Kinda makes you wonder why we bothered with the whole Cold War thing, doesn't it? We should have just sued them for copyright infringement and got a lien on the whole country. In Soviet Russia all their bases are belong to us, or whatever. Why conquer when you can simply write a check?
That's not all that far from what actually happened. The west essentially ran the soviet economy into the ground as it could not keep pace with the arms race. Capitalism has more money to spend on weapons, and spending that money on weapons puts it back into circulation.
His first two or three were good thrillers, I kept reading from momentum, but they got more and more full of turgid prose, jingoism, silly factual errors, and Tom Ryan became just a mouthpiece for Clancy's extreme right-wing politics.
I absolutely agree. I used to like Clancy's books; they are very detailed, accurate and plausible. On a technical level they were really interesting as they tended to explain a lot as they went on.
However, then came "The Bear and the Dragon", which starts off on the most horrendous and completely inaccurate character assassination of the Chinese race. It was borderline offensive as he set up the villain for the piece. After that I completely lost interest in the series.
If the BBC is using Skype - and there seems to be some doubt about this - then someone should be asking serious questions about their charter. The BBC is forbidden from advertising and is directly funded by a license fee.
Nonsense! That's not advertising. Are you suggesting that in the BBC staff canteen the Nescafe has the name blacked out? Using a product and advertising it are entirely different things.
Quick, grab your pitchforks, we're marching on Google. The BBC uses Google Earth imagery regularly, and yes, it says Google Earth in the image at all times.
They've also used RealPlayer but we we are putting together a lynching mob, count me in on that one.
Shhhhh!! The public are not meant to know that their every move is logged. It's only now and then that they accidentally let this method be known. The last instance I remember was the Lord Hamilton sexual assault case, where they actually used it to prove their innocence.
In addition to the privacy implications, I'm sure this is kept quiet as it would cease to be useful and potentially bad should criminals realize a mobile left at home can be an alibi.
I want a cwtext message interface for my cell phone, at least for sending. Has anyone heard of a phone that does that?
I think there is one. There was press coverage sometime in the last year or so about morse vs sms for sending text messages after a couple of talk show hosts ran contests. It was covered on slashdot and IIRC in the comments you'll find a link to some software that does it.
Suddenly I'm disrespecting the Holocaust victims because... I support Israel.
You said "they're Jews, which means that everyone wants them to die", referencing a real anti-Semitic history that the world has had. You essentially claimed that anyone who had any issue with Israel is essentially a Nazi and had that opinion on whatever topic because of their core beliefs.
Israel is always singled out for no logical reason. It's always the exception, always criticized for anything it does or doesn't do, and people will probably never shut up about Israel's history
No logical reason? How about their actions? Shut up about history? You referenced Pearl Harbour yourself. History is a part of things and people do bear grudges. When you kill a lot of civilians, you make a lot of enemies. Iraq is a case-in-point on this topic as are Israel and most of it's neighbours.
The problem is two-fold. There are those who do not believe Israel has a right to exist and they will always oppose it. These people are in the minority. I would expect that most folk are in the "well, they are there now, deal with it" camp. The minority I mentioned will always despise Israel, no matter what they do.
In the other camp are those who oppose violence and the middle-east is rife with it. This violence been going on tit-for-tat for decades, with each side blaming the other for all it's woes. All sides have their faults, but if you are to look at it objectively, Israel probably comes worse off. They have annexed territory and treat the inhabitants as sub-human. They tend to assassinate (sorry, "targeted kill") those that disagree with them. Bombing an opposing political party is simply not acceptable. The problem is that when it comes to attributing blame of what's going on over there generally is easy when it's Israel as it's their government. The Arabs have an escape clause in that it's an indirect link between those who commit terrorist acts almost daily, vs those in government. Israel often oversteps the line in retaliation for these actions. This is not only counter-productive in that it encourages more hatred and attacks, but to those of us on the outside it is simply something that any country should not do. For all the criticism on the recent US/Iraq conflict, the Americans had much debate on the topic before deploying arms. Israel on the other hand is just plain aggressive.
It's obviously anti-semitism.
Well, I can hope you can see from the above why I dislike many aspects of Israel's past and current behaviour. It's the country I have an issue with, not the religion. I find your suggestion that I am anti-Semitic as deeply insulting hence my (possibly too) angry response.
