The point is, it's not how the military and subsequently the press said it happened. As you say, it was really nothing out of the ordinary for a wartime situation, just someone doing their job and getting injured in the course of that. So why is there still so much hoopla? Could it be that, despite the objective facts, the aura of sainthood initially attached to Pvt Lynch has been officially sanctioned by the media and is consequently permanent?
I will concede that it is only partly to do with the media - part of it must surely stem from people's desire to believe in heroes regardless of reality.
"I'll be you believe the U.S. troops involved in the rescuse used blanks in their weapons, too."
Well, you'll notice I didn't list that amongst the inaccuracies. Do you dispute the cause of Lynch's injuries or the incident with the doctor being shot at?
On the other hand, there was significant testimony that the US did fire whilst inside the hospital, even though it was empty of Iraqi forces. I suppose it would have been better to fire live rounds in this case?
Good to see some patriots modding that post up as 'informative' even though it contained no factual information whatsoever...
This is an article about the US media fawning over private Lynch despite the fact that she was injured by US military incompetence, not Iraqis, that she was captured without a fight, not firing her weapon valiantly to the end, that the US met no resistence in the hospital during her rescue and actually fired on a doctor trying to bring her out and hand her over.
Luckily for the rest of the world the actual facts have not been totally obscured because non-US media outlets have managed to get hold of the story... but the fewer outlets there are, the less would actually be known about this. As it is it sounds like half of America is still swallowing the 'enhanced' story whole... must be the same half that thinks Iraq used chemical weapons in the war and that the September 11 attacks were linked to Iraq.
In fact, when you look at it the media is already basically concentrated by virtue of the fact that it is ideologically concentrated. Once an 'accepted' version of a story is selected by someone, it becomes gospel and is repeated throughout the land.
In fact, we're much more screwed in Australia than the Americans are if they allow media concentration. Things are very different for us - the USA is such a huge market that even minority viewpoints can swing a huge audience, and therefore will not be totally eliminated, even from the mainstream.
In Oz, on the other hand, we have a small population - most of our cities only support one newspaper, and we really have only one national paper. On top of this we have ridiculous limits on the number of TV and radio stations that are free-to-air.
As a result, media concentration in Australia is likely to lead to only one owner of everything - we have less than half the population of California in our whole damn country, so we're basically considered to be one market.
I am afraid we may be heading for a situation like they have in Italy, where one guy basically calls the shots on the whole media. In an uncanny coincidence he's also the President.
I think it might be because both sides are afraid of the other (or some third party) wielding too much power in the media.
When you look at it there are large swathes of both sides of politics who would oppose this on principle. On the left, anyone with a serious civil liberties, free speech type agenda will surely be opposed to this. On the right, anyone with a small government/libertarian type agenda will naturally oppose the concentration of media power as contrary to their aims.
It's really only the chumps in the middle - Bush with his corporate pals and neocons, Lieberman and the member of the New York/Washington set of big government Democrats - who are going to want to allow this.
Is it possible that, just for once, this is a case of politics actually reflecting what people want irrespective of partisan allegiance? What's going to be really interesting is to see if Bush is game to use his veto, and if so if the house will vote again to overrule him. So far he has basically put the veto stamp away and signed anything that's been put in front of him... kinda like a trained monkey.... (ahem).
It was one of the first 3D games that had real character, really imaginative level design, and an overall 'feel' that made it really fun to play. It was in the spirit of great SNES and NeoGeo games - a crazy adventure/platformer with lots of different enemies, amazing level design and most of all fun gameplay.
"You are better off instead making it possible for people from those lower socio-economic groups, regardless of race, to go to uni."
Totally agree, this would have the same indirect effect but be fairer overall. My point was mainly that if things were equitable we might expect a distribution of the various races roughly equal to their distribution in society.
Are you kidding? The Liberals are _exactly_ like the Republicans. In fact, they maintain active ties with the Republicans, and attend common policy forums, think tanks etc.
The Liberal Party in Australia is basically an analogue of the US Republicans or the British Conservatives, but without the religious zeal of the US Party (or at least without as *much* religious zeal).
Their ideology in brief: - pro business, especially bigger business - anti welfare - anti affirmative action - pro US, pro US foreign policy - pro invasions of civil liberties in the name of defence against 'terror' - terrible on the environment - like to be divisive (known as 'wedge politics') - HATE labour movements, unions, (left) student movements etc. - anti immigration - anti government regulation/intervention, preferring the 'free' market to run itself
They are very firmly on the right of politics. Despite the idiotic rantings of other posters, their name is extremely misleading, even to some Australians. In the last few years they have lurched sharply right, especially in the wake of September 11.
Despite what you may be told, they are *nothing* like the Libertarians. They want a strong, omniscient federal government and are constantly clashing with the judiciary, civil rights groups and minorities over their (ab)use of power. Their Attorney General also makes Joseph Goebbels look soft on terrorism.
