Bleh, I feel for you... totally...

The state of Internet in the US is embarrassing... where there is a monopoly, the prices are stupid and the speeds are slow.

While I agree with you to a point, I wouldn't say 10/10. That is no longer fast enough for a lot of what people could be doing. Video is no longer a minor part of the web.

25/25 would be enough to give multiple streams of 1080p video, which would allow the cable companies to go away. :)

I used to have DirecTV, got rid of them a year ago or so, now everything for us is streaming. I'd be happy to pay some reasonable number per month to buy channels over the web à la carte.

Actually, for me personally, it was...

With TWC and 50/5, I made a point to download anything I might think I wanted, because in the evenings, I never actually could get 50 down because it was shared with about 150 houses (actually I'm sure it was faster than that, but a 500 down connection shared with 150 homes is crappy at 7pm).

Now that I get a solid 18 megabytes per second, 24 hours a day, it has changed that behavior. Steam is a good example, I used to have the whole collection downloaded. Then it grew and I needed more space to keep it, and it was running slower keeping everything up to date.

Even a 10GB game would only take about 10 min to download. Now granted, I'd prefer faster, but what it means is that if I really want to play something, 10 min is enough time to go make coffee, use the bathroom, etc.

The "cloud" has become much more useful as such. With "more or less" unlimited space in my OneDrive, it has become practical to upload a copy of everything there. I would never have tried that before with just 5 up. I also run two online backup services, BackBlaze and Crashplan, to make sure I haev copies of everything. In addition, about 2 TB of critical files (mostly work related) are stored on Amazon Glacier. Again something I wouldn't try with 5 up, but with 150 up, becomes no big deal.

And yes, in addition to 4 copies in the cloud, I also have multiple external hard drives that I rotate on backups. I lost data once, nearly 20 years ago... NEVER AGAIN! :) (and yes, I test restores from time to time)

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Just my personal experience, others will be different of course.

My wife has been shopping for a new home in the county, she recently found a nice 10 acre place with a starter house on it not too far outside of Dallas for under 300k that would let us move there and then build a proper home when we're ready.

It is about 5 miles past decent internet. :)

My deal with her is that if I can't get at least 50/50 internet, I'm not going, otherwise she can have almost anything she wants.

I'm not going back to 50/5, that is just evil. I have 150/150 now, but frankly don't really need that much, 50/50 would be enough. It is the lack of upload on most home connections that would kill me.

I hear you... I used to have TWC at 50/5... but thankfully I've had FIOS for several years now...

150 down, 150 up... really a wonderful thing... That 700MB download? About 39 seconds...

And I really do get those speeds... There is enough bandwidth to the neighborhood to support it.

Just FYI, the use of the word "excessive" implies a bias.

This is true, road trips account for a small fraction of total miles driven.

I know of exactly one charging station in town, it is located at a restaurant. Otherwise there is no place to charge that I know of.

Fair enough, that choice will make sense for some people.

My primary issue is that I can't rent a vehicle that I'd actually want to drive across the country, they simply are not as nice as the vehicle that I drive on a regular basis.

If you could dependably rent such a thing, it would at least be worth considering. I suspect the cost would make it pointless however, as it stands the cost to rent a base Suburban for a week is more than the monthly cost to own mine. It probably would be 2 months worth of payments for a nice one to rent.

So instead of addressing the issue I bought up, you resort to insults?

Fair enough, but that usually means that my point was right and you've got nothing to counter it with...

Reply to the point, not the person...

Your calling it nonsense doesn't further your argument. Nor does it attract anyone who wasn't already on your side.

You don't owe me an explanation, and I don't owe you any support. If you want my support, it'll cost you an explanation that isn't filled with insults and personal attacks.

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For what it is worth, I'm perfectly willing to change my behavior and views when presented with reasonable information that actually makes sense.

I recently replaced every bulb in my house with LEDs, when someone posted the math on the price of the bulbs and how much power they were using. I was not aware that LEDs had dropped in price so much or how much power the older bulbs were using.

Once shown new information, changing was easy.

I have seen no such information that we could do the same with our overall CO2 emissions in such a way as to make a difference to the outcome, without crashing the economy. And yes, I've read up on the subject on both pro and con web sites, and yes, I'm above average in intelligence. :)

I'm not against CO2 being a problem, but I am against changing our whole way of life if it doesn't even solve the problem. I'd rather spend the money to adapt to the future that is coming, than fight against it when we can't stop it.

Citation needed

Wait, how about I provide one:

http://www.brookings.edu/blogs...

"Wind power is the second most expensive. It costs nearly 6 cents more per KWH (than coal)"

Not even close...

From the above: "Adding up the net energy cost and the net capacity cost of the five low-carbon alternatives, far and away the most expensive is solar. It costs almost 19 cents more per KWH than power from the coal or gas plants that it displaces."

What parts of Germany regularly hit 40c and spend about a month at that temp?

My house is 353 sqm, how big is yours? The total bill doesn't matter nearly so much as the cost per sqm.

So I'm paying about 85 cents per sqm per month in power, on average. What is your per-sqm average?

And I'm not even taking into account that I work from home, thus use more power than the average person does anyway, since I'm here all day.

Citation needed.

I don't see anyone debating the speed of light, the mass of water, or a hundred other things...

There are a LOT of people, including a lot of SMART people, who aren't convinced of man made climate change.

Yes, there are plenty of smart people who ARE convinced, and that's fine.

Clearly you're convinced. I'm not, so convince me. If you don't think you have to, that is fine as well, but then don't be shocked when I don't come along with you on your journey of "change the world".

I'm not alone there either. You need to do more to convince me otherwise if you want my support.

Those types of replies are why you get the same back in return.

Why don't you try and tell me how much we have to cut to undo that change, in what time period, and how much that will cost.

Pretend for a minute that everything is true and we're on a runway CO2 binge. Now what?

Will cutting 10% make any real difference to the outcome? Is it worth the money spent?

Saying "well anything we do helps" is nonsense, because if it doesn't make a real difference to the outcome, but crashes the economy in the process, then it was a stupid choice. Accepting the outcome and spending the money to adapt to it would make more sense.

It is quite possible that the time to make real changes passed 20 years ago and we're well past that point.

Kinda like rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic 30 min after it hit the ice berg. Way, way past the point of mattering. Actually, in that case, getting people in the life boats "helps", but if the Carpathia had not come to their rescue, that wouldn't have mattered either, would it?

What I see and hear in the media is a whole lot of "well we should do SOMETHING", except sometimes you shouldn't do something... it is a bunch of waving arms without any real conversation.

Umm... That $600 is for the BATTERY, not the whole bike...

What size/weight vehicle will that move 30km? Which is about 20mi, which is about 1/10th of what is needed.

And it isn't a car, it is a bicycle, that you have to pay for.

We're just talking about different things. :)

That was the first rational, fact filled reply I can recall reading...

I will do some reading up on that...