I equally dislike the way that many Muslim clerics use this conflict to claim it is an assault on their religion whenever anyone supports Israel. That is equally bullshit and I'm sure you'll agree that it's distasteful at the very least to promote violence on religions grounds. It works both ways and I hope you understand why I was made angry by what you said. The war is not your fault personally but you are stoking the flames when you make it a religious issue. Fundamentally it's a territory issue being warped into a holy war. That's a dangerous combination.
I would love to see the creation of a drive that can accept ECC-capable memory (perhaps 8 slots that can handle up to a 4GB stick each), utilizes the SATA-2 (3.0Gb/s) interface, and has a series of rechargeable batteries as a backup when power is completely out.
Em, I think you can already get them.. Why bother with SATA-2 etc when you can hook directly onto the PCI or PCIe bus?
Nah, the internal memory-management load balances the writing across the whole flash memory range. In your example you would just write to 100000 different bytes. Also, a journalling file system is different as well.
The actual attack would have followed within days. Early reports allege the involvement of the Pakistan-based group Lashkar-e-Taiba, or LeT.
There was never any imminent danger. Those in question did not even have passports, so they could not board planes. Are you suggesting that the UK government does not have the ability to check with the UK passport agency on the status of a UK citizens passport?
A police source told the BBC the case contained "everything you would need to make an improvised device".
Well count me in on that one as well. I have all the components of a "bomb kit" here as well. It's called a "toolbox" and a box of electrical odds-and-ends. "everything you would need to make an improvised device". Lets see, IIRC there is an old 27MHz RC controller, an old flashgun and numerous other relays and such like. You'd better arrest me, I've got everything required right here in one case. Now, not I'm not saying that "100% for sure the explosive factory in a case was bogus", just that there are many innocent things that could be labelled that. I have many other things that could be considered "terrorist tools" if you are perverted enough. I might even have the same box-cutter brand that was used used in 9-11.
If I was Islamic, that would be enough to arrest me. This is why I am highly sceptical of all of these "arrests". They are constantly making them here in the UK except no one ever gets charged, just quietly released a month or so later. For a country without guns, we managed to shoot two innocent people (one fatally) on these trumped up arrests. It's a worrying trend, especially given that the UK government is trying to extend the period you can be held for without charges. I know, we're not Islamic, so you are thinking "not my problem". Well, that's the case just now, but it might not be tomorrow.
I just loved the links of all the international arrests, though I can see where you are coming from. Are you now telling me that every militant in the world is a part of some super-secret organisation that is intricately linked? People in the UK don't care about Saudi dissidents getting arrested (for browsing porno or something?) because it's not relevant to us. Until we got involved in Iraq, Islamic terrorism wasn't relevant to us either. Airline terrorism affects us all because all nations travel. If you purge your list down to relevant, related groups, then I might worry. It's like saying there is a global thieves guild just because every country has street crime.
In particular, the link labeled "A chemists view", which keeps popping up here on Slashdot, leads to a chemistry student who doesn't claim any special experience with explosives, and who admits to working with second hand information from people he describes as clueless. No chance of getting anything wrong there, is there?
Well, I have studied chemistry, to the equivalent of the first one or two years of University (Scotland used to have a great free education system). I've performed the reactions he describes, monitoring temperature as you add a reactant dropwise. Get it wrong and your solution is worthless; some reactions have very strict temperature ranges for them to work. Ice-baths aren't PhD material, and they teach you about exothermic reactions very early on. There is nothing in his article that I've yet to see discredited. Attacking the author based on his experience is an Ad Hominem logical fallacy.
I'd love to go through your post point-by-point, but I simply don't have the time as I'm supposed to be working right now....
How about instead, you just go about your business, stop pretending that "Big Brother" is blowing up Somalis just to "scare" or "control" you
Ah, I get it; you think I'm a "we didn't land on the moon" type of person. Sorry bud, but I had an argument with a friend just th
Don't blindly assume that popular opinion is the correct opinion. Personally, I can't figure out why Israel is always singled out (well, aside from the fact that they're Jews, which means that everyone wants them to die).
