While interesting, your above analysis is missing the fact that voters are likely to vote differently under systems besides first past the post. Less strategic voting, voters that currently vote for the opposition party due to wanting to remove the government instead of their first choice (or visa versa) and possibly more or at least different turnout as the voters who don't currently bother voting due to living in a safe seat or such actually voting as now they feel their vote counts.
Depends on how remote, at least during the day, using a standard radio. Where I am right now, I get a lot more FM signals then AM even though the transmitters are about as far away. If you're really remote, you should have a good multi-band radio, though I believe shortwave is being used less and less, a strong AM signal can cover a good chunk of the continent at night.
This was the middle plan, not sure what the limits on the other plans were as 250GB seemed good. The hub does have 2 phone jacks and my neighbour, who seems to have a better relationship with the ISP's representative got her phone connected for $10 extra, supposedly I can do the same in a couple of months. It receives SMS as well, view-able through the web interface, but no way to send. I'd guess I could plug a phone in and access 911 if needed. Complaints, the hub at $300 ($12.50 a month over 2 years) was too expensive and the battery, rated at 8 hours, only lasts 3 hours.
I'm happy with it. I believe there are some government subsidies involved as well, mostly federal but it is hard to find info.
That's how it is working in Canada, if you are considered remote rural with no other choices, as I am, I get a 250GB cap for the same price as a 10GB cap in town. This is what is called fixed mobile, using a hub rather then tethering. The phone number isn't even currently activated.
Seems to me, the potential problem is low caps. If a couple of Windows updates maxes out your cap for the month, you still don't really have broadband.
For me, in Canada, being considered rural and remote with no access besides fixed mobile (4G with a shiny new tower), I get a 250 GB cap, probably with some government subsidy somewhere in there. Speed averages over 10/1 with one bar on the hub. Here it is considered an essential service with the plan to connect everyone, ideally at 50/5 but with 5/1 being acceptable for remote rural and 3/1 for the far north. The far north is quite challenging, areas that can contain a couple of Texas's with maybe 35,000 people. Interestingly, reading the faq at https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/..., seems broadband is defined as always on internet, or basically anything but dial-up.
I'm in Canada, where the government also wants everyone connected with broadband, ideally 50/10 connection but 5/1 in very rural areas and 3/1 in the far north. I'm rural, using dial-up until last Nov. Now on a fixed wireless 4G plan, which is probably partially government subsidized. My usage cap is 250 GBs a month (it would be 10 GB for the same price if I lived in town for the same $85 a month) and the 10-15/1-2 connection is plenty good enough for now, especially after suffering on dial-up for 20 odd years. Biggest problem I see is the over charges are high. Be much better if they just throttled it down to 64-128 kbs.
Interesting. It is hard to actually be fair even when striving for fairness. Do the people consider it is fair enough? One thing about America is a lot of bitching about gerrymandering which doesn't happen in Canada. As for the first past the post system, it is a matter of opinion. I like minority governments as the parties have to work together compared to a majority where the winning party can push through their agenda. There seems to be a lot of support here for getting rid of the first past the post system. The winners of the last Federal election won partially on the promise of no more FPTP elections (which they reneged on) and my last Provincial election was similar with a 44-43-3 result leading to a very good chance that things will change as the Greens with their 3 seats have agreed to support the government on the condition of moving to some form of proportional representation.
That wasn't so much gerrymandering as simply not redrawing districts to reflect population changes. It was actually worse, with ridings (districts) becoming depopulated to the point where there were only a few voters and new population centres with no representation. This is why modern democracies have regular censuses and redraw the lines to try to balance the size of the districts, ideally by an independent non-partisan committee. Works well here in Canada where gerrymandering is mostly unheard off. Our number of legislature members also increases as population increases to help ensure equal representation. Currently we have about 3/5ths the number of Federal legislature members as America with about 1/10th the population.
Yet Tim Hortons could afford to hire people at $16-$20 an hour in Ft McMurray and other places with an actual shortage of labour and still serve $1 cups of coffee, t least until the economy crashed and resulted in a surplus of desperate workers. Hard to wade through the articles on the Tim Hortons owners who think running a franchise should pay millions but here's one article, https://www.yukon-news.com/new...
