My point was imagine how much of things people actually want we could get for $680 billion. If you need the government to take people's money by force to pay for something, it's obviously not that important to people.

What do you mean fucked? There's plenty of wireless carriers that sell intenet access. If you are in a Metro area, sprint's speed can be quite competitive, and price-wise it's not bad to bump up to that level if you are already paying for a data plan on your phone. Plus there's always satellite internet.

The writing is on the wall for wired connections. DTV signals often are more clear than cable (due to cable's compression) and people are already canceling their land lines because they prefer to keep a cell phone.

George Orwell wondered why it was that only English-speaking intellectuals hated, rather than loved and were proud of, their home civilization. If he had taken the time to look at other distinctive traits of English-speaking cultures, he would have figured out why: no other civilization has a despised subculture for smart people. Anime is mainstream in Japan; enormous, borderline-crackpot philosophical theories are mainstream in Germany; Fernand Braudel, who wrote The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip II (including footnotes) from memory while he was imprisoned by the Nazis, would be among much more similar minds at Google than at Citigroup.

Note also that if Hodgman really thinks that jockdom wins wars, he hasn't heard of the Battle of Leuctra, to say nothing of the Vietnam War.

I, for one, don't want to pay a toll just to run to the grocery store.

It would be great to be able to opt-out of the crapware. I understand, the trial-ware and that kind of third party stuff generates income for the PC company, but I can imagine they lose some PC sales entirely, by bogging the PC down so much right from the start. Even the proprietary software that is well-meant and supposed to be helpful tips the scales to the side of inconvenience, when you take into account the long startup time and resources taken because of it. I realise this post is aimed at those who are bothered by the crapware and know the PC could do much better without, but are unwilling/unable to quickly and easily change that themselves.

Maybe eventually, but if you had RTFA you'd know that all current subscribers got their speeds doubled without an increase in cost...

But there is no "would have", because until the city decided to serve itself, the ISP had zero interest in rolling out fiber in that city.

Some people want to read only confirmation of their existing opinions. Some other people want their opinions challenged. In both cases, they'll find more material they like online than they ever would in a newspaper.

The summary *is* a bit skimpy on important details.

A - My brother and my parents, travelling in separate vehicles, arrived at my house at the same time.
B - Therefore, my brother's Ferrari and my parents' RV both travel at the same speed.

No logical gaps between A & B there. Move along.

Sure, but you can't snort ink.

If that don't learn'em, just kill'em.

Not just newspapers, but the idea of posting news stories on a public bulletin board dates all the way back to New York City in the 1890s..... or even earlier. People would stand outside Wall Street or store windows, and read the headlines scrawled across chalkboards. It ain't something new.

I'll go with even earlier.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ninety-Five_Theses

I'm pretty sure that everywhere there was a post near a town square, there has been an analog blog. Hell, isn't that where we get the term 'Post' from?

Even without that, there was always the town crier.

(2) can get stuff off the net/Netflix too [I haven't personally used that]

This one feature is well worth the price of admission... more selections would be nice, but they're improving that quite nicely.

Seriously though, you honestly can't expect more than 250 GB per month for residential service. Those of you arguing about Blu-ray transfers and GB of backup data, shut up. Get a goddamn commercial line if you're not an average consumer.

Are you saying watching HD movies and backing up pictures/home video to Carbonite or something aren't residential activities?

Complaining over a 250 GB cap is like complaining that you can't run a 20,000 machine data centre at home off the city's public electricity grid.

No it's not. It's like complaining that my connection to the power grid can't support eight computers in my home, because the "average user" doesn't have eight computers. Who's to say, though, that I don't have a high-power desktop for gaming (1), a laptop for surfing, etc (2), a laptop for the wife (3), one laptop each for the kids (4, 5), one MythTV box each for the upstairs TV and the downstairs TV (6, 7), and a media server (running Windows HOME Server, not something Enterprisey) (8)?

Sure, this is a hypothetical example, but it's not at all unreasonable. The fact that I'm not "average" doesn't mean I should need a commercial-grade connection.