Fuck off with that shit, people like you make me sick. It has NOTHING to do with religion and you are taking a crap on the graves of the 6 million Jewish souls that perished in the Nazi Holocaust by making it seem so. Every time someone says something bad about Israel, it's always "well, you hate jews". No it's not, we dislike the actions of the Israeli government in the same way we dislike the actions of the Saudi government. I'm sure there is a special section of hell for people like you who attempt to make everything a holy war.
WRT the timing of this, the story broke about a week after the whole world was shouting "ceasefire". The UK and USA governments were globally unique in saying that what was going on was OK. It was far from OK. It was the ethnic cleansing of an entire people. What is it with Isrealis? They think that just because a proportion of their population has endured a terrible tradedy half-a-century ago that it gives them the right to do the exact same things to other groups?
When this story broke, the turkey shoot in Lebanon was religated to page 7 in most newspapers. There were constant "updates" about new security procedures. There was enough bullshit that people could no longer focus on the fact that we were militarily, economically and morally supporting the deliberate de-population of Southern Lebanon.
Who gives a rat fuck where the nitroglycerin was mixed? Are you any less dead if there's a "sneak into the lavatory and mix nitric acid, sulfuric acid, and glycerol using an ice bath from the drink cart" step involved?
What exactly is your point? This story is about how innocent looking benign chemicals can be made on a plane. It's not possible and the whole "plot" is a bullshit lie. This is what we are discussing here.
WRT to getting liquid explosive on a plane premixed...how is that any different from any other explosive? You could make a book explosive with the right chemicals to react with the cellulose in the paper. You could make a wig that was explosive. You could surgically hide the device inside someone's stomach. There are any number of ways and confiscating liquids from people is nothing other than propaganda, be it for the following reasons:
Security makes people feel safer about flying
Looks like the government is proactive
Enables them to use the "terrorism" word without it losing all meaning
You need to get a macro remote then mate! I've got a really old basic one (the Cambridge one with the LCD touchscreen) and it's great for recording macros. You could have one button that turns the TV to AV1 while switching your amp to the correct digital input. Very handy with a little bit of thought.
Your SCART switch having output is very interesting; recently I came across some adapters that allowed you to send RGB down old cat-5 cable (not using IP tho, just wire re-use). Now that WiFi is usable, I'm seriously considering it! My main AV source is a chipped Xbox media player, which has a web interface. I've already got my WiFi PDA controlling my music around the home, so why not hi-quality video?:-) Unfortunately, I ran wires without thinking about video years ago, and I don't fancy the cost of a 30 meter run of RGB cable & digging up flooring!
However, I'm sure someone will come up with a wireless digital video solution soon, so I've very much in two minds about setting up RGB at the moment. I might just hook up an old playstation RF modulator I have in the meantime just to get the whole multiroom thing complete. Would be a horrible picture though, I just know it.
In any case, if boxcutters can crash 4 planes simultaneously i'm sure you don't need something as complicated as a binary liquid explosive.
If anything like that ever happens again, it won't be for a very long time. People know what happened on 9/11. You are not going to do so well with a melee weapon against a whole airliner worth of people who know they are fighting for their lives.
Numerous experts are dead wrong. It can be, and has been done. Google Flight 434.
I call bullshit. He didn't mix the chemicals onboard, all he did was take some wires hidden in his shoe, hook them up to his watch and some explosive he brought with him. Hardly a case of "inert liquids being a threat when mixed together" as is implied by this case.
You would have thought that after the whole threat was rubbished by just about anybody with any basic knowledge of classroom chemistry, the home office and BAA would have downgraded the threat.
I thought it was now common knowledge that the whole thing was a sham. It was to get another embarrassing item off the news at the time; our ongoing support for the bombardment of Lebanon when every other country in the world was crying out for a ceasefire. It was getting pretty embarrassing for them just as this story "broke".
UK intelligence agencies have said (off-the-record of course) that they wanted to continue observing the group and taking notes, getting contacts and so on. There was never any danger; not only did they not have any chemicals or plane tickets, most of those involved did not even have passports!! It was amateur hour and I believe that the intelligence agencies were waiting to see if they actually knew anyone relevant that they could further investigate.
It was said at the time that the push to make arrests came from the US intelligence service and that this was in spite of vocal opposition from those watching "the group". Now, from what I understand, the only reference to actually attacking planes comes from the torture of someone in Pakistan. The person in question had fled the UK on suspision of murder charges. So, what do you get when you combine an untrustworthy person with torture? Fairytales.
