Denon and Marantz has a very solid core business - home audio entertainment. It's a well-respected, much-loved brand.
The likelyhood of D&M running into financial difficulties is slim, simply because their traditional businesses are cash cows. Even if the SonicBlue division (whatever it ends up being called) makes a loss, D&M will be fine (short of some vey serious mismanagement).
It's like Microsoft and Hotmail - even if Hotmail was to sink like lead, the money that Microsoft makes from its other businesses would more than keep it afloat.
As someone else has said, $36.2 million to buy yourself a major slice of the PVR market (not to mention portable digital music players) is a steal.
I suppose back in the 60's the US could have subjected the defoliants to 15 years of clinical trials and testing to make sure they were safe and effective before using them in Vietnam.
Well, if you're going to drop the stuff on someone else's country (or even your own) it would seem like the responsible thing to do.
Why shouldn't the US take responsibility for the horrific side effects of Agent Orange? Is it suddenly OK to whip up a batch of any chemical you want and then just use it (in war or in peace) without taking the time to find out just exactly what it does?
OK, I see your point, that (ostensibly) Agent Orange wasn't meant as a chemical weapon. However, it doesn't change the fact that it did major damage to both the people and the environment exposed to it. Ditto for Napalm.
The fact that both were dropped almost indescriminately doesn't exactly help the US look like anything more than hypocrites when they constantly bring up Saddam Hussein's inexcusable use of chemical munitions.
Err, I know exactly what depleted uranium is and I'm quite familiar with the definition of the word "depleted". Thanks for your sarcasm though.
Countless studies, by US veterans groups, the UN, etc have shown that depleted uranium is harmful, to the men and women who handle the munitions on the ground when loading and to the combatants exposed to it in the field.
If you want to believe the official army line, that there's no health risk associated with DU weapons, then that's your perogative. Just don't pretend that there isn't a whole raft of reports, papers, etc out there from a variety of respected and verified sources that strongly disagree with the Pentagon's assessment.
And as for Agent Orange, I believe that I and others have covered just how "safe" that's proven to have been elsewhere in this thread.
Well, as you're too damn lazy to google yourself, here are the results of a simple search with the criteria "US Iraq chemical weapons sales".
Here are a couple of paragraphs pulled from some of the first few articles that the search pulls up:
"The US not only helped arm Iraq with military equipment right up to the time of the Kuwait invasion in 1989, as did Germany, Britain, France, Russia and others, but also sold and helped Iraq to integrate chemical weapons into their US-provided battle plans while fighting Iran between 1985-1988.
"According to a New York Times article in August, 2002, Col. Walter P. Lang, a senior defense intelligence officer at the time, explained that D.I.A. and C.I.A. officials "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose" to Iran. "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern," he said. One veteran said, that the Pentagon "wasn't so horrified by Iraq's use of gas." "It was just another way of killing people _ whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn't make any difference."
Note, the New York Times quoting a US defense intelligence officer. Not some anti-US, pro-Iraq stooge.
" The article cited above describes U.S. and British weapons sales to Iraq through the 1980s & even after the Persian Gulf War until March 1992. It quotes a U.S. Senate report which states that the U.S. provided materials that enable Iraq to develop "chemical, biological and missile-system programs." - In the 1980s, the U.S. sold weapons to both Iraq and illegally to Iran (Iran-Contragate). Without these weapons the two Mideast powers couldn't have sustained their war. - The U.S. continued to sell Iraq weapons materials even after Iraq's deadly gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988. - An Iraqi report leaked to the German paper Die Tageszeitung (Dec. 19, 2002) lists 24 U.S. companies which provided Iraq with materials for biological, chemical, nuclear, and conventional weapons.
Quoting a US Senate report. Your own government, not some foreign bunch of trouble-makers.
If memory serves, Agent Orange was a defoliant and not a chemical weapon.
It doesn't matter what it was designed to do, it matters what it actually does.
Read some of the links posted by TarPitt above. Do your own research online. Agent Orange may not have been designed to be harmful to man or beast but it was, and it still is.
Hearsay does not make fact. It is much better to cite sources than just say "may girlfriend read..."
I'd give you the sources, but for the following facts:
1. It's 23.15 here, and she's safely tucked up in bed. 2. She has a cold and a sore throat, so that's the best place for her to be. 3. Given 1 and 2, I'm not waking her up just to ask her where she read something. 4. Sometimes, people can go do their own damn research (but thanks for providing them with a starting point).
If research is truly dangerous then classify it. But not to research it only leaves you behind when other nations research it.
Hey, if you read the article then you would have understood Sir Martin Rees's reasons for recommending self-censorship. Here's a sample paragraph:
"Some experiments could conceivably threaten the entire Earth," he writes. "How close to zero should the claimed risk be before such experiments are sanctioned?"
He isn't talking about research that has potentially dangerous applications if it falls into the "wrong" hands, he's talking about potentially dangerous experiments. The kind of experiments where something going wrong could, say, create a minature black hole and thus destroy the planet.
When you're talking about an experiment going that wrong then you don't really give a damn who's performing it, "them" or "us".
