MADISON, WISCONSIN-When I arrived in Afghanistan (news - web sites) last November, Operation Enduring Freedom-the American bombing campaign that eventually toppled the Taliban-was being hailed by the U.S. media as an unqualified success. Precision bombing and first-rate intelligence, the Pentagon (news - web sites) claimed, had kept civilian casualties down to a few dozen victims at most. Long-oppressed Afghan women burned their burqas and walked the streets as the country reveled in an orgy of liberation. Or so we were told.

The amount of disjoint between television and reality was shocking. The "new" Northern Alliance government was no better than the Taliban; with the exception of the U.S.-appointed former oil-company hacks in charge, they were Talibs. Women still wore their burqas, stonings continued at the soccer stadium and the bodies of bombing victims piled up by the thousands. Not only was the War on Terror failing to catch terrorists, it was creating a new generation of Afghans whose logical response to losing their friends and parents and siblings and spouses and children would be to hate America.

Why didn't the truth about the extent of civilian casualties get out?

I blame the journalists, though Lord knows, some of them tried. As a novice correspondent for The Village Voice and KFI-AM radio in Los Angeles, I carefully studied the pros. A brilliant war reporter for a big American newspaper-he'd done them all, from Rwanda to Somalia to Kosovo-filed detailed reports daily from his room down the street from mine as I charged my electronic equipment on his portable generator. The next day we'd hook up a satellite phone to a laptop to read his pieces on his paper's website. Invariably every mention of Afghan civilians killed or injured by American air strikes would be neatly excised. One day, as a test, he fired off a thousand words about a 15,000-pound "daisy cutter" bomb that had taken out an entire neighborhood in southeastern Kunduz. Hundreds of civilians lay scattered in bits of protoplasm amid the rubble. His editors killed the piece, calling it "redundant."

MEET THE PRESS - The Corruption of Journalism in Wartime

"Back in the day, there were boards. Bulletin Board Systems. BBS's. No Net, no Web, no cyberspace, nothing. Just boards, and their ugly stepchildren, D-Dials. All strung together with phone lines, hand-rolled software, and 8-bit computers. No backbone, no hubs, no routers, no DNS tables. Just one computer picking up the phone, calling another, and having a little chat. "

Salon.com Technology | When 300 baud was the bomb

This is damn funny....hehehehe

WindowsRG Fullscreen Demo

NEXT MONTH, News Corp.’s FX cable-TV network is expected to broadcast a one-hour special called the “World Beer Games.” The program, which first broadcasts at 10:30 p.m. June 8, features teams of young men and women from around the world competing for the title of “world’s best beer nation” and a silver-plated beer-keg trophy.
Intent on attracting that hard-to-reach young male audience, the show, sponsored by Interbrew, Beer.com, and Hooters of Canada, is jam packed with lowbrow humor. During one scene, voluptuous cheerleaders — decked out in sparkling pastel short outfits — demonstrate the beer chug and, little surprise here, end up with very wet shirts. In the pint curl, which involves teams sliding three 20-ounce glasses with 16 ounces of beer down a long bar, one brunette misinterprets the rules and ends up sliding her entire body down the bar.

‘Beer Games’ a network headache

China's telcom thugz

China's cable firms fight deadly turf war

Miss Russia wins Miss Universe title!

Miss Russia, Oxana Fedorova, won the Miss Universe title at a glittering ceremony in Puerto Rico on Wednesday night, sweeping away a field of 74 other candidates with her long raven hair and elegance.

My girl wins!!!!!!!

WARWICK, England (CNN) -- A mathematical formula calculated by a British university professor has found that time actually is money.

According to the equation, the average British minute is worth just over 10 pence (15 cents) to men and eight pence (12 cents) to women.

The formula is: V=(W((100-t)/100))/C, where V is the value of an hour, W is a person's hourly wage, t is the tax rate and C is the local cost of living.

Time is money, professor proves

John Carmack and Trent Reznor interviewed

Doom III Has a Story to Tell

Nothing at this year’s Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) prepared spectators for Doom III, the latest first-person perspective shooter from id Software. The jump from Quake III to Doom III is no incremental jump; it is a revolution.
The environments in Doom III appear to be a cross between Star Wars and the Industrial Revolution. This is a world filled with iron-sheet walls and industrial winches. It is a world of dark hallways, monsters that would give HR Geiger the creeps, and the kinds of bathrooms you currently find in bus stations.
At one point in the demo, the hero of the game runs into a bathroom and witnesses a huge demonic dog tearing a bite out of the corpse of a fat, bald guy. The corpse is pale and has waxy, scarred skin. But in the world of Doom III, alliances change. Within moments of entering the room, the hero is attacked by both the hound from Hell and its corpulent lunch.

There’s no ignoring Doom III

Few people know more about the desperate insanity--or inanity--of cubicle culture than Adams. As creator of the popular Dilbert comic strip, Adams has built a successful Dilbert empire--both online and off--lampooning the oddness that comes with working within a corporation's four walls.

w1ld: funny article

Why Dilbert loves the Internet