I find it "distasteful" that a company knowingly cut corners on safety to raise short term gains at such a grave risk. My anger towards that can't begin to compare with what someone says on a silly Twitter account.

Not trolling, I just find it bewildering that people are willing to come to the defense of BP over such tiny things when we've read all the shenanigans they've been up to. Same goes for Transocean.

riiight... because no one studied the effects of radiation on humans before phones came along....

Yes, and I said mobile phone usage specifically. There are many different types of radiation, and many different ways of administering it.

I acknowledge we don't know the long term effects of any mobile phone usage because we haven't been using them long enough, but at the same time I feel uneasy. Phone companies would stand to lose so much money and have their industries labeled alongside big tobacco, so I can't help but think they're pouring as much research into studies that "prove" phone radiation is harmless. Even if they couldn't convince people, at least they'd make the water murkier.

I dunno, my opinions on the ethics of big business have hit another all time low, for some reason.

Probably not all that relevant to this discussion, but my SG$0.02.

All the Starbucks branches here in Singapore have free WiFi provided you register first, it's part of the government's Wireless@SG initiative, which I can forgive the corny 1990s name for because it Just Works. The irony is this free internet is faster and more reliable than the ADSL I was paying a small fortune for back in Australia!

There's a huge coffee shop culture here. It's really fascinating to see Starbucks (and Coffee Bean, and Killiney etc), even at 11pm they're absolutely packed with students studying on their MacBooks and business folk frantically typing away. I asked a few local friends why, and mostly it's because apartments here are so small an overpriced cup of coffee is a small price to pay for a comfy chair, relaxing music and a place to do some work on the Internets without your siblings making noise in your ear.

This news isn't on the scale of Google redirecting mainland Chinese search results to Google.cn but has more in common than Senator Conroy here in Australia would like people to think. Wait, no, that isn't even right, he's openly compared the proposed Great Firewall of Australia to the filters in China.

When Prime Minister Kevin Rudd and Federal Labor won the last election and Barack Obama and the Democrats won the elections in the US, Australian newspapers reported their first meetings as being one with kindred spirits, in much of the same way as George Bush and John Howard. This filter is perhaps the first large(ish) crack in this relationship, and I'm really hoping the Americans kick up as much of a fuss about Australia's laws as China's if the filter in Australia goes through.

The problem for the voting public here is in our version of the two party system, the opposition are considered the more conservative party, and its new Christian far-right leader Tony Abbott has been fairly silent on the whole issue. One can imagine he supports it in spirit but doesn't want to seem as though he's agreeing with Labor. Either way, we're royally stuffed.

In the meantime if you're an Aussie, don't forget the Electronic Frontiers Australia is accepting donations for their Open Internet campaign.

I downloaded it before it got taken down the first time and had fun entering BASIC command for a couple of seconds before I lost interest. Touch screen keyboards are fine for quick SMS messages or email but I couldn't imagine being such a masochist that I'd want to enter entire programs in with one! I suppose someone with enough resolve could do some amazing stuff and create an alternative interface to the iPhone with 8bit PETSCII glory. Actually that would be kinda cool.

Anyway despite that, I kept the application and won't be upgrading, if only just to (Mr Burns voice) honk off my Apple masters :).

Actually, they're not. Super long haul flights are done in A340s and 777s. 747s haven't been used in this role for years. I do agree though about the 777 being a more comfortable aircraft to fly in. They're much quieter in the cabin too.

You're absolutely right. Collective will of corporations, governments and people (land, labour, capital and enterprise for those economically inclined) towards a single goal in the past has resulted in amazing things being achieved. Alas it's just too uncommon for all three groups to be interested in the same things at the same time, because they have different priorities and perceived needs.

What I'm hoping for now is that with the shrinking of the world there is a huge opportunity for corporations, governments and people to work together regardless of their geographic location quite unlike any other period in our collective history.

Optimistically, together we can achieve so much. Realistically, I think we're still more interested in spending our land, labour, capital and enterprise resources on killing each other over differences such as religion, resource allocation and political ideology.

As a terribly politically incorrect end note though, the jet turbine engine was created as a direct result of war. Who knows, a new cold war may have people racing to other planets, comets or solar systems instead of our moon. It's interesting to think about: how much of our progress is just making sure someone else doesn't do it first?