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Korea World Leader in Broadband/Technology at Home 310

Posted by Hemos from the beating-the-world dept.
bozoman42 writes "67% of Korean Internet users are connected to broadband, some at 32Mbps! In fact, according to the Guardian Article, Korea is leading in nearly all walks of a modern high tech life. But there may be downsides. (Especially as covered here last week.)"
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Korea World Leader in Broadband/Technology at Home More

Korea World Leader in Broadband/Technology at Home

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  • But there may be downsides... (Score:5, Funny)

    by MattRog ( 527508 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:40AM (#4484836)
    Yeah, like living next to North Korea.
    • Yes, shame the poster and "editor" forgot to mention that the article is talking about South Korea. The situation is rather different in North Korea.

    • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • Multiplayer games are HUGE in Korea. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:42AM (#4484845)
    Multiplayer games are absolutely huge in Korea, people have played themselves to death. And there are examples in real life beatings because of stuff that happens in multiplayer games.

    SIG: Don't support Redhat until they support basic democracy in the dictatorship China vs democratic Taiwan issue. It's an evil company.

    • Gosu ^^ (Score:5, Interesting)

      by jedie ( 546466 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:20PM (#4484995) Homepage
      Think about the fact that Korean gamer's can become official "sportsmen" with corporate sponsorship etc.

      Game finals are even brought live on TV there.

      Gaming IS a sport there, look at "starcraft" the prizes you can win in the rounaments are insane.

      But that trend is starting to rise in the west too: think of CPL for instance, it's a worldwide event with international clans fighting for the first place (internationally!) in FPS games. And some clans even have dedicated fans nowadays, some players even have groupies (I kid you not: pretty girls, who take pictures with their webcams ofthemselves in their bra's holding a paper with the name of their favourite CS player for instance).



      In a way I think that's a logical evolution in the world of sports: why would sport have something to do with only the physical? Look at chess, and snooker etc.



      I mean, dedicated gamers even behave like real life jocks: they have the whole "yeah we're so 1337" thing going and act real tough (online that is ;))

      • Re:Gosu ^^ (Score:2, Interesting)

        by prelelat ( 201821 )
        You know what I think it would be kind of cool to watch some FPS games and other RPG games on tv. You could even call it Unreal TV. I'm sure that some Network will come up with it here in some respect in the future. It would probably be a big thing. Host tournaments to see who gets to be on the show and then have a big game of ctf or CS with some of the best players in the world(the internet allows for anyone to play).

        I would go and watch that anyways.

        What do I know I don't even run linux anymore...
    • There are two reasons why there are real life beatings because of the multiplayer games: 1. They take the games very seriously. 2. Korea's a densely populated and relatively small country (compared to the US) so they can physically meet the person they're playing with/against. I'm sure that there are people in the US who would do this, but it's kinda expensive to catch a plane to go beat up some other kid. Not everyone can get a wad of cash like Jay and Silent Bob ;) I remember reading an article on this and the police had a term for these beatings, an "offline PK."
    • Where was that guy that played himself to death?

  • Slight rewording (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:45AM (#4484858)
    67% of Korean HOUSEHOLDS are connected to broadband. There's a big difference there, and it's very impressive. I'll bet that 67% of Mexican Internet users are connected to broadband, and it's around 0.1% of their population.

    • Re:Slight rewording (Score:5, Insightful)

      by plone ( 140417 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:55AM (#4484896) Homepage
      The article said that 67% of Korean HOUSEHOLDS are connected to broadband, not 67% of Korean Internet USERS. That means that 67% of the homes are wired with broadband. The actual percentage of population of people who have access to broadband is therefore much higher than 67% since Households usually constitute more than a single person.

      • Re:Slight rewording (Score:2, Informative)

        by comic-not ( 316313 )

        Uhh ... no. For the mathematically challenged, if an average household equals 2 persons, then 67% of the persons have the access, not 134% as you seem to be indicating. Of course, the percentage may change if there is a clear correlation between household size and migration to broadband, but it does not depend on household size as such.

      • Nope. Assuming all households have the same number of residents, 67% of households = 67% of population.

        In fact, if poorer South Koreans tend to live in households crowded with more members, and tend not to be able to afford broadband, that could represent a lower percentage of the population.
      • The article said that 67% of Korean HOUSEHOLDS are connected to broadband, not 67% of Korean Internet USERS.

