I remember hearing about the breakup of the Bell telephone monopoly into the various "baby Bells" back when I was a kid, but I didn't really clue in to what was going on at the time. Now, it seems like we've got an anti-competitive telecom industry that can't be *much* better than it was back then, but more importantly absolutely everything is a subsidiary of one of 2-3 giant megacorporations that have their claws into everything.

I tend to think that a free market and low regulation is a good thing, but it seems like a little more regulation of these monopolies and some forced separation of the megacorps into pieces that have to stand and compete within their own sector (telecom, IT, press, etc. instead of giant ball-o-everything) on their own two feet would have to be better for everyone. Well, everyone except for the CEOs at the core of each ball, I guess.

Additional Stuff:
http://horkai.net/?oldal=6

Welcome to the HORKAI Animal Training Center! Wolves, bears, deer, wild boars... and some 100 more animal actors for your movies, commercials...

Here you can find all information you need on working with animals in the film and televison industry and also about how, what, with whom and when and with what kinds of animals we work with. You can browse our pictures at "Our animals" or watch videos at the "Videos" section and while at it you can gain some insight in the activities of the HORKAI Animal Training Center in the last ten years or so…
We wish you a pleasent visit at us and if you have any questions about our animals or movies we work in, do not hesitate to contact me directly at the "Ask Zoltan" section on the left side of the page. If you are looking for animals for your film, TV or commercial proudction you can contact us at the email adresses and telephones shown in 'Contacts".

>> ^lucky760:

There was no laptop, just cellular telephones.
http://videosift.com/talk/SoCal-LA-OC-SiftUp-July-2011


Ah. Did they not have wifi there? Bummer. I would have brought a very old lappy (PowerBook G4) and do my VS stuff (e.g., submission) there.

There was no laptop, just cellular telephones.

http://videosift.com/talk/SoCal-LA-OC-SiftUp-July-2011

The actual problem is the ability and willingness of the telecoms to sue to keep competition away. Owning all the pipes, while it may be perceived as a monopoly and obstruction to competition, does not satisfactorily explain the problem. I say this because in Germany all of the the pipes are owned by Deutsche Telecom, but it is government regulations that allow for competition. As a result, internet is cheaper and faster as pointed out by TheGenk. Go ahead, own the pipes, but allow for fair use of them and lease them to anyone willing to pay, and the problem will not be so acute.


>> ^dag:

I already posted this to BF's Facebook - but this is where the action is - my selected comments:
There's no chance for competition when the massive telecom corporations own all the pipes into the home and sue to prevent any further competition. (See most muni-broadband projects) http://arstechnica.com/tech-
policy/news/2010/11/the-price-of-muni-broadband-eternal-war-with-time-warner-cable.ars
Read the above article and tell me again how if only the free market was left unfettered we'd have competition in broadband. What a load of bull. The major controlling corporations have no interest in competition.
How is it government's fault? The big telcos gobbled up the little Baby Bells with no regulation from the FTC, hogging all the infrastructure and lobbying / suing any organization that challenged their primacy. How do you blame the government for this?


>> ^TheGenk:

>> ^marinara:
paying $60 per month for 768 kilobits here in the USA.

Outch!
For 30€ you get 100mbit internet and telephone flatrate here in Germany, time to move

>> ^marinara:

paying $60 per month for 768 kilobits here in the USA.

Outch!

For 30€ you get 100mbit internet and telephone flatrate here in Germany, time to move

EXTREMELY ROUGH TRANSLATION PART 4 (FINAL)

6:68~7:33

[NARRATOR] An instant before the car sinks, Mr. Muroga fled from the vehicle, barely escaping with his life. We took this opportunity to have him watch the images and give us his thoughts.

[MR. MUROGA] Ah, right at this point. I saw the cars being swept along and thought “It’s a tsunami!”

[NARRATOR] From the left-side of the screen, cars flow past and Mr. Muroga realizes the danger.

[MR. MUROGA] The camera doesn’t capture it, but I could see in the rearview mirror that an even faster tsunami had already arrived behind me.

7:33~8:16

[NARRATOR] These are pictures Mr. Muroga took with his own camera. This picture looking out the back of the car allows us to understand the ferocity with which the tsunami behind him arrived.

[MR. MUROGA] At this time, the cars were crashing into each other with great force and my car began to be battered out of shape.

[NARRATOR] Surrounded by waves, Mr. Muroga decided it was too dangerous to try to leave his vehicle.

[MR. MUROGA] I thought about things like, “Maybe I’ll be able to escape when the water recedes.”

