>> ^imstellar28:

There's nothing "small" about a government which takes 30-50% of a person's income and maintains military bases in most countries on the planet.

My point was that "small" government is a stupid way of looking at things in the first place. If you accept the basic fundamental role of a state is to establish and enforce laws, you shouldn't be caring about whether it's "small" or not, but whether it's acting with the interest of the governed in mind, or not.
>> ^imstellar28:
You think the answer is giving more power to elected officials,

No. This is what the "small" government fallacy leads you to believe. Because I refuse to view everything through your lens of "small" vs. "big", you mislabel me as somehow being in favor of being for "big" government as an end in and of itself. Not true.

I think government should be like a giant open-source operating system. Everyone gets to use it, and anyone can contribute new and improved rules for making it work better. My goal is to try to persuade people to see society this way in general, because I think changing societal norms is the only long-term fix for any of these problems.

My point is that the arguments we should be having are "how do we make this system work well", and not spend all our time fighting about how many lines of code are in the OS, or how much memory it uses. I'm open to the idea that cutting lines of code or unnecessary features could make the system work better overall, but I'm vehemently against the idea that we must be single-mindedly focused on reducing the scope of the OS at all times.
>> ^imstellar28:
but what you keep ignoring is that the private sector is made up of the same types of people.

Actually, that's part of why I said that all this talk about "small" government is a distraction. The focus shouldn't be on moving public services into the private sector, it should be on holding the people who're not serving the public interest accountable, and finding systematic ways to prevent people like that from abusing the system.

If the argument is that privatization increases accountability, that's at least the right way to approach the topic. If the argument is that this is the systematic fix, I think you've got a lot of work to do to convince me there's any benefit to handing prison management over to a for-profit company...
>> ^imstellar28:
The monopoly on force (government) should persist only to enforce the rule of law, nothing more. Cultural development is a personal choice and as such must be left to the people because a single person (or group) should not decide the culture of a nation. And yes, I would say that roads, education, telecommunications, healthcare and the like are all cultural characteristics. They have to be because they have only existed for small portions of our history - whereas the rule of law has (conceptually) existed, unchanged, ever since the first two humans learned to communicate with each other.
Here I think we have a much bigger schism. Not the one you might think though -- I think we're part of the same culture. I think implicit in your statement is that because we disagree on some/most of these topics, we are by definition not part of the same culture, and I think as long as you're a citizen of the Western world, we're all in the same culture.

Beyond that, I think if I really pressed you on taxation, I think you'd eventually admit to believing there's a universal moral principle involved, and that it's not some sort of simple cultural preference, just like if you pressed me on health care, I'd admit to believing there's a universal moral principle involved, and that it's not some sort of simple cultural preference.

@NetRunner

There's nothing "small" about a government which takes 30-50% of a person's income and maintains military bases in most countries on the planet. You think the answer is giving more power to elected officials, but what you keep ignoring is that the private sector is made up of the same types of people. I mean, did you not watch this video which said that 85% of Serco's employees came from the public sector? Characters in both groups have the same ambition for power and wealth, so both will make similar decisions when faced with a given situation. The details will vary from person to person but invariably individuals in both groups will vote to increase their own wealth and power, not to make the world a better place.

The monopoly on force (government) should persist only to enforce the rule of law, nothing more. Cultural development is a personal choice and as such must be left to the people because a single person (or group) should not decide the culture of a nation. And yes, I would say that roads, education, telecommunications, healthcare and the like are all cultural characteristics. They have to be because they have only existed for small portions of our history - whereas the rule of law has (conceptually) existed, unchanged, ever since the first two humans learned to communicate with each other.

"Don't fuck with my life and I won't fuck with yours"

What you are effectively suggesting is that we take the same pool of greedy assholes, and instead of dividing them into camp A and camp B, we should put them all under the same command chain (even more centralized power). Worse still, you want to give the very same corporate guys you are angry about the monopoly of force over other people! Don't the likes of Serco, Halliburton, BP, etc. cause enough humanitarian damage as it is, without an explicit license to kill?