        That's all well and good, but I don't need broadband to my house, or to me... Where I'd really like it, is connected to my computer. Thanks.
    • I've always wondered about this. For a long time Korea has had extremely high amounts of online time spent per-user. Presumably, that means lots of experienced techies from dicking around with computers so much.

      Yet I hear surprisingly few Korean names among major open-source developers. Korea has a name for pirated software, and that's about it.

      Why no *good* benefits coming from all that online time?

  • Maybe the "free" market ain't all that (Score:4, Insightful)

    by release7 ( 545012 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:48AM (#4484867) Homepage Journal
    Last week, they published a report highlighting a number of Korea's advantages. These include the government's vision and commitment...

    Ingredients for happy society:
    Add: one ounce of capitalism, one ounce of socialism, a pinch of communism

    Not everything in the world is black and white, especially when it comes to determining which "ism" makes the greatest number of people happy.

    • Add: one ounce of capitalism, one ounce of socialism, a pinch of communism

      Umm, the Communist half of Korea is one of the poorest and most repressive places on Earth. The article is about South Korea, which is effectively a different country. Think east and west Germany before the Berlin Wall came down.
      • Umm, the Communist half of Korea is one of the poorest and most repressive places on Earth.

        You're not getting it. The implication is that the various 'isms' should be mixed together. North Korea can be considered to represent the totalitarianism and poverty of Communism in isolation. America could be considered to represent the plutocracy ("corporatocracy") of Capitialism in isolation (though America is mildly or more-than-mildly socialistic in a number of ways). In fundamental ways, plutocracy is not that different from Communism, except that the leaders are not even theoretically concerned with the welfare of the people.

        For successful blends of the three, think Canada, Australia, or Western Europe. Do you think that the average American is happier than the average citizen of these other places? Think again.

  • Theres a huge demand for broadband in the UK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:50AM (#4484875)
    Unfortunatley BT refuses to upgrade rural exchanges for ADSL, and people are very angry at this. The town of todmorden recently made the headlines for being the first town to reach the threshhold of being upgraded. I live in an 'unupgraded' [uk.com]town, but I dont really care about BT, because Im happy with my cable modem from telewest [telewest.co.uk]. The cable companies are more determined than BT to supply broadband, but they can only cover where their cable network goes.

    Satilite broadband is becoming popular too, but its expensive, one way and low latency.

    • Re:Theres a huge demand for broadband in the UK (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cruachan ( 113813 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:34PM (#4485058)
      Satellite's now two way. I'm in the Scottish Highlands with a satellite connection courtesy of Bridge Broadband (a reseller of course, Hughes Satellite Systems underneath).

      Bandwidth is 512kbs UNCONTENDED down and 2Mbs burst contended. Only 150kbs up, but that should improve soon. It's expensive to put in, but with a pipe that size share the connection with a few neighbours and it's no more expensive than BT's ADSL offering.

      Latency is only a problem if you want to play games. Notice that because the line is uncontended I've actually got considerably more bandwidth than you get in practise from ADSL.

    • Re:Theres a huge demand for broadband in the UK (Score:5, Interesting)

      by digithed ( 445564 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:58PM (#4485150) Homepage
      You are correct when you say that there is a huge demand for broadband in the UK, but the really sad thing is that what is being offered to fill the demand is already out of date. In this day and age ADSL can hardly be described as 'broadband' as it is in most cases only 512Kb/sec. The UK government is dreaming if they really believe that everyone having an ADSL connection will make the UK the most competative place in Europe for e-business. By the time they have managed to roll out ADSL to the majority of the population, most of the rest of Europe will already have installed fiber networks and consumers will have 10Mb/sec connections. Sadly, at the moment, the UK governement either doesn't have a clue or doesn't have the inclination to even start talking about fiber networks.

      I am from UK, but I live in Sweden in a town of approximately 120,000 people (small by UK standards) and I have a 10Mb/sec ethernet connection in my appartment for which I pay 300kr per month (about £25 or $30). ADSL costs the same as this in UK and in most cases is 20 times slower. Why can't UK get its act together? And before people start talking about BTs monoply causing problems please considered that Telia in Sweden also have about the same kind of monopoly position as BT in UK but this does not seem to have hindered the roll out of high speed consumer broadband in Sweden!

