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Showing posts from December 26, 2004
My new friend Keith over at Adventures in Dubai speaks about the changing state of television in the UAE. His post led me to regurgitate my theory about the future of television here in the US. In the comments I wrote: In the US people in the various entertainment industries talk about this convergence as "Siliwood" the unholy matrimony of Hollywood and Silicon Valley. Pointy headed prognosticators think that your PC and home entertainment centers will merge sometime in the near future. I tend to agree. In the US TiVo is becoming very popular which further complicates/distorts the market by frustrating market segmentation. How can they pitch advertisers to buy a premium time slot of they can no longer provide demographic data showing dominance in the highly prized 18-49 demo? Bottom line, they can't. Now that I have TiVo, I don't care when anything is on. I program the thing and whenever I feel like watching something, I do. Plus I have the added bene
eye of science Amazing microscopic photography of crystals, bugs (bech!) and flora/fauna. h/t BoingBoing
Pentagon ousts official who tied Russia, Iraq arms This seems both typical and unfortunate. There are sometimes reasons to keep things of this nature quiet. One is leverage. The US may have wanted to use the leverage disclosure to encourage the Russians to play nice. This "leverage" is also known as "blackmail" when performed by entities other than governments. In this case, I suspect that Powell's State Department would not dream of squeezing Putin over this one. He doesn't seem the type. Were it Rice things would be differnt. More on this as it develops.
FBI Probes Laser Beam Directed at Cockpit Ask me this is a probing attack to test our responses. Initially I thought this would be found to be something like a kid with a wad of laser pointers doing something stupid. After reading that the attacker managed to shoot this beam into the cockpit when the plane was at 8500 feet clearly indicates this is not the case. I wonder if they recieved this beam weaponry from the Russians who blinded an American pilot . Tracing the beampath backwards to find the source of the beam is helpful. I suspect they'll use metering equipment going forward to triangulate the position of the attacker. I'll venture the attacker will move his location significantly and thereby frustrate such efforts. It would also behoove airports like Newark and O'Hare to pro-actively place metering/tracking equipment around their airports to frustrate similar efforts. They won't, however, as it will be deemed too costly. They'll petition for fed
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J.R.R. Tolkien: Lord of the Rings. You are entertaining and imaginative, creating whole new worlds around yourself. Well loved, you have a whole league of imitators, none of which is quite as profound as you are. Stories and songs give a spark of joy in the middle of your eternal battle with the forces of evil. Which literature classic are you? brought to you by Quizilla I am Lord of The Rings. Go figure.
Why Dec. 25th? Interesting article on why we celebrate Christmas on the 25th. I've only read tangentally into this one but I think the Sol Invictus appropriation meme is more likely. I've been having a discussion (read: arguement) on this one w/ a lefty on a board I frequent. He seems to think that this somehow renders Christianity invalid or some such. He siezes upon this as a "gotcha" from which he can refute the whole notion. Similarly he reverts to "early Christians wouldn't understand" current Christianity. Probably true. Nor would "Early Americans" understand America today. Things are in a continual state of flux which seems to elude him.