"And the municipalities are nullifying the will of private citizens."

Every time the politicians running a municipality enact something desired by less than 100% of the residents it's "nullifying the will of private citizens", but it's also enforcing the will of other private citizens. If it does something which nullifies the will of a majority of the residents, said politicians will find themselves replaced come the next election.

Almost all of the members of the NC legislature are not residents of Wilson and I daresay the ones who voted for that law were more concerned with what TWC wanted than what Wilsonites did.

I feel reasonably sure that the elected officials in Wilson who got Greenlight started were residents of Wilson and a lot more in touch with the wishes for faster broadband of their fellow residents, wishes which TWC and Embarq weren't interested in dealing with until Wilson started Greenlight, and then, as I recall hearing at the time, all of a sudden they started whining about how they were going to "real soon now".

In my neighborhood in a different NC city, where we're only about 3 blocks from a switching station, I heard "real soon now" about DSL as Carolina Telephone and Telegraph became Sprint became Embarq became CenturyLink. At some point I gave up and went with cable modem.

He wants to believe it, therefore it must be true.

Actually the FCC is preventing states from nullifying the will of municipalities.

Make no mistake, these laws, no matter what rationales are offered, are only about protecting outfits like Comcast and Time Warner Cable from competition, and keeping certain areas reserved for them until they feel like getting around to providing service in them.

So we should let them pipe it down to a Gulf of Mexico port and put it on a ship because nothing bad will happen to those ships?

The safest option is to let Canada transport the stuff across Canada to a Canadian port.

...then there's a Giant Rat of Sumatra joke in there somewhere.

So businesses everywhere experienced a huge spike in productivity due to a Slashdot uneffect?

I'm probably the only other person around here old enough to get that one.

So you think that was the result of *not* being good at what they were *really* trying to do?

You got any idea how big a percentage of communications to politicians are about the constituents' Social Security and/or Medicare accounts and problems with said accounts?

Neither do I, but I'll bet it ain't small, especially in a retiree magnet state like Florida, and if you want a politician to use leverage on your behalf with the SSA or whoever deals with Medicare, they're going to need to know your SSN so that the SSA or the Medicare people know who they're talking about.

Yeah, that's just what the Templars and the Rosacrucians want you to think.

No, wait, that's just what Opus Dei and the Freemasons want you to think that the Templars and the Rosacrucians want you to think.

No, wait, that's just what the Gnostics and The Elders of Zion want you to think that Opus Dei and the Freemasons want you to think that the Templars and the Rosacrucians want you to think.

No, wait, that's just what Ordo Templi Orientis and The Cathars want you to think that the Gnostics and The Elders of Zion want you to think that Opus Dei and the Freemasons want you to think that the Templars and the Rosacrucians want you to think.

No, wait, that's just what the Comte de Saint-Germain wants you to think that the the Priory of Sion wants you to think that Ordo Templi Orientis and The Cathars want you to think that the Gnostics and The Elders of Zion want you to think that Opus Dei and the Freemasons want you to think that the Templars and the Rosacrucians want you to think.

No, wait, that's just what the Jaycees want you to think that the Ascended Masters want you to think that the Comte de Saint-Germain...

In both cases, parties wishing to loot the US in one way or another.

The headline made *me* think it was about an undersea "communications" link.

But I did wind up expanding my knowledge of the variations of meaning for the word "moot".

Did you ever even get your spandex jacket?

...of the comment author when modding, or otherwise.

I read the comments, and look to see who wrote it if I think the comment is above average in some way, or otherwise stands out.

So if I were to hand out that many down mods (I very, very rarely down mod, try to use the points to uplift the good stuff), I suppose I could theoretically hit the same author 5 times in a row (if they didn't have a sig).

But yeah, in your case it was probably a jerk trying to find the " -100, I disagree " button.