Here's a weblog by an Iraqi citizen living in Baghdad: "Where is Raed?" I think all of you will find it to be of great interest. (BTW, I hope he survived the war. His last post was Mrch 24.)
I flew on the Concorde in Oct '93 from Lonton to New York. It was a recently refurbished
British Airways SSC and it was FANTASTIC.
The
main thing I noticed in flight was that the curvature of the earth was
much more visible due to the much higher cruise altitude. Also, it was a very smooth flight. No turbulence whatsoever.
Concorde is all first class essentially, and the fittings reflected this.
Gray leather seats, 2 x 2 arrangement. The bulkhead was lower than in a
conventional aircraft.
I was on British Airways. There
were 6 cabin crew for only 100 max passengers. The service in the air was
impeccable (you get treated like royalty), and they even welcomed visitors to the cockpit. (Not sure if they'd do that today though, since everyone's paranoid about terrorism.)
No movie inflight,
but there were sterophonic headsets for music. Also, each passenger
received a gift, (on this flight it was a 1994 date planner.) The seats
are not at all wide; however. the armrests fold flat if there's no one next
to you.
But as I said, en flight, you can see the curvature of the Earth. I was amazed.
Like skydiving, flying on the Concorde is something you don't have to do a second time...but once was fantastic.
I know it's expensive and inefficient, but we're going to lose a real treasure when the Concorde stops flying.
For those less trusting than average, note that number portability requies a nationwide database--not run by a single company--to keep track of where phones are at any given time. This is required because with number portability, all mobile numbers must be tracked at all times.
When you roam
now, the switch in the network you're in tells your home switch where you
are & the phone call gets routed there. But with portability, you won't have a
home switch and a call will have to go to a data base to find out who you're
connected with, connect to that system, and then that system will look for where you
are. Currently, the call is just connected to your system & it looks you up.
The real problem occurs when you are roaming & the call originates locally,
because until that data base is in place, nationally, the local phone
company doesn't know you are right next door & has to find out who you are
hooked up with & send the call to them. Now, the phone company knows that if
you have a Cingular number, Cingular knows where you are.
So, for privacy reasons, number portability may not be as good as it sounds at face
value.
The FBI had enough information, but no authority to prevent it, even if the clues all came together to paint a pretty picture. Such is the dilemma. Our criminal laws are reactive ones, ie, you arent guilty until after you comitted a crime.
You'll be happy to know that conspiracy to commit mass murder is indeed a crime. So Muhammad Atta was already guilty of a felony before he even stepped on the plane.
I hope you're right. My fear is there'll be some pork barrel projects tacked on to pacify dissenting Republicans and Democrats, and it'll pass. Furthermore, our courageous Senators and Representatives are deathly afraid of being labelled un-patriotic in the wake of Bush's wildly popular liberation of Iraq.
First, the Supreme Court appointed Bush. Then he was given broad police powers not in the Constitution. Then his foreign policy based on pre-emptive war was approved.
The coup was successful. All that remained was to make his war powers permanant.
Better intelligence analysis is the solution. As we now know, the FBI had enough information to prevent 9/11. The problem was that no one was piecing the clues together. So the PATRIOT Act--which means a massive expansion in the quantity of info that the government collects--is NOT the solution. The solution is to better analyze the information that we have. Indeed, as anyone familiar with the concept of "white noise" will tell you, it can even be counteer-productive to be flooded with useless information. (How helpful is it for the government to compile information on what books people check out, for example?)
Remember that the current Supreme Court voted 5-4 to install the Bush Junta, so I wouldn't bet on that Court to do anything about the PATRIOT Act. Even if some of the most shamelessly pro-corporate/anti-privacy Justices like Ruth Ginsberg or William Rehnquist retire, President Smirk is going to be the one nominating the replacements.
" A year and a half without a terrorist act. Either the Patriot Act works or the terrorists have been in a good mood lately. My guess is the former."
Using that exact same logic --
Ever since I started playing Starcraft, my house hasn't been burglarized. Therefore I can conclude that playing Starcraft scared away burglars.
