Slashdot Mirror
Baby Bells Promise Broadband Stagnation
twitter writes "According to this NYT article the Baby Bells will not be developing their 'high-speed networks' despite their recently granted DSL monopoly because they were not granted local phone monopolies. 'Here is a lot of crying crybaby reaction to the decision.' says Mr. Powell."
This isn't a link to an article, but a link to register to NYTimes.com! Jesus.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: the Baby Bells are dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Baby Bell community when Slashdot confirmed that the Baby Bells are sucky crybabies. Market share has dropped yet again, even with the government sanctioned monopoly. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that the Baby Bells have lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. The Baby Bells are collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent "Unsucky Crybaby Tests".
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict Baby Bell's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Baby Bell faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for the Baby Bells because the Baby Bells are dying. Things are looking very bad for the Baby Bell. Their offices are dark, the tomb-like sepulchral atmosphere is all that remains. The Baby Bells continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The Baby Bell DSL development team is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house. All major surveys show that the Baby Bell have steadily declined in market share. The Baby Bells are very sick and their long term survival prospects are very dim. If the Baby Bells are to survive at all it will be among telephony dilettante dabblers and hangers-on. The Baby Bells continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save them at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the Baby Bells are dead.
Fact: the Baby Bells are dying
Trolling is a art,
"Jared is still a fucking dork!" I said as I sprang from the couch, waving the remote control through the air like a suburban Jedi wielding a light saber.
My wife looked at me with that "there he goes again" look. My three-year-old daughter looked at me with that "can't wait to try out that new word at Bible school or in front of Grandma" look. But I didn't care. I'd had enough.
I usually get a kick out of the junk fitness products advertised relentlessly on TV. Kooky weight loss pills ("Eat anything you want and lose weight while you sleep!"), the Bowflex gizmo ("Build the body you've always dreamed of in 20 minutes a day, three times a week..."), Slim Fast ("Now with soy!"), and other such garbage. But the latest Subway sandwich commercials promoting that Jared guy and his weight loss efforts put me over the edge.
I'm sure you've seen the commercials. 425-pound Jared Fogle dropped down to 190 pounds by eating Subway sandwiches instead of mainlining bacon grease like he apparently used to do. He also walked a mile and a half a day for exercise. Well, good for him. Anything is better than weighing 425 pounds.
The problem is that Subway has since launched a whole ad campaign around Jared promoting the "Subway Diet" and pushing off their carb filled, preservative laden sandwiches as health food. Jared has even appeared on Oprah, the Today show, Extra, and has been featured in USA Today.
But let's back up for a minute and look at the facts here, shall we? According to the details at Subway's website, Jared skipped breakfast and only ate two sandwiches a day, a turkey sandwich for lunch and a "Veggie Delite" for dinner. That's it. I did the math and here's what I got: Jared ate around 700 calories per day, although sometimes that health nut admitted to eating some potato chips with his lunch. That means he consumed a whopping 28 grams of protein per day and virtually no healthy fats or quality carbs.
What does all this mean? Although Jared lost a lot of weight, this also means that he's destroyed his metabolism, slammed his Testosterone levels down to Richard Simmons' levels, and probably doesn't have an ounce of muscle left on his still flabby body. It means that Jared will most likely gain a lot of the weight back.
It means that although he "exercised" by walking, he still can't take off his shirt in public. It means, quite honestly, that women still don't want to fuck Jared. Jared lost a buttload of weight, but he still doesn't look good naked, at least that's what I'm guessing. In short, Jared is still a dork. And since when is that the goal of a diet and exercise program?
What really pisses me off is that regular people are adopting Jared's diet! If you have 300 pounds to lose, fine, but this is not a healthy or ultimately successful diet for those wanting to lose a normal amount of weight. Even the Subway corporate dietician (yes, they really have one) said, "It's great that it worked for him, but I would rather he had eaten a balanced breakfast and more fruits and vegetables."
Subway's official stance is that they do not endorse the "Jared Diet." Yeah, right. Kinda hard to tell with millions of dollars of ads running constantly on every channel, huh? Subway is cashing in big time on the desperation and ignorance of the general public. It's all about the ching ching, baby.
Now, considering a person would have to be pretty ignorant to adopt this harmful diet, I can only wonder about all those misinformed housewives out there trying it. I can see them now, skipping the turkey sandwiches and ordering up a big steak and cheese foot long combo loaded with mayo and washed down with a large soft drink. And don't forget the potato chips and a couple of Mrs. Fields cookies for dessert! After all, the commercial said that all you had to do is eat at Subway. (And in the fine print, you have to order the small sandwich, cut the oil, get a certain kind of bread, take off the cheese and skip all the condiments. But I wonder how many of Jared's followers read the fine print?)
And it's really no surprise he lost weight. You could eat 700 calories worth of anything and lose weight; nothing special about Subway sandwiches. But here's the kicker: After you lose that weight, will you look good? Will you keep the muscle? Will you perform better athletically? Will you feel good? Will you be healthy and strong?
Not likely. This is what people tend to overlook when they take their diets to extremes. Their motto is "thinness at all costs." Well, let me remind you that being bone skinny is just as unattractive as being fat, and a truly admirable body is built with weights, not walking.