>> ^deathcow:

> Everything except their networks seems to increase in size and capability, which is an odd thing.
All the ISP's I'm aware of have RADICALLY increased bandwidth and package offerings. It's called survival.


Sorry, you're way outta line here, deathcow.

What are they surviving from? The deadly competitive world of telecommunications? What a joke. There are TWO networks in Canada, TWO. That's a duopoly. Bell and Rogers. That's it. They don't need to have illegal closed door meetings whereby they can be accused of collusion. No, all Bell needs to do is release a statement saying hey, we're capping our lines at 25g/b a month, Rogers will quickly follow suit.

Furthermore, they've only slightly increased the speed of their lines. And what's the point of increasing the speed of your lines if you put in place a deterrent so strong that no one maxes out their speed. It's a fucking joke,

"Oh good news insects! We've increased the speed of your lines from 750kB/s to 3MB/s! We're so first world, we make Ugandans faint. Oh, but remember, though we've quadrupled your speed, if you actually use your connection at the speed we've sold you, for more than 12 hours in a month, your bill will increase eightfold." That's just spitting in our faces.

Lastly, increasing the number of available packages is a scam. I know firsthand it's a scam, because when they first started rolling out UBB about a year ago, they unsolicitously called my mother to discuss some new plans.

You see, it turns out that even though they were allowed to go forward with UBB, they weren't allowed to impose it upon customers who already had agreements.

So they called my mother and told her they have greatly improved plans, they told her they could switch her to a plan where her connection would be more reliable, faster and her computer would get infected with fewer viruses. You tell me of an ISP who can eliminate viruses from the internet. Yeah, that's right, they threatened her with viruses. So, she says,

"Why thank you kind sir, I really appreciate the time you've taken to call me with the aim of improving my internet experience. I'd love this new package."

The scum never told her that in doing so she forfeits her "grandfathered" unlimited account and would go from an infinite amount of download, to 60gb/month. I haven't yet succeeded in calculating infinity, but I can say with infrangible certainty that it is A LOT more than 60gb/month.

My mother has lived in Canada her whole life, and thus has been a paying customer of Bell for over 40 years. They spit in their customers' faces as if we should be writing them thank you notes for providing us with phone and internet, when we subsidized the infrastructure they now dangle in front of us.

And you wanna talk about surviving competition? Businesses that are in competition for customers, don't shit in their customers' faces.

Bell's Motto? "You don't like it? Fuck you, we'll cancel your shit. You can write a fucking letter to Rogers.

The great dispel.

Supernatural claims are quashed as the information flows free over the Internet or whatever replaces it when Telecommunication Companies try to stifle it with data tax.

God is banished into even smaller gaps to hide in.

The tone of politics will erupt and recede back to a less aggressive stance.

America will economically continue to decline while China and the eastern countries rise.

China's continuing social and technological advances will cause weather problems unlike what we've seen so far, if they have to go through the same dirty steps we in the western world did. Eventually, the western world will hopefully help them to skip the worst ecological steps in the energy production.

Entertainment will continue its current trend of getting more and more personalized. The same will happen with news. The two will merge and it will be hard to tell them apart.

The Simpsons will continue all through the decade. Futurama will be cancelled again. South Park will hit dire straits but continue nonetheless. Family Guy will continue. American Dad will be cancelled. Cleveland Show will be cancelled. Joss Whedon will make a new show; it will be cancelled.

3D will fail.

The Optical Discs (cd, dvd, bluray etc) will vanish and Solid State Disks will be common place.

Telephones will become wallets and Cash will be obsolete, only used by people who don't yet embrace the digital credit/debit card.

Facebook will only continue to grow and the 2010 will see people as far more connected. The Internet will reach more people than ever before, and the speeds will increase in general, but not unexpectedly so.

Computers will continue their trend of getting "wider" instead of "higher" - more cores will be added, frequencies will on average reach 4-5 GHz but not much higher. Processor companies will hit the physical ceiling on their processors when they cannot make the process any smaller with silicon. Quantum processors will start to show signs of life and might even start to become marketable.