1. Depleted uranium munitions fired in Iraq don't require cleaning up because they disapate instantaneously on impact and pose no long term threat to people or the environment.
Jeez, I guess the UN science teams who detected DU munitions fired by US aircraft over the former Yugoslavia seven years earlier were just imagining things.
Nice to know that, after bombing a society to hell and back in the name of "liberation", the US military doesn't even feel obliged to clean up its own mess.
2. Saddam Hussein was the biggest user of chemical weapons since World War II.
Isn't it funny how the US military conveniently forgets Vietnam whenever it wants to? Agent Orange any one?
Only last week my girlfriend read an article about how third generation birth defects are all too common in Vietnam, almost 30 years after that war ended; about how, on aborted missions, US bombers would ditch their weapons packages over reservoirs before returning to base; and how the US government denies any link between use of chemical weapons then and the ongoing damage to that county.
And let's not forget that it was the US that sold Saddam most of his chemical stockpile, even knowing his reputation for brutality.
Hey, it's a media PC. I want to put it in the front room with my TV.
2. Near silent operation.
See above. No use being in my front room if it sounds like a jet engine.
3. Ability to play, rip and stream (to other PCs) a variety of music file formats now and effortlessly accept more codecs in the future.
Right now my collection is in MP3 format. When I have time, I will probably rip to Ogg from scratch. In two years time, who knows what new super-duper format will be king?
4. Ability to play DVDs (of all regions) effortlessly.
Region encoding is ridiculous. If I bought it then I want to be able to play it. It shouldn't matter if I live in London, New York or Tokyo. 'Nuff said.
5. Ability to watch and record TV, PVR-style.
Hey, it's not that difficult.
6. Ability to do more than one of the above at once.
If I want to stream music to elsewhere in the house, I still want to be able to watch a DVD without it skipping frames. It's not that much to ask.
7. Ability to burn CD-RWs and/or DVDs
It would be really nice if this DVD+/DVD- format war would just resolve itself. Multi-format players, like the ones from Sony, are nice but we shouldn't have to pay a premium just to avoid the risk of buying a turkey.
8. Automatic update option.
Some people like to have complete control of their box but the mass market demands simplicity. The Average Joe doesn't want something he's going to have to tinker with every two weeks. Let the AJs have their automatic updates and let the power users do what they want too.
I'm sure I've left something off this list but these are the bare minimums that I'd look for in my ideal media PC.
Thing is, many of NewsCorp's news channels on Sky and the like lean left-- Rupert Murdoch isn't interested in brainwashing you to think like he does. He's interested in your money.#
Just this weekend, I read about how Murdoch wasn't happy with the slant of Sky News, calling it "BBC News lite", a reference to how much to the left of where he wants the station to be it currently sits. There were even some references to making it more like Fox News. From everything I've heard, Fox News is currently so gung-ho about the war in Iraq that renaming it Pentagon News wouldn't be entirely inappropriate.
"CNN leans to the left"? Sheesh. I've watched CNN on and off for the last 14 years and if that's an example of a station leaning to the left then that really says something about the state of broadcast journalism in the US. And what it says isn't good.
OK, I realise that asking anything about using a Microsoft product on Slashdot is the online equivalent of putting a "STONE ME TO DEATH" sign around my neck, but does anyone have any idea of how to configure Opera's mail feature to work with Hotmail addresses? Is this at all possible? (I'm guessing that it is, but that I'm just not smart enough to figure how to do it.)
There are some of us out there (myself and my partner included) that were using Hotmail before it was bought by Microsoft/assimilated by the Borg, and still continue to receive email to that address that must be regularly checked.
So, any genius out there know how to do this? Want to share the knowledge please?
Unfortunately, I think this might be a side effect of the new "mysterious future" feature. If subscribers can see an article 30 minutes before the rest of the Slashdot crowd then that gives them 30 minutes in which to slashdot the relevant server and/or eat up all of the site owners bandwidth cap.
Looks like uber geeks who can't stand missing out on articles like this one will have to subscribe if they want a fighting chance of reading the relevant article(s). I know the editors here really don't give a damn about issues like site management any more than they have to (witness the number of headlines and summaries that are inaccurate, badly spelt and/or grammatically incorrect, the number of dupes, fakes, etc), but when it's someone else's bandwidth then they really should be trying to work with people rather than against them.
Offering to mirror articles on non-commercial sites locally for a week or so would be a good start. The story links could point to the local server mirror which after a week could be changed to s simple redirection page pointing back to the original source site. This solution would stop major slashdotting of small "mom and pop"-type sites, and benefit Slashdot readers, Slashdot and the site owners as well. (If ad revenue is an issue, I'm sure Slashdot and the site owner could agree on splitting the revenue that the locally hosted mirror generates. And I'm sure Slashdot could cover itself against any possible legal ramifications with a well-worded contract that clearly illustrates that the content and the consequences of publishing it are the responsibility of the original owner - just like ISPs do all the time and Slashdot does with posts at the moment.)
I'm not saying that this should be compulsory, but that it should be an option. It seems to be a win-win situation all around, so why wouldn't they consider it?
Any editors reading this have any comments to make?
I was looking through some old stuff the other day when I came across some AD&D manuals, etc.
