A sworn statement, under oath, that uu.net does not allow pink contracts. ATT and PSInet used to proclaim no pink contracts and got caught. Pacbell has them as well.
I don't have time to sit on hold for hours. And yes, i'm sure the ip addresses involved are in uu.net's block. I don't know the mapping, but probably a downstream provider as well. I'll check the next time i see one. I found complaining to sales got me removed from the lists. abuse didn't. someone knows something. My guess is "take these email addr off your list. we are sick of the complaints."
Spamhaus used to list an executive (vp?) who apparently liked spam for its revenue. I see that link is gone now. Is the exec gone? If the senior idiots who allowed all the spam to continue are gone and there is actually action now, I will re-evaluate. I will wait and see the next time I get a uu.net spam. May take a month or two now. Don't expect me to hold my breath though.
"Define spamware. Any piece of maillist software can be used as spamware. Should those be banned as well? I can write a perl script that will send out spam, should perl be banned?"
A program designed to deliberately forge headers in an attempt to hide the source of the offending email. These programs have no legitimate function.
"There are no 'pink contracts' at UUnet. If you have proof of one post it somewhere. Otherwise, STFU!"
Right. Why does sales refuse to deny their existance, hmmm? Yes I have emails from them, but not on this pc. Generally very evasive, not one outright denial.
"Well, UUnet does accept spamcop reports, they goto abuse-noverbose@uu.net. The 'noverbose' means you will not get a detailed response, just a short message."
No. I now see tags "uu.net does not wish to receive complaints about xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" during the parsing. I forward these to abuse@uu.net and get the blanket statement which means nothing.
Right. thats why I used to get 7 spams/day/account out of uu.net customers. thats why uu.net continues to host so many companies that sell spamware so everyone can get even more spam.
I bet they only shut down spammers who haven't paid pink contract fees.
someone here once gave me the solution to dealing with uu.net. forward all spam to their sales people. funny, it worked. one complaint and the new spammer deletes me from the list. (the spammer doesn't go away - a trap account continues to get the spam, so uu.net does jack)
uu.net is huge, and responsible at one time for 70+% of all spam. granted their network is huge, (basically the entire east coast I believe) but it doesn't excuse their blind eye to spam issues.
also, abuse@uu.net no longer accepts complaints from spamcop. what does that say about them? every read the auto reply from abuse. pretty obvious they don't care.
the only way to solve their spam problem is make the spam a bigger headache than the revenue it generates.
disagree if you like, but I have the emails from uu.net to back it up.
1080i is the highest resolution in the standard. (At the time of the standards, 1080p wasn't feasible.)
720p is the other common resolution, and also looks very nice.
480p is not much better that s-video, and 480i is basic tv.
In the above i=interlaced, p=progressive.
The problem with every tuner card i've seen on the market so far is every last one of them downgrades the image to 480p. Why bother?
For those looking to buy a HDTV, one of the most important questions is what is the native mode. The cheaper sets may use 720p or even 480p. You want to get one using 1080i.
I haven't been able to read the article yet as it is/.d
most broadcasts will be either 720p (Monday Night Football and Super Bowl when they were being aired) or 1080i.
I use a good monitors that will support 1280x1024@75Hz or better, so I look forward to a true HD card.
actually i think you'll find its one zone over. Nebraska is infested with telemarketing scum, to the point that they even have a state senator in their pocket, who has publicly stated that they will fillibuster any attempt to blanket outlaw telemarketing.
But the will to win is more important. War is not usually total annihilation. It usually continues until one side loses the will to fight.
The situation here is to win we must exterminate the opposition. For them to win, they just have to inflict enough casualties that the general public loses its stomach and start bitching to their politicians.
This battle is going to have to be fought psychologically. At one time the British were fighting in what is now Pakistan (may have already been - someone with a better knowledge of history in this area could help), the British soldiers rendered down a pig and then dipped their bullets into the rendered pig, all in view of the enemy troops, who then broke and ran.