This was a non-story and I am amazed that the sham has held so long. I'd make a point of arguing the banality of it when passing through an airport, but it's just not worth the cavity search. I guess I should just be a nice, compliant citizen and be afraid and keep my mouth shut.
Interesting; my TV in the lounge is a Philips as well, and I think it's quite new. I have bad luck with televisions breaking down, so I'm renting just now until plasma/lcd or projection get to a point that I'm happy with them. I'll need to give it a try and see what happens! I've got a Philips set in the bedroom that has one RGB SCART and a manual switched S-Video/Composite SCART. While it does have composite/audio jacks on the side for a camcorder (etc), it lacks the S-Video here. Very very odd.
You can never have enough SCARTs. WRT to your switchbox; Maplin (IIRC) do an auto-switching SCART box that senses which inputs are active. The sockets are numbered 1 through 5 and it has a priority system that switches in the highest one that is currently active. Though, somehow I suspect that you also have a macro-remote that does the switching for you!;-)
on my TV one of the SCARTs does both RGB and S-video. It is even autodetecting it.
That's clever; I suppose the obvious thing to do is add intelligent switched inputs, based on a guess of what's on the line. First I heard of it in SCART, and I could probably recite the pin-out to you for them I've been using them so long!:-) I take it's a newish TV, maybe less than 2-3 years old?
But I have seen other TVs that have to be configured for RGB or S-Video (Y/C) somewhere in a menu.
I've seen this many times as an output option, but never an input. UK NTL cable used to have it, then they changed it to RGB which pissed off many DVD owners who'd prefer that to use the single RGB that most sets have. Often you'll get a S-Video / composite switch as both signals share a line and and using the wrong one will get you a black & white picture. Most sets just implement these as different inputs (at least, the recent ones I've used (Panasonic & Toshiba)).
The Sony TV I just sold, for example, had two SCART inputs -- only one of which could handle an RGB signal.
Probably because the second SCART had the S-Video connectors. It's either/or when it comes to SCART unfortunately. I haven't seen a set without RGB since the SNES days, it seems to the be the norm for SCART I, while II (and III if you shopped around) tend to be S-Video.
Indeed. Historians are still trying to figure out how parents raised their children before the advent of dedicated children's TV channels. Some actually claim that they had to spend some time with their kids, or limit their TV viewing to certain times.
While I completely agree with your point, Cebeebies is legendary amoung UK parents as it has no advertising. Most other kids shows exist to hold their interest between the commercials. I've heard numerous anecdotes from parents that switched their kids viewing to BBC that stopped the "I need, I need, I need!!" pester-power that the adverts encourage the comsumers^H^H^H^Hchildren to do.
Tax breaks for consumer electronics? Yea, ok. That'll happen about....never.
Well, they have tax breaks in the manufacturing industry, which are "trickled-down" to the consumer (allegedly). And I know of some laws here in the UK giving TV sets special status in the home. For example, there is a list of items that repo-men are not allowed to take. There are obvious things in this list such as refrigerators and other essential home utilities, but surprisingly, television is also on the list. They aren't allowed to deprive the home of it's last TV.
Set top boxes will extend the life of these TVs until they break
For some TVs, yes, but there are a lot of sets out there with no A/V inputs that will be effectively doorstops.
Here in the UK, we are part-way through this process. I've yet to see any suggestion of a recycling scheme for the old sets, but analogue isn't getting switched off for a few years yet.
Seriously, there seems to be this notion that Apple or Nintendo never get criticized here, but that seems pretty far from reality.
Oh, they do get negatively criticized* now and then, it just gets drowned in the groupthink and modded down into oblivion. Posting anti that might be critical of Apple always results in this. At best you can hope for a mod-war if enough people agree with you. I've had posts that have been moderated 15+ times on the subject.
(* the word criticism doesn't necessarily always mean bad review, to critique something is to review it and offer your viewpoint, good or bad.)
I've long since suspected that Apple have astroturfers on Slashdot. The views many Apple "fans" use are just too consistent. It's like you are fighting against a co-ordinated group of users that stick together and highlight posts for each other. The same phrases keep on coming through. Lets face it, if you wanted to astroturf for Apple, this is a great place to start.