      --
      Steve Brammer
      (From UK but currently living in Västerås, Sweden)
    • This is very true.

      I remeber when BT were first flexing their 'Broadband' initiative. I live in one of the cities which they actually advertised specifically as being broadband enabled, yet my exchange was not. They did practically the whole city, yet overlooked my exchange completely - and every time they gave me an estimate date for getting the exchange done, it came and went without any news. How the hell can they specifically use the name of my city in advertising, as a 'broadband enabled city' when it actually wasn't?

      After waiting a YEAR AND A HALF on dialup, ntl: began their huge cable rollout.. they dug up our street and posted leaflets about their service. So I took up broadband with them and I couldn't be happier! I have been running their 512k service for over a year and it has only ever been down 3 times.

      Screw BT.. they can never get anything right, and they are responsible for the shameful state of the UK's internet ability - they should have been busted up by the government a long time ago :|
  • They're doing it so that people can die at home, surrounded by their family, instead of at internet cafes [slashdot.org].

    RMN
    ~~~

  • They may be on to something (Score:5, Funny)

    by Haxx ( 314221 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:51AM (#4484881) Homepage
    In 2000, the government launched its Cyber 21 program, to train a million housewives in IT use in 18 months

    -Haxx calls Korean Airlines for a flight to korea to find a wife.

    Imagine discussing port security during intercourse.

  • Why is this shocking!? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by prichardson ( 603676 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:57AM (#4484906) Journal
    This is not shocking due to some basic differencews between the US and South Korea.

    1)The South Korean government is encouraging technological growth, while the US is still realing from P2P networks and people exercising free speach.

    2)South Korea is relatively new, like Europe and Japan, South Korea recently (relativel) rebuilt its industrial base. The US has NEVER had a serious conflict close enough to home to neccesatate major rebuilding. This means that our stuff is old compared to theirs.

    So you see, it is not only explainable, it is logical that South Korea would lead the US, and the rest of the world, in the people having cool toys and making cool tech toys.
    • "P2P and free speach [sic]."

      Why are these always used in combination? Pirating products is not free speech.

      Tom

      • No, but stopping pirating has the side effect if stifling free speech. You don't think everybody is out fighting for their right to pirate Warcraft III do you?

    • Re:Why is this shocking!? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by tshak ( 173364 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @01:21PM (#4485270) Homepage
      This is not shocking due to some basic differencews between the US and South Korea.
      You forgot:
      3) South Korea is smaller then the average US state and therefore very easy to wire for broadband.
    • The US has NEVER had a serious conflict close enough to home to neccesatate major rebuilding. This means that our stuff is old compared to theirs.

      I hate to nitpick, and I agree that it has little impact on your infrastructure-rebuilding argument, but are you familiar with a little tiff we like to call our civil war? Certainly, it didn't destroy any outdated telephone lines, but, NEVER is a STRONG word.
    • Alot of Europe has very old infrastructure, far more so than the US, think about it, the US is basically European expats + some other continents. The US on the whole does NOT have a long history compared to a great deal of the world, + it has a huge land mass for building new infrastructure, the US can afford to build new while keeping the old, places like the UK which is basically the size of Florida -have- to reuse old buildings as we can not afford to demolish all/rebuild and dont have the space for simply building all new extra. Also although countries in Europe etc were more involved in getting hit by Wars the rebuilding was done 50 years ago and it was not a total desimation of citys thus requireing total city rebuild.

  • Riverstone (Cabletron) routers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Degrees ( 220395 ) <degreesNO@SPAMgerisch.me> on Saturday October 19, 2002 @11:58AM (#4484910) Homepage Journal
    Early this year, Riverstone beat out Cisco on a contract to supply routers. The contract was to wire the city of Seoul with one router per 1,000 people. These are wire speed switching routers - and the wire speed and backplane of the things are superb. I was impressed when I read the news announcement. Riverstone in the news [riverstonenet.com]

  • That doesn't suprise me... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Robber Baron ( 112304 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:01PM (#4484919) Homepage
    All the best edonkey [edonkey2000.com] servers appear to be located in Korea.
    • Just to realize how few items are on eDonkey, and how troublesome you have to

      1. Find a list of current servers 2. Choose one hopefully that can accept a connection 3. Hopefully find the file you want on the server. 4. Goto #2 when no good file located

      There's a reason why Napster/Scour/Kazaa are/were way more popular than eDonkey and HotLine. Having to maintain a list of current servers is already a bottleneck. Not centralizing the file list is even more a bottleneck. Heck, even Gnutella does better in terms of searching.

