Rural America Is Building Its Own Internet Because No One Else Will (vice.com)
New submitter bumblebaetuna writes: In many cases, it's not financially viable for big internet service providers like Comcast and CharterSpectrum to expand into rural communities: They're not densely populated, and running fiber optic cable into rocky Appalachian soil isn't cheap. Even with federal grants designed to make these expansions more affordable, there are hundreds of communities across the US that are essentially internet deserts -- so many are building it themselves. But in true heartland, bootstrap fashion, these towns, hollows -- small rural communities located in the valleys between Appalachia hills -- and stretches of farmland have banded together to bring internet to their doors. They cobble together innovative and creative solutions to get around the financial, technological, and topological barriers to widespread internet.
We're going go build our own Internet, with blackjack and hookers! In fact, forget the blackjack!
#DeleteFacebook
So ironic that you are confusing regulation and lobbying... it's the regulation that PREVENTS the very thing you're whining about. Companies like to strong arm small communities as presented in the article you linked to... that's not the government doing that.. it's the private sector. So you think that weakening the government and strengthening the private sector (who is doing the strong arming) is the solution????
It's funny. In Europe, people trust the government more than corporations. So it's usually the government screwing them over.
In the US, people trust companies more than governments. And it's usually the companies screwing them over.
Just because it's not a "government" doesn't mean it can't get big and centralized enough to become abusive. Especially when it provides what, in the first world, has become a near-essential good/service. See, for example, Comcast.
Think that one through. We'd be without:
1. Non-cluttered public streets.
2. National parks.
3. Non-cluttered, no-charge freeways.
4. Patents.
5. Copyrights.
6. Cell phones and radios that work 10% of the time.
Say what you want about how poorly they're implemented in the US, those things have uses in a modern society. You can look to some areas of India to see what a cluster-fuck letting anybody build anything they want on shared public land will do.
It depends on the problem. If you're talking about large scale multi-regional infrastructure, well, that's what the Federal Government was designed for when it was rebooted after the failure of the Articles of Confederation. Now I applaud these people in rural areas for taking the initiative (and hope they don't run afoul of the same Big ISP attacks that their urban cousins have suffered when daring to put in their own infrastructure), but the fact that they have to cobble together their own solutions to get access to 21st century communications systems is a sad testament to state and Federal level failure to take the lead on delivering such access.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
They'll just make sure the state government makes the project illegal.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
I view Trump as rejecting more of the same. Clinton was the very definition of more of the same, particularly as she had already lived in the Whitehouse. It's trying to force change rather than muddle along with corrupt but maybe competent. Not much difference between the frustrations of the Trump voters and the Bernie voters, they both were rejecting more of the same.
It's not forcing change. You were upset about the system ignoring you and catering too much to rich buffoons who don't deserve the power they've inherited and won't use it to help anyone but themselves... so you elected a rich buffoon who doesn't deserve the power he's inherited and won't use it to help anyone but himself. All you did was cut out the middleman. There is no vote that is more in favor of "more of the same" than a vote for Donald Trump. Trump is everything that was already wrong with the system.
"We have crappy Internet provision because of Big Government!"
"Yeah! Let's make our government even less like those in France, Germany, and Scandinavia where the Internet access is several times as good."
And to fend off the inevitable "But we have it harder because the US is less dense than Europe!"
1) You are not less dense than Canada and Australia
2) US Internet provision sucks in US cities, too, and they are quite dense
You do not have crappy Internet because of "corrupt Clinton-style government". You have it because of not-technically-corrupt government that is *influenced* by large corporations that have an oligopoly on service provision. This influence is bipartisan, with a slight preference for Republican. (Until Trump, whose level of revolving-door state/corporate appointments has hit a new level.)
I saw some video of people carrying firearms. They weren't waving them about in a threatening manner, in any of the video that I saw. I carry a firearm fairly frequently. I'm not even remotely a threat.
If you're curious, I'm very politically left and not white. I'd hate to have you thinking I am a Nazi, or something.
At any rate, do you have some specific footage you'd like me to watch?
"So long and thanks for all the fish."