Lessig On McCain's Technology Platform 156
Agthorr writes "Lawrence Lessig has created a video analyzing John McCain's recently released technology platform (available here). Lessig's video touches on broadband penetration, competition, and network neutrality." Note that while Lessig has come out as a supporter of Barack Obama, this video is not from the Obama campaign.
To sum it up... (Score:5, Insightful)
McCain's has the foresight and intents (and motivations like "faith") of GWB. Not that Obama is a saviour, but let's try to minimize the severe damage the internet will suffer under either candidate (in America).
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Actually, I support Max for President [maxforpresident.org]. He is the only President that I know of that has actually killed the Internet.
Re:To sum it up... (Score:5, Insightful)
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If you're an optimist, this means that all those cold hard facts can eventually change, and everyone will be free! Yay!
If you're a pessimist, this means that Americans are just as bigoted as they were back then, only now it's the gays and atheists destroying America instead of blacks and Jews. Progress?
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Just the part that processes things like the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny.
the last poll I saw ~80% of the adult population in the US believed in God (not necessarily Jesus but a creator) so why do you find it surprising that the candidates would pander to a group that large?
No, the real question is, why would someone who calls himself the Candidate For Change, and who is proclaim
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Perhaps because even intelligent people don't necessarily agree about things, especia
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Exactly. So you are stuck with blindly accepting something someone told you without any way to verify it. Blind belief in fantastic stories that no one can confirm, test, recreate, etc. Add to that all the contradictions in the ideology as well as the blatant factual errors in the scriptures.
Your are basically saying "you can't verify it either way, so you should just
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But that's the problem. It's not just between them. The superstitious, magic-believing types tend to also wind up on school boards, or get involved in discussing whether or not God would want a particular sort of faith-based civic service organization to get or use funding in a certain way, blah blah blah. You can have a brain dead family member on life support in a hospital, with literally no chance of ever functioning again becau
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Really? A quick Google search seems to contradict that [lhup.edu], but maybe you have some sources to point to?
Not that it really matters. Just because someone who is really smart believes something blindly doesn't mean that he is right. Really smart people can be really stupid in many ways. Just look at how geeks who ex
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Religious belief/faith, whatever you call it, is blind by definition.
Far from it. Even the often demonized Richard Dawkins says that he isn't 100% sure that God doesn't exist. On a scale from 1 to 7 where 1 is absolute belief in God, and 7 is absolute
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mythology that includes descriptions of an all-powerful, all-loving God that - oddly - still to this day likes to kill innocent children with lukemia and bolts of lighting.
While I have not really taken a position about this mythology, don't you think we share some responsibility for prolonging suffering of innocent children with medical science when recovery is long past plausible?
Re:To sum it up... (Score:5, Interesting)
The difference is that Obama's faith isn't the rigid taking-orders-from-god kind, but rather the kind that's supportive of using logic and rationality to decide issues. He's on record supporting atheists and denying that religion is a requirement for morality. http://obama.senate.gov/speech/060628-call_to_renewal/
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Obama seems to me someone that is spiritual and has beliefs in a higher power but that isn't necessarily the Christian God.
To believe that requires that you ignore the countless times Obama has expressed a devout belief in Christ, the Bible, and so forth.
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The op is under the mistaken idea that barrack is a closet Muslim. He hasn't ignored anything, just taking in all of the accusations.
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Huh? I'm not registered with either party. I already know where McCain's coming from, religiosity-wise. He really hasn't changed in any way - though it would be nice if he woke up one morning and realized it was silly.
I'm paying more attention to how interesting it is to watch people on the left try to reconcile their mental image of Obama as a cerebral, rational, pillar of tolerance and understanding (and promoter of science and education) even as he loudly proclaims that he's an adherent to
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I would have to disagree.
Science: Verifiable, testable, fact-based, etc.
Religion: Blind belief in empty claims that cannot be tested or verified or even falsified.