      Besides, I can find most of the Korean mp3/mv's on Kazaa - right there, right now. Don't really see how eDonkey would improve my p2p experience.

  • Wow... (Score:2, Funny)

    by SIGBUS ( 8236 )
    No wonder spammers like South Korea so much. I keep wondering if I'm going to have to blackhole all of Korea on the mail server that I run.
  • ...and all their boxes are routing SPAM TO ME!

  • Interesting to Note... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Eidolon909 ( 589869 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:07PM (#4484946)

    I live and work in Seoul and while its true that most people seem to have broadband at home it doesn't seem like they use it all that much. Its also incredibly affordable, very fast and extremely reliable.

    With that said, Internet Cafes (PC Bangs) are a huge business here. They are literally everywhere. Its very difficult not to walk in a busy area and not see multiple PC bangs. So while all these people have internet at home, they still go out to the Internet Cafe to play games and spend extra money when they could easily do so at home.

    I'm sitting in a PC Bang now, it has about 40 stations and half of them are in use. Mostly men in their early to late twenties. Most of them are playing Starcraft: Broodwar or one of numerous Diablo II clones. The handful of women in here are playing cards or using chat software. I will play Warcraft myself shortly.

    Anyhow, my point is that all these homes are wired yet people still flock to these cafes unnecessarily. I mean, in the afternoons these places are filled with middle and high-school kids and then with adults all through the night. Most are open 24 hours.

    So 67% of Korean homes may be wired, but I'd say an even greater percentage of the population are internet users, I don't know a single korean who doesn't have an e-mail address or an IM id.

    • We need that here, (Score:5, Insightful)

      by HanzoSan ( 251665 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @01:03PM (#4485175) Homepage Journal


      It would improve the social enviornment in the USA, and give kids a place to go.
      • It would improve the social enviornment in the USA, and give kids a place to go.

        I live in the USA and they have a couple near my place. I haven't done any studies but it seems like a bunch of humbug teenagers smoking and drinking, and in practical terms is the same environment as an arcade - which I wouldn't really view as good or bad.

        I think the reason a place like that exists is I live in a Chinatown. Non-asians maybe don't like going to public computer places, or arcades, because it's more economical just to use their computer at home.

    • I don't know a single korean who doesn't have an e-mail address or an IM id.

      I ran into an old friend a few years ago on the subway, we chatted it up and then as her train was leaving I asked for her e-mail so I could get back in touch with her. She said she didn't have one and I was so befudled that I didn't catch her phone number as a the train pulled out.

      That is I could also almost say that in the US, even though millions of Americans don't even have e-mail. Hell I only know a couple people without broadband, even though most people don't have it here yet.
    • Mostly men in their early to late twenties. Most of them are playing Starcraft: Broodwar or one of numerous Diablo II clones. The handful of women in here are playing cards or using chat software.

      Ah, so this is insidious government plan plan for population control: turn all the young men into computer geeks.

  • I don't doubt that they watch VOD more (Score:5, Interesting)

    by keyed ( 560115 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:10PM (#4484958)
    Having got broadband internet, Koreans use it much more. Dr Heejin Lee, a lecturer at Brunel University, says Koreans rack up an average of 1,340 minutes per month, which compares with the UK average of 382 minutes. The high usage stems partly from it being fast enough for video on demand: people can use it to time-shift TV programmes, or catch up with episodes of soaps they have missed. Also, 54% of Koreans play online games.
    Their TV stations do VOD the right way. You can watch any show up to that they've aired for up to a week and without commercials. My mother, who lives in San Antonio, TX, and knows nothing about computers, watches these after she gets home from work. The quality of the video streaming isn't that good at times, but that probably has more to do with the fact that it's being streamed from Korea. It doesn't bother my mom too much as she watches the news and old style music shows that she liked when she left Korea 20+ years ago.

