That's what corporate deep pockets are for. She can pay them back* if she gets elected.

*with the congealed blood of a thousand rotting babies she used for target practice

Because the plain old internet doesn't make much money for anyone.

You're talking about putting infrastructure into places where there is no expectation of the local population valuing the connection enough to pay for it. And infrastructure doesn't pop up for free.

Philanthropy is wonderful, but it's not generally part of the business plan for major corporations. Especially when that philanthropy would allow competitors direct access to users.

There was no such ambiguity within the residents of Blacksburg. Most students currently at Tech were not students when the original shooting happened, or even know students who were here. But those of us who live here remember, and remember quite vividly. There was no question that this was related. Asking some kid who probably 12 when the shootings happened probably isn't going to get you much response.

I'd like to ensure that both sides of this suffer maximum casualties. Ending up with only one bat-shit crazy fundamentalist cult doesn't help.

Calling in a bomb threat has always been a crime, not a prank. I see three possible conditions here:

1. He heard of a plot for a mass murder on the Virginia Tech campus and warned the community via Yik Yak
2. He was personally threatening to carry out a mass murder on the Virginia Tech campus and decided to go super villain style and announce it
3. Neither 1 or 2, He was pranking a mass murder threat on the Virginia Tech campus

If it's (1), then he's free and clear once he comes clean about all he knows of the plot for mass murder and there is credible evidence to show that such an event was immanent. If it's (2) then he's likely facing free room and board with roomates not of his choosing and very little outdoor time for the foreseeable future. If it's (3) it would fall under threats in the Virginia statutes, and is a class 6 Felony. Note that the law does not distinguish between an empty threat and a viable threat; when it is in writing (including digital communications) it meets the test of the law.

If you posted "Another 9.11 is going to happen, just a warning" on September 10th in a New York area yak, do you think it would be taken seriously?
better yet - how about "Another 4.15 is going to happen, just a warning" on the day before the Boston Marathon a couple weeks ago in a yak centered near the start or finish of the race - do you think it would have been taken seriously?

Comparing a lone-gunman of a few years ago to an invasion by a hostile air force / navy from 3/4 century ago is very, very different.

It's a radio transmitter in a can. It would take an even larger departure from known physics to make it go boom. We have a good deal of experience with radio transmitters in space.

OK, I will try to restate in my baby talk since I don't remember this correctly.

Given that you are accelerating, the appearance to you is that you are doing so linearly, and time dilation is happening to you. It could appear to you that you reach your destination in a very short time, much shorter than light would allow. To the outside observer, however, time passes at a different rate and you never achieve light speed.

I am having an equally hard time thinking of how Earth is more habitable than Mars while atomic bombs are going off or impactors are impacting. If you wait a while, sure it's more habitable than Mars. But for that moment, no.

Prepare for another culture-shock, my dear passport-less American. Tokyo has competing privately-owned subway lines. Japan's wonderful highspeed trains are privately-owned too.

Which shock would this be, exactly? Major American cities used to have competing privately-owned commuter rail lines as well -- mostly torn down in the first half of the 1900s in favor of the highway model. This is by no means a surprise to anyone who knows even local transportation history.

If a government is doing it, it can not be smart...

You lecture me about fallacies, and then pull out that?! I find it hard to believe that you're actually interested in making a good-faith attempt at a meeting of the minds.

To an outside observer. I don't think it's the same in the inertial frame.

Before we call this real, we need to put one on some object in orbit, leave it in continuous operation, and use it to raise the orbit by a measurable amount large enough that there would not be argument regarding where it came from. The Space Station would be just fine. It has power for experiments that is probably sufficient and it has a continuing problem of needing to raise its orbit.

And believe me, if this raises the orbit of the Space Station they aren't going to want to disconnect it after the experiment. We spend a tremendous amount of money to get additional Delta-V to that thing, and it comes down if we don't.

Just put the solar panels in the grow room - boom, free power!

Except without all that silly permanence when things go wrong.

As long as the founders played the corporation game right, they have no personal liability at stake. A corporation is just like a person, except that when a corporation violates a law which would burden it for life, or financially destroy it, it magically disintegrates leaving the real people who ran it into the ground clean and unencumbered by their wrongdoing.

There are good reasons for the existence of corporations; this isn't one of them.

So you're only traveling between airports? What about commuting to/from the airport?