Whilst browsing, I came across one of my old characters, a cleric who had chronic gastric problems that would most likely be fatal. I remember having that hobbled priest when I was 15, and thinking about how damn unlucky I was to have to play a virtual cripple.
Ten years later I was diagnosed with chronic ulcerative colitis (a bowel disease similar to Crohn's disease), exactly what that cleric had. And, similarly, my situation deteriorated over an 18-month period until the day came when I had to choose between major surgery and certain death - a seemingly obvious choice but one which was still the hardest decision I've ever had to make (believe me, if you're ever in the same boat then you'll understand why).
Now, I'm not saying that AD&D ruined my life, or that playing it cast some wicked curse on my life. But I do think that, any day now, I'm due to find a ring of invisibility, boots of speed and a +3 vorpal sword, and when that day comes, I'm gonna kick some major ass.
When did I mention shooting anyone? About the most scathing thing that I said in either of my two above posts was that the people quarantined in this way have a responsibility to take their situation seriously and to respect the reasons why there's a need for them to avoid the temptation to go for a walk.
How you got from "don't go outside" to "let's shoot them" is beyond me. But then, you did manage to equate having to stay at home for a couple of weeks to being forcefully displaced to a deserted island and/or shot. so I shouldn't be entirely surprised.
Seriously though, if you have issues with how other people view the situation, then don't waste your time telling me that their views are too extreme. Tell them instead.
Please. These SARS carriers aren't being asked to do anything more than sit out their quarantine period in their own homes. Let's not analogise that with creating a leper colony.
I'll ask you the question that you seem to be ignoring: If you had to be quarantined for a couple of weeks, where would you rather spend that fortnight; in hospital or at home?
Come on, this isn't a Big Brother issue. These people could be isolated in a high security quaratine wing of a hospital or they could be self-quarantined at home, which is a much better option for the patients concerned, emotionally and psychologically. As someone who's had to have life-saving surgery, I can tell you that recovering at home in familiar surroundings and with all the comforts of your own home (your own bed, TV, PlayStation, PC, internet access, books, etc) is far more preferable than recovering in hospital.
These people are carrying a highly contageous, deadly, virus. They have a responsibility, to other members of society as well as themselves, to behave responsibly until they have fully recovered and pose no further threat to the people around them. All it takes is for the situation in Singapore to deteriorate to one of near anarchy is for one of these individuals to act irresponsibly and go for a walk to the local supermarket.
Containment is the only thing that is stopping that society from breaking down right now. As it is, their hospitals are struggling to cope with the existing SARS cases that they already have.
Remember what happened in the US when everyone was paranoid about anthrax? Remember how people greeted people at their doors with surgical masks? Now do you see why they've taken these basic measures to protect the general public?
Yeah, it just might work. But you don't want it to. Here's why.
Today, if you want to watch a TV series, or a movie, over and over at your leisure then you can buy the DVD. When you buy the DVD, the publisher makes some money. If we're talking about a $20 movie, then the studio might make $5-$10 from the sale, once the retail markup, distribution, production, royalties, marketing and other costs are considered.
But once you've bought the DVD, the publisher will make no more money out of you for that particular title. Yes, if you've got more money than sense (or if you really, really want it) then they might manage to sell you a director's cut, special edition or whatever but the bottom line is that the publisher will only make a fixed amount from you no matter how often you watch the product.
However, if they could keep the movie, but sell you access to it, at $3 per viewing, then pretty soon they'll have recouped the same amount of money if not more from you. Let's face it, any movie that you like enough to go out and buy on DVD is one that you'll happily sit down and watch at least two or three times, and at $3 a time that's $6-9 already. Then you get your Star Wars devotees and Titanic nuts who'll watch their favourite movie at least once a week. Now your talking about at least $150 per year from just one movie.
Now let's consider how else those customers could be milked/revenue streams maximised. Well, for one thing you could charge different customers different prices. Charge Titanic nuts who'll pay $4 per view that amount while charging those that'll only pay the basic $3 "only" $3. Charge a premium for watching Disney movies on Sunday afternoons, or whatever else you want.
Charging different customers different amounts for the same product is nothing new and it's certainly not something that companies are embarrassed about - Amazon does it, and so do mobile (cell) phone providers. So you can bet that AOL (or whoever) would do it too given the chance.
This isn't going to happen tomorrow, or next year, or in five years but it is coming. It's just to attractive for the publishers and broadcasters to ignore forever.
So, while a broadcast/cable provider-end storage solution Tivo might not sound like a big deal on its own, it does sound like a pretty big when you take it to its obvious conclusion.
1. It isn't news because it's a story that's at least two weeks old.
I had a heated discussion with at least one sceptic who didn't believe it was at all possible just here on slashdot only last week.
Suffice to say that Twirlip of the Mists didn't believe that the US military would do anything to harm journalists going about their daily business of informing us about this war and that the journalists who first reported this story must have "misunderstood" what the Pentagon meant when they said that all independent transmissions were legitimate targets. Bless his cotton little socks.