Drug commercials scare the hell out of me. Who are they aiming for? Ill people? Hypochondriacs? Doctors? Because of the NHS, this is something that I've never seen in the UK, with the possible exception of those little blue pills that are synonymous with email spam.
When information is presented, it should be cited when there are profit-based slants involved. I don't want to say there should be a law about it, but in some cases, there are already laws about it.
At least on TV here in the UK, adverts must state that they are adverts. Even the infomercials on late at night have "commercial presentation". Any ad that is designed to pretend to be a show ends up looking stupid.
Of course, there is a line to be drawn here. Personally, I think it should be further away from the consumers. I'd like to see e.g. review shows state that the manufacturer provided the item and so on. The best review publications are those that buy the items themselves and can say what they like. If they aren't free to say "this sucks"*, then the review is pointless.
* funny story; the BBC car show Top Gear reviewed a particular car and gave it a terrible review. The story goes that the editor received a letter stating that the car manufacturer will be ceasing advertising on the - commercial-free - network. Missed the point methinks.
It's not either, just as opening an unlocked safe is not "safe-cracking".
For instance, when freeing Neo in the first Matrix movie, they talk about a "carrier signal". I looked it up -- the carrier signal is that static-y sound that dialup internet uses to carry your data. That's right -- The Matrix runs on dialup -- and you can hear dialup-like sounds as the metal slime pours down his throat and he starts to wake up.
Carrier signals are also used in radio. When you tune a radio, you are setting it to the stations carrier signal. The actual data is fluctuations in that signal. I'd assume DSL/cable etc also uses carrier signals to get the RF data down the wire.
Before I knew that, it was simply technobabble, and I understood what the rest of the audience understood. "We're losing his <technobabble> signal!" I assumed that they knew what they were talking about.
Apparently that's exactly how Star Trek is written. The just put [tech] in the script and it's someone else's job to find something techy to drop in.:-)
Slashdot Mirror
That's not all that far from what actually happened. The west essentially ran the soviet economy into the ground as it could not keep pace with the arms race. Capitalism has more money to spend on weapons, and spending that money on weapons puts it back into circulation.
I absolutely agree. I used to like Clancy's books; they are very detailed, accurate and plausible. On a technical level they were really interesting as they tended to explain a lot as they went on.
However, then came "The Bear and the Dragon", which starts off on the most horrendous and completely inaccurate character assassination of the Chinese race. It was borderline offensive as he set up the villain for the piece. After that I completely lost interest in the series.
Nonsense! That's not advertising. Are you suggesting that in the BBC staff canteen the Nescafe has the name blacked out? Using a product and advertising it are entirely different things.
Quick, grab your pitchforks, we're marching on Google. The BBC uses Google Earth imagery regularly, and yes, it says Google Earth in the image at all times.
They've also used RealPlayer but we we are putting together a lynching mob, count me in on that one.
Shhhhh!! The public are not meant to know that their every move is logged. It's only now and then that they accidentally let this method be known. The last instance I remember was the Lord Hamilton sexual assault case, where they actually used it to prove their innocence.
In addition to the privacy implications, I'm sure this is kept quiet as it would cease to be useful and potentially bad should criminals realize a mobile left at home can be an alibi.
I think there is one. There was press coverage sometime in the last year or so about morse vs sms for sending text messages after a couple of talk show hosts ran contests. It was covered on slashdot and IIRC in the comments you'll find a link to some software that does it.
You said "they're Jews, which means that everyone wants them to die", referencing a real anti-Semitic history that the world has had. You essentially claimed that anyone who had any issue with Israel is essentially a Nazi and had that opinion on whatever topic because of their core beliefs.
No logical reason? How about their actions? Shut up about history? You referenced Pearl Harbour yourself. History is a part of things and people do bear grudges. When you kill a lot of civilians, you make a lot of enemies. Iraq is a case-in-point on this topic as are Israel and most of it's neighbours.
The problem is two-fold. There are those who do not believe Israel has a right to exist and they will always oppose it. These people are in the minority. I would expect that most folk are in the "well, they are there now, deal with it" camp. The minority I mentioned will always despise Israel, no matter what they do.