  • Weird world of Korea (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ektanoor ( 9949 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:11PM (#4484963) Journal
    There is some strange paradox here. Korea in fact is two Koreas. They started just in the same line and nearly with the same problems but today they seem to make a difference like Earth and Moon. We have the North with its rich resources but backward economy, its hunt for nukes, militarisation and lack of Internet (probably with exception of some bureaucrates). And we have the South that was considered to be more poor in resources, but which, in the end, is becoming the top technocratic country in the world. Yes, the South was also highly militarised and had nukes from the US. But the same went for the North with USSR.

    I just wonder what will happen when someone will try a real reunification. What will happen when a North, which still cannot give up its dependency on someone else, with an economy in shambles and one of the biggest armies in the world meets a South which a big part of the world depends on, an economy that gives envy to anyone and carrying a more pacifist mood than ever?

    North - What do you mean by "using Internet"?
    South - What do you mean by "not using Internet"?

    • Re:Weird world of Korea (Score:3, Interesting)

      by ergo98 ( 9391 )
      For a historical example, just take a peek at East and West Germany, or virtually all of the Eastern Bloc countries, and the reunification thereof. While there was much doom and gloom about the trouble that would result, it looks like they did a pretty good job, and much of Eastern Germany got pulled up by its bootstraps to a similar level that West Germany had enjoyed.
      • Europe never went the same way as some other countries. Even the huge backslash in Russia is nothing compared to what happened in some other places. The blistering fury, which blowed while Eastern block tried to reach its Western brothers/cousins, was mainly due to the fact that they were not so backward as it seems. Frankly, in the first years after Perestroika, things changed so fast that people joked that in this mood we "will reach and overcome America in its own remedy - Capitalism" (this didn't happen but that's another story). Besides, Europe was always crazy about technowars and the main problem was that a good part of it went once again in the technowar run after having a good dose of it in WWII. Europeans are very much alike and that's a reason why they don't love each other. But that's also the reaons why they can understand each other faster than anyone else.

        However Korea is something completely different. They were for long under the grip of Imperial Japan. They suffered two of the most bloody wars of the 20th Century. One of them nearly turned the whole world again into war. Besides, Korea was not top in Science neither Technology. When South started its Long March it had a population in misery, ruled by one of the most bloody dictatorships and suffered several drawbacks from it. Its economy suffered from several problems and it had frequently serious inflationary hickes. It also as an endemic social/political conflict that frequently rises to clashes. Its politicians are also known to be severly corrupted and fall frequently into scandals.

        However it is a fact that Korea is one of today's economic world powers, sometimes it even overshadows its past colonist, Japan. And its technological progress is on the top among many countries. Not many countries managed to reach such level. So I take the hat to these guys.

    • Shows effects of US intervention too.... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Brian_Ellenberger ( 308720 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @01:05PM (#4485188)
      And if it weren't for the *EVIL* United States, there would be a single Korea and it would be one massive hellhole instead of half hellhole and half really nice place to live.

      Right now the US has tens of thousands of troops right now helping the South Koreans hold of a million man North Korean army. With the news that North Korea has broken the treaty that gave them economic aid in exchange for giving up nukes, it should be increasingly obvious that the current US foreign policy that is heavy in, ahem, consequences, is not so naive after all. What is naive is the idea that you can solve all your problems with mean people by just talking nice to them.

      I wonder how if South Vietnam would be doing as well as South Korea of the US had succeeded in defending it.

      Brian Ellenberger

      • Re:Shows effects of US intervention too.... (Score:4, Insightful)

        by maw ( 25860 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @01:57PM (#4485414) Journal
        Your conclusion may be true, but your reasons for it are suspect.

        You assume that the only reason North Korea is the way it is is because it's a "communist" country. That may be the case, but it may also be the case that they are they way they are in a reaction to events and people around them.

        In other words, would they be in the same situation if they had been left alone? Maybe, but it's hardly given.

  • Fast and impressive, but is it free? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by twitter ( 104583 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:14PM (#4484970) Homepage Journal
    Are these networks free or gimped like US? Can the average Korean set up web, email, ftp, cvs services at the end of that fat pipe? If so, they will surely kick the world's ass in software development. If not, entertianment is nice but their net will be disipative.