Is anyone surprised at the news that the Bush Administration will use its popularity following the victory in Iraq to expand the police state? Thanks, warmongers.
Here are some books that are sure to get you profiled as a "person of interest":
1. "Hide Your Assets and Disappear" by Pankau
2. "How to be Invisible" by JJ Luna
3. Any US Army manual (most Army manuals detail things like how to build explosives and evade capture by enemy forces)
4. "1984" by Orwell
5. Any book on Islam
Didn't you terrorist-lovers get the memo? Shredding paper to preserve privacy is only okay when directed by rich people who work for multinational corporations. It's right there in the rule book. You know, the rule book that only applies to those who don't "think" properly...
I don't advocate censorship, but what's interesting is that while the Germans restrict violent games, the Americans restrict games that portray sex. Try releasing a game in US stores that has people fucking, and it'll get censored just as surely as violent shit does in Deutschland.
Please look up the UK's bait and switch law. Amazon.co.uk is blatantly violating it. But of course they'll get away with it, since massive multinationals are mostly above the law.
Amazon will of course be able to get away with this bait and switch because it is a massive multi-national corporation and, therefore, mostly above the law.
Don't believe me? Then try putting up a small ecommerce site that offers IPAQs for $10. Then tell your customers that you are not able to offer the IPAQs at that price but will be happy to sell them for a few hundred dollars instead. See if you'll be able to get away with it. I promise you won't.
Definition of bait and switch: Advertising goods or services without selling them as advertised. In Anglo-Saxon common law, this is a pretty standard definition. You won't find a jurisdiction in the USA or Great Britain that strays materially from that definition of bait and switch.
Therefore, Amazon is guilty of bait and switch if it offered the IPAQs for $10 but doesn't deliver.
The problem is that we know for a fact that certain inconvenient things (like oil) fund terrorism, but those areas are OFF LIMITS, because we obese Americans need to keep driving our SUVs to the fast food restaurants.
So what we as a society do instead is take other areas that are completely tangential and insignificant but very CONVENIENT to the coporate money interests to get rid of. Filesharing. Drug use (Don't smoke marijuana; instead buy our Prozac and Ritalin.) The right to privacy is just about dead. And so on.
Thanks for your wonderfully inciteful input, but the fact remains that one cannot legally play the new public domain GTA 1 without paying Micro$oft. Would you prefer the term "Microsoft Toll"?
Finally, if a mandatory payment isn't a tax, then how do you define the word "tax"? And would "toll" suffice instead?
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Here's a weblog by an Iraqi citizen living in Baghdad: "Where is Raed?" I think all of you will find it to be of great interest. (BTW, I hope he survived the war. His last post was Mrch 24.)
The main thing I noticed in flight was that the curvature of the earth was much more visible due to the much higher cruise altitude. Also, it was a very smooth flight. No turbulence whatsoever.
Concorde is all first class essentially, and the fittings reflected this. Gray leather seats, 2 x 2 arrangement. The bulkhead was lower than in a conventional aircraft.
I was on British Airways. There were 6 cabin crew for only 100 max passengers. The service in the air was impeccable (you get treated like royalty), and they even welcomed visitors to the cockpit. (Not sure if they'd do that today though, since everyone's paranoid about terrorism.)
No movie inflight, but there were sterophonic headsets for music. Also, each passenger received a gift, (on this flight it was a 1994 date planner.) The seats are not at all wide; however. the armrests fold flat if there's no one next to you.
But as I said, en flight, you can see the curvature of the Earth. I was amazed.
Like skydiving, flying on the Concorde is something you don't have to do a second time...but once was fantastic.
I know it's expensive and inefficient, but we're going to lose a real treasure when the Concorde stops flying.
When you roam now, the switch in the network you're in tells your home switch where you are & the phone call gets routed there. But with portability, you won't have a home switch and a call will have to go to a data base to find out who you're connected with, connect to that system, and then that system will look for where you are. Currently, the call is just connected to your system & it looks you up.