2. It is news because not all journalists in Iraq are "embedded" with US or British units.
A journalists main objective (the bias of his or her parent organisation aside) is to get to the truth. It's pretty hard to do that if you only see what the US and British commanders on the ground want you to see. Just as you shouldn't trust everything that's broadcast by Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine on Iraqi TV, you also shouldn't trust everything that the mainstream press's embedded journalists report. To get a more accurate picture you have to do what the military themselves teach their commanders to do with their intelligence reports; look at lots of different news sources, filter out the garbage and actively search for the truth rather than just accept what's handed to you on a plate.
Accordingly, the less superficial news gathering services and agencies have a lot of journalists in Iraq that aren't embedded.
(Remember, CNN, NBC, CBS or whoever are commercial news broadcasters. It's in their interests to tell the American public what they believe the American public wants to hear. Nobody wants to eat their dinner whilst hearing about how a US patrol killed fleeing women and children, so the networks don't show them that side of the war.)
Sorry if this seems like a rant but the amount of ignorance that the general public has about this war (and, unfortunately, this is especially true of the average American) is frightening.
Yes - it is petty and disheartening that corporate interests seem to be leading legislators around by the balls yet again. Does it really surprise you? However, your view of infrastructure is twaddle. This isn't "Field of Dreams" - just because you build it, doesn't mean shit. That's the idea of infrastructure - a foundation supporting the functioning of society. Wait, I have an idea - let's pave all the roads in Afghanistan and make them 8-lane highways! Yeah - those Afghani citizens would love to have good roads to tool around on in their BMWs and Maseratis. Let's build powerstations all over the country so they can use all those wonderful consumer products they're so keen on. Dammit - it's been almost a year and a half! Why haven't we done this already?
As to the pros and cons of empire, read this [chronicle.com]. Perhaps it'll inspire some deeper thought on the whole topic.
(I'll say this now. This is Slashdot, where anything the questions American actions, and especially Republican actions, can only be flamebait and/or trolling. Moderators, do yourselves and others a favour: don't moderate down other people's opinions just because you don't agree with them. Instead, respond logically and rationally with your own opinions. This is called debate. It's democracy in action.)
Oh, piss off and stop whining. Modding down other's opinions is a form of democracy. Majority rules and all that. (Cue Monty Python - "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!")
You've forgotten one tiny little detail (well, two if you include your balls; I see you "forgot" to login before you posted): before, during and after the US/Allied intervention in Afghanistan to hunt for Al Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban, George W Bush and his adminstration promised, on countless occasions, that they wouldn't just get what they want and get out but that they would play a major role in helping to rebuild Afghanistan. It was Bush who said that they would rebuild what the Soviets, the civil war and the fight against Al Qaeda destroyed. And it's Bush that has broken this promise.
And if I was worried about losing karma (as you seem to suggest) then I would have taken the cowardly option and posted as an AC, as you chose to do. What I was suggesting was that people who had a logical and rational alternative viewpoint should contribute to the greater debate, rather than just dismiss an argument that they didn't personally believe in.
First of all, whatever your beliefs regarding this war, I think it's disgusting that while people are dying on both sides - combatants and civilians - that someone can calmly try and make a fast buck on what happens to Iraq after the war.
Sure, you can say that the Congressman is just looking after the interests of his constituents, but I'm sure that he's received (or at least he will in the future) some hefty financial support from Qualcomm to finance his election campaigns. Morally, I find his haste to divide up what will be a war-torn country repugnant.
And why should the American government be deciding how Iraq should be rebuilt? Why should American companies profit from the devastation caused by America? Because America bore the brunt of the cost of a war that only it and only a few of its very closest allies wanted? Doesn't such unilateral carving up of post-war Iraq smack of colonialism?
Shouldn't a free market economy decide what kind of phone network Iraq eventually is left with? Isn't an arbitrarily imposed system a bit imperialistic? Is Nokia (of Finland) or Ericsson (of Sweden) any less entitled to compete for new business than Qualcomm (of the US of A)? Why?
It's not like America's track record on rebuilding nations scarred by it's "War on Terrorism" is anything to shout about. It's not like Afghanistan is undergoing radical change with roads, hospitals, power plants and other infrastructure being rebuilt is it? Mind you, Iraq does have the world's second largest oil reserves so at least they can pay for the lovely American-built goods that Dubya and Co. hope will soon be flooding the markets of Baghdad.
Most of the world believes that American foreign policy is about using other countries as much as possible one day and then throwing them out with the garbage the next morning. It's a shame and a tragedy (and it should be a national disgrace) that George W. Bush is making that belief a reality.
(I'll say this now. This is Slashdot, where anything the questions American actions, and especially Republican actions, can only be flamebait and/or trolling. Moderators, do yourselves and others a favour: don't moderate down other people's opinions just because you don't agree with them. Instead, respond logically and rationally with your own opinions. This is called debate. It's democracy in action.)
Slashdot Mirror
Denon and Marantz has a very solid core business - home audio entertainment. It's a well-respected, much-loved brand.
The likelyhood of D&M running into financial difficulties is slim, simply because their traditional businesses are cash cows. Even if the SonicBlue division (whatever it ends up being called) makes a loss, D&M will be fine (short of some vey serious mismanagement).