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The one with situational ethics, no firm principles, and who is willing to say anything to anyone in order to get elected. Obama is a bull headed idiot about winning the election, at the expense of having an ethical backbone. I won't complain about someone who - ethics intact - changes his mind or position on a policy that is intersecting with new information or externalities. But Obama's whole claim to fame (since he has zero experience, otherwise) is
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It doesn't matter if McCain has a better grip on reality than Obama, because it doesn't change the fact that everything* about his platform is wrong!
(*with perhaps the sole exception being his support for the 2nd Amendment -- if only he felt that strongly about the rest of th
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Try watching the video then try again. ...on with my opinion
I do state that I think Obama is the lesser of 2 evils. In America, politics equates to corruption. Obama is a SENATOR. No matter who is vying for the presidency or who arrives, they are all beholden to the same monetary and political interests. Based on what I have seen, read, and heard, I have my own faith. I believe that Obama is not a techno-retard and that's more than I can say for McCain. A liberal socialist over a con
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I would love to meet the idiots who impressed you enough to develop your world view. This is simply amazing that you would be able to make those generalizations on either candidate despite verifiable evidence that exists outside someone's imagination. It gets even further ridiculous when you attempt to rationalize what you think is "bad" for the economy.
Tell me, can you name one accomplishment Obama has made besides miraculously getting elected to office unopposed? I'm betting that your simply not paying at
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Some people call it "time". I appreciate your viewpoint, based on optimism and unicorns. Nowhere have I stated Obama is accomplished or "good" but since you're just gonna troll and you're on my lawn, save your breath.
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You actually said that Obama is better the McCain. You said so by saying he was the "lessor of two evils". Not as bad is the same as better then. My question about what has he accomplished goes to the very fact that you simply don't know enough about him to make that claim. You are solidly convince of something on blind faith that either someone else was right or what you can imagine base on generalizations is correct. This wasn't a troll, it was a call for you to actually become informed about the position
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Wow.. How ill informed you are. First, the war is already happening. It doesn't matter what I think about if it was needed or how it was starte
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I suppose... the guy who's least likely to continue breaking the law and pushing us into dangerous economic and military conflicts?
Speaking as a former republican (although always a social liberal), I really wish there was a reasonable, either one is ok, let's all be reasonable people sort of choice presented us. But what we have is Obama, who is not ideal, and McCain, who is a continuation of the evil vampires from space that currently run the republican party. So by all means, don't vote Obama if your c
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Apathy. I was intentionally being specific when I said "within America". I believe he recognizes that he does not know what's best. This situation rarely leads to making dramatic inroads. He's got enough problems when he hits the ground.
I can't watch this (Score:1)
Is there a transcript?
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sadly those who have banned flash on their pcs can't access content that could have easily been done with 2-5 small images and a text based blog entry instead of making a 2 minute shockwave flash video and wasting everyone's bandwidth.
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It has nothing to do with banning FLASH.
It does have all to do with many 56k dialup users around. Including us.
Thank your phone company for the 5 billion $ they took from us for "broadband".
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No, it plays fine. I just can't sit through it. It's driving me nuts.
Re:I can't watch this (Score:5, Informative)
Here's the video in mp4 format, for those who won't enable the Flash plugin for a few minutes:
ftp://definethis.org/video.mp4 [definethis.org]
It's 57.3 MB (60,102,443 bytes), straight from Google's servers.
For those complaining about dial up, here's only the sound:
ftp://definethis.org/sound.mp3 [definethis.org] (22050, mono, 3.82 MB (4,016,064 bytes))
Links are ftp to allow for bandwidth limit in case download goes overboard.
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Thank you :)
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How many people who might vote for mccain either know or care who Lessig is anyway? I won't be voting for McCain, and I'm only marginally aware myself.
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How many people who might vote for mccain either know or care who Lessig is anyway? I won't be voting for McCain, and I'm only marginally aware myself.
I would posit that it doesn't matter if his point is valid and well articulated.
