state where anybody can be detained by police without reason"?
I think that you'll find that that's complete bullshit. However, if you want to find evidence of a western, developed world nation where long-term detention without charge (and, even detention without charge and any prospect of a trial) is happening today then look at the USA, because that's exactly what's happening at Gitmo.
If you want to talk about how Britain and the US handle terrorism then let's do that. A good starting point would be to look at how they each treat guests to their country.
When an American visits Britain, they're not treated like a criminal from the moment they set foot on British soil. On the other hand, the moment that a Brit sets foot on US soil, he's "greeted" by a lengthy (two hours plus isn't unheard of) wait to even speak to a customs officer, who'll invariably be rude, after which he'll be finger-printed like a common criminal.
Make up an excuse for not wanting to visit Britain (the weather's not as nice as Florida or California, it's expensive now that our dollar has tanked, this guy on Slashdot was rude to me) but don't literally make draconian shit up and use that as your reason and then go round telling everybody that Britain is a police state when you're talking out of your behind.
The maximum period of detention without charge in the UK, which is applicable for terrorism-related issues only, is 28 days.
The government would like to see it increased to 90 days, but almost everybody is opposed to that, including the judiciary and even many senior police officers, so the likelyhood of that happening is low.
And when I say the government, I mean Tony Blair's government: it's yet uncertain if the new Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, supports this measure but certainly he's started his administration with a more liberal attitude and changes for the good rather than changes for the better.
Indefinite detention, perhaps permanent detention, with the likelyhood of no trial vs 28 days. Chalk and cheese.
Try reading it rather than skimming it. Jesus, you want to know what makes it so special but you can't even do that much.
Read the Wikipedia page on the Taj Mahal then. If you still think that it's still "just a big house" then I'll be surprised.
Have you actually seen the Taj Mahal for yourself? I have. Twice. The sheer beauty of it, in terms of aesthetics, and of design, and of engineering and even of mathematics, really blows your socks off.
The fact that you dismiss it without having actually seen it (the fact that you describe a mausoleum built by an Emperor to honour his dead wife as a house says it all) blows my mind. It's the single most breathtaking building I've yet to see, and I've seen many (but not all) of the others that made the shortlist, too.
One thing I would say about the voting for this new list is that it was let down by being turned into a national and even a religious pride pissing contest. In some countries people were strongly encouranged to vote for the entrants that were in their borders and there were similar ballot-stuffing manouvres by religous groups for those icons that were significant to their faiths.
Indeed, there had been some concern that some of the shortlist were only chosen for that reason. To be honest, as iconic as it is as part of the Rio de Janeiro skyline, Christ the Redeemer doesn't even strike me as being one of the most worthy Christian monuments to pick from. Gaudi's La Sagrada Familia, unfinished though it might be, is far more impressive.
There are lots of criticisms that you can make about this list. That the Taj Mahal is on it really doesn't strike me as being anything close to being one of them.
Dude, the Great Wall of China is awesome. It basically protects you from almost all aggression for a huge chunk of the game, thus allowing you to focus your attention almost exclusively on using your resources to build up your cities and rapidly expand your territory.
Wonders that you want to definitely want to have:
1. The Pyramids (free Granary in every city);
2. The Great Library (automatically get every advancement learnt by two rivals until Electricity);
3. The Great Wall (enemies must offer a ceasefire or peace in negotiations until Metallurgy);
4. Marko Polo's Embassy (free embassies, best info on your rivals);
5. Leonardo's Workshop (upgrades obsolete units to the best possible until Automobile);
6. Shakespeare's Theatre (city is always content, awesome for later conquesting);
7. King Richard's Crusade (huge shield boost for city, great for pumping out other wonders quickly while it lasts);
8. Michelangelo's Chapel (free Cathedral in every city, doesn't expire like some other happiness Wonders);
9. Sun Tzu's War Academy (produce veteran military units without Barracks until Mobile Warfare);
10. Adam Smith's Trading Co. (reduces your maintenance costs by a chunk);
11. Hoover Dam (clean power to all your cities, boosting shield output);
12. Women's Sufferage (free Police Station in every city, helps conquesting);
13. United Nations (like the Great Wall but later in the game);
14. SETI Program (doubles your science output across the board);
15. Cure for Cancer (one extra happy citizen in all cities).
The other 13 Wonders are a mixed bag. Some are pretty useful (eg, Magellan's Expedition, which will help your navy and is good if you're crossing large oceans) but some are just dire (eg, Collosus, which will get you a mediocre trade boost).
Given a choice between the Great Wall and the Hanging Gardens and I'll take the Great Wall any day.
Tamils aren't a religious group, they're an ethnic one. There are Hindu, Muslim and Christian Tamils.
Furthermore, the LTTE (or the Tamil Tigers, as they're commonly known) is politically-, not religiously-motivated. Their ongoing campaign has about as much to do with religion as Britney Spears has to do with who wins Nobel Prizes.
Other than that, you're correct in pointing out that suicide bombings aren't a Muslim fundamentalist invention: the Tamil Tigers were the first to use suicide bomb vests but there are plenty of earlier examples of suicide bombings. The Viet Minh used them during the Indochina Wars, the Japanese used them in Second World War, etc.
Posting using the AC option but then adding your user ID (and even a link to it!) to avoid negative moderation affecting your account?
Wow, way to show that you have the courage of your convictions and stand by what you say, pal.
Lacrosse is a girl's game.
Men's lacrosse is a full contact sport. It can be just as vicious as ice hockey or American football.
Well, I can't claim to speak for everyone but I don't think "the most honest man" wouldn't be enjoying child pornography, so that wouldn't be his crime but he might well be condemned for being a communist, a socialist, a liberal, a pacifist, a member of the wrong religion, an agnostic, an aethiest, etc.
These days anybody who raises a voice of dissent is a traitor to some people. The other day, on a special young person's edition of Question Time, one of the BBC's best politics programmes, Douglas Murray, who's described as Britain's only neo-con was so open as to say that people who would vote for New Labour (now centrist party) shouldn't be allowed to vote. If you don't agree with him then it's back to the political Middle Ages for you. Incredible.
Richelieu needed six lines. Nowadays governments don't even need six words.