Global Warming will continue to happen like it does now, it won't be catastrophically bad, but it will be there. Emissions in the west will lower, but the east will offset it. If Africa starts getting in gear it will only get worse.

Polls will show that Obama will not be reelected, but in debates he will flatten the opponent and he will get four more years. Fox will claim foul play and try to foul play the other way. Jon Stewart will cover it and it will be hilarious. Also, netrunner will sift it.

The Sift will change form from what we know now. I hope it will last, but it's hard to say at this point.

More things will happen. Good and bad.

>> ^charliem:


These net-neutrality pundits seem to be making out that the big companies want to abuse the way that QOS is assigned....ie. identifying streams from providers that pay a premium and giving them a higher priority, irrespective of the traffic class.
Is this whats actually happening?

No, but that's because the internet has always had Net Neutrality regulation up to this point, through FCC fiat.

Net Neutrality advocates want new legislation that enshrines the de facto FCC policy in law, so that it's not subject to the whims of whoever is FCC chair (or put another way, so that Internet regulation isn't dependent on the honesty of the occupant of the White House).

As for whether the companies would do the things the Net Neutrality activists say they would, the telecom companies are openly saying they need to do things like bandwidth metering, and selling prioritized traffic rights because otherwise they simply won't be able to afford expanding their networks to meet demand.

>> ^charliem:


If thats the case, then the only regulation that needs to be passed is one that enforces the correct application of QOS categorization...ensuring that Voice gets Voice level QOS tagging, video gets video tagging, generic content gets no real priority, and network management protocols get highest (routing / switching protocols).
I dont see how they could make that political at all....present it to congress in that way, and enforce correct prioritization as law. No problem.


Thinking as a technical guy, I agree, that would be ideal. The problem is, who decides what "correct" application of QoS is? The FCC? A standards board dominated by representatives of the telecommunications committees? The network providers themselves?

There's also a problem with enforcement. That doesn't go away under pure neutrality, but at least then you're just testing to see if the service providers are doing any traffic shaping, rather than having to get into the nitty gritty of the specific shaping logic, and then trying to discern whether the intent of each rule was noble (traffic optimization) or criminal (anti-competitive business practice, or an attempt to limit free speech).

Smart companies could and would easily muddy the waters in the second system. (e.g. We're not limiting bandwidth to Netflix because we have a business agreement with Hulu, it's because Netflix is a huge resource hog that's causing slowdowns for our other customers...).

This guy is a very good speaker. His gestures are.. He strikes me as a lie. A living lie.

I'm going to Godwin this now, there are other good speakers, and one that he reminds me of is Hitler.

US, plutocratic actions on Haiti, if true are deplorable.

Accusations of widespread human rights abuses

Human Rights Watch accused the Haitian police force under President Aristide, and his political supporters, of attacks on opposition rallies. They also said that the emergence of armed rebel groups seeking to overthrow Aristide reflected "the failure of the country’s democratic institutions and procedures."[27]

The OAS/UN International Civilian Mission in Haiti, known as MICIVIH (its French acronym) found that the human-rights situation in Haiti improved dramatically following Aristide's return to power in 1994. [28] Amnesty International reported that Haiti was "descending into a severe humanitarian and human rights crisis" after Aristide's departure in 2004.[29]
[edit] Accusations of drug trafficking

Drug trafficking was allegedly a major source of money. Canadian police arrested Oriel Jean, Aristide's security chief and one of the most trusted friends, for money laundering.[30] Beaudoin Ketant, a notorious international drug trafficker, Aristide's close partner, and his daughter's godfather, confessed that Aristide "turned the country into a narco-country. It's a one-man show. You either pay (Aristide) or you die." Aristide denied the allegation, and the U.S. has not charged him directly with involvment in the drug trade.[31]
[edit] Accusations of corruption

