Friday, July 25, 2008

Don't tell me that the price of oil isn't Political.


"He who is willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety." - Ben Franklin

"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams

Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons.

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."--Mark Twain

As of 10:09 GMT+8 oil is at $123.56 down anothe $1.93. And Gas is at 3.0275 down 0.0319 as of this same time.
It's been a good week




D, AKA Lets, Advising at keen as The Webster. Read my other blog, http://letslets.blogspot.com/ and or http://the-webster.blogspot.com/


send comments via Email to me





Same might think this should be in my TECH blog, but no.


"He who is willing to sacrifice freedom for safety deserves neither freedom nor safety." - Ben Franklin

"One useless man is called a disgrace; two useless men are called a law firm; and three or more useless men are a congress" - John Adams

Politicians and diapers should both be changed regularly and for the same reasons.

"Patriotism is supporting your country all the time and your government when it deserves it."--Mark Twain

FEATURE from Yahoo.com Games, http://videogames.yahoo.com/feature/playstation-2-component-incites-african-war/1231745


Playstation 2 component incites African war
Console war reaches past the couch and into the Congo, claims report.

By Ben Silverman



Has the video game industry dug up its very own blood diamond?

According to a report by activist site Toward Freedom, for the past decade the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony's Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

At the center of the conflict is the unrefined metallic ore, coltan. After processing, coltan turns into a powder called tantalum, which is used extensively in a wealth of western electronic devices including cell phones, computers and, of course, game consoles.

Allegedly, the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country's coltan mines.

"Kids in Congo were being sent down mines to die so that kids in Europe and America could kill imaginary aliens in their living rooms," said Ex-British Parliament Member Oona King.


So where's the connection to Sony? According to Toward Freedom, during the 2000 launch of the PS2, the electronics giant was having trouble meeting consumer demand. To pump out more units, Sony required a significant increase in the production of electric capacitors, which are primarily made with tantalum. This helped drive the world price of the powder from $49/pound to a whopping $275/pound, resulting in the frenzied scouring of the Congolese hills known for being ripe with coltan.

Sony has since sworn off using tantalum acquired from the Congo, claiming that current builds of the PS2, PSP and PS3 consoles are sourced from a variety of mines in several different countries.

But according to researcher David Barouski, they're hardly off the hook.

"SONY's PlayStation 2 launch...was a big part of the huge increase in demand for coltan that began in early 1999," he explained. "SONY and other companies like it, have the benefit of plausible deniability, because the coltan ore trades hands so many times from when it is mined to when SONY gets a processed product, that a company often has no idea where the original coltan ore came from, and frankly don't care to know. But statistical analysis shows it to be nearly inconceivable that SONY made all its PlayStations without using Congolese coltan."

Currently, the Playstation 2 is the best-selling video game console of all-time, having sold through over 140 million units.
END

These kinds of thing well come home to hurt us and has...




D, AKA Lets, Advising at keen as The Webster. Read my other blog, http://letslets.blogspot.com/ and or http://the-webster.blogspot.com/


send comments via Email to me





Thursday, July 24, 2008

letslets sent you a video: "Simon's Cat 'TV Dinner'"

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letslets has shared a video with you on YouTube:

The Cat is back in #3 the "TV Dinner"
A hungry cat resorts to increasingly desperate measures to gain its owner's attention.
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