If you don't like porn or naked art or puppies licking themselves them don't watch or purchase such material. The case in question raised an extremely valid contitutional point that I think you're completely missing. If I can view an adult web site hosted in New York from Utah, whose community standards should apply and why? What is the harm is viewing in an adult web site from the privacy of your home and why should your community get to decide what they will "tolerate" in your own home?
Can you imagine if we applied the Miller test to other constitutional rights like the right to a speedy trial or freedom of religion? What if the community didn't want to "tolerate" the right to an attorney or the right to habeas corpus? You can see were this is going. Why is there a tolerance test for freedom of speech in the first place? We don't need the First Amendment to protect pictures of flowers and puppies, but we do need it to protect those that want to look at nudie pictures or protest against their president.
Wouldn't the designers of any system entrusted to protect the lives of others automatically reject DRM as an elemnent of that system if it could prove to be a point of failure?
I am not a system engineer, but I don't see how DRM would ever be considered in a system of this nature. I would expect that a lot of the components used in such systems would either be highly modified/customized off the shelf components or custom made.
for trademark of the word "superhero" and variations thereof back in 1981. Apparently, there is some controvesy over the joint filing of this shared trademark as trademark law has a "single source" requirement. However, there is precedent of two companies sharing a trademark, but is supposed to be quite quite rare.
I am not sure how accurate this information as a lot it is from disparate sources, so someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Anyway, I don't see how Marvel/DC can claim a trademark on a word that has been in the popular lexicon for over fifty years.
With 25 or 50 GB capacity it would be nice to copy a collection of standard DVDs to the discs for use when travelling, etc. Imagine being able to keep one disc in a portable DVD player and be able to choose from three, six or as many as ten different DVDs all on one disc. I realize there are technical limitations such as creating a custom DVD menu and the cost of BD media, burners and portable players is going to be prohibitively expensive at first, but will a BD player play a movie from a burned BD-ROM? And I don't mean a HD movie, I am talking about the current DVD standard we have now.
Anyone know or is it even possible to know at this point?
I didn't know this game existed until a friend and I were desperate for a new, two playter game and all the good ones were rented. We rented Fuzion Frenzy and Medal of Honor: Frontline (which we had both played before and loved, but never two player). We popped Fuzion Frenzy in first were hooked in no time. My friend's girlfriend then came over to watch a movie and she asked what the game was we were playing. We asked her to join and we eventually played until the wee hours of the morning. We never did play Medal of Honor or watch a movie.
And I have to agree with Mario Party. I was surprised when a few days later she came over with a copy of Super Mario Party. "Let's try this," she said. Another evening wasted on fine entertainment and she kicked our asses!
Super Mario Kart: Double Dash is another great two plus player game for non-gamers. I have to say, the Gamecube seems to rule when it comes fun, multiplayer games for non-gamers or gamers alike. Wacky Races for the Dreamcast is about close as you're going to get on that platform and just as much fun to play.
My previous girlfriend and I played all the Nancy Drew games to the end (there were three at the time) and then we found the adventure Riddle of the Sphinx. It was fun working together trying to solve the puzzles. All this for a girl that hated video games and would cringe whenever I suggested we play a game.
After finishing Riddle of the Sphinx I took a huuuge leap and installed Zsnes and convinced her to play Zelda: A Link to the Past. She was hooked. Pretty soon she was playing games like Chronotrigger, then Baldur's Gate and eventually Magic: The Gathering. It's a progression.
The complaint form should include a box that asks, "Are you aware of the V-Chip parental access controls and it's operation?" or something to that effect. If the answer is "no" the complaint should get tossed and if the answer is "yes" then an automated reply should be sent to the effect that the viewer should tailor the V-Chip controls to suit their particular tastes.
No one ever mentions the V-Chip anymore because it's not their own viewing habits that concern them, but their neighbor's.
is send you endless reams of "balance transfer" cheques or convenience cheques. Not only are they a complete rip off to use as interest and endless fees apply the second you use one, but they get mixed in with all the other crap they love to send you in the envelope and you don't realize they're there. You end up throwning them away in the trash without voiding or otherwise defacing them to make them worthless. Any enterprising thief scrounging through your garbage can come across them and use them. This happened to a good friend of mine when she threw them away thinking they were some sort of advertising without realizing they were real cheques. Cheque fraud isn't the easiest thing in the world to do anymore, especially in Canada where no merchants will accept cheques anymore, but it does happen.
Ask them to stop sending them to you and they swear up and down it will happen, but it never does. It's just too lucritive for them to stop sending them to you.