Haitian investigators claimed to have discovered extensive embezzlement and money laundering by Aristide's administration, in which millions of dollars of public funds were allegedly lost to sophisticated financial transactions.[32] Aristide has forcefully denied these accusations. [33] The Haitian government filed a RICO (Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act) lawsuit in the U.S. in Miami, Florida, in November of 2005, alleging that Aristide and his associates took hundreds of thousands of dollars in kickbacks from the long distance company IDT, and that IDT diverted into a secret offshore bank account controlled by Aristide payments that should have gone to the Haitian company Teleco. The lawsuit was suspended by the Haitian government on June 30, 2006. [34][35]
[edit] Accusations of embezzlement of telecom revenues

According to a report by Christopher Caldwell in the July 1994 American Spectator, Aristide stole Haiti's telecom revenues while in the United States. Caldwell claims that, between 1991 and 1994, Aristide ordered that the proceeds from Haiti's international phone traffic, handled by the Latin American division of AT&T, be moved to a numbered offshore bank account in Panama.[36]

Some officials have been indicted by an US court.[37] The companies which made deals with Aristide included IDT, Fusion Telecommunications, and Skytel; critics claim the two first companies had political links. AT&T reportedly declined to wire money to "Mont Salem".[38][39][40][41]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean-Bertrand_Aristide#Criticism_and_Accusations

Sure, the assembly line day laborer may lose his job to the robotic arm, but other jobs will be created to manufacture those arms, write the software for them, service them, etc.

One factory for industrial robots is enough to supply a vast number of regular factories. The whole chain is done in this area, from software development to robot design to robot construction and naturally, it takes less manhours than it saves through increased productivity, or else it wouldn't be done in the first place.

Let's take a look at Volkswagen. Last I heard, they need an increase of 7% in sales just to keep up with rising productivity. 7% more sales or 7% less workers or 7% less wages ... every year. To see the consequences of this, one only needs to take a look at Bremerhaven or any train station along the railroad line from the factories in Wolfsburg, Braunschweig and Hannover (not to mention the ones in southern Germany) to the northern harbours, where the vehicles are brought to be shipped out. Enough bloody cars to fill the English Channel, everywhere you look. That's not sustainable, not in the least. And yet they still want to keep a dying automobile manufacturer (Opel) alive ...

Just a few days, two key railroad switches at Wunstorf were shut down for maintenance, now there are countless car trains stuck at the classification yards, enough to mobilize the whole bloody state. And they are not even back to pre-crisis production levels.

What I'm saying is this: they produce more cars than ever, more than any current market can take, and even though it takes vastly more work to build a modern car than it did 50 years ago, they still need considerably less manhours per car. That includes all the suppliers as well. And they should be damn proud of it, because that's what previous generations worked for. However, it is basically kept alive artificially and has to collapse eventually. That'll be fun. Opel will be the first, 2011 at the latest.

Only completely new areas have the ability to create enough jobs to remotely compensate for the loss caused by increased productivity and saturated markets. Telecommunications was the last one, renewable energy will most likely be the next one.

That said, there will always be endless work that needs to be done, just not jobs that create an income. For instance, the national railroad could use at least the 100k people back they let go over the last 2 decades. Though to get everything done according to regulations, 200k should be a closer bet. But since it's more profitable to cut maintenance personal by another 10%, the status of the infrastructure can only be described as desolate in large parts of the country.

Edit: damn, that's 3/4 just rambling ... sorry.

Intergalactic telecommunication should be like the Internet - free, unhindered, unmoderated, stream of our collective consciousness. All the good, all the bad.

Top 10 Reasons to Oppose the Stimulus

As with medicine, the first rule of law making should be first, do no harm. The "stimulus" bill fails this test spectacularly. Among so many other reasons to tell your U.S. Representative and Senators in Washington to oppose the stimulus, the Top 10 are:

1. The Stimulus Will Not Work

Our history is replete with examples of "stimulus" spending failing to move our economy toward prosperity--Bush just tried it, Ford tried it. Even Christina Romer, Obama's Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers agrees. Romer wrote in a study, "Our estimates suggest that fiscal actions contributed only moderately to recoveries." The New Deal didn't end the Great Depression and Obama's stimulus package won't end this recession. In fact, two UCLA economists published a study in 2004 finding FDR's similar New Deal policies prolonged the Great Depression by seven years.