This is important. These fundamentalists believe that if they are tainted with the unclean animal, they can't go to heaven. Where is the video of our troops getting ready, bloodying their bullets? The psychological effect of this can't be ignored. If and when bin-laden is caught, he should be executed in this fashion, and his body buried in a pig sty.
Brutal? Yes. Harsh? Yes. Racist? Maybe. Effective? Certainly. Deny these people their promise of the afterlife, and they may hesitate to continue. Their major motivation is that to die fighing in Allah's name will give them a martyrs pass to heaven. Take that away and you have taken away a major psychological advantage.
If we are going to get into this fight, we must do it to win. Declare publicly that here is what we won't do, and you can be sure the other side will exploit this weakness to the fullest.(Viet Nam - Ho Chi Minh trail? (sp??))
I have no doubt that our troops have the training, skill, and technology to get the job done. I do doubt the spine of our politicians to keep their fingers out of the mix. Cowardly elected officials have repeatedly hamstrung our soldiers and endangered them with political rules of engagement. If you are going to deploy troops, give them the mission and get out of their way. Changing the rules mid-mission is stupid and unfair.
Write to them and demand that they stop selling your credit info. (If you do this for all 3 credit bureaus, your credit card offer snail spam will disappear within 3 months. I only get them from my mortgage company occasionaly)
I don't know if you can demand that they delete all info from their database on you or not. What happens if everyone here tells them:
"You are hereby expressly prohibited from maintaining/dispensing any information about me to anyone for any purpose. If you violate this demand, you agree to pay the sum of $1000.00 US per incident. This agreement is not negotiable."
I don't know if you can force them to delete you from the database, but you can force them to stop selling your name and info.
Tracert or some other time measurement, and establish a baseline. Over the next week or so see what kind of increase there is. (This kind of networking problem is not my strong spot, so I hope someone can follow up on this)
A little late on the reply, but at one point, I read he has 15 misspellings of cartoon network.
I have a couple of friends who are former surfwatch employees, and they were familiar with a many of the porn sites. These sites were absolutely opposed to children visiting them. They do not want kids traffic, as they don't generate revenue, and they do generate parental and political problems.
This is the FTC. To get them to act, the individual has to be engaged in deceptive/illegal business practices.
Not only is he deceiving the people who mistype the website name, but he is collecting revenue from porn sites, gambling sites, etc that aren't getting traffic that they want. The porn operator doesn't want little johnny or susy - they don't have credit cards.
I don't see where writing the code is being made a crime. Its deceptive business practices that have attracted the governments notice.
One of his sites, per the cnet story, was cartoonnetwork.com.
It doesn't take a genius to figure that a substantial percentage of the visitors to this site will be children. To deliberately expose children to porn is criminal.
I strongly oppose the "but its for the children" tack as justification for shutting things down, but when you blatantly target them like this, you've wandered into extremely dangerous territory.
Personally, I don't allow activex, java, etc to run, except on sites I explicitly trust, but the vast majority of people either aren't aware or aren't technically savvy enough to do these things. There's a reason AOL is the number 1 isp. (I know I'm preaching to the choir)
Anyway, this idiot is no better than a spammer, and deserves the same treatment.
Bounce ALL uu.net originated spam to sales@uu.net and info@uu.net
Make their sales staff deal with the consequences of selling pink contracts. My accounts almost never receive spam from uu.net spammers anymore. They have been told to leave me alone because they are tired of dealing with the backlash.
If everyone would bounce spam from unresponsive isps like this, it might discourage the sale of pink contracts. Its not like uu.net can turn of sales@ without a major headache. Serves the vermin right
I haven't seen triple lnbs, but I have seen quads. I have to visit the house-of-evil today (aka fry's) and will check. Don't know how they would do trying to put two quads on one dish for multi-satellite reception though.
exactly. I intend to write that to my senators and suggest just that. Given that they are Fienstein and Boxer, the suggestion should hit home. I would urge everyone in California to send the same message:
"Why don't we just take this national identity thing to its logical conclusion and require all US citizens to have their national ID tatooed on their arms, with a microchip with all the relevant data imbedded under the skin. It should be a crime for anyone to cover thier arm in a fashion that would cover their tatoo. To avoid fraud, special custom inks should be used, just as is the case for currency."
