Although i regard it as one of the first sane things this man has come up with, it's high time to start rolling out the new nuclear plant designs. As far as nuclear waste goes, we've already produced as much as we're ever going to make and current designs will be able to run with practically no nuclear waste at all.
At this point, getting nuclear fuel reserves built up should be one of the priorities.
It's amazing how folks who preach tolerance are so intolerant of anyone who questions the validity of evolution, global warming, origins of the universe (fill in the blank) as being a morons incapable of deep thought or reason.
Ok, so because I am highlighting that your dismissal is unreasonable, I am being intolerant. Well, I'm sorry I wasn't allowed to talk and should make sure never to disagree with you again, since you are such a serious skeptic of evolution.
What's there to argue?...They are still bacteria.
Nobody claims they are not bacteria. You are implying (again) that bacteria should morph into another species, but that would be magic, and actually disprove evolution as we know it. I would expect a serious critic of evolution to know something about evolution at least, but I guess you can't have it all.
I don't see this as the irrefutable proof which will shake the Christian right's spiritual moorings.
Well, thats nice for the Christian right's spiritual moorings, i thought we were talking about biology here. You don't represent Christians though, the ones I know personally think creationism is just a sad reflection of how gullible people can be with the right motivation. In the case of many Christians in the US, the false "believe in your god" vs. "believe in reality" dichotomy.
I really wish people would stop repeating this and focus on the selection that happens and how it happens. Mutations are in essence the random number generators of nature, interesting concept to mathematicians perhaps, but the show is all about selection, not so much the input for that selection.
It's like describing a brilliant new encryption method by saying that it's so good, it operates by chance. While true in the same sense that biological evolution works by chance, it doubt your buyer will respond to that as a good thing.
Those statistics have been known since broadband was first rolled out over here which was by cable, in '94, '95 or so and mostly applies to the flagship product of an ISP. Your tactic sounds odd to me, it sounds like you are encouraging your customers to use your services less that way. It might work for a company in your market but I don't see it being effective here. Power users will flock to the ISP with the best terms of service and pay for their flagship product. You might try breaking into that market but your terms of service will be more strict, and people here are very keen on not getting bothered about their usage. I suppose there's still a lot of trauma from the pay-by-the-minute dial-up days.
Anyway, here, power users are sought after most, they bring in the money because they are willing to pay for good terms of service and high-speed connections. They are the cherry on top in a sense. The base of cheap subs is certainly not going to make you your money, it's a warzone there in terms of margins and competition.
You should be looking at enabling consumers to make an actual choice. Where I live (western Europe) I can choose between 20+ DSL providers, they'll install in a week and moving between them is done with virtually no interruption of service. If anything this is the big reason for the high broadband penetration here. The owner of the copper (former state monopolist usually) gets to charge a low maintenance charge and is obliged to cooperate with anyone that wants to sell DSL service over their copper.
I'm sure quite a few people will be on 512k lines but then this is still a world of difference to dial-up or nothing at all. Oh, and bandwidth use is not a big issue at all at most ISP's, I can burn 100GB of traffic a month and nothing will happen, I can spike to 200GB or 300GB in a month once in a while and nothing will happen. The ISP's could whine about it, but then I'd take my money elsewhere, so they just make sure their networks can deal with however people choose to use it. The consumer rules the broadband market, anything else, and your broadband economy is really just a pie in the sky.
The comment from Richard Russell is nothing but denial and sillyness. I'm skeptical that the US ever had the most dynamic broadband economy in the world, claiming that title for this very moment is even more ludicrous. I'd say this man is reality-challenged and incompetent. A common theme in this US administration it seems.
As a Dutch resident, I would like to apologize for the traitor to free speech who created that torrent.
The movie is most likely just a rant about the danger of trying to use ancient religious texts to rule peoples lives today. Regardless of that, I'm sure Muslims will take offence, since any criticism will cause them to take offence. These people just have a hard time dealing with free and open societies, and like to purport that their religious feelings deserve extra constitutional protection.
In a free marketplace of ideas like western Europe, asking for this kind of protection under the law for your ideas gives a rather obvious indication of the lack of confidence in those ideas in my opinion. But then, i don't claim to understand religious people.
a big question involving the transformation of thought to the physical world
Would you care to demonstrate that thought isn't part of the physical world first?
