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The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

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Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#81

Post by gametheoretic »

rralian wrote: post #73
gametheoretic wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you think the government would rather deal with more ISPs or fewer, insofar as surveillance is concerned?

That's an interesting angle. My immediate thought was that it's different parts of the government making such decisions. But upon reflection I have no reason to believe NSA et al wouldn't try to influence such matters as they could.

Yep, exactly. Some matters are just "big enough" that you can't go rogue without answering for it. After all, the heads these agencies (NSA, SEC, whatever) are all presidential appointees.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#82

Post by cubicle67 »

robzyb wrote: post #21
MichaelApproved wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got to be more specific when you say "there" or at least mention what you found wrong. The US is a large country with vast differences between the cities. Your experience in one area could be dramatically different from another area in the US.

I understand that a significant majority of the United States' healthcare system is lacklustre. I understand that a significant majority of the United States' only offer limited annual leave (compared to Australia's 4 weeks). I understand that a significant majority of the United States' suffers from an extremely high murder rate for a 1st world country. This is a sample of why I don't want to live in the US, even th…

4 weeks paid annual leave

plus 10 days paid sick leave (cumulative) plus 10 paid public holidays per year

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#83

Post by gcb0 »

brownbat wrote: post #76

It took fierce competition to even get broadband companies to advertise what they are offering. I had to deal with a very small local monopoly in Western Maryland that just advertised "faster than dial up," had typical pings of over 200. It was thick on the local board, had a deal with local government as the sole authorized supplier in the county. Now I'm in a different part of the country, can get FiOS, but while V…

lol at calling all the providers. the free market fails if left alone, under shady regulations it is almost a joke.

i found a aDSL number for ATT that was not advertised (and you reached a person on the first minute!) that was the result of some obscure regulation that they had to provide dsl without charging for a phone line if so i wanted. it was a very good service. as i was next door to their trunk.

i moved, less than 20miles, but another city. called att to transfer service, the rep read something and the burst out a sad "ah, sorry, this is verizon territory".

and that is exactly what i get here. verizon. nothing else. the 2nd or 3rd biggest city in los angeles, and i can choose, verizon.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#84

Post by bane »

catmanjan wrote: post #31
derleth wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, because a whole country is TexaFlorida and all the inhabitants are Duck Dynasty Honey Boo Boo.

Again, I still haven't heard any arguments _for_ a life in America other than "it isn't all bad" or "it isn't as bad as Hollywood makes it look".

If you're an Australian, if you woke up tomorrow in an American city of an Australian one, you'd probably have a hard time telling them apart until you saw which side a car drove on or somebody spoke to you.

On the flip side, Canada, which isn't the U.S. and has all of the benefits being claimed here about places that are not the U.S. is so virtually identical to the U.S. in most ways that I've watched entire seasons of TV shows and not known they were filmed in Canada with Canadian actors. After a night of bar hopping in Toronto, I once woke up in Canada and thought we had made it back over into the U.S. overnight. It took me a few hours and trying to pay at a diner with the wrong money to figure it out.

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#85

Post by dmix »

gametheoretic wrote: post #43
andyl wrote: post #16

My broadband service is terrible. Far to expensive, it is slow and drops packets. And the competitive environment sucks. Comcast and Regulators: go to hell. I'll vote for any politician who is interested in improving the situation.

We've tallied the votes, and it turns out it didn't matter who you voted for. Sorry. We hope it felt, for a fleeting moment, like you had influence over anything outside your immediate surroundings.

I see the old 'representative democracy' fallacy is still quite prevalent in broadband talks. Maybe another decade of complaining on the internet might do it?

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#86

Post by [deleted] »

khuey wrote: post #58
sillysaurus2 wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its much easier to garner a donation from a rich individual with concentrated cash, than many individuals. Interestingly, this may change soon. It's probably inevitable that we're going to see politicians raising money a'la Kickstarter. A well-presented and charismatic politician should be able to raise a decent amount with crowdfunding, especially if they're a Redditor. Since most children are Redditors, and since s…

Barack Obama did just that in 2008.

[deleted]

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#88

Post by vacri »

bane wrote: post #53
michaelochurch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some neat cities with character. For quality-of-life (relatively speaking) you have Austin and Portland. If you think you can make it rich, there's San Francisco and New York. For historic charm, you have Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The upper midwest has a relatively high quality of life, too. Life in the politically sane parts ("blue states") of the US, if you have a job in tech, isn't so bad. You…

I'd strike Portland and Baltimore off of that list and replace them maybe with Seattle and D.C.? The greater Portland area ain't bad, but downtown Portland kind of blows. The food scene is okay, but it's hard to get just normal good greasy spoon food without having to find out more than you want to know about the meal. Seattle is nicer is almost every way and has more to do and a far better tech scene. Baltimore is a…

Regarding the overpriced-ness of Australia, for a long time our dollar was worth around 2/3rds of the US dollar (at one point in the past 20 years it was down to 50c), and pricing made more sense in comparison, with imported things being generally more expensive due to remoteness. Then we had a mining boom and our dollar increased in value to a peak of around US$1.12. Of course, your local prices don't fluctuate to match the exchange rate, because it doesn't work that way. So for a local, that bus ticket has always been the same price, but it doubled in cost for tourists. The Aussie dollar is now on the way down again. Real estate is ridiculously expensive though - most expensive in the world in relative-to-average-income terms.

Apparently, the volatility of the $A combined with the general stability of the economy makes it the 5th-most traded currency in the world (US$, Euro, Yen, GB pound, then $A... the middle order might be a bit mixed up)

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#89

Post by eru »

bane wrote: post #53
michaelochurch wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are some neat cities with character. For quality-of-life (relatively speaking) you have Austin and Portland. If you think you can make it rich, there's San Francisco and New York. For historic charm, you have Boston, Philadelphia and Baltimore. The upper midwest has a relatively high quality of life, too. Life in the politically sane parts ("blue states") of the US, if you have a job in tech, isn't so bad. You…

I'd strike Portland and Baltimore off of that list and replace them maybe with Seattle and D.C.? The greater Portland area ain't bad, but downtown Portland kind of blows. The food scene is okay, but it's hard to get just normal good greasy spoon food without having to find out more than you want to know about the meal. Seattle is nicer is almost every way and has more to do and a far better tech scene. Baltimore is a…

And if you work for an multinational, even in Asia you can even get your five weeks of vacation a year. (I do.)

Re: The $200 Billion Rip-Off: Our broadband future was stolen (2007)

#90

Post by alayne »

wtallis wrote: post #62
zw123456 wrote: post #49

I have tried posting this idea a couple of times before and have been roundly scolded, but oh well, here goes again. I think... that readers of this forum are ideally equipped to find a way around this problem. What I mean to say is that it is universally felt by everyone that they hate their broadband provider, phone company etc. Why can't we, the tech community come up with a competing technology? I know many have…

It's not a technological problem. The technological barriers have been taken care of. Google Fiber exists and is awesome and affordable. The reasons we don't all have Google Fiber level of service are political: regulatory capture, monopolies and oligopolies, conflicts of interest, etc.

It's only not a tech problem if every service has Google levels of server capacity and performance. Websites still regularly fall over when posted on aggregation sites.
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