It's like Microsoft and Hotmail - even if Hotmail was to sink like lead, the money that Microsoft makes from its other businesses would more than keep it afloat.
As someone else has said, $36.2 million to buy yourself a major slice of the PVR market (not to mention portable digital music players) is a steal.
I suppose back in the 60's the US could have subjected the defoliants to 15 years of clinical trials and testing to make sure they were safe and effective before using them in Vietnam.
Well, if you're going to drop the stuff on someone else's country (or even your own) it would seem like the responsible thing to do.
Why shouldn't the US take responsibility for the horrific side effects of Agent Orange? Is it suddenly OK to whip up a batch of any chemical you want and then just use it (in war or in peace) without taking the time to find out just exactly what it does?
Here are some useful links:
Andrex Puppy: http://www.andrexpuppy.co.uk/flashsite/intro.html - a great site for younger kids. I've yet to find a kid who doesn't love it.
Loney Tunes Teach The Internet: http://www.warnerbros.com/ltti/homepage.html - Just what it sounds like. Lots of educational games.
Lots of other great sites can be found via these links:
Teachers Online
Search-Info.Com
Other historians have also suggested that his name may have been "Heisenberg".
There seems to be some, umm, what's the word,... uncertainty over the gentleman's name.
OK, I see your point, that (ostensibly) Agent Orange wasn't meant as a chemical weapon. However, it doesn't change the fact that it did major damage to both the people and the environment exposed to it. Ditto for Napalm.
The fact that both were dropped almost indescriminately doesn't exactly help the US look like anything more than hypocrites when they constantly bring up Saddam Hussein's inexcusable use of chemical munitions.
Err, I know exactly what depleted uranium is and I'm quite familiar with the definition of the word "depleted". Thanks for your sarcasm though.
Countless studies, by US veterans groups, the UN, etc have shown that depleted uranium is harmful, to the men and women who handle the munitions on the ground when loading and to the combatants exposed to it in the field.
If you want to believe the official army line, that there's no health risk associated with DU weapons, then that's your perogative. Just don't pretend that there isn't a whole raft of reports, papers, etc out there from a variety of respected and verified sources that strongly disagree with the Pentagon's assessment.
And as for Agent Orange, I believe that I and others have covered just how "safe" that's proven to have been elsewhere in this thread.
Care to back that up?
Well, as you're too damn lazy to google yourself, here are the results of a simple search with the criteria "US Iraq chemical weapons sales".
Here are a couple of paragraphs pulled from some of the first few articles that the search pulls up:
"The US not only helped arm Iraq with military equipment right up to the time of the Kuwait invasion in 1989, as did Germany, Britain, France, Russia and others, but also sold and helped Iraq to integrate chemical weapons into their US-provided battle plans while fighting Iran between 1985-1988.
"According to a New York Times article in August, 2002, Col. Walter P. Lang, a senior defense intelligence officer at the time, explained that D.I.A. and C.I.A. officials "were desperate to make sure that Iraq did not lose" to Iran. "The use of gas on the battlefield by the Iraqis was not a matter of deep strategic concern," he said. One veteran said, that the Pentagon "wasn't so horrified by Iraq's use of gas." "It was just another way of killing people _ whether with a bullet or phosgene, it didn't make any difference."
Note, the New York Times quoting a US defense intelligence officer. Not some anti-US, pro-Iraq stooge.
" The article cited above describes U.S. and British weapons sales to Iraq through the 1980s & even after the Persian Gulf War until March 1992. It quotes a U.S. Senate report which states that the U.S. provided materials that enable Iraq to develop "chemical, biological and missile-system programs."
- In the 1980s, the U.S. sold weapons to both Iraq and illegally to Iran (Iran-Contragate). Without these weapons the two Mideast powers couldn't have sustained their war.
- The U.S. continued to sell Iraq weapons materials even after Iraq's deadly gassing of the Kurdish town of Halabja in 1988.
- An Iraqi report leaked to the German paper Die Tageszeitung (Dec. 19, 2002) lists 24 U.S. companies which provided Iraq with materials for biological, chemical, nuclear, and conventional weapons.
Quoting a US Senate report. Your own government, not some foreign bunch of trouble-makers.
If memory serves, Agent Orange was a defoliant and not a chemical weapon.
It doesn't matter what it was designed to do, it matters what it actually does.
Read some of the links posted by TarPitt above. Do your own research online. Agent Orange may not have been designed to be harmful to man or beast but it was, and it still is.
Hearsay does not make fact. It is much better to cite sources than just say "may girlfriend read..."
I'd give you the sources, but for the following facts:
1. It's 23.15 here, and she's safely tucked up in bed.
2. She has a cold and a sore throat, so that's the best place for her to be.
3. Given 1 and 2, I'm not waking her up just to ask her where she read something.
4. Sometimes, people can go do their own damn research (but thanks for providing them with a starting point).
If research is truly dangerous then classify it. But not to research it only leaves you behind when other nations research it.
Hey, if you read the article then you would have understood Sir Martin Rees's reasons for recommending self-censorship. Here's a sample paragraph:
"Some experiments could conceivably threaten the entire Earth," he writes. "How close to zero should the claimed risk be before such experiments are sanctioned?"
