| Blu-ray and HD DVD support demystified
There is no doubt that the high-definition format war is one of most popular topics in the tech industry today. But while Blu-ray and HD DVD are gaining traction in the mainstream, it is still the enthusiast user and early adopter that remains the driver of the general opinion on both formats on the Internet. We are following this format war closely and, as a result, are often much more tangled up in this HD opinion battle than we’d prefer to. Just as is the case with Apple-Windows PC, Nvidia-ATI/AMD or Intel/AMD, one day you are being accused of being bought by Intel and the next day by AMD.The HD DVD/Blu-ray rivalry has the sort of dynamic we have been used to the Intel/AMD battles once a new technology is emerging that could change the playing field. And especially since we have some changes on the content side, our reader reactions are more intense – with some pretending to be representatives of major content studios and requesting retractions and others threatening to post articles discussing allegedly false content that was published by TG Daily.
World-class skiing at Whistler — for a price
Or you can swoosh off to the south, to the Dave Murray and Wild Card trails, which will be the runs for the men's and women's downhill and super giant slalom races in the Olympics. Those runs end at Creekside, another lodge with rentals, bars and restaurants a few down the road south from Whistler Village. In my multiple trips here over the years, I've liked the snow better and found the runs more wide open atop Blackcomb, also accessible from Whistler's main village (as well as its own base area). Beginning in late 2008, there will be a peak-to-peak gondola that will connect the two mountains at the 6,100-foot levels. In preparation for the Olympics, the only highway into Whistler is torn up in a widening project. And half of Vancouver is seemingly under construction.
Will the UN's scenario for AIDS repeat for global warming reports?
A new report from the United Nations acknowledges the agency has routinely overstated both the size and growth rate of the AIDS epidemic. The new figures reduce the number of worldwide AIDS cases from 40 to 33 million, cuts the number of new cases by 40%, and reveal that the rate of new cases has been, contrary to past reports, slowing for many years. The pattern of exaggeration may date back as far as 1995, the year UNAIDS was founded. Just last year, the UN reported infections were rising faster than "even our worst estimates," and warned of the "dangers of inaction." Critics have long maintained the U.N. overstated cases to gain political and financial support. "There was a tendency toward alarmism, and that fit perhaps a certain fundraising agenda" said author and AIDS expert Helen Epstein. James Chin, a former AIDS researcher for the World Heath Organiztion, says even these revisions are higher than the actual number of worlwide cases, which he estimates at 25 million.
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