Posts by Kyle Matthews
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Isn't there some (highly illegal) system out there that lets you view broadcast TV streams over the net?
Slarty has mentioned torrents. You might also be thinking of a system where someone streams their tv straight to a feed. I've never tried it, and I can't give you a name, but I understand it works quite well. A friend uses it to watch sport that we don't get in NZ, and he says it's fairly clear and works well live. You also get to watch the person at the other end changing channels during ad breaks!
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So let me see, let’s think about countries where the US either imposed its will or stayed around long enough to significantly influence the society. Japan, Germany, South Korea spring to mind, and are three of the most successful countries in the world over the last 60 years since the US began its involvement.
I like this game of "let's name the country". I'll take 'V' for Vietnam, and you can pretty much take your pick of a punch of countries in Central America, but the invasion of Panama and the involvement in Nicaragua come to mind pretty quickly.
And Japan and Germany were pretty successful countries before US involvement. Both have been major players in their regions, economic and military and cultural strengths well into the 19th century, and indeed before. You can't link their current strength and say that it's due to US involvement.
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Yes, the Freeview decoders seem awfully expensive for the number of channels you get with it.
I understand there's some sort of monopoly for the first year on these decoders. Or... there's a limited number of providers of them.
After that first year, I'd expect the price to drop a fair bit.
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I presume you are talking about Saddam as the others in the list don't fit and are all examples of US power being used for good.
And the Taliban. From wikipedia
What actually marks the beginning of the Taliban is when, in the late 1970s, the CIA and the ISI (Pakistan's Interservices Intelligence Agency) started the process of gathering radical Muslims from around the world to fight against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Osama Bin Laden was one of the key players in organizing these U.S. backed training camps for the Muslims. The U.S. poured funds and arms into Afghanistan and "by 1987, 65,000 tons of U.S.-made weapons and ammunition a year were entering the war"
Note also, their support for Osama, who's not exactly on most people's Xmas card lists these days.
Who is worse, the US that aided Saddam in a minor way and got rid of him or those countries that really did enable his regime and didn't want to see him go?
I don't know what minor means in your world. Selling chemical and conventional weapons which were then used to massacre Kurds, and then going to Iraq and shaking his hand... and then coming back a couple of decades later and capturing Saddam and having him executed for using the chemical weapons you sold him, isn't minor activities in my world.
It's worth remembering that prior to the invasion Saddam was kept in check only by the US and British military. When they decided that that situation could not continue no other country stepped up to say they would take over being Saddam's warder. It's all very well to criticise the US for unilateralism but the other side to that argument is that the international community has to have a credible alternative.
There's no indication imho that Iraq (or indeed the Middle East, or the rest of the world) is better now for having gotten rid of Saddam. Indeed, if you listen to the Australian Minister of Defence there were possibly/maybe not other reasons for being there. Some people would say things have gotten worse as a result of the occupation. There's certainly no credible plan going on there for the past four years, so the alternative might indeed have been better.
Personally I'm quite happy for Saddam to be gone. I could even make a reasonable list of other places that the US and other countries should go into and remove some other complete arseholes. None unfortunately involve oil, so we'll see how that works out.
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WTF is up with this one?
What does an elephant have to do with anything?
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What I really don't like about the $34 million 'we' just spent, and the next however many million we're about to follow it up with, is the fact that it's very one-off, non-competitive funding.
I could understand if there was a contestible fund for these sorts of things. And if Team NZ was competing for government money with Rugby World Cup with Netball Champs with under 20 soccer world cup with cricket world cup, commonwealth games, asia-pacific winter games etc. A 'major events' fund. It wouldn't need to be limited to sports either.
All of these things would have major benefits economically for the country, and they should all be able to apply to dip into the pot.
But this seems like yachting is flavour of the day, so cabinet is throwing money at it. And they've buddied up with Mallard and smoozed him appropriately, so they get another $10 million before they've even lost this time around. It's very ad-hoc and non-transparent.
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it's to a mysterious preview that screened before some sessions of transformers, and it's causing quite a stir on the web.
It's a JJ Abrams move, of Lost fame. Stuff has it here:
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On the other hand the US has got rid of Milosevic, the Taliban, Saddam, keeps North Korea at bay, has recently pressured the Sudan govt to allow an increased UN force in Darfur.
Umm. Go through that list again and highlight the ones that the US got rid of, after helping put them in their positions of power/selling them chemical and conventional weapons/etc.
Personally I think the "who's the worst at pissing into the pool of human rights" argument is a little silly. There's plenty of "left-wing" countries that have let down visions of people on the left, and there's a heap of "right-wing" countries that give "markets" and "capitalism" and "freedom" a really bad name.
Justifying America's actions by saying "Cuba is worse", or vice-versa? A plague on both their houses I say.
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Your latter comment makes me wonder how you would feel if someone usurped your blog; started one called -- say -- Public Redress but insisted it was not about politics, it was about citizens being able to express their dissatisfaction with whatever is bugging them. (yeh yeh, I know: you're only a 'small' site yourself - but imagine how you'd feel if you built this site up to something big in 10 years and then Public Redress popped up)
That's not really a valid comparison with Cooper. People have names, and they're logical things to use in a business name. Your example is an entirely more valid trademark dispute, no matter if Russell cared or not.
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I don't think H&K produces a 47. They have a 417. The MP5 is indeed the weapon of choice for 'serious' police activities.