It fails because you don't increase economic output by taking a dollar from one person and giving to another. The idea of "stimulus" spending falls for the " broken window fallacy"--the allure of what is seen versus what is not seen. We will see the jobs created by the government spending. What we won't see are the jobs lost because consumers have less money to spend because the government got the money its spending from us--the only place it can get money.

2. The Stimulus follows the same plan that ruined Japan's economy

Japan, after a dramatic market crash and a drop in real estate prices responded with government spending not unlike what the US Congress is considering today. In fact, they had 10 stimulus bills between 1992 and 2000, spending billions on infrastructure construction, building bridges, roads, and airports as well as pouring money into biotech and telecommunications. While many countries enjoyed booming economies and falling unemployment during this time, Japan had a lost decade, seeing its unemployment more than double. They spent double the US level of GDP on infrastructure, and now have a lousy economy and have one of the highest national debts in the world.

After 10 stimulus packages, Japan has gone from having the second biggest economy in the world by a long shot, to being well behind the new number two, China, and is close to falling behind India. We do not want to follow their lead.

3. The Stimulus is full of Wasteful Projects

While we were told the stimulus bill would focus on rebuilding America's infrastructure--mainly the roads and bridges--only 5% of the current bill goes to such projects. The rest of the bill goes to pet projects like:
* $400,000,000.00 for researching sexually transmitted diseases
* $200,000,000.00 to force the military to buy environmentally-friendly electric cars
* $34,000,000.00 to renovate the Department of Commerce headquarters
* $75,000,000.00 for a program to end smoking which, if successful will bankrupt the State Children's Health Program Democrats are about to pass (SCHIP) that is paid for by cigarette taxes
* $650,000,000.00 for digital TV coupons
* $50,000,000.00 for the National Endowment for the Arts

These programs are just the 2008 version of the " midnight basketball" program that derailed Bill Clinton's attempt to ram through a "stimulus" bill in 1992. Despite that bill failing, the economy quickly recovered and the economic boom of the 1990s began.

4. The Government Can't Afford the Stimulus

President Bush pushed the government deep into a $1.2 trillion deficit this year, the third time he has set a record for biggest deficit ever, and President Obama's stimulus bill follows his lead, piling on more debt. The deficit in 2008 amounted to about 8 percent of GDP. The entire debt is about 35 percent of GDP.

Even for those who do still believe in Keynesianism, it is important to remember his theory didn't start with the government already over a trillion dollars in the hole, he was generally operating from balanced budgets.

5. We Can't afford the Stimulus

How much is $825 billion? The Heritage Foundation has calculated that that comes to over $10,000 per American family. To further put that in context, on average, families annually spend:
* $2,230 on apparel and services
* $3,595 on health care
* $4,322 on food at home
* $11,657 on shelter

6. The Stimulus is Bigger Than the Economic Output of Most Countries

If this bill were a country, it'd be the 15th largest country in world, ranking between Australia and Mexico. It is bigger than the economies of Saudi Arabia and Iran combined. In fact, the $875 billion it calls for is more than all the cash in the United States.

7. Central Planning like the Stimulus Doesn't Work, Ask the USSR

If centrally planned government spending on a grand scale produced economic growth, the Soviet Union would have won the Cold War. If government spending on a grand scale produced economic growth we would be in the middle of the Bush Boom right now. It doesn't. Working, saving, and investing leads to economic output and increases in productivity lead to growth.

As economics professor Steven Horwitz said, "The stimulus plans assume consumption is the source of growth. It is not. It is the consequence of said growth."

8. Remember the $750 Billion Bailout from this Fall?

It was just a couple months ago when we were told if we would just quickly hand over $750 billion to the Treasury Secretary to bailout his friends on Wall Street, he would make the economy all better. That didn't work, and neither will an additional $825 billion.