One of the selling features for me was backwards compatibility. I figured that even though there are only two games out right now that I want, Call of Duty and Gotham Racing, the current list of backwards compatible titles covers pretty much all of my existing Xbox library. There have to be a lot of current Xbox owners chomping at the bit to get the 360 knowing they could ride out a dry spell of new games with existing games.
Just a note for those of you that thought that backwards compatibility wouldn't be a big deal.
Microsoft must be clapping with glee over the delay of the PS3. I don't think it will make much difference though unless they get their shit together and start actually making enough 360s. It's my opinion the shortage situation has really hurt sales of the 360. There was a while there where it seemed supply had picked up as my local Best Buy looked to be getting a few a week. After humming and hawing I decided to get one and I've been trying to find one for about two weeks now. I've just given up for the time being. Maybe it's better to wait as Microsoft is sure to drop the price eventually, perhaps when the PS3 is actually released.
The best way to see a movie is in the theatre. I don't know what theatre you frequent, but even the cheap second run theatre up the street from me offers quality projection, digital sound and sloped, comfortable seating. The newer theatres offer even larger screens and what essentially are food courts with a variety of food. Yes, the food is slightly more expensive (a Burger King Whopper is $3.69, but a bag of large popcorn is ridiculously priced at $4.00. Taco Bell is still the best deal with tacos at $1.29 each and I am talking about food inside the theatre.) and the advertisements at the start of the movie are incredibly annoying.
For me, a movie is a social experience where my friends and I eat somewhere close by before hand, enjoy the movie and then hit a pub for drinks afterward and discuss the movie. It doesn't always happen that way, sometimes we just hit the movie. The problem I have with watching a movie from home is the potentential distractions are greater, especially if friends are over. People mention cell phones ringing during the movies, but I find the problem far worse at home with friends over as they think that if the phone rings we can just pause the movie. And someone is always getting up to go to the bathroom or whatever. If I am in a theatre none of this happens; I am there to watch a movie. The neighbor can't come over, the phone is turned off and if someone leaves for the bathroom the movie continues to play. I just find the immersive experience at the theatre that much more profound then at home. You could watch Mozart's opera, "The Magic Flute" at home on DVD or you could go to the theatre and watch it live (and you score points with your girlfriend to boot). The inconvenience of dealing with the public are worth the experience sometime.
In regards to movie attendance, we just came off of two years of staggering growth due to some of most attended movies ever. I don't think the mandarins at MPAA realize that you aren't going to see attendance like 2003 or 2004 with a string of hits like Shrek 2, Spider-Man 2 and The Passion of the Christ in the same year every year. Incredibly, the Passion of the Christ, which was only third in box office receipts, took in $370 million domestically while Star Wars III, the top movie for 2005, took in slightly more at $380. What can you do when you have more popular movies in one year and not the next? It's just absolute greed and arrogance to think that just because you make a movie it should automatically make you rich.
Anyway, there are still good movies to watch and good theatres to see them in and as long as that's the case Hollywood will have nothing to worry about.
When I was called the Royal Bank was obviously as positive as possible about the potential security threat, but they called me none the less. It wasn't like there was this huge mystery when my card wouldn't work, they explained what happned and why my account was frozen.
As someone pointed out, freezing the account of the Texas couple due to concerns about terrorist financing failed because they were alerted to the problem. It would make a lot more sense if the bank accepted the payment, processed their account and then passed the information to DHS for them to monitor rather than stumbling around in some keystone cops attempt at thwarting terrorist financing.
Debit cards are extremely popular Canada. In fact, I believe we have the highest per capita use of debit cards anywhere in the world (Australia is apparently not far behind). The system even has its own name, Interac, and is so ubiquitous that I never carry cash because every merchant, and do I mean every merchant, is supplied with Interac. It's been this way for so long (Interac really took off around 1994 or so) that no one accepts cheques and hardly anyone carries cash.
Therein lies the problem. If I pop in to a local convenience store 99 times out of 100 they'll have Interac, but you don't really know how trustworthy they are. In the last few years thieves have caught on that no one really carries cash and have come up with imaginitve ways of skimming your card and stealing your PIN. There is a sense of relative safety and attractiveness in skimming debit cards instead of credit cards as they can then take a cloned card and PIN directly to a bank machine and receive cash. No fence, no signatures, no ID requirements, etc. The cost of equipment is relatively low: magnetic card reader/writer and a high quality digital video camera, the penalties almost laughable if you manage to get caught and the potential gain is just about limitless.
