one of the tenants of punctuated equilibrium

I had no idea that punctuated equilibrium was renting out its spare rooms.

Or did you mean "tenets"?

I had no idea we were supposedly responsible for the extinction of mammoth.

Why not? We've had evidence that we ATE them going back to the 1800's.

The early 1800's

A nonprofit competitor is required by law to spend any profits they make on upgrading infrastructure. So unless they massively overhire or have higher expenses because of economies of scale or renting a more expensive building, the nonprofit is pretty much guaranteed to be able to undercut any for-profit competitor while providing better service, because it doesn't have the extra overhead of profit taking.

I already have about as little respect for the man as I possibly can! How much less do I need to qualify under your guidelines?

Or is that an unknown unknown?

Since the city is still going to have to tie into someone's top tier backbone to carry their traffic to the rest of the world, they'll still likely have to route it through Sprint, AT&T, Verizon, or some other provider's network, and the NSA's taps are on those top tier providers. I also don't know if a city would fight against a National Security Letter any more or less than any other provider, so they would still never tell you about a tap. But at least they could go in claiming to start from the moral high ground: "Support Cleveland's new city-wide Internet service - We Have Never Tapped Anyone's Data (only because we haven't been asked.)"

Particularly if all you need is heat. You could potentially build an almost entirely passive desalinization plant fairly readily by building a greenhouse atop the ocean and making the roof slope towards the sides with catch basins that then flow downhill towards the shore. The only thing required is an insane amount of glass (and an insane amount of space to dedicate to it).

Rum, of course. Or, if you prefer, vodka.

Maybe, maybe not. We know that companies, such as electrical suppliers, have extra equipment lying around for general maintenance and upgrade. Also, the people who manufacture these products have supplies on hand.

While it would be tedious, you would use this spare equipment to repair the most critical connections (from power plant to factories), thus enabling you to begin resupplying everyone else.

I'm not trying to minimize the nightmare scenario of getting things back up and running, only pointing out the path to get us there.

Since their founding. Your city cannot pass a law permitting the operation of a 200kW tower broadcasting white noise at 2.4 GHz. It's why the FCC exists.

I have to say something on Comcast's defense here. I have never had bad customer service from them, and I've had cable through them for a very long time. Do I pay through the nose? Yes. But they answer the phone when I call, they get a service guy out to my house in hours, not days, and they hit their promised windows. The technicians are competent, and they're friendly: "hey I've got a 1TB DVR in my truck, if you want I can swap out your old 200GB DVR, you'll get a lot more hours of storage."

I have had no problems with Comcast's customer service. (That said, I haven't had to cancel my service with them for about 25 years, and haven't had to go through the horrors of talking to a "Customer Retention Specialist".)

Thus the second part of my statement.

Reading comprehension is your friend.

Actually, communities tend to run infrastructure remarkably well. Look at water systems. When is the last time you were in a location with city water, turned on the tap, and nothing came out? (Assuming you weren't cut off for lack of payment, of course.) Towns know how to keep the water flowing. If a town is without water for a period of time, it makes national news. (Yes, there are developing nations that do not have potable water coming out of their taps. The US is not one of those nations, and this is a US topic.)

Governments are not incapable of running such a program, and they are not inherently guaranteed to suck at it.

Now, is this different because it will require tech support? Sure. Are cities prepared to deal with the calls, the service interruptions, the network attacks, etc? The cities that are asking are going into this eyes wide open. The FCC is not mandating that cities must carry their own networks, they are simply being asked to rule on a non-competition clause that unfairly prevents the city itself from providing said competition.

I think the biggest problem the cable companies face is that cities now know exactly how much it costs to run a network, and it's nothing like the extortionate rates the cable companies are charging today. If the city has a competent manager leading the project, and good engineering staff, they will deliver fast data along with great customer service at a price that is not only going to be competitive, it's going to dominate. Everyone wins, except for the shareholders of the cable companies - and as they've been winning for a couple of decades already, my sympathy for their plight is not exactly overwhelming.

ISPs such as Verizon and Comcast would have been forced to upgrade their equipment which means some of the bottlenecks that currently exist wouldn't exist afterwards (though let's be honest, they will find some other excuse to keep speeds slow).

And yes, this is a Broken Window-type fallacy though in this case, it wasn't deliberate.

Also, there would be a temporary boost in productivity and spending as all this equipment, in general, is replaced though whether that would offset the loss of productivity and people having nervous breakdowns because of their Pavlovian need to check their email and texts every ten seconds is debatable.

Aren't these two states, Tennessee and North Carolina, states who routinely harp on federal government interference in states rights?

Now they're asking the federal government to override what their own state governments have said.

Reminds me of Texas where that company blew up because they were storing exorbitant amounts of explosive materials and which had never bothered to be regulated because, you know, regulations are evil. Once the place blew up, Gov. Perry says "Texans take care of their own" then proceeded to whine how their request for federal disaster aid was (initially) rejected.

It would be nice if people had some sort of internal consistency. Either the federal government is too big and needs to stop weedling into state government, or it's not.

I can't wait to hear how those who say there is no need for net neutrality will react to their own states asking for just that.

Also, what type of asshole employee would separate a man from his two young children?

Here's the part most stories won't include about this incident. The father was an A passenger meaning he gets to board first. Southwest also has B and C classifications.

Someone called in to the talk show I was listening who was also an A passenger and explained the complete process. A passengers board first, then B and C. However, since the person had children, despite his A status, he would have boarded between the A and B groups. That is Southwest policy and has been since whenever.

This person attempted to circumvent the established policy by trying to pull a "Do you know who I am?" deal. All he had to do was wait for the A group to board then he could have boarded with his children.

Instead, he was an ass and publicly gave the name of a worker who was doing what company policy was, though she probably should have explained the policy since obviously this guy didn't know, or didn't care, what it was.

So there you have it. Asshole thinks they're someone important and tries to jump the line ends up being shown the door for his stupidity and whininess.