I would, of course, prefer the second. That, and actual investigation into whether or not companies are willfully causing interference.

That's true, but they're also still delivering that to you, at same cost for them, and less cost for you.

Look, they're assholes. They already tried getting a slice of the content provider's pie albeit without actually providing content. And they should get a whipping for that. But asking for money to continue maintaining and improving an infrastructure that you're still utilizing as much as you used to (jury's out on whether it's more or less) is the least offensive crime they could commit. Of course, they're not actually doing that, they're just still engaging in horseshit, so I understand why they're hated. My point is that if and when they go, the new guy is going to suck more.

Your comment about scarce resources is another "sell" they tried that makes me cringe. Usage-based pricing should never be about resource. It should be about putting the cost burden on your heaviest users so that the people that need the Internet more than others, pay more than others. And it only makes sense to have hard caps if you have throughput pinches on your network. I'm not convinced cable companies do.

Then the market and environment has to be able to support said competition. As it currently stands, I seriously question if it is. When cable companies stay out of each other's territory, it tells me they can't get a return on that investment.

Speaking from the perspective of being a WISP, I can barely keep my paltry amount of technicians paid based on what people are willing to pay for service. When your cost burden is the average American, the business can't succeed anymore. The average American can't afford shit. If I have a competitor in the area, I might as well pack it up. They'll spam the environment with noise, and then proceed to try and undersell me, while we both make nothing at all. I do not believe the big cable industry is that much different.

Whether it makes sense to people or not, this topic is completely tied to income disparity. If income disparity continues, you're looking at a public Internet service, because these companies are going to keel over if they're depending on my money. And if nobody does anything to help two companies have double the infrastructure in the same location, you won't have competitors, either. But nobody wants to hear that their government is responsible for some of this shit.

Well that's just it.

Look, I'm not a lover of cable companies, and I think they regularly and historically have engaged in some really shitty business and billing practices. But at some point, displacing all of their consumption from TV to Internet, whilst utilizing the same infrastructure (and clamoring for infrastructure upgrades), is going to create pressure to increase Internet prices.

There seems to be a lot of people here who would rather see them drop dead, and again, I can understand they're not your favorite people. But, okay, they've dropped dead. Now what? Back to the DSL service you hated enough to be using them in the first place? Or enjoy the new monopoly that buys them up and gives you even shittier service (strange idea, that!). I'd rather see some regulation regarding their shitty business and billing practices, and then enforcement of those regulations.
Dead companies = Bigger other companies

Does critical thinking mean giving people the peace and quiet necessary to accomplish that critical thinking? Or is this really just a concern that they're not able to do that while carrying on two conversations and looking at your new baby pictures?

If we don't need people to do a job, why have the job exist? At what point do we start to look at our modernization's removal of jobs as a good thing? Sooner or later, we have to start recognizing that everyone having a job can't keep being the goal.

Besides, talking to customers is a craptastic job anyways. Enjoy yelling at your screens because you placed an order for 8 people and they missed one of your Diet Cokes or whatever. We don't need a human being to take that shit anymore.

First off, before I say anything else, thank you for taking the time to take part in the discussion. A lot of people would have seen the comments on this post and turned tail, knowing they were the subject of all the hate. I sincerely appreciate that you're willing to participate. That being said....

Well, no, there is a good way for strangers to work together anonymously. That's what a ridiculously large number of us do on a daily basis. It's called working within standards. It's how open-source projects function, and it's how the two of us are going to discuss this passionately yet calmly on /. In context, wouldn't a far better use of your technical know-how be to help educate others on proper administration of their open WiFI? Or perhaps to instead discuss on /. how other people utilize free and public WiFi? Instead you've created a tool that will, no doubt, be re-engineered by the black hat community to just redirect all traffic to a host, instead of just BT traffic. Because that will be the source of giggles for them. Which, mind you, I don't damn a tool for having that capacity, but I'd appreciate it if the tool's original intent wasn't something equally annoying, in the first place.

I think they have it right in Mass Effect. It's going to be really really awful and boring. Gunners are going to be mathematicians, and you can turn into some sort of butcher simply by missing.


Gunnery Chief: [as the character enters the Citadel] This, recruits, is a 20-kilo ferris slug, feel the weight. Every five seconds, the main gun of an everest class dreadnought accelerates one to 1.3% of light-speed. It impacts with the force of a 38-kiloton bomb. That is three times the yield of the city-buster dropped on Hiroshima back on Earth. That means- Sir Issac Newton is the deadliest son-of-a-bitch in space. Now! Serviceman Burnside! What is Newton's first law?

Serviceman Burnside: Sir! An object in motion stays in motion, sir!

Gunnery Chief: No credit for partial answers, maggot!

Serviceman Burnside: Sir! Unless acted on by an outside force, sir!

Gunnery Chief: Damn straight! I dare to assume you ignorant jackasses know that space is empty. Once you fire this hunk of metal, it keeps going til it hits something. That can be a ship. Or the planet behind that ship. It might go off into deep space and hit somebody else in ten thousand years. If you pull the trigger on this, you are ruining someones day, somewhere and sometime. That is why you check your targets. That is why you wait for the computer to give you a damn firing solution. That is why, Serviceman Chung, we do not "eyeball it". This is a weapon of mass destruction. You are not a cowboy shooting from the hip!

Serviceman Chung: Sir, yes sir!

Well, during other months they don't do anything at all, and that's altogether more recognizable for me.

Between this, Indefinite Detention, and SOPA, I am really struggling to recognize America this month.

Okay, but, again, you're addressing it from an internal standpoint. If people on the other side of your firewall can determine which workstations are doing what on your network, your firewall sucks.

I found it interesting that you said this, as I was thinking it. And the reason I was thinking it, was because I had recently seen this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U

I am going to go out on a limb and say that your corporate environment does not give every workstation their own public IP address.

You know, it's bad enough that ISP's, Verizon definitely included, are using bandwidth caps now, which limits the attraction of a service like Netflix.

It's bad enough that Verizon charges you extra to use functions on your phone that don't have a damn thing to do with their network at all (Mobile Hotspot).

I don't think I want to know how they manage to ruin Netflix, if they were to snatch it up.