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Your argument would be stronger if not knowing or caring who someone was didn't effect whether you listened to an argument, or trusted it as a source of information and/or analysis.
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My argument is just as strong as the argument I was responding to, which claims that the quality of the media affects whether or not someone is going to listen to an argument -- ie, judging the book by its cover. However, using Lessig in the first place is an appeal to authority, a rhetorical technique which often works best if the authority is recognized as such, so the quality of the video is secondary to the subject (not the topic) of the video.
Re:I can't watch this (Score:4, Insightful)
My argument is just as strong as the argument I was responding to, which claims that the quality of the media affects whether or not someone is going to listen to an argument -- ie, judging the book by its cover.
Except that it does, and people do.
Can you honestly tell me that you've never seen anyone get modded up for a well written post that didn't really say anything? Or conversely someone with a valid point get modded down because they write like an idiot?
That video added nothing to the point Lessig was trying to make, and in fact, actively detracted from it. I agree with every word he said and I thought that video was terrible. It was 16 minutes of poor PowerPoint emulation, bad parodies of Apple marketing, the implication that AT&T is *not* a villainous entity in the same vein as Comcast, and blatant political pandering (all of that Iraq war commentary was a distraction from his main point). Did you actually watch the video or do you just like arguing?
If I'm judging a book by it's cover, then you're too busy trying to see the forest to realize that the trees suck.
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No, I didn't even watch the video 'cause that's too much like reading the article.
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Your right, I will be voting for McCain but not because I support him and I know who Lessig is. But it is precisely because I know who he is that his words wouldn't influence my vote.
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Oh, and my friends and family won't trust me as viable reference?
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Sounds like your surrounded by intelligent people.
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***Agreed. Great message. Terrible video.***
Linux (Konqueror anyway) has once again saved me apparently. Got the audio, but no video. But sometimes I like ... want ... the damn pictures. I get the message that voting for McCain means more of the same. Can't say that I want that. Will voting for Obama somehow lead me toward that great technological wonderland where technology actually works right all the time?
In any case, let me point out that McCain was the force behind the #$@(*&( Children's Inter
To save you 16 minutes, (Score:5, Insightful)
Obviously Lessig would prefer to see more competition and open networks.
Personally, I think the broadband penetration number ("our rank has fallen to #22") is a bit of a red herring because the US is far less densely populated than most other countries and thus perfect broadband penetration is not feasible. And while I'm all for net neutrality, that issue alone is not going to determine who I vote for.
Despite the current lack of regulation I think I get a fairly fast, unrestricted Internet connection at a fairly low price. I think that as long as there are at least two providers available in any locality the market will force reasonable prices and net neutrality.
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And I'm sure if he'd thought you'd listen to more than 16 minutes, he'd have made a more complex argument.
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And I'm sure if he'd thought you'd listen to more than 16 minutes, he'd have made a more complex argument.
I see: Longer arguments == more intelligent. Got you.
Penetration - that's all I want to hear.
Lessig! Who the hell does he think he is making a clear and concise argument in only 16 minutes! Geeze! He could have made a completely obfuscated, overly complex, and important sounding argument that would last an hour! Or more! But I hear you. Long arguments are for intelligent and boring people but more important! If you can say it in 16 minutes, you can say it in in 160 minutes - and it'll be more intelligen
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It also has to do with the media he is using.
One of the things you're supposed to do with speeches---and that was most definitely a speech---is to keep the point of the speech simple. Another thing you're supposed to do is to be very redundant with the point you're trying to make: say that you're going to say it, say it, and say that you said it. He did both of these things.
Re:To save you 16 minutes, (Score:5, Insightful)
Lower population density may mean that universal broadband access isn't as profitable for commercial vendors as it might be otherwise (ditto with access to electricity, running water, telephone service, mail, etc.), but it certainly does not mean it is not feasible.
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Not to mention the benefits to competition.
When the last-mile is no longer owned by monopolies we may get decent competition.