    Here in the US, broadband "internet" is becoming more and more like cable TV. Unilaterally changeable service contracts ban useful services, ports are blocked and upload rates are artificailly reduced. It's mostly because of bad laws which alowed the regional bells to stomp fledgling DSL competition and other bad laws which essentially give cable operators exclusive franchises in huge areas. Rather than embracing the communications possibilities of wires in our homes and networks we have built, we plod along with pay per minute, voice only, long distance telephony.

    Has Korea learned from our mistakes or will they repeat them?

    • Re:Fast and impressive, but is it free? (Score:4, Informative)

      by ahfoo ( 223186 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:46PM (#4485109) Journal
      What you're saying has been true so far, but probably won't stay that way. There are already nationwide ISPs like Congent willing to offer 100Meg ethernet for about a thousand a month and this isn't DSL, it's real ethernet and it's the same speed up and downstream. It's true the existing players have done just that --played the American consumer for a sucker. But it will change and the most likely candidate for that change is wireless mesh networks. Seeing as how Taiwan is gearing up to push down prices on wireless hardware this should be happening in the next year or two.
      Of course until then, this story is a sad testiment to the lies perpetuated by the scandalous telecoms players in the US. It's too bad the American people are too complacent to elect leaders that represent their interests. Here I refer, among other things, to the recent commerce department attempts to force the FCC to limit all 802.11 products to indoor use. That is a scandal that goes right to the Bush administration. Give that guy enough rope and he'll hang us all.

  • This is offtopic (sorta) but interesting! (Score:3, Informative)

    by Joey7F ( 307495 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:15PM (#4484978) Homepage Journal
    http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/image/0011/earthl ights2_dmsp_big.jpg

    If you think the Koreas are anything alike, look at that picture to see what communism does to a country. The divide almost looks too perfect.

    --Joey

  • Statistics like this... (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Recca ( 166737 )
    are probably why North Korea is giving strange information that seems contradictory to other policies before. They're trying to change to a more open and capitalist government. North Korea has made other announcements besides nuclear weapons. They also disclosed the abduction of Japanese during the 70's and early 80's. Information here. [japantimes.com] Anyway, back on topic, North Korea has realized that nuclear weapons do not serve any good day-to-day purpose, because unlike video games using nuclear weapons in a recreational manner is highly illegal and non-productive in a down economy.

  • More S.Korean Stats (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    For those who are interested and not overtly offended by the source of the information, the CIA Fact Book [cia.gov] for South Korea is available.
    • Why would the CIA World Factbook offend anyone? it's a tremendously good resource.

      One thing the US government is really good about is putting out lots of free data archives that it's spent money building. There are *excellent* resources available to the world:

      The USGS [usgs.gov] puts out really great maps and elevation maps for free. Not something you can produce on your own easily.

      NASA [nasa.gov] puts out some of my favorite stuff -- images, huge quantities of data.

      The Farm Security Administration [loc.gov] has some really nice old photographs.

      The Library of Congress [loc.gov] has tons of really nice stuff.

      The Smithsonian [si.edu] is one of the greatest museums I can imagine.

      The US government is one of the most steady and highest-quality provider of useful content (and ad-free!) available to the Internet.

      I kind of wish there was some site that listed all the US government sites as a sort of tree...make it easier to browse through them.

  • Jack Schofield??? Nooooooooo not him! (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:19PM (#4484991)
    Why you listen to anything that this guys says.

    If he isn't being paid by M$ he should be. Read his other articles...

    A hard sell for cuddly new XP [guardian.co.uk]

    The mother of all operating systems [guardian.co.uk]

    Sun sues Microsoft from inside a glass house [cw360.com]

    To name a few ... I don't think you'll find a bad word said about Microsoft. Nice to know.

  • So what? (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Omkar ( 618823 )
    In urban India (where I'm unfortunately banished), the internet has become just another method of communication. Access is taken for granted. his despite the average computer here is a pentium1 with hardware sold under false pretenses. Broadband is unheard of. Most people access the internet at cybercafés How does pervasive broadband access measurably improve on this situation? Sure, flashy content is enabled, but I don't think anything fundamentally changes.

  • Korea sounds more sensational than Japan (Score:4, Insightful)

    by wyndigo ( 534813 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @12:30PM (#4485041)
    Japan launched 3G phones first, and broadband is equally prevasive here. Obviously, the author didn't check their facts. I probably just sounds better to say Korea, which has a back water image for some reason, than to compare to Japan. Still its more accurate to say large parts of asia (taiwan, korea, singapore, japan) are now significantly ahead of the west as far as being wired goes. Its easy here because due to population density the last mile problem disappears.