[NARRATOR] However, instead of receding, the water began to churn with even greater intensity.

8:16~8:55

{MR. MUROGA} At this point, the car began to be swept away. I was carried away by the current.

[NARRATOR] The tsunami flowed from the ocean between the buildings, capturing Mr. Muroga’s car like a pincer. Within only 30 seconds his car was completely afloat and slowly drifted along. But after that his car entered the faster part of the current and was dragged along by the tsunami.

8:55~9:20

[NARRATOR] This is the point at which Mr. Muroga, being swept along by the tsunami, escaped from his vehicle.

[MR. MUROGA’S VOICE ON VIDEO] Okay, now!

[MR. MUROGA] I think I jumped from the vehicle at this point. Because water suddenly began pouring inside.

[NARRATOR] Just moments before the car sinks, Mr. Muroga makes his escape through the window he had opened earlier.

9:20~9:55

[NARRATOR] Mr. Muroga’s car was swept approximately 150 meters into the wall of a warehouse before sinking. Mr. Muroga, while being swept along by the current, managed to swim to a nearby building and pull himself from the water. He visits the scene of the accident for the first time since the incident. As he approaches the area where the current was strongest, he notices something.

[MR. MUROGA] Ah, look over there, by the divider. Right there, the curb has been practically erased. Clearly the tsunami did that, no?

9:55~11:16

[NARRATOR] Even now, three months later, the evidence of the tsunami remains. What can we learn from these images? We requested Dr. Imura, a tsunami specialist to analyze them. The first thing he noticed was how quickly the water level rose.

[DR. IMURA] At this point it’s already over 50 centimeters deep and the cars are starting to float. Once that happens, the car is beyond control. The tanker truck has larger [in diameter] tires and isn’t floating yet. And then after the height reaches 1 meter, even trucks begin to float away.

[NARRATOR] Dr. Imura points out that once the water level rises above the height of the tires, the vehicle will begin to float and in a very short time be beyond driver control.

[DR. IMURA] Almost as soon as the tsunami appears before your eyes, your vehicle will begin to float. At that point you should monitor the situation and if the current doesn’t seem too strong and if there isn’t a lot of dangerous debris nearby, you should break your window and leave the vehicle as quickly as possible. Once outside, you should head for the highest area you can find, such as a fence or telephone pole—whatever is available. Grab onto whatever it is and climb as high as you can.

11:16~12:15

[NARRATOR] Also, Dr. Imura points out the difficulty vehicles pose on your ability to hear.

[DR. IMURA] It’s important to remember that the sound of the car will drown out outside sounds and make them harder to hear. The various sounds of a car may make it difficult to hear the approaching tsunami.

[NARRATOR] It is certainly true on the video that you cannot hear the roar of the tsunami approaching over the sounds the car. Mr. Muroga also had this to say about the sound.

[MR. MUROGA] In the video, I think you can see that there are many people lined up on the roof of that building. I’m pretty sure these people were screaming at us to run and get out of there. But none of us in our vehicles noticed them. We couldn’t hear them.

12:15~13:44

[NARRATOR] About trying to escape a tsunami in your vehicle, tsunami specialist Dr. Imura had this to say.

[DR. IMURA] Basically, people who can’t walk well should use a car to try to escape. Those who can walk or run should, in principle, not use their vehicles.

[NARRATOR] Cars being swept along… the might of the tsunami. Mr. Muroga told us that through these images he hopes to educate others about the awful power of the tsunami.

[NEWSCASTER, GRAY SUIT] It seems like Mr. Muroga maintained his calm in a difficult situation. In that part of the city, there are lots of buildings and you can’t see very far, making it difficult to notice the approaching tsunami. Furthermore, as we saw in the video, with the windows rolled up you can’t hear the tsunami approaching either.

[NEWSCASTER, FEMALE] It was very quiet on the video, wasn’t it?

[NEWSCASTER, GRAY SUIT] It had been an hour since the earthquake struck and Mr. Muroga was more than 1km inland, so he didn’t think there was any danger from a tsunami.

[NEWSCASTER, FEMALE] According to our tsunami specialist, it was the first time he had ever seen footage like this taken from within the tsunami.

[NEWSCASTER, GRAY SUIT] It’s very valuable footage. It would be great if many people—everyday people and tsunami specialists—could watch this footage and from it find the means of how to protect themselves and others.

That's the heart of American politics right there. A few people watch the news, even fewer understand it or pay attention, and then word of mouth just starts spreading like a giant retarded game of telephone. The people at my last job used to believe some of the dumbest crap. And if you tried to explain the reality of it to them, they'd look at you like you were speaking Chinese.