WTF is any operating system doing rendering fonts in ring 0? This was one of the reasons for the MS and IBM divorce, MS wanting to run stuff (video drivers) in ring 0 for performance and IBM refusing for security.
Yes, we're talking about the type of authoritarian government that locks up millions of citizens, often for political crimes such as using the wrong substances that the authoritarians don't like. It's actually pretty common for a large percentage of the population to like the authoritarians, look at America where they keep actually voting them in.
What used to kill off the pine beetles was cold. Used to have weeks of minus 30 in the interior of BC. Doesn't seem to happen anymore, leading to huge areas of dead lodgepole pine which is perfect for burning but the lumber companies don't want it to burn as they'd rather harvest the wood.
As we all know, weather (or seasons) is/are not climate.
Of course seasons are climate. Where I live , the climate is that Aug is usually the hottest, driest month, Nov is the wettest and Jan is the coldest. That is a form of climate and on average holds true. Further, the scientific consensus is that this short term climate is primarily caused by the tilt of the Earth though there are nutcases who dispute that just because the scientific consensus says the tilt of the Earth affects climate, we should be skeptical about the causes of seasons and that the Earth is really flat. Should we listen to the skeptics who claim the Earth is flat in the face of scientific consensus? After all they were wrong about the Earth being round.
You mean like everyone has to pay per minute for local calls on their landline? That kind of regulated like a utility? Sounds better then being charged on which of your neighbors you phone or not being allowed to phone any of your neighbors who the phone company doesn't like the politics off. The phone company does own the lines, so perhaps they should be able to control how you use them.
The smart authoritarian government allows freedom of speech. Makes it easy to monitor the speech and it allows the people to vent, with the venting directed at things besides the government such as outside forces like religion or economic system or internal divisions such as race or minor politics like abortion that doesn't really affect the authoritarian government.
Why do Americans put up with that shit? I can see them setting a minimum like I believe it works here in Canada and will with marijuana (18 yrs) but here the Provinces decide on the actual age, 18 some places and 19 other places with various rules on minors drinking in the presence of their parents/guardians and such.
Yea, I could see it if they were playing a beat with white noise, but plain white noise, no. Even a straight recording of monkeys shouldn't be copyright-able. Things are insane, even this message will be protected for 50-70 years after I drop dead and it isn't exactly a creative work and I'd write it even with no copyright. Copyright is supposed to advance learning, not be a means of collecting rent on culture for ever.
Your point #1, of course it is better to upgrade to 10 Mbps for those that have crap now, but as infrastructure gets upgraded, it should have a higher speed. That's how it is working here. 5 weeks back, I had a 26.4 Kbps connection, now I have a 10 Mbps cell connection, due to the Province partially paying for a new cell tower. I also have access to 911 even when the copper thieves strike. Meanwhile a bit closer to town, there is now fiber and it is due to be here in a couple of years. Lots of rural spread out communities are the same, first a cell tower with special deals (250 GB cap vs the 10 GB cap I'd have in town if I went with cellular) for people like me who have no other choice. The thing is even in rural areas where wireless currently is the best option is to get the fiber closer and closer with the goal of having it most places.
Your point #2, it's insane for the State to stop municipalities from creating their own network, especially in cases where no one else is serving them. Forcing having clear plans for financing and the voters agreement I can see. Perhaps due to having such low population densities, meaning only one or two over the air TV channels, most every town here has cable and if you have cable now, you probably have decent internet, so we haven't had the problems that happen down there where the cable company doesn't bother to build out but does lobby against towns building their own. Or perhaps it is just a different culture, without the extreme lobbying that happens down there and more of the attitude that the government is to serve the people.