Thought just isn't exactly understood, that doesn't mean it's not just a physical and natural process like EVERYTHING else we know anything about.
It's nice you know the origin of the phrase and how Jefferson introduced it when he explained one of the motives behind the constitution. If you are trying to pretend the phrase, uttered by Jefferson, one of the men that authored the constitution, has no bearing on the constitution, thats fine and I'll leave you to that fantasy.
Nobody cares if you like to pray in a public space, as long as it doesn't involve stripping down naked or harassing people. It's quite another thing to institutionalize it and then say it's ok with the establishment clause because you can get the majority vote and just pretend you didn't just trample over the rights of minorities as allotted to them by the constition. That is exactly what Scalia is saying btw.
Is there any republican candidate that will appoint a justice that uphulds church/state seperation?
There's only one vote difference at the moment, if Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Roberts get another ally when Stevens (88) passes away the attack on government neutrality in matters of religion will really take of and affect everyone.
Given that this also affects every single minority religion, support for a secular state used to be stronger across party lines. Now it seems the support for the secular state has become a party divider which it shouldn't be.
Never heard of vendetta online. I have played eve for around 4 years now though, and while bob and mc are powerful they are just alliances like any other. Kinda sad that the tinfoilhatters keep making stuff up and then pretend it's real. It's like dealing with creationists ffs. Big colourful rhetoric but rather short on actual evidence for their assertions.
Disclaimer: I've flown with and against both bob and mc (and countless other (more) interesting entities in EVE).
It's not that easy to distill those from the unhinged open letter you know.
Your 4th point is moot for at least three reasons:
1. Anyone can log in to the right IRC server and open a private chat with the developers there.
2. Disallowing private chats between devs and players is unenforceable and possibly illegal.
3. Even if private chats lead to actions, those actions are registered and logged.
So let's stop the stupid witchhunting and play the game ok?
While this "scandal" is getting headlines it is quite unremarkable tbh. It's just more baseless accusations from the same group of people as last time. There's nothing misleading to the evidence presented either. Of course, this time most of the players already knew the score before CCP finished their investigation.
It turns out there's nothing remotely true of the accusations made this time which is downhill from the last round where they got everything wrong as well but got browny points for being close and shaking CCP up a bit.
It's a shame people are succeeding in showcasing EVE and CCP in a rather bad way when almost all of the rumours are flat-out wrong.
I wouldn't expect anything else from this guy. He admits just glancing at a headline too.
The prague convention reclassified it, they didn't "invent" anything, he just conjures up his own version of what happened and denounces it as a revisionist act based on no authority whatsoever. It's actually precisely the reaction I'd expect from a person like Gibson and he shows his superficial apreciation of the scientific process by publishing it. I bet he was pissed when the french standardised the meter too.
Oh, and the people at the convention in prague got the authority to reclassiy pluto (and others!) because they worked hard to gain real understanding of our solar system and the processes within it, they did something useful and noble with their lives instead of becoming a tool in the media like... Gibson.
The council of Nicea is probably something Gibson can identify with, I mean, who were those guys and who gave them any authority to change things!?
I'm sorry but the laws concerning the holocaust are non-issues, if thats all you have to point out, have fun being a stooge.
You pretend knowing how some state-funded european media works, thats surprising because every country has their own usually rather complex system. I'm not sure what to say since your suppositions are rather far out there. Saying it "tends" to drive discussion *and* "quite common" just leaves me to conclude you know jack shit about the subject and heard it from someone who didn't do more then glance at it themselves either.
I suppose this guy is referring to Germany or Austria where it is against the law even joke about their former heir... a very easy example of lack of free speech __ agree or go to jail is a simply tp put it.
Wrong. There's a law prohibiting displaying signs and symbols from the nazi regime in public. What you want to say *about* that is totally up to you as long as you don't attempt to rewrite history by denying the holocaust or crazy stuff like that. I know lots of americans are actually buying into this crap about being the foremost free country in the world but if you'd bother to look over your borders for once and get up to speed on your own policies you'd see there's very little difference between the US and western/northern Europe. Making statements like that might work well in the US but will seriously undermine your credibility once you cross the border into Europe. I think the only country that ever came close to self-congratulating propaganda the US is spewing over it's citizens is probably nazi-germany. It's all good until you start believing it yourself, but hey whatever gives you that warm feeling inside dude.
