The extremely popular social networking site Facebook has been blocked in Bangladesh this weekend after pages were found to include satirical images of the prophet Muhammad.
Additionally, satirical images were found of Bengali leaders and one man was even arrested and charged with “spreading malice and insulting the country’s leaders.”
The block is temporary, and Bengali officials say access will be fully restored once all the images are removed.
Adds the Bangladesh Telecommunications Regulatory Commission (BTRC) (via BBC): Facebook “hurt the religious sentiments of the country’s majority Muslim population” by allowing the images of Muhammad.
“Some links in the site also contained obnoxious images of our leaders including the father of the nation Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, current Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina and the leader of the opposition,” notes the group.
Pakistan blocked access to Facebook, YouTube, Wikipedia and Flickr last week after the images first appeared.
Result for: sentiments
According to an NPD report, only 9 percent of US HDTV owners plan to buy a Blu-ray disc player in the next six months.
The survey by NPD was carried out in the middle of March, after Blu-ray killed off the rival HD DVD format. Although sentiments may have changed in the months since the survey was taken, I would assume the numbers are still pretty accurate, considering reports of Blu-ray sales show declining results.
The survey also showed that about 40 million US homes have at least one HDTV and that 9 percent amounts to a lowly 3.6 million units.
There was however, more interesting numbers to note. NPD added that only 45 percent of HDTV owners had even heard of Blu-ray or HD DVD meaning that 22 million HDTV owners were not even familiar with HD optical formats.
For their similar survey in 2007, NPD found that 65 percent of HDTV owners had not heard of the formats. A 10 percent increase over the course of a year? Clearly Blu-ray is not doing something right.
Most of the people surveyed also noted that they were more than happy with DVD picture quality and HD upscaling and that for now, Blu-ray was simply not worth it. However, of the people surveyed who had already bought into Blu-ray, 80 percent said their next purchases will be BDs rather than DVDs. Picture quality was the main reasoning behind that.