I'm tired of seeing people damage their health, waste money, and end up looking worse than they did to begin with just to see the numbers on the scale go down. It's time to deprogram the sheep. It's time we all stop bullshitting ourselves and look in the mirror, the world's most effective body-fat measuring device.
This is a wake-up call to all those over-dieted scrawny guys out there who, in an effort to get that ripped six-pack, have caused their legs to look like toothpicks and their arms to look like those of twelve-year old anorexic N'Sync fan. Newsflash: You don't even look like you lift weights with street clothes on.
And don't think for a second you "big" guys have escaped my Jared-induced rant. The next time I hear one of you bragging that you weigh 250, I'm going to ask you to strip off your shirt in front of all the gym babes. Face it, fat boy, a lean and muscular 190 looks better than your chunky 250, so stop giving shit to everyone under 200 pounds. This is about your "do-ability" rating, not the arbitrary numbers on a scale.
I know, you think I'm being too tough on everyone, and maybe I am. (Trust me, I'm tougher on myself.) But I'm just giving you a friendly push in the right direction. Combine the end of summer with all the insane current events that have been going on and I'll bet most of you have slacked a little. Sure, you go to the gym and go through the motions but are you really driven? Are you still full of that fire that brought you into the gym in the first place?
This lifestyle is not about looking average or normal, yet most people settle for just that. "Hey, as long as I'm not fat," they say. Well, I don't want to look skinny or "big." I want to look like that blue guy on the opening page of this site and I'll bet you do, too. We know that's the most difficult physique goal of all, but the difficulty itself is what inspires us. It's the difference between being average and being driven.
I think what separates the Slashdot crowd from the Slim Fast/Bowflex/Subway crowd is this desire to be a little better than average, a little above the norm. After all, if you settle for looking average, then you become average. That mediocrity will bleed over into the rest of your life. You'll marry a mediocre girl, get a mediocre job, and lead a plain vanilla life. You've got more than that inside of you. If you didn't, you wouldn't be reading this mag.
To me, this is the time of year I reevaluate my goals, shake off the torpor of hot summer days and get ready to stoke the fire. It's time to dig in and focus, not just in the gym, but with relationships, family, friends, and work. It's time to rev it up. I invite you to do the same.
And if everyone else is inspired by Jared, fine, but he shouldn't inspire us. We set the bar higher than that.
suck my dick you cock sucking ass fuck!
So go. Move to the f'ing worker's paradise that is (Canada|Australia|New Zealand) we don't want you here anyway.
doozer writes:
The only way we are going to get broadband across the board is if the government mandates
it, and takes it upon themselves to install and run it.
Doozer - what do you do for a living - work for a government office (or are you still a person in training at school)? Perhaps you can give me an example of a government agency that runs:
- efficiently
- under budget
- on time
- is customer-service focused
OK, outside of the IRS and the dept. of motor vehicles, who can you name? (grin)
I've never had a government office experience where I came away amazed at how good of a job they did.
In our part of the country, we have some local municipalities trying to offer broadband Internet.
Their trick? Charge twice as much for the other monopoly services to subsidize it, hire FDH (fat dumb and happy) employees that are high on self-esteem but low on competence (hey, everyone deserves a job and the government will give them one), and fulfill every other social program objective outside of providing good service at a good price while covering the cost of the service without borrowing the money from elsewhere.
$45/month broadband, fed by a single T1 to the community (that is shared across about 2000 subscribers and businesses). At 9pm, thruput is about 30-60 Kbps. Wow... dialup.
My customers in a town south of this one pay $30/month and are guaranteed 256 up and down. And get this... I'm not skimming four million bucks out of a cross-subsidy and jacking up the city's water and electric bills by double what other community rates are. How is this possible? Worse yet, I make money and they are looking at needing another loan to subsidize their boondoggle broadband network.
As soon as it's left up to
a corporation todo, they're going to not provide services to the customers that are expensive.
That's simply wrong. My company services what the elitists would call "fly over country." My smallest market is a town with a 220 population. I'm delivering a 12 Mbps backbone to them. Yea, they don't make very much money, but they're loyal customers and we break even.
Why? Because thats the point of a corporation. They want to make a profit.
Look, I know I'll never put an end to this misnomer, but maybe I can help you out. Take your personal finances. You go to work and bring in $1500 take home in your paycheck. You have bills that totals $1400. Uh oh... you ran a profit!
So for the next few months, spend $3500 per pay period and bring in only $1000 (tell your boss he's paying you too much). Now what do you do?
Why should a company be any different?
Private corporations are not the ideal method of provided uniform services, because not
everyone can be served at uniform cost.
Because not everyone wears a uniform with a swastika...er... sorry! (kidding). Not everyone is uniform. Some of my customers are businesses with hundreds of employees needing 6 Mbps or more. Should I charge everyone $2500 a month to be uniform?
Interestingly, I have a flat price for my residential customers that is indifferent of how easy or hard their installation is. Some take 15 minutes for an install - new PC with current OS operated by someone with a clue - and others take 6 hours of struggling with Win95, DLL-hell, etc.
Funny... I'm providing uniform service without uniform cost.
The sooner we realize this, and stop trying to privatize everything, we'll be better off
Please do reply. I've yet to find a successful person (in any endeavor of life outside crime) that thinks this way. Most who do are college students living off of someone elses money and their opinions don't matter anyway.
*scoove*