9. This Money Doesn't Grow on Trees

And this has nothing to do with paper money being made of cotton and linen. The only way the government gets money is through taxing, borrowing, or printing--that is, it has to take it out of the economy in order to put it back into the economy. If government borrows the money for the stimulus, then it will either have to print money later or raise taxes to pay it back. If it raises taxes to pay for the stimulus, it will, in effect, be robbing Peter to pay Paul - probably with interest. If it prints the money, inflation decreases the value of the dollar for every American - robbing Paul to pay Paul.

10. Economists do NOT Agree this is a Good Idea

No matter how many times supporters of the bill say it, economists do not all agree this bill is a good idea. In fact, hundreds of economists have come out against it, including Noble Laureates, who signed a letter the Cato Institute ran as a full page ad in several major newspapers opposing the stimulus. Still more economists submitted statements to the US House of Representatives opposing the stimulus proposal.

And this only scratches the surface, there are so many more reasons to oppose the stimulus.

^Yeah. Obama's scorecard is only from a pool of 20 votes though. And of those he voted:

FOR the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 (Senate)
On July 9, 2008, the Senate passed the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) Amendments Act of 2008 (H.R. 6304) by a vote of 69-28. The ACLU opposed this legislation due to its failure to protect Fourth Amendment privacy rights for individual Americans. Specifically, it authorizes an unlawful warrantless surveillance program, while providing effective immunity to those telecommunications companies that assisted government surveillance even before the facts surrounding the full extent of this program are known.
FOR Patriot Act Reauthorization (Senate)
On March 2, 2006, the Senate passed the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act
of 2005 by a vote of 89 to 10. The ACLU opposed this bill because it failed to add to the Patriot Act reasonable, necessary safeguards to protect civil liberties. It made many expiring provisions permanent, including provisions that allow the government to obtain a wide variety of private confidential records using National Security Letters, seek secret court orders under section 215, gag recipients of these record requests with only an illusory right to challenge, and secretly search homes and offices. The bill also expands the death penalty, limits protest rights at major events and coerces businesses to check their employees against flawed government watch lists.
FOR Judicial Review of Torture
On November 15, 2005, the Senate agreed to the Graham-Levin Amendment that would strip
detainees imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay of most of their due process protections. The ACLU
opposed the Graham-Levin Amendment because, by stripping detainees at Guantanamo Bay of
the ability to file habeas petitions and other claims in federal court, it unconstitutionally removed the
system of checks and balances for persons seeking protection against the government's use of
torture and abuse and other denials of due process. The amendment passed by a vote of 84 to 14
and was attached to the Defense Department Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2006.


christ that was a pretty important 18%....

The liberal blogs are all sending out "call your representatives, NOW" messages.

Kos had a conspicuously brief comment on it:

When we started this "netroots" thing, we worked to get "more and better Democrats" elected. At first, we focused on the "more" part. This year, we're focusing a bit more on the "better" part. And in 2010, we'll have enough Democrats in the House to exclusively focus on the "better" part.

That means primary challenges. And as we decide who to take on, let it be known that this FISA vote will loom large. Voting to give telecommunication companies retroactive immunity may not guarantee a primary challenge, but it will definitely loom large.

We kicked Joe Lieberman out of the caucus. We got rid of Al Wynn this year. Those were test runs, so to speak. We've got a lot more of that ready to unleash in 2010.

We're going to have to count on the Ron Pauls, the Dennis Kuciniches, Chris Dodds, Russ Feingolds, Robert Wexlers, and Pat Leahys to pull out some sort of gambit to block this (again).

It's shameful that this is being done, and that they're trying to give themselves immunity, when there's not likely to be a court decision that penalizes anyone for it in a meaningful way. Hell, no one was going to wind up charged with treason for betraying their oath to the Constitution.

We'd just fine AT&T a month's profit from iPhone service, and say "justice served."