I read somehwere, and I am too lazy to Google it, that debit card fraud took in $44 million in 2003 from around 27,000 people. That's approximately $1600 per person. I can't afford to lose that much and the banks don't seem to care. If you kick up a fuss and manage to get the media's attention then they'll do something about it and reimburse you, but count yourself lucky. At an estimated cost of $500 million to switch Interac to something like the chip and PIN system in the UK they can afford to lose a few customers here and there.
I do technical support for point of sale systems and during our end of year discussions in the MIS department I learned that debit card use fell in terms of dollars spent for the first time in twelve years. Credit card use increased to make up the difference. I can only conclude that card skimming has become so prevalent, or at least the public perception has, that it has already seriously eroded confidence in the Interac system. I was really shocked to learn that. It's also possible that people didn't have as much money as in years past and moved to credit cards, but countering a twelve year trend seems too co-incidental.
On the positive side, the Royal Bank does seem to be at least a little proactive in that they do monitor your account for unusually large cash withdrawals and have a system of daily transaction limits. I have been called twice by their security department in that last few years and told to report to the closest branch and have my card replaced. I was told simply that I used my card at a merchant where a suspected security breach (read: skimming operation) occurred. Inconvenient, but my savings are worth the inconvenience.
Does your WAP broadcast the SSID? If not there is a known problem with Windows Wireless Zero Configuration where it will not connect at all if the WAP does not broadcast the SSID, even if you manually configure the wireless settings.
I had this problem with the Apple Airport and the only way to fix it was to disable the Wireless Zero Configuration service.
I don't have a problem with this IF Shaw is honoring QoS flagged packets and routing them accordingly. If it's just a bullshit fee where Shaw is purposefully degrading service when it identifies VoIP protocols or ports only to restore service when the fee is paid, then I have a problem. I guess what I am trying to say is I think it's OK if you pay to receive an additional service versus paying a fee to restore service you should be receiving in the first place.
I want to believe Shaw is acting in good faith and offering something to customers of value. Their Internet service has always been very good for me; their mail servers suck, but that's a different story.
As someone pointed out, if Shaw only dealt with the SPAM zombies and compromised Windows boxes on their network there would be plenty more bandwidth to go around for VoIP. I am currently on Telus and you wouldn't believe the number of intrusion attempts I receive from Shaw netblocks.
According to the film critics Ebert and Roeper, it's their opinion that there was a bump in attendance over the last few years for movies like The Lord of Rings and Spider-Man/2 where fans would see the films mutiple times. Let's face it, there were some real block busters that came out in recent years like the LOTR trilogy, Spider-Man 2, Shrek 2, The Passion of the Christ, Finding Nemo, Stealth, The Dukes of Hazzard, etc. The Passion of the Christ alone made something $360 million dollars. The only real block busters this year seem to be Superman Returns and X3, so expect more tearful news from the movies studios around the same time next year.
There are just going to be some years were attendance exceeds normal growth due to the popularity of certain movies.
I have a friend living in Dubai as an ex-pat and during his last visit here at Christmas we got into terrorism and financing. According to what he knows, it's an open secret that the wealthy and well connected in the Gulf States, including the UAE, finance terrorists. Whenever you fill up your tank, at least a portion of that lines the pockets of the rich oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia who then in turn find ways to get the money to terrorists.
Forget paying off your $6000 credit card bill with laundered money, the Gulf is where the real financing is coming from and buying foreign oil is partly responsible for that.
I have a 1.42 G4 Mac Mini with 512 MB and was very impressed with the Intel version. Apple managed to counter every complaint with an improvement -- SPDIF audio in and out, additional USB ports, SATA hard drive, etc. I expect to buy one within the next few months and retire my G4 to the living room for use a VLC media centre.
My only disappointment was the integrated video. I was hoping for something better than the Intel chipset, and it's shared video memory to boot.
of continuous connectivity, not only do others get used to the idea, so do you. I don't do that anymore and I am quite into the habit of turning it off or engaging the silent profile.
Until you fall into the sphere of continuously connected you might now realize just how addicted people get to the convenience. All of my colleagues have Blackberrys and get annoying if you don't answer their bloody emails immediately. It's crazy.
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If you don't like porn or naked art or puppies licking themselves them don't watch or purchase such material. The case in question raised an extremely valid contitutional point that I think you're completely missing. If I can view an adult web site hosted in New York from Utah, whose community standards should apply and why? What is the harm is viewing in an adult web site from the privacy of your home and why should your community get to decide what they will "tolerate" in your own home?
