Obviously DVDs look good... They don't look ANYWHERE near as good as highdef, but they look "good".
DVDs look good, upconverted DVDs look better. As good as HD? No, but until the HD format mess gets sorted I'm very happy with my upconverting player. Upconverting isn't just ramping up the resolution, but also a bunch of processing tricks to improve how it looks.
They're still not cheap, and a $500 HDDVD player can do the job just fine.
My Oppo cost me about £160. Not too bad. Sure I could get a budget DVD for £35, but I could spend a lot more on one. Does the $500 HDDVD player upconvert old DVDs and improve their look?
As opposed to HD-DVD and Blu-ray, where purchasing either player will make your current DVD collection spontaneously explode.
It may make my new collection worthless though if I back the wrong one. With a 26" HDTV my DVDs look great upconverted, and I'm happy to keep buying new ones. For me it really has been a viable alternative to one of these new technologies, and I think people should consider it.
May not be an option for everyone, but worth mentioning as an option rather than dismissing it as "Banal".
I find the idea of some big conspiracy doing this so they can arrest people they want rather unlikely. It seems more like the record companies are rich enough to get the government to do what they want in this instance, while being afraid of technological change that threatens their profits. This leads to them making dumb decisions, and getting the government to do it as well.
Not that that is much consolation for someone on the receiving end.
A consumer buys a record on iTunes for the flat $10 price. Apple takes its cut (30% or $3.00) but gives the rest to the record company. The record company takes out costs and then gives the artist a small percentage. For our example, let's say 10% or $0.70 goes to the artist.
The record company takes a chunk for itself, then a there is a chunk of the artist. Out of the artists piece the record company take the costs, as they came in the form of a loan to the artist. Successful artists like Weird Al can sell enough to payback the loan, and then see some actual royalties.
A small amount also goes to the song writer(s) which helps those who write their own material.
If the consumer had bought a $10.00 CD instead, the record company would still take the same of costs in terms of percentage but Apple would not have taken the first piece out. The artist would have gotten $1.00 in royalties.
The $10 CD would have to be bought from someone, either an online store like Amazon or a bricks and mortar store. They will take a cut, jus tlike Apple do, and it would probably be more. (A quick google gave me about 40% for the retailer, with the distributer taking a few percent on top of that).
The reason artists get screwed by downloads is simply bad contracts. Every time the technology moves on (records, tapes, cds) the record labels have managed to squeeze the artists and reduce their share.
I think it's a reaction to the fact that web 2.0 is a meaningless term. Is it the (non-existent) symantec web? AJAX? Blogs? Uploading photos? Web services? RSS? Wikis?
It just seems to be a new buzzword for a bunch of technologies that actually aren't even that new themselves, and have already been or are being over-hyped.
Yes, there is a trend to sites that are more interactive, but sites don't interact with each other much so its really just people sharing info on the single sites.
I would bet though, the vast majority of users aren't using the internet any differently. I coded an RSS feed aggregator for out corporate internet homepage recently and almost nobody knew what RSS was. People using these new sharing technologies are ironically becoming very insular, blogs aren't changing the world, most people don't know what one is. They just seem important to the people involved.
I think these things will become important eventually, but the whole Web 2.0 thing, and all the technologies that make it up, are neither new nor dramatically changing the Internet for most people. And many of the people advocating them are just annoying.
Just look at all the free mods for popular games and you will see plenty of people are prepared to give free content, including modeling, skinning and animation.
The problem is, I think, people who do content want to see it in the game. You can get them to do it for a mod for an existing and popular game, but its going to be hard to get anyone to add content to you half complete, always being changed open source engine.
An engine without content though isn't going to interest anyone, so it's something of a catch-22.
Well, remember Firefox, "We're taking back the web"? That's exactly what we're doing here.
I like Firefox and all, but I really don't see the connection between having a choice over your web browser and launching DoS attacks on possible spammers.
If you disagree with fighting fire with fire, I suggest you also criticize any and all law enforcement activities. They're simply state-sponsored vigilantes.
Once they are state sponsored, they rather stop being vigilantes. They also (hopefully) are held accountable, have their actions limited and open to scrutiny and oversight.
Even by Slashdot standards that is a terrible straw man.
I use an extension called Mrtech Install that lets you overide other extensions version limits. Very handy as spellbound doesn't work otherwitse on the newer point releases.