Daschele, Elison, and Fienstein, and any other idiot that advocates this national id card idiocy should be reminded by whatever means are necessary that we will not tolerate their attempts to use our constitution as toilet paper. What you are seeing in the behaviour of these individuals is exactly why our founding fathers put the second amendment in the bill of rights. This is exactly the sort of tyranny that they wanted to prevent.
He is about as guilty of helping this atrocity as the mechanics and engineers at boing who built the flight control systems on the jets used in the attack.
Still, its horrible to think that your creation may have helped in this.
Some people have been so badly hurt that they are looking for anything to lash out at. Their choices of target have been pretty poor.
Just forward all your spam to their sales@ and info@. A belated thanks to whoever it was here who gave me that advice. I went from 10-15 spams per day to 0.
I just got a complaint back from one of their sales people. Told them I'd stop forwarding their spam back to them when they stopped sending it/canceled their pink contracts. Their was an implied admission in their response that they do have pink contracts (I hear the gasps of stunned disbelief...NOT). The messages etc will go to my attorney, and hopefully I'll have enough to go after the sales staff at uu.net.
I've been filing abuse complaints against this group. Even if they are on the level, the spammers can just sell the list of removed addresses. Their service is an attempt to legitimtize spam. In my book they are no better than the companies that sell header forging spamware.
But there are laws prohibiting alcohol ads near schools. Part of the tobacco settlement included no bilboards near schools.
There is a distinction between commercial and personal speach. An advertiser can not force you to listen to their pitch. For example the TCPA, which allows for legal action against telemarketers, etc.
If I tell a marketer to leave me alone and not to bother me again, if they do I can take action. My express will not to be disturbed overrides thier right to make their pitch to me. I have no right to stop them from selling to others, but ever right to stop them from trying to sell to me.
There is case law on this, but I don't have the link handy.
Last year at the Western Cable Show, several pvr manufacturers were showing pvr motherboards with scsi connectors, so the 2 drive limit would be raised to 15.
Of course you've got to pay for all that storage...
Most of the problems with our school system can be traced to the administration. These are the deadbeats who do nothing but push paper around, much like a PHB.
If the administration didn't siphon off so much money, the teachers could be better paid, the right supplies kept ordered and in stock, etc. But what the administrators want is to maximize the number of students. Money for schools is allocated based on the number of students. Why do schools get upset when a student cuts? Not because they didn't learn something, but because the school doesn't get to count that student hour towards the next budget. It is the same reason disruptive students can't be removed from class, suspended or expelled - the student hours are lost and there is less money.
The education system in the US is set up by the administrators to increase their own power base, not to provide a quality product. The fullest proof of this can be seen in private schools. They provide a first rate education at a lower cost per student. No overhead. One principal, maybe a vice principal and 1 or 2, MAYBE 3 office staff. And the principal and vp often teach as well.
Public schools don't have to answer to anyone. They are the perfect example of bloated goverment and corruption. Take the Oakland, California school system. Many of the schools were uninhabitable - they had been allowed to run down for lack of maintenance. Do you think the administrative buildings were in bad shape? They were in perfect condition and up to date.
While in jr high, the school didn't have the money necessary for the 3 jr highs to get football jerseys (would have totalled maybe $1500 or so ('81), but had well over 5 million to build the new administrative offices in a fancy part of town. There was nothing wrong with the old offices, except they were old.
The only solution to this part of the problem I can see is to forcibly break the teacher/admin union into 2 separate parts, and to keep them totally separate.
As for the scientific types in classrooms, it has been my experience that most technically inclined people are usually not the most socially capable people. The interest in math/science seems to be triggered as an escape from the herd. (Yes I know I'm going into broad generalizations here). It seems that the interest/skill in science comes from wanting to prove oneself better by doing well where most others fail. Another part is just the way the brain works - some do better at different types of problems that others. (I can't remember the names and such, but I do recall reading several articles on this particular topic - some time ago...)