As it is, you guys have it cheap down there compared to here, at least in general. Your internet is cheap, your cell service is cheap, at least compared to here. I pay $85+$12.50 equipment+tax for aprox. 10/1 Mbps internet. Singapore is small, the USA is big, Canada is even bigger. It is just in the nature of infrastructure that it costs more to cover large areas and much of the time there is no business case for more then one provider splitting up the costumer base. Even without the government hampering things, it's expensive and here the government has been trying to get more competition but the return isn't worth it. Plus the telcos are bastards who will rip of their costumers if given a chance.
And yet, Canada, a developed nation with a lower median income and 1/10th the population density is aiming for everyone to have access to a minimum of 50/10. Rural areas should still have decent speeds, even the ones that are a thousand kms from their neighbouring town. The economic justification is having to compete in the 21st century.
I have a 4G connection. It isn't too bad though with it pissing rain, I do see about half the speed as on a nice day. For very rural areas such as here where we have a brand new cell tower serving the internet to a community of about 200 households, it is one hell of an improvement on dial-up. Still even on a good day it is about 1/5th of my nations goals for access. If a country larger and with 10% of the population of America can aim for 50/10, America should be able to do the same.
We recognize that a well-developed broadband infrastructure is essential for Canadians to participate in the digital economy. That is why we set new targets for Internet speeds. We want all Canadian homes and businesses to have access to broadband Internet speeds of at least 50 Mbps for downloads and 10 Mbps for uploads.
With the plan that 90% of Canadians have this by 2021. If a large sparsely populated country can aim for 50/10, a country like the USA should be able to as well.
I currently get about 10-15 Mbps down and after dial-up it is fine for now. The problem is that at one time dial-up was fine, then most people got faster pipes and the web pages grew to fill them up. At the end of my dial-up days with crappy lines, it could take half an hour to load a page (if it didn't fail) and web sites just keep growing to fill the average pipe. In a couple of more years this 10 Mbps may well seem slow. It's like so much tech, I remember upgrading to 8MBs of memory and it seemed huge. Didn't take long for software to fill it up. Same with my first HD, 40 MBs of storage seemed huge after floppies. Now I have a TB and it doesn't seem that huge. Once again the data grew to fill it up.
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While interesting, your above analysis is missing the fact that voters are likely to vote differently under systems besides first past the post. Less strategic voting, voters that currently vote for the opposition party due to wanting to remove the government instead of their first choice (or visa versa) and possibly more or at least different turnout as the voters who don't currently bother voting due to living in a safe seat or such actually voting as now they feel their vote counts.
Depends on how remote, at least during the day, using a standard radio. Where I am right now, I get a lot more FM signals then AM even though the transmitters are about as far away.
If you're really remote, you should have a good multi-band radio, though I believe shortwave is being used less and less, a strong AM signal can cover a good chunk of the continent at night.
This was the middle plan, not sure what the limits on the other plans were as 250GB seemed good.
The hub does have 2 phone jacks and my neighbour, who seems to have a better relationship with the ISP's representative got her phone connected for $10 extra, supposedly I can do the same in a couple of months. It receives SMS as well, view-able through the web interface, but no way to send. I'd guess I could plug a phone in and access 911 if needed.
Complaints, the hub at $300 ($12.50 a month over 2 years) was too expensive and the battery, rated at 8 hours, only lasts 3 hours.
I'm happy with it. I believe there are some government subsidies involved as well, mostly federal but it is hard to find info.
That's how it is working in Canada, if you are considered remote rural with no other choices, as I am, I get a 250GB cap for the same price as a 10GB cap in town. This is what is called fixed mobile, using a hub rather then tethering. The phone number isn't even currently activated.
Seems to me, the potential problem is low caps. If a couple of Windows updates maxes out your cap for the month, you still don't really have broadband.
For me, in Canada, being considered rural and remote with no access besides fixed mobile (4G with a shiny new tower), I get a 250 GB cap, probably with some government subsidy somewhere in there. Speed averages over 10/1 with one bar on the hub.
Here it is considered an essential service with the plan to connect everyone, ideally at 50/5 but with 5/1 being acceptable for remote rural and 3/1 for the far north. The far north is quite challenging, areas that can contain a couple of Texas's with maybe 35,000 people.