At least that way, it'd be on the record as being something the government is still saying is against the law, rather than just written on some piece of hide stretched out in a display case in DC.

If there are any sifters out there who feel this should be stopped, please, call your representatives, for numbers, go here.

ahn...
My name is Renato. I´m 'pregnant' of my first daughter, which we´ll call Lucia.
I´m 33, age of dead christs.
I have two cats, Mao-Tse-Tung and Lacan , who brighten my days and nights.
They like to break things.

I live in Sao Paulo, Brazil and am a partner at a 3D animation company, TSI, doing work mostly for advertising and architecture.
I´m originally a journalist, but went to grad school in NY, on the (in)famous ITP - Intergalactic Telecommunications Program, or something similar. I miss NY.

I like to write when I am procrastinating more serious work, but videosift is getting in the way of that. I love to snowboard, despite the fact that after a motorcycle crash and some time at the hospital, the doctor forbid me. Still I went for ten days at Whistler and after two months I was back at being almost ok. Worth it. Now I sold the bike to pay for all those diapers to come.
(queue music: Gogol Bordello - Undestructable)

Yeah, that's fair enough I can agree with that. I don't mind getting into arguments at all so that's fine

I would suspect that racism or at least discrimination comes from two facets of human instinct. The need to find a scapegoat, or a way to offload any emotional baggage or problems onto others, failing to resolve them rationally; distrust of the uncertain as you pointed out; and the unwillingness to empathise or relate to someone who exists outside the immediate community or abides to different cultural norms and values.

The first one is certain to be reduced as developed and developing countries experience increasing living standards, economic prosperity and stability and the intra-dependence of global trade networks virtually eliminates the likelihood of a multilateral conflict. You're certainly still going to see scenarios like Rwanda in lesser developed countries, and you're still going to see governments categorically shift blame to minorities but on the whole I don't think you'll ever see it on the scale it has been prior in history.

In regards to the second and third, whereas intra-national sourcing of resources by corporations has created financial and economic interdependence, it is cheaper transportation and telecommunication developments that will help achieve a bridge of culture in the future. I doubt it has really dawned on the average consumer, just how global the production cycles of your typical set of groceries are. Actually on that note:

http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/5594/1195961793594xp0.jpg

Particularly as communication continues to improve and the ubiquity of it through the world expands, we'll see individual cultures more or less merge into one, to the point where any stark differences will become relatively narrow and any animosity or ethnocentricity will be greatly diminished. Or at least in theory That's why I'm quite sad to see, China the seemingly likely next superpower of the world, continuing to clutch to restriction freedom, access to information and communication, as well as propagandising a policy of 'us against them' nationalism.

The space station has helped us to understand and verify in far greater detail all those observations of newtonian physics, in micro-gravity. Sure, showing how things move and interact in air without gravity to effect it doesnt really give much immediate benefit, but if you were to think that way about all scienctific advance, then you would simply not have the internet.

Scientists didnt know that tinkering with electricity would eventuate into a telecommunications network where it allows ubiquitous connectivity anywhere in the civilised world, to them it was just some out-there cool thing, with no forseable advantages.

Same gos with lasers, radio's, cathode rays, penacillian...etc.

The list gos on.

To think that anything in science is not worthy of funding meerly because you cant forsee its benefits (and, devils advocate, its downsides; Manhattan Project anyone ?), and therefore should be forefit of funding, is an injustice to the scientific method of the highest order.

You take for granted the internet, your mobile phone, your television, your cars, your PDA, hell even your clothes. What you fail to realise is that without people funding seemingly useless scientific endeavours, NONE of it would exist as it does today.

Show some respect.

Cool sift!
Some extra info:

Telecommunication Breakdown
Contributing artists: Bill Laswell, Brian Eno, Grandmaster Melle Mel
Producer: Jack Dangers
Distributor: TVT Records

quotes of
-Get down! (Harrison Ford in "Patriot Games")
-"Jungle Boogie" by Kool & the Gang

Does anyone know who are the politicians in the video?