Why stop with data? Why not make all communications in an open format, i.e. if not mandating open source, at least mandate inter-operability on all levels.
Otherwise we will see MS very rapidly make everything completely obscure and encrypted, as they are currently working like frenzied (evil) beavers to do, and this will mean that any investment in their software will be like digging a deeper and deeper hole from which no government will have the money or will to escape.
I can suggest a good set of specifications for such inter-operability. I like to call it the Unix/Posix standard...:P
Let's not forget he is also The Register's Official World's Biggest Luddite. I was on a radio program once and I managed to call him an idiot live on air, it was quite satisfying even though the presenter had to rapidly disclaim my comments.
So far he has screwed up: - digital TV - broadcast rights for sport - broadband - Internet censorship - Telstra crushing all with its massive monopoly - the independence of the ABC - failure of government to come up with any kind of plan for spam
What a man! Order of Australia is in order, I feel.
Actually Labor has some pretty good IT policies, too. They seem to understand the Internet a lot better than the current govt., and they are somewhat pro-Linux etc. etc.
True what you say, even though people are modding you down - I feel the Democrats will be no more after the next election. Their votes will no doubt go to the Greens, though.
That she's on trial, I mean. It seems funny now. Hard to remember that back when she was first around there was a genuine fear that right wing extremists would control the balance of power in Australia.
"descrimination is bad in any way, shape or form."
As some US President said (Truman?), this is like freeing the slaves from their leg irons and then expecting them to have a fair chance of winning a 100 metre sprint.
'Discrimination' may well have value in righting wrongs.
Alternatively, we could consider the statistics. A vastly disproportionate number of whites get into top universities compared to other races. Either you contend: - (a) there is some natural genetic reason whites do better (i.e. eugenics ownz) - (b) there is some sort of bias at the universities - (c) there is some socio-economic reason other races struggle to get to university and to do as well as whites on their SATs or equivalent
I would hope (a) is unacceptable to you. I think you will find (b) and (c) are more likely explanations - so what do we do about it? Leave things be?
There are two things here. One is an attempt to embarrass the government by making them state on the record how much they spend on MS software. The other is a push for some sort of law relating to OSS and government procurement, possibly including provisions to give preference to OSS, all other things being equal. So, there is criticism from the conservative side of politics that such a law should not include preference for OSS as this would be unfair to other companies such as MS.
Whether it is or not, by asking the questions on notice in parliament the various ministers will be forced to stand up and tell the parliament how much they have spent on MS products. The point is to highlight the facts in a very public forum.
It may not be ready for secretaries etc... but there is a big difference between getting a site licence for MS Office and paying M$ jillions of dollars for MSDN subscriptions, ongoing support etc etc etc because your entire back end runs on their software.
I think a key issue is training of technical people. Most people on./ are probably *nix aware and skilled, but there are a huge number of people who do technical diplomas and the like and never even see a non-MS system.
A move for more open source in government should be coupled with a push to bring non-proprietry software back to the core of computer related education. I'm lucky in that I have a Comp Sci degree from a university that has a strong focus on Unix and its derivatives, but I know a lot of people who are trained purely in MS and Oracle stuff.
I am glad to see them doing this sort of thing... even if the system is effectively two party this type of action is a good way for minor parties to raise issues that the major parties would basically ignore.
Actually intention is all important in criminal law. Murder is manslaughter if you didn't intend to kill someone. Conspiracy to commit an offence is nothing if you weren't intending to commit the offence. In general, crimes should be considered in terms of mental state, not simply by actions.
"Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation, but didn't have a computer or internet connection handy?"
Yes, I have that problem all the time! Why should an average Joe like me struggle with complex trigonometry when this handy little device let's me do wireless link calculations in the field like a pro? No more time consuming manual wireless link calculations for me. Are you still doing wireless link calculations with a fiddly old wireless link calculation slide rule? Throw it in the garbage! You don't need it anymore thanks to this handy gizmo. Don't be a laughing stock because you can't do quick wireless link calculations in the field... act now!
By the way, what's a wireless link calculation? (Don't you love it when an article assumes you know exactly what it's talking about?)
Slashdot Mirror
Look, that's all fine.
The point is, it's not how the military and subsequently the press said it happened. As you say, it was really nothing out of the ordinary for a wartime situation, just someone doing their job and getting injured in the course of that. So why is there still so much hoopla? Could it be that, despite the objective facts, the aura of sainthood initially attached to Pvt Lynch has been officially sanctioned by the media and is consequently permanent?
I will concede that it is only partly to do with the media - part of it must surely stem from people's desire to believe in heroes regardless of reality.
I notice that's not stopping her being viewed as some kind of national hero.