Or maybe this guy is refering to France where you Muslims are told they must change their religion if the want to attend school (no headdress, etc) and their own people are burning down Paris. What a joke.
Wrong again. Where do you people get this bullshit? Maybe you should start considering the source.
A school is not the place to show off symbols of your favorite deity or religion, neither are any government buildings or facilities if you work there (state is not supposed to endorse or display *ANY* religious symbols). What you do in your own time, outside school, outside government buildings is your business. Saying that France is ordering muslims or anyone else to change their religion is utter, utter insanity that can only be thought up by idiots with an agenda. Who makes this shit up? Tell me your reliable source and I'll show you a twit of the first order.
By the way, tell me, how long ago was it that Los Angeles was ablaze with riots itself? Did you suddenly forget about that or something, did that have nothing to do with minorities? Is your memory as long as the 8 o'clock news? Do they even cover news outside your own borders?
Read a book, get an education, do something instead of being the mindless drone you are portraying now.
I've got to admit I find this all a bit worrying and sad at the same time. There's quite a few devout christians in Europe where I live, and let me tell you something, most of them know that you shouldn't try to compare religion and science next to each other. Both have their own expertise. The religiously inclined over here know how science works and what the scientific method does. The vast majority knows that evolution is a valuable contribution to human knowledge and it is simply a reality thats has allowed us to make progress in a vast amount of scientific fields of study, it makes predictions that are falsifiable and allow us to achieve great things. There's simply no better explanation available that scientists can work with. Stop trying to debunk it in public forums and for crying out loud, if you're serious about it, publish a freakin' paper in a peer reviewed scientific publication to challenge evolution instead of coming up with misinformed or distorted excuses and oneliners.
Religion has a place in society for the people that want to spend their lives serving their god or gods and thats fine, all kinds of faiths have had a chance for over 100 years to come up with a usable scientific explanation and they never have, because they don't deal in science, they deal with religion.
Please, don't mix them up or try to bring your favorite religion into the picture to explain things that are perfectly handled by science. Not only are you hurting science for dragging it into a mud slinging contest that really no scientist is interested in. But you are hurting your fellow citizens, not everyone believes in your god, not in Europe, not in the US. To postulate that your god has had a definite hand in creation of this planet and the life on and using very poor science to back it up is insulting to your own religion but also to the people of other faiths. Leave science alone, and keep your religion in your churches and the walls of your own home and possibly your *private* schools.
Remember that people who aren't religious or have a different religion are supposed to have equal rights as the people practicing the most popular religion. That means for one thing, that trying to sneak creationism into science classes makes you very very unpopular and is rightfully so considered extremely insulting to people of different faiths, no faiths and scientists together.
It would look so much better on a lot of christians in the US if they would just sit back and try to see who's agenda they are pushing here and what they think they'll get out of it. I can assure you, if things like schoolboards sneaking in creationism during science class continues, the laughter from the rest of the world will get so loud you will be able to hear it in your prescious heartland pretty soon.
As a last tip for the people trying to "debunk" the scientific method, please read this alinea here: http://www.benben.com.com/. And just let it sink in, please.
Whether it is a threat to the USA or its economy (or any of the other big economies) remains to be seen, frankly, if things happen gradually there shouldn't be a big problem at all for any of the worlds big economies. I might be off here but as I understood it the EU economy is bigger then that of the USA, so there's certainly some pressure on the USA to share control. I'm not so sure about where the most content on the internet is concentrated. If you're talking about the english speaking part of the net you might be surprised how much of it comes from porn servers located in Amsterdam. For spanish and chinese sites, I'm pretty sure most of it is not coming from the USA.
Personally, I'd prefer if things stay as they are now but it seems evident that the situation is not sustainable with growing dependencies on how the internet works for pretty much all countries. Whats going to be interesting is on what level the segmentation will take place and to what degree that will paint a picture of the rising geopolitical blocks in the near future.
Nobody said it is very hard to nationalize the root dns server, it's that nobody will wait until they are forced to do so. Either something useful comes out of the next meeting or the ball will start rolling and a lot of nations will start taking the necesary precautions.