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That would depend in the costs to implement it. If it costs me $2,000 to hook into a $45 a month service that is no better then Time Warner's $60 a month service, it would take me 133 months before I ever start seeing a saving. BTW, that's about 11 years so if something more advanced comes along, I might have to pay again to get the better tech.
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If it costs me $2,000 to hook into a $45 a month service that is no better then Time Warner's $60 a month service
True, but that's not how the numbers work out.
I think it is fair to say that about $25 dollars of any DSL or cable service is going to the physical system.
(I would love to see more data on this, anyone who knows please speak up. Bell canada charges independent ISPs $27 to use their DSL system)
That leaves $5 to $35 for IP service. That makes sense if you look at the wholesale price of bandwidth.
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While I will admit that my number might be a little off because I made them up, and my longevity concerns might be overblown but I think yours might have some issues too.
First, Your seemingly promoting an interconnect situation where you become your own ISP. That would cost a substantial amount more then the $2000 I initially started with as your would now need to track your own routing tables and DNS. Second, the charges to independent ISPs for line ussage, at least in America, is supposed to be the actual
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Rights of way really are a big problem.
The situation is also highly variable from town to town because it is a municipal government responsibility.
There are federal rules forcing the municipalities to allow the phone/cable/gas companies access but no global rule requiring easy access for things like customer owner fiber. If the power or phone company 'owns' the rights of way or the poles they could be a big problem.
Some municipalities require 'fair/open' access to the poles/rightsofway which would be the
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That sound very interesting. I wasn't aware that there was an actual pilot project that went beyond talk. I'm going to have to find out more about it.
On a side note, I'm imagining that the lines running into the neighborhood will be able to accommodate the houses that haven't signed up yet, at a future date. I'm wondering how this is reconciled if after everything is done and payed for, I decide I wanted in. Obviously chargeing what you paid would be nothing but pure profit but charging less wouldn't be fai
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I'm imagining that the lines running into the neighborhood will be able to accommodate the houses that haven't signed up yet, at a future date.
Ya, that's a good point I'll see if I can find out what the plan is for that.
As for capacity, the trunk line has something like 400 fiber pairs in it and each home will get its own pair running all the way back to the datacentre.
So there is no sharing of bandwidth until you reach the actual ISP network switches. At that point it will be up to the ISPs to decide how
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But if they do that, what if some nearby communities put a direct line between their networks ? That way they might communicate with each other - great for BitTorrent or shared news or mail servers, for example - without paying the company ! That's clearly communism !
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In a way true, but you'd be stuck with one of two scenarios really: Quick and expensive (nice last-mile solution) or Not-so-quick and inexpensive (cheap last-mile solution). Or quick-and-exposed-to-competition-hopefully-meaning-inexpensive (municipality owned access network w. nice last-mile solution), but they seem to get sued left and right for some reason, which is a pity.
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How am I not losing money now to have broadband delivered to me? I pay every single month, and I have no equity in anything I'm paying for. I call that lost money. I'm quite certain I've paid the prorated installation cost of the cable to my house several times over in the past 6 years, and if nothing changes, I can look forward to paying it all over again in the next 6 years. I am also absolutely certain that the prorated cost of transit for my traffic is a microscopic portion of my monthly payment.
So
Public projects (Score:2)
Uh, no, I already have broadband. Just like most of the people that supported (and paid for) the government initiative for rural electrification already had electricity. Now, I think I gain a benefit (and a financia
Lovely... (Score:2, Insightful)
> McCain will try to solve the broadband penetration "problem" by providing subsidies to the cable and telecom monopolies
Great. So regulation to protect Net Neutrality by preventing people from making an open market closed is bad, but giving tax money to monopolies is good?
As for broadband rank, I would like to point out that the Nordic countries do find in spite of having lower densities than we do. Also, if you look at coverage, it's concentrated in the rich areas.