He isn't talking about research that has potentially dangerous applications if it falls into the "wrong" hands, he's talking about potentially dangerous experiments. The kind of experiments where something going wrong could, say, create a minature black hole and thus destroy the planet.
When you're talking about an experiment going that wrong then you don't really give a damn who's performing it, "them" or "us".
1. Depleted uranium munitions fired in Iraq don't require cleaning up because they disapate instantaneously on impact and pose no long term threat to people or the environment.
Jeez, I guess the UN science teams who detected DU munitions fired by US aircraft over the former Yugoslavia seven years earlier were just imagining things.
Nice to know that, after bombing a society to hell and back in the name of "liberation", the US military doesn't even feel obliged to clean up its own mess.
2. Saddam Hussein was the biggest user of chemical weapons since World War II.
Isn't it funny how the US military conveniently forgets Vietnam whenever it wants to? Agent Orange any one?
Only last week my girlfriend read an article about how third generation birth defects are all too common in Vietnam, almost 30 years after that war ended; about how, on aborted missions, US bombers would ditch their weapons packages over reservoirs before returning to base; and how the US government denies any link between use of chemical weapons then and the ongoing damage to that county.
And let's not forget that it was the US that sold Saddam most of his chemical stockpile, even knowing his reputation for brutality.
1. Small form factor, similar to VCR/DVD player.
Hey, it's a media PC. I want to put it in the front room with my TV.
2. Near silent operation.
See above. No use being in my front room if it sounds like a jet engine.
3. Ability to play, rip and stream (to other PCs) a variety of music file formats now and effortlessly accept more codecs in the future.
Right now my collection is in MP3 format. When I have time, I will probably rip to Ogg from scratch. In two years time, who knows what new super-duper format will be king?
4. Ability to play DVDs (of all regions) effortlessly.
Region encoding is ridiculous. If I bought it then I want to be able to play it. It shouldn't matter if I live in London, New York or Tokyo. 'Nuff said.
5. Ability to watch and record TV, PVR-style.
Hey, it's not that difficult.
6. Ability to do more than one of the above at once.
If I want to stream music to elsewhere in the house, I still want to be able to watch a DVD without it skipping frames. It's not that much to ask.
7. Ability to burn CD-RWs and/or DVDs
It would be really nice if this DVD+/DVD- format war would just resolve itself. Multi-format players, like the ones from Sony, are nice but we shouldn't have to pay a premium just to avoid the risk of buying a turkey.
8. Automatic update option.
Some people like to have complete control of their box but the mass market demands simplicity. The Average Joe doesn't want something he's going to have to tinker with every two weeks. Let the AJs have their automatic updates and let the power users do what they want too.
I'm sure I've left something off this list but these are the bare minimums that I'd look for in my ideal media PC.
Thing is, many of NewsCorp's news channels on Sky and the like lean left-- Rupert Murdoch isn't interested in brainwashing you to think like he does. He's interested in your money.#
Just this weekend, I read about how Murdoch wasn't happy with the slant of Sky News, calling it "BBC News lite", a reference to how much to the left of where he wants the station to be it currently sits. There were even some references to making it more like Fox News. From everything I've heard, Fox News is currently so gung-ho about the war in Iraq that renaming it Pentagon News wouldn't be entirely inappropriate.
"CNN leans to the left"? Sheesh. I've watched CNN on and off for the last 14 years and if that's an example of a station leaning to the left then that really says something about the state of broadcast journalism in the US. And what it says isn't good.
OK, I realise that asking anything about using a Microsoft product on Slashdot is the online equivalent of putting a "STONE ME TO DEATH" sign around my neck, but does anyone have any idea of how to configure Opera's mail feature to work with Hotmail addresses? Is this at all possible? (I'm guessing that it is, but that I'm just not smart enough to figure how to do it.)
There are some of us out there (myself and my partner included) that were using Hotmail before it was bought by Microsoft/assimilated by the Borg, and still continue to receive email to that address that must be regularly checked.
So, any genius out there know how to do this? Want to share the knowledge please?
Unfortunately, I think this might be a side effect of the new "mysterious future" feature. If subscribers can see an article 30 minutes before the rest of the Slashdot crowd then that gives them 30 minutes in which to slashdot the relevant server and/or eat up all of the site owners bandwidth cap.
Looks like uber geeks who can't stand missing out on articles like this one will have to subscribe if they want a fighting chance of reading the relevant article(s). I know the editors here really don't give a damn about issues like site management any more than they have to (witness the number of headlines and summaries that are inaccurate, badly spelt and/or grammatically incorrect, the number of dupes, fakes, etc), but when it's someone else's bandwidth then they really should be trying to work with people rather than against them.
Offering to mirror articles on non-commercial sites locally for a week or so would be a good start. The story links could point to the local server mirror which after a week could be changed to s simple redirection page pointing back to the original source site. This solution would stop major slashdotting of small "mom and pop"-type sites, and benefit Slashdot readers, Slashdot and the site owners as well. (If ad revenue is an issue, I'm sure Slashdot and the site owner could agree on splitting the revenue that the locally hosted mirror generates. And I'm sure Slashdot could cover itself against any possible legal ramifications with a well-worded contract that clearly illustrates that the content and the consequences of publishing it are the responsibility of the original owner - just like ISPs do all the time and Slashdot does with posts at the moment.)