Basically the USA is given a choice, either give up direct control of the root zonefile and share it through an international body and for 99% of internet users nothing will change, or countries will start taking up their own root servers and millions of users will be confronted with road-blocks and detours to get where they want to be.
Everyone would prefer if things stay as they are now with one widely recognized root dns system, but if that system stays under the control of just one nation it is doomed to fail. You want the internet to stay as it is? Share control. You want the internet to fall apart in small segments each controlled by their own root servers? Fine, keep it as it is and it will happen in the coming years.
To be honest, I'm slightly worried even about the other Western democracies. France banned the sale of Nazi material on Yahoo. People have brought llibel lawsuits in Australia against United States newspapers because of material published on web servers in America. I'm MUCH less worried about them to be sure... but they still don't have the US 1st amendment.
The USA blocks free speech as much as any other western democracy. Your 1st amandment is nothing special amongst western democracies and embedded into pretty much all of their constitutions. You might want to try reading up before spouting ignorance and making a run for your misplaced moral highground.
The question isn't "Should the United Nations control the Internet?" but "Should the USA control the Internet?".
It should come as no surprise that nobody wants the USA to control the internet except for some groups in the USA itself. By phrasing the question in a way where you can start summing up all the negatives about the UN trying to control it you are forgetting that there's a whole bunch of other negatives involved by keeping the root name servers under control of some (non-profit) corpation in the USA.
How can anyone expect the rest of the world to keep the USA in control of something as essential for 1st world economies as the internet. With a press of the button the USA could disable a large part of the economy in every first world country they choose, nobody is going to take that chance. The discussion is pointless in my opinion. To the international community there's no convincing reason whatsoever to keep control in one country. The only solution is to put in under control of an international body, the UN is a possibility, maybe a seperate organization is better.
If the USA does not relinquish it's grip on the root nameservers OR another satisfactory solution is found, it's a very very very high probability that alternate roots will come up. In the end it is a national security issue for anyone taking the time to research the ramifications.
"I have yet to get someone to tell me why something like the fibonacci sequence that is observed in every living thing, also shows up in outer space. If that isn't design, what is it? It's a signature of God."
Thats just sounds ignorant, you're claiming that because a certain pattern is observed both in nature, biology and even in art it must be the signature of God.
I'd advise you to go and read up on what the fibonacci sequence is. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with signatures of your favorite deity.
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Although i regard it as one of the first sane things this man has come up with, it's high time to start rolling out the new nuclear plant designs. As far as nuclear waste goes, we've already produced as much as we're ever going to make and current designs will be able to run with practically no nuclear waste at all.
At this point, getting nuclear fuel reserves built up should be one of the priorities.
It's amazing how folks who preach tolerance are so intolerant of anyone who questions the validity of evolution, global warming, origins of the universe (fill in the blank) as being a morons incapable of deep thought or reason.
...They are still bacteria.
Ok, so because I am highlighting that your dismissal is unreasonable, I am being intolerant. Well, I'm sorry I wasn't allowed to talk and should make sure never to disagree with you again, since you are such a serious skeptic of evolution.
What's there to argue?
Nobody claims they are not bacteria. You are implying (again) that bacteria should morph into another species, but that would be magic, and actually disprove evolution as we know it. I would expect a serious critic of evolution to know something about evolution at least, but I guess you can't have it all.
I don't see this as the irrefutable proof which will shake the Christian right's spiritual moorings.
Well, thats nice for the Christian right's spiritual moorings, i thought we were talking about biology here. You don't represent Christians though, the ones I know personally think creationism is just a sad reflection of how gullible people can be with the right motivation. In the case of many Christians in the US, the false "believe in your god" vs. "believe in reality" dichotomy.
If you think ToE is in some kind of process waiting to become a law, you'd be wrong.
In spite of what any of you say, I'm betting the resulting organism is a Escherichia coli bacterium. Wake me when it becomes a two celled organism
I am not interested in counterarguments, so I'll just repeat another old canard that works great in my church community and run away to safety.
I really wish people would stop repeating this and focus on the selection that happens and how it happens. Mutations are in essence the random number generators of nature, interesting concept to mathematicians perhaps, but the show is all about selection, not so much the input for that selection.