Perhaps some of the thoughts of having scientific types in the grade school level has merit. My first experience with real math was 4th grade (by a teacher who was fired for going too far beyond the required material). The really interesting math/science stuff didn't start to show up until 7th grade.
That 4th grade teacher was one of 5 outstanding teachers I had in 12 years of basic education. I got 2 others in jr high and the last 2 in a private high school. Amazing that 3 good teachers managed to survive in such a bad system for as long as they did.
---
My brain has just switched off on me, so I'm going to end this rant here. Really wish I could complete the thought properly...
You have to dig up streets to lay fiber/cable.
You have to get permits to dig up the streets.
You have to have to be in business to get the permits, business license, etc.
You have to have insurance.
You have to jump through the political hoops to get permission for that kind of a business. You may even have to buy some of the town council and/or mayor.
Then
Buy the fiber, hubs, routers, switches, servers etc.
Building for equipment.
Electricity, backup power, line filtering etc.
Employees, sales, advertising, maintenance, installs etc.
Now all this infrastructure has to be in place, in at least one neighborhood, before you hook up your first client. All this time that money is earning no return. But, if the money is borrowed, interest is still due.
Even with DSL, which is cheaper to deal with, using existing infrastructure, the model doesn't work. How many alternative DSL providers are left, besides the baby bells?
Broadband internet is not enough to support a business model. It has to be bundled with something else, either cable or phone.
Try www.winfirst.com or www.rcn.com for a couple of examples.
Slashdot Mirror
A sworn statement, under oath, that uu.net does not allow pink contracts. ATT and PSInet used to proclaim no pink contracts and got caught. Pacbell has them as well.
I don't have time to sit on hold for hours. And yes, i'm sure the ip addresses involved are in uu.net's block. I don't know the mapping, but probably a downstream provider as well. I'll check the next time i see one. I found complaining to sales got me removed from the lists. abuse didn't. someone knows something. My guess is "take these email addr off your list. we are sick of the complaints."
Spamhaus used to list an executive (vp?) who apparently liked spam for its revenue. I see that link is gone now. Is the exec gone? If the senior idiots who allowed all the spam to continue are gone and there is actually action now, I will re-evaluate. I will wait and see the next time I get a uu.net spam. May take a month or two now. Don't expect me to hold my breath though.
"Define spamware. Any piece of maillist software can be used as spamware. Should those be banned as well? I can write a perl script that will send out spam, should perl be banned?"
A program designed to deliberately forge headers in an attempt to hide the source of the offending email. These programs have no legitimate function.
"There are no 'pink contracts' at UUnet. If you have proof of one post it somewhere. Otherwise, STFU!"
Right. Why does sales refuse to deny their existance, hmmm? Yes I have emails from them, but not on this pc. Generally very evasive, not one outright denial.
"Well, UUnet does accept spamcop reports, they goto abuse-noverbose@uu.net. The 'noverbose' means you will not get a detailed response, just a short message."
No. I now see tags "uu.net does not wish to receive complaints about xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx" during the parsing. I forward these to abuse@uu.net and get the blanket statement which means nothing.
Right. thats why I used to get 7 spams/day/account out of uu.net customers. thats why uu.net continues to host so many companies that sell spamware so everyone can get even more spam.
I bet they only shut down spammers who haven't paid pink contract fees.
someone here once gave me the solution to dealing with uu.net. forward all spam to their sales people. funny, it worked. one complaint and the new spammer deletes me from the list. (the spammer doesn't go away - a trap account continues to get the spam, so uu.net does jack)
uu.net is huge, and responsible at one time for 70+% of all spam. granted their network is huge, (basically the entire east coast I believe) but it doesn't excuse their blind eye to spam issues.
also, abuse@uu.net no longer accepts complaints from spamcop. what does that say about them? every read the auto reply from abuse. pretty obvious they don't care.
the only way to solve their spam problem is make the spam a bigger headache than the revenue it generates.
disagree if you like, but I have the emails from uu.net to back it up.
there are multiple standards.
