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South Korea Plans National 100 Mbps Network
prostoalex writes "Korean Ministry of Information and Communication is planning to wire the entire country with high-speed 50-100 Mbps network. A total of $80.4 billion will be spent on the project that's expected to be completed in 2010."
If Iraq chooses an anti-US communist or islamic regime, you seriously think that the White House is going to just shrug its shoulders and say "well, that's democracy".
If the US was interested in freedom, they'd have intervened in Zimbabwe and Rwanda (but I guess that they don't count because they don't have oil).
Personally, I'd rather see South Korea become a major tech power, and the population of California start making T-shirts in non-unionised conditions for a far eastern company. Maybe the US will learn something soon.
Incidentally, it won't get broadcast much, but Bush is in the UK, and most of us think he's a scumbag, even though our Prime Minister would like you to think otherwise, and that marches against Bush are being suppressed.
Your media might not report it, Tony Blair is way out of line on public opinion. Most of us think Bush is a liar and a crook.
That's not entirely true. Some numbers:
43% of Britons welcome the Bushes trip.
36% said they would rather not have him visit.
But regardless, majority/minority opinion is useless here. Blair's position all along has been that his Iraq decision may well be unpopular but it is in fact the right thing to do both in terms of humanitarianly and politically. Public opinion oscillates, but right and wrong in his view are more important. Having a Prime Minister who varies his views and policies based on the latest overnight tracking poll would not be very happy sight. The best recourse is to make Blair reget his decision by backing his ouster. But even his poll numbers are rebounding. At one point 70% of Britons disfavoured him, but now thats coming back to his normal levels. Last check it was hovering around the 51-52%. It dropped from 61% from just a few weeks ago.
Second, your inference about Halliburton and Iraq:
Out of $87B+ about $500M have been/will be inked in contracts toward Halliburton. Thats not quite one-half of one percent. They are about a $10B company, have a ~1% profit margin (in line with their competitors). On its face in terms of dollars it doesn't seem to be vastly corrupt. Details dont point that way either. The arrangement they have with the government is indentical to deals they had 1992 and 1999 when the army was in Balkans. They competed this time with 3 other US companies for contracts. Last time it was nearly a dozen. The cap for the contract was much higher, but since the work was providing support services and equipment for oil well repair in Iraq (and since there was minimal damage to wells compared to what was thought - $7B was the limit, $500M was spent) it seems interesting to suggest foul play.
Halliburton is a huge company - 83,000 employees, with lots of oil expertise. Do you think its weird that such a company would win a contract supporting oil-well repair in an oil rich country? It hardly seems a leap, especially since they've been doing work like this under contract for the Army for a very, very, very long time and under many different administrations ranging from Carter, to Reagan, to Bush, to Clinton and now Bush again.
The BBC has this good bit about it, for more information
So I guess you should be more explicit. What exactly are you saying about Halliburton? Seems like a lot of inference and very little substance.
Finally, about Mugabe. Bush has imposed sanctions on Mugabe, something that Clinton never did. Bush's representatives in the UN have pushed for more pressure to be put on him. Again, the UN is essentially useless, but regardless, the effort is there. Fundamentally Mugabe doesn't draw a lot of attention because his rule is weak compared to other dictators, his control over the country not nearly as strong as other dictators often possess, and he has never taken aggressive action against a neighbor - invasions, bombings, etc. Additionally, he is barely pursuing anything except a naked power grab let alone larger plans of weaponization. So whats your point there?
Maybe instead of relying on innuendo to do the job, you could acutally say something concrete.
I'd just like to point out that it wasn't modded as "funny."
infrastucture.
Instead of spending $87 billion on Iraq's infrastructer.
The marxist-leftists? They are the ones who slaughtered more people in a few short years of the 20th century than every other ideology combined in all of recorded history... and a small war in Iraq is suddenly a big deal.
What the hell are you talking about?
Heard of the Aztecs? Yeah, go hit the books thanks.
I live in a giant bucket.
Is it your area of the city?
:) I can pay more to get 256Kb down, but traffic would cost the same, so why bother?
:(( The higher chamber of Russian parlament proposed in 1992-1993 a strategy for development of postindustrial economy. However, Eltsin decided to concentrate on oil and gas instead, just like Gorbachev a decade before.... Fuckers.
Nope, I was one of the first people in the city (5 mln) to get cable.
ISP?
Sure, I can't switch a cable provider, but they all offer the same level of services.
Vintage 1970s coax or copper phone lines?
Digital switching board, quality lines and the cable lines laid down relatively recently.
Could it be your 386 with 16M of RAM?
P4 with 512Mb.
Cheapest access package for cable?
Well, second cheapest I would say.
Overloaded network?
At that sort of prices? You must be kidding.
Bottlenecked backbones?
They are not overloaded, they are just prohibitively expensive. For some unknown reason traffic costs a least a few cents per Mb in the city. So regardless of the ISP, it usually costs 5-7 cents to the end user. And this is given the fact that 300 km from here is Finland where 1024/256 with unlimited traffic costs 18 euros.
When I read this kind of post, I start feeling warm and fuzzy towards capitalism and the bounty
it brings.
The sad thing is that we had capitalism for about 13 years now and Internet even longer, but cheap broadband is nowhere in sight. Russian budget is about 70% of South Korean, but hell will freeze before the state will spend similar amount of money on wiring the country. And given that only a third of the populace have phone access...
The wonders of the free market, my ass. I hate the thugs who took over the country.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Having capitalism and knowing how to apply it are two totally different things, and the result of piss poor governmental decisions. As vast as the resources of Russia is there really is no other excuse aside from somebody being stupid or on the bankroll for not being able to kick up your economy and local/global markets. As for wiring the country like South Korea, sounds like you need to get more backbones in first to drop the cost. More supply than demand leads to cheaper prices. ;) You also seem to immediately discount the overloaded network theory...I really can't imagine you are the priveledged few Russkis that want broadband services maybe you should pop a few tracerts out there to look for a bottleneck.
:) But seriously, it sux to hear the state of internet access there in St. Petersburg...no good for geeks anywhere. :( Fuckers
Course, we haven't sealed our borders yet and I am sure you could find a state you would enjoy living in...perhaps Montana? Think about, even the ignorant sand fleas eventually learn how good life is in America...despite coming here to make a pathetic attempt at terrorism.
-1 Overrated (Too many big words for me to comprehend)