
The era of geek pork has arrived - blasdel
http://www.digitalsociety.org/2010/07/the-era-of-geek-pork-has-arrived/
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potatolicious
Hogwash.

Looking past the author's insulting and sophomoric use of "geek" as a
derogatory put-down, let's get to his claims:

> The "US is behind on broadband" thing is a myth.

Yet no sources are cited. All he does is wave his hands about how Mossberg is
the only one saying it, and everyone is just a regurgitating idiot. Last I
checked, this issue has been around for a while, and is supported by a _lot_
more voices than Mossberg.

Then he starts going to a straw man - claiming the regulatory angle is
fundamentally undemocratic, and completely ignores the fact that existing
telcos operate with a government-granted monopoly, making internet service
fundamentally not a free market enterprise to begin with.

> _"At the root of this anger against the ISPs is that they want faster
> Internet access and they don’t want to pay for it"_

I'm not sure how much more ignorant this comment can get. My internet service
at home experiences frequent lag spikes up to 3000ms, yet I have to just
_deal_ with it because no other ISP can operate where I live (this is a city
thing, not a building thing). Quit pretending there's a free market when there
is none.

> _"since I’m about as geeky as they come"_

I'm not sure how this can be, since he seems to claim to be a geek, yet he
uses the term in a derogatory way and pisses all over the demographic
frequently in the post, portraying them as entitled children, and blind sheep
following the Mossberg prophet.

So let's summarize: straw man argument, appeal to ridicule, argument from
ignorance (i.e., there is no problem with ISPs because the studies claiming
problems are allegedly problemtic), appeal to emotion (the pointless linking
of this to "democracy")... is this a high school rhetoric class or something?

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tomkinstinch
Note: Read with caution; digitalsociety.org is a libertarian soap box.

Telecommunications infrastructure has capital costs that prohibit disruptive
newcomers. The established players have the power to charge (and profit) at
whatever rate they choose. Unless there is regulatory pressure, they will
never focus on service over profits. Relative to the rest of the developed
world, our throughput rate to consumers is far from excellent[1]. We need
better service for citizens. It is true that the US's large size makes the
country costly to wire. This is precisely why government intervention is
needed to bring our connectivity up to the level of nations with similar
standards of living.

Skimming the author's other posts, he seems to miss the mark on so many
issues. (Indeed, visiting the homepage is like stepping into a crazier,
"Twilight Zone" version of reality.)

Personally, I would like my Internet connection to come from a public utility.
Roads are public, why not fiber?

1\.
[http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2649_34225_3869010...](http://www.oecd.org/document/54/0,3343,en_2649_34225_38690102_1_1_1_1,00.html)

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jbooth
Yeah. If people don't like the fact that the cable companies jack up the
prices 5-10% a year for service that sucks and doesn't improve, they should
just go bootstrap their own nation-straddling, trillion dollar infrastructure
project and outcompete them in the free market.