I'm not saying that this should be compulsory, but that it should be an option. It seems to be a win-win situation all around, so why wouldn't they consider it?
Any editors reading this have any comments to make?
I was looking through some old stuff the other day when I came across some AD&D manuals, etc.
Whilst browsing, I came across one of my old characters, a cleric who had chronic gastric problems that would most likely be fatal. I remember having that hobbled priest when I was 15, and thinking about how damn unlucky I was to have to play a virtual cripple.
Ten years later I was diagnosed with chronic ulcerative colitis (a bowel disease similar to Crohn's disease), exactly what that cleric had. And, similarly, my situation deteriorated over an 18-month period until the day came when I had to choose between major surgery and certain death - a seemingly obvious choice but one which was still the hardest decision I've ever had to make (believe me, if you're ever in the same boat then you'll understand why).
Now, I'm not saying that AD&D ruined my life, or that playing it cast some wicked curse on my life. But I do think that, any day now, I'm due to find a ring of invisibility, boots of speed and a +3 vorpal sword, and when that day comes, I'm gonna kick some major ass.
When did I mention shooting anyone? About the most scathing thing that I said in either of my two above posts was that the people quarantined in this way have a responsibility to take their situation seriously and to respect the reasons why there's a need for them to avoid the temptation to go for a walk.
How you got from "don't go outside" to "let's shoot them" is beyond me. But then, you did manage to equate having to stay at home for a couple of weeks to being forcefully displaced to a deserted island and/or shot. so I shouldn't be entirely surprised.
Seriously though, if you have issues with how other people view the situation, then don't waste your time telling me that their views are too extreme. Tell them instead.
Please. These SARS carriers aren't being asked to do anything more than sit out their quarantine period in their own homes. Let's not analogise that with creating a leper colony.
I'll ask you the question that you seem to be ignoring: If you had to be quarantined for a couple of weeks, where would you rather spend that fortnight; in hospital or at home?
Come on, this isn't a Big Brother issue. These people could be isolated in a high security quaratine wing of a hospital or they could be self-quarantined at home, which is a much better option for the patients concerned, emotionally and psychologically. As someone who's had to have life-saving surgery, I can tell you that recovering at home in familiar surroundings and with all the comforts of your own home (your own bed, TV, PlayStation, PC, internet access, books, etc) is far more preferable than recovering in hospital.
These people are carrying a highly contageous, deadly, virus. They have a responsibility, to other members of society as well as themselves, to behave responsibly until they have fully recovered and pose no further threat to the people around them. All it takes is for the situation in Singapore to deteriorate to one of near anarchy is for one of these individuals to act irresponsibly and go for a walk to the local supermarket.
Containment is the only thing that is stopping that society from breaking down right now. As it is, their hospitals are struggling to cope with the existing SARS cases that they already have.
Remember what happened in the US when everyone was paranoid about anthrax? Remember how people greeted people at their doors with surgical masks? Now do you see why they've taken these basic measures to protect the general public?
This just sounds like (not very) hot air to me...
Yeah, it just might work. But you don't want it to. Here's why.
Today, if you want to watch a TV series, or a movie, over and over at your leisure then you can buy the DVD. When you buy the DVD, the publisher makes some money. If we're talking about a $20 movie, then the studio might make $5-$10 from the sale, once the retail markup, distribution, production, royalties, marketing and other costs are considered.
But once you've bought the DVD, the publisher will make no more money out of you for that particular title. Yes, if you've got more money than sense (or if you really, really want it) then they might manage to sell you a director's cut, special edition or whatever but the bottom line is that the publisher will only make a fixed amount from you no matter how often you watch the product.
However, if they could keep the movie, but sell you access to it, at $3 per viewing, then pretty soon they'll have recouped the same amount of money if not more from you. Let's face it, any movie that you like enough to go out and buy on DVD is one that you'll happily sit down and watch at least two or three times, and at $3 a time that's $6-9 already. Then you get your Star Wars devotees and Titanic nuts who'll watch their favourite movie at least once a week. Now your talking about at least $150 per year from just one movie.
Now let's consider how else those customers could be milked/revenue streams maximised. Well, for one thing you could charge different customers different prices. Charge Titanic nuts who'll pay $4 per view that amount while charging those that'll only pay the basic $3 "only" $3. Charge a premium for watching Disney movies on Sunday afternoons, or whatever else you want.
Charging different customers different amounts for the same product is nothing new and it's certainly not something that companies are embarrassed about - Amazon does it, and so do mobile (cell) phone providers. So you can bet that AOL (or whoever) would do it too given the chance.
This isn't going to happen tomorrow, or next year, or in five years but it is coming. It's just to attractive for the publishers and broadcasters to ignore forever.
So, while a broadcast/cable provider-end storage solution Tivo might not sound like a big deal on its own, it does sound like a pretty big when you take it to its obvious conclusion.