    --wyn

    • Re:Korea sounds more sensational than Japan (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Yeah I just thought I'd post and add to this. I've lived in Korea for the last 5 years.
      Yeah Japan had 3G phones first. I don't think broadband is quite as pervasive in Japan, but I don't have any hard statistics. And yeah the population density has a lot to do with the ease of implementation. But it's still damn fast. I usually snicker at my friends back in Canada when they tell me about their ADSL services.

      You can run web,ftp, etc etc services from your home end.

      The spam is a big problem, the government is trying to figure out solutions to it. Though it's the government, so don't expect a speedy (or logical) response to the problem.

      I didn't bother creating an account, cause man I'm dumber than a post and rarely even read the forums here.
    • No, it's not just a density isue. It's about the market in the States being screwed by a collusion of government and telecoms monopolies. I now live in the far northern tip of Taiwan miles from any small town and I still get 512K DSL for thirty bucks a month and no hassles. Next year we're supposed to be upgraded to 1.5Meg just like they upgraded us from 256K earlier this year. This is not limited to high density areas by any means.
      The funny thing is I know so many people in the States who are under the illusion that there's some technical limitation that's preventing them from getting cheap broadband. It's like the people who thought the California electricity crisis was about the costs of power generation. Guess again.
    • are now significantly ahead of the west as far as being wired goes.

      Can we watch the lingo here? Everyone seems to be saying... 'Because the use of technology X, this other country is better than us'. The fact is, cynicism is a good thing. The fact that Koreans, Japanese, et al., ar willing to spend great gobs of money on hi-tech devices and services does not say that they are doing better than anywhere else.

      I think the total number of people with internet access (period) could be used as mark of technological advancement, but that's because there is a great deal of information available online. Just because Koreans can now watch streaming video, and play UT on big pipes, does not make them better off. In fact, their tendency to irationally spend money seems to make them much worse off IMHO.

      The same could be said of cell-phones. The coverage of cell technologies might indicate the communications level of a country, the number of Gs only means that people are willing to pay more for toys.

      Before anyone mentions how useful technology can be for some, we are talking about the populous here. You know, the people that spend $600 for an iPaq so they can have a battery-sucking MP3 player with a color screen... The people that pay several-hundred dollar cell-phone bills, so they can talk to their friends while they are driving to work.

  • The slashdot summary is incorrect... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If you read the article this points to, some broadband connections are 8mbs not 32mbs, and they hope to have 20mbs connections out by 2005.

  • Spam spam and spam (Score:2, Interesting)

    by mosschops ( 413617 )
    I wish they'd spend as much time and money controlling the amount of spam leaving Korean networks, rather than getting more (ab)users hooked up with insanely fast connections.

    I still use Spamcop to report most spam I get, but it's hard to know whether it actually does any good for mail originating in the Far East. Do they not have any responsibility to their peering networks?
  • ... I get so much spam in Korean!!!!
  • Ok there's a big difference between "Some 67% of Korean households now have broadband" (As said in the article), and "67% of Korean Internet users are connected to broadband" (As said in the /. post). Anyone know which is correct? I heinously doubt that 67% of Koreans have broadband, its more likely 67% of internet users.

  • Korea Is An Excellent Role-Model For America! (Score:3, Funny)

    by Bowie J. Poag ( 16898 ) on Saturday October 19, 2002 @04:05PM (#4485971) Homepage


    Wow, America could learn a thing or two from the Koreans!

    Korea is a perfect example of what happens when people have their lives enriched through technology -- By taking advantage of the Internet, Korea has been able to promote their own unique approach to personal growth to millions of people worldwide.

    Infact, most emails I recieve from Korea promise to add at least 3 inches.

  • What about Japan? (Score:2, Informative)

    by arjscott ( 601529 )
    Although the technology mentioned in this article is still far from the reach of most western countries, Japan already has it all.

    High-speed internet access has been common for many years. 10 megabit cable is now common for home users. 100 megabit is also available.

    NTT Introduced FOMA 3G mobile services way back in early 2001.

    HDTV has been available for at least 4 years. I first saw an HDTV broadcast in 1998.

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