1) The governments job is supposed to be to protect your rights as well as you life. If its OK to give up privacy for safety better have everyone finger printed, put their DNA on file, put RFID tags under their skin and let the police and security services listen in on any phone call without a warrant. Hey, lets let make all locks openable by a master key, and say whenever a cop or spook wants to look in someone's house they can just walk in. I'm sure they will stop more crime.
If people's lives aren't worth freedom, just why did our forefathers fight for it?
2) Historically government agencies have abused their powers. Look at the US security services spying on the civil rights movement, or the British on CND. With unlimited access to people's communications it's just going to get worse.
3) You can't stop it anyway. If someone is really sending evil terrorist messages you can encrypt them and hide them in pictures, music, movies just about any file complex enough. As bandwidth goes up and people can share them more easily that alone will create a headache. Check every picture being sent in case there is something hidden in it would be a mammoth task.
I know, lets ban sending pictures on the internet because they might be used by the scary bad men.
Of course, the most efficient and uncrackable way is simply to just not say anything explicitly and use terms you agree on before hand. It's a system no amount of scanning mails will help you crack and draws less suspicion.
If you have windows update on automatic it downloads the security fixes for IE in the background, although you may need to reboot afterwards, it is simple. I'm glad FireFox is getting better at updates since I use it all the time for browsing and re-downloading the whole browser for a security patch was a pain.
Its open source, if you don't like the way Linux goes fork it.
Right now I think Linux could use some standards, not that every distro will follow it, but if you know any program that says it follows the standard runs (easily) on any distro that follows it.
Do any lone developers really alter the direction of Linux these days? And how would standards actually stop them? If we are talking about things like stanard libraries or interfaces, I don't think the market or business models are going to have much impact.
Like the UN and how famously well that group agrees and gets things done efficiently? To whom, exactly, is a theoretical "pan-national" body accountable?
The UN have lots of agencies like the WHO and UNICEF that get things done just fine. It isn't just the security council and general assembly, although those agencies are accountable to them.
You're right. We have acted arrogantly, as if we own the world. Its an arrogance that comes in part from a history of looking back on the consequences of our past arrogance and being satisfied with the results.
Thats just scary. Satisfied with Vietnam and Korea? Satisfied with Iran? (if America and Britain hadn't installed the Shah over the more democratic government there would have been no Islamic revolution). How about backing brutal regimes like Pinochet or these days Uzbekistan? Hey they may be brutal dictatorships that kill there own people but at least that stops them being socialist/Islamic.
Deciding to join WWII (even if it was late and only after being attacked) only buys so much gratitude. Everyone is very grateful but it was 60 years and you can't expect people to just keep on being grateful and ignoring what happened afterward. America has proved it is happy to screw over other countries when it suits is purpose, and its refusal to join international efforts like Kyoto treaty or the International Criminal Court make people wary.
Not that the the Europeans countries were any better back when they were the main powers, worse probably because they had empires, but I don't think many modern Europeans would be 'satisfied' with, say, the way Africa was carved up.
Nor do I think America arrogance would be "cured" by anything other than when another country (or block) overtakes them economically and maybe militarily. It would be stupid of European politicians to do something to disadvantage Europe just to stick it to the Americans, but its equally stupid for American politicians to unnecessarily antagonise Europeans.
In the case of the Internet, is it possible for other countries to control copies of the roots such that the US could not turn them off, but that wouldn't impact people in the US, or the US control of their own copies. Seems there is room for reasonable compromise here but both sides are being arrogant.
If you choose not to use DRM that's your choice, but you can't blame the BBC for excluding you when you choose to exclude your self. You are choosing to be excluded because you choose to exclusively use free software and won't even use anything with DRM.
You may as well complaining you are being excluded because you won't buy a PAL TV and the BBC broadcast in PAL.
If they wanted software you had to pay for that would be excluding you, but if its free to use, and you won't use it on and obscure point of principle (and in the real world thats what demanding all non-proprietary non DRM is) you can't blame anyone else.
In 1815 most countries didn't recognise that slavery was wrong. So if an 1815 Google engaged in the slave trade were they doing the right thing since "most" people didn't recognise slavery as evil?
That has to be one of the most bizarre comparisons I've ever seen, even for Slashdot. Do you think not recognising Taiwan as a country is on a par with slave trading? Given that even the Taiwanese government hasn't declared it an independent country? Given it isn't clear the people of Taiwan want to be an independent country? Given Google isn't stopping them being one?
How does recognising a sovereign state compare to recognising human rights?