Because we have the early manuscripts and we know what they looked like. The oldest and the newest have very few discrepencies.

>> ^petpeeved:
When you were a kid, did you ever play that game telephone where the first kid whispers a sentence into the ear of the kid next to them who then repeats it into the ear of the next kid and on and on until the last kid says the sentence out loud?
It was always quite hilarious how mangled a sentence could get by the time it passed through five or six kid's brains.
Organized religion and their 'holy' books are just a much longer game of telephone except that the people passing the message have political, financial, and personal reasons for altering the message.
Even if, and this is an infinitely huge if, at one time 'the word' of a god was spoken to a human being, what are the chances that two thousand years later, that message bears any resemblance to the original?

When you were a kid, did you ever play that game telephone where the first kid whispers a sentence into the ear of the kid next to them who then repeats it into the ear of the next kid and on and on until the last kid says the sentence out loud?

It was always quite hilarious how mangled a sentence could get by the time it passed through five or six kid's brains.

Organized religion and their 'holy' books are just a much longer game of telephone except that the people passing the message have political, financial, and personal reasons for altering the message.

Even if, and this is an infinitely huge if, at one time 'the word' of a god was spoken to a human being, what are the chances that two thousand years later, that message bears any resemblance to the original?

I guess you missed all his other comments. How's the peanut gallery treating you?

>> ^shuac:
>> ^shinyblurry:
Are you extremely hyperactive or what? Why do you use exclamation points for everything you say?
>> ^Sketch:
So now the inaccuracy of your infallible book is evidence of it's efficacy!? Damn, it is amazing how far apologists will bend over backwards to justify their beliefs! No, I'm sorry, I will not trust a story handed down by bronze age people in a giant, oral tradition game of telephone.
There are statues and coins minted of Caesar from the time of his actual life. We have troop reports, corroborating evidence from his enemies, his friends, probably a lot of mundane articles of government, or war, or house staff corroborating the existence of Caesar. And that's even if you don't believe Caesar's own war diary was transcribed by historian Suetonius. I, for one, trust a historical scribe in a civilization that kept amazing records, which Jesus, as important as He was supposed to be, never shows up in, and a tribal people telling a story through oral tradition finally written down decades to centuries later, then combed through and culled to decide which were true gospels and which were not. The so-called eye witnesses for Jesus can, from what I understand, all be questioned. The whole "more evidence than Caesar" nonsense is apologist crap that people keep on spreading. That's why we get so frustrated.
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm">http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html">http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html</a>
<em>>> <a rel="nofollow" href='http://videosift.com/video/Christopher-Hitchens-badly-loses-debate-to-William-L-Craig#comment-1212231'>^shinyblurry</a>:<br />
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/Sketch" title="member since November 20th, 2006" class="profilelink">Sketch</a><br> <br> <br> As far as the discrepencies go, they were eye witness accounts. If this was all made up, don't you suppose the accounts would be harmonized? That fact that they're not harmonized makes them more reliable for testimony. Here is a good website to answer some of your objections:<br> <br> <a rel="nofollow" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm">http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm</a></a><br
> </em>


I counted two exclamation points out of all ten of Sketch's sentences.
Don't be hyperbolic. It's unseemly.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Are you extremely hyperactive or what? Why do you use exclamation points for everything you say?
>> ^Sketch:
So now the inaccuracy of your infallible book is evidence of it's efficacy!? Damn, it is amazing how far apologists will bend over backwards to justify their beliefs! No, I'm sorry, I will not trust a story handed down by bronze age people in a giant, oral tradition game of telephone.
There are statues and coins minted of Caesar from the time of his actual life. We have troop reports, corroborating evidence from his enemies, his friends, probably a lot of mundane articles of government, or war, or house staff corroborating the existence of Caesar. And that's even if you don't believe Caesar's own war diary was transcribed by historian Suetonius. I, for one, trust a historical scribe in a civilization that kept amazing records, which Jesus, as important as He was supposed to be, never shows up in, and a tribal people telling a story through oral tradition finally written down decades to centuries later, then combed through and culled to decide which were true gospels and which were not. The so-called eye witnesses for Jesus can, from what I understand, all be questioned. The whole "more evidence than Caesar" nonsense is apologist crap that people keep on spreading. That's why we get so frustrated.
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm">http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html">http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html</a>
<em>>> <a rel="nofollow" href='http://videosift.com/video/Christopher-Hitchens-badly-loses-debate-to-William-L-Craig#comment-1212231'>^shinyblurry</a>:<br />
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/Sketch" title="member since November 20th, 2006" class="profilelink">Sketch</a><br> <br> <br> As far as the discrepencies go, they were eye witness accounts. If this was all made up, don't you suppose the accounts would be harmonized? That fact that they're not harmonized makes them more reliable for testimony. Here is a good website to answer some of your objections:<br> <br> <a rel="nofollow" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm">http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm</a></a><br
> </em>



I counted two exclamation points out of all ten of Sketch's sentences.

