dieseltaylor

It is a subtle point but it is the consistency of Fox viewers being more wrong than other network viewers that is being underlined. However it is fairly shocking that what were important happenings get confused in peoples minds so quickly. But perhaps my shock is misplaced. The constant bombardment of information[?] covering so many things, the chances that a significant % of the population have the interest or even the intellectual capability to comprehend the political miasma. Perhaps I have to accept that in fact the vast majority of society only have a faint interest in being truly informedabout what governing is about. Perhaps democracy is dead, or at least needs a revamp. : (

http://www.alternet.org/story/149193/study_confirms_that_fox_news_makes_you_stupid

As I have said elsewhere the lessons from this are many: 1. Security - do not make everything easy to get. Assume your organisation will be infiltrated 2. When making decisions give weight to what might happen if the decision leaks 3. How viable is the e-business, consider what may happen if there is full-scale cyber-attacks 4. What is the state of alternative systems - ie cheques ,cash etc 5. How resistant are the banking settlement systems to infiltration /attack 6. Is it right that the international payment systems like Visa and Mastercard dance to US Govt pressure without force of law 7. Why is it that the US press does not censored for publishing if it is illegal? Bear in mind that the Lebanese telephone system has been infiltrated by the Israelis, that the Iranian industry has been virally attacked, that all e-mail traffic is routinely "read" by the US. Now this is what we know, what we are not told is how much enemy sleeper programs or eavesdropping is carried on by foreign nations or groups. So if you were to say what countries are best suited to weather cyber-attacks the odds are they would be deemed to be primitive countries. Each civilised country needs to have physical methods for keeping the barebones of an economic system running. Sweden is actually looking at replacing cash with near-field cards, many companies thing mobile phones will be the answer. Both of these rely totally on electronics to be effective. Consider how people would manage if their was a massive takedown of electronically based systems. How would people pay for food and gas, how could shopkeepers manage. There is no redundancy in most "western" civilisation.

Good stuff. Very impressed. Nice to see other vids there - noticed one where two MKiV's are taken out with a single shot!!

I was well pleased to see some Oz politicians actually have some scruples - unlike the ho-in chief. { can you tell I have been reading US sites] Anyway on a practical note: 6 Companies That Haven't Wussed Out of Working with WikiLeaks By Tana Ganeva, AlterNet Posted on December 10, 2010, Printed on December 14, 2010 http://www.alternet.org/story/149142/ Giants like PayPal, Amazon.com, Visa and MasterCard almost instantly crumbled under government (and p.r.) pressure to drop WikiLeaks, depriving the site of vital funding sources and online platforms. But other companies, some of them small, independent start-ups, have decided to risk the wrath of Joe Lieberman, the State Department, and their European counterparts and help keep WikiLeaks afloat by providing funding sources (yeah, you can now donate to WikiLeaks even if you only have Visa or MasterCard.) and hosting the site. Here's a list of companies that have stood by WikiLeaks: 1. Xipwire: The Philly online payment company has announced that unlike PayPal they welcome customer donations to WikiLeaks. According to their site, they're even waiving fees and charges so that 100% of the money goes to the whistleblower site. "While people may or may not agree with WikiLeaks, we at XIPWIRE believe that anyone who wishes to support the organization through a donation should be able to do so," they say on their site. While the publicity advantages are obvious, there's also the threat of backlash. One of the founders told the tech blog BaltTech, "We're fully aware that not everyone likes what Wikileaks is. But we are prepared to accept the consequences." (For the moment the money goes to an escrow account because they haven't been able to reach WikiLeaks.) 2. Flattr Flattr, which was started by one of the founders of Pirate Bay, has also been funneling money to WikiLeaks. The site lets users put money into accounts; when they run into a website they want to support, they can click on their "flattr" button to donate money to site. According to TechCrunch, WikILeaks has used Flattr since August and received over 3,000 Flattr donations when they released the Afghanistan war diary. 3. Datacell The Icelandic company processes debit and credit card donations to WikiLeaks, so Visa and Mastercards' recent decision to cut all donations to the site has not done great things for their business. In a statement published on their site, CEO Andreas Fink slammed Visa for letting political considerations get in the way of customer service: "The suspension of payments towards Wikileaks is a violation of the agreements with their customers. Visa users have explicitly expressed their will to send their donations to Wikileaks and Visa is not fulfilling this wish." Founder Ólafur Sigurvinsson pointed out in an interview with an Icelandic news channel, "I've got confirmed today that I am capable of supporting Al-Qaeda, Ku Klux Klan, buy weapons, drugs and all sorts of pornopraphy with a VISA card. But that's not being investigated. Instead I can not support a humanitarian organisation fighting for the freedom of speech." 4. OVH WikiLeaks moved to the French data server OVH after getting kicked off Amazon. This did not sit well with French Industry Minister Eric Besson, who demanded that the site be purged from all French servers. Rather than instantly boot WikiLeaks offline, the company asked the courts to clarify Besson's order. Earlier this week a judge ruled that the French government had to actually prove that WikiLeaks broke the law, instead of just saying so and then trying to intimidate private companies. A company spokesperson said, "OVH is neither for nor against this site. Now that it’s with us, we will fulfill the contract. That’s our job.” 5. Twitter WikiLeaks relies on Twitter to communicate, and their account seems to be safe for now. The micro-blogging site has been accused of blocking #WikiLeaks and #Cablegate from the trending topics though, a claim they dispute. 6. Facebook Facebook recently released a statement saying that they have no plans to delete the WikiLeaks account, which has 1,187,990 fans. Tana Ganeva is an AlterNet editor. Follow her on Twitter. You can email her at tanaalternet@gmail.com. © 2010 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved. View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/149142/ And thanks to IMI who will no doubt realise this is a public service message - I have highlighted the most pertinent part showing the hypocrisy. Perhaps having US controlled organisations inserted into all financial transactions needs to be examined as a threat.