I'm in the _middle_ of the 5th large
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It sounds like you are pretty far from any CO. You are in range for IDSL but not regular ADSL. To be at that range you must be pretty far out. There are benefits and drawbacks to anywhere you live. You dont have to deal with as much congestion and people are but you don't get easy broadband. If its not a worthy tradeoff then move.
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Your telco simply hasn't upgraded their lines. Your probably on a mix of older and newer lines. When SBC upgraded the lines in my neighborhood, they ran a bundle of fiber to the transfers at all points to the city. This means that fiber and DSL+2 is availible city wide with remote DSLAMS and extending that in any direction is trivial when the needs require it. Now, I don't know if they actually laid fiber-fiber or if they are using some hybred coper-fiber. I got this information second hand from a linesman.
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Darn, you really are screwed!
I live in Mexico City and my broadband is better and cheaper than yours...
(of course, computer hardware is more expensive, but well...)
Re:To save you 16 minutes, (Score:5, Informative)
Allow me to elaborate on the broadband issue. If you look at average and top speeds available in NYC, LA, Chicago, or any other major city, you'll find that they are 2-5 times slower than the average available to the whole country of Japan, South Korea, France and Sweeden.
The fastest speeds you can currently get from Verizon (via FiOS) are 50/20 (down/up), for which you'll pay $145 a month. This is below the average of what you'd get in the above countries, and I'm almost certain it costs 25-33% of the above rate.
A more reasonable 20/20 or 20/5 costs 70 or 57. The bottom line is that IF you can get the service, you'll pay 3-6 times the cost per mbps as you would in another country. One could argue that markup is to pay for further penetration, but eh... we're still well behind in internet speeds even in our metro areas.
To my knowledge Verizon offers the fastest service plans available for residential access, and I'm guessing their $/mbps is competitive as well. I'm glad that they're at least offering a 20/20 or a 50/20 package, but don't kid yourself - we're still pretty far behind in our coverage.
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I have a 20/5 business FiOS account. I have yet to visit any server (other than speed testing sites) that can saturate my connnection. I can reach 1+ Mbyte/sec download speeds with well-populated torrents, but that's still far below my 20 Mbit download speed. I could upgrade to higher speeds, but what difference would it actually make in practice?
Re:To save you 16 minutes, (Score:5, Insightful)
I have cable 20/2 Internet connection, and I'm in Romania (a small country in Europe with neighbors Hungary and Bulgaria for people with less knowledge of geography).
Inside the country, I can max the connection anytime, full 20mbps. Outside the country, the speeds are on average 13-14mbps.
This is the result of heavy competition between two ISP that bought almost all the small ISP companies in the country.
Also, no bandwidth caps and it costs about 20 dollars. Bundled with cable TV (576p, about 55 channels) the total cost is 40$.
For an additional 10$ a month, the company can give me a set top box that takes digital tv out of the same cable (still 576p but digital up to the set top box so crystal clear. HD is still in testing in the country).
About two years ago, for the same price I would have received 2mbps download, 256kbps upload.
So what I'm trying to say is that it's quite possible to saturate your connection, if I can for example by downloading two linux iso's from two different servers in my country.
It's your provider that doesn't invest enough to have the backbone capable of handling the speeds.
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Seriously? those countries are either technology obsessed or quasi-socialist. as another pointed out:
"Lower population density may mean that universal broadband access isn't as profitable for commercial vendors as it might be otherwise (ditto with access to electricity, running water, telephone service, mail, etc.), but it certainly does not mean it is not feasible."
How about you back up your claim with a list of government spending on broadband. TANSTAFL, The cos
Re:To save you 16 minutes, (Score:5, Informative)
I attempted to compare apples to apples. The population density in NYC or LA has to be greater than the population density of any of those countries outside their cities. Nowhere did I mention our average broadband speed, which even in the best of states is under 5 mbps IIRC. I didn't mention the average (under 3 mpbs), and I certainly didn't mention Alaska (under 1 mpbs)
Now an above poster mentions that a former USSR country (Romania) gets 10-15 times faster actual download speeds (20/2) than a 20/5 person in the US, and pays 1/3 as much.