The real problem occurs when you are roaming & the call originates locally, because until that data base is in place, nationally, the local phone company doesn't know you are right next door & has to find out who you are hooked up with & send the call to them. Now, the phone company knows that if you have a Cingular number, Cingular knows where you are.
So, for privacy reasons, number portability may not be as good as it sounds at face value.
You'll be happy to know that conspiracy to commit mass murder is indeed a crime. So Muhammad Atta was already guilty of a felony before he even stepped on the plane.
I hope you're right. My fear is there'll be some pork barrel projects tacked on to pacify dissenting Republicans and Democrats, and it'll pass. Furthermore, our courageous Senators and Representatives are deathly afraid of being labelled un-patriotic in the wake of Bush's wildly popular liberation of Iraq.
The coup was successful. All that remained was to make his war powers permanant.
Better intelligence analysis is the solution. As we now know, the FBI had enough information to prevent 9/11. The problem was that no one was piecing the clues together. So the PATRIOT Act--which means a massive expansion in the quantity of info that the government collects--is NOT the solution. The solution is to better analyze the information that we have. Indeed, as anyone familiar with the concept of "white noise" will tell you, it can even be counteer-productive to be flooded with useless information. (How helpful is it for the government to compile information on what books people check out, for example?)
Sorry to spoil your dream with my pessimism. :(
Using that exact same logic --
Ever since I started playing Starcraft, my house hasn't been burglarized. Therefore I can conclude that playing Starcraft scared away burglars.
Is anyone surprised at the news that the Bush Administration will use its popularity following the victory in Iraq to expand the police state? Thanks, warmongers.
Here are some books that are sure to get you profiled as a "person of interest": 1. "Hide Your Assets and Disappear" by Pankau 2. "How to be Invisible" by JJ Luna 3. Any US Army manual (most Army manuals detail things like how to build explosives and evade capture by enemy forces) 4. "1984" by Orwell 5. Any book on Islam
Didn't you terrorist-lovers get the memo? Shredding paper to preserve privacy is only okay when directed by rich people who work for multinational corporations. It's right there in the rule book. You know, the rule book that only applies to those who don't "think" properly...
Although I don't agree with censorship, most local governments don't allow porn to be openly displayed.
I don't advocate censorship, but what's interesting is that while the Germans restrict violent games, the Americans restrict games that portray sex. Try releasing a game in US stores that has people fucking, and it'll get censored just as surely as violent shit does in Deutschland.
The common law definition of "bait and switch" is a offering an item for sale and then not carrying through with it when someone wants to buy it.
Please look up the UK's bait and switch law. Amazon.co.uk is blatantly violating it. But of course they'll get away with it, since massive multinationals are mostly above the law.
Don't believe me? Then try putting up a small ecommerce site that offers IPAQs for $10. Then tell your customers that you are not able to offer the IPAQs at that price but will be happy to sell them for a few hundred dollars instead. See if you'll be able to get away with it. I promise you won't.
Therefore, Amazon is guilty of bait and switch if it offered the IPAQs for $10 but doesn't deliver.
So what we as a society do instead is take other areas that are completely tangential and insignificant but very CONVENIENT to the coporate money interests to get rid of. Filesharing. Drug use (Don't smoke marijuana; instead buy our Prozac and Ritalin.) The right to privacy is just about dead. And so on.
What did John Malcolm base that statement on though? His own independent assessment or cajoling from his fatcat friends at M$FT and the MPAA?
However, I suspect you won't be seeing Microsoft and the MPAA disagreeing with that assessment. Right?
Thanks for your wonderfully inciteful input, but the fact remains that one cannot legally play the new public domain GTA 1 without paying Micro$oft. Would you prefer the term "Microsoft Toll"?
Finally, if a mandatory payment isn't a tax, then how do you define the word "tax"? And would "toll" suffice instead?
There's really no such thing as Micro$oft bashing, since Bill Gates & Company view the term "profits before people" as a compliment.
The moon is responsible for the tides and some of the weather patterns here on Earth. It's not just a hunk of rock.
But while I'm on the subject, check out the Dominican Republic too. It's cheap, and an American expat can have a WONDERFUL lifestyle.