1. It isn't news because it's a story that's at least two weeks old.
I had a heated discussion with at least one sceptic who didn't believe it was at all possible just here on slashdot only last week.
Suffice to say that Twirlip of the Mists didn't believe that the US military would do anything to harm journalists going about their daily business of informing us about this war and that the journalists who first reported this story must have "misunderstood" what the Pentagon meant when they said that all independent transmissions were legitimate targets. Bless his cotton little socks.
2. It is news because not all journalists in Iraq are "embedded" with US or British units.
A journalists main objective (the bias of his or her parent organisation aside) is to get to the truth. It's pretty hard to do that if you only see what the US and British commanders on the ground want you to see. Just as you shouldn't trust everything that's broadcast by Saddam Hussein's propaganda machine on Iraqi TV, you also shouldn't trust everything that the mainstream press's embedded journalists report. To get a more accurate picture you have to do what the military themselves teach their commanders to do with their intelligence reports; look at lots of different news sources, filter out the garbage and actively search for the truth rather than just accept what's handed to you on a plate.
Accordingly, the less superficial news gathering services and agencies have a lot of journalists in Iraq that aren't embedded.
(Remember, CNN, NBC, CBS or whoever are commercial news broadcasters. It's in their interests to tell the American public what they believe the American public wants to hear. Nobody wants to eat their dinner whilst hearing about how a US patrol killed fleeing women and children, so the networks don't show them that side of the war.)
Sorry if this seems like a rant but the amount of ignorance that the general public has about this war (and, unfortunately, this is especially true of the average American) is frightening.
It is a real-life remote control car with Knight Rider references!
As long as those references include Bonnie and April but leave out Michael and Devon, then they'll be OK.
However, your view of infrastructure is twaddle. This isn't "Field of Dreams" - just because you build it, doesn't mean shit. That's the idea of infrastructure - a foundation supporting the functioning of society. Wait, I have an idea - let's pave all the roads in Afghanistan and make them 8-lane highways! Yeah - those Afghani citizens would love to have good roads to tool around on in their BMWs and Maseratis. Let's build powerstations all over the country so they can use all those wonderful consumer products they're so keen on. Dammit - it's been almost a year and a half! Why haven't we done this already?
As to the pros and cons of empire, read this [chronicle.com]. Perhaps it'll inspire some deeper thought on the whole topic.Oh, piss off and stop whining. Modding down other's opinions is a form of democracy. Majority rules and all that. (Cue Monty Python - "Help! Help! I'm being oppressed!")
You've forgotten one tiny little detail (well, two if you include your balls; I see you "forgot" to login before you posted): before, during and after the US/Allied intervention in Afghanistan to hunt for Al Qaeda and overthrow the Taliban, George W Bush and his adminstration promised, on countless occasions, that they wouldn't just get what they want and get out but that they would play a major role in helping to rebuild Afghanistan. It was Bush who said that they would rebuild what the Soviets, the civil war and the fight against Al Qaeda destroyed. And it's Bush that has broken this promise.
And if I was worried about losing karma (as you seem to suggest) then I would have taken the cowardly option and posted as an AC, as you chose to do. What I was suggesting was that people who had a logical and rational alternative viewpoint should contribute to the greater debate, rather than just dismiss an argument that they didn't personally believe in.
First of all, whatever your beliefs regarding this war, I think it's disgusting that while people are dying on both sides - combatants and civilians - that someone can calmly try and make a fast buck on what happens to Iraq after the war.
Sure, you can say that the Congressman is just looking after the interests of his constituents, but I'm sure that he's received (or at least he will in the future) some hefty financial support from Qualcomm to finance his election campaigns. Morally, I find his haste to divide up what will be a war-torn country repugnant.
And why should the American government be deciding how Iraq should be rebuilt? Why should American companies profit from the devastation caused by America? Because America bore the brunt of the cost of a war that only it and only a few of its very closest allies wanted? Doesn't such unilateral carving up of post-war Iraq smack of colonialism?
Shouldn't a free market economy decide what kind of phone network Iraq eventually is left with? Isn't an arbitrarily imposed system a bit imperialistic? Is Nokia (of Finland) or Ericsson (of Sweden) any less entitled to compete for new business than Qualcomm (of the US of A)? Why?
It's not like America's track record on rebuilding nations scarred by it's "War on Terrorism" is anything to shout about. It's not like Afghanistan is undergoing radical change with roads, hospitals, power plants and other infrastructure being rebuilt is it? Mind you, Iraq does have the world's second largest oil reserves so at least they can pay for the lovely American-built goods that Dubya and Co. hope will soon be flooding the markets of Baghdad.
Most of the world believes that American foreign policy is about using other countries as much as possible one day and then throwing them out with the garbage the next morning. It's a shame and a tragedy (and it should be a national disgrace) that George W. Bush is making that belief a reality.
(I'll say this now. This is Slashdot, where anything the questions American actions, and especially Republican actions, can only be flamebait and/or trolling. Moderators, do yourselves and others a favour: don't moderate down other people's opinions just because you don't agree with them. Instead, respond logically and rationally with your own opinions. This is called debate. It's democracy in action.)