As for your argument about density - Romania's average density is 236/sq mi. There are 11 US states with a density greater than that, according to wikipedia.
In my opinion (not to disparage Romania at all), but when a country that was under Communist control until 20 years ago has better internet speeds for 1/3 the price of the US, it should be entirely unacceptable.
Since you like economics, you should know duopolies (which are what most local ISPs are) and oligopolies (nationwide ISPs) don't allocate resources efficiently in many cases and reduce consumer surplus.
I'm also pretty sure U.S. telecoms have been given subsidies and/or tax breaks in return for guarantees on broadband penetration and speed. For the most part, telecoms are years behind where they promised to be if they got said subsidies.
If there's anything else you have a question about, let me know.
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In my opinion (not to disparage Romania at all), but when a country that was under Communist control until 20 years ago has better internet speeds for 1/3 the price of the US, it should be entirely unacceptable.
Why? Thats what i was asking, What are the costs? Sure a former soviet country has better internet then U.S.. Government subsidy's excel at this kind of thing. But the cost the end user pays is not the total cost of creation when subsidy is involved. What are the true cost of producing this internet? I'd bet you its way more then what it is in the U.S.. And what is the market desire? If they produce it more cheaply and abundantly then what is actually needed you have tons of resources going to wast.
Monop
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You're right. I'm sure that being in the USSR started with much better internet than us because of being communist.
It was the fact that their grocery stores were entirely unstocked that was the reason they failed. That when people came to America they wept the first time they saw one of our grocery stores, of just seeing row after row of food - they thought it was impossible for that to happen, and yet here it was, all over the country.
I assure you their infrastructure was horrible in 1989. I'm also guessin
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Your neglecting the fact that almost all broadband access in the US is a dual use connection that works as something else. Romania had to invest in their infrastructure in order to be competitive with western markets and unlike the US, they had the luxury of installing something better from the start. Now in the US, we are replacing the infrastructure and improving it all the time but the shear amounts of it is very taxing compared to a company one quarter the size if that. But upgrading the infrastructure
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Ok, I'll bite.
I live in Mexico (very far away from the Soviet area of influence) and I have several options available for broadband here (3 phone companies and 1 cable tv company)
My cable provider gives me 1.5 Mbps internet, plus phone service (w/unlimited local calls) and 230 channels of digital cable for $64.85USD a month total (at today's exchange rate)
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my goodness, how terrible that must be for you...
unlike us here in australia where in a capital city it's not possible to get faster than 24/8 for less than $100.00 a month -and- with horribly restrictive download limits of 20-40gb!
and this is supposed to be a 1st world country... it's shamefull.
Population density (Score:5, Insightful)
Was the USA more densely populated eight years ago?
I'll point out that Arizona is more urban than the Netherlands. Almost all of Arizona's population lives in major urban areas; the Netherlands has a higher net population density but a much higher percentage of their population lives in nonurban villages.
This is by way of saying that population density is a red herring, because broadband penetration is measured by people, not square miles. The USA's ranking isn't being driven down by the lack of broadband on the Yuma Proving Grounds or the Plains of St. Augustin.
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Interesting bit of selective statistics. Arizona is a desert state, where there isn't much point to living outside of a city. Its not very representitive of the US as a whole. We have far more agricultural states, where near universal coverage is more of a problem.
Now let's see what Wikipedia has to say about your figures for the Netherlands:
Re:To save you 16 minutes, (Score:5, Insightful)
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by providing subsidies to the cable and telecom monopolies
Not quite. What McCain proposes is tax cuts to these areas to spur development. Lessig, of course, calls them subsidies. A subsidy is very different from a tax cut. Of course, one shouldn't be surprised that Lessig makes this confusion as his political leanings tend to assume that tax money originates and belongs to the government, not the originating source of the income. The word subsidy also makes it sound like McCain wants to fill evil tel
tax cuts vs subsidies (Score:3, Insightful)
Lessig first refers to them as tax cuts; he obviously is not "confused" about the distinction, he quite deliberately equates tax cuts with subsidies, and the end result of a selective tax cut and a subsidy (assuming the subsidy is not larger than the amount taxed) is the same thing, as you well know.