Interestingly, reading the faq at https://www.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/..., seems broadband is defined as always on internet, or basically anything but dial-up.
I'm in Canada, where the government also wants everyone connected with broadband, ideally 50/10 connection but 5/1 in very rural areas and 3/1 in the far north. I'm rural, using dial-up until last Nov. Now on a fixed wireless 4G plan, which is probably partially government subsidized. My usage cap is 250 GBs a month (it would be 10 GB for the same price if I lived in town for the same $85 a month) and the 10-15/1-2 connection is plenty good enough for now, especially after suffering on dial-up for 20 odd years.
Biggest problem I see is the over charges are high. Be much better if they just throttled it down to 64-128 kbs.
Interesting. It is hard to actually be fair even when striving for fairness. Do the people consider it is fair enough? One thing about America is a lot of bitching about gerrymandering which doesn't happen in Canada.
As for the first past the post system, it is a matter of opinion. I like minority governments as the parties have to work together compared to a majority where the winning party can push through their agenda.
There seems to be a lot of support here for getting rid of the first past the post system. The winners of the last Federal election won partially on the promise of no more FPTP elections (which they reneged on) and my last Provincial election was similar with a 44-43-3 result leading to a very good chance that things will change as the Greens with their 3 seats have agreed to support the government on the condition of moving to some form of proportional representation.
That wasn't so much gerrymandering as simply not redrawing districts to reflect population changes. It was actually worse, with ridings (districts) becoming depopulated to the point where there were only a few voters and new population centres with no representation.
This is why modern democracies have regular censuses and redraw the lines to try to balance the size of the districts, ideally by an independent non-partisan committee. Works well here in Canada where gerrymandering is mostly unheard off. Our number of legislature members also increases as population increases to help ensure equal representation. Currently we have about 3/5ths the number of Federal legislature members as America with about 1/10th the population.
Yet Tim Hortons could afford to hire people at $16-$20 an hour in Ft McMurray and other places with an actual shortage of labour and still serve $1 cups of coffee, t least until the economy crashed and resulted in a surplus of desperate workers. Hard to wade through the articles on the Tim Hortons owners who think running a franchise should pay millions but here's one article, https://www.yukon-news.com/new...
WTF is any operating system doing rendering fonts in ring 0? This was one of the reasons for the MS and IBM divorce, MS wanting to run stuff (video drivers) in ring 0 for performance and IBM refusing for security.
Is doing a whataboutry your argument?
Yes, we're talking about the type of authoritarian government that locks up millions of citizens, often for political crimes such as using the wrong substances that the authoritarians don't like.
It's actually pretty common for a large percentage of the population to like the authoritarians, look at America where they keep actually voting them in.
What used to kill off the pine beetles was cold. Used to have weeks of minus 30 in the interior of BC. Doesn't seem to happen anymore, leading to huge areas of dead lodgepole pine which is perfect for burning but the lumber companies don't want it to burn as they'd rather harvest the wood.
As we all know, weather (or seasons) is/are not climate.
Of course seasons are climate. Where I live , the climate is that Aug is usually the hottest, driest month, Nov is the wettest and Jan is the coldest. That is a form of climate and on average holds true. Further, the scientific consensus is that this short term climate is primarily caused by the tilt of the Earth though there are nutcases who dispute that just because the scientific consensus says the tilt of the Earth affects climate, we should be skeptical about the causes of seasons and that the Earth is really flat.
Should we listen to the skeptics who claim the Earth is flat in the face of scientific consensus? After all they were wrong about the Earth being round.
You mean like everyone has to pay per minute for local calls on their landline? That kind of regulated like a utility? Sounds better then being charged on which of your neighbors you phone or not being allowed to phone any of your neighbors who the phone company doesn't like the politics off.
The phone company does own the lines, so perhaps they should be able to control how you use them.
The smart authoritarian government allows freedom of speech. Makes it easy to monitor the speech and it allows the people to vent, with the venting directed at things besides the government such as outside forces like religion or economic system or internal divisions such as race or minor politics like abortion that doesn't really affect the authoritarian government.