Pretty convenient that she 'can't remember' half of her ordeal (the half where she got 'rescued' from a civilian hospital).
"I'll be you believe the U.S. troops involved in the rescuse used blanks in their weapons, too."
Well, you'll notice I didn't list that amongst the inaccuracies. Do you dispute the cause of Lynch's injuries or the incident with the doctor being shot at?
On the other hand, there was significant testimony that the US did fire whilst inside the hospital, even though it was empty of Iraqi forces. I suppose it would have been better to fire live rounds in this case?
Good to see some patriots modding that post up as 'informative' even though it contained no factual information whatsoever...
Can be found here.
This is an article about the US media fawning over private Lynch despite the fact that she was injured by US military incompetence, not Iraqis, that she was captured without a fight, not firing her weapon valiantly to the end, that the US met no resistence in the hospital during her rescue and actually fired on a doctor trying to bring her out and hand her over.
Luckily for the rest of the world the actual facts have not been totally obscured because non-US media outlets have managed to get hold of the story... but the fewer outlets there are, the less would actually be known about this. As it is it sounds like half of America is still swallowing the 'enhanced' story whole... must be the same half that thinks Iraq used chemical weapons in the war and that the September 11 attacks were linked to Iraq.
In fact, when you look at it the media is already basically concentrated by virtue of the fact that it is ideologically concentrated. Once an 'accepted' version of a story is selected by someone, it becomes gospel and is repeated throughout the land.
In fact, we're much more screwed in Australia than the Americans are if they allow media concentration. Things are very different for us - the USA is such a huge market that even minority viewpoints can swing a huge audience, and therefore will not be totally eliminated, even from the mainstream.
In Oz, on the other hand, we have a small population - most of our cities only support one newspaper, and we really have only one national paper. On top of this we have ridiculous limits on the number of TV and radio stations that are free-to-air.
As a result, media concentration in Australia is likely to lead to only one owner of everything - we have less than half the population of California in our whole damn country, so we're basically considered to be one market.
I am afraid we may be heading for a situation like they have in Italy, where one guy basically calls the shots on the whole media. In an uncanny coincidence he's also the President.
I think it might be because both sides are afraid of the other (or some third party) wielding too much power in the media.
When you look at it there are large swathes of both sides of politics who would oppose this on principle. On the left, anyone with a serious civil liberties, free speech type agenda will surely be opposed to this. On the right, anyone with a small government/libertarian type agenda will naturally oppose the concentration of media power as contrary to their aims.
It's really only the chumps in the middle - Bush with his corporate pals and neocons, Lieberman and the member of the New York/Washington set of big government Democrats - who are going to want to allow this.
Is it possible that, just for once, this is a case of politics actually reflecting what people want irrespective of partisan allegiance? What's going to be really interesting is to see if Bush is game to use his veto, and if so if the house will vote again to overrule him. So far he has basically put the veto stamp away and signed anything that's been put in front of him... kinda like a trained monkey.... (ahem).
"Xbox and PS2 are now network capable and you can dl new content for games and such."
Question - short of releasing a version with a DVD burner, how can you patch PS2 games?
I think you mean:
Business plan for console games
1. Make game announcement at E3 before the game has started, promising un-realistic features and an un-realistic release date.
2. ???
3. Profit!
MDK was a great game.
It was one of the first 3D games that had real character, really imaginative level design, and an overall 'feel' that made it really fun to play. It was in the spirit of great SNES and NeoGeo games - a crazy adventure/platformer with lots of different enemies, amazing level design and most of all fun gameplay.
"I mean I cannot see the Republican Party imprisoning children for example ... maybe I'm wrong on that."
Not children. Just foreigners. And American citizens who are friends with foreigners. Oh, all right, and maybe some foreign children.
"You are better off instead making it possible for people from those lower socio-economic groups, regardless of race, to go to uni."
Totally agree, this would have the same indirect effect but be fairer overall. My point was mainly that if things were equitable we might expect a distribution of the various races roughly equal to their distribution in society.
Are you kidding? The Liberals are _exactly_ like the Republicans. In fact, they maintain active ties with the Republicans, and attend common policy forums, think tanks etc.
They are very, very right wing.
The Liberal Party in Australia is basically an analogue of the US Republicans or the British Conservatives, but without the religious zeal of the US Party (or at least without as *much* religious zeal).
Their ideology in brief:
- pro business, especially bigger business
- anti welfare
- anti affirmative action
- pro US, pro US foreign policy
- pro invasions of civil liberties in the name of defence against 'terror'
- terrible on the environment
- like to be divisive (known as 'wedge politics')
- HATE labour movements, unions, (left) student movements etc.
- anti immigration
- anti government regulation/intervention, preferring the 'free' market to run itself
They are very firmly on the right of politics. Despite the idiotic rantings of other posters, their name is extremely misleading, even to some Australians. In the last few years they have lurched sharply right, especially in the wake of September 11.