In the other camp are those who oppose violence and the middle-east is rife with it. This violence been going on tit-for-tat for decades, with each side blaming the other for all it's woes. All sides have their faults, but if you are to look at it objectively, Israel probably comes worse off. They have annexed territory and treat the inhabitants as sub-human. They tend to assassinate (sorry, "targeted kill") those that disagree with them. Bombing an opposing political party is simply not acceptable. The problem is that when it comes to attributing blame of what's going on over there generally is easy when it's Israel as it's their government. The Arabs have an escape clause in that it's an indirect link between those who commit terrorist acts almost daily, vs those in government. Israel often oversteps the line in retaliation for these actions. This is not only counter-productive in that it encourages more hatred and attacks, but to those of us on the outside it is simply something that any country should not do. For all the criticism on the recent US/Iraq conflict, the Americans had much debate on the topic before deploying arms. Israel on the other hand is just plain aggressive.
Well, I can hope you can see from the above why I dislike many aspects of Israel's past and current behaviour. It's the country I have an issue with, not the religion. I find your suggestion that I am anti-Semitic as deeply insulting hence my (possibly too) angry response.
I equally dislike the way that many Muslim clerics use this conflict to claim it is an assault on their religion whenever anyone supports Israel. That is equally bullshit and I'm sure you'll agree that it's distasteful at the very least to promote violence on religions grounds. It works both ways and I hope you understand why I was made angry by what you said. The war is not your fault personally but you are stoking the flames when you make it a religious issue. Fundamentally it's a territory issue being warped into a holy war. That's a dangerous combination.
Em, I think you can already get them.. Why bother with SATA-2 etc when you can hook directly onto the PCI or PCIe bus?
Nah, the internal memory-management load balances the writing across the whole flash memory range. In your example you would just write to 100000 different bytes. Also, a journalling file system is different as well.
I call shenanigans on almost everything you said.
There was never any imminent danger. Those in question did not even have passports, so they could not board planes. Are you suggesting that the UK government does not have the ability to check with the UK passport agency on the status of a UK citizens passport?
Well count me in on that one as well. I have all the components of a "bomb kit" here as well. It's called a "toolbox" and a box of electrical odds-and-ends. "everything you would need to make an improvised device". Lets see, IIRC there is an old 27MHz RC controller, an old flashgun and numerous other relays and such like. You'd better arrest me, I've got everything required right here in one case. Now, not I'm not saying that "100% for sure the explosive factory in a case was bogus", just that there are many innocent things that could be labelled that. I have many other things that could be considered "terrorist tools" if you are perverted enough. I might even have the same box-cutter brand that was used used in 9-11.
If I was Islamic, that would be enough to arrest me. This is why I am highly sceptical of all of these "arrests". They are constantly making them here in the UK except no one ever gets charged, just quietly released a month or so later. For a country without guns, we managed to shoot two innocent people (one fatally) on these trumped up arrests. It's a worrying trend, especially given that the UK government is trying to extend the period you can be held for without charges. I know, we're not Islamic, so you are thinking "not my problem". Well, that's the case just now, but it might not be tomorrow.
I just loved the links of all the international arrests, though I can see where you are coming from. Are you now telling me that every militant in the world is a part of some super-secret organisation that is intricately linked? People in the UK don't care about Saudi dissidents getting arrested (for browsing porno or something?) because it's not relevant to us. Until we got involved in Iraq, Islamic terrorism wasn't relevant to us either. Airline terrorism affects us all because all nations travel. If you purge your list down to relevant, related groups, then I might worry. It's like saying there is a global thieves guild just because every country has street crime.
Well, I have studied chemistry, to the equivalent of the first one or two years of University (Scotland used to have a great free education system). I've performed the reactions he describes, monitoring temperature as you add a reactant dropwise. Get it wrong and your solution is worthless; some reactions have very strict temperature ranges for them to work. Ice-baths aren't PhD material, and they teach you about exothermic reactions very early on. There is nothing in his article that I've yet to see discredited. Attacking the author based on his experience is an Ad Hominem logical fallacy.
I'd love to go through your post point-by-point, but I simply don't have the time as I'm supposed to be working right now....