It's like describing a brilliant new encryption method by saying that it's so good, it operates by chance. While true in the same sense that biological evolution works by chance, it doubt your buyer will respond to that as a good thing.
Those statistics have been known since broadband was first rolled out over here which was by cable, in '94, '95 or so and mostly applies to the flagship product of an ISP. Your tactic sounds odd to me, it sounds like you are encouraging your customers to use your services less that way. It might work for a company in your market but I don't see it being effective here. Power users will flock to the ISP with the best terms of service and pay for their flagship product. You might try breaking into that market but your terms of service will be more strict, and people here are very keen on not getting bothered about their usage. I suppose there's still a lot of trauma from the pay-by-the-minute dial-up days.
Anyway, here, power users are sought after most, they bring in the money because they are willing to pay for good terms of service and high-speed connections. They are the cherry on top in a sense. The base of cheap subs is certainly not going to make you your money, it's a warzone there in terms of margins and competition.
You should be looking at enabling consumers to make an actual choice. Where I live (western Europe) I can choose between 20+ DSL providers, they'll install in a week and moving between them is done with virtually no interruption of service. If anything this is the big reason for the high broadband penetration here. The owner of the copper (former state monopolist usually) gets to charge a low maintenance charge and is obliged to cooperate with anyone that wants to sell DSL service over their copper.
I'm sure quite a few people will be on 512k lines but then this is still a world of difference to dial-up or nothing at all. Oh, and bandwidth use is not a big issue at all at most ISP's, I can burn 100GB of traffic a month and nothing will happen, I can spike to 200GB or 300GB in a month once in a while and nothing will happen. The ISP's could whine about it, but then I'd take my money elsewhere, so they just make sure their networks can deal with however people choose to use it. The consumer rules the broadband market, anything else, and your broadband economy is really just a pie in the sky.
The comment from Richard Russell is nothing but denial and sillyness. I'm skeptical that the US ever had the most dynamic broadband economy in the world, claiming that title for this very moment is even more ludicrous. I'd say this man is reality-challenged and incompetent. A common theme in this US administration it seems.
As a Dutch resident, I would like to apologize for the traitor to free speech who created that torrent.
The movie is most likely just a rant about the danger of trying to use ancient religious texts to rule peoples lives today. Regardless of that, I'm sure Muslims will take offence, since any criticism will cause them to take offence. These people just have a hard time dealing with free and open societies, and like to purport that their religious feelings deserve extra constitutional protection.
In a free marketplace of ideas like western Europe, asking for this kind of protection under the law for your ideas gives a rather obvious indication of the lack of confidence in those ideas in my opinion. But then, i don't claim to understand religious people.
It's nice you know the origin of the phrase and how Jefferson introduced it when he explained one of the motives behind the constitution. If you are trying to pretend the phrase, uttered by Jefferson, one of the men that authored the constitution, has no bearing on the constitution, thats fine and I'll leave you to that fantasy.
Nobody cares if you like to pray in a public space, as long as it doesn't involve stripping down naked or harassing people. It's quite another thing to institutionalize it and then say it's ok with the establishment clause because you can get the majority vote and just pretend you didn't just trample over the rights of minorities as allotted to them by the constition. That is exactly what Scalia is saying btw.
Is there any republican candidate that will appoint a justice that uphulds church/state seperation?
There's only one vote difference at the moment, if Alito, Scalia, Thomas and Roberts get another ally when Stevens (88) passes away the attack on government neutrality in matters of religion will really take of and affect everyone.
Given that this also affects every single minority religion, support for a secular state used to be stronger across party lines. Now it seems the support for the secular state has become a party divider which it shouldn't be.
Never heard of vendetta online. I have played eve for around 4 years now though, and while bob and mc are powerful they are just alliances like any other. Kinda sad that the tinfoilhatters keep making stuff up and then pretend it's real. It's like dealing with creationists ffs. Big colourful rhetoric but rather short on actual evidence for their assertions.
Disclaimer: I've flown with and against both bob and mc (and countless other (more) interesting entities in EVE).
Good question, are those the issues?
It's not that easy to distill those from the unhinged open letter you know.
Your 4th point is moot for at least three reasons:
1. Anyone can log in to the right IRC server and open a private chat with the developers there.
2. Disallowing private chats between devs and players is unenforceable and possibly illegal.
3. Even if private chats lead to actions, those actions are registered and logged.
So let's stop the stupid witchhunting and play the game ok?
