Weblog on the Internet and public policy, journalism, virtual community, and more from David Brake, a Canadian academic, consultant and journalist

Archive forOctober 31st, 2001 | back to home

31 October 2001

Public wireless Internet hits Manchester. Of course, contrary to what the article was saying there have been plenty of public wireless Internet access points scattered around the world before now – particularly in the USA. This will probably be one of the first to use Bluetooth when the first 70 sites launch in September, but since Bluetooth is extremely rare at present its impact may be limited. You can buy Bluetooth PCMCIA cards for your laptop for around £125 if you are interested…

Access points are being placed in restaurants, pubs and coffee shops – so you will have to at least buy a coffee to use it. I would love to see it provided in public libraries etc…

Filed under:Uncategorized at10:51 am

Salon argues (in an article that may require you to subscribe to read it, alas) that the US is being very careful to avoid civilian casualties and its main problem is one of PR. The story claims that civilian casualties of the bombing in the Gulf war were around 3000 and in Kosovo were around 500 – both figures sound low to me.

A military analyst notes, “Nine percent of the air weapons used in the Gulf War were precision weapons, partially because only a certain number of planes could utilize them. In Kosovo about 30 percent of the air weapons used were precision-guided. By 1999 all planes could carry precision-guided weapons. And the cost of those weapons has gone down, which has led to a greater willingness to use them.” Does that mean that perhaps 50% of munitions might be precision this time around? What of the other 50%?

And none of this addresses the main problem which is people dying of starvation, not bombing. You could argue that if the bombing speeds the introduction of a regime which would make it easier to get supplies into the country, a large number of civilian bombing casualties would be justifiable (given the much greater numbers who are in danger because of the winter famine).ringtone free samsung a630rd accident barrington5450 lg ringtone6015i ringtonealltel ringtone real freenokia 3595 ringtone free modelphone free nokia ringtone allteladkins trace free ringtone Map