Thanks for totally ignoring the last point that actual speeds are a fraction of the rated speeds... the 2Gb connection may well be just a 100Mbps connection most of the time.

But your own post as it stands refutes your counter-argument. Waiting even four minutes for a demo is fairly long, which shows that higher speeds are in fact needed by average users today - even if they are not being used continuously. Having a high burst speed IS very useful to even the average person today.

When Bush left office, the Middle East was pretty safe, and had a functional democracy in Iraq.

The economy of the U.S. was on an upswing, and the U.S. had vastly less debt.

Now the middle east is blowing up all over, soon very literally when Iran achieves nuclear weapons. The economy is tanking again, the national debt is monstrously high, there are not infrequent waves of rioting and looting in many major cities. Race relations are at an all time low, in part because so many criticisms these days are countered with "you only disagree with me because I am black", an argument that trickles down to the population at large. It makes it impossible to talk about real instances of racism when so many things that are not, are labeled as such.

Civilians in other countries certainly don't feel much safer since instead of discriminating troops locking down an area or fighting other troops, we have vastly increased drone strikes that often harm innocents.

I'm not sure in what way you can possibly justify saying Obama is even a little better than Bush in terms of safety and hope, since there is now so much less of both than when Bush left office.

So much so, that a common sight now is posters of Bush smiling with the words "Miss me yet?" emblazoned underneath...

25% per year? so far less than what bitcoin lost in the last year? seems to me the story is shit and it certainly isn't any sort of disruptive influence on the economy as it is too small to be noticed. What I find amusing though is people claiming it is more stable, botcoin has collapsed far worse than pesos in last 12 months.

Well thank you Mr Gates for being so sure normal people couldn't use high speeds to advantage - what if two kids are watching YouTube in 1080p, another person is using Netflix, and then someone fires up a PS4? I just got one the other day and wanted to play two game demos - over *2GB* each thank you very much. I had to play the next day because *I* don't have 2GB fiber...

Plus we all know that 2GB is shared so it's almost always going to be a percentage of the rating speed. Might as well be a percentage of a much higher number.

How stupid must your plan be if politicians actually call it stupid?

seeing as he said DEVALUATION not deflation he seems to understand the difference just fine and used the correct term. The error is in your reading capabilities.

I do have a number of neighbors around me I know pretty well, that I say hi to - when I see them.

But I don't see them every day. In winter you may not see them for some time because people stay inside mostly.

Even a close community around you is no replacement for someone that checks on you daily.

"So I agree with you, there is no reason for your opening post to be thought of as a troll."
Actually yes there is.
You see we have this thing called the internet and the internet has services one is called Google and another is called Wikipedia.
You see something you do not know about you have too options.
1. Look it up and find out what it is.
or
2. Dismiss it because it is outside your area of knowledge.

By dismissing it you are being a jerk. This is Slashdot so a cool programing language is still a cool programing language even it it is not super popular. Here are some systems written in Haskell
https://wiki.haskell.org/Haske...

In other words it is really dumb to take pride in what you do not know.

The three people at work that have bought Apple Watches so far are all over 50. Is there an age limit on this hipster thing? They're also married with kids. Still hipsters?

I just need to be clear on this point, so I can tell them one way or the other.

What do you think society is going to be like when so many of the people not having kids get older? It's going to look like this, where you hire services to check in on you regularly and make sure you are not dead or needing help...

Even as the population gets more dispersed, there's a need for things like this so family who lives far away can still make sure parents are OK.