While this "scandal" is getting headlines it is quite unremarkable tbh. It's just more baseless accusations from the same group of people as last time. There's nothing misleading to the evidence presented either. Of course, this time most of the players already knew the score before CCP finished their investigation.
It turns out there's nothing remotely true of the accusations made this time which is downhill from the last round where they got everything wrong as well but got browny points for being close and shaking CCP up a bit.
It's a shame people are succeeding in showcasing EVE and CCP in a rather bad way when almost all of the rumours are flat-out wrong.
I wouldn't expect anything else from this guy. He admits just glancing at a headline too.
... Gibson.
The prague convention reclassified it, they didn't "invent" anything, he just conjures up his own version of what happened and denounces it as a revisionist act based on no authority whatsoever. It's actually precisely the reaction I'd expect from a person like Gibson and he shows his superficial apreciation of the scientific process by publishing it. I bet he was pissed when the french standardised the meter too.
Oh, and the people at the convention in prague got the authority to reclassiy pluto (and others!) because they worked hard to gain real understanding of our solar system and the processes within it, they did something useful and noble with their lives instead of becoming a tool in the media like
The council of Nicea is probably something Gibson can identify with, I mean, who were those guys and who gave them any authority to change things!?
Damn revisionists!
Wait wait, are you saying you think astrology has any kind of predictive power?
I'm sorry but the laws concerning the holocaust are non-issues, if thats all you have to point out, have fun being a stooge.
You pretend knowing how some state-funded european media works, thats surprising because every country has their own usually rather complex system. I'm not sure what to say since your suppositions are rather far out there. Saying it "tends" to drive discussion *and* "quite common" just leaves me to conclude you know jack shit about the subject and heard it from someone who didn't do more then glance at it themselves either.
Good luck in la-la land!
Wrong. There's a law prohibiting displaying signs and symbols from the nazi regime in public. What you want to say *about* that is totally up to you as long as you don't attempt to rewrite history by denying the holocaust or crazy stuff like that. I know lots of americans are actually buying into this crap about being the foremost free country in the world but if you'd bother to look over your borders for once and get up to speed on your own policies you'd see there's very little difference between the US and western/northern Europe. Making statements like that might work well in the US but will seriously undermine your credibility once you cross the border into Europe. I think the only country that ever came close to self-congratulating propaganda the US is spewing over it's citizens is probably nazi-germany. It's all good until you start believing it yourself, but hey whatever gives you that warm feeling inside dude.
Wrong again. Where do you people get this bullshit? Maybe you should start considering the source. A school is not the place to show off symbols of your favorite deity or religion, neither are any government buildings or facilities if you work there (state is not supposed to endorse or display *ANY* religious symbols). What you do in your own time, outside school, outside government buildings is your business. Saying that France is ordering muslims or anyone else to change their religion is utter, utter insanity that can only be thought up by idiots with an agenda. Who makes this shit up? Tell me your reliable source and I'll show you a twit of the first order.
By the way, tell me, how long ago was it that Los Angeles was ablaze with riots itself? Did you suddenly forget about that or something, did that have nothing to do with minorities? Is your memory as long as the 8 o'clock news? Do they even cover news outside your own borders?
Read a book, get an education, do something instead of being the mindless drone you are portraying now.
Obviously, that link was supposed to point here: http://www.benben.com/
I've got to admit I find this all a bit worrying and sad at the same time. There's quite a few devout christians in Europe where I live, and let me tell you something, most of them know that you shouldn't try to compare religion and science next to each other. Both have their own expertise. The religiously inclined over here know how science works and what the scientific method does. The vast majority knows that evolution is a valuable contribution to human knowledge and it is simply a reality thats has allowed us to make progress in a vast amount of scientific fields of study, it makes predictions that are falsifiable and allow us to achieve great things. There's simply no better explanation available that scientists can work with. Stop trying to debunk it in public forums and for crying out loud, if you're serious about it, publish a freakin' paper in a peer reviewed scientific publication to challenge evolution instead of coming up with misinformed or distorted excuses and oneliners.
