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What To Do When Broadband is Not An Option?
professorguy writes "I've been on the internet since 1984 (back before email addresses had @'s). But it looks like we're coming to the end of an era. From my home, I have 26.4 kbps dial-up access to the internet (you read that right). Since I am a hospital network administrator, it would be nice to do some stuff remotely when I am on 24/7 call. However, no cable or DSL comes anywhere near my house and because of the particular topography of my property (I'm on a heavily-forested, north-facing hillside), satellite is also not available. Heck, cell phones didn't even work here until January. So far, the technical people I've asked all have the same advice for reasonable connectivity: move. Move out of the house my wife and I built and lived in for 20 years. Has it really come to this? Am I doomed to be an internet refugee? Is this really my only option? Do you have an alternative solution for me?"
What? No broadband Internet? I'd go to a corner and then cry my heart out. Oh why! Oh why must I have no Internet! The horror of not being able to troll slashdot and other forums. The horrors of not whining and griping about my situation in life while millions of Filipinos go hungry.
Seriously, the Interweb isn't life.
Options:
1. DirectPC: There's no excuse to not get satellite Internet Access. Yes latency sucks, but surfing and many aspects of Interneting will be much faster. If you're telling me you can't get it because some tree is in the way, well heck dude, cut the tree - you live in a forest, one tree isn't going to make a difference. And if you love the tree too much, then run the wires UP the tree and install the satellite link securely atop a high tree branch near the trunk (yes you may have to cut a few branches)
2. MultiMode or Single Mode Fiber: Find the closest neighbour with broadband, explain your situation, offer a small monthly fee & install a media converter (CAT5 to Multimode or Single Mode fiber), then higher a wiring contractor to lay fiber all the way back to your shack in boonieland, install another media converter & there you be.
3. Setting up your own WiMax tower may be cheaper. You can setup 2 WiMAX towers these days for $10K USD or less, and they can be a few KM apart. Get your work to pay for 1/2 of the cost. Get your other boonieland neighbours to chip in monthly, and it may even get done for free. The second tower obviously need be where broadband is available... again near that first neighbour that has access to broadband. If he doesn't want to share broadband ADSL/Cable with you, then offer to purchase your own, but it gets delivered to your house & then you connect it to the WiMAX.
Adeptus
No trees were killed in the making of this post; however, many trillions of electrons were horribly inconvenienced.
I was not the one that said anything about what a libertarian would say in this instance, I'm just saying that every libertarian I have ever had dealings with or read about was easily provoked or tricked into saying and doing moronic things. I would go as far as to say that "smart libertarian" is oxymoronic (at least those that tend towards objectivism). Note that I am assuming we are referring to economic libertarians as opposed to social libertarians.
At the risk of the usual karma loss from a coordinated downmod assault via multuple accounts (a favourite tactic of "liberty" loving Libertarians of late) I must point out that placing "realistic" and Libertarian (or Objectivist) in a sentence to each other is the very definition of an oxymoron. I would not go as far as to call them all "morons", for some are very intelligent, but "... deluded, blinded by greed, destructive, anti-social (or in many cases sociopathic) selfish jerks, fantasy-land dwellers convinced of their imminent captainhood of industry and wealth beyond measure, and thus useful willing tools for the powerful and rich ... " should approximate some of their major features.
This, of course, would be a typical Libertarian goal-post-moving, which, you are quite right, would be only expected of one of them. The issue is not "right to internet access" (although any sane government would see that it is a great competetive advantage for the nation it governs to facilitate access to the wealth of data Internet offers for its citizens, just as it was with public libraries in older days) but rather that of ensuring the continued operation of the marketplace in the face of assault of natural monopolistic forces. Contrary to what any random Libertarian would tell you, markets are not miraculously self-curing operations, even though some very selectively chosen aspects of them can be so in theory (if sufficently dumbed-down that is). In real life, the operation of the market is very far from the optimal, theoretical conditions. Subsequently, due to an ability of companies to create "barriers to entry" for their competitors (be it via abuse of governmental functions - which is the only thing Libertatians ever see with their blinds on, or geograpghy, natural resources, social structures, cultural and national taboos and what not) produces conditions for creation of monopolies or, in most cases, oligopolies (or trusts or cartels) which quickly establish an iron grip on their corner of the marketplace, a situation which can last for generations.
The purpose of government in this case is to break that stranglehold and allow for reduction of these barriers to the point that smaller enterprises can enter the fray. From the perspective of commerce, the role of the government should be to ensure maximum competition in the marketplace. Government has many other crucial roles, such as ensuring that fostering of that vicious competition between businesses (as it should be) does not translate into a dog-eat-dog, brutal "lifestyle" of the workers (and their families) of those companies. That is why pan-national, independent from commerce or individual industries, safety nets and assistance programs are absolutely necessary to prevent the most negative of effects of ruthless competition from spreading where they do not belong: families of workers.
This of course goes to the fundamental disagreement about the purpose of the society as a whole. I (as most sane people) believe that this purpose is to foster well being of all members of that society, even if it means "unjsutly depriving" some of them from their 20th billion-dollar bonus in exchange for a few million children not dying from cholera. Libertarians, apparently, believe that the purpose of the society is to propel their asses into individual wealth and power (and who gives a fuck about the rest of us! If we can be used to step on to get there, all the better! Besides, if everyone was well off, how would one get servants?!).
Which of course would be the usual strawman burning so beloved by Libertarians, since no one even suggested for governments to force anybody into providing service. Merely that the government should look after the overall competetiveness of the marketplace, ensuring a large number of competitors by busting monopolies, cartels, oligopolies and the like, and as a result of that there would be enough companies, some of them specializing in providing access to remote areas, to serve these people.
But then again, Libertarians being deceitful is like water being wet. They just can't help themselves.