Don't be hyperbolic. It's unseemly.

Are you extremely hyperactive or what? Why do you use exclamation points for everything you say? It makes your dialogue almost purely hyperbole. Slow down son and listen..the methods historians use to verify evidence for something is not an exact science..if you were to say Jesus didn't exist then you would have to say a lot of people in ancient history didn't exist either, because the evidence for Jesus is far better than someone like say Alexander the Great. It's not nonsense, it's reality..if you want to say the methods are bad then discard most of what you know about world history. If however you accept those methods then you should also accept Jesus was a historical person..your position is fairly ridiculous.

>> ^Sketch:
So now the inaccuracy of your infallible book is evidence of it's efficacy!? Damn, it is amazing how far apologists will bend over backwards to justify their beliefs! No, I'm sorry, I will not trust a story handed down by bronze age people in a giant, oral tradition game of telephone.
There are statues and coins minted of Caesar from the time of his actual life. We have troop reports, corroborating evidence from his enemies, his friends, probably a lot of mundane articles of government, or war, or house staff corroborating the existence of Caesar. And that's even if you don't believe Caesar's own war diary was transcribed by historian Suetonius. I, for one, trust a historical scribe in a civilization that kept amazing records, which Jesus, as important as He was supposed to be, never shows up in, and a tribal people telling a story through oral tradition finally written down decades to centuries later, then combed through and culled to decide which were true gospels and which were not. The so-called eye witnesses for Jesus can, from what I understand, all be questioned. The whole "more evidence than Caesar" nonsense is apologist crap that people keep on spreading. That's why we get so frustrated.
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm">http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm</a>
<a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html">http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html</a>
<em>>> <a rel="nofollow" href='http://videosift.com/video/Christopher-Hitchens-badly-loses-debate-to-William-L-Craig#comment-1212231'>^shinyblurry</a>:<br />
@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/Sketch" title="member since November 20th, 2006" class="profilelink">Sketch</a><br> <br> <br> As far as the discrepencies go, they were eye witness accounts. If this was all made up, don't you suppose the accounts would be harmonized? That fact that they're not harmonized makes them more reliable for testimony. Here is a good website to answer some of your objections:<br> <br> <a rel="nofollow" rel="nofollow" href="http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm"><a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm">http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm</a></a><br> </em>

So now the inaccuracy of your infallible book is evidence of it's efficacy!? Damn, it is amazing how far apologists will bend over backwards to justify their beliefs! No, I'm sorry, I will not trust a story handed down by bronze age people in a giant, oral tradition game of telephone.

There are statues and coins minted of Caesar from the time of his actual life. We have troop reports, corroborating evidence from his enemies, his friends, probably a lot of mundane articles of government, or war, or house staff corroborating the existence of Caesar. And that's even if you don't believe Caesar's own war diary was transcribed by historian Suetonius. I, for one, trust a historical scribe in a civilization that kept amazing records, which Jesus, as important as He was supposed to be, never shows up in, and a tribal people telling a story through oral tradition finally written down decades to centuries later, then combed through and culled to decide which were true gospels and which were not. The so-called eye witnesses for Jesus can, from what I understand, all be questioned. The whole "more evidence than Caesar" nonsense is apologist crap that people keep on spreading. That's why we get so frustrated.
http://nobeliefs.com/exist.htm
http://www.jesusneverexisted.com/exist.html

>> ^shinyblurry:

@<a rel="nofollow" href="http://videosift.com/member/Sketch" title="member since November 20th, 2006" class="profilelink">Sketch

As far as the discrepencies go, they were eye witness accounts. If this was all made up, don't you suppose the accounts would be harmonized? That fact that they're not harmonized makes them more reliable for testimony. Here is a good website to answer some of your objections:
http://www.philvaz.com/apologetics/num9.htm

If you are bored you should Art some clay and make water fountains out of pots and rocks'n the like and put " fur sal ! " on telephone poles. total investment 30-40 real dollars, sell price, much much more.