Month: July 2006

(via boingboing)
This doesn’t sound good. Reports carried on CNN and Reuters today indicate that North Korea has test fired several long range missles this morning. The different reports indicate anywhere from 4 to 10 missiles were test fired. The upside is, the one missile with the range to reach the US failed to launch and fly successfully. The bad news is North Korea has already been warned that missile test firing would be considered an act of aggression.

WASHINGTON (CNN) — North Korea test-fired a long-range missile and five shorter-range rockets early Wednesday, but the closely watched long-range test failed within a minute, U.S. officials said.

That’s the good side I mentioned.

The tests began shortly after 3:30 a.m. local time (2:30 p.m. Tuesday ET) and lasted for about five hours.

The Taepodong-2 missile, which some analysts believed capable of hitting the western United States, failed after about 40 seconds, U.S. officials said.

U.S. National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley described the missile launches as “provocative behavior,” but said they posted no immediate threat to the United States.

And there’s the bad side. More, from the Reuter’s report.

On Monday, the North’s main news agency quoted an unidentified newspaper analyst as saying Pyongyang was prepared to answer a U.S. military attack with ”a relentless annihilating strike and a nuclear war.”

And here is what concerns me most. We have an enemy nation which we know for a fact has weapons capable of truly threatening the US. We have a President who has repeatedly stated he will protect the nation against any real threat, even going to war against one which may or may not have had provably threatening weapons technology depending on which intelligence report you believe. For two years I’ve been saying if his convictions are indeed real and his claims of protecting the nation are true, we will end up in a war with North Korea. Now we have a visible act of aggression which has occurred after the country was warned that missile firing would be viewed as an act of aggression.

So, if the President really is at war with Iraq because it was necessary to protect the US, then the President will have to prepare for war with North Korea. North Korea is currently provably more threatening to the US than Iraq was according to the intelligence we had at the time Mr. Bush started the war. That’s my view – if Bush is really serious about protecting us and that’s why he went to war in Iraq, then he must be making preparations for war with North Korea – the greater threat from North Korea is provably true, not just my view.

And honestly, I want to be wrong about President Bush, because I don’t want to believe he’s as bad a President as I’ve been saying since he was first elected. I’d much rather be a kooky conspiracy theorist (alhtough I don’t try to convince anyone of my beliefs, which separates me from my such kooks) and find out that Mr. Bush is as sincere and honest as he claims. I’d rather I (and the rest of the country) find out he’s a good President who has not appeared good because of how bad things were when he took charge. But I’m still waiting for the proof of his sincerity and how wrong I am.

Let’s see how we handle this, though.  Maybe I can be proven wrong about President Bush and we can avoid another war.
[tags]North Korea, War, Missile test firing[/tags]

I have not seen Blu-Ray nor HD-DVD videos, so I have nothing to say yes or no to this, but Robert Scoble is seeing techies suggest HD-DVD as the better format. What he has seen in the AVSForum apparently is making it to bigger tech news sites now. I should point out that at least a couple of comments in response to Scoble’s post suggest “WTF? Are you on crack” response from proclaimed techies. I’m just pointing out that if what Scoble says is true, then Sony may have just found an added hurdle to getting the PS3 as game console and center-of-your-AV-world device accepted.

I was hanging out on the AVSForum the other day and saw several posts from people who said that in their comparisons HD-DVD is far superior to BlueRay tests.

Today those posts are getting reported in CentreDaily.

See how the grassroots could be changing popular opinion?

And a snip of the Centredaily article:

Based on the first round of reports, the HD-DVD format is garnering praise, but Blu-ray is garnering almost universal scorn from reviewers and enthusiasts alike. Reviewer Evan Powell, of projectorcentral.com, commented of Blu-ray: “The image quality does not measure up to what we would expect from a high-definition source, and it certainly falls short of the hype.”

At the AVS Forum, home-theater buffs had even harsher reactions. A sampling of their comments: “There’s no getting around the fact that, at this time, BD is not as good as HD-DVD”; “I watched one and a half movies when I realized that they look horrible. … needs to go to the scrap heap”; “This has to count as one of the greatest AV disappointments I can remember!”; “I took it back after two days. … I just couldn’t justify keeping the Samsung when I considered what I’m getting from the Toshiba at half the price”; and “Too much money, too little performance. It went back!” You can read these and more comments under the Blu-ray player and HD-DVD player forums at www.avsforum.com.

[tags]Robert Scoble, HD-DVD, Blu-Ray, PS3[/tags]

(via Dan Gillmor’s blog)

In a move sure to confound many, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) has taken the side of those who wish to institute a ban on flag-burning in America.  Understand that I think burning the flag is a stupid thing.  However, like many others, I believe that it is an act which is protected as free speech.  I don’t have to agree with what someone does to feel they should have the freedom to do it.  In the case of flag-burning, I don’t agree with the people who do it, but I do believe those people should have the right to burn the flag.  Of course, I can particularly see the irony here of people protesting America by taking part in an act which is not widely protected outside of America.  And I would have no qualms telling those people they are free to go live elsewhere.

Washington, DC – U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) today spoke on the floor of the United States Senate in support of the flag protection amendment. In her remarks, Senator Feinstein expressed her belief that the current debate on this amendment is about conduct, not speech, and that the flag protection amendment itself is content neutral. She also argued that she believes the American flag is a monument to the spirit and values of this country, and should be protected as such. The following are her remarks, as delivered:

[tags]Flag burning, Free Speech, Dianne Feinstein[/tags]

ArsTechnica has the details on this one. The article talks more about the network neutrality debate that has been popping up in Congress recently. In particular, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) has stated he intends to stand in the way of a current proposed communications bill if an amendment guaranteeing network neutrality is not included.

Next up for the telecom bill is consideration by the full Senate… maybe. Net neutrality proponent Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) announced via e-mail yesterday that he has placed a “hold” on the legislation, due to its lack of an “effective policy” on net neutrality. “The days of unfettered, unlimited and free access to any site on the world wide web, what I call net neutrality, are being threatened,” said Sen. Wyden. “Those who own the pipes, the giant cable and phone companies, want to discriminate on which sites you can access.”

Without such an amendment, we face a very near-future likelihood in which telecommunication providers can easily limit how accessible web sites and services are to consumers by requiring payment from service and content providers for assured bandwidth and/or latency guarantees. This would mean, for example, that your Vonage phone connection would be of poor to unusable quality unless Vonage paid the baby balls and cable company providers. VOIP consumers could then choose to use an unreliable service like Vonage or a more reliable and more expensive service from their internet provider. Read the above-linked Wikipedia article for a better explanation of why network neutrality is a “good thing.” Wyden has tried unsuccessfully to get such an amendment added before. Here’s hoping this go around is more successful.
As something of an aside, check out the extra unusual move of a Senator not caving to the entertainment industry:

Other amendments may also be tacked onto or removed from the bill, with Sen. John Sununu (R-NH) on record as saying he may try to strip the broadcast flag from the legislation.

[tags]Network neutrality, Broadcast flag[/tags]