Ah, I get it; you think I'm a "we didn't land on the moon" type of person. Sorry bud, but I had an argument with a friend just th
Fuck off with that shit, people like you make me sick. It has NOTHING to do with religion and you are taking a crap on the graves of the 6 million Jewish souls that perished in the Nazi Holocaust by making it seem so. Every time someone says something bad about Israel, it's always "well, you hate jews". No it's not, we dislike the actions of the Israeli government in the same way we dislike the actions of the Saudi government. I'm sure there is a special section of hell for people like you who attempt to make everything a holy war.
WRT the timing of this, the story broke about a week after the whole world was shouting "ceasefire". The UK and USA governments were globally unique in saying that what was going on was OK. It was far from OK. It was the ethnic cleansing of an entire people. What is it with Isrealis? They think that just because a proportion of their population has endured a terrible tradedy half-a-century ago that it gives them the right to do the exact same things to other groups?
When this story broke, the turkey shoot in Lebanon was religated to page 7 in most newspapers. There were constant "updates" about new security procedures. There was enough bullshit that people could no longer focus on the fact that we were militarily, economically and morally supporting the deliberate de-population of Southern Lebanon.
What exactly is your point? This story is about how innocent looking benign chemicals can be made on a plane. It's not possible and the whole "plot" is a bullshit lie. This is what we are discussing here.
WRT to getting liquid explosive on a plane premixed...how is that any different from any other explosive? You could make a book explosive with the right chemicals to react with the cellulose in the paper. You could make a wig that was explosive. You could surgically hide the device inside someone's stomach. There are any number of ways and confiscating liquids from people is nothing other than propaganda, be it for the following reasons:
You need to get a macro remote then mate! I've got a really old basic one (the Cambridge one with the LCD touchscreen) and it's great for recording macros. You could have one button that turns the TV to AV1 while switching your amp to the correct digital input. Very handy with a little bit of thought.
Your SCART switch having output is very interesting; recently I came across some adapters that allowed you to send RGB down old cat-5 cable (not using IP tho, just wire re-use). Now that WiFi is usable, I'm seriously considering it! My main AV source is a chipped Xbox media player, which has a web interface. I've already got my WiFi PDA controlling my music around the home, so why not hi-quality video? :-) Unfortunately, I ran wires without thinking about video years ago, and I don't fancy the cost of a 30 meter run of RGB cable & digging up flooring!
However, I'm sure someone will come up with a wireless digital video solution soon, so I've very much in two minds about setting up RGB at the moment. I might just hook up an old playstation RF modulator I have in the meantime just to get the whole multiroom thing complete. Would be a horrible picture though, I just know it.
If anything like that ever happens again, it won't be for a very long time. People know what happened on 9/11. You are not going to do so well with a melee weapon against a whole airliner worth of people who know they are fighting for their lives.
I call bullshit. He didn't mix the chemicals onboard, all he did was take some wires hidden in his shoe, hook them up to his watch and some explosive he brought with him. Hardly a case of "inert liquids being a threat when mixed together" as is implied by this case.
I thought it was now common knowledge that the whole thing was a sham. It was to get another embarrassing item off the news at the time; our ongoing support for the bombardment of Lebanon when every other country in the world was crying out for a ceasefire. It was getting pretty embarrassing for them just as this story "broke".
UK intelligence agencies have said (off-the-record of course) that they wanted to continue observing the group and taking notes, getting contacts and so on. There was never any danger; not only did they not have any chemicals or plane tickets, most of those involved did not even have passports!! It was amateur hour and I believe that the intelligence agencies were waiting to see if they actually knew anyone relevant that they could further investigate.
It was said at the time that the push to make arrests came from the US intelligence service and that this was in spite of vocal opposition from those watching "the group". Now, from what I understand, the only reference to actually attacking planes comes from the torture of someone in Pakistan. The person in question had fled the UK on suspision of murder charges. So, what do you get when you combine an untrustworthy person with torture? Fairytales.
Further reading:
A chemists view
Opinion on those involved
More on the chemical side
This was a non-story and I am amazed that the sham has held so long. I'd make a point of arguing the banality of it when passing through an airport, but it's just not worth the cavity search. I guess I should just be a nice, compliant citizen and be afraid and keep my mouth shut.
Interesting; my TV in the lounge is a Philips as well, and I think it's quite new. I have bad luck with televisions breaking down, so I'm renting just now until plasma/lcd or projection get to a point that I'm happy with them. I'll need to give it a try and see what happens! I've got a Philips set in the bedroom that has one RGB SCART and a manual switched S-Video/Composite SCART. While it does have composite/audio jacks on the side for a camcorder (etc), it lacks the S-Video here. Very very odd.