/.d
1080i is the highest resolution in the standard. (At the time of the standards, 1080p wasn't feasible.)
720p is the other common resolution, and also looks very nice.
480p is not much better that s-video, and 480i is basic tv.
In the above i=interlaced, p=progressive.
The problem with every tuner card i've seen on the market so far is every last one of them downgrades the image to 480p. Why bother?
For those looking to buy a HDTV, one of the most important questions is what is the native mode. The cheaper sets may use 720p or even 480p. You want to get one using 1080i.
I haven't been able to read the article yet as it is
most broadcasts will be either 720p (Monday Night Football and Super Bowl when they were being aired) or 1080i.
I use a good monitors that will support 1280x1024@75Hz or better, so I look forward to a true HD card.
actually i think you'll find its one zone over. Nebraska is infested with telemarketing scum, to the point that they even have a state senator in their pocket, who has publicly stated that they will fillibuster any attempt to blanket outlaw telemarketing.
But the will to win is more important. War is not usually total annihilation. It usually continues until one side loses the will to fight.
The situation here is to win we must exterminate the opposition. For them to win, they just have to inflict enough casualties that the general public loses its stomach and start bitching to their politicians.
This battle is going to have to be fought psychologically. At one time the British were fighting in what is now Pakistan (may have already been - someone with a better knowledge of history in this area could help), the British soldiers rendered down a pig and then dipped their bullets into the rendered pig, all in view of the enemy troops, who then broke and ran.
This is important. These fundamentalists believe that if they are tainted with the unclean animal, they can't go to heaven. Where is the video of our troops getting ready, bloodying their bullets? The psychological effect of this can't be ignored. If and when bin-laden is caught, he should be executed in this fashion, and his body buried in a pig sty.
Brutal? Yes. Harsh? Yes. Racist? Maybe. Effective? Certainly. Deny these people their promise of the afterlife, and they may hesitate to continue. Their major motivation is that to die fighing in Allah's name will give them a martyrs pass to heaven. Take that away and you have taken away a major psychological advantage.
If we are going to get into this fight, we must do it to win. Declare publicly that here is what we won't do, and you can be sure the other side will exploit this weakness to the fullest.(Viet Nam - Ho Chi Minh trail? (sp??))
I have no doubt that our troops have the training, skill, and technology to get the job done. I do doubt the spine of our politicians to keep their fingers out of the mix. Cowardly elected officials have repeatedly hamstrung our soldiers and endangered them with political rules of engagement. If you are going to deploy troops, give them the mission and get out of their way. Changing the rules mid-mission is stupid and unfair.
Time for revenge.
Write to them and demand that they stop selling your credit info. (If you do this for all 3 credit bureaus, your credit card offer snail spam will disappear within 3 months. I only get them from my mortgage company occasionaly)
I don't know if you can demand that they delete all info from their database on you or not. What happens if everyone here tells them:
"You are hereby expressly prohibited from maintaining/dispensing any information about me to anyone for any purpose. If you violate this demand, you agree to pay the sum of $1000.00 US per incident. This agreement is not negotiable."
I don't know if you can force them to delete you from the database, but you can force them to stop selling your name and info.
Lets find out...
Is a nuremburg files for spammers. I bet that would be a popular site.
Too bad the actual killing part is illegal.
"The only reason some people are alive is because its illegal to kill them."
(Heinlein? - sounds like a Lazarus Long witicism)
How about measuring the effect of this?
Tracert or some other time measurement, and establish a baseline. Over the next week or so see what kind of increase there is. (This kind of networking problem is not my strong spot, so I hope someone can follow up on this)
Thanks
If you don't think MAPS is the solution, don't use it.
Don't deprive others of their right to use or not use such a list.
It is voluntary. I can guarantee that Experian will have a permanent home in my blacklist. If they ever spam me, I'll press harassment charges.
A little late on the reply, but at one point, I read he has 15 misspellings of cartoon network.
I have a couple of friends who are former surfwatch employees, and they were familiar with a many of the porn sites. These sites were absolutely opposed to children visiting them. They do not want kids traffic, as they don't generate revenue, and they do generate parental and political problems.