Now if Taiwan had a referendum, and based on that its government declared independence, and Google kept referring to it as a province of China I would think it bad although it still wouldn't be close to your crazy assed analogy as Google wouldn't be actually repressing Taiwan itself. I believe people have the right to self determination, but until its established the Taiwanese want self-determination I'm failing to see what is wrong with not recognising a place as a country when it hasn't even claimed it is one.
Taiwan still claims it is part of the Republic of China (just not the People's Republic of China). If you want to argue part of the Republic of China isn't a providence of China go ahead.
Most countries don't recognise Taiwan as a country. So isn't Google being more accurate this way? Its certainly contested, so whatever they put will be "wrong" to someone.
If this "new" stuff has each keypress going to the server, many users are going to toss it out the window as soon as the echo gets behind their typing every time somebody sends a bitmap to the printer.
Why on earth would it work like that? Web apps and java apps in browsers don't work like that. We aren't talking a terminal here.
Whoah there. I can see some of your points about having reservations about a company hosting your data, but that is a huge step to "completely evil".
I would see any company using GMail, or any web mail, but I'm happy to use it myself. Yes my mails go through Google, but before then they went through my ISP so to me its just a different company.
You are right, it isn't an open source platform (even if it runs on Linux underneath) and if that bothers you stay away. I can't think of any reason why Google would want to distribute all their code to people, they make money from the ads when people visit their site. That doesn't strike me as "completely evil" though.
I'm not sure how the (IMHO very silly idea of) "click to download source" would help at all. The sort of people who don't care about Google having their info would never us it. Even if you did use it to set up some rival, you can't afford the hardware to match Google. Maybe you could do a GMail server for you and some friends, but you won't be able to offer any viable alternative to all the Google services.
GCC and Evolution are ATTEMPTS to explain what appears to be going on, they aren't SCIENCE!
They are if they make predictions you can test, and are falsifiable. Its pretty easy to test evolution with say bacteria and anti-biotic.
You don't need a whole nother planet to test these things you know, (although it helps, and thats what those simulations are for) when someone can make predictions you can test those.
The biggest champions of these movements have turned it into a religion...
Its certainly true that some people with certain agendas have jumped on board, that doesn't nullify the work done by the people actually doing science.
it's an anti-Christian religion, but religion none-the-less.
How is climate change anti-Christian? Even with evolution, apart from a few fundies in the US most Christians are happy with evolution.
Evolution is the scientific community's best attempt to explain species, and has some big gaps that they are working on.
I keep hearing this, but nobody seems able to actually point out what these supposed gaps are.
Some people believe that evolution fails to explain certain complexity and indicates an intelligent design. Who cares... apparently you, because ALL science will now stop, because students are exposed to people that disagree...
Well some people care that groups who state they have a wider agenda are trying to push religion into classrooms by getting something that isn't science taught in science classes.
Consoles may have a few RTS games, but really they have nothing on the PC in that genre, and not much on it in the FPS one either.
When it comes to masive multiplayer online games they are even further behind. I've not seen any accurate flight sims on consoles either, or classic adventure games, although there may be a couple around.
I have a good games PC and an XBox. Right now the consoles don't offer much in some genres, usually ones that don't play well on them. They may have a token offering or two, but they really don't give the choice.
Even among peaceful Muslims, there is this duty and form of honor to never turn against another muslim regardless of thier evil deads. It's like turning against a brother or syster. All Muslims see eachother as a family unit. Even though they see Al Quaeda as radical, they will never turn against them as it would be a great dishonor in their own culture.
You are kidding me. Have you even taken a cursory look at the history of Islam? (hint rival faction members have killed each other a lot, just like other major religions) Do you know they right now in Iraq Muslims are killing each other? Who do you think the people in places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who keep fighting with Al Quaeda people are if not Muslims?
There isn't anything magic about Muslims that means they behave any better to each other than any other religion. There isn't one universal Muslim culture either.
Right now a lot of Muslims around the world don't like the west, often don't like their own governments and really don't like the US and certainly feel some sympathy for those that oppose them. They are the people that need to be won over to starve the extremists of support.
but Al Quaeda, no. Not unless you submit to the Korean and it's teaching. There is no middle compromise. Don't even try and argue this fact.
The point isn't to make peace with them, but remove their support and potential recruits.
Slashdot Mirror
Obviously DVDs look good... They don't look ANYWHERE near as good as highdef, but they look "good".
DVDs look good, upconverted DVDs look better. As good as HD? No, but until the HD format mess gets sorted I'm very happy with my upconverting player. Upconverting isn't just ramping up the resolution, but also a bunch of processing tricks to improve how it looks.