Can you imagine if we applied the Miller test to other constitutional rights like the right to a speedy trial or freedom of religion? What if the community didn't want to "tolerate" the right to an attorney or the right to habeas corpus? You can see were this is going. Why is there a tolerance test for freedom of speech in the first place? We don't need the First Amendment to protect pictures of flowers and puppies, but we do need it to protect those that want to look at nudie pictures or protest against their president.
Freedom speech in the internet age -1
Wouldn't the designers of any system entrusted to protect the lives of others automatically reject DRM as an elemnent of that system if it could prove to be a point of failure?
I am not a system engineer, but I don't see how DRM would ever be considered in a system of this nature. I would expect that a lot of the components used in such systems would either be highly modified/customized off the shelf components or custom made.
Bail Organa & Mon Mothma stirring the seeds of rebellion.
Man, using metaphors is not rocket surgery.
for trademark of the word "superhero" and variations thereof back in 1981. Apparently, there is some controvesy over the joint filing of this shared trademark as trademark law has a "single source" requirement. However,
there is precedent of two companies sharing a trademark, but is supposed to be quite quite rare.
I am not sure how accurate this information as a lot it is from disparate sources, so someone please correct me if I am wrong.
Anyway, I don't see how Marvel/DC can claim a trademark on a word that has been in the popular lexicon for over fifty years.
With 25 or 50 GB capacity it would be nice to copy a collection of standard DVDs to the discs for use when travelling, etc. Imagine being able to keep one disc in a portable DVD player and be able to choose from three, six or as many as ten different DVDs all on one disc. I realize there are technical limitations such as creating a custom DVD menu and the cost of BD media, burners and portable players is going to be prohibitively expensive at first, but will a BD player play a movie from a burned BD-ROM? And I don't mean a HD movie, I am talking about the current DVD standard we have now.
Anyone know or is it even possible to know at this point?
I didn't know this game existed until a friend and I were desperate for a new, two playter game and all the good ones were rented. We rented Fuzion Frenzy and Medal of Honor: Frontline (which we had both played before and loved, but never two player). We popped Fuzion Frenzy in first were hooked in no time. My friend's girlfriend then came over to watch a movie and she asked what the game was we were playing. We asked her to join and we eventually played until the wee hours of the morning. We never did play Medal of Honor or watch a movie.
And I have to agree with Mario Party. I was surprised when a few days later she came over with a copy of Super Mario Party. "Let's try this," she said. Another evening wasted on fine entertainment and she kicked our asses!
Super Mario Kart: Double Dash is another great two plus player game for non-gamers. I have to say, the Gamecube seems to rule when it comes fun, multiplayer games for non-gamers or gamers alike. Wacky Races for the Dreamcast is about close as you're going to get on that platform and just as much fun to play.
My previous girlfriend and I played all the Nancy Drew games to the end (there were three at the time) and then we found the adventure Riddle of the Sphinx. It was fun working together trying to solve the puzzles. All this for a girl that hated video games and would cringe whenever I suggested we play a game.
After finishing Riddle of the Sphinx I took a huuuge leap and installed Zsnes and convinced her to play Zelda: A Link to the Past. She was hooked. Pretty soon she was playing games like Chronotrigger, then Baldur's Gate and eventually Magic: The Gathering. It's a progression.
What were they going to call it? Troff?
The complaint form should include a box that asks, "Are you aware of the V-Chip parental access controls and it's operation?" or something to that effect. If the answer is "no" the complaint should get tossed and if the answer is "yes" then an automated reply should be sent to the effect that the viewer should tailor the V-Chip controls to suit their particular tastes.
No one ever mentions the V-Chip anymore because it's not their own viewing habits that concern them, but their neighbor's.
10 PRINT "SUCKERS!"
20 GOTO 10
That should make things easier...
is send you endless reams of "balance transfer" cheques or convenience cheques. Not only are they a complete rip off to use as interest and endless fees apply the second you use one, but they get mixed in with all the other crap they love to send you in the envelope and you don't realize they're there. You end up throwning them away in the trash without voiding or otherwise defacing them to make them worthless. Any enterprising thief scrounging through your garbage can come across them and use them. This happened to a good friend of mine when she threw them away thinking they were some sort of advertising without realizing they were real cheques. Cheque fraud isn't the easiest thing in the world to do anymore, especially in Canada where no merchants will accept cheques anymore, but it does happen.
Ask them to stop sending them to you and they swear up and down it will happen, but it never does. It's just too lucritive for them to stop sending them to you.