Religion has a place in society for the people that want to spend their lives serving their god or gods and thats fine, all kinds of faiths have had a chance for over 100 years to come up with a usable scientific explanation and they never have, because they don't deal in science, they deal with religion.
Please, don't mix them up or try to bring your favorite religion into the picture to explain things that are perfectly handled by science. Not only are you hurting science for dragging it into a mud slinging contest that really no scientist is interested in. But you are hurting your fellow citizens, not everyone believes in your god, not in Europe, not in the US. To postulate that your god has had a definite hand in creation of this planet and the life on and using very poor science to back it up is insulting to your own religion but also to the people of other faiths. Leave science alone, and keep your religion in your churches and the walls of your own home and possibly your *private* schools.
Remember that people who aren't religious or have a different religion are supposed to have equal rights as the people practicing the most popular religion. That means for one thing, that trying to sneak creationism into science classes makes you very very unpopular and is rightfully so considered extremely insulting to people of different faiths, no faiths and scientists together.
It would look so much better on a lot of christians in the US if they would just sit back and try to see who's agenda they are pushing here and what they think they'll get out of it. I can assure you, if things like schoolboards sneaking in creationism during science class continues, the laughter from the rest of the world will get so loud you will be able to hear it in your prescious heartland pretty soon.
As a last tip for the people trying to "debunk" the scientific method, please read this alinea here: http://www.benben.com.com/. And just let it sink in, please.
Whether it is a threat to the USA or its economy (or any of the other big economies) remains to be seen, frankly, if things happen gradually there shouldn't be a big problem at all for any of the worlds big economies. I might be off here but as I understood it the EU economy is bigger then that of the USA, so there's certainly some pressure on the USA to share control. I'm not so sure about where the most content on the internet is concentrated. If you're talking about the english speaking part of the net you might be surprised how much of it comes from porn servers located in Amsterdam. For spanish and chinese sites, I'm pretty sure most of it is not coming from the USA.
Personally, I'd prefer if things stay as they are now but it seems evident that the situation is not sustainable with growing dependencies on how the internet works for pretty much all countries. Whats going to be interesting is on what level the segmentation will take place and to what degree that will paint a picture of the rising geopolitical blocks in the near future.
Nobody said it is very hard to nationalize the root dns server, it's that nobody will wait until they are forced to do so. Either something useful comes out of the next meeting or the ball will start rolling and a lot of nations will start taking the necesary precautions. Basically the USA is given a choice, either give up direct control of the root zonefile and share it through an international body and for 99% of internet users nothing will change, or countries will start taking up their own root servers and millions of users will be confronted with road-blocks and detours to get where they want to be. Everyone would prefer if things stay as they are now with one widely recognized root dns system, but if that system stays under the control of just one nation it is doomed to fail. You want the internet to stay as it is? Share control. You want the internet to fall apart in small segments each controlled by their own root servers? Fine, keep it as it is and it will happen in the coming years.
The question isn't "Should the United Nations control the Internet?" but "Should the USA control the Internet?".
It should come as no surprise that nobody wants the USA to control the internet except for some groups in the USA itself. By phrasing the question in a way where you can start summing up all the negatives about the UN trying to control it you are forgetting that there's a whole bunch of other negatives involved by keeping the root name servers under control of some (non-profit) corpation in the USA.
How can anyone expect the rest of the world to keep the USA in control of something as essential for 1st world economies as the internet. With a press of the button the USA could disable a large part of the economy in every first world country they choose, nobody is going to take that chance. The discussion is pointless in my opinion. To the international community there's no convincing reason whatsoever to keep control in one country. The only solution is to put in under control of an international body, the UN is a possibility, maybe a seperate organization is better.
If the USA does not relinquish it's grip on the root nameservers OR another satisfactory solution is found, it's a very very very high probability that alternate roots will come up. In the end it is a national security issue for anyone taking the time to research the ramifications.
"I have yet to get someone to tell me why something like the fibonacci sequence that is observed in every living thing, also shows up in outer space. If that isn't design, what is it? It's a signature of God."
Thats just sounds ignorant, you're claiming that because a certain pattern is observed both in nature, biology and even in art it must be the signature of God.
I'd advise you to go and read up on what the fibonacci sequence is. It certainly doesn't have anything to do with signatures of your favorite deity.