Well, there was exactly one person who was promised to go to heaven, and he was a lazy thieving parasite.
Why do Americans put up with that shit? I can see them setting a minimum like I believe it works here in Canada and will with marijuana (18 yrs) but here the Provinces decide on the actual age, 18 some places and 19 other places with various rules on minors drinking in the presence of their parents/guardians and such.
Yea, I could see it if they were playing a beat with white noise, but plain white noise, no. Even a straight recording of monkeys shouldn't be copyright-able. Things are insane, even this message will be protected for 50-70 years after I drop dead and it isn't exactly a creative work and I'd write it even with no copyright.
Copyright is supposed to advance learning, not be a means of collecting rent on culture for ever.
Your point #1, of course it is better to upgrade to 10 Mbps for those that have crap now, but as infrastructure gets upgraded, it should have a higher speed. That's how it is working here. 5 weeks back, I had a 26.4 Kbps connection, now I have a 10 Mbps cell connection, due to the Province partially paying for a new cell tower. I also have access to 911 even when the copper thieves strike. Meanwhile a bit closer to town, there is now fiber and it is due to be here in a couple of years. Lots of rural spread out communities are the same, first a cell tower with special deals (250 GB cap vs the 10 GB cap I'd have in town if I went with cellular) for people like me who have no other choice.
The thing is even in rural areas where wireless currently is the best option is to get the fiber closer and closer with the goal of having it most places.
Your point #2, it's insane for the State to stop municipalities from creating their own network, especially in cases where no one else is serving them. Forcing having clear plans for financing and the voters agreement I can see.
Perhaps due to having such low population densities, meaning only one or two over the air TV channels, most every town here has cable and if you have cable now, you probably have decent internet, so we haven't had the problems that happen down there where the cable company doesn't bother to build out but does lobby against towns building their own. Or perhaps it is just a different culture, without the extreme lobbying that happens down there and more of the attitude that the government is to serve the people.
As it is, you guys have it cheap down there compared to here, at least in general. Your internet is cheap, your cell service is cheap, at least compared to here. I pay $85+$12.50 equipment+tax for aprox. 10/1 Mbps internet. Singapore is small, the USA is big, Canada is even bigger. It is just in the nature of infrastructure that it costs more to cover large areas and much of the time there is no business case for more then one provider splitting up the costumer base. Even without the government hampering things, it's expensive and here the government has been trying to get more competition but the return isn't worth it. Plus the telcos are bastards who will rip of their costumers if given a chance.
And yet, Canada, a developed nation with a lower median income and 1/10th the population density is aiming for everyone to have access to a minimum of 50/10. Rural areas should still have decent speeds, even the ones that are a thousand kms from their neighbouring town.
The economic justification is having to compete in the 21st century.
I have a 4G connection. It isn't too bad though with it pissing rain, I do see about half the speed as on a nice day. For very rural areas such as here where we have a brand new cell tower serving the internet to a community of about 200 households, it is one hell of an improvement on dial-up. Still even on a good day it is about 1/5th of my nations goals for access.
If a country larger and with 10% of the population of America can aim for 50/10, America should be able to do the same.
Just looked up my countries goals for internet speeds, http://crtc.gc.ca/eng/internet...
With the plan that 90% of Canadians have this by 2021. If a large sparsely populated country can aim for 50/10, a country like the USA should be able to as well.
I currently get about 10-15 Mbps down and after dial-up it is fine for now. The problem is that at one time dial-up was fine, then most people got faster pipes and the web pages grew to fill them up. At the end of my dial-up days with crappy lines, it could take half an hour to load a page (if it didn't fail) and web sites just keep growing to fill the average pipe. In a couple of more years this 10 Mbps may well seem slow.
It's like so much tech, I remember upgrading to 8MBs of memory and it seemed huge. Didn't take long for software to fill it up. Same with my first HD, 40 MBs of storage seemed huge after floppies. Now I have a TB and it doesn't seem that huge. Once again the data grew to fill it up.