Thanks for the heads up. What utter crap and here I thought the emulation was all bright and shiny.
Thanks.
One of the selling features for me was backwards compatibility. I figured that even though there are only two games out right now that I want, Call of Duty and Gotham Racing, the current list of backwards compatible titles covers pretty much all of my existing Xbox library. There have to be a lot of current Xbox owners chomping at the bit to get the 360 knowing they could ride out a dry spell of new games with existing games.
Just a note for those of you that thought that backwards compatibility wouldn't be a big deal.
Microsoft must be clapping with glee over the delay of the PS3. I don't think it will make much difference though unless they get their shit together and start actually making enough 360s. It's my opinion the shortage situation has really hurt sales of the 360. There was a while there where it seemed supply had picked up as my local Best Buy looked to be getting a few a week. After humming and hawing I decided to get one and I've been trying to find one for about two weeks now. I've just given up for the time being. Maybe it's better to wait as Microsoft is sure to drop the price eventually, perhaps when the PS3 is actually released.
The best way to see a movie is in the theatre. I don't know what theatre you frequent, but even the cheap second run theatre up the street from me offers quality projection, digital sound and sloped, comfortable seating. The newer theatres offer even larger screens and what essentially are food courts with a variety of food. Yes, the food is slightly more expensive (a Burger King Whopper is $3.69, but a bag of large popcorn is ridiculously priced at $4.00. Taco Bell is still the best deal with tacos at $1.29 each and I am talking about food inside the theatre.) and the advertisements at the start of the movie are incredibly annoying.
For me, a movie is a social experience where my friends and I eat somewhere close by before hand, enjoy the movie and then hit a pub for drinks afterward and discuss the movie. It doesn't always happen that way, sometimes we just hit the movie. The problem I have with watching a movie from home is the potentential distractions are greater, especially if friends are over. People mention cell phones ringing during the movies, but I find the problem far worse at home with friends over as they think that if the phone rings we can just pause the movie. And someone is always getting up to go to the bathroom or whatever. If I am in a theatre none of this happens; I am there to watch a movie. The neighbor can't come over, the phone is turned off and if someone leaves for the bathroom the movie continues to play. I just find the immersive experience at the theatre that much more profound then at home. You could watch Mozart's opera, "The Magic Flute" at home on DVD or you could go to the theatre and watch it live (and you score points with your girlfriend to boot). The inconvenience of dealing with the public are worth the experience sometime.
In regards to movie attendance, we just came off of two years of staggering growth due to some of most attended movies ever. I don't think the mandarins at MPAA realize that you aren't going to see attendance like 2003 or 2004 with a string of hits like Shrek 2, Spider-Man 2 and The Passion of the Christ in the same year every year. Incredibly, the Passion of the Christ, which was only third in box office receipts, took in $370 million domestically while Star Wars III, the top movie for 2005, took in slightly more at $380. What can you do when you have more popular movies in one year and not the next? It's just absolute greed and arrogance to think that just because you make a movie it should automatically make you rich.
Anyway, there are still good movies to watch and good theatres to see them in and as long as that's the case Hollywood will have nothing to worry about.
When I was called the Royal Bank was obviously as positive as possible about the potential security threat, but they called me none the less. It wasn't like there was this huge mystery when my card wouldn't work, they explained what happned and why my account was frozen.
As someone pointed out, freezing the account of the Texas couple due to concerns about terrorist financing failed because they were alerted to the problem. It would make a lot more sense if the bank accepted the payment, processed their account and then passed the information to DHS for them to monitor rather than stumbling around in some keystone cops attempt at thwarting terrorist financing.
I thought people would see Stealth and Dukes of Hazzard in the list and realize I was kidding. I guess it really was a Stealth joke.
Debit cards are extremely popular Canada. In fact, I believe we have the highest per capita use of debit cards anywhere in the world (Australia is apparently not far behind). The system even has its own name, Interac, and is so ubiquitous that I never carry cash because every merchant, and do I mean every merchant, is supplied with Interac. It's been this way for so long (Interac really took off around 1994 or so) that no one accepts cheques and hardly anyone carries cash.
Therein lies the problem. If I pop in to a local convenience store 99 times out of 100 they'll have Interac, but you don't really know how trustworthy they are. In the last few years thieves have caught on that no one really carries cash and have come up with imaginitve ways of skimming your card and stealing your PIN. There is a sense of relative safety and attractiveness in skimming debit cards instead of credit cards as they can then take a cloned card and PIN directly to a bank machine and receive cash. No fence, no signatures, no ID requirements, etc. The cost of equipment is relatively low: magnetic card reader/writer and a high quality digital video camera, the penalties almost laughable if you manage to get caught and the potential gain is just about limitless.