What a good read. Thanks for the link.

"pinko-commie-journo types" Crumbs - I did not think knowing howing to spell correctly labelled one so easily! And I remember to smile : )

I was just test-playing some CMBB stuff for a new tournament and rather amusingly I had two MkIV's hunting and a hunting IS-II saw them first and started firing. This occurring at 1500+ metres I was not expecting much but the percentages rose quite quickly. A T-34/85 coming to their assistance was nailed at 1527metres and knocked out with a single shot. A of the rest of the MkIV platoon one had bogged and immobilised but another joined the fight and recieved a turret hit from a 122mm - the crew were shaken! Which was pretty much the same result for the hits on the IS-II. though one shot penetrated for a crew kill. The IV's were not cowering - but then the Germans rarely do. I have played it through a bit further and I see that the IS-IIs are firing HE at the MkIVs and that can kill as one blew up spectacularly. Intent on getting the Stalins to fight I had a MkIV firing its HE and it destroyed a Stalin gun. Now that is a result! The secret ingredient being a Panther where its rate of fire and lethality makes a difference ending with two Stalins and two t34/85's. The Tiger got a Stalin before dying to one. In the end 4 dead IS-IIs and 3 T34/85's for a Tiger and a two MkIV's. This was played on a huge map.

http://www.qdg.org.uk/pages/WW2-Part-3-109.php In case you miss it. Italian tank nailed first shot at 3500 yards amongst other things.

I am sure JonS just had a momentary aberration but for those on the forum where English is not their native language I think it helpful to provide the proper word. : ) Estate agents!!!! Property managers!!! argh What winds me up hugely around here is leaflet drops saying we can sell your house and they cannot even get the street name correct. Ok so they are 0.5mile away, its in small print on maps, and did call at their office two years ago to mention it was not very professional. Rsholes. Congrats on the job though, presumably makes life complicated for a time.

Amusing to think how it was good , then not so good, and now vindicated. If you have feelings about organic food, and who does not, one of the defences for plants against attack is to generate more salcylic acid. Now of course if you spray crops with insecticides they have no nedd to generate the useful to animals salcylic acid. So now take your mini-daily dose! Of course aspirin was out of patent and the replacements well ... So it does cross my mind who might have had an interest in dissing aspirin. And you know how misconstrued reports can be.... http://blogs.alternet.org/speakeasy/2010/12/11/now-praised-aspirin-was-vilified-by-vioxx-marketing/

Have you read the latest link where apparently Zimmer said he had used Mars? Admittedly only a couple of people who watched a certain TV show. How far can you take it? Zimmer assigns the rights the case gets dropped and nobody says anything as part of the settlement - Zimmer hardly wants a court case where he loses and is branded a plagiarist. Holst's estate makes more money. Who is going to rock the boat?

in·du·bi·ta·ble adj. Too apparent to be doubted; unquestionable. in·dubi·ta·bly adv. Of course there may be another spelling ....

If the song was assigned voluntarily to Holst's estate then I doubt there is a recorded legal result - cases lapsed might be where to look. But I am guessing. The quote was off the YouTube link. Here is a interesting thread on Zimmer and he seems to be Edison like in his working arrangements: http://www.soundsonline-forums.com/archive/index.php/t-3971.html

http://www.alternet.org/story/149115/the_6_most_shocking_cases_of_police_stun-gun_abuse?page=1 Encouraging to see that after all the hoo-ha the device is not being misused : )

I was doing an experiment and incidentally set-up a fleet of 23 German big gun units against 15 Russian. At game start at slightly over 4km a single Nashorn opened fire of the four in the mix. It did seem that the Nashorns were the most aware. Most of the other German tanks had to be given fire orders as 1% chances apparently are not sufficient incentive. Over about 10 minutes of firing three Russian SU's died for the loss of one Nashorn, one gun damaged JagdTiger, and 7 commanders deceased. Fire from 152mm and 122mm can be within about 20-40 metres to kill a commander. The Russians had to be ordered to fire and never appeared to have a hit chance above 0%. Of course I should have changed everyone to crack rather than regular as the Germans could not used the advanced sights.