Despite what you may be told, they are *nothing* like the Libertarians. They want a strong, omniscient federal government and are constantly clashing with the judiciary, civil rights groups and minorities over their (ab)use of power. Their Attorney General also makes Joseph Goebbels look soft on terrorism.
Why stop with data? Why not make all communications in an open format, i.e. if not mandating open source, at least mandate inter-operability on all levels.
:P
Otherwise we will see MS very rapidly make everything completely obscure and encrypted, as they are currently working like frenzied (evil) beavers to do, and this will mean that any investment in their software will be like digging a deeper and deeper hole from which no government will have the money or will to escape.
I can suggest a good set of specifications for such inter-operability. I like to call it the Unix/Posix standard...
Let's not forget he is also The Register's Official World's Biggest Luddite. I was on a radio program once and I managed to call him an idiot live on air, it was quite satisfying even though the presenter had to rapidly disclaim my comments.
So far he has screwed up:
- digital TV
- broadcast rights for sport
- broadband
- Internet censorship
- Telstra crushing all with its massive monopoly
- the independence of the ABC
- failure of government to come up with any kind of plan for spam
What a man! Order of Australia is in order, I feel.
Actually Labor has some pretty good IT policies, too. They seem to understand the Internet a lot better than the current govt., and they are somewhat pro-Linux etc. etc.
True what you say, even though people are modding you down - I feel the Democrats will be no more after the next election. Their votes will no doubt go to the Greens, though.
That she's on trial, I mean. It seems funny now. Hard to remember that back when she was first around there was a genuine fear that right wing extremists would control the balance of power in Australia.
Oh wait, they do...
"descrimination is bad in any way, shape or form."
As some US President said (Truman?), this is like freeing the slaves from their leg irons and then expecting them to have a fair chance of winning a 100 metre sprint.
'Discrimination' may well have value in righting wrongs.
Alternatively, we could consider the statistics. A vastly disproportionate number of whites get into top universities compared to other races. Either you contend:
- (a) there is some natural genetic reason whites do better (i.e. eugenics ownz)
- (b) there is some sort of bias at the universities
- (c) there is some socio-economic reason other races struggle to get to university and to do as well as whites on their SATs or equivalent
I would hope (a) is unacceptable to you. I think you will find (b) and (c) are more likely explanations - so what do we do about it? Leave things be?
Did you RTFA? ;)
There are two things here. One is an attempt to embarrass the government by making them state on the record how much they spend on MS software. The other is a push for some sort of law relating to OSS and government procurement, possibly including provisions to give preference to OSS, all other things being equal. So, there is criticism from the conservative side of politics that such a law should not include preference for OSS as this would be unfair to other companies such as MS.
Kapish?
But I thought it was better left unsaid. Apparently 'affirmative action' is now a dirty word. Or two words.
Whether it is or not, by asking the questions on notice in parliament the various ministers will be forced to stand up and tell the parliament how much they have spent on MS products. The point is to highlight the facts in a very public forum.
It may not be ready for secretaries etc... but there is a big difference between getting a site licence for MS Office and paying M$ jillions of dollars for MSDN subscriptions, ongoing support etc etc etc because your entire back end runs on their software.
./ are probably *nix aware and skilled, but there are a huge number of people who do technical diplomas and the like and never even see a non-MS system.
I think a key issue is training of technical people. Most people on
A move for more open source in government should be coupled with a push to bring non-proprietry software back to the core of computer related education. I'm lucky in that I have a Comp Sci degree from a university that has a strong focus on Unix and its derivatives, but I know a lot of people who are trained purely in MS and Oracle stuff.
What do you mean payback?
I am glad to see them doing this sort of thing... even if the system is effectively two party this type of action is a good way for minor parties to raise issues that the major parties would basically ignore.
'Note: I didn't say "how I intend to use it".'
Actually intention is all important in criminal law. Murder is manslaughter if you didn't intend to kill someone. Conspiracy to commit an offence is nothing if you weren't intending to commit the offence. In general, crimes should be considered in terms of mental state, not simply by actions.
"Ever been out in the field and wanted to make a quick wireless link calculation, but didn't have a computer or internet connection handy?"
Yes, I have that problem all the time! Why should an average Joe like me struggle with complex trigonometry when this handy little device let's me do wireless link calculations in the field like a pro? No more time consuming manual wireless link calculations for me. Are you still doing wireless link calculations with a fiddly old wireless link calculation slide rule? Throw it in the garbage! You don't need it anymore thanks to this handy gizmo. Don't be a laughing stock because you can't do quick wireless link calculations in the field... act now!
By the way, what's a wireless link calculation? (Don't you love it when an article assumes you know exactly what it's talking about?)