I read somehwere, and I am too lazy to Google it, that debit card fraud took in $44 million in 2003 from around 27,000 people. That's approximately $1600 per person. I can't afford to lose that much and the banks don't seem to care. If you kick up a fuss and manage to get the media's attention then they'll do something about it and reimburse you, but count yourself lucky. At an estimated cost of $500 million to switch Interac to something like the chip and PIN system in the UK they can afford to lose a few customers here and there.
I do technical support for point of sale systems and during our end of year discussions in the MIS department I learned that debit card use fell in terms of dollars spent for the first time in twelve years. Credit card use increased to make up the difference. I can only conclude that card skimming has become so prevalent, or at least the public perception has, that it has already seriously eroded confidence in the Interac system. I was really shocked to learn that. It's also possible that people didn't have as much money as in years past and moved to credit cards, but countering a twelve year trend seems too co-incidental.
On the positive side, the Royal Bank does seem to be at least a little proactive in that they do monitor your account for unusually large cash withdrawals and have a system of daily transaction limits. I have been called twice by their security department in that last few years and told to report to the closest branch and have my card replaced. I was told simply that I used my card at a merchant where a suspected security breach (read: skimming operation) occurred. Inconvenient, but my savings are worth the inconvenience.
Does your WAP broadcast the SSID? If not there is a known problem with Windows Wireless Zero Configuration where it will not connect at all if the WAP does not broadcast the SSID, even if you manually configure the wireless settings.
I had this problem with the Apple Airport and the only way to fix it was to disable the Wireless Zero Configuration service.
I don't have a problem with this IF Shaw is honoring QoS flagged packets and routing them accordingly. If it's just a bullshit fee where Shaw is purposefully degrading service when it identifies VoIP protocols or ports only to restore service when the fee is paid, then I have a problem. I guess what I am trying to say is I think it's OK if you pay to receive an additional service versus paying a fee to restore service you should be receiving in the first place.
I want to believe Shaw is acting in good faith and offering something to customers of value. Their Internet service has always been very good for me; their mail servers suck, but that's a different story.
As someone pointed out, if Shaw only dealt with the SPAM zombies and compromised Windows boxes on their network there would be plenty more bandwidth to go around for VoIP. I am currently on Telus and you wouldn't believe the number of intrusion attempts I receive from Shaw netblocks.
It was a joke. I guess nobody got it.
According to the film critics Ebert and Roeper, it's their opinion that there was a bump in attendance over the last few years for movies like The Lord of Rings and Spider-Man/2 where fans would see the films mutiple times. Let's face it, there were some real block busters that came out in recent years like the LOTR trilogy, Spider-Man 2, Shrek 2, The Passion of the Christ, Finding Nemo, Stealth, The Dukes of Hazzard, etc. The Passion of the Christ alone made something $360 million dollars. The only real block busters this year seem to be Superman Returns and X3, so expect more tearful news from the movies studios around the same time next year.
There are just going to be some years were attendance exceeds normal growth due to the popularity of certain movies.
I have a friend living in Dubai as an ex-pat and during his last visit here at Christmas we got into terrorism and financing. According to what he knows, it's an open secret that the wealthy and well connected in the Gulf States, including the UAE, finance terrorists. Whenever you fill up your tank, at least a portion of that lines the pockets of the rich oil producing countries like Saudi Arabia who then in turn find ways to get the money to terrorists.
Forget paying off your $6000 credit card bill with laundered money, the Gulf is where the real financing is coming from and buying foreign oil is partly responsible for that.
I have a 1.42 G4 Mac Mini with 512 MB and was very impressed with the Intel version. Apple managed to counter every complaint with an improvement -- SPDIF audio in and out, additional USB ports, SATA hard drive, etc. I expect to buy one within the next few months and retire my G4 to the living room for use a VLC media centre.
My only disappointment was the integrated video. I was hoping for something better than the Intel chipset, and it's shared video memory to boot.
Someone convince me I am wrong...
of continuous connectivity, not only do others get used to the idea, so do you. I don't do that anymore and I am quite into the habit of turning it off or engaging the silent profile.
Until you fall into the sphere of continuously connected you might now realize just how addicted people get to the convenience. All of my colleagues have Blackberrys and get annoying if you don't answer their bloody emails immediately. It's crazy.