The Case of the al-Saadi family

The case of the Iraqi al-Saadi family raise so many issues it is difficult to know where to start.

The basic story is that the family car did not stop when directed to in a conflict zone and ignoring the posted warnings was fired upon. There were some injuries. The incident occurred in an area close to the Australian Embassy where a car bomb had been set off a few weeks earlier.

The civilian passengers who were injured received a mercy donation (charity) of about $7000 to help with medical expenses. Not being able to get good care in Iraq the family was flown to Australia to receive medical attention there where they have remained.

Now they are attempting to sue the military and the Australian Government for compensation. This could cost millions of dollars.

If successful it means that a decision made in the field by soldiers in a conflict zone has been arm-chaired in Australia. This would also mean that any future action of a similar nature taken by any soldier in battle could be subject to civilian judgement.

The problem for the soldier is that they would have to be second guessing themselves from that point onwards. For a soldier this is just about an automatic death sentence and the whole of the Australian Army might as well be disbanded. Perhaps this is the aim of those pressing the case or perhaps it is just another scumbag lawyer trying to get richer at the expense of Australian soldiers in this case.

The other issue is that there is a growing list of people who have been given charity and have sued the government. The cost to the taxpayers of Australia is growing and this is taking health care, education etc. away from the Australians and into the hands of lawyers and foreign people of doubtful nature.

Apology to Aboriginals in Australia

The government of Australia has made a formal apology to the local Aboriginals over what has been shown to be a myth, that of the "Stolen Generation." To date there has been no case taken to court where the plaintiff has demonstrated or proven their case. In one notable instance the mother of the child came out and said that she willingly gave the child up. To this day that child is still claiming that she was one of the "Stolen Generation."

It should be noted that the majority of children were simply abandoned to the elements as half casts. These children were rescued, fed, clothed, educated and generally taken care of. For this they are now complaining and want money.

The bottom line has always been money and the apology has opened up the door to the potential for millions of dollars in payments in the future. If success is measured by return on investment then if what has been given back to Australia for all of the money that has already been poured into the process the current level of success has been very close to zero.

Yes I did read the Stolen Generation Report which I found to be full of emotive statements and based on mostly oral tradition and reports. The validity of such sources has been challenged e.g. the Hindmarsh Island fiasco.

Why HD-DVD Should Be Winning the War

Blu-ray keeps claiming victory but I am still questioning why people are going for this format other than PS3 users.

HD-DVD is
backwards compatible
cheaper to manufacture and change over from a DVD manufacturing process
not a proprietary solution

Blu-ray
has Sony proprietary components
is more expensive in all parts of the manufacturing process

In real terms as far as the end user is concerned there is no difference in quality and potential features and the whole who can store the most issue is not really relevant.

I think the answer to this is that Toshiba dropped the ball with their marketing and getting partners like Microsoft to include the technology in their products. The movie producers are simply following the numbers they don't care about a particular format.

Toshiba and partners should have flooded the market with inexpensive machines a lot sooner and encouraged the Chinese manufacturers to being out sub $100 machines. The market in Asia has yet to be decided however and the population numbers will really count there.

I don't see the adoption of Blu-ray happening in the majority of Asia because of pricing and I suspect that it will got the way of SACD, isolated adoption and penetration but something else will take the real position sometime in the future.