This is the FTC. To get them to act, the individual has to be engaged in deceptive/illegal business practices.
Not only is he deceiving the people who mistype the website name, but he is collecting revenue from porn sites, gambling sites, etc that aren't getting traffic that they want. The porn operator doesn't want little johnny or susy - they don't have credit cards.
I don't see where writing the code is being made a crime. Its deceptive business practices that have attracted the governments notice.
One of his sites, per the cnet story, was cartoonnetwork.com.
It doesn't take a genius to figure that a substantial percentage of the visitors to this site will be children. To deliberately expose children to porn is criminal.
I strongly oppose the "but its for the children" tack as justification for shutting things down, but when you blatantly target them like this, you've wandered into extremely dangerous territory.
Personally, I don't allow activex, java, etc to run, except on sites I explicitly trust, but the vast majority of people either aren't aware or aren't technically savvy enough to do these things. There's a reason AOL is the number 1 isp. (I know I'm preaching to the choir)
Anyway, this idiot is no better than a spammer, and deserves the same treatment.
Bounce ALL uu.net originated spam to sales@uu.net and info@uu.net
Make their sales staff deal with the consequences of selling pink contracts. My accounts almost never receive spam from uu.net spammers anymore. They have been told to leave me alone because they are tired of dealing with the backlash.
If everyone would bounce spam from unresponsive isps like this, it might discourage the sale of pink contracts. Its not like uu.net can turn of sales@ without a major headache. Serves the vermin right
I haven't seen triple lnbs, but I have seen quads. I have to visit the house-of-evil today (aka fry's) and will check. Don't know how they would do trying to put two quads on one dish for multi-satellite reception though.
exactly. I intend to write that to my senators and suggest just that. Given that they are Fienstein and Boxer, the suggestion should hit home. I would urge everyone in California to send the same message:
"Why don't we just take this national identity thing to its logical conclusion and require all US citizens to have their national ID tatooed on their arms, with a microchip with all the relevant data imbedded under the skin. It should be a crime for anyone to cover thier arm in a fashion that would cover their tatoo. To avoid fraud, special custom inks should be used, just as is the case for currency."
Daschele, Elison, and Fienstein, and any other idiot that advocates this national id card idiocy should be reminded by whatever means are necessary that we will not tolerate their attempts to use our constitution as toilet paper. What you are seeing in the behaviour of these individuals is exactly why our founding fathers put the second amendment in the bill of rights. This is exactly the sort of tyranny that they wanted to prevent.
He is about as guilty of helping this atrocity as the mechanics and engineers at boing who built the flight control systems on the jets used in the attack.
Still, its horrible to think that your creation may have helped in this.
Some people have been so badly hurt that they are looking for anything to lash out at. Their choices of target have been pretty poor.
Lets see. Workplace monitoring of employees is ok.
Workplace monitoring of judges is not ok.
Judges are public employees.
Seems to me that the public should be allowed to see what judges are doing while working for us...
"We don't need any double standards. One standard will do just fine" G.Carlin
That seems to work for uu.net
Just forward all your spam to their sales@ and info@. A belated thanks to whoever it was here who gave me that advice. I went from 10-15 spams per day to 0.
I just got a complaint back from one of their sales people. Told them I'd stop forwarding their spam back to them when they stopped sending it/canceled their pink contracts. Their was an implied admission in their response that they do have pink contracts (I hear the gasps of stunned disbelief...NOT). The messages etc will go to my attorney, and hopefully I'll have enough to go after the sales staff at uu.net.
I've been filing abuse complaints against this group. Even if they are on the level, the spammers can just sell the list of removed addresses. Their service is an attempt to legitimtize spam. In my book they are no better than the companies that sell header forging spamware.
But there are laws prohibiting alcohol ads near schools. Part of the tobacco settlement included no bilboards near schools.
There is a distinction between commercial and personal speach. An advertiser can not force you to listen to their pitch. For example the TCPA, which allows for legal action against telemarketers, etc.