They're still not cheap, and a $500 HDDVD player can do the job just fine.
My Oppo cost me about £160. Not too bad. Sure I could get a budget DVD for £35, but I could spend a lot more on one. Does the $500 HDDVD player upconvert old DVDs and improve their look?
As opposed to HD-DVD and Blu-ray, where purchasing either player will make your current DVD collection spontaneously explode.
It may make my new collection worthless though if I back the wrong one. With a 26" HDTV my DVDs look great upconverted, and I'm happy to keep buying new ones. For me it really has been a viable alternative to one of these new technologies, and I think people should consider it.
May not be an option for everyone, but worth mentioning as an option rather than dismissing it as "Banal".
I find the idea of some big conspiracy doing this so they can arrest people they want rather unlikely. It seems more like the record companies are rich enough to get the government to do what they want in this instance, while being afraid of technological change that threatens their profits. This leads to them making dumb decisions, and getting the government to do it as well.
Not that that is much consolation for someone on the receiving end.
A consumer buys a record on iTunes for the flat $10 price. Apple takes its cut (30% or $3.00) but gives the rest to the record company. The record company takes out costs and then gives the artist a small percentage. For our example, let's say 10% or $0.70 goes to the artist.
The record company takes a chunk for itself, then a there is a chunk of the artist. Out of the artists piece the record company take the costs, as they came in the form of a loan to the artist. Successful artists like Weird Al can sell enough to payback the loan, and then see some actual royalties.
A small amount also goes to the song writer(s) which helps those who write their own material.
If the consumer had bought a $10.00 CD instead, the record company would still take the same of costs in terms of percentage but Apple would not have taken the first piece out. The artist would have gotten $1.00 in royalties.
The $10 CD would have to be bought from someone, either an online store like Amazon or a bricks and mortar store. They will take a cut, jus tlike Apple do, and it would probably be more. (A quick google gave me about 40% for the retailer, with the distributer taking a few percent on top of that).
The reason artists get screwed by downloads is simply bad contracts. Every time the technology moves on (records, tapes, cds) the record labels have managed to squeeze the artists and reduce their share.
I think it's a reaction to the fact that web 2.0 is a meaningless term. Is it the (non-existent) symantec web? AJAX? Blogs? Uploading photos? Web services? RSS? Wikis?
It just seems to be a new buzzword for a bunch of technologies that actually aren't even that new themselves, and have already been or are being over-hyped.
Yes, there is a trend to sites that are more interactive, but sites don't interact with each other much so its really just people sharing info on the single sites.
I would bet though, the vast majority of users aren't using the internet any differently. I coded an RSS feed aggregator for out corporate internet homepage recently and almost nobody knew what RSS was. People using these new sharing technologies are ironically becoming very insular, blogs aren't changing the world, most people don't know what one is. They just seem important to the people involved.
I think these things will become important eventually, but the whole Web 2.0 thing, and all the technologies that make it up, are neither new nor dramatically changing the Internet for most people. And many of the people advocating them are just annoying.
Just look at all the free mods for popular games and you will see plenty of people are prepared to give free content, including modeling, skinning and animation.
The problem is, I think, people who do content want to see it in the game. You can get them to do it for a mod for an existing and popular game, but its going to be hard to get anyone to add content to you half complete, always being changed open source engine.
An engine without content though isn't going to interest anyone, so it's something of a catch-22.
Well, remember Firefox, "We're taking back the web"? That's exactly what we're doing here.
I like Firefox and all, but I really don't see the connection between having a choice over your web browser and launching DoS attacks on possible spammers.
If you disagree with fighting fire with fire, I suggest you also criticize any and all law enforcement activities. They're simply state-sponsored vigilantes.
Once they are state sponsored, they rather stop being vigilantes. They also (hopefully) are held accountable, have their actions limited and open to scrutiny and oversight.
Even by Slashdot standards that is a terrible straw man.
In American English it's Math, but in British English (as used by the BBC) it's Maths.
I use an extension called Mrtech Install that lets you overide other extensions version limits. Very handy as spellbound doesn't work otherwitse on the newer point releases.
Lets see
1) The governments job is supposed to be to protect your rights as well as you life. If its OK to give up privacy for safety better have everyone finger printed, put their DNA on file, put RFID tags under their skin and let the police and security services listen in on any phone call without a warrant. Hey, lets let make all locks openable by a master key, and say whenever a cop or spook wants to look in someone's house they can just walk in. I'm sure they will stop more crime.
If people's lives aren't worth freedom, just why did our forefathers fight for it?
