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2/3 of Americans Without Broadband Don't Want It
Ant writes in with news that won't be welcomed by the incoming US administration as it tries to expand the availability of broadband Internet service. A recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project indicates, as noted by Ars Technica, that two-thirds of Americans without broadband don't want it. "...when we look at the overall reasons why Americans don't have broadband, availability isn't the biggest barrier. Neither is price. Those two, combined, only account for one-third of Americans without broadband. Two-thirds simply don't want it. The bigger issue is a lack of perceived value."
My father is in his 60s, and lives on a farm in rural PA. When I was growing up he had zero interest in computers. He didn't even want one until he found out, maybe 5 years ago now, that he could contact his old army buddies on it. At the time, broadband wasn't available in his area, but I set him up with a computer with a modem, and he messed with it and tinkered with it, and, indeed, completely screwed it up a few time, but he did learn how to use it moderately well.
Maybe 2 years ago they finally get DSL in his area. He didn't want it. Zero interest. He already had his modem and could contact his army buddies, and that was fine. But whenever he needed to download Windows patches it took literally overnight. He had sort of set into using the internet in certain ways, and he was satisfied.
That was until he stayed with me in the city, where I have Comcast, and he got to use the internet in completely new ways. THEN he wanted, and now uses, DSL. He looks at Youtube. He uses Utorrent. He is glad he made the switch.
tldr; People don't want to switch because they don't actually know what they are missing.
Do your friends post your pictures on Facebook? Last I checked, the only way to prevent people from explicitly searching for you in pictures was to have an account and disable it.
Also, with an account, you can untag your pictures.
Guess what, 'greatest generation', now we want to spend tax money on something that is GOOD for the nation.
Like rampant botnets? These are people who have said, out loud and with conviction, that they wouldn't use broadband if they had it. If you make it some kind of mandatory, they'll use it... but they won't take care of it. To use a /.-mandatory car analogy, make automobiles mandatory to go the the doctor's office, and you'll find unmaintained cars breaking down in the middle of the road all over, because the car hasn't been made that doesn't need tire replacement, oil-and-filter changes, and other periodic maintenance. If the driver can't be convinced they're responsible for that, the rest of us are boned.
Give every non-enthusiasts any network-connected computing device and you've just multiplied the attack space for worms and trojans by perhaps an order of magnitude. Are you volunteering to be tech support for those folks?
And, so help me $DIETY, if you Mactards and Linux zealots* start smugging on about how the whole maintenance and vulnerability issue vanishes if you just give Ma and Pa Kettle Macs or Ubuntu boxen, I swear I'll reach through the internet and smack you. Again, I'll say it: the car hasn't been built yet (and never will) that doesn't need periodic maintenace, and the same is even more true of computing boxes. Period. Given a large enough target zone, blackhats will find and exploit vulnerabilities. And Grandpa and Grandma won't know or care. "Educate 'em!", you say? Feh. To quote Calvin: "You can present the material, but you can't make me care".
I didn't want the war foisted upon us by lying politicians and the gullible and cowardly older generation, but here it is.
Non-sequitur. Strawman. Absolutely irrelevant. You don't want the war foisted on you, but at least no one is putting a gun in your hand and making you responsible for fighting it. "Mandatory" broadband in the hands of the untrained, unwilling, and uninterested is the functional equivalent.
But hey, don't let me stand in the way of your emo-angst irrationality. I'm sure the purported GWOT and the necessity of universal broadband are intimately connected somehow in your mind.
*Full disclosure: I am, after a fashion, a Linux zealot. I'm also a realist. Linux is not the answer to all life's problems. Linux is not Superman. Linux is not invulnerable. Linux is just far less evil than most of the alternatives. And speaking of evil, I am not a Mac enthusiast, because Apple's corporate and IP policies disgust me.
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Broadband has obvious, quantifiable benefits that are apparent basically as soon as you have it.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
Um, mark your profile as private so that only your friends can see it ; )
You can even set up groups of friends and limit the content they see based on the group they are in.
If you have incriminating stuff just mark it for the group of superclose friends and the rest will never see it.
-Viz
Don't kid yourself. It's the size of the regexp AND how you use it that counts.