If I tell a marketer to leave me alone and not to bother me again, if they do I can take action. My express will not to be disturbed overrides thier right to make their pitch to me. I have no right to stop them from selling to others, but ever right to stop them from trying to sell to me.
There is case law on this, but I don't have the link handy.
Commercial speech is not protected. Personal speech is.
Otherwise, billboards would have to carry ANY message the advetiser was willing to pay for, including alcohol, tobacco, porn, whatever.
Last year at the Western Cable Show, several pvr manufacturers were showing pvr motherboards with scsi connectors, so the 2 drive limit would be raised to 15.
Of course you've got to pay for all that storage...
Most of the problems with our school system can be traced to the administration. These are the deadbeats who do nothing but push paper around, much like a PHB.
If the administration didn't siphon off so much money, the teachers could be better paid, the right supplies kept ordered and in stock, etc. But what the administrators want is to maximize the number of students. Money for schools is allocated based on the number of students. Why do schools get upset when a student cuts? Not because they didn't learn something, but because the school doesn't get to count that student hour towards the next budget. It is the same reason disruptive students can't be removed from class, suspended or expelled - the student hours are lost and there is less money.
The education system in the US is set up by the administrators to increase their own power base, not to provide a quality product. The fullest proof of this can be seen in private schools. They provide a first rate education at a lower cost per student. No overhead. One principal, maybe a vice principal and 1 or 2, MAYBE 3 office staff. And the principal and vp often teach as well.
Public schools don't have to answer to anyone. They are the perfect example of bloated goverment and corruption. Take the Oakland, California school system. Many of the schools were uninhabitable - they had been allowed to run down for lack of maintenance. Do you think the administrative buildings were in bad shape? They were in perfect condition and up to date.
While in jr high, the school didn't have the money necessary for the 3 jr highs to get football jerseys (would have totalled maybe $1500 or so ('81), but had well over 5 million to build the new administrative offices in a fancy part of town. There was nothing wrong with the old offices, except they were old.
The only solution to this part of the problem I can see is to forcibly break the teacher/admin union into 2 separate parts, and to keep them totally separate.
As for the scientific types in classrooms, it has been my experience that most technically inclined people are usually not the most socially capable people. The interest in math/science seems to be triggered as an escape from the herd. (Yes I know I'm going into broad generalizations here). It seems that the interest/skill in science comes from wanting to prove oneself better by doing well where most others fail. Another part is just the way the brain works - some do better at different types of problems that others. (I can't remember the names and such, but I do recall reading several articles on this particular topic - some time ago...)
Perhaps some of the thoughts of having scientific types in the grade school level has merit. My first experience with real math was 4th grade (by a teacher who was fired for going too far beyond the required material). The really interesting math/science stuff didn't start to show up until 7th grade.
That 4th grade teacher was one of 5 outstanding teachers I had in 12 years of basic education. I got 2 others in jr high and the last 2 in a private high school. Amazing that 3 good teachers managed to survive in such a bad system for as long as they did.
---
My brain has just switched off on me, so I'm going to end this rant here. Really wish I could complete the thought properly...
10-100 million:
You have to dig up streets to lay fiber/cable.
You have to get permits to dig up the streets.
You have to have to be in business to get the permits, business license, etc.
You have to have insurance.
You have to jump through the political hoops to get permission for that kind of a business. You may even have to buy some of the town council and/or mayor.
Then
Buy the fiber, hubs, routers, switches, servers etc.
Building for equipment.
Electricity, backup power, line filtering etc.
Employees, sales, advertising, maintenance, installs etc.
Now all this infrastructure has to be in place, in at least one neighborhood, before you hook up your first client. All this time that money is earning no return. But, if the money is borrowed, interest is still due.
Even with DSL, which is cheaper to deal with, using existing infrastructure, the model doesn't work. How many alternative DSL providers are left, besides the baby bells?
Broadband internet is not enough to support a business model. It has to be bundled with something else, either cable or phone.
Try www.winfirst.com or www.rcn.com for a couple of examples.