Re:To save you 16 minutes, (Score:5, Interesting)
Yeah, population density explains it. That's why a typical Canadian broadband connection is faster that a typical broadband connection in the US (or any particular part of the US, regardless of population density.)
Looking at the post from the fellow in Romania, I think it's interesting that HDTV is normal here is the US, but basically doesn't exist in Romania, while the reverse is true for fast Internet. It's not a matter of technology level, or wealth. It's just a matter of priorities. Romania invested in a key enabling technology that has impacts in education, the economy, and individual political empowerment. The US invested in American Idol with extra pixels. And, this makes me sad. I know we could do better, and I just don't understand why we as a society choose not to.
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Personally, I think the broadband penetration number ("our rank has fallen to #22") is a bit of a red herring because the US is far less densely populated than most other countries and thus perfect broadband penetration is not feasible.
No. There's countries with much less density and far better penetration, even in rural areas.
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Personally, I think the broadband penetration number ("our rank has fallen to #22") is a bit of a red herring because the US is far less densely populated than most other countries and thus perfect broadband penetration is not feasible.
That's the biggest problem here in the USA--people forget that given the population density if western Europe, Japan and South Korea, there are enough customers per square hectare of area that telecoms can afford the exorbitant cost of wiring up everyone to ADSL, cable or fib
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Well... I've got my choice of four options (fiber, DSL, and two different cable providers). One of the companies involved didn't exist ten years ago. My neighborhood (which was developed in the 70's) now has fiber and coax from multiple providers competing for my money. And they do compete. I actually get reps from the companies I'm not using knocking on the door offering swell deals to make me jump ship.
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Is it likely Lessig might be lying? (Score:2)
In court, we require people to testify in person, and if they cannot for some good reason, we take a video deposition and show that. This is because we want the jury to see the person, to be better able to judge from their demeanor whether or not to believe them. Witnesses often have a strong incentive to lie, so this is important.
What are the chances Lessig is going to lie about his position on McCain's platform? Seems pretty damned low to me--I think we could trust him if a textual form of his analysis
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> So why present this in a cumbersome video format?
Welcome to the 21st Century. Text is dead, video is everything.
Litteracy in written English will be as common as basic arithmetic skills are now in another generation or so. The pocket calculator did in math, the mouse and cameras on everything will do in writing.
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All I want to say about McCain is (Score:5, Funny)
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Click to learn how the McCain Economic Plan will help bring reform, prosperity and peace to America.
Peace? Oh, that John McCain cracks me up...
Re:All I want to say about McCain is (Score:5, Funny)
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McCain eats cock. I'm sorry, but anyone who qualifies "rich" as more than $5 million is an out of touch moron. Of course, he can't figure out how to use these fancy interwebs, so please read him this comment along with his daily email printouts.
flamebait? (Score:2)
Apparently another mccain droid got some mod points.
Fuck you, too, parasite cocksucker.
Lessig is a hack (Score:2, Interesting)
I lost all respect for Lessig when he described the opposition to telecom immunity as "leftist hysteria" [lessig.org]. It's like if Richard Stallman suddenly called opposition to DRM the work of "Linux zealots".
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Except that's not what your linked article says at all. Lessig is talking about the hysteria over Obama's reaction to the FISA bill.
For instance:
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I think you're projecting your own hackdom onto Lessig, or you simply saw "immunity hysteria" in the headline and forgot to read the rest of the article you linked.
Obama had to make a decision on a particular bill with a particular set of components. The FISA bill had good components (closing loopholes the Administration had used) and bad components (telecom immunity). As Lessig points out, this becomes a question of which is more important: fixing the law going forward, or punishing those who previously vi
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