You can never have enough SCARTs. WRT to your switchbox; Maplin (IIRC) do an auto-switching SCART box that senses which inputs are active. The sockets are numbered 1 through 5 and it has a priority system that switches in the highest one that is currently active. Though, somehow I suspect that you also have a macro-remote that does the switching for you! ;-)
That's clever; I suppose the obvious thing to do is add intelligent switched inputs, based on a guess of what's on the line. First I heard of it in SCART, and I could probably recite the pin-out to you for them I've been using them so long! :-) I take it's a newish TV, maybe less than 2-3 years old?
I've seen this many times as an output option, but never an input. UK NTL cable used to have it, then they changed it to RGB which pissed off many DVD owners who'd prefer that to use the single RGB that most sets have. Often you'll get a S-Video / composite switch as both signals share a line and and using the wrong one will get you a black & white picture. Most sets just implement these as different inputs (at least, the recent ones I've used (Panasonic & Toshiba)).
Probably because the second SCART had the S-Video connectors. It's either/or when it comes to SCART unfortunately. I haven't seen a set without RGB since the SNES days, it seems to the be the norm for SCART I, while II (and III if you shopped around) tend to be S-Video.
While I completely agree with your point, Cebeebies is legendary amoung UK parents as it has no advertising. Most other kids shows exist to hold their interest between the commercials. I've heard numerous anecdotes from parents that switched their kids viewing to BBC that stopped the "I need, I need, I need!!" pester-power that the adverts encourage the comsumers^H^H^H^Hchildren to do.
Well, they have tax breaks in the manufacturing industry, which are "trickled-down" to the consumer (allegedly). And I know of some laws here in the UK giving TV sets special status in the home. For example, there is a list of items that repo-men are not allowed to take. There are obvious things in this list such as refrigerators and other essential home utilities, but surprisingly, television is also on the list. They aren't allowed to deprive the home of it's last TV.
For some TVs, yes, but there are a lot of sets out there with no A/V inputs that will be effectively doorstops.
Here in the UK, we are part-way through this process. I've yet to see any suggestion of a recycling scheme for the old sets, but analogue isn't getting switched off for a few years yet.
Oh, they do get negatively criticized* now and then, it just gets drowned in the groupthink and modded down into oblivion. Posting anti that might be critical of Apple always results in this. At best you can hope for a mod-war if enough people agree with you. I've had posts that have been moderated 15+ times on the subject.
(* the word criticism doesn't necessarily always mean bad review, to critique something is to review it and offer your viewpoint, good or bad.)
I've long since suspected that Apple have astroturfers on Slashdot. The views many Apple "fans" use are just too consistent. It's like you are fighting against a co-ordinated group of users that stick together and highlight posts for each other. The same phrases keep on coming through. Lets face it, if you wanted to astroturf for Apple, this is a great place to start.
Drug commercials scare the hell out of me. Who are they aiming for? Ill people? Hypochondriacs? Doctors? Because of the NHS, this is something that I've never seen in the UK, with the possible exception of those little blue pills that are synonymous with email spam.
At least on TV here in the UK, adverts must state that they are adverts. Even the infomercials on late at night have "commercial presentation". Any ad that is designed to pretend to be a show ends up looking stupid.
Of course, there is a line to be drawn here. Personally, I think it should be further away from the consumers. I'd like to see e.g. review shows state that the manufacturer provided the item and so on. The best review publications are those that buy the items themselves and can say what they like. If they aren't free to say "this sucks"*, then the review is pointless.
* funny story; the BBC car show Top Gear reviewed a particular car and gave it a terrible review. The story goes that the editor received a letter stating that the car manufacturer will be ceasing advertising on the - commercial-free - network. Missed the point methinks.
It's not either, just as opening an unlocked safe is not "safe-cracking".
Carrier signals are also used in radio. When you tune a radio, you are setting it to the stations carrier signal. The actual data is fluctuations in that signal. I'd assume DSL/cable etc also uses carrier signals to get the RF data down the wire.
Apparently that's exactly how Star Trek is written. The just put [tech] in the script and it's someone else's job to find something techy to drop in. :-)