2) Historically government agencies have abused their powers. Look at the US security services spying on the civil rights movement, or the British on CND. With unlimited access to people's communications it's just going to get worse.
3) You can't stop it anyway. If someone is really sending evil terrorist messages you can encrypt them and hide them in pictures, music, movies just about any file complex enough. As bandwidth goes up and people can share them more easily that alone will create a headache. Check every picture being sent in case there is something hidden in it would be a mammoth task.
I know, lets ban sending pictures on the internet because they might be used by the scary bad men.
Of course, the most efficient and uncrackable way is simply to just not say anything explicitly and use terms you agree on before hand. It's a system no amount of scanning mails will help you crack and draws less suspicion.
If you have windows update on automatic it downloads the security fixes for IE in the background, although you may need to reboot afterwards, it is simple. I'm glad FireFox is getting better at updates since I use it all the time for browsing and re-downloading the whole browser for a security patch was a pain.
Its open source, if you don't like the way Linux goes fork it.
Right now I think Linux could use some standards, not that every distro will follow it, but if you know any program that says it follows the standard runs (easily) on any distro that follows it.
Do any lone developers really alter the direction of Linux these days? And how would standards actually stop them? If we are talking about things like stanard libraries or interfaces, I don't think the market or business models are going to have much impact.
No country (especially corrupt totalitarian states) has a right to have a say in the internet is run. I don't care if they're in the UN club or not.
If no country should, why the US? That's still a country. If you rule out a UN body as well, what does that leave?
Like the UN and how famously well that group agrees and gets things done efficiently? To whom, exactly, is a theoretical "pan-national" body accountable?
The UN have lots of agencies like the WHO and UNICEF that get things done just fine. It isn't just the security council and general assembly, although those agencies are accountable to them.
You're right. We have acted arrogantly, as if we own the world. Its an arrogance that comes in part from a history of looking back on the consequences of our past arrogance and being satisfied with the results.
Thats just scary. Satisfied with Vietnam and Korea? Satisfied with Iran? (if America and Britain hadn't installed the Shah over the more democratic government there would have been no Islamic revolution). How about backing brutal regimes like Pinochet or these days Uzbekistan? Hey they may be brutal dictatorships that kill there own people but at least that stops them being socialist/Islamic.
Deciding to join WWII (even if it was late and only after being attacked) only buys so much gratitude. Everyone is very grateful but it was 60 years and you can't expect people to just keep on being grateful and ignoring what happened afterward. America has proved it is happy to screw over other countries when it suits is purpose, and its refusal to join international efforts like Kyoto treaty or the International Criminal Court make people wary.
Not that the the Europeans countries were any better back when they were the main powers, worse probably because they had empires, but I don't think many modern Europeans would be 'satisfied' with, say, the way Africa was carved up.
Nor do I think America arrogance would be "cured" by anything other than when another country (or block) overtakes them economically and maybe militarily. It would be stupid of European politicians to do something to disadvantage Europe just to stick it to the Americans, but its equally stupid for American politicians to unnecessarily antagonise Europeans.
In the case of the Internet, is it possible for other countries to control copies of the roots such that the US could not turn them off, but that wouldn't impact people in the US, or the US control of their own copies. Seems there is room for reasonable compromise here but both sides are being arrogant.
Is there a cross platform video codec with DRM that runs on multiple players they could use?
Without the DRM they probably won't be able to do this.
If you choose not to use DRM that's your choice, but you can't blame the BBC for excluding you when you choose to exclude your self. You are choosing to be excluded because you choose to exclusively use free software and won't even use anything with DRM.
You may as well complaining you are being excluded because you won't buy a PAL TV and the BBC broadcast in PAL.
If they wanted software you had to pay for that would be excluding you, but if its free to use, and you won't use it on and obscure point of principle (and in the real world thats what demanding all non-proprietary non DRM is) you can't blame anyone else.
In 1815 most countries didn't recognise that slavery was wrong. So if an 1815 Google engaged in the slave trade were they doing the right thing since "most" people didn't recognise slavery as evil?
That has to be one of the most bizarre comparisons I've ever seen, even for Slashdot. Do you think not recognising Taiwan as a country is on a par with slave trading? Given that even the Taiwanese government hasn't declared it an independent country? Given it isn't clear the people of Taiwan want to be an independent country? Given Google isn't stopping them being one?
How does recognising a sovereign state compare to recognising human rights?
