And Jack left town...

Sucks, but that's life in rural/unincorporated US. In many municipalities the cable franchise contract *requires* that the cable co pay to run cable to homes within their area, but if you are out of that area, good luck. Still, according to NCTA 93% of US households have access to cable, which IMO still qualifies as "vast majority".

Though this really does support the point that *someone* is going to have to spend the money to run or upgrade that rural last mile just as they will to upgrade the other 93% from the current 3-30Mbps broadband to 100-1Gbps broadband.

And when they spend that money they will want to own those wires. So it's not going to help competition that much unless the consumer or the government was the one willing to spend that money. There are some (very few though - they are increasingly selling out to Comcast/Verizon after being unable to break even due to scale) cities that are offering they own FTTP (fiber to the premises), but they require the homeowner/business to pay for the fiber link to the loop, which can cost a few grand.

Yes, it clearly was actually...

No, the vast majority has two: cable (DOCSIS) and telco (DSL). Though currently in all but a few lucky areas with FIOS, etc, the telcos (like AT&T) are way behind cable. The point of AT&T's upgrade is to finally ditch the ancient copper lines and leapfrog cable.

Again, no. The telcos have a monopoly because copper was installed to homes about 100 years ago via the only phone company in existence, the original AT&T. Their markets were "divided" by the antitrust breakup of AT&T, not a bunch of telcos deciding where to offer service.

Cable has a bit different history, but also had ZERO to do with "ISPs" since the Internet didn't *exist* when cable infrastructure was built into most cities. And in this case the cities are the ones who decided which cable company would get the franchise. Not to mention back then there were hundreds of smaller cable companies - it was almost the opposite of the telco evolution, probably in fact *becuase* of backlash to the AT&T monopoly. And of course it's the US government's fault as much as anyone, now, that those baby Bell telcos were allowed to recombine back into AT&T and Verizon and the cable companies to consolidate into the 5-6 that dominate the market.

Don't get me wrong, I hate the shitty policies and practices of cable and telco companies as much as anyone, but I'm also a realist. If anyone else wants to compete at this point they will either need to spend massive amounts of money to build the infrastructure (we can only hope Google can pull it off), or come up with some completely new technology/infrastructure (metro wifi, LTE+, etc) that is cheaper to deploy.

Yeah, time to give it up. His "arguments" have shifted so much he's basically into trolling territory. Once you pointed out the actual name of the SOX legislation as an indication of intent it was pretty much over for him, so he descended into semantics and enough underweight red herrings to get some poor fisherman some major Federal prison time...

What does this have to do with legal binding? We were talking understanding intent, and it absolutely goes towards intent. And the "Megan's Law" example is moronic, that's just an informal name, the actual law is "The Sexual Offender Act of 1994". And yes, it applies to sexual offenders. Fucking DUH.

Your arguments were looking weaker and weaker so you just changed your tack. But unfortunately now it's just become absurd.

Did you read the original comment this thread is based on?

I think you are in the weeds here. The rest of us actually started it based on that comment. Your post just goes... well who even knows where, sorry...

If you learned a bit more about the English Common Law system (which US law is based on), you'd understand the problem.

Yes, obviously (eye roll). And I don't wish skin cancer or death by falling rocks on you or anyone who decides to go on a tropical vacation once in a while. I assume you don't, really, either, and were just having a bad day or something. But if I'm wrong, then the douchenozzle comment stands.

Wait, you've *had* it and are still alive, and are dubious that it's highly treatable? (and you never researched it at all?) Ok, don't trust your own experience, I guess... but look it up!

"Skin cancer is the most common of all cancers. It accounts for nearly half of all cancers in the United States. More than 3.5 million cases of basal and squamous cell skin cancer are diagnosed in this country each year. Melanoma, the most serious type of skin cancer, will account for more than 76,000 cases of skin cancer in 2014."

"The overall 5-year relative survival rate for melanoma is 91%. For localized melanoma, it’s 98%; survival rates for regional and distant stage diseases are 62% and 16%, respectively. About 84% of melanomas are diagnosed at a localized stage." [from American Cancer Society]

I'll let you do the math, but I think it's pretty clear just by reading it that "skin cancer" as a whole (including melanoma, the only one that has significant mortality) has a well over 99% (really more like 99.99%) survival rate in a developed country.

I have two words for you. Surprised you haven't heard them, but apparently it may change your life!

Wear sunscreen.

For someone who claims to be a scientist, you seem to know almost nothing about really basic biology or medicine, huh? While it's the most common type of cancer, skin cancer also the most treatable.

IMO better to enjoy life, travel, and get outside than whatever you do for "fun" (hit rocks with little mallets in the basement?) But in any case you are a true douchenozzle for wishing death on anyone. Karma's a bitch, watch out for falling rocks...

Given that Dubai / UAE has been spending billions upon billions building massive resort islands for years now, that's not only plausible, but likely...

ie. 3rd world countries with problems catering to 1st world tourists.

Ah, interesting.

Agreed. In this, case, at least, it seemed like the judge had some common sense, but obviously it's open to abuse...

Because it's not from a lake, it's from offshore Federal waters, so it's their jurisdiction.

And there was NO criminal case over the size of a fish. It was over someone who could have accepted a minor fine but decided they wanted to deliberately flaunt Federal law to try to "get away with it". Conspiracy makes it worse, as it should.

That one may have been a bit overly harsh and punitive, but - good! When your own government representatives lie, I see no problem with "throwing the book at them". If you don't want to be under a microscope, don't be in a public office...

No, I think you totally misunderstood it... I'm saying that those without a degree should not be treated any differently (besides maybe requiring a couple extra years of experience/practical work to make up for the lack of a degree) while you seem to be telling the OP "hire them, you can get them for cheap!" While there are some (usually very conservative/old school) companies that do look for degrees, that's completely not the trend in Silicon Valley these days. Hell, many of the founders never completed theirs, so it's almost ingrained in the culture to go for talent over education. So I'm saying, don't underestimate the earning potential of those people! And it proves out over the years. At least in SV, your pay is largely a combination of the *range* of the position (which can be highly variable) and something that matches/beats an employee's current salary. If you keep settling you will never get the pay increases...

This is partly true. Private schools by definition, of course, are not. Though if you are going to Stanford or MIT you are probably going to be able to pay off those student loans quickly enough, anyway. Public schools IMO are the problem. How the hell can a public school charge $13k for tuition (which doesn't even include room and board). Well - we know the answer - because the US is no longer prioritizing education.

Which makes a lot of this is fairly academic (again no pun intended) since there is such a shortage of decent SW engineers in the US right now that we are importing as many as allowed from India and China, etc. And those developers will pretty much always have degrees AND be cheaper to hire. Not saying that's necessarily a good thing, but it's the current reality.

In fact, the combination of skyrocketing US tuition and more talent from out of the county means it's really not going to end up being a decision of the company HR or hiring managers, it's going to be up to the US government to fix (whether by fixing tuition or limiting H1Bs). And given the new Republican Congress doesn't give a rat's ass about student debt (they are happy with charging 7% on Federal loans when you can get a freaking mortgage or car loan for 4%), and shrinking H1Bs would seriously harm economic/tech growth in the US in the short/mid term, it's likely that nothing will be done in the near future. Big surprise...

Ok... 400k range UID... haven't seen the 100s of similar /. articles... did you just get out of prison yourself? Maybe caught one too many undersized groupers?