I am currently quite excited playing Victoria II. Had a 4 player LAN session Tuesday and it went pretty well as we are all novices at it. Highly addictive rule your world. And yeas it does have 100's of countries and mediacl research amongst others. I have to admit that the following night despite me needing to be up at 5.30 am the attack on my Bavaria by the North German Confederation required a strong response .... but then who needs more than 3 hours sleep? Apparently the script is modelable[?] and some has done something to download where you can start in 1400 rather than 1836. But I think I will wait to get the hang of the stock version.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fm-M7-AUt6w&feature=related

" But Hans Zimmer copied this theme from Gustav Holst who wrote the Planets Suite, part of which is Mars: Bringer of War. Holst wrote The Planets in the early 1900's. Mars: Bringer of War is considered one of the most influential pieces of the 20th Century. Holst's estate sued Zimmer after the release of Gladiator for copyright of the song, and the estate won! If you haven't listened to Mars - do so as it is unforgettable."

Love it. And recommended by a US viewer!

I was happy but surprised to see the EPA can be tough: http://www.smartplanet.com/people/blog/pure-genius/epa-list-identifies-environmental-criminals-on-the-lam/5018/

Michael Green's Tiger Tanks, page 74, asserts that a glancing hit from a 122mm shell could produce concussion enough to disable a Tiger's turret mechanism. So whilst we can glibly talk about penetrations or lack off perhaps we should accept there were many ways to disable tanks or force a retreat in RL. Unfortunately perhaps CMBB does not allow for a great range of results. Gun damage, immobilised, dead, or not. Crew hits I think are restricted to one.

Whilst I am now getting to the point where I accept everything in our world can affect anything else, and a lot of the time not beneficially, this one seems a long way from being an obvious effect. Mercury 'turns birds homosexual' By Victoria Gill Science and nature reporter, BBC News Mercury affects the behaviour of white ibises by "turning them homosexual", with higher doses resulting in males being more likely to pair with males. Scientists in Florida and Sri Lanka studied the effect of mercury in the birds' diet. Their aim was to find out why it reduced the ibises' breeding. Mercury pollution can come from burning coal and waste, and run-off from mines.The report, in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, shows that wetland birds are particularly badly affected by it. We're seeing very large reproductive effects at very low concentrations Peter Frederick, biologist Although the researchers already knew that eating mercury-contaminated food could affect an animal's development, they were surprised by the "strange" results of this experiment. "We knew mercury could depress their testosterone (male sex hormone) levels," explained Dr Peter Frederick from the University of Florida, who led the study. "But we didn't expect this." The team fed white ibises on food pellets that contained concentrations of mercury equivalent to those measured in the shrimp and crayfish that make up the birds' wetland diet. The higher the dose of mercury in their food pellets, the more likely a male bird was to pair with another male. Dr Frederick and his colleagues say the study shows that mercury could dramatically reduce the breeding rates of birds and possibly of other wildlife. The exact mechanism that causes this change in behaviour is not yet fully understood.But mercury is known to disrupt hormonal signalling, so it could have a direct impact on the sexual behaviour that is mediated by those hormones.Importantly, the males with the higher mercury doses performed far fewer courtship displays, so they were more likely to be "ignored" by females. Wetland habitats, like the Florida Everglades that are home to these birds, are particularly vulnerable to mercury contamination. Bacteria that live in the thick, oxygen-free sludge chemically alter the mercury, turning it into its most toxic form - methylated mercury.And this chemical can act as a sort of biological impostor, mimicking hormones that act as the body's natural chemical signals. Some of these signals are involved in reproductive behaviour - they may stimulate an animal to carry out a courtship display or motivate it to mate. "We're seeing very large reproductive effects at very low concentrations [of mercury]," said Dr Frederick. "So we really need to be paying more attention to this." When a wetland is warm all year round, like the Everglades, it is an ideal environment for this methylation process.Scientists refer to these conditions as a "Goldilocks mixture". Dr Frederick says that measures could be taken to clean up any sources of mercury where they are close to wetland habitats - for example by filtering or "scrubbing" the smoke from nearby coal-burning power plants. <li class="bull"> Gary Heinz, a wildlife researcher from the US Geological Survey in Maryland, who was not involved in the study, told the BBC that mercury was "a serious problem in many aquatic environments"."It cannot be broken down, only be moved about and transformed from one chemical form to another," he said."And any effect that might reduce the productivity of a species would likely be harmful in nature." Dr Heinz said the next step would be to study the reproductive behaviour of mercury-contaminated animals in the wild. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_9243000/9243902.stm

Hmmmmm ..........Including how many battles fought in the later war? I know there is a total of 4244 CMBB battles listed but you cannot break down the time periods so the number of games where T34/76's faced off against StugIII 's with the armour being questioned is impossible to say. There have been around 1300 tournament battles that I do not believe are included in the KR's figures and certainly some of these include IS-III's so would hardly be representative. The point is that many games may have been fought with late and post war tanks to flatter the Allies. There are also quite a few games played where it is street-fighting further reducing the bad match-ups. So there is no comfort to be drawn from the WeBoB data base. Is the next step is to introduce the StugIII 30+50mm armour patch which involves the .bmps being replaced with a lurid yellow model with Nein, and Nyet written on the armour to remind people it is definitely busted?

http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/ Lots of good pictures here : )