Now if Taiwan had a referendum, and based on that its government declared independence, and Google kept referring to it as a province of China I would think it bad although it still wouldn't be close to your crazy assed analogy as Google wouldn't be actually repressing Taiwan itself. I believe people have the right to self determination, but until its established the Taiwanese want self-determination I'm failing to see what is wrong with not recognising a place as a country when it hasn't even claimed it is one.
Taiwan still claims it is part of the Republic of China (just not the People's Republic of China). If you want to argue part of the Republic of China isn't a providence of China go ahead.
Most countries don't recognise Taiwan as a country. So isn't Google being more accurate this way? Its certainly contested, so whatever they put will be "wrong" to someone.
If this "new" stuff has each keypress going to the server, many users are going to toss it out the window as soon as the echo gets behind their typing every time somebody sends a bitmap to the printer.
Why on earth would it work like that? Web apps and java apps in browsers don't work like that. We aren't talking a terminal here.
Google is completely evil.
Whoah there. I can see some of your points about having reservations about a company hosting your data, but that is a huge step to "completely evil". I would see any company using GMail, or any web mail, but I'm happy to use it myself. Yes my mails go through Google, but before then they went through my ISP so to me its just a different company. You are right, it isn't an open source platform (even if it runs on Linux underneath) and if that bothers you stay away. I can't think of any reason why Google would want to distribute all their code to people, they make money from the ads when people visit their site. That doesn't strike me as "completely evil" though. I'm not sure how the (IMHO very silly idea of) "click to download source" would help at all. The sort of people who don't care about Google having their info would never us it. Even if you did use it to set up some rival, you can't afford the hardware to match Google. Maybe you could do a GMail server for you and some friends, but you won't be able to offer any viable alternative to all the Google services.GCC and Evolution are ATTEMPTS to explain what appears to be going on, they aren't SCIENCE!
They are if they make predictions you can test, and are falsifiable. Its pretty easy to test evolution with say bacteria and anti-biotic.
You don't need a whole nother planet to test these things you know, (although it helps, and thats what those simulations are for) when someone can make predictions you can test those.
The biggest champions of these movements have turned it into a religion...
Its certainly true that some people with certain agendas have jumped on board, that doesn't nullify the work done by the people actually doing science.
it's an anti-Christian religion, but religion none-the-less.
How is climate change anti-Christian? Even with evolution, apart from a few fundies in the US most Christians are happy with evolution.
Evolution is the scientific community's best attempt to explain species, and has some big gaps that they are working on.
I keep hearing this, but nobody seems able to actually point out what these supposed gaps are.
Some people believe that evolution fails to explain certain complexity and indicates an intelligent design. Who cares... apparently you, because ALL science will now stop, because students are exposed to people that disagree...
Well some people care that groups who state they have a wider agenda are trying to push religion into classrooms by getting something that isn't science taught in science classes.
More enterprise users would move away from Office if it sticks to proprietary patented stuff in the new version.
Why? they have been happy with it up until now, why would the proprietary stuff in this version make people switch when they never minded before?
Consoles may have a few RTS games, but really they have nothing on the PC in that genre, and not much on it in the FPS one either.
When it comes to masive multiplayer online games they are even further behind. I've not seen any accurate flight sims on consoles either, or classic adventure games, although there may be a couple around.
I have a good games PC and an XBox. Right now the consoles don't offer much in some genres, usually ones that don't play well on them. They may have a token offering or two, but they really don't give the choice.
Way to generalise there. Plenty of Muslims live in democratic countries, and support democracy and human rights.
Even among peaceful Muslims, there is this duty and form of honor to never turn against another muslim regardless of thier evil deads. It's like turning against a brother or syster. All Muslims see eachother as a family unit. Even though they see Al Quaeda as radical, they will never turn against them as it would be a great dishonor in their own culture.
You are kidding me. Have you even taken a cursory look at the history of Islam? (hint rival faction members have killed each other a lot, just like other major religions) Do you know they right now in Iraq Muslims are killing each other? Who do you think the people in places like Saudi Arabia and Pakistan who keep fighting with Al Quaeda people are if not Muslims? There isn't anything magic about Muslims that means they behave any better to each other than any other religion. There isn't one universal Muslim culture either. Right now a lot of Muslims around the world don't like the west, often don't like their own governments and really don't like the US and certainly feel some sympathy for those that oppose them. They are the people that need to be won over to starve the extremists of support.but Al Quaeda, no. Not unless you submit to the Korean and it's teaching. There is no middle compromise. Don't even try and argue this fact.
The point isn't to make peace with them, but remove their support and potential recruits.